Syria executes 24 people charged with lighting wildfires that devastated the country last year
CNN
Syria has executed 24 people who were convicted of terrorism charges for igniting last year's devastating wildfires that left 3 people dead and scorched thousands of acres of forests, the Syrian Ministry of Justice said Thursday.
The perpetrators confessed that they had set fire to several locations in the three governorates, and were first arrested last year, the Ministry of Justice statement said.
They were executed on Wednesday.
Attorney General Merrick Garland is expected to slam the “repeated attacks” and “conspiracy” theories floated by Republicans about the Justice Department being weaponized against former President Donald Trump during his opening statements to Congress on Tuesday, according to prepared remarks shared with CNN.
Dr. Anthony Fauci said he sees a direct link between the rise in death threats made against him and his family and public figures connecting him to Covid-19 conspiracy theories, which he noted happened earlier Monday during a contentious House hearing about the government’s response to the pandemic.
The public lashing Dr. Anthony Fauci faced on Capitol Hill Monday was illustrative of his enduring unpopularity with the GOP’s conservative base. Yet even as Republicans seek to capitalize on that dislike of the infectious disease expert, former President Donald Trump’s past elevation of Fauci is a potential vulnerability as he fights off an insurgent independent campaign from Robert F. Kennedy Jr.