Global News Podcast - Life in Damascus returning to normal despite Israeli bombing

Episode Date: December 10, 2024

Life in Dasmascus is returning to normal despite Israeli bombing. Also: Netanyahu appears in court on corruption charges and a judge throws a spanner in the works for the Murdoch succession plans.

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. If Hitler isn't defeated, it's the end of the free world. Purple Heart Warriors, listen now by searching for dramas wherever you get your BBC podcasts. This is the Global News podcast from the BBC World Service. This is the Global News podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Nick Miles and at 14 Hours GMT on Tuesday the 10th of December, these are our main stories. Syria's new government is taking shape. A prime minister has been named and public sector staff are returning to work. The Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is on trial for corruption. He told the court in Tel Aviv the charges against him were ridiculous.

Also in the podcast we hear from the lawyer of the French woman whose husband arranged for her to be raped by hundreds of men and a spanner in the works for Rupert Murdoch's succession plans. It is still only 48 hours since the Assad regime came to an end in Syria, but the rebel groups that have taken over in Damascus know the country needs more than just a wave of euphoria to move forwards. They have started to address the basics of governing, like making sure key services, water, electricity, transport and the oil industry continue to function properly. An interim Prime Minister and a small cabinet have been announced to make that happen. But there's also a recognition that past crimes will have to be addressed.

A list has been drawn up of Assad regime officials who oversaw torture. There have also been more than a hundred Israeli airstrikes across Damascus. Israel says it's trying to prevent weapons getting into the hands of extremists. Our correspondent Lina Sinjab is in the Syrian capital. So basically the leader of the rebels came out yesterday after a meeting with the former prime minister appointing a new interim Prime Minister with a small cabinet basically to get all the public institutions and services resume for people and we've heard that you know

some of the public employees have been contacted to come back to their work today but we still it's not confirmed if they've resumed work today, but you know, it seems that they have a plan to have a soft handover of power so that they continue with the running activities for people and so that life goes back to normal as soon as possible here in the capital. It does seem extraordinarily peaceful at the moment and from what I can gather in Damascus, particularly even in the Alawite areas, that's the sect from which Bashar al-Assad came. There must be a degree of concern about retribution in those areas?

Well, certainly, especially among those Alawites who supported President Assad. Now, the reader of the rebel also issued like an amnesty for everyone who worked in the army before or was part of the Assad regime before, but of course focusing on those who had torture, proved that they've been involved in torturing Syrians, they issued a list of names that they're calling for them to be arrested, to be brought to justice and prosecuted. Even they said that the ones who fled the country should be brought to justice. So the assurances that they're giving to minorities are giving people some sort of calm, but also

of course it's all to be proven how they're going to act on the ground in the days and weeks to come. The United Nations Special Envoy for Syria has said that the transitional arrangements need to be as inclusive as possible. Speaking at a news conference in Geneva, Gher Pedersen said that it was crucial all groups in Syria work together. Much of what some call rebel-controlled Syria is under the control of what I would call a patchwork of groups who are coordinating well for now, but they are not fully or formally united.

It's important that we don't see conflict between these groups. Let me also say that by and large we have seen reassuring statements from the HDS and the different armed groups, but there are still some issues of law and order. Our international editor, Jeremy Bowen, is on the Lebanese-Syrian border making his way into Syria. He told us more about the potential issues in how power is being and may be distributed. It's really early days at the moment and we don't even know the degree to which they have control outside the capital. They've clearly taken the main towns, clearly the regime has

collapsed, but Syria has dozens of armed groups, some of which are jihadists. They haven't converted and changed in the way that HCS says that it has. So it has a massive job. I mean, power anyway has been fractured in Syria for years because of the way that the war left the place in pieces, controlled by different authorities, different groups. But I think now, with the regime gone, there is, you know, it's a moment full of opportunities for Syrian people. If they can find a way of working together, they've got some hope, a hope that they haven't had. That's why people have been celebrating in the way that they have. But it's the Middle East. We have to

be realistic. There are dangers ahead. And the precedent from Iraq and from Libya in the last, well, 20 odd years, is the fact that when a dictatorship goes, when there is a vacuum of power in both those circumstances, the result has been a chaotic situation where people grab, grabbing for power, settling scores, taking territory, and Iraq, you know, for many years there was a catastrophic murderous situation and it's still a very fragile state. As we heard there from Jeremy Bowen, there are many lessons to remember from the fall of Saddam Hussein. That was regime change led by the US and the UK and their allies. Emma Sky saw that period. She was there between 2003 and 2010 advising the commanding general

of US forces through a key period from 2007 to 2010 and she's the director of the International Leadership Centre at Yale University. She spoke to my colleague Michelle Hussein. When you look at these images coming out of Syria and the joy and euphoria on people's faces at the fall of the Assad regime. You know, it brings back memories of Iraq from 2003 when there was such hope and optimism that the fall of Saddam would bring about a better future. So I feel those similarities and every Syrian I know is just ecstatic at the moment and just when you see people reunited with their loved ones,

going back to their homes, it's very moving. There was a key mistake by the coalition, wasn't there, to remove everyone connected with Saddam or his party, the Ba'ath party, and there's a link between that party and the Assad's party in Syria, to remove them entirely from the equation. Can you tell us the thinking at the time? So when the coalition overthrew the Saddam regime, they didn't have enough troops there

at the beginning. And you could see there was a lot of lawlessness, a lot of chaos and looting. But a couple of months after that, they then decided in order to put the new Iraq on new foundations to create a democratic country, they couldn't build from the Ba'ath Party. So they went through this process of de-Ba'athification, of removing members of the Ba'ath Party from their jobs and dissolving all the security institutions. The problem was there wasn't a difference really between the state and the party. And what this did was unintentionally collapse the state. So that led to a lot of violence and Iraq's descent into civil war.

LESLIE KENDRICK So today, what would you advise the UK and the US governments to do? Wait and see or take some immediate action because you'd want to be in a position of some influence or at least some communication with Syria? I think it's important to really think about what's in Western interests. This is a Syrian revolution that's been brought about by Syrians themselves. Now in Western interests, what's important is that Syria doesn't become a sanctuary for ISIS. There are already pockets of ISIS there, and it's really important that the ISIS guys in prison don't get out, that ISIS doesn't reconstitute, that ISIS doesn't move from the countryside into the towns, because then

you'll have Syria having these transnational jihadis who could pose a threat to us all around the world. So I think that is a core interest. It's also a core interest to see that Syria is stable, so that refugees who are now in Turkey, in Lebanon, in Jordan can return back to their homes. And there's things that the West can do in terms of providing humanitarian aid. I think it's important to have links with this new regime. I mean, it's a bit difficult at the beginning because Hayat Harir Sham is a prescribed terrorist organization. It was once affiliated with al-Qaeda and there were also sanctions on Syria, but those sanctions were on the Assad regime. But you can already

see there's outreach indirectly to these new groups to say, I suppose at one level, we wish them well and people wish to see Syria a much better country than it was under Assad. LESLEE KENDRICK-KLEIN This question of how you bring about stability and humanitarian aid, I mean, funding anything in Syria would require sanctions to be lifted, wouldn't it? NICOLA STURGEON Yes, it would. But those sanctions were on Assad. And with the overthrow of Assad, there's a whole new, you know, whole different process to be put in place of how we engage with the new regime there. You know, Syria under Assad was allied with Russia and Iran. And the new Syria, there is a hope that it won't have those alliances, because Iran has

been able to transport all its support to his ballot in Lebanon through Syria. So it's in Western interests to make sure that the new Syria has a chance to not be part of Iran's axis of resistance and to have a new relationship with Western countries. That was Emma Sky. Well, the ongoing uncertainty in Syria has caused worry in neighboring Israel. So much so that Israel has carried out hundreds of airstrikes on Syria since the fall of Bashar al-Assad. It says it's trying to stop weapons falling into the hands of those it calls extremists. But the Prime

Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has other pressing political concerns at home. He has just become the first sitting Israeli Prime Minister to take the witness stand in a criminal trial for corruption, which he calls a witch hunt. Here he is speaking before the trial. Regarding the trial, I heard in the media that they say that I want to avoid the trial. Have you heard that? Do I want to dodge? What a sad thing. For eight years I have been waiting to finally blow up the deluded and absurd charges against me.

Our Middle East correspondent Yolande Nell is at the court. The charges relate to three cases and all of them he's accused of fraud and breach of trust and one he faces the more serious charge of bribery as well. And in two of the cases he's basically accused of exchanging sort of regulatory favours for the owners of big media organisations in Israel for more positive press coverage. And then there's also a case which has been widely publicised where he's accused of accepting lavish gifts, really to advance the personal interests of powerful businessmen, particularly a Hollywood producer, those gifts to the tune of $200,000. And, you know, he denies any wrongdoing, has been saying that this is a

brutal witch hunt. Those were the words he used in a news conference last night. That point has really been very much picked up with the opening of the defense case. His lawyer has been speaking for most of the time in the courtroom but outside the court, you know, not just very far away from me, you can see this definitive split in Israel. We have on one side of me supporters of the Prime Minister very angry that this veteran leader is on trial under these circumstances and you have the anti Netanyahu protesters who have been calling for the prime minister to step down for the past few years while he faces criminal allegations against him and you know this is a sort of damaging

division that has really been evident in Israeli politics for the past few years And you land remind us what could happen to to Mr Netanyahu if he's found guilty. I mean, this trial, first of all, is expected to go on at least for another year before it reaches a verdict. He could then appeal to the Supreme Court. But yes, there are possible prison sentences here. Bribery is punishable by 10 years a prison sentence in Israel if he was found guilty.

That was Yuland Nel. A 26-year-old man has been charged with murder over last week's fatal shooting of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson on the streets of New York outside a hotel. Luigi Mangione was picked up while eating some food in McDonald's in Pennsylvania after a customer recognized him and alerted the authorities. Our correspondent Nida Taufik is following events from New York. Luigi Mangione by all accounts to those who knew him he's the last person they would have suspected. He is an Ivy League University graduate, worked as a data engineer and from a prominent Maryland family.

Now, people who knew him say he was well-rounded, social, smart, athletic. But it does seem like the last few months is what investigators and really the world will be looking at, because he reportedly suffered from a painful back injury, which impacted his life. A picture on one of his social media accounts actually shows x-ray images of what many assume is his spine with surgical implants. And he was in court. He was asked by the judge, as he was charged in Pennsylvania, with an unlicensed gun charge.

He said that he had been in touch with his family until recently. Now, we do expect him to be extradited to New York after that process plays out. Here in New York, prosecutors have already charged him with murder, besides casings on the crime scene that had the words defend, deny, depose, kind of a reference perhaps to the 3-Ds of insurance, tactics used by insurance to deny coverage to people. Also, he was found in possession of a three-page handwritten manifesto that officials say showed ill will toward corporate America and reportedly referred to insurance companies as parasites. It's really also interesting to underline just how much he has become a folk hero out

of this, because of many people's anger toward the insurance industry but the Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro said the real hero here was the person who alerted authorities. But what does the shooting dead of a person on the streets of a highly surveilled city like New York tell us about America security and some of the worrying subsequent reaction? Juliette Kayem is the former Assistant Secretary for Policy at the United States Department of Homeland Security. She spoke to my colleague Emma Barnett about some of the burning questions surrounding the attack. How did someone survey Mr Thompson, the CEO of the healthcare company, and move around

the most surveyed city in the United States with cameras everywhere, with people everywhere, with iPhones and managed to escape the city for almost a week. And to me, that suggested that this was someone who was studying how law enforcement and how these cities sort of try to protect themselves, which is essentially they have lots of cameras around, and he was able to evade them

quite successfully. Now that we know a little bit about him, that he's a smart person, he went to great schools, he studied engineering technology, he was into electronic gizmos, some of it is beginning to make sense. He was hunting for a person who reflected an industry that he had come to despise. When I saw the pictures of Thompson, the head of the healthcare agencies, sort of walking alone, not only did he not have security, he didn't even have staff. I think a lot of that is going to change for an industry that will now view itself as a potential target.

From the New York Police Department and New York perspective, in the end, it was really going quite public, as NYPD did, with pictures and every picture that they could find, including a later one that they disclosed where he was in a taxi cab that was the trigger for the McDonald's employee to know who was sitting in that restaurant. So in some ways it's old fashioned policing which ultimately got him, which was get out to the public and ask if anyone sees this person. I suppose there's also just a much bigger point here around what didn't happen after the killing. The gun now appears to be what we call a ghost gun and for most people know that Americans

are a very armed society. Ghost guns are sort of a new factor in a very complicated and violent country because of course they're basically at home kits made with 3D printers. There are regulations in this country to try to stop them. And it's before our Supreme Court right now. And so that is a huge factor in terms of, will we come out of this thinking about this kind of weaponry differently? And the likelihood is no, we are just a country

that finds it very hard to put gun restrictions on this. But I think what happened and how he, by him evading the NYPD as well as shooting the CEO of a company that is the leading healthcare company, I think it just, the way that he became sort of like this Robin Hood is just a horrible part of this story. And so when you ask like, what didn't happen is there just wasn't sufficient outrage. And I think, I think we have a lot to learn from that. Society that begins to think it's going to solve its public policy problems about health care by, by shooting the CEOs of health care companies is a, is a country that has lost its way.

Juliette Kayehm. Still to come in this podcast, in the islands of the South Pacific, deep sea mining for rare metals. They present a huge potential for our country. Countries like us at the forefront of impacts of climate change are struggling to find ways to build resilience.

There is little sign of an end to the political chaos in South Korea. President Yun Suk-yul has refused to step down after trying to declare martial law last week. Now his own office say even it is unable to say who's in charge of the country. I asked our Asia Pacific editor, Mickey Bristow, to describe what's in charge of the country. I asked our Asia Pacific editor Mickey Bristow to describe what's happening. Disarray is the least word you could perhaps use chaos, complete chaos really, at the top of South Korean politics at the moment. What you have had over the last few days is this deepening crisis. Had Yoon Sung-yul, the president stepped down, resigned, or had he been impeached at the weekend for ordering martial law last week,

there could have been an orderly transfer of power to the prime minister. Constitutionally, everybody would be clear where everyone stood, but that didn't happen. He's decided to hold onto power as long as he can. He's been supported by his party, refused to vote with the opposition for the president's impeachment, so he's still in power. But of course, authority has drained away from him. And over the last couple of days, it's been unclear exactly what power he does exercise. The Ministry of Defense said he was still in charge of the armed

forces. He was commander-in-chief. The Foreign Affairs Department suggested he's still in charge of diplomacy, South Korea's foreign affairs. But if the president's own office is today saying it is unclear who is in charge of the country, then really is something. Remember we're talking about South Korea for the last few decades. It's been a stable and reliable democracy. If the President's Office doesn't know who's in charge then who does? And Nicky some details have been coming out about that very brief period of martial law last week and how it all happened. Yeah there have been lots of other things happening inside and outside parliament today, a flurry of activity. Perhaps the most eye-catching is the Chief of the Special Warfare Command,

essentially the person in charge of sending troops into parliament last week to affect martial law. Previously we believed that the order for martial law came and the order for the troops to move came from the Ministry of Defence. It now appears from this testimony from this army commander that it was Mr. Ewan himself who on several occasions called the commander, demanded he send troops to Parliament. And also whilst legislators were gathering inside Parliament to vote down martial law, the president called the commander and said get those people out, break down the

doors, drag the legislators out, stop them from voting before there's a quorum, before there's enough of them to vote for martial law. The commander said he refused to do that, the politicians gathered, they voted down martial law, the president accepted that. So, real details about the cut and the difficulty that existed in South Korean politics and really how it could have gone either way had this commander not decided to refuse the order from President Yoon. Mickey Bristow, a powerful media patriarch, a chosen son and his squabbling siblings. It is a succession battle worthy of Hollywood fiction and it is being played out in a US court. The 93 year old media tycoon Rupert Murdoch has failed in a legal bid

to change his family trust so that his son Loughlin gets editorial control over his media empire. The trust currently splits power to control News Corp and Fox News among Mr Murdoch's four eldest children when he dies. A court in the US state of Nevada said Rupert Murdoch had acted in bad faith. Our North America business correspondent Michelle Fleury reports. Rupert Murdoch tried to amend a 1999 family trust to give his son Lachlan more control over the family media empire, bypassing siblings Prudence, Elizabeth and James, who don't necessarily share his conservative views. This ruling, guaranteeing a say for all of the children, could change the editorial stance of the Murdoch family's many media assets. These include controlling stakes in the Times and Sun newspapers in the UK and perhaps most

significantly Fox News in America, the powerhouse conservative network that's had a huge influence on Republican politics and right-wing audiences. James, Elizabeth and Prudence welcomed the decision, saying in a statement obtained by the BBC that they hope to move beyond this litigation to focus on strengthening and rebuilding relationships among all family members. Michel Fleury, to France now and a disturbing legal case that's made headlines around the world. Just a warning, you may find the following details distressing, involving a woman called Gisèle Pelico. Her husband of 50 years is accused of drugging her

into unconsciousness and allowing strangers to rape her. Ms Pelico waived her right to anonymity. In Paris her lawyer Stéphane Babonneau speaking with his client's permission, has been telling my colleague Victoria Derbyshire about the impact the case has had, not just on her own well-being but on how French society has reacted to the case. By listening to the victim herself we were immediately convinced that this woman was telling the truth, that she was genuinely unaware of what was happening to her. She explained to us how for 10 years, she's been trying to understand what was happening to her

by consulting with doctors, by talking with her family, with her environment, and no one was able to find any explanation. What were your fears, your concerns before telling Giselle Pelico exactly who this involved, what it involved and the scale of it over almost a decade? Well that she could have a nervous breakdown of course because we were all very worried that a human being who has been exposed to hundreds of extreme sexual abuse without knowing that. After being told what had happened to her, she couldn't accept to watch the videos or even to continue the discussion about the extent

of the rapes, how many, how long. She wasn't ready for that. It took her almost three years to be able to accept to have this very straightforward conversation about what was in the case and she accepted that because at that time she was already thinking to allow the public into the courtroom. So she felt that she needed to be fully aware and fully informed of the case, even if as many others she would have preferred to leave without knowing if it was possible, but it wasn't. And she, as you say, it took her four years to watch the footage, the videos that her husband had filmed.

How did she respond? How did she deal with what she was viewing? She felt extremely humiliated about what she was seeing, extremely humiliated. And she was extremely shocked of seeing herself becoming an object. And I think that this achieved to help her deciding that she wanted a public trial because she felt that it was important that people understood what happened to her. Let's talk about Madame Pellico's decision that she didn't want to be

anonymous, that she wanted to waive her right to anonymity and open up the case to journalists and to members of the public. Why was that important to her? She realised it wouldn't be possible to understand the extent of what happened, and that this story could be useful to others, and that in order to ensure that this would not happen again to anyone, it was important for the public to know how this could happen. What kind of men are on trial here? We heard many times that they are ordinary men. They're ordinary men because they are well integrated men for most of them. They have jobs, families,

friends, but they're not ordinary in the choices they made. So what this trial is trying to achieve is to understand what has led to this horrendous story. Stephane Babonneau. Pacific islands are often small in landmass but vast in terms of the ocean waters and the seabed they control. So deep-sea mining is a huge opportunity for many of them. It's the process of removing rock-like nodules packed full of metals from the ocean floor. The tiny Pacific Island nation of the Cook Islands is looking at how feasible it is for them, but at what environmental cost? Our Pacific

correspondent Katie Watson now reports from the island of Rarotonga. Kia ora my name is Alana Matamaru-Smith. I am the current director of the Epokare Society, a local non-government environmental organisation based here in the Cook Islands. We want to show the world that there is actually opposition to deep sea mining here in the Cook Islands and not everyone is in support or would prefer a significant amount of time being put into this space before any big decisions are made. Low-lying Pacific islands are among the nation's most vulnerable to climate change. With rising sea levels, the ocean remains their greatest threat. But it's also their greatest provider.

They fish in it, they live off tourists drawn to their turquoise waters. Now the Cook Islands wants to dig deeper, to the ocean floor, where there are millions of rocks or nodules packed full of some of the most in-demand resources in the world. Cobalt, manganese and nickel, crucial elements in things like electric car batteries and mobile phones. The Prime Minister, Mark Brown, is leading the Cook Islands' push to mine the ocean. Such as life on a small island, he wears more than one hat. He's the tourism minister and the seabed minerals minister,

too. They present a huge potential for our country. Countries like us, at the forefront of impacts of climate change, are struggling to find ways to build resilience against the increasing impacts of climate change are struggling to find ways to build resilience against the increasing impacts of climate change in our countries. You think you're finding a way forward that's different, but yet people are saying this is risky, you shouldn't do it.

We know that for the last 20 years we haven't been able to get the financing from the larger emitting countries, so we've got to look to ways to how we can protect ourselves. And our seabed minerals provide an opportunity for us to be able to look at how we can potentially exploit this resource. It's a hot and sunny day here on Rarotonga, and we've come to the main port on the island. And we've boarded the Anuanua Moana,

which is the research ship owned by Moana Minerals. South African Hans Schmidt is the CEO of Moana Minerals, which has an exploration licence in the Cook Islands. We have a couple of ways of sampling nodules. The best way to explain it is a cookie cutter. You've got dough and you press a cookie cutter into it and you lift it up. And what's really important about that is it's undisturbed so when we look at it at the surface

that's what it looks like on the sea floor." The worry though is that if they start mining this untouched area of the ocean will be disturbed. To scoop up the nodules on a large scale a robot will move along the sea floor hoovering up the rocks. The sand that's brought up as a by-product will then be put back into the sea. And that's one of the sticking points, how best to discard that material without disturbing marine life. Nothing we do in life is risk-free. So if we want to have this lifestyle, we want our cell phones and we want our electric vehicles and the like, we need the metals. The Cook Islands sees deep sea mining as giving this nation some security in an uncertain

future. Future income that will give its people better health care, education and opportunity. The downside though isn't yet clear. Internationally there's a growing call for a halt on deep-sea mining while more research is done and this island is split. Katie Watson. And that's all from us for now but there will be a new edition of the Global News podcast later. If you want to comment on this podcast or the topics covered in it, you can send us an email. The address is globalpodcast at bbc.co.uk. You can also find us on x at global news pod. This edition was mixed by Nora Hull. The producer was Rachel

Wright. The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Nick Miles. And until next time, goodbye. has grand ambitions to mine its seabed for metals used in green technology. But a community that's defined by its ocean has found itself at the centre of a global debate. Listen now by searching for the documentary wherever you get your BBC podcasts. Available now on the documentary from the BBC World Service. I'm Katie Watson in the Cook Islands where we're taking a deep dive into the Pacific. This small island nation has grand ambitions to mine its seabed for metals used in green technology. But a community that's defined by its ocean has found itself at the centre of a global debate. Listen now by searching for the documentary wherever you get your BBC podcasts. global debate.