Global News Podcast - Syria's new leader says armed factions will come under state control

Episode Date: December 22, 2024

Turkey says there's no room for Kurdish militias in Syria's future. Also: Germany promises a thorough investigation into the Magdeburg attack.

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T's and C's apply. World of Secrets is where untold stories are exposed. And in this new series, we investigate the dark side of the wellness industry. Following the story of a woman who joined a yoga school, only to uncover a world she never expected. I feel that I have no other choice. The only thing I can do is to speak about this. Where the hope of spiritual breakthroughs

leaves people vulnerable to exploitation. You just get sucked in so gradually and it's done so skillfully that you don't realise. World of Secrets, the bad guru. Listen wherever you get your BBC podcasts. This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Andrew Peach and in the early hours of Monday the 23rd of December these are our main stories. Syria's new leader says he wants all weapons and armed factions to come under state control. Germany promises a thorough investigation into the Magdeburg attack.

Also in this podcast... We bumped into a bunch of young kids and they just decided to run with me for about seven kilometres all the way to their school. In fact, we actually had to stop them to actually tell them to go to school because they just wanted to keep going with us. The Ugandan who's walked and run from Cape Town to London. Let's start the podcast with the latest from Syria, where in the past few hours we've been learning more about the new administration's plans for defence and security. There have been concerns about the country's stability ever since the sudden fall of the Assad regime

two weeks ago, including fears of the so-called Islamic State group growing in power. Today, the new de facto leader Ahmed al-Sharar addressed those concerns in a news conference with the Turkish Foreign Minister Haken Fidan. He said that armed factions would begin to be dissolved and incorporated into the Syrian army. And he announced plans to bring all weapons in the country under state control, including those held by the mainly Kurdish SDF. We will not by any means allow for weapons outside the control of the state, whether

from revolutionary factions or factions in SDF areas. We need to close this chapter as quickly as possible because the presence of rogue arms in the country is what leads to chaos and unstable security. I think there is wide agreement among the factions. God willing, things will work out well. Our Middle East regional editor, Sebastian Usher, is in Beirut and told me more about Turkey's involvement. Hakan Fidan is the first foreign minister to go to Damascus into the toppling of Bashar al-Assad

and the taking of power essentially, for now at at least by Ahmad al-Sharah and his HTS group. Now what he was saying is in one sense a continuation of his efforts to betray himself as a pragmatist, as a moderate, as a man who wants the future of Syria to be very different from its past, to see a unified Syria after the years of conflict and division. And of course that is something to be expected and something that would be welcomed by the rest of the world. And it is a very difficult situation. I mean there are a number of military groups that are operative in Syria. They include HTS and other similar factions, factions down

in the south which also rose with HTS in the toppling of Bashar al-Assad. ISIS is still operative to an extent. And most importantly, I think, perhaps, is the SDF, the Kurdish-led forces over in the northeast. Now, that's where it gets complicated, because essentially, as we're saying, Turkey was perhaps the key backer of HTS and Ahmet Al-Sharah. and it sees the SDF as simply an offshoot of the Kurdish separatists in Turkey and regards them as a terror group and has actually mounted several invasions into the north of Syria over the past years to push them back. So it's interesting that Ahmad al-Sharara in this meeting with the Turkish Foreign Minister should make such a priority of the SDF and that they should

give up their weapons. Obviously if Syria is to be united that is going to have to happen but whether taking on the SDF now endangering some of the gains of the SDF has actually made in terms I mean remember that this is the group that with US support essentially defeated ISIS and it has run the northeast of a country probably in just about the most efficient way that any part of a country has been run during the conflict. So there's a lot to lose and the STF certainly feels that its position is coming under more and more attack. It never really took on Assad's forces, but it's certainly now very much the focus of the attentions of Turkey and of Ahmad al-Sharah.

Obviously, Ahmad al-Sharah will hope that there will be no new armed conflict over this, but that is a possibility because the SDF, the Kurdish administration there, feels it has a lot to lose. Our Middle East regional editor, Sebastian Usher. Officials in Gaza say a wave of Israeli attacks has killed at least 28 people, including children and 13 members of one family. A school sheltering displaced families and a hospital among the site struck. Israel said Hamas had been using the school as a command centre. Pope Francis has again condemned attacks on Gaza, describing Israel's actions as cruelty towards children.

Our correspondent Emi Enadah reports from Jerusalem. In the city of Charn Younis in southern Gaza, rapt bodies are lined up and funeral prayers recited after more Israeli airstrikes. Thirteen people were also killed when airstrikes struck a house in Gaza's Deir el-Balach neighborhood. And at least eight Palestinians were killed, including four children, when a school sheltering displaced families was hit near Gaza City. The Israeli military said it was targeting a Hamas command centre that was operating there. A spokeswoman for the UN aid agency UNRWA, Juliet Thuma, called

the attacks horrific. Over the past 24 hours there's been an escalation in Gaza where civilians and civilian infrastructure have been hit and this is becoming commonplace but it shouldn't be the case. At Kamal Adwan Hospital in the north of Gaza, staff have been issuing desperate pleas. The hospital director, Dr. Hassam Abu Safiha, said he didn't know why they were being targeted. The IDF said it hadn't used airstrikes on the hospital but didn't comment on reports of shelling and gunfire. The World Health Organization has called for an immediate ceasefire around the vicinity of the hospital where 80 patients

are receiving care. On the 7th of October last year, George Anton, an aid worker in Gaza City, moved into the compound of the Holy Family Church, Gaza's only Catholic outpost with more than 500 parishioners. George, his wife and three children have been taking shelter there while the ground invasion of the Israeli army and the ensuing conflict continued around them. George has been talking to my colleague Emily Buchanan and told her what his children are thinking about the prospect of a second Christmas in the church compound. They tell me about their dreams for Christmas, you know, they want chocolate.

They miss chocolate, they miss the warm room in our house, they miss the Christmas tree. They tell me every time that, okay, we were doing this and that before the war, can we do it that? I try my best to give them the maximum that I can do for Christmas. But I also explain to them that this is the situation that we are living in. It's not in our hand that we can do whatever we have used to do before. For instance, we used to go to the market, to go to a restaurant, to have a Christmas dinner, and then a Christmas lunch. They go to the sea, they go to visit their friends, and we go to our relatives. We are missing all this.

When you look at your family, do you ever regret staying? I mean, it was a big decision to make, wasn't it, at the beginning of this war? Given that it's gone on for so long, do you regret staying now? Not at all. My family actually supports my decision to stay here, you know, because we believe that it's not only staying here because of my decision, they know that we have a very important duty to our church, to our Christian community in Gaza, that if everyone will live here, so we will destroy the Christian existence in Gaza, and this is what we do not need, because Gaza is our city and this is what we do not need because Gaza is our

city and this is our homeland you know we belong to here and they understand this very well and they support me to this. And the Pope is in daily contact with you I understand and I believe you wished him happy 88th birthday last week. How important is it that he is there and supporting you? You know, it's exactly like what you feel when you have your father support you every day and he holds you and he tells you that he loves you and he supports you and he stays beside you and he knows everything that you need and he's trying his best to protect you. Our Pope is our father. and he's trying his best to protect you. Our Pope is our father. Actually, his phone every day makes us feel like we have a father. You know, we are not left alone, and he tries his best to provide us with what we need through the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem. It became like a routine of our daily

life here in Gaza to have a call from the BOP. So we are waiting for this every evening. We make sure that we are still safe and alive. The German government has pledged to conduct a full investigation into whether the security services missed warnings about Taleb Ab-Abdel-Mosen. He's the man charged with ploughing a car into the Christmas market in Magdeburg, killing five people and injuring more than 200 others. The family of a boy who died have said he'll always live in their hearts.

From Magdeburg, here's our correspondent, Bethany Bell. The youngest victim of the attack has been named as Andre Gleissner, who was nine years old. In a social media post, his mother called him her little teddy bear. It's also emerged he'd been a member of the Children's Fire Brigade in the town of Varle, an hour's drive from Magdeburg. The fire team there paid tribute to him. Four women, aged between 45 and 75, were also killed.

They've not been identified. The Christmas market area is now open to the public again. Police cordons have been removed, but the stands and the stalls remain closed. It's quiet and eerie. People are slowly returning to the site of Friday's attack. This man saw it happen. This man saw it happen. I was on my way home from work and was standing at the entrance of the market where the car drove in and passed me. The car didn't hit me but the people next to me were lying on the ground.

My first reflex was to run away and after a couple of seconds I realised I had to go back to try and help. The suspect, Taleb Al-Abdul-Mohin from Saudi Arabia, has been remanded in custody. He faces charges of murder, attempted murder and dangerous bodily harm. The German ambassador to the UK, Miguel Berger, said there had been warning signs. He was not an unknown. He was very active on social media. He had given interviews to national to international papers. He was an activist who then

turned his anger as it looks not only against Saudi Arabia but also against the German authorities. And there are a lot of questions right now but I think we need to give the authorities the necessary time to look into all of that. The Saudi authorities said they had warned about his extremist views several now, but I think we need to give the authorities the necessary time to look into all of that. The Saudi authorities said they had warned about his extremist views several times, adding to the pressure on the German government to provide answers about whether more could have been done to stop the attack. Here in Britain, the Anglican Church is again under pressure because of its handling of

historical sexual abuse cases. There are further revelations that a priest, David Tudor, who is at the centre of one such case, was twice reappointed by Stephen Cottrell, now the Archbishop of York. Stephen Cottrell become the Church's most senior figure, and head of its worldwide congregation of 85 million people, when Justin Welby steps down as Archbishop of Canterbury next month following criticism of his handling of a different case of abuse. Here's our religion editor Ali Mugbul. On Monday when we broadcast our investigation about David Tudor, Stephen Cottrell acknowledged that when he became Bishop of Chelmsford in 2010 he was fully briefed about the man in

his charge. He learned of the abuse allegations, of Tudor being banned from being alone with children and later that the priest had paid a large sum to an alleged victim. The Archbishop of York says it was a situation that was awful to live with and manage, yet we now find that Tudor's role as area dean overseeing 12 parishes was renewed twice in 2013 and 2018. Stephen Cottrell's office says he accepts responsibility for David Tudor remaining as area dean, that he acknowledges that this could have been handled differently, but that his focus was on managing the risk posed by David Tudor.

The Bishop of Gloucester, Rachel Treweek, wouldn't be drawn on whether the Archbishop of York should resign. I think there are very important conversation and processes to go on that are not going to take place over public media. If you ask me if it made a difference, I do think there are big questions to be looked at. I heard that news with shock and dismay. But I want the proper process to take place. One of the victims of David Tudor, a priest who was only suspended in 2019 when another police investigation was launched,

says the new details only strengthen her belief that the Archbishop of York should step down. Ali MacBow reporting. And still to come on this podcast. Happy Christmas. Keep strong. Keep the faith in who you are. Keep the faith in Ukraine. Slava Ukrainyi. A carol service giving a message of hope for Ukraine. This podcast is brought to you by WISE, the app that helps you manage your money internationally.

With WISE you have up to 40 currencies at your fingertips. You can receive money, pay bills and send money across borders without hidden fees. You always get the real-time mid-market exchange rates. See exactly what you pay every time. Join millions of WISE customers worldwide. Download the WISE app today or visit wise.com. T's and T's apply. World of Secrets is where untold stories are exposed and in this new series we investigate the dark side of the wellness industry. Following the story of a woman who joined a yoga school only to uncover a world she never expected. I feel that I have no other choice.

The only thing I can do is to speak about this. Where the hope of spiritual breakthroughs leaves people vulnerable to exploitation. You just get sucked in so gradually, and it's done so skillfully that you don't realize. World of Secrets, the bad guru. Listen wherever you get your BBC podcasts. Hey Toronto, as the holiday season approaches let's make it a time of giving not just gifts. This year the City of Toronto is

asking all of us to do our part to reduce holiday waste. Instead of traditional gifts consider low, high-impact options like donating to a charity on behalf of a loved one. Try new ways to swap disposable items for reusable ones, such as using newspaper or fabric for gift wrap. Curious to learn more ways to reduce holiday waste? Visit toronto.ca slash reduce-reuse. Let's make this season not only festive, but environmentally friendly too. 88-year-old Iwao Hakamada was once the world's longest-serving death row inmate. Convicted of four murders in Japan in 1968, he spent 46 years awaiting execution in prison, mostly in solitary confinement.

But his sister Hedeko never gave up on him. She campaigned for his retrial, believing the evidence used against him in court was fabricated. In 2014, as Iwao's mental state was severely deteriorating, he was released into Hedeko's care and a rare retrial was granted. In September this year, finally Iwao was acquitted. The court ruled he'd been framed for a crime he didn't commit. Our Tokyo correspondent Shima Halil sat down with Hideo to talk about her brother's ordeal.

For nearly 60 years Iwao Hakamada had been fighting for his innocence and when it was finally declared in court, he wasn't there for the moment. Waiting for execution in solitary confinement for nearly half a century took a heavy toll on Iwao's mental health. He'd been exempt from attending court hearings for years. His sister and longtime advocate 91-year-old Hideko Hakamada had been in court on his behalf. When her brother was acquitted in September, she was visibly emotional as she thanked his

supporters outside the court. Hideko has been taking care of her younger brother, now 88, since he was released pending a retrial in 2014. We sat down in her home west of Tokyo, and she told me what it was like for her when Iwao was finally declared innocent. I was really happy when the judge said that the defendant is not guilty. I was in tears. I am not normally a tearful person.

And what was the moment like when you told your brother that he was acquitted? How did he react? When I got home, I told him he was acquitted on retrial, but he didn't reply. I couldn't really tell whether he understood or not. In 1968, Iwao Hakamada was found guilty of killing his boss at a soybean factory, as well as the man's wife and their two teenage children. The bodies were recovered from a fire. All four had been stabbed to death.

Iwao initially denied the allegations, but later gave what he came to describe as a coerced confession, following beatings and interrogations that lasted up to 12 hours a day. Two years after his arrest, he was convicted of murder and arson and sentenced to death. He changed completely and became very quiet. Once I went back to see him alone, he said,

there was an execution yesterday. There was a person in the next cell. From then on, he totally changed mentally. In 2014, Iwao was released from prison and granted a retrial. It took nearly 10 years for the retrial to begin because of lengthy legal proceedings. Then, in September, Iwao Hakamada was declared innocent. His supporters cheered outside the court when the verdict was announced. In his ruling, the Shizuoka District Court presiding judge said the evidence used to

incriminate Mr. Hakamada was fabricated and that the investigators added blood stains to the clothing items and hid them in the soybean tank well after the incident took place. Few weeks after Iwao's acquittal, the local police authorities officially apologized to him for the time he spent on death row for a crime he didn't commit. At Hakamada's home, the chief of the Shizuoka police bowed in front of Iwao. We caused you indescribable anxiety and burden. We are truly sorry. Iwao, Hideo, this is you.

As we stand at her dining table, Hideo smiles, showing me photographs of Iwao as a young man and a former professional boxer. The two are the youngest of six siblings. Ever since they were children, Hedeko had always taken care of her little brother. And so it continues. I wanted to make the house as bright as possible. I painted the door pink. I believe that if he is in a bright place and lived a cheerful life, he will eventually

heal. But it has been ten years, and he is not better. Maybe it can't be helped. This is what happens when you are locked up and crammed in a small prison cell for more than 40 years. Yuwao has a quiet life now and goes on daily outings with volunteers who help with his care. Hideko refuses to look back. And when I ask her who she blames for her brother's suffering, astonishingly, she says no one.

I have no feeling of anger. If I got angry, the retrial would have never started. Holding a grudge would not get us anywhere. I don't think about that anymore. I don't think about the past. I don't know how long I'm going to live. I just want a while to live a peaceful and quiet life." A report from our correspondent in Tokyo, Shima Halil. Carol services are a time to come together and commemorate the year gone by, but for Ukrainians Christmas can be a bitter reminder of what and who they've lost.

London's St Pancras station has been hosting a charity service, Carols of Hope. Our reporter Olga Marchevska was there and she spoke to the British actor, writer and comedian Stephen Fry. So I'm here at St. Pancras station and we can hear this beautiful music which is performed by Ukrainian refugees. Now we can see now the beautiful Ukrainian choir is replacing the musicians and they will sing some Ukrainian songs for us, and we will have a special guest, Stephen Fry, who came kindly to support here today these beautiful events. And why do you think it is important for you to come here and support the event?

Well, I had the extraordinary experience two years ago. I was invited by Madame Zelenskaya, the wife, the First Lady of Ukraine, the wife of the president, who holds every year a conference. And two years ago, she wanted to hold a conference on mental health, which is a subject that I'm very involved in over here. I'm president of MIND, the largest of our mental health charities. And I'm so fascinated that a country that's at war could have the honesty and the openness to talk about the mental health of its citizens.

They care about their people and they care about the mental health of their soldiers, the soldiers coming back and of the families and of the children and the citizens of Ukraine. And they were very anxious to discover more about what could be done to help and to be honest and open and to encourage Ukrainian people who are not used to it just as we weren't in Britain. We never talked about it 20 years ago. It's quite new to talk about mental health with openness and without shame or stigma. And the Ukrainian people are starting to do this and it's very healthy to do it. That's the paradox. It's healthy

to talk about ill health. If you don't talk about it, it gets worse. I know you went to Ukraine and what was one thing which impressed you the most or maybe surprised? Oh, the people. The humour, the laughter. Although there is a terrible situation, of course, they are people of great strength. And again, a sign of health is to laugh. They laugh. I mean, it's black humor, dark humor sometimes, but it's also humor that connects them to each other

and reminds them who they are. Ukrainians fighting to be Ukrainians, to stay Ukrainians, not to be invaded. I mean, most British people are not aware of the history of your country. Things like the Holodor, the unbelievable suffering that has been undergone by the Ukrainian people over the past 150 years in their fight to be an independent people. And yet, as you were saying, humor is so important for Ukrainians that they once even elected

a president who used to be an actor, Birkin is a comedian before, the most popular comedian in the country, right? And I just wanted to jump on that as well and just to ask you, well you have here in Britain all generations who are united in the love to you and your art, you have people who remember you about your masterpieceafis, a bit of lori and fry, right? And you also have people who are watching your antique today, younger generation. And what would be your message to all Ukrainians? A very short one and then we'll jump into the choir. Happy Christmas, keep strong, keep the faith in who you are, keep the faith in Ukraine.

Slava Ukrainyi! Thank you so much. And now we are, well, let's listen to the beautiful Ukrainian choir who will sing Silent Night for us, which is the Silent Night in Ukrainian and it is called And that was my colleague Olga Marczewska at St Pancras station in London. Now they tend to know their way from one end of a city to another, but could taxi drivers' geographical knowledge be providing them with a very different benefit? Scientists have discovered that cabbies are less likely than average to develop Alzheimer's disease, a piece of good fortune which may be down to their distinctive cognitive powers. So how did researchers work this out? Chris Smith from Cambridge University

explains. This is what we call an observational study. So what you do is you don't randomise people to something and then see what happens to them. You look at all the people doing different things and see what their outcomes are. And it is subtly different because when you look at the rate of Alzheimer's disease across a population, you can say, well, we expect this number of people in the population to get Alzheimer's disease then you break them all up into what they do for a job and you see if any job is higher or lower than that average number and taxi drivers, ambulance

drivers they turn out to be right at the bottom of the risk list one percent compared to some occupations that seem to be associated with an eight percent risk and you could say ah right well I'll go and be a taxi driver, and I will immediately reduce my risk of getting Alzheimer's disease. Now, that might be true, but actually, statistically, that might be a fallacy. Because what might be happening here is that people who are at low risk of Alzheimer's disease because of the way that their brain is wired up also happen to have all the right neurological attributes

to be a really good taxi driver, store lots of spatial information, know their way between A and B incredibly well and therefore having that sort of brain composition selects for being a taxi driver and means you're at low risk of Alzheimer's disease. So we don't know if it's cause or effect and you've got to be really careful about attributing cause when it's not causal it's an association. It does make a difference because about 24 years ago, Eleanor McGuire, who's a researcher in London, published a paper that got headlines all around the world when she showed that taxi drivers' brains do change in response to being a taxi driver.

They actually looked at people who hadn't and then had completed the knowledge, the amazing tests that taxi drivers in London have to go through to learn literally thousands of routes right the way across London. She found that this affected a region of the brain that we know is uniquely bound up with being able to find your way around and have a really good three-dimensional map of the world inside your head. That's the hippocampus. One region of the hippocampus in these taxi drivers was bigger after they finished the knowledge, therefore one argument is, well, if you can flex your brain in this way in the same way that building muscles in the gym, if you build brain power by doing cognitively demanding tasks, perhaps

that does mean you are at lower risk of developing certain memory eroding conditions like Alzheimer's disease. Against that theory is that Alzheimer's tends to, while it does start in regions like the hippocampus, this area I'm talking about, it actually is a global brain shrinkage. So it's harder to argue that flexing one bit of the brain more ought to then have a protective effect everywhere, which is why scientists are saying we're not sure if it's cause or effect. Dr. Chris Smith from Cambridge University. A runner from Uganda has finished an epic journey of more than 13,000 kilometres on foot

to draw attention to racism. Deokato ran or walked from Cape Town in South Africa back to London, where he lives, barring a few sections where he had to cross seas or avoid the war in Sudan. He told the BBC he wanted to profile the history of human migration out of Africa and that he experienced racism when his journey reached Europe. Danny Eberhard reports. I run because it helps me back to my childhood of running in Uganda, in Kampala, that childhood

play of not having any worries. It's just kind of Rome. And Rome he has, over deserts, grasslands and mountain ranges. In July last year, Deo Kato set out from the Long March to Freedom monument in Cape Town that commemorates South Africa's long liberation struggle. More than 500 days later, he finished in West London to the cheers of supporters. He told me how finishing felt. I was really blown away and being able to cross the finish line with my mother. I never imagined it.

Deo conceived this personal odyssey as a way of profiling the history of human migration out of Africa to show we all come from the same place. He's been using running to highlight racism since the murder of George Floyd by a US policeman. On this journey there were physical hardships. In recent days he's had to walk due to back pain. And there were other tough times. A three-week spell in a South Sudanese jail left him in frail health and he experienced racism first-hand in Europe in some hostile encounters where he was treated as an illegal migrant.

But there was human kindness too and joy meeting his father and younger brother and sister in Uganda for the first time in years and when school children joined him in Kenya. One particular day I was feeling low. I was waking up and waking up at three, four in the morning and really tired, covering about 50 to 60 kilometers at a time and then we bumped into a bunch of young kids around you know the ages of 5 to 10 and they just decided to run with me for about 7 kilometers all the way to their school and in fact we actually had to stop them to ask them to go to school because they just wanted to keep going with us and that really uplifted me so much and gave me the incentive to keep going.

Despite the trials and exhaustion, it had, he told the BBC, all been incredibly worthwhile. So what's Dayo looking forward to now? To sleep and wake up in the morning, not having to feel like I need to get up again to go for another run in the morning, so I can be able to rest and then to be able to enjoy Christmas with family and loved ones as well. After nearly a year and a half of running to be free, Deo Cato's now free not to run. Danny Aberhard reporting. And that's all from us for now. There'll be a new edition of Global News to download later. If you'd like to comment on this edition, drop us an email globalpodcast at bbc.co.uk

or on X we are at globalnewspod. This edition was mixed by Abby Wiltshire. The producer was Richard Hamilton. The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Andrew Peach. Thank you for listening and until next time, goodbye. money, pay bills, and send money across borders without hidden fees. You always get the real-time mid-market exchange rates. See exactly what you pay, every time. Join millions of WISE customers worldwide. Download the WISE app today or visit wise.com. T's and T's apply.