Syria envoy says UN security team visits alleged attack site

Syrian media said international chemical weapons inspectors on Tuesday entered the town of Douma, where an alleged poison gas attack was carried out earlier this month, but a Syrian diplomat said later that only a U.N. security team visited the Damascus suburb.

Syrians sit in front a shop with a shutter painted like the national flag, in Damascus, Syria, Tuesday, April 17, 2018.  (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)

The reported attack led to Western airstrikes against the Syrian government over the weekend.

Syria's U.N. ambassador, Bashar Ja'afari, told the Security Council that the U.N. team went to Douma to decide whether investigators from the international chemical weapons watchdog could safely visit the site. If the team decides "the situation is sound," the fact-finding mission from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons will start work there Wednesday, Ja'afari said

The team's entry into Douma came 10 days after the alleged attack, raising concerns that any evidence the inspectors find could be useless.

French President Emmanuel Macron delivers his speech at the European Parliament in Strasbourg, eastern France, Tuesday, April 17, 2018. (AP Photo/ Jean Francois Badias)

On Monday, OPCW Director-General Ahmet Uzumcu said Syrian and Russian authorities had blocked its inspectors from going to Douma and instead offered them 22 people to interview as witnesses. The team arrived in the Syrian capital of Damascus on Saturday.

Journalists in Damascus were prevented by government minders from contacting the OPCW inspectors, and The Hague-based organization refused to comment on "operational details regarding the Douma deployment."

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said it was the "obligation of the Syrian government to provide all the conditions for (OPCW inspectors) to work without any restrictions."

Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir, right, shakes hands with United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, after a press conference in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Tuesday, April 17, 2018. (AP Photo/Amr Nabil)

British Prime Minister Theresa May accused the Syrian government and its ally Russia of trying to cover up evidence and obstruct the investigation.

The OPCW is investigating reports that government forces gassed sites in Douma on April 7, when the town was still held by rebels and home to tens of thousands of people — residents and others who were displaced by fighting elsewhere.

Syrian activists said more than 40 people were killed in the alleged attack.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, listens to translation during press conference with Saudi Arabi's Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Tuesday, April 17, 2018. (AP Photo/Amr Nabil)

Less than two days later, the Army of Islam rebels surrendered the town, which was the last stronghold in the once rebellious eastern Ghouta region at the doorstep of Damascus.

The U.S. and France say they have evidence that Syrian President Bashar Assad's military was behind the poison gas attack, but they have made none of that evidence public. On Saturday, the U.S., France and Britain bombarded sites they said were linked to Syria's chemical weapons program.

Journalists were allowed access to Douma on Monday. The Associated Press spoke to survivors and witnesses who described being hit by gas, fainting, and discovering their relatives had died, with foam bubbling around their mouths.

Young women check their selfie on a street in Damascus, Syria, Tuesday, April 17, 2018. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)

The Syrian government and Russia have denied using chemical weapons and accused rebels, with Western backing, of using such weapons or faking such an attack.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova dismissed allegations that Russia was trying to hamper the OPCW inspectors, saying Moscow strongly supports their mission to Douma.

Alexander Rodionov of the Russian military's chemical weapons protection unit said its experts found chlorine and components for producing mustard gas at a rebel laboratory in Douma. He said the canister with chlorine was similar to one shown in images released by activists in the days after April 7.

Russian President Vladimir Putin told German Chancellor Angela Merkel that the Western strikes had violated international law and set back the peace process, the Kremlin said.

In this Monday, April 16, 2018 photo, people look out of their damage apartment windows just meters away from where the alleged chemical weapons attack occurred in the town of Douma, the site of a suspected chemical weapons attack, near Damascus, Syria. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)

But French President Emmanual Macron defended the military action in an impassioned and at times angry speech to the European parliament.

He spoke of the "outrage by images we've seen of children, women who died of a chlorine attack."

"Do we sit back, do we defend (human) rights by saying, 'Rights are for us, principles are for us, and realities are for others?' No, no!" the French leader said. "Three countries have intervened, and let me be quite frank: this is for the honor of the international community."

The alleged attack and subsequent military response underscored the challenge that the seven-year conflict in Syria poses for the West. President Donald Trump wants to remove U.S. troops from Syria, where it has been fighting the Islamic State militants.

In this Monday, April 16, 2018 photo, Kahled Mahmoud Nuseir, 25, center, who lost his wife, Fatmeh Karout nine months pregnant and daughters Qama 18 months and Nour two and half years, during the alleged chemical weapons attack occurred speaks during an interview with the Associated Press in front of a hospital that locals referred as Point One.(AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)

A new strategy appeared to be crystalizing to let the U.S. leave Syria without relinquishing its interests to Assad government or his allies, Iran and Russia.

Saudi Arabian Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir said the U.S.-aligned kingdom could deploy forces from a bloc of mostly Sunni Muslim nations that was established to fight terrorism. He said the Obama administration did not agree to such an offer.

The kingdom has supported Sunni rebel groups fighting Assad's forces, which are backed by Shiite-majority Iran. Saudi Arabia is also a member of the U.S.-led coalition battling IS militants.

The OPCW visit to Douma came hours after Syrian media reported airstrikes Tuesday on government military installations in the central Homs region and the suburbs of Damascus, but the military later said a false alarm had set off air defense systems.

In this Monday, April 16, 2018 photo, people gather in front of a hospital that locals referred as Point One, left, just meters away from where the alleged chemical weapons attack occurred in the town of Douma, the site of a suspected chemical weapons attack, near Damascus, Syria. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)

Explosions were heard in the areas of the two bases, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the conflict via a network of sources in the country. But it said no missiles landed inside the bases.

Earlier this month, four Iranian military personnel were killed in an airstrike on Syria's T4 air base, also in Homs. Syria, Iran and Russia blamed Israel for that attack. Israel did not confirm or deny it.

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — A Minnesota man who once fought for the Islamic State group in Syria but now expresses remorse for joining a “death cult” and has been cooperating with federal authorities will learn Wednesday how much prison time he faces.

Federal prosecutors have recommended 12 years for Abelhamid Al-Madioum in recognition both of the seriousness of his crime and the help has he given the U.S. and other governments. His attorney says seven years is enough and that Al-Madioum, 27, stopped believing in the group's extremist ideology years ago.

Al-Madioum was 18 in 2014 when IS recruited him. The college student slipped away from his family on a visit to their native Morocco in 2015. Making his way to Syria, he became a soldier for IS, also known as ISIS, until he was maimed in an explosion in Iraq. Unable to fight, he used his computer skills to serve the group. He surrendered to U.S.-backed rebels in 2019 and was imprisoned under harsh conditions.

Al-Madioum returned to the U.S. in 2020 and pleaded guilty in 2021 to providing material support to a designated terrorist organization. According to court filings, he has been cooperating with U.S. authorities and allied governments. The defense says he hopes to work in future counterterrorism and deradicalization efforts.

“The person who left was young, ignorant, and misguided," Al-Madioum said in a letter to U.S. District Judge Ann Montgomery, who will sentence him.

“I’ve been changed by life experience: by the treachery I endured as a member of ISIS, by becoming a father of four, a husband, an amputee, a prisoner of war, a malnourished supplicant, by seeing the pain and anguish and gnashing of teeth that terrorism causes, the humiliation, the tears, the shame,” he added. "I joined a death cult, and it was the biggest mistake of my life.”

Prosecutors acknowledge that Al-Madioum has provided useful assistance to U..S. authorities in several national security investigations and prosecutions, that he accepted responsibility for his crime and pleaded guilty promptly on his return to the U.S. But they say they factored his cooperation into their recommended sentence of 12 years instead of the statutory maximum of 20 years.

“The defendant did much more than harbor extremist beliefs,” prosecutors wrote in a sentencing memo. “He chose violent action by taking up arms for ISIS.”

A naturalized U.S. citizen, Al-Madioum was among several Minnesotans suspected of leaving the U.S. to join the Islamic State group, along with thousands of fighters from other countries worldwide. Roughly three dozen people are known to have left Minnesota to join militant groups in Somalia or Syria. In 2016, nine Minnesota men were sentenced on federal charges of conspiring to join IS.

But Al-Madioum is one of the relatively few Americans who've been brought back to the U.S. who actually fought for the group. According to a defense sentencing memo, he's one of 11 adults as of 2023 to be formally repatriated to the U.S. from the conflict in Syria and Iraq to face charges for terrorist-related crimes and alleged affiliations with IS. Others received sentences ranging from four years to life plus 70 years.

Al-Madioum grew up in the Minneapolis suburb of St. Louis Park in a loving and nonreligious family, the defense memo said. He joined IS because he wanted to help Muslims who he believed were being slaughtered by Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime in that country's civil war. IS recruiters persuaded him “to test his faith and become a real Muslim.”

But he was a fighter for less than two months before he lost his right arm below the elbow in the explosion that also left him with two badly broken legs and other severe injuries. He may still require amputation of one leg, the defense says.

While recuperating in 2016, he met his first wife Fatima, an IS widow who already had a son and bore him another in 2017. They lived in poverty and under constant airstrikes. He was unable to work, and his stipend from IS stopped in 2018. They lived in a makeshift tent, the defense says.

He married his second wife, Fozia, in 2018. She also was an IS widow and already had a 4-year-old daughter. They had separated by early 2019. He heard later she and their daughter together had died. The first wife also is dead, having been shot in front of Al-Madioum by either rebel forces or an IS fighter in 2019, the defense says.

The day after that shooting, he walked with his sons and surrendered to the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, which held him under conditions the defense described as “heinous” for 18 months until the FBI returned him to the U.S.

As for Al-Madioum’s children, the defense memo said they were eventually found in a Syrian orphanage and his parents will be their foster parents when they arrive in the U.S.

This image provided by the Sherburne County Jail in Elk River, Minn., shows Abelhamid Al-Madioum, a Minnesota man who once fought for the Islamic State group in Syria. Al-Madioum, who has been cooperating with federal authorities and now expresses remorse for joining a “death cult”, will learn Wednesday, May 1, 2024, how much prison time he faces. Al-Madioum was brought to the U.S. in 2020 and pleaded guilty in 2021 to providing material support to a designated terrorist organization. (Sherburne County Jail via AP)