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US Military Ends Gaza Floating Pier Mission to Bring Aid to Palestinians by Sea

A truck carries humanitarian aid across Trident Pier, a temporary pier to deliver aid, off the Gaza Strip, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, near the Gaza coast, June 25, 2024. (Reuters)
A truck carries humanitarian aid across Trident Pier, a temporary pier to deliver aid, off the Gaza Strip, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, near the Gaza coast, June 25, 2024. (Reuters)
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US Military Ends Gaza Floating Pier Mission to Bring Aid to Palestinians by Sea

A truck carries humanitarian aid across Trident Pier, a temporary pier to deliver aid, off the Gaza Strip, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, near the Gaza coast, June 25, 2024. (Reuters)
A truck carries humanitarian aid across Trident Pier, a temporary pier to deliver aid, off the Gaza Strip, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, near the Gaza coast, June 25, 2024. (Reuters)

The US military announced on Wednesday that its mission to install and operate a temporary, floating pier off the coast of Gaza was complete, formally ending an extraordinary but troubled effort to bring humanitarian aid to Palestinians.

The pier, announced by President Joe Biden during a televised address to Congress in March, was a massive endeavor that took about 1,000 US forces to execute. Aid began flowing via the pier to Gaza in May, an operation aimed at helping avert famine after months of war between Israel and Hamas.

But bad weather and distribution challenges inside Gaza limited the effectiveness of what the US military says was its biggest aid delivery effort ever in the Middle East.

"The maritime surge mission involving the pier is complete. So there's no more need to use the pier," Navy Vice Admiral Brad Cooper, the deputy commander of US Central Command, told a news briefing.

Cooper said efforts to distribute aid to Gaza arriving by sea would now shift to the established port of Ashdod in Israel.

"Our assessment is that the temporary pier has achieved its intended effect to surge a very high volume of aid into Gaza and ensure that aid reaches the civilians in Gaza in a quick manner," Cooper said, adding that nearly 20 million pounds of aid was delivered to Gaza.

The pier became a sore point in Congress, where Republicans branded it a political stunt by Biden, who was under pressure from fellow Democrats to do more to aid Palestinians after months of staunchly supporting Israel's punishing war on Hamas.

"This chapter might be over in President Biden’s mind, but the national embarrassment that this project has caused is not. The only miracle is that this doomed-from-the-start operation did not cost any American lives," Senator Roger Wicker, the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said.

While the pier brought in sorely needed aid to a marshalling area on Gaza's shore, the 1,200-foot-long (370-metre-long) floating pier had to be removed multiple times because of bad weather.

The pier has not been used since June, when it was moved to Ashdod port because of bad weather. It was unclear if the US military had started dismantling the pier at Ashdod before its expected return to United States.

The UN World Food Program paused operations at the pier in June because of security concerns, causing aid to pile up on the Gaza shore.

The United Nations has long said maritime deliveries were no substitute for land access. It said land routes needed to remain the focus of aid operations in the enclave, where a global hunger monitor last month said there is a high risk of famine.

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Syrian Official Who Oversaw Prison Where Alleged Abuse Took Place Arrested by US Officials

Freed Syrian detainees gather in front of posters showing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, right, and his father Hafez al-Assad after they were released from Adra Prison on the northeast outskirts of Damascus, Syria, on Jan. 15, 2013. (AP)
Freed Syrian detainees gather in front of posters showing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, right, and his father Hafez al-Assad after they were released from Adra Prison on the northeast outskirts of Damascus, Syria, on Jan. 15, 2013. (AP)
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Syrian Official Who Oversaw Prison Where Alleged Abuse Took Place Arrested by US Officials

Freed Syrian detainees gather in front of posters showing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, right, and his father Hafez al-Assad after they were released from Adra Prison on the northeast outskirts of Damascus, Syria, on Jan. 15, 2013. (AP)
Freed Syrian detainees gather in front of posters showing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, right, and his father Hafez al-Assad after they were released from Adra Prison on the northeast outskirts of Damascus, Syria, on Jan. 15, 2013. (AP)

A former Syrian military official who oversaw a prison where human rights officials say torture and abuse routinely took place has been arrested in Los Angeles, court documents show.

Samir Ousman al-Sheikh, 72, was taken into custody last week at Los Angeles International Airport on immigration fraud charges, specifically that he denied on his US visa and citizenship applications that he had ever persecuted anyone in Syria, according to a criminal complaint filed on July 9. Investigators are considering additional charges, the complaint shows.

Al-Sheikh was in charge of Syria’s infamous Adra Prison from 2005 to 2008 under President Bashar al-Assad. Human rights groups and United Nations officials have accused the Syrian government of widespread abuses in its detention facilities, including torture and arbitrary detention of thousands of people, in many cases without informing their families about their fate. Many remain missing and are presumed to have died or been executed.

"This is the highest-level Assad regime official arrested anywhere in the world. ... This is a really big deal," Mouaz Moustafa, executive director of the Syrian Emergency Task Force, said Wednesday.

Moustafa said one of his staff members, a former Syrian detainee, was first tipped off in 2022 by a refugee that there was "potentially a war criminal" in the United States. His organization alerted several federal agencies and began working with them to build a case against Al-Sheikh.

Investigators interviewed five former inmates at the Syrian prison, who described being hanged by their arms from the ceiling, severely beaten by electrical cables, and witnessing other prisoners being branded by hot rods, according to court documents. One inmate described how he had his back broken by guards.

According to the complaint, Al-Sheikh, a resident of Los Angeles since 2020, stated in his citizenship application that he had "never persecuted (either directly or indirectly) any person because of race, religion, national origin, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion" and "never been involved in killing or trying to kill someone." This was false, as Al-Sheikh persecuted political dissidents and ordered the execution of prisoners while he was head of Adra from 2005-2008, the complaint states.

Al-Sheikh began his career working police command posts before transferring to Syria’s domestic intelligence agency, which focused on countering political dissent, the complaint says. He became head of Adra Prison and brigadier general in 2005. He also served for one year as the governor of Deir Ezzor, a region northeast of the Syrian capital of Damascus, where there were violent crackdowns against protesters.

He had purchased a one-way plane ticket to depart LAX on July 10, en route to Beirut, Lebanon, which shares a border with Syria, according to the complaint.

Syria's civil war, which has left nearly half a million people dead and displaced half the country’s prewar population of 23 million, began as peaceful protests against Assad's government in March 2011.

Other players in the war, now in its 14th year, have also been accused of abuse of detainees, including insurgent groups and the US-backed, Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, which guard suspected and convicted ISIS members imprisoned in northeastern Syria.

In May, a French court sentenced three high-ranking Syrian officials in absentia to life in prison for complicity in war crimes in a landmark case against Assad's regime and the first such case in Europe.

The court proceedings came as Assad had begun to shed his longtime status as a pariah because of the violence unleashed on his opponents. Human rights groups involved in the case hoped it would refocus attention on alleged atrocities.