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The AIH Transcript for July 2, 2019

Hosts: Susan Bonner and Karen Gordon

SUSAN BONNER: Hello, I'm Susan Bonner, sitting in for Carol Off.

KAREN GORDON: Good evening, I'm Karen Gordon. This is As It Happens.

[Music: Theme]

Prologue

KG: Tonight:

SB: A nasty bit of business. Amnesty International asks the Canadian government to investigate whether a controversial lobbyist violated sanctions when he cut a deal with Sudan's military council.

KG: Compensation that won't compensate. The state-run rail company in the Netherlands accepts responsibility for working with the Nazis to transport Dutch Jews to camps — and agrees to pay millions to make amends.

SB: Broken homes. Yesterday, the Lebanese army demolished at least 20 concrete shelters in Syrian refugee camps. And our guest says that's another traumatic loss for people who've already lost so much.

KG: Tracing the traces. Using a technique called genetic genealogy, Washington detectives solved the 32 year old case of a murdered Canadian couple — and found a killer police had never suspected.

SB: Mandible on a mission. To break his latest world record, an Idaho man kept his chin up — and kept a running lawn more on his upraised chin for just shy of four minutes.

KG: And… beyond the doubt of a shadow. While taking an overhead photo with a drone on a Florida beach, a photographer sees an ominous silhouette in the water: a shark.

KG: As It Happens, the Tuesday edition. Radio that's glad he called everyone out of the water, or they might have ended up in a bad shape.

[Music: Theme]

Part one: Canada Sudan lobbying, Lebanon refugee homes, Florida shark drone

Canada Sudan Lobbying

Guest: Alex Neve

KG: Amnesty International is calling for an investigation into a deal between Sudan's military council and a controversial Canadian lobbyist. Last month, in Khartoum, more than a hundred pro-democracy activists were killed, when a government militia moved in to break up their protest camp. But that hasn't kept the Montreal firm of Dickens & Madson from entering into a contract to help the regime get what it wants on the world stage. The firm's founder is the former Mossad agent Ari Ben-Menashe. Last night the BBC Julian Marshall asked Mr Ben-Menashe about his choice of clients.

SOUNDCLIP

ARI BEN-MENASHE: People keep on talking about bad military guys and so on and so forth. They aren't here to stay. I promise you.

JULIAN MARSHALL: I know that you've had personal dealings with Lieutenant General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo. This is a man who led a group considered responsible for the genocide in Darfur about 15 years ago — estimated to have killed at least 200,000 people. This is this man's background.

ABM: I'm not challenging what you say, but he is the only person in this country right now that can bring stability to the country.

KG: That was Ari Ben-Menashe speaking ot the BBC's Julian Marshall last night. But Amnesty International doesn't share Mr. Ben-Menashe's confidence in the Sudanese regime. The human rights group is asking the Canadian government to investigate whether its deal with Dickens & Madson violates international sanctions and Canadian law. Alex Neve is the secretary general of Amnesty International Canada. We reached him in Ottawa.

SB: Mr. Neve, you heard Mr. Ben-Menashe there. Why are you worried that his company might be violating international sanctions?

ALEX NEVE: Well, I think the situation in Sudan speaks for itself — including the responsibility of General Dagalo for ongoing, very concerning serious human rights violations. Mr. Ben-Menashe may have his own aspirations and hopes as to what kind of stability General Dagalo may eventually bring to Sudan. But the reality is that he oversees force, the Rapid Support Forces, which have been responsible for egregious human rights violations, which when you go back to Darfur certainly include war, crimes crimes against humanity, and the International Criminal Court alleges genocide. And then in recent weeks has been responsible for massacres of protesters. That is not a man who is bringing stability to Sudan at this time. That is a man responsible for ongoing serious human rights violations. And is certainly not the kind of person that I would want to be contracting with. And that's why we think the Canadian government needs to look at this.

SB: Well, in a further exchange with Julian Marshall and Mr. Ben-Manashe, Mr. Marshall asks him whether he was violating Canadian sanctions or Canadian law by promising to, and he quotes the contract here, provide military training and security equipment to your military forces. Here's what Mr. Ben-Manashe had to say to that.

SOUNDCLIP

ABM: Nobody is supplying arms to anybody. First of all, we cannot supply arms. It would be countries that would go through the Security Council to supply arms. But we're not talking about now. We're talking after a government is set up.

JM: But it would have to be a different timeframe than that, surely. It would have to be after U.N. sanctions against Sudan are lifted.

ABM: Of course, that would be included that we will make an effort to remove the sanctions. Yes, with the help, hopefully, of the United States and other countries.

SB: So, Mr. Neve, does that response ease any of your concerns?

AN: [slight chuckle] Not in the slightest. That is certainly not what the contract says. There are no provisions in the contract that say you know in a future day, if things are finally better in Sudan, and the United Nations decides that it's at long last safe and proper to lift the sanctions, then we will go ahead and try to assist in providing military training and equipment. That is not what the contract says. The contract says that now in a contract that was entered into in May 7th that Mr. Ben-Manashe and his agency are going to endeavor to take steps to obtain that training and equipment for the forces that are in power today. So I don't take any comfort in him trying to give some sort of conditional promise that that's for a future day.

SB: Just to be clear, there's nothing wrong with lobbying for a government whether it's unsavory or not. There's nothing illegal in that. There may be some ethical questions, but the legality that you're arguing centers on what precisely?

AN: Well, I think there's three Canadian laws that need to be looked at very closely here. One is the United Nations Act. The other is the Special Economic Measures Act, and the other is the laws that oversee arms trade. This contract deals with three countries, Sudan most obviously, but as well has provisions dealing with both Libya and South Sudan. All three of those countries are subject to U.N. sanctions, which, yes, are very much directly about military goods, but are broader than that as well. And we have laws, the U.N. act and the Special Economic Measures Act, which have essentially brought those U.N. sanctions into Canadian law. So certainly, there has to be a very careful consideration as to whether anything in this contract violates those provisions. Then at the same time, we have arms control provisions. Over the last two years, the current government has been updating Canadian arms control laws to comply with the arms trade treaty regulations. And that includes not just the arms dealers who manufacture the weapons and sell the weapons. It includes individuals like Mr. Ben-Menashe, who are involved in brokering and negotiating deals to transfer weapons from one country to another. And if they're going to a country where there then is a very real likelihood they'll be used to commit serious human rights violations that too raises legality concerns under Canadian law.

SB: For people who don't know about his career, can you give us a sense why he's described as controversial in so much of the reporting around this?

AN: Well, he has a long career that goes back to the 1970s. And he's showed up in the centre of some of the most controversial international issues over the decades. He was he was a figure that showed up in the Iran-Contra affair. There was a time when he was charged with, and actually imprisoned for 11 months before being acquitted, on allegations that he'd been involved in negotiating the sale of aircraft to the Iranian government. Here closer to home in Canada, in his role at Dickens & Madson, he had entered into agreement with Zimbabwe's former ruler Robert Mugabe, which was a very shadowy agreement that seemed to be about setting up Mugabe's main opponent at that time, Morgan Tsvangirai. To make incriminating statements on video, which were then used to bring treason charges against Mr. Tsvangirai in Zimbabwe — of which he was eventually acquitted. So he certainly has shown a predilection to be very willing to do business with very unsavoury characters. Certainly doesn't to seem to have any sort of human rights framework let along a strong commitment to human rights to guide him in his business dealings. And as a result, has become quite a notorious figure.

SB: Mr. Neves, thank you.

AN: Thank you for your interest.

SB: Goodbye.

AN: Bye-bye.

KG: Alex Neve is the secretary general of Amnesty International Canada. He's in Ottawa.

[Music: Sombre]

Lebanon refugee homes

Guest: Maggie Tookey

KG: In the early hours of Monday, the Lebanese army drove into Syrian refugee camps with heavy machinery, and began demolishing homes. The homes were makeshift concrete structures, built by Syrian refugees in the border town of Arsal. Fifty-five thousand refugees live in camps there — many of them since the beginning of the Syrian War. Knowing the demolition was coming, some refugees dismantled the concrete homes on their own, before the army could bulldoze them. Maggie Tookey has been helping Syrian refugees in the affected camps. She's an aid worker with Edinburgh Direct Aid. We reached her in Beirut.

SB: Ms. Tookey, what was it like to watch the homes of these Syrian refugees being demolished this week?

MAGGIE TOOKEY: Well, it's been heartbreaking, obviously. The stress that they are already under living as refugees in this town, some of them for six years, and then to have an order come through for their homes to be destroyed, I can't imagine what it must be like to actually be somebody in that position. But I mean I spoke to so many this week who were in a very, very sad state.

SB: These are concrete structures, and it's not what I think an image that comes to mind. When most people think of refugee camps, they conjure images of row upon row of tents. Why were these structures built in the first place?

MT: Well, there are many, many camps that are just tents. But the tents have gradually become a little bit more sophisticated because they have to keep out extremely bad weather — winter storms and summer storms, in fact as well. But snow in the winter. But some refugees pooled their resources, their financial resources, to build together these literal sort of cement shelters — one room or two room shelters that are much more weatherproof. And so these have developed over the last few years because there has been enormous problems with flooding and snow collapse, etc.

SB: What issue does the Lebanese government have with these structures?

MT: The main issue is that, of course, they consider them to be permanent. And the Lebanese government does not want to consider the Syrian refugee population as permanent. They want them to go back to Syria. I mean Lebanon has been hosting them for six years. And there is a move now in the government a much more sort of right-wing move to pressure them to go back. And so they just only want to see temporary structures that’s all.

SB: You were there today. Can you tell us about the camp that you visited?

MT: Well, it’s the camp that we've been working in — my organization has been working in. We were assigned to that camp by the UNHCR. It was a camp with quite a lot of cement structures. And it was a camp specifically for disabled and the elderly. So, of course, they had no ability physically or otherwise to demolish their homes. And they just didn't know what to do. And so we were assigned that camp to do a managed demolition. That means that the demolition is done carefully so that no water supply or sewerage supply is destroyed. And we just took the walls down to one metre, which complies with the rules. And then the rest of the shelter is reconstructed just from plastic sheeting and wood, which of course, is not going to be very efficient, but that's the rules. So that's what we had to reconstruct.

SB: Tell me about some of the people that you met in this camp and their stories?

MT: When you first meet them, you think well they seem quite resilient to this. And, of course, they are resilient. But if you scratch the surface, and you just ask them just one question, that can set off strong reaction in terms of sobbing and being upset. And one elderly couple who really didn't know what to do. And I asked him what they would have done if we hadn't come in? And he said if the Lebanese army were going to come in and do that, then we wanted to die. It would be better to die. That was one very sad interview I had. And another one with a couple, an elderly man in his 80s and a woman who was 70 or so, and they had two very disabled adult daughters. And they had to watch as we demolish their house. We tried to do it as carefully as possible. They were absolutely distraught. And they had to live for three days in a tiny room with no water, no toilet. And the two disabled girls just didn't know what was happening and were very distressed. We managed to get them back into their shelter in two-and-a-half days. We built it very quickly for them. But that was very distressing to see.

SB: These are people who have experienced so much trauma already. And they have been living here in these camps for in some cases six years. What kind of a toll has that kind of waiting game taken on these people?

MT: Well, I mean it's a hopelessness. They can't work. They're not allowed to work, officially anyway. There are many children not in school, and so just hang about in the camps all day. They have no space. They have no privacy. I mean they came from homes you know nice homes. Some of them show me their homes and their gardens and their fruit trees and their orchards. I mean I had one teacher, a young teacher Fatma, who just asked to talk to me, and she spoke good English, and she just said to me can you tell me if my life is always going to be like this? And I have no answers for them. I have none. And so I feel as though I’ve failed because you can't give them what they want, which is to go back to their homes in Syria.

SB: Is that even feasible? Returning more than a million refugees back to Syria?

MT: It's not feasible in the sense that so much of the country is destroyed. The most difficult thing is that it's simply not safe for them to go back — particularly the men. I mean young men between I think it's 16 and 43 will be conscripted into the army. But also, so many of their names are on a list of the security services. And they'll be picked up if they go back. And who knows what will happen to them.

SB: Do they feel that they're at risk of being driven out of Lebanon now?

MT: I think there's a general fear now that they will be got rid of in whatever way possible. And I think there's a new feeling amongst the refugee population that they have something to fear. And I think that now it's creating a very big stress on them all really — starting with our cell. This is the first move in our cell whether they'll expand it to the Beqaa we don't yet know. We wait to see about that.

SB: Well, good luck with your efforts to help these people. Thank you so much.

MT: Thanks very much. Okay, bye-bye.

SB: Goodbye.

KG: Maggie Tookey is an aid worker with Edinburgh Direct Aid, an NGO that manages a camp for Syrian refugees in Lebanon. We reached her in Beirut. And there's more on this story on the As It Happens website: www.cbc.ca/aih.

[Music: Ambient]

Florida shark drone

Guest: Dan Watson

KG: If you're a photographer, you'll go to extremes to get a shot that perfectly sums up a moment. And recently, for one Florida photographer, it was all about a "swimming" shot. One he felt required the use of a drone, to capture a magical overhead photo of his family in the water. What he didn't know, however, was that they weren't alone out there. We reached photographer and dad, Dan Watson, in Orlando, Florida.

SB: Dan, what did you see when you looked in the viewfinder and saw that view of the beach from your drone?

DAN WATSON: Yes, I actually hadn't planned on flying it. We had been out for three or four hours. It was 5:30; we were about to pack it in. And at the last minute, I'm like hey, I forgot I brought the drone. Let me just take a picture of the kids playing in the water. And then all of a sudden, I started noticing that shadow moving through the water. And then I started running off to the beach and yelling at them to get out, and yelling shark.

SB: Well, tell me more about that exact moment when you saw the shark near your children in the water?

DW: Yes, so my actual first impulse was shark. But after I had taken that image and they started running out, I immediately started to doubt myself because I hadn't really seen a picture of it yet. So I'm thinking nah, it was probably just a shadow, seaweed, something moving through the water. And it wasn't until a little bit later where I was actually able to download the full resolution images from the drone and kind of zoom in there that I was like wow! That's an actual shark.

SB: You're down on the beach, and you're screaming shark, shark at your kids. How did they react?

DW: So thankfully, it was one of those moments where you're really glad that your kids listen to you right away. I mean my youngest is only five years old. And thankfully, they all got the sense of urgency and started running away really quickly. That second photo was the moment of impulse right there. You can see them running. You can see the sand scattering everywhere from their movement. And then you can see the shark make that turn and start heading back out into the water.

SB: What about your wife? How did she react?

DW: So very panicked at first when I started yelling that was very good for getting out the kids immediately. And then it wasn't until a little bit later when she had actually in the image that that she started to realize how bad it was and how close it was. Because in that first image, the shark was moving into the water very, very quickly.

SB: How big was this animal?

DW: I mean we have both the kids and the shark. So as best we can estimate, somewhere between six and eight feet. So not massive, but we're talking five-year-old children out there.

SB: So bigger than the kids.

DW: Yes.

SB: Have you ever seen sharks there before?

DW: No. We have heard airplane pilots spot them in the area because they migrate a lot up that coast. Generally, surfers might see them way further out. But not close to the shore in the beach area.

SB: I imagine that all of this happened so quickly. But in the days since, how have you been processing it? Has it sunk in?

DW: Yes, so it actually took on almost another level a couple of days ago. Because we found out that a kid was bit in the same exact spot that we were just a couple days later by a shark and was taken to hospital and had some pretty severe injuries from that. So that moment to us was chilling because that that meant that yes, indeed, there are multiple sharks in the area and they've gotten aggressive in that area. So that was another add on to the chill factor for us.

SB: Well what do you think could have happened if you hadn't had your drone with you and hadn't seen the image from above?

DW: Right, and that was a scary thing because we're talking young kids here. So while most of us probably could have survived and swam to shore and things like that, you know my five and six-year-old kids combating a shark is something that wouldn't be able to happen. So yes, it could have been a very scary situation.

SB: So, Dan, how are you feeling about the beach these days?

DW: We'll be working on our sand castle skills next time we go back probably. We might be able to find some little places to splash around. But as far as the deep ocean, I think we're going to stay away for a little while.

SB: How do the kids feel about the ocean?

DW: So my two youngest have actually been very curious about sharks in general lately. They want to see pictures of them. My daughter is a little bit more nervous. She's the oldest. And for her, it's probably a little bit more impactful.

SB: So I guess you won't head back to the beach without your drone?

DW: Yeah, it's definitely something I would like to bring out with me and take a look from overhead above. I mean they've been used in search and rescue and things like that for a good reason. And this is one of those areas where they're very helpful for spotting things moving through the water.

SB: Well, I'm glad it turned out all right. Thanks for telling us about it.

DW: Yes, absolutely. Thank you.

SB: Bye, Dan.

DW: Bye.

KG: Dan Watson is a photographer in Orlando, Florida — which is where we reached him. To see the photos he captured of his family's encounter with a shark, head to our website at: www.cbc.ca/aih.

[Music: Up tempo]

Lawnmower chin

KG: The heart of a champion. The eye of the tiger. The chin...of a hero. It takes a special person to break a record for balancing a lawnmower on their chin. Just ask Ashrita Furman, who holds the Guinness record for "farthest distance travelled balancing a lawnmower on the chin (powered)" — that is to say, with the lawnmower running. Or Jay Rawlings, who just last week, at the Glastonbury Festival in England, set a new world record for both "farthest distance travelled balancing a lawnmower on the chin (not powered)" and "longest duration balancing a lawnmower on the chin (not powered)" — 286-point-1 metres, and 13-point-zero-6 minutes, respectively. Of course, Furman and Rawlings are already household names. And now, to the pantheon of chin-lawnmower-balancers, you can add Rush — David Rush. For more than 3 years, he trained. And now, by not dropping it from his jaw, he's achieved a jaw-dropping feat: Mr. Rush has set a new record for "longest duration balancing a lawnmower on the chin (powered)". From a YouTube video, here's David Rush explaining the challenges he faced on that fateful day last week. The slightly choppy edits are in the original recording.

SOUNDCLIP

DAVID RUSH: And so while it might sound like a difficult record on the outset, what you may not realize is that in addition to the danger of losing limbs and fingers and like, you're trying to balance an inverse pendulum on your chin. And the acceleration due to gravity is inversely proportional to the centre of gravity or the height of the centre gravity. But in addition to that, there's blades spinning, which creates angular momentum, which kind of throws off the balance too. And since the blades aren't exactly flat — they're kind of angled. It's like a helicopter blade and it creates thrust. It also wants to move the lawnmower. And then since it's a powered lawnmower with electricity, it's got a cord hanging off it that also kind of makes it try to spend a little bit. And a couple other things that made it difficult is that it was at two o'clock in the afternoon and it was sunny, and so I was basically looking right into the sun the entire time. And then finally, there was plenty of wind gusts that also made it a little bit more difficult. But there's a risk reward here. The reward is breaking the Guinness World Record. The risk is you know you can cut off your hands or fingers will be chopped up. That's not a good thing. I had a guy there at the ready to pull the plug in the electricity in case it started falling off my chin. So I didn't just do this on a whim. I didn't just do this without putting in a significant amount of time and effort into preparing for what I knew was going to be successful. And frankly, I didn't want to lose any fingers.

KG: David Rush, explaining his attempt to beat the record for balancing a running lawnmower on one's chin, which was 3 minutes and 1 second… was.

SOUNDCLIP

[Sound: Why would you do this? The sound is a running engine powering down to the tune of cheering]

KG: And that's the sound of Mr. Rush setting a new record — 3 minutes and 52 seconds — at the "Road to the X Games" in Boise, Idaho, on Saturday. A truly astonishing achievement. And one that very few of us could match. Because very few of us would even consider doing anything so weird and dangerous, let’s face it. But you know, mower power to him

[Music: A song from Corner Gas?]

Part two: Dutch Holocaust compensation, Ottawa university paper, genealogy guilty verdict

Dutch Holocaust compensation

Guest: Salo Muller

KG: During the Second World War, the Dutch state-run rail company NS was given orders by the Nazis. So it built a new rail line — and, over time, transported more than 100 thousand Dutch Jews to Nazi concentration camps. NS apologized for what it's called "a black page in the history of the company" years ago. But now, the rail company says it will pay up to 50 million Euros in compensation to surviving Holocaust victims and their families. Survivors — who were transported to a transit camp by the train company — will receive about 15-thousand euros, which is more than 22-thousand Canadian dollars. This is what Salo Muller campaigned for. Mr. Muller's parents were transported from Amsterdam to the Dutch transit camp Westerbork, before being taken to Auschwitz. And he's been working for years to get compensation from N-S. We reached Salo Muller in Knokke-Heist, Belgium.

SB: Mr. Muller, in 2005, the rail company NS apologized for its role in transporting Dutch Jews to concentration camps. You weren't satisfied with that apology. Why not?

SALO MULLER: All the Jewish people lost their families, lost their children, the wives, the husbands. So they are not interested at that moment in an apology. And years later, they said to the railway you have to apologize again, and better and louder and clear. They said no, no, we did it, and we did so much more. We sent money to Westerbork, to the camp. We opened a museum. We have statues at several places. So be satisfied. And then the Jewish people said no, we are not satisfied. And then the whole story stopped till four years ago.

SB: What happened four years ago?

SM: Listen, for years I was thinking about the railway because the people who were sent to the camps had to pay their own tickets.

SB: They had to buy a ticket on this?

SM: That's right. Not to buy, but they have to pay. So the railway said every Jew who will take the train, who has to take the train, have to pay seven-guilders-and-50-cents — perhaps a little bit more, little bit less. And then the railway sent bills to the Germans, and the Germans stole from the Jewish bank, and from that money and all that jewelry and gold, they paid the Dutch railway. It was much, much more than you think. And four years ago, I read an article in the paper about the French railway. They gave a compensation to the French Jews in America. And so I said if the French railway company will pay, why not the Dutch railway? And then I start writing letters about my story, about a story of my wife, about a story of several Jewish people in Holland. And that was the start.

SB: Mr. Muller, what was the extent of NS’s responsibility? Did the company, did management know the passengers they were transporting would be killed?

SM: Yeah, I'm sure. And Mr. Roger van Boxtel, the president/director, said yeah, we knew it. In that time, there are letters from people who wrote to the Dutch railway do you know what happened with the Jewish people? And he said we can't stop it. We can't stop it. The Germans kill the people. We don't do it. But we transport it.

SB: And the rail company profited from that.

SM: Absolutely.

SB: You told them during your fight with the company to get compensation, you told them the story of your family.

SM: Yeah.

SB: Can you tell us the story of what happened to your family? What do you remember of your parents being seized and then taken from Amsterdam by train?

SM: For me, the war starts when I was six year, in ‘42. My mother brought me to school, and she said she you tonight and be a good boy. That's the title of my book in English. And she left the school, and my father and my mother are working at the same company. When they arrived, in front of the door was a German truck. And all the Jewish employees were taken. They were sent to the Dutch Theatre. The same night, I was with my my uncle and with my aunt. There was a knock on the door, and there were two German soldiers and a Dutch policeman. And He said that's that the German soldiers round up and took all the Jewish people out of the houses and from the streets. And then they took me with all the Jewish people with the truck — the German truck — and I saw my father and mother standing on the stage.

SB: You saw your parents?

SM: Yeah, I run to my mother, I took her hand, and at that moment, a soldier and a nurse came to me, took me away. I was crying and yelling for my father and mother for four days and nights. And my father and mother were taken with other Jewish people to Westerbork. And after nine weeks, they were sent to Auschwitz.

SB: Mr. Muller, I am so sorry. I am so sorry for what happened to you and your family.

SM: Yeah. At the age of twelve, we received a letter from the Red Cross. And they were stating in the letter that my parents were died in Auschwitz. But I hoped and I was praying all the time that they were not killed. But they were killed immediately when they arrived in Auschwitz.

SB: What have you heard now from survivors about the amount of compensation? Are people telling you that that compensation is appropriate?

SM: I received hundreds of mails from Jewish people — survivors and children of the survivors — and they were very satisfied. And they were very satisfied. And they’re thanking me. And so the first thing, I want to apologize — a clear apologize — and not special the money. But now the money is okay, okay?

SB: I understand. You didn't seek financial compensation, but it evolved that way. And you think that has made a difference?

SM: Absolutely, yeah.

SB: Are there people asking you about the way you dealt with NS looking for guidance so that they can launch their own fights against other transport companies in Europe?

SM: Yeah, especially the Belgium Jews. They phoned me several times. They sent me letters. How did you do it? Can you help us? Give us information. I give them the address of my lawyer. I give them some suggestions what to do. And at the moment, I'm finished. What happened in the future, I don't know. But at the moment, I said enough is enough for this moment.

SB: Well, you've done well. And I'm so glad to talk to you.

SM: Thank you for talking to me. And it was a nice interview. Thank you very much.

SB: Thank you, Mr. Muller. Goodbye.

SM: Okay. Goodbye.

KG: Salo Muller is an author and the former physiotherapist for Dutch soccer team, Ajax. His parents were killed at Auschwitz during the Holocaust, after being transported via the Dutch railway. We reached him in Knokke-Heist, Belgium. And we've got more on our webpage at: www.cbc.ca/aih.

[Music: Ambient]

Mini: Dalai Lama apology

KG: A quick update to a story we told you last week. The one about the Dalai Lama, Tibet's spiritual leader, known as "His Holiness", who's living in exile in India. He wants you to know he was kidding when he told a BBC journalist that, if the next Dalai Lama is female, she had best be attractive. A statement released on his website today offers sincere apologies. It says, quote: "it sometimes happens that off-the-cuff remarks, which might be amusing in one cultural context, lose their humour in translation when brought into another." Unquote.

[Music: Ambient]

Ottawa university paper

Guest: Matt Gergyek

KG: School's out for summer. But student journalism never rests — unless someone stops the presses. That's what's happened at the University of Ottawa's English-language paper, The Fulcrum. Over the weekend, someone hacked the online campus paper — and deleted its entire archive. Police are investigating, but so far, they don't know who's responsible. Matt Gergyek is the editor-in-chief of The Fulcrum. We reached him in Waterdown, Ontario.

SB: Matt, what does the website for your newspaper look like now?

MATT GERGYEK: So right now, it's completely blank. There's nothing on it anymore. It's just a lot of black and white background, which is a really scary feeling for myself and the other editors of The Fulcrum and our readers to look at right now.

SB: Is that how it looked as soon as the hack took place?

MG: When the hack first took place, there was like one post left on the website. It called our newspaper an anti-union rag. And then kind of just a stock image of just the person kind of holding up the middle finger.

SB: So that was a message from the hackers?

MG: Yeah, that's kind of what we're taking it as.

SB: What was the extent of the hack? What exactly did you lose?

MG: We lost everything. So we used WordPress to host our websites. And the website goes back pretty consistently to about 2010, and then it goes in spotty patches back to like 2006, when we first started our website. But o there, there's like 900 pages almost of posts. And each page has like eight to 10 posts. So that adds up to a huge amount of content. It's just so much work. Like ten years back it was gone. And we looked in the trash bin on the website, and it was empty. So it was just a horrible feeling.

SB: When you saw that headline on the site calling your paper an anti-union rag, what did you take from that?

MG: I think we're being really careful not to jump to conclusions and not point fingers yet. But like we said, it could just be someone who wants to stir the pot and knows nothing about our university or our relationship with our student government. But yeah, I think like some people certainly took it as just an attack on student journalism — kind of a way of critiquing our relationship with our student government. But yeah, just in general, we saw it as an attack on student journalism for sure, and then in the broader ecosystem of journalism as a whole as well.

SB: You had covered allegations of fraud against the previous student union at the university. And those allegations were eventually shown to be unfounded. Do you think those stories and that coverage had something to do with the hack?

MG: Like I said, it's really hard to say exactly where this came from. But it's a possibility for sure.

SB: Given what they say that you're an anti-union rag, is that not a clear link to that?

MG: Yeah, like that can definitely be a possibility. Like you said, the anti-union rag that line really kind of just points back to what happened. But it's tough to say this was someone from the union or someone who had links to it or someone who had hurt feelings from it. But I can totally understand how someone could be feeling hurt by that for sure.

SB: How difficult was that time when you were covering this and it was so contentious.

MG: Yeah, it was really tough. And like we all really understood that our job as journalists we sometimes have to be tough on our student government. We have to ask those tough questions. And we have to put out stories that the student government is not going to like. We tried to keep the relationship somewhat healthy. We will always allow them to comment first in stories and allow for that fair balance and a chance for them to respond to allegations things like that. But I think at times, they didn't really understand that it was our job to report what was happening. And sometimes that could shine a bad light on them or make them feel uncomfortable.

SB: Can you remind us about those allegations at the time what happened?

MG: A police report was filed by a former executive of the Union, which is the Student Federation of the University of Ottawa, and the police report outlined allegations of fraud and financial mismanagement. So that led to kind of a domino effect within the university. Some people would say it was kind of a build-up of a lot of different things. like a lot of people had critiqued the union for a long time. So this was kind of like for some people it was the final straw to break.

SB: And your paper covered at all?

MG: Yeah, we did. We did. But it eventually led to the university setting up a vote for a referendum to decide if we wanted to keep that student union or bring in a new one. And close to I think was like around 70 per cent of students voted for the new union. So the new union was brought in and the contract with the previous union was terminated with the university.

SB: What do you want the hackers to know now?

MG: Number one, I’d want them to know that we're doing our job as journalists. We do our absolute best to allow for fair comment on stories, to provide all perspectives, to cover everything fairly. But I think people need to understand that sometimes stories are going to upset people. And I think good journalism is supposed to make people uncomfortable, and to at least have some emotional reaction, right? And if this was something some kind of complaint about our coverage and the way we do things, there's like much better informal ways to go about addressing that. Like going through our ombudsperson or bringing up with me or the rest of our staff. We're so open to talking with people. And we love feedback criticism. And I think it makes us better. So yeah, there's just much better ways to address things like this.

SB: And when are you gonna be back online.

MG: By the end of the week for sure. Thankfully, our website host has done a great job. And they've been able to find a backup that just took place last week. So we're gonna be able to restore to that, which is an awesome feeling. But at first, it looked like we're gonna have a pretty dark outcome from all this for sure.

SB: Matt, thank you for your time.

MG: Yeah, thank you so much.

KG: Matt Gergyek is the new editor-in-chief at The Fulcrum. He took over the job in May. We reached him in Waterdown, Ontario.

[Music: Horns!]

Genealogy guilty verdict

Guest: Jim Scharf

KG: For decades, it seemed like the murder of the young Canadian couple from Saanich, B.C. would never be solved. The trail of the killer of Tanya Van Cuylenborg and Jay Cook, in nearby Washington state, had gone cold. But, now, 32 years later, there has been a conviction. On Friday, a jury returned a guilty verdict against William Talbot the Second. The case is significant because it is the first guilty verdict in a U.S. court resulting from genetic genealogy. Key to the case was a DNA sample that was then connected to relatives of the accused killer, through a genealogy database. Jim Scharf was a detective on the case. We reached him in Everett, Washington.

SB: Detective Scharf, you worked on this case for years. What was it like to finally see the conviction?

JIM SCHARF: Well, it was absolutely fantastic to get the conviction. We always knew that we had the right person. So we were confident that the jury was going to see that also.

SB: Tell us a little bit about the murder. It dates back to 1987. Can you give us a brief reminder of what happened to the young couple?

JS: Well, they were heading from Saanich, British Columbia to Seattle, where they were going to run an errand for Jay's father. And it was just going to be an overnight trip with his girlfriend, Tanya.

SB: And they ended up murdered.

JS: Well, yeah. They were kidnapped in the SoDo district of Seattle, which is south of downtown. It was only a mile from the ferry dock. And Jay was found out here in the Monroe area of Snohomish County about a week later. Tanya had been found about 65 or 70 miles north two days earlier in Skagit County.

SB: So there was an investigation. It did not lead to any charges. You took over the cold case in 2005. And you had a DNA sample from the crime scene. But it didn't turn up anything in the FBI’s database. Why was that?

JS: Well, the FBI’s database only consists of convicted felons or people that had met the criteria to have their DNA taken upon conviction of a crime. And the person that had done this was never convicted of any crimes where his DNA would have been taken to put in the database. So it sat in the database for years without getting a match to a person.

SB: So was there any evidence or anything at all to lead you at that point to the man who's now been convicted, William Talbot the Second?

JS: Well, what led us to him was by the use of genetic genealogy, which is a means to get a tip of who a person might be that might have committed the crime. And it's the best kind of tip you can get because it's based on science of genealogy.

SB: So tell us what happened specifically in this case? How it was used?

JS: Well, what we did was we had Parabon Nanolabs upload the DNA profile that we had to a public database called GEDmatch. And the next day, GEDmatch reported possible matches. The closest matches were at the second cousin level.

SB: So you matched this DNA that you had from the scene of the crime that was taken from Tanya, and you matched it to two second cousins of your suspect? What happened then?

JS: Yes. Well, Parabon Nanolabs uploaded it to GEDmatch to get those matches. And then the next morning, they turned this information of matches of second cousins over to CeCe Moore, who is a famous genealogist. And she worked about two hours to identify the suspect. And then she worked another six hours to confirm that she was correct in her identification. So Steve Armentrout called me from Parabon, and said that they had narrowed down the information from the genealogy website to one individual. And that was William Earl Talbot the Second.

SB: In the court case, did Mr. Talbot's lawyers challenge the use of the genealogy database in his case?

JS: No, they actually agreed to a stipulated understanding of making it simple to explain to the jury how this took place. And I testified about it myself.

SB: This is the first guilty verdict of this kind. The first time this has been actually tested through the court system. Do you anticipate it will happen over and over?

JS: Oh, absolutely. Since then, I've arrested a man for a rape/murder that happened in 1972. And that case is waiting to go to trial — along with probably 40 or 50 others across this country.

SB: It's a controversial tool for police. What do you say to those who are uncomfortable with police using this to solve crimes?

JS: Well, it's actually not that much of a concern for people's privacy. Anybody that uses social media has more potential of having people imposed on their privacy than this type of a situation because the data that's in there doesn't give the police anything more than just something to build a family tree with. It doesn't give them the information to look in to their medical history or things like that that people are concerned about.

SB: Without this, would you ever have solved the crime?

JS: No, unless he would have committed another crime in the future where his DNA would have been taken. He could've lived out his entire life and never been found.

SB: Well, Detective Scharf, congratulations. Thanks for telling us about it.

JS: Thank you very much. You're very welcome.

SB: Goodbye.

JS: Bye-bye.

KG: Jim Scharf is a detective with the Snohomish County Sheriff's Office. He was in Everett Washington.

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July 2, 2019 episode transcript

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