Kyle Rittenhouse claims he’s in secret ‘safe house’ after prosecutors file arrest warrant over pre-trial disappearance

Graeme Massie and James Crump
<p>Prosecutors request Kyle Rittenhouse arrest warrant for alleged bail breach</p> (JOSEPH PREZIOSO/AFP via Getty Images)

Prosecutors request Kyle Rittenhouse arrest warrant for alleged bail breach

(JOSEPH PREZIOSO/AFP via Getty Images)

Kyle Rittenhouse's lawyer has claimed that he is staying in a secret "safe house", as prosecutors request an arrest warrant for an alleged breach of his bail conditions.

Mr Rittenhouse, 18, who is charged with shooting dead two protesters in Kenosha, Wisconsin, last year, is accused of failing to update his home address with the court.

His failure to do so inhibits authorities ability to monitor his whereabouts, according to court papers filed by the Kenosha County District Attorney's Office.

Officials say that they became aware of the situation when a notice for a hearing was returned to sender without a forwarding address.

After visiting his listed address, Kenosha investigators discovered that another man had been living there since mid-December.

Prosecutors argued that because Mr Rittenhouse did not pay his $2m (£1.46m) bond himself he has little incentive to comply with the conditions of his release.

Right-wing activists and conservative celebrities helped raise the money to have Mr Rittenhouse released from Kenosha County Jail on bond ahead of his trial.

“After all, it is extremely unusual for a defendant facing a charge of First Degree Intentional Homicide in Kenosha County to post cash bond and be released from custody pending trial,” the motion stated.

“Rarely does our community see accused murderers roaming about freely.”

The motion requested that a judge issue the arrest warrant, increase the bond by $200,000 (£146,530), and that Mr Rittenhouse immediately update his address.

Responding to the request on Wednesday, Mr Rittenhouse's lawyer Mark Richards said that his client is staying in an undisclosed "safe house" due to death threats and "has stayed in constant contact" with his lawyers.

Mr Richards said that he offered prosecutors the details of the new address if they agreed to keep it secret, but he claimed that they declined.

Mr Rittenhouse is accused of killing Joseph Rosenbaum, 36, and Anthony Huber, 26, when he traveled to Wisconsin last year, supposedly to guard a car dealership during protests over the police shooting of a Black man, Jacob Blake.

He is also accused of injuring a third man, Gaige Grosskreutz, who survived.

The demonstrations in the city took place after a white police officer shot Mr Blake in the back during a domestic disturbance incident.

He was left paralysed from the waist down after the shooting.

It is not the first problem that authorities have had with Mr Rittenhouse’s behaviour while out on bail.

On 5 January, after his arraignment, he went to bar and drank three beers in the company of a number of Proud Boys and flashed white supremacist signs, while wearing a shirt with a slogan that read “Free as f***.”

Prosecutors included details of that incident in their motion.

Mr Rittenhouse has pleaded not guilty to all charges.

Read More

Prosecutors seek restrictions on Rittenhouse after bar stop

Kyle Rittenhouse pleads not guilty to all charges in Kenosha shooting

Wisconsin prosecutors add curfew charge against Rittenhouse

Online store stops selling Rittenhouse family's merchandise

Kyle Rittenhouse pleads not guilty to all charges in Kenosha shooting

Latest Stories

  • Israel's rapid rollout provides the first real-world proof that COVID vaccination works as well as promised

    Now that a huge share of Israelis have been vaccinated, experts are looking at the country’s experience as a kind of real-world, real-time experiment, with unique data that could start to answer some of our most pressing questions about the power of vaccines to curb the pandemic.  

  • U.S. charges Seattle-based Proud Boys member for role in Capitol riots

    The U.S. Justice Department arrested and charged a top member of the Seattle chapter of the far-right Proud Boys group on Wednesday over allegations he had a role in the storming of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 by pro-Trump followers. Separately, two other Proud Boy members including the leader of the group's Hawaii Chapter were indicted by a federal grand jury for conspiracy to obstruct Congress, the Justice Department said. Prosecutors said that 30-year-old Ethan Nordean, also known as Rufio Panman, could face up to 20 years in prison if he is convicted on a charge of impeding an official government proceeding.

  • Greene was reportedly applauded by GOP lawmakers after apologizing for past inflammatory remarks

    During a GOP caucus meeting on Wednesday night, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) received a round of applause after she apologized for putting her fellow Republicans in a difficult spot due to her past racist, anti-Semitic, and anti-Muslim remarks, The Washington Post reports. Prior to her election in 2020, Greene, a supporter of the QAnon conspiracy, questioned the 9/11 attacks, claimed school shootings were staged, said Jewish space lasers sparked a California wildfire, endorsed the execution of Democratic leaders, and made a variety of racist remarks during podcasts and livestreams. Several Republicans who attended Wednesday night's meeting said Greene offered an apology for some of those earlier comments. Before the meeting, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said he spoke with Greene on Tuesday night, and made it clear that her remarks "do not represent the values or beliefs of the House Republican Conference." More stories from theweek.comProsecutors don't know where Kenosha shooter Kyle Rittenhouse is, want him arrested again5 scathing cartoons about the GOP's Marjorie Taylor Greene problemMarjorie Taylor Greene is getting exactly what she wants

  • Turkey's Erdogan describes student protesters as terrorists

    Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has denounced student protesters as “terrorists" and vowed to crackdown on demonstrations opposing the appointment of a government loyalist to head Istanbul’s most prestigious university. Students and faculty members of Bogazici University have spent weeks protesting Erdogan’s Jan. 1 appointment of Melih Bulu, an academic who once ran for parliament as a candidate for Erdogan’s party. Scores of students have been detained amid the protests, some taken away following raids of their homes.

  • Salmond brands Sturgeon's government 'a disgrace' over claims it hid evidence

    Alex Salmond has branded Nicola Sturgeon's government "a disgrace" and accused her officials of systematic dishonesty and obstruction during a probe into sexual misconduct claims against him. In written evidence to the Holyrood committee investigating the botched Scottish Government investigation into two complaints of sexual harassment, he also repeated his claim that Ms Sturgeon had offered to interfere in the probe on his behalf. If proven, the allegation would contradict Ms Sturgeon’s statements to Holyrood, in which she has repeatedly denied offering to meddle in the investigation to help her former mentor. Written evidence provided by Mr Salmond, in advance of his highly anticipated return to Holyrood as a witness next week, was published on Wednesday. Mr Salmond claims that compromising evidence was repeatedly withheld from his legal team as he sought to challenge the fairness and legality of the Scottish Government process in court. He also states it was a “fact” that the government only conceded the case after its external counsel threatened to resign if it did not do so. A senior Scottish Government source responded to the 21-page submission by accusing Mr Salmond of "contradictions and incoherence". Mr Salmond was awarded more than £500,000 in legal costs after he won his judicial review against the civil service probe, and claimed more than £750,000 of taxpayers’ money in total was spent fighting his case. He was later cleared of all 13 sexual assault charges at a trial, following a separate criminal investigation.

  • Biden adviser suggests holdovers from Obama era dictated 'harsh' response to GOP COVID-19 relief proposal

    The Monday night White House statement that appeared to take some air out of bipartisan COVID-19 relief bill negotiations didn't sound like President Biden, an anonymous longtime adviser to the commander-in-chief told Politico. "I think it sounded like more like [White House Chief of Staff] Ron Klain," the adviser said. "The GOP plan wasn't a joke. I looked at it and said, 'OK the midpoint between $600 billion and $1.9 trillion is about 1.2 or 1.3.' I was a little surprised we hit back that hard. It's not like our plan is perfect and there's nothing we can approve. Vintage Biden would not have been that harsh." The adviser suggested that while Biden has a penchant for bipartisan deal-making, Klain, an Obama-era holdover, doesn't have fond memories of working with Republicans after unsuccessful talks with GOP lawmakers about the stimulus in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis and the Affordable Care Act. "Ron has this whole thing: 'Remember how they rat-f---ed us on the ACA!," the adviser told Politico. It's worth noting, however, the White House statement did say Biden wants to keep talking with the group of senators going forward, so the idea of a bipartisan resolution hasn't been completely shot down, even if the possibility is shrinking. Read more at Politico. More stories from theweek.comProsecutors don't know where Kenosha shooter Kyle Rittenhouse is, want him arrested again5 scathing cartoons about the GOP's Marjorie Taylor Greene problemMarjorie Taylor Greene is getting exactly what she wants

  • U.S. cool to, but does not reject, Iran's idea on reviving nuclear deal

    The U.S. State Department reacted coolly on Tuesday to an Iranian suggestion that Washington and Tehran take synchronized steps to return to the Iran nuclear deal, though a U.S. official said the stance should not be seen as a rejection. On Monday, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif had said one way to bridge the impasse with Washington was for an EU official to choreograph their steps to restore the 2015 pact abandoned in 2018 by then-President Donald Trump.

  • Daughter: Pakistan arrests rights activist in sedition case

    A Pakistani teacher, social worker and activist was arrested on Wednesday in the northwestern city of Peshawar, after a court denied him bail on charges of terror financing and sedition, his daughter said. Gulalai Ismail tweeted that her father, Mohammad Ismail, was taken into custody in a long-standing case that also charges her and her mother since 2019. According to Gulalai Ismail, the local court in Peshawar granted the provincial counter-terrorism authorities permission to hold her father for questioning for three days.

  • One Person’s Trash Is Another Person’s Coffee Table

    Furniture made from waste materials just keeps getting better—and easier to buyOriginally Appeared on Architectural Digest

  • Biden reacts to fatal shootings of two FBI agents in Florida

    President Biden addresses incident from the Oval Office..

  • Kremlin critic Navalny tells court that Putin will go down in history as nothing but an 'underpants poisoner'

    "I mortally offended him by surviving...And then I committed an even more serious offense: I didn't run and hide," Alexei Navalny said of Putin.

  • GOP Lawmakers Look to Remove Ilhan Omar from Committees as Dems Attack Taylor Greene

    House Republicans this week are looking to remove Representative Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.) from her committee assignments amid a similar fight from Democrats to oust Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R., Ga.) from her assignments. Earlier this week House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer reportedly gave GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy an ultimatum: remove Greene from her committee assignments in 72 hours or Democrats will bring the issue to the House floor. Greene’s appointment to the House Education and Labor Committee and the House Budget Committee sparked outcry last week from Democrats who say that she should be disqualified from serving on the committee over a recently unearthed video of a 2019 incident in which she harassed a survivor of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting, saying the survivor was paid by George Soros, as well as a 2018 Facebook post in which she agreed that the Sandy Hook and Stoneman Douglas shootings were “staged.” McCarthy met with Greene Tuesday night and told her that she would either have to apologize or be ousted from at least one of her two committee assignments by GOP leadership to avoid a politically-fraught vote on the House floor, Politico reported. The House is set to consider a measure this week that calls for Greene’s removal from her assignments. Meanwhile, according to Fox News, a proposed GOP-backed amendment the measure calls for Omar to be ousted from her assignments “in light of conduct she has exhibited.” The amendment — sponsored by Representatives Brian Babin (R., Texas), Jeff Duncan (R., S.C.), Jody Hice (R., Ga.), Andy Biggs (R., Ariz.), and Ronny Jackson (R., Texas) — claims that Omar has made anti-Semitic comments that are grounds for dismissal. Omar drew criticism from colleagues on both sides of the aisle in February 2019 when she wrote, “It’s all about the Benjamins baby,” in response to a tweet about McCarthy’s promise to take “action” against her over her criticism of Israel. The “Squad” member later suggested that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee was paying politicians to take a positive stance on Israel. She ultimately apologized and thanked colleagues for “educating [her] on the painful history of anti-Semitic tropes.” The move against Omar comes as Hoyer has said Greene “must be held accountable for her reprehensible statements.” Greene, a freshman congresswoman, has taken on a controversial reputation over her belief in the QAnon movement, which claims, among other things, that former President Donald Trump and his allies are secretly working to expose a deep-state ring of child sex traffickers. Last week she also came under fire after Media Matters unearthed a 2018 Facebook post in which Greene made unfounded claims about the cause of California’s wildfires. She alleged that the Rothschilds, a wealthy Jewish banking family that is frequently the subject of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, may have used a laser beam from space to spark a forest fire in order to profit from it. A number of House Democrats have expressed support for both a formal censure against Greene and for her expulsion from the House.

  • Harry Dunn suspect was employed by US intelligence agency at time of crash, court told

    Harry Dunn's alleged killer was "employed by an intelligence agency in the US" at the time fatal road crash - which was "especially a factor" in her departure from the UK, a court has heard. The Alexandria district court in Virginia was told Anne Sacoolas and her husband Jonathan Sacoolas worked for the US State Department and they "fled" the country due to "issues of security". The revelations came out during Sacoolas's application to dismiss a civil claim for damages against her made by the Dunn family on Wednesday. The suspect's barrister, John McGavin, told the court he could not "completely candidly" explain why the Sacoolas family left the UK - adding: "I know the answer, but I cannot disclose it." Family spokesman Radd Seiger told the PA news agency UK authorities must "urgently investigate whether she had diplomatic immunity" at the time of the incident. Mr Dunn, 19, was killed after a car crashed into his motorbike outside US military base RAF Croughton in Northamptonshire in August 2019.

  • Prosecutors don't know where Kenosha shooter Kyle Rittenhouse is, want him arrested again

    Prosecutors in Kenosha, Wisconsin, sought a new arrest warrant Wednesday for Kyle Rittenhouse, the teenager charged with killing two people during an Aug. 25 protest against the police shooting of Jacob Blake, a Black man now paralyzed from the waist down. The prosecutors said Rittenhouse has violated the terms of his $2 million bond by moving without informing the court or providing his new address. After a court filing sent to Rittenhouse was returned as undeliverable Jan. 28, Kenosha detectives visited Rittenhouse's listed address and discovered another man has been living there since mid-December, prosecutors explained. It is "extremely unusual for a defendant facing a charge of first-degree intentional homicide in Kenosha County to post cash bond and be released from custody pending trial," prosecutors said in their motion. "Rarely does our community see accused murderers roaming about freely." Along with Rittenhouse's arrest, they asked the court to increase his bond by $200,000, noting that since his $2 million bond had been paid from a "dubious internet fundraising campaign," Rittenhouse "has no financial stake in the bond" and no incentive to cooperate since "he is already facing the most serious possible criminal charges and life in prison." Rittenhouse's lawyer, Mark Richards, responded Wednesday night, saying his client is in an undisclosed "safe house" due to death threats and "has stayed in constant contact" with his lawyers, if not the courts. He said he had offered to provide prosecutors with the new address if they would keep it secret, and they declined. Rittenhouse, now 18, is accused of fatally shooting Joseph Rosenbaum, 36, and Anthony Huber, 26, and wounding a third man. He says he fired in self-defense. Prosecutors sought to amend the terms of his bail last month after video footage captured him drinking with a group of Proud Boys at a Wisconsin bar and flashing white-power hand signs. It is legal for 18-year-olds to drink in bars in Wisconsin if a parent is present, and Rittenhouse's mom was apparently at the bar with him. More stories from theweek.com5 scathing cartoons about the GOP's Marjorie Taylor Greene problemMarjorie Taylor Greene is getting exactly what she wantsLate night hosts survey how the GOP is handling Marjorie Taylor Greene, QAnon, and 'Jewish space lasers'

  • Iran receives its first batch of foreign coronavirus vaccine

    Iran on Thursday received its first batch of foreign-made coronavirus vaccines as the country struggles to stem the worst outbreak of the pandemic in the Middle East. The shipment consists of 500,000 doses of Russian-made Sputnik V vaccines which arrived at Tehran’s Imam Khomeieni International Airport from Moscow, the semi-official Fars news agency reported. Also Iranian state TV quoted Tehran’s ambassador to Russia, Kazem Jalali, as saying that Iran has ordered 5 million doses from Russia.

  • Venezuela's offshore funds could pay for vaccines but Maduro not cooperating, Guaido says

    Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido said on Wednesday that Venezuelan funds controlled by the U.S. Treasury Department could be used to pay for coronavirus vaccines but that President Nicolas Maduro's government is refusing to cooperate. The government has not accepted an implementation plan laid out by the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) that would enable Venezuela to join the COVAX program, and has not fulfilled a prior deal regarding distribution of COVID-19 tests. "The (problem) is not the funds, that's the dictatorship's propaganda to try to excuse itself and point fingers and confuse the whole world," Guaido told a press conference.

  • Trump Loyalists Across Homeland Security Could Vex Biden's Immigration Policies

    WASHINGTON — After a Texas judge last week temporarily blocked President Joe Biden’s order to pause deportations for 100 days, immigration agents did not hesitate to use the brief window to defy the incoming president’s new tone. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents moved a 40-year-old Cameroonian asylum seeker to a facility in Louisiana and prepared to deport him, despite his claims of torture in his home country. “This is not what the Biden administration stands for,” Henry Hollithron, the man’s lawyer, said in an interview. “That is definitely a holdover from the Trump era.” Sign up for The Morning newsletter from the New York Times President Donald Trump often complained about what he called a “deep state” inside the government working to thwart his agenda. But Biden and his secretary of homeland security, Alejandro Mayorkas, are already encountering their own pockets of internal resistance, especially at the agencies charged with enforcing the nation’s immigration laws, where the gung-ho culture has long favored the get-tough policies that Trump embraced. Mayorkas, who was confirmed on Tuesday after a nearly two-week delay by Republicans unhappy about his immigration views, will find a Department of Homeland Security transformed since he was its deputy secretary in the Obama administration. Liberal immigration activists and former Trump administration officials rarely agree on much, but both parties say Mayorkas will struggle to get buy-in for Biden’s immigration agenda from the thousands of border and immigration agents in his sprawling, 240,000-person department. “There are people in ICE that agree with Trump’s policies,” said Tom Homan, an immigration hard-liner who served as Trump’s ICE director. “They want to do the job they took an oath to do.” Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, the policy counsel the American Immigration Council, which advocates on behalf of immigrants, agreed that after “four years of a newly empowered and politicized workforce,” ICE and Customs and Border Protection agents are “more likely to push back against an incoming administration than in the past.” Biden campaigned on bringing accountability to the government’s immigration agencies, but he is already facing a daunting challenge in overhauling a department that was unmatched in how closely it aligned with Trump. Videos celebrating Trump’s “big, beautiful” border wall are still featured on the Customs and Border Protection website. A fictionalized video by the agency that shows Trump’s depiction of migrants as feared criminals is still on the Border Patrol’s official social media channels. And the union representing ICE agents — whose top leaders were enthusiastic supporters of Trump — has signaled that it does not intend to accept all of the new administration’s reversals of his policies. Those agents may have gotten a lift in the waning days of Trump’s administration, when Trump loyalists tried to codify the influence of those unions. The day before Biden’s inauguration, union leaders signed a labor agreement with Kenneth Cuccinelli, an immigration hard-liner and the acting deputy secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, that requires ICE’s political leadership to consult with the union on policy decisions. If the agreement stands, it could undercut Biden’s directives to the enforcement agency, including guidance that took effect on Monday requiring ICE officers to focus arrests on violent offenders. “They are not going to be able to get people to change their deeply held convictions,” Stephen Miller, the architect of Trump’s immigration policies, said of many career officials at the Homeland Security Department. “They are going to make painfully clear to the politicals what the consequences are going to be if their advice is not followed.” The emergence of an emboldened resistance inside the Biden administration is not limited to the homeland security agencies. Pockets of government employees loyal to Trump and his agenda remain ensconced in other parts of the bureaucracy. Andrew Veprek, an ally of Miller’s and once the deputy assistant secretary of state for refugees and migration, has been succeeded by a veteran of President Barack Obama’s administration. But Veprek, a career Foreign Service officer, has returned to the State Department. Michael Ellis, a Trump loyalist, was named as the top lawyer for the National Security Agency in the days before Biden took office. He has been put on administrative leave while his appointment is investigated, but he remains an employee of the agency. And at the Justice Department, there are still career lawyers who defended many of Trump’s policies, including the separation of families at the border. Biden also faces the politically fraught choice of whether to remove two inspectors general appointed by Trump: Eric Soskin, the inspector general of the Transportation Department and Brian Miller, a former Trump White House lawyer tapped last year to investigate abuses in pandemic spending. Not everyone working for Mayorkas will reject the new approach. Some officials in the Homeland Security Department grew frustrated at the revolving door of acting leadership within the agencies under Trump’s administration. And one division of ICE that investigates longer-term cases into traffickers and terrorists even asked to separate from the immigration agency so it would not be connected to Trump’s effort to crack down on undocumented immigrants. Shortly after he was confirmed Tuesday, Mayorkas wrote to his employees pledging his support and relaying his expectations. “We will act with integrity and humility,” Mayorkas said in an email obtained by The New York Times. “We will be open, transparent and accountable.” Still, Miller noted, “It’s going to be most intense at DHS.” Homan said morale at the agency had been “flushed down the toilet” since Biden began issuing executive orders in the past two weeks, and he predicted that some in the bureaucracy would seek to undermine the new president. “That’s the way everybody attacked the Trump administration, by leaking things,” Homan said. “People now are taking a page out of that playbook. I think turnaround is fair play.” It is already happening. Shortly after Biden’s Homeland Security Department issued a memo establishing new enforcement priorities and pausing deportations, an internal email sent to an ICE field office in Houston ended up on Fox News. The email suggested that some immigrants in custody should be released; it set off a firestorm on conservative news media. (Biden has not issued a directive to release immigrant detainees). Miller predicted that homeland security officials who oppose Biden’s policies would put their concerns into writing as a way of documenting them for future legal challenges that conservative activists are certain to file. Reichlin-Melnick, whose organization has challenged Trump’s policies in the court system, said it would be critical for Mayorkas and Biden to ensure that their directives were actually followed by the rank and file in the department. “The next month or two are really going to be formative for the administration,” he said. That might be too long for some immigrants. ICE deported nearly 350 undocumented immigrants to Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador on Friday, the agency said in a statement. In a letter to the Homeland Security Department, Rep. Jerrold Nadler of New York, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said the action “raises serious questions about the agency’s commitment to adhering to its own policy directives.” Hollithron said his client fled Cameroon after he was subjected to torture when he was accused of providing aid to separatists in the civil war there. Hollithron said his client was actually just marching in protests. He traveled to Central America and journeyed north, arriving at the U.S. border in June 2019, where he was subjected to Trump’s “metering” rule, which limited the number of migrants a day who could ask for protections at border entry points. He has been detained since September 2019. While an immigration judge rejected his plea for asylum last year, citing the need for more evidence to his claims, Hollithron was still fighting the case in court and filed an emergency stay last Sunday on his client’s removal. But that order is just temporary. The future of Hollithron’s client remains uncertain. “It’s going to take time until the administration comes down and does a top-down examination,” Hollithron said. This article originally appeared in The New York Times. © 2021 The New York Times Company

  • Firings of officers after students pulled from car reversed

    Video of Atlanta police officers using Tasers and pulling two college students from a car during a large protest last year against police brutality and racial injustice sparked national outrage, and two of the officers were immediately fired. The board, which is made up of five residents recommended by the mayor and confirmed by the city council, ordered Monday that the dismissals of Ivory Streeter and Mark Gardner be revoked. Officers confronted Messiah Young and Taniyah Pilgrim, rising seniors at historically Black colleges in Atlanta, as they were stuck in traffic after a curfew declared by the mayor May 30 during protests sparked by the killing of George Floyd in Minnesota.

  • Gulf Arab states launch new restrictions over virus fears

    Gulf Arab states on Thursday launched new restrictions over fears of the coronavirus resurging across their countries. With populations including largely young and healthy foreign laborers, many Gulf countries have avoided the higher death tolls seen elsewhere around the world. In Saudi Arabia, where authorities already have banned travel to the kingdom from 20 countries, including the U.S., officials also ordered all weddings and parties suspended.

  • U.S. should delay complete troop pullout in Afghanistan -report to Congress

    The United States should extend the May 1 deadline for pulling all its troops from Afghanistan, and make force cuts contingent on progress in peace talks as well as by the Taliban in reducing violence and containing al Qaeda, a bipartisan report to Congress said on Wednesday. Washington should not abandon the Afghan peace process, the report said. Withdrawing all U.S. troops then could lead to civil war, destabilizing the region and reviving the al Qaeda threat.