The La Liga side have announced the signing of the Ivory Coast striker, who most recently played for Sporting CP

Seydou Doumbia will play for his sixth team in four years after joining Girona.

The La Liga club have signed the nomadic Ivory Coast striker on a three-year deal.

Former CSKA Moscow attacker Doumbia leaves Roma after a series of loan spells, most recently with Sporting CP in 2017-18, where he failed to score a league goal in 14 total appearances.

The 30-year-old also had an unproductive loan spell in the Premier League with Newcastle United during his time with the Serie A outfit.

But Doumbia’s loan to Basel was far more successful, his 20 goals firing the team to the 2016-17 Swiss Super League title.

Doumbia also hit 50 league goals across two seasons in Switzerland with Young Boys before joining CSKA.

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NEWS MEDIA UPDATE · NINTH CIRCUIT · Confidentiality/Privilege · Sep. 22, 2006

Judge orders reporters jailed in BALCO subpoena case

A federal judge orders two San Francisco Chronicle reporters to be jailed for refusing to reveal confidential sources, but the journalists remain free while the case is appealed.

AP Photo/The Chronicle, Darryl Bush

San Francisco Chronicle reporters Lance Williams and Mark Fainaru-Wada talk to the media before Thursday’s court hearing.

Sep. 22, 2006 · Two San Francisco Chronicle reporters will go to prison on contempt of court charges for their refusal to tell a grand jury who leaked them the secret testimony of several professional athletes, a federal judge in San Francisco ruled Thursday.

Under the judge’s order, Lance Williams and Mark Fainaru-Wada will remain out of prison until the U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco (9th Cir.) can hear their appeal.

The reporters could spend up to 18 months in jail — the maximum term of confinement for civil contempt under federal rules — for refusing to tell investigators who leaked secret grand jury testimony of several athletes, including Barry Bonds of the San Francisco Giants and Jason Giambi of the New York Yankees. The athletes were being questioned about steroid use in connection with a federal investigation of the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative, known as BALCO.

Williams and Fainaru-Wada reported the testimony in newspaper articles and in their book, Game of Shadows. A federal grand jury proceeding is typically conducted in secret and revealing the testimony is a crime, although witnesses can discuss their own testimony.

The reporters were subpoenaed by a federal grand jury in May but have refused to testify. They have asserted a reporter’s privilege under the First Amendment, saying that the interests of a free press outweigh the grand jury’s interest in the information.

Although California has a strong shield law that would allow them to refuse to testify in a state court, there is currently no federal shield law that grants such a privilege.

In August, a court ruled that the government’s interest in the identity of the leaker outweighed the reporters’ First Amendment rights. Last month, federal prosecutors asked that the court order Willams and Fainaru-Wada to prison until they agreed to testify or until the grand jury’s term expires. Attorneys for the reporters asked that the judge impose small fines instead, according to news reports.

In separate statements to the court Thursday, Williams and Fainaru-Wada expressed respect for the justice system but said they simply could not comply with the court’s order to testify.

“I cannot — and will not — betray the promises I have made over the past three years,” Fainaru-Wada said in the statement, reprinted in the Chronicle. “If I were to break those promises, I would be tossing aside everything that I believe as a journalist and a person of integrity.”

Williams told the judge that subpoenaing reporters and sending them to jail could have dangerous consequences in the media.

“I despair for our free press if we go very far down this road,” he said. “Whistleblowers won’t come forward. Injustices will never see the light of day. Our people will be less informed and worse off.”

The Reporters Committee for Freedom in the Press joined in a friend-of-the-court brief on behalf of Fainaru-Wada and Williams.

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(In re Grand Jury Subpoenas; Media Counsel: Eve Burton, Hearst Communications, New York; Amicus Counsel: Nathan Siegel, Levine Sullivan Koch & Schultz, Washington, D.C.) — ES

Related stories:

Judge orders San Francisco reporters to testify or face jail (08/16/2006)

Reporters who uncovered alleged steroid abuse subpoenaed (05/10/2006)

© 2006 The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press · Return to: RCFP Home; News Page

Supreme Court declines review of reporter’s privilege case

A decision of the U.S. Court of Appeals protecting two reporters from testifying in a civil rights case is allowed to stand.

March 21, 2005 — The U.S. Supreme Court declined today to review a case involving the reporter’s privilege, letting stand a decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals in Denver (10th Cir.) that the subpoenas of two journalists in a civil rights case were properly quashed by the trial court.

The Supreme Court has not reviewed a case involving the reporter’s privilege since its 1972 ruling in Branzburg v. Hayes. Following the Court’s fractured decision in Branzburg, lower federal courts are split on the existence and scope of journalists’ First Amendment privilege to withhold the identity of confidential sources from criminal and civil courts.

The recent Court of Appeals decision stems from the unsolved 1993 murder of Buffy Rice Donohue of Montrose, Colorado. Donohue’s parents sued Montrose officials in 1996, including former police chief Gerald Hoey, for violating their civil rights by failing to conduct an adequate investigation.

The Donohues subpoenaed two reporters who had covered the murder and investigation, Robert Weller of the Associated Press and Stacie Oulton, but the trial court quashed the subpoenas, concluding that the reporters were protected by the reporter’s privilege. The Court of Appeals affirmed Sept. 21, 2004, holding that the Donohues had failed to explain how the trial court erred in quashing the subpoenas.

After the subpoenas were quashed, the reporters were not notified that the issue was being appealed and were not represented before the Court of Appeals or the Supreme Court. The Court of Appeals ruled that because it was affirming the order protecting the reporters, their appearance was not necessary.

(Donohue v. Hoey) — GP

© 2005 The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press

Return to: RCFP Home; News Page

Government need not raise Privacy Protection Act in warrant application

07/29/96

MISSOURI–In mid-July, the U.S. Court of Appeals in St. Louis (8th Cir.) ruled that a county prosecutor had been improperly prevented by a District Court from arguing that the seizure of a videotape from a Kansas City television station fell within an exemption of the federal Privacy Protection Act.

The appeals court ordered the lower court in Kansas City to re- consider whether prosecutor Claire McCaskill should be fined $1000 because the police used a search warrant — instead of a less- intrusive subpoena, as the law requires in most instances — to obtain a tape that recorded the abduction of a woman who was later murdered.

WDAF-TV purchased the tape from a tourist and televised it on August 5, 1994. Later that day, police armed with a search warrant seized the tape. The Privacy Protection Act requires that, with limited exemptions, government officials can obtain documentary materials intended for dissemination to the public only by a subpoena.

The District Court ruled that McCaskill was liable for $1000 in damages.

She argued that the seizure was justified. The act permits an immediate seizure if there is reason to believe that a death or serious injury is imminent, she said, or that the issuing of a subpoena might lead to the destruction, alteration, or concealment of materials. But the court ruled that McCaskill was not entitled to raise these exemptions in her defense because they had not been addressed in the initial application for a search warrant.

The appeals court overruled this decision, holding that neither the text of the Privacy Protection Act nor its legislative history suggest that any exemptions to it must be cited in an application for a search warrant. Congress chose not to include any such requirement in the act, and courts should not “embellish [Congress’s] legislative scheme with additional procedural requirements,” according to the court.

A dissenting judge noted that the law was enacted in response to a U.S. Supreme Court decision, Zurcher v. Stanford Daily, which anticipated that a warrant to search a news agency would establish “special circumstances.” “The logical conclusion is that Congress envisioned the procedural framework to remain intact,” he wrote; Congress anticipated that exemption claims would be considered by a judge before a search warrant was issued. (Citicasters v. McCaskill; Media Counsel: Sam Colville, Kansas City)

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Police in Phoenix searched and confiscated items from the home of a blogger who runs a Web site that is critical of the police department.

According to blogger Jeff Pataky, who runs the site BadPhoenixCops.com, the police confiscated his laptop,wireless router, and paper files includingtax documents and bills, when they searched his home in mid-March.Those items have not been returned. Pataky said the officers had a search warrant.

Pataky was out of town on a business trip when the authorities arrived, but he said his roommate was home andwaited in handcuffs for three hours while thepolicesearched the house. Her laptop was confiscated as well.

Pataky thinks the raid was in response to both his critical writing on the policeand to a civil rights lawsuit he filed against thedepartment after hefacedassault charges in an unrelated domestic case; those charges wereultimately dismissed last spring.

Since the raid, he’s been talking to his lawyer about adding to the suit another claim for the confiscation of his computer and files to the pending lawsuit. Searches and seizures of journalists’ work productviolatethefederalPrivacy Protection Act.

In the meantime, the ordeal hasn’tdissuaded Pataky fromworking on his blog.

“For about a day I was down,” he said. “Then I got a computer and was back up and running.”

Pataky has run the police site for about a year. He said it focuses on the chief, Jack Harris, and his management of the officers. Though Pataky is not connected to the police department, he says he has many confidential sources with whom he speaks on a regular basis. Despite the name, he sayshis blog offers a balanced perspective on the agency and its staff.

“The Web site provides a voice and outlet for the good cops to talk about what they want to talk about,” he said, while at the same time, “it exposes corruption and lets the public know about it.”

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NEWS MEDIA UPDATE · FIFTH CIRCUIT · Confidentiality/Privilege · June 15, 2007

Magistrate upholds subpoena over Hamas interview

A reporter at The Dallas Morning News had sought to avoid testifying about his interview with one of the founders of Hamas.

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June 15, 2007 · A federal magistrate judge on Wednesday refused to quash a subpoena for a Dallas journalist in a criminal case in which a Texas-based foundation is accused of providing funding for Hamas.

Steve McGonigle, a reporter for The Dallas Morning News, was subpoenaed to testify about a December 1999 interview with one of the founders of Hamas, Sheikh Ahmad Yassin, according to McGonigle’s motion. Yassin has since died.

McGonigle’s work produced two stories in June 2000 in which Yassin denied any relationship with the Holy Land Foundation. McGonigle also anonymously quoted a “senior Israeli official” who said the United States was reluctant to “act too close to the HLF” in the late 1990s.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Paul D. Stickney did not explain the denial in his one-page order.

In his motion, McGonigle argued that testimony about his interview with Yassin would be “irrelevant and immaterial.”

“Specifically, McGonigle was not an eye witness to any events or overt act alleged in the Superseding Indictment and has no personal knowledge of any such events,” the motion states.

Statements by Yassin to McGonigle would be “inadmissible hearsay,” the reporter’s attorneys argued in the motion.

McGonigle also argued that his conversations with and the identity of his confidential source are protected by a qualified reporter’s privilege recognized by the federal appeals court in Houston (5th Cir.), whose decisions are binding on the lower court in Dallas. That privilege prevents the “forced disclosure of confidential sources,” according to the motion.

Additionally, journalists who appear to have “acted as an agent for the U.S. Government will almost inevitably be placed at a substantially greater risk when on assignment in the Middle East,” McGonigle argued. He said this could result in less news for readers.

“To avoid this increased risk to McGonigle, news organizations such as The News may decide not to send him on future assignments to the Middle East, which may result in less news being available to report to U.S. readers,” the motion says.

At a minimum, McGonigle argued, his testimony should be limited to “his authentication of Sheikh Yassin’s quoted statements.”

(U.S. v. Holy Land Foundation, Media Counsel: Russell F. Coleman, Belo Corp., Dallas) — SH

© 2007 The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press · Return to: RCFP Home; News Page

A judge has ruled that University of California police illegally obtained photographs from a journalist covering a campus protest.

Alameda County Superior Court Judge Yolanda Northridge on Friday ordered police to return all copies of the photos taken during the December protest at the Berkeley campus, according to the Oakland, Calif.-based First Amendment Project. The judge also ordered university officials to declare under oath what agencies, if any, received copies of the photos.

“Everything we asked for, we got,” said David Greene, the First Amendment Project’s executive director.

Photojournalist David Morse was covering the demonstration for the San Francisco Bay Area Independent Media Center, known as Indybay, when he was arrested by campus police who obtained a search warrant to view his photos.

In requesting the warrant, police never informed a judge that Morse was a journalist, Greene said. A California shield law protects journalists from subpoenas that seek unpublished information gathered while covering the news.

Though Morse repeatedly identified himself as a journalist before he was arrested, the university argued that police had reason to believe Morse was not a journalist because he was carrying an expired press pass.

Morse frequently carries his old press pass as a backup and left his current pass behind as he rushed to get to the scene, Greene said. Regardless, the attorney noted, police ignored Morse when he tried to explain that he was a journalist.

University police Capt. Margo Bennett said Tuesday that she had not yet reviewed the court’s ruling and was unable to discuss its impact.

Police arrested eight people Dec. 11, when dozens of protesters marched on the home of university Chancellor Robert Birgeneau to protest budget cuts and a fee increase. Protesters – some carrying torches – broke lights and windows and overturned planters at the chancellor’s home.

The university obtained Morse’s photos to aid its investigation. In a court motion supporting its actions, the university argued that the public’s interest in prosecuting the protesters outweighed a First Amendment right to preserve the confidentiality of unpublished information.

Meanwhile, in another case that could involve California’s shield law, the owners of the Gizmodo technology blog have asked authorities to return computers and other equipment taken from a blogger who posted pictures of a missing iPhone prototype. Gawker Media argues the state’s shield law should also protect the blogger’s property.

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The Supreme Court decided not to hear an appeal of a New York ruling that said Fox News reporter Jana Winter did not have to testify in the Colorado murder trial of James Holmes, the accused Aurora theater shooter. The lower court’s opinion therefore still stands, and Winter will not be forced to testify.

The Colorado court wanted Winter to testify about the sources who gave her confidential information about a notebook Holmes sent to his psychiatrist before he opened fire in a Colorado movie theater in July 2012.

Because Winter lives in New York, the Colorado court had to seek an order from a New York court forcing Winter to testify in Colorado. The highest court in New York ruled that it would not force Winter to testify, as she was protected by New York’s shield law, which is stronger than Colorado’s. The New York shield law offers "absolute privilege" for confidential sources and never forces a journalist to reveal the identity of confidential sources.

Colorado law, on the other hand, can require a journalist to reveal confidential sources if the information requested is "directly relevant to a substantial issue" and "cannot be obtained by any other reasonable means," and the interest in the information outweighs the First Amendment interests.

Holmes' trial will start in October with jury selection.

The Reporters Committee led a coalition of 38 media organizations in filing a friend-of-the-court brief in support of Winter before New York's high court last August.

At a hearingtoday in federal court in Detroit, ajudge delayed ruling on whether to holdDetroit Free Press reporter David Ashenfelter in contempt for refusing to reveal confidential sources, the paper reported.

Ashenfelter is fighting a subpoena from former federal prosecutor Richard Convertino, who subpoenaed the reporter for information to boost his Privacy Act lawsuit against the Department of Justice. Convertino sued the DOJ for leaking information to the press about an internal investigation into his conduct during a terrorism trial in Detroit.

At a deposition in December, Ashenfelter invoked the Fifth Amendment in response to questions from Convertino’s attorneys. Convertino subsequently asked the court to hold Ashenfelter in contempt and to impose sanctions on him for refusing to testify.

In papers filed before the court, Ashenfelter’s attorney, Herschel Fink, argued that the reporter could be prosecuted for several crimes – including violating the Espionage Act or conspiracy for any crime committed by DOJ officials. As evidence Fink pointed to statements made by Convertino calling Ashenfelter a criminal.

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Judge Robert Cleland invited DOJ officials to the hearing today to comment on the likelihood that Ashenfelter could be prosecuted for a crime. Those officials told the judge that they could not give a definitive answer as to whether Ashenfelter could, or would, face criminal charges if he testified, the Free Press reported.

Cleland’s refusal to rule from the bench today means that a written opinion will be forthcoming.

U.S. special forces in Syria carried out a successful operation in which Abu Bakr Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State militant group, died, President Trump announced Sunday.

WASHINGTON — 

The U.S. special forces operation in Syria that led to the reported death of Abu Bakr Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State militant group, brought to a close a manhunt that lasted nearly a decade and dealt a significant blow to a jihadi group known for its extremism and brutality.

President Trump announced the terror leader’s death in a televised statement Sunday from the White House, relishing the opportunity to taunt the deceased militant and declare victory over Islamic State, also known as ISIS.

“He was a sick and depraved man, and now he’s gone,” Trump said, vowing that the U.S. would “continue to pursue the remaining ISIS terrorists.”

“Last night was a great night for the United States and for the world,” Trump said. “He died like a coward, the world is now a much safer place.”

Baghdadi had a spectacular rise and fall in the violent world of Islamic extremism, forging elements of the Sunni insurgency against the U.S. in Iraq into Islamic State, which in 2014 conquered a swath of Iraq and Syria the size of Britain that he declared to be an Islamic caliphate. For more than two years, he ruled over some 12 million people, employing brutal, highly publicized killings, rapes of captive women and enslavement of non-Sunni minorities to enforce his theocratic brand of Islam.

Even before those conquests, Baghdadi had been among the world’s most-wanted men, hunted by the CIA and the intelligence services of Iraq and several of its neighbors. He eluded pursuit in part by stringent security procedures, seldom appearing in public and communicating even with his own followers only through intermediaries.
His death came when he detonated a suicide vest, killing himself and three children with him, according to Trump and U.S. military officials. It capped a U.S. commando raid Saturday in Syria’s Idlib province, in the northwestern part of the country.

No U.S. personnel were killed in the raid, Trump said. In addition to the three children, two women, believed to be wives of Baghdadi, also died in the raid, he said. An additional 11 children who survived the raid were turned over to local forces.

After reading his prepared remarks from a teleprompter, Trump stayed at the White House podium, taking questions during what ended up being a nearly 50-minute exchange with reporters. Trump revealed an extraordinary level of operational information about the raid — details normally withheld — with much of it aimed at driving home the argument that Baghdadi was not a powerful militant leader, but a weak and evil man.

“He died after running into a dead-end tunnel whimpering and crying and screaming all the way,” Trump said, adding that he watched much of the operation from the White House Situation Room as it took place.

It was “like a movie,” he said, describing Baghdadi being chased in the tunnel by one of the Army’s trained dogs and noting that the assault team brought a robot with them for pursuit, but didn’t use it because the operation moved too quickly.

“The thug who tried so hard to intimidate others spent his last moments in utter fear, in total panic and dread,” he said.

Asked if he actually heard Baghdadi whimpering on the video feed, Trump said, “I don’t want to talk about it.”

Defense Secretary Mark Esper, interviewed on several Sunday television programs, was far more tight-lipped than the president about the intelligence that led to the raid and the way it played out, but confirmed that the Islamic State leader had committed suicide by detonating an explosive vest after being pursued into a tunnel.

“The aim was to capture,” Esper said on CNN. “We tried to call him out and asked him to surrender himself. He refused.”

He notably did not vouch for Trump’s claim about the terrorist leader whimpering.

“I don’t have those details,” he said on ABC’s “This Week.”

Trump, who has been eager to withdraw U.S. forces from the Middle East, mixed his message with characteristic self-aggrandizement as he took credit for a mission that, he noted, was aided by regional allies.

“Bin Laden was big, but this was bigger,” he declared at one point, referring to the 2011 raid in which U.S. forces killed Osama bin Laden during former President Obama’s tenure. Bin Laden attacked the World Trade Center, but Baghdadi attempted to build a country, Trump said.

At another point he claimed, falsely, that in a book published in 2000 he had advocated killing Bin Laden long before anyone else had realized the importance of the Al Qaeda leader. By that point, Bin Laden had already been indicted by a federal grand jury on terrorism charges, was listed as one of America’s “most wanted” fugitives and had been the target of at least one unsuccessful U.S. military raid.

Trump’s rhetoric drew some immediate criticism, including from figures in his own party. Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-Texas), the senior GOP member of the House Armed Services Committee, said during an interview on CNN on Sunday that some of the remarks made him “uncomfortable.”

According to Esper, Trump gave the go-ahead for the raid on Thursday. U.S. forces had Baghdadi under surveillance for the “last couple of weeks,” Trump said, as the militant leader repeatedly changed his plans.

The leader of the Syrian Democratic Forces, the leading Kurdish militia group, which was aligned with the U.S. in the fight against Islamic State, said in a statement on Twitter that planning for the operation had been under way at least since early summer.

“For five months there has been joint intel cooperation on the ground and accurate monitoring, until we achieved a joint operation to kill Abu Bakir al-Bagdadi,” Gen. Mazloum Abdi wrote.

The raid involved U.S. commandos who arrived on scene in eight helicopters, flying over territory controlled by Turkey and Syria, Trump said. The commandos used explosives to enter the compound in which Baghdadi was located, he said.

The flight in was the most dangerous part of the operation, Trump noted. Trump declined to say where the helicopters took off from, but his description of the flight strongly suggested a base in Iraq.

The commandos were “met with gunfire,” but the opposing forces were quickly killed, Trump said. In addition to Baghdadi’s death, the raid also netted “highly sensitive material” that will be useful in tracking other militants, he said.

In the operation’s aftermath, regional allies of the U.S. — including Syrian Kurds, Iraq and Turkey — rushed to claim credit for helping U.S. commandos launch the attack. Trump said the raid was carried out with “cooperation” from Russia, Iraq, Turkey and Kurdish forces in Syria. The Kurds provided “information” that was helpful, he said.

The president, who has been under intense criticism from lawmakers in both parties in recent weeks for his withdrawal of U.S. troops from a different part of Syria — the Turkey-Syria border in the northeastern part of the country — teased the news Saturday night, tweeting, “Something very big has just happened!”

He released the tweet as soon as the U.S. troops landed safely, he said, but ordered his aides not to inform senior Democratic members of Congress. Typically, the congressional leadership is notified of such missions.

“Washington is a leaking machine, and I told my people we will not notify them until our great people are out,” he said.

Leaks happened anyway. Within minutes of Trump’s tweet, reports quickly began circulating that Baghdadi had been targeted in the raid and had died, but military officials could not confirm the death until they conducted DNA tests.

Trump said the identification was certain, based on an “on-site test” of body parts. The team conducting the raid included lab technicians, he said.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) sharply criticized Trump for keeping lawmakers in the dark, especially after he notified U.S. adversaries.

“The House must be briefed on this raid, which the Russians but not top Congressional Leadership were notified of in advance, and on the Administration’s overall strategy in the region,” Pelosi said in a statement. “Our military and allies deserve strong, smart and strategic leadership from Washington.”

The raid took place in or near Barisha, a small town in northwestern Syria not far from the border with Turkey. The region lies some 250 miles west of the remote shadowlands of the Syrian-Iraqi border where Baghdadi was thought to have been hiding.

Syrian activists posted video on social media showing large explosions and the sound of small-arms fire in the Barisha area. In one video, the roar of warplanes is punctuated by a series of massive blasts. Another video shows some of the results of the attack: A cameraman walks in the village, filming the burned husk of a car as well as charred corpses.

Residents in the area contacted via the WhatsApp messaging service said explosions could be heard miles away. Some ran up to their rooftops, and saw tracer fire streaking during the firefight.

The area where the raid took place has long served as a conduit for ferrying people and war supplies across the border to and from Turkey.

The region is dominated by jihadist groups hostile to Islamic State, making Baghdadi’s presence there surprising. The radical Islamic group in that part of Syria fought pitched battles against Islamic State, which they saw as a rival, since 2013. The area also falls under the supervision of Turkish military observation posts.

Baghdadi, an Iraqi believed to be in his 40s, joined the Islamist insurgency against U.S. forces in Iraq following the 2003 invasion of that country. As a relatively low-level member of the insurgency, he was captured in 2004 and held for close to a year by the U.S. in the Abu Ghraib detention facility. He was released in late 2004, and rejoined the militants.

He was publicly declared the leader of Islamic State in 2010 and survived several attempts by the U.S. and its allies to kill or capture him. The chaos spread by Syria’s civil war allowed the group to take root in the eastern part of the country, along the border with Iraq, which provided a springboard for its sweeping conquests in 2014.

In 2015, under former President Obama, the U.S., working with the Iraqi government and Kurdish allies in Syria, began the effort to roll back Islamic State’s gains. An offensive to retake Mosul began in late 2016. The military continued that strategy under Trump, who declared in March that Kurdish militias allied with the U.S. had retaken the last of the territory that Islamic State had held.

Over the years Baghdadi has been reported killed several times — each time resurfacing. The last known images of him came from a video released in April by Islamic State in which he exhorted militants to continue attacks on Western targets.

The group did not immediately confirm his death, which would be a major blow, although jihadi groups have repeatedly shown the ability to regroup after the deaths of their leaders. The group is believed to still command the loyalty of as many as 18,000 fighters in Iraq and Syria, U.S. defense officials reported recently.

Esper stressed that point in his appearances Sunday. Just because the militants no longer hold territory doesn’t mean they can’t take root again, he said, adding that the U.S. military has to “continually monitor” the situation.

“It’s hard to defeat an ideology,” he said. “So what we’re going to have to do is stay on top of this.”

In April, the militants released an 18-minute video in which a man identified as Baghdadi repeatedly praised the “steadfastness” of militants and said that although Islamic State had lost territory, “jihad is ongoing until the day of judgment.”

Last week as Trump took credit for a cease-fire between Turkey and Kurdish groups in northern Syria, the president’s special envoy for Syria, James Jeffrey, told lawmakers on Capitol Hill that at least 100 prisoners associated with Islamic State had escaped from detention camps that had been guarded by the Kurds and remained unaccounted for amid the intensified fighting in the region.

Stokols reported from Washington and Bulos from Beirut.

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