Winnipeg Free Press

Winnipeg Free Press (Newspaper) - February 6, 2022, Winnipeg, Manitoba C M Y K PAGE A6 ● WINNIPEGFREEPRESS.COMA6 IGHRAN, Morocco — A 5-year-old boy who was trapped for four days in a deep well in Morocco has died, the royal pal- ace said Saturday. Moroccan King Mohammed VI ex- pressed his condolences to the boy’s parents in a statement released by the palace. The boy, Rayan, was pulled out Sat- urday night by rescuers after a lengthy operation that captured global atten- tion. An Associated Press reporter at the scene saw the boy wrapped in a yellow blanket after he emerged from a tunnel dug specifically for the rescue. His parents, Khaled Oram and Was- sima Khersheesh had been escorted to an ambulance before the boy emerged. The palace statement said the king had been closely following the frantic rescue efforts by locals authorities, “instructing officials to use all means necessary to dig the boy out of the well and return him alive to his parents”. The king hailed the rescuers for their relentless work and the community for landing support to Rayan’s family. Hundreds of villagers and others had gathered to watch the rescue operation. Online messages of support and con- cern for the boy poured in from around the world as the rescue efforts dragged on for four days. Rescuers used a rope to send oxygen and water down to the boy as well as a camera to monitor him. By Saturday morning, the head of the rescue com- mittee, Abdelhadi Temrani, said: “It is not possible to determine the child’s condition at all at this time. But we hope to God that the child is alive.” Rayan fell into a 32-metre well locat- ed outside his home in the village of Igh- ran in Morocco’s mountainous north- ern Chefchaouen province on Tuesday evening. For three days, search crews used bulldozers to dig a parallel ditch. Then on Friday, they started excavating a horizontal tunnel to reach the trapped boy. Morocco’s MAP news agency said that experts in topographical engineer- ing were called upon for help. Temrani, speaking to local television 2M, said Saturday that rescuers had just two metres left to dig to reach the hole where the boy had been trapped. “The diggers encountered a hard rock on their way, and were therefore very careful to avoid any landslides or cracks,” he said. “It took about five hours to get rid of the rock because the digging was slow and was done in a careful way to avoid creating cracks in the hole from below, which could threaten the life of the child as well as the rescue workers.” The village of about 500 people is dotted with deep wells, many used for irrigating the cannabis crop that is the main source of income for many in the poor, remote and arid region of Moroc- co’s Rif Mountains. Most of the wells have protective covers. The exact circumstances of how the boy fell in the well are unclear. — The Associated Press S ALT LAKE CITY — In 2016, Don-ald Trump overtook the Republic-an National Committee through a shock and awe campaign that stunned party leaders. In 2020, the party was obligated to support him as the sitting Republican president. Heading into 2024, however, the Re- publican party has a choice. The RNC, which controls the party’s rules and infrastructure, is under no obligation to support Trump again. In fact, the GOP’s bylaws specifically re- quire neutrality should more than one candidate seek the party’s presidential nomination. But as Republican officials from across the country gathered in Utah this week for the RNC’s winter meet- ing, party leaders devoted considerable energy to disciplining Trump’s rivals and embracing his grievances. As the earliest stages of the next presidential contest take shape, their actions made clear that choosing to serve Trump and his political interests remains a focus for the party. “If President Trump decides he’s run- ning, absolutely the RNC needs to back him, 100 per cent,” said Michele Fiore, an RNC committeewoman who has represented Nevada since 2018. “We can change the bylaws.” The loyalty to Trump is a fresh re- minder that one of America’s major political parties is deepening its align- ment with a figure who is undermining the nation’s democratic principles. As he fought to stay in the White House, Trump sparked a violent insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. More recently, he has explicitly said that former Vice Presi- dent Mike Pence could and should have overturned the election results, some- thing he had no power to do. Away from the ballrooms of the RNC meeting, Pence rebuked Trump on Fri- day, saying he had “no right to overturn the election” and that his former boss was ”wrong” to suggest otherwise. That kind of dissent was rare in Salt Lake City. In censuring two GOP law- makers who have criticized Trump and joined the committee probing the Jan. 6 insurrection, the RNC channeled the former president in assailing the panel for leading a “persecution of ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse.” Pence, whose life was threatened on Jan. 6, is one of a few Republicans making moves toward a 2024 campaign regardless of whether Trump wages a comeback bid. If he were to run for the White House again, Trump is such a powerful force with the GOP base that he probably wouldn’t need the party’s help to become the nominee. Some Republicans said that’s beside the point. “There’s probably some disagreement there,” said Bruce Hough, a longtime RNC member from Utah who lost to a Trump ally in a race for party co-chair last year. “The RNC has to provide a level playing field for any and all com- ers for president. That’s our job. That’s what we have to do.” But a stark divide has emerged be- tween veterans like Hough, who are devoted to the GOP as an institution, and a larger group of Trump-aligned newcomers, who argue they’re bring- ing new energy to the party. Their chief loyalty, however, seems to be to the for- mer president. “Leading up to 2020, or most of the time Trump was in office, he sent around his minions to populate the com- mittee with very loyal Trump folks in a lot of red states,” said Bill Palatucci, an RNC committeeman from New Jersey and frequent Trump critic. “And they still enjoy that strong majority.” The RNC’s continued embrace of Trump more than two years before the 2024 election is a decided shift from the party’s position in past elections. In 2012 and 2016, for example, Reince Priebus as RNC chair went to great lengths to ensure each of the candi- dates was treated equally. The party sanctioned 12 debates, including early rounds that featured up to 17 candi- dates. “Clearly, there’s a bias that didn’t exist in the past,” said Tim Miller, who previously worked for the Republican National Committee and has since emerged as a fierce Trump critic. “It’s all Trump all the time coming out of there.” A year ago, just after President Joe Biden’s inauguration, RNC chair Ronna McDaniel declined to encourage Trump to run again when asked, citing party rules that require neutrality. She also discouraged attacks on those Repub- licans who voted for Trump’s impeach- ment. This week, however, she backed an ef- fort by Trump loyalists to censure Reps. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., and Adam Kinz- inger, R-Ill., a move triggered almost entirely by their fight against Trump’s enduring influence in the party beyond the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. The censure, which passed on a voice vote Friday, says the two “support Democrat efforts to destroy President Trump more than they support winning back a Republican majority in 2022.” McDaniel’s shift coincides with the RNC’s reliance on Trump for fundrais- ing. The party has issued hundreds of fundraising appeals since Trump left office evoking his name. One offered this message to prospective small- dollar donors on Tuesday: “YOU must stand with President Trump and YOUR Party.” In speeches made minutes before party leaders voted to censure Cheney and Kinzinger, McDaniel and co-chair Tommy Hicks did not mention Trump and stressed the need to unify for the 2022 midterm elections. Though the committee’s moves dem- onstrated a sustained loyalty to the former president, outside the winter meeting the censure was condemned by opponents as divisive and contrary to frequent appeals from leaders to ex- pand the party’s tent. The RNC’s discipline “shows more about them than us,” Kinzinger said in an interview. “It shows that Trump and Trumpism has overtaken the RNC.” Cheney in a statement said the move demonstrated how the party had be- come hostage to Trump. Indeed, this week’s focus on debates that won’t take place until 2024 and on anti-Trump Republicans overshadowed the party’s preparations for the mid- term elections. That’s notable because the GOP could reclaim control of at least one chamber of Congress and sev- eral governor’s mansions. But this week, Trump’s grievances with his Republican critics took centre stage instead. “We should be focused on what the voters are focused on,” said Caleb Heimlich, chair of the Republican party in Washington state, where two of three Republican House members voted to impeach Trump following the Jan. 6 in- surrection. “I’ve been talking to voters in Washington state, traveling around and nobody talks about Cheney. That’s a D.C. topic.” Others disagreed. Harmeet Dhillon, an RNC committee- woman from California, said it was im- perative to send a clear message about Cheney and Kinzinger for her and the legions of volunteers working to elect Republicans this year. “The midterms are about a party electing its leaders, and what Adam Kinzinger and Liz Cheney did here is defy their party’s leadership,” Dhillon said. “I do not want to elect people in the midterms who do what these two did.” Beyond the censure, Republicans set in motion a rules change rooted in an- other of Trump’s longstanding griev- ances. A measure advanced that would force presidential candidates to sign a pledge saying they will not participate in any debates sponsored by the Com- mission on Presidential Debates ad- vanced. It is expected to be voted on when RNC members convene again in August. “We are not walking away from de- bates,” McDaniel said. “We are walking away from the Commission on Presi- dential Debates because it’s a biased monopoly that does not serve the best interests of the American people.” The eventual 2024 nominee, however, will have final say on whether to par- ticipate. Another Republican eyeing a White House campaign, Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, decried the RNC’s push to pun- ish Trump’s rivals. “The GOP I believe in is the party of freedom and truth,” the frequent Trump critic tweeted Friday. “It’s a sad day for my party — and the country — when you’re punished just for express- ing your beliefs, standing on principle, and refusing to tell blatant lies.” — The Associated Press SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 2022NEWS I WORLD SAM METZ AND STEVE PEOPLES GOP further tightens tie to Trump NASHVILLE, Tenn. — A man who shot and killed four people at a Nashville Waffle House in 2018 received a sen- tence of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole on Saturday. Jurors handed down the penalty for 33-year-old Travis Reinking after hear- ing about two hours of testimony from family members of the four people killed. They sobbed and trembled as they talked about their loved ones and how losing them continues to fracture their lives more than three years later. Jurors had the option of giving Reink- ing the chance for parole after serving 51 years in prison. Naked save for a green jacket, Reink- ing opened fire inside the restaurant just after 3:20 a.m. on April 22, 2018, killing Taurean Sanderlin, 29; Joey Perez, 20; Akilah Dasilva, 23; and DeE- bony Groves, 21. He fled after restau- rant patron James Shaw Jr. wrestled his assault-style rifle away from him, trig- gering a manhunt. “I’ve always been somebody that they say is unbreakable, because no mat- ter what our family has been through, I will always be the one to bring our family up,” Patricia Perez said through tears about losing her son Joey. “This has broken me.” Jurors on Friday rejected Reinking’s insanity defence as they found him guilty on 16 charges, including four counts of first-degree murder. The trial opened Monday after jury selection the previous week. Prosecutors in 2020 indicated they would not seek the death penalty and would seek life without par- ole. Reinking’s defence team, which didn’t put on any sentencing witnesses Saturday, argued for the possibility of parole, saying he was mentally un- tethered. Prosecutors argued the evi- dence shows Reinking planned out the attack and wanted to kill everyone at the restaurant. Prosecutors also directed jurors’ attention back to heart-wrenching testi- mony from family members. Evidence at trial showed Reinking had schizophrenia and had suffered delusions for years, believing unknown people were tormenting him. He con- tacted law enforcement several times to report that he was being threatened, stalked and harassed. In July 2017, he was detained by the Secret Service af- ter he ventured unarmed into a restrict- ed area on the White House grounds and demanded to meet with then-presi- dent Donald Trump. The jury also convicted Reinking on four counts of attempted first-degree murder and four counts of unlawful em- ployment of a firearm during commis- sion of or attempt to commit a danger- ous felony. In addition to the four people he killed, he seriously wounded Sharita Henderson and Shantia Waggoner. Kay- la Shaw and James Shaw Jr., who are not related, suffered lesser injuries. — The Associated Press Moroccan boy trapped in well for days dies Waffle House shooter receives life in prison without parole MOSA’AB ELSHAMY AND TARIK EL-BARAKAH MOSA’AB ELSHAMY / THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Rescue workers carry the body of 5-year-old Rayan to an ambulance Saturday. RICK BOWMER / THE ASOCIATED PRESS Ronna McDaniel, the GOP chairwoman, speaks during the Republican National Committee winter meeting Friday in Salt Lake City. Party chooses to serve former president’s political interests JONATHAN MATTISE A_06_Feb-06-22_FP_01.indd 6 2022-02-05 10:52 PM ;