Hitch 23

  I  tracked #ergodan when he started squashing the press in Turkey and using  Syria as his path to crush the Kurds in this blog  Hitch 22  Also, I discussed discussed the late Christopher Hitchens comments on the Middle East.

Yesterday Ergodan offered a  declaration of war to Greece, “if anyone wants to stand before us and face the consequences, they are welcome to", during an anniversary celebration marking the 1071 battle of Manzikert, during which Turkish Seljuks beat Byzantine forces.  The Seljuks created a huge Turco-Persian (Iran ) tradition.

Greece and Turkey are vying for territorial waters for energy exploration in an area between Cyprus and Crete .

aug 28

Greece signed  exclusive economic zone (EEZ) maritime deals with Italy on June 9 and with Egypt on Aug. 7. Yesterday, Ergodan hosted Hamas terrorists in Istanbul. It's going to take a miracle to prevent bloodshed.

aug 30

It's getting tenser. Greece, who just completed air force exercises with France, Italy and Cyprus, began joint air force training exercises with the UAE in the eastern Mediterranean on Friday. EU threatened Turkey with sanctions over Mediterranean drilling.

Sept 11 

More warehouse fires in Lebanon. Also, USA put sanctions on two former Lebanese government ministers, Yusuf Finyanus and Ali Khalil, who are accused of ensuring contracts went to firms owned by Hezbollah, which the US considers a terrorist group, and moving money to associated institutions.

Oct 3

  USS Hershel "Woody" Williams, an expeditionary sea base ship, will be homeported at Souda Bay on the Greek island of Crete, 600 miles from the Turkish coast. And it could become an alternative to the use by the USAF of the Incirlik Air Base in Turkey. 

Oct 27

#Putin ain't playing nice with Turkey in Syria and elsewhere . Russian airstrikes killed 78 al-Sham,a Sunni Islamist rebel military unit, recruits at a Turkish-supported training camp near Idlib,Syria. He is angry that Turkey sentone thousand Al-sham trainees to the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region between Russian- supported Armenia and Turkish-backed Azerbaijan.

Nov 12

 Money is part of the issue, but a lack of trust and confidence in the political leadership  is a major factor in exodus of Doctors from Lebanon.  And a hefty part of that leadership is affiliated with #hezbollah .

Dec 7

Mixed bag of  chilling news from Egypt: Three EIPR, a human rights group, members were released from detention, but Patrick Zaky, an #EIPR researcher, is still being held on suspicion of spreading fake news, misusing social media, and inciting protest without permission. Think about those shaky charges a few times.

Dec 10

Somalians are obtaining student or healthcare visas for Turkey, and with assistance from criminal gangs, attempting to cross into Greece and then possibly to Europe.

dec 31, 2020

In the mountainous village of Pera Melana in Greece’s southern Peloponnese peninsula, you’ll hear the buzz of conversations among descendants of ancient Sparta in a 3,000-year-old language called Tsakonika, which is based on the Doric language spoken by the ancient Spartans.

Jan 14, 2021

While Congress fights over bashing Trump, Secretary of State  #Pompeo accused Iran of expanding its ties with al Qaeda by allowing senior operatives from the terrorist group to establish a new headquarters in its territory. And added this comment about finding moderates to work with inside the Iranian government. “The reality is that you have a better chance of finding a unicorn,” 

feb 5, 2021

#LokmanSlim, a prominent critic of  Hezbollah, was shot four times in the head and once in the back in Lebanon.  His sister's comment on her brother's death: "Killing is the only language they are fluent in,"

feb 25,2021

While I have few doubts, that Assad's folks have done horrible things during the Syrian civil war, a German court's successful prosecution  on torture charges of Eyad A, who arrived in Germany from Syria in 2018 and was granted asylum, raises serious issues about Germany’s universal jurisdiction laws, which allow its courts to prosecute crimes against humanity committed anywhere in the world. I  foresee a tit for tat game growing around the world.

Also wondering why they granted him asylum in 2018.

March 5, 2021

I wonder if this will get traction: #GilaGamliel , Israel’s environmental protection minister, accuses the Iranian government of environmental terrorism. Iran sent a ship that turned off its radar and spilled crude oil into the Mediterranean last month. while smuggling it from Iran to Syria . 

mARCH 8, 2021

Proxy war between Iran and SA is going to get huge. Iran's proxy, Yemen's Houthi forces, fired drones and missiles at the heart of Saudi Arabia's oil industry yesterday including the Saudi Aramco facility at Ras Tanura. 

March 18, 2021

 Turkish prosecutors are trying to get the HDP, a legal political party, outlawed via the courts by alleging the party was "acting as an arm of the PKK" and "attempting to disrupt the unity and territorial integrity of the state.". If this is successful,  tensions will escalate in Turkey, Syria, and possibly Iraq.

April 18, 2021

Iran named  43-year-old #RezaKarimi as a suspect in the attack on its Natanz nuclear facility that damaged centrifuges there,stating he had fled the country before the sabotage occurred.

There was no explanation on how he would have acquired access to one of the most secure facilities in Iran which has requested an Interpol “red notice” seeking his arrest. 

I wonder if Interpol will ask Iran  to turn over the international criminals it's hiding.

May 15, 2021

In non-Israeli news:  #Karpowership , a Turkish energy company, shut down about one quarter of Lebanon's electricity supply because it is owed more than $100m (£71m) by Lebanon and has not been paid in 18 months.

May 23. 2021

Turkish mafia boss #SedatPeker ,who is living in exile, issued this statement :“Do not doubt, I will teach some tyrants that there is no more dangerous weapon than a man who dares to die." He published five videos on YouTube  claiming AKP lawmakers were involved in malfeasance, murders, rapes, drug trafficking etc.

Ergodan's response was  to fire a journalist for Turkey's state news agency Anadolu for asking a question about these videos.

A growing sentiment in the country is that Ergodan and his AKP cohorts have been dividing up national resources while acting under the guise of a nationalist struggle against Kurdish militants.

jULY 1, 2021

Iraq’s PM Mustafa al-Kadhemi condemned the overnight US air attack on Iran-backed armed groups in Iraq and Syria. I'm a bit surprised at Biden's moves, and Iraq should stop moaning and rein in Iran's influence.

July 27, 2021

Protests in Iran that began in the province Khuzestan over insufficient water and electricity have spread to Tehran, where a group of people in the city are chanting against the country's clerical rulers, telling them to "get lost".  They picked a good time since president-elect Ebrahim #Raisa , The Butcher, takes office next month.

Aug 11, 2021

A senior Iranian security official urged Iraq to expel Iranian rebels from Iraqi Kurdistan, or expect Tehran to take "preventative measures" . Kurds have been one of our strongest allies in the region. Is Biden's crew paying attention?

Sept 22, 2021

#StenyHoyer tells Israel that the removal of Iron Dome funding is a 'technical postponement'.    Omar is spreading her wings - watch out Israel!

Dec 10, 2021

 United Arab Emirates ordered work halted on a Chinese facility in the country after USA officials argued that Beijing intended to use the site for military purposes. Anwar Gargash, a diplomatic adviser to the U.A.E.’s leadership, didn’t believe the facility was intended for military or security uses but wouldn't explain the desired uses for the facility.  I just roll my eyes.

Jan 6, 2022

Posting this in case Sleepy Joe's aides don't put it on his teleprompter: Iran-aligned paramilitary groups continue to fire rockets at bases hosting U.S.-led military coalition forces in Iraq and Syria.

Feb 22, 2022

While Iran cries about those "evil" USA sanctions against them, Iran-aligned Houthi rebels continue drone attacks on Saudi Arabia. Don't believe the Ayatollahs' hype!

March 9, 2022

Congratulations Biden: Saudi Arabia and UAE leaders refuse to answer telephone calls from Biden due to his administration's lack of support in the war in Yemen and the revived negotiations concerning the Iran nuclear deal. Meanwhile the Keystone oil pipeline in the USA is dormant.

May 16, 2022

The Lebanese Forces (LF) party, a Saudi-aligned Christian group which is opposed to the Iran-backed Shi'ite Muslim movement Hezbollah, may be on course to emerge as the biggest bloc in Lebanon's parliament after Sunday's election. This could get ugly quickly.

May 28, 2022

 Iran will likely squash this but  protesters have been burning pictures of Iran's top authority, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and chanting "We don't want the rule of the clerics" and calling for the return of Reza Pahlavi, the exiled son of the former Shah of Iran.

July 17, 2022

Asim Ghafoor, an American citizen and civil rights attorney, who previously served as a lawyer for slain journalist Khashoggi, was detained in the UAE on July 14 because of in-absentia conviction for money laundering by Emirati courts. How did he ignore or not know that the plane was stopping in UAE on its way to Turkey?

 Meanwhile, Biden disputed the Saudi FM's statement that he did not hear Biden blame Mohammed bin Salman for the murder of Khashoggi.

August 6, 2022

On August 4, 2020 a fire in a hangar at the Beirut port triggered a blast that killed 200 people. On Thursday a nationwide day of mourning in Lebanon, Beirut’s port burned. I wonder if a casino anywhere had odds on this.

Sept 15, 2022

A woman held staff hostage at a bank in Beirut, demanding they let her withdraw frozen savings to pay for her sister's medical bills.

She was given $13,000 (£11,240) and there are no reports of her arrest.

Sept 22, 2022

 Protesters in Tehran and other Iranian cities torched police stations and vehicles today as unrest triggered by the death of Mahsa Aminia, a 22-year old woman detained by the morality police for wearing "unsuitable attire", intensified. 

Do the Mullahs squash another small rebellion again and laugh it off.

Does Biden take women's rights seriously and slow down negotiations to give Iran an economic break?

Oct 6, 2022

Iranian students remove their headscarves during a protest in Tehran

Also, younger school children have joined the protests. Will Iran's military shoot at the little ones?

Oct 20, 2022

A mild chuckle from another rough day for Lebanon, whose Parliament failed to elect a President again. 55 blank votes, 42 for anti-Hezbollah lawmaker Michel Mouawad, scattered votes for political slogans, and one vote for a "benevolent dictator".

 

What would you do if....

Nov 4, 2016

If you feared your nine man unarmed crew would have had little chance of resisting the German airmen if, after being rescued, they had hijacked your vessel? What would you do if your fishing boat King Stephen were in a zone in which fishing was prohibited by the British authorities and you feared that a return to a British port with a large number of German prisoners might have drawn attention?
Commander Martin of the King Stephen, a Brtitsh fish trawler,  ignored the rescue pleas of the German Zeppelin L19 crew which was stranded in the North Sea after a bombing mission to England in 1916 during WW1.

Nov 12, 2016

If you feared humiliating defeat. Fight to the end or commit suicide?  #PubliusCrassus and some of the other leading Romans with him committed suicide rather than fight on hopelessly against the #Parthians (current northeast Iran) during the 53BC  #Battle of Carrhae (small town in modern day Turkey).

Jan 2, 2017

  During the Civil War Yanks and Rebels would sometimes eat lunch together  then return to the battlefield  to kill each other. Would you be hesitant dropping your weapon to fraternize if the "gentelmen" code were in play today?

April 15, 2017

The power of Ice in the winter of 1794-95.What would you do if you're a part of a Dutch fleet  immobilized when the Zuiderzee bay (North Sea) froze overnight, and French calvary on horseback is moving in your direction. You surrender. #battleoftexel.

May 28, 2017

#paganpower What would you do if a meteorite landed between two armies? Scatter.  The two sides feared it was sign from their respective gods  during the Third Mithridatic War of 76–63 B.C. It occurred near the Kingdom of Pontus which is currently a part of Turkey neat the Black Sea coast.

July 16, 2017

What would you do if you're asleep in Baltimore, a shady port and a haven for pirate ships in southern Ireland, and #MuratReis, a Dutch born  sailor , convert to Islam, and a Barbary Coast pirate, is on a slave raid. #WilliamHarris shot warning shots which slowed down the raid, but 108 Baltimoreans would up slaves in North Africa in 1631. #sackofbaltimore

aug 23, 2017

what would you do if Canadian troops won a key battle #hill70 during #WW1 which kept  German troops from getting to Belgium in August, 2017. Finally build a monument

nov 11, 2017

What would you do if you ran the British Navy in WW1 and had an old Lt Commander known as a braggart, a liar, a hot head, who knew the region, #LakeTanganyika which sat between Tanzania (then German East Africa) and the Democratic Republic of Congo (then Belgian Congo)  spoke French and German and was both available and willing to lead the expedition in which the British rolled, floated and dragged their boats through the interior of Africa? You put the thickly tattoed Lt.-Cmdr. Geoffrey Spicer-Simson to work.

Jan 7, 2017  

What will the multi-gender promoters do. Re-write history:  #WWI #Britishtanks were initially categorized as “males” and “females.” Male tanks had cannons,  females had heavy machine guns

feb 21 2018

Turks ran out of ammunition against the Greeks at the Battle of  Tellidede during the Greco-Turkish war (1919-22).  Will it happen again as Turks are fleeing to Greece which refuses to extradite alleged Turkish criminals back to Turkey. Turks are fighting  the Kurds in various places.

april 13,2018

The battle of #Jutland in the North Sea was fought over 36 hours from May 31 to June 1 1916 and involved around 250 ships. Royal Navy's Grand Fleet clash with the German High Seas Fleet. More than 6,000 Britons and 2,500 Germans died. Both sides claimed a victory.

may 2, 2018

What would you do if you saw a stricken steamship going down? #janewhyte waded into the North Sea to save the 15-strong crew of The William Hope ,a stricken iron steamship in the North Sea, in 1884 is to be honoured for her courage. Its not war story but....

july 22, 2018

I'm trying to envision  what it was like for #moltke Chief of German General Staff,  when German forces were temporarily stiffed at #Liege , Belgium in a haphazard  attack on a neutral nation at the start of  #WW1  early August 2014. I'm nearly finish reading July 1914, a book by Sean McMeekin that reminded me of what I didn't know about  how WW1 was started.

aug 27,2018

What would have happened if #Paraguay had been at war?  Officers found that the FN FAL battle rifles had been replaced with wooden and plastic replicas and sold on the black market.

nov 17, 2018

What would you do if an international operation couldn't find your missing submarine? You hire a private firm.  #ArgentineNavy reported that  Ocean Infinity, a private company hired by Argentina, has located the submarine ARA San Juan  2625 feet below the ocean’s surface a year after it "vanished" with 44 crew members aboard.

nov 19

Argentina's defence minister #aguad claims they "does not have the means" to raise  ARA San Juan

feb 3, 2019

 Employees at a #HongKong crisp factory discovered a World War I-era German-made, mud coated grenade in a pile of potatoes imported from France.  It was in an unstable condition because it had been previously discharged in a  trench in #France but failed to detonate.

march 30, 2019

I forgot this part of the Entebbe story:  RIP #MichelBacos , the French pilot who  refused to leave the passengers of  Air France plane that was hijacked on  June 27 1976 by members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and a German radical group.  They were later freed by Israeli commandos at Entebbe, Uganda.

june 22 , 2019

  Captain Hans Langsdorff  brought the German pocket warship #GRAFSPEE  into Montevideo's harbor, where he was given three days to remove injured and dead sailors after the Battle of River Plate on Dec 13, 1939. He took advantage of this offer and ordered the ship scuttled in the estuary off the coast to prevent the Allies from gaining access to its technology and killed himself days later in a Buenos Aires hotel. This story caught my attention because #Uruguay 's government has been ordered to sell the 800-pound eagle with a swastika under its talons that was  a part of the stern of the German "pocket battleship" .

july 18

 Three French soldiers who were laying explosives to destroy an underground  gold mining complex in French #Guiana, died when they were intoxicated by noxious fumes. Were the sodiers not wearing masks?  It sure appears to be an odd operation.
Miners use mercury to separate gold from grit.

aug 27, 2019

 Barcelona's popular Sant Sebastià beach: #SpanishNavy explosive experts moved an unexploded 154lb TNT bomb from the 1936-39 Spanish Civil War further out to sea, where it was successfully detonated.

sept 6

An American farmer shot a British pig on San Juan Island (now a part of the state of Washington) in 1859. It had escalated to nearly a war  between the USA and Great Britain when  Admiral Baynes of the British Navy refused to engage the USA 9th Infantry unit,  stating that he would not “involve two great nations in a war over a squabble about a pig”.

Nov18 2019

 Maybe it's time to stop fishing with a magnet? Kids snagged several pieces of World War II ammunition and bullet fragments in a pond near the village of Wölfis in the eastern state of Thuringia, Germany on Saturday.

Jan 11,2020

 Construction projects in Germany are  preceded by checks for unexploded ordnance, often using old Allied aerial photos showing WW2 impact craters. Evacuations of 14,000 residents are underway in #Dortmund, as experts prepare to find and disarm four WW2 bombs.

March 22

 What will Afghanistan do with two Presidents, Ghani(declared election winner) and Abdullah, who held parallel inaugurations within minutes of each other in separate venues that were erected inside the grounds of Kabul's presidential palace?

May 10, 2020

  Blue División , was a unit of Spanish volunteers that served in the German Army on the Eastern Front" in WW2. Franco ordered them home in 1943 but some stayed.Yesterday , I watched

Frozen Silence (2011), a movie in which the German High Command ordered  a private in the Blue Division  who was an ex police inspector, to find the person responsible for a series of bodies, hideously mutilated and carved with bizarre symbols and messages. Amidst the chaos of war, his investigation led him to  "russian" roulette wager parties among the Nazi and Blue Divison troops. Plenty of "what would you do questions" in this flick.

Then there 's the question of how Spain kept its Neutral status during WW2.

May 13, 2020

  Mayaguez incident or what some refer to as the last battle of the Vietnam war  started 45 years ago today in Cambodia where the Khmer Rouge had recently seized power. President Ford was determined to not allow it to become another Pueblo incident. The results  were messy  and are still open to debate.

May 25, 2020 

 SS Jeremiah O'Brien, a fully functional Liberty ship and a part of the DDay armada,  was saved during a fire at Pier 45, Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco. Bay area firefighters battled flames that were pinching on the side of the vessel.

May 28, 2020

  The Britannic, a sister ship of the Titanic, was converted into a British hospital ship during World War 1, and was sunk by a mine in the Aegean Sea near Greece in 1916. Pending legislation in Greece will allow divers to visit ships, submarines or planes that sank in Greek waters between 1860 and 1970.

June 4, 2020

So you're out fishing on the River Cam in Cambridge , England and you reel in a grenade? The police then the military were called and the grenade was destroyed. Military devices from WW2 are uncommon in Cambridge, which was not targeted by major bombing campaigns.

July 20, 2020

Greece is trying  to declutter its coastline ahead of 2,500th anniversary of key naval battles including the 480 BC Battle of #Salamis , in which the invading Persian navy suffered a huge defeat. The large Persian vessels were unable to  navigate effectively in the narrow seaways.

July 26, 2020

 #borisjohnson is chatting up the prospect of a bridge from Northern Ireland to Scotland , but the presence of dumped munitions in the Irish Sea could cause problems for a potential project.

Sept 3, 2020

 Trump designated Wilmington, N.C., as the country's first American World War II Heritage City. The ceremony took place on decommissioned USS North Carolina, which took part in every major naval offensive in the Pacific area of operation and earned 15 battle stars.

Sept 21, 2020

The Pacific Games , may want to revisit using the Solomon Islands as its host country in 2023. Stephen Atkinson and Trent Lee , employees of Norwegian People's Aid, were killed while attempting to remove un-exploded WW2 bombs in Honiara.

Dec 20, 2020

#Sweden will allow an underwater examination of the ferry Estonia, which sank in the Baltic on Sept. 28, 1994. after a documentary film showed previously unknown holes in the wreck’s hull. It was sailing from Tallinn to Stockholm in bad weather  and 852 people died when it sank.  Two possible explanations for the holes are a collision with a submarine and/or an explosion inside the ship.

March 28, 2021

The whole nine yards(27') derivation:

 British Frigates of the 19th Century hoisted 27'  masts to achieve full speed. 

During WW2  .50 caliber machine gun ammo belts triggered by pilots measured exactly 27'

April 6, 2021

While reading news about Northern Island, I came across an obit on Commander Philip Ball OBE,

a decorated Royal Navy officer who served on the carrier HMS Victorious, which provided air cover for the convoys supplying essential material to the Soviet Union during WW2.

These sailors faced Arctic ice storms, Luftwaffe bombers and  U-boat attacks. 

July 30, 2021

What if you live in  a  federal parliamentary- constitutional monarchy,.and see your government do this? Australia has deployed hundreds of soldiers to Sydney to help enforce a Covid lockdown. They did a similar thing in Melbourne last year.

It's to review your constitution!!!!!!!!!

OCT 19, 2021

What would you do if you found a 900-year-old Crusader sword while diving off the Israel coast at the beach in Carmel?   #ShlomiKatzin gave it to the  Israel Antiquities Authority. Some events from nearly 900 years ago were the Spanish Inquisition and the death of Genghis Khan.  

Oct 30, 2021

John P. Laborde, who died this week at age 97, was a former aide to Gen. MacArthur and later ran Tidewater for nearly 40 years and built the largest fleet of vessels serving offshore drillers. I'm sure he wondered if he'd ever make it to the Pacific WW2 war zone when he sailed on a ship that had once carried pineapples from Hawaii, for 56 days from San Francisco to New Guinea. One of the notes he left his family was some ancient advice:   “Never test the depth of water with both feet.”

Nov 6, 2021

William S. Anderson, who died in July 2021 at 102, got career advice from a fellow prisoner while starving in a Japanese-run camp and later  became the President of NCR . He was born March 29, 1919, in Hankow, China and was imprisoned by the Japs while serving as a member of the Hong Kong volunteer defense corps, backing up regular British troops.  In 1947, he testified at a war-crimes trial of prison-camp leaders in Japan and identified one of the defendants by the nickname of Fishface. When a  defense lawyer asked him why he didn’t know the man’s real name. “Well, you see,” Mr. Anderson recalled replying, “we were never formally introduced.”

Dec 2, 2021

No explanation yet from Munich authorities on why a decades-old bomb dropped from an aircraft in WW2 wasn’t discovered during an advance check for unexploded ordnance. The explosion at a construction site injured four people.

Jan 11, 2022

Sometimes, I forget how many battles continued long after the USA left Nam. Three members of demining team, Cambodia Self Help Demining, were killed by a device from Cambodia’s civil war in the northern province of Preah Vihear, an area where heavy combat between government forces and guerrillas of the communist Khmer Rouge occurred in the 1990s.

Feb 24, 2022

In 2006 the salvage team that found, a bronze eagle from the sunken Admiral Graf Spree, a German  warship, signed a 50/50 deal with the Uruguayan navy for a future sale. Yesterday, Uruguay appealed a 2019 ruling ordering it to sell the bronze eagle.  Graf Spee's captain, Hans Langsdorff, had scuttled the destroyer on December 17, 1939 near Montevido, Uruguay, following a defeat at the Battle of the River Plate to HMS Achilles, a New Zealand "pocket ship".

April 10, 2022

HUBANESWAR, India : Police in India are seeking to arrest members of a gang, who posed as government officials attached with the irrigation Dept and dismantled a 60-feet-long iron bridge. Residents probably assumed that the government officials had finally decided to dismantle the old bridge that was not in use.

Selling scrap metal is a lucrative business in India.

July 5, 2022

Yesterday, I watched a movie made in 1984 about Mata Hari which got me wondering how much of a spy she was and if you had been a French or German high-ranking officer during WW1, would you have whispered in her ear in the bedroom?

During World War I, the Netherlands remained neutral, and since Mata was a Dutch subject, this helped her travel easier during WW1. 

Aug 23, 2022

On Aug. 23, 1958, Communist China bombed the Taiwan-controlled Kinmen and Matsu islands. What did Ike do?  USAF deployed F-100D Super Sabres, F-101C Voodoos, F-104A Starfighters, and B-57B Canberras to Taiwan to demonstrate support for the republic and eventually the Commies stood down.

Oct 21, 2022

What did James A. McDivitt do when he didn’t have the money for college growing up in Kalamazoo, Michigan? He joined the Air Force and later flew 145 combat missions in Korea.

  He was the commander of 1965′s Gemini 4 mission and the Apollo 9 mission.

 He died at the age of 93 on 10/19/22. RIP, Sir!

Nov 15, 2022

What would you do if you're a soldier in a war -zone and bullets are being fired in your direction from an area where a member of the press is? Israel condemns FBI probe into killing of Abu Akleh, a Palestinian-American journalist for Al Jazeera, who was shot dead while wearing a bullet proof PRESS jacket, covering an Israeli military operation at a refugee camp in the city of Jenin in the occupied West Bank in May 2022.

Dec 6, 2022

An antenna manufactured by an Ottawa-based company ended up on the Shahed-136, a drone used by Iran. Don't fret: Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is “extremely concerned”.