UN expert slams Algeria’s ‘criminalization’ of rights activists

UN expert slams Algeria’s ‘criminalization’ of rights activists
A United Nations rights expert on Thursday denounced Algeria's harassment and criminalisation of human rights defenders, highlighting a number of cases including that of independent journalist Merzoug Touati. (Reuters/File)
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Updated 30 January 2025
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UN expert slams Algeria’s ‘criminalization’ of rights activists

UN expert slams Algeria’s ‘criminalization’ of rights activists
  • Mary Lawlor, the UN special rapporteur on human rights defenders, said: “Human rights defenders in different fields of work, some of whom I met, are still being arbitrarily arrested”
  • Equally concerning, Lawlor said, were the arrests last year of three human rights lawyers

GENEVA: A United Nations rights expert on Thursday denounced Algeria’s harassment and criminalization of human rights defenders, highlighting a number of cases including that of independent journalist Merzoug Touati.
Mary Lawlor, the UN special rapporteur on human rights defenders, said she was “deeply disappointed” to see the situation had not improved since she visited Algeria in late 2023.
“Human rights defenders in different fields of work, some of whom I met, are still being arbitrarily arrested, judicially harassed, intimidated and criminalized for their peaceful activities under vaguely worded provisions, such as ‘harming the security of the state’,” she said in a statement.
Lawlor, an independent expert appointed by the UN Human Rights Council but who does not speak on behalf of the United Nations, voiced particular concerns about Touati’s case.
The independent journalist and rights advocate “has been subjected for years to trials on spurious charges,” she said, saying it was “among the most alarming cases I have recently examined.”
He had been detained three times since the start of last year, she said.
During his latest arrest last August, she said, “his family was reportedly subjected to ill-treatment. He was then allegedly physically and psychologically tortured while in police custody for five days.”
“He continues to be judicially harassed even after his release.”
Equally concerning, Lawlor said, were the arrests last year of three human rights lawyers, Toufik Belala, Soufiane Ouali and Omar Boussag, and a young whistleblower, Yuba Manguellet.
She also drew attention to the case of the “Association of Families of the Disappeared,” set up during the Algerian Civil War in the 1990s to seek answers over the forcible disappearances amid the violence.
The organization had repeatedly been prevented from holding events by huge contingents of police forces surrounding its office in Algiers.
“Its female lawyer and members, many of whom are mothers of disappeared persons, have been manhandled and forced to leave the location on these occasions,” the statement said.
“I want to repeat that I met nearly all of these human rights defenders,” Lawlor said, adding that “not one of them was in any way pursuing violent acts.”
“They all must be treated in accordance with international human rights law, which Algeria is bound to respect.”


US says killed a senior member of Syria Al-Qaeda affiliate

US says killed a senior member of Syria Al-Qaeda affiliate
Updated 11 sec ago
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US says killed a senior member of Syria Al-Qaeda affiliate

US says killed a senior member of Syria Al-Qaeda affiliate

BEIRUT: The US military said Saturday it had killed a senior member of Al-Qaeda’s Syrian branch Hurras Al-Din, which announced its dissolution last month, in an air strike in the country’s northwest.
It is the latest US strike this year against the group in Syria. Along with its Western and Arab allies, the United States has emphasized that Syria must not serve as a base for “terrorist” groups after the toppling of president Bashar Assad in December.
On Friday, US Central Command (CENTCOM) forces “conducted a precision air strike in northwest Syria, killing Wasim Tahsin Bayraqdar, a senior leadership facilitator of the terrorist organization Hurras Al-Din,” the military said in a statement.
The northwest was the stronghold of interim president Ahmed Al-Sharaa’s Islamist Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham group before it led the rebel offensive that toppled Assad in December.
The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor said a drone strike on a car killed Bayraqdar.
Last Sunday, CENTCOM said it killed “a senior finance and logistics official” in Hurras Al-Din.
That came after CENTCOM last month reported killing another senior Hurras Al-Din operative, Muhammad Salah Al-Zabir, in an air strike also in the northwest.
The US-based SITE Intelligence Group said Hurras Al-Din was founded in February 2018.
The group did not publicly confirm its allegiance to Al-Qaeda until its dissolution announcement in January.
Hurras Al-Din dissolved in line with orders from Sharaa, who has called on all armed group to disband.
The United States designated Hurras Al-Din as a “terrorist” organization in 2019.


Turkiye probes opposition mayor’s ‘falsified’ university degree

Turkiye probes opposition mayor’s ‘falsified’ university degree
Updated 1 min 21 sec ago
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Turkiye probes opposition mayor’s ‘falsified’ university degree

Turkiye probes opposition mayor’s ‘falsified’ university degree
  • Ekrem Imamoglu will be questioned Wednesday over ‘falsification of an official document’

ISTANBUL: Turkiye has begun investigating allegations that Istanbul’s opposition mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, already the subject of a clutch of other legal proceedings, falsely obtained his university degree, the official Anadolu news agency said Saturday.
Imamoglu, who Friday submitted his candidacy to stand for the social democratic Republican People’s Party (CHP) main opposition for the next presidential election, will be questioned Wednesday over “falsification of an official document,” Anadolu said.
The stakes are high for Imamoglu as constitutionally, any presidential candidate must have a higher education degree.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has faced similar claims from opponents — which he denies.
Following allegations by a journalist, the Istanbul municipality last September published a photocopy of a business management diploma which Imamoglu received from Istanbul University in 1995.
The opposition mayor, who was last year re-elected having in 2019 won control of Turkiye’s largest city from Erdogan’s ruling Islamist-conservative Justice and Development Party (AKP), is the subject of a further five investigations, two of which were opened last month.
Regularly targeted by Erdogan, likewise a former mayor of Istanbul, Imamoglu was sentenced in December 2022 to a jail term of two years and seven months and banned from political activities for “insulting” members of Turkiye’s High Electoral Committee, a sentence he has appealed.
A vocal opponent of the president, Imamoglu denounced what he termed judicial “harassment” last month on leaving an Istanbul court where he had been questioned as part of an investigation opened after criticism of the city’s public prosecutor.


Hamas frees 5 Israeli hostages in latest transfer under truce

Hamas frees 5 Israeli hostages in latest transfer under truce
Updated 39 min 6 sec ago
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Hamas frees 5 Israeli hostages in latest transfer under truce

Hamas frees 5 Israeli hostages in latest transfer under truce
  • Releases came under first phase of a ceasefire deal which began on January 19

NUSEIRAT, Palestinian Territories: Palestinian militants on Saturday freed five Israeli hostages, among the last living captives to be released under the first phase of a fragile truce that is also expected to see Palestinian prisoners released.

Freedom for the captives caps an emotional two days in Israel, where the family of another hostage, Shiri Bibas, earlier on Saturday confirmed receipt of her remains.

Bibas and her two young sons had become symbols of the ordeal suffered by Israeli hostages since the Gaza war began.

Palestinian militants seized dozens of captives during their unprecedented October 7, 2023 attack on Israel which triggered more than 15 months of war in the Gaza Strip.

At a ceremony in Nuseirat, central Gaza, masked Hamas militants brought onto a stage Eliya Cohen, 27, Omer Shem Tov, 22, and Israeli-Argentine Omer Wenkert, 23.

They waved while holding release certificates before their handover to the Red Cross, who took them away in a convoy after more than 16 months of captivity, an AFP correspondent said.

The military said they later were back home on Israeli soil.

At a similar ceremony earlier Saturday in Rafah, southern Gaza, militants handed over Tal Shoham, 40, and Avera Mengistu, 38, who both appeared dazed.

Shoham was made to address the gathering, flanked by armed and masked fighters dressed all in black.

In the Israeli city of Tel Aviv, hundreds who gathered at a site known as ‘Hostages Square’ applauded and some appeared to weep as they watched the releases.

Israeli campaign group the Hostages and Missing Families Forum had published the names of six Israelis to be freed on Saturday. Among them, it listed Hisham Al-Sayed,37.

Sayed, a Bedouin Muslim, and Mengistu, an Ethiopian Jew, were captured in Gaza around a decade ago after they entered the territory individually on their own accord.

A Hamas source had said the group would free four captives in Nuseirat but the details of Sayed’s expected release were not immediately clear.

“Our family has endured 10 years and five months of unimaginable suffering,” Mengistu’s family said in a statement.

Relatives of Shoham wept and embraced as they watched his handover, video released by Israel’s government showed.

“We saw that Tal seems well considering the circumstances. An enormous weight is lifted from us,” the family of the Austrian-Israeli dual national said in a statement.

The releases came under the first phase of a ceasefire deal which began on January 19 and is due to expire in early March.

At both locations the militants had prepared for a now well-practiced ceremony, with stages in front of large posters promoting the militants’ cause or praising fallen fighters.

The Red Cross has repeatedly appealed for handovers to take place in a dignified manner.

Under a cold winter rain in Rafah, and in Nuseirat, Hamas staged a show of force after months of bombardment and strikes that killed the group’s top leaders. Some fighters held rifles, others rocket launchers, as nationalistic Palestinian music blared.

The Palestinian Prisoners’ Club advocacy group said Israel would free 602 inmates, most of them Gazans arrested during the war, on Saturday as part of the exchange.

The ceasefire has so far seen 24 living Israeli hostages freed from Gaza in exchange for more than 1,100 Palestinian prisoners released from Israeli jails.

On Thursday the first transfer of hostages’ bodies took place under the truce.

Hamas had said Shiri Bibas’s remains were among the four bodies returned but Israeli analysis concluded they were not in fact hers, sparking grief and anger.

Hamas then admitted a possible “mix-up of bodies,” which it attributed to Israeli bombing of the area.

Late Friday the Red Cross confirmed the transfer of more human remains to Israel “at the request of both parties.”

Early Saturday, the Bibas family said in a statement that after an identification process, “we received the news we feared the most. Our Shiri was murdered in captivity and has now returned home to her sons, husband, sister, and all her family to rest.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – under domestic pressure over his handling of the war and the hostages – vowed Hamas would pay “the full price” for what he termed a violation of the truce deal over the return of Shiri Bibas.

Israel’s military said that, after an analysis of the remains, Palestinian militants killed the Bibas boys, Ariel and Kfir, “with their bare hands” in November 2023.

The family on Saturday said it has “not received any such details from official sources.”

Hamas has long maintained an Israeli air strike killed them and their mother early in the war.

Hamas and its allies took 251 people hostage during the October 7 attack that sparked the war. There are 62 hostages still in Gaza, including 35 the Israeli military says are dead.

The Hamas attack resulted in the deaths of 1,215 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.

Israel’s retaliatory campaign has killed at least 48,319 people in Gaza, the majority of them civilians, according to figures from the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory that the United Nations considers reliable.


Iraq denies reports that it faces US sanctions if oil exports from Kurdistan not resumed, Iraqi official says

Iraq denies reports that it faces US sanctions if oil exports from Kurdistan not resumed, Iraqi official says
Updated 22 February 2025
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Iraq denies reports that it faces US sanctions if oil exports from Kurdistan not resumed, Iraqi official says

Iraq denies reports that it faces US sanctions if oil exports from Kurdistan not resumed, Iraqi official says
  • Iraq denies reports that it faces US sanctions if oil exports from Kurdistan not resumed, Iraqi official says

BAGHDAD: Iraq denied reports on Saturday that it would face US sanctions if oil exports from the Kurdistan region were not resumed, Farhad Alaaldin, a foreign affairs adviser to the Iraqi prime minister told Reuters.


Syria’s new president meets Chinese envoy for first time since Assad’s fall

Syria's de facto leader Ahmad al-Sharaa (R) and Chinese ambassador Shi Hongwei. (Supplied)
Syria's de facto leader Ahmad al-Sharaa (R) and Chinese ambassador Shi Hongwei. (Supplied)
Updated 22 February 2025
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Syria’s new president meets Chinese envoy for first time since Assad’s fall

Syria's de facto leader Ahmad al-Sharaa (R) and Chinese ambassador Shi Hongwei. (Supplied)
  • Syria’s state news agency SANA reported Sharaa’s meeting with Ambassador Shi Hongwei but gave no details of what was discussed

DAMASCUS: Syria’s new President Ahmed Al-Sharaa met China’s ambassador to Damascus in the first public engagement between the two countries since the overthrow of Bashar Assad in December, Syrian state media said on Friday.
China, which backed Assad, saw its embassy in Damascus looted after his fall, and Syria’s new Islamist rulers have installed some foreign fighters including Uyghurs, a mainly Muslim ethnic minority in China that Western rights groups say has been persecuted by Beijing, into the Syrian armed forces. Beijing has denied accusations of abuses against Uyghurs.
Syria’s state news agency SANA reported Sharaa’s meeting with Ambassador Shi Hongwei but gave no details of what was discussed.
The decision to give official roles, some at senior level, to several Islamist militants could alarm foreign governments and Syrian citizens fearful of the new administration’s intentions, despite its pledges not to export Islamic revolution and to rule with tolerance for Syria’s large minority groups.
In 2015, Chinese authorities said many Uyghurs who had fled to Turkiye via Southeast Asia planned to bring jihad back to China, saying some were involved in “terrorism activities.”
Chinese President Xi Jinping had vowed to support Assad against external interference. He offered the veteran Syrian leader a rare break from years of international isolation since the start of Syria’s civil war in 2011 when he accorded him and his wife a warm welcome during a visit to China in 2023.
Assad was toppled a year later in a swift offensive by a coalition of rebels led by the Sharaa-led Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS), a former Al-Qaeda affiliate, that ended 54 years of Assad family rule.