Author: Théophile Niyitegeka

{ISIL is now surrounded by Syrian army from the south and by Turkish-backed rebels from the north, monitoring group says.}

Syrian government forces have advanced on the ISIL-held city of al-Bab, cutting off the last supply route that connects it to the armed group’s strongholds further east towards Iraq, according to a monitoring group.

ISIL fighters in the area are now effectively surrounded by the Syrian army from the south and by Turkish-backed rebels from the north, as Damascus and Ankara race to capture the largest stronghold of the armed group in Aleppo province, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Monday.

The British-based war monitor, which tracks developments in Syria’s conflict, added that the army and allied militia had made gains southeast of al-Bab overnight and fought ISIL there on Monday.

Backed by air strikes, they severed a road that links the city to other ISIL-held territory in Raqqa and Deir Az Zor provinces, it said.

A military commander in the alliance fighting in support of President Bashar al-Assad said ISIL, which stands for Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant and is also known as ISIS, was now encircled.

“There is one narrow passage left out of al-Bab,” the commander told the Reuters news agency. Government forces now had most of it “within close firing range”, he said.

Key city

The Syrian army’s advance towards al-Bab risks triggering a confrontation with the Turkish military and its allies – rebel groups fighting under the Free Syria Army (FSA) banner – which have been waging their own campaign to take the city.

In three weeks, Syrian army units moved to within 6km of al-Bab, as Damascus seeks to stop Turkey from penetrating deeper into a strategic area of northern Syria.

“It’s clear the regime is in a hurry to reach al-Bab,” Mustafa Sejari, a senior rebel official in the FSA group Liwa al-Mutasem, told Reuters. The Turkish-backed rebels, who have also had the city in their sights for months, would fight government forces if they got in the way, he said.

Turkey launched its campaign in Syria, “Euphrates Shield”, in August to secure its frontier from ISIL and halt the advance of the powerful Kurdish YPG militia.

Backed by Turkey’s air force, Turkish troops and FSA rebels on Monday clashed with ISIL fighters around the town of Bazaa, northeast of al-Bab, the Observatory said. Turkish-backed forces had briefly captured the town before suicide bombers pushed them out on Saturday.

Al-Bab is 40km northeast of Aleppo, where the government defeated rebels in December – its most important gain in the nearly six-year-old war.

Northern Syria is one of the most complicated battlefields of the multi-sided Syrian war, with ISIL now being fought there by the Syrian army, Turkey and its rebel allies, and an alliance of US-backed Syrian militias.

If a clash does occur, it would be the first time Syrian government forces have confronted the Turkish army on the ground in northern Syria since Turkey launched its operation.

Russia, Assad’s most powerful ally, has carried out air strikes targeting ISIL in the al-Bab area in support of both sides, underlining big shifts in the diplomatic landscape.

As relations between Russia and Turkey have improved, the two countries brokered a shaky ceasefire in December between the Syrian government and rebel groups fighting to unseat Assad.

An official from one of the Turkmen rebel brigades backed by Turkey said the presence of Russian forces could help prevent a confrontation.

“There are Russian soldiers along with the regime forces who are leading the way and that is an element that could satisfy Turkey,” the rebel official told Reuters. “I don’t expect clashes.”

Source:Al Jazeera

{The US justice department has defended President Donald Trump’s travel ban and urged an appeals court to reinstate it in the interests of national security.}

A 15-page brief argued it was a “lawful exercise of the president’s authority” and not a ban on Muslims.

The executive order temporarily banned entry for all refugees and visitors from seven mainly Muslim countries.

A hearing has been set for Tuesday on whether to allow or reject the ban.

The filing was made to the San Francisco-based 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals in response to the halting of Mr Trump’s order on Friday by a federal judge in Washington state.

The judge had ruled the ban was unconstitutional and harmful to the state’s interests.
As a result, people from the seven countries – Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen – with valid visas were able to travel to the US again.

{{What did the department of justice argue?}}

The brief filed on Monday evening said the Washington court had “erred in entering an injunction barring enforcement of the order”.

“But even if some relief were appropriate, the court’s sweeping nationwide injunction is vastly overbroad,” the department of justice added.

The key arguments in the brief are:

the president is best placed to make decisions about national security
it is “incorrect” to call it a ban on Muslims because the seven countries were identified for their terror risk the executive order is therefore “neutral with respect to religion” aliens outside the US have no rights to due process

{{Confusion at airports}}

The executive order issued by President Trump on 25 January fulfilled his campaign promise to tighten restrictions on arrivals to the US.

{{Its main components were:}} nationals from Iraq, Syria, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen – even those with visas – banned from entering the US;
a temporary ban on all refugee admissions; the reprioritisation of minority religion (interpreted to mean Christian) refugee claims; a ban on all Syrian refugees; a cap on total annual refugee admissions to the US of 50,000.

It caused confusion at US and foreign airports when it came into force, and was widely condemned, although polls suggest that US public opinion is sharply divided on the policy.

{{Who has spoken out against the ban?}}

The states of Washington and Minnesota have argued that as well as being unconstitutional, the travel ban is harmful to their residents, businesses and universities.

Attorneys general in 16 states have signed a letter condemning the ban, and lawsuits have been launched in 14 states.

Former secretaries of state John Kerry and Madeleine Albright and former CIA director Leon Panetta have joined others in drafting a letter which describes the travel ban as ineffective, dangerous and counterproductive.

And lawyers for tech firms including Apple and Google have also lodged arguments with the court, saying that the travel ban would harm their companies by making it more difficult to recruit employees.

{{Supreme Court battle looms}}

Mr Trump’s tweets are in line with the arguments from the Department of Justice – that national security is at risk.

The president has attacked the “so-called” judge behind the Washington ruling, and said: “If something happens blame him and court system.”

Whatever the decision of the appeals court on Tuesday, the case could end up in the highest court in the US, the Supreme Court.

The last immigration case that reached the justices there ended in a 4-4 tie.

But if Mr Trump’s nominee to fill the ninth berth, Neil Gorsuch, is confirmed in time, it could tip the balance in the president’s favour.

Source:BBC

{Israel has passed a controversial law retroactively legalising 3,800 settler homes built on private Palestinian land in the occupied West Bank.}

Under the law the original Palestinian landowners will be financially compensated or given alternative land.

New US President Donald Trump has taken a softer stance on Israeli settlement activity than his predecessor, Barack Obama, who was a vocal critic.

The new law comes amid an escalation in settlement activity in recent weeks.

Emboldened by what it sees as a more sympathetic US administration, Israel has advanced plans for thousands of new homes in settlements.

More than 600,000 Jews live in about 140 settlements built since Israel’s 1967 occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem – land the Palestinians claim for a future state. The settlements are considered illegal under international law, though Israel disputes this.

Palestinians say the new legislation negates peace and their chances of creating a state. However, its passage could be largely symbolic. Already Israel’s attorney general has said the law is unconstitutional and that he will not defend it in the Supreme Court.

The law, which passed by 60 votes to 52, legalises the homes in both settlements and some 53 outposts – settlements built without official authorisation, according to Israeli anti-settlement watchdog Peace Now.

The group says there are 97 outposts across the West Bank, though the largest, Amona, was evacuated by police last week after the Supreme Court ordered it to be dismantled because it was built on private Palestinian land.

However, the new legalisation has proved divisive within Israel and is likely to face legal challenges.

Opposition leader Yitzhak Herzog denounced the measure as “an acute danger to Israel” which could lead to prosecution at the International Criminal Court (ICC) at The Hague.

The ICC is currently examining whether Israeli settlements should be subject to a full investigation.

A minister from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party championed the vote as a demonstration of “the connection between the Jewish people and its land. This whole land is ours. All of it.”

Palestinians condemned the law.

“This is an escalation that would only lead to more instability and chaos,” said Nabil Abu Rudeineh, a spokesman for Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas.

He added: “It is unacceptable. It is denounced and the international community should act immediately,”

The UN Middle East envoy, Nickolay Mladenov, said the law would “greatly diminish the prospects for Arab-Israeli peace”.

Last week, the White House said it did not see settlements as an impediment to peace, though new settlements or expanding existing settlements beyond their borders “might not be helpful”. However, it said it had not yet formed an official position on the settlements issue.

Mr Trump is due to meet Mr Netanyahu in Washington next week for the first time since Mr Trump took office last month.

Source:BBC

{As many as 13,000 people, most of them civilian opposition supporters, have been executed in secret at a prison in Syria, Amnesty International says.}

A new report by the human rights group alleges that mass hangings took place every week at Saydnaya prison between September 2011 and December 2015.

Amnesty says the alleged executions were authorised at the highest levels of the Syrian government.

The government has previously denied killing or mistreating detainees.

However, UN human rights experts said a year ago that witness accounts and documentary evidence strongly suggested that tens of thousands of people were being detained and that “deaths on a massive scale” were occurring in custody.

Amnesty interviewed 84 people, including former guards, detainees and officials at Saydnaya prison for its report.

It alleges that every week, and often twice a week, groups of between 20 and 50 people were executed in total secrecy at the facility, just north of Damascus.

Before their execution, detainees were brought before a “military field court” in the capital’s Qaboun district for “trials” lasting between one and three minutes, the report says.

A former military court judge quoted by Amnesty said detainees would be asked if they had committed crimes alleged to have taken place. “Whether the answer is ‘yes’ or ‘no’, he will be convicted… This court has no relation with the rule of law,” he said.

According to the report, detainees were told on the day of the hangings that they would be transferred to a civilian prison then taken to a basement cell and beaten over the course of two or three hours.

Then in the middle of the night they were blindfolded and moved to another part of the prison, where they were taken into a room in the basement and told they had been sentenced to death just minutes before nooses were placed around their necks, the report adds.

The bodies of those killed were allegedly then loaded onto lorries, and transferred to Tishreen military hospital in Damascus for registration and burial in mass graves located on military land.

On the basis of evidence of the testimony of its witnesses, Amnesty estimates that between 5,000 and 13,000 people were executed at Saydnaya over five years.

{{Witness accounts}}

{{A former judge who saw the hangings:}}

“They kept them [hanging] there for 10 to 15 minutes. Some didn’t die because they are light. For the young ones, their weight wouldn’t kill them. The officers’ assistants would pull them down and break their necks.”

{{‘Hamid’, a former military officer who was detained at Saydnaya:}}

“If you put your ears on the floor, you could hear the sound of a kind of gurgling. This would last around 10 minutes… We were sleeping on top of the sound of people choking to death. This was normal for me then.”

{{Former detainee ‘Sameer’ describes alleged abuse:}}

“The beating was so intense. It was as if you had a nail, and you were trying again and again to beat it into a rock. It was impossible, but they just kept going. I was wishing they would just cut off my legs instead of beating them any more.”

{{Source: Amnesty International}}

Although it does not have evidence of executions taking place since December 2015, the group says it has no reason to believe they have stopped and that thousands more were likely to have died.

Amnesty says these practices amounted to war crimes and crimes against humanity.
It also notes that death sentences have to be approved by the grand mufti and by either the defence minister or the army’s chief of staff, who are deputised to act on behalf of President Bashar al-Assad.

The human rights group says it contacted the Syrian authorities about the allegations in early January but has received no response.

Last August, Amnesty reported that an estimated 17,723 people had died in custody as a result of torture and the deprivation of food, water and medical care between March 2011 – when the uprising against President Assad began – and December 2015. That figure did not include those allegedly hanged at Saydnaya.

Source:BBC