Tag: InternationalNews

{President Erdogan says some refugees who pass screenings will be granted nationality to “make use” of their skills.}

Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan has announced that some Syrian and Iraqi refugees who pass a screening process will be granted Turkish citizenship.

In a speech broadcast on television on Friday, Erdogan said that security checks would be carried out to determine who among the millions who fled war in their home countries were eligible for citizenship.

“Our interior ministry is carrying out work, and under this work, some of them will be granted our nationality after all the necessary checks have been carried out,” he said.

“There are highly qualified people among them, there are engineers, lawyers, doctors. Let’s make use of that talent … Instead of letting them work illegally here and there, let’s give them the chance to work as citizens like the children of this nation.”

Erdogan added that the interior ministry “is ready to implement the measure at any time”. But he gave no further details, notably about how many would gain Turkish nationality.

According to Turkish government figures, the country is hosting more than three million Syrians and Iraqis who have fled conflict.

The Turkish leader outlined a naturalisation plan last summer but the idea was met with angry protests and xenophobic comments on social media.

The country’s political opposition saw the plan as a scheme to widen Erdogan’s electoral basis at a time when he is pushing for constitutional reform to strengthen his powers.

{Syrian forces battle rebels for Wadi Barada valley where damaged infrastructure has cut off water to millions of people.}

The United Nations has warned that sabotaging water supplies is a war crime after the main source for Syria’s capital was cut leaving millions of people facing shortages.

Water supplies from the rebel-held Wadi Barada valley near Damascus have been severed since December 22 with the government and rebels trading blame.

Jan Egeland, head of a UN-backed humanitarian taskforce for Syria, said on Thursday the shutdown already had “dramatic” consequences.

He said water supplies to 5.5 million people had been hit “because of fighting, or because of sabotage or because of both”.

“To sabotage and deny water is of course a war crime, because it is civilians who drink it and civilians who will be affected by waterborne diseases” if supplies are not restored, he told reporters in Geneva.

The UN Office for the Coordination Humanitarian Affairs has said water supplies were cut off because “infrastructure was deliberately targeted and damaged” – without saying who was responsible.

The government has accused rebels of polluting the springs with diesel, while the opposition says government bombing destroyed the village’s water plant.

The Syrian army and its allies pressed ahead on Friday with a two-week-long offensive to seize the strategic valley, in spite a ceasefire in place since last week.

Aerial bombing and shelling from the army as well as Hezbollah fighters stationed in the mountains that overlook the valley on the northwestern edge of the capital have intensified in the last 48 hours.

The Reuters news agency cited Reuters and rebels saying scores of fighter jets pounded the area around the Ain al-Fija springs and the villages of Baseimah, Kafr Zayt, and al-Husseineh, which form part of a cluster of 10 villages controlled by rebels in the Wadi Barada region.

Fighters there rejected a government offer to leave the area for the rebel-held province of Idlib in northern Syria. Similar deals have led rebels to yield swathes of territory, including in the city of Aleppo

The military offensive has strained a ceasefire agreement brokered by Russia and Turkey aimed at bringing about Syrian peace talks in Kazakhstan later this month.

The opposition has warned unless the Syrian army halts its attacks it would consider any truce “null and void”. They have also suspended any discussion on participating in the forthcoming peace talks unless Russia puts pressure on the government and its Tehran-backed allies to abort the offensive.

The government says forces in Wadi Barada include Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, previously known as the al-Qaeda-linked al-Nusra Front, which Moscow and Damascus say is excluded from the ceasefire.

Rebels deny the group is in the area.

The rupture of water supplies from the springs has caused severe shortages after the pumping station of Ain al-Fija – that supplied about 70 percent of the capital’s water needs – was damaged.

Prices of bottled water and trucked water supplied by private traders to residential homes has tripled, residents of the capital say, with a black market now thriving.

The government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has also brought in supplies from other provinces by tanker to cover some of the shortfall in the capital and pumped extra water from underground wells.

The civilian population in the valley is estimated by the United Nations to number about 45,000, but civic groups say the total is double that with their plight worsening daily under heavy shelling and shortages of food and medicine.

Dozens of homes have been hit by the bombing campaign.

Only 1,200 families have so far left to a government-run shelter in the nearby town of Rawda, the UN said.

“We hope in a few days water will return back to the capital after the army takes back Ain al-Fija. The army is advancing and … we expect good news,” Alaa Munir Ibrahim, a governor in the Damascus suburbs, told state media.

{Top intelligence officials accuse Moscow of interfering in US elections, a day before spy agencies brief Donald Trump.}

US spy chiefs insisted they have strong evidence that Russia mounted an unprecedented bid to disrupt the American election, standing firm in the face of president-elect Donald Trump’s refusal to accept their conclusions.

One day before the heads of four top intelligence bodies brief the president-elect on their assessment of Russian meddling in last year’s vote, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told a Senate hearing on Thursday he had “very high” confidence in their findings.

“The Russians have a long history of interfering in elections, theirs and other people’s,” he told the Armed Services Committee. “But we have never encountered such a direct campaign to interfere with the election process as we have seen in this case.

“This was a multifaceted campaign. So the hacking was only one part of it, and it also entailed classical propaganda, disinformation, fake news,” said Clapper.

Clapper, National Security Agency chief Michael Rogers, and Marcel Lettre, undersecretary of defense for intelligence, told the committee in a joint statement that “only Russia’s senior-most officials” could have authorised the operation, in which hackers stole Democratic Party files and emails.

The information was then disseminated via WikiLeaks, embarrassing the Democratic Party and potentially harming losing candidate Hillary Clinton’s White House effort.

“Russia has clearly assumed an even more aggressive cyber posture by increasing cyber espionage operations,” Clapper said.

The Senate Committee hearing comes a week after President Barack Obama expelled 35 Russian diplomats over the alleged hacking.

John McCain, the Republican chairman of the committee, said “every American should be alarmed” by Russia’s meddling in the 2016 presidential election.

There is “no escaping the fact that this committee meets today for the first time in this new Congress in the aftermath of an unprecedented attack on our democracy,” McCain said.

Pressed by McCain, former presidential candidate and organiser of the hearing, on whether the actions constituted an “act of war”, Clapper said that was “a very heavy policy call” more appropriate for other entities in the government to decide.

Obama struck back at Moscow in late December with sanctions aimed at Russia’s leading spy agencies, the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence agency, and the FSB, the successor to the Soviet-era’s main security agency, the KGB, that the US said were involved.

Moscow has denied the hacking allegations and dismissed Obama’s sanctions as an attempt to “harm Russian-American ties”.

The committee’s session is the first in a series aimed at investigating purported Russian cyber-attacks against US interests and developing defences sturdy enough to blunt future intrusions.

Trump, who has pledged to bring about a rapprochement with President Vladimir Putin’s Russia after taking office on January 20, has repeatedly dismissed such findings.

He even seemed to have backed WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s contention that Russia did not provide him with hacked Democratic Party emails.

Trump, set to be briefed on the findings by the intelligence committee on Friday, claims to have information on the hacking that he will soon make public.

Clapper said lawmakers will be briefed on the Russian hacking report next week and an unclassified version is tentatively scheduled to be released shortly after that.

He said, however, Russia’s hacking “did not change any vote tallies”.

{At least 11 killed and 35 others wounded in government-controlled town in Latakia province, state news agency reports.}

At least 11 people have been killed and 35 others wounded in a car bomb attack on the Syrian government-held coastal town of Jableh, state media reported.

Thursday’s attack in Latakia province is the first such explosion since a new ceasefire, brokered by Russia and Turkey, took effect last week.

“A terrorist car bomb attack took place near the Municipal Stadium in Jableh,” state news agency SANA said.

Jableh is close to a Russian air base and located in the heartland of Syria’s Alawites, a Shia offshoot to which President Bashar al-Assad’s family also belongs.

Latakia province police chief Yasser al-Shariti told state TV the explosion hit during rush hour in one of the city’s main streets.

State TV showed footage of mangled cars and shutters of shops damaged and blown apart as rescue workers cleared the debris amid a heavy security presence in the bustling commercial area near a popular vegetable market and a garage depot.

As most of Syria’s government-held coastal cities and towns, Jableh has enjoyed relative stability during the almost six-year conflict.

In May, however, a string of blasts hit first a crowded bus station in the city, then outside a hospital that was receiving the wounded. About 120 people died in that attack, which was claimed by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group.

No group immediately claimed responsibility for Thursday’s bombing. ISIL and several other groups are not part of the broad truce that the government and the opposition agreed on recently.

{Release of four detainees comes despite President-elect Donald Trump’s demand for a freeze on transfers.}

Four Yemenis that were held by the United States at its Guantanamo Bay military prison have landed in Saudi Arabia.

The release of the four on Thursday came after the White House rejected President-elect Donald Trump’s demand for a freeze on transfers.

Family members met the detainees in tearful reunions at the royal airport in the Saudi capital Riyadh.

The transfers are part of a final push by President Barack Obama to shrink the inmate population there before leaving office on January 20.

A spokesman in the Saudi interior ministry confirmed to the families that the ministry will facilitate their visitations while they are being rehabilitated in the Mohammed bin Nayef Center for Counseling and Care, located outside of Riyadh.

Saudi state media released the names of the four Yemenis as Mohammed Rajab Sadiq Abu Ghanim, Salim Ahmad Hadi, Abdullah Yahia Yousf al-Shabli and Mohammed Ali Abdullah Bwazir.

Saudi Arabia received the four prisoners for resettlement after a request by the Yemeni President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi to do so.

There are 59 detainees remaining at the controversial detention centre, out of the 240 when Obama took office in 2009.

Only a handful have started moving through the military tribunals, including the alleged plotters of the September 11, 2001 attacks.

Many of the others are in legal limbo: not charged but deemed too dangerous to release.

Roughly 20 are expected to be transferred before Trump is sworn in later this month.

Saudi Arabia received detainees most recently in April, when the Obama administration transferred nine to the country, including an alleged bodyguard of Osama Bin Laden.

All nine detainees were linked to al-Qaeda. None of the nine men had been charged and all but one had been cleared for release from the US base in Cuba since at least 2010.

On Tuesday, Trump said on Twitter “There should be no further releases from Gitmo. These are extremely dangerous people and should not be allowed back onto the battlefield.”

He also vowed to “load [Guantanamo] up with some bad dudes” once he is in the White House.

Trump’s declaration is the latest in a series of public disputes between Obama and the outspoken Republican president-elect, who has jettisoned the notion that there is “one president at a time”.

Obama came to office vowing to shutter the facility, saying detention without trial did not reflect American values.

But he has run up against political and legal hurdles, Pentagon foot-dragging and stubborn Republican opposition in Congress.

{US imposes sanctions on Hamza bin Laden, son of late al-Qaeda leader, designating him a “global terrorist”.}

The United States has added the son of the late al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden to the US counter-terrorism blacklist, in a move that would keep him from accessing the US financial system.

The State and Treasury departments said on Thursday they had designated Hamza bin Laden a “global terrorist” who they said had “called for acts of terrorism in Western capitals”.

Hamza, who is in his mid-twenties, has become active as a member of al-Qaeda since his father’s death at the hands of US special forces on May 2, 2011.

Egyptian deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri has since taken up the reins of the organisation, but Hamza has also issued audio messages to supporters. He was officially named an al-Qaeda member in 2015, the US state department said.

In August 2015, al-Qaeda released an audio message that it claimed had come from Hamza, in which he urged attacks on the US and its allies.

Osama bin Laden, who founded al-Qaeda and was the alleged mastermind of the September 11, 2001 attacks in the US, was killed by American special forces who raided his compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan.

Hamza was thought to be under house arrest in Iran at the time, and documents recovered from the compound indicated that aides had been trying to reunite him with his father.

According to letters found in the US raid on Osama’s hideout in Pakistan, Hamza wrote to his Saudi-born father asking to be trained to follow him.

Bruce Reidel, an analyst with the Brookings Institution think tank in Washington, has called Hamza the “new face for al-Qaeda” and “an articulate and dangerous enemy,” Reuters news agency said.

The US also added Ibrahim al-Banna, a senior member of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) to the counter-terrorism blacklist on Thursday.

Al-Banna, who was born in Egypt, has described al-Qaeda’s 2001 attacks on New York and Washington as “virtuous” and threatened to target Americans in the United States and abroad, the state department said.

Before joining AQAP, he was a leader of Egyptian Islamic Jihad in Yemen, it said, adding that al-Banna threatened to target Americans abroad and urged Saudi tribes to unite with AQAP in Yemen to fight against Saudi Arabia.

Any property owned by the two men and subject to US jurisdiction may be frozen, and US citizens are prohibited from engaging in any transactions with them, the state department said.

{Israeli prime minister urges clemency after military court convicts soldier who shot dead a wounded Palestinian.}

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called for a pardon of Elor Azaria, the Israeli soldier found guilty of manslaughter after he shot and killed a wounded Palestinian last year.

“This is a difficult and painful day – first and foremost for Elor, his family, Israel’s soldiers, many citizens and parents of soldiers, among them me … I support granting a pardon to Elor Azaria,” Netanyahu said on Wednesday on his Facebook page.

The country’s president, Reuven Rivlin, who has the authority to issue pardons, said he will wait for the legal process to run its course before making a decision.

“In the event that a pardon should be requested, it will be considered by the president in accordance with standard practices and after recommendations from the relevant authorities,” he said in presidential statement.

The remarks were made just hours after Azaria was convicted on Wednesday in the high-profile case that raised questions over rules of engagement towards perceived threats by Palestinians.

A judge read out the court’s decision for more than two hours before announcing the verdict. The 20-year-old soldier could now face a maximum 20 years in prison.

The Israeli military expects that he will be sentenced in just over a week, on January 15. Azaria’s defence team has already said it will appeal.

In delivering her verdict, Colonel Maya Heller systematically rejected all of Azaria’s defence arguments, saying “the fact that the man on the ground was a terrorist does not justify a disproportionate response”.

The March 24 shooting of Abed al-Fattah al-Sharif, 21, as he lay overpowered on the ground was filmed by activists from the Israeli B’Tselem human rights group.

Al-Sharif and another Palestinian his age were shot as they allegedly lunged at an Israeli soldier guarding a checkpoint in Hebron in the occupied West Bank.

In the video, a combat medic, later identified as Azaria, raises and aims his rifle, then a shot is heard. The Palestinian’s head jolts, and he suddenly has what seems to be a fresh head wound.

Scuffles erupted outside the courtroom between supporters of the Israeli soldier and police officers before the verdict was announced.

{{Several people were arrested.}}

Scuffles between Azaria supporters and police officers escalated after the announcement of the guilty verdict.

Shabtay Oz, a retired policeman carrying a large Israeli flag in front of the court house, told AFP news agency that he never imagined himself joining a demonstration.

“But when I saw a soldier in cuffs after he shot a terrorist… that was the point of no return.”

{{Victim’s family demands life sentence}}

The defendant has previously said he believed al-Sharif was wearing a bomb belt, but prosecutors cited “contradictions” in his testimony.

They said that an officer had earlier carefully turned over al-Sharif and his companion to check if they were wearing bomb belts.

At their home in Hebron, Sharif’s parents told Al Jazeera before the verdict that they would not accept anything other than a guilty verdict and a life sentence.

“He should be sentenced in this court like they do with Palestinians… life sentences, torture and then ending up dead lying in a refrigerator,” said Yusri al-Sharif, the victim’s father.

But according to a survey in August by the Israel Democracy Institute, 65 percent of the Jewish public supports Azaria and his claim of self-defence.

“Israel’s political leadership has also swayed with the majority,” Al Jazeera’s Andrew Simmons, reporting from Tel Aviv, said.

“Avigdor Lieberman actively campaigned in support of Azaria and he has since been appointed defence minister by Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister.”

Naftali Bennett, the education minister and a member of Israel’s far-right Jewish Home party, said before the verdict that the soldier should be pardoned if found guilty.

“That is whipping up a lot of reactions,” Simmons said. “There is a split in the Israeli public opinion on how army should act in [attack] situations. In the majority are those who feel that ‘terrorists’ who attack Israeli soldiers are fair targets.”

Shortly after the shooting, the Palestinian leadership demanded the United Nations investigate what rights groups have called Israel’s “extrajudicial killings”.

Ayman Odeh, head of the Joint List, a predominantly Palestinian electoral coalition in Israel, said the “criminal occupation [of the Palestinian territories] has produced the likes of Azaria”, going on to assert that hundreds of similar incidents had not been caught on film.

There have been previous accusations that Israeli forces killed wounded Palestinian attackers who no longer posed a threat.

In a memorandum sent to the Israeli authorities in September 2016, human rights group Amnesty International highlighted at least 20 cases of apparently unlawful killings of Palestinians by Israeli forces. In at least 15 of these cases those killed were deliberately shot dead, despite posing no imminent threat to life.

Since October 2015, Israeli soldiers and settlers have been responsible for the killing of at least 244 Palestinians, including unarmed demonstrators, bystanders and alleged attackers in an upsurge in violence.

Thirty-six Israelis have also been killed in mostly stabbing and shooting incidents carried out by Palestinians.

{The unexpected resignation of Ivan Rogers came just weeks before the Brexit negotiations were to start.}

British Prime Minister Theresa May has appointed a senior career diplomat as envoy to the European Union to replace an ambassador whose unexpected resignation rocked Brexit plans just before negotiations are due to start.

Downing Street announced on Wednesday that Tim Barrow, a former ambassador to Moscow who has previously served in Brussels, would take over from Ivan Rogers as Britain heads into the talks on Brexit.

Rogers, who resigned on Tuesday, sent an email to staff condemning “ill-founded arguments and muddled thinking” over Brexit and made it clear he was still in the dark over May’s objectives.

Barrow is not known to have taken a strong public position on Brexit.

In a statement released by May’s office, he said he looked forward to joining the new government department tasked with overseeing the exit from the EU, “to ensure we get the right outcome for the United Kingdom as we leave the EU”.

A Downing Street spokesperson described Barrow as a “seasoned and tough negotiator, with extensive experience of securing UK objectives in Brussels”.

“He will bring his trademark energy and creativity to this job – working alongside other senior officials and ministers to make a success of Brexit,” the statement added.

May intends to launch the two-year process of negotiating to leave the bloc by the end of March, beginning what is expected to be some of the most complicated international talks Britain has engaged in since World War Two.

{The new law forbids dealing in and ownership of all types of wild, domesticated and dangerous animals.}

The private ownership of wild animals has been outlawed in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), where keeping exotic creatures as pets is a status symbol for some, according to local media reports.

Media reports said on Wednesday that the new law bans dealing in and ownership of all types of wild, domesticated and dangerous animals.

Wildcats including endangered cheetahs are known to have been domesticated in the UAE and neighbouring Gulf countries as status symbols, with some even spotted being taken outside in the middle of big cities.

In October, one such outing with five tigers on a beach near Dubai’s iconic Burj Al-Arab Hotel was captured on video and went viral on social media, while others have been filmed driving around with lions.

Such animals can now only be kept at zoos, wildlife parks, circuses, breading and research centres, Gulf News said.

“Anyone who takes a leopard, cheetah or any other kind of exotic animal out in public will face a jail term of up to six months and a fine” of up to 500,000 dirhams ($136,000), it added.

Al-Ittihad, an Arabic daily, said those who use wild animals to “terrorise” others would face jail or fine of up to 700,000 dirhams.

{{Move welcomed}}

The move has been welcomed by animal welfare activists.

El Sayed Mohamed, regional director at the International Fund for Animal Welfare in Dubai, was quoted by Abu Dhabi-based The National newspaper as saying that the UAE had set an example for the GCC.

“We welcome and congratulate the UAE Government in taking this important initiative, which we wish to be a milestone for the rest of the countries, not just in the region, but also in the world,” he said.

The legislation also imposes new restrictions on traditional pets.

Dog owners are required to get permits and keep the animals on leashes in public, the reports said, adding that those who fail to obtain the licences face fines of up to 100,000 dirhams.

{The rights group called the report investigating alleged abuses towards Rohingya Muslims “methodologically flawed”.}

A commission investigating violence in Myanmar’s Rakhine State has denied security forces had abused Rohingya Muslims, a claim slammed by the Human Rights Watch, the US-based rights group.

The commission’s report and the HRW’s reaction to it came on Wednesday, days after a video emerged showing police beating civilians from the Muslim minority.

Tens of thousands of Rohingya, a group loathed by many among Myanmar’s Buddhist majority, have fled a military operation in the northwestern state, launched after deadly attacks on police posts in October.

Dozens have died in the crackdown, while escapees now in neighbouring Bangladesh have alleged rape, arson, murder and torture at the hands of security forces.

Myanmar’s government, led by Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, has said the allegations are made up and has resisted mounting international pressure to act to protect the minority.

On Wednesday, the commission set up to investigate the violence released its interim report dismissing claims security forces had carried out abuses or embarked on a campaign to force the Rohingya Muslims out.

The size of the “Bengali” population, mosques and religious buildings in the unrest-hit area “are proof that there were no cases of genocide and religious persecution,” it said in a statement carried in state media.

Myanmar refuses to recognise the Rohingya as one of the country’s ethnic minorities, instead describing them as Bengalis or illegal immigrants from neighbouring Bangladesh.

{{‘Pre-baked political conclusions’}}

The commission, headed by a former army general until recently blacklisted by Washington, also found “insufficient evidence” of rape and was still looking into claims of arson, illegal arrests and torture of the Rohingya.

HRW called the report “methodologically flawed”.

“[It is] a classic example of pre-baked political conclusions to assert the situation is not so bad, designed to push back against international community pressure,” the group said.

Legal action has been taken against 485 civilians, it said, without giving further details.

The statement comes days after the government detained four police officers over a video shot by a fellow policeman that shows them beating and kicking Rohingya villagers, a rare admission of abuse.

More than 120,000 have been trapped in squalid displacement camps since sectarian violence erupted in 2012, where they are denied citizenship, access to health care and education.