Tag: InternationalNews

{French president’s remarks in a new book draw criticism as he also says too many immigrants are arriving.}

President Francois Hollande told the authors of a book just published that France has “a problem with Islam” and there are too many immigrants arriving in the country who “shouldn’t be here”.

Hollande made the controversial remarks to the authors of A President Shouldn’t Say That… in December 2015, a month after gunmen attacked Paris, killing 130 people. Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) claimed responsibility for the deadly assault.

“It’s true that there’s a problem with Islam. No one doubts it,” Hollande is quoted as saying in the book published this week.

“It’s not that Islam poses a problem in the sense that it is a dangerous religion, but in as far as it wants to affirm itself as a religion of the Republic.”

Hollande also told the Le Monde journalists Gerard David and Fabrice Lhomme: “I think there are too many arrivals of immigration that shouldn’t be there.”

Immigration and national identity are key themes in campaigning for next year’s presidential election.

A string of attacks in France in the past two years, coupled with the Europe-wide migrant crisis, have stoked anti-immigration sentiment.

A heated debate about Muslim integration in staunchly secular France came to a head over the summer when about 30 towns banned the body-concealing “burkini” swimsuit. France’s highest administrative court later ruled that such a ban was a “serious” violation of basic freedoms.

The deeply unpopular Hollande has not yet declared whether he intends to stand for re-election.

But his arch-rival Nicolas Sarkozy, bidding for the centre-right nomination, is campaigning heavily on populist anti-immigration themes.

“Politicians from across the spectrum have almost a free rein to criticise/demonise Islam and Muslims and use it as a scare tactic whenever a particular leader or political party is in a critical situation facing the public opinion – knowing that the French Muslim citizens have no real organised lobby with the capacity to exercise any influence on the parties or politicians,” French sociologist and media critic Ali Saad told Al Jazeera.

“This reality is even clearer in the case of the present government, since all the Socialist Party’s tenors – such as [Prime Minister] Valls, [former finance minister] Macron, [and women’s rights Minister Laurence] Rossignol – are on the same wavelength as the president,” he added.

The French government’s policies – particularly in the wake of the 2015 Paris attacks and the subsequent declaration of a state of emergency – have come under harsh criticism from rights groups for the targeting of Muslims through detainment and harassment.

“In the long term, such a stigma endured by Muslim citizens would force them into seclusion, which could entail grave consequences for France’s social cohesion because isolation helps religious extremism to take roots and develop,” said Saad.

Asked about Hollande’s comments, government spokesman Stephane Le Foll reiterated the president’s remarks.

“There’s a problem with Islam today because Islam is politicised by some. There is a problem – and at the same time we need to be able to overcome this problem.”

{Thousands of people march in Bogota and elsewhere calling on the government and FARC rebels to save a peace deal.}

Thousands of people have marched in cities across Colombia to demand a peace deal between the government and leftist rebels not be scuttled.

Wednesday’s demonstrations marked the second time in a week that Colombians took to the streets to support the accord signed last month with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and now hanging by a thread after a shock referendum defeat for the deal.

“We have seen hundreds of representatives of indigenous groups, Afro-Colombians and other groups of minorities who walked through Bogota demanding peace,” Al Jazeera’s Alessandro Rampietti, reporting from the capital Bogota, said.

In Bogota, victims of the decades-long conflict carrying photos of dead loved ones were greeted by well-wishers handing white flowers symbolising peace.

“We victims are in a state of limbo, we need the accord now,” Diana Gomez, a 38-year-old activist whose father was killed a decade ago, told The Associated Press news agency.

She said her father’s murder remains unsolved – one of many unresolved cases during a 52-year-old conflict that claimed the lives of 220,000 people and left almost eight million displaced.

{{Deal adjustments}}

President Juan Manuel Santos, winner of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize, is in talks with the opposition and FARC to make adjustments to the accord following its narrow rejection in a referendum six days after it was signed in front of world leaders.

But it is not clear he can save the deal as opponents push for stiffer penalties for rebel leaders and fighters.

Under the terms of the accord signed on September 26, FARC leaders would be able to serve in Congress, with a guarantee of 10 seats, while fighters who confessed their crimes would be spared time in jail and instead ordered to carry out community development work in areas hard hit by the conflict.

“This isn’t a question of cosmetic changes,” former President Alvaro Uribe, who led the campaign against the peace deal, said on Wednesday after delivering to government officials a list of proposals that he said would strengthen and provide broader support for the accord.

“In a country of institutions like Colombia, transitional justice can’t consist of failing to punish those responsible for atrocious crimes.”

The FARC leader Timoleon Jimenez, known by his nom de guerre Timochenko, tried to put on a brave face on Wednesday, saying that the group is open to making adjustments even if it is not willing to start negotiations again from scratch.

“Personally I think it may have been good that this happened,” said Timochenko, referring to the referendum loss, in a rare, hour-long interview with Caracol Radio.

“It allows us to clear up many doubts and especially commit the important segment of the Colombian society that didn’t vote, more than 63 percent, to take an interest in this history-making event.”

Wednesday’s march on the Plaza Bolivar, adjacent to the congress and presidential palace, appeared to be larger than last week’s rally, a potential sign of how politically apathetic Colombians have been jolted into action by the fading prospects for peace.

In recent days, the Plaza has been overtaken by dozens of tents set up by peace activists and on Tuesday was blanketed with a giant, white shroud containing the names of almost 2,000 victims of the conflict stenciled in ash.

Santos has applauded the outburst of activism, and on Wednesday reiterated the need to seek a quick solution to the impasse so that a ceasefire in place does not unravel.

“The great majority of people have asked me to find a solution soon because uncertainty is the enemy,” he said in televised address.

{US navy bombs three radar sites controlled by Houthis after it says its warship came under missile attacks.}

The US military has launched cruise missile strikes to knock out three coastal radar sites in areas of Yemen controlled by Houthi rebel forces, in retaliation for missile attacks at its Navy ship.

Thursday’s strikes, authorised by President Barack Obama, represent Washington’s first direct military action against Houthi-controlled targets in Yemen’s conflict.

The Pentagon said the strikes were aimed at radars that enabled the launch of at least three missiles against the US Navy destroyer USS Mason since Sunday.

US officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said US Navy destroyer USS Nitze launched the Tomahawk cruise missiles around 4am local time (01:00 GMT), according to Reuters news agency.

“These radars were active during previous attacks and attempted attacks on ships in the Red Sea,” including the USS Mason, one of the officials said, adding the sites were in remote areas where the risk of civilian casualties was low.

The US official identified the areas in Yemen where the radars were targeted as near Ras Isa, north of Mukha and near Khoka.

Rebels’ denial

The missile attacks on the USS Mason – the latest of which took place earlier on Wednesday – appeared to be the Houthis’ response to a suspected Arab coalition strike on mourners gathered in Yemen’s Houthi-held capital Sanaa.

But Houthi rebel fighters and allies on Thursday denied the accusations that they had targeted the USS Mason, according to AFP news agency.

“Those claims are baseless,” the Saba news agency quoted a military official allied with the rebels as saying. “The [rebel-allied] army and the Popular Committees [armed group] have nothing to do with this action.”

The missile incidents, along with an October 1 strike on a vessel from the United Arab Emirates, add to questions about the safety of passage for military ships around the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, one of the world’s busiest shipping routes.

The Pentagon warned against any future attacks.

“The United States will respond to any further threat to our ships and commercial traffic, as appropriate,” Cook said.

The conflict between Yemen’s government and Houthi rebels escalated last year with the intervention of an Arab coalition in support of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi.

The UN says more than 6,700 people have been killed and more than three million displaced by fighting in Yemen since March 2015, when the coalition launched its campaign.

{Syrian refugee arrested for allegedly planning a major airport attack commits suicide in Leipzig prison cell.}

A Syrian man suspected of planning a bomb attack on a German airport was found dead in a prison cell on Wednesday after reportedly killing himself.

Jaber al-Bakr, 22, was arrested earlier this week after a two-day manhunt following the discovery of explosives and other bomb-making equipment at his flat in the nearby city of Chemnitz.

Justice Ministry spokesman Joerg Herold told the Associated Press news agency that Bakr killed himself sometime in the evening, but the incident was still being investigated.

Investigators said Bakr, who arrived in Germany last year, had links to Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS).

“On the evening of October 12, 2016, Jaber al-Bakr, who was suspected of planning a serious attack, took his life in the detention centre at Leipzig correctional hospital,” the ministry said in a statement on its website.

It said it would give more details at a news conference in Dresden on Thursday at 0900GMT.

Spiegel Online reported that Bakr had been under round-the-clock surveillance in police custody in Leipzig because he was on hunger strike and an acute suicide risk.

German news agency DPA reported that Bakr hanged himself in his cell.

Bakr was arrested on Monday after three Syrian refugees whom he befriended tied up the suspect in their flat in Leipzig and alerted police after realising he was a wanted man.

However, sources told DPA that during police interrogations Bakr had accused the refugees of having known in advance about the planned attack.

Prosecutors leading the investigation refused to confirm that information, or say whether the refugees were being treated as suspects or witnesses.

{Top court adjourns final appeal in case of Asia Bibi, on death row since 2010, after a judge recuses from bench.}

Pakistan’s Supreme Court has delayed an appeal into the country’s most notorious blasphemy case against a Christian mother on death row since 2010, after one of the judges stepped down.

Thousands of security troops had been deployed in the capital, Islamabad, as the court prepared to hear a final appeal in the case of Asia Bibi on Thursday.

The court did not immediately set a new date for the appeal.

But the threat of violence was largely abated when one of the three-judge bench, Justice Iqbal Hameed ur Rehman, told the court he had to recuse himself from the case.

“I was a part of the bench that was hearing the case of Salmaan Taseer, and this case is related to that,” he told the court.

Taseer, a liberal provincial governor, was shot dead in Islamabad in 2011 after speaking out for Bibi.

His assassin, Mumtaz Qadri, was hanged earlier in 2016 in a step welcomed by liberals in the country, but which brought hardliners into the streets calling for Bibi’s death.

A senior police official said that up to 3,000 forces were deployed in the capital on Thursday.

“Security is very tight in Islamabad all around today. Additional troops have been deployed on checkpoints and city junctions in general. There is also deployment of paramilitary force Rangers and FC [Frontier Corps] on some additional points,” a police source told AFP news agency.

Up to 100 officers, many in riot gear, were stationed outside the Supreme Court as Bibi’s lawyer and husband arrived for the hearing, with more throughout the city.

“I have made my preparation, we are very hopeful,” Bibi’s lawyer Saif-ul-Malook told AFP earlier.

Blasphemy is a hugely sensitive issue in Pakistan.

Rights groups complain that the controversial legislation is often abused to carry out personal vendettas, mainly against minority Christians.

Bibi was convicted and sentenced to hang in 2010 after an argument with a Muslim woman over a bowl of water. Her supporters maintain her innocence and insist it was a personal dispute.

But successive appeals have been rejected, and if the Supreme Court bench upholds Bibi’s conviction, her only recourse will be a direct appeal to the president for clemency.

She would become the first person in Pakistan to be executed for blasphemy.

The repercussions for minorities, human rights and the blasphemy laws will be “tremendous” if that happens, said Shahzad Akbar, a human rights lawyer.

Observers have warned of possible violence if the conviction is overturned, with some calling the case a battle for Pakistan’s soul as the state walks a line between upholding human rights and appeasing hardliners.

{At least 81 civilians killed on Wednesday alone in more than 50 Russian and Syrian air attacks on rebel-held Aleppo.}

Syria’s Aleppo city was the scene of mass carnage on Wednesday with at least 81 civilians killed in air strikes on rebel-held neighbourhoods, a local rescue group said.

First responders said the divided city’s eastern sector was pounded by more than 50 Russian and Syrian government missile attacks throughout the day that also wounded more than 87 people – some of whom are in a critical condition.

“Up until this moment the Civil Defence is still working to pull people from the rubble,” Ibrahim Abu Leith, an Aleppo-based spokesman for the White Helmets, a rescue group operating in rebel-held areas, told Al Jazeera.

Earlier in the day, air strikes on a busy marketplace in the Fardous neighbourhood killed at least 22 people.

Dr Farida, a gynaecologist whose clinic was in the market, said it was not clear what the aircraft were targeting.

“Many stores totally disappeared. I can’t find a trace of a mini-market I used to buy things from,” she told the Associated Press news agency, asking that her last name not be published because of security concerns.

“The destruction is horrible,” she said. “The rubble has piled up and the roads are cut.”

According to Abu Leith, 45 people were killed in Fardous alone.

“We only have three doctors in our hospital and about eight nurses. We couldn’t accept all the injured at the same time,” Modar Sheikho, an emergency nurse in Fardous, told Al Jazeera.

According to global charity Doctors Without Borders, there are only 11 ambulances left for the 275,000 people who remain in the rebel-held sector. Only 35 doctors are still there.

Pro-government forces have opened at least seven different fronts across the divided city.

“Last week the Syrian army said it would reduce its air strikes to allow people in rebel-held east Aleppo to leave. There were a few days of calm, but there was no corridor for civilians to evacuate to other rebel-held areas,” Al Jazeera’s Zeina Khodr said, reporting from Gaziantep along the Turkey-Syria border.

And while there has been “criticism” from the international community, said Khodr, there has been “little action … food supplies are running low and medical services are overwhelmed”.

The latest strikes have shattered a relative lull in the area, where hospitals, underground shelters and buildings had been targeted for weeks.

The surge in attacks on Wednesday came as Russia announced that it would hold new peace talks with the United States and regional powers this weekend.

{Three men hailed as heroes after handing over Syrian wanted for allegedly planning bomb attack in city of Leipzig.}

Three refugees have been hailed as heroes in Germany after they apprehended a Syrian fugitive wanted in an alleged bomb plot and handed him over to police in the eastern city of Leipzig.

Jaber al-Bakr, 22, was tied up and held by three other Syrians who alerted police. He was arrested on Monday, nearly two days after he evaded officers during a raid on an apartment about 80km away from where police found explosives.

On Tuesday, Leipzig Mayor Burkhard Jung thanked the Syrians, whom authorities are not identifying out of concern they could become targets for retribution.

“This is an immense success against terrorism and shows that a large majority of the foreigners and asylum seekers who live here want nothing to do with this form of radical Islamism,” Burkhard said.

Investigators suspect that Bakr, who had been granted asylum in Germany and was among 890,000 refugees who arrived in the country last year, was linked to Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and considering Berlin’s airports as potential targets.

Worries over the difficulties of integrating large numbers of newcomers and over the possibility of some carrying out attacks have helped boost anti-foreigner sentiment in recent months. In July, several people were wounded in two attacks carried out by asylum seekers and claimed by ISIL. Both assailants were killed.

Andre Hahn, a prominent politician with the opposition Left Party, told Bayerischer Rundfunk radio that “the courageous people” who captured Bakr should be granted asylum “as soon as possible” in recognition of their courage.

“That would be very important for all honest refugees who need help and who in their absolute majority have nothing to do with the self-styled Islamic State or any terrorist activities,” Hahn said.

The Syrians’ asylum status wasn’t immediately clear.

Bakr met the fellow Syrians, who eventually turned him in, after he fled the police raid in the city of Chemnitz and posted on an internet network for Syrian refugees that he was at Leipzig’s main rail station and needed a place to stay, German newspaper Bild reported.

One of the Syrians, identified only as Mohamed A, was quoted as telling the newspaper he and a friend picked Bakr up and took him back to another friend’s apartment, only later seeing police notices on Facebook about the bomb-plot suspect.

As Bakr slept on Sunday evening, they discussed with other Syrians on Facebook whether their guest was the fugitive, and then tied him up with electric cords.

“He offered us 1,000 euros [$1,115] and $200 if we let him go. He had that in a backpack together with a knife,” the man was quoted as saying. “I am so grateful to Germany for taking us in. We could not allow him to do something to Germans.”

Hans-Georg Maassen, head of the domestic intelligence agency, told ZDF television it received information in early September that ISIL was planning “attacks on infrastructure, stations and airports, in western Europe, particularly Germany”.

Maassen said in separate comments to ARD television that the suspect had bought chemicals online. On Friday, officials observed Bakr at a shop buying hot glue, which he said is “used by people who want to carry out suicide attacks”.

He and other officials were tight-lipped with details of Bakr’s suspected contacts with ISIL, saying that is part of their ongoing investigation.

“From intelligence information, there are good reasons to say that he had relations with ISIL,” Maassen said.

{Israeli forces prevent ambulance from reaching 20-year-old Ali Shioukhi in Silwan neighbourhood, local media say.}

Israeli soldiers have shot dead a Palestinian after clashes in the Silwan neighbourhood of Occupied East Jerusalem, Palestinian officials said.

Ali Shioukhi, 20, was killed by security forces on Tuesday night, as the Israeli army was deployed in force across the Occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem to quell Palestinian dissent during the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur, the officials said.

Israeli forces had raided Silwan late on Tuesday night before protests erupted.

The security forces then prevented an ambulance from reaching the scene after Shioukhi was shot in the chest, according to Palestinian media.

The Shioukhi family, along with dozens of other Palestinians in Silwan, opted to bury Ali’s body the same night, out of fear that the Israelis would try to keep it.

According to a statement issued by the Committee of Jerusalemite Families, Shioukhi was released from an Israeli prison earlier this year after serving a 15-month sentence.

{{Silwan protests}}

In Silwan, a neighbourhood of roughly 50,000 Palestinians in Occupied East Jerusalem, Palestinian families are regularly evicted from their homes through a combination of Israeli court orders and military force. Their homes and apartment buildings are then demolished.

Residential buildings for Jewish settler families are often built in place of the destroyed Palestinian homes.

Palestinian residents have frequently clashed with the Israeli army in Silwan to protest the policy.