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Bahraini photographer among 29 jailed for up to 10 years

Al-Akhbar | March 26, 2014

A Bahraini court on Wednesday jailed 29 people, including an award winning photographer, for up to 10 years for an alleged attack on a police center in April 2012.

A judicial source and activists said the verdicts were based on defendants’ confessions that were extracted under torture.

Twenty-six of those convicted were handed 10-year prison terms and three others jailed for three years, a source told AFP.

Among those sentenced to 10 years was Ahmed Humaidan, a 26-year-old photojournalist abducted by plainclothes police in late-2012.

Humaidan’s lawyer said the court presented no evidence to suggest that he was involved in any attack against police aside from a confession he made under torture.

The Bahrain Center for Human Rights has documented cases of torture against the young photojournalist in prison, which included being blind-folded and told to hold an object for hours that police claimed was a bomb.

The prosecution accused the defendants of attacking a police center in the village of Sitra, south of Manama, with petrol bombs and iron rods, wounding a policeman.

The other defendants also told the court that they were tortured and their confessions obtained under duress, according to the judicial source.

Bahrain, home to the US Fifth Fleet, remains in a constant state of turmoil since authorities launched a bloody crackdown on a popular uprising three years ago, with hundreds of protesters and activists jailed on “terror” charges.

Authorities in the Gulf dictatorship last year increased the penalties for those convicted of violence, introducing the death penalty or life sentences in certain cases.

(AFP, Al-Akhbar)

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March 26, 2014 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Subjugation - Torture | , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Palestinian killed after occupation forces open fire on his car

Al-Akhbar | March 11, 2014

A Palestinian died and a second was injured Tuesday after Israeli occupation forces fired on their car near Tulkarem in the northern West Bank, Palestinian security sources said.

The sources told AFP that the car then veered off the road, and it was not clear whether the gunfire or the subsequent crash led to the casualties.

There was no immediate comment from the Israeli army.

Abdullah Kamil, Tulkarem governor, identified the man who died as Fidaa Muhye Addin Majadlah, and his passenger as Ibrahim Adnan Shukri, both from the Tulkarem village of Attil, according to Palestinian news agency Ma’an.

The latter was reported to have suffered moderate to serious wounds, and is in Israeli custody. Occupation authorities are also holding Majadlah’s body, the Ma’an report added

The death comes one day after occupation forces shot dead two Palestinians in separate incidents in the West Bank.

In the first of Monday’s killings, a Jordanian-Palestinian judge was shot dead by Israeli troops at the Jordan border, with the Israelis claiming that he tried to snatch a weapon and “strangle” a soldier.

But Palestinian witnesses said the man was shot following an argument over a cigarette in an incident which prompted a furious response from the Palestinian Authority and Amman.

The man was identified as 38-year-old Raed Zeiter who worked as a judge in Amman. Jordan’s justice ministry said he worked at a magistrate’s court in the capital.

Several hours after Zeiter’s death, occupation forces shot dead a 20-year-old Palestinian, identified as Fadi Sayel Darwish, near the West Bank city of Ramallah. The army said he had been throwing stones at soldiers.

(AFP, Al-Akhbar)

March 11, 2014 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | , , , | Comments Off on Palestinian killed after occupation forces open fire on his car

Saudi forces kill two anti-government protesters in Qatif

Al-Akhbar | February 20, 2014

A Saudi court has jailed seven protesters for up to 20 years for joining a demonstration and chanting anti-government slogans in the kingdom’s Eastern Province, local media reported Thursday.

The Eastern Province, where Qatif is located, was the site of frequent Shia-led protests between February 2011 and August 2012.

A specialized court in Riyadh on Wednesday sentenced the young defendants to between six and 20 years in prison and imposed travel bans of the same duration as their jail terms.

They were convicted of “taking part in protests,” “chanting slogans against the state,” and “possessing and making Molotov cocktails,” according to local newspapers.

The court in the ultra-conservative kingdom also sentenced one of the defendants to 80 lashes for consuming alcohol.

The defendants said they would appeal.

Protests first erupted in the province of eastern Saudi Arabia in March 2011. Since then 10 people have been killed in clashes with security forces.

The Eastern Province is home to many of the kingdom’s minority Shias, who have long complained of discrimination in a country that hews to the rigid Wahhabi school of Sunni Islam.

Shias say they are passed over for government jobs, that some of their neighborhoods lack investment afforded to Sunni districts and that powerful government-paid clerics publicly denigrate their faith. The authorities deny discrimination.

Fighting intensified after the arrest in July 2012 of Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, considered to be a driving force behind the protests.

However, tensions eased in August that year when seven dignitaries from Qatif hailed a call by King Abdullah for the creation of a center for Sunni-Shia interfaith dialogue.

(AFP, Al-Akhbar)

February 20, 2014 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Solidarity and Activism, Subjugation - Torture, Video | , , , , | Comments Off on Saudi forces kill two anti-government protesters in Qatif

Scientist puts in doubt French report ruling out Arafat poisoning

Al-Akhbar | December 5, 2013

A French report ruling out poisoning in Yasser Arafat’s 2004 death has a glaring inconsistency, the co-author of a Swiss probe said Thursday, sticking by his team’s conclusion that the Palestinian leader was likely killed.

“Our data lean more towards the thesis of poisoning than in the opposite direction,” Professor François Bochud, head of the Lausanne Institute of Applied Radiophysics, told AFP.

Bochud is the co-author of a report published last month that said the high levels of polonium – a rare and highly radioactive element – found in Arafat’s remains and personal effects indicated third party involvement in his death.

An as-yet unpublished French report however rules out poisoning, a source close to the probe said this week, with an argument that the naturally occurring radioactive element radon, found in the ground, explained the high polonium levels.

Bochud, who has read the French report, stressed that the 107-page Swiss study had presented numerous arguments against that theory, the most compelling being that other remains exhumed from the same cemetery did not contain excessive levels of polonium.

Both the Swiss and the French experts thoroughly cleaned Arafat’s bones to remove external contamination before carrying out their measurements, and proceeded to find identical levels of polonium, he pointed out.

“I have a hard time understanding why they, on one side say they have thoroughly cleaned the bones and eliminated contaminations, and at the same time explain their measurements with the very contamination they supposedly eliminated,” he said.

“It’s a bit difficult to follow their reasoning,” he added.

The circumstances of Arafat’s death aged 75 at a military hospital near Paris in November 2004 after a sudden deterioration in his health have long been mired in rumor and speculation.

France opened a formal murder inquiry in August 2012, a month after an documentary by the al-Jazeera television network linked Arafat’s death to polonium poisoning.

Some 60 samples were taken from his remains in November 2012 and divided between Swiss and Russian investigators and a French team carrying out a probe at his widow’s request.

Many Palestinians believe he was poisoned by Israel – a claim denied by the Jewish state.

(AFP, Al-Akhbar)

December 5, 2013 Posted by | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular | , , , | Comments Off on Scientist puts in doubt French report ruling out Arafat poisoning

Israeli forces destroy water tank, agricultural facility in West Bank village

Al-Akhbar | November 20, 2013

Israeli forces demolished a water tank and an agricultural structure in a West Bank village near Nablus on Wednesday, a local official said.

Deputy mayor of Aqraba Bilal Abdul-Hadi told Ma’an news agency that three bulldozers escorted by seven military vehicles stormed the neighborhood of al-Taweel and began demolishing the structures, claiming they were built without authorization.

Shaddad Attili, who heads the Palestinian Water Authority, said the World Bank, the United Nations and other international organizations have issued reports condemning Israel’s attacks on Palestinian water rights.

“Israel controls all the water resources in the occupied West Bank. It exploits these resources for near exclusive Israeli use, allocating a mere fraction of the available water supply to Palestinians,” Ma’an quoted Attili as saying. “While Israelis enjoy some of the highest water consumption rates in the world, Palestinians continue to face a series of crippling water shortages artificially engineered by Israel as a matter of policy.”

mainThe official added that Israel used water to target vulnerable Palestinian communities.

Israel has destroyed more than 558 Palestinian properties in the West Bank and East Jerusalem since the beginning of this year, displacing 919 people, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

Between 2009 and 2011, Israel’s military destroyed 173 water, sanitation and hygiene structures in the West Bank including 40 wells, 57 rainwater collection cisterns and at least 20 toilets and sinks, OCHA reported.

A 2012 report by the Emergency Water, Sanitation and Hygiene group slammed Israel’s policies towards water and sanitation facilities in the West Bank, saying their extensive destruction was in contravention of international law.

(Ma’an, Al-Akhbar)

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November 20, 2013 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Subjugation - Torture | , , , | Comments Off on Israeli forces destroy water tank, agricultural facility in West Bank village

Disarmament watchdog says Syrian chemical weapons equipment destroyed

Al-Akhbar | October 31, 2013

All of Syria’s declared chemical arms production equipment has been destroyed ahead of a Friday deadline, a source at the world’s chemical weapons watchdog said.

“Syria has completed rendering inoperable its chemical weapons production and assembly installations,” the source at the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) said, asking to remain anonymous ahead of an official announcement later Thursday.

Inspectors had until Friday to visit all of Syria’s chemical sites and destroy all production and filling equipment in accordance with a timeline laid down by the Hague-based OPCW and backed by a UN Security Council resolution passed last month.

The resolution was agreed by the US and Russia to avert military strikes on Syria after deadly chemical weapons attacks outside Damascus in August, which the West blamed on President Bashar al-Assad. The Syrian government has categorically rejected such accusations.

A first monthly report of the inspectors, covering their work on the ground since October 1, has been sent to the UN Security Council by UN chief Ban Ki-moon.

The OPCW’s Executive Council will use the Syrian declaration to decide by November 15 on “destruction milestones” for Syria’s arsenal.

Syria has also sent in a declaration of its chemical weapons activities and facilities, meeting its obligations as a new state party to the Chemical Weapons Convention.

(AFP, Al-Akhbar)

October 31, 2013 Posted by | Aletho News | , , , | Comments Off on Disarmament watchdog says Syrian chemical weapons equipment destroyed

Israeli settlement construction rose by 70 percent in 2013, NGO says

Al-Akhbar | October 17, 2013

Construction starts in illegal Jewish settlements on occupied Palestinian land rose by a “drastic” 70 percent year-on-year in the first half of 2013, an Israeli NGO said on Thursday.

According to figures released by the anti-settlement group Peace Now, between January and June construction starts were made on 1,708 new homes in the West Bank, including annexed east Jerusalem, compared with 995 in the first half of 2012.

Billing the figures as a “drastic rise,” Peace Now said only a third of the construction had taken place on the Israeli side of the vast separation barrier which cuts through the West Bank.

And 86 percent of the new construction was carried out in areas where tenders were not required, it said, meaning that building activity did not technically flout the quiet freeze on tenders Israel reportedly agreed to this year as Washington pushed for a resumption of direct peace talks.

“This means the ‘tender moratorium’ declared by the government until the prisoner release in (August) 2013 was not a general construction freeze but only of a small part of the construction in settlements,” the watchdog said, referring to the government’s release of 26 long-term Palestinian prisoners as a proclaimed gesture of goodwill.

US-sponsored direct peace talks resumed in late July after a hiatus of nearly three years, although both sides have kept a tight lid on the substance under discussion at the request of Washington.

“The fact that there is talk about a freeze on tenders doesn’t dramatically change the situation on the ground,” Peace Now’s Hagit Ofran told AFP. “They are building as usual.”

“The tendency of (Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu’s government has been to build more in isolated settlements deep in the West Bank where tenders are not needed, compared with the previous government which built more in settlements closer to the Green Line,” she said.

Settlement building in the territories occupied by Israel during the 1967 Six Day War is considered illegal under international law, and the issue remains one of the most divisive issues in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

“Fortunately the Palestinians did not leave the talks because of the continued construction in settlements, but there is a chance that if this policy continues, then it will be very very hard to hold on to the talks,” Ofran said.

The Palestinians said that settlement building threatened the future of the fledgling peace talks.

“Israel’s continued settlement building is destroying the peace process,” top negotiator Saeb Erakat told AFP, holding “the Israeli government fully responsible for this situation and its outcome.”

(AFP, Al-Akhbar)

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October 17, 2013 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation | , , , , | 1 Comment

Iran rejects calls to ship out uranium stockpile

Al-Akhbar | October 13, 2013

Iran will not agree to ship out its stockpile of enriched uranium, one of its main negotiators said Sunday ahead of crunch talks with world powers on its nuclear program.

“We will negotiate about the volume, levels and the methods of enrichment but shipping out the (enriched) material is a red line for Iran,” deputy foreign minister Abbas Araqchi told the state broadcaster.

The remarks came on the eve of two-day talks in Geneva, the first meeting between Iranian negotiators and world powers since President Hassan Rohani, a reputed moderate, took office in August.

The red line adds to Tehran’s insistence on what it considers its right to operate a uranium enrichment program on its soil.

Iran currently has a stockpile of 6,774 kilograms of low-level uranium enriched, and nearly 186 kg of medium-enriched material with 20 percent purity, according to latest figures by the UN nuclear watchdog in September.

It also possesses some 187 kg of the 20 percent material converted to uranium oxide for use in fuel plates.

“The Iranian negotiating team will present a specific plan … which we hope will produce results in a logical time period,” Araqchi said.

Araqchi signaled flexibility on other aspects of Iran’s uranium enrichment.

“Of course we will negotiate regarding the form, amount, and various levels of (uranium) enrichment,” he said.

Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif is Iran’s top negotiator with the so-called P5+1 group of the United States, Britain, China, France and Russia plus Germany.

But Araqchi said he will lead the Iranian team in the talks with European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton and representatives from the P5+1 countries as Zarif will only attend the opening meeting.

He said Iran would “remove all of (the) rational concerns of the other side,” referring to suspicions in the West and Israel that Tehran is pursuing nuclear arms under the guise of a civilian energy program, a claim the Islamic state vehemently denies.

(AFP, Reuters, Al-Akhbar)

October 13, 2013 Posted by | Aletho News | , , , | 1 Comment

Syrian National Council won’t attend Geneva II peace talks

Al-Akhbar | October 13, 2013

A key group within the Syrian opposition National Coalition said Sunday it would not attend proposed peace talks in Geneva and would quit the Coalition if it participated.

“The Syrian National Council, which is the biggest bloc in the Coalition, has taken the firm decision… not to go to Geneva, under the present circumstances (on the ground),” Council president George Sabra, told AFP.

“This means that we will not stay in the Coalition if it goes” to the peace talks in Geneva, he added.

He invoked the ongoing suffering of Syrians on the ground and said his group would not negotiate before the fall of the government.

The international community, led by Russia and the United States, has been pushing for the Syrian government and rebels to attend a peace conference dubbed Geneva II to find a political solution to the conflict.

The proposed meeting has been delayed for months, but Washington and Moscow are now talking about a potential mid-November date for the talks.

The Syrian National Council has long said it will not negotiate until President Bashar al-Assad’s government is toppled.

But Sabra’s announcement, which comes after two days of meetings of the Council’s top leadership, could deal a major blow to the planned talks.

It comes a day before US Secretary of State John Kerry is due in London to meet Lakhdar Brahimi, the UN-Arab League envoy for Syria, to discuss preparations for the Geneva II meeting.

Last month, the Coalition’s president Ahmed Jarba met with UN chief Ban Ki-Moon, who praised his “commitment to send a delegation to the Geneva Conference.”

Ban also urged Jarba “to reach out to other opposition groups and agree on a representative and united delegation,” UN spokesman Martin Nesirky said.

But the prospect of talks with Assad’s government continues to be deeply unpopular both among members of Jarba’s Coalition and rebel fighters on the ground in Syria.

Sabra fiercely criticized the international community, accusing it of failing to punish Assad after an August 21 sarin attack that reportedly killed hundreds of people in the outskirts of the capital Damascus.

Washington threatened to carry out military strikes in response to the attacks, which the United States and the Syrian opposition blamed on Assad, a charge the Syrian government vehemently denied..

But military action was averted by a US-Russian deal under which Syria is turning over its chemical arsenal for destruction.

“The international community has focused on the murder weapon, which is the chemical weapons, and left the murderer unpunished and forgotten the victims,” Sabra said.

“The regional and international context does not give the impression that Geneva II will offer anything to the Syrians,” he added.

“We will not participate in a conference that is intended to hide the failure of international politics.”

(AFP, Al-Akhbar)

October 13, 2013 Posted by | Aletho News | , , , | Comments Off on Syrian National Council won’t attend Geneva II peace talks

Bahrain sentences nine activists to life in prison

Al-Akhbar | October 7, 2013

A Bahraini court jailed nine activists for life Monday after alleging that they made bombs for “terrorist” purposes, a judicial source said.

Four of the defendants were in court for the verdict and the remaining five, tried in absentia, were handed an 10 additional years in jail for failing to hand themselves in. Life imprisonment in Bahrain is a 25-year-sentence.

Human rights groups have slammed the Bahraini dictatorship’s persecution of activists and political opponents since a pro-democracy movement swept the tiny Gulf kingdom two and a half years ago.

The courts, whose judges are appointed by the Bahraini king, have jailed hundreds of peace activists and human rights leaders on terrorism-related charges in recent months.

Monday’s ruling brings to 104 the number of activists jailed since September 29 over terrorism-related charges in the western and Saudi-backed Gulf kingdom.

The four men told the court that they were tortured, mistreated and held in solitary confinement – a routine procedure in country to force confessions, according to the Bahrain Center for Human Rights (BCHR).

The defendants were found guilty of “joining a group with the intention of disturbing public order and using terrorism to endanger Bahrain’s security,” the charge sheet said.

They were also convicted of making bombs and training others how to produce them, and “owning and using explosives for a terrorist purpose and carrying out bombings to terrorize citizens.”

BCHR says at least 89 people have been killed by Bahraini police and a Saudi-led Gulf force since the a popular, anti-government uprising erupted in February 2011.

Bahrain is the home base of the US Fifth Fleet and Washington is a long-standing ally of the Al-Khalifa ruling family.

(AFP, Al-Akhbar)

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October 7, 2013 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Subjugation - Torture | , , , , , | Comments Off on Bahrain sentences nine activists to life in prison

Israelis torch Palestinian car, slash tires of five others

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Photo credit – alarabiya.net
Al-Akhbar | October 1, 2013

Suspected Jewish extremists slashed the tires of five Palestinian-owned cars in Israeli-occupied east Jerusalem overnight, a police spokeswoman and local media said on Tuesday.

Separately in the occupied West Bank village of Burin, near Nablus, Israeli settlers set fire to a car, Ma’an news agency cited a Palestinian Authority official as saying.

“Five vehicles were vandalized close to the Old City at the entrance to the Silwan neighborhood, and the slogan ‘price tag’ written on a wall nearby,” spokeswoman Luba Samri said.

Initially carried out against Palestinians in “retaliation” for their filing lawsuits against Israel to reclaim stolen land occupied by settlers, price tag attacks have become a much broader phenomenon with racist and xenophobic overtones.

And in the northern West Bank, Ma’an reported that settlers from the illegal Yizhar outpost torched a car belonging to a Palestinian man at the entrance of the northern West Bank village of Burin, according to official Ghassan Daghlas who documents settler crimes.

Tuesday’s attacks come two days after police caught four Israelis red-handed as they destroyed Christian tombstones in a Palestinian cemetery in Jerusalem cemetery.

(AFP, Al-Akhbar)

October 1, 2013 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , , , , | Comments Off on Israelis torch Palestinian car, slash tires of five others

Israeli soldiers rough up EU diplomat, confiscate aid supplies for Palestinians

Al-Akhbar | September 20, 2013

bum69cxcuaayoazIsraeli soldiers manhandled European diplomats on Friday and seized a truck full of tents and emergency aid they had been trying to deliver to Palestinians whose homes were demolished this week.

A Reuters reporter saw soldiers throw sound grenades at a group of diplomats, aid workers and locals in the occupied West Bank, and yank a French diplomat out of the truck before driving away with its contents.

“They dragged me out of the truck and forced me to the ground with no regard for my diplomatic immunity,” French diplomat Marion Castaing said.

“This is how international law is being respected here,” she said, covered with dust.

The Israeli army and police declined to comment.

Locals said Khirbet al-Makhul was home to about 120 people. The army demolished their houses, stables and a kindergarten on Monday after Israel’s high court ruled that they did not have proper building permits.

Despite losing their property, the inhabitants have refused to leave the land, where they say their families have lived for generations along with their flocks of sheep.

Israeli soldiers stopped the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) delivering emergency aid on Tuesday and on Wednesday IRCS staff managed to put up some tents but the army forced them to take the shelters down.

Diplomats from France, Britain, Spain, Ireland, Australia and the European Union’s political office, turned up on Friday with more supplies. As soon as they arrived, about a dozen Israeli army jeeps converged on them, and soldiers told them not to unload their truck.

“It’s shocking and outrageous. We will report these actions to our governments,” said one EU diplomat, who declined to be named because he did not have authorization to talk to the media.

“(Our presence here) is a clear matter of international humanitarian law. By the Geneva Convention, an occupying power needs to see to the needs of people under occupation. These people aren’t being protected,” he said.

In scuffles between soldiers and locals, several villagers were detained and an elderly Palestinian man fainted and was taken for medical treatment.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said in a statement that Makhul was the third Bedouin community to be demolished by the Israelis in the West Bank and adjacent Jerusalem municipality since August.

Palestinians have accused the Israeli authorities of progressively taking their historical grazing lands, either earmarking it for military use or handing it over to the Israelis whose settlements dot the West Bank.

Israeli forces regularly demolish Palestinian homes, claiming they do not have the proper construction permits. However, the Israeli government regularly announces the expansion of settlements, which are considered illegal under international law.

Israelis and Palestinians resumed direct peace talks last month after a three-year hiatus. Palestinian officials have expressed serious doubts about the prospects of a breakthrough.

“What the Israelis are doing is not helpful to the negotiations. Under any circumstances, talks or not, they’re obligated to respect international law,” the unnamed EU diplomat said.

(Reuters, Al-Akhbar)

September 20, 2013 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

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