Category Archives: Middle East and North Africa

US senator warns top Saudi over refusal to testify on PGA golf deal

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Richard Blumenthal to consider ‘other legal methods’ to compel Yasir al-Rumayyan to speak to Senate oversight committee

A senior US lawmaker has challenged a Saudi Arabian official’s refusal to voluntarily testify before a Senate committee investigating the kingdom’s controversial golf deal with the PGA Tour, saying officials should be prepared to be subject to American laws and oversight if they invest in the US.

Richard Blumenthal, a Democratic senator from Connecticut who serves as chairman of the Senate’s permanent subcommittee on investigations, also said he would consider “other legal methods” to force Yasir al-Rumayyan, the governor of the Public Investment Fund (PIF), to testify if he continued to refuse.

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Family of academic detained in Egypt accuse US of breaking pledge to help

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Salah Soltan, a US green card holder and critic of Abdel-Fatah al-Sisi, claims he faces death in Cairo jail and urges Biden to act

A prominent Egyptian prisoner of conscience has told his family that he faces death in detention, spurring them to accuse the Biden administration of abandoning their father, despite previous promises on human rights.

In a letter smuggled out of prison, Salah Soltan, a US green card holder and Islamic jurisprudence scholar, said he felt “as if I stared death in the eyes while lying on the ground, paralysed and denied help and medicine for days,” after collapsing in his cell earlier this year following complaints of chest pains. His family say the letter was his first unsupervised contact in two and a half years.

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‘Dire crisis for children’ in Sudan, aid groups warn as millions more go hungry

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Up to 17,000 more children a day lack food, Save the Children say, as global indifference to humanitarian crisis condemned as ‘racist’

The past four months of fighting in Sudan has pushed millions into food insecurity – with an additional 1.5 million children expected to fall into crisis levels of hunger by September – as aid agencies say they are struggling to reach people.

Up to 17,000 children a day have been falling into crisis levels of hunger, Save the Children warned on Tuesday. With 4 million people displaced so far, the charity said more people were facing hunger in Sudan than at any point since records there began in 2012.

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Sudan: more than a million people have fled ‘spiralling’ conflict, says UN

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Joint statement from UN agencies lays bare the effect of violence on the country’s food and healthcare systems

More than 1 million people have fled Sudan to neighbouring states, as people inside the country are running out of food and dying due to a lack of healthcare after four months of war, the United Nations has said.

Fighting between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has devastated the capital Khartoum and sparked ethnically driven attacks in Darfur, threatening to plunge Sudan into a protracted civil war and destabilise the region.

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UK should finally acknowledge role in 1953 Iran coup, says David Owen

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Former foreign secretary says doing so would benefit both reform movement in country and Britain’s credibility

The UK should finally acknowledge its leading role in the 1953 coup that toppled Iran’s last democratically elected leader, for the sake of Britain’s credibility and the Iranian reform movement, a former foreign secretary has said.

The US formally admitted its role 10 years ago with the declassification of a large volume of intelligence documents, which made clear that the ousting of the elected prime minister, Mohammad Mosadegh, 70 years ago this week was a joint CIA-MI6 endeavour. The formal UK government position is to refuse to comment on an intelligence matter.

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Vice blocked news stories that could offend Saudi Arabia, insiders say

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Exclusive: Media company recently signed lucrative deal with Saudi government-controlled MBC Group

Vice has repeatedly blocked news stories that could offend the Saudi government, leaving its reporters unsure if they are still able to report freely on the kingdom’s human rights abuses, sources have said.

The media company recently signed a lucrative partnership deal with the MBC Group, a media company controlled by the Saudi government, to establish a joint venture in the Middle Eastern country. Of the 29 jobs currently advertised on Vice’s careers page, 20 are based in the Saudi Arabian capital, Riyadh.

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Gunman kills one and injures eight in attack on Shah Cheragh shrine in Iran

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Governor says man has been detained after attack on Shia shrine in southern city of Shiraz

A gunman opened fire on Sunday night at a prominent shrine in southern Iran, killing one person and wounding eight others in an attack that followed another assault there months earlier, authorities said.

Officials offered no immediate motive for the attack in the city of Shiraz at Shah Cheragh, which draws Shia pilgrims to its domed mosque and the tomb of a prominent member of the faith from its earliest days.

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Arrest of Saudi scholar and influencer another sign of social media crackdown

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Detention of public health expert Mohammed Alhajji surprised many observers as he was seen as apolitical

A prominent Saudi scholar and Snapchat influencer has been arrested by Saudi authorities in what experts said was evidence of the kingdom’s extreme crackdown on social media users.

The arrest of Mohammed Alhajji, a public health expert who completed his dissertation in the US, follows the disappearance and recent arrests of other prominent influencers for “crimes” that include the perceived criticism of the crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, and support for women’s rights.

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Tony Blair Institute continued taking money from Saudi Arabia after Khashoggi murder

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Blair defends continuing partnership with kingdom despite ‘anxieties’ after 2018 assassination of journalist

Tony Blair’s institute has continued to advise and receive money from the government of Saudi Arabia since the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, it has emerged.

The Sunday Times reported the former prime minister’s organisation is involved in a multimillion-pound partnership helping with a modernisation drive in the country led by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

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Yemen: UN removes 1m barrels of oil from ageing tanker to avert environmental catastrophe

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Tanker contained four times as much oil as was spilled in 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster off Alaska

The transfer of more than 1 million barrels of oil from an ageing tanker moored off the coast of war-torn Yemen has been completed, avoiding an environmental disaster, the UN has said.

In a statement on Friday, Farhan Haq, the deputy spokesperson for UN secretary general António Guterres, said the operation had prevented a “monumental environmental and humanitarian catastrophe”.

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China has its own reasons for being at Ukraine peace talks in Saudi Arabia

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Gathering in Jeddah offers Beijing chance to placate global south and limit damage with west over Russia relations

When the Chinese envoy Li Hui arrived in Saudi Arabia, to join international talks on a peace deal for Ukraine this week, it was a pointed contrast with Beijing’s decision to skip a similar forum in Copenhagen in June.

At the summit, which excluded Russia, Ukraine’s leader Volodymyr Zelenskiy promoted his vision for ending the war to a large gathering of countries from the global south.

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Saudis ask to join UK, Italy and Japan’s joint air combat programme

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UK-backed move could help spread cost of developing fighter jet and drones, but may prove controversial

Saudi Arabia has asked the UK, Japan and Italy to be made a full partner in their joint effort to build the next generation of fighter jets, in a move backed by the British government.

Companies from the UK, Japan and Italy are working together to build a new fighter jet and other systems such as drones under the Global Combat Air Programme (GCAP), also known as Tempest. The programme aims to deliver the first planes by 2035, a tight turnaround.

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Democratic House leader under fire for Israel trip sponsored by lobbyist group

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Hakeem Jeffries was accused of giving cover to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as he tried to curtail Israeli judiciary power

A Democratic congressional delegation is under fire for a visit to Israel funded by the hardline lobbying group the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac), which is working to defeat other members of the party in next year’s elections.

Critics have accused the most senior Democrat on the tour, House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries, of giving political cover to the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who has faced months of huge demonstrations against his far-right government’s power grab.

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Five US dual citizens detained in Iran moved out of prison to house arrest

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Move could indicate start of a possible prisoner swap between US and Iran, though negotiations for release of the five are continuing

Five US dual citizens detained by Iran have left Tehran’s Evin prison and are now under house arrest, in a move which could indicate the start of a possible prisoner swap between the two countries.

The Iranian Americans include the businessmen Siamak Namazi, 51, and Emad Shargi, 58, as well as the environmentalist Morad Tahbaz, 67, who also has British nationality, said Jared Genser, a lawyer who represents Namazi. The identity of the other two US citizens has not been made public.

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US, UK and Canada impose sanctions on ex-governor of Lebanon’s central bank

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Riad Salameh accused of corrupt actions to enrich himself and associates ‘contributing to breakdown of the rule of law’

The US, Britain and Canada have announced sanctions against the former governor of Lebanon’s central bank, Riad Salameh, accusing him of corrupt actions to enrich himself and his associates.

Salameh, in messages to Reuters, denied the allegations made by the three sanctioning countries and said he would challenge them. Some of his assets had already been frozen in previous investigations, he said.

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UN aid deliveries to rebel-held area of Syria poised to resume

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The Bab al-Hawa crossing from Turkey will reopen to the UN for six months after negotiations with Assad’s government

The United Nations is poised to resume aid deliveries into north-western Syria, an area controlled by rebels, via a crossing that has been a lifeline for the region, after aid workers said Damascus appeared to loosen terms that had led to a hiatus.

Deliveries from Turkey via the Bab al-Hawa crossing stopped in July when western powers and Russia, the Syrian government’s main ally, failed to agree on extending a UN security council mandate for the operation. Syria then gave unilateral approval – but on terms that the UN rejected as unacceptable.

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Lebanon in move to ban Barbie film for ‘promoting homosexuality’

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Culture minister asks general security agency to act to prevent screening as anti-LGBT rhetoric ramps up

Lebanon’s culture minister moved to ban the film Barbie from the country’s cinemas on Wednesday, saying it “promoted homosexuality” and contradicted religious values.

Mohammad Mortada is backed by the powerful Shia Muslim armed group Hezbollah, whose head, Hassan Nasrallah, has ramped up his rhetoric against the LGBT community, saying it poses an “imminent danger” to Lebanon and should be “confronted”.

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Kuwait bans hit Australian horror film Talk to Me over casting of trans actor Zoe Terakes

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Terakes, who plays a character whose gender is never mentioned in the film, called the decision ‘targeted and dehumanising’

The hit Australian horror film Talk To Me has been banned from screening in Kuwait, reportedly solely over the casting of non-binary trans actor Zoe Terakes, who plays a character whose gender identity is never mentioned in the film.

The Hollywood Reporter first reported on the decision, which they confirmed was based entirely on the presence of Terakes, an Australian actor who identifies as non-binary and trans-masculine. A rising star who has appeared in Wentworth and Nine Perfect Strangers, they are also the first trans actor to be cast in a Marvel TV series, with a role in the upcoming superhero show Ironheart. The Guardian has confirmed the decision independently.

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Saudi Aramco’s quarterly profits drop nearly 40% but it still rakes in $30bn

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Decline in crude oil prices and less refining income trims revenues inflated in 2022 by Russian invasion of Ukraine

The world’s biggest oil firm, Saudi Aramco, has announced a near-40% fall in profits after a decline in crude oil prices and weakening margins in refining and chemicals.

The company, which is 90% owned by the Saudi state, said in a statement to the market that profits were $30.1bn for the months of April to June, down 38% from $48.4bn in the second quarter of last year.

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Democrat calls on Biden to stop ‘racists’ in Israeli government from ‘land grab’

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Senator Chris Van Hollen says president should reassess military aid to Israel in light of extreme rightward tilt of government

A leading Democratic senator has called on Joe Biden to “get more personally engaged” in stopping “racists” in the Israeli government from a land grab in the occupied territories and committing “gross violations” of Palestinian rights or risk damage to the US’s credibility.

After a visit to Israel and the West Bank last month, Chris Van Hollen of Maryland told the Guardian in an interview that the US president should begin by reassessing the US’s huge military aid to Israel to prevent it from being used to facilitate annexation of the West Bank and oppression of the Palestinians, including the army’s complicity in escalating settler violence against the Arab civilian population.

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