Yemeni national posted video clip of himself at the Grand Mosque in Mecca, Islam’s holiest site
Saudi authorities have arrested a man who claimed to have travelled to the Muslim holy city of Mecca to perform an umrah pilgrimage on behalf of Queen Elizabeth II.
The man, a Yemeni national, published a video clip of himself on social media on Monday at the Grand Mosque in Mecca, Islam’s holiest site, where non-Muslims are forbidden.
Continue reading...As IAEA board meets, Israel says Iran will be able to produce enough material for three warheads in weeks
Tensions around a breakdown in talks between Iran and the US over Tehran’s nuclear programme escalated on Monday when Israel’s defence minister, Benny Gantz, claimed that Iran would be able to produce enough enriched uranium to make three nuclear warheads within a few weeks.
Gantz also revealed a map detailing 10 facilities in Syria allegedly being used to arm Iran and its proxies, including Hezbollah. He said the facilities represented a threat to Israel’s security.
Continue reading...Jailed activist-blogger may escalate six-month hunger strike as supporters say UK is failing to pressure its Cop27 partner
The British-Egyptian activist Alaa Abd El-Fattah has warned his family he may die in prison, as he reaches six months on hunger strike in the run-up to the Cop27 climate conference in Sharm El Sheikh.
“I don’t want to upset you, but I don’t believe there’s any chance of individual salvation,” he told his mother during her visit to Wadi al-Natrun prison. He passed on a list of demands, including the release of those detained by the Egyptian security forces and thousands held without charge in pre-trial detention.
Continue reading...Sarah Shourd, Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal held for more than a year after being stopped while hiking along Iraqi border in 2009
Three Americans who were jailed by Iran for more than a year and accused of being spies while hiking along the border with Iraq are suing their former captors, hoping to persuade a judge to award them damages for the torture they say they endured.
The lawsuit being pursued by Sarah Shourd, her ex-husband and fellow journalist Shane Bauer, and their friend Josh Fattal is being overseen by federal judge Richard Leon in Washington, who in 2019 ordered Iran to pay Washington Post journalist Jason Rezaian $180m for imprisoning him for more than a year on false espionage charges.
Continue reading...Outcry over show trial, which follows Zahra Seddiqi Hamedani talking to BBC about abuse of gay people in Iran’s Kurdish region
Two women have been condemned to death in Iran because of their links to the LGBTQ+ community on social media, human rights groups have reported.
Zahra Seddiqi Hamedani, 31, and Elham Choubdar, 24, were found guilty of a number of charges by a court in Urmia, in the Iranian province of West Azerbaijan, on 1 September but the details of their sentences only emerged this week.
Continue reading...Omri Goren Gorochovsky admitted contacting Black Shadow hacking collective linked to Iran
A housekeeper who worked for Israel’s defence minister has been jailed for offering to spy on his employer for an Iran-linked hacking group.
Omri Goren Gorochovsky, a resident of the central city of Lod, was sentenced to three years in prison by an Israeli court on Tuesday after being found guilty of attempting to pass on information to an enemy entity. Initial espionage charges were dropped under a plea deal.
Continue reading...Families demand DNA tests to identify if their relatives are among thousands of unclaimed bodies in hospital morgues
The families of those missing after three years of political unrest in Sudan are to meet government officials to discuss how to bury more than 3,000 unclaimed bodies in the country’s mortuaries.
Last week, the government announced plans to dig mass graves as Sudan’s senior public prosecutor said mortuaries were overcrowded, many remains were decaying and they needed to be cleared.
Continue reading...Report finds widespread instances of forced labour, with women denied access to passports and subjected to physical or sexual abuse
Oman is failing to protect migrant domestic workers who are victims of human trafficking, trapped in abusive households and subjected to physical and sexual violence with no access to justice or a safe route home, a report has found.
Do Bold, an organisation that works to assist and repatriate migrant workers trapped in the Gulf, interviewed 469 domestic workers from Sierra Leone working in Oman, for the report. It concluded that all but one of the women interviewed were victims of forced labour and human trafficking.
Continue reading...Chris Van Hollen calls for independent US inquiry, saying IDF claim Shireen Abu Aqleh died amid gun battle unsupported by evidence
A US senator has dismissed an Israeli army report that claims a soldier accidentally killed the Palestinian American journalist Shireen Abu Aqleh in the midst of a gun battle, saying it is unsupported by the evidence.
Chris Van Hollen, a Democratic senator for Maryland, repeated his call for an independent US investigation into Abu Aqleh’s killing in the West Bank in May, saying that the United Nations and reconstructions by major news outlets found that the Al Jazeera television journalist was not in the immediate vicinity of fighting with Palestinian militants and could not have been caught in the crossfire.
Continue reading...Gulf states did not identify the type of content, though Saudi Arabia state-media condemned shows with gay characters
A group of Persian Gulf states have threatened Netflix with legal action if it continues broadcasting content that “contradicts” Islam, while Saudi state media indicated that the offending material centred on shows depicting sexual minorities.
A statement issued jointly by the Saudi media regulator and the six-member Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), headquartered in the Saudi capital, Riyadh, did not specifically identify material, referring only to content that “contradicts Islamic and societal values”.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Jailed engineer appears gaunt with moles doctors fear are cancerous, as wife decries ‘watching his murder in slow motion’
The Australian government says it holds “serious concerns” for the welfare of Australian engineer Robert Pether as his health deteriorates in a Baghdad jail cell, a process his wife has likened to “watching his murder in slow motion”.
The Guardian has obtained the first photos of Pether since he was arrested and arbitrarily imprisoned in Baghdad in April last year over a business dispute between the Iraqi government and his architecture firm, which was engaged to build a new headquarters for the central bank.
Continue reading...Army official says no one will be punished after investigation into fatal shooting of Al Jazeera journalist
The Israeli army has said there is a “high possibility” a soldier killed an Al Jazeera journalist in May but that the shooting was accidental and no one will be punished.
Shireen Abu Aqleh was shot dead while covering Israeli military raids in the occupied West Bank.
Continue reading...World is ‘in last minute of the 11th hour to save lives’, says aid chief, amid fears that crisis is worse than 2010 famine, when 250,000 died
Two areas of Somalia are likely to enter a state of famine later this year as the country battles an unrelenting drought and flare-ups of conflict, the UN humanitarian chief has warned.
Martin Griffiths said the latest UN food insecurity analysis had found “concrete indications” that famine would occur in the Baidoa and Burhakaba districts of south-central Somalia between October and December unless aid efforts were significantly stepped up.
Continue reading...Government says it will use technology on public transport in crackdown on women’s dress
The Iranian government is planning to use facial recognition technology on public transport to identify women who are not complying with a strict new law on wearing the hijab, as the regime continues its increasingly punitive crackdown on women’s dress.
The secretary of Iran’s Headquarters for Promoting Virtue and Preventing Vice, Mohammad Saleh Hashemi Golpayegani, announced in a recent interview that the government was planning to use surveillance technology against women in public places following a new decree signed by the country’s hardline president, Ebrahim Raisi, on restricting women’s clothing.
Continue reading...Two of those killed had given Israel information that led to killing of Palestinians and three were convicted of murder, says ministry
Gaza’s Hamas authorities executed five Palestinians on Sunday, two of them on charges of espionage for Israel that dated back to 2015 and 2009, the interior ministry said.
The dawn executions, by hanging or firing squad, were the first in the Palestinian territories since 2017. Human rights groups have criticised past cases of capital punishment in Gaza.
Continue reading...The killings come two weeks after group besieged a hotel in Mogadishu for 30 hours, leaving 21 dead
Fighters from the Islamist insurgent group al-Shabaab have killed at least 19 civilians in a night-time attack in central Somalia, clan chiefs and local officials said on Saturday.
The attack comes two weeks after al-Shabaab, which has waged a long insurgency against the Somali state, besieged a hotel in the capital Mogadishu for 30 hours, leaving 21 people dead and 117 injured.
Continue reading...US state department rejects what Iran characterised as a bid to ‘finalise the negotiations’ in latest efforts to agree a deal
Hopes of a rapid conclusion to negotiations on a revived nuclear deal with Iran have receded after the US quickly rejected the latest Iranian proposal as “not constructive”.
Washington’s rapid reaction to the Iranian text, which had been delivered shortly before 3am on Friday Tehran time, directly contradicted Tehran’s claims that its proposals presented “a constructive approach” aimed at “finalising the negotiations”.
Continue reading...UN security council hears bleak assessment of country’s prospects after violence between militia in capital
Libyans have lost faith that the political class and its allied militias and mercenaries are willing to end their robbery of the nation’s wealth, a senior US diplomat has warned, after some of the worst violence in Tripoli in years.
More than 32 people were killed and 150 wounded in clashes in the capital last week between militia allied to the rival prime ministers Abdul Hamid Dbeibah and Fathi Bashagha.
Continue reading...Canada and UK accused of covering up involvement of double agent in British teenager’s recruitment for IS
Shamima Begum was smuggled into Syria for Islamic State at the age of 15 by a Canadian spy whose role was covered up by the police and Britain’s security services, it has been claimed in a book out this week.
Begum, along with her schoolfriends Kadiza Sultana, then 16, and Amira Abase, then 15, were met at Istanbul bus station for their onward journey to Syria by a man called Mohammed al-Rashed.
Continue reading...A new book says Met police knew she was helped to join IS by a Canadian spy, reinforcing concerns she was victim of trafficking
It is not new – although it is eyecatching – to report that Shamima Begum, then 15, was helped to travel to Syria and join Islamic State by a Canadian agent. Mohammed al-Rashed was picked up by the Turkish authorities in March 2015, and said at the time he was an informant for Canadian intelligence, and had helped Begum travel from Istanbul airport to the Syrian border a few days earlier.
What is new is the suggestion that the Metropolitan police knew about Canada’s behind-the-scenes involvement for some time. A book, The Secret History of the Five Eyes, out this week, reveals that Canadian intelligence officers went shortly after to the British police to admit their connection to Rashed, boosting the argument that the teenager from Bethnal Green and her two friends were in fact trafficked.
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