Category Archives: Middle East and North Africa

Tunisia minister sacked and arrested in scandal over illegal waste from Italy

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Mustapha Aroui held along with 22 others after 200 containers of decaying household and medical waste discovered in July

Tunisia’s environment minister has been arrested following the attempted importation of household and hospital waste from Italy.

Mustapha Aroui was dismissed from his post and subsequently arrested on Sunday, along with several other people, including senior customs officials, members of its waste management agency, Agence Nationale de Gestion des Déchets (ANGed) and a Tunisian diplomat based in Naples.

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‘Please help us’: child refugees running out of time to reach UK before Brexit

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Desperate relatives in Britain plead with Home Office for flexibility as paperwork holdups delay family reunions while deadline looms

The Home Office has said it will not allow a group of stranded refugee children to join their families in the UK if their cases do not make it through the Greek asylum system by 31 December when the EU family reunification programme comes to an end.

Around 20 children who are eligible to join their relatives in the UK under the current family reunification scheme are still waiting for their cases to be completed in Greece, before the UK government ends the programme when it leaves the EU on the 31st December.

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‘Our blood is cheaper than water’: anger in Iraq over Trump pardons

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Joe Biden to be lobbied to reverse decision to pardon security guards jailed over massacre

Iraqis have reacted with outrage to Donald Trump’s move to pardon four security guards from the security firm Blackwater who were jailed for a 2007 massacre that sparked an outcry over the use of mercenaries in war.

The four men were part of a security convoy that fired on civilians at a central Baghdad roundabout, killing 14 people including a nine-year old child and wounding many more.

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Trump pardons Blackwater contractors jailed for massacre of Iraq civilians

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Four guards fired on unarmed crowd in Baghdad in 2007, killing 14 and sparking outrage over use of private security in war zones

President Donald Trump has pardoned four Blackwater security guards who were given lengthy prison sentences for killing 14 civilians in Baghdad in 2007, a massacre that caused international uproar over the use of private contractors in war zones.

The four – Paul Slough, Evan Liberty, Dustin Heard and Nicholas Slatten – were part of an armoured convoy that opened fire indiscriminately with machine-guns and grenade launchers on a crowd of unarmed people in the Iraqi capital. Known as the Nisour Square massacre, the slaughter was seen as a low point in the conflict in Iraq.

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Israel to hold fourth election in two years as political crisis grinds on

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Failure of fractious coalition government to pass budget triggers snap election and plunges country into more political chaos

Israel has tumbled into a fourth round of elections within the space of two years after efforts to keep a fractious coalition government intact failed.

Beset by infighting and distrust, the government was unable to pass a budget by a midnight deadline on Tuesday (10pm GMT), triggering a snap election next March and lurching the country back into a protracted political crisis.

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Revealed: how abusive texts led to discovery of hacking of Al Jazeera

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Threatening messages led to monitoring of phone that unearthed evidence of cyber-attack against Qatar-based network

A series of abusive text messages sent to an Al Jazeera investigative programme were the first crumbs that eventually led to the discovery of an unprecedented hacking operation against dozens of staff from the Qatar-based media network, according to one of the journalists who was targeted.

Researchers at Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto claimed on Sunday that the UAE and Saudi Arabia used spyware sold by an Israeli private intelligence company to access the phones of at least 36 journalists, producers and executives from Al Jazeera, as well as that of a London-based reporter with the Al Araby network.

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EU foreign ministers pave way for revival of Iran nuclear deal

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Step would allow Tehran to come back into compliance with deal, so long as US sanctions were lifted

EU foreign ministers have agreed not to set fresh preconditions on a revival of the Iran nuclear deal, believing Tehran and Washington should be able to come back into full compliance with the agreement without at this stage needing to accept to extend or strengthen it.

The step removes one of the potential roadblocks to Iran coming back into compliance with the existing deal, so long as the US lifts its sanctions and complies with UN resolutions.

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The Arab spring wasn’t in vain. Next time will be different | Nesrine Malik

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Lessons have been learned about how to convert the forces that demand equality into those that deliver it

At the end of 2010, I was en route to Sudan for Christmas, scouring Arabic social media in search of scraps of information about a story unfolding in Tunisia; a story the Arab media was censoring and the western media was still ignoring. A street trader, Mohammed Bouazizi, had set himself on fire in protest at the government in the city of Sidi Bouzid, sparking demonstrations that spread across the country.

Weeks before the protests toppled Tunisia’s president-for-life, you could see that something about this uprising was different. There was something about the way the protests resonated in households around the Arab world, the intensity of the moral outrage and the force of the momentum that felt new and exciting.

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Dozens of Al Jazeera journalists allegedly hacked using Israeli firm’s spyware

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Citizen Lab researchers say cyber-attack using NSO Group software likely ordered by Saudia Arabia and UAE

Spyware sold by an Israeli private intelligence firm was allegedly used to hack the phones of dozens of Al Jazeera journalists in an unprecedented cyber-attack that is likely to have been ordered by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, according to leading researchers.

In a stunning new report, researchers at Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto said they discovered what appears to be a major espionage campaign against one of the world’s leading media organisations, which is based in Qatar and has long been a thorn in the side of many of the region’s autocratic regimes.

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‘Trump is crazy’: Hezbollah sees threat in US president’s final days

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Leaders fear Donald Trump and Israel will act against Iran and Hezbollah before Joe Biden’s arrival

For the past four years, the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah has fought a war in Syria, supported Iraqi forces and stage-managed the politics of its homeland, all the while trying to avoid facing off with Israel. Yet its exhausted leaders fear the last gasps of Donald Trump’s presidency could deliver threats that eclipse everything else.

In the organisation’s heartland, Hezbollah members are watching the clock – and the skies. Israeli jets have been streaking overhead for more than a month, and over the past few weeks the frequency of flights has sharply increased, as has security in Beirut’s southern suburbs, the nerve centre of the region’s most powerful militant group.

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Trump’s flurry of dodgy deals will not bring the Middle East any peace

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The outgoing US president has his eyes on a Saudi Arabia-Israel accord – no matter who gets hurt

Peace deals that entrench injustice, punish the weak and are propelled by greed, blackmail and weapons sales have precious little to do with peace – and are unlikely to endure. Yet the Middle East has witnessed a recent spate of such dodgy deals. All concern Israel and all were hastily cobbled together by the White House. As his curtailed presidency grinds to an unlamented close, Donald Trump appears engaged in a frantic foreign policy fire sale.

Peace is always a welcome prospect – but never at any price. Trump’s horse-trading on Israel’s behalf has made a cruel mockery of Palestinian rights. By agreeing to normalise relations with Israel, the UAE and Bahrain broke with the 2002 Arab peace plan that makes recognition conditional on the creation of a viable, independent Palestinian state. The deal was sweetened with offers of advanced US weapons and money-spinning business and trade opportunities.

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‘If a smuggler says do it, you do’: refugees on trying to rescue their friends from the Channel

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Two Kurdish asylum seekers made frantic attempts to save lives of family whose boat capsized in rough conditions

Two asylum seekers who were in the same boat as a Kurdish Iranian family who drowned trying to cross the Channel have spoken out about their frantic attempts to save the family’s lives after the vessel capsized.

Rasul Iran Nezhad, his wife, Shiva Mohammad Panahi, both 35, and their children: Anita, nine, Armin, six, and 15-month-old Artin, were among 22 people who boarded the boat, a rigid polyester structure about 20ft long, in October.

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Jamal Khashoggi’s fiancee urges Joe Biden to release CIA report

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US president-elect can help uncover truth about Saudi journalist’s murder, says Hatice Cengiz

Hatice Cengiz, the fiancee of Jamal Khashoggi, has called on the US president-elect, Joe Biden, to release the CIA’s classified report into the Washington Post journalist’s murder once he enters the White House, a move she said would “greatly assist” in uncovering the truth.

The classified intelligence assessment has never been released but media outlets have reported, without providing more details, that it concludes with “medium to high confidence” that the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, ordered the killing.

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Italian fishermen held in Libya freed after more than 100 days

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Release of 18 men seized by Khalifa Haftar’s forces ends standoff between countries

Eighteen Italian fishermen, held captive in Libya for more than 100 days, have been freed, ending a political standoff between the two countries over the fate of the men.

The prolonged imprisonment of the group had become an embarrassment for Italy’s government, with critics accusing ministers of failing to stand up to Khalifa Haftar, the military commander who holds sway in eastern Libya.

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Tunisia and the Arab spring 10 years on: ‘We tried to rise’

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When a young street seller set himself on fire to protest lack of employment opportunities and government corruption, Tunisia became the cradle of the Arab spring revolutions that swept the middle east. Less than a month later, the dictator Ben Ali had to flee the country he had ruled for 23 years. Ten years on, what change has the revolution brought and was the sacrifice of so many worth the price?

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Life has got worse since Arab spring, say people across Middle East

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Exclusive: Guardian-YouGov poll suggests majority in nine countries across the Arab world feel inequality has increased

A majority in nine countries across the Arab world feel they are living in significantly more unequal societies today than before the Arab spring, an era of uprisings, civil wars and unsteady progress towards self-determination that commenced a decade ago, according to a Guardian-YouGov poll.

Pluralities in almost every country agreed their living conditions had deteriorated since 2010, when the self-immolation of Tunisian fruit seller Mohamed Bouazizi is credited with kicking off mass demonstrations and revolutions that spread across the region. Reverberations of that moment continued into 2019 with the overthrow of Sudan’s former dictator Omar al-Bashir and large protest movements in Lebanon, Algeria and Iraq.

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Saudi prosecutor seeks maximum jail sentence for women’s rights activist

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Loujain al-Hathloul, one of kingdom’s most prominent human rights campaigners, may face 20 years behind bars

The state prosecutor’s office in Saudi Arabia is seeking the maximum possible jail sentence for the women’s rights activist Loujain al-Hathloul, raising the possibility that the campaigner could face 20 years behind bars after a verdict in her case is announced next week.

In a hearing on Wednesday at Saudi Arabia’s notorious terrorism court, the judge said he would deliver a verdict and possible sentencing in the case on Monday, said Hathloul’s sister Lina, who also shared a copy of the prosecution’s indictment with the Guardian.

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‘He ruined us’: 10 years on, Tunisians curse man who sparked Arab spring

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Thanks in part to Mohamed Bouazizi’s self-immolation, Tunisians are freer than before, but many are miserable and disillusioned

His act of despair still shakes the Arab world. Mohamed Bouazizi, the 26-year-old fruit seller whose self-immolation triggered revolutions across the Middle East, has a boulevard named after him in Tunisia’s capital, Tunis. In his home town of Sidi Bouzid, he is depicted in a giant portrait facing the local government headquarters.

But a decade since he set himself on fire in protest at state corruption and brutality, Bouazizi is out of fashion in Tunisia – along with the revolution his death inspired. His family have moved to Canada and cut most ties with Sidi Bouzid. “They were smeared,” says Bilal Gharby, 32, a family friend.

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Lost artefact from Great Pyramid of Giza found in cigar box in Aberdeen

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Wooden fragment from at least 3000BC discovered by chance by Egyptian university researcher

A lost artefact from the Great Pyramid of Giza, one of only three objects ever recovered from inside the last remaining wonder of the ancient world, has been found in a chance discovery at the University of Aberdeen.

Curatorial assistant Abeer Eladany, originally from Egypt, was reviewing items in the university’s Asia collection when she came across a cigar box marked with her country’s former flag.

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MPs say UK government strategy on Iran prisoners not working

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Report says Foreign Office should formally declare detention of foreign nationals as ‘hostage taking’

The UK should do more to constrain Iran by proscribing the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps as a terrorist group and formally describe the Iranian practice of detaining British dual nationals as state hostage taking, the all-party foreign affairs select committee has said.

The report finds that the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office’s current approach to seeking the release of detainees is not working. There are least four British-Iranian dual-nationals either in jail, on a tag in Tehran or sentenced to lengthy jail terms, including Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe.

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