Category Archives: Middle East and North Africa

First papal visit to Iraq to go ahead despite Covid and terrorism concerns

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Visit from Pope Francis will start in Baghdad on Friday and is his first trip abroad in 15 months

Despite the twin threats of Covid-19 and terrorism, the first ever papal visit to Iraq is due to begin on Friday, during which Francis will meet beleaguered Christian communities and one of the world’s most influential Muslim leaders.

For 84-year-old Pope Francis, it will be his first trip abroad for 15 months as the pandemic has curtailed his movements. New Covid restrictions came into effect in Iraq last week, with overnight curfews and a full three-day lockdown at weekends, as daily recorded cases doubled in less than a week.

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More than 75% of Syrian refugees may have PTSD, says charity

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‘There is a huge amount of damage you can’t see – the mental trauma’, says Syria Relief report author

More than three-quarters of Syrian refugees may be suffering serious mental health symptoms, 10 years after the start of the civil war.

A UK charity is calling for more investment in mental health services for refugees in several countries after it found symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) were widespread in a survey of displaced Syrians.

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Supporters of detained Saudi princess call for UK to help secure release

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Exclusive: letters to Dominic Raab and Lady Scotland say Princess Basmah requires urgent medical treatment

Supporters of a prominent Saudi Arabian princess detained with her daughter in Riyadh have appealed to the British government to help secure their release.

In two letters to both foreign secretary Dominic Raab and Commonwealth general secretary Patricia Scotland, the princess’s supporters urged them to intervene on behalf of Princess Basmah bint Saud bin Abdulaziz al-Saud and her daughter Souhoud Al Sharif, arrested in Jeddah two years ago.

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Shamima Begum court decision brings shame on UK | Letters

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Readers respond to the supreme court decision that Begum will not have her citizenship restored

Every day it seems the Guardian serves up another reason for being ashamed to be British. On Friday, it was the case of Shamima Begum (Shamima Begum loses fight to restore UK citizenship after supreme court ruling, 26 February). It makes it particularly difficult that I’m tutoring someone who is hoping to take an A-level in British politics. All the books list human rights and explain how carefully protected they are in our system. Article 5 is supposed to protect the right to liberty and freedom from arbitrary detention. Yet the supreme court is unable to protect Begum’s rights against a home secretary who is operating a policy based on pandering to public opinion in return for (hoped-for) votes.

We are told that legal protections are particularly important in difficult cases – that is, cases where an individual presents as unpleasant or undeserving. Begum was a teenager who took the extraordinary step of leaving her country to defend something she believed was deserving of her support. But even if she left with the firm intention of terrorising her fellow citizens, does this mean she should be deprived of her rights? It is a matter not of what Begum deserves but of what our national honour, and our constitution, deserve. This has been increasingly in doubt in recent years, with the government threatening to renege over the Northern Irish border agreement; not to mention the Chagos Islands and our participation in rendering citizens to be tortured during the “war on terror”.
Jeremy Cushing
Exeter

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Green pass: how are Covid vaccine passports working for Israel?

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As hotels and gyms reopen in Israel, governments elsewhere are considering a similar certificate scheme – raising ethical concerns

As the UK and other governments consider whether to give Covid-vaccinated people certificates that allow entry to bars, hotels, and swimming pools, one country, Israel, has already deployed its “green pass”.

The state of 9 million, which has administered jabs to half its population, released an app a week ago that shows whether people have been fully inoculated against the coronavirus or if they have presumed immunity after contracting the disease.

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Khashoggi: statement clarifying US stance on Saudi Arabia due on Monday

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Biden’s announcement comes after Saudi exiles express shock over lack of sanctions against Mohammed bin Salman over killing of journalist

President Joe Biden said on Saturday that the US would make an announcement on Saudi Arabia on Monday, following an intelligence report that found that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had approved the killing of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul in 2018.

Saudi dissidents have expressed anger and disbelief that while the US has officially confirmed the long-suspected view that Prince Mohammed “approved” the killing of the journalist, he will escape punishment. A declassified intelligence assessment released on Friday concluded that the heir to the throne “approved an operation to capture or kill Khashoggi”.

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Named, shamed but unscathed: Saudi crown prince spared by US realpolitik

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Analysis: The US has sanctioned 76 people linked to Khashoggi’s murder, but not Mohammed bin Salman, future king of a strategic Middle East ally

Friday was the day that Joe Biden’s vaunted drive to put human rights back at the centre of US foreign policy slammed, as such drives usually do, into the brick wall of great power realpolitik.

As it had promised, the new administration obeyed the law laid down by Congress and ignored by its predecessor. It published an unclassified summary of the intelligence assessment that the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, “approved” the murder and dismemberment of the Saudi reformer and Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi.

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Lack of sanctions for crown prince shows weight Riyadh holds

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Analysis: decision not to penalise Saudi heir over Jamal Khashoggi shows kingdom still has influence

After two years of blanket cover from Donald Trump, a new US president has officially blamed Mohammed bin Salman for the most savage political slaying of modern times and brought the Saudi heir’s unchecked run with Washington to a humiliating halt.

Joe Biden’s confirmation that Prince Mohammed approved the butchering of Jamal Khashoggi bluntly ends the era of bromance between his predecessor and the kingdom’s de facto leader, and signals a very different relationship with a new administration.

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US finds Saudi crown prince approved Khashoggi murder but does not sanction him

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Biden administration to target ‘counter-dissident’ activity and Saudi official but not Mohammed bin Salman personally

US intelligence agencies concluded that the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, approved the 2018 murder of the Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi but stopped short of personally targeting the future Saudi king with financial or other sanctions.

Related: Khashoggi confidant Omar Abdulaziz: 'I’m worried about the safety of the people of Saudi Arabia'

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Iran threatens to quit IAEA pact over censure from west

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US seeking resolution to express ‘deepening concern’ over Tehran’s cooperation with UN nuclear agency

Iran has threatened to pull out of a deal struck with UN weapons inspectors last weekend if western countries go ahead with plans to censure it over its failure to cooperate fully with the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Western leaders are planning to table a motion at the IAEA next week condemning Iran for pulling out of the overarching agreement with the UN body giving inspectors access to its nuclear sites.

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Isis women languish in dire conditions with nowhere else to go

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Al-Hawl camp, where Shamima Begum surfaced, is focal point of humanitarian crisis starring unsympathetic protagonists

When 20-year-old Shamima Begum, heavily pregnant and alone, managed to escape the US-led coalition bombing of Islamic State’s last stronghold two years ago, she left behind a scene resembling hell and entered limbo instead.

Begum was among an astonishing 64,000 women and children who poured out of Baghuz, a tiny oasis town on the Euphrates river, deep in the Syrian desert. Many of their husbands and fathers died defending the last sliver of the so-called caliphate.

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Shamima Begum loses fight to restore UK citizenship after supreme court ruling

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Begum, who fled as a schoolgirl to join Isis in Syria, will not be able to re-enter UK to fight case in person

Shamima Begum, who fled Britain as a schoolgirl to join Islamic State in Syria, has failed to restore her British citizenship after the supreme court ruled she had lost her case.

The judgment on Friday from the UK’s highest court is a critical – and controversial – test case of the UK’s policy to strip the citizenship of Britons who went to join Isis and are being detained by Syrian Kurdish groups without trial.

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Pro-choice protests in Warsaw and Myanmar coup: 20 photos on human rights this week

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A roundup of the best photography on struggles for human rights and freedoms, from Algeria to Uganda

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US carried out airstrikes against Iran-backed militia in Syria

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Operation, which was approved by Joe Biden, comes after a series of attacks against US targets in Iraq

The United States has carried out airstrikes in Syria targeting facilities near the Iraqi border used by Iranian-backed militia groups.

The Pentagon said the strikes were retaliation for a rocket attack in Iraq earlier this month that killed one civilian contractor and wounded a US service member and other coalition troops.

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Joe Biden speaks to Saudi Arabia’s King Salman before release of Khashoggi murder report

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White House says president ‘affirmed the importance the United States places on universal human rights and the rule of law’

Joe Biden has spoken with Saudi Arabia’s King Salman for the first time as president, ahead of the publication of a US intelligence report expected to implicate the Saudi crown prince in the 2018 murder of dissident and Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi.

A White House account of the call did not mention the report, but did say, in another context, that Biden “affirmed the importance the United States places on universal human rights and the rule of law” and that the two discussed working on “mutual issues of concern”.

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Princess Latifa letter urges UK police to investigate sister’s Cambridge abduction

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Latifa says in letter passed to police ‘your help and attention on her case could free’ Princess Shamsa

Princess Latifa, a daughter of Dubai’s ruler who claims to have been held in captivity by her father since 2018, has asked UK police to re-investigate the kidnapping more than 20 years ago of her sister, Princess Shamsa, according to a letter reported by the BBC.

The BBC reported that in a letter handwritten in 2019 – but passed to Cambridgeshire police on Wednesday – Latifa says the police may be able to free Shamsa, who was abducted on the orders of her father when she was 19.

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Jamal Khashoggi: Biden faces calls to ‘strike a blow’ for Saudi human rights

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President Biden to call King Salman as his administration prepare to release intelligence report expected to implicate crown prince

Joe Biden is expected to call Saudi Arabia’s King Salman, as his administration prepares to release a declassified intelligence report that many experts expect will name the royal’s son and heir as complicit in the grisly murder of Jamal Khashoggi.

The White House confirmed on Wednesday that Biden’s call to the 85-year-old ruler would take place “soon” and that the declassified report on Khashoggi’s murder was being readied for release. Biden is insisting that he speak only to the king.

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Germany convicts former Assad regime agent in historic Syria torture verdict

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Eyad al-Gharib found guilty of aiding and abetting a crime against humanity

A court in Germany has found a former Syrian regime official guilty of being an accomplice to crimes against humanity, in a historic first victory for efforts worldwide to bring legal accountability for atrocities committed in Syria’s long war.

Eyad al-Gharib, a 44-year-old former colonel in the Syrian intelligence service, carried out orders in one of Bashar al-Assad’s notorious prisons.

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Yazidis have been forgotten during Covid. They need justice, jobs and a return home | Nadia Murad

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Survivors of Islamic State brutality are pushed further into the margins as the pandemic causes the world to turn inward

Staring at the same four walls day after day, unable to find work, reunite with relatives, or send your children to school. The Covid pandemic has rendered this bleak picture a reality for many people across the globe. Yet for many who have survived or are living through conflict, these hardships are hardly novel.

For the Yazidi ethnic minority in Iraq, Islamic State’s 2014 genocide created adversity long before the pandemic ever did. For more than six years, hundreds of thousands of Yazidis have been in camps for internally displaced people (IDP) staring at the same four walls of their tents. They are unable to find work because Isis razed their farms and businesses. They cannot reunite with relatives still in Isis captivity or attend the burials of family members whose bodies remain in mass graves.

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Iranian officials should be charged over shooting down of Ukrainian plane, UN expert says

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In letter to Tehran, human rights advocate outlines six-month investigation into disaster

Many high level Iranian officials should be charged for the shooting down of a Ukrainian commercial airliner in January 2020, a UN human rights expert has said, describing the killing of the 176 people aboard as a “profound and serious indictment” of the country’s civil and military authorities.

Agnès Callamard, the UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, delivered a 45-page letter to the Iranian government which was made public on Tuesday, outlining her findings from a six-month investigation into the disaster, and complaining about the lack of Iranian cooperation, which has left many of her questions unanswered.

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