Mira Lozi says quiet diplomacy has failed to free Rami Naimi who was first seized in Dubai in 2017
A British woman has spoken out for the first time about the alleged abduction, torture and coercion of her husband at the hands of Saudi authorities, after nine years of “failed” quiet diplomacy.
The businessman Rami Naimi was first abducted in Dubai in 2017 on his return from a trip to Australia with his father. After being tortured, he was released the following year.
Continue reading...In strongest condemnation ever by UK government, Ed Miliband announces sweeping sanctions on trade with Israeli settlements
Israeli “terrorists” are conducting ethnic cleansing in the West Bank with the tacit backing of the government, the UK foreign secretary, Ed Miliband has said, as he announced sweeping sanctions on trade with Israeli settlements.
In the strongest condemnation ever issued by the UK government, Miliband said the government would now take the official position that Israel’s occupation of the West Bank was unlawful in its entirety, saying such acknowledgment was “the least the people who face such suffering deserve. And it should be the prelude to justice.”
An import ban on goods from illegal settlements in the occupied territories.
A comprehensive sanctions regime against providing services such as construction or financing for Israeli settlements.
A ban on the advertising in the UK of illegal settlement properties.
Personal sanctions against key individuals accused of promoting settler violence.
A new ban for arms licences and other exports that “materially contribute to the occupation”.
Continue reading...Riyadh says it will retaliate after overnight attacks by Iran-backed Yemen group on oil facilities wound more than 70
Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthis have attacked four cities in Saudi Arabia, wounding more than 70 people and setting oil installations ablaze in what appeared to be a significant expansion of the Middle East war.
Saudi Arabia said it would retaliate after the overnight strikes – reportedly involving dozens of drones and missiles – that targeted several oil facilities in the country’s south.
Continue reading...Ed Miliband to reassert support for Palestinian rights and a two-state solution in move likely to draw fierce criticism from US and Israel
Ed Miliband will announce what he has described as a broad reset of the UK’s relations with Israel on Tuesday, promising the government will take a more active approach in supporting the Palestinian cause.
In an intervention that is expected to draw fierce criticism from the US and Israel, the foreign secretary will impose a UK ban on the trade in goods and some services from illegal Israeli settlements.
Continue reading...Exclusive: UN special rapporteur on occupied territories says ban on goods from settlements ‘important’ but must go further if it is to amount to more than a ‘press release’
The UK’s planned ban on trade with unlawful Israeli settlements is a welcome, if overdue, first step and must be judged according to its practical impact, a UN expert has told the Guardian.
The UK foreign secretary, Ed Miliband, has vowed to act more decisively against Israeli settlements, as well as continued restrictions of aid into Gaza, prompting the US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, to claim on Saturday that Downing Street was motivated by “Jew hatred”.
Continue reading...Chris Wright tells ABC there ‘may not’ be an agreement that would prevent Iran from having nuclear weapons
US energy secretary Chris Wright said on Sunday morning that the US may not be able to reach a nuclear agreement with Iran that would prevent the country from having nuclear weapons.
Asked on ABC on Sunday morning about any sign of such a deal, as negotiations appear stalled and the US-Israel war on Iran continues, Wright said: “There may not be a nuclear agreement.”
Continue reading...Leon Panetta tells Guardian US is risking ‘forever war’ and says Pentagon ‘turmoil’ sending message of weakness
Donald Trump’s war with Iran is likely to drag on for another six months, Leon Panetta, the former US defense secretary, has warned, as the US president struggles to find his way out of the controversial conflict.
Panetta declared in an interview that the war with Iran – launched by Trump over six months ago – risks becoming another “forever war in the Middle East”, with no clear end in sight.
Continue reading...Taraneh Rahimi was told prison guards would rape her sister, Romina, if she did not sign a confession
The twins were 19 and still in high school when they were taken from their beds in the dead of night by masked men later identified as being sent by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.
After four months of desperately seeking news from hospitals and state institutions, their mother, Marzieh Nourmohammadi, finally learned their fate. Taraneh and Romina Rahimi had been seized over their decision to join millions on the streets of Iranian cities during the January protests against the regime. The twins were unrecognisable by the time of their mother’s prison visit in May.
Continue reading...Sarah Khalifa, 39, charged with forming organised criminal gang to manufacture and traffic drugs
An Egyptian court sentenced a well-known television presenter and 11 others to death for manufacturing and trafficking narcotics in a sprawling drug case, official media reported on Saturday.
The presenter, Sarah Khalifa, 39, is best known for her programme Mission Impossible, which dealt with issues concerning security and crime.
Continue reading...Houthi rebel offensive against government forces on west coast leads to some of deadliest clashes in years
Clashes between Yemen’s Saudi-backed government forces and the Iran-aligned Houthi rebel movement have killed more than 60 people, including civilians, as the Houthis pushed forward with a military offensive on Yemen’s western coast.
Twenty-six government troops and 31 Houthi fighters were killed during several hours of fighting in the country’s south-west on Saturday, medical and military sources told Agence France-Presse (AFP). A missile strike also killed six civilians and injured seven others travelling by bus in the city of Taiz.
Continue reading...Anwar, who lives in Glasgow, says Home Office refused visa application despite Maryam having cancer
A man living in the UK has said he believes his sister-in-law who died from cancer in Gaza would still be alive today if the Home Office had agreed to bring her and her family to Britain.
Anwar, who lives in Glasgow, fled Gaza in 2020 and was granted refugee status in the UK in 2021. After the destruction of large areas of Gaza by Israeli forces following the Hamas attacks on Israel in October 2023, he applied to bring his brother Hassan, Hassan’s wife, Maryam, their two young children and other family members to the UK in October 2025. He said the Home Office rejected their application.
Continue reading...Mourning turns to anger as residents of Kuhestak say Baloch communities are being placed in path of conflict
People in Kuhestak, a predominantly Baloch city in Iran’s southern Hormozgan province, are mourning after a strike on a wedding killed at least four people, including a child, and injured more than 60, according to local authorities.
The blast hit at around 9.30pm on 1 September, turning a night of celebration into one of devastation for the small coastal community, which is on the strait of Hormuz.
Continue reading...Troops escort settlers into al-Mughayyir and raze village outside Hebron as ethnic cleansing of West Bank continues
Israelis have shot dead two teenagers in a Palestinian village encircled by settlers, and Israeli troops have razed an entire village outside Hebron, in the latest attacks in a surge of Israeli terror and ethnic cleansing across the occupied West Bank.
The shootings targeted Khalil Abu Alia, 16, who was about to start 11th grade at the al-Mughayyir boys school, and 19-year-old Omar al-Nassan, who graduated from the same institution with top marks this summer.
Continue reading...Pedro Sánchez continues to defend Rabat after police report claiming border forces helped 70,000 cross border
Spain has seen no evidence “whatsoever” that Morocco planned or facilitated a mass border breach into its north African territory of Ceuta, the Spanish prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, has told parliament.
The address on Thursday followed the emergence of a police report, commissioned by a judge and widely quoted in the media, claiming Moroccan border forces had actively aided about 70,000 people to cross the border in late July.
Continue reading...Defence minister says he believes US backing could tip regional balance in favour of forced resettlement
Israel’s defence minister has said his country is seeking Donald Trump’s support to approve plans to expel Palestinians from the Gaza Strip in what has widely been condemned as a potential war crime.
Israel Katz said there was “no real solution for Gaza in the end without this
migration” during a conference hosted by the Israeli news site Ynet and the newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth. He said the Israeli government was “organised and prepared to get them out by sea, by air, by every way possible”.
Blast also injures 68 guests at the wedding in southern Iran, prompting fears of escalation in hostilities
Iran has accused the US of a war crime after a missile blast killed at least four people and injured 68 who were attending a wedding at a private home in a coastal city of southern Iran, as the fresh exchange of strikes prompted fears of a wider renewal of hostilities.
Iranian media said that the wedding ceremony was being held in a home in the city of Kuhestak, Hormozgan province, late on Tuesday when a US missile struck, with shrapnel and debris from the strike killing and injuring people.
Continue reading...Exclusive: sanctions against ministers and settler groups are ‘smoke and mirrors cop-out’ says Omar Barghouti
Britain’s legal and ethical obligation to stop a genocide in Gaza requires it to take bigger steps than halting trade with illegal Israeli settlements or imposing further sanctions, Omar Barghouti, the co-founder of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement has said.
He described sanctions against individual settler groups or extremist ministers as a “smoke and mirrors cop-out and distraction” from the UK’s legal obligation under international law to end all support for Israel, including arms exports, trade deals and academic relations that “may directly or indirectly enable Israel’s illegal occupation” of Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
Continue reading...Washington says it acted after observing Iran was planning to deploy fresh mines in strait of Hormuz
The US and Iran have exchanged fire for the first time in a month, with missiles and drones fired at Iranian rocket launchers on an island in the strait of Hormuz, and Iran targeting US military bases in Jordan and the United Arab Emirates in response.
The US president, Donald Trump, on Monday threatened further action. The US is to trying to prise open Tehran’s grip on shipping going through the strait, which before the war accounted for a fifth of the world’s seaborne energy supply. Washington claimed that Iranian control over the waterway had been loosened by repeated US attacks on Iranian missile launchers and radars.
Continue reading...Trump’s Operation Economic Outcast is expected to push many Iranians into deeper poverty as food inflation soars
For many Iranians, the new US sanctions campaign, called Operation Economic Outcast, seems superfluous given the grim economic situation in their country.
Iranians are facing runaway food inflation, closed petrol stations and a seemingly never-ending depreciation of the nation’s currency caused by a lack of foreign exchange reserves.
Continue reading...Pedro Sánchez says two countries cooperating and accuses Israel and Russia of spreading fake news about migration
Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, has said there is no evidence to suggest the Moroccan government was behind last month’s massive border crossing into Ceuta but accused Israel and Russia of spreading disinformation.
As many as 141 people are thought to have died trying to enter the Spanish enclave at the end of July. The influx of about 70,000 men, women and children unleashed a political crisis, a humanitarian emergency and reignited tensions within the EU over immigration.
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