Category Archives: Dominic Raab

Albania angrily denies it would process asylum seekers for UK

Posted on by

PM Edi Rama says he will ‘never receive refugees for richer countries’ after Raab said UK was exploring plans

Albania has strenuously denied it is willing to process people crossing the Channel to Britain, after the UK deputy prime minister, Dominic Raab, confirmed that the government is exploring ways of processing asylum seekers abroad.

Edi Rama, the prime minister, said he would “never receive refugees for richer countries”, after a report in the Times suggested Albania would be willing to host an offshore processing centre for people arriving in the UK from France in small boats.

Continue reading...

Julian Assange and fiancee claim they are being blocked from marrying

Posted on by

WikiLeaks founder and Stella Moris are preparing legal action against Dominic Raab and Belmarsh jail governor

Julian Assange and his fiancee, Stella Moris, say they are being prevented from getting married and are preparing legal action against Dominic Raab and the governor of Belmarsh prison.

The action accuses the justice secretary and Jenny Louis, who runs the prison where the WikiLeaks co-founder is being held while the US is seeking his extradition, of denying the human rights of the couple and their two children.

Continue reading...

Zimbabwean who cleared Falklands mines urges rethink on 75% cut to clearance programmes

Posted on by

Cuthbert Mutukwa fears disastrous consequences for home country if UK cuts go ahead as it nears ‘mine-free’ status

A Zimbabwean man who helped clear hundreds of landmines from the Falkland Islands has urged Britain not to go ahead with cuts that would see the government pull funding from his home country just as it nears “mine-free” status.

Cuthbert Mutukwa, 42, left his family in Zimbabwe to work for two years de-mining the Falkland Islands, the British overseas territory that was peppered with about 13,000 mines by Argentinian forces during the 1982 war.

Continue reading...

The Taliban are not the only threat to Afghanistan. Aid cuts could undo 20 years of progress

Posted on by

The most vulnerable people will bear the cost of sanctions, as services and the economy collapse

Watching Afghanistan’s unfolding trauma, I’ve thought a lot about Mumtaz Ahmed, a young teacher I met a few years ago. Her family fled Kabul during Taliban rule in the late 1990s.

Raised as a refugee in Pakistan, Ahmed had defied the odds and made it to university. Now, she was back in Afghanistan teaching maths in a rural girls’ school. “I came back because I believe in education and I love my country,” she told me. “These girls have a right to learn – without education, Afghanistan has no future.”

Continue reading...

Evacuations from Kabul may resume ‘in near future’, says Raab

Posted on by

Foreign secretary says UK must engage with Taliban in Afghanistan after meeting with Qatari officials

Evacuations may be able to resume from Kabul airport “in the near future”, the foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, has said as he expressed a need for direct engagement with the Taliban.

Speaking after talks in Qatar on Thursday, Raab raised hopes that the Britons and Afghans left behind may be able to leave on flights from Afghanistan’s capital.

Continue reading...

West may benefit from pragmatic approach after defeat to Taliban

Posted on by

Analysis: forging an acceptable agreement with new Afghan regime will require careful diplomacy

The history of war is littered with losing parties struggling to accept the terms or even the fact of their defeat. At the end of the first world war, Germany’s then chancellor Philipp Scheidemann announced: “May the hand wither that binds us in such shackles.”

Some of the demands by the US and its allies on how the Taliban must behave now contain similar self-denial. It is as if the US remains in control of Kabul, as orders are issued on future Taliban actions ranging from the release of refugees to the future makeup of the government, its counter-terrorism policies and the place of women in society.

Continue reading...

Dominic Raab says no one predicted Taliban takeover of Afghanistan – video

Posted on by

It was impossible to predict the Taliban would retake Afghanistan so swiftly after the withdrawal of international troops, Dominic Raab has said, arguing: ‘No one saw this coming.’

Speaking to the media following his return from holiday, after chaotic and deadly scenes at Kabul airport on Sunday, the UK foreign secretary said US and British troops had stabilised the airport, allowing evacuations to resume


Continue reading...

Raab: pace of Taliban takeover ‘caught everyone by surprise’ – video

Posted on by

Britain will use all the means at its disposal, including sanctions and diplomacy, to hold the Taliban to account in Afghanistan, foreign secretary Dominic Raab said.

In his first public appearance since the crisis began, Raab said that 'everyone was caught by surprise by the pace and the scale of the Taliban takeover', in which Kabul fell to the Islamist group over the weekend. Britain, which had initially committed 600 members of the armed forces to evacuate British nationals and former British staff, will shortly have 900 troops in Kabul.

Continue reading...

UK agrees to consider providing safe haven for Afghan journalists

Posted on by

U-turn over those who worked for British media follows outcry from newspapers and broadcasters

The foreign secretary has agreed to consider allowing Afghan journalists who worked for the British to flee to the UK if their lives are endangered by the resurgence of the Taliban, after an outcry from a coalition of British newspapers and broadcasters.

Dominic Raab signalled the policy U-turn on Friday, saying he recognised the bravery of the Afghan journalists. A scheme that was set up to offer a safe haven to Afghans who worked with the British will be expanded to include those who worked as journalists, it was reported.

Continue reading...

‘Highly likely’ Iran was behind fatal oil tanker attack – Dominic Raab

Posted on by

Foreign secretary backs Israeli PM’s claims Iran was behind drone strike that killed Briton and Romanian

The UK has said it is “highly likely” that Iran carried out an “unlawful and callous attack” on a ship in the Middle East, which left a Briton dead.

The foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, said the government believed the drone attack on the oil tanker off the coast of Oman was “deliberate, targeted, and a clear violation of international law by Iran”.

Continue reading...

UK Covid live: 689,313 people in England and Wales pinged by NHS Covid app last week

Posted on by

Latest updates: latest figures show increase of more than 70,000 compared to previous week

Here are the main points from the Downing Street lobby briefing.

The chancellor has said previously that the triple lock is government policy. But we recognise people’s concerns. We’ve got to ensure fairness for both taxpayers an pensioners.

Thank you @RNLI for all that you do. https://t.co/MkdOU1IHaP

Just made a donation. If you’d like to too - and help save lives - please visit https://t.co/TnJtqXeXbg pic.twitter.com/tk6a8Zky3k

These are from Torsten Bell, the chief executive of the Resolution Foundation, a thinktank focusing on pay and inequality, on today’s furlough figures. (See 11.44am.)

Two big take-aways from today's furlough stats. 1. almost 2 million workers still furloughed as the scheme's phase out started. That's more than I expected and the rate of decline halved in June from May (lesson = labour market chat has become too complacent) pic.twitter.com/xZgxG1AmAp

2. Furlough is now an older workers story. The young (who were most likely to have been furloughed) are flowing off the scheme much faster. Older workers are more likely to be parked on it and as a result, for the first time, they have the highest furlough rates pic.twitter.com/Ot6ThssfJa

Continue reading...

Foreign Office is ‘complicit in British man’s Somalia torture’

Posted on by

‘David Taylor’ claims hooding, sensory deprivation and waterboarding was to persuade him to cooperate with the CIA

A British citizen has claimed he was tortured in Somalia and questioned by US intelligence officers, raising concern that controversial practices of the post-9/11 “war on terror” are still being used.

The 45-year-old from London alleges he has endured hooding, sensory deprivation and waterboarding at the hands of the Somali authorities to persuade him, he believes, to cooperate with the CIA. Foreign Office officials are aware of the allegationsof torture and US involvement, but their failure to act has raised questions over UK complicity.

Continue reading...

Dominic Raab’s mobile number freely available online for last decade

Posted on by

Exclusive: Finding raises questions for security services weeks after similar revelations about PM’s number

The private mobile number of Dominic Raab, the UK foreign secretary, has been online for at least 11 years, raising questions for the security services weeks after the prime minister’s number was also revealed to be accessible to anyone.

Raab’s number was discovered by a Guardian reader using a Google search. It appears to have been online since before he became an MP in 2010, and remained after he became foreign secretary and first secretary of state – de facto deputy prime minister – in 2019.

Continue reading...

The Guardian view on Hong Kong’s Apple Daily: gone but not forgotten | Editorial

Posted on by

The outspoken tabloid’s closure is a chilling moment. But as Beijing silences dissent, the spirit of resistance endures

Apple Daily is dead. At midnight on Wednesday, Hong Kong’s biggest pro-democracy news outlet closed, forced out of business after authorities froze the assets of the 26-year-old tabloid and arrested executives and journalists. Through its outspoken support for protests, it had come to stand for resistance itself: for the freedom to know what is happening, to challenge authorities, and to imagine and demand another Hong Kong.

Beijing is determined to crush that resistance. Each day it turns the screws further. Many have fallen silent already, but Apple Daily was defiant. Its owner, Jimmy Lai, already jailed over a protest, could face life in prison due to further charges under the draconian national security law. The editor-in-chief and chief executive of its parent company have been charged with conspiracy to collude with “external elements” after 500 officers raided its headquarters last week. Authorities say that the case relates to articles calling for sanctions on the Hong Kong and Chinese governments, some published before the imposition of the security law, which is not supposed to be retroactive. This vindictive action marks the criminalisation of journalism. On Wednesday, the company announced it was closing overnight, citing employee safety and staffing levels after officers arrested its lead opinion writer.

Continue reading...

New Israeli government is just as bad as the last, says Palestinian PM

Posted on by

Mohammad Shtayyeh condemns Naftali Bennett’s announcements in support of Israeli settlements

Benjamin Netanyahu’s ousting closes one of the “worst periods” of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict but the new government headed by a settler advocate, Naftali Bennett, is just as bad as the last, the Palestinian prime minister has said.

“We do not see this new government as any less bad than the previous one, and we condemn the announcements of the new prime minister Naftali Bennett in support of Israeli settlements,” Mohammad Shtayyeh said, referring to hundreds of thousands of Jewish Israelis who have taken land in the occupied West Bank.

Continue reading...

China’s ‘splinternet’ will create a state-controlled alternative cyberspace

Posted on by

Beijing is using blockchain to build a new internet and many developing countries are likely to sign up – but at what cost?

Cyberspace is one huge, unregulated mess. A virtual wild west where sophisticated criminal gangs ply their trade alongside multinational companies, spy agencies, activists, celebrity influencers – and nation states. The question of who governs it is one of the biggest of our time.

Britain needs to be, if not quite ruling the waves, at least a global force for good in the expanding virtual world. The issue has never been so pressing. Six years ago, I acted for a coder in the biggest cyberfraud phishing case in the UK. The malware my client and others created was so sophisticated that the police could not decode it but were able to show it was used for fraud. The financial data harvested was stored on two servers, one in France and one in the US, and the lack of international cooperation meant law enforcement never got their hands on it.

Continue reading...

EU imposes new economic sanctions on Belarus over ‘hijacked’ flight

Posted on by

EU’s 27 heads of state call for the immediate release of opposition blogger Roman Protasevich

EU leaders triggered new economic sanctions against Belarus and punitive measures against its national airline as a dissident taken from a “hijacked” Ryanair flight was paraded on the country’s television news apparently confessing to crimes against the state.

In a summit communique swiftly agreed in Brussels on Monday night, the EU’s 27 heads of state and government condemned the forced landing of flight FR4978 in Minsk and called for the immediate release of opposition blogger Roman Protasevich and his Russian girlfriend, Sofia Sapega.

Continue reading...

Dominic Raab: UK airlines told to suspend flights over Belarus – video

Posted on by

The British government has told all UK planes to cease flying over Belarus and summoned the country’s ambassador amid outrage over the arrest of an opposition blogger and his girlfriend when their Ryanair flight was forced to make an emergency landing in Minsk. The operating permit for Belavia, the country’s state-owned airline, has also been suspended in the UK.

Dominic Raab told the Commons that Belarus’s ambassador had been summoned to provide an explanation and told MPs he was urgently seeing what further sanctions could be placed on Belarusian individuals and entities, but he stressed he wanted to act in coordination with allies, including the EU

Continue reading...

UK accused of a ‘abandoning’ Rohingya with ‘catastrophic’ 40% aid cut

Posted on by

Children in overcrowded Cox’s Bazar settlement likely to suffer most from reduced humanitarian spending, say campaigners

The government has been accused of abandoning Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh after cutting aid to the humanitarian response by more than 40%.

The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) pledged £27.6m to the humanitarian sector’s joint response plan launched this week, compared with £47.5m last year.

Continue reading...