Retiree Jim Fitton, 66, was detained when airport security found ‘valueless’ pottery shards in luggage
The family of a retired British geologist facing the death penalty in Iraq have called on the UK government to urgently intervene.
Jim Fitton, 66, was detained by authorities in the Middle Eastern country, accused of smuggling, during a geology and archaeology trip.
Continue reading...Water shortages leading to rising salt concentrations and sandstorms are eroding world’s ancient sites
Some of the world’s most ancient buildings are being destroyed by climate change, as rising concentrations of salt in Iraq eat away at mud brick and more frequent sandstorms erode ancient wonders.
Iraq is known as the cradle of civilisation. It was here that agriculture was born, some of the world’s oldest cities were built, such as the Sumerian capital Ur, and one of the first writing systems was developed – cuneiform. The country has “tens of thousands of sites from the Palaeolithic through Islamic eras”, explained Augusta McMahon, professor of Mesopotamian archaeology at the University of Cambridge.
Continue reading...Iraqi militias and others say undercover networks being used to supply materiel such as RPGs and anti-tank missiles
Russia is receiving munitions and military hardware sourced from Iraq for its war effort in Ukraine with the help of Iranian weapons smuggling networks, according to members of Iranian-backed Iraqi militias and regional intelligence services with knowledge of the process.
RPGs and anti-tank missiles, as well as Brazilian-designed rocket launcher systems, have been dispatched to Russia from Iraq as Moscow’s campaign has faltered in the last month, the Guardian has learned.
Continue reading...Man applied to Australian government for act of grace payment over Mosul strike targeting Islamic State in 2017
An Iraqi man who alleges 35 family members were killed when an Australian airstrike targeting Islamic State instead obliterated a house where civilians were sheltering has been denied a compensation payment by the federal government.
The man, who did not wish to be identified, applied for what is known as an act of grace payment from the Department of Finance last year, arguing that there was strong evidence the Australian Defence Force dropped the bomb in 2017 as part of a series of airstrikes in Mosul by the coalition fighting IS.
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Continue reading...Revolutionary Guards say target in Erbil was Israeli ‘strategic centre’ following attack in Syria
Iran has claimed responsibility for a missile barrage that struck early on Sunday near a sprawling US consulate complex in the northern Iraqi city of Erbil, saying it was retaliation for an Israeli strike in Syria that killed two of its Revolutionary Guards.
No injuries were reported in the attack, which marked a significant escalation between the US and Iran. Hostility between the countries has often played out in Iraq, whose government is allied with both countries.
Continue reading...A day after Iraq said it would host a fresh round of talks between the regional rivals, Iran announced they would not go ahead
Iran has suspended the latest round of talks with regional rival Saudi Arabia, a website affiliated with Iran’s top security body has reported.
Iraq’s foreign ministry had announced on Saturday that it would host the talks on Wednesday. The Iraqi foreign minister, Fuad Hussein, revealed the development during remarks at a diplomatic forum in Antalya on Turkey’s southern coast cited by local media. A foreign ministry spokesperson confirmed the comments to Reuters.
Continue reading...Telecoms group’s admission comes days after revelations about alleged bribes given to Islamic State
The Swedish telecoms group Ericsson broke a formal agreement with US prosecutors by withholding evidence about its involvement in corruption, the firm has announced.
The US Department of Justice had notified Ericsson that the firm has failed, as required, to hand over details of alleged corruption in Iraq to DoJ prosecutors.
Continue reading...Telecoms giant’s internal investigators uncover allegations it was involved in corruption in at least 10 countries
Confidential documents have revealed how the telecoms giant Ericsson is alleged to have helped pay bribes to the Islamic State terrorist group in order to continue selling its services after the militants seized control of large parts of Iraq.
The leak of internal investigations at Ericsson, which also found that the firm had put its contractors at risk and allowed them to be kidnapped by the militants, is potentially damaging for the multinational.
Continue reading...The institution suffered a devastating attack by Islamic State in 2014. Eight years on, an international effort has seen it reopen as ‘a lighthouse of knowledge’
The university library in Mosul, which was bombed by Islamic State militants, has opened its doors again, describing itself as a “lighthouse of knowledge” which is “once again burning bright”.
Founded in 1921, the library was ransacked and bombarded by missiles during the IS occupation of the city, with an estimated 8,000 to 10,000 books and manuscripts destroyed. It was reopened on 19 February by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), with financial support from Germany and book donations from around the world, including over 20,000 from the UK.
Continue reading...The mountains of Iraqi Kurdistan are edged with a tangerine glow as our minibus drives past them. We set off earlier from Erbil, the region’s capital, and are driving to Shaqlawa, a historic city about 50 minutes away, to hike up the nearby Safeen mountain. Inside the minibus, a group of teenage girls are playing their favourite songs.
The teenagers live with their families in one of Erbil’s two main camps for internally displaced people (IDPs), Baharka and Harsham, having fled Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, and surrounding towns such as Tal Afar and Sinjar, when the area was captured by ISISsis in 2014. The hike has been organised by Free to Run, an NGO that supports and empowers women and girls in regions of conflict through sport, offering them life-skills training, and creating safe spaces for them to develop confidence and friends, and to reclaim public space in a country where women’s rights are lacking.
Continue reading...Friends of Doski Azad said the 23-year-old makeup artist had received repeated death threats from male family members
The Kurdish transgender woman Doski Azad shot dead by her brother last month, had been living in hiding from her family after repeated death threats, friends have said.
According to friends, Azad had had to move home regularly after several death threats by male members of her family.
Continue reading...Éléonore Weber’s documentary, air-strike footage of pilots on night missions, could work well in a gallery
This hypnotic meditation on modern warfare from Éléonore Weber is an experimental cine-essay that feels closer to a gallery installation than a documentary. Watching it is a bit of a test of concentration: 75 minutes of helicopter airstrike footage from American and French missions in Iraq and Afghanistan. Clip after clip of pilots following what’s on the ground hundreds of metres below. Who is that in their crosshairs: a Taliban fighter holding a Kalashnikov or a farmer with a rake? Farmers know that they get mistaken for fighters, so run and hide their tools when they hear helicopters. Which of course makes them look suspicious.
In the cockpit, we hear American voices: “Request permission to engage.” “We got a guy with an RPG.” This is the notorious video WikiLeaks dubbed Collateral Murder, a US airstrike filmed from an Apache helicopter in 2007. The rocket-propelled grenade launcher turned out to be a camera tripod belonging to a Reuters photographer, who was one of a dozen civilians killed in the attack. It’s impossible to watch and not think of computer games. “Kill! Kill! Kill” we hear in another video – you can almost feel the itch to shoot everything that moves.
Continue reading...‘Dozens of IS fighters’ were freed from the jail and the attacks raise fears of the terror group’s resurgence
Islamic State has attacked a Syrian prison housing its suspected members and a military base in Iraq in near-simultaneous deadly operations that have revived fears of the terror group’s resurgence.
IS has yet to comment on the attacks and there is no indication that these were coordinated, but according to analysts they strongly suggest IS is trying to boost its ranks and arsenal in an attempt to reorganise across both countries.
Continue reading...People still missing despite major rescue effort as smugglers switch to more perilous route from Turkey
At least 16 people have died after a migrant boat capsized in the Aegean Sea late Friday, bringing to at least 30 the combined death toll from three accidents in as many days involving migrant boats in Greek waters.
The sinkings came as smugglers increasingly favour a perilous route from Turkey to Italy, which avoids Greece’s heavily patrolled eastern Aegean islands that for years were at the forefront of the country’s migration crisis.
Continue reading...Oilwells set alight by Iraqi forces in 1991 were put out within months, but insidious pollution still mars the desert
For 10 months in Kuwait, everything was upside down. Daytime was full of darkness from the thick smoke, and nights were bright from the distant glow of burning oilwells.
When Iraq’s leader, Saddam Hussein, ordered the occupation of Kuwait in August 1990 in an attempt to gain control of the lucrative oil supply of the Middle East and pay off a huge debt accrued from Kuwait, he was fairly quickly forced into retreat by a US coalition which began an intensive bombing campaign.
Continue reading...Maryam Nuri Mohamed Amin from northern Iraq was messaging her fiancé when dinghy started sinking
A Kurdish woman from northern Iraq has become the first victim of this week’s mass drowning in the Channel to be named.
Maryam Nuri Mohamed Amin was messaging her fiance, who lives in the UK, when the group’s dinghy started deflating on Wednesday.
Continue reading...As officials grapple with crisis, even more Kurds are preparing to make dangerous journey to Europe
Were they driven to the freezing shores of Europe by desperation, or did several thousand Kurds instead make the dangerous journey in search of opportunity?
As officials in Iraqi Kurdistan grapple with what is driving a crisis that is thought to have led to scores of citizens drowning in the Channel on Wednesday, and thousands of others to brave precarious migrant routes to Europe, even more are preparing to leave.
Continue reading...Ambassador warned Foreign Office an Iraqi invasion was under way but this was not passed on to airline
Hundreds of British passengers might have avoided being taken hostage by Saddam Hussein in 1990 if a call by a British ambassador regarding Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait had been relayed to British Airways, the Foreign Office has disclosed.
The revelation of the phone call and the decades long cover-up was made on Tuesday under the 20-year disclosure rule, but was known to ministers and diplomats since 1990. The current foreign secretary, Liz Truss, has apologised for the omission.
Continue reading...A roundup of the struggle for human rights and freedoms, from Pakistan to Poland
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