Bill could become law this week as end of parliamentary ping-pong in sight
Q: Do you think you will be able to implement this without leaving the European convention of human rights?
Sunak says he thinks he can implement this without leaving the ECHR.
If it ever comes to a choice between our national security, securing our borders, and membership of a foreign court, I’m, of course, always going to prioritise our national security.
Continue reading...Lords also press ministers to allow independent Rwanda monitoring as deportation bill returns to Commons
Rishi Sunak’s government is considering concessions on the Rwanda deportation bill to allow exemptions for Afghans who served alongside UK forces, parliamentary sources say.
Ministers are also being pressed to give ground to an amendment to the legislation so that the east African country could be ruled unsafe by a monitoring committee.
Continue reading...Families of those who helped British forces could be deported from Pakistan despite promise to resettle them in UK
Afghan families who helped UK forces and then fled to neighbouring Pakistan are in danger of being deported back to the Taliban due to Home Office delays in bringing them to the UK.
In the chaotic evacuation period in the Afghan capital, Kabul, in August 2021 some family members eligible for resettlement in the UK became separated from the rest of their families. Some boarded flights while others were unable to due to crushes at the airport and instead fled over the border to Pakistan.
Continue reading...Shah Muhammad Rais was devastated when Taliban destroyed his shop, but now he is sending books to Afghanistan via the internet
Shah Muhammad Rais first opened his bookshop in the Afghan capital in 1974. By 2003, when his story was made famous by the bestselling book The Bookseller of Kabul, the business had collected about 100,000 books, in different languages, about literature, history and politics. The collection included works of fiction and nonfiction, with everything from richly illustrated children’s tales to dense academic tomes.
After the Taliban stormed Kabul in 2021, Rais fled to the UK, telling the Guardian last year that he feared the group would destroy his cherished business. His fears came true.
Continue reading...Afghan regime’s return to public stoning and flogging is because there is ‘no one to hold them accountable’ for abuses, say activists
The Taliban’s announcement that it is resuming publicly stoning women to death has been enabled by the international community’s silence, human rights groups have said.
Safia Arefi, a lawyer and head of the Afghan human rights organisation Women’s Window of Hope, said the announcement had condemned Afghan women to return to the darkest days of Taliban rule in the 1990s.
Continue reading...Johnny Mercer given 10 days to reveal source of claims British troops engaged in war crimes
The minister for veterans’ affairs, Johnny Mercer, has been given 10 days to reveal the source of allegations British troops engaged in war crimes in Afghanistan, or face a potential prison sentence.
Mercer in effect admitted last month in front of the public inquiry into the claims that he believed members of the SAS had engaged in dozens of unlawful killings of Afghan civilians between 2010 and 2013.
Continue reading...The ISKP regional affiliate has a haven in Afghanistan and carried out recent bombings in Iran, suggesting it has capacity for major atrocities
Speculation about who carried out the shooting at the Crocus City Hall in Moscow has quickly indicated that the terror attack will have outsized political implications in Russia and abroad.
A claim has surfaced that the attack was carried out by Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP) a regional affiliate of the IS terrorist organisation. IS has been implicated in some of Russia’s largest recent terror attacks, including the 2017 bombing in the St Petersburg metro that killed 15 and injured 45.
Continue reading...Retired generals Mark Milley and Frank McKenzie, who oversaw evacuation of Afghanistan, said it was poorly planned
The top two US generals who oversaw the evacuation of Afghanistan as it fell to the Taliban in August 2021 blamed the Biden administration for the chaotic departure, telling lawmakers on Tuesday that it inadequately planned for the evacuation and did not order it in time.
The rare testimony by the two retired generals publicly exposed for the first time the strain and differences the military leaders had with the Biden administration in the final days of the war. Two of those key differences included that the military had advised that the US keep at least 2,500 service members in Afghanistan to maintain stability and a concern that the state department was not moving fast enough to get an evacuation started.
Continue reading...A second Australian men’s cricket series against Afghanistan in as many years has been postponed due to the country’s poor record on human rights for women and girls.
Australia had already cancelled a one-day international series to be played in the United Arab Emirates in March 2023 due to “a marked deterioration” in the treatment of females in the country.
Continue reading...After no reported cases of wild polio for 19 weeks, vaccination efforts boosted at last endemic spots in Pakistan and Afghanistan
The world is “tantalisingly close” to eradicating polio – with no confirmed cases of wild polio anywhere so far this year. But experts warn that vaccination efforts – and funding – must not falter if the world is to rid itself of a human infectious disease for the second time in history, after smallpox.
There have been no reported cases of wild polio infection in people for the last 19 weeks. Figures from the World Health Organization reveal that the last confirmed cases were on the borders of Pakistan and Afghanistan in October and September 2023 respectively; these are the last nations on Earth where polio is endemic.
Continue reading...Unnamed militant group drove vehicle laden with explosives into post and detonated suicide bombs
Militants have attacked a military post in Pakistan near Afghanistan using a vehicle laden with explosives, killing five security force members, Pakistan’s military said.
The incident in north-west Pakistan was carried out by six attackers, the military’s media wing said in a statement, without naming the militant group responsible for the attack.
Continue reading...Johnny Mercer tells inquiry defence secretary did not say he knew of allegations before Commons told they were untrue
A minister has told an inquiry that he was angry with the former defence secretary Ben Wallace after discovering that UK special forces officers knew about Afghanistan death squad allegations before he described them as untrue in the House of Commons.
Johnny Mercer wrote to Wallace in August 2020 shortly after emails surfaced in the Sunday Times that showed senior special forces officers expressed serious concerns about the killings of 33 people in 11 night raids in the war-torn nation in 2011.
Continue reading...Johnny Mercer tells UK inquiry of reports SAS had killed civilians between 2010 and 2013
The UK’s minister for veterans, Johnny Mercer, has effectively admitted in front of a public inquiry that he believed members of the SAS had engaged in dozens of unlawful killings of Afghan civilians between 2010 and 2013.
Mercer told the inquiry on Tuesday that at one point, shortly after first becoming a minister in 2019, Mercer said he told the then defence secretary, Ben Wallace, that “something stinks”. His boss replied: “There is no new evidence, Johnny,” and the cabinet minster chose not to take any further action.
Continue reading...MoD conducts review but stands accused of conflict of interest while public inquiry investigates conduct of SAS in Afghanistan
Elite Afghan commandos who fought alongside the British military have had their applications to relocate blocked by UK special forces despite evidence that they had served alongside them in dangerous missions against the Taliban.
Documents leaked and shared with BBC Panorama show that Britain’s secretive special forces were given a veto power over resettlement, prompting claims that hundreds of Afghan veterans have been left in limbo or danger in their native country.
Continue reading...The Internationalists details how the president was determined to leave a country in which 2,324 US troops were killed since 2001
Joe Biden is “privately defiant” that he made the right calls on the US withdrawal from Afghanistan in summer 2021, a new book reportedly says, even as the chaos and carnage that unfolded continues to be investigated in Congress.
“No one offered to resign” over the withdrawal, writes Alexander Ward, a Politico reporter, “in large part because the president didn’t believe anyone had made a mistake. Ending the war was always going to be messy.”
Continue reading...Roberts-Smith, 45, is seeking to overturn June defamation trial judgment that found he engaged in war crimes in Afghanistan
News companies defending a defamation appeal launched by Ben Roberts-Smith over reports he engaged in war crimes in Afghanistan have told a court the ex-SAS corporal’s case is “fundamentally flawed”.
The appeal by Roberts-Smith, 45, seeks to overturn his June defamation loss against Nine newspapers and the Canberra Times over 2018 reports on war crimes during the Victoria Cross-recipient’s Afghanistan deployments.
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Continue reading...Gun Ufuk, 29, sentenced to 20 years in prison over deadly sinking that occurred metres from shore
An Italian court has sentenced a people smuggler to 20 years in prison for involvement in a shipwreck last year that killed at least 94 migrants.
The court in the southern city of Crotone found Gun Ufuk, a 29-year-old Turkish national, guilty of crimes including causing a shipwreck and aiding illegal immigration. It also ordered him to pay a €3m fine and pay damages to civil plaintiffs.
Continue reading...Oliver Jordan Schulz, who is accused of murder over the shooting of a young Afghan, applied for his bail conditions to be loosened
A former SAS soldier and accused war criminal requires assessment by police checking in on him while on bail because his military training presents a physical danger, a court has heard.
Oliver Jordan Schulz, 42, is expected to be able to fly to Perth to visit his lawyers after a bail variation hearing at Sydney’s Downing Centre local court on Monday.
Continue reading...Rescue teams find charter ambulance flight from Thailand to Moscow after it disappeared from radar screens
Four people are reported to have survived after a private jet carrying out a medical evacuation from Thailand to Russia disappeared from radar screens and crashed in a remote and mountainous area of north-eastern Afghanistan on Saturday.
Russian aviation authorities said two passengers and four crew members were onboard the charter ambulance flight, which was travelling from Utapao airport, near Pattaya, to Moscow via India and Uzbekistan.
Continue reading...Many waiting for a ticket to Australia are in Pakistan, where local authorities are undertaking a mass deportation
Afghan women’s rights defenders who have fled the Taliban’s rule say they are at risk of imminent return to Afghanistan by Pakistani authorities, prompting calls for the Australian government to step in and expedite their protection visas.
The federal government has received more than 215,000 humanitarian visa requests from Afghan nationals since the fall of Kabul to the Taliban in August 2021, granting 15,852 visas so far as of December 2023.
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