Region

TUNIS — Fourteen people from sub-Saharan Africa drowned in the Mediterranean, authorities said on Thursday in Tunisia, where black migrants have faced a wave of violence since an inflammatory speech by President Kais Saied.

The drama occurred off the coast of Tunisia's Sfax region, where a spokesman for the court in charge of the investigation said the dead were from two sunken migrant boats.

Three migrants died and 34 were rescued in one sinking on Tuesday, followed Wednesday by 11 deaths in a separate incident with 20 rescued, the spokesman Faouzi Masmoudi said.

The coastguard, in an earlier statement on Facebook, said its personnel had rescued 54 people "of various sub-Saharan African nationalities", and recovered 14 bodies, but mentioned only one boat.

The agency said it had prevented a total of 14 attempts to cross the sea and rescued 435 migrants overnight Wednesday-Thursday, almost all from African countries south of the Sahara.

Many black migrants in Tunisia have been made homeless amid a wave of racist violence since President Kais Saied accused them last month of causing a crime wave and representing a “criminal plot” to change the country’s demographic composition.

The North African country hosts around 21,000 undocumented migrants from other parts of Africa, less than 0.2 per cent of the population.

Hundreds, including children and pregnant women, were made homeless in the winter cold and many registered with their embassies for repatriation, mostly to West African countries.

Others have sought to reach Europe in unseaworthy boats from Tunisia, whose coast lies about 130 kilometres from the Italian island of Lampedusa at its closest point.

The country has long been a springboard for people fleeing war and poverty elsewhere on the continent to seek better lives in Europe, along with thousands of Tunisians themselves.

Rome said in February that more than 32,000 migrants, including 18,000 Tunisians, reached Italy from Tunisia last year, while thousands more have departed from neighbouring Libya.

European governments, particularly in Rome, have pressured Tunis to stem the flow, and the coastguard regularly intercepts boats carrying migrants in its territorial waters, part of the world’s deadliest migration route.

A spokesman told AFP on Thursday that the coastguard would continued to battle “gangs involved in organising clandestine immigration operations”.

Last month, Saied had ordered “urgent measures” to tackle irregular migration. He said “hordes” of migrants were causing a crime wave and threatening Tunisia’s demographic composition, echoing a conspiracy theory popular among the far right in France.

His comments sparked outcry, with rights groups accusing him of racism and hate speech. Landlords, fearing heavy fines and jail sentences, evicted hundreds of migrants, many of whom are still living rough in Tunis.

But Saied on Wednesday denied he was racist, saying he had African friends. He slammed the “malicious remarks” of those who “wanted to interpret the speech as they saw fit to harm Tunisia”.

Speaking after a meeting with Guinea-Bissau’s President Umaro Sissoco Embalo, who is chairman of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), Saied said migrants in Tunisia were “brothers”.

He said the aim of his speech was to ensure respect for “Tunisian legality regarding foreigners”.

“This situation concerning Africans cannot be interpreted by malicious tongues, as they have done in recent days, as racism. What are they talking about?”

“I am African and I am proud to be African,” he said.

Embalo, current chairman of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), said Saied’s speech on sub-Saharan migrants had been “misinterpreted”.

The African Union has previously expressed “deep shock and concern” at Saied’s remarks, urging member states to “refrain from racialised hate speech that could bring people to harm”.of power in the region.

PARIS — Iran has jailed for six-and-a-half years on national security charges an Irish-French citizen held since October, his family said, adding that health problems meant his life was in danger.

Bernard Phelan, a Paris-based travel consultant, was arrested in October in the north-eastern city of Mashhad and has been held ever since.

He is one of some two dozen foreigners jailed in Iran who campaigners see as hostages held to extract concessions from the West.

Phelan, 64, is accused of transmitting information to an enemy state, a charge he denies, his family said in a statement late Tuesday.

At an initial hearing on February 20, where he was allowed to be accompanied only by a regime-appointed lawyer, he was sentenced to three-and-a-half years, earning a deduction for health reasons and his age.

But a second hearing on February 26 saw the sentenced raised to six and a half years, the family said.

“The health of Bernard is very worrying and his life is in danger,” the family’s statement said.

The family said that his health has “deteriorated considerably” in detention and he needs daily medication for a number of health issues, and that it fears his supplies are running out.

His health issues include cardiovascular problems, hypertension, high risk of stroke and kidney failure and a bone problem that generates significant chronic pain, while his eyesight is also deteriorating.

Phelan went on a dry hunger strike in January to protest his detention but stopped the action at the request of his family, who feared he would die.

With Iran rocked by anti-regime protests since September, Phelan has been accused of taking photos of a burned mosque and police officers, and sending images to a British newspaper, the family said, adding that he denies the accusations.

He has also been accused of taking 900-year-old pieces of pottery from a village, which he also denies, it added.

Six French citizens, described as “hostages” by the French foreign ministry, are currently held in prison by Iran.

French-Iranian academic Fariba Adelkhah was released from prison in February but it remains unclear if she is able to leave the country.

French citizen Benjamin Briere, detained in May 2020 and later sentenced to eight years in prison for espionage, was acquitted by an appeals court but remains in prison in a situation deemed “incomprehensible” by his family.

Held like Phelan in the prison of Vakilabad in Mashhad, Briere is continuing a hunger strike he started a month ago, and is “exhausted physically and mentally”, according to his French lawyer.

BEIRUT — Seven people including several civilians were killed on Wednesday when a drone strike targeted a weapons factory belonging to Iran-backed factions in government-held eastern Syria, a war monitor said.

It was not immediately clear who was behind the strike in Deir Ezzor province, where Iran-backed factions hold sway and where a US-led coalition and Israel have previously carried out attacks.

"Seven people were killed and 15 wounded in a drone strike targeting a weapons factory and a truck loaded with weapons," both belonging to Iran-backed groups, said Rami Abdel Rahman, who heads the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Three pro-Iranian fighters from Afghanistan, three Syrian civilians and one unidentified Syrian were killed, Abdel Rahman told AFP, adding that the building targeted was only recently converted into an arms factory.

Israel has carried out repeated air and missile strikes against government forces and their Iran-backed allies in Syria since the civil war broke out in 2011. It rarely comments on individual military operations.

A US-led coalition fighting the remnants of the Daesh terror group in Iraq and Syria has also carried out strikes against pro-Iran fighters in Syria in the past.

Wednesday’s attack targeted a part of Deir Ezzor that is home to residences of top Iranian commanders and senior officers of Lebanon’s Hizbollah movement as well as an Iranian hospital for cholera patients, Abdel Rahman said.

Pro-Iran factions aligned with the Syrian government, including Iraqi groups and Hizbollah, are heavily deployed south and west of the Euphrates River which bisects Deir Ezzor province.

Syrian state media said a landmine planted by Islamic State group “terrorists” exploded in the same neighbourhood, killing three and wounding seven.

“Three citizens were killed and seven others injured” in the explosion, state news agency SANA reported.

It published photographs of the aftermath of the blast that showed extensive damage to a building and a truck.

The attack followed a series of unclaimed drone strikes on January 30 that targeted a suspected Iranian weapons convoy in the province and killed 11 people, including a pro-Iranian commander, the observatory said at the time.

The 25-truck convoy had been targeted three times in less than 24 hours, a Syrian official had told AFP, denying the trucks carried weapons.

The conflict in Syria started in 2011 with the brutal repression of peaceful protests and escalated to pull in foreign powers and global terrorists.

The war has killed nearly half-a-million people and forced around half of the country’s pre-war population from their homes.

TEHRAN — Iran announced on Tuesday it had made the first arrests in a spate of mystery poisonings of schoolgirls that has affected more than 5,000 pupils since late November.

Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei had called on Monday for the perpetrators of the "unforgivable crime" to be tracked down "without mercy" as public anger mounts.

The interior ministry said in a statement on Tuesday "a number of people" suspected of manufacturing hazardous substances had been arrested in six provinces, including a pupil's parent.

Iran's deputy interior minister, Majid Mirahmadi, told state television earlier on Tuesday that the "intelligence agencies" had made several arrests, "and the relevant agencies are conducting a full investigation".

Scores of Iranian schools have been hit by poisonings since late November, with pupils suffering symptoms ranging from shortness of breath to nausea and vertigo after reporting "unpleasant" odours on school premises. Some have been treated in hospital.

"Twenty-five [out of 31] provinces and approximately 230 schools have been affected, and more than 5,000 schoolgirls and boys poisoned," Mohammad-Hassan Asafari, a member of the parliamentary fact-finding committee, told the ISNA news agency on Monday.

"Various tests are being carried out to identify the type and cause of the poisonings. So far, no specific information has been obtained regarding the type of poison used."

The mystery poisonings have triggered a wave of anger and demands for action from the authorities.

According to the interior ministry statement, arrests had been made in Khuzestan, West Azerbaijan, Fars, Kermanshah, Khorasan and Alborz provinces.

One of those arrested had allegedly used their child to insert the “irritant” into the school, and then recorded videos of sick students which were sent to “hostile media” to “create fear... and close schools”, the statement said.

It added three suspects have criminal records “including involvement in the recent riots”, a term used by the Iranian authorities to describe the protests sparked by Mahsa Amini’s death in custody.

Amini, 22, had been arrested over an alleged violation of strict dress rules for women and died on September 16.

‘Fear and despair’ 

President Ebrahim Raisi tasked the interior and intelligence ministries last week with providing continuous updates on the poisoning cases, dubbing them “the enemy’s conspiracy to create fear and despair” among the people.

“In less than 5 per cent of the students transferred to hospital, irritant materials were found which led to their ill-health,” the interior ministry said on Monday.

“Fortunately, so far, no toxic or dangerous substances have been found in any of the students transferred to medical centres.”

Deputy health minister Saeed Karimi said symptoms included “respiratory irritation, stomach ache, weakness and lethargy”.

“These inhaled irritants may not necessarily be a gas but may be in the form of a powder or paste or even a liquid, which when poured over a heater or vaporised by heat can cause complications,” he added.

The latest case — reported by the ISNA news agency — involved 40 pupils, all of them female, in the restive southeastern city of Zahedan on Tuesday.

The White House called on Monday for a “credible independent investigation” into the poisonings.

The first cases were reported in Iran’s Shiite clerical capital of Qom in late November, a month after the Amini protests that later spread to universities and schools.

On Tuesday, Tehran Prosecutor Ali Salehi warned “those who spread lies and rumours” about the poisonings that “they will be dealt with decisively and legally”, the judiciary’s Mizan Online website reported.

“In the past week, court cases and charges have been filed against the managers of the Hammihan, Rouydad 24 and Shargh media, as well as several individuals,” Salehi added.

TUNIS — The head of a panel tasked with uncovering abuses under Tunisia’s autocratic past rulers said on Tuesday she had been banned from leaving the country as prosecutors investigate her for alleged falsifications in the commission’s report.

Sihem Bensedrine, head of the former Truth and Dignity Commission (IVD), is the latest public figure to face investigation in the birthplace of the Arab Spring pro-democracy uprisings.

A string of personalities, mainly critics of President Kais Saied, have been arrested since early February.

The IVD received testimonies from tens of thousands of victims of abuses including rape and torture following the country’s 2011 pro-democracy revolution which had toppled dictator Zine Al Abidine Ben Ali.

After its mandate ended, the commission issued a vast final report that was published in Tunisia’s official journal in 2020.

Bensedrine said in a statement on Tuesday that she had been under investigation since February 2021 on allegations that she falsified parts of the report.

She is accused of accepting a bribe to include a passage accusing the Franco-Tunisian Bank of corruption, allegations she refuted.

Bensedrine said she had been banned from travelling after being summoned last Thursday by a financial crimes judge.

The judge told her she was charged with “having procured unjustified advantages”, “harming the state” and “forgery”, she said in her statement.

No court official could be reached for comment on the case.

The IVD collected some 65,000 complaints covering the period of Ben Ali’s rule and that of his predecessor Habib Bourguiba.

Tunisia adopted a new, democratic constitution three years after Ben Ali was toppled, but despite a decade of tentative democracy, Bensedrine told AFP in 2020 that “the demons of the past came back”.

Saied, who sacked the government and froze parliament in mid-2021 and later pushed through a new constitution concentrating power in his office, has been accused of attempting to restore an authoritarian system in the country.

He has accused those arrested in recent weeks of “terrorism” and “plotting against state security”.

DOHA — Denmark, an active foreign aid donor, on Tuesday slammed as a “total embarrassment” the fact rich nations have failed to raise a promised $100 billion a year to help poor countries battle climate change.

Dan Jorgensen, Denmark’s development minister, told the UN Least Developed Countries summit that “trillions” would be needed in coming decades to control the fallout from rising temperatures.

The impact of a heating planet on the world’s 46 poorest nations has been a key topic at the summit in Doha that ends on Thursday.

Least developed countries account for 4 per cent of polluting emissions but suffer more than two thirds of deaths from floods, storms and other climate related disasters, according to Simon Stiell, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.

“It is a total embarrassment that the developed world has not yet delivered on the $100 billion that was promised in 2009,” Jorgensen said.

Rich nations promised at a climate conference in Copenhagen in 2009 that the sum would be given annually by 2020 but have so far only reached about $83 billion.

Denmark is one of a handful of Scandinavian-dominated countries that have passed a UN target to give 0.7 per cent of gross national income in foreign aid.

Some developed nations have cut aid budgets because of the coronavirus pandemic while some European countries, including Denmark, have diverted foreign aid money to support refugees from the Ukraine war and other international crises.

Denmark is “delivering more than our share”, said Jorgensen.

At a global level “we need to step up that financing”, he added, arguing that “we need trillions, so 100 billion really should not be a problem”.

France’s minister of state for development Chrysoula Zacharopoulou said that her country wanted to step up negotiations on aid financing at a summit in Paris on June 22-23.

Stiell said that the COP28 climate conference to be held in the United Arab Emirates this year would be key for setting “milestones” and “targets” for future years.

He said his office was ready to help all LDC countries set up national action plans on climate change before the conference in November.

VIENNA — Iran will evade fresh censure by the UN nuclear watchdog after making "concrete" commitments at the weekend to be transparent following the discovery of particles enriched to near weapons-grade, diplomats told AFP on Monday.

The development comes after International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) head Rafael Grossi received assurances from Iran that surveillance cameras at several nuclear sites would be reconnected and the pace of inspections increased.

On Saturday, Grossi returned from a two-day visit to Tehran, which sought greater cooperation over its atomic activities, following the discovery of uranium particles enriched to near weapons-grade level.

Three Western diplomats told AFP on the first day of the Board of Governors meeting of the Vienna-based IAEA that no new resolution criticising Iran over its nuclear programme was planned.

"But it remains to be seen whether anything agreed in Tehran results in real progress," a Western diplomat cautioned.

In November, Iran was censured over its lack of cooperation with the agency.

On Monday, Grossi dismissed the perception that he had merely obtained empty promises from Iran over the weekend.

These are “not promises, we do have certain agreements which are concrete”, he told reporters in Vienna.

“I have been as frustrated as many other people, perhaps the most frustrated, when there is lack of results,” he added.

“We seem to be moving into more firm ground,” he said, adding that the agency would “of course walk with caution”.

Grossi hailed “a marked improvement” in his discussions with the Iranian government last week.

He said the measures he agreed with Iran should be in place “very soon” following a technical meeting due to travel to Tehran.

In his series of meetings with Iranian officials, Grossi met President Ebrahim Raisi.

Tehran also indicated it had agreed to more inspections at the Fordo underground plant, where uranium particles enriched to near weapons-grade were found.

A confidential IAEA report seen by AFP detailed that uranium particles enriched up to 83.7 per cent — just under the 90 per cent needed to produce an atomic bomb — had been detected.

Iran denies wanting to acquire atomic weapons, and says it had made no attempt to enrich uranium beyond 60 per cent purity.

In January, the IAEA’s Grossi said Iran had “amassed enough nuclear material for several nuclear weapons”.

On-off talks between Tehran and world powers to revive a 2015 landmark deal that sought to curb Iran’s nuclear programme in exchange for sanctions relief had stalled since last year.

The deal Iran reached with Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United States collapsed after Washington’s unilateral withdrawal in 2018 under then president Donald Trump.