Region

CAIRO — Egypt disputed Sunday a claim by British human rights lawyer Amal Clooney that she had been warned she risked arrest last year if she released a report in Cairo critical of the judiciary.

Clooney, a rights lawyer who married Hollywood star George Clooney in a lavish Venice ceremony last year, told Britain's Guardian newspaper that the warning had stopped her going ahead with a Cairo launch for the February 2014 report for the International Bar Association.

But interior ministry spokesman Hani Abdel Latif questioned the source of the alleged warning.

"She should say exactly who said that," Abdel Latif told AFP. "Why not specify from the start who told her that?"

"We have nothing against her," he said.

In the comments published by The Guardian on Saturday, Clooney did not detail the source of the alleged warning.

"When I went to launch the report, first of all they stopped us from doing it in Cairo," she said.

"They said: 'Does the report criticise the army, the judiciary, or the government?' We said: 'Well, yes.' They said: 'Well then, you're risking arrest.'"

The report, based on a fact-finding mission made in mid-2013, warned about the wide powers that ministers had over judges and highlighted a record of selective prosecutions, flaws that Clooney said later contributed to the convictions of three Al Jazeera journalists.

Clooney, who is now on the defence team for one of the three — Egyptian-Canadian Mohamed Fahmy — said the same flaws in the judicial system meant she had little confidence in the retrial ordered on Thursday by Egypt's top court.

She said she was focusing instead on lobbying for Fahmy to be deported under new powers decreed by President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi in November.

Lawyers for Fahmy's Australian colleague Peter Greste are pushing for the same outcome, while the wife of Egyptian Baher Mohamed has said she is looking at ways to get her husband out of Egypt.

The three men remain in custody pending the retrial.

SYDNEY/CAIRO — Two of three Al Jazeera journalists jailed in Egypt have applied to be deported under a new law after the country's highest court ordered their retrial but did not free them as their families had hoped.

Australian Peter Greste, Canadian-Egyptian Mohamed Fahmy and Egyptian Baher Mohamed were sentenced in June to seven to 10 years in jail for spreading lies to help a "terrorist organisation" — a reference to Egypt's outlawed Muslim Brotherhood.

Egypt's High Court ordered their retrial on Thursday citing procedural flaws in the original trial, which was condemned by human rights groups and Western governments.

The reporters' imprisonment is a thorny issue for Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi as he seeks to prove his commitment to reform, having ousted his Islamist predecessor in July 2013 and cracked down on the Brotherhood.

Their families say they are paying the price for a deterioration in ties between Qatar, which owns Al Jazeera, and Egypt following the Brotherhood's expulsion from power.

Doha supported the Brotherhood during its year in power but a recent Saudi push to heal the rift had raised expectations the reporters would be freed.

The new law passed in November allows for foreign convicts or suspects to be transferred to their country to serve their sentences or to be tried there. It was not clear how it might be applied in Al Jazeera case since there are no precedents.

Greste's lawyer Mostafa Nagy told Reuters in Cairo he had presented the prosecution with a deportation request last month but received no response. He planned to make a new request in light of Thursday's ruling and hoped it would be accepted.

Greste's brother, Andrew, echoed those hopes.

"Now that Peter is essentially an innocent man, he's not convicted any more, it does allow for some room to move and for him [Sisi] to step in... and deport him," he told reporters in Brisbane.

Fahmy's brother Adel told Reuters in Cairo: "Our lawyer Amal Clooney has submitted a request for deportation to the public prosecutor and the presidency which has been endorsed by the Canadian government and we believe this is the best option."

Despite widespread criticism of the case, Sisi has resisted intervening directly, citing judicial independence.

Defence lawyers say the retrial could begin within a month. The judge has the power to release all three on bail at the first hearing though a verdict could take months. Adel Fahmy said that made deportation a more attractive route.

BEIRUT — Lebanon is to impose visa restrictions on Syrians for the first time after being overwhelmed by an influx of more than 1.1 million refugees, according to documents published online.

The new regulations, posted on the website of the General Security Agency, come into effect on January 5 and lay out eight new visa categories, including for tourism and medical treatment.

The requirement appeared to be the first time Lebanon has demanded that Syrians apply for visas.

Citizens of both countries have for decades been able to travel freely across their shared border.

The new rule is the latest in a series of measures taken by Lebanon to stem the influx of Syrians fleeing their country's brutal civil war.

In October, Social Affairs Minister Rashid Derbas said Lebanon was effectively no longer receiving Syrian refugees, with limited exceptions for “humanitarian reasons”.

A security source, speaking to AFP on condition of anonymity, declined to describe the new requirements as visas, but acknowledged they were unprecedented.

“This is the first time these kinds of instructions have been given,” he said.

“The goal is to bring the security and economic situation under control and to monitor the presence of Syrians on Lebanese soil.”

A spokesman for the United Nations refugee agency UNHCR said they were still studying the new rules and had no immediate comment.

But aid groups and agencies working with Syrian refugees have long warned that Lebanon, with a population of just four million people, has been overwhelmed by the influx of Syrians.

The document published online lists eight categories, including tourist visas, which require applicants to provide evidence of a hotel reservation and $1,000, as well as a valid passport or ID card.

Other visas are available for business visits, medical treatment and schooling, as well as transit visas for onward travel.

Visas are also available for those who own property in Lebanon or are seeking to enter to apply for visas at foreign embassies in Beirut.

More than 200,000 people have been killed in Syria’s conflict, which began in March 2011 and has displaced around half the country’s population.

BAGHDAD — Militants linked to the Islamic State (IS) group have rounded up dozens of men from two villages in northern Iraq following a quarrel that led to the burning of the extremist group's flag, tribal leaders said on Saturday.

The latest move by the Sunni extremist militants came as the United Nations said that last year saw the highest causality figures in Iraq in over five years.

Two sheiks said the militants entered a mosque in the village of Al Shajara on Friday as worshippers gathered for prayers, removing flags commemorating the birth of Prophet Mohammad and hoisting their own black IS flag.

That prompted a verbal quarrel between the militants and the worshippers, who later burned IS flag. The militants then snatched up around 140 men from their homes in Al Shajara and from the nearby village of Al Ghariba village, both around 70 kilometres outside the northern city of Kirkuk.

Around 100 of the men were later released, while the rest remained in captivity, the sheiks said on condition of anonymity, fearing for their own safety.

IS controls around a third of both Iraq and neighbouring Syria, where it has declared an Islamic caliphate and imposed a violent form of Sharia law.

In its monthly release issued on Friday, the UN Assistance Mission in Iraq said a total of 12,282 Iraqis were killed and another 23,126 injured in violence in 2014, making it the bloodiest year since 2006-2007.

The violence has spiked as the IS’ advances have sparked renewed sectarian tensions between Sunni and Shiite Muslims. The latest incident took place Thursday in the mostly Shiite southern city of Basra, where gunmen shot dead three Sunni clerics.

In a symbolic gesture of unity between Iraqis, Prime Minster Haider Al Abadi paid a visit on Friday to the hallowed Abu Hanifa Sunni mosque in Baghdad’s northern Azamiya neighbourhood and to the adjacent Shiite shrine of Imam Mousa Al Kazim, a revered 8th century saint, during commemorations of Prophet Mohammad’s birthday.

DUBAI — A Saudi delegation will travel to Baghdad in the coming week to start preparations to reopen an embassy in the Iraqi capital for the first time in 25 years, official Saudi media said on Saturday.

A thaw in the once chilly relations between Sunni-ruled Saudi Arabia and Shiite-led Iraq could help strengthen a regional alliance against Islamic State militants who have seized territory in Iraq and Syria.

Saudi Arabia closed its Baghdad embassy in 1990 after the late Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. It has long accused Iraq of being too close to Shiite Iran, its main regional rival, and of encouraging sectarian discrimination against Sunnis, a charge Baghdad denies.

The Saudi move would help return Iraq to the Arab nation "after an absence since the toppling of the Saddam Hussein regime and the penetration of the Iranian regime into the joints of the Iraqi state," said Abdullah Al Askar, head of the foreign affairs committee on Saudi Arabia's Shoura Council, which advises the government on policy.

Saudi Arabia began cautious moves towards rapprochement after the appointment in August of Haider Al Abadi as Iraq's new prime minister. Senior members of the kingdom's ruling Al Saud dynasty had branded his predecessor, Nouri Al Maliki, a puppet of Iran, according to US embassy cables released by WikiLeaks, and accused him of ruling Iraq only on behalf of the Shiites.

Citing an official foreign ministry source, the Saudi Press Agency (SPA) said that besides reopening its embassy, the kingdom also planned to set up a general consulate in Erbil, capital of Iraq's Kurdistan region.

A team from the ministry would head to Baghdad this week to liaise with Iraq on choosing and preparing buildings for both missions, so they could start work "at the earliest opportunity", SPA said.

Mustafa Alani, an Iraqi security analyst with close ties to the Saudi government, said the move was prompted by both the change in Iraqi leadership and the threat from Islamic State, which staged a lightning advance across Iraq in June and is the target of US-led air strikes in both Iraq and Syria.

"The Saudis think there is a gap now. If they leave Mr Abadi without help, he will be forced to go to the Iranians," he said.

"With the change of leadership, change of circumstances, they think that it's time to bring back Iraq ... to the Arab fold and to reduce the Iranian influence."

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — Israel has decided to withhold critical tax revenue from the Palestinians and is seeking ways to bring war crimes prosecutions in the United States and elsewhere against President Mahmoud Abbas and other senior figures, Israeli officials said on Saturday.

The moves are in retaliation for moves by the Palestinians to join the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Hague, with the aim of prosecuting Israelis for what they consider war crimes committed on their territory.

On Friday, they delivered documents to UN headquarters in New York on joining the Rome statute of the ICC and other global treaties, saying they hoped to achieve "justice for all the victims that have been killed by Israel, the occupying power".

The ICC was set up to try war crimes and crimes against humanity such as genocide. Israel and the United States object to unilateral approaches by the Palestinians to world bodies, saying they undermine prospects for negotiating a peaceful settlement of the decades-old Middle East conflict.

In a first punitive response to Abbas' approach to the ICC, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu decided in consultation with senior ministers on Thursday to withhold a monthly transfer of tax revenue totalling some 500 million shekels ($125 million), an Israeli official said on Saturday.

The funds are critical to running the Palestinian Authority, which has limited self-rule, and paying public sector salaries. Israel took a similar step in December 2012, freezing revenue transfers for three months in anger at the Palestinians’ launch of a statehood recognition campaign at the United Nations.

Under interim peace deals from the 1990s, Israel collects at least $100 million a month in duties on behalf of the Palestinian Authority.

In addition to the revenue freeze, an Israeli official said Israel was “weighing the possibilities for large-scale prosecution in the United States and elsewhere” of President Abbas and other senior Palestinians.

Israel would probably press these cases via non-governmental groups and pro-Israel legal organisations capable of filing lawsuits abroad, a second Israeli official said, explaining how the mechanism might work.

Israel sees the heads of the Palestinian Authority in the occupied West Bank as collaborators with Hamas Islamists in Gaza because of a unity deal they forged in April, the officials said.

Netanyahu has previously warned that unilateral moves by the Palestinian Authority at the UN would expose its leaders to prosecution over support for Hamas, viewed by Israel as a terrorist organisation.

Hamas “commits war crimes, shooting at civilians from civilian-populated areas”, one official said, referring to the war in Gaza last summer in which more than 2,100 Palestinians and more than 70 Israelis died, mostly soldiers.

Palestinians seek a state in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem, lands Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East War.

Momentum to recognise a Palestinian state has built since Abbas succeeded in a bid for de facto recognition at the UN General Assembly in 2012, which made Palestinians eligible to join the ICC.

The United States, Israel’s main ally, supports an eventual independent Palestinian state, but has argued against unilateral moves like Friday’s, saying they could damage the peace process.

Washington sends about $400 million in economic support to the Palestinians every year. Under US law, that aid would be cut off if the Palestinians used membership in the ICC to press claims against Israel.

TEHRAN — A draft law that would give greater powers to Iran's police and volunteer militias to enforce women's compulsory wearing of the veil has been ruled unconstitutional, state media reported Saturday.

Under Islamic law in force in Iran since the 1979 revolution, women must wear loose clothing, known as hijab, that covers the head and neck and which conceals their hair.

But many now push the boundaries by wearing thin head scarves, tight leggings and fashionable coats rather than a chador, a long and traditional black garment that covers the entire body from head to toe.

This has led to claims from lawmakers and religious leaders that the rules are being skirted and not maintained by morality police whose job is to ensure Islamic dress code is complied with in public places.

The draft law, called the "Plan on Protection of Promoters of Virtue and Vice" was rejected by the country's influential Guardian Council, a 12-member group that scrutinises legislation.

The official IRNA news agency, quoting a council spokesman, said the 24-point plan contained 14 flaws and it "contradicted the constitution and was not approved". The report did not give specifics.

However, the council's decision is not the end of the law, under which lawmakers want to give members of the Basij, a religious volunteer force established by the country's revolutionary leaders, power and protection to verbally caution women they deem improperly dressed.

The council has sent the law back to parliament for amendment, IRNA said.

The wearing of hijab is an emotive issue in the Islamic republic, with supporters saying it is an essential part of Islamic culture for women, but opponents argue that it is an ill-defined legal requirement.

The draft law, which was approved by parliament in December, also aimed to place responsibility on employers to ensure hijab is observed by workers, with companies facing fines for non-compliance.

President Hassan Rouhani, who has been under pressure from hardline lawmakers to pursue a tougher police stand on the veil, distanced himself from the planned law in a speech on October 25.

"We should not be overly focused on one issue, such as bad hijab, to prevent vice," he said, alluding to the Islamic duty to promote virtue.

GAZA CITY — Hamas on Saturday condemned the fatal shooting by Egyptian border guards of what they said was a Palestinian minor on the Gaza border.

"We condemn the killing [Friday] of the child Zaki Al Houbi by Egyptian army gunfire on the borders, we consider what happened as a dangerous development and excessive use of force," the Islamist organisation said in a statement.

"What happened is not appropriate to neighbourly relations between brothers."

An Egyptian security official said that troops opened fire on Gazans who had illegally crossed into the Egyptian Sinai, where the army has created a buffer zone to prevent the movement of fighters.

"Soldiers charged with protecting the frontier fired at six Gazans, of whom three succeeded in returning to Gaza while three were arrested. One was probably hit by the fire," an official said.

Gaza emergency services spokesman Ashraf Al Qudra said that Houbi was 17 years old.

He was killed in the Gaza frontier town of Rafah by Egyptian soldiers firing from across the border, Qudra said.

The border troops shot the youth "in the back and the bullet settled in the heart. He died on the spot", he told AFP.

He was the first Palestinian "to have been killed in a long time" along the border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt, according to Qudra.

An eyewitness told AFP that Houbi and three others scaled a concrete wall on the border hoping to find work on the Egyptian side.

His mother, Sarah Al Houbi, 35, said that he had "left home to look for work" adding that her husband was unemployed and the family stricken by the poverty rampant in Gaza.

She said that he was not a member of any militant group and had tried several times to get into Egypt but was sent back each time.

Buffer zone 

Egypt announced on Tuesday that work to double the width of a buffer zone along the Gaza border would begin next week to prevent militants infiltrating from the Palestinian enclave.

Construction of the 500-metre buffer zone along 10 kilometres of the border comes after an October 24 suicide bombing that killed 30 Egyptian soldiers. Some 800 homes are being demolished in the process.

After that incident, Egypt declared a three-month emergency in parts of North Sinai — a remote but strategic region bordering Israel and Gaza — and closed the Rafah border crossing for two months.

The crossing is Gaza's only gateway to the outside world not controlled by Israel.

Egypt suspects Palestinian fighters of aiding jihadist attacks against its security forces, which have increased since the army ousted Islamist president Mohamed Morsi last year.

The Egyptian army has also stepped up the destruction of tunnels from Gaza it says are used to smuggle arms, food and money by Palestinian group Hamas which controls the territory.

Cairo says it has destroyed more than 1,600 tunnels since Morsi's ouster.

Meanwhile, the Israeli navy opened fire early Saturday on two Palestinian boats off the southern Gaza coast, wounding a fisherman, Gaza medical officials said.

An Israeli military spokeswoman told AFP that the fishing boats were headed for Egyptian waters and suspected of involvement in smuggling. She said that a naval patrol fired at the boats after they ignored warning shots and orders to turn back.

Under the terms of an agreement with Israel, Gaza's fishermen have the right to trawl the waters up to six nautical miles off the coast.

NEW YORK — A Libyan accused over the 1998 Al Qaeda bombings of US embassies in Africa died on Friday, days before he was to stand trial in New York, his lawyer and family said.

Abu Anas Al Libi, 50, was on the FBI's most-wanted list with a $5 million price on his head when he was captured by US troops in the Libyan capital Tripoli in October 2013.

He and Saudi businessman Khalid Al Fawwaz were due to stand trial on January 12 over the attacks on the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that killed 224 people and wounded around 5,000.

Libi, a computer expert, died at a hospital in the New York area on Friday, his lawyer Bernard Kleinman told The Washington Post, saying the health of his client — who had advanced liver cancer — had deteriorated significantly in the last month.

Libi and Fawwaz both previously pleaded not guilty to conspiracy charges.

A third suspect, Egyptian Adel Abdel Bary, last year pleaded guilty to playing a role in the 1998 attacks.

Libi's son Abdel Mouin told CNN by telephone from Tripoli early Saturday that his father had been in a coma before his death and that the family holds the US government "fully responsible" for his demise.

Libi, who also suffered from hepatitis C, was detained by US commandos on October 5, 2013, and interrogated on board a US warship before being handed over to FBI agents on October 12 and flown to New York.

Hunger strike 

He was questioned by the agents on board the flight, initially waiving his right to a lawyer, during which he made an incriminating statement.

But Libi had sought to supress the statement in court, saying he was on hunger strike at the time, raising questions about the extent to which he was cognisant when he waived his rights.

Investigators told the court Libi had informed them of the hunger strike during the flight, but that he had been hooked up to an IV and under medical supervision.

He was responsive, understood his rights, knowingly waived them and spoke willingly, and at no point appeared confused, investigator George Corey said.

In an indictment, prosecutors accused Libi of discussing in 1993 possible attacks against the US embassy in Nairobi, and of carrying out surveillance of the diplomatic mission.

In or around 1994, the indictment said, he received files concerning possible attacks against the embassy, the US Agency for International Development, and British, French and Israeli targets in Nairobi.

However, defence lawyer Kleinman says Libi was innocent and had cut his ties with Al Qaeda before the 1998 attacks.

The United States faced criticism after the raid in which Libi was captured as he was parking his car in Tripoli, with Libya denouncing it as a kidnapping and rights groups accusing Washingon of violating his fundamental human rights.

CAIRO — Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah Bin Abdulaziz is suffering from pneumonia and temporarily needed help to breath through a tube on Friday but the procedure was successful and his condition was now stable, the royal court said.

The elderly monarch was admitted to the King Abdulaziz Medical City in Riyadh on Wednesday for tests after he suffered what one source described as breathing difficulties, state media said.

"It became apparent that there was a lung infection that required the insertion of a tube to aid with breathing on a temporary basis this evening," the royal court said in a statement carried by state news agency SPA.

The procedure had resulted in "stability and success", it added.

A Saudi source familiar with the affairs of the royal family said the king would most likely stay in hospital for another week.

Markets keep a close eye on the health of the king of the world's top oil producer, a country that also has influence over Muslims through its guardianship of Islam's holiest sites.

King Abdullah, who took power in 2005 after the death of his half-brother King Fahd, is thought to be 91, although official accounts are unclear. He has undergone surgery in the past few years related to a herniated disc.

King Abdullah named his half-brother, Prince Salman, 13 years his junior, heir apparent in June 2012 after the death of Crown Prince Nayef Bin Abdulaziz. Last year he appointed Prince Muqrin Bin Abdulaziz as deputy crown prince, giving some assurance on the kingdom's long-term succession process.