Region

ISTANBUL/BEIRUT — Turkey's main Kurdish party accused the government of turning a blind eye to Islamic State militants on its soil on Saturday after suicide bombers attacked the town of Kobani along its southern border with Syria.

Four IS militants blew themselves up in Kobani, one detonating a car bomb at the Mursitpinar border crossing. At least 30 people were killed in clashes across the town, a monitoring group and local officials said.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and a Kurdish official in the town, Idris Nassan, said the vehicle used in the dawn car bombing had come from Turkish territory.

Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu's office said in a statement that while IS had attacked several parts of Kobani, including Mursitpinar, it was "definitely a lie" that the vehicle used in the bombing had crossed from Turkey.

Kurdish militia have been holding off IS fighters for more than two months in Kobani, known as Ain Al Arab in Arabic. Neither side has gained a decisive advantage despite US-led air strikes meant to push back the Islamist insurgents.

The observatory said a second bomber detonated an explosive vest in the same area, before two more suicide attacks hit the southwestern edge of the town.

Turkey's pro-Kurdish HDP Party said the militants were using state grain depots on the Turkish side of the border as a base from which to attack Kobani and described their presence in an area patrolled by Turkish security forces as a "scandal".

“As we have been pointing out for months, this once more proves that Islamic State is being supported [from within Turkey],” the HDP said in a statement.

Turkey has vehemently denied supporting the jihadists, saying they are also a threat to its own national security. Davutoglu’s office said Turkish security forces had taken “all necessary precautions” along the border.

Ankara has refused to take a frontline role in US-led action against IS, fearing it could strengthen Syrian President Bashar Assad’s forces or Kurdish militias, both of which it sees as a threat.

The stance has infuriated Turkey’s Kurds, prompting violent protests in October in which around 40 people were killed.

The observatory said IS fighters had fired at least 110 shells on Kobani and were bringing in tanks. Two air strikes targeted IS positions to the east, it said.

At least 30 fighters were killed, said Rami Abdulrahman, the observatory’s director. Twenty-one were IS fighters, including the four bombers. The rest were Kurdish forces.

CAIRO — An Egyptian court dismissed Saturday a murder charge against ousted president Hosni Mubarak over the deaths of protesters during a 2011 uprising, sparking celebrations among supporters but fury from opponents of the former strongman.

Mubarak, who ruled Egypt for three decades until he was toppled in a popular revolt, was also acquitted of a corruption charge but will remain in detention because he is serving a three-year sentence in a separate graft case.

Seven of his security commanders, including the feared former interior minister Habib Al Adly, were acquitted in connection with the deaths of some of the roughly 800 people killed during the revolt.

Cheers broke out in the courtroom and Mubarak's two sons kissed his forehead when the judge read out the verdict in the retrial as the ex-president, 86, lay in an upright stretcher inside the caged dock.

But relatives of those killed expressed dismay.

Dozens of protesters later gathered at an entrance to Cairo's Tahrir Square — the hub of the anti-Mubarak revolt — chanting: "The people demand the toppling of the regime."

Earlier in court, the usually stone-faced Mubarak, wearing his trademark shades, allowed himself a faint smile after the verdict was read.

Corruption charges against his sons, Alaa and Gamal, were also dropped.

An appeals court had overturned an initial life sentence for Mubarak in 2012 on a technicality. Saturday's verdict may also be appealed.

Mubarak was later transported back to a Cairo military hospital where he is serving his sentence, appearing in a wheelchair from a balcony door to wave at several dozen cheering supporters.

“I did nothing wrong at all,” he told an Egyptian private broadcaster over the phone from his hospital.

He praised his own 30-year rule, which was marred by police abuses and corruption, especially the decade before his overthrow.

Apparently referring to economic growth, he said: “The last 10 years showed more results than the 20 years before... and then they turned against us.”

His lawyer Farid Al Deeb told AFP that the verdict was “a good ruling that proved the integrity of Mubarak’s era”.

Many Egyptians increasingly look to the former autocrat’s stable era with nostalgia in light of the turmoil that followed.

His Islamist successor Mohamed Morsi was toppled by the army himself in 2013 following massive protests.

Mubarak’s supporters leapt out of their benches in celebration when the judge pronounced the verdict, chanting: “Say the truth, don’t be scared — Mubarak is innocent.”

In a summary of its reasoning, the court cited witnesses — all former security commanders — saying the police did not use live ammunition against protesters during the deadliest day of the 2011 revolt.

‘Oppressive ruling’ 

Outside the court venue, a sprawling police academy on Cairo’s outskirts, relatives of those killed in the revolt were appalled at the verdict.

“It’s an oppressive ruling. The blood of my son has been wasted,” said Mostafa Morsi, whose son was killed outside a police station during the uprising.

In the streets of Cairo, opinion was divided on the outcome.

“Justice for the martyrs has been lost,” said one woman in her 50s.

Others disagreed. “There is no evidence against Mubarak. He was an honest president,” said Mostafa Saed, a retired government worker.

Protesters at the time of the revolt vented years of pent-up fury over police abuses and corruption by attacking and torching stations across the country, leaving the interior ministry on the brink of collapse.

Chief Judge Mahmud Kamel Al Rashidi, 63, suggested his ruling was made with a clear conscience.

“God will ask me what did you do in this world, and specifically what did you do as a judge,” he told the court before pronouncing his verdict.

He said he dropped the murder charge against Mubarak because the prosecution should not have added him to the case initially made against his security chiefs.

During the uprising, hundreds of thousands of protesters rallied daily demanding Mubarak step down.

But once-banished Mubarak-era officials have since made a comeback, using a backlash against former opposition figures blamed for the subsequent tumult.

Prime Minister Ibrahim Mahlab was a senior official in Mubarak’s now-dissolved party. Mubarak’s former military intelligence chief Abdel Fattah Al Sisi is now president, having won an election after deposing Morsi last year.

Police are waging a deadly crackdown on pro-Morsi Islamist protesters and militants, while Morsi is standing trial in several cases including taking part in jail breaks and violence during the anti-Mubarak revolt.

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — Hundreds of left-wing Israelis demonstrated Saturday night in Jerusalem against a controversial draft law enshrining Israel’s status as the Jewish national homeland.

The rally was organised by Israel’s Peace Now settlement watchdog and held across the street from the residence of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Peace Now said the rally was “an opportunity to let the democratic camp’s voice be heard” against the draft law, which embodied “nationalism, racism and nation-state aggression” threatening to “ruin our country”.

As the demonstration got under way, police said that arsonists had torched an Arab-Jewish school in Jerusalem and scrawled racist anti-Arab slogans on its walls.

“Go home, release us from your oppressive, racist, extremist and inciting regime,” MP Tamar Zandberg of the opposition Meretz Party said at the demonstration.

Critics say the new bill — endorsed by the Cabinet on Sunday — will come at the expense of democracy and institutionalise discrimination against minorities, including Arabs.

Netanyahu insists the law would balance Israel’s Jewish and democratic characteristics.

Protesters held signs reading “we won’t let you ruin the country” and “the nation-state law of the right-wing government is democracy for Jews only” in the crisp evening.

Israeli forces said approximately 800 people attended the demonstration.

Meanwhile firefighters extinguished the fire at the “Hand-in-Hand” school, a short distance from Netanyahu’s residence.

Slogans such as “death to Arabs” and “no coexistence with cancer” had been scrawled on the walls of the Arab-Jewish school, police said.

Several Israeli officials condemned the arson attack.

Education Minister Shai Piron described it as a “violent and despicable incident, which could undermine the foundations of Israeli democracy”.

It is “a serious affront to the fabric of Jewish-Arab relations”, he said in a statement.

Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat said: “We won’t let pyromaniacs and radicals disrupt public order.”

“We will continue to denounce extremists and do everything necessary to restore security,” he said in a statement.

The school has been targeted with racist graffiti in the past, most recently during Israel’s summer war with Hamas fighters in Gaza.

BEIRUT — Lebanese poet Said Aql, whose work was loved by Arab readers but who hated Arabism so much that he invented a latinised version of the Lebanese dialect, died Friday aged 102.

Aql championed Lebanese nationalism, while often espousing contradictory views on politics in the tumultuous Middle East.

Some of his lyrics paid homage to Mecca and Israeli-occupied Jerusalem, while in the 1980s he celebrated the Israeli invasion of Lebanon.

The renowned poet "died peacefully", friends said at a press conference.

"Lebanon and all the Arabs today lost a giant of poetry, God rest your soul Said Aql," former prime minister Saad Hariri wrote on Twitter.

Born in 1912 in an eastern Lebanese Christian village, he was a fierce defender of the idea of Lebanese specificity, classing the tiny Mediterranean country as strictly Phoenician, never Arab.

Aql felt an affinity to a cultural and political trend espoused by some Lebanese Christians from the beginning of the 20th century until the outbreak of the 1975-1990 civil war, that sought to emphasise specific Lebanese cultural traits as standing apart from the rest of the Arabs.

The poet, whose bushy white hair and flamboyant gestures made him instantly recognisable, invented a latinised version of the local dialect, and baptised it the "Lebanese alphabet".

He founded a newspaper called Lebnaan (Lebanon in Arabic) and wrote poems such as "Yara" in his alphabet.

At the same time, he maintained a paradoxical relationship with the Arabic language.

While publicly despising anything Arab, he was an innovative Arabic-language poet and master lyricist of songs that became favourites among Arab nationalists.

Among his best-known songs was Lebanese diva Fairouz's track "Zahret Al Madaen", which means Flower of All Cities and is dedicated to Jerusalem.

Aql went even further in his contradictions, once declaring: "The Arabic language is destined to become extinct. And if I have become one of the great Arabic-language poets, it is precisely so that I can have the authority to express this idea."

Several of his more refined poems, some of which follow the "ghazal" model that expresses love for a woman, are taught in Lebanese schools.

One of his works, "Lubnan in Haka" (If Lebanon Spoke), is an epic poem that mixes historical references with fiction.

Aql is seen as the spiritual father of a far-right Lebanese group, the Guardians of the Cedars, that fiercely defended the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982.

In an interview, he referred to Israeli troops as "a liberation army" that sought to defend the Lebanese from Palestinian "terrorism".

At the time of the invasion, the Palestine Liberation Organisation was based in Lebanon, and had the backing of local left-wing and Muslim groups.

BEIRUT — With regime troops and jihadists battling for control of Syria, sidelined activists who led a pro-democracy uprising in 2011 say their revolution has died along with their dreams of freedom.

On the ground, where foreign fighters have flocked to join the Islamic State (IS) group and rival Al Qaeda-linked militants, the reality could barely be grimmer for the pro-democracy movement.

The jihadists have expelled mainstream, “moderate” rebels from large areas, while many opposition fighters once revered as heroes are now branded opportunistic warlords.

Meanwhile President Bashar Assad still holds Damascus and is pressing on with his relentless campaign of aerial bombings and arrests.

Most of the peaceful protesters of the early days of the revolt have been killed, jailed, forced into exile or live under siege, said 28-year-old Sami Saleh from the central city of Hama, where the opposition briefly seized control for a month in 2011.

“The revolution is dead. The dogs have taken over... It’s total war,” Saleh said, speaking to AFP via the Internet from Turkey.

‘Stop the killing’

“You need a movement, protests, civil action for it to be a revolution. What we are witnessing now are battles for territory, resources and control,” he said.

The feeling of failure has pushed many to abandon their demand that Assad be ousted at any cost.

Instead, they long for an end to a brutal conflict that has killed nearly 200,000 people.

Nael Mustafa, who risks his life to document violations by IS group, is among the disillusioned.

“My revolutionary cry now is for the killing machine to stop,” said Mustafa, who lives and works undercover in the northern city of Raqqa.

IS has overrun the city and proclaimed it their “capital”, having ousted the rebels who captured it in spring 2013.

Those who had tried to set up a civilian administration after the army’s expulsion from Raqqa, the first provincial capital to fall from regime control, have disappeared or are in exile.

Mustafa, whose name has been changed to protect his identity, said he never supported the arming of the revolt, which came after the government used live rounds and tank fire against unarmed demonstrators.

“I respect the fighters’ sacrifices, but when the decision to take up arms came, I knew this will be the death of the Syrian revolution,” he said.

‘Mistake after mistake’

Among others who have worked closely with rebel factions and face similar disenchantment is Ibrahim Al Idelbi, an outspoken young writer.

For the past month he has been living in forced exile in Turkey.

He survived two stints of government detention and torture, but it was not the Syrian regime that pushed him out.

It was Al Qaeda affiliate Al Nusra Front, whose jihadists this month took over most rebel positions in his native northwestern province of Idlib.

“If someone had told me in 2011 that things would be this way, I would have laughed,” Idelbi told AFP via the Internet.

He blames the regime, rebel naivety and the international backers of the revolt for the failure.

“The regime said people were armed when they weren’t — and people took up arms,” said Idelbi.

“The regime said there were terrorists in Syria when there weren’t any — and the terrorists came. Sure, it’s the regime’s fault, but we helped make its claims come true,” he said.

“We made mistake after mistake.”

 ‘New life for Syria’ 

He said those well organised rebel forces still active are now fighting a turf war, with foreign backers in Qatar and Saudi Arabia exploiting Syria as a proxy battlefield.

“Each state is merely fighting for its own interests,” rather than the goal of toppling Assad, he said.

But Idelbi, like Syrian Kurdish activist Ahmad Khalil, refuses to give up hope.

Jailed for taking part in protests, Khalil fled to Turkey before being resettled as a refugee with his wife in Norway.

Speaking to AFP from hospital just as his wife prepared to give birth, he was full of emotion.

“There will be new life [for Syria]. We may not live to see it, but when it happens, it will be beautiful,” he said.

MANAMA — Bahrainis voted in the second round of a parliamentary election on Saturday, a poll boycotted by the tiny Gulf monarchy's Shiite-led opposition which accuses the government of gerrymandering and says parliament lacks powers.

Voters have returned to the polls in 34 of Bahrain's 40 constituencies for the parliament, which has limited direct powers in a country where ultimate decision making resides with the Sunni Muslim Al Khalifa family.

Al Wefaq, the main opposition group which has widespread support among the country's Shiite majority, said on October 11 it would not take part, citing parliament's lack of powers and what it said were constituency boundaries that favoured Sunnis.

Bahrain has been in political turmoil since mass protests broke out in February 2011 demanding more democracy before they were put down by the security forces. Small demonstrations have continued in Shiite areas.

A second round of voting was needed in constituencies where no candidate secured more than half the votes last week. Bahrain said participation in the first round was 53 per cent.

Bahrain, an ally of fellow Sunni monarchy Saudi Arabia and home to the US Fifth Fleet, accuses Shiite Gulf power Iran of stirring up unrest and says it has made many reforms since 2011. Iran denies those charges.

BEIRUT — Lebanon's Shiite movement Hizbollah said Friday that an Iranian elite unit commander led the anti-jihadist counterattack in Iraq after the Islamic State group made major advances in June.

Major General Qassem Suleimani landed in Baghdad on June 10, hours after the IS overran the Iraqi city of Mosul, "leading a group of Lebanese and Iranian military experts", according to the pro-Tehran Shiite group's Al Manar website.

It said Suleimani, who heads Iran's elite Quds Force, had together with the Iraqi military and Shiite militias worked out a strategy "to secure Baghdad and its surroundings", when the jihadists appeared unstoppable.

"The first order he gave was to secure the road linking Baghdad to Samarra [to the north], and he successfully expelled the IS jihadists who had been occupying sections of this vital artery," it said.

"He had a direct role in battles on this road, and has been present in all the major anti-IS battles in the western province of Anbar," according to Al Manar.

It said Suleimani also took part in fighting in "the Kurdish regions of Diyala [in the east], the oil-rich province of Kirkuk and in the recent battle to reclaim Baiji refinery".

There was no immediate confirmation of the report from officials in Baghdad.

A secretive figure, Suleimani is seldom mentioned in Iranian media. He has cultivated a reputation as one of the most influential security operatives in the Middle East.

In 2008, the United States accused him of training Shiite militias waging attacks against Western troops in Iraq.

A senior Iranian justice official has also said that Suleimani was present during fighting near Erbil alongside Kurdish forces in early August.

Media in Iran regularly report the deaths of Iranian "volunteers" in Syria and Iraq in fighting against jihadists.

Iranian authorities claim the combatants are there of their own accord to protect Shiite holy sites.

CAIRO — An Egyptian court on Saturday dismissed criminal charges against former president Hosni Mubarak in connection with the killing of protesters in the 2011 uprising that ended his nearly three-decade reign.

Mubarak, 86, was also acquitted of corruption charges that he faced along with his sons Alaa and Gamal.

Mubarak was convicted and sentenced to life in prison in 2012, but the verdict was overturned on appeal the following year.

Saturday's verdict concludes his retrial along with his two sons, his security chief and six top security commanders, who were all acquitted. Also on trial was businessman Hussein Salem, a longtime Mubarak friend tried in absentia. He too was acquitted.

Nearly 900 protesters were killed in the 18-day uprising that ended when Mubarak stepped down, handing over power to the military. The trial, however, was concerned only with the killing of 239 protesters, whose names were cited in the charges sheet.

Presiding judge Mahmoud al-Rashidi made clear that the dismissal of the charges did not absolve Mubarak of the "corruption" and "weakness" of the latter years of his 29-year rule and praised the January 2011 uprising, saying that its goals — freedom, bread and social justice — were justified.

CAIRO — Amal Shaker's 25-year-old son Ahmed was fatally shot in the back on the "Friday of Rage", one of the bloodiest days of Egypt's 2011 uprising against longtime autocrat Hosni Mubarak. Nearly four years later, she is still waiting for justice.

"We want blood for blood," she said.

Her wait is supposed to end Saturday when a verdict is expected in the 86-year-old Mubarak's trial on charges connected to the killing of more than 900 protesters against his rule. But Egypt's "trial of the century", initially watched with excitement, has largely dropped from public attention. That's partly because of how drawn out the process has been — with a trial and retrial — and partly because subsequent upheaval has flipped the political narrative.

The revolutionary fervour of 2011 has been largely extinguished, replaced among many Egyptians by exhaustion from nearly four years of turmoil. Many of the pro-democracy activists central to the uprising are in prison for attempting to protest against the new president, former army chief Abdel Fattah
Al Sisi. 

Others are dismissed in the media as troublemakers, while the police who in the revolutionaries’ eyes were the hated tools of Mubarak oppression are now lauded in the press as heroes in a fight against Islamists.

“The issue is over,” Ahmed Hani, a Cairo accountant, said of the trial, which he like many is not following closely. “What’s important is to improve the country, to bring it back to its prior state, more than to take an interest in a thing like this.”

When the trial began in 2011, Egyptians were initially transfixed by TV images of the former strongman who ruled for 30 years being rolled on a gurney into the defendant’s cage. In June 2012, he was convicted of failing to stop the killing of protesters and was sentenced to life in prison.

But the conviction was thrown out by a higher court, and a retrial began in May 2013. On trial with Mubarak are his former interior minister and other top security officials, as well as his sons Alaa and Gamal on corruption charges.

During the retrial, the political landscape dramatically transformed.

Mubarak’s elected successor, Islamist Mohamed Morsi, was ousted by Sisi and the military after massive protests that began on June 30, 2013 against the domination of Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood. A sweeping crackdown against Islamists ensued and has widened to suppress any dissenting voices.

Now the state routinely blames all violence on Islamists and foreign conspirators. TV stations and newspapers have largely dropped criticism of Mubarak’s old regime and focus all their venom on Islamists. They also at times promote a revised history painting the 2011 uprising as part of a conspiracy to destabilise Egypt that the 2013 “revolution” corrected.

“The urgency of holding Mubarak to account... is much less now,” particularly when many Mubarak-era officials including Sisi are in positions of influence, said Issandr Al Amrani, North Africa Project Director at International Crisis Group. Sisi was promoted to head of military intelligence during Mubarak’s last year in power.

“There’s been a steady narrative to say 2011 wasn’t a real revolution, the real revolution was the June 30, 2013 one against Mohamed Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood,” he said.

During the retrial, Mubarak’s defence has tried to blame protester deaths on the Brotherhood, to ride the anti-Islamist tide, said lawyer Mohammed Farouk, who is representing families of the victims in the trial.

He said he expected Mubarak to be convicted and given a life sentence again, arguing that there has been ample evidence Mubarak failed to protect protesters. Mubarak is currently serving a 3-year sentence on a separate embezzlement charge.

Another lawyer for the victims, Hoda Nasrallah, said she is worried that renewed empathy for Mubarak could have an impact on the judge’s ruling, especially given recent court verdicts criticised by rights advocates as politicised and vindictive against Islamists.

The question, she said, is how the judge wants to write the history of 2011 — “whether he will decide it was a revolution” that Mubarak tried to stop or “whether it was a conspiracy”.

The trial has faced challenges since it began. Evidence was lost because the prosecutor was slow to collect it, lawyers said, and a key CD of police communications was destroyed. The prosecution has to rely for evidence on the Interior Ministry, which is in charge of police, though its leaders were implicated in the case.

At the closing session in August, Mubarak was allowed to speak in a televised session. He defiantly expressed regret that his legacy had been tainted, saying he “did everything for the interests of the people” and stepped down as president “to prevent bloodshed and to preserve national unity”.

The atmosphere leaves families of the 2011 “martyrs” even more isolated as they wait.

“Every house has a burning heart. Youth that were like flowers were killed... Four years have passed, where is the trial?” said Shaker, Ahmed’s mother.

She said her son, the family’s primary breadwinner, was a bystander at the protests, shot while meeting his fiancee. She describes him as a hardworking young man frustrated by the lack of opportunities in Egypt. “His ambitions in life were to be something big,” she sighed, holding a portrait of her son.

Mahmoud Ibrahim Ali, whose wife was killed during the 2011 uprising, has little faith in the judiciary, believing it simply does the government’s bidding.

“The regime is the same. Names have changed but everything is the same.”

BAGHDAD — Militants from the Islamic State (IS) group blocked all mobile phone networks in the largest Iraqi city they control, Mosul, accusing informants in the city of tipping off coalition forces to their whereabouts, residents told The Associated Press on Thursday.

Residents described a scene of "chaos" and "paralysis" in the city Thursday, a day after the militants announced their decision on their Mosul-based radio network. Businesses were at a standstill as residents tried to understand what was happening, they said. Some are still able to access the Internet, which operates under a different network.

All residents spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal.

The militants seized the city in June during their lightning advance across northern Iraq, after the Iraqi military virtually crumbled when confronted by the group. The US began launching air strikes on August 8 and has conducted at least 22 strikes around the city of Mosul alone.

The city has come to represent the expanding power and influence of the extremist group, which was born in Iraq but spread to Syria, where it grew exponentially in the chaos of the country's civil war. 

Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi, the group’s reclusive leader, made his first video appearance in Mosul in July to announce his vision for a self-styled caliphate, a form of Islamic state.

Baghdad-based political analyst Hadi Jalo said that this move by the IS group is a clear sign that the militants are losing confidence after a string of recent victories by Iraqi troops, backed by Shiite and Kurdish militiamen.

“Even the people in Mosul, who hate the Shiite-led government, are becoming less sympathetic with the militants — whose main victims are Sunnis, not Shiites, nowadays,” said Jalo.

An official in one of the Iraqi mobile phone operators said his company is investigating the issue, but declined to give further details.

The shutting down of phone lines is a notable change from what has been the group’s core strategy so far — focusing on providing services and establishing administration in areas it controls to win support of the locals. In parts of Syria under its control, the group now administers courts, fixes roads and even polices traffic. It recently imposed a curriculum in schools in its Syrian stronghold, Raqqa, scrapping subjects such as philosophy and chemistry, and fine-tuning the sciences to fit with its ideology.

In Syria, government warplanes kept up air raids on the northern city of Raqqa, the de facto capital of the Islamic State group, killing at least seven people Thursday, activists said.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said one of the raids struck the house of a judge facing the Islamic State group’s tax collection center. Another air raid targeted an IS group checkpoint.

An activist who uses the name Abu Ibrahim al-Raqqawi said eight airstrikes killed at least seven people, including four women and a child. Al-Raqqawi, who is based outside Syria, heads a collective of activists on the ground in Raqqa.

On Tuesday, similar airstrikes killed at least 95 people in Raqqa, most of them civilians. U.S. State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said she is “horrified” by the reports that Syrian government airstrikes had killed dozens of civilians and demolished residential areas.