Region

CAIRO — Egyptian authorities announced on Saturday the discovery of an ancient tomb in Luxor dating back around 3,500 years that archaeologists believe holds the remains of an 18th dynasty royal.

The tomb was unearthed by Egyptian and British researchers on the west bank of the River Nile, where the famous Valley of the Queens and Valley of the Kings lie, said Mostafa Waziri, head of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities.

“The first elements discovered so far inside the tomb seem to indicate that it dates back to the 18th dynasty” of pharaohs Akhenaton and Tutankhamun, Waziri said in a statement.

The 18th dynasty, part of the period of Egyptian history known as the New Kingdom, ended in 1292BC and is considered among the most prosperous years of Ancient Egypt.

Piers Litherland of the University of Cambridge, head of the British research mission, said the tomb could be of a royal wife or princess of Thutmosid lineage.

Egyptian archaeologist Mohsen Kamel said the tomb’s interior was “in poor condition”.

Parts of it including inscriptions were “destroyed in ancient floods which filled the burial chambers with sand and limestone sediment”, Kamel added, according to the antiquities board’s statement.

Egypt has unveiled several major archaeological discoveries in recent years, most notably in the Saqqara necropolis south of the capital Cairo.

Critics say the flurry of excavations has prioritised finds shown to grab media attention over hard academic research.

But the discoveries have been a key component of Egypt’s attempts to revive its vital tourism industry, the crowning jewel of which is the long-delayed inauguration of the Grand Egyptian Museum at the foot of the pyramids.

The country of 104 million inhabitants suffers a severe economic crisis.

Egypt’s tourism industry accounts for 10 per cent of GDP and some 2 million jobs, according to official figures, but has been hammered by political unrest and the COVID pandemic.

RAMALLAH, Palestinian Territories — Israeli forces killed a Palestinian in the occupied West Bank on Thursday, the Palestinian health ministry said.

"Samir Aouni Harbi Aslan, 41, was killed after he was wounded by a bullet of the Israeli occupation forces that penetrated his chest during the aggression on Qalandia camp" for Palestinian refugees near Ramallah, the ministry said.

Eighteen people were arrested in overnight raids across the West Bank, the Palestinian Prisoners' Club advocacy group said.

Mohammed Saed, a representative of community leaders in Qalandia camp, said Aslan was shot when Israeli forces raided his home.

"He was killed in his house but he was not involved in the confrontation; he was just trying to defend his son from arrest," Saed told AFP.

Aslan is the third Palestinian killed in the West Bank in 24 hours, and the seventh since the start of the year.

On Wednesday, an Israeli civilian shot dead a 19-year-old Palestinian.

The incident came hours after Israeli forces killed a Palestinian fighter in a firefight during an incursion by Israeli forces into the northern city of Nablus.

A surge in bloodshed last year saw at least 200 Palestinians killed across the West Bank, according to an AFP tally.

More than 150 of the fatalities were in the West Bank.

After a series of attacks targeting Israelis last March and April, Israeli forces stepped up raids in the northern cities of Jenin and Nablus, bastions of armed Palestinian factions in the West Bank.

TRIPOLI — CIA chief William Burns has met Libya's interim premier weeks after the authorities handed the United States a suspect in the 1988 Lockerbie bombing, the Tripoli-based government said on Thursday.

The meeting in Triploi, also reported by Libyan media, was part of the first visit by a CIA director to the North African country since the 2012 attack against a US mission in Benghazi that killed the US ambassador and three others.

"Prime Minister Abdelhamid Dbeibeh hosted the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, William Burns" at the Cabinet office in Tripoli, along with Foreign Minister Najla Al Mangoush and Libyan intelligence chief Hussein Al Ayeb, Dbeibah's government said in a Facebook post.

Burns "underlined the need to develop economic and security cooperation between the two countries", it said.

Last month, a Libyan man accused of making the bomb that destroyed a Pan Am flight over Scotland in 1988 appeared in a US court, after being extradited by Dbeibah's government.

The move sparked a public backlash against the Tripoli-based government, which is challenged by a rival government in the war-torn country's east.

Alleged former intelligence agent Abu Agila Mohammad Masud Kheir Al Marimi could face life in prison if convicted of "destruction of an aircraft resulting in death" and two other related charges over the attack, which killed 270 people and was the deadliest-ever terror operation in Britain.

Dbeibah has faced bitter criticism from political rivals, rights groups and relatives of Libyan detainees who fear being handed over themselves. Analysts say the Tripoli-based administration had little option but to adhere to the American request.

Libyan media have reported that Burns would also visit the headquarters of eastern military strongman Khalifa Haftar, Dbeibah's key rival.

Burns, CIA chief since March 2021, visited Libya in 2014 as undersecretary of state for the Middle East.

He was the first US official to visit the country when Washington was mending ties with the regime of late ruler Muammar Qadhafi, in 2004.

Qadhafi's overthrow and killing in the 2011 revolt plunged Libya into division and violence.

TEHRAN — An Iranian-British dual national sentenced to be hanged for spying for UK intelligence once held roles at the top of Tehran's defence and security establishment, Iran's state media said on Thursday.

Alireza Akbari held posts including "deputy minister of defence for foreign affairs" and was in the "secretariat of the Supreme National Security Council", state news agency IRNA reported.

Akbari had also been an "advisor to the commander of the navy" as well as "heading a division at the defence ministry's research centre", it added.

Akbari was found guilty of "corruption on earth and for harming the country's internal and external security by passing on intelligence," the judiciary's Mizan Online news agency reported Wednesday.

Britain has demanded Tehran halt what foreign minister James Cleverly has called a "politically motivated" execution.

Mizan, citing a statement from Iran's intelligence ministry, said Akbari became a "key spy" for Britain's Secret Intelligence Service, more commonly known as MI6, due to "the importance of his position".

In February 2019, the official government newspaper Iran published an interview with Akbari, whom it identified as a "former deputy defence minister" during the 1997-2005 presidency of Mohammad Khatami.

IRNA, which said Akbari is aged 61 and is a veteran of the Iran-Iraq war that raged from 1980-1988, said he was arrested sometime between March 2019 and March 2020.

The state news agency also published a nine-minute video showing pictures of Akbari, including with people with their faces concealed.

In the video, he is seen apparently talking about his contacts with Britain, and also says he was questioned by the British about Iran's top nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, assassinated in November 2020 in an attack that Tehran blames on arch-foe Israel.

In early December, Iran executed four people accused of working with Israeli intelligence, Mizan said at the time.

Iran hanged them four days after the Supreme Court upheld their death sentence for "their intelligence cooperation with the Zionist regime [Israel] and kidnapping", Mizan reported.

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — Bolstered Israeli restrictions against flying the Palestinian flag are "a shameless attempt to legitimise racism", rights group Amnesty International said Tuesday.

Israel's new firebrand National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir ordered the police commander on Sunday to authorise officers to remove Palestinian flags flying in public spaces.

"I have instructed the Israeli police to enforce the ban on flying a PLO [Palestine Liberation Organisation] flag in public spaces, a sign of identification with a terrorist organisation", Ben-Gvir wrote on Twitter.

“We will fight terrorism and the supporters of terrorism with all our might,” he added.

After winning November elections, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu formed a government last month with key posts taken by far-right allies.

They include Ben-Gvir of the Jewish Power party, who has a history of inflammatory remarks about Palestinians.

Amnesty called the new measures “repressive” and an “audacious attack on the rights to nationality, freedom of expression and freedom of peaceful assembly”, in a statement sent to AFP.

In Israel and in annexed East Jerusalem, Israeli security forces already confiscate Palestinian flags, sometimes triggering violence.

In May last year, at the funeral of slain Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, a veteran Al Jazeera reporter, baton-wielding Israeli police beat pallbearers carrying the coffin, which was covered by a Palestinian flag.

Although it is not illegal to fly the Palestinian flag, Israeli laws prohibit the public display of a flag of an enemy country or group hostile to Israel’s existence.

“Israeli authorities say the directive is aimed at stopping ‘incitement’ against Israel, but it comes amid a string of measures designed to silence dissent and restrict protests, including those held in defence of Palestinian rights,” Amnesty said.

“The farcical pretexts for this directive cannot mask the fact that Israeli authorities are growing increasingly ruthless in their attempts to silence Palestinian voices,” the statement added.

CAIRO — The Egyptian pound was trading on Wednesday at half its value from March after the central bank intervened for a third time as part of an International Monetary Fund (IMF) loan agreement.

The devaluation, representing a drop of around 50 per cent against the dollar over the 10-month period, comes as the price of imported food and other goods is soaring in the country of 104 million.

The Egyptian pound plunged to 31.95 pounds to the dollar in state banks on Wednesday before recovering somewhat in the early afternoon to 29.8 pounds against the greenback.

Experts say the devaluation could continue, with the pound trading at around 35 to the dollar on the parallel market.

Egypt's economy was hit hard after Russia's invasion of Ukraine last February unsettled global investors and led them to pull billions out of the North African country.

The war sent wheat prices spiraling, heavily impacting Egypt, one of the world's largest grain importers, and piling pressure on its foreign currency reserves.

With costs driven up further by soaring global energy prices, official inflation hit 21.9 per cent in December, and food prices rose 37.9 per cent year on year, piling further hardship onto households.

The IMF late last year approved a $3 billion loan programme for Egypt, conditioned on "a permanent shift to a flexible exchange rate regime" and a "monetary policy aimed at gradually reducing inflation".

Egypt also needs to carry out "wide-ranging structural reforms to reduce the state footprint", the IMF said at the time, with the economy dominated by powerful state and military-led enterprises.

The IMF loan programme, worth $3 billion over 46 months, is a drop in the bucket for Cairo whose debt service in 2022-2023 alone amounts to $42 billion.

Egypt has only $34 billion in foreign currency reserves compared to $41 billion last February, while its foreign debt has more than tripled in the past decade to $157 billion. 

Many banks have limited foreign currency withdrawals and increased credit card charges.

Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouli on Monday told ministers to cut budgets and announced a moratorium “on new projects that have a clear dollar component”.

Egypt has been dependent on bailouts in recent years, both from the IMF and from Gulf allies.

According to ratings agency Moody’s, Egypt, the Arab world’s most populous country, is one of the five economies most at risk of defaulting on its foreign debt

JENIN, Palestinian Territories — Past the sandbags and anti-tank obstacles in Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank, theatre director Mustafa Sheta ponders the fate of Palestinian thespians.

“We are under a very abnormal situation,” Sheta told AFP at the camp’s Freedom Theatre.

The streets were silent that December day as residents had called a public strike to protest Israeli forces killing a 16-year-old Palestinian girl in Jenin hours earlier.

With Israeli forces raiding Jenin repeatedly in recent months, engaging in gunfights with Palestinian militants, the Freedom Theatre’s ability to provide residents with respite is under growing strain.

In 2011, the theatre’s well-known Israeli-Palestinian director Juliano Mer-Khamis was gunned down in Jenin’s refugee camp, in an attack that remains unsolved.

Other Palestinian cultural institutions across the occupied West Bank, occupied East Jerusalem or Israel also face many obstacles.

“It’s not like you have a clear plan in your schedule... you need to prepare for different scenarios,” said Sheta, 42.

Ahead of the opening night of the theatre’s latest production, “Metro Gaza”, the creatives woke up to find three Palestinians had been killed in an Israeli operation.

“What can we do? Can we continue, or stop, cancel the show?” asked Sheta.

The actors took to the stage as planned and an audience of around 75 filled half the stalls.

Yasmin Shalaldeh, 30, a Jerusalemite who plays a Gazan girl in the show, said it was “essential to keep on working”, particularly in Jenin.

More than 40 Palestinians were killed last year during Israeli operations in the Jenin area, including fighters, children, and a teenager involved in the theatre’s youth programme who was shot dead in November.

Funding ban 

After Jenin, “Metro Gaza” went on tour to Ramallah, occupied East Jerusalem and finally Haifa in northern Israel.

Each playhouse faces its own challenges and Jerusalem’s El-Hakawati, also known as the Palestinian National Theatre, has seen its audiences dwindle since Israel began constructing a barrier around the West Bank in the early 2000s.

“After the wall and the checkpoints, [it] started to get less and less, people cannot come,” said director Amer Khalil, as the sound of children enjoying a puppet show drifted into the room.

Whether living in Jerusalem, the West Bank, Israel or the blockaded Gaza Strip, Palestinians hold different papers which impact the ability of theatre casts and audiences to travel.

“It’s torture,” said Shalaldeh. “When you have a play in Jerusalem and you send it to someone from Gaza and they want to come, they can’t.”

Long gone are the days when directors must submit their script to Israeli censors, yet the theatre is “threatened by other things”, said Khalil.

Decorated with posters of past productions, El Hakawati’s foyer bustles with Jerusalemites ahead of each new performance.

But the director described a “very, very, very difficult — critical — economic situation”, with ticket sales not even covering a third of running costs.

El Hakawati cannot receive any support from the Palestinian Authority, which is banned by Israel from operating in Jerusalem, leaving it to “live on donations” largely from European states, said Khalil.

“Like the whole world, you have a national theatre and... the running costs — electricity, water, taxes — are all paid by the government or by the municipality. And this is what we don’t have here,” he said.

‘Delivering art to people’ 

For Al Saraya, a theatre in the coastal city of Jaffa that receives state funding from Israel, such support is far from unconditional.

Mahmoud Abu Arisheh, its 34-year-old director, said the theatre’s mission is to celebrate “the richness and uniqueness of the Arab culture”.

In November, then finance minister Avigdor Lieberman called on authorities to take “all the available measures, including denying funding” when Al Saraya screened “Farha”, a film depicting alleged Israeli atrocities against Palestinians.

Abu Arisheh said threats and incitements against the theatre “are already limiting our freedom of speech and expression”.

And sanctions by Israeli authorities “could happen at any time”, the director warns.

But Palestinian artists, whether in Jaffa, Jenin or Jerusalem, must keep the show going, said actor Shalaldeh.

“Even with all of this situation... and the cruelty in the world, it is important to keep on living — and delivering art to people.”

GENEVA — Iran is weaponising the death penalty to frighten the public and crush dissent, and its execution of protesters without due process amounts to state-sanctioned killing, the UN said on Tuesday.

Tehran has executed four people in connection with nearly four months of demonstrations in the country, with two more executions scheduled imminently and at least 17 other individuals reportedly sentenced to death, the United Nations Human Rights Office in Geneva said.

"Criminal proceedings and the death penalty are being weaponised by the Iranian government to punish individuals participating in protests and to strike fear into the population so as to stamp out dissent, in violation of international human rights law," UN rights chief Volker Turk's office said.

The Islamic republic has been rocked by a wave of protests since the death in custody on September 16 of Kurdish Iranian Amini, 22, following her arrest for allegedly violating Iran's strict dress code for women.

"The weaponisation of criminal procedures to punish people for exercising their basic rights, such as those participating in or organising demonstrations, amounts to state-sanctioned killing," Turk said.

"The government of Iran would better serve its interests and those of its people by listening to their grievances, and by undertaking the legal and policy reforms necessary to ensure respect for diversity of opinion, the rights to freedom of expression and assembly, and the full respect and protection of the rights of women in all areas of life."

The UN Human Rights Office said it had received information that two further executions are imminent — that of 22-year-old Mohammad Ghobadlou and Mohammad Boroghani, 19.

“I reiterate once more my call to the government of Iran to respect the lives and voices of its people, to impose an immediate moratorium on the death penalty and to halt all executions,” Turk said.

“Iran must take sincere steps to embark on the reforms that are required and demanded by their own people for the respect and protection of their human rights.”

Meanwhile, Iran has sentenced another man to death in connection with the protests triggered by the death in custody of Mahsa Amini, the judiciary said Tuesday.

The Islamic republic has been gripped by civil unrest since the September 16 death of 22-year-old Amini following her arrest for allegedly violating Iran’s strict dress code.

Javad Rouhi was sentenced to death on charges of “corruption on Earth”, the judiciary’s Mizan Online news website reported.

The sentence, which can still be appealed, brings to 18 the total number of people the judiciary have announced have been condemned to death in connection with the protests.

The sentence, which can still be appealed, brings to 18 the total number of people the judiciary have announced have been condemned to death in connection with the protests.

Rouhi was found guilty of “leading a group of rioters”, “inciting people to create insecurity”, as well as of “apostasy by desecration of the Koran by burning it”, Mizan Online reported.

He was also found guilty of “setting fire to and destroying property in a way that causes severe disruption to the country’s public order and security”, it added.

Iranian authorities say hundreds of people, including members of the security forces, have been killed and thousands arrested during the protests which they mostly describe as “riots”.

Tehran accuses hostile foreign countries and opposition groups of stoking the unrest.

Four executions have been carried out, and six of those sentenced to capital punishment have been granted retrials.

According to London-based rights group Amnesty International, Iran is second only to China in its use of the death penalty, with at least 314 people executed in 2021.