Region

TUNIS — The main coalition against Tunisian President Kais Saied said on Tuesday his administration was using the judiciary to close down opposition to his rule, after several inquiries were opened against its members.

In July last year, Saied sacked the government, froze parliament and seized far-reaching executive powers, later grabbing control of the judiciary, moves opponents said aimed to install a new dictatorship in the birthplace of the Arab Spring uprisings.

Ahmed Nejib Chebbi, president of the National Salvation Front, said he and three other members had been summoned for investigation after a complaint by another opposition figure from outside the alliance, Abir Moussi.

Moussi's complaint came after Chebbi last month accused her of trying to reinstall a dictatorship similar to that of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali who was forced from office in the country's 2011 revolt.

"In just 24 hours, without the complaint even being examined, a decision was already taken to prosecute us," Chebbi told journalists on Tuesday.

He said the speed of the proceedings showed the complaint was being "instrumentalised" by authorities.

"It's a shoddy piece of judicial theatre and one we won't take part in," he said.

"I won't respond to the summons, and if I'm taken there by force, I will remain silent."

Chebbi said that any “Tunisian who has an independent opinion or is part of the opposition is a criminal as far as Kais Saied is concerned”.

Chebbi had last month called for Saied to step down, after a December election to a neutered parliament drew turnout of little more than 11 per cent.

A lawyer who is defending a group of judges sacked by Kais Saied has also said he is under investigation for allegedly spreading false rumours “in order to undermine public security”.

Ayachi Hammami said his summons was based on a controversial decree Saied issued in September, which provides for prison sentences for anyone spreading “false information or false rumours” in the media or online.

Hammami said the investigation related to his statements to media late last month that prosecutors asked the top judicial body to strip 13 judges of immunity so they could be tried on terror charges.

In a joint statement on Tuesday, 35 human rights groups voiced their “absolute solidarity” with Hammami against the “fabricated accusations” he faces.

TEHRAN — Iran's judiciary confirmed on Monday the death sentence against a man accused of violence during protests over the death in custody of Mahsa Amini.

"Mohammad Boroghani's death sentence was upheld on December 6 by the supreme court," the judiciary's Mizan Online news website said.

The judiciary says it has handed down a total of 11 death sentences in connection with the protests. Two of those have been carried out.

Iran has been gripped by demonstrations since the September 16 death in custoday of Amini, 22, an Iranian Kurd arrested by the country's morality police for allegedly violating the country's strict dress code for women.

Iranian officials call the protests "riots" and say hundreds of people including members of the security forces have been killed.

Thousands of others have been arrested.

Boroghani was charged in October with moharebeh, "enmity against God", an offence punishable by death under Islamic sharia law.

He was accused of "wounding a security personnel with a knife with the intent of killing him and sowing terror among citizens" as well as "setting ablaze the governor's office in Pakdasht", a city 43 kilometres southeast of the capital Tehran.

The supreme court had in recent weeks ordered retrials for three protesters, including a Kurdish rapper, facing the death penalty for their alleged involvement in the demonstrations.

BEIRUT — Israeli missile strikes on the Syrian capital's airport on Monday killed four people including two soldiers and closed the runways for several hours, a rights monitor said.

This is the second time in less than seven months that Damascus International Airport — where Iranian-backed armed groups and Lebanese Hizbollah fighters are present — has been hit by Israel.

The attack around 2:00 am (23:00 GMT) put the airport out of service until 9:00 am (06:00 GMT), Syria's state news agency SANA and officials said.

Israel carried out the strike with "barrages of missiles targeting Damascus International Airport and its surroundings", a military source told SANA, which reported that two Syrian soldiers were killed and two others wounded.

But the Britain-based monitoring group Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which relies on a wide network of sources on the ground in Syria, said "four fighters including two Syrian soldiers were killed".

The missiles also hit "positions for Hizbollah and pro-Iranian groups inside the airport and its surroundings, including a weapons warehouse", said Rami Abdul Rahman, head of the Observatory.

Flights later resumed after repairs of "the damage caused by Israeli aggression", Syria's transport ministry said in a statement.

"Air traffic has returned after we restored work on one of the runways, while the process of repairing the second runway continues," transport ministry official Suleiman Khalil told AFP.

'Persistent 

military action' 

Since civil war broke out in Syria in 2011, Israel has carried out hundreds of air strikes against its neighbour, targeting government troops as well as allied Iran-backed forces and fighters from Lebanon's Shiite militant group Hizbollah.

The Israeli army, which said on Monday that "it does not comment on foreign reports", has repeatedly said it will not allow its archfoe Iran to gain a foothold in Syria.

On December 28, the head of the Israel Defence Forces Operations Directorate, Major General Oded Basiuk, presented the military's "operational outlook" for 2023, where he said that the force "will not accept Hizbollah 2.0 in Syria", the army said on Twitter.

“Our course of action in Syria is an example of how continuous and persistent military action leads to shaping and influencing the entire region,” Basiuk added.

The following day, Israel’s military chief Aviv Kohavi gave a speech in which he noted “the armies Iran is trying to establish throughout the Middle East” as one of the facets of Tehran’s threat to Israel.

“The most important thing to us is the entrenchment, not just through proxies, but through arms, infrastructure, the Iranians are trying to set up in the area near us, primarily in the Syria-Lebanon region”, Kohavi said.

The airport is in a region southeast of Damascus where Iran-backed groups, including Hizbollah, regularly operate.

The last time the airport was out of service was in June 2022 — also after an Israeli missile strike.

The runway, control tower, three hangars, warehouses and reception rooms were badly damaged in that attack — forcing the airport to close for about two weeks and flights to be suspended.

Just as in Monday’s attack, the Observatory said at the time that the strikes had targeted nearby warehouses used as weapons depots by Iran and Hizbollah.

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

About half a million people have been killed, and the conflict has forced around half of the country’s pre-war population from their homes.

Though hostilities have largely abated in the last three years, sporadic fighting at times breaks out and jihadist attacks continue, mainly in the east of the country.

In 2022, Syria experienced its lowest yearly death toll since the conflict started over a decade ago.

At least 3,825 people died in Syria’s war in 2022, according to figures compiled by the observatory — down from the previous year’s 3,882.

Among those killed in 2022 were 1,627 civilians, including 321 children, the observatory said.

UNITED NATIONS, United States — The UN General Assembly on Friday asked the International Court of Justice to consider consequences for Israel over its occupation of Palestinian territories, a day after Israel’s most right-wing government ever took over.

The General Assembly voted 87-26 with 53 abstentions on the resolution, with Western nations split but virtually unanimous support in the Islamic world — including Arab states that have normalised relations with Israel — and backing from Russia and China.

The resolution calls on the UN court in The Hague to determine the "legal consequences arising from the ongoing violation by Israel of the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination" as well as of its measures "aimed at altering the demographic composition, character and status" of the holy city of Jerusalem.

The Palestinian ambassador to the United Nations, Riyad Mansour, said the vote sent a signal to the new government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over its efforts to "accelerate colonial and racist policies" and hailed nations that were "undeterred by threats and pressure".

"We trust that regardless of your vote today, if you believe in international law and peace, you will uphold the opinion of the International Court of Justice when delivered," Mansour said.

Speaking ahead of the vote, the Israeli ambassador, Gilad Erdan, called the resolution "a moral stain on the UN".

"No international body can decide that the Jewish people are occupiers in their own homeland," Erdan said.

"Any decision from a judicial body which receives its mandate from the morally bankrupt and politicised UN is completely illegitimate," he said.

The resolution also demands that Israel cease settlements, but General Assembly votes have no legal force — unlike those in the Security Council, where Israel ally US wields veto power.

The United States, Britain and Germany opposed the resolution, while France abstained.

"We do not feel that a referral to the International Court of Justice is helpful in bringing the parties back to dialogue," British diplomat Thomas Phipps said.

"It is also the position of the UK that it is inappropriate without the consent of both parties to ask the court to give an advisory opinion in what is essentially a bilateral dispute."

Among Western nations that backed the resolution was Portugal, whose representative acknowledged the "risk of over-judicialising international relations" but said the world court "underpins the international rules-based order which we seek to preserve".

ISTANBUL — The foreign ministers of Turkey, Syria and Russia will meet "in the second half of January," the Turkish foreign minister said on Saturday, in the latest sign of rapprochement between Ankara and Damascus.

"We have decided to hold a tripartite meeting in the second half of January. The meeting could take place in a third country," Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu told reporters in Ankara, according to the NTV news channel.

The defence ministers of Turkey, Syria and Russia met in Moscow on Wednesday for the first time since the start of the war in Syria in 2011, which has strained relations between Ankara and Damascus

In mid-December, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said he might meet his Syrian counterpart Bashar Assad after meetings at the level of defence and foreign ministers.

Turkey, a neighbour of Syria, has for more than a decade been the most important political and military backer of the Syrian opposition.

Analysts say Moscow is trying to bridge the divide between its two allies, united by a common "enemy" — Kurdish forces in northern Syria, described as "terrorists" by Ankara and backed by Washington.

Ankara launched a series of air raids against Kurdish fighters in northern Syria in late November, threatening a new ground operation following three such operations since 2016.

The Turkish and Syrian foreign ministers had a brief informal exchange on the sidelines of a regional summit in 2021 and Ankara acknowledged intelligence contacts.

Fiercely opposed to the regime of President Bashar Assad since the start of the conflict in 2011, Turkey has in recent months softened its stance towards Damascus as it seeks to improve its relations with Arab countries.

ALGIERS — A prominent Algerian journalist was remanded in custody under a state security law, news outlets he directs reported on Thursday.

"Journalist Ihsane El Kadi, who was arrested on Friday night... has been placed in pretrial detention" by an investigating judge in Algiers, news website Maghreb Emergent said.

It added that he was being detained under a law relating to receiving "funds, donations or advantages... for carrying out or inciting acts" that threaten state security or "national unity".

El Kadi could face up to seven years in prison.

Radio M, which he also runs, said El Kadi had appeared before the investigating judge "without his lawyers, who were not notified".

The day after his detention, the police sealed off the headquarters of Interface Media — which runs both outlets — and seized documents, it reported.

El Kadi was sentenced in June to six months in prison after a former information minister lodged a complaint against him over a Radio M article about Rachad, an Islamist organisation Algeria labels a "terrorist" group.

The sentence was confirmed on appeal but the court did not order El Kadi’s detention.

The authorities’ moves against El Kadi and his outlets have prompted an outpouring of solidarity among journalists and rights defenders in Algeria and beyond, with some 800 people signing a petition for his release.

Algeria ranks 134 out of 180 countries in watchdog Reporters Without Borders ‘s press freedom index.