Region

CAIRO — Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi warned world powers on Monday that Islamist militants are ravaging the Middle East and pose a threat to everyone’s security.

“Be alert to what is happening in the region... This region is being destroyed right now and we should not let this happen,” Sisi said in a televised speech.

“This matter concerns not just the Arab world. It concerns the entire world,” he said, naming the United States, Russia, China and Europe.

Militants have long challenged pro-Western Arab countries, and Egypt itself faces an Islamist insurgency based in the Sinai peninsula.

But a lightning advance by the Islamic State through major oil producer Iraq has rung alarm bells from Cairo to Washington.

The Al Qaeda offshoot declared itself a “caliphate” last month, weeks after overrunning the northern city of Mosul and seizing swathes of land north and west of the capital.

Top US defence officials said last week Iraq’s security forces were able to defend the capital, Baghdad, but would have difficulty going on the offensive to recapture lost territory, mainly because of logistic weaknesses.

Sisi did not name the Islamic State in his speech, but the mention of “countries that are being destroyed and divided in the name of religion” was a clear reference to their actions in Iraq and neighbouring Syria.

Sisi told Reuters before his election in May that Egypt needed US support to combat militants, who have stepped up attacks on Egyptian security forces since the army toppled president Mohamed Mursi of the Muslim Brotherhood just over a year ago, killings hundreds in bombings and shootings.

The government has declared the Brotherhood a terrorist group, but the Brotherhood says it is a peaceful movement.

The former army chief warned that the Sinai could turn into a base for “terrorism”, destabilising Egypt and the region.

Most of Sisi’s speech focused on efforts to revive the economy and fix state finances, which have been battered by more than three years of political turmoil.

He said his government’s decision to cut subsidies for fuel and electricity were necessary to improve Egypt’s budget deficit, which is set to hold at 10 per cent of economic output in the next three years.

Gulf Arab allies opposed to the Brotherhood have extended more than $12 billion in cash and petroleum products to help Egypt stave off economic collapse. But Sisi said reforms, not aid, were needed to ensure long-term stability.

“Our brothers stood by our side,” he said. “But for how long and then what?”

CAIRO — Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi’s stated regret over the trial that imprisoned Al Jazeera journalists was a strong signal to a judiciary whose harsh rulings have prompted international outrage, analysts said.

Sisi, who had previously said it would be inappropriate to remark on court rulings, conceded on Sunday that the lengthy prison sentences in June for the three reporters, including Australian Peter Greste, had had a “negative effect”.

The former army general told Egyptian newspaper editors during a roundtable that he wished the reporters had been deported after their arrest, rather than put on trial.

The three journalists were sentenced to between seven and 10 years for allegedly defaming Egypt and aiding the now blacklisted Muslim Brotherhood movement of president Mohamed Morsi whom Sisi removed from power last year when he was army chief.

Qatar, where Al Jazeera is based, has backed the Brotherhood.

Sisi’s remarks reflected growing dismay within the ruling establishment at a string of court rulings, including mass death sentences of opposition Islamists, that repeatedly shocked the international community, analysts and officials said.

“Sisi’s comments were obviously a positive sign that he understands the damage this has done to Egypt’s reputation,” one Western diplomat told AFP, referring to the Al-Jazeera trial.

Sisi’s remarks “hopefully will serve as a clear signal to the judiciary that the appeals process needs to be completed quickly and in favour of release of the journalists involved”.

His office has said that Sisi, who won a presidential election in May, cannot intervene to pardon the reporters until the appeals process is completed.

The army’s ousting of Morsi in July last year unleashed a deadly crackdown on the Islamists, with thousands also arrested and hundreds sentenced to death or prison in often swift trials.

Harsh and outlandish verdicts 

The government insists that it does not interfere with the courts and that their rulings must be respected. But privately, officials have expressed consternation at the sometimes harsh and outlandish verdicts.

In one case, a court handed initial death sentences to almost 700 Islamists over deadly rioting.

The Islamists, the court explained in its ruling, were “demons” who used mosques to promote “their holy book, the Talmud”, a key text in Judaism.

In the trial of the Al-Jazeera journalists, the prosecution presented such evidence as they could gather from the defendants’ laptops. This included a picture of Greste’s parents and footage of a horse in a stable.

Their sentencing came a day after US Secretary of State John Kerry, seen as Cairo’s best friend in Washington, paid the newly elected Sisi a visit in a show of support.

The day before Kerry arrived, another court sentenced 183 Islamists to death. The timing of both verdicts was seen as deeply embarrassing for Washington’s top diplomat.

Kerry, who in Cairo announced the resumption of aid suspended after Morsi’s overthrow, called the imprisonment of the reporters “chilling and draconian”.

“There is some degree of alarm in the Egyptian establishment at some of the rulings in recent weeks,” said Issandr El Amrani, the North Africa Project director for the International Crisis Group think tank.

The rulings “have had diplomatic consequences like the Jazeera trial or death sentences and were an embarrassment in US-Egypt relations”, he said.

Even supporters of Sisi’s ouster of the Brotherhood have voiced dismay about the court rulings.

“The independence of the judiciary we all defend does not mean it should work in an isolated island, with no connection to consequences” wrote influential television host Lamees Al Hadidi in one newspaper.

BEIRUT — The Western-backed Syrian opposition group will begin a three-day meeting in Istanbul later Sunday to elect a new president and discuss the offensive by Islamic militants straddling Iraq and Syria, an official with the group said.

The meeting comes amid reports that 150,000 people have been displaced from their homes in eastern Syria by jihadi fighters who captured wide areas of the eastern province of Deir Al Zour in the past weeks.

Mustafa Osso said the Syrian National Coalition will pick a replacement for its current president, Ahmad Al Jarba, in a vote expected on Tuesday. He said the top two candidates for the job are senior coalition members Hadi Bahra and Muwaffaq Nairabiyeh, who belong to Jarba’s Democratic bloc.

Jarba, who was elected in July of last year, has already served two six-month terms — the maximum period allowed by the coalition.

A statement by the group said that in addition to a vote for a new president, the coalition will also elect three vice presidents, a secretary general and a political committee. The statement said the coalition will be “discussing the military changes in Syria and the region in general, and its impact on the course of revolution.”

Over the past weeks, Islamic militants launched a wide offensive in eastern Syria and northern Iraq capturing large areas on both sides of the border.

The group, which calls itself the Islamic State, six days ago declared the establishment of an Islamic State, or caliphate, in the territories it seized in Iraq and Syria. The group proclaimed its leader Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi the leader of its territory and demanded that all Muslims pledge allegiance to him.

Also Sunday, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the Islamic State group has displaced 150,000 Syrians from their homes in the eastern oil-rich province of Deir Al Zour. The group has been on the offensive in Deir Al Zour since late April and has captured a large numbers of towns and villages in the province after intense fighting with rival rebel groups.

On Saturday, the military chief of Syria’s main Western-backed rebel group warned Syria risked a “humanitarian disaster” if allies do not send more aid to help his moderate forces halt the advance of the Islamic State group.

“We call on urgent support for the FSA with weapons and ammunition, and to avoid a humanitarian disaster that threatens our people,” said Brig. Gen. Abdul-Ilah Al Bashir, commander of the Free Syrian Army.

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — An Israeli judge on Sunday released from jail and placed under house arrest a 15-year-old American of Palestinian descent whose apparent beating by Israeli forces in East Jerusalem has drawn US concern.

Tariq Khdeir from Tampa, Florida, is a cousin of Mohammed Abu Khdeir, 16, whose abduction and killing in Jerusalem on Wednesday sparked violent protests and calls from Palestinians for a new uprising against Israel.

Many Palestinians, including President Mahmoud Abbas, say the teen was the victim of right-wing Jews avenging the abduction and killing of three Israeli teenagers, who disappeared while hitchhiking in the occupied West Bank on June 12, and whose bodies were found on Monday.

An Israeli security source said on Sunday that six Jewish suspects have been arrested in the investigation into Abu Khdeir’s death have been arrested. The source did not identify them.

Israeli-Arab tensions have risen sharply in the wake of the killings. Israel said on Sunday its aircraft had attacked 10 sites in the Gaza Strip in response to rocket strikes, although the government dismissed wider action against the enclave.

A lawyer for Khdeir, a high school student who was visiting family in East Jerusalem, said the youngster would be restricted to a relative’s home for nine days.

A video clip circulated on the Internet on Saturday showed two Israeli soldiers holding down and repeatedly pummelling a masked youth before carrying him away.

A later part of the video shows Khdeir’s face with a heavy black eye and swollen lip.

On Saturday, US State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki confirmed that Khdeir was being held by Israeli authorities and said a consular officer had visited him. A judge on Friday had ordered him held in custody until a hearing on Sunday.

“We are profoundly troubled by reports that he was severely beaten while in police custody and strongly condemn any excessive use of force. We are calling for a speedy, transparent and credible investigation and full accountability for any excessive use of force,” Psaki said.

Security spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said Khdeir was one of six protesters caught and detained on Thursday during clashes with Israeli forces. Khdeir’s mother told Reuters her son was watching the protest and had not taken part.

She said the family was planning to return to the United States on July 16.

Israel’s justice ministry said the police internal affairs department had opened an investigation into allegations he had been beaten.

SANAA/ADEN — Clashes in the north Yemen town of Omran continued on Sunday between the army and fighters from the Houthi movement after at least 104 people were killed on Saturday, while in the south six soldiers were shot dead by Al Qaeda militants.

Yemen’s government is struggling to regain stability in a country facing a deadly uprising in the north, a separatist movement in the south and a growing Al Qaeda insurgency that has survived repeated assaults by the military.

Western and Gulf governments fear the spread of Al Qaeda in Yemen and persistent fighting in the north could allow the militants room to plot attacks on international targets and in neighbouring Saudi Arabia, the world’s top oil exporter.

Three suspected Al Qaeda fighters were killed when they attacked a Saudi frontier post on Friday, killing four border guards, and two others blew themselves up on Saturday after fleeing to a government building in the kingdom’s south.

The conflict between the government and Houthis, who demand more rights for the Shiite Zaydi sect in the majority Sunni country, has taken on an increasingly sectarian tone leading to fears of further unrest.

The Houthis blame the end of a 12-day ceasefire across north Yemen on an advance in Al Jouf province northeast of the capital Sanaa by army units loyal to the Islah Party, which has links to the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood.

The government said the advance on the town of Al Safra had been prompted by the failure of Houthi fighters to vacate positions in compliance with the terms of the ceasefire.

On Saturday Yemen’s air force bombed Houthi positions in Omran, northwest of Sanaa, in fighting that killed 34 soldiers and 70 Houthis, who call themselves Ansarullah or “followers of God”, medical sources in the city said on Sunday.

The attack by Al Qaeda militants in Wadi Dhayka in the Mahfad district of the southern Abyan province in a separate incident on Sunday morning killed six soldiers and injured two, local security officials said.

The district had been declared free of militants in April after a costly military campaign to clear Al Qaeda from its strongholds in Abyan and the neighbouring province of Shabwa.

BAGHDAD — Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki’s coalition should withdraw its support for his bid for a third term and pick another candidate, Shiite Muslim cleric Moqtada Al Sadr urged, amid parliamentary deadlock over the formation of a new government.

Maliki has come under mounting pressure since Islamic State militants took swathes of the north and west of Iraq last month and declared a caliphate on land they and other Sunni armed groups have captured in Iraq and Syria.

In a statement published on his website late on Saturday, Sadr said Maliki “has involved himself and us in long security quarrels and big political crises” and suggested that preventing Maliki from serving a third term would be a “welcome step”.

“It is necessary to demonstrate the national and paternal spirit by aiming for a higher, wider goal from individuals and blocs and by that I mean changing the candidates,” said Sadr, who gained political influence during the US occupation.

The radical cleric and his political allies had previously advocated the next prime minister should be a Shiite chosen from outside of Maliki’s State of Law coalition.

“I remain convinced that the brothers in the State of Law coalition must present the candidate for prime minister ... because it is the biggest bloc within the National Alliance,” Sadr said.

State of Law is part of the National Alliance, a bloc comprising the country’s biggest Shiite parties, including both Maliki’s list and his foes.

Dhiya Al Asadi, secretary general of the Al Ahrar bloc, the Shiite political party loyal to Sadr, told Reuters: “We are fine with any State of Law candidate as long as he is not Maliki.”

The United States, Iran, the United Nations and Iraq’s own Shiite clerics have called on Iraqi politicians to overcome their differences to face the insurgency.

Analysing video

Maliki’s military spokesman Qassim Atta told reporters on Sunday “the security apparatus is working” to analyse a video posted online of a man purporting to be the leader of Islamic State praying at the Grand Mosque in Mosul.

The city is one of those seized by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) last month before the group changed its name and declared its leader Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi caliph, a title held by successors of the Prophet Mohammad.

Interior ministry spokesman Saad Maan had earlier said the 21-minute video, which carried Friday’s date, was “false”.

Atta said the video was being “cross-referenced with intelligence data to determine whether it is in fact” the reclusive Baghdadi.

Before the video was released on jihadist forums and Twitter accounts associated with the group, reports appeared on social media that Baghdadi would make his first public appearance.

Government forces were on Sunday continuing to battle Islamic State militants south of the rebel-held city of Tikrit, which the army has yet to retake after an offensive began on June 28, Atta said.

He said forces had killed 14 militants since Saturday in Al Dayoum and Wadi Shisheen areas near Tikrit and troops were reinforcing the village of Awja, recaptured three days ago, and preparing to push 8km north into the city.

Maliki’s opponents blame his divisive rule for fuelling the political crisis and want him to step aside. They accuse him of ruling for the Shiite majority at the expense of the Sunni and Kurdish minorities.

He has remained defiant, insisting on Friday that he will not give up his quest for a third term in power.

The first meeting of the Iraqi parliament since its election in April collapsed last week without agreement. Kurds and Sunnis walked out, complaining Shiite lawmakers had not yet determined who they would put forward as premier.

Maliki’s main Shiite rivals say there is consensus among some in the Shiite coalition and among the Sunnis and Kurds against his bid for a third term.

“There is a wish by all political blocs except the State of Law ... [for] the change,” said Ali Shubber, a leading member of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI), a Shiite party that came second to Maliki’s State of Law in April’s election.

“We feel that it must take place in order to change the political equation.”

Another Shiite politician, former prime minister Iyad Allawi, called on Maliki on Saturday to give up his bid for a third term or risk the dismemberment of Iraq.

BAGHDAD — Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi, the enigmatic self-proclaimed “caliph” of a state straddling Iraq and Syria, is increasingly seen as more powerful than Al Qaeda’s chief.

The leader of the powerful Islamic State (IS) militant group was on June 29 declared “caliph” in an attempt to revive a system of rule that ended nearly 100 years ago with the fall of the Ottoman Empire.

In a video posted online on Saturday, purportedly the first known footage of Baghdadi, he ordered Muslims to obey him during a Ramadan sermon delivered at a mosque in the northern militant held Iraqi city of Mosul.

“I am the wali [leader] who presides over you, though I am not the best of you, so if you see that I am right, assist me,” he said, wearing a black turban and robe.

“If you see that I am wrong, advise me and put me on the right track, and obey me as long as I obey God.”

The man now touted as the world’s most prominent jihadist, who has rarely been seen in public, appeared in Saturday’s video sporting a long beard, bushier and greyer than in the few previously released images.

His appearance follows the June 29 declaration by IS spokesman Abu Mohammad Al Adnani of a pan-Islamic “caliphate” with Baghdadi as its leader.

Baghdadi, born in Samarra in 1971 according to Washington, apparently joined the insurgency that erupted shortly after the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq, at one point spending time in an American military prison in the country.

In October 2005, American forces said they believed they had killed “Abu Dua”, one of Baghdadi’s known aliases, in a strike on the Iraq-Syria border.

$10-million bounty 

But that appears to have been incorrect, as he took the reins of what was then known as the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI) in May 2010 after two of its chiefs were killed in a US-Iraqi raid.

Since then, details about him have slowly trickled out.

In October 2011, the US treasury designated him as a “terrorist”, and there is now a $10-million (7.3-million-euro) bounty for his capture.

This year, Iraq released a picture they said was of Baghdadi, the first from an official source, depicting a balding, bearded man in a suit and tie.

US officials said last year that the jihadist was probably in Syria, but information about his whereabouts since has been unclear.

If authenticated, Saturday’s video would indicate growing confidence of the once secretive Baghdadi, one of the world’s most wanted militants.

His appearance at the Mosul minbar, or pulpit, in the typical garb of a Sunni Muslim scholar, could also signal a shift from the battlefield to a more spiritual role for the self-proclaimed “caliph”.

Baghdadi, whose group advocates an extreme form of Islamic law and a return to the lifestyle of the first Muslims, pulled out a “miswak” — a twig used as a traditional toothbrush and reportedly used by the Prophet Mohammad — and cleaned his teeth before beginning his sermon.

He is touted within IS as a battlefield commander and tactician, a crucial distinction compared with Al Qaeda chief Ayman Al Zawahiri, and has attracted legions of foreign fighters, with estimates in the thousands.

At the time Baghdadi took over the group in April 2010, when it was ISI and tied to Al Qaeda, it appeared to be on the ropes after the “surge” of US forces combined with the shifting allegiances of Sunni tribesmen to deal him a blow.

But the group bounced back, expanding into Syria in 2013.

Baghdadi sought to merge with Al Qaeda’s Syrian franchise, Al Nusra Front, which rejected the deal, and the two groups have mostly operated separately since.

CAIRO — Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi said on Sunday a referendum on the independence of Iraq’s Kurdish region would lead to a “catastrophic” break up of the country, which is facing an onslaught by Sunni Islamist militants.

The comments from Sisi, leader of the most populous Arab nation, indicate a growing fear in the region that the division of Iraq could further empower the insurgents who have declared a “caliphate” on land seized in Iraq and neighbouring Syria.

“The referendum that the Kurds are asking for now is in reality no more than the start of a catastrophic division of Iraq into smaller rival states,” Egypt’s MENA news agency quoted Sisi as saying during a meeting with local journalists.

The president of Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish north, Massoud Barzani, asked the region’s parliament on Thursday to prepare the way for a referendum on independence.

Iraq’s five million Kurds, who have ruled themselves in relative peace since the 1990s, have expanded their territory by up to 40 per cent in recent weeks as the Sunni Islamist militants seized vast stretches of western and northern Iraq.

Egypt, a traditionally regional diplomatic heavy weight, has been embroiled in domestic turmoil for three years since a 2011 uprising ousted autocratic president Hosni Mubarak.

Sisi said he warned the United States and Europe about the ambitions of the Islamic State militants, which have shortened their name from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).

“ISIL had a plan to take over Egypt,” Sisi said. “I had warned the United States and Europe from providing any aid to them and told them they will come out of Syria to target Iraq then Jordan then Saudi Arabia.”

Sisi, Egypt’s former army chief, last year orchestrated the ouster of the state’s Islamist president Mohamed Morsi, who was elected in a free vote, in reaction to mass protests against his rule.

Sisi’s interim government that ruled until his election had cracked down on Islamists. Thousands of Islamist activists and members in Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood group have been jailed since Morsi’s ouster last July and hundreds of street protesters were killed.

The Muslim Brotherhood group, the state’s oldest and most organised movement, is now banned and declared a terrorist organisation.

DUBAI — A police officer died in a “terrorist” blast in a Shiite-populated village in the Sunni-ruled Gulf kingdom of Bahrain, an interior ministry official announced Saturday.

“Police officer Mahmud Farid died Saturday before dawn from wounds sustained in a terrorist explosion at East Ekar,” near Manama, said national security chief General Tareq Al Hassan in a statement published by national news agency BNA.

An investigation has been opened to identify and arrest those behind the attack, he added without giving further details.

Attacks on security forces have been on the rise in Bahrain in recent months, with three police officers, one from the United Arab Emirates, killed in a bomb attack in a Shiite-populated town on March 3.

Another officer died on February 15, also by a bomb blast, in a Shiite village during protests marking the third anniversary of Shiite-led demonstrations, taking their cue from Arab Spring uprisings elsewhere in the region and demanding democratic reforms in the absolute monarchy.

Security forces boosted by Saudi-led troops ended the protests a month later, but smaller demonstrations frequently take place in Shiite villages, triggering clashes with police.

BEIRUT — The military chief of Syria’s main Western-backed rebel group warned Saturday that the country risked a “humanitarian disaster” if allies do not send more aid to help his moderate forces halt the advance of Islamic militants.

Extremist fighters of the Islamic State group control a swath of land straddling Syria and neighbouring Iraq, mostly running across the Euphrates River, where they have established their self-styled caliphate. Most of the land was seized last month in a lightning push across Iraq.

In recent days, fighters from the group have been pushing into rebel-held territory around the northern Syrian city of Aleppo, close to the Turkish border. They are also consolidating their rule along a corridor of land in the eastern Syrian province of Deir el-Zour that leads to neighbouring Iraq.

“We call on urgent support for the FSA with weapons and ammunition, and to avoid a humanitarian disaster that threatens our people,” said Brig. Gen. Abdel Ilah Al Bashir, commander of the Free Syrian army. “Time is not on our side. Time is a slashing sword,” he said.

His statement underscored the distress many of the country’s many rebel fighters, whose battle to overthrow President Bashar Assad has been overshadowed by the advance of Islamic State fighters.

In northern Syria, where the extremists have been pushing back rebels, Syrian government forces also seized a key industrial area, allowing them to choke off rebel-held parts of Aleppo, already brutalised by indiscriminate bombing.

Bashir called on rebel allies, chiefly the United States, but also neighbouring Turkey and regional supports Saudi Arabia and Qatar, to speedily send help. He said the Islamic State fighters will not halt at Syria’s borders.

“If we do not receive support quickly, the disaster will not stop at the borders. We put the international community before its historic responsibility,” he said.

Also Saturday, Syrian activists said that a father, mother and their six children were killed in a government airstrike in the southern town of Dael.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the eight civilians were killed in shelling early Saturday. The activist collective, the local coordination committees, also reported the incident.