Region

RABAT/PARIS — Morocco has halted judicial cooperation with France, blocking procedures from prisoner transfers to joint investigations, officials said on Thursday, in a growing dispute with its former colonial ruler over allegations of human rights abuses.

French President Francois Hollande spoke to the Moroccan king this week to try to defuse the rare row with Rabat, an ally under fire from rights groups over police abuses, press freedom and judicial independence.

Rabat on Saturday summoned the French ambassador after French police went to the Moroccan Embassy in Paris seeking to question the head of the domestic intelligence service (DRT) over torture allegations, following lawsuits filed against him in France by French-Moroccan activists.

“We haven’t received any explanation regarding the seven French police officers who went to question the head of the territorial surveillance,” Moroccan government spokesman Mustapha Khalfi told reporters.

“That damaged the integrity of the Moroccan judiciary system... That is why we decided to suspend the whole judicial cooperation with France until an update of those agreements.”

Lawyers and officials said the move affected cooperation on penal matters such as joint investigations, prisoner transfers and extraditions. Also blocked will be civil procedures for dual French-Moroccan nationals, who number almost 700,000, such as marriages, custody of children issues and divorces. There are about 170 French citizens held in Moroccan prisons.

Morocco’s justice ministry had earlier said it had recalled one of its judges who had been liaising on judicial matters.

France’s foreign minister had said on Wednesday he hoped the dispute was in the past after speaking to his Moroccan counterpart. “We are continuing our close dialogue with the Moroccan authorities to overcome the recent difficulties,” France’s foreign ministry said in a statement on Thursday.

France, Morocco’s top economic partner, is keen to resolve the dispute as quickly as possible, officials said.

In 2012, the United Nations said torture against people suspected of national security crimes in Morocco was systematic and urged it to end ill-treatment of detainees. US-based Human Rights Watch has urged Morocco to investigate accusations that police tortured pro-democracy activists.

Joseph Breham, a lawyer for one of those who filed a complaint in Paris, said the suspension would block prisoner transfers to France. Several of his clients had been jailed on drug-trafficking charges and had asked for transfers to France after making claims of torture following arrest, he said.

“The Moroccans have realised that prisoners file legal complaints once they get back to France,” he said.

But analysts said the diplomatic row may also be linked to the long-running Western Sahara dispute.

One of Africa’s oldest territorial feuds, it has been a sensitive issue for Morocco since the United Nations brokered a ceasefire in 1991 that ended a war between the North African kingdom and the Algerian-backed Polisario movement.

The United Nations will vote in April on extending the mandate of a UN mission in Western Sahara for another year.

France has long supported Rabat’s position on Western Sahara. Last year, Paris pushed the United States to modify a draft resolution that aimed to have UN peacekeepers monitor human rights in the territory. The draft prompted Morocco to cancel joint US-Moroccan military exercises.

BIRZEIT, Palestinian Territories — A Palestinian died during an Israeli army raid on his home in the West Bank town of Birzeit Thursday, the military and a Palestinian security source said.

The death came as Amnesty International criticised Israel’s killing of dozens of Palestinian civilians in the occupied West Bank over the past three years.

“After the army left the house and the town, the body of Motaz Washaha was found,” the Palestinian source said.

The army confirmed the death of a “Palestinian suspected of terror activity.”

“After the suspect was called to turn himself in, he barricaded himself inside his house,” it said.

Soldiers responded with “live fire” and recovered an assault rifle, it added.

Neighbours said the dead man was a member of the leftist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

The army entered Birzeit, north of the West Bank administrative centre of Ramallah, Thursday morning and used “riot dispersal means” to clear stone-throwing Palestinians from their path to the house.

The Palestinian government slammed what it said was a “new escalation” by Israel, adding that the army had “deliberately” killed the man.

“The forces of the occupation surrounded Washaha’s house, evacuated its other inhabitants and then fired several rockets at it, destroying parts of it whilst firing [with guns],” a statement said.

DOHA — Al Jazeera television on Thursday organised a “global day of action” in solidarity with its four journalists detained in Egypt over accusations of supporting the now-banned Muslim Brotherhood.

Dozens of staff of the Doha-based satellite news channel staged a five-minute gathering at the network’s headquarters.

“It is not a crime to be a journalist,” read banners carried by Al Jazeera staff, some of them with their mouth taped, an Al Jazeera journalist told AFP.

The channel said protests were held in other cities in support of the campaign.

In Khartoum, around 100 Sudanese journalists and activists staged a silent vigil on a street near the office of the satellite channel, an AFP journalist reported.

Al Jazeera declared Thursday a “global day of action” in support of its staff and for media freedom in general.

The detained Al Jazeera staff in Egypt include Australian journalist Peter Greste, Canadian-Egyptian colleague Mohamed Fadel Fahmy and Baher Mohamed.

They have been held since December in a case that has sparked an international outcry.

Their trial began in a Cairo court last week, against the backdrop of strained ties between Cairo and Doha, which backed deposed Islamist president Mohamed Morsi and his now-banned Muslim Brotherhood.

Morsi was ousted by the army in July.

The government has designated the Brotherhood a “terrorist organisation”, although the group denies involvement in a spate of bombings since Morsi’s overthrow.

The three journalists are accused of supporting the Brotherhood and broadcasting false reports, charges denied by the television network.

A fourth Al Jazeera journalist, Abdullah Al Shami, has been held since August.

FRANKFURT — German tour operators started bringing hundreds of holidaymakers back from Egypt’s Sharm El Sheikh Red Sea resort on Thursday after Germany’s foreign office advised against travel to the entire Sinai peninsula.

German authorities on Wednesday recommended its citizens refrain from travelling to the beach resorts on the peninsula and said those already there should make arrangements with their travel agent to return early.

Alltours said it would bring back 120 holidaymakers in Sharm El Sheikh this evening, while TUI Deutschland and Thomas Cook Germany said they were organising travel back to Germany for its customers there.

“We want to bring them back by the weekend. They will be refunded for the days of their trip they did not use,” a Thomas Cook Germany spokesman said.

Another big German tour operator, DER, said it had booked a plane for Friday morning to bring back all 85 guests from its different tour operator brands that were in Sharm El Sheikh.

The recent bombing of a coach carrying Korean holidaymakers across the peninsula has led to renewed concerns for tourism in Egypt, an industry which provides a livelihood for millions and the government with much-needed foreign currency.

Germans and Russians are the most numerous visitors to the country, which saw tourism revenue plunge 41 percent to $5.9 billion last year due to the waves of unrest that have disrupted the country since the Arab Spring uprising in 2011.

The advice from Germany was not equivalent to a full warning that would force all tour companies to repatriate German holidaymakers immediately.

For German travellers the resorts of Hurghada and Marsa Alam on Egypt’s mainland Red Sea coast, which are not affected by the latest travel advice, are more popular destinations. TUI Germany said 90 per cent of its holidaymakers in Egypt were in Hurghada.

DER said overall bookings to Egypt were down by between 30-40 per cent since the start of the Arab Spring, while bookings to Sharm El Sheikh were down 90 per cent, mainly due to its location nearer trouble hotspots.

The Russian foreign ministry said on Thursday it was “important” that Russian tourists stay inside tourist areas and refrain from travelling around the country, urging them to avoid big cities and the interior of the Sinai Peninsula in particular, confirming earlier advice.

France and Britain, two other major sources of tourists for Egypt, also advise against travelling to the peninsula but have so far exempted Sharm el-Sheikh.

The German tour operators said guests with holidays booked over the next few weeks to Sharm El Sheikh would be offered the chance to switch bookings to another destination or to cancel their trip entirely for free.

TUI Germany, Thomas Cook Germany and DER said the rebooking or cancellation offer was valid on holidays until March 14, while Alltours said those with travel booked until the end of March could alter their plans for free.

BAGHDAD — At least 42 people were killed Wednesday as a motorcycle rigged with explosives detonated in Baghdad’s Sadr City and militants targeted mostly Shiite neighbourhoods around the country.

The motorcycle was parked in a second-hand market in the Shiite Muslim neighbourhood that sells used bikes and was filled with people, mostly young men, when it exploded late Thursday afternoon, killing 31 and wounding 51 others, Iraqi medical and police sources said.

Blood covered the ground, storefront windows were shattered and shoes and motorcycle parts were strewn around the market, according to a Reuters’ correspondent at the scene. Dozens of people were screaming for information about their relatives.

A wounded man, who identified himself as Ahmed, rested in a nearby hospital. 

“I was about to leave the market when a huge explosion happened,” Ahmed said. “I was hit in my face and my hands and when I got up, everyone was screaming and running towards me away from the blast.”

It was not clear who was behind the bombing but violence against Shiites is often blamed on the Sunni Muslim Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), an Al Qaeda-linked group.

Baghdad has been hit by wave after wave of bombings since April as the precarious peace enjoyed since the end of Iraq’s sectarian war in 2008 has unravelled.

Explosives and suicide bombs have been favoured by Sunni extremists as they seek to target Shiite areas and intimidate their own religious community.

The latest bloodshed comes as Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki wages a war against Sunni militants in western Anbar province neighbouring Syria, and has become a base for ISIL. Despite the offensive, the pace of attacks around the country goes on undiminished.

In other incidents on Thursday, four people died from bombs on two different mini-buses in Shiite sections of Baghdad.

A militant smashed his explosives-packed vehicle into a checkpoint, killing three soldiers and wounding six others in Mushaada, a Sunni district, in northern Baghdad, police said.

In Salahuddin province, a pro-government Sunni-manned checkpoint in the town of Shirqat was hit by a bomb that killed two fighters and wounded four others, police said.

Also to the north in Tuz Khurmatu, a bomb in an outdoor marketplace frequented by Shiite Turkmen killed two people and wounded 11 others.

CAIRO — A court in Egypt on Thursday suspended the espionage trial of deposed Islamist president Mohamed Morsi after defence lawyers requested that the judges in the case withdraw.

The case, one of three already opened against Morsi, comes amid a relentless government crackdown targeting him and his Muslim Brotherhood movement since the army removed him last July.

Prosecutors accuse Morsi and 35 others, including Brotherhood leaders, of conspiring with foreign powers, Palestinian movement Hamas and Shiite Iran to destabilise Egypt.

“The court decided to stop looking into the case until a decision is taken on the recuse request” filed by defence lawyers, presiding judge, Shaaban Shamy, said before ending Thursday’s brief hearing.

On Monday, Shamy suspended another case against Morsi for the same reason.

In that case, Morsi and 130 other defendants, including Palestinian and Lebanese militants, are charged with organising jailbreaks and attacking police stations during the 2011 revolt against strongman Hosni Mubarak.

Lawyers for some defendants have asked that a new panel of judges examine both the jailbreak and the espionage cases.

They have also complained about a soundproof glass cage in which the accused are held when the court is in session.

The special dock is designed to stop Morsi and other defendants from interrupting the proceedings, as they have done in past hearings.

The recuse request was also motivated by the alleged taping of private conversations between the defendants and their lawyers, after an Egyptian newspaper leaked a discussion between Morsi and lawyer Selim Al Awa.

Lawyer Hussein Abdel Salam, representing former Morsi presidential aide Ayman Ali, told AFP on Thursday “there were no reasons justifying the recuse request and most probably it will be turned down”.

Salam is not a member of the main lawyers’ team defending the Brotherhood leaders.

An appeals court will examine the recuse request on March 1 and decide whether to appoint a new panel of judges.

In the espionage case, Morsi and other defendants are accused of “delivering to a foreign country... national defence secrets and providing the Iranian Revolutionary Guards with security reports in order to destabilise the security and stability of the country”.

Prosecutors said that between 2005 and August 2013, Morsi and the defendants carried out espionage on behalf of the “international Muslim Brotherhood organisation and Hamas with an aim to perpetrate terror attacks in the country in order to spread chaos and topple the state”.

On Thursday, Morsi and one former aide were separated from other defendants and placed in a different dock.

The others, including Brotherhood supreme guide Mohamed Badie, his deputy Khairat Al Shater and several former presidential aides, turned their backs on the court, ignoring the judge and chanting “Down with military rule”.

The third current case against Morsi relates to the killing of protesters during his presidency.

In another case, for which no date has yet been set, he is expected to be tried for “insulting the judiciary”.

More than 1,400 people have been killed and thousands jailed in a police crackdown targeting Morsi supporters since his overthrow last July 3.

BERLIN — The Syrian opposition’s interim prime minister said Thursday that it was still possible to negotiate an end to his country’s bloody conflict despite the failure of UN-led peace talks.

Ahmed Tomeh was responding to reporters’ questions in Berlin about his hopes for peace after the acrimonious breakdown of the “Geneva II” talks earlier this month.

“I nevertheless still believe in a negotiated solution and hope that the international community will exercise more pressure in future on the Syrian regime,” he told reporters.

Tomeh and several other members of the Syrian opposition’s provisional government met German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier in Berlin on Wednesday.

The Syrian opposition figure said Germany could contribute towards a solution of the nearly three-year conflict, in which more than 140,000 people have been killed, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Tomeh also confirmed the arrest and detention of relatives of opposition delegates who attended the Geneva talks, after the US accused the Syrian government Wednesday of strong-arm tactics to intimidate opposition negotiators.

“Anyone in Syria who has anything to do with the opposition, even from afar, is in danger of being arrested, and not only that,” Tomeh said through an interpreter.

Germany and the United Arab Emirates have created a fund with 50 million euros ($68 million) to help in the reconstruction of areas under the control of the moderate opposition.

Japan added a further 10 million euros to the fund Wednesday, the German foreign ministry said.

BEIRUT — Syria’s army is preparing to assault a key rebel bastion near Damascus, a pro-regime newspaper said Thursday, as activists reported heavy shelling and fighting in the area.

“The Syrian army is preparing to launch a new phase” on the town of Yabrud near the border with Lebanon in its offensive in the Qalamun mountains, Al Watan reported.

It said troops loyal to President Bashar Assad have seized control of two strategic hills near Yabrud, which has been the target of heavy air raids and tank fire since early February.

“Every day there is progress” by the army, said the newspaper, adding that rebels had been using the two hills as supply routes.

Regime forces backed by fighters of Lebanon’s Shiite Hizbollah launched an offensive in the Qalamun area in November.

They have expelled rebels from several strategic towns, but Yabrud — the largest in the region — has so far remained an opposition stronghold.

Thursday’s developments come a day after the heaviest death toll in nearly three years among fighters on both sides of the conflict, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

It reported fighting between rebels and troops and Hizbollah fighters on the outskirts of Yabrud on Thursday.

“Last night, the shelling was very fierce,” Amer, an activist in the Qalamun area, told AFP via Skype.

Amer said he was confident rebels could defend the town against a ground offensive, but said most residents had fled.

Yabrud was once home to some 50,000 people. Last week, the United Nations refugee agency UNHCR said some 13,000 had crossed from Qalamun into Lebanon’s border town of Arsal.

Elsewhere in Syria, five people were killed and 13 wounded in a mortar attack “by terrorists” on the regime-held Akrameh district of Homs city, state television said, using the regime’s term for rebels.

Akrameh borders a handful of rebel-held districts in the heart of Homs that have been under choking army siege for more than a year-and-a-half.

The observatory said Wednesday saw the highest death toll among rebels, jihadists and loyalists since the start of Syria’s conflict in March 2011.

The group, which relies on activists and doctors on the ground for its information, said 326 fighters were killed nationwide.

They included 242 opposition fighters, among them at least 33 jihadists.

Another 84 were loyalists, including 37 paramilitaries and non-Syrian fighters.

Meanwhile, in northern Syria’s Hasake province, home to the majority of the country’s Kurds, jihadists destroyed a Sufi Muslim shrine as they advanced on Tal Maaruf village, residents said.

Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) militants “blew up the shrine, and burned a mosque and a police station”, said Massoud Akko, a Kurdish journalist and native of Hasake province, citing residents.

ISIL follow an extremely strict interpretation of Islam which views Sufi Muslims as heretics.

Syria’s war has killed more than 140,000 people, the observatory says, and forced millions more to flee their homes.

On the humanitarian front, UNRWA said it distributed 450 food parcels in the Palestinian refugee camp of Yarmouk in Damascus on Wednesday.

UNRWA on Tuesday said the situation in Yarmouk was “shocking” and called for sustained access for aid deliveries to some 18,000 Palestinians trapped there under fire.

RAMALLAH — A senior Palestinian official on Thursday rejected US moves to extend an April deadline for nine months of hard-won talks with Israel to culminate in a framework peace deal.

“There is no meaning to prolonging the negotiation, even for one more additional hour, if Israel, represented by its current government, continues to disregard international law,” Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat told AFP.

“If there was a committed partner, we wouldn’t even have needed nine hours to reach that deal,” he said.

Erekat was responding to comments by US Secretary of State John Kerry, who told reporters in Washington on Wednesday that more time would be needed and that he hoped first to agree a framework to guide further talks.

It was Kerry who coaxed the two sides back to the negotiating table in late July, after a three-year hiatus.

“Then we get into the final negotiations. I don’t think anybody would worry if there’s another nine months, or whatever it’s going to be... But that’s not defined yet,” said Erekat, who according to Palestinian sources is to meet with Kerry within days.

Israeli Defence Minister Moshe Yaalon said last month that he expected the time frame to be lengthened.

“We are now trying to reach a framework to continue negotiations for a period beyond the nine months some thought would suffice for reaching a permanent accord,” he said.

US President Barack Obama is to host Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House next week when he is expected to renew pressure on his guest to rein in the expansion of Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas will be meeting with Obama on March 17 to review the peace talks and discuss efforts to “strengthen the institutions that can support the establishment of a Palestinian state” White House spokesperson Jay Carney said on Thursday.

Israeli newspaper Yediot Aharonot reported that Netanyahu’s Cabinet had quietly begun a de facto freeze on expanding settlements outside the major Jewish population centres.

The paper said the move was revealed to a West Bank settler leader in a conversation with Cabinet Secretary Avihai Mandelblit.

“We’ve received instructions from the political level not to move ahead on [construction] plans beyond those for the settlement blocs,” it quoted Mandelblit as telling settler David Elhayani.

Israeli army radio reported last week that Washington was expected to demand a partial settlement freeze when Kerry unveils his formula for extending the peace talks.

Israel has so far resisted persistent pressure from its key ally to renew a one-time, 10-month partial freeze on new West Bank building, which expired in late 2010, contributing to the collapse of the last round of peace talks.

A moratorium is fiercely opposed by hard-line partners in Netanyahu’s fractious coalition and by many in his own right-wing Likud Party.

“We shall not freeze construction,” Housing Minister Uri Ariel of the far-right Jewish Home Party said last week.

“There is no way the prime minister would order that there will be no tenders issued outside the settlement blocs,” he said.

Both the Palestinians and the international community consider all Israeli construction on land it occupied in the 1967 Middle East war to be a violation of international law.

Right-wing Israeli MPs rounded on US Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro this week, accusing Washington of pro-Palestinian bias in the peace talks.

A recording of the closed-door meeting was leaked to media, prompting an apology from the MPs — for the leak rather than the sentiments expressed.

Following the leak, the two lawmakers who had organised the meeting telephoned Shapiro to apologise that the “private conversation was made public”, thanking him for a “good and productive meeting”.

Shapiro has, in fact, publicly supported the Israeli demand that the Palestinians recognise Israel as a “Jewish state”, a demand vigorously opposed by the Palestinians, who said after talks between Kerry and Abbas in Paris last week that the secretary of state’s proposals were unacceptable.

The Palestinians fear that recognising Israel as a Jewish state would prejudice the right of return for Palestinian refugees as well as the rights of Arab Israelis.

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — Israel has killed dozens of Palestinian civilians in the West Bank over the past three years showing a “callous disregard for human life”, a report by Amnesty International said Thursday.

Israel responded by saying the London-based rights group did not take into account the increasing number of attacks on its forces in the past year or seek comment until the eve of publication.

The report, entitled “Trigger-happy: Israel’s use of excessive force in the West Bank”, documents the killing of 45 Palestinians and wounding of thousands “who did not appear to be posing a direct and immediate threat to life”.

It “shows a harrowing pattern of unlawful killings and unwarranted injuries of Palestinian civilians by Israeli forces in the West Bank”.

The report accuses Israel of “war crimes and other serious violations of international law” against Palestinians.

Since occupying the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza in 1967, “Israeli authorities have signally failed to carry out independent investigations that meet international standards into alleged crimes”, Amnesty said.

The group calls on Israel “to open independent, impartial, transparent and prompt investigations into all reports of Palestinian civilians killed or seriously injured by the actions of Israeli forces”.

It also urged the United States, the EU and the rest of the international community to “suspend all transfers of munitions, weapons and other equipment to Israel” to pressure it to change.

The Israeli military said Amnesty failed to take into account “the substantial increase in Palestinian violence initiated over the past year”, which “saw a sharp increase in rock hurling incidents, gravely jeopardising the lives of civilians and military personnel”.

“During that year alone, 132 Israelis were injured, almost double the previous year,” it added. “Over 5,000 incidents of rock hurling took place.”

“In 2013 there were 66 further terror attacks which included shootings, the planting of IEDs [improvised explosive devices]... and the abduction and murder of a soldier,” the Israeli military added.

Israeli Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Yigal Palmor said Amnesty authored its report “without even bothering to ask for response and comment”, until the eve of publication.

“Their trick is to disable our capacity to respond,” he said in an e-mail to AFP. “And that’s what this move is about: not to get responses, but to deprive Israel of its capacity to even take part in the conversation.”