Region

TRIPOLI — A key state body in Libya accused the government of prime minister Abdulhamid Dbeibah on Monday of preventing it from meeting, reviving political tensions in a country that has seen a decade of violence.

The high council of state's accusations came after armoured vehicles from an armed group commanded by Dbeibah's administration surrounded a major hotel in the capital Tripoli, preventing council members from entering, according to images broadcast by local media.

The council's head, Khaled Al Mishri, said in a video statement on Facebook that the body had been due to vote on a constitutional basis for elections.

Polls had been set for December 2021 to elect a replacement for Dbeibah's government, but were indefinitely postponed.

Mishri said the hotel had cancelled the reservation of a conference room, citing "government instructions".

He added that "no [other] hotel has agreed to rent us" a conference hall.

The meeting was also set to discuss "the unification of executive power", implying that it would cover the fate of Dbeibah's government.

Libya has been plagued by violence since the fall of Muammar Qadhafi's regime in 2011.

Mishri said Monday's move was "the first time since the February 17 revolution [of 2011] that a head of government has tried to prevent a sovereign institution from doing its work".

Dbeibah was appointed as part of a United Nations-guided peace process following the last major battle in Libya in 2020, but the eastern-based parliament and military strongman Khalifa Haftar say his mandate has expired.

In March, parliament appointed a new government to take his place, but the rival administration has failed to install itself in Tripoli.

In a statement later on Monday, the US embassy urged Libyan leaders to "resolve their political differences through dialogue and compromise" and to deliver "credible, transparent, and inclusive elections".

"The threat of force is de-stabilising, undermines efforts toward national unity, and is not a legitimate or sustainable way to resolve political differences," the embassy wrote on Twitter.

Mishri has lodged an official complaint with the country's chief prosecutor, according to the council's Facebook page, which posted a picture of him delivering the complaint by hand.

TEHRAN — A delegation from Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei expressed sadness and promised solutions in a visit to a south-eastern province where dozens have been killed in unrest, official media said.

The violence in Zahedan, the capital of Sistan-Baluchistan province which borders Pakistan, erupted on September 30, and authorities say six members of the security forces were among the dead.

The casualties came against the backdrop of nationwide unrest that followed the September 16 death of Mahsa Amini, 22, after her arrest by morality police in Tehran for allegedly violating Iran's strict dress code for women.

Some local figures said the protests in Zahedan were triggered by anger over the reported rape of a teenage girl by a police officer.

Overseas-based activists accused security forces of firing on demonstrators.

Zahedan is one of the few Sunni-majority cities in predominantly Shiite Iran.

"We came to share the sadness felt by the supreme leader concerning the incidents which happened" in the province, said Mohammad-Javad Haj Ali Akbari, spokesman for the delegation which arrived Saturday.

He said they were also there to "report on measures decided [by Khamenei] to resolve these problems", the state news agency IRNA quoted him as saying on Sunday.

Akbari also referred to a "special plan" from Khamenei to benefit the province's people, but IRNA gave no further details on such measures.

He also met the imam of Zahedan's Makki mosque, Iran's largest Sunni house of worship, and said he wanted to see relatives of those killed or wounded in the incidents "to console them".

In late October the Sistan-Baluchistan security council said it had concluded an investigation that found "negligence" by officers and the deaths of "innocent" civilians during the unrest.

The council announced the dismissal of Zahedan's police chief as well as the head of a police station.

Poverty-stricken Sistan-Baluchistan had previously seen clashes with drug smuggling gangs as well as rebels from the Baluchi minority and Sunni Muslim extremist groups.

DAMASCUS — Israeli strikes on Sunday evening killed two Syrian soldiers and wounded three others in the central Homs province, Syrian state media reported.

Syrian air defences responded to "hostile targets over the southeastern Homs province", intercepting "several of them", official news agency SANA said.

Citing a military source, it said the strikes hit the regime-controlled Shayrat airbase, inflicting casualties and material damage.

Syrian state television broadcast footage showing air defences intercepting "missiles of an Israeli aggression".

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported explosions in the area of the Shayrat airbase, saying four missiles had been fired.

This area is home to military sites used by Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime as well as Iran-backed groups, including the Lebanese Shiite movement Hizbollah.

Israel has carried out hundreds of air strikes on Syrian territory since civil war broke out there in 2011, targeting government positions as well as allied Iran-backed forces and Hizbollah fighters.

The Israeli forces on Sunday declined to comment on the reported strikes.

While Israel rarely comments on such strikes, it has repeatedly said it will not allow its arch-foe Iran to gain a foothold there.

Israeli strikes targeting the Shayrat Air Base on November 8, 2021 wounded two Syrian regime soldiers, according to Syrian state media.

In late October, four pro-Iranian fighter were killed during Israeli strikes on several positions near Damascus, said the observatory, which relies on a wide network of sources in Syria.

PARIS — Iranian women dissidents who met President Emmanuel Macron praised the talks on Saturday as a historic move from Paris, while urging France to lead concrete action against the Islamic republic.

Macron had on Friday held a previously unpublicised meeting with four prominent women campaigners as anti-regime protests sweep Iran over the death of Mahsa Amini who had been arrested by the morality police.

The four included US-based activist Masih Alinejad who for years has led a campaign encouraging Iranian women to remove their obligatory headscarves.

She held a one-on-one meeting with Macron at the Elysee Palace, before being joined by the three other campaigners, participants told AFP.

They were Shima Babaei, who has campaigned for justice for her father who has disappeared in Iran, Ladan Boroumand, the co-founder of Washington-based rights group Abdorrahman Boroumand Centre and Roya Piraei whose mother Minoo Majidi was killed by security forces at the start of the protest crackdown.

“The meeting was very important. In 43 years [since the 1979 Islamic Revolution] not one Iranian dissident had a meeting with official status with a French president,” Boroumand told AFP.

“It was groundbreaking,” she added.

“What matters most in this historic meeting is the psychological impact of acknowledging the legitimacy of the ongoing struggle inside Iran. We need now to push the government to action.”

The four presented a list of demands for the French government including recalling its ambassador from Tehran, reducing diplomatic relations to a minimum and sanctioning officials responsible for the crackdown on protesters, according to the document obtained by AFP.

‘Right side of history’ 

After the meeting, Macron on Friday told a conference in Paris of his “respect and admiration in the context of the revolution they are leading”.

Alinejad commented to AFP: “President Macron recognised the Iranian revolution and that’s a truly historical decision. It’s time to stand on the right side of history and for universal values.”

“I’m sure it was not easy but he has clearly taken a brave and principled stance.”

Macron last month said France “stands by” the protesters in Iran and expressed his “admiration” for women and youths demonstrating in the country.

The Iranian foreign ministry retorted that his comments were “meddlesome” and served to encourage “violent people and lawbreakers”.

France Inter radio will broadcast an interview with Macron on the Iran issue on Monday.

Alinejad and other activists were previously bitterly critical of Macron’s decision to meet Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in September as he sought to revive the 2015 deal on the Iranian nuclear programme.

Babaei, who is campaigning to learn the whereabouts of her father Ebrahim who has been missing in Iran since late last year, said she told Macron that the Islamic republic “has occupied my country” just like Russia has done to Ukraine.

“So do the same to the Islamic republic as you did to [President Vladimir] Putin. Recognise the revolution of the Iranian people,” she wrote on Twitter.

Piraei has now left Iran after a photo went viral of her with cropped hair and bare-headed standing by her mother’s grave in Iran. She held the hair she had cut off in a symbol of solidarity with the protests.

Babaei tweeted a photo of the four women locked in a tight embrace at the Elysee Palace.

“This is the moment when we defeated the propaganda of the Islamic republic and became the voice of the Iranian people in the Elysee Palace,” she said.

BEIRUT — Hizbollah wants Lebanon's next president to "reassure" the group and stand up to the United States, its leader Hassan Nasrallah said on Friday, after Michel Aoun's term expired last month without a successor.

The international community has warned that a prolonged presidential vacuum would compound Lebanon's political and economic woes.

The country has already been ruled by a caretaker government with limited powers since May and is mired in three years of economic turmoil.

"We want a president who can reassure the resistance, who doesn't stab it in the back," said Nasrallah, who heads the powerful Iran-backed group.

Lebanon's next president "should not be scared if the US ambassador or the US administration yells at him... He must not begin to tremble and make concessions," he added in a televised speech.

Lebanon's divided parliament has held five rounds of voting since September, with no candidate garnering enough support to succeed Aoun, as Hizbollah and its allies cast blank votes.

Lawmaker Michel Moawad has gathered the most votes in parliament although he is far from securing enough support to clinch the presidency.

Moawad has good ties with Washington and has repeatedly asked for Hizbollah — the only faction to keep its weapons after the end of Lebanon’s 1975-1990 civil war — to disarm.

Hizbollah has not officially backed a candidate, but Nasrallah has warned that the next Lebanese president cannot be close to Washington, which he accused of “intervening” in Lebanon.

Some lawmakers have accused the Shiite movement and its allies of obstructing the ballot.

The group adopted such tactics during the last election — a move that left Lebanon without a president for more than two years.

Nasrallah denied accusations of obstruction.

“A presidential vacuum is no one’s goal,” he said. “We want a president as soon as possible.”

He also lauded the former president, saying he “did not betray the resistance or stab it in the back”.

Without a dominant party in parliament, decisions like electing a president, naming a prime minister or forming a government can take months or even years of political horse-trading, sometimes even leading to violence.

But Lebanon can ill-afford a prolonged power vacuum as it grapples with a financial crisis dubbed by the World Bank as one of the worst in recent world history.

BAGHDAD — Lebanon extradited a man said to be a grandnephew of Saddam Hussein to Iraq, where he is accused of involvement in a massacre by the Daesh group, a security source said on Saturday.

Abdullah Sabawi, dubbed the "grandnephew" of the executed dictator by Iraqi media, was extradited on Wednesday, the security official told AFP on condition of anonymity.

"He is accused of having been a member of IS [Daesh] and having participated in the Speicher massacre" of 2014, in which up to 1,700 air force cadets were executed by the terrorist group, the source added.

A Lebanese judicial source said Sabawi, born in 1994, "was detained on June 11" following an Interpol notice calling for his arrest over his alleged involvement in the massacre.

"Iraq requested his extradition," the Lebanese source added.

Sabawi's family has denied the accusations, telling AFP he had been in Yemen at the time of the killings.

The Camp Speicher massacre was considered one of Daesh worst crimes after it took over large parts of Iraq in 2014.

Video footage released by Daesh showed an assembly-line massacre in which gunmen herded their victims towards the banks of the Tigris, shot them in the back of the head and pushed them into the river one after the other.

Dozens have been sentenced to death by Iraqi courts over their involvement in the killings, many of them having already been executed.