BRUSSELS: Supporters of a Belgian aid worker being held in Iran staged a Christmas Day protest in Brussels to demand his immediate release, with a spokesman questioning why a prisoner swap treaty was stalled.
Around 50 people took part in the demonstration under constant rain in the center of the Belgian capital, brandishing pictures of the aid worker, Olivier Vandecasteele.
A spokesman for the campaign to free Vandecasteele, Olivier Van Steirtegem, said the gathering took place because “it’s the first year that Olivier is marking Christmas as a hostage in Iran.”
He said the situation was “unthinkable for his family,” who did not even know where Vandecasteele was being detained.
Vandecasteele, 41, was seized in February and has since been held in conditions that Belgium’s government has described as “inhumane.”
Last week, Iran imposed a 28-year jail term on him, stirring an already bitter debate over a stymied prisoner exchange treaty.
The Belgian government subsequently urged all Belgians in Iran, including dual nationals, to leave the country over the risk that they could be arbitrarily arrested and imprisoned.
Belgium insists Vandecasteele is innocent and was being held as a hostage as Tehran attempts to force Brussels to release an Iranian agent convicted of terrorism.
Under a treaty Belgium and Iran signed earlier this year, Vandecasteele would have been eligible to be swapped for the Iranian Assadollah Assadi.
Assadi, an Iranian diplomat who was stationed in Austria, was arrested in 2018 after German, French and Belgian law enforcement foiled a plot to set off a bomb at a rally outside Paris by an Iranian exiled opposition group.
After three years in detention, he was sentenced last year in Belgium to 20 years in prison for terrorism.
But in early December, Belgium’s constitutional court suspended the implementation of the prisoner swap treaty pending a final ruling on its legality within the next three months.
Van Steirtegem said the Belgian government believed the stalled treaty was “the only path” to getting Vandecasteele freed.
“The question is whether we can accept leaving a Belgian man to potentially die in Iranian jail. All that because we don’t want to transfer a prisoner from here who has already served five years in prison.”
Demonstration for Belgian held in Iran calls for his release
https://arab.news/237dk
Demonstration for Belgian held in Iran calls for his release
- Iran has imposed a 28-year jail term on Vandecasteele
- 41-year-old been held in “inhumane” conditions, Belgium’s government says
UAE hits record May temperature of 51.6C
Scientists have shown that recurring heatwaves are a clear marker of global warming
DUBAI: The United Arab Emirates breached its May temperature record for the second day in a row, hitting 51.6 degrees Celsius on Saturday, according to the National Center of Meteorology.
“The highest temperature recorded over the country today is 51.6C in Sweihan (Al Ain) at 13:45 UAE local time (0945 GMT),” the office said in a post on X, 1.2C hotter than the temperature recorded on Friday in the Abu Dhabi area.
Both those temperatures exceeded a previous record for the month of 50.2 Celsius recorded in May 2009, according to the meteorology office.
The desert nation lies in one of the planet’s hottest regions and one which is particularly vulnerable to climate change.
Scientists have shown that recurring heatwaves are a clear marker of global warming and that these heatwaves are set to become more frequent, longer and more intense.
The number of extremely hot days has nearly doubled globally in the past three decades.
According to a 2022 Greenpeace study, the Middle East is at high risk of water and food scarcity as well as severe heat waves as a result of climate change.
The report, which focused on six countries, found the region was warming nearly twice as fast as the global average, making its food and water supplies “extremely vulnerable” to climate change.
Nine of Gazan doctor’s 10 children killed in Israeli air strike
- Dr. Alaa Al-Najjar also saw her husband, Dr. Hamdi Al-Najjar, critically injured
- Couple’s only surviving child, 11-year-old boy, was severely wounded
LONDON: A pediatrician working in southern Gaza has lost nine of her 10 children in an Israeli air strike that hit her family home, in what fellow medics have described as an “unimaginable” tragedy.
Dr. Alaa Al-Najjar, who was on duty at the Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis at the time of the strike, also saw her husband, Dr. Hamdi Al-Najjar, critically injured.
The couple’s only surviving child, an 11-year-old boy, was severely wounded and underwent emergency surgery on Friday, according to reports.
“This is the reality our medical staff in Gaza endure. Words fall short in describing the pain,” said Dr. Muneer Alboursh, director general of Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry. “In Gaza, it is not only healthcare workers who are targeted, Israel’s aggression goes further, wiping out entire families.”
Graphic footage shared by Palestinian Civil Defense, and verified by media outlets including the BBC, showed the remains of small children being pulled from the rubble of a collapsed building near a petrol station in Khan Younis.
British surgeon Dr. Graeme Groom, who is volunteering at Nasser hospital, said Dr Al-Najjar’s surviving son was his final patient of the day.
“He was very badly injured and seemed much younger as we lifted him onto the operating table,” he said in a video posted to social media.
Groom added that the child’s father, also a physician at the same hospital, had “no political and no military connections and doesn’t seem to be prominent on social media,” calling the strike “a particularly sad day.”
He continued: “It is unimaginable for that poor woman, both of them are doctors here… and yet his poor wife is the only uninjured one, who has the prospect of losing her husband.”
Relative Youssef Al-Najjar, speaking to AFP, made an emotional plea: “Enough. Have mercy on us. We plead to all countries, the international community, the people, Hamas, and all factions to have mercy on us. We are exhausted from the displacement and the hunger.”
Dr. Victoria Rose, another British doctor at the hospital, said the family had lived near a petrol station and speculated that the strike may have caused or been worsened by a large explosion. “That is life in Gaza. That is the way it goes in Gaza,” she said.
The Israel Defence Forces did not comment directly on the strike, but in a general statement said it had hit more than 100 targets across Gaza in a 24-hour period.
The Hamas-run health ministry reported at least 74 Palestinian deaths in that time frame alone.
The UN has warned that Gaza may be entering its “cruelest phase” of the war, with Secretary-General Antonio Guterres denouncing Israel’s restrictions on aid as exacerbating a humanitarian catastrophe.
Although Israel partially lifted its blockade this week, allowing limited aid to enter, the UN says the deliveries fall far short of the 500–600 trucks of supplies needed daily to meet basic needs for the territory’s 2.1 million people.
Since Israel launched its offensive after Hamas militants stormed into Israel, killing around 1,200 people and abducting 251 others, on Oct. 7, 2023, more than 53,000 Palestinians have been killed, according to Gaza’s health ministry, which includes women and children in its total but does not differentiate between civilians and combatants.
Erdogan, Syria’s Sharaa hold talks in Istanbul
- Video footage on Turkish television showed Erdogan shaking hands with Sharaa
- The two countries’ foreign ministers also attended the talks
ISTANBUL: Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan was holding talks with Syrian President Ahmed Al-Sharaa in Istanbul on Saturday, news channel CNN Turk and state media said, broadcasting video of the two leaders greeting each other.
The visit comes the day after US President Donald Trump’s administration issued orders that it said would effectively lift sanctions on Syria. Trump had pledged to unwind the measures to help the country rebuild after its devastating civil war.
Video footage on Turkish television showed Erdogan shaking hands with Sharaa as he emerged from his car at the Dolmabahce Palace on the shores of the Bosphorus Strait in Turkiye’s largest city.
The two countries’ foreign ministers also attended the talks, as well as Turkiye’s defense minister and the head of the Turkish MIT intelligence agency, according to Turkiye’s state-owned Anadolu news agency.
The Syrian delegation also included Defense Minister Murhaf Abu Qasra, according to Syrian state news agency SANA.
MIT chief Ibrahim Kalin and Sharaa this week held talks in Syria on the Syrian Kurdish YPG militant group laying down its weapons and integrating into Syrian security forces, a Turkish security source said previously.
US strike on Yemen kills Al-Qaeda members: Yemeni security sources
- “Five Al-Qaeda members were eliminated,” said a security source in Abyan
- Washington once regarded the group as the militant network’s most dangerous branch
DUBAI: Five Al-Qaeda members have been killed in a strike blamed on the United States in southern Yemen, two Yemeni security sources told AFP on Saturday.
“Residents of the area informed us of the US strike... five Al-Qaeda members were eliminated,” said a security source in Abyan province, which borders the seat of Yemen’s internationally-recognized government in Aden.
“The US strike on Friday evening north of Khabar Al-Maraqsha killed five,” said a second source, referring to a mountainous area known to be used by Al-Qaeda.
The second security source added that, though the names of those killed in the strike were not known, it was believed one of Al-Qaeda’s local leaders was among the dead.
Washington once regarded the group, known as Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), as the militant network’s most dangerous branch.
Born in 2009 from the merger of Al-Qaeda’s Yemeni and Saudi factions, AQAP grew and developed in the chaos of Yemen’s war, which since 2015 has pitted the Iran-backed Houthi militants against a Saudi-led coalition backing the government.
Earlier this month, the United States agreed a ceasefire with the Houthis, who have controlled large swathes of Yemen for more than a decade, ending weeks of intense American strikes on militant-held areas of the country.
The Houthis began firing at shipping in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden in November 2023, weeks after the start of the Israel-Hamas war, prompting military strikes by the US and Britain beginning in January 2024.
The conflict in Yemen has caused hundreds of thousands of deaths and triggered one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises, although fighting decreased significantly after a UN-negotiated six-month truce in 2022.
Iraq seeks deal to swap kidnapped academic for jailed Iranian
- Iraqi officials are working on a deal to release kidnapped Israeli academic Elizabeth Tsurkov in exchange for an Iranian jailed for murdering an American civilian
- Tsurkov was kidnapped in March 2023 allegedly by paramilitary group Kataib Hezbollah in Iraq
BAGHDAD: Baghdad is working on a deal to free kidnapped Israeli-Russian academic Elizabeth Tsurkov in exchange for an Iranian jailed in Iraq for murdering a US civilian, security sources said Saturday.
The deal depends on US approval, the senior Iraqi security officials told AFP, asking to remain anonymous because the matter is considered sensitive.
Tsurkov, a doctoral student at Princeton University, was kidnapped in Baghdad in March 2023.
There was no claim of responsibility for her abduction, but Israel accused Iraq’s powerful Kataeb Hezbollah of holding Tsurkov.
The Iran-backed armed faction has implied it was not involved.
Iraq has been working to solve the issue which “depends on the Americans’ approval for the release of the Iranian accused of killing an American citizen,” a senior security source said.
The three Iraqi sources said that Washington has not yet agreed to this.
“The Americans have not yet agreed to one of the conditions, which is the release of the Iranian who is being held for killing an American citizen,” one official said.
Iraq is both a significant ally of Iran and a strategic partner of the United States, and has for years negotiated a delicate balancing act between the two foes.
The Iranian and another four Iraqis were sentenced to life in prison in Iraq for murdering American civilian Stephen Troell, who was shot dead in Baghdad in November 2022.
In December last year, the US Justice Department announced that a “complaint was unsealed... charging” Iranian Mohammad Reza Nouri, “an officer” in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), with allegedly orchestrating the killing.
Tsurkov, who is likely to have entered Iraq on her Russian passport, traveled to the country as part of her doctoral studies.
Security and diplomatic sources have told AFP they do not rule out the possibility that she may have been taken to Iran.
In November 2023, Iraqi channel Al Rabiaa TV aired the first hostage video of Tsurkov since her abduction.
AFP was unable to independently verify the footage or to determine whether she spoke freely in it or under coercion.
