NEW YORK CITY: As Iran is rocked by furious nationwide protests following the death on Friday of Mahsa Amini — a 22-year-old Iranian woman who died after police beat her for “improperly” wearing the hijab — President Ebrahim Raisi might have hoped to escape the anger swelling in his country while he attends the UN General Assembly in New York this week.
But he faces the threat of being served with a lawsuit in the city by Iranian dissidents and Westerners who were held hostage by the regime in Tehran and accuse him of personal involvement in the torture and mistreatment they endured.
The lawsuit, which is supported by the National Union for Democracy in Iran, is being filed in the Southern District of New York by human rights attorney Shahin Milani on behalf of victims of Raisi’s alleged crimes.
The plaintiffs claim they endured acts of torture that were either directly ordered or substantially assisted by Raisi, which means the Iranian president is liable to face a civil lawsuit under the US Torture Victim Protection Act.
Cameron Khansarinia, NUFDI’s policy director, introduced the plaintiffs during a press conference at a private club in midtown Manhattan.
“We are here today to announce and outline in detail an historic, federal, civil lawsuit against Ebrahim Raisi,” he said.
“The plaintiffs in this case — Iranian dissidents, former Iranian hostages, former Western hostages — are coming together in unprecedented fashion to take a step forward for justice.”
On the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, Khansarinia told Arab News: “Raisi is in New York and it’s important that while the media is covering him, they’re also covering his victims.
“We want to have it recorded in the US judiciary that Ebrahim Raisi’s victims are standing up to him, that he is a criminal, that he is being accused, and in our view is guilty, of torture. This is important for setting a new legal precedent for such cases.
“Secondly, we are giving a voice to the Iranian people and to his victims, and allowing them for the first time to speak up because for so long they have been silenced by the regime and, unfortunately, often even by those in the West, so it’s an important opportunity for them to speak their truth today.”
During the press briefing, which was also supported by the NUFDI, four of those victims shared the details of their experiences at the hands of the Iranian regime: Mehdi Hajati, a city councilor and dissident; Kylie Moore-Gilbert, a British-Australian academic and former hostage of the regime; Hamid Babaei, a Belgian-Iranian academic and former hostage; and Ahmad Batebi, a former political prisoner.
They were joined by Navid Mohebbi, who was once the youngest journalist in the world in detention when he was imprisoned by the regime in Tehran. Milani, the lead attorney in the lawsuit, stressed that the civil case directly targets Raisi personally and not the Islamic Republic of Iran as a whole.
Moore-Gilbert described years of “gross mistreatment” and “psychological and physical torture” while in detention. Raisi was head of Iran’s judiciary when she was convicted, sentenced, denied an appeal, and transferred to prison. She said she holds him “ultimately responsible for the mistreatment and injustice” she endured.
She said that the judge at her trial was “clearly a puppet” of the government and not “capable of making independent decisions.” She was not even aware she had a lawyer until a couple of weeks before her hearings, she added.
Moore-Gilbert, speaking via video link, said she was “unable to present evidence during the trial” and could not understand the proceedings because they were conducted entirely in Farsi. She was sentenced to 10 years in prison on “ludicrous charges” of espionage. She was immediately placed in solitary confinement for seven months, one of the many examples of cruel and unjust punishment she said she endured, which also included exposure to infectious diseases and denial of medical care.
“He is ultimately responsible for my mistreatment,” Moore-Gilbert said of Raisi, adding: “I am taking part in this lawsuit under the TVPA in order to hold Raisi accountable for one injustice: My own.”
Babaei, another academic unjustly imprisoned in Iran, described the repulsive conditions he endured during his time in detention, revealing that inmates were not even provided with cups for drinking water.
“I lived in a constant trauma,” he said as he told how he saw fellow prisoners being taken away to be hanged, which he said kept him in a continuous state of fear that he would be next.
Mohebbi said that Iranians have been “exposed to continuous trauma over the last 43 years.”
Describing his experiences in prison, he said the entire judiciary system, in which “the punishment of a defender is already sealed,” had conspired against him.
He said: “With this lawsuit, the survivors and victims of the regime send a very clear message to the butchers of Tehran that you will never break our soul, our resilience, and our fight for our human dignity is not one that we will lose.”
The lawsuit brings three cases to the court, he added, but they “represent thousands of Iranians whose rights to express justice, their rights to express themselves, and their rights to express their suffering has been taken away.”
Marjam Keypour Greenblatt, a human rights activist and non-resident scholar at the Middle East Institute, told Arab News: “I am here to support the rights of Iranian people who are having their rights violated by the regime on a regular basis. I am here to echo their voices and to make sure there is justice where justice is rarely seen.”
Justice is the ultimate goal of the civil case against Raisi but success in achieving this justice, which thousands of others have been denied, could be a difficult prospect.
Gissou Nia, director of the Atlantic Council’s Strategic Litigation Project, told Arab News that the TVPA is “the right act to use here because you can seek remedies for crimes that were committed elsewhere.”
She added: “The legal team wants to serve process but provided that he is served then there would be determinations around immunity. With this particular matter, if the defendant was a head of government from France or Germany (for example), then the court would most likely take judicial notice and say that Raisi is protected by head-of-state immunity.
“But because it’s Iran, and under US law there are some different exceptions to state immunity as it applies to Iran, the court may opt to ask the State Department for their view. This could take a while but there is a chance that the suit moves forward.”
Raisi is not obliged to respond to a civil lawsuit, however, and if he chooses not to engage with the legal proceedings the court could issue a default ruling against him and in favor of the plaintiffs.
The president is not a member of Iran’s permanent mission to the UN and therefore does not qualify for diplomatic immunity. However he is afforded protection from being served with legal papers while he is in the UN headquarters and the surrounding district, and while traveling between there and his accommodation. However, the legal papers could be served against him if his accommodation in New York, or any non-official activities he takes part in, are outside the borders of the UN district.
Nizar Zakka, a former prisoner of the Iranian regime, told Arab News: “The most important part of this lawsuit is that the Iranian regime needs to know that they will be hunted wherever they go (and) they will be sued until they stop these activities, like hostage-taking, that they have been doing since 1979.”
For those dissident Iranians and Western hostages who continue to endure physical and psychological trauma after years of unjust confinement, that hunt continues this week in New York City.
Iranian dissidents, former hostages of regime launch lawsuit against Raisi
https://arab.news/g2pej
Iranian dissidents, former hostages of regime launch lawsuit against Raisi
- Activists call for justice in a US federal civil case against President Ebrahim Raisi, who is in New York this week for the UN General Assembly
- ‘I have lived in constant trauma,’ said one victim of unjust detention and torture who saw fellow prisoners taken to be hanged and feared he would be next
France condemns attack on Red Cross in Sudan
PARIS: France on Friday condemned “in the strongest terms” an attack on an International Committee of the Red Cross convoy in war-torn Sudan that killed two staff and injured three others.
“France calls on all parties to the conflict to respect their obligations under international humanitarian law, which obliges them to protect humanitarian and health staff and guarantee complete, safe and unhindered humanitarian access,” said French foreign ministry spokesman Christophe Lemoine.
The ICRC said gunmen killed two drivers and injured three staff in South Darfur on Thursday as they returned from a humanitarian mission.
A brutal conflict between the Sudanese army led by General Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces of his ex-deputy Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo has torn the country apart for more than a year.
The war has killed tens of thousands of people and forced millions more to flee their homes in what the United Nations has called the “largest displacement crisis in the world.”
It has also triggered acute food shortages and a humanitarian crisis that has left the northeast African country’s people at risk of starvation.
UN official warns that famine in northern Gaza is already ‘full-blown’
- Israel has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry
- The panel that serves as the internationally recognized monitor for food crises said earlier this year that northern Gaza was on the brink of famine and likely to experience it this month
WASHINGTON: A top UN official said Friday that hard-hit northern Gaza was now in “full-blown famine” after more than six months of war between Israel and Hamas and severe Israeli restrictions on food deliveries to the Palestinian territory.
Cindy McCain, the American director of the UN World Food Program, became the most prominent international official so far to declare that trapped civilians in the most cut-off part of Gaza had gone over the brink into famine.
“It’s horror,” McCain told NBC’s “Meet the Press” in an interview to air Sunday. “There is famine — full-blown famine — in the north, and it’s moving its way south.”
She said a ceasefire and a greatly increased flow of aid through land and sea routes was essential to confronting the growing humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza, home to 2.3 million people.
There was no immediate comment from Israel, which controls entrance into Gaza and says it is beginning to allow in more food and other humanitarian aid through land crossings.
The panel that serves as the internationally recognized monitor for food crises said earlier this year that northern Gaza was on the brink of famine and likely to experience it this month. The next update will not come before this summer.
One of the US Agency for International Development’s humanitarian officials in Gaza told The Associated Press that on-the-ground preparations for a new US-led sea route were on track to bring in more food — including treatment for hundreds of thousands of starving children — by early or mid-May. That’s when the American military expects to finish building a floating pier to receive the shipments.
Ramping up the delivery of aid on the planned US-backed sea route will be gradual as aid groups test the distribution and security arrangements for relief workers, the USAID official said.
The official spoke on condition of anonymity over security concerns for work done in a conflict zone. They were some of the agency’s first comments on the status of preparations for the Biden administration’s $320 million Gaza pier project, for which USAID is helping coordinate on-the-ground security and distribution.
At a factory in rural Georgia on Friday, USAID Administrator Samantha Power pointed to the food crises in Gaza and other parts of the world as she announced a $200 million investment aimed at increasing production of emergency nutritional paste for starving children under 5.
Power spoke to factory workers, peanut farmers and local dignitaries sitting among pallets of the paste at the Mana nonprofit in Fitzgerald. It is one of two factories in the US that produces the nutritional food, which is used in clinical settings and made from ground peanuts, powdered milk, sugar and oil, ready to eat in plastic pouches resembling large ketchup packets.
“This effort, this vision meets the moment,” Power said. “And it could not be more timely, more necessary or more important.”
Under pressure from the US and others, Israeli officials in recent weeks have begun slowly reopening some border crossings for relief shipments.
But aid coming through the sea route, once it’s operational, still will serve only a fraction — half a million people — of those who need help in Gaza. Aid organizations including USAID stress that getting more aid through border crossings is essential to staving off famine.
Children under 5 are among the first to die when wars, droughts or other disasters curtail food. Hospital officials in northern Gaza reported the first deaths from hunger in early March and said most of the dead were children.
Power said the UN has called for 400 metric tons of the nutritional paste “in light of the severe hunger that is pervading across Gaza right now, and the severe, acute humanitarian crisis.” USAID expects to provide a quarter of that, she said.
Globally, she said at the Georgia factory, the treatment made there “will save untold lives, millions of lives.”
USAID is coordinating with the World Food Program and other humanitarian partners and governments on security and distribution for the pier project, while US military forces finish building it. President Joe Biden, under pressure to do more to ease the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza as the US provides military support for Israel, announced the project in early March.
US Central Command said in a statement Friday that offshore assembly of the floating pier has been temporarily paused due to high winds and sea swells, which caused unsafe conditions for soldiers. The partially built pier and the military vessels involved have gone to Israel’s Port of Ashdod, where the work will continue.
A US official said the high seas will delay the installation for several days, possibly until later next week. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss operation details, said the pause could last longer if the bad weather continues because military personnel and divers have to get into the water for the final installation.
The struggles this week with the first aid delivery through a newly reopened land corridor into north Gaza underscored the uncertainty about security and the danger still facing relief workers. Israeli settlers blocked the convoy before it crossed Wednesday. Once inside Gaza, the convoy was commandeered by Hamas militants, before UN officials reclaimed it.
In Gaza, the nutritional treatment for starving children is most urgently needed in the northern part of the Palestinian territory. Civilians have been cut off from most aid supplies, bombarded by Israeli airstrikes and driven into hiding by fighting.
Acute malnutrition rates there among children under 5 have surged from 1 percent before the war to 30 percent five months later, the USAID official said. The official called it the fastest such climb in hunger in recent history, more than in grave conflicts and food shortages in Somalia or South Sudan.
One of the few medical facilities still operating in northern Gaza, Kamal Adwan hospital, is besieged by parents bringing in thousands of children with malnutrition for treatment, the official said. Aid officials believe many more starving children remain unseen and in need, with families unable to bring them through fighting and checkpoints for care.
Saving the gravely malnourished children in particular requires both greatly increased deliveries of aid and sustained calm in fighting, the official said, so that aid workers can set up treatment facilities around the territory and families can safely bring children in for the sustained treatment needed.
Hamas says Israeli PM trying to derail Gaza truce deal
- Israel has killed more than 34,622 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry
GAZA STRIP, Palestinian Territories: A top Hamas official accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday of trying to derail a proposed Gaza truce and hostage release deal with his threats to keep fighting the Palestinian militant group.
“Netanyahu was the obstructionist of all previous rounds of dialogue... and it is clear that he still is,” senior Hamas official Hossam Badran told AFP by telephone.
Foreign mediators have waited for a Hamas response to a proposal to halt the fighting for 40 days and exchange hostages for Palestinian prisoners, which its chief Ismail Haniyeh has said the group was considering in a “positive spirit.”
A major stumbling block has been that, while Hamas has demanded a lasting ceasefire, Netanyahu has vowed to crush its remaining fighters in the far-southern city of Rafah, which is packed with displaced civilians.
The hawkish prime minister has insisted he will send ground troops into Rafah, despite strong concerns voiced by UN agencies and ally Washington for the safety of the 1.2 million civilians inside the city.
World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the agency was “deeply concerned that a full-scale military operation in Rafah... could lead to a bloodbath.”
“The broken health system would not be able to cope with a surge in casualties and deaths that a Rafah incursion would cause,” an agency statement said.
Badran charged that Netanyahu’s insistence on attacking Rafah was calculated to “thwart any possibility of concluding an agreement” in the negotiations brokered by Egyptian, Qatari and US mediators.
Israeli air strikes killed several more people in Rafah overnight, Palestinian medics and the civil defense agency said.
One bereaved resident, Sanaa Zoorob, said her sister and six of her nieces and nephews were killed.
Two of the children “were found in pieces in their mother’s embrace,” Zoorob said, appealing for “a permanent ceasefire and a full withdrawal from Gaza.”
The war broke out after Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel resulted in the deaths of more than 1,170 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
The militants also took some 250 hostages, of whom Israel estimates 128 remain in Gaza.
The army says 35 of them are dead, including 49-year-old Dror Or, a resident of the badly hit kibbutz Beeri, whose death was confirmed by authorities on Friday.
Israel’s devastating retaliatory campaign has killed at least 34,622 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.
Israel has weathered an international backlash over the spiralling death toll.
Pro-Palestinian protests that have rocked US campuses for weeks were more muted Friday after a series of clashes with police, mass arrests and a stern White House directive to restore order.
But similar demonstrations have spread to campuses in Britain, France, Mexico, Australia and elsewhere.
Turkiye announced on Thursday that it was suspending all trade with Israel, valued by the government at $9.5 billion a year.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the move was intended to “force Israel to agree to a ceasefire and increase the amount of humanitarian aid to enter” Gaza.
Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels, who have carried out months of attacks on merchant shipping in the Red Sea in a costly blow to maritime trade, said they would extend their attacks on Israel-bound shipping to the Mediterranean “immediately.”
Israel’s siege has pushed many of Gaza’s 2.4 million people to the brink of famine.
US pressure has prompted Israel to facilitate more aid deliveries to Gaza, including through the reopened Erez crossing that leads directly into the hardest-hit north.
Food availability has improved “a little bit,” said the World Health Organization’s representative in the Palestinian territories, Rik Peeperkorn.
But he warned that the threat of famine had “absolutely not” gone away.
Five Israeli human rights groups that took Israel to court over restrictions on aid to war-torn Gaza said the state’s insistence that it has met its obligations was “incomprehensible.”
The government had told the supreme court that the steps it had taken went “above and beyond” its obligations under international law.
Gisha and four other Israeli non-profit organizations retorted that the shortages evident inside Gaza indicated “the respondents are not meeting their obligations, not to the required extent nor at the necessary speed.”
The US-based charity World Central Kitchen resumed operations this week, after suspending them in the aftermath of Israeli drone strikes that killed seven of its staff as they unloaded aid in Gaza on April 1.
The group’s kitchen manager Zakria Yahya Abukuwaik said: “We realized after the kitchen closed that many mouths were left hungry.”
World Central Kitchen was involved in an effort earlier this year to establish a new maritime aid corridor to Gaza from Cyprus to help compensate for dwindling deliveries by land from Israel.
The project suffered a new blow Friday when the US military announced high winds had forced troops working to assemble a temporary aid pier off the Gaza coast to relocate to the Israeli port of Ashdod.
“The partially built pier and military vessels involved in its construction have moved to the Port of Ashdod, where assembly will continue, and will be completed prior to the emplacement of the pier in its intended location when sea states subside,” US Central Command said in a statement.
Several Arab and Western governments have also airdropped aid into northern Gaza. Civil defense spokesman Mahmud Basal said one person was killed and several injured when they were hit by falling pallets.
€1bn EU ‘bribe’ over Syrian refugees stirs anger in Lebanon
BEIRUT: Lebanon’s Prime Minister Najib Mikati on Friday vowed to step up deportations as part of a crackdown on illegal residents in the country.
“This matter is not up for debate, and orders have been given to the relevant authorities to implement what is necessary,” he said.
Mikati’s comments came after the EU on Thursday announced a €1 billion ($1.07 billion) aid package for Lebanon, mostly to boost border control in a bid to curb refugee flows across the Mediterranean Sea to Cyprus and Italy.
Lebanon hosts more than 1.5 million Syrian refugees.
In a television interview, Mikati said: “Any Syrian residing in Lebanon illegally will be deported, and a different approach will be taken toward all registered individuals compared to unregistered ones.”
While Mikati welcomed the announcement of increased European aid, some political and religious figures described the package as a “bribe” to resettle Syrian refugees in Lebanon, and warned that Lebanon is “not for sale.”
Local newspaper headlines highlighted the objections, which follow increasing numbers of murders, thefts, and kidnappings in recent months carried out by Syrians who entered Lebanon illegally.
Syrian inmates now make up 35 percent of Lebanon’s prison population, according to Interior Minister Bassam Mawlawi.
Cyprus recently complained about the increasing number of boats arriving on its shores carrying Syrians who traveled via Lebanon. Dozens remain stranded on the island, which refuses to accept them as refugees, and wants to return them to Lebanon.
Mikati said that there is “a European division” on the issue of safe areas in Syria for the return of refugees.
“We will undertake a campaign in this context to push the EU to take a decision that there are safe areas in Syria,” he added.
The announcement of the EU package was made as European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen visited Lebanon on Thursday with Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides.
However, Nicolas Sehnaoui, a member of the Strong Lebanon parliamentary bloc, said: “Keep the billion euros, and take an additional billion in exchange for taking all the Syrian refugees to European countries.”
Razi Al-Hajj, a member of the Strong Republic bloc, described the presence of Syrian refugees in the country as a “ticking time bomb.”
He said: “If Mikati wants to dispel the doubts of the Lebanese about the EU’s agenda in Lebanon, and the government’s true intention, he must begin implementing what he promised, which (means) deporting anyone residing illegally on Lebanese territory.”
Change party MP Waddah Sadek said: “Those who are residing illegally in Lebanon — the number of whom is significant — should be deported. An appropriate solution should then be reached regarding those who sought refuge in Lebanon for fear of getting killed or persecuted.”
Jaafari Grand Mufti Sheikh Ahmad Kabalan said in his Friday sermon: “We don’t want to slaughter Lebanon with 1 billion poisoned euros.
“Europe is Washington’s partner in the devastation in Syria and the siege on Lebanon. I warn those in charge against assuming the role of Europe’s security and political guard. The Syrian refugees’ case requires an urgent resolution. We ran out of time, and our country’s demography, stability, security, economy and livelihood are threatened.”
Maroun Al-Khawli from the National Campaign for the Return of Syrian Refugees, said: “Lebanon will not be for sale under any circumstances.”
He said the aid package “is a humiliating deal for Lebanon’s dignity and sovereignty, and a dark spot in the history of the caretaker government.”
Shiite cleric Ali Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah said in his Friday sermon: “The European Union resorts to the financial aspect to persuade the Lebanese when it comes to the Syrian refugees’ file.
“However, this matter is not limited to the financial dimension. It requires us to address its root causes and organize the Syrian presence in a way that doesn’t cause any internal repercussions, concerns and tensions that might affect the relationship between Lebanese and Syrian refugees.”
In a statement, the Progress Party said: “The European countries’ policy ensures that the Syrian refugees’ boats don’t reach their shores. This is what made them offer Lebanon €1 billion to make up for their presence in the country.
“The governing system accepted the bribe to recycle itself at the expense of the accumulating crises without organizing this file.”
The party proposed setting up camps for Syrian refugees on the border, and securing their needs through international support.
Egypt braces for second summer of power cuts as gas supplies dwindle
- The cuts started as Egypt allocated more of its gas production for export to raise scarce dollars, importing polluting fuel oil to keep some power stations running
CAIRO: Among the bustling workshops of central Cairo’s Al-Sabtiyah district, Om Ghada’s blacksmith business has seen profits dip as two-hour power cuts each day returned after a brief suspension during the holy month of Ramadan.
When scheduled outages began last summer it came as a shock to Egyptians accustomed to years of reliable power supplies under President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, and the government promised they would be temporary.
But supplies of the natural gas that helped generate an electricity surplus are dwindling and the power cuts are back.
The outages “create a lot of obstacles and cut into my profit,” said Om Ghada, as sparks flew from a metal cutter nearby. She owns the workshop, which is among dozens in the area that rely on electricity to power machines.
“One customer yesterday waited two hours, until they became impatient and left,” she said.
While Egypt recently secured record investments from the United Arab Emirates and an expanded IMF program, easing a foreign currency crisis, power cuts are a reminder of underlying economic challenges.
The cuts started as Egypt allocated more of its gas production for export to raise scarce dollars, importing polluting fuel oil to keep some power stations running. The government initially blamed them on high temperatures, but they continued through 2023 after summer ended even after the government paused exports to meet demand.
Egypt has been seeking a role as a regional energy exporter, eyeing electricity sales to countries including Saudi Arabia and Libya, planning an interconnector to Greece, and shipping Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) cargoes from two liquefaction plants.
But development of renewables has been halting and gas supplies are in doubt because of a lack of large discoveries since the giant Zohr field in 2015. That pushed gas production in 2023 to its lowest level since 2017, and the government recently started importing LNG cargoes.
Officials have blamed power cuts on rising demand from a growing population of 106 million, mega-projects backed by El-Sisi, and urban development.
Cuts to electricity subsidies have been slowed as the economy came under pressure in recent years.
Egypt’s electricity ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
SALES DOWN
The power cuts were suspended over Ramadan and the Eid holiday that followed, and local media said they would also be halted for labor day and spring holidays going over this weekend. But they are sometimes hard to predict and are hurting small businesses that play a crucial role in an economy where growth has slowed and is expected to ease to 2.8 percent in the current financial year ending in June, from above 4 percent last year.
Ahmed Hussein, an air conditioning technician in Al-Sabtiyah, said daytime power cuts reduced productivity by 40 percent. South of central Cairo in the Sayeda Zeinab neighborhood, Essam said sales at the dessert shop where he works were down 30 percent since the regular power cuts began.
“As long as there’s no electricity there are no sales. The safe and the till aren’t working,” Essam, who didn’t give his last name, said. “Customers can’t see anything.”
Sales of generators are up, but many can’t afford them.
The cuts have drawn ire on social media, where some have complained about being stuck in elevators, or unable to use them, and others have bemoaned the lack of air conditioning in hotter areas in southern Egypt.
At the launch of a state-run cloud computing data center this week, El-Sisi encouraged citizens to focus on developing sectors like information technology, saying “this needs brains, not a factory or anything else.”
But as one social media post quipped in response: “This needs electricity and unlimited Internet.”
