Algeria prosecution seeks 10 years jail for writer Sansal on appeal

Indirect talks between Hamas and Israel for a ceasefire in Gaza are being held up by Israel’s proposals to keep troops in the territory, two Palestinian sources with knowledge of the discussions said on Saturday.

Delegations from both sides began discussions in Qatar last Sunday to try to agree on a temporary halt to the 21-month conflict sparked by Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.

Both Hamas and Israel have said that 10 living hostages who were taken that day and who are still in captivity would be released if an agreement for a 60-day ceasefire were reached.

But one well-informed Palestinian source said Israel’s refusal to withdraw all of its troops from Gaza was holding back progress on securing a deal.

“The negotiations in Doha are facing a setback and complex difficulties due to Israel’s insistence, as of Friday, on presenting a map of withdrawal, which is actually a map of redeployment and repositioning of the Israeli army rather than a genuine withdrawal,” the source said.

Hamas has said it wants the complete withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza, which is home to more than two million people.

The source said, however, that the Israeli delegation presented a map at the talks which proposed maintaining military forces in more than 40 percent of the Palestinian territory.

“Hamas’s delegation will not accept the Israeli maps... as they essentially legitimize the reoccupation of approximately half of the Gaza Strip and turn Gaza into isolated zones with no crossings or freedom of movement,” the source added.

Mediators have asked both sides to postpone the talks until the arrival of US President Donald Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, in Doha, they added.

A second Palestinian source said “some progress” had been made on plans for releasing Palestinian prisoners and getting more aid to Gaza.

But they accused the Israeli delegation of having no authority, and “stalling and obstructing the agreement in order to continue the war of extermination.”

TUNIS: A Tunisian inmate was sentenced to six months in prison after he was reported to authorities for refusing to watch a TV news segment about President Kais Saied, his lawyer and an NGO said Friday.

The inmate’s lawyer, Adel Sghaier, said his client was initially prosecuted under Article 67 of the penal code, which covers crimes against the head of state, but the charge was later revised to violating public decency to avoid giving the case a “political” dimension.

The local branch of the Tunisian League for Human Rights in the central town of Gafsa said that the inmate had “expressed his refusal to watch (coverage of) presidential activities” during a news broadcast that was playing on TV in his cell.

He was reported by a cellmate, investigated and later sentenced to six months behind bars, the NGO said, condemning what it called a “policy of gagging voices that even extends to prisoners in their cells.”

Sghaier said his client had been held over an unrelated case that was ultimately dismissed, and that his family only learnt of his other sentence when he wasn’t freed as expected.

He acknowledged that his client voiced insults and demanded the channel be changed when Saied’s image appeared on TV, explaining the man blamed the president for “ruining his life” by striking a deal with Italy for the deportation of irregular Tunisian immigrants.

The man had himself been deported from Italy, where he had been living without documentation.

A spokesman for the court in Gafsa could not be reached for comment.

Saied, elected in 2019, has ruled Tunisia by decree since a 2021 power grab, with local and international organizations decrying a decline in freedoms in the country considered the cradle of the “Arab Spring.”