TUNIS: Several jailed Tunisian opposition figures demanded a public trial, their relatives and lawyers said Thursday on their behalf at a press conference.
Around 40 people — including prominent politicians, lawyers, and media personalities — are facing charges of “conspiracy against internal and external state security” and “belonging a terrorist group.”
A number were detained in a wave of arrests in February 2023, after President Kais Saied had dubbed them “terrorists.”
With the trial set to begin on March 4, judicial authorities have scheduled a remote hearing for eight of the defendants, which their lawyers and relatives said was unfair.
They include politician Jawhar Ben Mbarek, Islamist-inspired Ennahdha party leader Abdelhamid Jelassi, and Issam Chebbi, a leader of the opposition National Salvation Front.
“We want a public trial, neither remote nor behind closed doors,” Ben Mbarek wrote in a letter read by his father, leftist activist Ezzeddine Hazgui, at the press briefing in Tunis.
“We are certain of our innocence, and if the regime shuts the courtroom doors to the public, it’s because they are ashamed of their fabricated case,” he added, denouncing what he said was “judicial harassment” against politicians, unionists and activists.
Ridha BelHajj, a former minister also detained, echoed the demand for a transparent hearing.
“Our trial on March 4 must be public, with our physical presence in court, and open to the press and people to guarantee fairness,” he wrote.
Lawyer Dalila Msaddek, from the detainees’ defense committee, said that while many are in custody, some remain free pending trial, while others have fled abroad.
The case has also named Bochra BelHajj Hmida, a former member of parliament and human rights activist now living in France, along with National Salvation Front coalition leader Ahmed Nejib Chebbi and lawyer Ayachi Hammami, both prominent critics of President Kais Saied.
Detained Tunisian opponents demand public trial in ‘plot against state’ case
https://arab.news/rkfzt
Detained Tunisian opponents demand public trial in ‘plot against state’ case
- Around 40 people are facing charges of “conspiracy against internal and external state security” and “belonging a terrorist group“
- With the trial set to begin on March 4, judicial authorities have scheduled a remote hearing for eight of the defendants
Hundreds of Syrian Druze clerics head to Israel on pilgrimage
- Hundreds of clerics from Syria’s Druze minority on Friday are heading to Israel where they will conduct a pilgrimage to a sacred shrine, the second such visit since longtime ruler Bashar Assad’s
The clerics from the esoteric, monotheistic faith, are to cross the border on foot, according to a Syrian official and a local news organization, despite Israel and Syria being technically at war.
The delegation will visit the Nabi Shuaib shrine in north Israel’s Galilee region, where an annual pilgrimage is held from April 25-28 each year.
Abu Yazan, the official from Hader on the Syrian Golan Heights, said that 400 clerics from his town and from the Damascus suburb of Jaramana will head to Israel after the Israeli authorities gave their approval.
Asking not to be identified by his full name, he said the trip was “purely religious” in nature.
Suwayda24, a news organization from nearby Sweida province, said some 150 Druze clerics from that area would also participate.
The group notified the Syrian government of its plan to go to Israel, though it received no response, the website added.
Unlike during a smaller visit to the shrine last month, the clerics will spend the night in Israel this time.
Abu Yazan, who is one of the participants, said that “we requested to stay for a week to visit the shrine” and other members of the religious community “but the Israeli side only authorized one night.”
The Druze are mainly divided between Syria, Israel and Lebanon.
They account for about three percent of Syria’s population and are heavily concentrated in the south.
Israel seized much of the strategic Golan Heights from Syria in a war in 1967, later annexing the area in 1981 in a move largely unrecognized by the international community.
After Islamist-led forces ousted Assad in December, Israel carried out hundreds of air strikes on Syria and sent troops into the demilitarised buffer zone of the Golan.
Israeli authorities have also voiced support for Syria’s Druze and mistrust of the country’s new leaders.
In March, following a deadly clash between government-linked forces and Druze fighters in Jaramana, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said his country would not allow Syria’s new rulers “to harm the Druze.”
Druze leaders rejected the warning and declared their loyalty to a united Syria.
A deleted condolence after pope’s death revealed tension between Israel and the Vatican
- For most of Francis’ papacy, ties between Israel and the Vatican steadily improved — highlighted by a visit to the Holy Land in 2014
- Christians make up less than 2 percent of the Holy Land’s population
JERUSALEM: Hours after Pope Francis’ death was announced, Israel’s Foreign Ministry posted a short message on X: “Rest in peace, Pope Francis. May his memory be a blessing.” Several hours later, it was deleted without explanation.
Coming at a time of effusive global mourning over Francis’ death, the decision to delete the post appeared to reflect the tensions that have emerged between Israel and the Vatican over Francis’ frequent criticism of Israel’s conduct during the war in Gaza. The Foreign Ministry declined to comment on the deletion.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is usually quick to issue statements on the passing of major international figures. It took him four days to issue a terse, 28-word statement on the official Prime Minister account, and Foreign Minister Gideon Saar has been silent. The only immediate official condolences came from Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog, who holds a largely ceremonial role and who praised Francis for being “a man of deep faith and boundless compassion.”
For most of Francis’ papacy, ties between Israel and the Vatican steadily improved — highlighted by a visit to the Holy Land in 2014.
But everything changed after the war in Gaza erupted with Hamas’ deadly attack in southern Israel on Oct 7, 2023.
While expressing sympathy for Israeli victims and hostages, Francis has suggested Israel’s subsequent attacks in Gaza and Lebanon were “immoral” and disproportionate. He also called for an investigation to determine if Israel’s attacks in Gaza constitute genocide, a charge Israel denies while investigations at the UN’s top courts proceed.
“Pope Francis condemned what happened on Oct. 7, but he was clear also that what happened on Oct. 7 does not justify what has been happening since Oct. 7,” said Wadie Abunassar, who heads a group that represents Christians in Israel and the Palestinian territories.
Pope Francis was like a friend who tells the truth, even if that’s not exactly what you want to hear, Abunassar said.
Throughout the war, Francis walked a delicate balance between his close ties with Israel and condemning the devastating losses in Gaza, according to Amnon Ramon, an expert on Christianity in Israel and a senior researcher at the Jerusalem Institute for Policy Research. Francis was exceptionally close to Gaza’s local parish priest, who, like the former pontiff, is from Argentina.
A history of tension
Israel has historically had a fragile relationship with the Vatican. It stems from anger over the Vatican’s perceived lack of action during World War II, when critics argue Pope Pius XII kept silent during the Holocaust despite possible knowledge of the Nazi plan to exterminate the Jews. Supporters insist he used quiet diplomacy to save Jewish lives.
In the 1960s, the Vatican underwent a series of dramatic transformations, including, among other things, changing the Church’s attitude toward Jews over what was long seen as their collective culpability for the crucifixion of Jesus, Ramon explained. The Holy See formally launched diplomatic relations with Israel in 1993.
Christians make up less than 2 percent of the Holy Land’s population. There are about 182,000 in Israel, 50,000 in the West Bank and 1,300 in Gaza, according to the US State Department.
At the start of Francis’ papacy, the relationship with Israel warmed significantly. Francis visited the Holy Land in 2014 as one of his first international trips, when he met with Netanyahu, who was prime minister at the time. Then-President Shimon Peres visited the Vatican multiple times, including with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to plant a peace tree in the Vatican Gardens.
But the Israeli government’s rightward shift, and the ongoing war with Gaza, strained the ties.
The pope voiced concern for hostages held in Gaza
“Pope Francis expressed himself for the first time on Oct. 8, the day after the war began, and he followed the same line right through the end of his life: war is defeat, there’s no victory for war,” said the Rev. David Neuhaus, a local priest who served as a spokesperson during the pope’s 2014 visit.
“He expressed great concern for hostages, but said violence should stop and Israel is using force to something that cannot be achieved by force,” Neuhaus said. Francis also met the families of hostages held in Gaza and Palestinians affected by the war.
In an interview with The Associated Press in April 2023, the leader of Catholics in the Holy Land, Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa said that Netanyahu’s far-right government has made life worse for Christians in the birthplace of Christianity. He noted an increase in attacks against Christian sites, pilgrims, and religious leaders.
Although world leaders, including US President Donald Trump and French President Emmanuel Macron, will attend Francis’ funeral, Israel will only send its Vatican ambassador, a lower-level diplomat.
Foreign Ministry spokesperson Oren Marmorstein said this was due partially to scheduling conflicts and the funeral taking place on Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath, which requires Israeli politicians to stay within walking distance of the funeral. The decision was not indicative of any tension with the Vatican, he said.
“Israel will be represented in the most official way in the funeral through our ambassador there,” said Marmorstein. “There were things we didn’t agree with, but we are taking part in the funeral.”
Francis emphasized mercy in a polarized world
“Pope Francis was one of the best friends of Israel, but Israeli leadership didn’t understand him properly,” said Abunassar, the coordinator of the Holy Land Christian forum. Abunassar, a Catholic from the northern Israeli city of Haifa, said he was angry that the Israeli government hadn’t sent official condolences except through the president.
“The man was the leader of the most important church in the world. The man was the head of state. The man has followers among people who are Israeli taxpayers. The man deserves some respect.”
Netanyahu has publicly expressed condolences for the passing of other world leaders, including Queen Elizabeth II and former president Jimmy Carter, who was critical of Israel.
On Wednesday, hundreds of people streamed into the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, built on top of the site where tradition holds Jesus was crucified, buried and resurrected, for a special requiem mass in honor of Pope Francis.
Also in attendance were many representatives from Orthodox Christianity, a nod to Francis’ strong support for interfaith ties and his groundbreaking meeting with Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople Bartholomew I in Jerusalem in 2014, after centuries of strained relationships between the two churches.
Neuhaus said he hopes the next pope will follow the same message as Francis.
“I hope it will be someone who will put emphasis on mercy, someone who could bring us all together,” he said. “We live in such a divided, polarized world.”
Rescuers say death toll from Israeli strike on north Gaza home rises to 23
- Gaza’s civil defense agency reported on Friday that the death toll from an Israeli air strike the day before on a house in the north of the Palestinian territory had risen to 23
GAZA CITY: Gaza’s civil defense agency reported on Friday that the death toll from an Israeli air strike the day before on a house in the north of the Palestinian territory had risen to 23.
“Civil defense teams recovered 11 bodies last night and this morning following the Israeli bombing that targeted a residential house ... in Jabalia,” Mohammed Al-Mughayyir, an official with the agency, told AFP.
“This is in addition to the 12 victims recovered at the time of the attack yesterday,” he added.
Gaza’s northern area of Jabalia has repeatedly been a focus Israel’s military offensive since the start of the war on October 7, 2023 following Hamas’s attack on Israel.
The military has returned to the district several times after announcing it had been cleared of militants, saying Hamas fighters had regrouped there.
In another strike in the area on Thursday, Israel hit what was previously a police station, rescuers said.
The toll from that attack has risen to 11, Mughayyir said, after initially announcing that nine people had been killed.
The military said on Thursday that it had struck a Hamas “command and control center” in the area of Jabalia, without specifying the target.
Israeli strikes continued on Friday, with the civil defense agency reporting that at least five people — a couple and their three children — had been killed when their tent was struck in the Al-Mawasi area of the southern city of Khan Yunis.
Agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal said that the deceased woman had been pregnant.
Since Israel resumed its offensive on March 18 after the collapse of a two-month ceasefire with Hamas, at least 1,978 people have been killed in Gaza, bringing the overall death toll of the war to 51,355, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.
World Food Programme to reduce food support in Sudan due to funding shortages
- The United Nations agency warns that it may have to reduce the number of people it can help across the country, from May, if more funding does not come through from donors
GENEVA:The World Food Programme warned on Friday it is facing a funding shortfall that could impact its ability to supply support to people facing acute food shortages in Sudan within weeks.
The United Nations agency warns that it may have to reduce the number of people it can help across the country, from May, if more funding does not come through from donors.
It is seeking $698 million to help 7 million people from May through September.
Morocco volunteers on Sahara clean-up mission
- It may be the gateway to the vast Sahara desert, but that does not mean it’s free of that modern scourge of the environment — the rubbish humanity discards
M’HAMID EL GHIZLANE:It may be the gateway to the vast Sahara desert, but that does not mean it’s free of that modern scourge of the environment — the rubbish humanity discards.
In southern Morocco, volunteers are hunting for waste embedded in the sand, and they do not have to look far.
Bottles, plastic bags — “there are all kinds,” noted one helper who has joined the initiative cleaning up the edge of a village bordering the Sahara.
The initiative marks the 20th International Nomads Festival, which is held in mid-April every year in M’Hamid El Ghizlane in Zagora province in southeast Morocco.
Around 50 people, gloved and equipped with rubbish bags, toiled away for five hours — and collected 400 to 600 kilos of waste, the organizers estimated.
“Clean-up initiatives usually focus on beaches and forests,” festival founder Noureddine Bougrab, who lives in the village of around 6,600 people, told AFP.
“But the desert also suffers from pollution.”
The campaign brings together artists, activists and foreign tourists, and is a call for the “world’s deserts to be protected,” said Bougrab, 46.
He said the clean-up began at the northern entrance of the village, “which was badly affected by pollution,” and extended through to the other end of town and the beginning of the “Great Desert.”
The rubbish is “mainly linked to the massive production of plastic products, low recycling rates and atmospheric pollutants carried by the wind,” said anthropologist Mustapha Naimi.
Morocco has a population of almost 37 million and they generate about 8.2 million tons of household waste each year, according to the Ministry of Energy Transition and Sustainable Development.
“This is equivalent to 811 times the weight of the Eiffel Tower — enough to fill 2,780 Olympic swimming pools with compacted waste,” said Hassan Chouaouta, an international expert in sustainable strategic development.
Of this amount, “between six and seven percent” is recycled, he said.
Their morning alarm went off “early,” according to one volunteer, New York-based French photographer Ronan Le Floch, who said the initiative’s aim was “to show that it’s important to take care of this type of environment.”
Another helper was Ousmane Ag Oumar, a 35-year-old Malian member of Imarhan Timbuktu, a Tuareg blues group.
He called the waste a direct danger to livestock, which are essential to the subsistence of nomadic communities.
Naimi, the anthropologist, agreed. “Plastic waste harms the Saharan environment as it contaminates the land, pasture, rivers and nomadic areas,” he said.
Pastoral nomadism is a millennia-old way of life based on seasonal mobility and available pasture for livestock.
But it is on the wane in Morocco, weakened by climate change and with nomadic communities now tending to stay in one place.
The most recent official census of nomads in Morocco dates to 2014, and returned a population of 25,274 — 63 percent lower than a decade earlier in 2004.
Mohammed Mahdi, a professor of rural sociology, said the country’s nomads had “not benefited from much state support, compared to subsidies granted to agriculture, especially for products intended for export.”
“We give very little to nomadic herders, and a good number have gone bankrupt and given up,” he said.
Mohamed Oujaa, 50, is leader of The Sand Pigeons, a group that specializes in the “gnawa” music practiced in the Maghreb by the descendants of black slaves.
For him, a clean environment is vital for future generations, and he hopes the initiative will be “just the first in a series of campaigns to clean up the desert.”
