Britain’s Charity Commission must conduct a “full and urgent investigation” into Oxfam following an alleged cover-up of its staff hiring prostitutes in Haiti during a 2011 relief effort on the earthquake-hit island, the prime minister’s office said Saturday.

“The reports of what is unacceptable behavior by senior aid workers in Haiti are truly shocking,” a spokeswoman for Theresa May said. “We want to see Oxfam provide all the evidence they hold of the events to the Charity Commission for a full and urgent investigation of these very serious allegations.”

The call came as the British charities regulator released its own statement detailing Oxfam’s previous disclosure of the events, including that it characterized the misconduct as “inappropriate sexual behavior.”

“Our approach to this matter would have been different had the full details that have been reported been disclosed to us at the time,” the commission said.

It confirmed that it had asked Oxfam to urgently provide fresh information.

Late on Friday, the Department for International Development (DFID) also said it was reviewing its relationship with the U.K.-based charity, to which it gave nearly $44 million last year.

It said Oxfam’s leaders had “showed a lack of judgment” in their handling of the matter and their level of openness with the government and Charity Commission.

‘Appalling abuse’

“The international development secretary is reviewing our current work with Oxfam and has requested a meeting with the senior team at the earliest opportunity,” a DFID spokeswoman said. “The way this appalling abuse of vulnerable people was dealt with raises serious questions that Oxfam must answer.”

Oxfam Chief Executive Mark Goldring said Saturday that the charity receives less than 10 percent of its funding from DFID and hoped to continue working with the department while rebuilding trust with the public. 

He admitted Oxfam did not give full details of the scandal to the commission in 2011 but insisted it “did anything but cover it up.”

“With hindsight, I would much prefer that we had talked about [the] sexual misconduct,” Goldring told BBC radio. “But I don’t think it was in anyone’s best interest to be describing the details of the behavior in a way that was actually going to draw extreme attention to it.”

The charity is under growing pressure after an investigation by The Times found young sex workers had been hired by senior staff in Haiti after the 2010 earthquake. Groups of young prostitutes were invited to homes and guesthouses paid for by the charity for sex parties, according to one source who claimed to have seen footage of an orgy with sex workers wearing Oxfam T-shirts.

In further revelations Friday, the paper said Oxfam failed to warn other aid agencies about the staff involved, which allowed them to get jobs among vulnerable people in other disaster areas.

Roland van Hauwermeiren, 68, whom Oxfam said was forced to resign as Haiti country director in 2011 after allegedly admitting hiring prostitutes, went on to become head of mission for Action Against Hunger in Bangladesh from 2012 to 2014.

Good references received

The French charity told AFP it made pre-employment checks with Oxfam but that the U.K.-based organization “did not share with us the reasons for his resignation as head of mission in Haiti or the results of its internal inquiry.”

“Moreover we received positive references from former Oxfam staff — in their individual capacities — who worked with him,” including from a human resources staffer, a spokesman said.

In a statement, Oxfam denied providing positive references for those implicated.

It said the vast number of aid operations working around the globe made it impossible “to ensure that those found guilty of sexual misconduct were not re-employed in the sector.”

“Unfortunately, there is nothing we can do to stop individuals falsifying references, getting others that were dismissed to act as referees and claiming it was a reference from Oxfam,” a spokeswoman added.

And there was also nothing to stop them from getting former or current staff to provide a reference “in a personal capacity,” she said.

The charity said it launched an immediate investigation in 2011 that found a “culture of impunity” among some staff, but it denied trying to cover up the scandal.

During the probe, Oxfam dismissed four staff members and another three resigned, including van Hauwermeiren.

The charity also said it had yet to find evidence proving allegations that underage girls were involved.
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German Chancellor Angela Merkel declined to comment Saturday on a Polish law that imposes jail terms for suggesting the country was complicit in the Holocaust, saying she did not want to wade into Poland’s internal affairs.

The law would impose prison sentences of up to three years for using the phrase “Polish death camps” and for suggesting “publicly and against the facts” that the Polish nation or state was complicit in Nazi Germany’s crimes.

“Without directly interfering in the legislation in Poland, I would like to say the following very clearly as German chancellor: We as Germans are responsible for what happened during the Holocaust, the Shoah, under National Socialism [Nazism],” Merkel said in her weekly video podcast.

She was responding to a question from a student who had asked whether the new Polish law curbs freedom of expression. Israel and the United States criticized President Andrzej Duda for signing the bill into law this week.

Israel says the law will curb free speech, criminalize basic historical facts and stop any discussion of the role some Poles played in Nazi crimes.

A Polish government spokeswoman welcomed Merkel’s remarks, the PAP news agency reported. Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki will hold talks with Merkel in Berlin next week.

Poland’s ruling Law and Justice party has clashed with the European Union and human rights groups on a range of issues since taking power in late 2015. It says the law is needed to ensure that Poles are recognized as victims, not perpetrators, of Nazi aggression in World War II.

More than 3 million of the 3.2 million Jews who lived in pre-war Poland were killed by the Nazis, accounting for about half of all Jews killed in the Holocaust.

Jews from across the continent were sent to be killed at death camps built and operated by Germans in occupied Poland — home to Europe’s biggest Jewish community at the time.
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Skier Albin Tahiri will miss Kosovo’s 10th-anniversary celebrations next week — but as the country’s first winter Olympian, he thinks his 1.8 million compatriots will forgive him while he competes in the Pyeongchang Games that began Friday.

While it has long had snow-capped mountains offering steep slopes and deep powder, Kosovo didn’t exist as a country until it broke free from Serbia in 2008, nearly a decade after a NATO-led bombing campaign pushed out Serbian forces to end a brutal crackdown on ethnic Albanians during a two-year battle for independence.

Now the 28-year-old Tahiri will compete in all five alpine-ski events in South Korea, one of 115 countries that recognize Kosovo as a country.

“When I started skiing, Kosovo was not an independent country,” says the Slovenian-born Tahiri, who carried Kosovo’s flag into the Olympic Stadium during the opening ceremonies.

“My father always cheered for Kosovar athletes and I did it as well, so when Kosovo proclaimed independence I wanted to help by representing the country as an athlete,” he adds. 

Kosovo’s inclusion in the Olympics was not always a given.

Serbia lobbied hard to block Kosovo from being recognized as a separate Olympic country and it wasn’t until the International Olympic Committee granted such a status to Kosovo in late 2014 that it made its debut at the Summer Olympics two years later in Brazil, which still does not formally recognize Kosovo as an independent country.

Tahiri, who began skiing in Slovenia at the age of 7, collected enough World Cup points while studying dentistry.

Now given the chance to represent Kosovo, the birthplace of his father, Tahiri will have to compete against the world’s best skiers without access to a full-time equipment manager or his coach — who can’t travel with him to South Korea because of the cost.

‘Once-In-A-Lifetime Pressure’

With the lighting of the flame in Pyeongchang, Kosovo will be one of six countries competing in the Winter Olympics for the first time.

The young country officially marks its independence on Feb. 17, midway through the Olympics, which finish eight days later.

“For me as president of the country, for the state and Kosovar society, as well as for the whole world, the participation of Kosovo for the first time in the Olympic Winter Games in [South] Korea is [big] news,” Hashim Thaci, president of Kosovo, said on Feb. 5, during a ceremony presenting the official Kosovar flag to Tahiri.

“I hope that not only the participation [of Tahiri] will make news, but that we will also have the strong news of winning a medal,” Thaci added.

Thaci and the rest of the country still have the Rio Olympics fresh in their minds. That debut by Kosovo put the country on the sporting map as Majlinda Kelmendi made history by winning a gold medal in judo.

Kelmendi says she is proud that Kosovo will finally be represented in the Winter Olympics, and knows the pressure Tahiri faces as the hopes of a nation weigh on him as he glides down the slopes.

“I wish him all the best,” Kelmendi said in a Thursday Facebook video post. “I know you have responsibility, you will also be waving the flag, but enjoy this experience to the maximum. Believe me, it’s something that happens once in a lifetime, so all the best and feel proud for the country you represent,” she added.

RFE/RL’s Balkan Service contributed to this report.
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A new vocabulary program claims to dramatically accelerate a child’s understanding of language. As Faith Lapidus reports, the Mrs Wordsmith teaching system relies on cartoon drawings and short word exercises to boost academic achievement.
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The detention in northern Syria by U.S.-backed Kurdish fighters of two notorious British jihadists, the remaining members of a militant quartet that tortured and beheaded Western hostages, including American journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff, is being greeted with pleas by former Western captives of the terror group that they face trial.

Nicolas Henin, a French reporter held for 10 months by the British gang, has told British and U.S. broadcasters that he wants the militants to face justice for their crimes somewhere he and other former hostages and the relatives of murdered victims will be able to attend and testify. 

El Shafee Elsheikh and Alexanda Amon Kotey, the last two members of the British quartet that Western hostages dubbed “The Beatles,” were captured last month by the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in eastern Syria. News of their detention was reported Thursday by The New York Times. U.S. officials have confirmed their capture and say they were identified from their fingerprints and biometric data.

“This is the beginning of a process that will bring them eventually, hopefully, to a trial. Justice is just what I want,” Henin said. “What I want is a trial and a trial potentially that I can attend, so rather, a trial in London rather than one in Kobani in northern Syria.”

He rejected the idea of them facing a U.S. military commission in Guantanamo, saying that would risk a “denial of justice.”

“Guantanamo was opened 16 years ago. There hasn’t been a single trial there,” he said. 

Rights campaigners are urging the U.S. government not to transfer the men to Guantanamo. “They should prosecute them in U.S. federal court, not send them to Guantanamo,” said Laura Pitter of the Human Rights Watch.

“These men are accused of committing serious crimes, including torture, murder and other offenses. If they end up in [formal] U.S. custody, the U.S. should not jeopardize their prosecutions by sending them to the dysfunctional military commissions at Guantanamo where important cases involving serious crimes have languished for years.”

According to European captives who were freed by the Islamic State terror group in return for ransoms, the group of four British militants put their Western captives, especially the British and Americans, through rounds of excruciating suffering, routinely beating and waterboarding them and staging mock executions.

Thanks to IS propaganda videos, the gang quickly acquired a singular place in this century’s annals of terrorism. James Foley, the first of the Western hostages to be beheaded, was earmarked for the worst treatment of all, possibly because he had a brother who had served with U.S. forces in Afghanistan. 

“You could see the scars on his [Foley’s] ankles,” Jejoen Bontinck, a 19-year-old Belgian and convert to Islam, said in interviews later. Bontinck, a jihadist recruit who fell afoul of IS, shared a prison cell with Foley in 2013. “He told me how they had chained his feet to a bar and then hung the bar so that he was upside down from the ceiling. Then they left him there.”

Foley’s mother, Diane, told the BBC on Friday that the crimes of the British jihadists “are beyond imagination.” She says they need to face life in prison. “It doesn’t bring James back, but hopefully it protects others from this kind of crime.”

An international manhunt was launched by Western governments for the fighters in 2014 when IS released a video of Foley’s execution at the hands of an masked English-accented militant, who called himself “John” and was the leader of the gang. He was nicknamed by the British media “Jihadi John” and was later identified as Mohamed Emwazi, who was born in Kuwait, but was raised like the rest of the gang in west London.

He was killed in a drone strike in November 2015.

Another member of the gang, Aine Davis, was sentenced last year in Turkey to a seven-and-a-half-year prison term. He was charged with membership in a terrorist organization, but a weightier charge of preparing acts of terrorism, which carried the possibility of a longer sentence, was dropped by Turkish prosecutors for lack of sufficient evidence. 

U.S. officials say El Shafee Elsheikh, who fled from Sudan in the 1990s but grew up in London, and Alexanda Amon Kotey, whose ethnic background is Greek Cypriot, are providing information on the remaining IS structure and leaders. But it is unclear who has been interrogating them and whether British intelligence officers also have had access to the pair alongside U.S. counterterror officials. 

Family and friends of British photojournalist John Cantlie, a friend of Foley, who remains missing, say they hope the captured jihadists provide information about his whereabouts. Cantlie was used by IS to front propaganda videos.

The British IS gang also was responsible for the murder of U.S. aid worker Peter Kassig, according to freed captives, as well as David Haines, a British aid worker, and Alan Henning, a British taxi driver from Salford outside Manchester, who had volunteered to deliver humanitarian aid to Syria.  

Elsheikh traveled to Syria in 2012 and joined al-Qaida in Syria before switching to IS. U.S. officials say he took pleasure in staging crucifixions and waterboarding while an IS jailer. The two captured jihadists knew Emwazi in the British capital, where all three attended Al-Manaar mosque in west London. 

Officials on both sides of the Atlantic say the fate remains unclear of the captured jihadists, who may be considered non-state combatants. They could be handed over to the U.S. Justice Department to stand trial in the U.S. or be transferred to the U.S. military authorities to face a tribunal at Guantanamo Bay detention center. U.S. President Donald Trump recently signed an order to keep the detention center. 

Another option is for their fate to be left to the Kurdish authorities in northern Syria, but that option is being opposed by freed captives. French officials have raised the possibility of the pair standing trial at the International Criminal Court in The Hague, which has jurisdiction to prosecute individuals for crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. However, the U.S. is not a signatory to the court. 

The French position was echoed Friday by a British defense minister, Tobias Elwood, who said the two jihadists shouldn’t be tried before a U.S. military tribunal or sent back to Britain, but should face justice at The Hague in order to uphold the rule of law.

Relatives of other alleged victims have echoed Henin’s call for a trial.

Bethany Haines, the daughter of David Haines, posted on Facebook: “It’s brilliant that these evil people have been caught. The families will now have people to hold account for their loved ones death.”

She added, “No punishment is enough for these barbarians and in my opinion they should be sentenced to a slow painful death.”
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U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson will press Turkey to release Americans detained by Ankara, and urge the NATO ally to show restraint in military operations in northern Syria, according to senior U.S. officials.

“At times like this, engagement is all the more important,” said a State Department official on Friday, while acknowledging, “It’s going to be a difficult conversation.”

Turkey is the second stop of Tillerson’s five-nation visit to the Middle East next week, following a visit to Jordan. He will also meet with senior officials from Lebanon, Egypt and Kuwait.

The top U.S. diplomat’s visit to Ankara comes amid escalated tensions between the two NATO allies over a series of disagreements, including human rights cases and the Syria crisis. 

“Look, it’s difficult. The rhetoric is hot, the Turks are angry and this is a difficult time to do business, but it’s our belief that there are still some very fundamental underlying shared interests,” the senior official said Friday.

U.S. citizen Serkan Golge, a NASA scientist who was arrested in July 2016, was convicted without credible evidence on Feb. 8 by Turkish authorities for being a member of a terror organization. On Feb. 1, Amnesty International’s Turkey chairman, Taner Kilic, was re-arrested and placed back in pretrial detention. Kilic is facing terrorism charges.

The State Department said it is deeply troubled by those cases and urged the Turkish government to “end the protracted state of emergency, to release those detained arbitrarily under emergency authorities, and to safeguard the rule of law consistent with Turkey’s own domestic and international obligations and commitments.”

In the year after a failed coup in July 2016, Turkey arrested more than 40,000 people and fired 125,000, including many from the police, army and judiciary. 

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan accused Fethullah Gulen, an exiled cleric based in the U.S., of orchestrating the attempted coup. Gulen has denied any role in the plot. Ankara has also asked Washington to extradite Gulen.   

The lack of trust between Washington and Ankara grew after Turkey started an air and ground offensive in Afrin, Syria against a Kurdish group known as the People’s Protection Units, or YPG. Turkey considers the YPG to be a terrorist organization, alleging it is an extension of a Kurdish group fighting for autonomy in Turkey for decades. 

The U.S. denies those connections and sees the YPG as a key ally in the battle against Islamic State militants.

“We are urging them [Turkish authorities] to show restraint in their operations in Afrin, and to show restraint further along the line across the border in northern Syria,” said a senior State Department official. 

“We can work with them to address their legitimate security concerns while, at the same time, minimizing civilian casualties and above all else, keeping everything focused on the defeat ISIS fight, which is not over,” he added, using the acronym of the Islamic State militants.

In Amman, Tillerson will meet with the Jordanian leadership on the conclusion of a new memorandum of understanding on bilateral assistance, and discuss key regional issues, such as the ongoing crisis in Syria and Jordan’s support for Middle East peace.

In Beirut, he will meet with Lebanese President Michel Aoun, Prime Minister Saad Hariri, and Speaker of Parliament Nabih Berri to emphasize U.S. support for the Lebanese people and the Lebanese armed forces.

Building on Vice President Mike Pence’s recent visit to Cairo, Tillerson will meet with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi and Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry to discuss regional security issues such as Libya and Syria, as well as Israeli-Palestinian issues.

The chief U.S. diplomat will also lead a delegation to the ministerial meeting in Kuwait of the 74-member Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS. He will also participate in the Iraq Reconstruction Conference, which is the first since Islamic State was defeated in Raqqa, Syria and Iraq declared some of its own territory liberated.

The three-day Iraq Reconstruction Conference will showcase private sector investment opportunities and international support for Iraq.
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Politicians and public figures suspected of buying property with corrupt money will be forced to explain their wealth, or face the seizure of their assets under new legislation that has come into force in Britain this month. As Henry Ridgwell reports from London, the so-called Unexplained Wealth Orders have been welcomed by activists, who say the British capital is at the center of a global web of corrupt and embezzled money.
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When two people see things the same way, it is often said that they are “operating on the same wavelength.” That concept recently got a scientific stamp of approval when researchers at the University of Cambridge found that adults’ and infants’ brainwaves synchronize when they look at each other’s eyes while singing a nursery rhyme. VOA’s George Putic has more.
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Turkey and Russia’s presidents have reportedly agreed to meet with their Iranian counterpart in Istanbul in the near future.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan spoke Thursday amid growing tensions between the countries over Syria.The two also agreed to increase coordination between their forces in Syria.

The telephone conversation follows a tumultuous few days in Syria.

Saturday, a Russian made missile was blamed by Ankara for the destruction of a Turkish tank and the killing of eight Turkish soldiers in the Syrian Kurdish enclave of Afrin.

The deaths were the worst loss for Turkey since it launched an offensive against the YPG Kurdish militia in Syria nearly three weeks ago.

Also Saturday, a Russian jet was downed by Syrian rebels in Idlib.The rebel group blamed by Russia has close ties to Turkey, and Russian media alluded to Turkish involvement, a charge denied by Ankara.

Erdogan reportedly offered his condolences to Putin for the loss of the Russian pilot. Turkey used its connections with the Syrian rebels to help repatriate the pilot’s body.

The incident likely serves as a painful reminder to Putin of the 2015 shooting down by a Turkish jet of a Russian bomber operating from a Syrian airbase. Then, Putin all but severed relations with Ankara and imposed painful sanctions. Now, Moscow appears publicly ready to accept Ankara’s denials of responsibility.

Russia ‘unhappy’

But since Monday, Russia has prevented Turkish warplanes supporting ground forces fighting in Afrin from entering Syria airspace.

“Russia is unhappy and concerned,” noted International Relations Professor Huseyin Bagci of Ankara’s Middle East Technical University, “Russia and Turkey have developed certain relations, but Turkey is much more dependent on Russia. Turkey can’t operate in Syrian airspace without Russia.”

The scale of the Turkish operation and Ankara’s objectives in Syria are also reportedly adding to Moscow’s concern.

Addressing supporters Thursday, Erdogan further stoked concerns over the Afrin operation.

“Those who thought we’ve forgotten all about these lands [Syria] after withdrawing in tears a century ago better realize now they are wrong about Turkey,” he said.

Erdogan also lashed out at foreign powers, including Moscow, for attempting to keep Turkey out of Syria.

Observers suggest Moscow is also uneasy about Turkish reliance on elements of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) in the Afrin operation.

Political columnist Semih Idiz, of Al Monitor website argued that Moscow’s concern “is more about the FSA” and some of its elements that are fighting with Turkey.

“They are made up of groups that Russia is bombing,” he added. “That is a potential weak spot in the [Russian-Turkish] relationship. Sooner or later this will surface.”

Ankara and Moscow remain at loggerheads about which Syrian groups can be considered terrorists.

Moscow has tempered its criticism of Ankara. “Both Moscow and Ankara try to maintain the cooperation and are not interested in any kind of frictions which can provoke a break,” noted Zaur Gasimov, an Istanbul-based specialist on Russian-Turkish relations at the Max Weber Foundation.

In its attempts with Tehran to negotiate a solution to the Syrian civil war, Moscow considers Ankara’s strong ties with some Syrian rebel groups important. But experts note key Syrian opposition groups, many with links to Ankara, boycotted the Russian-hosted Sochi meeting in January, likely adding to Moscow’s unease.

Severing alliances

Russia’s deepening relationship with Turkey in the past year potentially offers a bigger prize: the strategic goal of drawing Ankara away from the United States and NATO.

“Turkey and Russia have finally found each other after 300 years separation due to Western-incited wars,” Erdogan’s chief aide, Yigit Bulut, declared on a TV show this week.”Turkey no longer needs the West when Russia and China are taking Turkey’s side.”

A Western diplomat speaking on condition of anonymity said there are deep concerns Erdogan wants to re-orientate Turkey towards Moscow.

Putin is well aware Turkish-US relations are at crisis point over Washington’s support of the YPG in its fight against Islamic State. Erdogan has repeatedly threatened to extend the Syrian offensive to the town of Manbij, where U.S. forces are deployed with the YPG.

Gasimov said Moscow “is about to elaborate a new strategy for Syria.” But for now, he said it is intensively observing the dynamics in the region and in Syria, particularly American-Turkish relations “with regard to the movements of the Turkish troops in Afrin and the plans related to Manbij.”
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Russia has warned Islamic State is turning northern Afghanistan into a “resting base” of international terrorism and a “bridgehead” for establishing its “destructive” caliphate in the region.

The “international wing of Daesh” is spearheading the effort of terrorists spilling over the borders of Syria and Iraq and moving worldwide, asserted Russian ambassador to Pakistan, Alexey Dedov.

Daesh is the Arabic acronym for IS.

“With clear connivance, and sometimes even with direct support of certain local and outside sponsors, thousands of militants of various nationalities are consolidating under the banners of Daesh there (in northern Afghanistan), including jihadis from Syria and Iraq,” Dedov told a seminar in Islamabad.

He did not elaborate but Russia and Iran accuse the United States of supporting Islamic State’s rise in Afghanistan.

Iran’s top military commander earlier this week also alleged that the U.S. is transferring IS militants to Afghanistan to fuel regional instability and justify its presence in the region.

Washington vehemently rejects the charges as “rumors” and says its sustained operations in partnership with Afghan forces against IS bases in the country have significantly degraded and reduced the terrorists.

The U.S. military maintains its recent airstrikes in northern Afghan regions are targeting Taliban training camps and those of the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, a terrorist organization operating near the border with China and Tajikistan.

“The U.S. strikes support Afghanistan in reassuring its neighbors that it is not a safe sanctuary for terrorists who want to carry out cross border operations,” the military said Thursday.

Russia has lately also increased contacts with Taliban insurgents in a bid to contain spread of IS, particularly to Afghan provinces, which border Central Asian states.

Kabul and Washington denounce Moscow for its overt ties with the Taliban, saying they are detrimental to U.S.-led international efforts to fight terrorism and extremism in Afghanistan.

Russia defends its ties with insurgents, saying they are meant only to promote a peaceful resolution of the conflict, and rejects allegations of arming the Taliban.

Ambassador Dedov said his country seeks increased security cooperation with Afghan and Pakistani authorities to suppress the “proliferation” of IS-led terrorism before it threatens the security of Moscow-allied Central Asian states.

He noted the recent sale of Mi-35M combat helicopters to Pakistan and other military deals are part of Russia’s efforts to boost regional efforts against terrorism. The two countries, added the Russian diplomat, conducted joint anti-terrorism military and naval drills in 2016 and 2017, and the process will continue this year.

“This (cooperation) is being developed dynamically and we are very satisfied with these dynamics,” Dedov said.

Pakistan

Islamabad has come under increased U.S. pressure over alleged Taliban sanctuaries in Pakistan that Washington says have enabled insurgents to prolong and expand the Afghan conflict.

President Donald Trump has recently suspended military aid to Pakistan until it takes “decisive action” against the militants. The move has dealt a major blow to Islamabad’s already fragile relationship with Washington and tensions continue to escalate with the rise in Taliban attacks in Afghanistan.

Pakistani officials deny they harbor or support insurgents, insisting the country is being scapegoated for U.S. military “failures” in the neighboring country.

Speaking at the seminar, Pakistan’s Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee Chairman, General Zubair Mahmood Hayat, took a swipe at Trump’s punitive actions against his country and boasted at the same time expanding military and economic ties with Russia and China.

These two relationships, however, “are not at the expense of, or in opposition to a third party,” the general explained without naming the U.S. Pakistan is a major non-NATO ally of the U.S, though calls are growing in American political circles for degrading the status.

“While some powers weaken diplomatic and military support to Islamabad, Beijing and Moscow continue to support Pakistan in the diplomatic sphere…Pakistan appreciates Russian and Chinese diplomatic efforts to defend Pakistan’s legitimate security and sovereignty concerns,” Hayat said.

The top Pakistani general praised as “a significant development” Russia’s “stabilizing” role in Afghanistan and its push for warring sides to find a negotiated settlement.

“We welcome Russia’s influence in Afghanistan to weaken Daesh foothold. Pakistan also supports Russian outreach to various segments of the afghan society for wider benefits of peace and stability,” Hayat said.

The general went on to criticize increased U.S. military actions in Afghanistan in a bid to break the stalemate with the Taliban. He emphasized the need for starting an intra-Afghan reconciliation process, involving the Taliban, to end the violence.

“Unfortunately, preference for the kinetic approach over political settlement has further compounded the already existing complexity in Afghanistan,” warned Hayat.

The general was apparently referring to President Donald Trump’s recent remarks in which he ruled out peace talks with the Taliban and instead vowed to escalate military pressure on the insurgents to “finish” them.

China, Pakistan’s biggest regional ally, has recently initiated a trilateral ministerial level dialogue involving Islamabad and Kabul to ease tensions in their bilateral ties and promote Afghan peace.

“China’s increasing active role to bring peace in Afghanistan has our full support. The trilateral mechanism between China, Afghanistan and Pakistan has positive prospects for success,” said General Hayat.

Beijing is investing billions of dollars in Pakistan to help build a massive economic corridor linking the two countries as part of China’s global Belt and Road Initiative.
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The top surviving suspect of the November 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris, stayed mostly silent during a much awaited trial appearance Monday in Brussels. The trial is for a case involving a shootout with Belgian police.

Salah Abdeslam quickly shattered any hopes he might finally talk about his role in the 2015 Paris attacks, the deadliest in recent French history. Bearded, long-haired and clad in a white polo, Abdeslam arrived under tight security at the main courthouse in Brussels. 

He first refused to stand or answer questions but then claimed Muslims were unfairly judged and said he would only respond to Allah.

If found guilty, Abdeslam and fellow defendant, Tunisian Soufiane Ayari, face up to 40 years in prison for attempted murder in a shootout with Belgian police. The incident took place in March 2016, four months after the Paris attacks that killed 130 people, and just before Abdeslam was arrested in the Brussels Molenbeek district where he grew up.

Days later came the attacks in the Belgian capital and airport that killed more than 30 people. 

Belgian criminologist Michael Dantinne described Abdeslam as a potential mine of information about the Paris and Brussels attacks. 

Speaking to French radio, Dantinne described Abdeslam’s short remarks as propaganda aimed to provoke and to shore up other radicals.

The head of a Paris attacks survivors’ group, Philippe Duperron, said he was not surprised by Abdeslam’s silence. 

Duperron, who lost his son Thomas in the 2015 attacks, described a strong emotional charge when Abdeslam walked into the room. He said seeing him for the first time was very difficult. 

Security was heavy for the trial’s opening, and both Abdeslam and Ayari declined to be photographed or captured on video. For the rest of this week’s hearings, Abdeslam will be commuting from a high-security prison in northern France, and face the same 24-hour video surveillance as in his maximum security cell at the Fleury Merogis prison near Paris.
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The International Rescue Committee on Wednesday announced the creation of Project Core, a $1 million job training program for refugees in Germany.

The IRC said it would collaborate with computer giant Intel to equip at least 1,000 migrants with “critical skills in information and communications technology and other in-demand sectors of the German economy.”

“It is exciting and encouraging to see that opportunities are being extended to refugees living in the country,” IRC President David Miliband said. 

He thanked Intel for its cooperation and commitment. “The work we will do together epitomizes the power of partnerships to develop the right solutions and create meaningful impact,” he said.

The IRC said more than 1.5 million refugees had arrived in Germany since 2015, seeking asylum from war, terrorism and poverty, and having little hope their lives would have improved if they stayed home.

The IRC said it has worked with the German government and civil organizations, sharing its expertise in educating refugee children and others in ways they can contribute to their new communities.
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Russian presidential hopeful Ksenia Sobchak, a Russian TV celebrity and socialite, has told VOA that the rumors are true: If her father’s old political mentor, President Vladimir Putin, were guaranteed a personally safe exit from public life, he would willingly retire from politics.

“Yes, I think [he really would retire],” she said. “It’s just hard to convince him that there’s an exit and that he can trust those people who guarantee that, and that nothing like what happened to [former Chilean dictator Augusto] Pinochet or [former Libyan dictator Moammar] Gadhafi would happen to him. He’s really afraid of that.”

Sobchak, 36, whose candidacy has been questioned by opposition activists and political observers who suspect her campaign is a Kremlin ploy to boost turnout and help Putin’s bid for another six-year term, was not the first to make this claim. Alexei Navalny, who has built a national following by railing against endemic corruption, made a similar observation several months ago.

After being barred from seeking office because of what supporters have long called politically motivated criminal charges, Navalny made the claim independent of any direct ties to Putin’s inner circle. Sobchak, however, is the first person to base the observation on personal insights into Putin’s private life.

Strategic transition

Asked whether his safety could be guaranteed without his wealthy and powerful allies remaining in power, she said his departure would require a politically strategic transition.

“The question here is about a change of the entire system, so that those people would not stay in power either,” Sobchak said. “We’re talking about politics and [a long-term] strategy, so in six years [Putin] wouldn’t think about new changes to the constitution and again take part in elections.

The objective would be “to slowly change the situation and minimize the aggression level, have new people, new talent and have a new compromise political figure that would be satisfying for the opposition, but also acceptable for Putin,” she said.

Attending several high-profile events in Washington this week, Sobchak countered skeptics, saying that her political ambitions were genuine and that they would continue well beyond the March 18 polls.

Speaking at the Center for Strategic and International Studies on Tuesday, Sobchak indicated that, among other things, she planned to meet with administration officials about U.S. economic sanctions imposed on Russia in recent years.

Washington first hit Moscow with asset freezes and travel bans in 2014, following Russia’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula and the outbreak of fighting between government forces and Russia-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine. Later measures were imposed in response to U.S. intelligence findings that Russia engaged in a campaign of hacking and propaganda to try to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

Those sanctions have continued into Donald Trump’s presidency, despite his calls for better relations with Moscow.

Division on sanctions

A law passed by Congress last summer called for new punitive measures against Russia, but last week, the State and Treasury departments declined to impose new sanctions.

Putin is widely expected to win a new six-year term in next month’s election.

Sobchak, who is one of the other candidates who will appear on the ballot, is best known for her celebrity persona and TV appearances. Her father was Anatoly Sobchak, the late mayor of St. Petersburg who brought Putin, then an unknown KGB officer, to work in the city government.

This story originated in VOA’s Russian Service.
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Chancellor Angela Merkel finally reached a deal Wednesday to form a new German coalition government, handing the powerful finance ministry to the country’s main center-left party in an agreement aimed at ending months of political gridlock.

The center-left Social Democrats’ leaders now have one last major hurdle to overcome – winning their skeptical members’ approval of the deal.

Merkel’s conservative Christian Democratic Union, its Bavaria-only sister, the Christian Social Union, and the center-left Social Democrats agreed after a grueling final 24 hours of negotiations on a 177-page deal that promises “a new awakening for Europe.”

“I know that millions of citizens have been watching us closely on this long road over recent weeks,” Merkel said. “They had two justified demands of us: First, finally form a government – a stable government – and second, think … of people’s real needs and interests.”

The coalition deal could be “the foundation of a good and stable government, which our country needs and many in the world expect of us,” she added.

Germany has already broken its post-World War II record for the longest time between its last election on Sept. 24 to the swearing-in of a new government. That is still at least several weeks away.

Merkel currently leads a caretaker government, which isn’t in a position to launch major initiatives or play any significant role in the debate on the European Union’s future, led so far by French President Emmanuel Macron.

A key role in the EU is particularly dear to Social Democrat leader Martin Schulz, a former European Parliament president.

On Wednesday he declared that, with the coalition deal, Germany “will return to an active and leading role in the European Union.” The agreement states, among other things, that Germany is prepared to pay more into the EU budget.

To help that process, Schulz announced later he would hand over his party’s leadership to Andrea Nahles, the head of its parliamentary group, and take on the role of Germany’s foreign minister. Nahles will still have to be confirmed by the party.

Yet before addressing Europe’s future, Schulz faces hard work at home.

The coalition accord will be put to a ballot of the Social Democrats’ more than 460,000 members, a process that will take a few weeks. Germany’s highest court said Wednesday it had dismissed a series of complaints against the ballot.

Many Social Democrats are skeptical after the party’s disastrous election result, which followed four years of serving as the junior partner to Merkel’s conservatives in a so-called “grand coalition.” The party’s youth wing vehemently opposes a repeat of that alliance.

If Social Democrat members say no, the new coalition government can’t be formed. That would leave only an unprecedented minority government under Merkel or a new election as options.

Schulz had previously ruled out taking a Cabinet position under Merkel, and his decision to become foreign minister may complicate his efforts to sell the coalition deal to party members.

“We are optimistic that we can convince a wide majority of our members to enter this coalition,” he said, speaking with Nahles at his side.

Schulz’s zigzag course has undermined his authority. He vowed to take the party into opposition on election night, but reversed course in November after Merkel’s efforts to build a coalition with two smaller parties collapsed.

On the conservative side, Merkel needs only the approval of a party congress of her CDU, a far lower hurdle.

“I am counting on convincing our members that we have negotiated a very good coalition agreement,” Schulz said.

His party reached compromises on two key demands: curbing the use of temporary work contracts in larger companies and at least considering narrowing differences between Germany’s public and private health insurance systems.

In addition to the Foreign Ministry, the Social Democrats are set to get the Labor and Finance Ministries – the latter a major prize, held by Merkel’s CDU for the past eight years and an influential position given Germany’s status as the eurozone’s biggest economy. Unconfirmed reports in the German media say the new finance minister and vice chancellor would be Olaf Scholz, Hamburg’s center-left mayor.

The Interior Ministry, also held by the CDU, would go to Bavaria’s CSU, which has pushed hard to curb the number of migrants entering Germany.

Merkel’s party would keep the Defense Ministry and get the Economy and Energy Ministry, held by the Social Democrats in the outgoing government. One CDU lawmaker, Olav Gutting, wrote on Twitter: “Phew! At least we still have the chancellery!”

Merkel defended the carve-up of ministries.

“Of course, after many years in which Wolfgang Schaeuble led the finance ministry and really was an institution, many find it difficult that we can no longer hold this ministry, and the same goes for the interior ministry,” she said. “But we have important jobs. We have the economy ministry for the first time in decades.”

She dismissed suggestions that Social Democrat-led ministries would force her to open Germany’s purse wider for Macron’s European reform proposals than she would like.

“Regardless of whether a ministry is led by the Social Democrats or the (Christian Democratic) Union, you can only spend the money you have,” Merkel said.

If the coalition comes together, the nationalist Alternative for Germany will be the biggest opposition party. Co-leader Alexander Gauland criticized the deal, particularly the possibility of deeper European financial integration.

“You ask yourself why Mr. Macron doesn’t just move into the chancellery,” he said.
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The United States said on Tuesday it was “deeply troubled” by Turkey’s re-arrest of the chairman of the local arm of Amnesty International, and called on its NATO ally to end its state of emergency and safeguard the rule of law.

U.S.-Turkish relations have been strained recently by a series of disagreements, especially over the Syria crisis.

Taner Kilic was one of 11 human rights activists arrested last year on what Amnesty International has said were “bogus terrorism charges.” He is the only one of the 11 still jailed after eight months in detention, the rights group said.

Kilic was conditionally released last week, but the prosecution successfully appealed the decision and he was re-arrested before he had even arrived home, Amnesty said in a statement.

U.S. State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert told a briefing the United States was “deeply troubled” by Kilic’s re-arrest on Feb. 1.

She said Washington was closely following Kilic’s case, as well as those against other human rights defenders, journalists, civil society leaders and opposition politicians detained in the state of emergency that followed a failed coup against President Tayyip Erdogan on July 15, 2016.

“We call on the Turkish government to end the protracted state of emergency, to release those detained arbitrarily under the emergency authorities and to safeguard the rule of law,” Nauert said, noting that the emergency had “chilled freedom of expression” and raised concerns about judicial independence.

In the year after the coup, Turkey arrested more than 40,000 people and fired 125,000, including many from the police, army, and judiciary. Erdogan blames the attempted coup on Fethullah Gulen, an exiled cleric and former ally based in the United States. Gulen has denied any role in the plot.

 
…

The 28-member European Union faces an aggregate of pressures, including slow economic growth, persistently high unemployment, escalating populism, a migrant wave, the threat of terrorism, and a resurgent Russia. Amid these difficulties, the future shape and character of the EU is being questioned. VOA’s Jela de Franceschi probes the topic with three veteran observers of all things Europe.
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A Paris judge on Tuesday denied bail to a controversial Swiss Muslim scholar facing rape accusations, as fresh allegations promise to further complicate one of France’s most prominent sexual assault cases to date.

Oxford University professor Tariq Ramadan, 55, was charged with rape late last week, following two French women’s accusations of brutal sexual experiences in hotel rooms years before. Ramadan was questioned for two days before being taken into custody Friday.

Swiss media have reported allegations that Ramadan had sexual relations with teenage girls at a Geneva school where he taught in the 1980s. In addition, French media have reported that police have testimonies from other women, who have not leveled charges.

The allegations first surfaced last fall, as the Harvey Weinstein scandal triggered a broader #MeToo outcry against sexual assault and harassment.

Ramadan, a married father of four, adamantly denies the charges, claiming they amount to slander from enemies intent on demolishing him. The case has stunned the Muslim world and further fueled the many critics of Ramadan, who has long been a polarizing figure in Europe.

The accusations

Both of the women pressing charges describe similar episodes — of hotel room meetings, ostensibly for religious discussions, that quickly turned into violent sexual encounters. One woman — a handicapped, 45-year-old convert to Islam using the pseudonym “Christelle” — described in interviews a particularly brutal and humiliating encounter with the scholar in the French city of Lyon in 2009.

During recent questioning, “Christelle” allegedly identified a scar on Ramadan’s groin, which he reportedly confirmed existed. She turned over a USB flash drive to investigators allegedly containing compromising text messages from Ramadan, according to Le Parisien newspaper.

But the newspaper also reported a plane reservation that, if confirmed, would show Ramadan flying from London to Lyon at about the same time the woman said the assault took place.

The second woman, Henda Ayari, a former Salifist-turned-feminist activist, went public with her accusations in October. She was the first to openly accuse Ramadan of sexual assault, earning insults and threats in the weeks that followed. Like “Christelle,” Ayari said the experience took place in a hotel in 2012.

But Ayari’s account, too, has been compromised in recent days, with reports of a man claiming she threatened to press rape charges against him in 2013 — a year after her alleged encounter with Ramadan —after he rebuffed her advances.

Beginning of the end?

Regardless of the outcome, the charges amount to a significant blow to Ramadan, once seen as an inspiration to a generation of young European Muslims. In conferences and television interviews, he preached that Islam and Europe were compatible. Still, critics claimed Ramadan, the grandson of Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood founder Hassan al-Banna, wielded a double discourse, hiding political Islam behind unifying rhetoric.

Following last fall’s allegations, Ramadan took a leave of absence from his teaching post at Oxford University. More recently, French media report that Qatar — which financed his Islamic Studies chair at Oxford — has also distanced itself from him.

“He has a real hold on his [sexual] prey, as on his faithful,” feminist writer Caroline Fourest, a longtime Ramadan foe, told Le Journal du Dimanche.

“I don’t think people realize his impact on Europe as a preacher,” she added. “He has radicalized brilliant students — young Muslims —and transformed them into vindictive paranoids. He has divided European citizens with the kind of harm that few extremists can match.”

A number of prominent Muslims have chosen to remain silent, saying they will wait for French justice to weigh in. Analysts claim Ramadan’s star was fading long before the allegations surfaced — and especially after the Arab uprisings starting in 2011.

“It’s a whole myth that is collapsing. Tariq Ramadan will have a hard time continuing his preaching career based on his personality and a discourse of religious puritanism,” Islam specialist Omero Marongui-Perria told Le Parisien.

For their part, Ramadan’s backers have launched a petition and written an open letter of support in which they denounce an alleged campaign against him carried out by French media and politicians.
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North Korea has been getting equipment and technology for its nuclear weapons program through its embassy in Berlin, Germany’s intelligence chief says.

“When we detect something of this sort, we prevent it,” BfV head Han-Georg Maassen told German public television NDR Monday. “But we can’t guarantee that we will be able to detect and thwart all cases.”

Maassen says German authorities suspect underground markets and shadow buyers got their hands on the parts and the North Koreans procured them in Germany. 

He did not say exactly what equipment the North Koreans bought, but said it is likely duel-use technology, meaning it has civilian and military purposes.

The German TV report says the North carried out its activities in Germany in 2016 and 2017, but that a North Korean diplomat tried to buy a monitor used in chemical weapons production as early as 2014.

A North Korean embassy spokesman denies the report, telling CNN it is “simply not true.”

The United Nations has imposed a series of increasingly stronger sanctions on North Korea because of its refusal to stop developing nuclear weapons and testing ballistic missiles that could carry such bombs.

But a recent U.N. report says the North earned nearly $200 million last year ignoring sanctions and exporting such goods as coal, iron, and steel.
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European Central Bank head Mario Draghi said Monday that it’s too soon to declare victory over weak inflation – indicating it would be premature to set a definite end date for the bank’s money-printing stimulus despite a strengthening economy.

Draghi’s statement to a session of the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France, said that continuing economic growth means inflation would eventually tick up toward the bank’s goal of just under 2 percent, from an annual 1.3 percent in January. 

“While our confidence that inflation will converge towards our aim of below, but close to, 2 percent has strengthened,” Draghi said, “we cannot yet declare victory on this front.”

He said that “new headwinds” had arisen from a recently stronger euro. The stronger currency can hurt exporters _ and therefore growth _ and makes it harder to raise inflation, since it reduces the costs of imports. The euro was little changed after Draghi spoke, trading around $1.242, down 0.3 percent on the day. 

Draghi offered no indication of any looming change in the bank’s statement that it would continue purchasing 30 billion euros ($37 billion) per month in bonds at least through September, and longer if necessary. The purchases pump newly created money into the economy, driving down longer-term interest rates in an effort to raise inflation and growth.

The ECB head said that “overall, while we can be more confident about the path of inflation, patience and persistence with regard to monetary policy is still warranted for underlying inflation pressures to build up and inflation to converge durably towards our objective.”

An end to the purchases would eventually mean higher long-term borrowing costs for governments and companies. The ECB’s stance is being closely watched in currency markets, which tend to send the euro higher against the dollar on any indication that the stimulus might come to an end. Monetary stimulus tends to lower a currency’s exchange rate, while interest rate increases tend to raise the exchange rate against other currencies. 

The ECB has made clear that interest rate increases will only occur well after the end of the purchases. That means the next rate increase likely won’t happen until sometime in 2019. Currently, the bank’s main benchmark interest rate is at a record low of zero.
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The United States says it is confident that both the U.S. and Russia will have honored their commitments under the bilateral Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) by the Monday deadline. 

U.S. State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert said there is good news to report on deadline day, which is also the eighth anniversary of the new Start treaty taking effect.

“The United States has met the central limits of the New Start treaty in August 2017. We assess at this time that Russia has also progressed toward meeting those limits. We have no reason to believe that the Russian government will not meet those limits as well.” 

The State Department said in a release late Sunday that both countries will exchange data on their respective nuclear arsenals “within the next month, as we have done twice per year over the last seven years in accordance with the Treaty.”

Treaty signed in 2010

The New START Treaty was signed in Prague on April 8, 2010 by then U.S. President Barack Obama and then Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and came into force on Feb. 5, 2011. 

It limits the U.S. and Russia to no more than 1,550 nuclear warheads and also limits deployed and non-deployed intercontinental ballistic missiles, heavy bombers and submarine-launched ballistic missiles. 

Under the treaty, both sides are to exchange information twice a year on the number of warheads and delivery vehicles, and are allowed to conduct on-site inspections to verify each other’s compliance.

Olga Oliker is the Director of the Russia and Eurasia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.  She told VOA the ability to deploy “boots on the ground” for inspections helps build trust.

“It limits your incentives to try to cheat, and it gives everyone also the opportunity to meet one another and to actually build relationships that are based on verifying compliance with the treaty that everyone agreed to.”

Trump calls for upgrade

At his State of the Union speech last week, President Donald Trump outlined his approach to nuclear weapons.

“We must modernize and rebuild our nuclear arsenal, hopefully never having to use it, but making it so strong and powerful that it will deter any acts of aggression. Perhaps someday in the future there will be a magical moment when the countries of the world will get together to eliminate their nuclear weapons. Unfortunately, we are not there yet.”

Experts say despite a widening rift between Moscow and Washington on Russia’s election interference, Syria, Crimea, Ukraine and other issues, the fact that both sides are still cooperating and complying with nuclear monitoring and verification is crucial to global security and stability.

Treaty is crucial

Olga Oliker says the disagreements between Washington and Moscow make the treaty even more crucial.

“I think the United States and Russia disagree on a great many things and have some interests that are very misaligned. This means all the more that we need to work to make sure that our disagreements don’t escalate and that if they do get worse, we don’t run the risk of blowing up the world many times over.”

Oliker says the New START treaty is key to global security and stability because the U.S. and Russia have about 95 percent of the world’s nuclear weapons.
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Israel’s education minister is set to visit Warsaw amid uproar over proposed legislation that would outlaw blaming Poland for crimes committed during the Holocaust.

Naftali Bennett said Monday he would “make it clear: the past can’t be rewritten, the future should be written together.”

The bill sparked outrage in Israel, raising tensions with a close ally.

It calls for up to three years in prison for any intentional attempt to falsely attribute crimes of Nazi Germany to the Polish state or people.

Israel sees it as an attempt to whitewash the role some Poles played in the killing of Jews during World War II.

Bennett noted ahead of his trip Wednesday that while thousands of Poles helped Jews during the war many others participated in their persecution.
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British officials reacted angrily Monday to President Donald Trump’s stark criticism of the U.K. health care system, which he said was breaking down.

Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt said he is proud of the National Health Service and rejected Trump’s claim that it’s collapsing.

The “NHS may have challenges but I’m proud to be from the country that invented universal coverage – where all get care no matter the size of their bank balance,” he said.

Opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn called Trump’s comments “wrong” and said Britons love the NHS.

The latest dispute between Trump and Britain started when Trump criticized Democrats and the British approach to health care in a single tweet.

“The Democrats are pushing for Universal HealthCare while thousands of people are marching in the UK because their U system is going broke and not working,” he tweeted Monday. “Dems want to greatly raise taxes for really bad and non-personal medical care. No thanks!”

His comments followed a march in London on Saturday that drew thousands of people demanding more government funding for Britain’s NHS, which has been badly overstretched this winter, in part because of a rise in severe flu cases. Emergency rooms have at times been overwhelmed, causing long waits.

The march was organized by the People’s Assembly and Health Campaigns Together group, which on Monday condemned Trump’s comments.

“We don’t agree with your divisive and incorrect rhetoric. No thanks,” the group said in a statement.

It said the marchers wanted to show their support for the principle of universal, comprehensive medical care that is free to the user and paid for through general taxation.

Trump has sought to repeal the health care law of his predecessor, Barack Obama.

Congress repealed the unpopular requirement that most Americans carry insurance or risk a tax penalty. That takes effect next year. But other major parts of the overhaul remain in place.

Trump’s relationship with Britain has been strained by his retweeting of videos by the far-right group Britain First and disagreements over his policies on climate change, immigration and other matters. Nonetheless, officials in both countries are working on plans for him to visit Britain later this year.
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Russia sentenced 43 people to jail over online posts last year, a rights group said Monday, warning that the country is slowly criminalizing internet use as the security service tightens its grip.

The Agora rights group presented a report in Moscow on “the creeping criminalization of the internet,” in which it registered 115,706 cases of restrictions on internet freedom last year.

The report said there was a rise in physical attacks and criminal convictions, with the 43 people sentenced to prison in 2017 up from 32 in 2016.

In a new trend, five people were placed in isolation in psychiatric hospitals.

A total of more than 10 million websites have been blocked in recent years, less than half of those after a court decision, said the internet rights group RosKomSvoboda.

The Agora report listed one murder and 66 cases of violence or threats of violence against bloggers and online journalists in 2017. This was the highest number since they started monitoring this issue since 2011.

Some of the measures that criminalize restrictions on internet freedom in Russia include anti-extremism and anti-separatism laws.

However the report noted a surge in convictions for “inciting terrorism”, which increased 20-fold in the last five years.

The Federal Security Service, the feared KGB successor that probes major crimes against the state, now handles a third of all cases relating to freedom of expression on the internet — up from just 16 percent in 2015.

“The role of the FSB is growing significantly. De facto it is becoming the main controller of the Russian internet, both technologically and as the main repressive organ,” the report said.

 
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Cyprus President Nicos Anastasiades won reelection to second five-year term Sunday, promising to continue economic recovery and the island’s reunification efforts.

The conservative Anastasiades beat his leftist challenger Stavros Malas 56 to 44 percent. The two also faced-off in the 2013 election.

“I will continue to be president for all Cypriots,” Anastasiades told cheering supporters in Nicosia. “Tonight, there are no winners of losers. There is only a Cyprus for all of us.”

Malas told his backers they can be disappointed, but said “the battle” does not begin or end with a single election. He said he telephoned Anastasiades and told him to “take care of our Cyprus.”

Anastasiades is credited with helping the Greek Cypriot economy bounce back from a severe recession that required a bailout from the European Union and International Monetary Fund.

But there has been little progress in U.N.-sponsored reunification talks with the Turkish Cypriot north.

Anastasiades promises to resist Turkish demands to keep a military presence on a reunified Cyprus and continue oil and gas exploration off the Greek Cypriot coast – an enterprise that also angers Turkish Cypriots.

Cyprus has been split between a Greek Cypriot south and Turkish Cypriot north since 1974, when Turkish forces invaded in response to a military coup aimed at unifying the entire island with Greece.

Only Turkey recognizes an independent northern Cyprus while the southern half enjoys international recognition and the economic benefits of EU membership.
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Tens of thousands of demonstrators marched in Athens Sunday to protest a potential compromise between Greece and Macedonia over a long-standing name dispute.

Police estimated a crowd size of about 140,000, while organizers of the march claimed 1.5 million people from Greece and the Greek diaspora gathered to urge the government against brokering a deal regarding neighboring Macedonia’s official name.

“The million protesters that the organizers imagined was wishful thinking,” Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras said in a statement released by his office.

“The crushing majority of Greek people conclude that foreign policy issues should not be dealt with with fanaticism.”

Greece and Macedonia have been feuding over who gets to use the name since Macedonia’s independence from Yugoslavia in 1991. Many Greeks say allowing the neighboring country to use the name insults Greek history and implies a claim on the Greek territory also known as Macedonia — a key province in Alexander the Great’s ancient empire.

Greece has blocked Macedonian efforts to join the European Union and NATO because of the name dispute. The country of Macedonia is officially known at the U.N. as the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.

But Tsipras, a leftist, has been open to negotiating a compromise in the 27-year dispute, sparking protests in both nations.

Macedonian Prime Minister Zoran Zaev said in recent weeks his country would rename an airport and a major road after Alexander the Great “to demonstrate, in practice, that we are committed to finding a solution.”

 
…

After nearly two years in solitary confinement at a maximum security jail, the top surviving suspect of the deadliest terror attack in recent French history goes on trial Monday in Brussels.

The four-day trial of 28-year-old Salah Abdeslam will not deal directly with the November 2015 attacks that killed 130 people around Paris, but rather a shootout with police months later. But it is being closely watched, in hopes it may shed insight into the tangle of alliances and events that link the Paris attacks with the March 2016 attacks on the Brussels airport and metro.

The trial may turn on whether Abdeslam, who has remained silent for months under round-the clock prison watch, will finally talk or even make a courtroom appearance.

“Will he say anything more than he has said?” asks Rik Coolsaet, a longtime terrorism expert and senior fellow at the Egmont Institute, a Brussels-based research group. “If he doesn’t, I’m afraid the trial will not make things much clearer about his involvement either in the Brussels or in the November attacks in Paris.”

The trial directly deals with a March 2016 shootout with Belgian police that took place days before Abdeslam was arrested, after months on the run. He and accomplice Sofiane Ayari face attempted murder charges.

Much still unknown

Abdeslam’s case comes amid a changing terror landscape in Europe. With the Islamist State group beaten back in Syria and Iraq, the focus is now on returning radicals and those leaving European prisons in the not-too-distant future. The Brussels trial is one of many expected during the coming months and years dealing with recent terrorist attacks across the region.

But while the trials may shed light on the past, “they won’t inform us much about the future threats and challenges,” analyst Coolsaet says. “We are living in a kind of post-ISIS era, in which the threat has been transformed from organized networks of plots and attacks to lone actors.”

A former pot-smoking petty criminal who once ran a bar in the Molenbeek neighborhood of Brussels with his brother Brahim, who blew himself up in the Paris attacks, Abdeslam seems an unlikely jihadist. His Belgian lawyer, Sven Mary, once characterized him as a ‘little jerk from Molenbeek’ with the “intelligence of an empty ashtray.”

Yet Abdeslam is believed to have played a key logistical role in preparing the attacks. He allegedly organized safe houses, drove across Europe to pick up other suspects, and dropped off three suicide bombers to the Stade de France soccer stadium outside Paris, where they blew themselves up during a France-Germany game.

The stadium attack was the first in a string of shootings and bombings that took place across Paris on a warm November evening. The terrorists targeted bars, restaurants and the Bataclan concert hall before blowing themselves up or being shot dead by police.

But Abdeslam escaped, sneaking across the French border into Belgium the following day with the help of friends. Recent evidence shows his suicide vest was defective, although it remains unclear whether he intended to trigger it.

After a four-month manhunt, he was finally caught in the Molenbeek neighborhood where he grew up, just days after the shootout with police, who were investigating a suspected safe house they originally thought was unoccupied.

Days later, three bomb attacks on Brussels airport and the Maalbeek metro station killed 32 people. The suspected killers were closely tied to the Paris attackers. Abdeslam, who initially talked during interrogations, and gave misleading information, has kept silent since.

His silence ultimately led both Belgian lawyer Mary and Abdeslam’s French lawyer Franck Berton to give up his defense a few months later. Berton blamed the round-the-clock surveillance for eroding Abdeslam’s mental stability, and warned his former client was “radicalizing in an extreme fashion.” In December, Abdeslam finally tapped Mary to resume his defense for the Brussels trial.

Many questions remain about the Brussels and Paris attacks, among them the whereabouts of onetime Syrian jihadist and suspected coordinator Oussama Atar. An international arrest warrant is still out for Atar who, like Abdeslam, is a Belgian national of Moroccan extraction (although Atar is bi-national). He is also the cousin of two of the Brussels suicide bombers.

The French and Belgian attacks were only the beginning of several killings across Europe that targeted Germany, Britain, Spain and the French Riviera city of Nice. Last month, the first trial relating to the 2015 Paris attacks opened in the French capital. Three suspects are charged with assisting or being aware of the assailants’ whereabouts.

Changing threat

But the geopolitical landscape has changed dramatically in the interim. With IS weakened, terrorists in Europe cannot count on the same kind of extensive backing as the Paris and Brussels assailants once did, analysts say.

European jihadists are also coming home, although in fewer numbers than earlier feared. “Returnees are not coming back here en masse, and that’s for the whole of Europe,” says terrorist expert Coolsaet. “Either they’re fighting to death, or they’re being imprisoned.”

Yet other threats remain. That includes in overcrowded prisons which critics claim have long been breeding grounds for terrorists.

For survivors and victims’ families, the Paris attacks remain painfully present. Jean-Francois Mondeguer lost his daughter Lamia, killed in a hail of gunfire as she was dining with her boyfriend at an outdoor cafe. Mondeguer is part of a survivors’ group called “November 13, Brotherhood and Truth.”

Before leaving for Brussels to attend Abdeslam’s trial, Mondeguer said, “I’m not angry with him, I don’t hate him, but I will never forgive him. What we want to find out is what exactly happened on November 13.”

 
…

Turkish guards at the border with Syria are indiscriminately shooting at and summarily returning asylum seekers attempting to cross into Turkey, Human Rights Watch said.

A senior Turkish government official denied the report Saturday, repeating that Turkey had taken in 3.5 million war refugees since the Syrian conflict began in 2011.

New York-based Human Rights Watch said Syrians were now fleeing heightened violence in the northwestern province of Idlib to seek refuge near Turkey’s border, which remains closed to all but critical medical cases.

Syrian armed forces have thrust deeper into the mainly rebel-held province in recent months, and Turkey last month launched military action in the nearby Afrin region, targeting Kurdish YPG militia fighters.

“Syrians fleeing to the Turkish border seeking safety and asylum are being forced back with bullets and abuse,” Lama Fakih, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch, said.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s spokesman, Ibrahim Kalin, when asked about the HRW statement, told reporters that Turkish soldiers were there to protect these people and that Ankara has had an “open-door policy” since the start of Syria’s civil war in 2011.

A senior government official later told Reuters: “There has been absolutely no case of civilians being fired upon at the border.”

HRW cited U.N. figures saying 247,000 Syrians were displaced to the border area between December 15 and January 15.

“As fighting in Idlib and Afrin displaces thousands more, the number of Syrians trapped along the border willing to risk their lives to reach Turkey is only likely to increase,” Fakih said.

In the latest fighting in Afrin, five Turkish soldiers were killed Saturday when their tank was hit in an attack carried out by YPG fighters, Turkey’s armed forces said.

Under fire

Of 16 Syrian refugees HRW spoke to, 13 alleged that Turkish border guards had shot toward them or other fleeing asylum seekers as they tried to cross while still in Syria, killing 10 people, including one child, and injuring several more.

Turkey has taken in more Syrian refugees than any other country, granting many temporary protection status and providing them with basic services, including medical care and education.

“However, Turkey’s generous hosting of large numbers of Syrians does not absolve it of its responsibility to help those seeking protection at its borders,” the HRW statement added.

It said Erdogan’s government should issue standard instructions to border guards at all crossing points that lethal force must not be used against asylum seekers and that no asylum seeker is to be mistreated.
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Russian oligarchs suspected of corruption will be forced to explain their wealth in Britain, The Times newspaper reported on February 3, quoting the security minister.
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Poland is seeing a resurgence of anti-Semitism over pending legislation that would impose jail terms for suggestions that the nation was complicit in the

Holocaust, local minority groups warned, as pressure mounts on the president to veto the bill.

Parliament passed the measure Thursday, drawing outrage from Israel, U.S. criticism and condemnation from a number of international organizations. President Andrzej Duda has 21 days to decide whether to sign it into law.

The bill would impose prison sentences of up to three years for mentioning the term “Polish death camps” and for suggesting “publicly and against the facts” complicity on the part of the Polish nation or state in Nazi Germany’s crimes.

More than 3 million of Poland’s 3.2 million Jews were killed by the Nazis, accounting for about half of the Jews killed in the Holocaust. Jews from across Europe were sent to be killed at death camps built and operated by the Germans on Polish soil, including Auschwitz, Treblinka, Belzec and Sobibor.

According to figures from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Nazis also killed at least 1.9 million non-Jewish Polish civilians.

In a rare show of unity, Polish minority and ethnic groups, including Jewish, Ukrainian and Russian, urged Duda and other authorities to counteract all forms of xenophobia, intolerance and anti-Semitism, although they did not directly call on the president to veto the bill.

“Our particular concern and objection is caused by the numerous and loud manifestations of anti-Semitism that we have been witnessing this week after the [parliament] passed [the Holocaust bill],” the groups said in a statement.

Painful debate

Poland, which has gone through a painful public debate in recent years after the publication of research showing some Poles participated in the Nazi atrocities, has long sought to discourage use of the term “Polish camps” to refer to Nazi camps on its territory, arguing that the phrase implies complicity.

On Saturday, German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel said the use of the phrase “Polish death camps” was wrong.

“There is not the slightest doubt as to who was responsible for the extermination camps, operated them and murdered millions of European Jews there: namely Germans,” Gabriel said in a statement.

Israeli officials said the legislation criminalizes basic historical facts. The country’s Foreign Ministry said Thursday that Israel “adamantly opposes” the bill’s approval as a whole.

The Israeli Embassy in Warsaw said late Friday that Israel did not oppose Poland’s fight to assure that the phrase “Polish death camps” is never used.

“We would like to use this opportunity to repeat that Israel stands with Poland in using the proper term for the death camps — German Nazi camps,” the embassy said in its statement.

The embassy also said that it had received “a wave of anti-Semitic statements” in the past week.

Poland is one of the most ethnically and religiously homogenous countries in Europe, but before World War II, Jews made up 10 percent of the population and the country also had large Ukrainian, German, Belarussian and other minorities.

Poland’s ruling party, the socially conservative PiS, has reignited debate on the Holocaust as part of a campaign to fuel patriotism since sweeping into power in 2015.

The party says the bill is needed to protect Poland’s reputation and ensure historians recognize that Poles as well as Jews were victims of the Nazis.

Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the chairman of the PiS and the country’s de facto leader, told public radio Jedynka on Saturday that Poland rejected “anti-Semitism very radically.”

“But we are also a sovereign state and we have a duty to start, because this is only the beginning, the fight against … this great defamatory campaign against Poland, namely, insulting Poland, blaming us for someone else’s actions.”

Free speech

Critics of the bill have raised concerns it will curb free speech and could be used against Holocaust survivors or historians.

A U.S. congressional task force on combating anti-Semitism and a number of Jewish groups urged Duda to veto the bill.

The International Auschwitz Council, an advisory body to the office of the Polish prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, said Friday that the bill’s imprecision raised “legitimate concerns about restricting freedom in discovering the truth about the Holocaust.”

Duda has not said whether he will sign the bill, but his spokesman told the Polish state radio Trojka: “The president believes that Poland, as any other country, has the right to defend its good name … has the right to defend the truth.”

Kaczynski said that Duda should sign the law.

“We must talk to our allies in a way that would allow them to understand that we have no intention of renouncing our dignity,” he said.
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Greek Cypriots are gearing up for a presidential runoff Sunday, barely seven months after the latest failure to reunify the eastern Mediterranean island nation of Cyprus.

President Nicos Anastasiades is looking to reprise his triumph over left-leaning Stavros Malas in 2013 when the two men faced each other. Earlier polls had shown Anastasiades beating Malas convincingly in Sunday’s runoff, but Malas’ strong showing in last weekend’s first round of voting might make it a closer race.

Voters are skeptical about whether anyone can lead them out of the labyrinth of the decades-old division with Turkish Cypriots.

Cyprus was divided into a Greek-speaking south and a Turkish-speaking north in 1974 when Turkey invaded following a coup by supporters of union with Greece. Only Turkey recognizes a Turkish Cypriot declaration of independence and keeps more than 35,000 troops in the north.

Anastasiades, 71, who says it will be his last term in office if re-elected, is counting on his track record of turning the economy around after a 2013 financial crisis that saw unemployment soar and salaries slashed. He has also been trumpeting his role in steering peace talks with breakaway Turkish Cypriots further than anyone else since the 1974 split.

By contrast, the 50-year-old Malas is hoping his relative youth will strike a chord with the 550,000 eligible voters, many of whom are disillusioned by the acrimonious breakdown of the latest round of peace talks and years of economic uncertainty that’s shaken the confidence of the middle class.

Anastasiades and Malas secured 35.5 and 35.2 percent of the vote, respectively, in the first round, setting up potentially a tighter than anticipated final vote.
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