DENPASAR, Indonesia: A British former war correspondent will be released from a Bali prison in a matter of months after being handed a short jail term Thursday for using hashish on the Indonesian resort island.
Ex-Reuters journalist David Fox, 55, was found guilty of drug use at a court in the Balinese capital Denpasar after being caught with a few grams of hash, and given a seven-month jail term.
His sentence will be reduced by time already served in detention since his arrest in October with an Australian businessman, meaning he should be released in May.
Fox, who said he used hashish to relieve stress caused by covering conflict, could have been jailed for several years for breaking Indonesia’s tough anti-drugs laws which include the death penalty for traffickers.
But prosecutors praised him for politeness and admitting wrongdoing during his trial. Fox admitted he became addicted to the drug to deal with post-traumatic stress from war reporting and vowed never to use it again.
He worked for Reuters for over 20 years and covered conflicts and natural disasters in countries including Bosnia, Rwanda, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq. He left the agency in 2011.
After the verdict was handed down, Fox said he felt “relieved.”
“I’m very very grateful, I think the court recognized the circumstances of my peculiar case,” he told reporters.
Chief Judge Erwin Djong told the court that Fox was “legally and convincingly proven guilty of committing... the crime of unlawful use of narcotics” as he handed down the jail term.
Djong added the sentence would be reduced by the time that Fox had already served in detention.
It was lower than the one year recommended by prosecutors at an earlier hearing.
The Briton was detained on the resort island, where he had been living for several years, after the arrest of Australian Giuseppe Serafino, who runs a bar on Bali.
Authorities raided the house of Serafino, 49, after a tip-off from local residents that a foreigner living there had been using drugs.
Police found about 7 grams (quarter of an ounce) of hashish in the house and Serafino named Fox as someone who helped him buy the drugs.
Authorities then detained Fox and found 10 grams of hashish in the Briton’s pocket and at his house. Serafino is also on trial and will be sentenced next week.
Jakarta has sparked global outrage by hauling an increasing number of foreign drug convicts before the firing squad over the past two years.
Foreigners are regularly arrested for drugs offenses on Bali, which attracts millions of visitors to its palm-fringed beaches every year.
UK ex-war reporter jailed in Bali drugs case
UK ex-war reporter jailed in Bali drugs case
Belarus frees 10 political prisoners but 1,400 remain, rights group says
Human rights group Viasna said it knew of three women and seven men who had been freed
MINSK: Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko has freed at least 10 political prisoners, rights campaigners said on Thursday, including a veteran opposition figure suffering from cancer.
But the rare pardon still leaves some 1,400 people behind bars for political activity, most of them arrested after peaceful mass protests in 2020 and convicted on a range of charges related to alleged extremism.
Human rights group Viasna said it knew of three women and seven men who had been freed.
The only one named so far by relatives is Ryhor Kastusiou, 67, a former opposition party leader and presidential candidate. He was arrested in 2021 and sentenced the following year to 10 years in a penal colony after being convicted of plotting against the government to seize power. Following his arrest, he was diagnosed with cancer.
Activists said their happiness at the releases was bitter-sweet.
“This is a very great joy, of course, almost childlike. But it is joy through tears — there is anger too for what people have to go through,” said Inna Kovalenok, a representative of a relatives’ group that campaigns for the release of prisoners.
Andrei Stryzhak, head of an organization called Bysol that raises funds to support political prisoners and their families, said it was a delusion to think the authorities had become more humane.
“To believe that something has suddenly changed in the minds of those who torture, rape and kill for the sake of maintaining power is a dangerous fantasy bordering on treason and crime,” he posted on Telegram.
Lukashenko, a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, this week announced an amnesty to mark the 80th anniversary of Belarus’s liberation from the Nazis in World War Two. State news agency Belta said it was expected to apply to about 7,850 prisoners including minors, pregnant women, pensioners and people suffering from tuberculosis or cancer.
Those convicted of crimes against the state or extremist and terrorist activities were excluded, but Lukashenko signalled there would be some exceptions for those who were seriously ill.
Lukashenko, in power since 1994, staged a violent crackdown in 2020 to suppress mass protests following an election that the opposition and Western governments said he had heavily rigged.
Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, who ran against him in that election and now leads the opposition in exile, welcomed the release of some prisoners but said more were still being detained.
“Political trials & arrests continue without a break in #Belarus,” Tsikhanouskaya posted on X. “Repression doesn’t stop for a day & we won’t stop our fight for freedom.”
Tsikhanouskaya’s husband Syarhei is among the best known prisoners, along with Nobel Peace Prize winner Ales Bialiatski and Maria Kolesnikova, a protest leader who tore up her passport in September 2020 to thwart the security services from expelling her from the country by forcing her to cross into Ukraine.
Sweden says three citizens given death sentences in Iraq over shooting
- Sweden does not have the death penalty and opposes its use in all circumstances
STOCKHOLM: Three Swedish citizens have been sentenced to death in Iraq over their involvement in a shooting and a fourth may also face the same punishment over a separate crime, the Swedish foreign ministry said on Thursday.
The government summoned Iraq’s charge d’affaires last month to protest the death sentence against one of the three involved in the shooting.
Sweden does not have the death penalty and opposes its use in all circumstances.
The foreign ministry said it had now received confirmation that two more Swedes have been convicted in relation to the same crime, and received the death penalty.
“The information we have received on the death penalties is extremely serious and we are working to ensure the sentences will not be carried out,” the foreign ministry said in an emailed statement.
In June, the Daily Aftonbladet reported that the men had been involved in the shooting of another Swedish citizen in Iraq in January.
The ministry said it had received a report that a fourth Swede was given a death sentence for a different, drug-related crime, but that it could not confirm the information.
Germany summons Turkish ambassador over right-wing ‘wolf’ goal celebration
- Turkish football player’s “wolf salute” goal celebration considered by Germany as racist due to its far-right associations
BERLIN: Turkiye’s ambassador to Germany has been summoned over a Turkish football player’s “wolf salute” goal celebration, the German foreign ministry said on Thursday, ramping up a diplomatic spat amid reports that Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan will come to Berlin this weekend.
European soccer’s governing body UEFA opened an investigation into the Turkish center back Merih Demiral’s celebration after scoring in a Tuesday evening European Championship match. Germany condemned the gesture as racist due to its far-right associations.
Turkiye’s foreign ministry said UEFA’s probe was unacceptable and that German authorities’ approach to Demiral “involved xenophobia.”
The ministry had summoned Germany’s ambassador to Ankara over the dispute, a Turkish diplomatic source said on Wednesday.
German and Turkish media reported on Thursday that Erdogan now planned to come to Berlin on Saturday for Turkiye’s game against the Netherlands.
Erdogan changed his schedule to attend the game, NTV and other Turkish media reported on Thursday.
He was scheduled to attend a summit of Organization of Turkic States (OTS) in Azerbaijan on Saturday.
The gesture made by the player is linked to the “Grey Wolves,” an ultra-nationalist youth branch of Turkiye’s Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), an ally of Erdogan’s ruling AK Party.
The wolf salute is not banned in Germany.
However, German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said on X that “using the European Football Championship as a platform for racism is completely unacceptable.”
France to deploy more police to prevent trouble after Sunday election
- Sunday’s second round will determine whether Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally (RN) secures a parliamentary majority
PARIS: Some 30,000 police will be deployed across France late on Sunday following the high-stakes runoff of a parliamentary election to ensure there is no trouble, a minister said, as two candidates said they had been victims of attacks on the campaign trail.
Sunday’s second round will determine whether Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally (RN) secures a parliamentary majority for the first time and forms the next government in France, the euro zone’s second-largest economy.
The campaign has been marred by political tensions but also some violence, and government spokeswoman Prisca Thevenot said she and her team had been attacked by a small group of youths on Wednesday evening while out putting up campaign posters.
While Thevenot herself was not harmed, her deputy and a party activist were injured by the unidentified group of about 10 youths who were defacing campaign posters, Thevenot told Le Parisien newspaper.
An RN candidate in Savoie, Marie Dauchy, also said she had been attacked by a shopkeeper at a market on Wednesday.
Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said four people had been arrested in relation to the attack on Thevenot’s team.
Darmanin said he would be “very careful” about security on Sunday evening, when the election’s results will be announced.
Some 5,000 of the 30,000 police deployed that evening will be located in Paris and its surroundings, and they will “ensure that the radical right and radical left do not take advantage of the situation to cause mayhem,” he told France 2 TV.
A poll on Wednesday suggested efforts by mainstream parties to block the far right from reaching an absolute majority might work.
The Harris Interactive poll for Challenges magazine showed the anti-immigration, euroskeptic RN and its allies would get just 190 to 220 seats in the 577-strong assembly, while the center-right Republicans (LR) would win 30 to 50 seats. This could rule out the possibility of a far-right minority government supported by part of the LR parliamentary group.
The poll was published after more than 200 candidates across the political spectrum withdrew their candidacies to clear the path for whoever was best placed to defeat the RN candidate in their district, in a process known as the “republican front.”
However, much uncertainty remains, including whether voters will go along with these efforts to block the RN.
Russian court keeps Frenchman accused of gathering military data in custody
- Vinatier was shown last month on state TV being arrested in a central Moscow restaurant by masked FSB officers
MOSCOW: A Russian court on Thursday ruled to keep Laurent Vinatier, a French researcher accused of illegally gathering military information, in pre-trial detention until Aug. 5, the press service of Moscow’s courts said.
Vinatier, an expert on the former Soviet Union with long experience of working in Russia, faces charges of illegally acquiring sensitive Russian military information that could benefit foreign intelligence services. The offense carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison.
On Wednesday, Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) said that Vinatier, 47, had pleaded guilty during questioning.
Vinatier was quoted by the state RIA news agency on Thursday as telling his appeal hearing that he had never acted against Russia, a country he was cited as saying he loved.
“I love Russia. My wife is Russian, my friends are all in Moscow. My life is connected with Russia,” RIA cited him as telling the court via video link.
Vinatier was shown last month on state TV being arrested in a central Moscow restaurant by masked FSB officers.
The arrest of Vinatier, who joins a growing number of Western citizens detained in Russia, was seen by Western diplomats as a signal to French President Emmanuel Macron who has repeatedly urged European leaders to step up their support for Ukraine as Russian forces advance.
Macron has denied that Vinatier, an employee of the Center for Humanitarian Dialogue (HD), a Swiss-based conflict mediation group, worked for the French state.
He has described the arrest as part of a disinformation campaign by Moscow and called on Russia to free Vinatier.
