JAKARTA: Nearly 10,000 Indonesian Muslims staged a demonstration outside the Myanmar Embassy in central Jakarta on Wednesday to protest the violent crackdown against Rohingya Muslims.
The protesters also urged Indonesia to sever its bilateral ties with Myanmar.
Police had put up barbed wires around the embassy perimeter to prevent the protesters from getting closer to its building in the upscale Menteng area while traffic was rerouted as a precautionary measure.
Jakarta police spokesman Argo Yuwono told Arab News at the rally that security had been stepped up around the embassy since last week.
Protesters held a moment of prayers for the victims of the ongoing military crackdown. Others were seen smacking on an effigy that donned a mask of Ashin Wirathu, the hard-line Buddhist monk. Some of the protesters demanded the police to take down the Myanmar flag from the embassy compound. They also burned Myanmar flags.
Ade Bhakti, executive director of the Jakarta-based Center for Radicalism and Deradicalization Studies, who was observing the rally, told Arab News that the Rohingya issue “is fluid and touches upon various elements in Indonesia.”
Indonesian Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi, meanwhile, concluded her two-country diplomatic trip in Dhaka to seek solutions to the Rohingya refugee crisis. Marsudi arrived in Dhaka earlier in the day after visiting Myanmar on Monday.
In Myanmar, she held talks with State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyi, National Security Adviser U Thaung Tun, Myanmar Armed Forces Commander-in-Chief Senior Gen. U Min Aung Hlaing and two other ministers. The talks were aimed at easing tension in Rakhine state and boosting humanitarian aid to communities affected by the conflict.
Marsudi also held bilateral talks with her Bangladeshi counterpart Mahmood Ali and representatives of UN refugee agency UNHCR and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) in Dhaka.
During her meeting with Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, Marsudi said she conveyed Indonesia’s appreciation of Bangladesh for coping with a massive influx of Rohingya refugees into its territory.
“In accordance with President Joko Widodo’s directives, Indonesia is offering support to the Bangladeshi government to ease its burden in handling this humanitarian crisis,” Marsudi said in a video statement from Dhaka, made available to journalists in Indonesia by the Foreign Ministry on late Tuesday.
She said Sheikh Hasina welcomed Indonesia’s gesture to support Bangladesh in tackling the refugee crisis. The Indonesian ambassador in Dhaka will hold a follow-up meeting with Bangladeshi authorities to discuss more details on Indonesia’s role, the minister added.
During her bilateral talks, Marsudi said Ali briefed her about the challenges faced by the refugee camps. She said the representatives of UNHCR and IOM confirmed those challenges during her talks with them.
It was Marsudi’s second visit to Bangladesh to address the Rohingya crisis that has caused tension on both sides of the border.
In December 2016, she met Ali to promote communications between Bangladesh and Myanmar. The two foreign ministers then visited the Kutupalong refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar.
During her meeting with Suu Kyi on Monday, Marsudi proposed 4+1 formula to end to the humanitarian crisis in Rakhine state.
Marsudi also described her trip to Myanmar and Bangladesh as “marathon diplomacy for humanity.”
The minister said her Dutch, Iranian, and British counterparts had contacted her during the course of her trip to express their support for Indonesia’s diplomatic efforts to address the Rohingya crisis.
Rohingya crisis: Indonesia offers to ease Bangladesh’s burden
Rohingya crisis: Indonesia offers to ease Bangladesh’s burden
UK’s Met Police refers itself to watchdog over Al-Fayed probes
- Two women have complained about the police's handling of investigations into alleged sexual abuse by the late Harrods owner Mohamed Al-Fayed
LONDON: The UK’s Metropolitan Police on Friday referred itself to the police watchdog following complaints from two women over its handling of investigations into alleged sexual abuse by late Harrods owner Mohamed Al-Fayed.
The complaints, referred to the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC), involve investigations from 2008 and 2013.
They revolve around the quality of the police response and, in the case of the 2013 probe, how details came to be disclosed publicly.
“In recent weeks, two victims-survivors have come forward with concerns about how their allegations were handled when first reported, and it is only appropriate that the IOPC assess these complaints,” said Stephen Clayman, from the Met’s Specialist Crime team.
“Although we cannot change the past, we are resolute in our goal to offer every individual who contacts us the highest standard of service and support,” he added.
More than 400 women and witnesses have come forward in the past six weeks alleging sexual misconduct by Fayed, who died in August last year aged 94.
The allegations follow the airing of a BBC documentary in September that detailed multiple claims of rape and sexual assault by the former owner of the upmarket London department store.
The Justice for Harrods Survivors group said it had received 421 inquiries, mainly related to the store but also regarding Fulham football club, the Ritz Hotel in Paris and other Fayed entities.
The Met said Friday that it was “actively reviewing 21 allegations reported to the Metropolitan Police prior to Mohamed Al-Fayed’s passing... to determine if any additional investigative steps are available or there are things we could have done better.”
India’s Naga separatists threaten to resume violence after decades-long truce
- “The violent confrontation between India and Nagalim shall be purely on account of the deliberate betrayal and breach of commitment by India and its leadership to honor the letter and spirit of Framework Agreement of 2015,” he said
GUWAHATI, India: An armed separatist group in a remote northeast Indian state on Friday threatened to “resume violent armed resistance” after nearly three decades of ceasefire, accusing New Delhi of failing to honor promises in earlier agreements.
The Naga insurgency, India’s oldest, is aimed at creating a separate homeland of Nagalim that unites parts of India’s mountainous northeast with areas of neighboring Myanmar for ethnic Naga people. About 20,000 people have died in the conflict since it began in 1947.
A ceasefire between the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (Isak-Muivah), a leading separatist group, and Indian security forces has held since it was enforced in 1997 and the group signed an agreement with New Delhi in 2015 toward striking a resolution on their demands.
BACKGROUND
A ceasefire between the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (Isak-Muivah), a leading separatist group, and Indian security forces has held since it was enforced in 1997.
But talks have stagnated since and in a statement Friday, the group’s chief, Thuingaleng Muivah, accused India of “betrayal of the letter and spirit” of the 2015 agreement.
India’s Interior Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Muivah’s remarks.
In a statement, Muivah urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s federal government to “respect and honor” the 2015 agreement, which he said “officially recognized and acknowledged” the right to a sovereign flag and constitution for the separatists.
Muivah proposed a “third party intervention” to resolve the impasse, threatening that it would resume violence if “such a political initiative was rejected.”
“The violent confrontation between India and Nagalim shall be purely on account of the deliberate betrayal and breach of commitment by India and its leadership to honor the letter and spirit of Framework Agreement of 2015,” he said.
“India and its leadership shall be held responsible for the catastrophic and adverse situation that will arise out of the violent armed conflict between India and Nagalim,” he said.
Comoros arrests suspected key smuggler
- The International Organization for Migration said on Monday that at least 25 people died after the boat was “deliberately capsized by traffickers”
MORONI, Comoros: Police in the Comoros said on Friday they had arrested the alleged leader of a smuggling network involved in the capsizing of a migrant boat that claimed around two dozen lives.
The boat sank on a well-known smuggling route between the Comoros island of Anjouan and the French Indian Ocean archipelago of Mayotte on Nov. 1.
“The smuggling ringleader who owned the capsized boat was arrested on Thursday in Anjouan,” Col. Tachfine Ahmed said.
“He admitted that he owned the boat and bought all the material needed for the trip,” he added, saying the 37-year-old suspect was a resident of Mayotte.
The International Organization for Migration said on Monday that at least 25 people died after the boat was “deliberately capsized by traffickers.”
The Comoros police said they knew of 17 deaths.
Fishermen rescued five survivors who said the boat was carrying around 30 people, including women and young children, the IOM said.
A survivor said the smugglers sank the vessel before fleeing on a speedboat.
Police confirmed the survivor’s account, saying the two smugglers escaped.
“We are actively looking for the two smugglers who got on another boat,” the colonel added.
In addition to homicide charges, the arrested suspect faces up to 10 years imprisonment for belonging to an organized criminal group as well as three years for illegal transport of passengers.
Anjouan is one of three islands in the nation of Comoros, located around 70 km northwest of Mayotte, which became a department of France in 2011.
Despite being France’s poorest department, Mayotte has French infrastructure and welfare, which makes it attractive to migrants from Comoros seeking a better life.
Many pay smugglers to make the dangerous sea crossing in rickety fishing boats known as “kwassa-kwassa.”
UK court awards Manchester bomb victims £45,000 over hoax claims
- Martin Hibbert and his daughter Eve sued Richard Hall over claims made in videos and a book that they were “crisis actors“
- Judge Karen Steyn called Hall’s behavior “a negligent, indeed reckless, abuse of media freedom”
LONDON: Two survivors of the 2017 bomb attack at an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester, England, on Friday won £45,000 ($58,000) in damages from a former TV producer who claimed the attack was a hoax.
Martin Hibbert and his daughter Eve sued Richard Hall over claims made in videos and a book that they were “crisis actors” employed by the state as part of an elaborate deception.
Hibbert sustained a spinal cord injury in the attack, and his daughter suffered severe brain damage.
Hall argued that he was acting in the public interest by filming Hibbert’s daughter outside her home, but the High Court in London agreed with Hibbert’s claim for harassment.
Judge Karen Steyn called Hall’s behavior “a negligent, indeed reckless, abuse of media freedom” and on Friday ordered him to pay Hibbert and his daughter each £22,500 in damages.
Hall must also pay 90 percent of their legal costs, currently estimated at £260,000.
“The claimants are both vulnerable. The allegations are serious and distressing,” said the judge.
Jonathan Price, lawyer for the claimants, said that Hall “insisted that the terrorist attack in which the claimants were catastrophically injured did not happen and that the claimants were participants or ‘crisis actors’ in a state-orchestrated hoax, who had repeatedly, publicly and egregiously lied to the public for monetary gain.”
Hibbert welcomed the ruling, adding: “I want this case to open up the door for change, and for it to protect others from what we have been put through.
“It proves and has highlighted... that there is protection within the law, and it sends out a message to conspiracy theorists that you cannot ignore all acceptable evidence and harass innocent people.”
Islamic extremist Salman Abedi, aided by his brother, Hashem Abedi, killed 22 people and injured 1,017 during the suicide bombing at the end of the concert by the US singer.
Justice Department brings criminal charges in Iranian murder-for-hire plan targeting Donald Trump
- Shakeri is at large and remains in Iran
- Two other men were arrested on charges that Shakeri recruited them to follow and kill prominent Iranian-American journalist Masih Alinejad
WASHINGTON: The Justice Department on Friday disclosed an Iranian murder-for-hire plot to kill Donald Trump, charging a man who said he had been tasked by a government official before this week’s election with planning the assassination of the Republican president-elect.
Investigators learned of the plan to kill Trump from Farhad Shakeri, an accused Iranian government asset who spent time in American prisons for robbery and who authorities say maintains a network of criminal associates enlisted by Tehran for surveillance and murder-for-hire plots.
Shakeri told investigators that a contact in Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard instructed him this past September to set aside other work he was doing and assemble a plan within seven days to surveil and ultimately kill Trump, according to a criminal complaint unsealed in federal court in Manhattan.
The official was quoted by Shakeri as saying that “We have already spent a lot of money” and that “money’s not an issue.” Shakeri told investigators the official told him that if he could not put together a plan within the seven-day timeframe, then the plot would be paused until after the election because the official assumed Trump would lose and that it would be easier to kill him then, the complaint said.
Shakeri is at large and remains in Iran. Two other men were arrested on charges that Shakeri recruited them to follow and kill prominent Iranian-American journalist Masih Alinejad, who has endured multiple Iranian murder-for-hire plots foiled by law enforcement.
“I’m very shocked,” said Alinejad, speaking by telephone to The Associated Press from Berlin, where she was about to attend a ceremony to mark the anniversary of the tearing down of the wall. “This is the third attempt against me and that’s shocking.”
In a post on the social media platform X, she said: “I came to America to practice my First Amendment right to freedom of speech — I don’t want to die. I want to fight against tyranny, and I deserve to be safe. Thank you to law enforcement for protecting me, but I urge the US government to protect the national security of America.”
Lawyers for the two other defendants, identified as Jonathan Loadholt and Carlisle Rivera, did not immediately return messages seeking comment. Iran’s UN Mission declined to comment.
Shakeri, an Afghan national who immigrated to the US as a child but was later deported after spending 14 years in prison for robbery, also told investigators that he was tasked by his Revolutionary Guard contact with plotting the killings of two Jewish-Americans living in New York and Israeli tourists in Sri Lanka. Officials say he overlapped with Rivera while in prison as well as an unidentified co-conspirator.
The criminal complaint says Shakeri disclosed some of the details of the alleged plots in a series of recorded telephone interviews with FBI agents while in Iran. The stated reason for his cooperation, he told investigators, was to try to get a reduced prison sentence for an associate behind bars in the US
According to the complaint, though officials determined that some of the information he provided was false, his statements regarding a plot to kill Trump and Iran’s willingness to pay large sums of money were determined to be accurate.
The plot, disclosed just days after Trump’s defeat of Democrat Kamala Harris, reflects what federal officials have described as ongoing efforts by Iran to target US government officials, including Trump, on US soil. Last summer, the Justice Department charged a Pakistani man with ties to Iran in a murder-for-hire plot targeting American officials.
“There are few actors in the world that pose as grave a threat to the national security of the United States as does Iran,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement Friday. FBI Director Christopher Wray said the case shows Iran’s “continued brazen attempts to target US citizens,” including Trump, “other government leaders and dissidents who criticize the regime in Tehran.”
Iranian operatives also conducted a hack-and-leak operation of emails belonging to Trump campaign associates in what officials have assessed was an effort to interfere in the presidential election.
Intelligence officials have said Iran opposed Trump’s reelection, seeing him as more likely to increase tension between Washington and Tehran. Trump’s administration ended a nuclear deal with Iran, reimposed sanctions and ordered the killing of Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani, an act that prompted Iran’s leaders to vow revenge.
Trump spokesman Steven Cheung said the president-elect was aware of the assassination plot and nothing will deter him “from returning to the White House and restoring peace around the world.”
