BAGHDAD: A prominent Iraqi blogger resurfaced Friday a day after he was seized by masked gunmen, his father said, as Amnesty International denounced a “climate of fear” in the country after protests and deadly violence.
Shujaa Al-Khafaji’s family said armed men had snatched him from his home on Thursday without identifying themselves or showing an arrest warrant.
Khafaji’s Facebook page, Al-Khowa Al-Nadifa (Arabic for “Those Who Have Clean Hands“), carries posts on political and social issues and has some 2.5 million followers.
“Around 15 men wearing masks and black uniforms” took Khafaji from his home, the blogger’s father, Fares Al-Khafaji, told AFP.
He said they seized his son’s phones and computers, but were not violent.
Twenty-four hours later, Khafaji was “abandoned in a street with $20 to pay for a taxi home,” his father added.
The report of Khafaji’s seizure sparked an outcry from activists and influential political leaders.
Rights watchdog Amnesty International denounced a “relentless campaign of intimidation and assault against activists in Iraq” by authorities.
“The Iraqi authorities must immediately rein in the security forces and dismantle the climate of fear they have deliberately created to stop Iraqis from peacefully exercising their rights to freedoms of expression and assembly,” said Lynn Maalouf, the group’s Middle East research director.
The group said other activists, including a doctor and a lawyer, were “forcibly disappeared more than 10 days ago,” and called on Iraqi authorities to reveal their whereabouts.
Firebrand Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr wrote on Twitter that “any act of aggression (against journalists or activists)... by the state constitutes an attack on freedom of speech.”
Former prime minister Haider Al-Abadi’s parliamentary bloc called on the government “to stop abuses of free media.”
Iraq was gripped by anti-government protests between October 1 and 6, during which 110 people, mainly demonstrators, were killed in clashes with security forces.
During the protests, unidentified armed men in uniforms raided several local television stations in Baghdad, destroying their equipment and intimidating their staff.
Journalists and activists also reported receiving threats, mostly by phone, from unidentified callers accusing them of having sided with the protesters.
Khafaji faced online harassment last month after a string of attacks on bases of the Hashed Al-Shaabi, a paramilitary force dominated by pro-Iran groups.
The group on Thursday denied any involvement in the disappearance of activists, threatening legal action against anyone making such accusations.
But according to Amnesty, the Hashed was involved in at least one abduction — that of lawyer Ali Hattab, who represented protesters and was seized on October 8 in the southern city of Amara.
He was snatched by “suspected members of a faction of the Popular Mobilization Units (Hashed),” Amnesty said quoting Hattab’s relatives.
It happened two days after “two armed men from the PMU came to (his) home to warn him to stop being vocal about the killing of protesters on Facebook, otherwise they would kill him,” Amnesty added.
Iraqi blogger returns day after kidnapping
Iraqi blogger returns day after kidnapping
- “Around 15 men wearing masks and black uniforms” took Al-Khafaji from his home, the blogger’s father said
- Twenty-four hours later, hei was “abandoned in a street with $20 to pay for a taxi home”
Greece says migrant arrivals rising in south-east islands
Rhodes mayor Alexandros Koliadis told Rodiaki that the island lacks the personnel, police officers and coast guard needed to register the arrivals before transferring them to camps
ATHENS: Some islands in the southeast of the Aegean sea, including Rhodes, are seeing an increase in migrants arriving by boat from Turkiye, Greek migration and asylum minister Nikos Panagiotopoulos said Tuesday.
“The southeast of the Aegean and the island of Rhodes are experiencing migratory pressure right now,” he said on public television station ERT, though he said the increase does not appear to be linked to rising tensions in the Middle East.
At the end of October, several hundred migrants set up tents and cardboard houses outside the local government offices of the city of Rhodes, sparking anger among residents and local authorities.
According to local media Rodiaki, more than 700 migrants arrived during the last week of October.
Rhodes mayor Alexandros Koliadis told Rodiaki that the island lacks the personnel, police officers and coast guard needed to register the arrivals before transferring them to camps on the mainland or in other islands.
Previously, Aegean islands further north such as Lesbos and Samos had received the brunt of migrants crossing from Turkish shores.
Crete, which has likewise seen an increase in arrivals from Libya, also needs to build facilities to process migrants.
Greece has seen a 25 percent increase this year in the number of people fleeing war and poverty, with a 30 percent increase alone to Rhodes and the south-east Aegean, according to the Migration Ministry.
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees says 48,158 arrivals have been recorded so far in 2024, of which around 42,000 arrived by boat and 6,000 by crossing the land frontier with Turkiye.
“The camps on the islands have an occupancy rate of 100 percent. But on the mainland they are only 55 percent full, which provides a margin in the event of an increase in arrivals on the islands,” Panagiotopoulos said.
Sudan files AU complaint against Chad over arms: minister
- Chad last month denied accusations that it was “amplifying the war in Sudan” by arming the RSF
PORT SUDAN: Sudan’s army-backed government on Tuesday accused neighboring Chad of supplying arms to rebel militias, likely referring to the paramilitary forces it is battling.
The northeast African country has been engulfed by war since April 2023, when fighting broke out between the regular army, led by de facto ruler Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan, and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) commanded by his former deputy Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo.
Justice minister Muawiya Osman said Burhan’s administration had lodged the complaint against Chad at the African Union.
Speaking to reporters, including AFP, Osman said the government demanded compensation and accused Chad of “supplying arms to rebel militias” and causing “harm to Sudanese citizens.”
“We will present evidence to the relevant authorities,” he added from Port Sudan, where Burhan relocated after fighting spread to the capital, Khartoum.
Chad last month denied accusations that it was “amplifying the war in Sudan” by arming the RSF.
“We do not support any of the factions that are fighting on Sudanese territory — we are in favor of peace,” foreign minister and government spokesman Abderaman Koulamallah said at the time.
The United Nations has been using the Adre border crossing between the two countries to deliver humanitarian aid.
Sudan had initially agreed to keep the crossing open for three months, a period set to expire on November 15. Authorities in Khartoum have yet to decide whether to extend the arrangement.
The Sudanese war has killed tens of thousands of people and displaced more than 11 million, including 3.1 million who are now sheltering beyond the country’s borders.
Explosion at Turkish oil refinery injures 12
- The 12 employees sustained slight injuries and were taken to a hospital for examinations
ANKARA: An explosion at an oil refinery in northwestern Turkiye on Tuesday left at least 12 employees slightly injured, the company said. A fire at the facility was quickly brought under control.
The Turkish Petroleum Refineries company, TUPRAS, said a fire broke out at its facilities in Izmit, in Kocaeli province, during maintenance work on a compressor. The company’s emergency teams responded immediately to the incident, it said in a statement.
The 12 employees sustained slight injuries and were taken to a hospital for examinations, the company said.
The company said the unit where the incident occurred “was deactivated in a controlled manner” and that other operations at the refinery were “continuing as normal.”
Earlier, Tahir Buyukakin, the mayor for Kocaeli told private NTV television that the blast occurred during a drill. The fire was quickly brought under control by the company’s own crews and no request for help was made, he said.
Video footage from the site showed smoke rising from the refinery, which is one of Turkiye’s largest. Izmit is about 100 kilometers (62 miles) east of Istanbul.
The Borsa Istanbul stock exchange temporarily halted trading of TUPRAS shares, until the company provides a detailed explanation of the incident.
Israeli strikes hit south of Beirut and Lebanon’s Bekaa region
BEIRUT: At least one Israeli airstrike hit an apartment building in a beach town south of Beirut on Tuesday, Lebanese state media said, as other deadly strikes hit scattered locations across the country and armed group Hezbollah launched rockets into Israel.
The attack on the beach town of Jiyyeh left a massive smoke column billowing out of an apartment building. It was not immediately clear if the strike was an assassination attempt, and no evacuation warning was given before it was carried out.
The Israeli military and Iran-backed Hezbollah have been exchanging fire for over a year in parallel with the Gaza war, but hostilities have escalated over the last six weeks. More than 3,000 people have been killed in Lebanon, most of them since late September, according to health authorities.
Israeli strikes on Tuesday also killed five people near the city of Baalbek in the Bekaa Valley, including two killed in a strike on a car, according to Lebanon’s health ministry.
Lebanon’s state news agency said on Tuesday that it estimated Israeli air strikes and widespread detonation of homes had destroyed more than 40,000 housing units in the country’s border region.
Iran says killed eight militants since attack on police in province bordering Pakistan
- Militants from the Jaish Al-Adl group killed 10 police officers during a raid in Sistan-Baluchistan province on October 26
- Sistan-Baluchistan, which straddles border with Afghanistan and Pakistan, is one of Iran’s most impoverished provinces
TEHRAN: Iran’s military has killed eight militants in an operation in the restive southeast since a deadly attack last month on a police station, state media reported Tuesday.
Militants from the Pakistan-based Jaish Al-Adl group killed 10 police officers during a raid on October 26 in Sistan-Baluchistan province — one of the deadliest attacks in the region in recent months.
Sistan-Baluchistan, which straddles the border with Afghanistan and Pakistan, is one of Iran’s most impoverished provinces.
It has long been a flashpoint for cross-border attacks by separatists and extremists, opposed to the authorities in Iran.
Revolutionary Guards commander Ahmad Shafahi said “a total of eight terrorists have been killed” since the beginning of operations in the province, according to the official IRNA news agency on Tuesday.
“Fourteen other terrorists have been arrested,” including key figures involved in the attack, he said, adding security forces seized weapons and ammunition.
Shortly after the attack in Taftan county, some 1,200 kilometers (745 miles) southeast of the capital Tehran, a report on the Tasnim news agency said four militants had been killed and four others arrested.
Late on Monday, IRNA quoted Guards ground forces commander Mohammad Pakpour as saying the attackers “were not Iranian,” though he did not specify their nationalities.
In early October, at least six people including police officers were killed in two separate attacks in the province.
Jaish Al-Adl said on Telegram they had carried out the attacks.
Formed in 2012 by Baluch separatists, the group is proscribed as a “terrorist organization” by both Iran and the United States.
