PARIS: French police said on Monday they had arrested seven members of a people smuggling ring which helped migrants enter Britain illegally from France.
The gang picked up migrants in Paris, took them to motorway service stations where they were hidden in trucks bound for the UK without the knowledge of the drivers.
The people smugglers charged each migrant 3,000 euros ($3,566) for the passage, giving their network total revenues over the past year of 1.5 to 3.0 million euros, said Jean Arvieu, deputy chief of the police’s central office against illegal immigration.
The ring was run by Iraqi-Kurdish organizers who took over the network after gangland wars with rival groups, he told AFP.
Police, which investigated the ring for a year before the arrests, found that at the height of the business there were daily runs between Paris and Britain.
There was no evidence of any collusion between truck drivers and people smugglers, Arvieu said.
Most people smuggled on the route were either Iraqi, Iranian, Afghan, Syrian or Pakistani, nationalities that often target Britain as their final destination.
Young men between 20 and 35 and families made up the biggest contingent, he said.
France breaks up people smuggling ring to UK
https://arab.news/g6vnw
France breaks up people smuggling ring to UK
- The gang was conducting daily runs between Paris and the UK before it was shut down by police
- Most of those smuggled were either Iraqi, Iranian, Afghan, Syrian or Pakistani,
British Muslims plan MCB alternatives to represent communities
- New bodies to provide civil, political support to Muslims in UK
- Successive governments have refused to fully engage with established Muslim bodies
LONDON: A number of British imams are in the process of establishing new organizations to represent the UK’s Muslim communities, The Times reported on Saturday.
A series of governments have refused to engage with established Muslim bodies, including the Muslim Council of Britain, creating a “vacuum” between politicians and British Muslims, according to community leaders.
Other groups — such as the Mosques and Imams National Advisory Board, the British Board of Imams and Scholars, and Tell Mama, an organization monitoring Islamophobia — are deemed too small to effectively lobby for or represent the UK’s 3.8 million Muslims.
The MCB represents around 500 mosques, schools and charities in the UK on social issues, but does not issue religious declarations.
The Labour government under Tony Blair had ties with it, but saw those severed in 2009 under Gordon Brown after the MCB’s then-deputy leader signed a declaration that was viewed as a call for violence against the Royal Navy and Israel.
The current Labour government talks to various Muslim groups on an “ad hoc” basis, said Qari Asim, senior imam at the Makkah Mosque in Leeds.
A source told The Times that rather than “simply a new entity to replace the MCB,” a “series of new initiatives” would be established “focused on increasing connection between British Muslims and the British government and trying to better represent and engage British Muslims.”
Another source told the newspaper: “It is a group of people from broad civil society who happen to be Muslim, from lawyers to doctors to economists to accountants.
“It’s a huge community (but) there is a lack of serious engagement (from government) and a whole load of expertise and experience not being tapped into by policymakers and others.”
Sariya Cheruvallil-Contractor, professor in the sociology of Islam at Coventry University, told The Times that the government is “missing a trick” by not engaging with the MCB, warning that there is “a lot of suspicion within Muslim communities of new initiatives.”
UK must weigh repatriating Daesh members in Syria, terror adviser says
- Jonathan Hall KC: ‘It wouldn’t prevent them from potentially being prosecuted for what they’ve done’
- Trump’s counterterrorism adviser has also urged Britain to take back citizens who joined Daesh
LONDON: The UK must consider repatriating British members of Daesh held in Syrian detention camps, the government’s independent terrorism adviser has said.
“Repatriation would not be moral absolution. If someone came back it wouldn’t prevent them from potentially being prosecuted for what they’ve done,” Jonathan Hall KC, the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, told the BBC.
The incoming Trump administration’s counterterrorism adviser Sebastian Gorka has also urged the UK to follow the US lead and take back its citizens who joined Daesh.
“Any nation which wishes to be seen to be a serious ally and friend of the most powerful nation in the world should act in a fashion that reflects that serious commitment,” Gorka said.
“That is doubly so for the UK which has a very special place in President (Donald) Trump’s heart, and we would all wish to see the ‘special relationship’ fully re-established.”
One high-profile Briton who traveled to Syria to support Daesh is Shamima Begum, who left London as a teenager in 2015.
Her citizenship was stripped in 2019. Foreign Secretary David Lammy has said Begum “will not be coming back to the UK.”
Hall said: “It could be quite a pragmatic decision in the overall interests of national security to bring someone back.
“There is obviously some national security benefit of leaving people there because you don’t have to monitor them.
“On the other hand, there haven’t yet been any attacks in Europe by anyone who has been repatriated in this way and if they are left there ... and then they escape, they would be much more dangerous, actually, to the UK.”
The US and some European countries have repatriated their citizens from Syrian camps. Many have been put on trial and imprisoned.
Lammy said Begum’s case has been reviewed in court and the 25-year-old is “not a UK national.”
Many of the detainees are “dangerous, are radicals,” he told the “Good Morning Britain” show on Thursday.
Opposition leader Kemi Badenoch has also said Begum should not be allowed to return to the UK.
“Citizenship means committing to a country and wanting its success. It’s not an international travel document for crime tourism,” Badenoch said.
IMF chief sees steady world growth in 2025, continuing disinflation
- Georgieva’s comments are the first indication this year of the IMF’s evolving global outlook
- The IMF will release an update to global outlook on Jan. 17, just days before Trump takes office
WASHINGTON: The International Monetary Fund will forecast steady global growth and continuing disinflation when it releases an updated World Economic Outlook on Jan. 17, IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva told reporters on Friday.
Georgieva said the US economy was doing “quite a bit better” than expected, although there was high uncertainty around the trade policies of the administration of President-elect Donald Trump that was adding to headwinds facing the global economy and driving long-term interest rates higher.
With inflation moving closer to the US Federal Reserve’s target, and data showing a stable labor market, the Fed could afford to wait for more data before undertaking further interest rate cuts, she said. Overall, interest rates were expected to stay “somewhat higher for quite some time,” she said.
The IMF will release an update to its global outlook on Jan. 17, just days before Trump takes office. Georgieva’s comments are the first indication this year of the IMF’s evolving global outlook, but she gave no detailed projections.
In October, the IMF raised its 2024 economic growth forecasts for the US, Brazil and Britain but cut them for China, Japan and the euro zone, citing risks from potential new trade wars, armed conflicts and tight monetary policy.
At the time, it left its forecast for 2024 global growth unchanged at the 3.2 percent projected in July, and lowered its global forecast for 3.2 percent growth in 2025 by one-tenth of a percentage point, warning that global medium-term growth would fade to 3.1 percent in five years, well below its pre-pandemic trend.
“Not surprisingly, given the size and role of the US economy, there is keen interest globally in the policy directions of the incoming administration, in particular on tariffs, taxes, deregulation and government efficiency,” Georgieva said.
“This uncertainty is particularly high around the path for trade policy going forward, adding to the headwinds facing the global economy, especially for countries and regions that are more integrated in global supply chains, medium-sized economies, (and) Asia as a region.”
Georgieva said it was “very unusual” that this uncertainty was expressed in higher long-term interest rates even though short-term interest rates had gone down, a trend not seen in recent history.
The IMF saw divergent trends in different regions, with growth expected to stall somewhat in the European Union and to weaken “a little” in India, while Brazil was facing somewhat higher inflation, Georgieva said.
In China, the world’s second-largest economy after the United States, the IMF was seeing deflationary pressure and ongoing challenges with domestic demand, she said.
Lower-income countries, despite reform efforts, were in a position where any new shocks would hit them “quite negatively,” she said.
Georgieva said it was notable that higher interest rates needed to combat inflation had not pushed the global economy into recession, but headline inflation developments were divergent, which meant central bankers needed to carefully monitor local data.
The strong US dollar could potentially result in higher funding costs for emerging market economies and especially low-income countries, she said.
Most countries needed to cut fiscal spending after high outlays during the COVID pandemic and adopt reforms to boost growth in a durable way, she said, adding that in most cases this could be done while protecting their growth prospects.
“Countries cannot borrow their way out. They can only grow out of this problem,” she said, noting that the medium-growth prospects for the world were the lowest seen in decades.
China marks muted 5th anniversary of first Covid death
BEIJING: The fifth anniversary of the first known death from Covid-19 passed seemingly unnoticed in China Saturday, with no official remembrances in a country where the pandemic is a taboo subject.
On January 11, 2020, health officials in the central Chinese city of Wuhan announced that a 61-year-old man had died from complications of pneumonia caused by a previously unknown virus.
The disclosure came after authorities had reported dozens of infections over several weeks by the pathogen later named SARS-CoV-2 and understood as the cause of Covid-19.
It went on to spark a global pandemic that has so far killed over seven million people and profoundly altered ways of life around the world, including in China.
On Saturday, however, there appeared to be no official memorials in Beijing’s tightly controlled official media.
The ruling Communist Party kept a tight leash on public discussion throughout its zero-Covid policy, and has eschewed reflections on the hard-line curbs since dramatically ditching them at the end of 2022.
On social media, too, many users seemed unaware of the anniversary.
A few videos circulating on Douyin — the Chinese version of TikTok — noted the date but repeated the official version of events.
FIRST COVID CASE
And on the popular Weibo platform, users who gravitated to the former account of Li Wenliang — the whistleblower doctor who was investigated by police for spreading early information about the virus — did not directly reference the anniversary.
“Dr. Li, another year has gone by,” read one comment on Saturday. “How quickly time passes.”
There was also little online commemoration in Hong Kong, where Beijing largely snuffed out opposition voices when it imposed a sweeping national security law on the semi-autonomous city in 2020.
Unlike other countries, China has not built major memorials to those who lost their lives during the pandemic.
Little is known about the identity of the first Covid casualty except that he was a frequent visitor to a Wuhan seafood market where the virus is thought to have circulated during the initial outbreak.
Within days of his death, other countries reported their first cases of the disease, showing that official efforts to contain its spread had failed.
China was later criticized by Western governments for allegedly covering up the early transmission of the virus and effacing evidence of its origins, though Beijing has vehemently maintained it acted decisively and with full transparency.
According to the WHO, China has officially reported nearly 100 million Covid cases and 122,000 deaths to date, although the true number will likely never be known.
In 2023, Beijing declared a “decisive victory” over Covid, calling its response a “miracle in human history.”
Thai suspect confesses to killing Cambodian ex-lawmaker
- Lim Kimya was gunned down as he arrived in Bangkok by bus from Cambodia with his French wife
- Thai media have reported that the suspect, Ekkalak Paenoi, was a former marine
BANGKOK: A Thai man suspected of killing a former Cambodian opposition lawmaker in Bangkok has confessed to the crime, police said Saturday.
"I confess that I did wrong," Ekkalak Paenoi said to police and media after being charged with premeditated murder and unauthorized gun ownership.
Lim Kimya, a former lawmaker for the dissolved Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP), was gunned down on Tuesday by a motorcyclist as he arrived in Bangkok by bus from Cambodia with his French wife.
Cambodian opposition figures have accused the country's powerful former leader Hun Sen of ordering the shooting.
Police in Cambodia said they arrested the suspect on Wednesday and took him to the Thai border following an extradition request.
He was picked up by a Thai police helicopter on Saturday and taken to Bangkok.
"We can't determine the motives yet, please give us time," said Somprasong Yenthuam, a senior police official.
Thai media have said Ekkalak was a former marine.
Yenthuam told reporters an arrest warrant for a Cambodian accomplice had also been issued.
A Cambodian government spokesman denied official involvement in the slaying.
Scores of Cambodian opposition activists have fled to Thailand in recent years to avoid alleged repression at home. Some were arrested and deported back to the country.
Hun Sen ruled Cambodia with an iron fist for nearly four decades, with rights groups accusing him of using the legal system to crush opposition to his rule.
He stepped down and handed power to his son Hun Manet in 2023, but is still seen as a major power in the kingdom.
France has condemned the killing of Lim Kimya, who also held French citizenship.
