Swiss stabbing suspect ‘linked to extremism inquiry’
A woman was arrested after allegedly trying to strangle one woman with her bare hands and stabbing another in the neck in a Lugano department store
Switzerland has never suffered a major extremist attack, but police and officials highlighted several recent incidents being investigated for possible terrorist motives
Updated 25 November 2020
AFP
GENEVA: A woman arrested for a knife attack in a Swiss department store was linked to a 2017 extremism investigation and spent time in a psychiatric clinic, police said on Wednesday.
The 28-year-old was held on Tuesday after allegedly trying to strangle one woman with her bare hands and stabbing another in the neck.
The second victim in the attack, in Lugano in southern Switzerland, was said to be seriously wounded.
“The perpetrator is known to @FedpolCH,” the federal police said on Twitter. “She appeared in a police investigation in 2017 in connection with extremism.”
Police had discovered at the time that the woman had formed a relationship on social media with an extremist fighter in Syria.
She had attempted to travel to Syria to meet the man, but was stopped by Turkish authorities at the Syrian border and was sent back to Switzerland.
“The woman was suffering from mental health problems,” police said, adding that she had been admitted to a psychiatric clinic.
She had not been on the radar of the federal police since then, the tweet said.
During Tuesday’s incident, the woman was overpowered by customers in the shop before officers arrived.
The regional police later mentioned a possible terror motive behind the attack.
“The situation is extremely serious,” said Norman Gobbi, head of the Ticino regional government.
The Swiss federal police said criminal proceedings were under way.
“This attack does not surprise me,” federal police chief Nicoletta della Valle said Tuesday, underlining that such attacks occurred all over the world.
Switzerland has never suffered a major extremist attack, but police and officials highlighted several recent incidents being investigated for possible terrorist motives.
And two Swiss nationals aged 18 and 24 were arrested near Zurich over alleged links to the perpetrator of a deadly attack in neighboring Austria’s capital Vienna earlier this month.
After Tuesday’s incident, Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz tweeted that he condemned the “extremist terrorist attack” in Lugano.
“We stand with Switzerland in these difficult hours,” he wrote.
“We’ll give a joint response to extremist terrorism in Europe and defend our values.”
A Daesh sympathizer who had tried to join the extremist group in Syria was behind the attack in Vienna, in which four people were killed and several others injured.
Why the Middle East will weigh heavily on the new US president’s agenda
From Iran to Palestine, the incoming US administration will face a slew of daunting policy challenges
New leadership will have to balance diplomacy with action if it hopes to prevent further regional escalation
Updated 10 sec ago
Jonathan Gornall
LONDON: America has voted and now the Middle East waits to discover who has won — and, crucially, what that victory will mean for a region with which the US has had a complex relationship ever since President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Saudi Arabia’s King Abdulaziz bin Saud met for historic talks on a US warship in the Suez Canal in 1945.
Whichever way CNN and the other big US channels have called the result of the US presidential election, it could be days, or even weeks, before America’s arcane electoral process reaches its final conclusion and the winner is formally declared.
Although they have ticked the box on their ballot papers alongside their preferred candidate, America’s voters have not actually voted directly for Kamala Harris, Donald Trump or any of the four other runners.
Instead, in proportion to its number of representatives in Congress, each state appoints electors to the Electoral College, the combined membership of which votes for the president and the vice president.
It is rare, but not unknown, for electors to disregard the popular vote. But either way, to become president, a candidate needs the votes of at least 270 of the college’s 538 electors.
Their votes will be counted, and the winner announced, in a joint session of Congress on Jan. 6. The president-elect is then sworn into office on Monday, Jan. 20 — and, as first days at work go, these promise to be intense.
A poll worker waits for voters at a polling station in New York City on Election Day, November 5, 2024. (AFP)
There will be many issues, domestic and foreign, clamoring for the attention of the new president and their team.
But of all the in-trays jostling for attention, it is the one labeled “Middle East” that will weigh most heavily on the Resolute desk in the Oval Office and on the mind of the incoming president.
Depending on how they are handled, the sum of the challenges contained in that in-tray could add up either to an opportunity to achieve something no American president has achieved before, or an invitation to a disastrous, legacy-shredding encounter with some of the world’s most pressing and intractable problems.
Palestine and Israel
In November 2016, then-President-Elect Donald Trump declared: “I would love to be able to be the one that made peace with Israel and the Palestinians.” A lot of “really great people” had told him that “it’s impossible — you can’t do it.”
But he added: “I disagree … I have reason to believe I can do it.”
As recent history attests, he could not do it.
Every US president since Jimmy Carter, who led the Camp David talks that culminated in a peace agreement between Egypt and Israel in 1979, has been drawn inexorably into the maelstrom of Middle East politics — partly through economic and political necessity, but also because of the Nobel-winning allure of going down in history as the greatest peacemaker the world has ever known.
A woman rests with her children as displaced Palestinians flee Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip on November 5, 2024. (AFP)
Not for nothing, however, is the Israel-Palestine issue known in diplomatic circles as “the graveyard of US peacemaking.”
Since Oct. 7, 2023, and Israel’s onslaught on Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups in Gaza and Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon, a crisis long deemed intractable appears to have degenerated even further to a point of no return.
All the talk throughout the election by both of the main candidates, calculated to walk the electoral tightrope between pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian voters, will now be forgotten.
All that matters now is action — careful, considered action, addressing issues including the desperate need for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza and the reopening of the much-cratered pathway to a two-state solution.
Palestinians search through the rubble following Israeli strikes in Nuseirat refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip, on November 1, 2024. (AFP)
Epitomizing the hypocrisy that has so infuriated millions, including the many Arab American voters who have switched their allegiance from the Democrats to the Republicans in this election, the Biden-Harris administration has bemoaned the deaths of tens of thousands of innocent Palestinians while simultaneously supplying Israel with the munitions that killed them.
For Trump, regaining the White House would be a second chance at peacemaker immortality and, perhaps, the Nobel Peace Prize he felt he deserved for his 2020 Abraham Accords initiative.
Last time around, Trump did achieve the breakthrough of establishing diplomatic relations between Israel and the UAE and Bahrain. The big prize, which eluded him in 2020, was bringing Saudi Arabia on board. The Kingdom has made it clear that for that to happen, one condition must be fulfilled — the opening of a meaningful path to Palestinian statehood. This, therefore, could well be on the to-do list of a Trump administration in 2025.
For Harris, the presidency would be a chance to step out from under the shadow of the Biden administration, which has so spectacularly failed to restrain Israel, its client state, and in the process has only deepened the crisis in the Middle East and undermined trust in the US in the region.
The West Bank
If America has equivocated over events in Palestine and Lebanon, the Biden administration has not turned a blind eye to the provocative, destabilizing activities of extremist Jewish settler groups in the West Bank.
In February, the White House issued an executive order imposing sanctions on “persons undermining peace, security, and stability in the West Bank.” The order, signed by President Joe Biden, condemned the “high levels of extremist settler violence, forced displacement of people and villages, and property destruction,” which had “reached intolerable levels” and constituted “a serious threat to the peace, security, and stability of the West Bank and Gaza, Israel, and the broader Middle East region.”
A wounded Palestinian man arrives for treatment for injuries sustained in clashes with Israeli settlers in the village of Mughayir, at a hospital in Ramallah in the occupied West Bank on April 12, 2024. (AFP)
So far, the US, reluctant to act against members of an ally’s government, has stopped short of sanctioning Israel’s far-right ministers Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir, the chief settler rabble-rousers in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet.
Whether Harris would continue with, or even strengthen the sanctions policy, remains to be seen, but the settlers believe that Trump would let them off the hook. “If Trump takes the election, there will be no sanctions,” Israel Ganz, chairman of one of the main settler groups, told Reuters last week.
“If Trump loses the election, we will in the state of Israel … have a problem with sanctions that the government over here has to deal with.”
It was, after all, Trump who recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, undoing decades of US foreign policy, and moved the US Embassy there from Tel Aviv.
Whoever wins, if they are truly interested in peace in the region, they will need to exert pressure on Netanyahu to bring the extremist right-wingers in his government to heel. It was Ben Gvir’s repeated incursions into the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound that Hamas cited as the main provocation that triggered its Oct. 7 attack on Israel last year.
Iran
Iran has been a thorn in the side of every US administration since the 1979 revolution, the roots of which can be traced back ultimately to the CIA-engineered overthrow of democratically elected Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in 1953.
The next US president faces two key, interrelated choices, both of which have far-reaching consequences. The first is how to deal with Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian, a heart surgeon who was elected in July and, so far, has given every appearance of being someone who is prepared to negotiate and compromise with the West and its regional allies.
In the hope of lifting the sanctions that have so badly hurt his countrymen, if not their leaders, Pezeshkian has offered to open fresh negotiations with the US over Iran’s nuclear program.
According to a recent Arab News/YouGov poll ahead of the presidential election, this would be appealing to many Arab Americans.
Asked how the incoming US administration should tackle the influence of Iran and its affiliated militant groups in the region, 41 percent said it should resort to diplomacy and incentives, with only 32 percent supporting a more aggressive stance and a harsher sanctions regime.
Here, a Harris victory might pave the way to progress. The Biden presidency has seen some sanctions lifted and moves made toward reopening the Iran nuclear deal, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.
In a move that infuriated supporters of Israel but brought some relief to a region that appeared to be teetering on the brink of all-out war, in October the Biden administration publicly warned Israel that it would not support a strike on Iranian nuclear facilities in retaliation for Tehran’s drone and missile attack on Israel.
Under a Trump administration, however, progress with Iran would seem unlikely. It was Trump who in 2020 ordered the assassination of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps commander, Qassem Soleimani, and who in 2018 unilaterally pulled the US out of the JCPOA to the dismay of the other signatories, Iran and the five permanent members of the UN Security Council. It is difficult to see how he could revisit that decision.
The Houthis
In many ways, coming to an understanding with Iran could be the greatest contribution any US president could make to peace in the region, especially if that led to a defanging of Iran’s proxies, which have caused so much disruption in the Middle East.
The previous Trump administration backed Saudi Arabia’s war against the Houthi rebels in Yemen and designated the group as a foreign terrorist organization. In 2021, however, Biden reversed that decision and withdrew US support for the military interventions of the Coalition to Restore Legitimacy in Yemen against the rebels, who overthrew Yemen’s internationally recognized government, sparking the civil war, in 2015.
Houthi supporters attend an anti-Israel rally in solidarity with Gaza and Lebanon in the Houthi-controlled capital Sanaa on November 1, 2024. (AFP)
Since then, however, Houthi attacks on shipping in the Red Sea, and drone and missile assaults on Saudi Arabia, have opened Western eyes to the true nature of the rebel group, to the extent that in October Biden authorized the bombing of Houthi weapons stores by B2 stealth bombers.
For either candidate as president, apart from securing the all-important commercial navigation of the Red Sea, dealing with the Houthis offers the opportunity to mend bridges with Arab partners in the region (only Bahrain joined America’s Operation Prosperity Guardian, a naval mission to protect shipping).
But it is Trump, rather than the Biden-era tainted Harris, who is expected to come down hardest on the Houthis.
Hezbollah
Trump’s grasp of events in the Middle East has at times appeared tenuous. In a speech in October, for example, he boiled down the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon to “two kids fighting in the schoolyard.” As president, though, there seems little doubt that he would, once again, be Israel’s man in the White House.
In a recent call with Netanyahu, he appeared briefly to forget the importance of wooing the all-important Arab American swing-state votes and told the Israeli prime minister to “do what you have to do,” even as innocent civilians were dying at the hands of Israeli troops in Lebanon.
Of course, no American government is going to defend Hezbollah or any of Iran’s proxies. But when Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, was targeted in an Israeli airstrike in September, Harris released a statement that outlined a preference for diplomacy over continuing conflict.
Demonstrators celebrate during a rally outside the British Embassy in Tehran on October 1, 2024, after Iran fired a barrage of missiles into Israel in response to the killing of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. (AFP)
She had, she said, “an unwavering commitment to the security of Israel” and would “always support Israel’s right to defend itself against Iran and Iran-backed terrorist groups such as Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis.”
But, she added, “I do not want to see conflict in the Middle East escalate into a broader regional war. We have been working on a diplomatic solution along the Israel-Lebanon border so that people can safely return home on both sides of that border. Diplomacy remains the best path forward to protect civilians and achieve lasting stability in the region.”
The US presence in the Middle East
One of the findings of the recent Arab News/YouGov poll of Arab Americans ahead of the election was that a sizable majority (52 percent) believed the US should either maintain its military presence in the Middle East (25 percent), or actually increase it (27 percent).
This will be one of the big issues facing the next president, whose administration’s ethos could be one of increasing isolationism or engagement.
America still has 2,500 troops in Iraq, for example, where talks are underway that could see all US and US-led coalition personnel withdrawn from the country by the end of 2026 — 23 years since the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
A vehicle part of a US military convoy drives in Arbil, the capital of the autonomous Kurdish region of northern Iraq, on September 17, 2024. (AFP)
In April, Biden and Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia Al-Sudani issued a joint statement affirming the intention to withdraw US troops, who now act mainly as advisers, and transition to a “bilateral security partnership.”
Trump, on the other hand, could go much further, and as president has a record of disengaging America from military commitments. In 2019, to the alarm of regional allies, he unilaterally ordered the sudden withdrawal of the stabilizing US military presence in northeastern Syria, and in 2020 withdrew hundreds of US troops who were supporting local forces battling against Al-Shabaab and Daesh militants in Somalia.
In the wake of his election defeat that year, he ordered the rapid withdrawal of all US troops from Afghanistan. The order was not carried out, but in September 2021, the Biden administration followed suit, ending America’s 20-year war and leading to the collapse of the Afghan National Security Forces and the takeover of the country by the Taliban.
Harris or Trump? Millions vote in tense, tight US election
Tens of millions of voters were expected to cast their ballots Tuesday, on top of the 83 million who have already voted early, and both candidates put in a final word to try to sway the last undecided voters
Updated 3 min 16 sec ago
AFP
ATLANTA: The volatile, dramatic US presidential race between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump headed to an unpredictable finish Tuesday, with millions of Americans casting their votes in one of the tightest elections of modern times.
The result — which may be known overnight or not for days — carries major consequences, either making Harris the first woman in arguably the world’s most powerful job or handing power back to Trump and his nationalist “America First” agenda.
As voters formed long lines across the country, several bomb threats were reported at polling stations, while police at the US Capitol — where Trump’s supporters rampaged following his 2020 defeat — arrested a man who smelled like fuel and was carrying a flare gun.
Both the FBI and Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger said the bomb threats, while not credible, appeared to originate from Russia.
Polls show one of the tightest races in modern times between Democratic Vice President Harris, 60, and Republican Trump, 78, who would be the first felon president, the oldest ever to take office and only the second to serve non-consecutive terms.
Harris made a late, dramatic entrance into the race when President Joe Biden dropped out in July, while Trump has ridden out two assassination attempts and a criminal conviction.
Tens of millions of voters were expected to cast their ballots Tuesday, on top of the 83 million who have already voted early, and both candidates put in a final word to try to sway the last undecided voters.
After criss-crossing the country, Harris returned to Washington where she called in to radio stations in swing states and took a few calls personally at a phone bank for voters.
“We’ve got to get it done. Today is voting day, and people need to get out and be active,” Harris told Atlanta station WVEE-FM.
She described her opponent as “full of vengeance. He’s full of grievance. It’s all about himself.”
Trump voted in Florida near his Mar-a-Lago residence, saying he felt “very confident” and that he wanted to be “very inclusive.”
But he aired concerns about the vote count — heightening fears he will reject the result and cite fraud if he loses.
“If it’s a fair election, I would be the first one to acknowledge it,” he said.
Trump has repeated baseless claims of election fraud while saying he should “never have left” the White House in 2021.
Casting a ballot in Arizona, Trump backer Camille Kroskey, 62, said she was voting in person due to concerns about voting fraud.
“I want to make sure I drop my ballot where it’s going to actually land somewhere,” she told AFP.
“Now, will it get counted?” she asked. “I don’t know.”
In perhaps the most crucial battleground state, Pennsylvania, Harris voter Marchelle Beason, 46, said the lines were “way, way, way more” than in the last election.
“We’re so divided right now, and she’s about peace. And everything that her opponent has to say is really negative,” she added.
At the same school, 56-year-old Darlene Taylor, wearing a homemade Trump shirt, said her main issue is to “close the border.”
Trump has vowed an unprecedented deportation campaign of millions of undocumented immigrants if elected.
The election is being watched closely around the world including in the war zones of Ukraine and the Middle East.
Harris has vowed to keep up support for Ukraine against Russia’s invasion and to put a greater effort in ending the Gaza war, although she has also voiced support for Israel.
Trump has promised a quick end to the Ukraine war, likely by pressing Kyiv into concessions, and has made clear he will give freer rein to Israel, which relies on US support.
“We can fix every single problem our country faces and lead America — indeed, the world — to new heights of glory,” Trump told his closing rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Harris hammered home her opposition to Trump-backed abortion bans in multiple states — a vote-winning position with crucial women voters.
Control of Congress is also at stake, with Republicans widely expected to win back control of the Senate.
US hails fired Israeli defense chief Gallant as ‘important partner’
Gallant has served as a main pointperson for the United States in the 13-month war in Gaza and now in Lebanon, with US officials seeing him as a professional without the ideological bent of some in Netanyahu’s cabinet
Updated 20 min 16 sec ago
AFP
WASHINGTON: The United States on Tuesday praised sacked Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant, a key intermediary with Washington fired by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“Minister Gallant has been an important partner on all matters related to the defense of Israel. As close partners, we will continue to work collaboratively with Israel’s next minister of defense,” a State Department spokesperson said.
Gallant has served as a main pointperson for the United States in the 13-month war in Gaza and now in Lebanon, with US officials seeing him as a professional without the ideological bent of some in Netanyahu’s cabinet.
Just Monday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke by telephone to Gallant to press US demands for greater humanitarian aid into Gaza, with a deadline looming next week in a threat to cut off some US military assistance without progress.
President Joe Biden’s own relationship has deteriorated with Netanyahu, who announced Gallant’s dismissal just as the United States was electing Biden’s successor.
FBI warns of hoax bomb threats from Russia at US voting sites
The FBI set up a national election command post in Washington to monitor threats 24 hours a day through election week, and security has been bolstered at many of the nearly 100,000 US polling stations
Updated 39 min 7 sec ago
AFP
ATLANTA: The FBI warned of bomb threats at polling stations in “multiple” US states on a tense Election Day, adding that none were credible but many appeared to originate from Russia.
The statement from the Federal Bureau of Investigation came as authorities in the US state of Georgia said hoax bomb threats had briefly disrupted voting there Tuesday.
The 2024 US presidential campaign has been a particularly volatile one, and security for Election Day has been ramped up to unprecedented levels given concerns over possible civil unrest, election chicanery and violence against poll workers.
“The FBI is aware of bomb threats to polling locations in several states, many of which appear to originate from Russian email domains,” spokeswoman Savannah Syms said in a statement.
“None of the threats have been determined to be credible thus far,” she added, urging the public to “remain vigilant.”
Georgia’s secretary of state Brad Raffensperger said the state had also identified the source of bomb threats that briefly disrupted voting at polling places.
“It was from Russia,” he said, without elaborating.
At least seven polling stations in Georgia’s Fulton County were among those facing threats and were briefly closed, South Fulton’s Mayor Kobi told AFP.
“None of the polling places were closed for more than 30 minutes,” he told AFP outside one of them — Feldwood Elementary School in South Fulton.
“There are some people who are trying to discourage people in South Fulton from voting, but we are the Blackest city in the United States,” he said.
“We are the descendants of, the sons and daughters of people who faced lynch mobs, water cannon... to exercise the right to vote. And so we aren’t going to let bomb threats turn us around.”
With Democrat Kamala Harris and Republican Donald Trump deadlocked at the climax of the 2024 race, authorities are keen to reassure jittery Americans that their votes are secure. But they have also bolstered physical security for election operations nationwide.
Poll workers have been given panic buttons, workers, special weapons teams have been deployed on rooftops, and hundreds of National Guard personnel have been placed on standby.
The FBI set up a national election command post in Washington to monitor threats 24 hours a day through election week, and security has been bolstered at many of the nearly 100,000 US polling stations.
The US Capitol Police, who protect the seat of Congress in Washington, said on social media platform X Tuesday that they had arrested a man who “smelled like fuel, had a torch & a flare gun.”
He was stopped at the Capitol visitor center — part of the complex that was stormed by Trump supporters in a deadly riot on January 6, 2021 as they sought to overturn his election loss to Joe Biden.
The visitor center would remain “closed for tours for the day, while we investigate,” the post said.
The bomb threats were not the first time US authorities have pointed the finger at Russian interference during the vote.
Hours before polls opened, officials warned that Russia-linked disinformation operations had falsely claimed attempts were being made in battleground states to fraudulently sway the outcome of the election.
And on Friday, US intelligence officials blamed Russia for a fake video of a Haitian immigrant claiming to have voted multiple times..
The United States previously imposed sanctions on Russian individuals and entities over alleged attempts to interfere in the 2016, 2018 and 2020 elections.
Brazilian police official chosen as the next head of Interpol
Urquiza was elected secretary-general by a vote of Interpol’s general assembly at its meeting in Glasgow
Urquiza pledged to promote diversity within the organization, saying “a strong Interpol is one that includes everyone”
Updated 54 min 33 sec ago
AP
LONDON: Brazilian police official Valdecy Urquiza will be the next chief of Interpol, the global police organization announced Tuesday.
Urquiza was elected secretary-general by a vote of Interpol’s general assembly at its meeting in Glasgow, Scotland, and will take up the post when the gathering ends on Thursday.
Currently Interpol’s vice president for the Americas, Urquiza is the first chief of the Lyon, France-based organization not to come from Europe or the United States.
The Interpol secretary-general essentially runs the organization on a daily basis. Jürgen Stock of Germany, who has held the post since 2014, is not allowed under its rules to seek a third term.
Urquiza pledged to promote diversity within the organization, saying “a strong Interpol is one that includes everyone.”
“When we respect and elevate diverse perspectives, we get a clearer, more comprehensive approach to global security,” he said.
Interpol, which has 196 member countries and celebrated its centennial last year, works to help national police forces communicate with each other and track suspects and criminals in fields such as counterterrorism, financial crime, child pornography, cybercrime and organized crime.
The world’s biggest police organization has been grappling with challenges including a growing caseload of cybercrime and child sex abuse, and increasing divisions among its member countries.
Interpol had a total budget of about 176 million euros (about $188 million) last year, compared to more than 200 million euros at the European Union’s police agency, Europol, and some $11 billion at the FBI in the United States.
