PARIS: A Frenchman held in Iran for more than 18 months on espionage charges he rejects has begun a hunger strike to protest at his detention conditions, his family said Monday.
Benjamin Briere, 36, was arrested in Iran last May, allegedly while flying a drone and taking photographs in a prohibited area.
“Benjamin started the hunger strike on December 25 because he was not allowed to call us for Christmas, but also to draw attention to the mistreatment he has suffered for twenty months,” his sister Blandine Briere told AFP.
“He sees no evolution in his case.”
His family describes him as an innocent tourist who set out in 2018 on a road trip in his camper van that began in Scandinavia before heading overland toward Iran.
His Iranian lawyer said in May that prosecutors had confirmed he would be tried for espionage as well as “propaganda against the system.” A conviction of espionage is punishable by death in Iran.
The French foreign ministry has described the spying charges against Briere, who is being held in the Valikabad prison in the city of Mashhad in northeastern Iran, as “incomprehensible.”
“The Iranian judiciary have not yet decided which court will try the case,” said Blandine Briere.
“He is being held hostage for no reason,” she added. “It is completely illegal and we don’t know anything. Benjamin needs more from the French foreign ministry.”
In Paris, a foreign ministry spokesman said Monday that the government was following “our compatriot’s situation with the greatest attention.”
The French embassy in Tehran had been in regular contact with Briere, who the spokesman said was in Iran “as a tourist” when he was arrested.
The latest such visit took place on December 21, and the embassy contacted him again on Monday, the ministry spokesman said.
Briere is one of more than a dozen Western nationals held in Iran whom activists describe as hostages innocent of any crime, and detained at the behest of the powerful Revolutionary Guards to extract concessions from the West.
Iran insists they are held in accordance with Iranian law, but Tehran has in the past shown readiness to release Western nationals in exchange for the freedom of Iranians held abroad.
Briere is the only such Western detainee known to be held in Iran who does not also hold an Iranian passport.
Iran is also holding the French-Iranian academic Fariba Adelkhah, who was detained in 2019 and sentenced in May 2020 to five years in prison on national security charges. In October, she was moved to house arrest.
Fellow French academic Roland Marchal, who was detained with her, was released in March 2020 after France released Iranian engineer Jallal Rohollahnejad, who faced extradition to the United States over accusations he violated US sanctions against Iran.
Frenchman held in Iran begins hunger strike
https://arab.news/mwrk6
Frenchman held in Iran begins hunger strike
- Started the “hunger strike on December 25 because he was not allowed to call us for Christmas”: Sister
- Lawyer said prosecutors had confirmed he would be tried for espionage as well as “propaganda against the system”
Germany joins US, UK in making diplomatic contact with Syria’s HTS
German diplomats’ first talks with representatives of the HTS-appointed interim government will focus on a transitional process for Syria and the protection of minorities, a spokesperson for the German foreign ministry said.
“The possibilities of a diplomatic presence in Damascus are also being explored there,” the spokesperson added in a statement, reiterating that Berlin was monitoring HTS closely in light of its roots in Al-Qaeda ideology.
“As far as one can tell, they have acted prudently so far,” the spokesperson said of the group, whose rebels led the ouster of Assad earlier this month, ending 13 years of war.
The conflict triggered the movement of some one million Syrian refugees to Germany. Its end has stoked debate in the country on asylum procedures, now paused for Syrians pending an assessment of the situation in their home country.
Germany is liaising closely with its partners, including the US, France and Britain, as well as Arab states, on Syria, the German ministry spokesperson said.
Israeli airstrikes kill 14 Palestinians in Gaza, tanks push south
CAIRO: Israeli military strikes across the Gaza Strip killed at least 14 Palestinians on Tuesday, at least 10 of them in one house in Gaza City, medics said as tanks pushed deeper toward the western area of Rafah in the south.
Medics said the Israeli airstrike on the house in the Daraj suburb of Gaza City destroyed the building and damaged nearby houses. Four other people were killed in two separate airstrikes in the city and the town of Beit Lahiya north of the enclave said medics, medics added.
There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military.
In Rafah, near the border with Egypt, Israeli tanks pushed deeper toward the western area of Mawasi, known as a humanitarian-designated area, residents said.
Heavy fire from tanks rolling into the area forced dozens of families sheltering there to flee northwards toward Khan Younis.
The war began when the Palestinian militant group Hamas stormed into Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking more than 250 hostages back to Gaza, according to Israeli authorities.
Israel then launched an air and land offensive that has killed more than 45,000 people, mostly civilians, according to authorities in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip.
The campaign has displaced nearly the entire population and left much of the enclave in ruins.
Israeli defence minister says Israel will have freedom of action in Gaza after defeating Hamas
DUBAI: Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz said on Monday Israel will have security control over Gaza with full freedom of action after defeating Hamas in the enclave.
At least 100,000 bodies in Syrian mass grave, US advocacy group head says
- Assad and his father Hafez, who preceded him as president and died in 2000, are accused by Syrians, rights groups and other governments of widespread extrajudicial killings, including mass executions within the country’s notorious prison system
WASHINGTON: The head of a US-based Syrian advocacy organization on Monday said that a mass grave outside of Damascus contained the bodies of at least 100,000 people killed by the former government of ousted President Bashar Assad.
Mouaz Moustafa, speaking to Reuters in a telephone interview from Damascus, said the site at al Qutayfah, 25 miles (40 km) north of the Syrian capital, was one of five mass graves that he had identified over the years.
“One hundred thousand is the most conservative estimate” of the number of bodies buried at the site, said Moustafa, head of the Syrian Emergency Task Force. “It’s a very, very extremely almost unfairly conservative estimate.”
Moustafa said that he is sure there are more mass graves than the five sites, and that along with Syrians victims included US and British citizens and other foreigners.
Reuters was unable to confirm Moustafa’s allegations.
Hundreds of thousands of Syrians are estimated to have been killed since 2011, when Assad’s crackdown on protests against his rule grew into a full-scale civil war.
Assad and his father Hafez, who preceded him as president and died in 2000, are accused by Syrians, rights groups and other governments of widespread extrajudicial killings, including mass executions within the country’s notorious prison system.
Assad repeatedly denied that his government committed human rights violations and painted his detractors as extremists.
Syria’s UN Ambassador Koussay Aldahhak did not immediately respond to a request for comment. He assumed the role in January — while Assad was still in power — but told reporters last week that he was awaiting instructions from the new authorities and would “keep defending and working for the Syrian people.”
Moustafa arrived in Syria after Assad flew to Russia and his government collapsed in the face of a lightning offensive by rebels that ended his family’s more than 50 years of iron-fisted rule.
He spoke to Reuters after he was interviewed at the site in al Qutayfah by Britain’s Channel 4 News for a report on the alleged mass grave there.
He said the intelligence branch of the Syrian air force was “in charge of bodies going from military hospitals, where bodies were collected after they’d been tortured to death, to different intelligence branches, and then they would be sent to a mass grave location.”
Corpses also were transported to sites by the Damascus municipal funeral office whose personnel helped unload them from refrigerated tractor-trailers, he said.
“We were able to talk to the people who worked on these mass graves that had on their own escaped Syria or that we helped to escape,” said Moustafa.
His group has spoken to bulldozer drivers compelled to dig graves and “many times on orders, squished the bodies down to fit them in and then cover them with dirt,” he said.
Moustafa expressed concern that graves sites were unsecured and said they needed to be preserved to safeguard evidence for investigations.
Syria’s Golani says rebel factions to be ‘disbanded’, calls for lifting sanctions
- “Syria must remain united, and there must be a social contract between the state and all religions to guarantee social justice,” said Jolani
DAMASCUS: The leader of the Islamist group that toppled Bashar Assad said Monday that armed factions in war-torn Syria would be “disbanded” and their fighters placed under the defense ministry, and called for sanctions to be lifted so refugees can return.
Syrian president Assad was toppled by a lightning 11-day rebel offensive spearheaded by the Islamist Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham group (HTS), whose fighters and allies swept down from northwest Syria and entered the capital on December 8.
HTS leader Abu Mohammed Al-Golani said Monday on the group’s Telegram channel that all the rebel factions “would “be disbanded and the fighters trained to join the ranks of the defense ministry.”
“All will be subject to the law,” said Golani, who now uses his real name, Ahmed Al-Sharaa.
He also emphasized the need for unity in a country home to different ethnic minority groups and religions, while speaking to members of the Druze community — a branch of Shiite Islam making up about 3 percent of Syria’s pre-war population.
“Syria must remain united,” he said. “There must be a social contract between the state and all religions to guarantee social justice.”
Several countries and organizations have welcomed Assad’s fall but said they were waiting to see how the new authorities would treat minorities in the country.
During a second meeting with a delegation of British diplomats, the HTS leader also spoke “of the importance of restoring relations” with London.
He stressed the need to end “all sanctions imposed on Syria so that Syrian refugees can return to their country,” according to remarks reported on his group’s Telegram channel.
HTS is rooted in Syria’s branch of Al-Qaeda and proscribed as a terrorist organization by many Western governments, though it has sought to moderate its rhetoric.
Since the toppling of Assad, it has insisted that the rights of all Syrians will be protected.
