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Why Somalia’s drought and looming food crisis require an innovative response

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Updated 22 September 2022
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Why Somalia’s drought and looming food crisis require an innovative response

  • Presidential Envoy for Drought Response tells Arab News “famine could be here as soon as October”
  • Abdirahman Abdishakur says “humanitarian support is vital but it cannot be a permanent solution”
Updated 22 September 2022
Ephrem Kossaify

NEW YORK CITY: Just a few months ago, Somalia was promised a new era. After a peaceful vote and an equally peaceful transfer of power, many had hoped that a line had been drawn under decades of clan divisions, factious politics, heightened tensions between Mogadishu and the regions, and a persistent extremist presence.

In recent years, Somalia recorded encouraging economic growth as well, lifting the hopes of the international community further. 

A new president, whose election had crowned a period of hope that saw the drafting of a new provisional constitution, the establishment of a federal government, and the subsequent formation of five new federal member states, had promised to focus on national reconciliation and on further political and financial reforms.

James Swan, the UN special representative to Somalia, had told the Security Council that Hassan Sheikh Mohamud’s presidency offered a “long-awaited opportunity to advance urgent national priorities.”

Yet it is not because of this progress that Somalia is set to be a major focus of this year’s 77th session of the UN General Assembly. Once again, the country finds itself facing a state of alarming emergency resulting from multiple, overlapping crises.

The UN’s World Meteorological Organization has predicted that the Horn of Africa is likely to face a fifth consecutive failed rainy season over the months of October to December. Somalia is one of the most vulnerable countries to climate change and is ill-equipped to cope with this drought, the worst it has experienced in 40 years.

There is no end in sight, many say. Five years of drought have depleted the country’s water levels, leading to crop failure, with agricultural production falling 70 percent below average. More than 3 million livestock have perished. The animals that remained are now emaciated.

And getting aid to those in need remains a tremendous challenge. Some areas are hard to reach owing to poor road infrastructure. Others are under the control of Al-Shabab, an uncompromising, unpopular group with links to Al-Qaeda.




A mother gives water to her child at a camp for displaced persons in Baidoa, Somalia. Hungry people are heading to Baidoa from rural areas of southern Somalia, one of the regions hardest hit by drought. (AFP)

A deadly insurgency by Al-Shabab against the federal government has resulted in humanitarian aid convoys being attacked. In a vicious cycle, the scarcity that Al-Shabab is exacerbating is in turn leading to more young Somalis being vulnerable to recruitment.

Then came the war in Ukraine, the reverberations from which have been deeply felt in the Horn of Africa. The resultant spike in global grain prices has pushed millions of Somalis to leave their homes and look for food, carrying starving and malnourished children on the way.

Only those who are physically capable of leaving have left, however. As for the most vulnerable, the children, Somalia’s newest generation, they are perishing.

“Food insecurity is a global problem,” Abdirahman Abdishakur, Somalia’s special presidential envoy for drought response, told Arab News.

“The whole world has been affected by disruptions to global supply chains of grain, fertilizer and fuel arising from the conflict in Ukraine. Much like the rest of the world, Somalia has also been affected.

“The difference for Somalia is that this crisis is coming on top of many others that the country has been reeling from for decades.”

UN reports indicate that some communities, particularly agro-pastoral populations in Baidoa and Burhakaba districts and displaced people in the Baidoa town of the Bay region, will experience famine starting in October if aid is not immediately scaled up.

Abdishakur is in New York City to lobby and urge donors, the international community, and the Somali diaspora to support the drought response “before it is too late.”

Various UN bodies, including children’s fund UNICEF, the World Food Program, and the Food and Agriculture Organization, have repeatedly warned that the emergency shows no signs of letting up.

In a statement, the FAO said that “without action, famine will occur within the next few weeks,” adding that drought-related deaths had already been occurring and the toll could be much higher in hard-to-reach rural areas, compared with the number recorded in camps for displaced families.

During the famine of 2011, 340,000 Somali children required treatment for severe acute malnutrition, James Elder, UNICEF spokesperson, said in Geneva, Switzerland. “Today it’s 513,000. It’s a pending nightmare we have not seen this century.”




Abdirahman Abdishakur, Somalia's special presidential envoy, has called for an immediate global response to the country's food crisis. (Supplied)

According to the FAO, approximately 6.7 million people in Somalia will likely endure high levels of acute food insecurity between October and December this year, including more than 300,000 who have been left “empty-handed” by the country’s triple emergency and who are expected to fall into famine.

Abdishakur said: “Needs have escalated, and funds remain below what is required. The window for the international community is literally now. If the world doesn’t scale up assistance, famine could be here as soon as October.”

Although such dire predictions have thrown Somalia into the limelight, famine projections were actually made back in March.

“Many governments have increased their funding over the course of the drought, and we are very grateful. However, the need for adequate levels of funding to contain the initial emergency was not met, allowing the situation to spiral into the crisis we are experiencing today,” he added.

Now, Abdishakur is leading a call for a more aggressive humanitarian response to the crisis to save as many lives as possible.

“The sheer severity of the situation demands a more aggressive, innovative, and tangible reaction from the international community,” he said. And he called on the international community to “rally in the spirit of humanitarian diplomacy” and increase their contributions “before it’s too late.”

“No one should be dying from starvation in 2022. In this world of staggering wealth, skills and knowledge, there should be enough support to go around,” he added.




A child sleeps in a makeshift tent at Muuri camp in Baidoa, one of 500 camps for displaced persons. (AFP)

It is not the first or even 10th time that an emergency appeal has been made for Somalia to donor countries, and Abdishakur noted that it would not be the last if the same approach continued to be taken each year by Somalia’s government or the international community.

He said: “I do not want to be knocking on doors again in five years’ time or ever. Around 1 billion dollars is spent on aid to our country annually yet needs continue to increase. Humanitarian support is vital during a crisis, but it cannot be a permanent solution.”

Somalis are aware of the progress they had begun to get a taste for, but now fear that their country’s full potential will not be achieved.

According to experts, had that potential been utilized, Somalia could have contributed to food security and sustainable energy production in the Horn of Africa and the world.

As the presidential envoy for drought response, Abdishakur is advocating a new way of working aimed at ultimately ending the cycle of hunger and suffering that focuses on long-term adaptation to, and mitigation of, climate change.

Along with the urgent funds needed to save lives, he has called for investments that focus on fighting food insecurity, help foster livelihoods, and build infrastructure, especially roads.

He said that between 20 and 40 percent of agricultural produce in Somalia was lost in transportation because of poor roads.

FASTFACT

• A famine is an acute episode of extreme lack of food characterized by starvation, widespread deaths, destitution, and extremely critical levels of acute malnutrition.

“Somalia needs partnerships that make its people thrive by continuing to live their traditional way of life with some added climate-adaptive and mitigation practices,” Abdishakur said

“Somalia has resources. We have minerals, rivers, wind, and natural gas. We have the longest coastline in Africa. We have a large agro-pastoral population, who live off ample pasture and export livestock to global markets when drought is not scorching their land.

“To break away from recurrent crises, we need the international community to understand the importance of building the resilience of our people to climate, economic, and security shocks.

“Along with urgently saving lives, international engagement in Somalia must contribute to livelihoods, develop vital modern infrastructure like roads and irrigation channels, and help families adapt to a new climate reality.”

Looking to the future, Abdishakur said: “We know that our government has a long way to go but we are committed to ending this crisis and stopping the cycle, including through improvements to the way we function, our transparency, and accountability.

“Our request to the international community, and any group with relevant expertise and resources, is to work with our government to urgently save lives today and make sustainable investments in the Somalia of tomorrow.”

Topics: UNGA77 UNGA Somalia Editor’s Choice

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Trump’s threat to impose tariffs could raise prices for consumers, colliding with promise for relief

Updated 27 November 2024
AP
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Trump’s threat to impose tariffs could raise prices for consumers, colliding with promise for relief

  • The US is the largest importer of goods in the world, with Mexico, China and Canada its top three suppliers, according to the most recent US Census data
Updated 27 November 2024
AP

DETROIT: If Donald Trump makes good on his threat to slap 25 percent tariffs on everything imported from Mexico and Canada, the price increases that could follow will collide with his campaign promise to give American families a break from inflation.
Economists say companies would have little choice but to pass along the added costs, dramatically raising prices for food, clothing, automobiles, booze and other goods.
The president-elect floated the tariff idea, including additional 10 percent taxes on goods from China, as a way to force the countries to halt the flow of illegal immigrants and drugs into the US But his posts Monday on Truth Social threatening the tariffs on his first day in office could just be a negotiating ploy to get the countries to change behavior.
High food prices were a major issue in voters picking Trump over Vice President Kamala Harris, but tariffs almost certainly would push those costs up even further.
For instance, the Produce Distributors Association, a Washington trade group, said Tuesday that tariffs will raise prices for fresh fruit and vegetables and hurt US farmers when other countries retaliate.
“Tariffs distort the marketplace and will raise prices along the supply chain, resulting in the consumer paying more at the checkout line,” said Alan Siger, association president.
Mexico and Canada are two of the biggest exporters of fresh fruit and vegetables to the US In 2022, Mexico supplied 51 percent of fresh fruit and 69 percent of fresh vegetables imported by value into the US, while Canada supplied 2 percent of fresh fruit and 20 percent of fresh vegetables.
Before the election, about 7 in 10 voters said they were very concerned about the cost of food, according to AP VoteCast, a survey of more than 120,000 voters.
“We’ll get them down,” Trump told shoppers during a September visit to a Pennsylvania grocery store.
The US is the largest importer of goods in the world, with Mexico, China and Canada its top three suppliers, according to the most recent US Census data.
People looking to buy a new vehicle likely would see big price increases as well, at a time when costs have gone up so much they are out of reach for many. The average price of a new vehicle now runs around $48,000.
About 15 percent of the 15.6 million new vehicles sold in the US last year came from Mexico, while 8 percent crossed the border from Canada, according to Global Data.
Much of the tariffs would get passed along to consumers, unless automakers can somehow quickly find productivity improvements to offset them, said C.J. Finn, US automotive sector leader for PwC. That means even more consumers “would potentially get priced out,” Finn said.
Hardest hit would be Volkswagen, Stellantis, General Motors and Ford, Bernstein analyst Daniel Roeska wrote Tuesday in a note to investors. “A 25 percent tariff on Mexico and Canada would severely cripple the US auto industry,” he said.
The tariffs would hurt US industrial production so much that “we expect this is unlikely to happen in practice,” Roeska said.
The tariff threat hit auto stocks on Tuesday, particularly shares of GM, which imports about 30 percent of the vehicles it sells in the US from Canada and Mexico, and Stellantis, which imports about 40 percent from the two countries. For both, about 55 percent of their lucrative pickup trucks come from Mexico and Canada. GM stock lost almost 9 percent of its value, while Stellantis dropped nearly 6 percent.
It’s not clear how long the tariffs would last if implemented, but they could force auto executives to move production to the US, which could create more jobs in the long run. However, Morningstar analyst David Whiston said automakers probably won’t make any immediate moves because they can’t quickly change where they build vehicles.
Millions of dollars worth of auto parts flow across the borders with Mexico and Canada, and that could raise prices for already costly automobile repairs, Finn said.
The Distilled Spirits Council of the US said tariffs on tequila or Canadian whisky won’t boost American jobs because they are distinctive products that can only be made in their country of origin. In 2023, the US imported $4.6 billion worth of tequila and $108 million worth of mezcal from Mexico and $537 million worth of spirits from Canada, it said.
“Tariffs on spirits products from our neighbors to the north and south are going to hurt US consumers and lead to job losses across the US hospitality industry,” it added.
Electronics retailer Best Buy said on its third-quarter earnings conference call that it runs on thin profit margins, so while vendors and the company will shoulder some increases, Best Buy will have to pass tariffs to customers. “These are goods that people need, and higher prices are not helpful,” CEO Corie Barry said.
Walmart also warned last week that tariffs could force it to raise prices.
Tariffs could trigger supply chain disruptions as people buy goods before they are imposed and companies seek alternate sources of parts, said Rob Handfield, a professor of supply chain management at North Carolina State University. Some businesses might not be able to pass on the costs.
“It could actually shut down a lot of industries in the United States. It could actually put a lot of US businesses out of business,” he said.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who talked with Trump after his call for tariffs, said they had a good conversation about working together. “This is a relationship that we know takes a certain amount of working on and that’s what we’ll do,” Trudeau said.
Trump’s threats come as arrests for illegally crossing the border from Mexico have been falling. But arrests for illegally crossing the border from Canada have been rising over the past two years. Much of America’s fentanyl is smuggled from Mexico, and seizures have increased.
Trump has sound legal justification to impose tariffs, even though they conflict with a 2020 trade deal brokered in large part by Trump with Canada and Mexico, said William Reinsch, senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a former Clinton administration trade official. The treaty, known as the USMCA, is up for review in 2026.
In China’s case, he could simply declare Beijing hasn’t met obligations under an agreement he negotiated in his first term. For Canada and Mexico, he could say the influx of migrants and drugs are a national security threat, and turn to a section of trade law he used in his first term to slap tariffs on steel and aluminum.
The law he would most likely use for Canada and Mexico has a legal process that often takes up to nine months, giving Trump time to seek a deal.
If talks failed and the duties were imposed, all three countries would likely retaliate with tariffs on US exports, said Reinsch, who believes Trump’s tariffs threat is a negotiating ploy.
US companies would lobby intensively against tariffs, and would seek to have products exempted. Some of the biggest exporters from Mexico are US firms that make parts there, Reinsch said.
Longer term, Mary Lovely, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, said the threat of tariffs could make the US an “unstable partner” in international trade. “It is an incentive to move activity outside the United States to avoid all this uncertainty,” she said.
Trump transition team officials did not immediately respond to questions about what he would need to see to prevent the tariffs from being implemented and how they would impact prices in the US
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum suggested Tuesday that Mexico could retaliate with tariffs of its own. Sheinbaum said she was willing to talk about the issues, but said drugs were a US problem.

Topics: Trump Returns US tariffs Mexico Canada

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US appeals court grants dismissal of Trump documents case

Updated 27 November 2024
AFP
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US appeals court grants dismissal of Trump documents case

  • The appeals court granted Smith’s request to dismiss the case without comment
Updated 27 November 2024
AFP

WASHINGTON: An appeals court on Tuesday granted a request by prosecutors to drop the case against US President-elect Donald Trump for mishandling classified documents.
Special Counsel Jack Smith had asked the court on Monday to dismiss the case because of a long-standing Justice Department policy of not prosecuting a sitting president.
A Trump-appointed district court judge in Florida threw out the documents case earlier this year, but Smith had appealed the ruling to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals.
The appeals court granted Smith’s request to dismiss the case without comment.
Smith is continuing, however, to pursue the case against Trump’s two co-defendants, his valet, Walt Nauta, and Mar-a-Lago property manager Carlos De Oliveira.
Trump, 78, was accused of removing large quantities of top secret documents after leaving the White House at the end of his first term and obstructing efforts to retrieve them.
The former president was also accused by the special counsel of conspiring to overturn the results of the 2020 election won by Joe Biden. A judge on Monday granted a request by Smith to drop that case.
The special counsel paused both federal cases this month after Trump defeated Vice President Kamala Harris in the November 5 presidential election.
The former and incoming president also faces two state cases — in New York and Georgia.
He was convicted in New York in May of 34 counts of falsifying business records to cover up a hush money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels on the eve of the 2016 election to stop her from revealing an alleged 2006 sexual encounter.
Judge Juan Merchan has postponed sentencing while he considers a request from Trump’s lawyers that the conviction be thrown out in light of the Supreme Court ruling in July that an ex-president has broad immunity from prosecution.
In Georgia, Trump faces racketeering charges over his efforts to subvert the 2020 election results in the southern state, but that case will likely be frozen while he is in office.

Topics: Trump Returns US court Special counsel Jack Smith

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Trump won about 2.5M more votes this year than he did in 2020. This is where he did it

Updated 26 November 2024
AP
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Trump won about 2.5M more votes this year than he did in 2020. This is where he did it

  • Trump’s team and outside groups supporting him knew from their data that he was making inroads with Black voters, particularly Black men younger than 50, more concentrated in these urban areas that have been key to Democratic victories
Updated 26 November 2024
AP

WASHINGTON: It’s a daunting reality for Democrats: Republican Donald Trump’s support has grown broadly since he last sought the presidency.
In his defeat of Democrat Kamala Harris, Trump won a bigger percentage of the vote in each one of the 50 states, and Washington, D.C., than he did four years ago. He won more actual votes than in 2020 in 40 states, according to an Associated Press analysis.
Certainly, Harris’ more than 7 million vote decline from President Joe Biden’s 2020 total was a factor in her loss, especially in swing-state metropolitan areas that have been the party’s winning electoral strongholds.
But, despite national turnout that was lower than in the high-enthusiasm 2020 election, Trump received 2.5 million more votes than he did four years ago. He swept the seven most competitive states to win a convincing Electoral College victory, becoming the first Republican nominee in 20 years to win a majority of the popular vote.
Trump cut into places where Harris needed to overperform to win a close election. Now Democrats are weighing how to regain traction ahead of the midterm elections in two years, when control of Congress will again be up for grabs and dozens of governors elected.
There were some notable pieces to how Trump’s victory came together:
Trump took a bite in Northern metros
Though Trump improved across the map, his gains were particularly noteworthy in urban counties home to the cities of Detroit, Milwaukee and Philadelphia, electoral engines that stalled for Harris in industrial swing states Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.
Harris fell more than 50,000 votes — and 5 percentage points — short of Biden’s total in Wayne County, Michigan, which makes up the lion’s share of the Detroit metro area. She was almost 36,000 votes off Biden’s mark in Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania, and about 1,000 short in Milwaukee County, Wisconsin.
It wasn’t only Harris’ shortfall that helped Trump carry the states, a trio that Democrats had collectively carried in six of the seven previous elections before Nov. 5.
Trump added to his 2020 totals in all three metro counties, netting more than 24,000 votes in Wayne County, more than 11,000 in Philadelphia County and almost 4,000 in Milwaukee County.
It’s not yet possible to determine whether Harris fell short of Biden’s performance because Biden voters stayed home or switched their vote to Trump — or how some combination of the two produced the rightward drift evident in each of these states.
Harris advertised heavily and campaigned regularly in each, and made Milwaukee County her first stop as a candidate with a rally in July. These swings alone were not the difference in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, but her weaker performance than Biden across the three metros helped Trump, who held on to big 2020 margins in the three states’ broad rural areas and improved or held steady in populous suburbs.
Trump’s team and outside groups supporting him knew from their data that he was making inroads with Black voters, particularly Black men younger than 50, more concentrated in these urban areas that have been key to Democratic victories.
When James Blair, Trump’s political director, saw results coming in from Philadelphia on election night, he knew Trump had cut into the more predominantly Black precincts, a gain that would echo in Wayne and Milwaukee counties.
“The data made clear there was an opportunity there,” Blair said.
AP VoteCast, a nationwide survey of more than 120,000 voters, found Trump won a larger share of Black and Latino voters than he did in 2020, and most notably among men under age 45.
Democrats won Senate races in Michigan and Wisconsin but lost in Pennsylvania. In 2026, they will be defending governorships in all three states and a Senate seat in Michigan.
Trump gained more than Harris in battlegrounds
Despite the burst of enthusiasm Harris’ candidacy created among the Democratic base when she entered the race in July, she ended up receiving fewer votes than Biden in three of the seven states where she campaigned almost exclusively.
In Arizona, she received about 90,000 fewer votes than Biden. She received about 67,000 fewer in Michigan and 39,000 fewer in Pennsylvania.
In four others — Georgia, Nevada, North Carolina and Wisconsin — Harris won more votes than Biden did. But Trump’s support grew by more — in some states, significantly more.
That dynamic is glaring in Georgia, where Harris received almost 73,000 more votes than Biden did when he very narrowly carried the state. But Trump added more than 200,000 to his 2020 total, en route to winning Georgia by roughly 2 percentage points.
In Wisconsin, Trump’s team reacted to slippage it saw in GOP-leaning counties in suburban Milwaukee by targeting once-Democratic-leaning, working-class areas, where Trump made notable gains.
In the three largest suburban Milwaukee counties — Ozaukee, Washington and Waukesha — which have formed the backbone of GOP victories for decades, Harris performed better than Biden did in 2020. She also gained more votes than Trump gained over 2020, though he still won the counties.
That made Trump’s focus on Rock County, a blue-collar area in south central Wisconsin, critical. Trump received 3,084 more votes in Rock County, home of the former automotive manufacturing city of Janesville, than he did in 2020, while Harris underperformed Biden’s 2020 total by seven votes. That helped Trump offset Harris’ improvement in Milwaukee’s suburbs.
The focus speaks to the strength Trump has had and continued to grow with middle-income, non-college educated voters, the Trump campaign’s senior data analyst Tim Saler said.
“If you’re going to have to lean into working-class voters, they are particularly strong in Wisconsin,” Saler said. “We saw huge shifts from 2020 to 2024 in our favor.”
Trump boosted 2020 totals as Arizona turnout dipped
Of the seven most competitive states, Arizona saw the smallest increase in the number of votes cast in the presidential contest — slightly more than 4,000 votes, in a state with more than 3.3 million ballots cast.
That was despite nearly 30 campaign visits to Arizona by Trump, Harris and their running mates and more than $432 million spent on advertising by the campaigns and allied outside groups, according to the ad-monitoring firm AdImpact.
Arizona, alone of the seven swing states, saw Harris fall short of Biden across small, midsize and large counties. In the other six states, she was able to hold on in at least one of these categories.
Even more telling, it is also the only swing state where Trump improved his margin in every single county.
While turnout in Maricopa County, Arizona’s most populous as the home to Phoenix, dipped slightly from 2020 — by 14,199 votes, a tiny change in a county where more than 2 million people voted — Trump gained almost 56,000 more votes than four years ago.
Meanwhile, Harris fell more than 60,000 votes short of Biden’s total, contributing to a shift significant enough to swing the county and state to Trump, who lost Arizona by fewer than 11,000 votes in 2020.
Rightward shift even in heavily Democratic areas
The biggest leaps to the right weren’t taking place exclusively among Republican-leaning counties, but also among the most Democratic-leaning counties in the states. Michigan’s Wayne County swung 9 points toward Trump, tying the more Republican-leaning Antrim County for the largest movement in the state.
AP VoteCast found that voters were most likely to say the economy was the most important issue facing the country in 2024, followed by immigration. Trump supporters were more motivated by economic issues and immigration than Harris’, the survey showed.
“It’s still all about the economy,” said North Carolina Democratic strategist Morgan Jackson, a senior adviser to Democrat Josh Stein, who won North Carolina’s governorship on Nov. 5 as Trump also carried the state.
“Democrats have to embrace an economic message that actually works for real people and talk about it in the kind of terms that people get, rather than giving them a dissertation of economic policy,” he said.
Governor’s elections in 2026 give Democrats a chance to test their understanding and messaging on the issue, said Democratic pollster Margie Omero, whose firm has advised Wisconsin’s Democratic Gov. Tony Evers in the past and winning Arizona Senate candidate Ruben Gallego this year.
“So there’s an opportunity to really make sure people, who governors have a connection to, are feeling some specificity and clarity with the Democratic economic message,” Omero said.

 

Topics: Trump Returns U.S. President-elect Donald Trump

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Teen who lied about beheaded French teacher’s class says ‘sorry’

Samuel Paty. (Photo credit: @Ch_Capuano)
Updated 26 November 2024
AFP
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Teen who lied about beheaded French teacher’s class says ‘sorry’

  • Paty had used the Charlie Hebdo magazine as part of an ethics class to discuss free speech laws in France, where blasphemy is legal and cartoons mocking religious figures have a long history
Updated 26 November 2024
AFP

PARIS: A teenager whose lies about her teacher are accused of contributing to the educator’s murder by an Islamist radical apologized to his family in a French court on Tuesday.
Eight people have been on trial since early November, charged with contributing to the climate of hatred that led to an 18-year-old of Chechen origin beheading teacher Samuel Paty outside Paris in 2020.
They include Brahim Chnina, the 52-year-old Moroccan father of the adolescent testifying Tuesday.
Then aged 13, the adolescent falsely claimed that Paty had asked Muslim students to leave his classroom before showing caricatures of the prophet Mohammed.
She was not in the classroom at the time.
“I would like to apologize to the family,” the 17-year-old, who has not been named, told the court. “I destroyed your lives, I am sorry.”
Also on trial is Abdelhakim Sefrioui, a 65-year-old French-Moroccan Islamist activist.
He and Chnina spread the teenager’s lies on social networks with the aim, according to the prosecution, of “designating a target,” “provoking a feeling of hatred” and “thus preparing several crimes.”
Both men have been in pre-trial detention for the past four years.
The teenager told the court that she lied to her mother to justify why she had been suspended from school for two days over her behavior and repeated absences.
“I was in panic and stress,” she said. “I told her I had been in class and that I wasn’t happy with what went on there and that the teacher excluded me. That we looked at cartoons.”

Sefrioui posted a video describing Paty as a “teaching thug.”
He also staged an “interview” with the teenager outside the school, whispering to her what to answer. The adolescent dutifully reiterated the falsehoods.
“I thought somebody would stop me in my lying, but nobody ever said that I wasn’t in class,” she told the court Tuesday.
She stuck to her story even after Paty’s death. Only following her arrest and 30 hours of interrogation did she admit to investigators that she had made it all up.
The teenager, whose delivery in court was matter-of-fact, showed emotion only when she talked about her father.
“Without my lies, none of us would be here,” she said, sobbing. “I used my father’s naivete and kindness.”
She added that “my father says you must always respect teachers,” a remark that prompted an astonished “really?” interjected by the court’s presiding judge.
The teenager was sentenced to 18 months of probation in December 2023 after being convicted of slander.
Paty had used the Charlie Hebdo magazine as part of an ethics class to discuss free speech laws in France, where blasphemy is legal and cartoons mocking religious figures have a long history.
His killing took place just weeks after Charlie Hebdo republished the Prophet Muhammad cartoons.
After the magazine used the images in 2015, Islamist gunmen stormed its offices, killing 12 people.
 

Topics: France Islamophobia

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After long wrangling, Blinken to testify in Congress on Afghanistan

Updated 26 November 2024
Reuters
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After long wrangling, Blinken to testify in Congress on Afghanistan

  • Donald Trump drew criticism for shooting video for his campaign at Arlington National Cemetery where he appeared at a ceremony honoring troops killed in the evacuation
  • Democrats have insisted some blame for the messy end of the war should be laid at the feet of Trump, who began the withdrawal process by signing a deal with the Taliban in 2020
Updated 26 November 2024
Reuters

WASHINGTON: US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has agreed to testify publicly at a House of Representatives committee hearing on the 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan, the panel said on Tuesday, after a long dispute with the Republican-led committee.
House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul said Blinken had committed to appear at a public hearing on Dec. 11 to discuss the committee’s investigation of the withdrawal three years ago.
The committee and the State Department have been wrangling over Blinken’s appearance for months. Panel Republicans voted in September to recommend Blinken be held in contempt of Congress for failing to comply with a subpoena.
The State Department had contended that the panel was provided with large amounts of information, with Blinken testifying before Congress on Afghanistan more than 14 times and the department providing nearly 20,000 pages of records, multiple high-level briefings and transcribed interviews.
McCaul released a report on Sept. 8 on the committee Republicans’ investigation of the chaotic Afghanistan withdrawal, blasting Democratic President Joe Biden’s administration for failures surrounding the evacuation.
The issue had become intensely politicized before the presidential election on Nov. 5. In his successful bid for a second term, Republican former President Donald Trump drew criticism for shooting video for his campaign at Arlington National Cemetery where he appeared at a ceremony honoring troops killed in the evacuation.
Trump also sought to pin blame for the withdrawal on Vice President Kamala Harris, his Democratic opponent.
Democrats have insisted some blame for the messy end of the war — less than seven months into Biden’s presidency — should be laid at the feet of Trump, who began the withdrawal process by signing a deal with the Taliban in 2020.
The issue could become even more politicized after Trump returns to the White House on Jan. 20, after he spoke during his campaign of firing those responsible for the pullout from Afghanistan.

Topics: United States of America (USA) Afghanistan Antony Blinken

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