RABAT: Moroccan police said Wednesday they had broken up a people smuggling gang in a northern town near the site of a deadly border tragedy in June.
The DGSN security service said it had arrested 23 suspected smugglers during morning raids in Nador and surrounding areas.
Nador is near the border with the Spanish enclave of Melilla, one of two main European Union territories on African soil and a magnet for migrants fleeing violence across the continent and seeking refuge in Europe.
Those arrested Wednesday included Moroccans and four people from sub-Saharan Africa.
“They are suspected of acting as middlemen, finding potential candidates and organizing illegal migration operations via the sea, as well as equipment and logistics,” the DGSN said in a statement.
Police seized items including 125 outboard motors, rubber dinghies, navigation equipment and 10 cars, some with false number plates, it added.
Melilla was the site of a tragedy on June 24 attempt when some 2,000 mostly Sudanese migrants attempted to storm the enclave’s border.
At least 23 people died, the worst toll in years of such attempted crossings, and rights groups accused both Spanish and Moroccan authorities of using excessive force.
Since the tragedy, Morocco has sentenced dozens of migrants to prison terms on charges including illegal entry and belonging to criminal gangs.
Morocco police say 23 people smugglers arrested
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Morocco police say 23 people smugglers arrested
- The DGSN security service said it had arrested 23 suspected smugglers during morning raids Those arrested Wednesday included Moroccans and four people from sub-Saharan Africa
Libyan agency calls for halt to public sector appointments amid rising wage bill
- About 89 percent of Libya’s labor force is employed in the public sector, the World Bank said in a 2024 report, based on a 2022 survey
TRIPOLI: The Libyan state agency mandated to oversee government performance has called for suspension of public sector appointments and contracts due to an excessive wage bill.
The Administrative Control Authority said the number of public sector employees in Libya had reached 2,099,200, with salary costs totaling 372 billion Libyan dinars ($75.21 billion) over the past 12 years.
About 89 percent of Libya’s labor force is employed in the public sector, the World Bank said in a 2024 report, based on a 2022 survey.
The authority posted its call on Facebook on Tuesday evening, addressing the Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Dbeibeh, who leads the government of national unity, and all bodies and institutions affiliated with his government. The government has yet to respond.
The public sector payroll in the oil producing country has increased by 104 percent in the last four years. It reached 67.6 billion Libyan dinars last year compared to 33.1 billion dinars in 2021, according to central bank data.
“(As the) public interest requires, you are requested to suspend all procedures for filling public positions (appointments — contracting) until they are reconsidered,” ACA said.
ACA is based in Tripoli and its powers include challenging appointments to public positions and improving accountability and transparency in Libya’s governance. The authority said the rise in the number of public sector employees and their salaries is a result of “random procedures, which imposed financial obligations on the public treasury that the state was unable to fulfill.”
Many Libyans have had to queue at banks to get cash since the 2011 ouster of Muammar Qaddafi followed by the east-west split of rival factions in 2014.
Egypt’s El-Sisi urges accelerated aid into Gaza Strip
- El-Sisi said the deal came after “strenuous efforts over more than a year of Egyptian, Qatari and US mediation“
CAIRO: Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi pointed on Wednesday to the “importance of accelerating the entry of urgent humanitarian aid” into Gaza as he welcomed a ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas.
El-Sisi, whose country neighbors Gaza and whose government helped negotiate the truce, said the deal came after “strenuous efforts over more than a year of Egyptian, Qatari and US mediation.”
Syrians work to avoid return to dictatorship
- Exiled activists have returned home and Damascus public spaces are abuzz with previously banned meetings
DAMASCUS: In a Damascus courtyard, Syrian activists brainstormed strategies to ensure their country does not return to authoritarianism, in a scene unimaginable under president Bashar Assad’s rule.
Since opposition fighters ousted the longtime ruler last month, the Syrian capital’s public spaces have been abuzz with previously banned civil society meetings.
Exiled activists have returned to the country for the first time in years, often leading to moving reunions with friends who stayed behind throughout the civil war.
Now, with Assad out, the activists who spearheaded the revolt want to ensure their voices count.
In the arched courtyard of a traditional Damascus home, Syrian activist Sawsan Abou Zainedin recounted meeting the country’s new leader Ahmad Al-Sharaa earlier this month.
“We stressed the essential role that civil society needs to play in the political transition,” said the director of a coalition of dozens of nongovernmental groups called Madaniya.
And “we insisted on the need to not only name people from the same camp” to form the interim authorities, she added of the Jan. 4 meeting.
Al-Sharaa, who leads a group called Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham, has named people close to him to key ministerial posts.
His armed group severed all ties with Al-Qaeda years ago, and his authorities have sought to reassure Syrians and the international community that they will respect the rights of minorities.
The new Damascus authorities have suspended the Assad-era constitution and the parliament.
Al-Sharaa last month said it could take four years before elections could be held, and up to three years to rewrite the constitution.
He said HTS would be disbanded at a so-called national dialogue conference to bring together Syrians of all political stripes.
His Foreign Minister, Asaad Al-Shaibani, said last week a committee is to be set up to prepare the meeting, for which no date has been announced.
Abou Zainedin said she and Asfari had requested “absolute transparency” in the preparation of that conference.
The Damascus authorities have appointed new officials to head other bodies too.
Lawyer Abdulhay Sayed said the conference would be “crucial” as long as representatives of civil society and unions were invited. Their inclusion would allow for “checks and balances” to prevent a return to authoritarianism, Sayed said.
The lawyer is among more than 300 people to have called for free and fair elections at his profession’s bar association after the new authorities replaced an Assad loyalist with a man of their choice.
“We’re in a constitutional void, in a transition period after 62 years of the Baath party’s rule,” Sayed said.
The national dialogue “conference has to establish a roadmap for an electoral law toward electing a constituent assembly in a year,” he added. “This assembly will be tasked with drawing up a permanent constitution and later could become a parliament.”
Syrian feminists also insisted on participating in all discussions toward building the country at a gathering earlier this month.
They are concerned that HTS’s ideology will exclude women from politics and public life.
Lawyer Joumana Seif said women had “a great role to play” in the new Syria and wanted to “actively” take part in the national conference. “We dream of rule of law,” said the rights advocate, whose father parliamentarian Riad Seif was jailed under Assad’s rule.
Wajdan Nassif, a writer and activist, spoke to fellow feminists after returning from exile.
“We don’t want a new oppressor ... We don’t want to see any more prisons,” she said.
“Syrian women need to take part (in discussions) in their own right ... We don’t want a repeat of the past.”
The journalists behind Sarkozy’s Libya corruption woes
- Sarkozy, a conservative with two convictions in other cases, has always maintained he is innocent and points to his key role in ousting Qaddafi
PARIS: Every day at the Paris court trying ex-president Nicolas Sarkozy over alleged corruption with Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi, the journalists who helped uncover the extraordinary allegations are following proceedings.
Fabrice Arfi and Karl Laske have spent 14 years documenting the links between Sarkozy’s entourage and the late Qaddafi, who is alleged to have funded the rightwinger’s 2007 election campaign with cash and offshore bank accounts.
The pair from the Mediapart news outlet have traveled the world for secret meetings with sources, tracked money to a host of tax havens, and been sued five times over their reporting — always unsuccessfully.
What is arguably the most shocking corruption trial in modern French history is the pinnacle of their work, sparking pride but also pressure for a duo with a track record in uncovering financial crime. “When you see a former president and three former ministers sat together on four folding chairs, with the justice system asserting ‘you were corrupted by a dictator,’ you know you are a witness to a historic event,” Arfi said in an interview.
“I don’t know what the outcome will be — it’s not down to me to say if they will be found guilty or not — but it shows that our work was not for nothing.”
Pushed on whether he thought the trial would have taken place without his and Laske’s relentless digging, he awkwardly conceded that “they played a role.”
“With all due modesty, without our investigation, prosecutors might not have opened their case,” added Arfi, the 43-year-old son of a police officer whose regular scoops have helped turn Mediapart into a profitable independent news site.
The Libya investigation began in 2011 when an individual contacted the newsroom, offering confidential information.
Arfi and Laske traveled abroad — Arfi withholds all of the details to protect the source — and received a computer hard drive said to belong to an infamous Franco Lebanese arms dealer called Ziad Takieddine.
When they returned to their hotel, they realized they had been given a potential goldmine — “Ali Baba’s cave,” Arfi says — containing Takieddine’s personal diary, emails, bank transfers and even photographs.
While French investigators were already looking at Takieddine’s role as a middleman in French arms deals in the 1990s, Arfi and Laske began verifying and confirming his more recent dealings with Qaddafi.
“We didn’t understand everything to start with. There are bits that are like pieces of the puzzle that only make sense once you have found the others,” he explained.
The first articles on Takieddine’s ties to Sarkozy allies made a few waves but the allegations would become more serious as Arfi and Laske dug deeper.
In 2012, during the presidential election campaign in which Sarkozy was seeking a second term, they published a document that caused a political earthquake — and a lot of professional soul-searching.
“We published in the middle of an election campaign, which is a difficult time for a news outlet,” Arfi explained. “But withholding it would have been worse.”
The document, handed over by a source with access to Libyan archives after the 2011 fall of Qaddafi, purported to show an offer of $50 million from the dictator to fund Sarkozy’s campaign, signed and stamped by Libyan intelligence chief Moussa Koussa. Sarkozy lost the election and sued, alleging the document was fake.
It, along with other evidence unearthed by Mediapart, will be presented during the trial which is scheduled to last until April 10.
Takieddine’s hard drive was also handed over to police by Arfi’s source.
Sarkozy, 69, alleges that he is the victim of a conspiracy between politically biased judges, police and left-leaning Mediapart.
In his first comments in court last week, Sarkozy called Arfi and Karl Laske “thugs” and angrily told judges that “you will never ever find a single euro, a single Libyan cent in my campaign.”
Arfi claims Sarkozy has been successful in deflecting public attention, using the same playbook as other right-wing populists.
Talks underway to open Egypt-Gaza border crossing for aid: Egypt state media
CAIRO: Egyptian state media reported Wednesday that coordination was underway to “open the Palestinian Rafah crossing to allow the entry of international aid” into Gaza, citing an Egyptian security source.
Egypt was “preparing to bring in the largest possible amount of aid to the Gaza Strip,” following news of a ceasefire deal reached between Israel and Hamas, state-owned newspaper Al-Ahram said.
It cited a report from Al-Qahera News, which is closely linked to state intelligence.
Mediators said Israel and Hamas agreed Wednesday to a ceasefire and a deal to release hostages held in Gaza, but Israel cautioned that the final sticking points needed to be ironed out.
Pressure to put an end to the fighting had ratcheted up in recent days, as mediators Qatar, Egypt and the United States intensified efforts to cement an agreement.
The Rafah border crossing has been closed since May, when the Israeli military seized the area and closed the Palestinian side of the crossing.
Egypt has repeatedly said it will only recognize Palestinian authority over the crossing.
Al-Qahera News on Wednesday said the framework agreement comprised of three interconnected phases.
The first would last 42 days and involve a temporary halt to military operations on both sides.
It would also require the withdrawal of Israeli forces away from population centers and toward Gaza’s borders, as well as the temporary cessation of flyovers by Israeli warplanes and reconnaissance aircraft for 10 hours each day.
