BERLIN: A German court ruled Wednesday that a special forces soldier who believes he is at risk of attacks by militant extremists because he served in Afghanistan isn’t entitled to a private weapons permit.
The 42-year-old soldier, whose name the court didn’t release, first applied for a permit to carry a weapon in 2016. His request was rejected by police. He appealed that decision successfully to a court in the western town of Minden, but regional authorities appealed and a higher administrative court in Muenster on Wednesday ruled against the soldier.
The plaintiff is a member of the German military’s KSK special forces unit and served several times in Afghanistan.
The Muenster court ruled that people who fear attacks are only entitled to a weapons permit “if they demonstrate that they are significantly more endangered than the general public.”
But it said that the plaintiff failed to show that, and there was no evidence either that KSK members are at significantly elevated risk or that he had been identified as a target by Islamist groups. It said it also couldn’t establish that carrying a firearm would serve to reduce any such risk.
German forces pulled out of Afghanistan along with other Western forces in 2021 after nearly two decades.
A German court denies weapons permit to a special forces soldier who served in Afghanistan
https://arab.news/c7k9n
A German court denies weapons permit to a special forces soldier who served in Afghanistan
- Regional authorities appealed and a higher administrative court in Muenster on Wednesday ruled against the soldier
- The plaintiff is a member of the German military’s KSK special forces unit and served several times in Afghanistan
El Salvador’s Bukele says he will not return man the US mistakenly deported
- Case of Maryland resident wrongfully deported dominates visit
WASHINGTON: El Salvador President Nayib Bukele said at the White House on Monday he had no plans to return a man mistakenly deported from the United States, suggesting that doing so would be like smuggling a terrorist into the country.
His remarks came during an Oval Office meeting where multiple officials in President Donald Trump’s administration said they were not required to bring back Salvadoran Kilmar Abrego Garcia, despite a US Supreme Court order saying they must facilitate the Maryland resident’s return.
Abrego Garcia’s case has drawn attention as the Trump administration has deported hundreds of people to El Salvador with help from Bukele, whose country is receiving $6 million to house the migrants in a high-security mega-prison.
The US government has described his deportation as an administrative error. But in court filings and at the White House on Monday, the administration indicated it does not plan to ask for Abrego Garcia back, raising questions about whether it is defying the courts.
Bukele told reporters he did not have the power to return Abrego Garcia to the US
“The question is preposterous. How can I smuggle a terrorist into the United States?” Bukele said, echoing the Trump administration’s claim that Abrego Garcia is a member of the MS-13 gang.
Bukele’s comments came shortly after US Attorney General Pam Bondi said at the same meeting that the US needed only to “provide a plane” if Bukele wanted to return Abrego Garcia.
Abrego Garcia’s lawyers have denied the allegation he is a gang member, saying the US has presented no credible evidence.
The US sent Abrego Garcia to El Salvador on March 15. Trump called reporters asking whether the administration would follow the order for his return “sick people.”
“The foreign policy of the United States is conducted by the president of the United States, not by a court,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said during the Oval Office meeting.
Mega-prison
Trump said he would send as many people living in the US illegally to El Salvador as possible and help Bukele build new prisons.
The US on Saturday deported 10 more people to El Salvador it alleges are gang members.
The migrants El Salvador accepts from the US are housed in a facility known as the Terrorism Confinement Center. Critics say the prison engages in human rights abuses and that Bukele’s crackdown on gangs has swept up many innocent people without due process.
Bukele told Trump he is accused of imprisoning thousands of people. “I like to say that we actually liberated millions,” he said.
The US president reacted gleefully to Bukele’s comment. “Do you think I can use that?” Trump asked.
The State Department last week lifted its advisory for American travelers to El Salvador to the safest level, crediting Bukele for reducing gang activity and violent crime.
Lawyers and relatives of the migrants held in El Salvador say they are not gang members and had no opportunity to contest the US government assertion that they were.
The Trump administration says it vetted migrants to ensure they belonged to gangs including Tren de Aragua and MS-13, which it labels terrorist organizations.
Last month, after a judge said flights carrying migrants processed under the 1798 Alien Enemies Act should return to the US, Bukele wrote “Oopsie... Too late” on social media alongside footage showing men being hustled off a plane at night.
Tuesday hearing
An immigration judge had previously granted Abrego Garcia protection from being deported to El Salvador, finding that he could face gang violence there. He held a permit to work in the US, where he had lived since 2011.
The US Supreme Court last week upheld a lower court ruling directing the administration to “facilitate and effectuate” his return. But it said the term “effectuate” was unclear and might exceed the authority of the district court judge.
A hearing is scheduled for Tuesday. Legal experts said Judge Paula Xinis may press the Trump administration to determine if it signaled to Bukele that he should refuse to release Abrego Garcia, which could amount to defiance of the court order’s language to “facilitate” his return.
While the Supreme Court in its decision ordered Xinis to clarify her order “with due regard for the deference owed to the executive branch in the conduct of foreign affairs,” some legal experts said Trump is likely defying the court by undermining Abrego Garcia’s release.
“All that is total claptrap as applied to a case like this, where the only reason why the foreign country is holding the person is because the US pushed them to do it and made an agreement under which they would do it,” George Mason University constitutional law professor Ilya Somin said.
“It’s very obvious that they could get him released if they wanted to.”
Trump told reporters on Friday that his administration would bring the man back if the Supreme Court directed it to do so.
A Palestinian activist expecting a US citizenship interview is arrested instead by ICE in Vermont
- “The Trump administration detained Mohsen Mahdawi in direct retaliation for his advocacy on behalf of Palestinians and because of his identity as a Palestinian
WASHINGTON: A Palestinian man who led protests against the war in Gaza as a student at Columbia University was arrested Monday at a Vermont immigration office where he expected to be interviewed about finalizing his US citizenship, his attorneys said.
Mohsen Mahdawi, a legal permanent resident who has held a green card since 2015, was detained at the US Citizenship and Immigration Services office in Colchester by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, his lawyers said.
The attorneys said they do not know where he is. They filed a petition in federal court seeking an order barring the government from removing him from the state or country.
“The Trump administration detained Mohsen Mahdawi in direct retaliation for his advocacy on behalf of Palestinians and because of his identity as a Palestinian. His detention is an attempt to silence those who speak out against the atrocities in Gaza. It is also unconstitutional,” attorney Luna Droubi said in an email.
According to the court filing, Mahdawi was born in a refugee camp in the West Bank and moved to the United States in 2014. He recently completed coursework at Columbia and was expected to graduate in May before beginning a master’s degree program there in the fall.
The petition describes him as a committed Buddhist who believes in “non-violence and empathy as a central tenet of his religion.”
As a student, Mahdawi was an outspoken critic of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza and organized campus protests until March 2024. He co-founded the Palestinian Student Union at Columbia with Mahmoud Khalil, another Palestinian permanent resident of the US and graduate student who recently was detained by ICE.
Khalil was the first person arrested under President Donald Trump’s promised crackdown on students who joined campus protests against the war in Gaza. On Friday, an immigration judge in Louisiana ruled that Khalil can be deported as a national security risk.
Christopher Helali, a friend of Mahdawi who lives near him in Vermont, was present outside the immigration office when Mahdawi was detained and recorded a video of Mahdawi being led away by authorities. In the video, which Helali released on social media Monday, Mahdawi is shown giving a peace sign with his hands and being led away to a car.
Helali described Mahdawi as a peaceful demonstrator who has worked to foster dialogue about the struggle of Palestinians in his homeland. Helali said he and Mahdawi were aware that Mahdawi could be detained today and that his friend went forward with the appointment anyway.
“And rightfully so, he was nervous for what was going on around him. But he was very much resolute in coming to this interview and coming today because he didn’t do anything wrong and was a law-abiding citizen, or soon-to-be citizen,” Helali said.
Vermont’s congressional delegation issued a statement condemning Mahdawi’s arrest, saying that instead of taking one of the final steps in his citizenship process, he was handcuffed by armed officers with their faces covered.
“This is immoral, inhumane, and illegal. Mr. Mahdawi, a legal resident of the United States, must be afforded due process under the law and immediately released from detention,” said the statement from Sen. Bernie Sanders, Sen. Peter Welch and Rep. Becca Balint.
Man charged over Tesla arson as anti-Musk wave sweeps US
- Two Tesla vehicles were badly damaged in the firebomb attack on a showroom in Albuquerque on February 9, and slogans likening Musk and his company to Nazis were sprayed on the walls
LOS ANGELES, United States: A man who allegedly torched two vehicles at a Tesla dealership and painted “Die Elon” on the side of the building has been hit with federal charges, the US Department of Justice said Monday.
The charges are the latest to be levied in connection to attacks on the EV maker, whose boss Elon Musk has become a hate figure for some over his role in slashing government as a top adviser to President Donald Trump.
Two Tesla vehicles were badly damaged in the firebomb attack on a showroom in Albuquerque on February 9, and slogans likening Musk and his company to Nazis were sprayed on the walls.
Jamison Wagner, 40, who lives in the city, in the western state of New Mexico, was also charged over a firebomb attack that hit an office of the state’s Republican Party last month.
If convicted of the two counts of malicious damage or destruction of property by fire or explosives, he could be jailed for up to 20 years on each count, the Department of Justice said.
“Let this be the final lesson to those taking part in this ongoing wave of political violence,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a statement.
“We will arrest you, we will prosecute you, and we will not negotiate. Crimes have consequences.”
Federal prosecution carries a stiff penalty compared to local law, where such a crime typically results in a sentence starting from just 18 months’ incarceration and a $5,000 fine. In March, Trump even suggested that people who vandalize Tesla property could be deported to prisons in El Salvador.
Musk, the South Africa-born billionaire chief of Tesla and SpaceX, is leading Trump’s ruthless cost-cutting drive at the head of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
Lauded on the right, he has rapidly become one of the most controversial figures in the country.
Several Tesla dealerships and a number of cars both in the US and around the world have been vandalized, and the company’s stock price has taken a hammering.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg takes the stand in historic antitrust trial
WASHINGTON: Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg took to the witness stand on the first day of a historic antitrust trial to defend his company against allegations it illegally monopolized the social media market.
The trial could force the tech giant to break off Instagram and WhatsApp, startups Meta bought more than a decade ago that have since grown into social media powerhouses.
FTC attorney Daniel Matheson called Zuckerberg as the first witness, as it seeks to prove that Meta acquired Instagram and WhatsApp to preserve its monopoly in the social networking space.
At the hearing, Matheson focused on a communication sent to colleagues that illustrated Zuckerberg’s frustration with a lack of progress on developing a photo-sharing app to compete with Instagram’s.
“The way I read this message is that I’m not happy about how we’re executing on that project,” Zuckerberg said.
Matheson followed up by asking if that was because of Instagram’s rapid growth.
“That does seem to be what I’m highlighting,” Zuckerberg said, adding that he’s always urging his teams to do better.
Later in the day, Zuckerberg appeared frustrated when Matheson asked him about his concerns expressed about how fast Instagram was growing.
“I don’t have the full timeline of Instagram’s development in my head,” Zuckerberg said, when Matheson asked him about his mention of its growth. “You could probably get that better from somebody else.”
Matheson also asked about comments of plans to keep Instagram running, while focusing on Facebook and not investing in Instagram. Zuckerberg said he wouldn’t characterize it as a plan, and he insisted that Instagram wasn’t neglected.
“In practice, we ended up investing a ton in it after we acquired it,” Zuckerberg, who testified most of the afternoon, said.
In opening statements, Matheson said Meta has used its position to generate enormous profits even as consumer satisfaction has dropped. He said Meta was “erecting a moat” to protect its interests by buying the two startups.
Mark Hansen, an attorney for Meta, said the FTC was making a “grab bag” of arguments that were wrong. He said Meta has plenty of competition and has made improvements to the startups it acquired.
“This lawsuit, in summary, is misguided,” Hansen said, adding: “anyway you look at it, consumers have been the big winners.”
The trial will be the first big test of President Donald Trump’s Federal Trade Commission’s ability to challenge Big Tech. The lawsuit was filed against Meta — then called Facebook — in 2020, during Trump’s first term. It claims the company bought Instagram and WhatsApp to squash competition and establish an illegal monopoly in the social media market.
Meta, the FTC argues, has maintained a monopoly by pursuing Zuckerberg’s strategy, “expressed in 2008: ‘It is better to buy than compete.’ True to that maxim, Facebook has systematically tracked potential rivals and acquired companies that it viewed as serious competitive threats.”
Facebook also enacted policies designed to make it difficult for smaller rivals to enter the market and “neutralize perceived competitive threats,” the FTC says in its complaint, just as the world shifted its attention to mobile devices from desktop computers.
Facebook bought Instagram — then a scrappy photo-sharing app with no ads and a small cult following — in 2012. The $1 billion cash and stock purchase price was eye-popping at the time, though the deal’s value fell to $750 million after Facebook’s stock price dipped following its initial public offering in May 2012.
Instagram was the first company Facebook bought and kept running as a separate app. Up until then, Facebook was known for smaller “acqui-hires” — a type of popular Silicon Valley deal in which a company purchases a startup as a way to hire its talented workers, then shuts the acquired company down. Two years later, it did it again with the messaging app WhatsApp, which it purchased for $22 billion.
WhatsApp and Instagram helped Facebook move its business from desktop computers to mobile devices, and to remain popular with younger generations as rivals like Snapchat (which it also tried, but failed, to buy) and TikTok emerged. However, the FTC has a narrow definition of Meta’s competitive market, excluding companies like TikTok, YouTube and Apple’s messaging service from being considered rivals to Instagram and WhatsApp.
Meta, meanwhile, says the FTC’s lawsuit “defies reality.”
“The evidence at trial will show what every 17-year-old in the world knows: Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp compete with Chinese-owned TikTok, YouTube, X, iMessage and many others. More than 10 years after the FTC reviewed and cleared our acquisitions, the Commission’s action in this case sends the message that no deal is ever truly final. Regulators should be supporting American innovation, rather than seeking to break up a great American company and further advantaging China on critical issues like AI,” the company said in a statement.
In a filing last week, Meta also stressed that the FTC “must prove that Meta has monopoly power in its claimed relevant market now, not at some time in the past.” This, experts say, could also prove challenging since more competitors have emerged in the social media space in the years since the company bought WhatsApp and Instagram.
Meta’s fate will be decided by US District Judge James Boasberg, who late last year denied Meta’s request for a summary judgment and ruled that the case must go to trial.
While the FTC may face an uphill battle in proving its case, the stakes are high for Meta, whose advertising business could be cut in half if it’s forced to spin off Instagram.
Meta isn’t the only technology company in the sights of federal antitrust regulators, Google and Amazon face their own cases. The remedy phase of Google’s case is scheduled to begin on April 21. A federal judge declared the search giant an illegal monopoly last August.
Trump blames Zelensky for ‘millions’ of deaths in Russian invasion
- Donald Trump: ‘Let’s say Putin number one, but let’s say Biden, who had no idea what the hell he was doing, number two, and Zelensky’
- Trump: ‘You don’t start a war against somebody that’s 20 times your size, and then hope that people give you some missiles’
WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump resumed his attempts Monday to blame Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky for Russia’s invasion, falsely accusing him of responsibility for “millions” of deaths.
Trump — who had a blazing public row in the Oval Office with Zelensky six weeks ago — said the Ukranian shared the blame with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who ordered the February 2022 invasion, and then-US president Joe Biden.
The Republican told reporters that there were “millions of people dead because of three people.”
“Let’s say Putin number one, but let’s say Biden, who had no idea what the hell he was doing, number two, and Zelensky,” Trump said during a meeting with the visiting president of El Salvador.
Trump then doubled down on his attack on Zelensky.
“He’s always looking to purchase missiles,” he said dismissively of the Ukrainian leader’s attempts to maintain his country’s defense against the Russian invasion.
“When you start a war, you got to know that you can win the war,” Trump said. “You don’t start a war against somebody that’s 20 times your size, and then hope that people give you some missiles.”
Relations between Trump and Zelensky have been tense ever since the US president stunned the world by opening talks with Russia in February.
In the run-up to their televised row on February 28 Trump repeatedly echoed Moscow’s talking points — blaming Ukraine for the war and calling Zelensky a “dictator without elections.”
Zelensky has since tried to patch things up, including sending a delegation to Washington last week to discuss a mineral deal Trump has called for, that would give the US preferential access to Ukrainian natural resources.
But the US leader has stepped up his rhetoric in the last few days.
Trump however insisted a deal to end the Ukraine war was possible, despite Ukrainian accusations that Moscow is stalling.
“I want to stop the killing, and I think we’re doing well in that regard. I think you’ll have some very good proposals very soon,” Trump said.
Trump’s comments came despite a deadly Russian strike on the Ukrainian city of Sumy on Sunday that killed at least 35 people, one of the deadliest attacks of the war.
The US president said on Sunday that the attack was a “mistake” but did not elaborate. Russia insisted Monday that its missiles hit a meeting of Ukrainian army commanders.
Zelensky urged US counterpart Donald Trump in a CBS interview broadcast Sunday to visit his country to better understand the devastation wrought by Russia’s invasion.
