ISTANBUL: A Turkish court on Thursday sentenced the former head of a pro-Kurdish party to 42 years in prison for his alleged role in deadly 2014 protests that erupted as Daesh group jihadists overran the Syrian town of Kobani.
In jail since 2016, Selahattin Demirtas, 51, a two-time election rival to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, was convicted of dozens of crimes including undermining state unity and the country’s integrity.
The court in Sincan, on the outskirts of Ankara, also sentenced the People’s Democratic Party (HDP) former co-chair Figen Yuksekdag to 30 years and three months in jail, private broadcaster NTV and rights group MLSA reported.
After the hearing, several lawmakers for the party, which has since been renamed the DEM, held up portraits of the two jailed leaders in the national assembly.
Fearing troubles after the case, the governors of at least 14 southern provinces with large Kurdish and Syrian communities banned demonstrations for four days, MLSA added.
The court ordered the release of some politicians, including Gultan Kisanak, former mayor of the major pro-Kurdish city of Diyarbakir, but many others were handed jail terms.
The case against former HDP members, including Demirtas and Yuksekdag, stems from a dark episode of the more than decade-long Syria war.
Thirty-seven people died in demonstrations against the Turkish army’s inaction in the face of an IS offensive against the largely Kurdish northern Syrian town.
The fighting was visible from the Turkish side of the border and many in the Kurdish community viewed the army as complicit in the humanitarian disaster that followed.
The jihadists were driven out of Kobani in January 2015 by US-backed Syrian Kurdish fighters that Turkiye officially views as terrorists.
Turkiye views the HDP as the political front of outlawed Kurdish militants who have been waging an insurgency that has claimed tens of thousands of lives since 1984.
The HDP blamed Turkish police for causing the deaths.
In 2023 testimony, Demirtas slammed the case against him. “There’s no single evidence about me. This is a case of political revenge, we were not legally arrested, we are all political hostages.”
Demirtas has been in jail in the western city of Edirne since 2016, facing multiple trials on terror-related charges that Western governments view as part of Erdogan’s crackdown on political dissent.
The European Court of Human Rights has repeatedly called for his release.
The court verdict against former leaders and members of the HDP — which faces a court case that could result in it being shut down — sparked protests.
DEM Party co-chair Tuncer Bakirhan slammed the verdict as a “black stain in the history of Turkish justice.”
“We all witnessed a legal massacre here today,” Bakirhan said.
“Kurds and revolutionaries were tried to be erased from the political scene,” he added.
Prosecutors accused the 108 defendants of “attacking the integrity of the state,” and of crimes including looting and murder.
They sought an aggravated life sentence for 36 suspects including Demirtas on charges of attacking state unity and the country’s integrity.
Human Rights Watch called the conviction of Demirtas and other leading Kurdish politicians the latest move in a campaign of persecution that has disenfranchised mainly Kurdish voters.
“Using bogus criminal proceedings to remove democratically elected Kurdish politicians from political life will do nothing to end the Turkish state’s decades-long conflict with the PKK,” said Hugh Williamson, Europe and Central Asia director at Human Rights Watch.
Defense lawyers said they would appeal the verdict, which came after Erdogan spoke of a “softening” in politics, after his Islamic-rooted party suffered a historic defeat in the March 31 local elections.
“The politics in Turkiye needs softening. We will do our part as before,” he said in an address on Wednesday.
The issue of political prisoners, including leading civil society leader Osman Kavala, reportedly came up during Erdogan’s rare meeting on May 2 with opposition CHP leader Ozgur Ozel. The CHP retained control of large cities including Istanbul and made major gains in the March vote.
On Wednesday, an Istanbul court rejected a request for Kavala to be retried.
The Paris-born philanthropist was arrested in October 2017 and sentenced to life imprisonment in 2022 for allegedly trying to topple Erdogan’s government.
Turkiye court jails Kurdish leader for 42 years over 2014 unrest
https://arab.news/zqxfn
Turkiye court jails Kurdish leader for 42 years over 2014 unrest
- HDP former co-chair Figen Yuksekdag was sentenced to more than 30 years in prison
Russian FM slams killing of Palestinians with US weapons
- Palestinians have ‘legitimate right’ to self-determination, Sergey Lavrov tells UN General Assembly
- Israel’s attacks on Lebanon are ‘inhumane’ and a ‘glaring example of terrorist methods’
DUBAI: “The killing of Palestinian civilians with American weapons must be immediately ended,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told the UN General Assembly on Saturday.
“There can be no justification for acts of terrorism, which Israelis fell victim to on Oct. 7 of last year, but everyone who still has a sense of compassion is outraged by the fact that the October tragedy is being used for the mass collective punishment of the Palestinians in the form of an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe,” he said.
It is important to ensure the delivery of humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip and the reconstruction of its infrastructure, he added.
Lavrov highlighted the importance “to guarantee the realization of the legitimate right for the Palestinians to self-determination and to allow them, not in words but in deeds as they say on the ground, to create a contiguous and viable state within the 1967 borders with its capital in East Jerusalem.”
He described Israel’s attacks on Lebanon as “inhumane” and a “glaring example of terrorist methods as a means of achieving political aims” by transforming civilian technology into a lethal weapon.
“There must be an immediate investigation into this crime, but already we can’t remain silent in the face of many publications in the media, including in Europe and here in the US, that indicate to varying degrees the involvement and awareness of Washington when it comes to the preparation of that terrorist attack,” Lavrov said.
Revolutionary Guard general’s killing ratchets up pressure on Iran to respond
- Gen. Nilforushan served as the deputy commander for operations in the Guard, a role overseeing its ground forces
DUBAI: A prominent general in Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard died in an Israeli airstrike that killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in Beirut.
The killing of Gen. Abbas Nilforushan marks the latest casualty suffered by Iran as the nearly yearlong Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip teeters on the edge of becoming a regional conflict.
His death further ratchets up pressure on Iran to respond, even as Tehran has signaled in recent months that it wants to negotiate with the West over sanctions crushing its economy.
Ahmad Reza Pour Khaghan, the deputy head of Iran’s judiciary, also confirmed Nilforushan’s death, describing him as a “guest to the people of Lebanon,” the state-run IRNA news agency said.
Khaghan also reportedly said that Iran had the right to retaliate under international law.
Nilforushan served as the deputy commander for operations in the Guard, a role overseeing its ground forces.
What he was doing in Lebanon on Friday wasn’t immediately clear. The Guard’s expeditionary Quds Force for decades has armed, trained and relied on Hezbollah as part of its strategy to rely on regional militias as a counterbalance to Israel and the US.
Nilforushan, like other members of the Guard that view Israel as Iran’s main enemy, long mocked and criticized the country.
“The Zionist regime has many ethnic, cultural, social and military rifts. It is in vulnerable and in doom status more than before,” Nilforushan said in 2022, according to an IRNA report.
The US Treasury sanctioned Nilforushan in 2022 and said he had led an organization “directly in charge of protest suppression.”
Those sanctions came amid the monthslong protests in Iran over the death of Mahsa Amini following her arrest for allegedly not wearing her headscarf, or hijab, to the liking of police. At the time, Nilforushan accused Iran’s enemies abroad of stoking the demonstrations led by Iranian women that challenged both the mandatory hijab and the country’s theocracy.
Nilforushan also served in Syria, backing President Bashar Assad in his country’s decades-long war that grew out of the 2011 Arab Spring. Like many of his colleagues, he began his military career in the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s.
In 2020, Iranian state television called him a “comrade” of Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the head of its expeditionary Quds Force who was killed in a US drone attack in Baghdad that year.
Nilforushan’s death comes as Iran in recent months has been signaling it wants to change its tack with the West after years of tensions stemming from then-President Donald Trump’s unilateral withdrawal of America from Tehran’s nuclear deal with world powers in 2018.
In July, Iranian voters elected reformist President Masoud Pezeshkian following a helicopter crash that killed President Ebrahim Raisi, a hard-line protege to 85-year-old Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
While critical of Israel, Pezeshkian has maintained that Iran is willing to negotiate over its nuclear program, which now enriches uranium to near weapons-grade levels. While Iran has been able to sell oil abroad despite sanctions, it likely was at a steep discount and energy prices have fallen further in recent weeks.
Meanwhile, Iran still threatens to retaliate for Soleimani’s killing and the suspected Israeli assassination in Tehran of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in July. Iran hasn’t explained why it hasn’t struck yet, though an unprecedented direct attack it launched in April on Israel failed to seriously damage any major target.
Lebanon’s health minister: Israeli attacks on medics constitute a war crime
- Dr. Firass Abiad says Monday’s airstrikes created “environment of terror,” spurring mass flight from targeted areas
- He made the comments during an appearance on the Arab News current affairs program “Frankly Speaking”
DUBAI: Dr. Firass Abiad, Lebanon’s minister of public health, has strongly condemned Israeli attacks on healthcare workers and medical infrastructure, describing them as war crimes under international humanitarian law.
“Do we consider this a war crime? Of course, we consider this a war crime,” said Abiad, adding that this was not just the view of the Lebanese government but echoed by international legal bodies.
“When we listen to the International Court of Justice, these are the experts on what is international humanitarian law and whether it has been violated. So, these are the experts telling us that what Israel is doing constitutes war crimes.”
Abiad made the comments during an appearance on the Arab News current affairs program “Frankly Speaking” amid escalating violence between Israel and the Iran-backed Hezbollah militia, which now threatens to spill over into a major regional war.
On Saturday, Hezbollah confirmed that its leader, Hassan Nasrallah, was killed in an Israeli strike on the group’s Dahiyeh stronghold in Beirut. The attack follows days of Israeli strikes across Lebanon, which have left 1,030 people dead — including 156 women and 87 children.
Hezbollah began rocketing northern Israel last October in solidarity with the Palestinian militant group Hamas, whose Oct. 7 assault on southern Israel triggered the war in Gaza. Israel retaliated by mounting strikes on Hezbollah targets, including its leadership.
In early September, the tit-for-tat suddenly escalated when Hezbollah communication devices, including pagers and walkie-talkies, suddenly exploded simultaneously in a sophisticated coordinated attack blamed on Israel.
Since then, Israeli strikes on Hezbollah targets across the country have rapidly escalated, with significant collateral damage to residential areas. Health workers and medical infrastructure have not been spared amid the carnage.
“This is something that did not start these past few weeks,” Abiad told “Frankly Speaking” host Katie Jensen. “This is something that we have seen from the start of the hostilities, since last October.
“Even before the detonation of communication devices, we had recorded 25 healthcare professionals who had been killed, whether they were paramedics or whether they were healthcare professionals. And unfortunately, in the past two weeks, we have seen that number rise to almost 40 healthcare workers who have been killed in the atrocious attacks.”
The ongoing conflict has created a massive humanitarian crisis, with widespread displacement across the country. According to the Lebanese government’s estimates, nearly 500,000 people have been forced to flee their homes due to escalating violence.
Abiad explained the magnitude of the displacement. “Before the attacks, the number released by the disaster management side was 130,000 displaced,” he said.
“Remember that by that time, there was an escalation of hostilities by Israel, and the populations were internally displaced still into southern areas.”
However, last Monday’s airstrikes, which saw the killing of approximately 600 people, including nine healthcare workers and two UN staff, in the single deadliest day in Lebanon since the 2006 war, was a watershed moment in the long-running crisis.
“That created this environment of terror, and really, this is where we saw people leave en masse from the targeted areas,” said Abiad.
Lebanese highways were quickly overwhelmed with people fleeing their homes, causing massive traffic jams. Many spent up to 18 hours on the road, desperately seeking safety.
Abiad said the Lebanese government has established 400 public shelters, which currently house about 70,000 people. However, he said the total number of displaced people is far higher.
“We estimate that usually, from our past experience in the 2006 war, the number of people, whether they are living with friends, family, in homes they rented, or even across the border into neighboring countries, is four to five times as many as there are in shelters,” he said.
“And that’s why we really believe that the tally of people who have been displaced is probably around 400,000 to 500,000.”
Biden describes Israeli strike that killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah as ‘measure of justice’
Biden describes Israeli strike that killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah as ‘measure of justice’
- President says US will ‘further enhance defense posture’ in the Middle East to deter aggression
- Nasrallah responsible for the deaths of thousands of Americans, Israelis, and Lebanese civilians, Biden says
LONDON: US President Joe Biden on Saturday described the Israeli strike that killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah as a “measure of justice” for his thousands of victims.
Biden was speaking after Hezbollah had earlier confirmed that Nasrallah, one of the group’s founders, was killed in an Israeli airstrike in Beirut the previous day.
Biden said “taking out” Nasrallah happened in the broader context of the conflict that began with Hamas’ massacre of Israelis on Oct. 7 last year.
“Nasrallah, the next day, made the fateful decision to join hands with Hamas and open what he called a ‘northern front’ against Israel,” Biden said in a statement.
He also noted that Hezbollah under Nasrallah’s watch has been responsible for the deaths of thousands of Americans, Israelis, and Lebanese civilians.
Biden said that he had directed US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin to “further enhance the defense posture of US military forces in the Middle East region to deter aggression and reduce the risk of a broader regional war.”
Washington’s goal was to “deescalate the ongoing conflicts in both Gaza and Lebanon through diplomatic means,” he added.
However, Biden and his administration have repeatedly said that they had no prior knowledge of the latest Israeli attack, a strike that some officials have spoken out against.
“Nasrallah was a bad guy, but it is frustrating that the Israelis are doing this without consulting us and then ask that we clean up when it comes to deterring Iran,” one US official told Axios.
Another American official said “Nasrallah has blood on his hands,” but that the Biden administration did not see how Israel’s “whack-a-mole” approach will address the larger strategic picture, Axios added.
* With AFP
Hashem Safieddine: possible successor to Hezbollah chief Nasrallah
- Safieddine bears a striking resemblance to his charismatic maternal cousin Nasrallah
- Safieddine has strong ties with Iran after undertaking religious studies in the holy city of Qom.
BEIRUT: Hashem Safieddine, a potential successor to his slain cousin Hassan Nasrallah, is one of Hezbollah’s most prominent figures and has deep religious and family ties to the Shiite Muslim movement’s patron Iran.
Safieddine bears a striking resemblance to his charismatic maternal cousin Nasrallah but is several years his junior, aged in his late 50s or early 60s.
A source close to Hezbollah, requesting anonymity as they were not authorized to speak to the media, said the grey-bearded, bespectacled Safieddine was the “most likely” candidate for party’s top job.
The United States and Saudi Arabia put Safieddine, who is a member of Hezbollah’s powerful decision-making Shoura Council, on their respective lists of designated “terrorists” in 2017.
The US Treasury described him as “a senior leader” in Hezbollah and “a key member” of its executive.
While Hezbollah deputy chief Naim Qassem automatically takes over the Hezbollah leadership after Nasrallah’s death, the Shoura Council must meet to elect a new secretary-general.
Safieddine has strong ties with Iran after undertaking religious studies in the holy city of Qom.
His son is married to the daughter of General Qasem Soleimani, the commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards’ foreign operations arm who was killed in a 2020 US strike in Iraq.
Safieddine has the title of Sayyed, his black turban marking him, like Nasrallah, as a descendant of the Prophet Muhammad.
Unlike Nasrallah, who lived in hiding for years, Safieddine has appeared openly at recent political and religious events.
Usually presenting a calm demeanour, he has upped the fiery rhetoric during the funerals of Hezbollah fighters killed in nearly a year of cross-border clashes with Israel.
Nasrallah said his forces were acting in support of Palestinian Hamas militants fighting Israel in Gaza.
Amal Saad, a Lebanese researcher on Hezbollah based at Cardiff University, said that for years people have been saying that Safieddine was “the most likely successor” to Nasrallah.
“The next leader has to be on the Shoura Council, which has a handful of members, and he has to be a religious figure,” she said.
Safieddine “has a lot of authority... he’s the strongest contender” she added.
Hezbollah was created at the initiative of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and gained its moniker as “the Resistance” by fighting Israeli troops who occupied southern Lebanon until 2000.
The movement was founded during the Lebanese civil war after Israel besieged the capital Beirut in 1982.
In July in a speech in Beirut’s southern suburbs, Safieddine alluded to how Hezbollah views its leadership succession.
“In our resistance... when any leader is martyred, another takes up the flag and goes on with new, certain, strong determination,” he said.
