TUNIS: The head of a Tunisian opposition party, Lotfi Mraihi, who has announced his intention to run in a presidential election set for October, has been arrested by police on suspicion of money laundering.
Mraihi, the leader of Republican Union Party, and one of the most prominent critics of President Kais Saied, was arrested late on Wednesday, politicians and local media said.
Tunis court spokesman said earlier this week that Mraihi faces charges of money laundering and opening bank accounts abroad without a license from the central bank.
Mraihi’s arrest comes as opposition parties, many of whose leaders are in prison, accused Saied’s government of exerting pressure on the judiciary to track down Saied’s rivals in the 2024 elections and pave the way for him to win a second term.
Elected president in 2019, Saied has not officially announced his candidacy for the election expected in Oct.6, but is widely expected to seek a second term. He said last year he will not hand power to what he called non-patriots.
Abir Moussi, the leader of the Free Constitutional Party and a prominent candidate, has been in prison since last year on charges of harming public security.
Moussi’s party says she was imprisoned in an effort to remove her from the election race and avoid a strong candidate. The authorities deny this.
Other candidates including Safi Saeed, Nizar Chaari and Abd Ellatif Mekki are facing prosecution for alleged crimes such as fraud and money laundering.
Mondher Znaidi, a prominent potential candidate who is living in France, is also facing prosecution on suspicion of financial corruption.
The opposition says fair and credible elections cannot be held unless imprisoned politicians are released and the media is allowed to do its job without pressure from the government.
Saied seized almost all powers in 2021, dissolved parliament, and began ruling by decree in a move that the opposition described as a coup. Saied said his steps were legal and necessary to end years of rampant corruption among the political elite.
Prominent opponents of the president have been detained since last year on charges of conspiring against state security, in a crackdown that included businessmen, media figures and politicians.
Tunisian police arrest candidate for presidential election
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Tunisian police arrest candidate for presidential election
- Lotfi Mraihi faces charges of money laundering and opening bank accounts abroad without a license from the central bank
- Mraihi’s arrest comes as opposition parties accused Saied’s government of exerting pressure on the judiciary to track down Saied’s rivals in the 2024 elections
Saudi Arabia and Jordan airdrop food aid to the Gaza Strip
- 30 tonnes of food aid airdropped by KSrelief and Jordan's charity group JHCO via Jordan's air force
- KSrelief chief Abdullah Al-Rabeeah says the food aid are ready to eat without the need for heating
RIYADH: Saudi Arabia and Jordan had airdropped 30 tonnes of ready-to-eat food for besieged Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, the King Salman Humanitarian Aid and Relief Center (KSrelief) said early Sunday.
In a statement carried by the Saudi Press Agency (SPA), KSrelief said the airdrop was carried out with the Jordanian Hashemite Charity Organization (JHCO) and the Jordanian Hashemite Armed Forces.
The food supplies dropped by air are suitable for immediate consumption without the need for heating, Dr. Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Rabeeah, KSrelief director general, said in the statement.
KSrelief and other aid agencies had been resorting to parachute drops of food aid to Gaza to bypass the closure of border crossings by the Israeli occupation forces, which had previously prevented the entry of humanitarian aid to the affected people in the Strip.
Al-Rabeeah called for the opening of border crossings, noting that delivery through airdrops were not sustainable considering the massive number of people in need of humanitarian assistance.
He said KSrelief's campaign for Palestinians to date has collected financial sums exceeding $184 million. The Kingdom also operated an air bridge consisting of 54 planes and a sea bridge consisting of eight ships still operating.
The US military had also built a temporary sea port in Gaza for the delivery of humanitarian aid, but even that had been rendered unstable by stormy seas.
More than 2 million Palestinians had been displaced in Gaza since Israel launched a full-scale war in response to the Oct. 7, 2023, attack by Hamas militants, killing 1,200 people and taking some 250 hostages, according to official Israeli figures.
The conflict has claimed the lives of more than 38,000 Palestinians, per the latest count of Gaza health officials.
Extensive damage to Gaza's infrastructure has precipitated a healthcare crisis, with an increase in communicable diseases, especially among children, and brought the entire educational system in Gaza to a standstill, according to the United Nations.
’Bulldozed and shelled’: Gaza’s farming sector ravaged by war
- Israel has killed at least 38,098 people, also mostly civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry
GAZA STRIP, Palestinian Territories: Tank tracks still fresh on his field in southern Gaza’s coastal area of Al-Mawasi, Nedal Abu Jazar lamented the damage war has wrought on his trees and crops.
“Look at the destruction,” the 39-year-old farmer told AFP, holding an uprooted tomato plant.
He pointed to his greenhouse’s metal frame and its white plastic sheeting strewn across the plot, inside an area designated a humanitarian zone by the Israeli army.
“People were sitting peacefully on their farmland ... and suddenly tanks arrived and fired at us, and then there were (air) strikes.”
Abu Jazar said the Israeli operation in late June destroyed about 40 dunams (10 acres) of land and killed five laborers.
His is not an isolated case. Across Gaza, 57 percent of agricultural land has been damaged since the war began, according to a joint assessment published in June by the UN’s agriculture and satellite imagery agencies, FAO and UNOSAT.
The damage threatens Gaza’s food sovereignty, Matieu Henry of the Food and Agriculture Organization told AFP, because 30 percent of the Palestinian territory’s food consumption comes from agricultural land.
“If almost 60 percent of the agricultural land has been damaged, this may have a significant impact in terms of food security and food supply.”
The Gaza Strip exported $44.6 million worth of produce in 2022, mainly to the West Bank and Israel, with strawberries and tomatoes representing 60 percent of the total, according to FAO data.
That number fell to zero after the October 7 attack on southern Israel that resulted in the deaths of 1,195 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli figures.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 38,098 people, also mostly civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.
The damage assessment on the agricultural land comes as the UN’s hunger monitoring system estimated in June that 96 percent of Gaza faces high levels of acute food insecurity.
Contacted by AFP, the Israeli army said it “does not intentionally harm agricultural land.”
In a statement, it said Hamas “often operates from within orchards, fields and agricultural land.”
The impact is worse in the Palestinian territory’s north, where 68 percent of agricultural land is damaged, although the southern area encompassing parts of Al-Mawasi has seen the most significant increase in recent months due to military operations.
UNOSAT’s Lars Bromley told AFP the damage is generally “due to the impact of activities such as heavy vehicle activity, bombing, shelling, and other conflict-related dynamics, which would be things like areas burning.”
Near the southern city of Rafah, 34-year-old farmer Ibrahim Dheir feels helpless after the destruction of 20 dunams (five acres) of land he used to lease, and all his farming equipment with it.
“As soon as the Israeli bulldozers and tanks entered the area, they began bulldozing cultivated lands with various trees, including fruits, citrus, guava, as well as crops like spinach, molokhia (jute mallow), eggplant, squash, pumpkin and sunflower seedlings,” he said, before listing more damage in a testimony of the area’s past agricultural abundance.
Dheir, whose family exported its produce to the West Bank and Israel, now feels destitute.
“We used to depend on agriculture for our livelihood day by day, but now there’s no work or income.”
Farmer Abu Mahmoud Za’arab also finds himself with “no source of income.”
The 60-year-old owns 15 dunams (3.7 acres) of land on which crops and fruit trees used to grow.
“The Israeli army passed through the land, completely wiping out all trees and crops,” he told AFP.
“They bulldozed and shelled the land, turning it into barren pits.”
The harm done to farmland in Gaza will last far beyond tank tracks and explosions, said Bromley of UNOSAT.
“With modern weaponry, a certain percentage is always going to fail. Tank shells won’t explode, artillery shells won’t explode ... so clearing that unexploded ordnance is a massive task,” he said.
It will require “probing every centimeter of the soil before you can allow the farmers back onto it.”
Despite the risks, Dheir wants to return to farming.
“We want the war to stop and things to return to how they were so we can farm and cultivate our lands again.”
What does reformist Masoud Pezeshkian’s election win mean for Iran’s future?
- Heart surgeon and former MP will be Islamic Republic’s first reformist Iranian president since 2005
- The election witnessed record low voter turnout with less than half of eligible voters casting their ballots
ATHENS, Greece: Iran reformist Masoud Pezeshkian’s victory over his hardline rival Saeed Jalili in the country’s presidential runoff on Saturday offers Iranians desperate for change a sliver of hope, according to political observers.
While many Iranians are too disillusioned with their government to feel optimistic, some believe Pezeshkian’s win points to the possibility of reform in the midst of economic turmoil, corruption, and crackdowns on dissent.
The first round of elections began on June 28, just over a month after President Ebrahim Raisi died in a helicopter crash.
Newly-elected Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian gestures during a visit to the shrine of the Islamic Republic's founder Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in Tehran on July 6, 2024.(AFP)
However, the election failed to generate more than 50 percent of votes for any candidate, with the lowest turnout since the Islamic Revolution of 1979. Videos circulating on social media platforms, including X, showed almost empty polling stations across the country.
“How can you, while holding a sword, gallows, weapons, and prisons against the people with one hand, place a ballot box in front of the same people with the other hand, and deceitfully and falsely call them to the polls?” Narges Mohammadi, the imprisoned Iranian human rights activist and Nobel laureate, said in a statement from Evin Prison.
BIO
- Name: Masoud Pezeshkian
- Year of birth: 1954
- City of birth: Mahabad, Iran
- Occupation: Heart surgeon
The underwhelming turnout is part of a trend that began four years ago with the country’s 2020 parliamentary election, according to Ali Vaez, Iran Project director at the International Crisis Group (ICG).
“This clearly shows that the majority of the Iranian people have given up on the ballot box as a viable vehicle for change,” he told Arab News.
“The head-to-head between Jalili and Pezeshkian in the second round was a contest between two opposite ends of the spectrum acceptable to the system: Jalili’s hard-line, ideological approach and Pezeshkian’s moderate, liberal stance created intense polarization, seemingly driving a higher voter turnout. Jalili embodies confrontational foreign policy and restrictive social policies, while Pezeshkian advocates for moderate reforms and diplomatic engagement.”
Political analysts voiced cautious optimism in the wake of Pezeshkian’s victory.
“Pezeshkian prevailed in an election where just 50 percent of voters went to the polls. He lacks the mandate enjoyed by Iran’s previous reform-minded presidents. But boycotting is what made his candidacy possible,” Esfandyar Batmanghelidj, founder and CEO of the UK-based Bourse & Bazaar Foundation think tank, said on X on Saturday.
“Both voters and non-voters had an influence on this remarkable outcome. The turnout was high enough to push Pezeshkian into office, but low enough to deny the (Iranian regime) legitimacy and to maintain political pressure for more significant change.”
Some Iranians have said that while they do not have any great expectations for Pezeshkian’s governance, their decision to vote for him was motivated by the desire for change, however small.
“The reason for my vote is not that I have any special hopes for his government, no. I voted because I believe that society’s explosive desire for change is now so strong and ready to erupt that even if a small opportunity is provided, society itself … will change many things for the better,” Iranian journalist and Sadra Mohaqeq, who voted for Pezeshkian, said on Friday.
Pezeshkian, a heart surgeon whose political career includes a tenure as the Iranian health minister, will be the first reformist to assume the office of president in Iran since 2005. His promises include efforts to improve relations with the West and a relaxation of Iran’s mandatory headscarf law.
With both Azeri and Kurdish roots, he also supports the rights of minorities in Iran. Minority groups often bore the brunt of state-sanctioned violence in the wake of the 2022-2023 protests sparked by the death of Mahsa (Jina) Amini in police custody.
After Amini’s death, Pezeshkian said that it was “unacceptable in the Islamic Republic to arrest a girl for her hijab and then hand over her dead body to her family.”
However, just days later, amid nationwide protests and brutal crackdowns by the government, he warned protesters against “insulting the supreme leader.” For even the most optimistic of Iran observers, it is clear that Pezeshkian still answers to the country’s head of state.
“Despite being a reformist, Pezeshkian is loyal to the supreme leader of Iran, and reformists in Iran generally cannot pursue reforms that challenge the vision, goals, and values of the Islamic Revolution. The ultimate authority doesn’t rest with President-elect Pezeshkian but with (Supreme Leader Ali) Khamenei,” Mohammed Albasha, senior Middle East analyst for the US-based Navanti Group, told Arab News.
Furthermore, even if Pezeshkian proves willing to strongly push for reforms, the Iranian political environment is still dominated by hardliners.
Vaez said: “Given Pezeshkian’s relatively low votes, the continued conservative dominance of other state institutions, and the limits of presidential authority, Pezeshkian will face an uphill battle in securing the greater social and cultural rights at home and diplomatic engagement abroad he’s emphasized in debates and on the campaign trail.”
While Pezeshkian has expressed support for domestic reforms and improved international relations, he has also voiced his unequivocal support for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
He has condemned the former Trump administration’s decision to label the IRGC as a terrorist organization and has worn the IRGC uniform in public meetings.
Opinion
This section contains relevant reference points, placed in (Opinion field)
It is unclear how Pezeshkian will reconcile a desire for ties with the West with his views, particularly given that the IRGC has been designated as a terrorist group by the US, Sweden, and Canada.
An increased push for improved ties with the West may also draw the ire of the Islamic Republic’s strongest military and economic allies, such as China and Russia.
However, Pezeshkian may not have much choice in the matter, regardless of his own aspirations.
“The president in Tehran is primarily responsible for implementing the daily agenda, not setting it. Nuclear policy, regional alliances, and relations with the West are dictated by the supreme leader and the Revolutionary Guard,” the Navanti Group’s Albasha said.
Though not the head of state, Pezeshkian will undoubtedly have some influence over Iran’s domestic and foreign policies, as well as economic policy.
The government of Iran’s last reformist president, Mohammad Khatami, was characterized by some liberalization, including freedom of expression, a free market economy, and improved diplomatic relations with other countries.
Only time will tell how much change Pezeshkian is willing, or able, to bring about.
Pezeshkian’s election win is not a turning point, ICG’s Vaez said, but “another twist in the complex political dynamics of a system that remains split between those who want the 1979 revolution to mellow and those who want it to remain permanent.”
Egypt to host Israeli, US delegations for Gaza ceasefire talks, says Al Qahera TV
CAIRO: Egypt’s state-affiliated Al Qahera News TV said on Saturday that the country will host Israeli and US delegations to discuss “outstanding issues” in a possible Gaza ceasefire agreement.
Citing a senior official, Al Qahera News said Egypt is conducting talks with the Palestinian faction Hamas to conclude ceasefire and hostages-for-prisoners swap deals.
Hamas in Gaza says 16 killed in strike on UN school
- The Israeli military said in a statement it “struck several terrorists operating in structures located in the area of UNRWA’s Al-Jawni school”
GAZA STRIP, Palestinian Territories: The Hamas authorities in Gaza said an Israeli strike on Saturday on a UN-run school where thousands of displaced were sheltering killed 16 people.
Israel’s military said its aircraft had targeted “terrorists” operating around the Al-Jawni school in Nuseirat, central Gaza.
The health ministry in the Hamas-run territory, which condemned the strike as an “odious massacre,” said 50 injured were taken to hospital from the school.
Some 7,000 people were sheltering in the school at the time of the attack, the Hamas government press office said. Dozens of people scrambled through the rubble after the strike to find survivors.
The press office said the school was run by the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, and most of the casualties were “children, women, and elderly.”
“This is the fourth time they have targeted the school without warning,” said one woman, Samah Abu Amsha, who told how some children were killed as they read the Qur’an in a class when the missile hit.
“Shrapnel flew at me inside the classroom and the children were injured,” she told AFP.
Hamas called the attack “a new massacre and crime committed by this criminal enemy as part of its war of genocide against our Palestinian people.”
The Israeli military said in a statement it “struck several terrorists operating in structures located in the area of UNRWA’s Al-Jawni school.”
“This location served as a hideout and operational infrastructure from which attacks against IDF troops operating in the Gaza Strip were directed and carried out,” it added, insisting that “steps were taken in order to mitigate the risk of harming civilians.”
Israel has agreed to meetings with mediators on a ceasefire initiative but has kept up its offensive in the territory that started on October 7 after the Hamas attack on southern Israel.
UNRWA said two of its workers were killed in a strike at Al-Bureij, also in central Gaza, early Saturday. The agency has a major food warehouse in the district.
The Al-Aqsa hospital said nine other bodies were brought to its morgue from the strike.
The UN agency said 194 of its workers have now been killed since the war started.
An UNRWA spokesperson said that since the war began, more than half of the agency’s facilities have been hit and many were shelters. “As a result at least 500 people sheltering in those facilities have been killed,” the spokesperson told AFP.
Paramedics said 10 people, including three journalists, died in another strike on a house in Nuseirat on Saturday.
“Absolutely no place in the Gaza Strip is safe,” said civil defense spokesman Mahmud Bassal.
The war began with the October 7 attack on southern Israel that resulted in the deaths of 1,195 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli figures.
Hamas militants also seized hostages, 116 of whom remain in Gaza including 42 the military says are dead.
In response, Israel has carried out a military offensive that has killed at least 38,098 people in Gaza, also mostly civilians, according to data from the Hamas-run health ministry there.
