LONDON: Three asylum seekers who brought court action to block the UK’s attempt to send them to Rwanda had their cases resolved on Tuesday, after the incoming Labour government ditched the policy.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced on Saturday that the migrant deportation plan forged by the ousted Conservative government was “dead and buried.”
There had already been a spate of legal challenges to the scheme, with the UK Supreme Court in November last year ruling that it was illegal under international law as Rwanda could not be considered a safe country for asylum seekers.
Government lawyer James Eadie told the High Court in London on Tuesday: “In relation to the three named claimants, these claimants’ cases will be fully disposed of and withdrawn subject to the (interior ministry) paying their costs.”
The Labour Party said before last Thursday’s general election that it would ditch the scheme, which the Tories said would deter huge numbers of migrants trying to get across the Channel to the UK on small boats from northern France.
Sixty-five people were brought ashore Monday — the first under the new government — taking the total number of arrivals so far this year to 13,639, according to an AFP tally of official figures.
Rwanda, home to 13 million people in Africa’s Great Lakes region, claims to be one of the most stable countries on the continent and has drawn praise for its modern infrastructure.
But rights groups accuse veteran President Paul Kagame of ruling in a climate of fear, stifling dissent and free speech.
A spokesman for his government said Monday that “Rwanda takes note of the intention of the UK government to terminate the Migration and Economic Development Partnership Agreement.”
As part of the deal, the UK has already paid some £240 million ($307 million) to Rwanda, with a further £50 million scheduled to be sent at a later date.
In January, Kagame said the money was “only going to be used if those people will come. If they don’t come, we can return the money.”
However, he later specified there was “no obligation” to do so.
UK resolves Rwanda asylum cases after government drops policy
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UK resolves Rwanda asylum cases after government drops policy
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- New UK leader: Migrant deportation plan forged by the ousted Conservative government ‘dead and buried’
Biden to host UK PM for talks next week, says White House
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WASHINGTON: US President Joe Biden will host British Prime Minister Keir Starmer for talks next week that will focus on the wars in Gaza and Ukraine, the White House said on Friday.
Starmer’s visit to the White House on September 13, his second since taking office in July, will also discuss the “special relationship” between London and Washington, it said.
Thailand’s king swears in new government after turmoil
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- Dressed in official uniform, Paetongtarn and her Cabinet ministers swore their allegiance in front of King Vajiralongkorn and Queen Suthida in a ceremony at Bangkok’s Dusit Palace
BANGKOK: Thailand’s King Maha Vajiralongkorn swore in Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra and 35 Cabinet ministers in Bangkok on Friday, ushering in a new government in Southeast Asia’s second largest economy after a period of political turmoil.
Paetongtarn, 38, leader of the ruling Pheu Thai party, was elected by parliament last month to become Thailand’s youngest prime minister after her predecessor Srettha Thavisin was dismissed by a court order over an ethics violation.
The Cabinet, which was formally endorsed by the king on Wednesday, comprises 17 members from Pheu Thai, including the premier, and another 19 positions divided among coalition partners.
Dressed in official uniform, Paetongtarn and her Cabinet ministers swore their allegiance in front of King Vajiralongkorn and Queen Suthida in a ceremony at Bangkok’s Dusit Palace.
“I want to wish, with gladness, that the Cabinet will have the encouragement and determination to perform your duties as you have sworn for the benefit of the country and people,” the king said after the Cabinet’s oath of allegiance.
Paetongtarn and the Cabinet ministers bowed after the king’s remark.
The youngest daughter of the divisive former premier Thaksin Shinawatra, Paetongtarn has not served in government previously and will face challenges on multiple fronts, including a floundering economy.
She is also the second woman and fourth member of the Shinawatra clan to hold Thailand’s top elected position, with three previous premiers removed by coups or court decisions.
Paetongtarn’s government will deliver its policy statement to parliament next Thursday and Friday, marking the formal start of her administration.
UK vows to smash gangs as courts jail people traffickers
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- Anas Al-Mustafa, originally from Syria, found guilty in August of assisting unlawful migration by trafficking seven people
LONDON: UK interior minister Yvette Cooper vowed Friday that her government “will not rest” until people-smuggling gangs are dismantled, following a series of shocking migrant incidents including a deadly boat wreck in the Channel.
Her comments came shortly after a van driver received a 10-year prison term for smuggling migrants in a secret compartment where they were found screaming for help and starved of oxygen.
Anas Al-Mustafa, 43, originally from Syria, was found guilty in August of assisting unlawful migration by trafficking the seven people in a specially adapted van.
Cooper spoke at a gathering of senior crime-fighting and intelligence officials that she chaired on Friday.
It came after at least 12 people perished trying to cross the Channel on Tuesday, when their small boat was ripped apart off the northern French coast.
Ahead of the summit, Cooper said that “exploiting vulnerable people is at the heart of the business model of these despicable criminal smuggling gangs.
“At least 12 people were killed as part of this evil trade. We will not rest until these networks have been dismantled and brought to justice.”
While much of the focus has been on crossings of the Channel by small boat, smugglers also use more traditional routes to move people from mainland Europe to the UK.
Al-Mustafa was caught when crew members on a car ferry between Dieppe in northern France and Newhaven on England’s south coast heard pleas from inside the van.
The six men and one woman were found crammed into an overheated concealed space described as no more than “the width of a human chest.”
Crew members used an axe to free the migrants by breaking down the fake partition.
By the time they were rescued two had lost consciousness. None of the migrants had been supplied with water, the court was told.
Prosecutors said that the younger migrants recovered from their dehydration but that one man had a possible heart attack, the woman suffered an acute kidney injury and another man went to hospital in a comatose state and suffered a stroke.
“Desperate people are prepared to risk their lives to come into the UK, often with tragic consequences,” judge Christine Laing said. “They are exploited by those who profit from this trade and pay little attention to their safety.”
Border Security and Asylum Minister Angela Eagle said the case underlined the need to dismantle the smuggling gangs.
“This evil criminal put seven people’s lives at risk for cash, it is a miracle they are still alive after the conditions they were put in,” she said in a statement.
In a separate case, a UK national who attempted to smuggle five migrants, including a five-year-old child, was jailed for three years after being found guilty of assisting unlawful immigration at trial.
Border Force officers caught Joshua Bynoe, 29, in Coquelles, France, as he drove his motorhome, in which five Afghan nationals were hiding, toward the UK.
Immigration was a major issue at the general election in July that brought Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labour party to power.
One of his first acts as prime minister was to abolish the last Conservative government’s plan to deport migrants to Rwanda as a deterrent to small boats crossings, calling it an expensive “gimmick.”
The Tories had spent £700 million ($900 million) on the scheme but only four migrants had relocated to Rwanda — and they went voluntarily, Cooper told parliament in July.
According to the latest UK government figures, 22,240 migrants have been detected and brought ashore so far this year.
There are also concerns about an increase in the size of boats being used to try to cross the busy shipping lane.
Zelensky appeals for weapons as Russia advances
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- “We need more weapons to drive Russian forces off our land,” said Zelensky
- The Ukrainian leader again called for restrictions to be lifted on the use of long-range Western weapons to hit targets inside Russia
RAMSTEIN AIR BASE, Germany: President Volodymyr Zelensky appealed on Friday to Ukraine’s backers for additional weapons as Kyiv faces advancing Russian forces in the east and devastating strikes by Moscow.
The Ukrainian leader pressed his nation’s case to allies meeting at Ramstein Air Base in Germany, where Washington unveiled a new $250 million in military aid.
“We need more weapons to drive Russian forces off our land,” said Zelensky, who also met with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and was to head to Italy for talks.
The gathering comes as Moscow’s forces advance in the Donbas region, with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday declaring that capturing the eastern area was his “primary objective” in the conflict.
Zelensky urged Kyiv’s supporters to follow through on previous commitments, saying: “The number of air defense systems that have not been delivered is significant.”
The Ukrainian leader again called for restrictions to be lifted on the use of long-range Western weapons to hit targets inside Russia.
“We need to have this long-range capability, not only on the occupied territory of Ukraine, but also on the Russian territory,” Zelensky said.
In Italy, Zelensky is due to hold talks with Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and attend The European House-Ambrosetti forum in Cernobbio, on Lake Como.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban — who upset his EU counterparts and Zelensky by meeting Putin in Moscow in July — is also attending the three-day economic forum.
Italy has strongly supported Ukraine and has sent weapons to help it defend itself against Russian forces, while insisting these must only be used on Ukrainian soil.
At the meeting at the US base in Germany, US defense chief Lloyd Austin announced that Washington will provide $250 million in new military aid for Ukraine.
The package “will surge in more capabilities to meet Ukraine’s evolving requirements,” Austin told the meeting.
The assistance is expected to include ammunition for HIMARS precision rocket launchers, artillery rounds, anti-tank and anti-air weapons, a US defense official said on condition of anonymity.
The talks in Germany, with representatives from some 50 nations, were to focus on areas including bolstering Ukraine’s air defenses and encouraging allies to boost their defense industries, Pentagon spokesman Major General Pat Ryder said ahead of the meeting.
Since the start of Russia’s offensive in February 2022 when it failed to seize the Ukrainian capital Kyiv, Moscow has adapted its aims, concentrating instead on trying to conquer eastern Ukraine.
While Ukraine’s surprise push into Russia’s Kursk region last month caught Russian forces off-guard, Putin stressed that the move had failed to slow Moscow’s advance.
Ukraine on Friday claimed to have recaptured a part of the eastern Ukrainian town of New York, in the first success for Kyiv on this part of the front for months.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, speaking in Oslo Friday, said Ukraine needs more military support and that the “quickest way to end this war is to provide weapons to Ukraine.”
“Putin must realize that he cannot win on the battlefield, but must accept a just and lasting peace where Ukraine prevails as a sovereign and independent nation,” he said.
The United States has been Ukraine’s biggest backer during the conflict, providing military aid worth more than $55 billion (50 billion euros) since February 2022.
But uncertainty looms over the future of that funding as a US election in November could see Ukraine-skeptic Donald Trump back in the White House.
Germany — Ukraine’s second-biggest backer — has also come under pressure domestically over its aid for Kyiv, which has been at the center of a protracted row over the 2025 budget.
German officials have repeatedly pushed back at criticism over a planned reduction in financial support next year.
After talks with Zelensky in Frankfurt Friday, Scholz posted on X that “Germany is and will remain the strongest supporter of Ukraine in Europe.”
German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius also announced on the sidelines of the meeting that his country would provide 12 artillery pieces valued at 150 million euros to Ukraine.
“I’m grateful to Germany, its government, and its people for all their support,” Zelensky said in a social media post after meeting with Pistorius.
Judge delays Donald Trump’s sentencing in hush money case until after November election
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- It had been scheduled for Sept. 18, about seven weeks before Election Day
- Trump’s lawyers pushed for the delay on multiple fronts, petitioning the judge and asking a federal court to intervene
NEW YORK: A judge agreed Friday to postpone Donald Trump’s sentencing in his hush money case until after the November election, granting him a hard-won reprieve as he navigates the aftermath of his criminal conviction and the homestretch of his presidential campaign.
Manhattan Judge Juan M. Merchan, who is also weighing a defense request to overturn the verdict on immunity grounds, delayed Trump’s sentencing until Nov. 26, several weeks after the final votes are cast in the presidential election.
It had been scheduled for Sept. 18, about seven weeks before Election Day.
Merchan wrote that he was postponing the sentencing “to avoid any appearance — however unwarranted — that the proceeding has been affected by or seeks to affect the approaching presidential election in which the Defendant is a candidate.”
“The Court is a fair, impartial, and apolitical institution,” he added.
Trump’s lawyers pushed for the delay on multiple fronts, petitioning the judge and asking a federal court to intervene. They argued that punishing the former president and current Republican nominee in the thick of his campaign to retake the White House would amount to election interference.
Trump’s lawyers argued that delaying his sentencing until after the election would also allow him time to weigh next steps after Merchan rules on the defense’s request to reverse his conviction and dismiss the case because of the US Supreme Court’s July presidential immunity ruling.
In his order Friday, Merchan delayed a decision on that until Nov. 12.
A federal judge on Tuesday rejected Trump’s request to have the US District Court in Manhattan seize the case from Merchan’s state court. Had they been successful, Trump’s lawyers said they would have then sought to have the verdict overturned and the case dismissed on immunity grounds.
Trump is appealing the federal court ruling.
The Manhattan district attorney’s office, which prosecuted Trump’s case, deferred to Merchan and did not take a position on the defense’s delay request.
Messages seeking comment were left for Trump’s lawyers and the district attorney’s office.
Election Day is Nov. 5, but many states allow voters to cast ballots early, with some set to start the process just a few days before or after the date Sept. 18.
Trump was convicted in May on 34 counts of falsifying business records to conceal a $130,000 hush money payment to porn actor Stormy Daniels just before the 2016 presidential election. Daniels claims she and Trump had a sexual encounter a decade earlier after they met at a celebrity golf tournament in Lake Tahoe.
Prosecutors cast the payout as part of a Trump-driven effort to keep voters from hearing salacious stories about him during his first presidential campaign. Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen paid Daniels and was later reimbursed by Trump, whose company logged the reimbursements as legal expenses.
Trump maintains that the stories were false, that reimbursements were for legal work and logged correctly, and that the case — brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, a Democrat — was part of a politically motivated “witch hunt” aimed at damaging his current campaign.
Democrats backing their party’s nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, have made his conviction a focus of their messaging.
In speeches at the party’s conviction in Chicago last month, President Joe Biden called Trump a “convicted felon” running against a former prosecutor. Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Texas, labeled Trump a “career criminal, with 34 felonies, two impeachments and one porn star to prove it.”
Trump’s 2016 Democratic opponent, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, inspired chants of “lock him up” from the convention crowd when she quipped that Trump “fell asleep at his own trial, and when he woke up, he made his own kind of history: the first person to run for president with 34 felony convictions.”
Falsifying business records is punishable by up to four years behind bars. Other potential sentences include probation, a fine or a conditional discharge, which would require Trump to stay out of trouble to avoid additional punishment. Trump is the first ex-president convicted of a crime.
Trump has pledged to appeal, but that cannot happen until he is sentenced.
In seeking the delay, Trump lawyers Todd Blanche and Emil Bove argued that the short time between the scheduled immunity ruling on Sept. 16 and sentencing, which was to have taken place two days later, was unfair to Trump.
To prepare for a Sept. 18 sentencing, the lawyers said, prosecutors would be submitting their punishment recommendation while Merchan is still weighing whether to dismiss the case. If Merchan rules against Trump, he would need “adequate time to assess and pursue state and federal appellate options,” they said.
The Supreme Court’s immunity decision reins in prosecutions of ex-presidents for official acts and restricts prosecutors in pointing to official acts as evidence that a president’s unofficial actions were illegal.
Trump’s lawyers argue that in light of the ruling, jurors in the hush money case should not have heard such evidence as former White House staffers describing how the then-president reacted to news coverage of the Daniels deal.