Month: September 2022

Eight suspects went on trial Monday over the harrowing July 2016 attack in the Mediterranean city of Nice, where an Islamist extremist killed 86 people by driving a truck into thousands of locals and tourists celebrating France’s national day.

The attacker, a 31-year-old Tunisian named Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel, was shot and killed by police after a four-minute rampage down the seaside embankment of the Promenade des Anglais.

The seven men and one woman standing trial in Paris are accused of crimes ranging from being aware of his intentions to providing logistical support and supplying weapons.

Only one suspect, Ramzi Kevin Arefa, faces the maximum penalty of life imprisonment if convicted as a repeat offender. The others risk between five and 20 years in prison.

The trial, which is set to last until December 16, is the latest legal process over the wave of Islamist attacks that have struck France since 2015.

On June 29, a Paris court convicted all 20 suspects in the trial over the November 2015 attacks in the French capital that left 130 dead.

The Nice trial is taking place at the historic Palais de Justice in Paris, in the same purpose-built courtroom that hosted the November 2015 attacks hearings. A special venue has also been set up in Nice to allow victims to follow proceedings via a live broadcast.

“We’re waited six years for this,” Seloua Mensi, whose sister, aged 42, was killed in the attack, told AFP in Nice. “The trial is going to be very difficult for us, but it’s important to be able to speak about what we went through.

“Confronting the accused, seeing them and understanding what happened, will allow us to rebuild our lives,” she said.

The extremist Islamic State (IS) group rapidly claimed responsibility for the Nice attack, though French investigators ultimately did not find any links between the attacker and the jihadist organization that at the time controlled swathes of Iraq and Syria.

Of the accused, three suspects are charged with association in a terrorist conspiracy and the five others with association in a criminal conspiracy and violating arms laws.

The attack, which saw 15 children and adolescents among the dead and more than 450 wounded, was the second most deadly postwar atrocity on French soil after the November 2015 Paris attacks.

Six years after the attack, “the fact that the sole perpetrator is not there will create frustration. There will be many questions that no one will be able to answer,” said Eric Morain, a lawyer for a victims’ association that is taking part in the trial.

“We are trying to prepare them for the fact that the sentences may not be commensurate with their suffering,” said Antoine Casubolo-Ferro, another lawyer for the victims.

French Justice Minister Eric Dupond-Moretti commented: “I understand this frustration, it is human. But there will be a legal response. We respond to this barbarism through the law.”

Of the accused, only seven will appear in court after one suspect, Brahim Tritrou, being tried in absentia, fled judicial supervision to Tunisia where he is now believed to be under arrest.

Just three of the accused are currently under arrest with one held in connection with another case. The defendants are a mix of Tunisians, French Tunisians and Albanians.

Some 30,000 people had gathered on the seafront to watch a fireworks display celebrating France’s annual Bastille Day holiday on July 14 when Lahouaiej-Bouhlel began his rampage.

Nice was struck again in October 2020 when a Tunisian Islamist radical stabbed three people to death at a church.

Nice’s mayor, Christian Estrosi, said, “This wound will never heal, whatever the outcome of the trial. This wound is too deep.”

According to French and Tunisian news reports, the body of Lahouaiej-Bouhlel was repatriated to Tunisia in 2017 and buried in his hometown of M’saken, south of Tunis. This has never been confirmed by the Tunisian authorities.
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A former journalist was convicted of treason and handed a 22-year prison sentence on Monday after a trial that has been widely seen as politically motivated and marked a new step in a sweeping crackdown on the media and Kremlin critics.

The sentence handed to Ivan Safronov, who worked as a military affairs reporter for leading business daily Kommersant before becoming an adviser to the head of the Russian space corporation Roscosmos, has been harshly criticized by his colleagues as utterly unfounded.

A few friends and co-workers of Safronov who attended Monday’s hearing at the Moscow City Court chanted “Freedom!” and clapped after the verdict was read.

“I love you all!” Safronov told those who came to support him.

Safronov was accused of passing military secrets to Czech intelligence and a German national. He strongly insisted on his innocence, arguing that he collected all the information from open sources as part of his journalistic work and did nothing illegal.

In his final statement at the trial last week, Safronov rejected the charges as “absurd,” noting that he published all the information he gathered from his sources in government agencies and military industries.

He emphasized that he never had access to any classified documents and emphasized that investigators have failed to produce any witness testimony to back the espionage charges.

Safronov described the long sentence requested by prosecutors as “monstrous,” saying that it would stain the country’s image by showing that a journalist is sentenced simply for doing his job. His defense quickly appealed the sentence.

Many Russian journalists and human rights activists have pushed for Safronov’s release, maintaining that the authorities may have wanted to take revenge for his reporting that exposed Russian military incidents and shady arms deals.

Hours before the ruling was announced by the Moscow City Court, 15 independent Russian media outlets issued a joint statement demanding Safronov’s release.

“It is obvious to us that the reason for persecuting Ivan Safronov is not ‘treason,’ which hasn’t been substantiated … but his work as a journalist and stories he published without any regard for what the Defense Ministry or Russian authorities think,” the statement read.

Amnesty International denounced Safronov’s conviction and sentencing as a travesty of justice and demanded that Russian authorities quash them.

“The absurdly harsh sentence meted out to Ivan Safronov symbolizes the perilous reality faced by journalists in Russia today,” Natalia Prilutskaya, the group’s Russia researcher, said in a statement. “It also exposes the failings of the Russian justice system and the impunity enjoyed by state agencies, who routinely fabricate cases with little or no evidence to support them.”

She added that Safronov “was tried solely for his journalistic work,” adding that “his only ‘crime’ was collecting information from open sources and being acquainted with and befriending foreigners.”

The European Union on Monday also urged Russian authorities to drop all charges against Safronov and “release him without any conditions,” denouncing “systematic repressions of the regime against independent journalism.”

The Kremlin has remained unperturbed, with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, refusing to comment on the case in a conference call with reporters.

Safronov has been in custody since his July 2020 arrest in Moscow.

Rights activists, journalists, scientists and corporate officials who have faced treason accusations in Russia in recent years have found it difficult to defend themselves because of secrecy surrounding their cases and a lack of public access to information.

Safronov’s father also worked for Kommersant, covering military issues after retiring from the armed forces. In 2007, he died after falling from a window of his apartment building in Moscow.

Investigators concluded that he killed himself, but some Russian media outlets questioned the official version, pointing to his intent to publish a sensitive report about secret arms deliveries to Iran and Syria.
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Germany is sticking to its long-held plan of shutting down the country’s three remaining nuclear power plants this year but keeping the option of reactivating two of them in case of an energy shortage in the coming months, officials said Monday.

The announcement follows the publication of a much-anticipated stress test that examined how Germany’s power grid will cope with a possible electricity squeeze due to the energy crisis Europe is facing.

Like other European countries, Germany is scrambling to ensure the lights stay on and homes stay warm this winter despite the reduction in natural gas flows from Russia amid the war in Ukraine.

The government has already announced numerous measures including the import of liquefied natural gas from other suppliers, while urging citizens to conserve as much energy as possible.

But there were concerns that Germany’s power grid, which is central to the European network, could be heavily strained if consumers switch to electric heaters in the winter and strong demand from neighboring countries means energy exports rise.

Germany’s opposition parties have called for the country’s nuclear plants to be kept online, with some lawmakers also suggesting shuttered ones be reopened and new reactors built. Some members of a small pro-business party that’s part of the governing coalition have argued in favor of running all three remaining reactors for as long as possible.

Economy and Energy Minister Robert Habeck, a member of the environmentalist Greens party that has long been opposed to nuclear power, acknowledged that several factors could come together to place a severe strain on the continent’s grid this winter. These include problems with France’s nuclear power plants, drought hampering hydropower generation in the Alps and Norway, and problems shipping coal across Europe due to low water levels in rivers.

“We can’t rely securely on there being enough power plants available to stabilize the electricity network in the short term if there are grid shortages in our neighboring countries,” he said.

Grid operators examined what would occur in a worst-case scenario, where a harsh winter coincides with an unexpected shutdown of French nuclear plants and a sharp rise in electricity demand. The projected result was hours-long blackouts for millions of Germans as transmission lines struggle to cope with required electricity flows.

To help prevent this from happening, Germany will keep two reactors — Isar 2 in Bavaria and Neckarwestheim north of Stuttgart — on standby until mid-April next year, Habeck said. A third plant, Emsland near the Dutch border, will be powered down as planned in December.

Opposition lawmaker Jens Spahn of the center-right Christian Democrats accused Habeck of being driven by anti-nuclear ideology, noting that the Emsland plant is located in a state that’s holding regional elections next month.

Environmentalists, meanwhile, warned the government not to renege on its promise to phase out nuclear power by leaving the door open for an extension of the plants’ operating life.

Habeck insisted there would be no long-term reversal in Germany’s commitment to end nuclear power.

“The nuclear plants won’t be equipped with new fuel rods,” he said. “There will be no decision to build new atomic power plants. That would be absurd because this technology — look to France — is part of the problem.”

Habeck also said Russian gas is no longer a factor in Germany’s energy calculations, and that it was no surprise Russia’s state-controlled energy giant Gazprom didn’t resume supplies through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline after halting them for maintenance last week.

“The only thing one can rely on from Russia is lies,” he said.

Measures taken by the government in recent months, including the painful decision to reactivate some coal-fired power plants, would ensure Germany has enough energy to get through the winter, said Habeck.

“Maybe not all of those in positions of responsibility can do so, but the German population can sleep deeply and easily,” he said.
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Exiled Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya plans to attend United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) meetings in person for the first time since the disputed Belarusian presidential election in August 2020, according to diplomatic sources close to her.

The sources say Tsikhanouskaya and her delegation will address ongoing political repression by Belarusian authorities under the rule of President Alexander Lukashenko and call for the immediate release of all political prisoners.

They say Lukashenko’s facilitation of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine would also be discussed during Tsikhanouskaya’s participation in UNGA events from September 18-22.

The Belarusian opposition leader spoke to a virtual informal session of the U.N. Security Council two years ago.

Tsikhanouskaya fled Belarus two days after the August 9, 2020 election, after police detained her for several hours. Lukashenko was declared the winner despite claims by opposition leaders that the vote was rigged.

Security officials cracked down on pro-democracy protests, arresting opposition leaders and journalists. Currently there are more than 1,200 political prisoners in Belarus, according to the State Department.

The United States has imposed sanctions and visa restrictions against Lukashenko’s regime for what U.S. officials call “destabilizing behavior and human rights abuses.” In return, Belarusian authorities requested that Washington reduce its embassy staff in Minsk, denying a visa to the U.S. envoy to Belarus.

U.S. President Joe Biden met with Tsikhanouskaya on July 28, 2021, at the White House, where he expressed support for the Belarusian people’s quest for democracy and universal human rights.

In April of this year, Tsikhanouskaya met with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman. The top U.S. diplomats said Lukashenka’s regime should be held accountable for its “complicity” in Russia’s war against Ukraine.
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Britain’s Foreign Secretary Liz Truss has won the Conservative Party vote to be its new leader and will become the country’s new prime minister, replacing Boris Johnson at a time of economic upheaval and escalating energy bills.     

The 47-year-old Truss, who will become the third woman to lead the country, defeated former Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak, Britain’s treasury secretary, in a vote of about 140,000 dues-paying members of the Conservative Party, a mere 0.2% of the United Kingdom’s population of 67 million.   

The intraparty vote, rather than a general election, was held because Conservatives still hold a majority in parliament and could pick the new prime minister of their choosing. Truss will be the 15th leader of the United Kingdom during the long reign of its monarch, Queen Elizabeth. The Conservative Party announced the Truss victory Monday.   

The vote took place over recent weeks after Johnson announced in July he would step down.  The outgoing prime minister was engulfed in a series of scandals, including ignoring the government’s own rules against public gatherings during the height of the coronavirus pandemic.   

Truss is expected to take over the government Tuesday after both she and Johnson visit Queen Elizabeth at her summer home, Balmoral Castle in Scotland, and the queen formally invites her to form a new government.    

Later, Truss is expected to address the country from her new home, the prime minister’s residence at 10 Downing Street in London.   

Truss, once an opponent of pulling Britain from the European Union but now a staunch supporter of Brexit, holds hawkish foreign policy views and is expected, like Johnson, to remain a steadfast link in the Western alliance sending aid to Ukraine in its fight against Russia’s six-month-old invasion.   

She will be Britain’s fourth prime minister in six years and third female leader, after Margaret Thatcher and Theresa May.   

Truss will immediately face severe economic problems, including a recession, labor turmoil, surging energy bills for British households and possible fuel shortages this coming winter.   

After her victory was announced, Truss told a party gathering, “I campaigned as a Conservative, and I will govern as a Conservative.”   

“I will deliver a bold plan to cut taxes and grow our economy,” she said. “Dealing with people’s energy bills but also dealing with the long-term issues we have on energy supply.”   

Truss served in Johnson’s cabinet but was not part of the Tory attacks on Johnson that led to his eventual ouster as the party’s leader and the end of his three years as prime minister.  

Truss was not the first choice among Conservatives to lead the party but emerged in the intraparty voting in the House of Commons to be one of the two finalists in the vote among party members.   

She defeated Sunak by a final count of 81,326 to 60,399. 

 
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Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson on Sunday was on the campaign trail a week before Sweden’s national election to tackle fears over gang violence and rising electricity bills.

Andersson traveled by bus to communities near Stockholm to try to reassure voters. The election on Sept. 11 comes amid a sense of rising insecurity, with a spate of shootings in Sweden making crime a key campaign issue.

Russia’s war against Ukraine led Sweden, along with Finland, to take the historic step of applying to join NATO. That step has reassured many and is so uncontested it hasn’t been an issue in the campaign before the election.

But Andersson said that Russia’s energy “warfare” against Europe, including a cutoff of gas through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline to Germany, has become an issue that voters keep raising with her as she campaigns for her left-wing Swedish Democratic party.

“Many people are concerned with their electricity bills given Putin’s warfare on energy,” the 55-year-old leader said in comments to The Associated Press after a visit at a senior community center in Norrtalje, a town north of Stockholm.

“I mean he has a military invasion in Ukraine, but he also has energy warfare against Europe, so people are very concerned with electricity bills but also with criminality and climate.”

Her government pledged Saturday to provide $23 billion in liquidity guarantees to electricity companies, a step that followed the cutoff to Nord Stream 1, and was meant to prevent a financial crisis.

Another concern for Andersson is the rising popularity of a populist far-right party with its historical roots in the Nazi movement, the Sweden Democrats.

The party, which has worked to mainstream its image, is closer to power than it has ever been, causing many Swedish voters to fear that it could end up with a key position of power in a right-wing coalition. The anti-migrant party has gained in popularity as the country has struggled to integrate large numbers of migrants. Critics fear its roots in the extreme far right make it a threat to the county’s democratic foundations.

Polls show that a right-wing coalition including the Sweden Democrats has a chance at winning power, though the race is expected to be close.

Andersson told the AP she is concerned, noting that an employee of the right-wing party sent out an email last week inviting people to celebrate the Nazi invasion of Poland 83 years ago.

“That kind of invitation would never happen in any other parties in Sweden. Having said that, many of the voters of the Sweden Democratic party, they are decent people that are disappointed with the development,” she said.

Against the backdrop of shootings and the challenge from the right, the Social Democrats have been toughening up their stance in recent years. In this campaign, the party has been promising tougher measures to fight crime along with promises to preserve the Scandinavian country’s famous welfare protections.

Andersson and her party said she believes the problems can be tackled together, and that the welfare system is one of the best weapons for fighting crime.

Andersson told the AP that her solution to crime involves building up the police force and putting more of the criminals behind bars, while also tackling the social roots of the problem.

“We also have to work harder to prevent new generations from choosing a criminal life. And I think the only way to do that is to stop the segregation that we have in Sweden,” she said.

Andersson traveled in a large red bus emblazoned with the words “our Sweden can do better.” After leaving the senior center, she headed to a fair on park grounds in Botkyrka where party campaigners wore T-shirts saying, “I vote for Magdalena” and where families from multicultural immigrant backgrounds lined up for pony rides and other attractions.

Andersson is Sweden’s first-ever female prime minister. She took the job last November after her predecessor, Stefan Lofven, resigned after leading the party and country since 2014.

While she has to fight the perception that her party hasn’t managed to stem the gang violence ailing the country. In her favor is a reputation for being a steady and competent hand who has governed with a thin majority and through a time of geopolitical upheaval.

At the party fair, Annelie Gustafsson, a 45-year-old mother carrying her daughter on her shoulders, wouldn’t say who she was voting for. But she made clear her vote was meant to keep the Sweden Democrats out of power. She opposes their unwelcoming stance toward migrants.

“This year it was about which party I don’t want to see running the country, and that’s really important for me,” she said. “I’m proud of being Swedish, I’m proud of the people here, and that we help other people. … So, closing the country, that’s not for me.”
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