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Funeral service held for Italian ambassador killed in Congo
Italy's politicians and military remembered the ambassador Luca Attanasio and a policeman killed in Congo. The two were "torn from this world by claws of savage violence," said the papal representative, Angelo De Donatis, in his homily at the funeral service in Rome on Thursday. He also sent the condolences of Pope Francis. In addition to Prime Minister Mario Draghi, the president of the Chamber of Deputies, Roberto Fico, and the president of the Senate, Maria Elisabetta Casellati, were among those attending the state funeral. Carabinieri soldiers carried the coffins, draped in an Italian flag...
DPA
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Setting precedent, German court convicts man of Syrian state torture
A Syrian man faces four and a half years in prison for his role in his country's torture regime, the first verdict of its kind worldwide, after a German court ruling on Wednesday. Eyad A was convicted of aiding and abetting a crime against humanity by the higher regional court in the city of Koblenz. The 44-year-old was a member of the General Intelligence Directorate in Syria before fleeing to Germany, where he was arrested in February 2019. Judges found that the man permitted the torture and deprivation of liberty of at least 30 people, after he brought demonstrators to a Damascus prison in ...
DPA
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Setting precedent, German court convicts man of Syrian state torture
A Syrian man was sentenced to four and a half years in prison on Wednesday by a German court for his role in Syria's torture regime, the first verdict of its kind worldwide. Eyad A was convicted of aiding and abetting a crime against humanity by the higher regional court in the city of Koblenz. The 44-year-old was a member of the General Intelligence Directorate in Syria before fleeing to Germany, where he was arrested in February 2019. Judges found that the man permitted the torture and deprivation of liberty of at least 30 people, after he brought demonstrators to a Damascus prison in 2011. ...
DPA
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Court convicts man of Syrian state torture in unprecedented trial
A Syrian man has been sentenced to four and a half years in prison by a German court for his role in the Syrian state torture regime, in the first verdict of its kind worldwide. Eyad A was found guilty on Wednesday of acting as an accessory to crimes against humanity by the higher regional court in the city of Koblenz. The 44-year-old was a member of the General Intelligence Directorate in Syria before later fleeing to Germany, where he was arrested in February 2019. The man brought at least 30 demonstrators to a Damascus prison for torture in autumn 2011, as President Bashar al-Assad was crac...
DPA
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Libya's interior minister survives attack west of Tripoli
The interior minister of Libya's UN-recognized government, Fathi Bashagha, survived a militant attack on his convoy west of the capital Tripoli on Sunday, an official said. An armored vehicle opened fire on the minister's convoy on the highway in Janzur area, the Health Ministry's media adviser Amin al-Hashimi wrote on Twitter, adding that Bashagha was unharmed. A guard in the minister's convoy was wounded, while one of the assailants was killed and two others arrested, according to the official. The Interior Ministry's Facebook page posted photos of Bashagha inspecting a Tripoli branch of the...
DPA
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Relief scarce at camps for Afghans displaced by unending conflict
In the eastern part of Kabul, just a few kilometres away from the Afghan capital's fancy coffee shops and luxurious hotels, there are families who have known only poverty, deprivation and misery for most of their lives. Tens of thousands of them have sought shelter in Kabul, fleeing fighting between the government and Taliban in the north and south of the country, or running from the increasing threat posed by the Islamic State terrorist militia in the east. Displaced by ongoing conflicts that have gripped Afghanistan for years, with no end in sight, there's not much hope in the enclosures tha...
DPA
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NATO puts holds on Afghanistan decision, expands in Iraq
Brussels (AFP) - NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said on Thursday the alliance had made "no final decision" on the future of its Afghanistan mission, as new US President Joe Biden weighs pulling out troops. While defence ministers held off on making that call at a two-day virtual conference, they did decide to expand a NATO training mission in Iraq from 500 to "around 4,000" personnel. The fate of NATO's 9,600-strong support mission in Afghanistan was top of the agenda after former US leader Donald Trump struck a deal with the Taliban to pull troops out. Biden's administration is rev...
AFP
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US seeks to defuse row with Turkey over 'terrorists'
Ankara (AFP) - The United States on Monday sought to defuse a furious diplomatic row with NATO ally Turkey by saying it now accepts Ankara's claim that Kurdish "terrorists" had executed 13 Turks in Iraq. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had lashed out at the State Department's initial hesitance to blame the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) for the deaths. Both sides view the PKK as a terrorist organisation but the US also backs a Kurdish militia in neighbouring Syria in the conflict against President Bashar al-Assad. Ankara on Sunday accused the PKK of executing the hostages -- most of th...
AFP
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Erdogan slams critics of military operations after PKK killings
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan lashed out against critics of his country's military operations on Monday, one day after the military announced that 13 Turkish nationals had been killed by Kurdish militants. After the "bloodbath" that occurred in northern Iraq at the hands of the banned Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), no individual or country had the right to "question, criticize or oppose Turkey's operations in Iraq and Syria," Erdogan said in a speech in the Black Sea province of Rize. On Sunday, the army said the bodies of 13 Turkish police officers and soldiers had been discovered i...
DPA
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‘Hungry’ palm oil, pulpwood firms behind Indonesia land-grab spike: Report
JAKARTA — Conflicts over land flared up across Indonesia in 2020, as Indigenous and rural communities tried to hold off pulpwood, palm oil and logging companies ramping up their expansion during the COVID-19 pandemic. The flurry of activity came despite the economic slowdown wrought by the government’s response to the pandemic, and suggests the companies were taking advantage of the situation to lay claim to disputed territory, according to the Consortium for Agrarian Reform (KPA), an NGO that advocates for rural land rights. In its year-end report, the KPA recorded 138 land conflicts between ...
Mongabay
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