Plaidoiries pour les enfants puis réquisitoire au procès Jubillar

Après d’ultimes plaidoiries des parties civiles, les avocats généraux du procès de Cédric Jubillar vont requérir mercredi contre un accusé qu’ils n’ont cessé de questionner avec courtoisie mais dont les esquives ont fini par les agacer.Malika Chmani et Laurent Boguet, les avocats des enfants du couple, Louis et Elyah, s’exprimeront dans la matinée après les prises de parole, la veille, des sept autres avocats des parties civiles, et rappelleront les attentes de leurs jeunes clients, âgés de 11 et six ans.”On veut que Cédric Jubillar dise la vérité, il la doit à ses enfants”, mais s’il “ne la donne pas, elle sera judiciaire”, avait déclaré à l’AFP, avant le procès, Me Chmani.Lundi, à la toute fin des débats, la présidente des assises, Hélène Ratinaud, a lu un courrier que Louis lui avait adressé, dans lequel il répétait son désir de pouvoir se recueillir à l’endroit où sa mère repose.”J’aimerais lui apporter une réponse à cette question, mais malheureusement, je n’en ai pas”, a dit l’accusé. “Compte tenu de la spécificité de notre rôle, que je n’oublie pas, je trouverai des choses originales à venir plaider devant la cour d’assises”, a affirmé à l’AFP Me Boguet, qui conclura la séquence de plaidoiries des parties civiles.- Fourbir leurs arguments -Les deux représentants de l’accusation, Pierre Aurignac et Nicolas Ruff, doivent enchaîner par leur réquisitoire à partir du début d’après-midi.Hors procès Jubillar, le premier, qui arbore en audience la robe traditionnelle d’avocat général, rouge avec revers bordés d’hermine, dirige le pôle des affaires criminelles du parquet général de Toulouse, tandis que son jeune collègue porte la robe noire correspondant à ses fonctions habituelles de vice-procureur de Toulouse.Tout au long de ce long procès de quatre semaines, les interventions des deux hommes ont ponctué chaque témoignage et exposé d’experts, souvent sur des points factuels très précis, comme pour fourbir leurs arguments en vue du réquisitoire de mercredi.Au fil des audiences, ils ont pris un soin manifeste à traiter avec considération l’accusé, le saluant toujours poliment et l’interrogeant avec parfois plus d’égards que les avocats des parties civiles.Ce n’est qu’en fin de procès que les réponses de Cédric Jubillar (ses “si vous le dites”, “peut-être”, “je ne sais pas”, “je n’en ai pas le souvenir”, ou encore ses “tout à fait” répétitifs) ont commencé à impatienter les représentants de l’accusation.”A chaque fois qu’on essaie de dialoguer avec vous, vous vous dérobez, c’est un peu vain de discuter. Mais merci monsieur!”, a ainsi regretté Pierre Aurignac lundi, lors du long interrogatoire de Cédric Jubillar.”Vous dites tout et son contraire sur tout et n’importe quoi”, s’est aussi exaspéré Nicolas Ruff lors de la même journée. Et alors que Cédric Jubillar estimait qu’il essayait de lui forcer la main sur une réponse, l’avocat général réplique: “Je crois au contraire que je suis trop gentil avec vous.”- Montrer les crocs -Le duo d’avocats généraux a toutefois su montrer de temps à autre les crocs d’un ministère public soucieux du sérieux de la procédure, comme au terme de la première semaine, lorsqu’un ancien policier, cité comme expert par un avocat des parties civiles, était venu présenter des théories loufoques à la barre. “Vous demandez à cette cour d’assises de condamner cet homme sur la base de cette plaisanterie, monsieur?” avait lâché Pierre Aurignac, quand Nicolas Ruff le jugeait soit “inhumain” de donner de faux espoirs aux parties civiles, soit “incompétent”.Ou encore lorsqu’un gendarme avait reconnu à la barre une erreur de copier-coller cruciale: “J’imagine que vous n’avez pas passé une très bonne nuit, moi non plus”, l’avait froidement accueilli M. Aurignac.”On a affaire à une paire efficace, on a senti leur complémentarité”, juge pour l’AFP Me Boguet. “Ce sont des avocats généraux expérimentés, qui ont déjà eu l’occasion d’intervenir sur des dossiers intéressant les cours d’assises et qui impliquaient une absence de corps, donc je pense qu’ils ont été sélectionnés à cette fin.”La défense plaidera jeudi toute la journée, avant le verdict attendu vendredi.

Israel says remains of four more Gaza hostages have arrived

The Israeli military said the remains of four more hostages handed over by Hamas on Tuesday were brought into Israel from Gaza, as the identities of those transferred a day earlier were confirmed.The remains were handed over to the Red Cross, then transferred to Israel, the latest step in implementing a ceasefire aimed at ending two years of war in the Gaza Strip.”Four coffins of deceased hostages… crossed the border into the state of Israel a short while ago,” the military said in a statement, adding that they were being taken for forensic testing.Already on Monday, Hamas had transferred the remains of four hostages, just hours after releasing the last 20 living hostages under the ceasefire deal brokered by US President Donald Trump.Separately, a Gaza hospital said it had received the bodies of 45 Palestinians handed back by Israel, also as part of Trump’s plan to end the war.Those whose remains were handed over on Monday were Israeli citizens Guy Iluz, Yossi Sharabi and Daniel Peretz, as well as Nepalese agriculture student Bipin Joshi.Sharabi, 53 at the time of Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, was taken from Kibbutz Beeri, and Peretz, 22 at the time, was killed on the day of the assault and his body taken to Gaza.”Now we can finally bring closure to the nightmare that began over two years ago, and give Yossi the dignified and loving burial he deserves,” Sharabi’s wife Nira was quoted as saying by the Hostages and Missing Families Forum campaign group.Iluz, who was 26 at the time of the attack, had been attending the Nova music festival when Hamas-led militants launched their assault.The military said Iluz was wounded and abducted alive, but later died of his injuries due to a lack of medical treatment while in captivity.His death was announced in December 2023.- ‘Courageous’ Joshi -The military said the final causes of death for the four hostages would be determined following forensic examinations.Joshi, who was 22 at the time of the attack, was part of a Nepalese agricultural training group that had arrived in Israel three weeks before the Hamas assault.He was abducted from Kibbutz Alumim.”It is assessed that he was murdered in captivity during the first months of the war,” the military said.Joshi’s Nepalese friend Himanchal Kattel, the group’s only survivor, told AFP the attackers had thrown a grenade into their shelter, which Joshi caught and threw away before it exploded, saving Kattel’s life.Joshi was a “courageous” student, his teacher Sushil Neupane said.”We were deeply hoping that Bipin would return home. This news hurts us all… Our hope has died,” he said.Families of hostages whose remains are still being held in Gaza waited anxiously.”It’s difficult. You know, we kind of had the rollercoaster on the up yesterday and now we’re on the down,” said Rotem Kuper, son of Amiran Kuper, whose remains are held in Gaza.- ‘Job is NOT DONE’ -In Tel Aviv, people gathered to celebrate the liberation of the living hostages and demand the return of the others’ remains.”I don’t know what to feel because I didn’t think (we’d) reach this day where all the living hostages will return,” demonstrator Barak Cohen told AFP.”But still I see great difficulties in returning the remaining dead hostages,” he said.Another participant, Tovah Baruch, said she was imagining “a world where all the hostages are back, everybody is buried and we work on a new era and with peace”.The bodies of 45 Palestinians that had been in Israeli custody were handed over to the Nasser Medical Centre in Gaza, the hospital said.Under the Trump deal, Israel was to turn over the bodies of 15 Palestinians for every deceased Israeli returned.”A big burden has been lifted, but the job is NOT DONE. THE DEAD HAVE NOT BEEN RETURNED, AS PROMISED! Phase two begins right NOW!!!” Trump said on X.Palestinian militants are still holding the bodies of 20 hostages, which are expected to be returned under the terms of the ceasefire agreement.”We are determined to bring everyone back,” said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after visiting hostages freed Monday at Beilinson Hospital in central Israel.The freed hostages had experienced weight loss, said hospital director Noa Eliakim Raz.”Being underground affects all the body’s systems,” she told journalists.”There is no fixed timetable — each person is recovering at their own pace. It’s important that they heal slowly,” she added.Twins Ziv and Gali Berman, who were reunited on Monday, said they had been held separately and in complete isolation, according to Channel 12.The two, who were 28 when abducted, described enduring long periods of hunger, alternating with short intervals when they were better fed, the report said.

Cuban opposition hobbled by leading dissident’s exile

Cuba’s opposition, browbeaten by the communist government, has been further weakened by the US exile of dissident figurehead Jose Daniel Ferrer, colleagues and analysts say.After refusing for years to leave the one-party state despite repeated imprisonment, Ferrer finally yielded and boarded a flight for Miami on Monday. He was released from prison — where he said he had been tortured — at Washington’s request, according to Havana.”Even in prison, he (Ferrer) was an inspiration. Now that inspiration is gone,” fellow dissident Martha Beatriz Roque, 80, told AFP.Ferrer’s exile, she added, “has left the Cuban opposition without a leader.”The 55-year-old founder of the Patriotic Union of Cuba (UNPACU) has for years been the face of the fight for democracy in the Caribbean nation where opposition politics is illegal and the act of protest has seen hundreds locked up.Ferrer himself has been repeatedly imprisoned, most recently in April after a brief period of freedom under a landmark deal struck with Washington that saw Cuba removed from a list of terrorism sponsors.He was sent back to jail after Donald Trump took office and returned Cuba to the list.During his brief spell of freedom, Ferrer defied the authorities by criticizing Cuba’s leadership on social media, setting up a soup kitchen funded by exiled Cubans at his home, and meeting the head of the US diplomatic mission.Upon his arrival in Miami, a US stronghold of Cuban anti-communist sentiment, Ferrer — dubbed a “mercenary” of the United States by Havana — vowed to “keep up the fight.””But fighting from the outside is not the same as fighting from the inside,” said Roque, who was arrested with Ferrer and 73 other dissidents during a wave of political repression in 2003 known as Cuba’s “Black Spring.”She is still in Cuba.- ‘Move beyond protest’ -Observers say Ferrer’s departure has robbed Cuba’s already fractured opposition of its most prominent and unifying figure.In a letter announcing his pending exile, Ferrer said he had lost faith in some of his comrades because of their “disunity, dogmatic nature and lack of effectiveness.”Analyst Roberto Veiga of the Inter-American Dialogue think tank told AFP there was “a deficit of real political weight” in the Cuban opposition, with little “capacity to implement solid and realistic strategies.” Cuban dissident Manuel Cuesta agreed the opposition has been unable to capitalize on widespread public discontent and “move beyond protest” to real change in a country also battling a historic economic downturn and mass emigration.Standing up to the government in Havana is not easy: dissidents and protesters are regularly detained, harassed, or, like Ferrer, pressured to leave the country.After historic protests in 2021 — the biggest since Fidel Castro’s 1959 revolution that overthrew a US-backed dictator and paved the way for communist rule — hundreds of people including Ferrer were locked up.Rapper Maykel Castillo is serving a nine-year prison sentence, while performance artist Luis Manuel Otero Alcantara received five years, both on “contempt” charges for criticizing the government through their art.Rights groups view them as “political prisoners.”Other dissenters such as playwright Yunior Garcia and visual artist Tania Bruguera opted for exile under government pressure.If ever Cuba’s opposition needed strong leadership, it is now, said Veiga.”If the political time for change runs out, the island could become entrenched” in its political and economic crisis, he added.

Trump says FIFA chief would back moving World Cup games

US President Donald Trump said Tuesday that FIFA chief Gianni Infantino would support moving 2026 World Cup games from US cities for security reasons if necessary.In September, Trump raised the possibility of moving games amid his crackdown on Democratic-run cities, but at the time FIFA said that it was up to football’s governing body to decide where games are held.”If somebody is doing a bad job and if I feel there’s unsafe conditions, I would call Gianni, the head of FIFA, who’s phenomenal, and I would say, let’s move it to another location. And he would do that,” Trump told reporters at the White House when asked if games could be moved from Boston, one of the host cities.”Very easily he would do it.”Trump’s comments came a day after he met close friend Infantino in Egypt at a summit on a Gaza ceasefire, where the FIFA boss joined more than two dozen world leaders who were discussing peace in the Middle East.The US president also suggested that, if necessary, events for the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics could also be moved. “I could say the same thing for the Olympics,” Trump said. “If I thought LA was not going to be prepared properly, I would move it to another location.”Republican Trump’s administration has deployed national guard troops to Democratic-run US cities this year over the objections of local and state leaders, saying they are needed to counter crime and left-wing activism.Boston is hosting seven games at next year’s World Cup. San Francisco and Seattle are both hosting six matches each at the tournament while Los Angeles is hosting eight.The United States is co-hosting next year’s World Cup with Mexico and Canada, but will be hosting the bulk of the games in the tournament, which has been expanded to include 48 teams.Trump earlier this year appointed himself as chairman of a White House task force for the World Cup.

Major media outlets reject Pentagon reporting rules

US and international news outlets including The New York Times, AP, AFP and Fox News on Tuesday declined to sign new restrictive Pentagon media rules, meaning they will be stripped of their press access credentials.The new rules come after the Defense Department restricted media access inside the Pentagon, forced some outlets to vacate offices in the building and drastically reduced the number of briefings for journalists.The media policy “gags Pentagon employees” by threatening retaliation against reporters who seek out information that has not been pre-approved for release, the Pentagon Press Association (PPA) said.AFP said in a statement Tuesday that it “cannot sign up to the terms of the Pentagon document that would require media to acknowledge insufficiently clear new policies that appear to fly in the face of US constitutional principles and of the basic tenets of journalism.””We shall continue to cover the Pentagon and the US military freely and fairly, as we have done for decades,” the agency added.TV networks ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox and NBC issued a joint statement saying they will not sign the new rules, which would “restrict journalists’ ability to keep the nation and the world informed of important national security issues.”Alongside Fox, other conservative outlets the Washington Times and Newsmax are also reportedly refusing to agree to the new policy, which could see a total of some 100 press passes revoked.The new rules are the latest in a series of moves that restrict journalists’ access to information from the Pentagon, the nation’s single largest employer with a budget in the hundreds of billions of dollars per year.The Defense Department announced earlier this year that eight media organizations including the Times, the Washington Post, CNN, NBC and NPR had to vacate their dedicated office spaces in the Pentagon, alleging that there was a need to create room for other — predominantly conservative — outlets.It has also required journalists to be accompanied by official escorts if they go outside a limited number of areas in the Pentagon — another new restriction on the press.And it has drastically reduced the number of briefings for journalists — holding some half a dozen this year, compared to an average of two or more per week under president Joe Biden’s administration, which left office in January.Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth — a former Fox News host and Army National Guard veteran — has campaigned against leaks from the Defense Department.But he was inadvertently involved in the release of sensitive information earlier this year, sharing details about upcoming strikes against Yemen’s Huthi rebels in a chat on messaging app Signal to which a journalist had been mistakenly added.Hegseth has also reportedly used Signal to discuss US strikes on Yemen with his wife and other people not usually involved in such discussions.His use of Signal has prompted an investigation by the Pentagon inspector general’s office.

US set to carry out four executions this week

A Florida man convicted of murdering two women he hired for sex was put to death by lethal injection on Tuesday, one of four executions to be carried out in the United States this week.Samuel Smithers, 72, was sentenced to death in 1999 for the 1996 killings of Christy Cowan and Denise Roach in Tampa. They had been beaten and strangled and their bodies were found in a pond.Smithers was executed at a Florida state prison at 6:15 pm (2215 GMT), the 14th execution in the southern state this year.Another convicted murderer was also put to death by lethal injection in the midwestern state of Missouri on Tuesday.The execution of Lance Shockley, 48, was carried out at 6:13 pm (2313 GMT) for the 2005 murder of a police sergeant, Carl Graham.Graham was gunned down in an ambush at his home. The officer had been investigating a fatal car accident involving Shockley at the time.Shockley maintained his innocence but his appeals were rejected by numerous courts, including the Supreme Court. Missouri Governor Mike Kehoe rejected his clemency request on Monday.Two other executions are scheduled this week.Charles Crawford, 59, is to be put to death by lethal injection in Mississippi on Wednesday for the 1994 rape and murder of Kristy Ray, a 20-year-old college student.Richard Djerf, 55, is to be executed by lethal injection in Arizona on Friday for the brutal 1993 murders of four members of a Phoenix family.In a letter last month apologizing for the crime, Djerf said he was ready to die and would not seek clemency.”If I can’t find reason to spare my life, what reason would anyone else have?” he wrote.There have been 37 executions in the United States this year, the most since 2013, when 39 inmates were put to death.Florida has carried out the most executions with 14, followed by Texas with five and South Carolina and Alabama with four.Thirty-one of this year’s executions have been carried out by lethal injection, two by firing squad and four by nitrogen hypoxia, which involves pumping nitrogen gas into a face mask, causing the prisoner to suffocate.The use of nitrogen gas as a method of capital punishment has been denounced by United Nations experts as cruel and inhumane.The death penalty has been abolished in 23 of the 50 US states, while three others — California, Oregon and Pennsylvania — have moratoriums in place.President Donald Trump is a proponent of capital punishment and, on his first day in office, called for an expansion of its use “for the vilest crimes.”

Trump hails ‘martyr’ Charlie Kirk at posthumous medal ceremony

US President Donald Trump hailed assassinated ally Charlie Kirk as a “martyr for truth and freedom” Tuesday as he posthumously awarded the right-wing activist America’s highest civilian honor.Handing the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Kirk’s tearful widow, Trump compared the 31-year-old conservative to Socrates, Saint Peter, Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King.Trump, 79, also used the somber ceremony at the White House to vow to redouble his crackdown on what he calls radical left-wing groups that he launched following Kirk’s shooting.”In the wake of Charlie’s assassination, our country must have absolutely no tolerance for this radical left violence, extremism and terror,” Trump told an audience of the country’s conservative elite.”We’re done with the angry mobs, and we’re not going to let our cities be unsafe.”The US State Department on Tuesday said it had revoked visas of at least six foreign nationals who had “celebrated the heinous assassination” on social media. In posts to X, the department shared offending posts allegedly by citizens of Argentina, South Africa, Mexico, Brazil and Paraguay who had called Kirk “racist,” “xenophobic” or other characterizations.One German apparently lost their US visa for writing “When fascists die, democrats don’t complain,” according to the State Department.The Trump administration has controversially cited political reasons in stripping others of their visas, including several hundred people involved in Gaza war protests on US universities campuses. Father-of-two Kirk was shot dead on a Utah college campus last month, sparking a wave of grief among conservatives and promises of a clampdown from Trump that has seen National Guard troops sent to several Democrat-run cities. Guests at the ceremony included visiting Argentinian President Javier Milei, a libertarian firebrand, and a host of conservative US media personalities.Kirk’s widow Erika thanked Trump for flying back from a Middle East peace trip for the medal ceremony, which fell on what would have been her late husband’s 32nd birthday.”You have given him the best birthday gift he could ever have,” she said, dabbing away tears and occasionally pausing to collect herself.She added that Kirk, who used huge audiences on TikTok, Instagram and YouTube to build support for conservative talking points, “would probably have run for president” if he had not been assassinated.Tyler Robinson, 22, has been charged with Charlie Kirk’s murder. He faces the death penalty if convicted.

US advisor on India accused of taking documents, meeting Chinese

A well-known US scholar on India who advised the US government was charged with retaining classified information and allegedly met Chinese officials, prosecutors said Tuesday.Ashley Tellis, 64, who has worked in or advised the US government for more than two decades, was found to have kept more than 1,000 pages of top-secret or secret documents in his home, a criminal affidavit said.Late in the evening of September 25, Tellis entered the State Department, where he served as an unpaid advisor, and appeared to print from a secret document on US Air Force techniques, the affidavit said.It said Tellis met multiple times with Chinese government officials at a restaurant in the Washington suburb of Fairfax, Virginia. At one dinner, Tellis entered with a manila envelope but did not appear to leave with it, and on two occasions the Chinese officials presented him a gift bag, the affidavit said.Tellis faces up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine if convicted on the charges of unlawfully holding documents, the Justice Department said. “The charges as alleged in this case represent a grave risk to the safety and security of our citizens,” said Lindsey Halligan, the US attorney for Virginia’s eastern district who has become known for pursuing charges against critics of President Donald Trump.The State Department confirmed that Tellis was arrested Saturday — the same day the affidavit said he was due to fly to Rome — but declined further comment due to the ongoing investigation.Tellis, a naturalized US citizen originally from India, is a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and served in senior positions under former president George W. Bush. He helped negotiate the Bush administration’s civil nuclear deal with India that was seen as a landmark in building ties between the world’s two largest democracies.But in recent years, Tellis has become known as one of the most outspoken contrarians in Washington on the US courtship of India.In a recent essay in Foreign Affairs, Tellis said India was often pursuing policies at odds with the United States, pointing to its relations with Russia and Iran, and doubted that India would match China’s strength anytime soon.Trump in August slapped major tariffs on India over its purchases of oil from Russia.Lawyers for Tellis did not immediately respond to a request for comment.