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Cement group Lafarge went on trial in France Tuesday, accused of paying the Islamic State group and other jihadists protection money to build its business in war-torn Syria.In a very similar case in the United States, the French firm pleaded guilty of conspiring to provide material support to US-designated foreign “terrorist” organisations and agreed to pay a $778-million fine, in what was the first time a corporation had faced the charge.In the French trial, Lafarge — which has since been acquired by Swiss conglomerate Holcim — is accused of paying millions of dollars in 2013 and 2014, via its subsidiary Lafarge Cement Syria (LCS), to jihadist groups and intermediaries to keep its plant operating in northern Syria.Groups it allegedly paid include the Islamic State group (IS) and Syria’s then Al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra.Defendants include Lafarge, its former director Bruno Lafont, five ex-members of operational and security staff, and two Syrian intermediaries.After the hearing opened, presiding judge Isabelle Prevost-Desprez called the defendants to the stand to hear the charges against them.They have been accused of “funding terrorism” and violating international sanctions.Lafarge could face a fine of up to $1.2 million if found guilty of “funding terrorism” and much more if found to have breached sanctions.Holcim, which took over Lafarge in 2015, has said it had no knowledge of the Syria business dealings.- Syrian staff left behind -Lafarge finished building its $680-million factory in Jalabiya in 2010, before civil war broke out in Syria in March the following year.The conflict erupted with then-president Bashar al-Assad’s brutal repression of anti-government protests, and evolved to include a multitude of armed groups and foreign powers.Among them, IS jihadists gained ground in northern Syria from 2013.They would go on to seize large swathes of the country and neighbouring Iraq in 2014, declaring a so-called cross-border “caliphate”.They implemented their brutal interpretation of Islamic law, carrying out public executions, cutting off the hands of thieves, and selling women from the Yazidi minority as sex slaves.While other multinational companies left Syria in 2012, Lafarge evacuated only its expatriate employees and left its Syrian staff in place until September 2014, when IS seized control of the factory.In 2013 and 2014, LCS allegedly paid intermediaries to access raw materials from IS and other groups and to allow free movement for the company’s trucks and employees.Kurdish-led Syrian fighters, backed by the air power of a US-led coalition, defeated IS and its proto-state in 2019.- Crimes against humanity? -An inquiry was opened in France in 2017 after several media reports and two legal complaints in 2016, one from the finance ministry for the alleged breaching of an economic sanction and another from non-governmental groups and 11 former LCS staff members over alleged “funding of terrorism”.The trial in Paris is scheduled to last until December 16.In the US case, the Justice Department said Lafarge sought IS’s help to squeeze out competitors, operating an effective “revenue sharing agreement” with them.Lafont, who was chief executive from 2007 to 2015 when Lafarge merged with Holcim, at the time denounced the inquiry as “biased”.Another French investigation into Lafarge’s alleged complicity with crimes against humanity is still ongoing.In the United States, around 430 Americans of Yazidi background and Nobel laureate Nadia Murad have filed a civil suit accusing it of supporting brutal attacks on the population through a conspiracy with IS.

Armed with his camera, Oscar-winning Palestinian filmmaker Basel Adra has spent years in the occupied West Bank documenting what he describes as the impunity Israelis enjoy in their mistreatment of Palestinians.From his terrace, he points to the nearby Israeli settlement of Maon, just a short distance away. The view appears calm, but he said incidents involving settlers and Israeli soldiers take place almost daily.The situation has only worsened since the start of the war in Gaza in October 2023, said Adra, the co-director of “No Other Land,” a documentary he made with Israeli filmmaker Yuval Abraham that this year won an Academy award.”The world allows Israelis — and gives them the impunity — to commit crimes,” the 29-year-old filmmaker told AFP at his home in the village of At Tuwani.In the nine months after accepting his Oscar in Hollywood, Adra has given score of interviews and captured hundreds of videos capturing settler violence allegedly carried out under army protection.”Dozens of Palestinian communities, villagers fled from their homes in this time due to the settler and occupation forces violence and attacks and killings,” Adra said.Taking a team of AFP journalists on a tour to illustrate the difficulties of life for Palestinians in the West Bank, Adra headed to the nearby Bedouin village of Umm al-Khair.To reach it, one must pass an Israeli settlement.On a wall, an inscription in Arabic warns: “No future for Palestine.”Since the war in Gaza began with Hamas’s October 2023 attack on Israel, settler and army attacks in the West Bank have killed around 1,000 Palestinians, according to the Palestinian health ministry in Ramallah.During the same period, Palestinian attacks in the same region have killed at least 43 Israelis, including soldiers, according to official Israeli figures.- Targeted -Even the presence of international and Israeli activists, intended to deter violence, has done little to change reality for Palestinians in the West Bank.Adra recalled the killing of a close friend, fellow activist Awdah Hathaleen, on July 28.Hathaleen, he said, was filming “settlers with a bulldozer going through his family land, destroying their olive trees and fence”.His death, widely filmed by other activists and reported in the media, prompted Israeli police to open an investigation, though they did not classify it as murder.”A couple of days after this criminal settler committed these crimes, he was allowed to come again to the same place, to continue digging the same land,” Adra said.The young filmmaker, who displayed the Oscar statue, has also been targeted.”I’ve been arrested several times by the army,” Adra said.”Once, settlers came onto our land, they started pushing us, throwing stones. They had sticks, and one of them had a gun. Two of my brothers were slightly injured.””We called the police. They arrived, but the attack continued while they watched.”The military said it had received reports that “several terrorists” had hurled rocks at Israeli civilians near At Tuwani injuring two of them.”Upon receiving the report, the security forces were dispatched to the scene, conducted searches in the area and questioned suspects,” the military told AFP.Adra said that in Masafer Yatta, the cluster of villages that includes At Tuwani, settler activity is unrelenting.”They keep building settlements and illegal outposts 24 hours a day, seven days a week,” he said.After a long legal battle, the Supreme Court ruled in favour of the army in 2022, paving the way for the eviction of residents from eight Palestinian villages in the area.- ‘We will stay’ -In the village of Umm al-Khair, a few concrete houses are surrounded by settler structures — mobile homes flying Israeli flags and permanent structures encircling the Bedouins.At his desk, community leader Khalil Hathaleen — brother of the slain activist — spreads out 14 demolition orders received on October 28.According to army documents in Hebrew and Arabic, residents have 14 days to appeal.”Even if the entire village is demolished, we will stay on this land and we will not leave,” Hathaleen said.”Because there is nowhere else to go.”Like other communities in the area, the approximately 200 residents of Umm al-Khair are descendants of Bedouins expelled from the Negev desert in southern Israel in the early 1950s.About three million Palestinians live in the West Bank, which Israel has occupied since 1967. Some 500,000 Israelis live there in settlements deemed illegal under international law.At the end of October, the Israeli parliament voted to advance two far-right-backed bills calling for annexation of the territory.”Growing up, I believed very much in international law,” Adra said.”I believe that the materials that I’m filming, the documentation, when they are seen abroad, somebody is going to do something.”

Sudan’s army-backed authorities will meet on Tuesday to discuss a US proposal for a ceasefire in the war with the paramilitary, a government source told AFP, as the UN chief called for an end to the “nightmare of violence”.The war, which has killed tens of thousands of people and displaced millions more over the past two years, has spread to new areas of Sudan in recent days, sparking fears of an even graver humanitarian catastrophe.After mediating in other conflicts in Africa and the Middle East in recent months, the US administration under Donald Trump is pushing for a ceasefire in Sudan.The army-aligned authorities had rejected an earlier truce proposal under which both they and the paramilitaries they are fighting would be excluded from a transitional political process.The latest discussions follow an escalation on the ground, with the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) appearing to prepare an assault on the central Kordofan region after it captured El-Fasher, the last army stronghold in Darfur region.”The Security and Defence Council will hold a meeting today to discuss the US truce proposal,” the army-aligned government source said on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to brief the media.People forced to flee El-Fasher have described to AFP scenes of fear and violence.Mohamed Abdullah, 56, told AFP he was stopped by RSF fighters while fleeing El-Fasher on Saturday, just hours before its fall. “They demanded our phones, money, everything. They kept searching us thoroughly,” he said of the RSF. On his way to Tawila, about 70 kilometres (45 miles) to the west, he saw “a body left on the street that looked like it had been eaten by a dog.”- ‘Out of control’ -Trump’s envoy to Africa, Massad Boulos, held talks in Sudan’s neighbour Egypt on Sunday with Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty and then on Monday with the Arab League.During the talks, Abdelatty stressed “the importance of concerted efforts to reach a humanitarian truce and a ceasefire throughout Sudan, paving the way for a comprehensive political process in the country”, according to a foreign ministry statement.According to the Arab League, Boulos met the regional body’s chief Ahmed Aboul-Gheit and briefed him on recent US efforts in Sudan to “halt the war, expedite aid delivery and initiate a political process”.The so-called Quad group, comprising the United States, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, has been engaged in months of diplomacy aimed at securing a truce in the more than 30-month conflict in Sudan.In September, the four powers proposed a three-month humanitarian truce, followed by a permanent ceasefire and a nine-month transition to civilian rule, but the army-aligned government immediately rejected the plan at the time.In the aftermath of the RSF’s assault on the key city of El-Fasher, reports emerged of mass killings, sexual violence, attacks on aid workers, looting and abductions during the offensive.The International Criminal Court on Monday voiced “profound alarm and deepest concern” over such reports, warning that such acts “may constitute war crimes and crimes against humanity”.Speaking at a forum in Qatar, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Tuesday called on the warring parties to “come to the negotiating table, bring an end to this nightmare of violence — now”. “The horrifying crisis in Sudan… is spiralling out of control,” he added.- ‘Do not kill children’ -At a protest in Sudan’s capital Khartoum, which is under army control, children took part in an anti-paramilitary protest on Monday.One pupil held up a handwritten sign that read: “Do not kill children, do not kill women.””The militia is killing the women of El-Fasher with no mercy,” read another sign.Despite repeated international appeals, the warring sides — both of which are accused of committing atrocities — have so far ignored calls for a ceasefire.The UAE is accused by the UN of supplying arms to the RSF — allegations it has repeatedly denied. Meanwhile, the Sudanese army has received support from Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Iran, according to observers.The fall of El-Fasher gave paramilitaries control over all five state capitals in Darfur, raising fears that Sudan would effectively be partitioned along an east-west axis.The RSF now dominates Darfur and parts of the south while the army holds the north, east and central regions along the Nile and Red Sea.