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Syrians back to famed Palmyra ruins scarred by IS

Syrians are once again picnicking and smoking shisha amid the ruins of ancient Palmyra, once desecrated by jihadists but still awe-inspiring, and open to the public following the overthrow of president Bashar al-Assad.The city’s renowned ruins, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, were twice overrun by the Islamic State group, which proceeded to destroy many of the most famed structures. Although they were driven out, the Syrian government and its allies, including Russia and Iran, then set up military bases nearby, effectively barring public access.Open to the public once more, Yasser al-Mahmoud, 54, was among dozens of formerly displaced Syrians rediscovering the beloved landmarks that still bear scars of war.”We used to come here every Friday, before” the war, Mahmoud said, pouring hot tea into glass cups placed atop a massive column’s stone base.”Now we’re back and we can reconnect with our memories,” he said, standing near his wife and children.”People are so happy,” he said.Spread out across the ruins, families were carrying bags of food and making tea, while young people smoked shisha.”We really missed the ruins. We haven’t been here since 2015,” when IS first invaded the area before being forced out for good in 2017.Mahmoud said he wanted to reopen his stall selling trinkets and jewellery once visitors returned to Palmyra — which attracted more than 150,000 tourists a year before civil war broke out in 2011.Nearby, two huge columns forming a squared arch stood amid a sea of rubble — all that remained of the Temple of Bel after IS jihadists detonated explosives inside it.- Illegal excavations -Known to Syrians as the “Pearl of the Desert”, Palmyra was home to some of the best-preserved classical monuments in the Middle East before Syria’s 13-year war.But IS launched a campaign of destruction after capturing Palmyra, using its ancient theatre as a venue for public executions and murdering its 82-year-old former antiquities chief.The jihadists blew up the shrine of Baal Shamin, destroyed the Temple of Bel, dynamited the Arch of Triumph, looted the museum and defaced statues and sarcophagi.While the jihadists are gone, danger still looms over Palmyra.The director general of antiquities and museums in Syria, Nazir Awad, told AFP he was concerned about illegal excavation.There are guards, he said, “but I don’t think they can do their work to the fullest extent, because of random and barbaric excavations across very wide areas”.People looking for ancient artefacts to loot are using heavy machinery and metal detectors that are “destructive”, adding that the digging was “destroying layers of archaeological sites, leaving nothing behind”.- ‘A military zone’ -The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor said Assad’s allies established “military sites and positions” in Palmyra and its archaeological sites, even taking up residence in its hotels.In a sign of their presence, Israeli air strikes in November on the modern city killed 106 Tehran-backed fighters, according to the British-based monitor with a network of sources in Syria.Former rebel fighter Khaldun al-Rubaa, 32, said Palmyra had been turned “from an archaeological site into a military zone” that was off-limits to visitors.He worked at Palmyra’s ancient sites from childhood, giving tourists camel rides and, like many Palmyra residents, tourism was his main source of income, he said.Now that Assad-allied armed groups and foreign armies have left, Rubaa has returned home, hoping to trade his arms for a camel.He held a picture on his phone of him as a young boy riding his camel, killed in the fighting, with the Arch of Triumph in the background.”Palmyra and the ruins have been through horrors. The site has seen IS, Iran, the Russians, all of the militias you could think of,” he said.Yet he is among the lucky ones able to settle back home.After 12 years of displacement Khaled al-Sheleel, 57, said he has yet to return to his house, destroyed in an Israeli strike.He now works as a taxi driver, mostly carrying residents wishing to visit or return home. “We have no homes, we cannot return,” he said. But “despite the destruction, I was overjoyed, I knelt on the ground and cried tears of joy when I returned” for the first time.

‘I don’t have time’: Mother of jailed UK-Egyptian makes Starmer plea

Having lost a third of her body weight during a 134-day hunger strike, a “weak” Laila Soueif on Monday urged UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer to secure her son’s release from an Egyptian jail, warning “I don’t have time”.Soueif, 68, has lived on coffee, tea and rehydration sachets since September 29, 2024, the date that marked five years of imprisonment, when pre-trial detention is taken into account, for her UK-Egyptian son Alaa Abdel Fattah.Fattah, a pro-democracy and rights campaigner, was arrested by Egyptian authorities in September 2019 and handed a five-year sentence for “spreading false news” in a Facebook post on torture in Egypt’s prisons.His mother has braved the biting UK winter to demonstrate outside Starmer’s Downing Street office each working day since her son’s supposed release date.She met in November with foreign minister David Lammy, who travelled to Cairo last month to press for her son’s release.But Soueif has been demanding a meeting with Starmer, who she says could be doing more to help.”I wrote to him asking for a meeting,” Soueif told AFP in her south London home.”I got a response that didn’t mention a meeting and he repeated that this was his top priority, but he also said that this would take time,” she said.”I don’t have time.”- ‘Very worried’ -Soueif has lost 28 kilogrammes (61 pounds) since starting the hunger strike, leaving her “weak and slow”.She was admitted to a London hospital last week, where doctors said she had low blood pressure as well as low levels of blood sugar and potassium.Soueif last saw her 43-year-old son, a key figure in the 2011 revolt that toppled Egyptian autocrat Hosni Mubarak, on January 7 at the Cairo jail where he is being held. “He wants to go on hunger strike too, he’s finding it very hard that I’m doing this and… he’s just sitting in his jail cell marking time,” she said.”He was glad to see me still on my feet. Of course he’s very worried.”But Soueif, herself an activist, is not for turning.”He knows me better than that, all my children are very worried,” she said.”They know me well enough to know that the best thing to do is just support me.”Her declining health means that Soueif is unlikely to currently make the five-hour flight to Cairo.”I’m staying here until this is resolved one way or another,” she said.”I’m going on with my hunger strike until either Alaa is released or I collapse completely, and maybe even die.””Every time I visit him I’m thinking this could be the last one. I guess he’s thinking that too.”- ‘Fighting spirit’ -Soueif believes that Starmer is the only person who can intervene by putting pressure on Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.”I do not understand why Mr Starmer is failing to phone or talk directly to Mr Sisi,” she told reporters Monday at a Downing Street protest.”In Egypt things go from top to bottom. Unless Mr Sisi gives the green light, nothing is going to happen.”Since taking office in 2014, Sisi’s government has faced criticism over a sweeping crackdown on dissent that has targeted activists, journalists and opposition figuresIf Soueif were to die, “I’m sure it would look badly on every member of the British government and every member of the Egyptian government,” she told AFP.She hopes that US President Donald Trump’s recent provocative comments on Middle East security may draw the UK and Egypt closer together, and help her son’s cause.If he were to be released, Soueif — who still serves as a mathematics professor at a Cairo university — says her son would live a quiet life in the UK, looking after his autistic son Khaled, 13.When asked if her son had inherited his rebellious streak from her, London-born Soueif replied “Oh yes!””My whole family has enough fighting spirit for anything in the long run,” she said.

Trump: Palestinians have no right of return under Gaza plan

President Donald Trump said Palestinians would have no right of return to Gaza under his US takeover plan, describing his proposal in excerpts of an interview released Monday as a “real estate development for the future.”Trump told Fox News Channel’s Bret Baier that “I would own it” and that there could be as many as six different sites for Palestinians to live outside Gaza under the plan, which the Arab world and others in the international community have rejected.”No, they wouldn’t, because they’re going to have much better housing,” Trump said when Baier asked if the Palestinians would have the right to return to the enclave, most of which has been reduced to rubble by Israel’s military since October 2023.”In other words, I’m talking about building a permanent place for them because if they have to return now, it’ll be years before you could ever — it’s not habitable.”Trump first revealed the shock Gaza plan during a joint news conference with visiting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday, drawing outrage from Palestinians.The US president pressed his case for Palestinians to be moved out of Gaza, devastated by the Israel-Hamas war, and for Egypt and Jordan to take them.Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty flew to Washington in the wake of Trump’s remarks. He met at the State Department on Monday with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, with neither speaking to the media.Jordan’s King Abdullah II was set to hold talks with Trump on Tuesday.In the Fox interview — which will be broadcast Monday after the first half was screened a day earlier — Trump said he would build “beautiful communities” for the more than two million Palestinians who live in Gaza.”Could be five, six, could be two. But we’ll build safe communities, a little bit away from where they are, where all of this danger is,” added Trump.”In the meantime, I would own this. Think of it as a real estate development for the future. It would be a beautiful piece of land. No big money spent.”- ‘Unacceptable’ -Trump stunned the world when he announced out of the blue last week that the United States would “take over the Gaza Strip,” remove rubble and unexploded bombs and turn it into the “Riviera of the Middle East.”But while he initially said that Palestinians could be among the “world people” allowed to live there, he has since appeared to harden his position to suggest that they could not.Netanyahu on Sunday praised Trump’s proposal as “revolutionary”, striking a triumphant tone in a statement to his cabinet following his return from Washington.”President Trump came with a completely different, much better vision for Israel,” said Netanyahu, who was reportedly only briefed on the plan shortly before Trump’s announcement.The reaction from much of the rest of the world has been one of outrage, with Egypt, Jordan, other Arab nations and the Palestinians all rejecting it out of hand.The criticism was not limited to the Arab world, with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Sunday labeling the plan “a scandal,” adding that the forced relocation of Palestinians would be “unacceptable and against international law.”Trump’s plan has also threatened to disrupt the fragile six-week ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, and the chances of it progressing to a second, more permanent phase.Trump, however, repeated his insistence that he could persuade Egypt and Jordan, both major recipients of US military aid, to come around.”I think I could make a deal with Jordan. I think I could make a deal with Egypt. You know, we give them billions and billions of dollars a year,” he told Fox. Last year, Trump described Gaza as being “like Monaco,” while his son-in-law Jared Kushner suggested that Israel could clear Gaza of civilians to unlock “waterfront property.”

Tunisian accused says cannot remember 2020 France church killings

A Tunisian man went on trial Monday accused of stabbing to death three people in a church in the southern French city of Nice in 2020, but his insistence that he had no recollection of the events provoked anger among relatives of the victims.Brahim Aouissaoui, 25, is being tried at a special court in Paris and faces life in jail if convicted. The murderous rampage on October 29, 2020 was one of a number of deadly incidents in France blamed on Islamist radicals since 2015.Aouissaoui, speaking in Arabic through an interpreter, with his long hair combed back and a short beard, confirmed his identity as the trial opened.He has insisted he has no memory of the attack and told the court: “I don’t remember the facts. I have nothing to say because I don’t remember anything.”A cry of rage and despair sounded from court benches reserved for the relatives of  victims and their lawyers.Presiding judge Christophe Petiteau told gendarmes to expel one man who shouted abuse at Aouissaoui.Aouissaoui has also said he does not know the name of his lawyer.”When I talk to him, I have the impression — but again I’m not a doctor or an expert — I have the impression that he doesn’t understand the issues of this trial, that he doesn’t understand the stakes of this case,” his lawyer Martin Mechin told reporters outside the court.- ‘Very exaggerated’ -According to prosecutors, armed with a kitchen knife, Aouissaoui almost decapitated Nadine Vincent, a 60-year-old worshipper, stabbed 44-year-old Franco-Brazilian mother Simone Barreto Silva 24 times and slit the throat of the sacristan Vincent Loques, 55, a father of two daughters.Seriously injured by police after the attack, Aouissaoui has always insisted that he does not remember anything. However, his medical examination did not reveal any brain damage and a psychiatric assessment concluded that there was no impairment of his judgement at the time of the events. His telephone conversations in prison have also shown “that his alleged amnesia was at the very least very exaggerated”, according to the prosecution.His behaviour is a “fictitious amnesia” or even “deception”, according to Philippe Soussi, a lawyer for the husband of one victim and of the French Association of Victims of Terrorism (AFVT), adding that the accused’s “radicalisation is old and deep”.- ‘Commit an attack’ -Aouissaoui arrived in Europe from Tunisia the month before the attack, first crossing the Mediterranean to Italy and then going to France overland.On the morning of the attack, Aouissaoui entered the Basilica of Notre-Dame in the heart of Nice, carrying a copy of the Koran, three knives and two mobile phones, according to prosecutors.They have argued that he already intended to “commit an attack in France” before leaving Tunisia, pointing to a “proven radicalisation and association with individuals involved in terrorist cases” in Tunisia.The accused is to be cross-examined on February 24 and the trial is due to last until February 26.The Nice killings came two weeks after history teacher Samuel Paty was beheaded by an 18-year-old Chechen refugee for having shown his pupils cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed in a lesson on freedom of speech.Aouissaoui was shot several times by police after the killings and continued to shout “Allahu Akbar” (God is greatest) as he was being arrested.French intelligence had nothing on file relating to Aouissaoui prior to the attack.He hails from a large family in the Tunisian city of Sfax.His mother said he repaired motorcycles and described how he had taken to prayer in the years before he left. “He didn’t go out and didn’t communicate with others,” she told AFP shortly after the attack.

Iran president says Trump aiming to bring country ‘to its knees’

Iran’s president accused his US counterpart Donald Trump on Monday of seeking to bring the Islamic republic “to its knees” as the country marked the 1979 revolution that toppled the shah.The revolution removed a pro-US government in Iran, and the subsequent hostage-taking of American diplomats in Tehran ushered in decades of hostility between the United States and Iran.This year’s celebrations carry additional weight following Trump’s return to the White House. During his first term, Trump he pursued a policy of “maximum pressure” against the Islamic republic.In the morning, people gathered in public spaces across Iran, accompanied by pop songs and patriotic ballads, to celebrate the anniversary of the overthrow of shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.In Tehran, they headed to the symbolic Azadi tower, whose name means “freedom” in Persian, and which is in a square formerly named in honour of the shah.”Trump says, ‘we want to talk’, and… (then) he signs in a memorandum all the conspiracies to bring our revolution to its knees,” Pezeshkian told the crowd, referring to Trump’s reinstatement of sanctions against Tehran earlier this month.”We are not looking for war,” he said, while adding that Iran “will never bow to foreigners”.Chanting anti-American and anti-Israeli slogans, crowds formed Monday in the streets of Shiraz and Bandar Abbas in the south, Rasht in the north, Kermanshah and Sanandaj in the west, and the holy city of Mashhad in the east, according to images broadcast on television.Attendees, many of them families, carried portraits of supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the green, red and white flag of Iran, as well as the banners of Tehran-backed groups such as Hezbollah.Iranian-made missile replicas and military equipment were on display, drawing crowds of families.- ‘You can’t trust America!’ -Children, draped in Iran’s flag, clambered over an air defence system, and some people carried portraits of Khamenei.”Negotiating with the United States is pointless because they lie,” said Parvaneh Samakhani, a 52-year-old teacher.During his first term, which ended in 2021, Trump had pursued a policy of “maximum pressure” against Iran, an approach he has restored since returning to office.Trump pulled Washington out of the 2015 nuclear deal, torpedoing an agreement that had gave Iran sanctions relief in exchange for curbs on its atomic programme.As he signed the order instructing US departments to design new sanctions against Iran on February 4, Trump voiced optimism for a “deal with Iran and everybody can live together”.The US president also warned that if he were assassinated by Iran, the country would be “obliterated”.”Iran made many concessions, but then Trump came and tore up the deal,” said Samakhani, dressed in a black chador.”You can’t trust America!” she said, as some waved caricatures of Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.With Trump’s return to office, “history is repeating itself,” said Mehdi Sajadfar, a 24-year-old shopkeeper.”Everything is a lie” when it comes to the United States, he added, as demonstrators chanted “Death to America”.In his speech, Pezeshkian said the United States sought to weaken Iran by sowing “division”.”If we join hands, we are capable of resolving all the country’s problems,” said the Iranian president.Iran’s 10-day celebrations marking the ouster of the shah start each year on January 31, the anniversary of the return to Tehran of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1979 from exile.Iranian officials had urged citizens to attend the festivities in large numbers after Trump’s sanctions announcement.

Tunisian on trial in France over deadly 2020 Nice church attack

A Tunisian man went on trial Monday for stabbing three people to death in a church in the southern French city of Nice in 2020 as part of a “terrorist” plot.Brahim Aouissaoui, 25, is accused of being behind the murderous rampage on October 29, 2020. The Nice attack was one of a number of deadly incidents in France blamed on Islamist radicals since 2015.Aouissaoui is being tried at a special court in Paris and faces life in jail if convicted.The defendant, speaking in Arabic through an interpreter, with his long hair combed back and a short beard, confirmed his identity as the trial opened.When presiding judge Christophe Petiteau asked him the name of his lawyer, Aouissaoui, who insists he has no memory of the events of October 29, replied: “I don’t know his name.”Armed with a kitchen knife, he almost decapitated Nadine Vincent, a 60-year-old worshipper, and stabbed 44-year-old Franco-Brazilian mother Simone Barreto Silva 24 times and slit the throat of the sacristan Vincent Loques, 55, a father of two daughters.Seriously injured by police officers after his attack, Brahim Aouissaoui insists that he does not remember anything. However, his medical examination did not reveal any brain damage and the psychiatric assessment concluded that there was no impairment of his judgement at the time of the events. His telephone conversations in prison have also shown “that his alleged amnesia was at the very least very exaggerated”, according to the prosecution.His behaviour is a “fictitious amnesia” or even “deception”, according to Philippe Soussi, the lawyer of the husband of one of the victims and of the French Association of Victims of Terrorism (AFVT), adding that the accused’s “radicalisation is old and deep”.Aouissaoui’s lawyer Martin Mechin said that “after more than four years of detention in total isolation” his mental health will be in question at the trial and his capacity to be able to defend himself as any accused has the right to do.- ‘Proven radicalisation’ -Aouissaoui had arrived in Europe from Tunisia the month before the attack, first crossing the Mediterranean to Italy and then crossing into France overland.On the morning of October 29, Aouissaoui entered the Basilica of Notre-Dame in the heart of Nice, carrying a copy of the Koran, three knives and two mobile phones, according to anti-terror prosecutors.They have argued that he already intended to “commit an attack in France” before leaving Tunisia, pointing to a “proven radicalisation and association with individuals involved in terrorist cases” in Tunisia.The accused is to be cross-examined on February 24 and the trial due to last until February 26.The Nice killings came two weeks after history teacher Samuel Paty was beheaded by an 18-year-old Chechen refugee for having shown his pupils cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed in a lesson on freedom of speech.Aouissaoui was shot several times by police after the killings and continued to shout “Allahu Akbar” (God is greatest) as he was being arrested.French intelligence had nothing on file relating to Aouissaoui prior to the attack.He hails from a large family in the central Tunisian city of Sfax.His mother said he repaired motorcycles and described how he had taken to prayer in the years before he left. “He didn’t go out and didn’t communicate with others,” she told AFP shortly after the attack.