16 - 22 August 2001
Issue No.547
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 16 - 22 August 2001 Issue No.547 |
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Killings go on
SUSPECTED Islamic rebels slashed the throats of 17 farmers in Algeria in the bloodiest attack on civilians in recent weeks. According to reports, two lorries carrying the farmers were stopped at a bogus roadblock by "terrorists" wearing military fatigues on Sunday night some 20 km from the city of Relizane, about 250 km west of Algiers, Algerian medical sources said."The bodies showed signs of torture before their slaughter," a doctor at Relizane hospital said. Two people who escaped unhurt from the ambush alerted security forces. The ambush brought to at least 26 the number of civilians killed in the past three days in the violence-torn North African country.
Defiant Druze
LEBANESE Druze leader Walid Jumblatt has urged the Arab Druze community in Israel to defy the compulsory national military service and stand by their Palestinian brothers. "Refusing the draft and compulsory military service is your right in a country which boasts democracy," Jumblatt said.In a speech at Bayyada, the spiritual seat of the Druze community near the southeastern village of Hasbaya, Jumblatt said serving in the Israeli army when Palestinians were being subjected to the worst kinds of oppression could not be justified. He likened the Druze serving in the Israeli army to collaborating during the Nazi occupation of France and Algeria's war of liberation.
Jumblatt's appeal came during a tour of south Lebanon, his first since Israel withdrew its troops from the area in May 2000 to end its 18-year-occupation. Jumblatt also urged the Druze not to succumb to Israeli attempts to remove them from their Arab surroundings and origins.
Violations double
THE CAIRO-based Arab Organisation for Human Rights (AOHR) says complaints alleging human rights violations in Jordan almost doubled last year as a result of exaggerated security measures and arbitrary arrests of activists protesting Israel's suppression of the Palestinian uprising."We received 153 complaints from Jordan last year, compared with an average of about 80 complaints each year for the past 11 years," AOHR officer Hani Dahleh said. "Unfortunately, the government only reacted to 10 per cent of these complaints, which confirms the continuation of rights violations."
According to the AOHR report, which was published on Sunday, most of the complaints were of a political nature. The report called the increase in complaints "an unacceptable retreat in the performance and practices of Jordanian security apparatuses."
Group demands release
SYRIAN human rights advocates have called on the authorities to release Mohamed Maamoun Al-Homsi, a member of parliament jailed after he began a hunger strike last week to demand broader political freedoms. Syrian officials arrested Al-Homsi shortly after he announced his hunger strike. The interior ministry subsequently said Al-Homsi's protest was aimed at slandering the state, to which it said he owed a million US dollars in taxes.A Syrian human rights group, the Committee for the Defence of Human Rights, questioned the legality of a decision to strip Al-Homsi of his parliamentary immunity preceding his arrest. "We ask that the Syrian authorities free Al-Homsi ... and that the Syrian authorities and government stop using the judiciary as an instrument of pressure or terror against political activists," a statement released by the group said.
Moroccan ex-agent held
FORMER Moroccan secret agent Ahmed Boukhari, who recently accused Moroccan security officials of having tortured and killed political opponents over the past decades, has been arrested for issuing invalid cheques. Boukhari was detained on Monday by a Casablanca magistrate who summoned him following complaints about cheques which bounced.In interviews with local and foreign media in recent weeks, Boukhari made disclosures about the fate of charismatic exiled leftist leader Mehdi Ben Barka, who disappeared in mysterious circumstances in Paris in 1965. Boukhari said Barka died after being tortured by senior Moroccan military officials near Paris, and that his body was transferred to Rabat where it was dissolved in a vat of acid. Boukhari's account was dismissed as a fabrication by the three ex-agents who, he said, had witnessed the killing. The three are suing him for defamation.
Romance hits Iraq
THE IRAQI National Theatre is preparing to turn a romantic novel apparently written by President Saddam Hussein into a musical. It is being touted as the country's biggest-ever production. Babil, a newspaper owned by Saddam's son Uday, said last month that the president was the most likely author of the 160-page "Zabiba," which went on sale several months ago and has been heavily promoted by the official press.In the story, the king's lover, Zabiba, is raped on January 17 -- the day the US-led forces launched the 1991 offensive which drove Iraq out of Kuwait, forcing subsequent Iraqi surrender and a sharp economic decline blamed on the UN sanctions regime. The king dies after capturing the rapists and avenging Zabiba's honour.
Besides the love story, the novel is dominated by talk of who is to succeed the king. It prompted speculation that 64-year-old Saddam, who has ruled Iraq since 1979, is preparing to hand over power to one of his sons.
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