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Israel has carried out dozens of strikes in Syria: Netanyahu

JERUSALEM: Israel has launched dozens of strikes in Syria, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday, acknowledging for the first time such attacks against suspected arms transfers to Lebanon’s Hezbollah guerrillas.

Though formally neutral on Syria’s civil war, Israel has frequently pledged to prevent shipments of advanced weaponry to the Iranian-backed group, while stopping short of confirming reports of specific air operations.

Visiting Israeli troops in the occupied Golan Heights near the frontier with Syria, Netanyahu said: “We act when we need to act, including here across the border, with dozens of strikes meant to prevent Hezbollah from obtaining game-changing weaponry.”

Netanyahu did not specify what kind of strikes Israel had conducted in Syria. He also gave no timeframe or other details regarding the strikes.

Israel welcomed the cessation of hostilities in Syria in February but has indicated it could still launch attacks there if it sees a threat from Hezbollah, which holds sway over southern Lebanon and whose fighters have been allied with President Bashar al-Assad.

Israeli leaders have sought assurances from Russia, which sent forces to Syria last year to help Assad, that it would not allow Iran and Hezbollah to be bolstered by the partial military withdrawal that Moscow announced last month.

Israel and Russia have maintained a hotline to prevent any accidental clash between their aircraft over Syrian territory.

Hezbollah and Israel last fought a war in 2006 that included rocket strikes inside Israel and an Israeli air and ground offensive in Lebanon.

Israeli leaders have said that since that conflict, Hezbollah has built up and improved the range of a rocket arsenal that can now strike deep inside Israel.

Hit by Panama row, Cameron announces new tax evasion law

LONDON: British Prime Minister David Cameron will try to repair trust in his leadership on Monday by speeding legislation to make companies criminally liable for employees who aid tax evasion.

After a week of questions over his personal wealth and his late father´s connection to an offshore fund, Cameron has moved to defuse criticism over his handing of the fallout from the Panama Papers by publishing his own tax records. 

Seeking to boost his anti-corruption credentials, he will tell parliament on Monday that he will introduce legislation this year making it a criminal offence for companies if they fail to stop employees from instructing clients on ways of evading tax.

But with opposition lawmakers saying Cameron had not done enough to silence concerns about his wealth and members of his Conservative Party critical over his role in leading the campaign to stay in the European Union at a June referendum, the move is unlikely to calm the storm over the Panama Papers.

"This government has done more than any other to take action against corruption in all its forms, but we will go further," Cameron will tell parliament, according to advance excerpts of his statement circulated by his Downing Street office.

"That is why we will legislate this year to hold companies who fail to stop their employees facilitating tax evasion criminally liable."

The plan was announced by finance minister George Osborne in March 2015, but previously the commitment was to introduce the legislation by 2020, Downing Street said.

Accountants said the move could force companies to be punished for "rogue employees" and may increase the risk burden on firms doing business in Britain, which has already seen lower levels of investment because of uncertainty over whether the country will stay in the European Union at the June 23 vote.

"First let´s not have knee jerk reactions to Panama Leaks and the UK PM´s personal issues," said Chas Roy-Chowdhury, head of tax at ACCA, a global accounting body based in London.

"We need to be proportionate and realistic in any new legislation being introduced," he told Reuters.

TRANSPARENCY

Cameron is hoping to regain the upper hand after facing accusations of hypocrisy for going after tax evaders when his father had set up an offshore fund.

On Thursday, he bowed to pressure and said he had profited from selling his shares in the fund in 2010 and on Sunday he published a summary of his tax records for the past six years.

But any hope he might draw a line under the row was short-lived, as local media zeroed in on a gift of 200,000 pounds ($282,500) Cameron received from his mother in 2011.

Some reports suggested it may have been a way of avoiding inheritance tax, though the Financial Times quoted tax experts as saying that was not the case.

With the Panama Papers leak having given fresh impetus to criticism that the government favours Britain´s elite over ordinary voters, the wealth of other leading Conservative politicians has also come under scrutiny.

A source close to finance minister George Osborne, an ally of Cameron, said he was "always happy to consider ways to offer even more transparency", but "had never had any offshore shareholdings or other interests".

Cameron´s spokeswoman said Cameron believed it was right that future British leaders and finance ministers should publish information on their tax returns.

The leader of the main opposition Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn, called for all lawmakers to publish their tax records.

EURO IMBROGLIO

The questions come at a difficult time for Cameron´s cabinet of senior ministers, who are split over whether Britain should stay in the European Union and have been criticised for failing to bail out the steel industry.

Cameron has cast himself as championing a crackdown on tax evasion and will host an international summit next month to tackle corruption.

The government says that it has brought in more than 2 billion pounds ($2.8 billion) from offshore tax evaders since 2010 and has established a registry of company beneficial ownership information due to become public in June this year.

But for Labour, one lawmaker said it was time to press further for tax reform.

"It´s time for Labour ... to restore some basic fairness to our system of taxation," Wes Streeting wrote.

Kerry says Hiroshima ‘gut-wrenching’ reminder world should abandon nuclear weapons

HIROSHIMA: US Secretary of State John Kerry on Monday called his visit to a memorial to victims of the 1945 US nuclear attack on Hiroshima “gut-wrenching” and said it was a reminder of the need to pursue a world free of nuclear weapons.

The first US secretary of state to visit Hiroshima, Kerry said President Barack Obama also wanted to travel to the city in southern Japan but he did not know whether the leader’s complex schedule would allow him to do so when he visits the country for a Group of Seven (G7) summit in May.

Kerry toured the Hiroshima Peace Memorial and Museum, whose haunting displays include photographs of badly burned victims, the tattered and stained clothes they wore and statues depicting them with flesh melting from their limbs.

“It is a stunning display. It is a gut-wrenching display,” he said. “It is a reminder of the depth of the obligation everyone of us in public life carries...to create and pursue a world free from nuclear weapons,” he told a news conference.

After the tour by Kerry and his fellow G7 foreign ministers, the group issued a statement reaffirming their commitment to building a world without nuclear arms but said the push had been made more complex by North Korea’s repeated “provocations” and by worsening security in Syria and Ukraine.

The ministers from Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States laid white wreaths at a cenotaph to the victims of the August 6, 1945, bombing, which reduced the city to ashes and killed some 140,000 people by the end of that year.

While he is not the highest-ranking US official to have toured the museum and memorial park, a distinction that belongs to then-US Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi in 2008, Kerry is the most senior executive branch official to visit.

“Everyone in the world should see and feel the power of this memorial. It is a stark, harsh, compelling reminder not only of our obligation to end the threat of nuclear weapons, but to rededicate all our effort to avoid war itself,” the chief US diplomat wrote in a guest book.

Asked later if this meant Obama should come, Kerry said: “Everyone means everyone. So I hope one day the president of the United States will be among the everyone who is able to come here. Whether or not he can come as president, I don’t know.”

‘First step’

At Kerry’s suggestion, the ministers also made an impromptu visit to the Atomic Bomb Dome, the skeletal remains of the only structure left standing near the hypocentre of the bomb explosion and now a UNESCO World Heritage site.

Three days after a US warplane dropped a nuclear bomb on Hiroshima, another atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, on August 9, 1945. Japan surrendered six days later.

A visit by Obama could be controversial in America if it were viewed as an apology.

A majority of Americans view the bombings as justified to end the war and save US lives, while the vast majority of Japanese believe it was not justified.

Hopes for Obama’s visit to Hiroshima were raised after an April 2009 speech in Prague when he called for a world without nuclear weapons.

He later said that he would be honoured to visit the two nuclear-attacked cities.

The G7 foreign ministers’ trip to the museum and memorial is part of Japan’s effort to send a strong nuclear disarmament message from Hiroshima, the world’s first city to suffer atomic bombing.

“I think this first-ever visit by G7 foreign ministers to the peace memorial park is a historic first step towards reviving momentum toward a world without nuclear weapons,” Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida said in a statement.

He later told a news conference that it was “inconceivable” that Japan would ever decide to have nuclear weapons.

Last month, US Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said Japan and South Korea should build such weapons to deter enemies.

In a separate, detailed statement, the G7 ministers singled out North Korea for sharp criticism, condemning its recent nuclear test and launches using ballistic missile technology.

And in a statement on maritime security, they voiced their strong opposition to provocative attempts to change the status quo in the East and South China Seas, an apparent reference to China, which is locked in territorial disputes with other nations including the Philippines, Vietnam and Japan.

Bus bombings kill at least 14 in Afghanistan: officials

JALALABAD: A suicide bomber on a motorcycle killed at least 12 army recruits on a bus in eastern Afghanistan on Monday, officials said, hours after a similar attack killed two people in the capital Kabul.

The latest blast hit a bus in the Sorkh Rud district of Nangarhar province, which borders Pakistan.

Twelve bodies and at least 38 wounded had been taken to the main hospital in Jalalabad, the principal city in eastern Afghanistan, hospital chief Ihsanullah Shinwari said.

The number of casualties was expected to rise, several officials said.

“The suicide bomber was on a three-wheel motorcycle and targeted new army recruits who were heading to Kabul for training,” said a police official, who asked not to be identified because he was not authorised to discuss matters concerning the Afghan army.

Defence Ministry spokesman Dawlat Waziri confirmed one of the ministry’s buses carrying army recruits had been attacked but put the number of wounded at 26."It was a crowded area and it is hard to say now how many of them were from the defence ministry,” Waziri said.

Hours earlier, a bomb hit a mini-bus carrying Education Ministry workers in eastern Kabul, killing two people and wounding seven, the ministry said.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for either attack.

Government workers and members of the security forces are often targeted by insurgent groups, including the Taliban, who are seeking to topple the US-backed government in Kabul.

A spokesman for the Taliban said the group was not aware of either of the attacks.

The Taliban have stepped up their insurgency since most foreign troops withdrew from Afghanistan at the end of 2014, although Kabul had enjoyed a period of relative calm during the harsh winter months.

That lull was expected to end soon with the Taliban poised to launch their annual spring offensive.

In Kabul, bus conductor Rahim Gul said the force of the blast threw him out of the vehicle.

“We picked up the Education Ministry staff and we were driving on the road when there was an explosion,” Gul told Reuters Television.

“It was very powerful and threw me out of the car window. A few minutes later I found myself in a wheat field and then I rushed to the site of the attack and helped some injured people and they were taken to hospital.”

Three suicide bombers blow themselves up in Russia

Three suicide bombers blow themselves up in RussiaThree suicide bombers carry out explosions in Russia's Stavropol region, according to a report from Russain news agency Interfax.

The suicide bombers were killed by the blast and no one else was hurt, according to RIA news agency.

Parents of Nigeria's missing Chibok girls cling to hope of finding daughters

Parents of Nigeria's missing Chibok girls cling to hope of finding daughtersLAGOS: When Dauda Yama retrieved his mobile phone from a neighbour´s house in January this year, he noticed a missed call from his daughter Saratu who had been missing for almost two years.

The last time he spoke with Saratu was on April 14, 2014, when she rang to say men from the extremist group Boko Haram had loaded her and her classmates from the Government Girls´ Secondary School in Chibok in northeast Nigeria onto trucks.

Attempts to reach her again failed and two years on, 219 girls abducted that night remain missing, despite a global campaign #bringbackourgirls involving celebrities and U.S. first lady Michelle Obama calling for them to be found.

The students are among an estimated 2,000 girls and boys abducted by the Boko Haram since the start of 2014, with many of those abducted used as sex slaves, fighters and even suicide bombers, according to an Amnesty International report.

But when Yama returned the missed call that evening, a man answered.

Yama hung up and rushed to the home of Yakubu Nkeki, chairman of the Association of Parents of the Abducted Girls from Chibok.

"He asked me what he should do," Nkeki, 58, a schoolteacher, whose 17-year-old adopted daughter Maimuna Yakubu Usman is among those missing, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Nkeki took the phone and redialled the number that was again answered by a man who said the phone belonged to his wife.

Reporting the matter to any of the armed personnel around Chibok was out of the question so instead they informed a campaigner with the Bring Back Our Girls group, which advocates the return of the missing girls "now and alive".

"We don´t know who to trust," said Nkeki who has received physical threats for his efforts to keep the abduction of the Chibok girls in the headlines and the government's sights with the abduction becoming a political issue for Nigerian leaders.

Took the lead

Providing counsel to parents of the missing Chibok girls is part of Nkeki´s role as chairman of the association.

He also checks up on the parents to see if they need help at all.

"I check if they have food items or if someone is seriously sick," he said.

"If there is any issue, I call the committee members.

"Some months ago, for example, the association received a donation of 128 bags of corn from a missionary group.

The association decided to give three bags to one parent to sell and raise money for medicine for his son who was bitten by a snake.

Nkeki said he had not intended to become a leader for the parents but was catapulted into the role when he tried to rally families into action after the abduction.

Under his lead, and frustrated by a lack of official action, the parents formed a team to search the Sambisa forest for missing girls the day after the abduction, finding scarves and other items along a trail until heavy rain forced them back.

Nkeki then organised a meeting of parents in his village of Mbalala, calling for a peaceful demonstration and seeking media coverage to get the word out, with his initiatives prompting the parents to appoint him as their leader.

It was Nkeki´s efforts that ascertained exactly how many girls were missing after the school said the Boko Haram had razed all records.

He cycled from village to village for two weeks with pen and paper to build a register.

"I got the names of the girls, their pictures. I asked for proof. They showed me their daughters´ books so that I could get the exact name the girl used in the secondary school," he said.

His census revealed the number of girls abducted was 276 but 57 were able to escape as the trucks took off and came home.

Not Welcome

But the attempts to rally parents were not always welcome. Nkeki said some parents refused to have anything to do with the parents association and he has been harassed and arrested by armed forces personnel, displeased with his media appearances and efforts to keep the missing Chibok girls in the news.

Former Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan was criticized for his slow reaction to the Chibok kidnappings, which was seen by some as indicative of his response to Boko Haram, which at its strongest held large swathes of northeastern Nigeria.

President Muhammadu Buhari, who defeated Jonathan in an election last year, ordered a new investigation into the abductions in January.

"My family is afraid for me. Even my uncle´s wife whose daughter was abducted, the one I adopted, said to me that she does not want to lose her daughter and then also lose me," said Nkeki.

But despite Nkeki´s efforts, his daughter and the other girls are still missing, with the parents desperate for any leads that could help locate their daughters.

Hopes were raised earlier this month when a suspected female suicide bomber who claimed to be one of the missing Chibok girls was arrested in northern Cameroon.

But official investigations revealed the 12-year-old girl was not from Chibok but abducted from Bama in northeastern Nigeria by Boko Haram a year ago.

Nkeki and Yama dialled Saratu´s number a few more times after the initial success but the line repeatedly went dead.

However, Nkeki says it rang when Yama tried again in February. "The man warned him never to call his wife´s number again. He said if he is not careful, he will lose his life," he said.

Prince William, kate Middleton bat in Mumbai for poor Indian kids

Prince William, kate Middleton bat in Mumbai for poor Indian kidsMUMBAI: Britain´s Duke and Duchess of Cambridge played a charity cricket match with underprivileged children in Mumbai on Sunday, the first day of a week-long tour of India that will include a trip to the isolated Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan.

Prince William and his wife Kate Middleton flew into India´s financial capital and met children from Magic Bus, Childline and Doorstep – three non-governmental organisations that work with children.

They took an open-top bus tour and played a cricket match with a team from a local cricket academy and kids backed by the three charities.

Kate, in sunglasses and a red, white and blue summer dress, faced a few deliveries from Indian cricket legend Sachin Tendulkar. She struck one ball only to be caught out, leading to a lively exchange between William and the fielders.

The royal couple, travelling without children George and Charlotte, were due to attend a Bollywood-inspired charity gala on Sunday night amid speculation that Kate may appear in a sari from a top Indian fashion designer.

William and Kate´s tour takes in New Delhi, where they will lunch with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, a wildlife park in Assam famed for its one-horned rhinos, and Bhutan.

Their tour ends back in India next Saturday at the Taj Mahal, revisiting the scene of a solo – and much photographed – visit in 1992 by William´s mother, the late Princess Diana, to the monument to love.

Ukraine PM Yatseniuk resigns in televised broadcast

KIEV: Ukrainian Prime Minister ArsenyYatseniuk tendered his resignation in a televised broadcast on Sunday and signalled support for parliamentary speaker and presidential ally Volodymyr Groysman to take over his post.

Yatseniuk has resisted pressure to resign since surviving a no-confidence motion against his government in February, but Ukraine´s political crisis has fractured the ruling coalition and further delayed the disbursement of aid under a $17.5 billion International Monetary Fund bailout programme.

"I have taken the decision to resign as prime minister of Ukraine. On Tuesday, April 12, my request will be submitted to the parliament," Yatseniuk said in televised broadcast.

"The political crisis in the country was created artificially. The desire to change one person blinded
politicians and paralysed their political will for real change. The process of changing the government turned into a mindless running in place," he said.

President Petro Poroshenko´s faction (BPP) and Yatseniuk´s People´s Front party were expected to announce the formation of a new coalition next week.

In his speech, Yatseniuk said his party was committed to the coalition and appeared to hand over the reins of government to Groysman.

"We cannot allow destabilisation of the executive branch during a war. This would be inevitable, if after this resignation a new government of Ukraine is not selected immediately," he said.

"The parliamentary faction of the Block of Petro Poroshenko has nominated Volodymyr Groysman to the post of Prime Minister.

“Having done everything to ensure stability and continuity of our course, I declare my decision to transfer the obligations and responsibilities of the head of government of Ukraine," he said.

Nearly 100 dead in Indian temple blaze triggered by fireworks

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: A massive fire swept through a temple in India's southern Kerala state on Sunday, killing nearly 100 people and injuring more than 200 who had gathered for a fireworks display to mark the start of the local Hindu new year.

Thousands of devotees had packed into the Puttingal Devi temple in the coastal district of Kollam. The fireworks display began at midnight and went on for hours.

The fire started when one of the crackers fell onto a shed where the fireworks were stored, said residents near the temple site, about 70 km from the state capital Thiruvananthapuram.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi flew to Kollam with a team of doctors to help state authorities cope with the large number of injured people, moving swiftly to pre-empt criticism over lack of public safety.

"The fire at the temple in Kollam is heart-rending and shocking beyond words," he said in a Twitter post. "My thoughts are with families of the deceased and prayers with the injured."

Modi has faced public criticism in the past for failing to respond quickly to disasters such as the floods in Chennai late last year.

Large parts of the metropolis were under water for days before government help arrived.

Kerala's Chief Minister Oommen Chandy said 97 people were dead in the temple fire, many of whom were trapped by flames in the temple building. He said 245 were injured.

Television images showed people, some clutching children with burn injuries, being taken to hospitals.

The federal government also ordered the military to help the Kerala state authorities with two navy ships sailing to Kollam with medical supplies.

NO PERMISSION

With Kerala in the midst of an election for a new state assembly, the temple fire quickly turned into a political issue as local leaders demanded an investigation into the fireworks display.

In Kerala, Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party trails its rivals the Congress party and the communists. The BJP has focused on building up grassroots strength in the state for decades.

Kerala's Chief Minister Chandy said the Kollam district administration had denied the temple authorities permission to carry out the fireworks display, and that the government will investigate how they went ahead.

"There was no permission to even store the fireworks," he said.

Police has registered a case against the temple authorities for negligence.

The temple trust was not immediately available for comment.

Kerala is studded with temples, managed by rich and powerful trusts that often flout local regulations.

Each year temples carry out fireworks displays, often competing to stage the most spectacular ones. There are judges who decide the winners.

Kollam district magistrate A. Shainamol said people living in the neighbourhood of the temple had complained about the danger of these fireworks in the past.

The explosion from the fireworks was so strong that some parts of the temple roof caved in.

Local media showed bulldozers trying to clear the area of the debris.

The Puttingal temple is one of the oldest in the state.

It was built on the site of an ant hill where locals believe a goddess appeared centuries ago.

Kerry aims to ease crisis over Afghan unity pact during Kabul visit

KABUL: US Secretary of State John Kerry made an unannounced trip to Afghanistan on Saturday to show support for the government and to try to defuse a political crisis fueled in part by a national unity deal he brokered in 2014.

The visit comes at a difficult moment for Afghanistan, with President Ashraf Ghani’s government weakened by infighting between political rivals, the economy sinking and the resurgent Taliban stronger than at any time since they were toppled from power in late 2001.State Department spokesman John Kirby said Kerry would “emphasize US support” for the government and its security forces, which NATO officials say fully control no more than 70 percent of Afghanistan.

US forces in Afghanistan are due to be almost halved to 5,500 from the current 9,800 by the start of 2017, and the new commander in Afghanistan, General John Nicholson, is conducting a review of security before making his recommendations to Washington some time in June.

In addition to showing support for the government, the visit also appears aimed at prodding Afghanistan’s fractious political class into working more productively.

“Democracy requires...a willingness by people from various political, ethnic and geographic factions to put away those factional divisions and work together for the common good,” Kerry said at the start of the US-Afghanistan bilateral commission with Afghan Foreign Minister Salahuddin Rabbani.

Kerry met Nicholson and spoke to a small number of US troops at the heavily guarded NATO headquarters in Kabul.

Disputed election

He was also scheduled to meet Ghani, the victor of Afghanistan’s disputed 2014 election, and Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah, the runner-up.

The pair share power under the 2014 National Unity Government agreement.

The political deal that Kerry brokered suggested that their power-sharing arrangement would end in September 2016, which has fueled political manoeuvring in Kabul.

An opposition movement close to former president Hamid Karzai is pushing to have a say on the way forward.

The legal decree that enacted the deal, however, provided no clearly binding time limit, leaving open the possibility that the National Unity government, in one form or another, could continue for the rest of Ghani’s five-year mandate.

Kerry is expected to make that point while in Afghanistan, a stance that US officials hope may help quell some of the infighting.

“Though the political agreement calls for this to be a two-year agreement, the decree doesn’t spell out an end date,” said a senior US official on condition of anonymity.

“We ourselves here don’t view that there is going to be an end...in September.”

US special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Olsen made a similar point more obliquely with reporters in Washington on Monday.

“The Secretary wants to signal continuing US support for the national unity government,” he said. “It’s at the 18-month mark in a five-year term.”

In Warsaw in July, the NATO Western security alliance is expected to decide how to fund Afghanistan’s security forces in the coming years and donor nations will gather in Brussels in October to make civilian aid pledges to Afghanistan.

Kerry said US and Afghan officials needed “to make certain that we use the time between now and the meeting in Warsaw and the meeting in Brussels to make sure that we are putting Afghanistan’s best foot forward”.

Noting the dates, Andrew Wilder, an Afghanistan expert at the United States Institute for Peace think tank, said “the last thing we need is a big political crisis calling into question the legitimacy of the national unity government in September”.

US Embassy warns citizens about ‘credible threats’ in Turkey

ISTANBUL: The United States warned its citizens on Saturday about “credible threats” to tourist areas in Turkey, particularly in Istanbul and the southwest coastal resort of Antalya.

Turkey has been hit by four suicide bombings already this year, the most recent one last month in Istanbul.

Two of those have been blamed on Islamic State, while Kurdish militants have claimed responsibility for the other two.

The US Embassy emailed what it called an “emergency message” to Americans.

“The US Mission in Turkey would like to inform US citizens that there are credible threats to tourist areas, in particular to public squares and docks in Istanbul and Antalya,” it said in the statement.

“Please exercise extreme caution if you are in the vicinity of such areas.”

Two Reuters reporters in central Istanbul saw an extremely heavy police presence, with roads sealed off near the Hilton hotel.

Armed special police units were deployed outside foreign consulates in Istanbul, including the German and Italian missions.

Last month’s attack in Istanbul’s main shopping district killed three Israelis, two of whom held dual citizenship with the United States, and one Iranian.

A separate attack in the city’s historic heart in January killed 12 German tourists.

Turkey is facing multiple security threats. As part of a US-led coalition, it is fighting Islamic State in neighbouring Syria and Iraq.

It is also battling Kurdish militants in its southeast, where a 2-1/2-year ceasefire collapsed last July, triggering the worst violence since the 1990s.

Sixth person arrested in Brussels bombing probe: Belgian minister

BRUSSELS: The Belgian authorities have arrested a sixth person in connection with the suicide attacks in Brussels which killed 32 people on March 22, Belgium’s justice minister said on Saturday.

Belgian media said the man arrested late on Friday was Bilal El Makhoukhi, who was convicted in January last year for being involved in a disbanded organisation which recruited people to go and fight alongside militant organisations in Syria and Iraq.

Originally sentenced to five years in prison, with three years suspended, El Makhoukhi was allowed to serve his remaining term at home under electronic monitoring and was released last month, Justice Minister Koen Geens told reporters.

“He was under electronic supervision and his sentence ended on March 15,” Geens told Reuters on the sidelines of a government news conference.

El Makhoukhi was convicted last year after he had returned to Belgium after losing a leg while fighting in Syria.

Earlier on Saturday Belgian police raided an apartment complex in central Brussels without further arrests being made.

Panama law firm says it hasn’t been approached by investigators yet

BERLIN: The founding partner of Mossack Fonseca, the Panamanian law firm hit by a huge leak of offshore financial data, told a German newspaper his company had not yet been approached by anyone as part of investigations.

Ramon Fonseca also said the release of more than 11.5 million company emails was the result of hacking from a computer overseas rather than an inside job and that he knew which country the hacker attack had come from but was not allowed to disclose it.

He had told Reuters on Tuesday the firm was a victim of a hack from outside.

“We’re the ones who have filed a complaint with the authorities,” Fonseca told Bild newspaper’s Saturday edition.

“Every time there’s something in the newspapers, the authorities announce they’ll launch investigations. We’re fully cooperating but we haven’t been contacted by anyone yet.”

Panama said on Wednesday that an independent commission would review the country’s financial practices following the leak of information that has embarrassed a clutch of world leaders and forced Iceland´s prime minister to resign.

Fonseca, who was a senior government official in Panama until March, said “thousands of lawyers around the world” were doing the same “completely legal” work as Mossack Fonseca, which specialises in setting up offshore companies.

Most of the offshore firms are in jurisdictions other than Panama, including Britain, the United States and the British Virgin Islands, Fonseca said.

“So why us? We see it like the biblical story of David and Goliath. Everyone has the right to privacy. Perhaps God chose us to fight for this fundamental human right or perhaps I’m mistaken,” he added.

Britain’s Cameron says he mishandled Panama Papers tax scrutiny

Britain’s Cameron says he mishandled Panama Papers tax scrutinyLONDON: British Prime Minister David Cameron said on Saturday he should have handled scrutiny of his family’s tax arrangements better, seeking to reassert his leadership after days of negative media coverage and calls for his resignation.

After four days and four different statements over his late father’s inclusion in the “Panama Papers”, Cameron said on Thursday he once had a stake in his father’s offshore trust and had profited from it.

“Well, it’s not been a great week,” Cameron said, speaking in London at a meeting of members of his Conservative Party.

“I know that I should have handled this better, I could have handled this better. I know there are lessons to learn and I will learn them.”

As hundreds of protesters from rival parties gathered outside with banners demanding his resignation, Cameron said he would publish the information used to compile his annual tax returns, past and present, because he wanted to be “completely transparent about these things”.

The protest, in which many waved banners saying “Cameron must go”, briefly blocked the street outside the venue, with delegates advised to remove their identification before leaving.

Cameron’s candid admission of fault, during which he said he had been angered at how the media had portrayed his late father, comes after a torrid period for the Conservative government.

Divided over a June 23 referendum on whether to remain in the European Union, forced to backtrack on welfare cuts and criticised for not protecting the steel industry, Cameron sought to rally party unity ahead of regional elections next month.

“We have a huge responsibility over the coming months and the coming years to settle this issue over Europe...to show the discipline and unity and purpose that is vital for government,” he said.

‘Don’t mention Europe’

But the splits over Europe were in plain sight at the party’s spring forum — a key event in the party calendar at which members discuss future policy.

Outside, before the event began, rank and file Conservative Party members had to walk between lines of rival “In” and “Out” campaigners offering bags of campaign literature, with each side cheering when a delegate took one of their leaflets.

Inside, chief “In” campaigner Cameron and de-facto “Out” campaign head Boris Johnson tried in vain to avoid the debate.

“Boris and I agreed we weren’t going to talk about Europe. Did Boris keep his promise?” Cameron said to laughs from the audience soon after Johnson referred repeatedly to the referendum in a speech at the event.

London Mayor Johnson, who opted in February to oppose Cameron and campaign for a British exit from the EU, called June 23 “independence day” during his address.

Interior minister Theresa May, making the final public speech, urged members not to let the EU debate dominate the party’s term in office.

“The referendum is a question to which the answer will define our country for years to come,” she said.

“But we mustn’t allow it to define our Party. Being a Conservative is more than about being Leave or Remain.”

Al-Qaeda emerges stronger and richer from Yemen war

Al-Qaeda emerges stronger and richer from Yemen warDUBAI/CAIRO: Once driven to near irrelevance by the rise of Islamic State abroad and security crackdowns at home, Al-Qaeda in Yemen now openly rules a mini-state with a war chest swollen by an estimated $100 million in looted bank deposits and revenue from running the country’s third largest port.

If Islamic State’s capital is the Syrian city of Raqqa, then Al-Qaeda’s is Mukalla, a southeastern Yemeni port city of 500,000 people.

Al-Qaeda fighters there have abolished taxes for local residents, operate speedboats manned by RPG-wielding fighters who impose fees on ship traffic, and make propaganda videos in which they boast about paving local roads and stocking hospitals.

The economic empire was described by more than a dozen diplomats, Yemeni security officials, tribal leaders and residents of Mukalla.

Its emergence is the most striking unintended consequence of the Saudi-led military intervention in Yemen.

The campaign, backed by the United States, has helped Al- Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) to become stronger than at any time since it first emerged almost 20 years ago.

Yemeni government officials and local traders estimated the group, as well as seizing the bank deposits, has extorted $1.4 million from the national oil company and earns up to $2 million every day in taxes on goods and fuel coming into the port.

AQAP boasts 1,000 fighters in Mukalla alone, controls 600 kilometres of coastline and is ingratiating itself with southern Yemenis, who have felt marginalised by the country’s northern elite for years.

By adopting many of the tactics Islamic State uses to control its territory in Syria and Iraq, AQAP has expanded its own fiefdom.

The danger is that the group, which organised the Charlie Hebdo magazine attack in Paris last year and has repeatedly tried to down US airliners, may slowly indoctrinate the local population with its hardline ideology.

“I prefer that Al-Qaeda stay here, not for Al Mukalla to be liberated,” said one 47-year-old resident. “The situation is stable, more than any ‘free’ part of Yemen. The alternative to Al-Qaeda is much worse.”

Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, is struggling to extricate itself from the Yemeni quagmire a year after intervening in the country’s civil war.

Riyadh is determined to deny bitter rival Iran sway over another Arab capital. It has focused on attacking the Houthis who have seized parts of northern Yemen and who are allied to Iran.

But despite thousands of aerial bombings, the Saudis and their Gulf allies have failed to push the Houthis from the capital Sanaa.

An estimated 6,000 people, half of them civilians, have been killed.

A temporary ceasefire between the internationally recognised government, which is backed by the Saudis, and the Houthis, is due to begin on April 10.

In a recent statement issued by the Saudi embassy in Washington, Saudi officials said that their campaign had “denied terrorists a safe haven in Yemen”. And yet, AQAP’s strength is growing.

A US counter-terrorism official said AQAP remained one of Al-Qaeda’s “most potent affiliates”. The United States launched its deadliest air strike yet on the group on March 22nd, killing around 50 of its fighters at a military base outside Mukalla.

“The group’s bomb-making expertise and long-standing ambitions to carry out attacks using novel or complex tactics underscore (the) threat,” the official said.

A senior Yemeni government official said the war against the Houthis “provided a suitable environment for the...expansion of Al-Qaeda”.

The withdrawal of government army units from their bases in the south, allowed Al-Qaeda to acquire “very large quantities of sophisticated and advanced weapons, including shoulder-fired missiles and armed vehicles”.

As well, the coalition’s preoccupation with fighting the Houthis “made it easier for Al-Qaeda elements to expand in more than one area”, he said.

“And this is why Al-Qaeda has today become stronger and more dangerous and we are working with the coalition now to go after elements of the group...and will continue until they are destroyed.”

Anatomy of an economic empire

Barely a week after Saudi Arabia launched “Operation Decisive Storm” against the Houthis in March last year, Yemeni army forces vanished from Mukalla’s streets and moved westward to combat zones, security officials and residents said.

The city’s residents were left defenceless, allowing a few dozen AQAP fighters to seize government buildings and free 150 of their comrades from the central jail.

The freed included Khaled Batarfi, a senior Al-Qaeda leader. Pictures appeared online of Batarfi sitting inside the local presidential palace, looking happy and in control as he held a telephone to his ear.

Tribal leaders in neighbouring provinces said that, in the security vacuum, army bases were looted and Yemen’s south became awash with advanced weaponry.

C4 explosive and even anti-aircraft missiles were available to the highest bidder. And just as Islamic State seized the central bank in Mosul in northern Iraq, AQAP looted Mukalla’s central bank branch, netting an estimated $100 million, according to two senior Yemeni security officials.

“That represents their biggest financial gain to date,” one of the officials said. “That’s enough to fund them at the level they had been operating for at least another 10 years.”

In a sign that AQAP not only wants to get rich but also seeks official recognition as a quasi-state, it unsuccessfully sought permission from the Yemeni government to export crude oil in October and collect a share of the profits, according to a tribal leader and two senior officials.

Yemen’s government refused, fearing the deal would give defacto recognition to the internationally blacklisted group.

“Al-Qaeda sent a mediator to the government to get them agree to listen to this deal,” the tribal leader, who is in southern Yemen, said.

“Their offer was they need the official documents from the government to sell crude oil, and they would get 25 percent of the profit, and 75 percent for the government.”

The government rejected the offer, said both the tribal leader and Badr Basalmah, a former transport minister in Yemen’s government.

“Yes, that happened,” Basalmah said, speaking by telephone from the Saudi capital of Riyadh.

“The government refused completely to have anything to do with this deal because it would give authority and legitimacy to Al-Qaeda.”

On the water front

In Mukalla port, a thriving fuel smuggling network enriches AQAP daily. Tribal sources, residents and diplomats said the militants gained control of the ports in Mukalla and Ash Shihr when they first stormed the cities in April last year.

The militants began imposing tax and custom tariffs on shippers and traders. “The group is experiencing a period of obscene, unprecedented wealth and luxury,” one resident of Mukalla said.

A current official in the transport ministry estimate AQAP’s daily revenue at $2 million a day.

Some local traders put it as high as $5 million a day from customs duties and smuggled fuel, according to Basalmah, Yemen’s former transport minister.

“You will find hundreds of oil trucks there smuggling fuel from one area to another where they are selling it,” said Basalmah.

Abdallah al-Nasi, governor of neighbouring Shabwa province, where AQAP controls some territory, said the group has become the de facto fuel supplier.

“They sell the fuel to whoever buys it,” Nasi said over the phone. “The government-run petrol stations buy from them and sell it on to the citizens.”

Tribes who work with Al-Qaeda now control much of the country’s oil infrastructure. Six white oil tanks on a beach between Mukalla and Ash Shihr are linked by pipeline to the Masila oilfields which are estimated to hold more than 80 percent of Yemen’s total reserves.

After army forces withdrew from the area last year, armed local tribes linked to Al-Qaeda took charge. That prompted major companies operating there — state-owned PetroMasila, Canada’s Nexen Energy and France’s Total — to shut production and end exports.

A PetroMasila official said that small amounts of oil are still being extracted for use in provincial power generators. Total said it has not restarted operations. Nexen did not respond to a request for comment.

Robin Hood

It is a dramatic change of fortune for a group that was founded in the late 1990s and merged with Al-Qaeda’s Saudi branch in 2009.

After a campaign of suicide bombings and attacks against the Yemeni government, and two foiled bomb plots on US-bound airliners, AQAP was forced into retreat by assaults from Yemeni tribes and troops as well as persistent US drone strikes.

Now the group has embarked on a brazen campaign to shake down state-owned firms, including the national oil and mobile phone companies.

AQAP uses the money it extorts to win favour among its subjects. Elisabeth Kendall, a Yemen scholar at Oxford University, calls it a “Robin Hood” strategy.

In January, a copy of a demand issued by AQAP circulated on local media. The notice, on AQAP letterhead, demanded $4.7 million from the national oil company’s bank account in Mukalla.

“May God grant that all serve the country and the faithful,” the note said.

A top government security official said the oil company paid the full $4.7 million. A source at the bank said it had paid only $1.4 million.

A representative of the oil company declined to comment.

Officials at the three biggest national mobile phone companies, MTN, Sabafone and Y Telecom, said AQAP had also demanded payments of $4.7 million each from them.

The firms all said they refused to pay. Late last year, AQAP cancelled payroll taxes in areas it controls because it deemed the practice un-Islamic.

In a video posted on YouTube in November, the chief of Al-Qaeda’s Sharia court in Hadramout — the coastal region where Mukalla is capital — announced it would repay government workers taxes they had paid.

In the video, a bureaucrat is shown counting out wages for a worker from a bulging wad of Yemeni currency.

“The poor have been paying alms to the rich and the rich don’t pay, and it´s the tyrants and oppressors who are the ones getting this money,” AQAP fighter Ali bin Talib al-Kathiri said in another video.

“Because those oppressors have not implemented God’s law, they’ve eaten up the people’s money in sin.”

Kathiri died in January in a gun battle with southern tribesmen. But AQAP’s populist strategy is paying off, said Oxford University’s Kendall.

The group regularly posts pictures of its fighters repairing damaged bridges and paving streets in Hadramout and other cities under its control.

It says the money for the repairs comes from groups such as Guardians of Sharia or Sons of Hadramout, names AQAP has taken on as part of a rebranding effort to emphasise its local origins.

In one video posted on February 28, AQAP members deliver free medical supplies and equipment to the kidney dialysis and cancer wings of a local hospital.

The boxes of supplies are sealed with the tape of a Western pharmaceutical company.

“These are some medicines from your brothers, the Guardians of Sharia, to al-Jamii hospital which was going to be closed...because of no money,” says one fighter whose face is blurred out.

The video also shows a hospital official saying he had received money from Al-Qaeda to pay workers’ salaries.

A popular haven?

The group has exploited sectarian grievances to brand their state-building project as a liberation movement.

“So many areas fell to us after the Houthis left because we are the entity that people trust,” AQAP leader Batarfi said.

In the five coastal provinces stretching from the government’s temporary seat in Aden to Mukalla, a familiar pattern has recurred in recent months.

Al-Qaeda forces storm a town, plant their flags, and then watch as local leaders acquiesce. Citizens say they are tired of moving and would rather live with Al-Qaeda’s control.

“With Al-Qaeda, if you resist, you never know when they could come and assassinate you,” one Yemeni sheikh said.

AQAP has also learned to be less cruel than its rival, Islamic State, which has struggled to gain a foothold in a population repelled by its brutality.

While AQAP has resorted to killing suspected “sorcerers”, and carried out stonings of at least one man and woman accused of adultery, residents and the group’s online media suggest such incidents are rare.

And even when AQAP publicises punishments, their videos and photographs never show the level of gratuitous gore that Islamic State revels in.

Rather than resorting to mass beheadings, AQAP has detained or put under house arrest several dozen army officers and other figures they see as a threat, activists said.

One Mukalla resident said her life had changed little since AQAP swept through the city. “We carry out our lives normally, they walk among the people,” she said over the phone.

“Of course they’re trying to create a popular haven.”

A regional diplomat who follows Yemen says that if Al-Qaeda manages to successfully root itself as a political and economic organisation, it could become a more resilient threat, much like Al-Shabaab in nearby Somalia.

“We may be facing a more complicated al Qaeda,” the diplomat said, “not just a terrorist organisation but a movement controlling territory with happy people inside it”.