Spain has stepped up diplomatic pressure on Morocco after a record number of refugees reached Ceuta, a tiny Spanish territory in North Africa, amid political tensions between the two countries over Western Sahara.

On Tuesday, Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez flew to Ceuta, vowing to “restore order” in the Spanish enclave, after some 8,000 refugees, including 1,500 minors, reached its seashores by swimming or walking at low tide from beaches in neighboring Morocco a day earlier.

“We will restore order in the city and along our borders as quickly as possible,” he said, adding, “This sudden arrival of irregular migrants is a serious crisis for Spain and Europe.”

Sanchez said Madrid would deploy an extra 50 law enforcement officials to strengthen the 200 troops already stationed across the enclave to patrol the border with Morocco.

On Tuesday, armored vehicles were guarding Ceuta, and soldiers and police used batons to clear refugees from the beach and threw smoke bombs to discourage others from crossing.

The number of arrivals by sea had slowed, and some refugees were voluntarily returning to Morocco, a Reuters reporter on the ground said. A few others could be seen being carried away by soldiers. Footage of the beach at around 8 p.m. local time showed that nearly all the refugees had been cleared.

Spain said approximately 4,000 refugees had already been sent back to Morocco, under a readmission deal.

European Commission Vice-President Margaritis Schinas also said in a post on Twitter that the enclave’s frontier was a European border, expressing his “full solidarity with Spain.”

Spain also summoned Morocco’s ambassador to express displeasure at the mass arrivals in Ceuta.

Immediately afterwards, Morocco’s Foreign Ministry said it had recalled its ambassador from Spain.

Analysts say Morocco is intentionally looking the other way as the refugees arrive in Ceuta to place diplomatic pressure on Spain to recognize its sovereignty over Western Sahara.

Early on Tuesday, another 300 refugees attempted to cross into Spain’s Northern African enclave of Melilla by climbing over a border fence, with 86 being able to force their way into the territory.

Spain’s two North African enclaves, Melilla and Ceuta, have the European Union (EU)’s only land borders with Africa. They are often used as entry points into Europe for African refugees, who either climb over their border fences or try to swim along the coast.

The latest surge in arrivals came after Rabat expressed anger last month over Spain’s decision to admit the leader of the Polisario Front, Brahim Ghali, to a Spanish hospital for COVID-19 treatment.

In a strongly-worded statement, Morocco’s Foreign Ministry accused Spain of admitting Ghali under a false identity without informing Rabat and warned of consequences for the ties between the countries.

Isaias Barrenada, a world relations professor on the Complutense College of Madrid, said Morocco had sent a “strong message” to Spain by permitting the refugee surge into Ceuta.

However, Spain’s foreign minister insisted that Rabat had “assured” Madrid there was no connection between the surge and Ghali’s presence in Spain.

Morocco annexed Western Sahara — a former Spanish colony — in 1975, and has since been in conflict with the Algeria-backed Polisario Front. The movement has been fighting for the independence of the Sahrawi people in Western Sahara and a referendum on their self-determination.

Source: Presstv

The French army’s chief of staff on Tuesday called on a group of soldiers who signed an open letter warning about the risk of “civil war” in France to quit the armed forces.

“The most reasonable step is certainly to leave the institution in order to freely express their ideas and convictions,” General Francois Lecountre said in a letter to military personnel that contained no threat of sanctions.

The letter by the soldiers had warned of unrest in the country because of what they called “concessions” to Islamism by French President Emmanuel Macron.

The document, posted on the website of the right-wing Valeurs Actuelles magazine late Sunday, echoes a letter published by the same publication last month but appears to have been written by an unknown number of younger troops still in active service.

“Over the past several weeks …, the obligation of discretion for members of the armed services has been largely violated,” Lecointre said in his message.

He said those who had signed the letter “in order to defend personal convictions” had dragged the army into political debates it should steer clear of.

“Every soldiers enjoys freedom of thought but must unambiguously distinguish between civic and military duties,” the general added.

Those who signed the letter described themselves as soldiers from the younger generation of the military, a so-called “generation of fire” that had seen active service.

“They have offered up their lives to destroy the Islamism that you have made concessions to on our soil,” they wrote.

The latest letter as well as the previous one have prompted political uproar in France with Defence Minister Florence Parly dismissing them as part of a “crude political scheme” and reminding soldiers of their obligation of neutrality.

Last month an open letter by retired generals in Valeurs Actuelles warned Macron the country was headed for “civil war” unless he cracked down on Islamists, anarchists and anti-racism activists.

A number of serving defence force members also signed the dramatically-worded letter which warned that “laxist” policies would result in chaos requiring “the intervention of our comrades on active duty in a perilous mission of protection of our civilisational values”.

Failure to act against the “suburban hordes” — a reference to residents of the mainly immigrant tower blocks that ring French cities — and other unnamed groups who “scorn our country, its traditions and its culture” will lead to “civil war” and deaths “in the thousands”, the signatories warned.

Source: AFP

German police said Monday they had shut down “one of the biggest darknet child pornography platforms in the world” and arrested four of its members in a series of raids in mid-April.

The platform, named as “Boystown”, had existed since 2019, counted over 400,000 members and was “set up for the worldwide exchange of child pornography”, federal police said in a statement.

The darknet forum allowed users to communicate with others and share graphic image and video content which included “serious sexual abuse of toddlers”, the statement said.

Three men between the ages of 40 and 64 were arrested in seven raids in Germany, while a further suspect was detained in Paraguay on the request of German authorities.

The suspect in Paraguay’s Concepcion region, also a German citizen, is to be extradited back to Germany on the basis of an international arrest warrant issued by a court in Frankfurt.

Three of the men are accused of having managed the platform as administrators, providing technical support and advice to members on how to avoid being discovered by the authorities, while another was “one of the platform’s most active users”, police said.

Investigators added that the months-long, German-instigated operation had been coordinated by Europol and supported by law enforcement in the Netherlands, Sweden, the United States and Canada.

Both “Boystown” and other chat platforms were taken offline following the raids.

(AFP)

The bodies of three Europeans killed in Burkina Faso were flown to Spain on Friday, with Madrid pledging to keep up a “relentless” fight against the jihadist insurgency raging in Africa’s Sahel region.

The two Spanish journalists and an Irish wildlife activist were ambushed during an anti-poaching patrol in the impoverished West African nation which has been struggling with a surge in Islamist attacks since 2015.

Journalists David Beriain and Roberto Fraile were with Rory Young, head of the Chengeta Wildlife group, in the Arly National Park in eastern Burkina Faso when the attack occurred on Monday.

They were with a group that included soldiers and forest rangers when the assailants turned up in pickup trucks and on motorbikes, with the three Europeans initially reported missing.

The Burkina authorities said they had been “executed by terrorists”, becoming the latest victims of the ruthless Islamist insurgency gripping one of the poorest countries in the world.

Spanish Foreign Minister Arancha Gonzalez Laya and Defence Minister Margarita Robles were on the tarmac at Torrejon de Ardoz airbase as three wooden coffins were carried off the plane by 24 air force officers.

“These are the heroes of the day: David and Robert, who have done so much to give a voice to those who do not have one, who have done so much to shed light on the realities that surround us and that are sometimes invisible,” Gonzalez Laya said.

The pair had been working on a documentary on conservation in Burkina Faso.

The Irish ambassador to Spain, Sile Maguire, was also at the airbase.

Young’s body was to be flown back to Ireland later on Friday, the Spanish foreign ministry told AFP, without giving further details.

‘We will be relentless’

Hailing the pair for “doing so much to give a voice to the voiceless,” Gonzalez Laya said the government was posthumously awarding them the Order of Civil Merit “for their work in pursuit of a journalism that enhances our democracy”.

The violence had highlighted the importance of Spain’s continued involvement in “efforts for peace and stability” in the war-torn Sahel region, she said.

Extending condolences to the families who were also at the airport but not on the tarmac, Robles said Spain would do “everything possible to find out who was behind these appalling acts”.

She vowed that Spain would press ahead with efforts to help those fighting the Islamist insurgency in the region.

“The fight against terror in these areas is not going to stop, we will be relentless,” she said.

Hotbed of lawlessness

Burkina, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger have joined forces in a French-backed alliance called the G5 Sahel to fight jihadism on the southern edge of the Sahara, with the initiative also backed by Spain, Germany and Italy.

In a joint statement on Friday, Spain, France, Germany and Italy pledged continued security support for nations in the Sahel region which stretches from Senegal to Sudan and has turned into a hotbed of lawlessness over the past decade.

“We will continue existing initiatives to support the armies of the region, as well as the gendarmerie and internal security forces in their operations, training and capacity building,” they said.

Since 2015, more than 1,300 people have been killed and one million have fled the violence in Burkina Faso, which has ravaged this land-locked nation’s once-vibrant tourist industry

(AFP)

Northern Ireland police faced a barrage of petrol bombs and rocks on Thursday, an AFP journalist said, as violence once again flared in Belfast despite pleas for calm.

Riot police on the republican side of the divided city were pelted with projectiles as they tried to prevent a crowd moving towards pro-UK unionists.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Irish counterpart Micheal Martin had earlier called for “calm” following days of violence that included a petrol-bomb attack on a moving bus.

Martin and Johnson held telephone talks in which they stressed that “violence is unacceptable” and “called for calm”, the Irish leader’s office said.

But their calls went unheeded as night fell in Belfast, with unrest breaking out on the republican side of the capital.

Rioting over the last few days—the city’s worst unrest in recent years—had mainly stemmed from its unionist community, leading to joint condemnation from political leaders in the British province.

Unionists are angry over apparent economic dislocation due to Brexit and existing tensions with pro-Irish nationalist communities.

“Destruction, violence and the threat of violence are completely unacceptable and unjustifiable, no matter what concerns may exist in communities,” said the Northern Ireland executive—made up of unionist, nationalist and centrist parties.

“While our political positions are very different on many issues, we are all united in our support for law and order.”

Northern Ireland Secretary Brandon Lewis visited Belfast to meet leaders from the main parties, including unionist First Minister Arlene Foster and deputy First Minister Michelle O’Neill of Sinn Fein, as well as faith and community advocates.

He called the joint condemnation “a very clear statement”, adding “there is no excuse for violence, we’ve got to make sure we take things forward in a proper democratic and political way.”

In Washington, the White House also expressed concern over the violence and urged calm.

‘Sectarian violence’

In the disorder on Wednesday, gates were set alight on a “peace line”—walls separating pro-Irish nationalist and unionist communities—and police said crowds from either side broke through to attack each other with petrol bombs, missiles and fireworks.

Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) temporary assistant chief constable Jonathan Roberts said the scale and nature of the violence was unprecedented in recent years.

“The fact that it was sectarian violence and there was large groups on both sides… again is not something we have seen for a number of years,” he told reporters.

Before Thursday, six nights of unrest left 55 police injured, Roberts noted, as well as a press photographer and the driver of the bus fire-bombed Wednesday.

He said children as young as 13 were suspected of involvement following encouragement from adults, and the large volume of petrol bombs used suggested “a level of pre-planning”.

The PSNI is probing if Northern Ireland’s notorious paramilitary groups were involved in the unrest.

‘Deep rooted’

Northern Ireland endured 30 years of sectarian conflict that killed 3,500 people.

Unionist paramilitaries, British security forces and armed nationalists seeking to unite the territory with the Republic of Ireland waged battle until a landmark peace deal in 1998.

The accord let unionists and nationalists coexist by blurring the status of the region, dissolving border checks with fellow European Union member Ireland.

But Britain’s 2016 vote to quit the EU revived the need for border checks. A special “protocol” was agreed that shifted the controls away from the land border to ports trading with the UK mainland, prompting many unionists to accuse London of betrayal.

There was also recent outrage among unionists after Northern Irish authorities decided not to prosecute Sinn Fein leaders for attending a large funeral last year of a former paramilitary leader, in apparent breach of Covid restrictions.

Few people in central Belfast on Thursday wanted to discuss the sensitive situation.

“It’s deep-rooted, it’s not just about Brexit,” said Fiona McMahon, 56, before adding Britain’s EU withdrawal had had a “massive impact”.

“The British do whatever the hell they want to do and we get landed with everything afterwards,” she told AFP.

PM Johnson tweeted overnight that he was “deeply concerned”, saying “the way to resolve differences is through dialogue, not violence or criminality”.

Johnson and Martin agreed during their call that “the way forward is through dialogue and working the institutions of the Good Friday Agreement,” according to Dublin.

Source: AFP

Former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi has been hospitalised for the second time in two weeks, a source within his Forza Italia party said Wednesday.

The flamboyant 84-year-old billionaire and media tycoon has been at Milan’s San Raffaele hospital since Tuesday afternoon, the source said.

Berlusconi arrived for a check-up, and doctors decided to keep him in to conduct more tests, the source added.

The hospitalisation was also announced by one of Berlusconi’s lawyers during a hearing in Milan linked to his long-running “bunga bunga” sex scandal.

The hearing is part of the latest prong of the investigation into Berlusconi’s relationship with an underage girl, Karima El-Mahroug, dubbed “Ruby the heart-stealer”.

The probe involves alleged payments to witnesses by Berlusconi to buy their silence over his so-called “bunga bunga” parties involving El-Mahroug and other women.

Berlusconi, who has dominated public life in Italy since the 1980s, has had a string of health problems in recent years.

He already spent a couple of days at the San Raffaele in late March. His entourage said at the time it was to conduct previously scheduled tests.

In January, Berlusconi — who had open heart surgery in 2016 — was admitted to a hospital in Monaco for heart problems. Last September, he was hospitalised for 11 days with Covid-19.

Source: AFP

Former French president Nicolas Sarkozy goes on trial Wednesday over claims of illicit financing for his failed 2012 re-election bid, just two weeks after a landmark conviction for corruption.

On March 1, the 66-year-old became France’s first post-war president to be sentenced to prison when he was given a three-year term, two years of which were suspended, for corruption and influence peddling.

That case was one of several hanging over him since he left office.

Sarkozy has denied any wrongdoing, saying he is the victim of a vindictive judicial system with which he tangled while in power between 2007 and 2012.

In the trial opening Wednesday, which he is not expected to attend, the divisive rightwinger is accused of overspending on his failed 2012 re-election bid to the tune of 20 million euros ($24 million).

The money was spent on lavish US-style rallies in the final days of the race, as Sarkozy scrambled to fend off an unexpectedly strong challenge from his Socialist rival Francois Hollande.

Prosecutors say accountants had warned him that the campaign was set to blow the 22.5 million euro ($26.7 million) cap on spending between the first and second rounds of voting, but Sarkozy insisted on holding more events.

Investigators say his total spending on the second round came to nearly 43 million euros ($51 million).

To hide the spending, the PR firm behind the campaign, Bygmalion, and officials in Sarkozy’s UMP party (since renamed Les Republicains) are accused of conspiring to have the UMP foot the bill through a system of fake invoices.

The former president says he was unaware of the fraud — unlike some of the defendants he is not charged with fraud, but with the lesser offence of illegal campaign financing. He fought for years to avoid a trial.

‘Runaway train’

Bygmalion executives and Jerome Lavrilleux, the deputy manager of Sarkozy’s 2012 campaign who will also go on trial, have acknowledged the system of fake invoices.

Lavrilleux in particular made headlines in 2014 after he tearfully confessed to the scam during a French TV interview, saying: “This campaign was a runaway train that no one had the courage to stop.”

The trial is set to run until April 15, but Lavrilleux’s defence team has said it will seek to postpone the start because his main lawyer has been hospitalised with Covid-19.

If convicted, Sarkozy risks being sentenced to up to a year in prison and a fine of 3,750 euros.

On March 1, he was found guilty of forming a “corruption pact” with his lawyer to convince a judge to share information about yet another investigation into the politician’s affairs, relating to his winning 2007 campaign.

His prison sentence stunned the political establishment and prompted his many admirers on the right, including Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin, to send him messages of support.

This sentence is not expected to see him serve actual jail time with two of the three years suspended by the court and the remaining year set to be served at home with an electronic bracelet.

Sarkozy has appealed the verdict which effectively crushed any hopes that he could stage another presidential comeback after a first failed attempt in 2016.

In an TF1 television interview on March 3, he repeated that he had “turned the page” on his political career but made clear he would continue to make his political views known and anoint right-wing favourites.

Sarkozy is married to former singer and model Carla Bruni, with whom he has a nine-year-old daughter.

He has also been charged over allegations he received millions of euros from the late Libyan dictator Moamer Kadhafi for his 2007 election campaign.

And in January, prosecutors opened a probe into alleged influence-peddling involving his activities as a consultant in Russia.

Source: AFP

The European Commission authorised Johnson & Johnson’s one-dose coronavirus vaccine on Thursday, giving the European Union’s 27 nations a fourth licensed vaccine to try to curb the pandemic amid a stalled vaccination drive in the bloc.

“More safe and effective vaccines are coming to the market. We have just authorised the use of Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine in the EU, following EMA positive review,” Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, wrote on Twitter.

The EU medicines regulator said earlier it was recommending the vaccine be authorised “after a thorough evaluation” of Johnson & Johnson’s data found it met the criteria for efficacy, safety and quality.

“With this latest positive opinion, authorities across the European Union will have another option to combat the pandemic and protect the lives and health of their citizens,” said Emer Cooke, executive director of the European Medicines Agency (EMA).

US pharma giant Johnson & Johnson (J&J) filed on February 16 for approval for the vaccine, developed by its Belgian subsidiary Janssen.

Its approval offers a boost for the EU’s sluggish vaccination programme, even if reports say the first J&J shipments doses may not arrive in European countries until April.

Stella Kyriakides, the EU’s health commissioner, said the vaccine’s authorisation marked “another key step towards ensuring that all citizens can access safe and effective vaccinations as soon as possible”.

AstraZeneca concerns

The move comes as several European countries have suspended their roll-out of the AstraZeneca vaccine citing concerns about patients developing blood clots after receiving the jab.

The EU has so far approved three vaccines – Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna and the AstraZeneca jab developed by the University of Oxford.

Three other vaccines are under “rolling review” by the Amsterdam-based EMA – Novavax, CureVac and Russia’s Sputnik V.

As well as being the first that requires a single injection as opposed to two, the Johnson & Johnson vaccine is easier to store.

The J&J shot however appears less protective than Pfizer and Moderna’s regimes, which both have an efficacy of around 95 percent against all forms of Covid-19 from the classic coronavirus strain.

(FRANCE 24 with AP, AFP)

A French court on Thursday acquitted former prime minister Edouard Balladur on corruption charges after he was accused of using kickbacks from an arms deal but handed a suspended jail term to his former defence minister.

The verdict by the Law Court of the Republic (CJR), which sits to try serving and former ministers for alleged violations committed in office, came just days after ex-president Nicolas Sarkozy was convicted for corruption.

Balladur, 91, had been accused of funnelling illicit commissions from arms deals to his unsuccessful presidential campaign in 1995.

His former defence minister Francois Leotard, 78, was however convicted of complicity in the misuse of assets and handed a suspended two-year prison term and a fine of 100,000 euros ($120,000).

Neither was present in court for the verdict.

Balladur and Leotard, both right-wingers, were charged in 2017 with “complicity in the misuse of corporate assets” over the sale of submarines to Pakistan and frigates to Saudi Arabia between 1993 and 1995.

The verdicts came hot on the heels of a corruption conviction for former president Sarkozy on Monday which stunned France and has led to a debate about the extent of political corruption.

That judgement meant that both of the last heads of states from France’s right-wing party now called The Republicans (LR) — Jacques Chirac and Sarkozy — have criminal convictions.

Sarkozy has vowed to appeal and clear his name.

Swiss cash

The allegations against Balladur and Leotard came to light during an investigation into a 2002 bombing in Karachi, Pakistan, that targeted a bus transporting French engineers.

Fifteen people were killed in the attack, including 11 engineers working on the submarine contract, with the Al-Qaeda terror network initially suspected of carrying out the assault.

But the focus shifted and French investigators began to consider whether the bombing had been carried out as revenge for a halt in commission payments for the arms deals.

Balladur lost his 1995 presidential bid to rival Chirac who allegedly cut off the payments negotiated by the previous government.

Leotard was accused of having created an “opaque network” of intermediaries who took commissions on contracts signed with Pakistan and Saudi Arabia and then paid back some of the money with illicit cash transfers.

Prosecutors alleged that the commissions totalled 550 million francs, or 117 million euros in today’s money, some of which was funnelled back to Balladur’s campaign.

At the centre of the case was a deposit of 10.25 million francs in cash made into Balladur’s campaign account three days after his electoral defeat in 1995.

Balladur claimed the money came from donations from supporters and merchandise sales, but prosecutors linked the money to cash withdrawals in Switzerland made by a Lebanese-French intermediary who took commissions on the arms deals.

Ziad Takieddine, long active in French right-wing circles, fled to Lebanon last June after a Paris court sentenced him and another middleman, Abdul Rahman El-Assir, to five years in prison over their role in the “Karachi” kickbacks.

Three others were also convicted but have announced appeals.

“I have a completely free conscience,” Balladur told the court during his interrogation.

Takieddine has also made — and retracted — claims that he delivered suitcases stuffed with cash from Libyan dictator Moamer Kadhafi to Sarkozy’s chief of staff to help with the ex-president’s 2007 presidential campaign.

Those claims are the subject of a separate investigation into Sarkozy.

Combative Sarkozy

On Monday, the 66-year-old ex-president was found to have formed a “corruption pact” with his lawyer Thierry Herzog to convince a judge to obtain and share information about yet another inquiry into his campaign financing.

Sarkozy, who has been dogged with investigations since leaving office in 2007, denies the charges and has vowed to clear his name with an appeal.

In two interviews Wednesday, he lambasted the verdict and said he was mulling filing a complaint with Europe’s top rights court.

“I never betrayed the trust of the French people,” France’s president from 2007 to 2012 told TF1 channel in a primetime interview on Wednesday evening.

(AFP)

A French court found former president Nicolas Sarkozy guilty on Monday of trying to bribe a judge and of influence peddling, making him the second head of state in modern-day France to be convicted of corruption.

Sarkozy, who led France from 2007 to 2012, was found guilty of offering a plum job in Monaco to a judge in exchange for inside information on an inquiry into his campaign finances.

He was sentenced to three years in jail, including two years suspended.

The sentence means it is unlikely Sarkozy will physically go to prison, a punishment that in France usually applies to custodial terms above two years.

The court said Sarkozy will be entitled to request to be detained at home with an electronic bracelet.

Sarkozy has 10 days to appeal the ruling.

The same sentence was handed down to his co-defendants – lawyer Thierry Herzog and judge Gilbert Azibert.

The former president and his lawyer were found guilty of seeking to bribe judge Azibert for information on an inquiry into claims the former leader had received illicit payments from L’Oréal heiress Liliane Bettencourt during his successful 2007 presidential campaign.

The state’s case was based on wiretaps of conversations between Herzog and Sarkozy, with prosecutors accusing him of “using secret telephone lines” to cover up his attempt to infiltrate the court.

Prosecutors said it had been established “with certainty” that judge Azibert transmitted confidential information about the Bettencourt case on an unofficial line to his friend Herzog.

One conversation “overwhelmingly” showed that Sarkozy had promised to intervene to get Azibert a post in Monaco, they said.

Azibert, who was a senior adviser at France’s highest appeals court at the time, never got the job in Monaco.

Sarkozy’s lawyers argued this pointed to the absence of corruption but prosecutors said French law makes no distinction between a successful corruption attempt and a failed one.

Other cases pending

Sarkozy, who was eventually cleared of any wrongdoing in the Bettencourt affair, still faces a raft of other legal woes.

Allegations that he received millions of euros from Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi for his 2007 election campaign are still being investigated, and he is also accused of fraudulently overspending in his failed 2012 reelection bid.

In January, prosecutors opened another probe into alleged influence-peddling by Sarkozy over his advisory activities in Russia.

News website Mediapart said the probe targeted a payment by Russian insurance firm Reso-Garantia of 3 million euros in 2019 when Sarkozy was working as an adviser, well after leaving office.

Sarkozy’s long-running legal travails helped sink his comeback bid for the 2017 presidential vote, but he has surfed on a wave of popularity since announcing his retirement from politics in 2018.

Only one other French president, Sarkozy’s political mentor Jacques Chirac, was put on trial after leaving office, but he was excused from having to attend his 2011 corruption trial because of ill health.

Chirac received a two-year suspended sentence over the creation of ghost jobs at the Paris city hall to fund his party when he was mayor.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP, AP and REUTERS)