The Feb 20 report was published on World Bank website on
Tuesday. This report was handed over to Finance Minister AMA Muhith a few days
back.
The three-member panel, led by Louis Moreno-Ocampo, filed the
report where it said the ACC investigation did not appear to be full and
fair.
“The Panel maintains that there were no legal reasons to exclude
the name of the former Minister of Communications from the initial list of
persons under investigation.”
“The Panel agrees with the decision to
pursue a formal investigation of the seven named individuals” who allegedly
tried to take bribes for themselves and others by favouring Canada-based SNC
Lavalin and its partners inthe tender process for construction supervision
consultant.
However, the report said “that a final assessment of the
adequacy of the ACC’s investigative activities should be done at the end of its
investigation”.
Brazil’s president has embraced an outbreak of protests against her
government across the country, after the South American country saw some
of its biggest ever rallies earlier this week.
Dilma
Rousseff, a former leftist guerrilla who was imprisoned and tortured
during Brazil’s 1964-85 dictatorship, said on Tuesday that the protests
were evidence of a vibrant democracy and acknowledge the need for better
public services and more responsive governance.
"The massive size
of yesterday's protests prove the energy of our democracy, the force of
the voice of the street and the civility of our population,'' she said.
"My government hears the voices clamouring for change, my government is committed to social transformation," she said.
"Those
who took to the streets yesterday sent a clear message to all of
society, above all to political leaders at all levels of government."
The
demonstrators are demanding better education, schools and transport
after mass protests across at least seven cities on Monday, which
intensified after clashes with police in Sao Paulo. Demanding more
Many
of them have begun to demand more from their government and are angry
that billions of dollars in public funds are being spent to host the
World Cup and Olympics while few improvements are made on infrastructure
elsewhere.
The office of the United Nations' High Commissioner
for Human Rights urged the Brazilian authorities on Tuesday to exercise
restraint in dealing with the social protests in the country and called
on demonstrators not to resort to violence in pursuit of their demands.
The UN body said it welcomed the statement by Rousseff that peaceful demonstrations were legitimate.
A
survey by the Datafolha polling agency suggested a large majority
of participants at the Sao Paulo protest on Monday night had no
affiliation with any political party and nearly three-quarters were
taking part in the protests for the first time.
Local news media estimated more than 240,000 people participated in demonstrations Monday night that were mostly peaceful.
However,
violence was seen in Rio de Janeiro, where 20 officers and 10
demonstrators were injured in clashes, and in the cities of Porto Alegre
and Belo Horizonte. State legislature attacked
The
vast majority of Rio's protesters were peaceful, but a group had
attacked the state legislature building and set a car and other
objects ablaze.
As the group moved on to the state legislature
building, footage broadcast by the Globo television network showed
police shooting into the air.
At least one demonstrator in Rio was
injured after being hit in the leg with a live round allegedly fired by
a law nforcement official.
Protests also were reported in the cities of Curitiba, Vitoria, Fortaleza, Recife, Belem and Salvador.
Monday's
protests came not only during the Confederations Cup but just one month
before a papal visit, a year before the World Cup and three years
ahead of the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.
The unrest is raising security concerns and renewed questions over Brazil's readiness to host the mega-events.
The head of the US National Security Agency has defended government's
sweeping electronic surveillance programmes and said it had helped
disrupt possible attacks more than 50 times since September 11, 2001.
Justifying
the spying programmes that were disclosed by contractor Edward Snowden
earlier this month, General Keith Alexander said on Tuesday he would
give lawmakers classified details of all of the thwarted incidents
within 24 hours.
He said the public disclosure of spying
programmes caused "irreversible" damage to national security and helped
America's enemies.
"I think it was irreversible and significant
damage to this nation," General Keith Alexander said at a House of
Representatives Intelligence Committee hearing.
Asked whether the
disclosures by Snowden had helped America's enemies, Alexander replied:
"I believe it has and I believe it will hurt us and our allies."
Alexander spoke at a rare open Capitol Hill hearing.
At
the hearing, both the FBI and leaders of the House Intelligence
Committee have come out in vigorous defence of the NSA programmes.
'Foiled plots'
Deputy
FBI director Sean Joyce said that the government's surveillance of
telephone and Internet communications foiled plots including one to bomb
the New York Stock Exchange.
Michigan Republican Representative
Mike Rogers, who will preside over an open hearing of the intelligence
panel later on Tuesday, said he expected NSA head to declassify
additional information about the programme.
The Obama
administration already has declassified data crediting the NSA programme
with breaking up a planned attack on New York City's subway system.
On Monday, US President Barack Obama defended the NSA as legal and transparent in a lengthy TV interview.
"We're
going to have to find ways where the public has an assurance that there
are checks and balances in place ... that their phone calls aren't
being listened into; their text messages aren't being monitored, their
emails are not being read by some big brother somewhere," Obama said.
Meanwhile,
Yahoo is the latest company to disclose how many requests for user data
it has received from US government agencies, putting the number between
12,000 and 13,000 in the six months that ended on May 31.
The Obama administration has publicly identified for the first time
46 prisoners at the Guantanamo Bay US Naval Base whom it wants to hold
indefinitely without charge or trial because it says they are too
dangerous to release but cannot be prosecuted.
The Defence Department released the names on Monday after the Miami Herald newspaper and a group of Yale Law School students sued for its release in a US District Court in Washington.
The
list also names nearly two dozen prisoners who have been recommended
for prosecution, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who is already on
trial for his alleged role in the September 11, 2011, attack, and
Hambali, an alleged Indonesian "terrorist leader".
Those on the
list are prisoners who have been held without charge under the
Authorised Use of Military Force act passed by Congress and signed by
President George Bush in 2001, according to a spokesman for the
Pentagon, Army Lieutenant-Colonel Todd Breasseale.
The prisoners
on the list were first reviewed by an administration task force of
lawyers, military officers and intelligence agents. Indefinite detainees
In
a 2010 report, the task force declared 48 Guantanamo prisoners too
dangerous to release. However, the report said they could not be tried,
either because there was no evidence linking them to specific attacks or
because evidence against them was tainted by coercion or abuse.
On the list were 26 Yemenis, 12 Afghans, three Saudis, two Kuwaitis, two Libyans, a Kenyan, a Moroccan and a Somali.
Two of the Afghans died after the list was compiled, one from suicide and the other from a heart attack.
That leaves 46 of the 166 Guantanamo prisoners designated as indefinite detainees.
The Guantanamo detention camp was set up in 2002 to hold prisoners captured in US counterterrorism operations overseas.
President Barack Obama recently called it a stain on America's reputation and reiterated his intent to close it.
He said his administration would appoint a pair of envoys from the State and Defence departments to work on that.
Following
up on that promise, the State Department announced on Monday the
appointment of Clifford Sloan, a veteran Washington lawyer, to work as
its envoy to negotiate the repatriation or resettlement of 86 prisoners
who have been cleared for transfer or release. Pre-trial hearings
The
announcement came as five prisoners charged with plotting the 9/11
attacks on the US appeared in the war crimes tribunal at the Guantanamo
base for a week of pre-trial hearings.
Defendants in the death
penalty case include Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other men accused
of funding and training the hijackers.
All five defendants
appeared adequately fed, suggesting they have not joined more than 100
other detainees who have waged a four-month hunger strike in protest at
the failure to resolve their fate after more than a decade of detention
at Guantanamo.
They sat quietly in the courtroom as their lawyers
questioned a retired admiral who previously oversaw the Guantanamo war
crimes tribunal.
The lengthy and at times tedious questioning was
aimed at showing the admiral and other military officials meddled in
attorney-client communications, which are supposed to be confidential. Hidden microphones
The
hearing was the first in the case since February, when camp officials
revealed that what appeared to be smoke alarms in the huts where defence
lawyers met the defendants were actually microphones.
Camp
officials insisted that they never listened to or recorded
attorney-client meetings at the detention camp and said the microphones
have since been disabled.
In addition to the five defendants in
the 9/11 case, the Obama administration had planned to try about 36
prisoners in the war crimes tribunal.
But the chief prosecutor in
the tribunals, Army Brigadier-General Mark Martins, told Reuters news
agency last week that number would be scaled back to about 20 -
including the 9/11 defendants and seven cases that have already been
completed.
He had planned to charge many of the others with
providing material support for terrorism but a US appeals court ruled
last year that was not internationally recognised as a war crime when
the acts in question took place in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
A stunt double for Oscar-winning actress Angelina Jolie has sued Rupert Murdoch's beleaguered media empire News Corp
over allegations its British newspapers hacked her phone, the first
lawsuit in the US against the company since a hacking scandal broke out
two years ago.
The lawsuit filed on June 13 by professional stunt double, Eunice Huthart, said reporters from News Corp's tabloids The Sun and the defunct News of the World, hacked her mobile phone while she was working for Jolie on location in Los Angeles.
A spokesman for News Corp declined to comment on the lawsuit.
Huthart's
lawsuit said the hacking occurred in 2004 and 2005 while she was in the
United States and Britain and resulted in lost voice messages that she
never received.
The missing voice mails provided information later
used in news reports, according to the court document in US District
Court in California.
Huthart is seeking unspecified damages.
Huthart's
mobile phone number, account number and personal code appeared in the
notes of Glenn Mulcaire, who was imprisoned in Britain for six months in
2007 for illegally intercepting phone messages at the request of News of the World.
The
weekly paper was shut down in July 2011 after it emerged it had
illegally accessed the mobile phone voice messages of hundreds of
high-profile figures, including missing teenager Milly Dowler who was
later found murdered.
A deadly blast in the west of Kabul that left at least three people
dead has marked the formal handover of nationwide security from the
US-led NATO coalition to Afghan forces.
The handover of
responsibility on Tuesday is a significant milestone in the nearly
12-year war against Taliban and other armed groups and marks a turning
point for American and NATO military forces, which will now move
entirely into a supporting role.
It also opens the way for their full withdrawal in 18 months.
The
ceremonial handover was, however, marred by an explosion that targeted
the convoy of Mohammed Mohaqiq, a prominent ethnic Hazara lawmaker.
Mohaqiq is said to have survived the blast.
General Mohammad
Zahir, chief of the Kabul Criminal Investigation Division, said three
people were killed by the bombing and another 30 were wounded -
including six bodyguards.
"The roadside bomb targeted the Mohaqiq convoy, but he safely passed. One of his vehicles was damaged," Zahir said.
Handover ceremony
The
blast came as hundreds of local and international officials gathered on
the capital's outskirts to mark the beginning of the final phase of
security transition to Afghan forces across the nation.
Afghan
President Hamid Karzai announced the formal handover. "Our security and
defence forces will now be in the lead," he said in a speech.
"From here, all security responsibility and all security leadership will be taken by our brave forces."
Fogh
Rasmussen, the NATO secretary-general, said the International Security
Assistance Force (ISAF) would help militarily if and when needed but
will no longer plan, execute or lead operations.
"The main effort of our forces is shifting from combat to support," he said in speech during the ceremony.
"By the end of 2014, our combat mission will be completed. At that time, Afghanistan will be fully secured by Afghans," he said
Following the handover, Afghan forces will now have the lead for security in all 403 districts of Afghanistan's 34 provinces.
Until now, they were responsible for 312 districts nationwide, where
80 percent of Afghanistan's population of nearly 30 million lives.
After the handover, 100,000 NATO forces will play a supporting and
training role, as Afghan soldiers and police take the lead in the fight
against armed groups.
Doubts remain, however, over the ability of the 350,000-strong Afghan
forces to thwart the Taliban, and the NATO military coalition will
retain an important role in logistics and air support as well as in
combat when required.
Recent attacks have demonstrated the Taliban's ability to strike at
Kabul, as the country prepares for next year's presidential elections
and the NATO withdrawal by the end of 2014.
Less than a week ago, a deadly suicide car bomb struck a bus carrying
employees of the Supreme Court in Kabul and killed at least 17 people.
The blast on June 12 also injured 40 others, according to officials.
The total of 3,092 civilians killed or wounded between January 1 and
June 6 this year was 24 percent higher than the same period last year,
according to UN figures
Rescue efforts are under way after torrential rains and floods washed
away buildings and roads, killing at least 64 people in north India,
with thousands of pilgrims stranded in the Himalayan state of
Uttarakhand, officials have said.
The Indian Air Force scrambled a
dozen helicopters to reinforce a military-backed rescue mission in the
worst-hit state of Uttarakhand, a spokesman said on Tuesday.
Local government officials in the state capital Dehradun said they were overwhelmed by the scale of the disaster.
"So
far, we have found 54 bodies and 17 others are still missing,"
top disaster management official Piush Rautela told the AFP news agency
by telephone.
"The situation is really very bad out there. More than 600 buildings
have toppled or been swept away and there are 75,000 people including
pilgrims stranded at various places."
"Certain areas are still
unaccessible to us," he added, speaking from a control room in Dehradun
which is monitoring rescue and relief missions.
More than 10,000
pilgrims stranded along a mountain pass leading to a Hindu religious
site were being evacuated by helicopter after roads to the pilgrimage
spot were blocked by landslides.
The army was also working to evacuate thousands from popular locations in Dehradun, Uttarkashi and Rishikesh.
A military statement said five airbases in northern India have been activated to speed up operations. Pilgrimage trips cancelled
Television footage showed bridges, houses and multi-storey buildings crashing down and being washed away by the swirling waters.
As many as 250,000 people are thought to be in danger. The hilly terrain has made rescue operations difficult.
A giant statue of Lord Shiva could be seen submerged up to its head in the tourist hub of Rishikesh in Uttarakhand.
Rising
water levels in some towns have also swept away cars, earthmoving
equipment and even a parked helicopter, as a result of the surprise
rains which began lashing the region on Saturday.
Authorities have
cancelled pilgrimage trips, fearing further rains and landslides in the
state, often referred to as the "Land of the Gods" because of its many
Hindu temples and Hindu religious sites.
Wildlife, including deer, could be seen struggling for safety against the tide.
"Right
now our priority is to save as many lives as possible and the scale of
destruction will be assessed later," Routela said from Dehradun.
The state government was also readying food parcels and drinking water to be dropped by helicopters to the remote villages.
The
Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh spoke with officials in
Uttarakhand and promised "all assistance in rescue and relief
operations" in the the stricken state, the premier's office said in a
statement mailed to AFP. Thousands stranded
In
the neighbouring Himachal Pradesh state, the death toll from
rain-related accidents stood at 10, said a state government official
from the capital Shimla.
About 1,500 people, including 150 foreign
holiday-makers, were stranded in the state which is a popular tourist
destination, the official added.
Efforts were under way to try to
reopen the major roads to rescue those cut off by the rains, said JM
Pathania, a top administrative official of Kinnaur district of the
state.
The monsoon, which India's farming sector depends on,
covers the subcontinent from June to September, usually bringing some
flooding.
But the heavy rains arrived early this year, catching
many by surprise. The country has received 68 percent more rain than
normal for this time of year, data from the India Meteorological
Department shows.
Two hydropower stations that supply the region have also been shut down as a safety measure.
The River Ganges and its tributaries are flowing above the danger mark in several areas in Uttarakhand.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai has said that his government will send
representatives to Qatar soon to discuss peace with the Taliban, a day after it was reported that the group was set to open its political office in Doha.
The
announcement on Tuesday is the first significant step towards reaching a
ceasefire in the 12-year-old war against the armed group.
"Afghanistan's
High Peace Council will travel to Qatar to discuss peace talks with the
Taliban," Karzai said in Kabul, referring to the council he formed in
late 2010 to pursue talks with the armed group.
Karzai was speaking at a ceremony in which the international military coalition marked its final handover of security to Afghan forces.
There was no immediate comment from Taliban.
Al Jazeera had earlier reported that Taliban would open a political office in the Qatari capital, Doha, on Tuesday.
Until earlier this year, Karzai was strongly opposed to the Taliban
having a meeting venue outside Afghanistan, but the US has pushed for
the Taliban to be present at the negotiating table.
In March, Karzai met Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, the Emir of
Qatar, and discussed "issues of mutual interest," the state news agency
QNA said, without elaborating on the substance of their talks.
Members of the Taliban arrived to Doha about one year ago to
establish the office from which they could engage in negotiations with
representatives of Washington, in the hope of eventually achieving direct Afghan-to-Afghan talks with the government of President Hamid Karzai.
But as early as March of this year, the Taliban seemed far from ready to forge peace by laying down their arms.
A suicide bomber has targeted a funeral procession in northwestern
Pakistan, killing at least 29 people, including a legislator, and
wounding more than 30 others, police have said.
The attack took
place in the town of Sher Garh in Mardan district during funeral prayers
for the owner of a local compressed natural gas (CNG) station, Abdullah
Khan.
The blast, which police said appeared to target the
politician, highlights the security challenges facing the new government
of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, sworn in earlier this month after
winning the May 11 general election.
The death toll was confirmed to Al Jazeera by Shaukat Yousafzai, the information minister of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province (KPK).
Some
of the wounded are in a serious condition and have been rushed to
hospitals in Mardan and Peshawar. There were more than 100 people at the
time of the funeral, according to sources.
A witness told Pakistan's Dunya television that 700 to 800 people were attending the funeral when the bomber detonated the device.
"We all fell down after the blast,'' he said. "There were bodies and wounded everywhere.''
Years of fighting
Imran Khan Mohmand, a lawmaker and provincial assembly member from Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party, was also believed to be killed.
Mohmand
ran in Pakistan's May 11 parliament elections as an independent
candidate and later supported PTI - the party
of cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan.
He is the second member of the assembly killed today. Earlier, Farid Khan of the same party was killed in Hangu district.
The
carnage poses a challenge for the newly-installed provincial government
of Imran Khan, who campaigned on a platform that he would negotiate
with the Pakistani Taliban to bring an end to the years of fighting and
attacks in northwestern Pakistan.
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa is on the
frontline of a seven-year Taliban insurgency and borders the
semi-autonomous tribal belt, where US drone strikes have targeted
Taliban and al-Qaeda operatives.
The main focus of the second day of talks at the G8 conference has been about cracking down on international tax evasion.
Leaders want to keep pressing for legislation to cut down on the criminal use of shell companies.
However, they did not take firmer action for now to tighten rules on tax evasion and money laundering.
Al Jazeera's Laurence Lee reports from Enniskillen in Northern Ireland.
Anti-government protests have escalated in Bosnia over the issuing of identity documents.
On
Monday, a funeral was held for a Bosnian baby whose specialist
treatment abroad was delayed because she had no identificaiton card.
All
children born since February are without personal documents as the
government bickers over how to define new identity numbers.
Al Jazeera's Charlie Angela reports.
The word tweet, in relation to social media, has been added to the
Oxford English Dictionary (OED), breaking the rule which says a new word
must be current for a decade before inclusion.
The addition is marked as a 'quiet announcement' on the dictionary's June 2013 update.
Chief
editor and lexicographer John Simposon, 59, said: "The noun and verb
tweet (in the social-networking sense) has just been added to the OED."
Other new word entries include flash mob, live blog, mani-pedi, geekery and jolly hickey sticks.
Commenting
on the word tweet, Simpson said: "This breaks at least one OED rule,
namely that a new word needs to be current for 10 years before
consideration for inclusion. But it seems to be catching on."
The word has been used only since 2007, the dictionary says, one year after the launch of Twitter.
To
tweet, says the entry, is to "make a posting on the social networking
service Twitter. Also: to use Twitter regularly or habitually."
The Oxford English Dictionary was first used in 1895.
Leaders of the G8 countries will be spending the final hours of the
summit focusing on how to deter kidnappings of foreign workers in
Africa, and how best to corner globe-trotting companies into paying more
taxes.
G8 leaders agreed to curb the payment of ransoms for
hostages kidnapped by "terrorists", British Prime Minister David
Cameron's office said at the summit in Northern Ireland on Tuesday.
Downing
Street said the world leaders would also call on companies to follow
their lead in refusing to pay for the release of abductees.
Hostage-taking
of foreign workers for cash payments is on the rise across much of West
Africa, particularly Nigeria with its own oil industry dominated by
Western companies and foreign managers. Syria statement
Elsewhere,
on the sidelines of the final talks at the summit, officials said they
were close to agreeing on a statement on the Syria conflict despite deep
divisions between the Russian President Vladimir Putin and the rest of
the G8.
However, the leaders are still working out the exact
wording of the final communique they will issue, officials from two
Western nations told the AFP news agency.
The statement is likely
to focus on less contentious issues such as the need to push for a
Syria peace conference in Geneva, and on humanitarian aid, one official
said on condition of anonymity.
Syria was discussed for a second
time on Tuesday during a session on counter-terrorism, following a
lengthy discussion during the leaders' dinner on Monday, another source
said.
As well as host Britain, the G8 includes the US, Japan, France, Germany, Italy, Canada and Russia. Public pressure
The
G8 leaders also are expected to agree on new measures to restrict
the ability of multinational corporations to avoid paying taxes in their
home countries by using shell companies and other legal accounting
tricks to shelter cash in principalities and islands, many of them
British, that charge little or no tax.
Al Jazeera's Laurence Lee,
reporting from Enniskillen, Northern Ireland, said there was a lot of
public pressure to make sure companies are taxed in their home
countries, especially when normal citizens were having to bear the brunt
of austerity measures.
The British Treasury chief George Osborne
is taking part to help explain Britain's agreement, unveiled last week,
with its far-flung crown dependencies and overseas territories -
including the Channel Islands, Gibraltar and Anguilla - to start sharing
more information on which foreign companies bank their profits there.
"You're
going to see concrete achievements today on changing the international
rules on taxation, so individuals can't hide their money offshore and
companies don't shift their profits away from where the profit is
made,'' Osborne said.
A 98-year-old top Nazi war crimes suspect, accused of overseeing
thousands of Jewish deportations during World War II, has been charged
with war crimes in Hungary, prosecutors said.
Laszlo Csatary, who
has been under house arrest since last year, is listed by the Simon
Wiesenthal Center as its most-wanted alleged Nazi war criminal.
The
Nazi-hunting organisation says that Csatary was a senior Hungarian
police officer in charge of the Kosice ghetto, in what is now Slovakia.
"He
is charged with the unlawful execution and torture of people ...
committing war crimes partly as a perpetrator, partly as an accomplice,"
said Bettina Bagoly, a spokeswoman for the Budapest Chief Prosecutor's
Office.
She said Csatary's case would go to trial within three months.
The
Center says that in his role, Csatary helped organise the deportation
to Ukraine and the Nazi death camp Auschwitz of some 15,700 Jews between
1941 and 1944.
He was sentenced to death in absentia in 1948 by a court in what was then Czechoslovakia.
Csatary,
whose full name is Laszlo Csizsik-Csatary, sometimes spelt
Csizsik-Csatari, was arrested on July 18, 2012 in Budapest on the basis
of information provided by the Wiesenthal Center.
Csatary had fled to Canada after World War II but apparently lived undisturbed in Hungary for about 15 years before his arrest.
At a court hearing last July he denied all the accusations.
Police in Turkey have arrested 85 people following more than two weeks of anti-government protests.
Muammer Guler, Turkish interior minister, said on Tuesday that 62
people had been detained in Istanbul, Turkey's biggest city, while 23
others had been arrested in the capital Ankara as a result of raids in
several cities.
“The operations are against members of the
Marxist-Leninist Communist Party, who also attended the Gezi Park
protests, as part of an investigation being conducted by prosecutors for
more than a year,” Guler said.
Al Jazeera's Hashem Ahelbarra,
reporting from Istanbul, said the detained people were accused of
damaging public property and inciting violence.
Earlier, police
detained a dozen people who stood still at Istanbul's Taksim Square in a
form of passive defiance against Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's
authority after activists were ousted from a sit-in at Gezi Park over
the weekend.
Erodogan brushed aside criticism of the crackdown on Tuesday and vowed to increase the police's powers to deal with the unrest.
Police defended
Erdogan also defended police use of pepper spray against the protesters.
"Using
pepper stray is natural right of the police. Have they fired a bullet,
have they used guns?... The police forces have passed the democracy
test," he said in an address to his Justice and Development Party’s
(AKP) parliamentary group at the assembly.
The main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu sharply criticised Erdogan for his speech.
Accusing Erdogan of behaving a like a dictator, Kilicdaroglu said
that Turkey's reputation had increased as a result of "youth's cry for
freedom".
"Our youth won. Recep Tayyip Erdogan lost," Kilicdaroglu added in an address to CHP’s parliamentary group.
The
Human Rights Watch (HRW) has stated that it documented “a huge wave of
arbitrary detentions and police attacks” during the Gezi Park protests
in Istanbul over the weekend.
In a statement published on its
website on Tuesday, HRW said Erdogan government's use of force in a
clampdown on protesters has “precipitated a deepening human rights and
political crisis in Turkey".
Facing criticisms from inside and
outside Turkey, AKP will continue to organise "Respect to National Will"
rallies this week to counter anti-government protests.
Erdogan
announced that such rallies, initally held in Ankara and Istanbul during
the weekend would continue in Kayseri on Friday, in Samsun on Saturday
and Erzurum on Sunday.
Turkish President Abdullah Gul called on anti-government demonstrators to stop their protests.
Gul warned that Turkey’s image should be protected in all aspects.
“You
make effort to create this image in 10 years, but you can destroy it
within a week,” Gul told reporters in Ankara on Tuesday.
The
crisis began when a sit-in to save Gezi Park's 600 trees from being
razed in a redevelopment project prompted a brutal police response on
May 31, escalating into countrywide demonstrations against Erdogan, seen
as increasingly authoritarian.
According to the Turkish Medical
Association (TBB), four people have been killed and nearly 7,500 people
injured during clashes between protesters and the security forces.
The US will engage in direct negotiations with the Taliban in Qatar
next week, aimed at achieving peace in Afghanistan, senior White House
officials have said.
Tuesday's announcement came as the Taliban opened a political office
in the Qatari capital, Doha, to help start talks on ending the
12-year-old conflict, saying it wanted a political solution that would
bring about a just government and end foreign occupation.
Mohammad Sohail Shaheen, Taliban spokesman and a member of the Doha
political office, told Al Jazeera the armed group will continue to
attack US targets in Afghanistan, but will simultaneously seek to end
the conflict by pursuing peace talks.
He said there was no ceasefire with the US and its allies and that the Taliban "simultaneously follows political and military options".
"There is no ceasefire [with the US] now. They are attacking us and we are attacking them," Shaheen said.
Late on Tuesday, fighters attacked the Bagram Air Base west of Kabul, killing four US soldiers.
US President Barack Obama said the opening of the Taliban office was an important first step towards reconciliation between the Taliban and Afghanistan's government. He cautioned, however, that the
process would be lengthy and insisted that the Taliban break ties with
al-Qaeda and end violence. Secret discussions
A senior representative of the Afghan government confirmed that talks
were scheduled with the Taliban and said the progress was made after
secret discussions with the group.
"Peace talks will certainly
take place between the Taliban and the High Peace Council," the official
said, referring to the body created by Karzai in 2010 to negotiate
peace with the group.
The Taliban has until now said it would not
countenance peace talks with the Karzai government, which it calls a
"stooge" of the US and other Western nations.
The peace talks, if they go ahead, could also lead to a reduction in fighting across Afghanistan, the official said.
"We
hope that the attacks carried out by the Taliban in Afghanistan will
reduce while we talk peace; there is no point in talking if the bombs
continue to kill civilians," he said.
But in what could anger the Afghan government, the white Taliban
flag was visible at Shaheen's side during Tuesday's ceremony in Doha,
and a large sign behind him proclaimed the office of the "Islamic
Emirate of Afghanistan", the name the Taliban used during their brief
national rule in the 1990s.
Both events may have been timed to coincide with a ceremony on Tuesday to mark the beginning of the final phase of security transition from the US-led coalition to the Afghan state. Concern in Kabul
Al Jazeera's Jane Ferguson, reporting from Kabul, said that many
poeple were saying they would resist what they percieved as the rise in
power of the Taliban.
"The people here in Kabul are extremely concerned about the developments in Doha today," she said. "What people here are asking is: What
about the other objectives that were sold to Afghans in 2001 such as
women's rights, universal human rights, democracy? Are those objectives
to be sacrificed for the sake of a quick American withdrawal?
"If the Taliban were to have widespread political influence here,
does that mean a lot of the things that the Americans have worked for
over the past 12 years could be lost?"
Two people have reportedly been killed in armed clashes between
supporters of a pro-Hezbollah group and followers of a Sunni cleric in
south Lebanon, local media has said.
The fighting erupted in the
Abra neighbourhood of the port city of Sidon on Tuesday, as the army cut
off roads leading to Abra in an effort to control the fighting there,
state news agency NNA said.
It is the latest apparent outbreak of
violence between Lebanese factions supporting opposing sides in the
civil war in neighbouring Syria.
Lebanon's Sunni leaders have
called on their followers to fight alongside Syria's rebels, who are
mostly Sunni. While the Shia group Hezbollah has given its support
firmly to the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Automatic rifles
and rocket propelled grenades were used in the fighting in the eastern
Sidon suburb, marking the worst violence in the area in years.
'Hezbollah apartments'
Sheik
Ahmad al-Assir, the Sunni cleric whose followers were fighting in
Sidon, is a vehement critic of the Hezbollah and has threatened to clear
apartments occupied by the group's supporters in the mostly Sunni city.
Al
Jazeera's Nour Samaha, reporting from Beirut, said Assir has made
repeated accusations that there were Hezbollah apartments in the area
near his mosque that the cleric wants cleared.
"Following the
clashes today, he told one local channel that he has given the tenants
of these apartments a deadline until Monday to get out," Samaha said.
Local
media reported that the gunmen fighting Assir's followers belonged to
the local Resistance Brigades that support Hezbollah.
Tensions
have been building in Sidon since Monday, when followers of Assir said a
soldier verbally harassed one of them as he went to the local mosque to
pray.
The clashes erupted on Tuesday after several people
attacked the car of Amjad al-Assir, the brother of the cleric, throwing
stones at his car and breaking its glass, the officials said.
The
army issued a stern ultimatum calling on all gunmen in the area to get
off the streets, saying they will open fire on any armed man they see,
our correspondent said.
Two suicide bombers have blown themselves up in and around a Shia
mosque in the Iraqi capital, killing 26 people and wounding many more,
police said.
Tuesday's coordinated blasts are the latest in a
string of attacks rippling across Iraq that is reviving fears the
country is headed back toward the widespread sectarian bloodshed that
pushed it to the brink of civil war in 2006 and 2007.
Police said
the first bomber detonated his explosives at a security checkpoint near
the mosque in Baghdad's northern al-Qahira neighbourhood in an apparent
attempt to distract the authorities.
The district is a middle-class, Shia-majority neighbourhood.
Amid
the commotion, a second bomber slipped into the mosque and blew himself
up while worshippers were performing midday prayers, according to
police.
A medic in a nearby hospital confirmed the casualties. All
officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not
authorised to speak to media.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility.
The latest violence comes a week after a series of blasts across the country left at least 48 people dead.
More
than 1,000 people were killed in attacks in Iraq during May, according
to the United Nations, making it the deadliest month since the 2006-2007
sectarian bloodletting.
Both Sunnis and Shias have been targeted in an intensifying wave of violence since the beginning of the year.
