Concerns grow for 3 OSCE workers jailed since shortly after Russia's invasion of Ukraine
His seizure from his home in the Luhansk region in April 2022 — weeks after Moscow's full-scale invasion — was part of a coordinated operation by pro-Russian forces who detained him and two other Ukrainian OSCE workers. Maksym Petrov, an interpreter, also was seized in the Luhansk region, while Vadym Golda, another security assistant, was detained in neighboring Donetsk.
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Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
‘We need help': Family pleads for release of US teenager held by Israel
Washington, DC – Israeli authorities have been detaining an American teenager for nearly six months without trial for allegedly throwing rocks at Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank, a claim the 16-year-old's family denies while expressing concern for his deteriorating health. Mohammed Ibrahim, a Palestinian-American who was born in the US state of Florida, has been completely cut off from his family since his arrest in February without visitation or telephone rights, his father and uncle said. According to an Israeli military interrogation video obtained by the family and seen by Al Jazeera on Wednesday, Mohammed denied accusations that he was throwing rocks at Israeli vehicles near his village north of Ramallah. Zaher Ibrahim, the jailed teenager's father, said on Wednesday that the family has received reports that Mohammed is losing weight drastically and suffering from a skin infection. Ibrahim said he is concerned about his son's wellbeing. 'Of course, we have fear,' he said. 'When you can't visit him and you can't get a phone call from him, what do you know? We don't know if he's dead … There's nothing we know.' According to the family, United States officials visited Mohammed in detention weeks after he was arrested. But an email from a consular officer suggests that the officials were unable to gain access to him earlier in July. 'The Israel Prison Service updated us yesterday that your son suffers from scabies, and he is being treated by a doctor. We requested [an] update regarding his healing,' the email said. Scabies, caused by an infestation of mites, causes extreme itching and rashes across the body. 'We hope to see him next week or the week after when he heals,' the email read, pledging to keep the family 'updated'. The Israeli military, its Ministry of Defence and its Government Press Office did not respond to Al Jazeera's request for comment by the time of US State Department declined to answer Al Jazeera's questions about Mohammed's case or confirm or deny his detention, citing 'privacy considerations'. 'The Department has no higher priority than the safety and security of US citizens,' a department spokesperson wrote in a note to Al Jazeera. 'Whenever a US citizen is detained abroad, the Department works to provide consular assistance, which may include visiting detained US citizens to ensure they have access to necessary medication or medical attention and facilitating authorized communications with their family or others.' The US provides billions of dollars in military aid to Israel annually as well as diplomatic backing at the United Nations – assistance that has increased significantly since the start of the war on Gaza. 'We get swept under the rug' Mohammed was arrested during a raid by heavily armed Israeli troops at his family home in al-Mazraa ash-Sharqiya, north of Ramallah, at dawn on February 16, according to his family. He is facing charges related to rock-throwing, but his relatives say they are worried that his health is deteriorating in detention as his court hearings are routinely postponed. Ibrahim also expressed concern that Israeli prosecutors may use evidence obtained by torture to incriminate his son. Mohammed's family is urgently calling for the US government to secure his release before it's too late. The teenager is the first cousin of Sayfollah Musallet, who was beaten to death by Israeli settlers in July in the West Bank. Mohammed's arrest came amid escalating violence by Israeli forces and settlers in the occupied West Bank as the war on Gaza rages on. The Israeli military has regularly carried out deadly raids and home demolitions across the West Bank. For their part, Israeli settlers often descend on Palestinian communities and ransack entire neighbourhoods. Mohammed's relatives say his ordeal underscores the US's unwillingness to protect even its own citizens from Israeli abuses. 'It's obvious we get swept under the rug. And as far as getting help or investigations or some type of justice, we don't know,' said Zeyad Kadur, Mohammed's uncle. 'Eight Americans have been killed in the last 19 months. Where is our place in line? Are we number nine?' According to the nonprofit Defense for Children International-Palestine (DCI-P), Israel detains as many as 700 Palestinian children annually.'Just a child' Mohammed turned 16 in jail in March. His family said that US officials have promised to push for an improvement in his jailhouse conditions and seek his release. Other than updates from the embassy, all the family knows about Mohammed is through reports from former child inmates who saw him in jail. They also catch glimpses of him on video feeds during his court appearances. Kadur, Mohammed's uncle, said the family estimates that the teenager has lost 13kg (28 pounds) in detention, more than a fourth of his body weight. At Megiddo Prison, the same facility where Mohammed is being held, 17-year-old detainee Walid Ahmad died in March due to 'prolonged malnutrition', according to DCI-P. Walid, who had been held for six months without a charge, also suffered from scabies. Kadur stressed that Mohammed is 'just a child' who loves life, and he was eager to get his driver's licence in order to work at the family's ice cream shop in Florida during the summer. 'There's not a law, there's not a country, there's not anywhere in the world where children are imprisoned and that country calls itself a democracy and doesn't have visitations or phone calls, or any method – even letter writing – to [contact] the parents,' Kadur told Al case While Mohammed is languishing in Israeli detention, the settlers who killed his cousin remain free. In a separate incident, Yinon Levi, an Israeli settler who appeared to fatally shoot Palestinian activist Awdah Hathaleen on video earlier this week, was quickly released to house arrest. Palestinians in the West Bank are tried in Israeli military courts that have a near 100-percent conviction rate. But settlers are mostly prosecuted under Israeli criminal law, and they rarely face accountability for attacks on Palestinians. That two-tiered legal approach is a facet of what leading rights groups call a system of apartheid against Palestinians. 'Israeli settlers can come to you, shoot you in the head, and walk home to sleep,' said Ibrahim, Mohammed's father. 'The Palestinian, if he has his own plot of land in front of his house and the settlers come to burn his car and he pushes them away, he'll be charged.' US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee – a vocal supporter of illegal Israeli settlements – has described the killing of Musallet as a 'terrorist act' and called for Israel to 'aggressively investigate' the incident. But there have been no arrests in the case 20 days after Musallet was beaten to death. Solve the daily Crossword
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
German Economy Minister Reiche says social systems under pressure
German Economy Minister Katherina Reiche believes that social security systems in Germany are under pressure. The Christian Democrat (CDU) politician said after a company visit in the western city of Essen on Thursday that a comprehensive - and critical - review of Germany's social systems is due in the autumn. "They must deliver what the citizens expect from them: security and reliability. But we also know that reforms are needed," Reiche said. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has spoken of a "reform autumn." "There is really nothing to add to that," she said. "Tipping point" The coalition has agreed to set up various commissions after the lower house of parliament, the Bundestag, returns from its July-August break, not only to examine the social security systems but also to develop reform proposals, said Reiche. She added that the reform of the social systems and the demographic imbalance is not solely an issue for the current government. "The challenge we are facing is that the so-called tipping point is getting closer, and we must therefore actively address the question of how we can combine different employment histories, labour demand, and immigration into such a good concept that we can maintain labour productivity at a high level in the future," she said. When asked whether the planned expansion of the mother's pension is still timely, Reiche said, "Measures that further burden the social security systems are indeed a challenge for our system." However, she noted that it is also primarily about individual workers. Criticism of pension proposal Reiche had sparked a broad debate with statements about increasing Germans' working life. German Finance Minister Lars Klingbeil said on Wednesday that it was very clearly set out in the coalition negotiations that there would be no increase in the retirement age. He stated that calls "from the sidelines" do not help. Reiche on tour The minister visited the medium-sized family business Agathon in Essen, a world-leading manufacturer of chocolate moulds for large-scale industrial production. The company relocated its headquarters from Bottrop to Essen at the beginning of the year and invested €15 million ($17.2 million) in the construction of a new production hall. Prior to this, Reiche visited German polyurethane and polycarbonate producer Covestro in Leverkusen. Solve the daily Crossword
New York Times
2 hours ago
- New York Times
Appeals Court Allows Trump Order That Ends Union Protections for Federal Workers
A federal appeals court on Friday allowed President Trump to move forward with an order instructing a broad swath of government agencies to end collective bargaining with federal unions. The ruling authorizes a component of Mr. Trump's sweeping effort to assert more control over the federal work force to move forward, for now, while the case plays out in court. It is unclear what immediate effect the ruling will have: The appeals court noted that the affected agencies had been directed to refrain from ending any collective bargaining agreement until 'litigation has concluded,' but also noted that Mr. Trump was now free to follow through with the order at his discretion. Mr. Trump had framed his order stripping workers of labor protections as critical to protect national security. But the plaintiffs — a group of affected unions representing over a million federal workers — argued in a lawsuit that the order was a form of retaliation against those unions that have participated in a barrage of lawsuits opposing Mr. Trump's policies. The unions pointed to statements from the White House justifying the order that said 'certain federal unions have declared war on President Trump's agenda' and that the president 'will not tolerate mass obstruction that jeopardizes his ability to manage agencies with vital national security missions.' But a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, a famously liberal jurisdiction, ruled in Mr. Trump's favor, writing that 'the government has shown that the president would have taken the same action even in the absence' of the union lawsuits. Even if some of the White House's statements 'reflect a degree of retaliatory animus,' they wrote, those statements, taken as a whole, also demonstrate 'the president's focus on national security.' The unions had also argued that the order broadly targeted agencies across the government, some of which had no obvious national security portfolio — including the Department of Health and Human Services and the Environmental Protection Agency — using national security as a pretext to strip the unions of their power. The panel sidestepped that claim, writing in the 15-page ruling that 'we question whether we can take up such arguments, which invite us to assess whether the president's stated reasons for exercising national security authority — clearly conferred to him by statute — were pretextual.' The order, they continued, 'conveys the president's determination that the excluded agencies have primary functions implicating national security.'
