Uncertainty over Iran’s morality police after official's 'disbanded' remarks - BBC

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By Siavash Ardalan & Marita Moloney

BBC Persian & BBC News

There is uncertainty over the status of Iran's morality police, which enforces its dress code, after a senior official suggested that it had been disbanded.

When asked about the Guidance Patrol at a conference, Attorney General Mohammad Jafar Montazeri said they "have been shut down from where they were set up".

However, the government did not confirm the move and local media reported that his remarks had been "misinterpreted".

The death of a woman detained by the force has sparked nationwide protests.

Mahsa Amini, 22, collapsed and fell into a coma shortly after being arrested in Tehran on 13 September for allegedly violating the rule requiring women to cover their hair with a hijab, or headscarf.

There were reports that morality police officers beat her head with a baton. The police said she suffered a heart attack.

Anti-government protests - labelled "riots" by Iranian authorities - swept across Iran after Ms Amini died in hospital on 16 September.

But while her death was the catalyst for the unrest, it has also been driven by long-standing discontent over poverty, unemployment, inequality, injustice and corruption.

• A really simple guide to Iran's protests
• Women, men, children - faces of those who have died in Iran

Iran has had various forms of "morality police" since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, but the latest version - known formally as the Guidance Patrol (Gasht-e Ershad) - is currently the main agency tasked enforcing Iran's Islamic code of conduct.

They began their patrols in 2006 to enforce the dress code which also requires women to wear long clothes and forbids shorts, ripped jeans and other clothes deemed immodest.

Mr Montazeri was a religious conference when he was asked about the Guidance Patrol.

"The morality police had nothing to do with the judiciary and have been shut down from where they were set up," he said.

However, he stressed that the judiciary would continue "to monitor behavioural actions at the community level".

The Guidance Patrol is part of the national police force and control lies with the interior ministry and not with the judiciary.

After the BBC and other foreign media picked up the attorney general's statement, some Iranian state media outlets pushed back on the morality police had been disbanded.

State-run Arabic-language TV channel Al-Alam said some had "tried to misinterpret" what the attorney general said.

"The most that can be understood from Mohammed Jafar Montazeri's remarks is that the morality police's patrols have not been connected to the judiciary since their inception."

Conservative outlet Student News Network (SNN) dismissed the "false headlines" and stressed that observing hijab is "still a law in Iran".

However, the reformist Sharq newspaper said it had approached the public relations office of Tehran's police force but that officials had "dodged" its question on disbanding the Guidance Patrol.

And when asked about Mr Montazeri's remarks during a visit to Serbia, Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian neither confirmed nor denied that they were correct.

"In Iran, everything is moving forward well in the framework of democracy and freedom," he said.

On Saturday, Mr Montazeri also told the Iranian parliament the law that requires women to wear hijabs would be looked at.

'A revolution is what we have'

If confirmed, the scrapping of the morality police would be a concession to the protesters.

But there are no guarantees it would be enough to halt the unrest, which has seen women waving their headscarves in the air and setting them on fire.

"Just because the government has decided to dismantle morality police it doesn't mean the protests are ending," one Iranian woman told the BBC World Service's Newshour programme.

"Even the government saying the hijab is a personal choice is not enough. People know Iran has no future with this government in power. We will see more people from different factions of Iranian society, moderate and traditional, coming out in support of women to get more of their rights back."

Another woman said: "We, the protesters, don't care about no hijab no more. We've been going out without it for the past 70 days.

"A revolution is what we have. Hijab was the start of it and we don't want anything, anything less, but death for the dictator and a regime change."

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the abolition of Iran's morality police could be "a positive thing" and praised the "extraordinary courage of Iranian young people, especially women, who've been leading these protests".

"If the regime has now responded in some fashion, to those protests, that could be a positive thing," he added.

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2022-12-05 10:52:32Z
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Ukraine war: Oil prices rise as cap on Russian crude looms - BBC

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By Annabelle Liang

Business reporter

Oil prices have risen after major producers agreed to continue to cut output and the G7 and its allies agreed to cap the price of Russian oil.

Brent crude rose by about 0.6% to above $86 a barrel on Monday morning.

On Friday, the G7 agreed to cap the price of Russian oil at $60 a barrel to raise pressure on Russia over the invasion of Ukraine.

Meanwhile, oil producers' group Opec+ said at the weekend it would stick to its policy of reducing output.

• Ukraine's Zelensky calls Russian oil cap 'weak'
• G7 and allies approve cap on price of Russian oil

Opec+ is a group of 23 oil-exporting countries, including Russia, which meets regularly to decide how much crude oil to sell on the world market.

"This decision by Opec+ to keep the quota where it is... is by itself an implicit sort of support to the oil market," Kang Wu of S&P Global Commodity Insights told the BBC.

Analysts said oil prices had also been boosted by the easing of Covid restrictions in some Chinese cities, which could lead to an increase in demand for oil.

More cities in China, including Urumqi in the north west, have said they will loosen curbs after mass protests against the country's zero-Covid policy.

Price cap

In a joint statement last week, the G7 and Australia said the $60 cap on Russian oil would come into force on Monday or "very soon thereafter".

They said the measure was meant to "prevent Russia from profiting from its war of aggression against Ukraine".

The price cap means only Russian oil bought for less than $60 a barrel will be allowed to be shipped using G7 and EU tankers, insurance companies and credit institutions.

This could make it difficult for Moscow to sell its oil at a higher price, because many major shipping and insurance companies are based within the G7.

Russia has said it will not accept the price cap, and has threatened to stop exporting oil to countries adopting the measures.

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Jorge Leon, senior vice-president at Norwegian energy consultancy Rystad Energy, told the BBC's Today programme that oil prices could increase as a result.

"Russia has been very clear that they will not sell crude (oil) to anybody signing up to the price cap," he said.

"So probably what's going to happen is that we will see some disruptions in the coming months and therefore probably oil prices are going to start increasing again in the coming weeks."

The G7 is an organisation of the world's seven largest so-called "advanced" economies, which dominate global trade and the international financial system. They are Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK and the United States.

Supply fears

Prices of oil and gas have soared on concerns that Russia's invasion of Ukraine could hit supply.

Russia is the world's second top producer of crude oil after Saudi Arabia, and supplies around a third of Europe's needs.

US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said the price cap would further constrain Russian President Vladimir Putin's finances and "limit the revenues he's using to fund his brutal invasion" while avoiding disrupting global supplies.

However, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky called the cap "a weak position" that was not "serious" enough to damage to the Russian economy.

An EU-wide ban on Russian crude oil imported by sea will also take effect on Monday.

Although the measures will most certainly be felt by Russia, the blow will be partially softened by its move to sell its oil to other markets such as India and China, who are currently the largest single buyers of Russian crude oil.

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2022-12-05 07:26:38Z
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Brussels attacks: Trial begins over 2016 attacks that killed 32 - BBC

BBC/Mohamed El Bachiri

By Nick Beake

BBC News Europe correspondent

On a bridge overlooking a Brussels canal, Mohamed El Bachiri's face lights up in the winter sun as he remembers the mum of his three boys.

"Loubna was an angel, she was beautiful, she was always smiling, she was an extraordinary mother and wife," says Mohamed.

Thirty-four-year-old teacher Loubna Lafquiri was murdered on the Brussels metro on the morning of 22 March 2016.

In all, 32 people were killed by three suicide bombers in the attacks at Maelbeek station and Zaventem airport.

Ten men are now going on trial in the Belgian capital. Six of them have already been found guilty of involvement in the terror attacks in Paris in November 2015, which killed 130 people.

Salah Abdeslam, the main suspect in the French trial who was detained four days before the Brussels attacks, is also among the defendants, along with others whom prosecutors claim hosted or helped certain attackers.

One of the 10, who is presumed killed in Syria, will be tried in absentia.

Back in 2016, Mohamed El Bachiri was plunged into grief with the realisation he was now a widowed father to three children under the age of 10.

His immediate response? A Jihad of Love.

This, the name of the book he subsequently wrote, was intended to wrestle back the narrative from men who had grown up in his community and who had corrupted his Islamic faith.

"I needed to express a kind of anger - which is legitimate. My anger expresses itself in the jihad [struggle] of love. Sharing love. That's my way of violently responding to the terrorists. To deconstruct their ideology."

I meet Mohamed in Molenbeek, one of the poorest districts of Brussels. It is where plotters of both the 2016 Brussels bombings and the Paris attacks had lived and were later given refuge amid a huge manhunt.

Whenever such high-profile cases come to court, we the media often talk of an opportunity for justice to finally be done, or a moment where bereaved families can "move on."

But Mohamed will not be attending the trial.

"I have three kids who really need my energy, who need strength," says Mohamed. "It's not always obvious, but I really need to protect myself and I am sincerely afraid what the legal process might reawaken in me."

Does he ever allow himself to think about those who took away the "love of his life"?

"I think those men on trial, their thoughts are in hatred and darkness and negativity. And to wish them ill - I hold to the principles of humanism and I can't wish suffering on others. I don't have hatred, it brings nothing to your life. How to react to this is with a message of peace and love and not to be sad or negative."

As I and my Brussels colleagues began to think about how we would cover this trial in our adopted city, we considered which of the 32 bereaved families we would try to approach to ask if they felt able to talk.

Mohamed was an obvious choice, as a father of three who still lives in the community where some of the killers had plotted. So too was Charlotte Dixon-Sutcliffe, whose partner David was the only Briton murdered in the Brussels attacks; in early 2016, she and David had been living in Brussels with their son Henry, who was turning seven.

What none of us knew was that an immediate, profound bond had been forged between Mohamed and Charlotte in the hours after the attacks, as photos of their respective missing loved ones David and Loubna circulated online.

"On my Facebook they always appeared next to each other and I was invested in her," says Charlotte.

"She was just so beautiful and she was with her three children. Her eyes were shining through the photograph."

In a park overlooking the River Thames in London, Charlotte tells her story with the same illuminated expression that Mohamed had when also describing Loubna.

"I just felt really attached to her and almost like - and this may sound ridiculous - but almost like their fates were intertwined."

BBC/Charlotte Dixon-Sutcliffe

Charlotte says the connection with Loubna was overwhelming.

"It was almost like I was as invested in her being found as it was David. It's like she became a family member or someone that I cared about, even though I had never met her. It was heartbreaking for me with David. But it felt like I'd lost her as well."

For Charlotte, her treatment by the Belgian authorities had compounded her trauma as she had searched in vain for her partner.

"With my picture of David we were going into local police stations and they were gathering round and just saying, 'Well, it's nothing to do with us, it's a federal matter'," she says.

Three days after the attack, Charlotte got a call from a police social worker:

"It was dark. I was walking the dog around the streets. She said I had to prepare myself for the worst now. She basically told me that David was dead. She told me over the phone."

Charlotte says the authorities became more supportive recently.

Much like how Mohamed channelled his grief into writing his book and sharing his message in schools, Charlotte founded an organisation called Survivors Against Terror.

"One of the big drives is to make sure that terrorist acts don't happen in the first instance. But if they do, having seen the poor treatment and some of the excellent treatment, it instils a massively strong drive to make a difference and to change things so that no one has to suffer in the way that we did."

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After the attacks, she and her son Henry left Belgium to try to rebuild their lives but Charlotte has decided to return to Brussels for the start of the trial.

The defendants include Mohamed Abrini, who prosecutors say is the "man in the hat" who was captured on CCTV fleeing the airport after his suitcase of explosives failed to detonate.

"So many of them have already been found guilty and are serving sentences. But I think they weren't the only ones. I think that there was a huge misstep in the way that the Belgian state handled the attacks, [how it] behaved on the day of the attack and leading up to the attack."

Charlotte points to intelligence failings in the run up to the attack and the decision to keep the metro running after the earlier airport bombings.

There were government resignations and apologies in the aftermath, but that is not enough for many bereaved families and survivors.

"Culpability obviously essentially rests with those who committed the attacks, but certainly there's a level of culpability by the Belgian state that I feel needs to be addressed," says Charlotte.

As well as shining a light on how the authorities acted, Charlotte welcomes the opportunity to give a victim impact statement.

"Me being able to present a picture of David in court will give me some peace. It will give me something that will help me connect a sense of justice for him."

She doesn't want her partner remembered as just one of 32 victims.

"David was incredibly funny, the power he had to be able to connect to other people, to be able to bring joy to people's lives - it's like it's the very polar opposite of the people in those boxes."

That's a reference to the glass boxes for the defendants in the specially constructed court at the former Nato headquarters where the trial will slowly play out over the next six months.

In September, the judge ruled the boxes should be reworked after defence lawyers argued they were like animal cages.

In all, the delayed trial is expected to cost up to 25 million euros ($25.9m; £21.5m).

In the greyness of the court and the grind of the legal process, Charlotte hopes her depiction of her David will provide some colour.

"I hope that joy stays with him. And I think maybe if I could bring to that place a sense of lightness and connection and love and happiness, then that's got to be something, doesn't it?"

In the course of this working on this story we discovered the bond Charlotte felt for Loubna was reciprocated.

When we had said our goodbyes to Mohamed, I asked if he was particularly attached to any of the other families of the victims.

"There was a British woman. She had a young boy and also lost her partner."

When I explain we are also interviewing Charlotte and she is returning to his city for the trial a smile breaks out across his face.

Neither knows how they will react to the coming months but both hope to meet each other and reinforce the solidarity and spirit the terrorists unwittingly created.

"They've created a network of people that talk about cohesion and love and community," says Charlotte.

"They destroyed some of us, but we come together and we're stronger. You know what? Our message is stronger. And that's why they won't win."

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2022-12-05 00:07:36Z
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Cyril Ramaphosa: South Africa leader won't resign, says spokesman - BBC

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By Farouk Chothia

BBC News

South Africa's President Cyril Ramaphosa will not resign despite a scandal over money stolen from his farm, his spokesman says.

The row centres on claims he kept large sums of cash on his property then covered up its theft.

A panel of legal experts concluded that he has a case to answer.

But Mr Ramaphosa's spokesman suggested he would fight on, and rather than quit would seek a second term as leader of his African National Congress party.

"President Ramaphosa is not resigning based on a flawed report, neither is he stepping aside," Vincent Magwenya said.

"It may be in the long-term interest and sustainability of our constitutional democracy, well beyond the Ramaphosa presidency, that such a clearly flawed report is challenged," he added.

The scandal erupted in June, when a former South African spy boss, Arthur Fraser, filed a complaint with police accusing the president of hiding a theft of $4m (£3.25m) in cash from his Phala Phala game farm in 2020.

• A quick guide to South Africa's 'Farmgate' scandal

Mr Ramaphosa admitted that money had been stolen, but said it was $580,000, not $4m.

The president said the $580,000 had come from the sale of buffalo, but the panel, headed by a former chief justice, said it had "substantial doubt" about whether a sale took place.

The panel's findings have been handed to parliament, which is set to examine them and decide whether or not to launch impeachment proceedings against the president.

Mr Ramaphosa is also under pressure from the opposition, as well as rivals from his governing ANC, to resign.

He is due to meet the ANC's top leadership bodies on Sunday and Monday after failing to turn up at an earlier meeting.

The scandal is especially damaging for Mr Ramaphosa because he came to power vowing to clear up the corruption which had dogged the country under his predecessor, Jacob Zuma.

The ANC remains deeply divided between supporters of Mr Zuma and those who back Mr Ramaphosa.

Mr Ramaphosa will be challenged for the ANC's leadership by his former health minister Zweli Mkhize, who has also been accused of corruption. He denies the allegations.

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2022-12-03 19:17:52Z
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Russia rejects $60 oil price cap, warns of response - Al Jazeera English

Russia has rejected a $60 price cap on its oil set by Ukraine’s Western allies and warned of a response as President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said it was “quite comfortable” for Moscow amid a push from Kyiv for a lower cap.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Saturday that Russia would not accept the price ceiling, adding that it needed to analyse the situation before deciding on a specific response.

The EU, G7 and Australia on Saturday approved the $60 per barrel price cap on Russian seaborne oil. It will come into force on December 5.

“The G7 and all EU Member States have taken a decision that will hit Russia’s revenues even harder and reduce its ability to wage war in Ukraine,” EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said in a statement.

“It will also help us to stabilise global energy prices, benefitting countries across the world who are currently confronted with high oil prices,” she said.

But Russia’s permanent representative to international organisations in Vienna, Mikhail Ulyanov, warned that the cap’s European backers would come to rue their decision.

“From this year, Europe will live without Russian oil,” Ulyanov tweeted. “Moscow has already made it clear that it will not supply oil to those countries that support anti-market price caps. Wait, very soon the EU will accuse Russia of using oil as a weapon.”

Al Jazeera’s Mohamed Vall, reporting from Moscow, said that Russia had been preparing for this decision in advance. “Russia knows that it has to use some alternative infrastructure to export its oil to the countries who will not accept to sign this decision,” Vall said.

Russia’s biggest oil buyers – China and India – have, however, not committed to the oil cap.

Under Friday’s agreements, insurance companies and other firms needed to ship oil would only be able to deal with Russian crude if the oil is priced at or below the cap. Most insurers are located in the EU and the United Kingdom and could be required to observe the ceiling.

Russia’s crude has already been selling for about $60 a barrel, a deep discount from international benchmark Brent, which closed Friday at $85.42 per barrel.

The EU will also stop any imports of Russian petroleum products from February 5. A G7 price cap on petroleum products will also be set at a later date, using exactly the same mechanism as for crude oil, the Commission said.

The price cap aims to put an economic squeeze on Russia and further crimp its ability to finance a war that has killed an untold number of civilians and fighters, driven millions of Ukrainians from their homes and weighed on the world economy for more than nine months.

Not ‘serious’

The Ukrainian president said that the $60 price cap is not “serious”.

“Russia has already caused huge losses to all countries of the world by deliberately destabilising the energy market,” he argued in his nightly address, describing the decision on the price cap as “a weak position”.

It is “only a matter of time when stronger tools will have to be used anyway”, Zelenskyy added. “It is a pity that this time will be lost.”

Kyiv said it had suggested a lower cap of $30 in order to “destroy the enemy’s economy faster”.

Speaking from Kyiv, Al Jazeera’s Rory Challands said that Ukraine has called for a lower price cap and has said the one adopted by the EU and the Group of Seven leading economies did not go far enough.

“Ukraine has been calling since the beginning of the Russian invasion for a complete embargo on all Russia’s energy products,” Challands said.

“A price cap on Russian seaborne oil, from the Ukrainian perspective – it doesn’t go far enough.”

Shelling continues

Meanwhile, the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces reported that since Friday Russia’s forces had fired five missiles, carried out 27 air raids and launched 44 shelling attacks against Ukraine’s military positions and civilian infrastructure.

Kyrylo Tymoshenko, the deputy head of the president’s office, said the attacks killed one civilian and wounded four others in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk region.

In southern Ukraine’s Kherson province, whose capital city of the same name was liberated by Ukrainian forces three weeks ago following a Russian retreat, Governor Yaroslav Yanushkevich said evacuations of civilians stuck in Russian-held territory across the Dnieper River would resume temporarily.

Russian forces pulled back to the river’s eastern bank last month. Yanushkevich said a ban on crossing the waterway would be lifted during daylight hours for three days for Ukrainian citizens who “did not have time to leave the temporarily occupied territory”.

Ukrainian authorities also reported intense fighting in Luhansk and Russian shelling of northeastern Ukraine’s Kharkiv region, which Russia’s soldiers mostly withdrew from in September.

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2022-12-03 20:30:26Z
1679868074

El Salvador: Thousands of troops surround city in gang crackdown - BBC

President Nayib Bukele

By Matt Murphy

BBC News

Around 10,000 troops have surrounded the city of Soyapango in El Salvador as part of a massive crackdown on gangs, President Nayib Bukele has announced.

All roads leading to the city have been blocked, and special forces have been searching houses for gang members.

Officers have also been stopping everyone attempting to leave the city and checking identity papers.

The operation is part of a massive crackdown on gangs after a surge in violence earlier this year.

Soyapango is one of El Salvador's largest cities and is home to more than 290,000 people. The city - which sits just 13 km (8 miles) west of the capital San Salvador - has long been known as a hub for gang activity.

"As of this moment, the municipality of Soyapango is totally surrounded," President Bukele wrote on Twitter. "Extraction teams from the police and the army are tasked with extricating all the gang members still there one by one."

He added that ordinary people "have nothing to fear" and said that the crackdown was part of "an operation against criminals, not against honest citizens".

Images released by the government showed heavily armed troops clad in body armour and carrying assault rifles outside the city.

A partir de estos momentos, el municipio de Soyapango está totalmente cercado.

8,500 soldados y 1,500 agentes han rodeado la ciudad, mientras los equipos de extracción de la policía y el ejército se encargan de sacar uno a uno a todos los pandilleros que aún se encuentran ahí. pic.twitter.com/9QIpj0ziwX

— Nayib Bukele (@nayibbukele) December 3, 2022

The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites.View original tweet on Twitter

One resident, Guadalupe Perez, told the AFP news agency that the raid had come as a welcome surprise.

"They search you and ask for your identity papers to verify where you live, but that's fine - it's all for our safety," the 53-year-old said.

Since Mr Bukele announced a state of emergency in late March, more than 58,000 people have been jailed by authorities in the country of 6.5 million people.

Rights groups have criticised the heavy handed nature of the crackdown, saying the measures, which allow police to arrest suspects without warrants, have led to arbitrary detentions.

But Mr Bukele's allies say the crackdown is necessary after a wave of homicides culminated with gangs being blamed for 62 murders in a single day on 26 March.

A recent poll taken by the Central American University (UCA) found that 75.9 percent of Salvadorans approved of the state of emergency.

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2022-12-03 19:34:33Z
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People try to steal Banksy mural of gas-masked woman in Ukraine - Al Jazeera English

Police arrest a group of individuals who attempted to slice the mural off a war-damaged wall in the city of Hostomel.

A group of people have tried to take a mural by graffiti artist Banksy in Ukraine by cutting it off a battle-scarred wall where it was painted.

The group managed to slice off a section of board and plaster bearing the image of a woman in a gas mask and dressing gown holding a fire extinguisher on the side of a scorched building.

They were spotted at the scene in the city of Hostomel, near Kyiv, and the mural was retrieved, the governor of Kyiv region Oleksiy Kuleba said in a statement.

The image was still intact and police were protecting it, he added.

“These images are, after all, symbols of our struggle against the enemy … We’ll do everything to preserve these works of street art as a symbol of our victory,” he said.

The yellow wall appears sliced off after a group of people tried to steal Banksy’s mural in the town of Hostomel, Kyiv region [Andrii Nebytov via Telegram/Reuters]

Police published images of the yellow wall with a large patch cut all the way back to the brickwork. A number of people were arrested at the scene, they said.

Banksy, whose work can sell for millions of dollars on the art market, confirmed he had painted the mural and six others last month in places that were badly affected by heavy fighting after Russia invaded Ukraine in late February.

One of the other murals shows a girl gymnast performing a handstand on a small pile of concrete rubble. Another shows an old man having a bath.

A third mural depicts a man resembling Russia’s President Vladimir Putin being flipped by a child during a judo match.

Graffiti of a child throwing a man on the floor in judo attire is seen on a wall amid damaged buildings in Borodyanka [File: Ed Ram/Getty Images]

Banksy rose to fame around the city of Bristol, in southwestern England, in the early 1990s.

The anonymous street artist has travelled to areas affected by war and conflict in the past, including the occupied West Bank and Gaza.

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2022-12-03 09:25:36Z
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