https://arab.news/zyqtd
BEIRUT: Lebanese central bank governor Riad Salameh maintained his innocence Friday following a second day of questioning before European investigators in Beirut as part of a probe into his personal wealth.
Salameh, 72, is part of the Lebanese political elite widely blamed for a crushing economic crisis that began in late 2019 and which the World Bank has dubbed one of the worst in recent history.
He faces allegations of crimes including embezzlement in separate probes in Lebanon and abroad, with investigators examining the fortune he has amassed during three decades in the job.
Following a three-hour session Friday, Salameh released a statement saying he appeared as a witness and “not as a suspect or facing charges.”
“Funds from the Lebanese central bank were not transferred to my account,” he said in a statement, adding: “The transfers I made abroad, whatever the amount, were from my personal account.”
The European investigators are looking into allegations of financial misconduct, including possible money laundering and embezzlement.
In January, the European investigators interviewed banking officials in Beirut about the transfer of funds to countries where Salameh has significant assets.
They have also been examining the central bank’s ties to Forry Associates Ltd, a British Virgin Islands-registered company that listed Salameh’s brother as its beneficiary.
Forry is suspected of having brokered Lebanese treasury bonds and Eurobonds at a commission, which was then allegedly transferred to bank accounts abroad.
Salameh denied he profited from any commissions to the company.
He decried “ill intentions” against him and blamed an “ongoing media campaign” for his legal woes.
Thursday’s more than five-hour session at Beirut’s heavily guarded justice palace was the first time Salameh had appeared as part of the European investigation.
The hearing had been scheduled to begin on Wednesday but Salameh failed to show up, claiming it was in “conflict with national sovereignty,” an argument the judiciary rejected.
For procedural reasons, the European investigators submitted their questions to a Lebanese judge, who was then responsible for putting them to Salameh in their presence, a judicial source previously told AFP.
France, Germany and Luxembourg seized assets worth 120 million euros ($130 million) in March last year in a move linked to a French probe into Salameh’s personal wealth.
Salameh has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing and has rarely appeared before investigating judges, despite numerous complaints and summonses.
Last month, Lebanese authorities charged Salameh with embezzlement, money laundering and tax evasion as part of their own investigation.
Lebanon opened its probe into Salameh following a request for assistance from Switzerland’s public prosecutor probing more than $300 million in fund movements by Riad Salameh and his brother.
LONDON: Airstrikes launched by the UK’s military in Syria may have killed up to 32 civilians, research by a charity has reportedly revealed.
According to the BBC, the Action on Armed Violence organization, which investigates conflicts around the world, said its research had shown that at least nine attacks by the Royal Air Force led to civilian casualties between March 2016 and 2018.
It undermines a claim by the UK Ministry of Defence that its activities only led to a single civilian death during Britain’s seven-year aerial campaign against Daesh.
A ministry spokesperson said that military personnel examine evidence and mission data from every operation, and that there was “no evidence” of civilian casualties in the airstrikes investigated by AOAV.
A statement by the ministry said it had “identified nothing to indicate that such civilian casualties were caused in Syria.
“The RAF always minimizes the risk of civilian casualties through our rigorous targeting processes … but no evidence has been identified in these instances.”
The charity’s research claims that “at least 26 civilians are likely to have been killed” in RAF airstrikes during the two-year period, while “up to 32 civilians may have actually been killed.”
AOAV used “self-reported” civilian deaths to reach its figure, where military personnel under the US-led coalition against Daesh reported the high likelihood of civilian casualties following an operation.
The charity found that the reports were “credible” in eight of the nine RAF airstrikes.
It cross-checked the reports with the Ministry of Defence’s own internal mission data as well as information from US Central Command and other charities.
The single civilian death that the UK Ministry of Defence has admitted came in May 2018, when a motorcyclist was killed by a Reaper drone targeting Daesh fighters.
But another report surrounding possible civilian deaths, which the ministry has denied, centered on an RAF jet operation in May 2017, when Tornado aircraft attacked seven Daesh targets in Iraq’s Mosul.
The incident led to a “self-reported” claim by coalition personnel, with The New York Times newspaper finding that three civilians were nearby one of the strike targets, according to US mission data.
The data said: “The explosion from striking the mortar site was large enough to conclude that any person in the blast radius was seriously injured or killed in the strike.”
The US has said that 1,437 civilians may have been killed in the aerial campaign against Daesh between August 2014 and May 2023.
RAMALLAH: Israeli forces killed a Palestinian man during a raid in the occupied West Bank on Thursday, Palestinian officials said, amid attempts to curb surging violence from spiralling further.
A statement from Israeli border police said its undercover unit was involved in a raid early on Thursday to arrest a Palestinian man suspected of involvement in several shooting attacks. The forces surrounded the house he was in and fired at the man after he aimed a weapon at them, the border police said.
The Palestinian health ministry said 25-year-old Amir Abu Khadijeh was shot in the head in the city of Tulkarem.
A new group formed to confront Israel’s occupation under the name of the “Tulkarem Brigade” said Abu Khadijeh was one of its founders and described the killing as an “assassination.”
Thursday marked the first day of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan in the Palestinian territories.
In previous years, Ramadan has occasionally seen clashes between Israeli police and Palestinians, particularly around Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, Islam’s third holiest site, revered as the Temple Mount by Jews. Ramadan coincides this year with Judaism’s Passover and Christian Easter.
On Sunday, Israeli and Palestinian officials made commitments to de-escalate violence at a meeting attended by US, Egyptian and Jordanian delegations in the resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.
The Israeli-occupied West Bank has seen a surge of confrontations in recent months, with near-daily Israeli military raids and escalating violence by Jewish settlers, amid a spate of attacks by Palestinians.
Over the past year, Israeli forces have killed more than 250 Palestinians in the West Bank, including fighters and civilians. More than 40 Israelis and three Ukrainians have died in Palestinian attacks in the same period.
The Palestinians aim to establish an independent state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip with East Jerusalem as its capital, territories Israel captured in a 1967 war.
JERUSALEM: Israel ratified a law on Thursday limiting the circumstances in which a prime minister can be removed, despite worries voiced by a government jurist that it may be meant to shield the incumbent Benjamin Netanyahu from any fallout from his corruption trials.
The amended definition for the “incapacity” of national leaders is among legislative measures by the religious-nationalist coalition that have tipped Israel into crisis, with the opposition arguing that judicial independence is in peril.
The coalition says the overhaul is aimed at pushing back against what it calls Supreme Court over-reach and restoring balance among branches of government.
By a 61-to-47 final vote, the Knesset approved the bill under which prime ministers can be deemed unfit — and compelled to step aside — either if they or three-quarters of cabinet ministers declare them so on physical or psychological grounds.
The stipulations fleshed out a quasi-constitutional “basic law” that provides the government with guidance in the event of a non-functioning prime minister — but which previously lacked details on circumstances that may give rise to such situations.
According to the Israel Democracy Institute think tank, the rule had earlier left Netanyahu vulnerable to a possible assertion of his incapacity by Attorney-General Gali Baharav-Miara, should she perceive an attempt by him to halt his three court cases.
The new law precludes this, IDI senior researcher Amir Fuchs said — while adding that he had considered such a finding by Bararav-Miara to be an unlikely “extreme case.”
Netanyahu denies all charges against him, and has cast the trials as a politicized bid to force him out of office.
Baharav-Miara — who was appointed by the former, centrist Israeli government — said last month that Netanyahu must stay out of his coalition’s push for a judicial overhaul because of what she deemed a conflict of interest arising from his trials.
Baharav-Miara’s deputy, Gil Limon, voiced misgivings over the incapacity bill during a Knesset review session on Tuesday.
“What we see before our eyes is a cluster of legislation elements that are most troubling and are being advanced at great speed,” Limon said, according to an official transcript.
“They have the potential to serve the personal interests of a man regarding the outcomes of legal proceedings he is facing.”
The Movement for Quality Government in Israel filed a Supreme Court appeal against the new law. Should the court rule to overturn the law, that would in itself fuel the feud.
“Netanyahu and his coalition of corrupt men are trying every possible maneuver in their attempts to escape the threat of justice,” a statement from the watchdog group said.
UNITED NATIONS: The Palestinians and Israel clashed over the future intentions of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far right-wing government at a UN Security Council meeting Wednesday, with the Palestinian UN ambassador pointing to an Israeli minister’s statement “denying our existence to justify what is to come.”
Israel’s UN ambassador countered that the minister had apologized, and accused the Palestinian leadership of regularly inciting terrorism and erasing Jewish history.
The council’s always contentious monthly meeting on the Mideast was even more acrimonious in the face of comments and actions by Israel’s new coalition government, which has faced relentless protests over its plan to overhaul the judiciary and strong criticism of Tuesday’s repeal by lawmakers of a 2005 act that saw four Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank dismantled at the same time that Israeli forces withdrew from the Gaza Strip.
Palestinian ambassador Riyad Mansour told the Security Council the statement by firebrand Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich claiming there’s “no such thing” as a Palestinian people wasn’t part of “a theoretical exercise” but was made as Israel’s unlawful annexation of territory the Palestinians insist must be part of their independent state “is more than underway.”
While not all Israeli officials go as far as denying the existence of Palestinians, some deny Palestinian rights, humanity and connection to the land, Mansour said.
Last year was the deadliest for Palestinians in the West Bank, with the past three months “even worse,” he said. So far this year, 85 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire, and Palestinian attackers have killed 15 Israelis, according to a tally by The Associated Press.
Nonetheless, with the start of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan and the approach of the Jewish holiday Passover and Christianity’s Easter observance, Mansour said the Palestinians decided to be “unreasonably reasonable” and leave no stone unturned to prevent bloodshed.
The Palestinian envoy urged the Security Council and the international community to mobilize every effort “to stop annexation, violence against our people, and provocations.” Everyone has a duty to act now “with every means at our disposal, to prevent a fire that will devour everything it encounters,” he said.
Israel’s UN Ambassador Gilad Erdan called his country “unquestionably the most vibrant liberal democracy in the Middle East” and accused the Palestinians of repeating lies, glorifying terrorists who spilled innocent Israeli blood and “regurgitating fabrications” that are not going to solve the decades-old conflict.
“To the Palestinian representative, I say: ‘Shame on you. Shame on you.’ It is so audacious that you dare condemn the words of Israeli minister who apologized and clarified what he meant, while your president and the rest of (the) Palestinian leadership regularly, regularly incite terrorism, never condemn the murders of Israeli civilians, praise Palestinian terrorists, and actively attempt to rewrite facts and the truth by erasing Jewish history,” he said.
Erdan accused the Palestinians of being “dead set on encouraging more violence” while Israel has taken significant steps to de-escalate the current tensions by sitting down with Palestinian officials in Jordan in February and on Sunday in the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.
In a joint communique afterward, the two sides had pledged to take steps to lower tensions ahead of the sensitive holiday season — including a partial freeze on Israeli settlement activity and an agreement to work together to “curb and counter violence.”
The Palestinians seek the West Bank and Gaza Strip as an independent state, with east Jerusalem as its capital. Israel captured those territories in the 1967 Mideast war. Since then, more than 700,000 Israelis have moved into dozens of Jewish settlements in the West Bank and east Jerusalem — which most of the world considers illegal and an obstacle to peace.
But Netanyahu’s government has put settlement expansion at the top of its agenda and has already advanced thousands of new settlement housing units and retroactively authorized nine wildcat outposts in the West Bank.
The repeal of the 2005 act on the four West Bank settlements came after Sunday’s agreement, and a Palestinian shooting attack that wounded two Israelis in the West Bank underscored the difficulties in implementing the joint communique. The United States, Israel’s closest ally, criticized the repeal, summoning Israel’s US ambassador, and other countries were also critical.
Netanyahu appeared to back down Wednesday, saying his government has no intention of returning to the four abandoned settlements.
Ambassador Erdan echoed him, saying “the state of Israel has no intention of building any new communities there,” but he said the new law “rights a historic wrong” and will allow Israelis to enter areas that are “the birthplace of our heritage.”