https://arab.news/jfpe4
A Connecticut state legislator who was attacked last month as she left a Muslim prayer service made her first public comments about the incident on Wednesday, saying she sustained multiple physical injuries from what she described as an attempted sexual assault and violent physical assault.
Rep. Mayram Khan, who was with her children and sister outside a downtown Hartford arena taking pictures when the attack occurred, said in a written statement that she was grateful to the “courageous men who came to my aid” and chased down her assailant until police arrived.
“Their courage and tenacity in those moments helped to save my life, the lives of my children and many other Muslim women and children that were still inside the XL Center,” said Khan, referring to the roughly 4,000 other people who attended the service marking Eid Al-Adha, the end of the Hajj, the annual pilgrimage by Muslims to Makkah.
Khan, who said she is “on a long journey of physical and emotional healing,” said she remains concerned about “the lack of security at one of the largest Muslim gatherings on the day of Eid in Hartford.”
Farhan Memon, the chair of the Connecticut chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said at the time that the man made obscene remarks, grabbed Khan, hit her and threw her to the ground.
Khan, a Democrat from Windsor, is scheduled to appear Thursday at a news conference at the Legislative Office Building to discuss the incident. The Associated Press doesn’t generally identify people who report attempted sexual assaults unless they publicly identify themselves.
The suspect, Andrey Desmond, 30, was held in lieu of $250,000 bond at his arraignment last week on charges including misdemeanor assault, unlawful restraint, breach of peace and interfering with police. Authorities have said he could still face additional charges.
An email was sent seeking comment from Desmond’s public defender but there was no immediate response.
A police report said Desmond allegedly made lewd comments to Khan and tried to kiss her. When the legislator attempted to pull away, Desmond slapped her across the face and let go of her neck, causing her to fall to the ground, suffering minor injuries, according to the report.
Khan told police she does not know Desmond.
Desmond was chased down and held by two bystanders, one of whom kicked him in the face after he was on the ground and had stopped fighting, police said. That man is expected to be charged with assault, according to the report. A Hartford Police spokesperson said Wednesday that no charges have been filed in connection with the bystanders and the incident remains under investigation.
Khan became the first Muslim member of the Connecticut House when she won a special election for the seat in March 2022.
ISTANBUL: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky will travel to Turkiye on Friday for the first time since Russia’s invasion for talks with counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
The Turkish presidency said the two leaders could stage a joint press conference after the talks in Istanbul.
The meeting is due to focus on an expiring deal to ship Ukrainian grain across the Black Sea as well as next week’s NATO summit.
But analysts expect Zelensky to push Erdogan to give a green light for Sweden’s membership of NATO ahead of the July 11-12 alliance summit in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius.
Turkiye is blocking Sweden’s candidacy because of a longstanding dispute about Stockholm’s perceived lax attitude toward alleged Kurdish militants living in the Nordic country.
Both Zelensky and Erdogan also want to extend a United Nations and Turkiye-brokered deal with Russia under which Ukraine has been allowed to ship grain to global markets during the war.
Erdogan has tried to use his good working relations with both Zelensky and Russian President Vladimir Putin to mediate an end to the war.
Turkiye staged two early rounds of peace negotiations and is pushing for more talks.
But Western governments worry about NATO member Turkiye’s growing economic ties with Russia and its resistance to the bloc’s expansion.
DHAKA: Bangladesh is ready to support an International Criminal Court investigation on Myanmar’s possible crimes against the Rohingya, authorities said on Thursday as the court’s top prosecutor wrapped up his official visit to Cox’s Bazar.
ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan arrived in Dhaka on Tuesday for a four-day visit to investigate possible crimes against humanity by the Myanmar military, which carried out a brutal crackdown in 2017 that forced hundreds of thousands of Rohingya people into neighboring Bangladesh.
“Today, he visited two camps and talked with several victims,” Bangladeshi Refugee Relief and Repatriation Commissioner Mizanur Rahman told Arab News.
“He requested our coordination in the investigation process and of course, we will provide all our cooperation.”
Bangladesh’s Foreign Minister A.K. Abdul Momen met with Khan earlier this week and “assured (the) ICC prosecutor of Bangladesh’s support and cooperation concerning its investigation into (the) situation in Bangladesh/Myanmar,” the Foreign Affairs Ministry said, referring to the Rohingya case.
More than 1 million Rohingya people live in the squalid camps of Cox’s Bazar, after fleeing violence and persecution in Myanmar’s Rakhine State to neighboring Bangladesh almost six years ago.
Although Myanmar is not a member of the ICC, the court ruled it has jurisdiction over some crimes related to the Rohingya because of their cross-border nature.
“The world cannot forget about the Rohingya and the need for accountability,” Khan said in a tweet after his earlier meeting with Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.
Members of the Rohingya community in Cox’s Bazar had hoped to meet with Khan to question the lack of progress on their ICC case.
“We believe if we are able to meet with him, then we can ask him some of the questions and we can raise some concerns … related to (expediting) the process of the proceedings,” Maung Sawyeddollah, founder of community rights group Rohingya Students Network, told Arab News.
The ICC issued an arrest warrant in March for President Vladimir Putin for war crimes, accusing him of personal responsibility for the abductions of children from Ukraine after Khan launched an investigation last year.
On the other hand, a full inquiry of Myanmar’s alleged crimes, specifically the forced deportation of Rohingya from Rakhine State, had been approved by ICC judges in 2019. Khan’s trip this week is a follow-up to his first visit in February 2022.
“The case of the Rohingya preceded that of Ukraine,” Sawyeddollah said. “What we are seeing is a result in the case of Ukraine, but still there is no end result for us in the case of Rohingya. So why did that happen?”
In 2018, an independent UN fact-finding mission found that Myanmar’s military carried out mass killings and gang rapes of Rohingya Muslims with “genocidal intent.”
“We are the victims of genocide,” Nurul Amin, who founded Rohingya Girls School and provided informal lessons to over 100 girls in Cox’s Bazar, told Arab News.
Though Amin wants the ICC to continue its investigation, she is unsure of how it will impact the Rohingya.
“If they announce this is genocidal violence committed by Myanmar authorities, what will they (ICC) do? Can we go back to our homeland with rights and dignity?”
BEIJING: Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen arrived in Beijing on Thursday for meetings with Chinese leaders as part of efforts to revive relations that are strained by disputes about security, technology and other irritants.
Yellen planned to focus on stabilizing the global economy and challenging Chinese support of Russia during its invasion of Ukraine, Treasury officials in Washington told reporters ahead of the trip.
The secretary was due to meet with Chinese officials, American businesspeople and members of the public, according to Treasury officials. They gave no details, but said Yellen wouldn’t meet Chinese leader Xi Jinping.
Yellen follows Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who met Xi last month in the highest-level US visit to Beijing in five years. The two agreed to stabilize relations but failed to agree on improving communications between their militaries.
Yellen earlier warned against economic decoupling, or disconnecting US and Chinese industry and markets. Businesspeople have warned the world might split into separate markets, slowing innovation and economic growth, as both governments tighten controls on trade in technology and other goods deemed sensitive.
Yellen said earlier the two governments “can and need to find a way to live together” in spite of their strained relations over geopolitics and economic development.
The most recent flareup came after President Joe Biden referred to Xi as dictator. The Chinese protested, but Biden said his blunt statements about China are “just not something I’m going to change very much.”
Relations have been strained by disputes over technology, security, China’s assertive policy abroad and conflicting claims to the South China Sea and other territory.
Washington has tightened restrictions imposed by Biden’s predecessor, Donald Trump, on Chinese access to processor chips and other US technology on security grounds.
Ties became especially testy after a Chinese surveillance balloon flew over the United States in February and was shot down.
This week, Beijing responded to US technology controls by announced unspecified curbs on exports of gallium and germanium, two metals used in making semiconductors, solar panels, missiles and radar.
MINSK: Russia’s mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin is in St. Petersburg and his Wagner troops have remained at the camps where they had stayed before an abortive mutiny, the president of Belarus said Thursday.
Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko helped broker a deal for Prigozhin to his rebellion on June 24 in exchange for security guarantees for himself and his soldiers and permission to move to Belarus.
After saying last week that Prigozhin was in Belarus, Lukashenko told international reporters Thursday that the mercenary chief is in St. Petersburg and Wagner troops still were at their camps.
He did not specify the location of the camps, but Prigozhin’s mercenaries fought alongside Russian forces in Ukraine before their revolt.
The rebellion saw them quickly sweep over the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don and capture military headquarters there before marching on the Russian capital in what Prigozhin described as a “march of justice” to oust the Russian defense minister and the General Staff chief.
Prigozhin claimed his troops had come within 200 kilometers (124 miles) of Moscow when he ordered them to stop the advance under the deal brokered by Lukashenko.
The abortive rebellion represented the biggest threat to Russian President Vladimir Putin in his more than two decades in power and exposed the Kremlin’s weakness.
Lukashenko’s statement followed Russian media reports that claimed that Prigozhin was spotted in St. Petersburg, Russia’s second-largest city. His presence was seen as part of agreements that allowed him to finalize his affairs there.
BRUSSELS: The leaders of Turkiye and Sweden will meet on the eve of a NATO summit next week to try and unblock Stockholm’s stalled membership bid, alliance head Jens Stoltenberg said Thursday.
The talks in Lithuania Monday are a last-ditch attempt to convince Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan to drop his objections after over a year of delays before NATO leaders gather.
“It is absolutely possible to have a positive decision at the summit next week,” Stoltenberg said after talks with Sweden and Turkiye’s foreign ministers at NATO’s Brussels headquarters.
Sweden’s Foreign Minister Tobias Billstrom said he was hoping for a breakthrough but underscored it remained a “Turkish decision.”
“We believe from our point of view we have fulfilled all our commitments,” he said.
NATO allies have been pressuring Ankara for months to give way and let the Scandinavian nation in by the time of the two-day summit starting Tuesday in Vilnius.
Turkiye and Sweden inked a deal aimed at clearing the path to accession at a NATO summit over a year ago.
Ankara has demanded a Swedish crackdown on Kurdish movements, such as the the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which it says is a terrorist group.
Sweden says it has made good on the deal.
On Thursday it jailed a Turkish citizen for “attempted terrorist financing” for the PKK under new legislation.
But Erdogan has continued to criticize Stockholm, and a protest last week that saw pages of the Qur’an burnt further stoked his ire.
“Any further delay in Sweden’s membership would be welcomed by the PKK and (Russian) President (Vladimir) Putin,” Stoltenberg said.
US President Joe Biden is expected to make a strong push for Sweden in the coming days.
Biden told Sweden’s prime minister at a meeting in Washington on Wednesday that he was “anxiously looking forward” to the country joining.
Sweden and its neighbor Finland dropped decades of military non-alignment and applied to join NATO in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Finland formally joined the bloc in April.
Hungary is also still holding out on Sweden’s membership, which requires the unanimous approval of all 31 NATO members.
But Budapest has indicated it will give way if Turkiye agrees.