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MOSCOW: Russia’s commissioner for children’s rights, who was accused by the International Criminal Court (ICC) alongside President Vladimir Putin of war crimes in Ukraine, said on Tuesday that the ICC’s allegations were false and unclear.
The Hague-based ICC on March 17 issued arrest warrants for Putin and Maria Lvova-Belova, the Russian commissioner for children’s rights, for the war crime of unlawfully deporting children from areas of Ukraine occupied by Russian forces.
The ICC said it had information that hundreds of children had been taken from orphanages and children’s care homes in areas of Ukraine claimed by Russia. Some of those children, the ICC said, have been given up for adoption in Russia.
Lvova-Belova told a news conference in Moscow that the consent of children’s parents was always sought and that the commission always acted in the best interests of the child.
If there were any specific problems with specific families, she said she was ready to help solve them.
“It is unclear to the presidential commissioner for children’s rights what the International Criminal Court’s allegations specifically consist of and what they are based on,” her commission said in a separate statement about its work released before the news conference.
“The use of the formulation ‘unlawful deportation of population (children)’ in the ICC’s official statement causes bewilderment,” it said.
It said it had also not received any documents about the case from the ICC, whose jurisdiction Russia does not recognize.
The Commission said Donetsk and Luhansk, two Ukrainian regions claimed and partially controlled by Russia, had asked Russia to accept civilians, including orphans and children whose parents were missing.
The Kremlin has said the ICC arrest warrant is an outrageously partisan decision, but meaningless with respect to Russia. Russian officials deny war crimes in Ukraine and say the West has ignored what it says are Ukrainian war crimes.
Putin allies have cast the ICC, which countries including Russia, China and the United States do not recognize, as a “legal nonentity” that had never done anything significant.
MOSCOW: A fire briefly broke out at a building belonging to Russia’s defense ministry in the center of Moscow on Wednesday evening, Russian state news agencies reported, citing emergency services.
Footage shared by state media outlets on social media showed a thin plume of dark smoke rising from the defense ministry’s headquarters in Moscow on Znamenka street, near the Kremlin.
The small blaze was put out shortly after it started with no casualties, the TASS news agency reported.
“Around 19:30 (16:30 GMT), in one of the administrative buildings of the defense ministry in Moscow, duty workers detected smoke on the premises. The fire department and ministry of emergency situations came to the scene,” Interfax cited the defense ministry as saying in a statement.
The fire covered an area of 60 square meters (646 square feet), TASS cited local emergency services as saying.
The defense ministry said it was currently establishing the cause of the fire.
LONDON: Britain on Wednesday announced it had leased a barge to house around 500 asylum seekers on England’s south coast as the UK seeks to cut lodging costs for migrants arriving on its shores.
The Home Office said the accommodation barge will be used “to reduce the unsustainable pressure on the UK’s asylum system and cut the cost to the taxpayer caused by the significant increase in Channel crossings.”
The barge that will be docked in Portland Port is to accommodate single adult males whilst their asylum claims are processed, with the first residents due in the “coming months.”
“The use of expensive hotels to house those making unnecessary and dangerous journeys must stop. We will not elevate the interests of illegal migrants over the British people we are elected to serve,” said Immigration Minister Robert Jenrick.
“We have to use alternative accommodation options, as our European neighbors are doing — including the use of barges and ferries to save the British taxpayer money and to prevent the UK becoming a magnet for asylum shoppers in Europe,” he added.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has vowed to stop crossings of the Channel, which hit more than 45,000 last year.
He unveiled legislation last month to stop migrants illegally making the treacherous journey on small boats.
Almost 88,000 people have made the crossing of one of the world’s busiest waterways since 2018, leading the country’s asylum system to become overloaded.
More than 160,000 people were awaiting a decision as of the end of December 2022, with most having waited more than six months, according to official figures.
MANILA: The Philippines is looking to forge a labor cooperation deal with Morocco, Manila’s envoy in Rabat said on Wednesday, as officials work to bolster opportunities for Filipino professionals.
Around 4,600 Filipinos live in Morocco, where more than half are employed as household service workers while others make a living working in beauty salons and the electronics industry.
As the Philippines and Morocco are “strong advocates of migration,” the two countries have been discussing ways to boost their labor cooperation, said Leslie Baja, Manila’s ambassador to Morocco.
“We are both interested in safeguarding the rights of workers and any cooperation in this field could lead to any possible agreement,” Baja told Arab News.
Although formal discussions have yet to begin, the embassy is coordinating with the Philippines’ Department of Migrant Workers to initiate agreement within the year, with the first deal expected to be a memorandum of understanding.
Baja added: “This is a draft MOU, not a full-fledged BLA [bilateral labor agreement]. Morocco is considering this as a first step toward a full agreement. It seeks cooperation on labor, employment and vocational training.”
The deal is expected to extend engagement between the two countries’ labor agencies, and pave the way for future agreements, including on the subject of hiring Filipino professionals.
Baja said: “They recently indicated a need for healthcare professionals like nurses.”
Filipino nurses fluent in English are in high demand overseas, making up a large part of the healthcare workforce in many countries such as Canada and the US.
Relations between the Philippines and Morocco have been strengthened since Manila reopened its embassy in Rabat last year. The mission had been closed for around three decades due to budget constraints.
The two countries have engaged more closely as the 50th anniversary of diplomatic relations between them, in 2025, approaches.
BRUSSELS: The main suspect in the trial of nine alleged militants accused of taking part in the March 2016 bombings in Brussels denied on Wednesday having any knowledge of the plot.
Salah Abdeslam, a 33-year-old Frenchman already jailed over his role in the Paris terror attacks of November 2015, was facing his first day of cross-examination in the Brussels trial.
On March 22, 2016, two suicide bombers blew themselves up at the Belgian capital’s airport and another one targeted a metro station, killing 32 people and wounding many more.
Investigators believe the Daesh group cell behind the attacks was linked to the group that carried out the Paris attacks, which left 130 dead.
Abdeslam has been sentenced to life in prison without parole for his role in the French massacre, but on Wednesday he insisted that he had no knowledge of the Belgian plot.
“My presence in the dock is unjustified,” he told the court. “This is not justice, this is trying to make an example of someone.”
Abdeslam argued that he could not have taken part in planning the Brussels attacks because, he claimed, they had been planned in the four days between his March 18 arrest and the fatal blasts.
“I was not aware of anything,” he said.
The trial began on December 5 last year, in a specially built high-security courtroom in the disused former headquarters of the NATO military alliance.
Wednesday was the first day of questions for the defendants.
Abdeslam’s childhood friend and fellow accused, 38-year-old Mohamed Abrini, also downplayed his role, even though he is accused of being the only surviving member of the attack team.
Abrini has been identified by prosecutors as the so-called “man in the hat” seen on airport surveillance footage, apparently changing his mind at the last minute and deciding not to detonate his bomb.
Two more attackers, Najim Laachraoui and Ibrahim El Bakraoui, went through with their suicide bombings, and a third, Khalid El Bakraoui, attacked the Maalbeek metro station.
Abrini told the court: “They’re trying to pin this all on us. Just like in Paris, they’ll convict for what others did.”
Abrini left Paris on the eve of the attacks, but the French court concluded that he had planned to carry out a suicide bombing there before another last-minute change of heart
He was given a life sentence, with no chance of parole before 22 years served, but did not lodge an appeal.
“After 10 months on trial, we were at the end of our tether. Even if I had been sentenced to death I would not have appealed,” he told the Belgian court.
Wearing an orange hooded T-shirt under a dark jacket, with close-cropped hair and a full beard, Abrini argued that the defendants appearing in Belgium were “not the tip of the pyramid.”
“You never caught those pulling the strings, but you have to trot out someone, and that someone is us,” he said, accusing the prosecution of pandering to a public thirst for revenge.
The defendant’s version of the events in the run-up to and day of the attacks will be examined later in the trial, but on Wednesday they were cross-examined about their character and motivations.
Asked by the presiding judge Laurence Massart to describe his qualities, Abdeslam said: “I’ve always tried to do good. It’s what I’ve always done throughout my life.”
“And your faults?” the judge continued. Abdeslam paused for a moment to reflect, then replied: “I don’t know of any.”
Faced with the same question, Abrini responded that his belief in God was a strength but that he has “millions of faults — I commit too many sins.”
The trial continues.
ROME: Former Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi was hospitalized Wednesday in intensive care because of a problem related to a previous infection, but was alert and speaking, Italy’s foreign minister said.
The 86-year-old three-time premier was in the ICU at Milan’s San Raffaele hospital, the clinic where he routinely receives care, said Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani, who is also a leader of Berlusconi’s Forza Italia party. Speaking from Brussels, Tajani said Berlusconi was admitted because of an “unresolved problem” related to a previous infection.
Berlusconi has had a series of health problems in recent years, most significantly recovering from COVID-19 in 2020. He told reporters after being discharged from a 10-day hospital stay then that disease had been “insidious” and was the most dangerous challenge he had ever faced.
He has had a pacemaker for years, underwent heart surgery to replace an aortic valve in 2016 and has overcome prostate cancer. In January 2022 he was admitted for a reported urinary tract infection.
Berlusconi had been to San Raffaele, where his personal physician works, for a regular checkup for several days just last week. In a March 31 tweet after he returned home, Berlusconi thanked “all those who wanted to send a thought or sign of affection in these days.”
He said he was already back at work “ready and determined to commit myself as I’ve always done to the country I love.”
Berlusconi, a media mogul-turned politician, made his latest political comeback in September general elections, winning a Senate seat a decade after being banned from holding public office over a tax fraud conviction. That election brought a hard-right-led government to power, with Berlusconi’s Forza Italia party a junior member of a government headed by Premier Giorgia Meloni.
Berlusconi remains at the helm of Forza Italia, the center-right party he created when he jumped into politics in the early 1990s, though the day-to-day running of the party has been left to underlings.
Most recently he has made waves with a handful of comments about his old friend Russian President Vladimir Putin, boasting that the two had exchanged birthday greetings and blaming Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for the war. Berlusconi’s comments have irked the pro-Ukraine Meloni government, though just this week Tajani insisted that Berlusconi is committed to a peaceful solution to the war.
In January 2022, Berlusconi withdrew his name from consideration to be Italy’s president.