Iran executes two members of banned group for targeting infrastructure
Mehdi Hassani and Behrouz Ehsani-Eslamloo, "operational elements" of the MEK, were sentenced to death in a verdict upheld by the Supreme Court, Mizan said.
"The terrorists, in coordination with MEK leaders, had set up a team house in Tehran, where they built launchers and hand-held mortars in line with the group's goals, fired projectiles heedlessly at citizens, homes, service and administrative facilities, educational and charity centres, and also carried out propaganda and information-gathering activities in support of the MEK," the report said.
The defendants were indicted with "moharebeh", an Islamic term meaning waging war against God, destroying public property and "membership in a terrorist organisation with the aim of disrupting national security."
The report did not say whether the defendants' actions took place during last month's Israel-Iran war, during which Tehran accused opposition groups like MEK of providing support to Israel from within Iran.
The MEK, known in English as People's Mujahideen Organisation of Iran, were a powerful leftist-Islamist group that staged bombing campaigns against the shah's government and U.S. targets in the 1970s but ultimately fell out with the other factions of the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
Since then, the MEK has opposed the Islamic Republic and its leadership in exile has been Paris-based. The group was listed as a terrorist organisation by the U.S. and the European Union until 2012.
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The Independent
an hour ago
- The Independent
As Dubai cracks down on crowded jerry-rigged apartments, migrant workers have nowhere else to go
Lights flicker, doors hang off their hinges and holes in the walls expose pipes in the apartment building where Hesham, an Egyptian migrant worker, lives in Dubai, an emirate better known for its flashy skyscrapers and penthouses. His two-bedroom rental unit is carved up to house nine other men, and what he calls home is a modified closet just big enough for a mattress. But now the government has ordered the 44-year-old salesman out of even that cramped space, which costs him $270 a month. He's one of the many low-paid foreign laborers caught up in a widespread crackdown by authorities in Dubai over illegal subletting. That includes rooms lined with bunk beds that offer no privacy but are as cheap as a few dollars a night, as well as partitioned apartments like Hesham's, where plywood boards, drywall and plastic shower curtains can turn a flat into a makeshift dormitory for 10 or 20 people. After a blaze at a high-rise in June, Dubai officials launched the campaign over concerns that partitioned apartments represent a major fire risk. Some of those evicted have been left scrambling to stay off the streets, where begging is illegal. Others fear they could be next, uncertain when or where inspectors might show up. 'Now we don't know what we'll do,' said Hesham, who's staying put until his landlord evicts him. Like others living in Dubai's cheapest and most crowded spaces, he spoke to The Associated Press on condition only his first name be used for fear of coming into the crosshairs of authorities enforcing the ban on illegal housing. 'We don't have any other choice," he said. Dubai Municipality, which oversees the city-state, declined an AP request for an interview. In a statement, it said authorities have conducted inspections across the emirate to curb fire and safety hazards — an effort it said would 'ensure the highest standards of public safety' and lead to 'enhanced quality of life' for tenants. It didn't address where those unable to afford legal housing would live in a city-state that's synonymous with luxury yet outlaws labor unions and guarantees no minimum wage. Dubai boom boosts rents Dubai has seen a boom since the pandemic that shows no signs of stopping. Its population of 3.9 million is projected to grow to 5.8 million by 2040 as more people move into the commercial hub from abroad. Much of Dubai's real estate market caters to wealthy foreign professionals living there long-term. That leaves few affordable options for the majority of workers — migrants on temporary, low-wage contracts, often earning just several hundred dollars a month. Nearly a fifth of homes in Dubai were worth more than $1 million as of last year, property firm Knight Frank said. Developers are racing to build more high-end housing. That continued growth has meant rising rents across the board. Short-term rentals are expected to cost 18% more by the end of this year compared to 2024, according to online rental company Colife. Most migrant workers the AP spoke to said they make just $300 to $550 a month. In lower-income areas, they said, a partitioned apartment space generally rents for $220 to $270 a month, while a single bunk in an undivided room costs half as much. Both can cost less if shared, or more depending on size and location. At any rate, they are far cheaper than the average one-bedroom rental, which real estate firm Engel & Völkers said runs about $1,400 a month. The United Arab Emirates, like other Gulf Arab nations, relies on low-paid workers from Africa and Asia to build, clean, babysit and drive taxi cabs. Only Emirati nationals, who are outnumbered nearly 9 to 1 by residents from foreign countries, are eligible for an array of government benefits, including financial assistance for housing. Large employers, from construction firms and factories to hotels and resorts, are required by law to house workers if they are paid less than $400 a month, much of which they send home to families overseas. However, many migrants are employed informally, making their living arrangements hard to regulate, said Steffen Hertog, an expert on Gulf labor markets at the London School of Economics and Political Science. The crackdown will push up their housing costs, creating 'a lot of stress for people whose life situation is already precarious,' he said. Hassan, a 24-year-old security guard from Uganda, shares a bed in a partitioned apartment with a friend. So far, the government hasn't discovered it, but he has reason to be nervous, he said. 'They can tell you to leave without an option, without anywhere to go.' Fires remain a threat in Dubai Dubai has targeted overcrowded apartments in the past amid a spate of high-rise fires fueled by flammable siding material. The latest round of inspections came after a blaze in June at a 67-story tower in the Dubai Marina neighborhood, where some apartments had been partitioned. More than 3,800 residents were forced to evacuate from the building, which had 532 occupied apartments, according to a police report. That means seven people on average lived in each of these units in the tower of one-, two- and three-bedroom flats. Dozens of homes were left uninhabitable. There were no major injuries in that fire. However, another in 2023 in Dubai's historic Deira neighborhood killed at least 16 people and injured another nine in a unit believed to have been partitioned. Ebony, a 28-year-old odd-job worker from Ghana, was recently forced to leave a partitioned apartment after the authorities found out about it. She lived in a narrow space with a roommate who slept above her on a jerry-built plywood loft bed. 'Sometimes to even stand up,' she said, 'your head is going to hit the plywood.' She's in a new apartment now, a single room that holds 14 others — and sometimes more than 20 as people come and go, sharing beds. With her income of about $400 a month, she said she didn't have another option, and she's afraid of being forced out again. 'I don't know what they want us to do. Maybe they don't want the majority of people that are here in Dubai,' Ebony said.
The Guardian
an hour ago
- The Guardian
‘I shouldn't have to fight for answers': David Amess's daughter on the MP's murder and her fury at his friends and colleagues
The last time Katie Amess saw her dad, the Conservative MP Sir David Amess, he was dropping her at Heathrow for her flight home to Los Angeles. Usually, she would cry when they said goodbye, but this time neither were sad – they were both excited. In six weeks, Katie would be back for her wedding. 'It was going to be in the House of Commons and my dad could not wait to walk me down the aisle,' she says. 'He'd been practising, taking my arm, walking me around. We joked about it – we were calling it the 'royal wedding'. At the airport, we hugged goodbye and he kissed me on both cheeks. I skipped off thinking the next time I saw him would be the best day of my life.' Instead, just four weeks later, her father was murdered at his surgery, stabbed 21 times by an Islamic State sympathiser. He was buried in the suit he was going to wear to the wedding. The music planned for walking Katie down the aisle – Pachelbel's Canon – was instead played as his coffin was carried into the church. The murder of David Amess in October 2021, while serving his constituency in a church hall in Leigh-on-Sea, sent shock waves across the country – and the details that have since emerged should have deepened the outrage and furthered the questions. Amess's killer, Ali Harbi Ali, was a once bright, motivated teenager planning to study medicine who had self-radicalised during Syria's civil war. The teachers at his Croydon school had noticed – one described it as a light going out and that his 'eyes were dead'. Ali's attendance fell, his grades plummeted and attempts to talk to him only raised more concerns, leading the school to contact Prevent, the government-led counter-terrorism strategy designed to identify and deradicalise extremists. One home visit was made, followed by one brief meeting between Ali and an 'intervention provider' in a McDonald's. Conversation was limited to two subjects: whether western music and student loans were unlawful in Islam. Ali was deemed a 'pleasant and informed young man'. (He later said: 'I just knew to nod my head and say yes and they would leave me alone afterwards and they did.') There was no follow-up, no further consultations or contact with his referring teachers. There was no monitoring. Despite the atrocity Ali went on to commit, Katie believes there has been little scrutiny of any of the above, no accountability or consequences for the anonymous officials involved and no requirement to give a public account of their actions and lessons learned. For almost four years, Katie, on behalf of the Amess family, has pushed for an inquiry. Partly as a result of this pressure, the Home Office commissioned Lord Anderson, the interim Prevent commissioner, to produce a rapid review of the case in order to identify whether questions remain unanswered. It was published last week and concluded: 'Though the information available on [Ali's] case is not complete and likely never will be,' the 'unhappy story' of his engagement with Prevent had been 'squeezed almost dry'. Katie doesn't agree. 'I'm not going to give up,' she says. 'All we want is for someone to say: 'We're sorry. This is what happened, these are the mistakes made and this is what we're doing to make sure it never happens again.' I shouldn't have to fight for answers.' Born in Basildon to an electrician father and a dressmaker mother, David Amess was a working-class, Catholic Conservative and had been an Essex MP for 38 years when he was murdered. He was approaching his 70th birthday – on that last airport trip with Katie, she had broached the subject of retirement. 'He didn't want to retire any time soon,' she says. 'He felt he had so much left to do.' Having an MP father was all Katie had ever known, but Amess was not an absent figure, away at Westminster. He was committed to his constituency with no ambitions for higher office. 'When I was young, I used to ask: 'Do you think you could be prime minister?' He'd say: 'Absolutely not!'' For Katie, the second of five children, all born within seven years, he was present and fun and always loomed large in her life. 'My dad was absolutely hilarious and completely inappropriate,' she says. 'He'd do the craziest things and sometimes they were a bit dangerous.' He would booby trap the house at Halloween. He would take all five children to water parks even though he couldn't swim and would have been unable to rescue any of them. At toll booths, on family road trips, all five children were instructed to blow raspberries while he paid the operator. 'He was obsessed with animals, so we had dogs, cats, chickens, bunny rabbits, hamsters, gerbils, a goat called Tinkerbell,' says Katie. 'He wanted a small pony at one point, but Mum vetoed that. He had fish and birds in his office even though no animals were allowed, but he didn't listen to rules. At Halloween, he'd go to Westminster in full goblin outfit. At Christmas, he'd put a tree on his balcony at Westminster, which was definitely not allowed, and his whole office was lit up with flashing lights.' From the age of four, Katie accompanied him to constituency events. 'My elder brother was out playing football and my mum had my three younger sisters to look after, so I was all dressed up and dragged to garden parties and village fetes.' Later, when she moved to London for drama school – she is now an actor – she stayed in her dad's London flat. 'I'm so glad I spent all that time with him so I could just be around him and soak up what he was about,' she says. 'I never knew I wouldn't be with him for another 30 years.' Amess was very well known in his Southend West and Leigh constituency. 'He spent so much time there,' says Katie. 'Everybody knew his name and face. I've received so many messages since he died saying: 'We didn't agree with him politically, but he helped my elderly parents'; 'He got support for my disabled child'; 'He visited my sick grandma in hospital.'' In some ways, his profile and accessibility made him vulnerable. He was the face of government and easy to locate. In fact, it later emerged that Ali had worked through a list of possible victims, including Michael Gove and Keir Starmer, both of who were deemed too complicated to find. Amess – targeted because he had voted in favour of airstrikes against Islamic State – was holding a surgery. (The pinned tweet on Amess's account gave the date, place and details of how to book.) 'I always worried about Dad's safety, but I thought if anything was going to happen, it would be a punch-up from a local yob,' says Katie. 'Never in your wildest dreams would you imagine that a terrorist would go through a list and then come and murder your dad. It's just so shocking. It's still unbelievable.' In the immediate aftermath, the family were too stunned to think about inquiries or even formulate questions. Katie remembers flying straight back to the UK, walking into the family home and seeing the runner beans Amess had picked from the garden before going to surgery. 'I washed up his breakfast plates – tea and toast – from the morning it happened as well as his dinner plates from the night before and could not believe it was the last time I'd ever be doing this,' she says. 'All those times I was annoyed that he'd left his plates for me to clean when I was in his London flat for drama school. Now, I just wanted to be able to clean them one more time.' When details about Ali's history with Prevent began surfacing, the family assumed an inquiry would be announced after his trial. (In April 2022, Ali was given a whole-life sentence.) Two home secretaries – Priti Patel and Suella Braverman – assured the family that they were working on it, but their successor James Cleverly refused to meet them. Instead, there has been only a Prevent learning review, completed in February 2022. This gives a glimpse of Prevent's failures in the case – the strange decision‑making (why focus on student loans and western music only?), the lack of record-keeping, the absence of communication, returned emails or follow-up. 'I was absolutely gobsmacked when I read it,' says Katie. 'I could run Prevent better with my friends. If these are the people entrusted to save us from terrorism, we've got a huge problem.' Equally striking is the sparsity of the review. No one involved is identified or even interviewed. It's a review of secondhand accounts and the records kept (and not kept). 'The main conclusion it seems to draw is that so much has changed with Prevent, it's all been fixed, so we don't need to look any harder,' says Katie. 'If that was true, why were three little girls murdered in Southport last year?' Axel Rudakubana, the Southport killer, was referred to and rejected by Prevent three times. One of the questions to be asked in the Southport inquiry is whether Prevent needs a complete overhaul. 'They could have asked that question years earlier after my dad was killed and perhaps Southport wouldn't have happened,' says Katie. Campaigning hasn't been easy. Katie is based in the US and her mother, Julia, is not well – she had a stroke shortly after Ali's trial, which the family attributes to trauma and grief. The change of government briefly gave them hope. Katie and Julia had a video meeting with Yvette Cooper, the new home secretary, who told them that Amess was a great friend, their Westminster offices were next door and they used to walk to the Commons chamber together. 'We thought: 'Perfect. Now we're getting somewhere,'' says Katie. Instead, months passed. Finally, in March, in another video call, Cooper admitted there wouldn't be an inquiry. 'My mum said: 'Look me in the eyes and tell me as his friend that you think you're doing the right thing.' Yvette Cooper could not answer.' In a formal letter, Cooper explained that it was 'hard to see' how an inquiry could go beyond what had already been established in the trial, the Prevent learning review and the coroner's report, as well as the forthcoming rapid review by Lord Anderson. 'When an elected official is killed in a church hall in broad daylight by somebody the government is monitoring, there should be an inquiry – it shouldn't even be a question,' says Amess. 'This isn't a witch-hunt, but there should be some accountability. The mistakes made cost me my father, my mother's husband, a grandfather, a brother, a son. 'I don't think we'll ever recover,' she continues. 'It's my 40th birthday this month and I know I'd have flown back to England like I did every summer and my dad would have thrown me a huge party. There'd have been 40 balloons and he'd have made my friends give me 40 bumps! I want to have children, but I think: 'What sort of mother would I be now when I'm in so much trauma and heartache?' I used to think he'd be such a funny grandpa. All that has been robbed from me.' For Katie, the lack of support from Westminster after her father's decades of service is deeply painful and nonsensical, too. 'I just cannot believe the way we've been treated by his friends and colleagues,' she says. 'It's in all their interests. They are meeting the public day in, day out, so why don't they want to investigate properly and establish what would make them safer? Dad's legacy needs to be that through what happened to him, he saves other people. Please, just show some human decency. Do the right thing.' Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.
The Guardian
2 hours ago
- The Guardian
The time for Australia to recognise the state of Palestine is right now
No one should underestimate the power of one image to move the minds of nations. Just like the image of nine-year-old South Vietnamese girl Pham Thi Kim Phúc, running naked on a road, screaming as her back burned from napalm dropped during an attack by the South Vietnamese air force. That moment was captured by photographer Nick Ut. The New York Times debated running the photo due to its nudity. They ran it on their front page the next day in edited form. It became powerfully attached to the Vietnam war and rippled through global opinion. The memory of this image bolted to my mind's forefront when I saw last week the images of children starving in Gaza plastered across almost every media outlet in the world, including conservative UK outlet the Daily Express, which featured a staggering front page with a gaunt Muhammad Zakariya Ayyoub al-Matouq – a one-year-old so starved, he now weighs the same as a three-month-old baby. His spine sticks out like a knotted thread – an image that whipped a headline out of the Daily Express: 'For pity's sake, stop this', declaring that the suffering 'shames us all'. Muhammad is not the victim of a drought, or an event beyond the control of people and governments. It's no accident, this boy – like so many children in Gaza – has barely any energy to lift eyelids. This is a result of deliberate decisions by the Netanyahu government to restrict humanitarian aid into Gaza. The significance of the Daily Express featuring this image should not be overlooked. A publication with a conservative bent has taken a strong stand because the humanitarian cause should not be political. These images have torn through social media. The same week, one of the biggest western nations – and the first member of the G7 – France, announced it would officially recognise the state of Palestine at September's UN general assembly. About 147 nations already recognise the state of Palestine – but none as large as France. That's significant. So many nations have lost patience and are unable to stay silent or inert, as the Netanyahu government continually demonstrates its refusal to conduct its pursuit of Hamas in a way that respects the life of innocent civilians, something demanded by international humanitarian law. Our prime minister's strong statement this week and his recognition over the weekend that 'Quite clearly it is a breach of international law to stop food being delivered, which was a decision that Israel made in March', paves the way for further action. This is the moment for our nation to take a similar stand. I'm proud that our party has twice agreed at its highest decision-making forum – the National Conference of the Australian Labor party – to recognise the state of Palestine. The time to do so is absolutely right now. It would be so close to the declaration of the French, sending a powerful signal, build momentum and likely influence other nations, even though at this moment the UK and German governments appear unmoved. It's not that the move of its own will point-blank end the suffering experienced by Palestinians in Gaza. There is so much crucial work to be done. But it will cement and back in the stand taken by 28 nations last week – rightly including Australia – to object to any re-partitioning of Gaza into concentration zones, tantamount to ethnic cleaning. While our party position has been straightforward, our government has understandably believed recognition should be part of a peace process. That has been a clear-cut, logical stand for the times. But times change. Just when we think we can't be shocked further, every month of this 20-month campaign has seemingly proved us wrong and this demands a rethink in our response. It's also blazingly clear that the Netanyahu government has absolutely no intention of recognising a Palestinian state. Not now, not ever. That's clearly not a party you can negotiate a peace process with, especially if they're not even prepared to warm a seat at the negotiating table (frankly that seat will have to be dragged into the room collectively by the actions of the international community). French president Emmanuel Macron felt no need to observe conditionality prior to making his announcement. He did set out nearly half a dozen important markers as part of the recognition process, which Australia would not conceivably object to. These included: an immediate ceasefire, the immediate release of all Israeli hostages, a massive surge of humanitarian aid into Gaza, the demilitarisation of Hamas. The fact that only over the weekend the Netanyahu government is allowing 'minimal' aid into the territory demonstrates that the actions of the French government mattered, they made a difference. The time is right for Australia to recognise Palestine. Last week, I took part in a vigil outside Parliament House. Parliamentarians of different stripes took shifts in reading out the names of the 17,000 teenagers and children killed in Gaza since 7 October. 17,000 names listed in a book whose weight dragged on the heart. The pages formatted into a grid: name, age, gender. I can't describe to you how confronting it was, as the eye moved left to right, reading a name where the age 0 was listed beside it. I kept thinking to myself: that baby deserved to be raised and nurtured within the love of a family, to laugh and play with other kids, to grow to fulfil their own ambitions, write their own history. Yet their history is starkly recorded as a name subsumed within a thicket of lines and pages captured in a book of casualties. If a conservative outlet such as the Daily Express can summon heart to demand better for children like Muhammad, why can't Australian conservatives do the same, the ones who champion pro-family values but are silent in the face of families being wiped out. We can and should feel for both Israeli and Palestinian families. We're all human after all, right? Ed Husic is the federal Labor MP for Chifley in western Sydney
