Latest news with #Syria-born
New Indian Express
26-05-2025
- Politics
- New Indian Express
Correspondent from Syria new Foreign Correspondents Club chief
NEW DELHI: Dr Waiel Awwad, a senior Syria-born foreign correspondent based in India, was elected as the new President of the Foreign Correspondents Club (FCC) of South Asia and Veteran editor, political commentator and author Prakash Nanda was re-elected as the Secretary of the Club for the 2025–27 term. P. M. Narayanan, a television journalist with German TV, was re-elected as the Treasurer, a statement form FCCSA said. Dr Awwad succeeds Venkat Narayan, another highly respected foreign correspondent. The elections followed the Annual General Body Meeting, held within the FCC premises. A total of nine members were also elected to the General Council. The elected members are Mayank Bhardwaj (Reuters), Krishnan P. Nayar (Emirates News Agency), Anoop Saxena (German TV), Devina Gupta (BBC), Eshani Mathur (Bloomberg), Ruslan Imaev (Russia Today), Sidhartha Srivastava (CAN), C. K. Nayak (Jan Aastha Abroad), Amitav Srivastava (SABC). Polls held within FCC premises The elections followed the Annual General Body Meeting, held within the FCC premises. A total of nine members were also elected to the General Council. The new team will serve for two years form 2025 to 2027.
Time of India
26-04-2025
- Politics
- Time of India
Trump govt admits Mahmoud Khalil was detained without warrant, says he was a flight risk
Trump administration admitted to the court that Mahmoud Khalil was detained without a warrant. Columbia University student and pro-Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil whose arrest sent shockwaves among university students in the country was detained without an arrest warrant, the Donald Trump administration admitted to the court. It cited exigent circumstances for the warrantless arrest and said there was a flight risk. Mahmoud Khalik said he would not cooperate and intended to leave the scene,the immigration authorities said. Khalil, a Syria-born legal US resident with a green card, was arrested March 8 after he returned from an Iftar meal during Ramadan. Video footage of the arrest shows Khalil cooperating and telling officers, "Yes, I'm coming with you." DHS argued in court documents submitted to the court Thursday that it did not need to obtain a warrant before the arrest because immigration officers have the power to detain people where there is suspicion of 'an offense against the United States.' "The HSI [Homeland Security Investigations] supervisory agent believed there was a flight risk and arrest was necessary," the DHS wrote. "The agents had reason to believe that the respondent was likely to escape before a warrant could be obtained," it continued. Khalil's lawyers claim he was cooperating with the agents Khalil's attorneys, however, argue DHS did need a warrant to enter their client's apartment building. Khalil's legal team is calling for the case to be dismissed, claiming that he cooperated with authorities throughout the arrest and that no evidence has been presented to prove he was a flight risk. "We learned for the first time that the DHS agents who arrested Mahmoud lied to him: they wrote in their arrest report that the agents told him that they had an arrest warrant, but DHS has now admitted in their filing that that was a lie and that there was no warrant at all at the time of the arrest," Marc Van Der Hout, one of Khalil's attorneys, said in a statement. Khalil not allowed to see his newborn Khalil's wife Noor Abdalla gave birth to their first son in New York while Khalil remains in ICE detention in Louisiana. "I welcomed our son into the world earlier today without Mahmoud by my side. Despite our request for ICE to allow Mahmoud to attend the birth, they denied his temporary release to meet our son. This was a purposeful decision by ICE to make me, Mahmoud, and our son suffer," Khalil's wife said in a statement issued on April 21.
Memri
31-03-2025
- Politics
- Memri
Emirati Political Analyst: U.S. Universities Have Become A Platform For Spreading Extremism, Hate And Antisemitism On Behalf Of Terrorist Organizations
Following the arrest in the U.S. of Mahmoud Khalil, a key figure in the pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia University, Emirati political analyst Salem Al-Ketbi warned that American universities and academic institutions have become a strategic platform used by extremist organizations to spread their ideas and even recruit supporters. Writing on March 16, 2025 on the Saudi website Elaph, Al-Ketbi stated that this is a broad and troubling phenomenon, whereby extremist and terrorist organizations use U.S. immigration laws to infiltrate American universities and form student cells whose members are eventually likely to receive U.S. citizenship, making it difficult for the U.S. to act against them. Some foreign students, he stressed, come to the U.S. not just to study but also to incite hatred and antisemitism, as part of a broader strategy to foster extremism on campus. Behind this strategy are countries, chief of them Iran, which fund terrorist organizations like Hamas while also employing charities and student organizations to recruit support for terrorism and cultivate a new generation of activists who promote extremist ideas without even realizing they are extremist. The extremist organizations, Al-Ketbi added, manipulate the academic discourse to justify their activities and ideology in the guise of humanitarian action. He called on the U.S. universities to reexamine their policy regarding foreign funding and activism by foreign students, and formulate clear guidelines for monitoring activities that transcend the boundaries of free speech and can become means for promoting extremism. Mahmoud Khalil (Image: The following are translated excerpts from his article. "On March 8, [2025] the American authorities arrested Syria-born Palestinian Mahmoud Khalil, a student activist and a high-profile mediator in the protests at Columbia University in support of the terrorist Hamas [movement], after Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers raided his home. The arrest came after the U.S. State Department ordered to revoke his student visa because he was a key figure at the sit-ins on the Columbia University campus and in the negotiations between the student protesters and the university authorities. But [Khalil's] case goes beyond mere student activism: it sheds light on the way extremist organizations use America's immigration laws to insert their people into American society and build support networks [whose members] may later work to attain [U.S.] citizenship… "Mahmoud Khalil was one of the prominent faces of Columbia University's Apartheid Divest (CUAD) movement that called to boycott companies that support Israel and stop investments in them. As the tensions surrounding the war in Gaza increased, the demonstrations in which Mahmoud Khalil participated drew harsh criticism from supporters of Israel, who accused him of promoting 'Hamas' terrorist propaganda.' Although his lawyers denied these accusations and no real evidence has been found of 'financing' terrorism, his case sparks a debate about a graver issue: the way the American immigration laws are used facilitate the infiltration of terrorist elements and the establishment of cells supporting [terrorism, whose members] will hold American citizenship in the future, making it difficult to pursue them. "Mahmoud Khalil is not an isolated case. The American universities – which attract students from all over the world – have become a strategic target for extremist organizations, because the student visa programs allow foreign students from various countries, including Palestinians, to attend them. But some of these students don't come just to study, but also to disseminate extremism and to foment hatred. "In 2019, for example, an investigation of the American National Security Agency into a network of foreign students at the University of California revealed that they had used their academic positions to spread the extremist ideas of Al-Qaeda and that there were other cases of this sort, like that of a Pakistani student at New York University who turned the university's student dorms into centers for recruiting young people to ISIS. These examples demonstrate how the universities can be used to inculcate extremist ideology. "The troubling fact is that these universities are usually incapable of uncovering these instances or coping with them, due to their commitment to the principles of freedom of expression. Moreover, the competition between the world's universities makes them less conservative in their choice of students, which leaves them open to exploitation by foreign countries and elements. The extremist organizations exploit the concentrations of students and the culture clubs as fronts for disseminating their ideas. For example, groups were formed such as Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) or Columbia University's Apartheid Divest (CUAD), which purport to promote humanitarian issues but usually [just] serve as a platform for disseminating discourse that is antisemitic or supportive of terrorism. "In 2023 a student group at the University of California, Berkley sparked controversy when it organized a conference on 'Resistance to the Occupation,' at which Hamas' attacks against Israeli civilians [on October 7] were praised. Furthermore, in 2024, the university advertised a course [to be taught during the] 2025 spring semester that described Hamas as 'a revolutionary resistance force combating settler colonialism' – although it later deleted the course description. [Also], on two separate occasions the university faced lawsuits alleging antisemitism on campus. In November 2023 the Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, a nonprofit organization, filed a lawsuit against the university alleging that its authorities turn a blind eye to antisemitism. "These methods and conferences indicate that this is not just an academic debate, but is part of a wider strategy to disseminate extremist ideologies on university campuses. This may seem natural in a country that believes in democracy and freedom of expression. But if we look a little deeper, we find that there is blatant foreign interference in the matter. What's more, several countries, including Iran but also others, have played a significant role in assisting the [Hamas] movement and in strengthening its presence in the U.S. Iran, which is considered one of Hamas' biggest financers, along with several other countries, used its financial networks to transfer funds to American charitable associations, [funds] that are later used to support [Hamas]. For instance, in 2012, a U.S. State Department investigation exposed a funding network designed to support Hamas via American charitable associations. This network enabled Hamas to expand its influence within these associations and use Palestinian and other foreign students to spread its ideas. "If the charitable associations and humanitarian organizations are a traditional mechanism that is being used by dubious elements to finance terrorism, then the universities and academic institutions have been turned by the extremist organizations into a strategic platform for disseminating their ideas and recruiting supporters. This exploitation goes beyond financial or logistic assistance; it is aimed at infiltrating young minds and creating a new generation of activists who espouse extremist ideas without realizing [that they are extremist]. "Furthermore, some rogue states and extremist organizations use the academic discourse to justify their activity by organizing conferences and debates about 'human rights' that present extremist ideologies as acceptable and justifiable. This manipulation of the academic discourse makes it difficult to differentiate between legitimate criticism of international policy and incitement to violence. "Exploiting universities as platforms for disseminating extremism is certainly nothing new, but [fighting it] has become more complicated due to globalization and freedom of movement. This leads us to wonder whether the American universities will reexamine their policy regarding foreign financing and monitoring political activity by foreign students on campus. Will clear guidelines be formulated for monitoring activities that cross the boundaries of freedom of expression and become tools in the service of extremist ideologies? Universities are not only institutes of learning, but are also a mirror of society and must be kept from falling prey to political or terrorist exploitation." [1] [1] March 16, 2023.
CairoScene
22-03-2025
- Entertainment
- CairoScene
Karim Alkhayat & HNGT Drop Joint Dark Techno EP ‘Fate/Away From Home'
Released on Denmark's Iboga Records, the two-track EP layers eerie vocal samples of Islamic litanies with brooding synths and cathartic atmospheric melodies. Mar 22, 2025 Dubai-based Syria-born DJ and producer Karim Alkhayat teams up with HNGT, one of the most prominent DJs in Brazil, on a joint EP, titled 'Fate/Away From Home', a hypnotic voyage into the heart of techno's darker recesses. Released on Denmark's Iboga Records, the EP encompasses two tracks, 'Fate' and 'Away from Home', the first of which is a fresh effort on Arabic techno, layering eerie vocal samples of Islamic litanies with brooding synths and cathartic atmospheric melodies. Meanwhile, 'Away from Home', is a peak-time techno banger, where a pounding kick drum serves as the track's backbone accompanied by industrial-style percussion that weaves in and out in an unrelenting sense of motion and a stripped-back breakdown of reverb-drenched melodies. IbogaRecords · Karim Alkhayat, HNGT - Fate / Away from Home - Out Now!
Yahoo
13-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Tommy Tuberville Wants Mahmoud Khalil, Other Protesters In Jail: 'Free Speech Is Great, But...'
Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) is joining a chorus of Republican lawmakers in condemning Mahmoud Khalil, the Palestinian activist and recent Columbia University graduate who organized peaceful protests on campus last year amid Israel's ongoing war on Gaza. The Syria-born legal U.S. resident was abducted from his university-owned apartment Saturday by federal immigration agents who didn't have a warrant or a crime to charge him with. Khalil is currently being held in a detention facility in Louisiana. While most conservatives who support this apparent First Amendment breach appear content with calls to deport Khalil, Tuberville told Fox Business on Wednesday that he belongs in jail — along with 'all' the other protesters supposedly disrupting education. 'The Democrats, basically, they don't like our country anymore,' said Tuberville. 'They just want to tear it down … Every Democrat that we work with up here, they're gonna take this guy's side and they're gonna try to drive this narrative that he's doing the right thing.' 'You know, we have two levels of education,' Tuberville added. 'We have K-12 and we have higher ed. We've gotta treat both of them different, but when it comes to protesters, we gotta make sure we treat all of 'em the same: Send 'em to jail.' Immigration agents claimed after detaining Khalil that his green card will be revoked, but his attorney Amy Greer filed a habeas corpus petition on his behalf Monday — prompting a district judge to rule against his deportation pending further legal action in his case. President Donald Trump, who appears to call anyone belonging to his political opposition 'Palestinian' these days, labeled Khalil a 'Radical Foreign Pro-Hamas Student' on his Truth Social platform Monday, despite there being zero evidence to support that claim. More than a dozen progressive lawmakers published an open letter Tuesday demanding Khalil's release, arguing that the Trump administration's 'illegal actions set a dangerous precedent' of stifling constitutional rights 'to free speech and due process' in America. 'Free speech is great, but hateful, hate, free speech is not what we need in these universities,' Tuberville said Wednesday about anti-Israel protests across schools. 'And they don't need to be doing things that they're preaching from Hamas, about antisemitism.' The First Amendment protects free speech whether people feel a 'need' to hear ideas they disagree with or not. Numerous journalists have further questioned if there's actual evidence that Khalil is antisemitic. On Monday, his wife, who is eight months pregnant, made a plea for his release. 'I urge you to see Mahmoud through my eyes as a loving husband and the future father to our baby,' she said. 'I need your help to bring Mahmoud home, so he is here beside me, holding my hand in the delivery room as we welcome our first child into this world.' Mike Johnson Can't Say What Crimes Mahmoud Khalil Committed Lawyers For Mahmoud Khalil Fight To Release Him From ICE Detention Israel Cuts Off Electricity Supply To Gaza, Threatening Access To Drinking Water
