Monday, June 17, 2019

152 million children enslaved in child labour - EDITORIAL

17 June 2019

Sincerity is the greatest quality in human beings and it is children who have it in abundance. Children are devastatingly honest. That is why religious leaders have warned us and the punishment that await those who abuse children. Such criminals should be thrown into the deepest sea with a millstones tied around their necks.
On June 12, the International Labour Organization (ILO) launched the World Day Against Child Labour in 2002 to focus attention on the global extent of child labour and the action and efforts needed to eliminate it. According to the United Nation each year on June 12, the World Day brings together governments, employers and workers organizations, civil society and millions of people from around the world to highlight the plight of child labourers and what can be done to help them.

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), adopted by world leaders in 2015, include a renewed global commitment to ending child labour. Specifically, target 8.7 of the Sustainable Development Goals calls on the global community to take immediate and effective measures to eradicate forced labour, end modern slavery and human trafficking and secure the prohibition and elimination of the worst forms of child labour, including recruitment and use of child soldiers, and by 2025 end child labour in all its forms.
The 2019 theme is “children should not work in fields, but on dreams”. Yet today, it is shocking to note that about 152 million children are still in child labour. Although child labour occurs in almost every sector, seven out of every ten child labourers are in agriculture.
This year the ILO celebrates 100 years of advancing social justice and promoting decent work. The World Day Against Child Labour looks back on progress achieved through 100 years of ILO support to countries on tackling child labour. Since its founding in 1919, the protection of children has been embedded in the ILO’s Constitution. One of the first Conventions adopted by the ILO was on Minimum Age in Industry.

On this World Day, the UN says it also looks forward towards UN Sustainable Development Goal Target 8.7 set by the international community calling for an end to child labour in all its forms by 2025. The UN calls for immediate action to address the remaining challenges so that the world community can get firmly on track towards eliminating child labour. A newly released ILO report points the way with policy approaches and responses.
What is the situation in Sri Lanka? It is known that many households employ poor children without enabling them to go to schools. Food, clothing, healthcare and other basic facilities are minimal. Some families justify this by saying the poor children will suffer more if they are not employed. Even if this is true such families should ensure that the employed children are sent to school so that through education and other means their human dignity could be restored.

Children are also known to be employed in factories and other places. Agriculture being the heart of Sri Lanka’s civilization no official figures are available on how many children are used in the fields without allowing them to achieve their dreams or bringing out their creative and innovative talents.
The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child in a report says despite Sri Lanka being recognised as a pathfinder country to end violence against children and is in its final stages of developing a national child protection policy, it lacks a comprehensive national plan to address the issues. The report recommends the development of a national plan to address issues under the Optional Protocol while providing adequate human and financial resources for its implementation, monitoring and evaluation.

The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child has published its concluding observations on the report submitted by Sri Lanka on the Optional Protocol II adopted on the convention of rights of the child in relation to sale of children, child prostitution, and child pornography.
The committee recommendations include the development of a national plan to address issues under the OP while providing adequate human and financial resources for its implementation, monitoring and evaluation, according to a report in the Sunday Times of June 9.

Settler group strengthens grip on Jerusalem

Men dressed in black robes stand side by side

Theophilos III, the Greek Orthodox patriarch, is trying to stop church property from being taken over by Israeli settlers. Amir CohenReuters

Tamara Nassar -15 June 2019

Israel’s high court has given the green light for major properties in Jerusalem’s Old City to be sold to an extremist settler organization.

The Greek Orthodox Church had appealed against the 99-year lease of three major Jerusalem assets in prime locations near Jaffa Gate, but the high court rejected the appeal on Monday.

Ateret Cohanim, a right-wing organization involved in Israeli settlement on Palestinian land in Jerusalem, claims to have bought church land in 2004 from Ireneus I, the Greek Orthodox patriarch at the time.

The Greek Orthodox Church has subsequently taken over the site but Ateret Cohanim is now trying to seize the land that it bought over a decade ago.

Ireneus I claims his ousting was not legal and still identifies as the patriarch.

Theophilos III, the current patriarch, has rejected the sale that his predecessor approved.

Theophilos III claims the sale involved corruption and was not given the church’s green light, according to the Tel Aviv newspaper Haaretz.

He claims that Ateret Cohaim bribed the church’s finance director, Nikolas Papadimos, to move forward with the deal.

With the high court’s decision, Ateret Cohanim “can dramatically strengthen its hold on the Old City’s Christian Quarter,” according to Haaretz.

In 2017, the newspaper reported on a number of cases brought to light in recent months where the Greek Orthodox Church sold land and assets at unreasonably low prices on the pretext of having debts to pay.

Storming al-Aqsa

During the past few months, Israeli settlers have regularly raided the al-Aqsa mosque compound in Jerusalem’s Old City.

Uri Ariel, Israel’s agriculture minister, made an incursion into the al-Aqsa compound, accompanied by Israeli settlers, on Tuesday.

View image on Twitter

Quds News Network

✔@QudsNen

Dozens of Israeli extremists led by the Israeli minister of agriculture broke into the #AlAqsa mosque this morning. #Jerusalem #Palestine

3

4:04 AM - Jun 11, 2019

Ariel is a prominent advocate for the destruction of al-Aqsa.

Settlers regularly storm the al-Aqsa compound escorted by heavily armed occupation soldiers to intimidate Palestinians and assert Israeli control over the site.

Israeli occupation forces demolished several Palestinian structures in the occupied East Jerusalem neighborhood of Jabal al-Mukabbir on Tuesday:

#Watch| Israeli bulldozers demolished on Tuesday structures owned by Palestinians in Jabal Al Mukabber in occupied #Jerusalem. #Palestine pic.twitter.com/bw1q1fM5oX
— Quds News Network (@QudsNen) 11 June 2019

On Thursday, Israel arrested a member of the Islamic Waqf – the body responsible for Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem – from the Old City, and two other al-Aqsa mosque workers.

Israeli occupation forces are restricting maintainance work inside the al-Aqsa mosque and preventing the entry of necessary tools for restoration work, according to Safa, a Palestinian news agency.

Dozens of Israeli intelligence and police personnel also stormed the compound on Thursday, Safa has reported.

Tamara Nassar's blog

Mothers of 'radicalised' children tell how their offspring were rejected by society

Parents of children in Europe who went to Syria say they too are now treated as 'black sheep' and are 'tracked for terrorism'

In December 2013, Dominique Bons's 30-year-old son Nicholas blew himself up in an attack on a Shia village (AFP)

By Safa Bannani- 16 June 2019

“I couldn’t just stand by and do nothing. That’s why I got involved in the fight,” says 66-year-old Dominique Bons, of Toulouse, who lost her son in Syria.

In December 2013 her son Nicholas, aged 30, blew himself up in an attack on a Shia village.

Since then, Bons has been fighting so that no other family would have to go through what she suffered.

Three weeks after receiving an SMS announcing her son had died a "martyr", she founded the non-profit organisation Syrien ne bouge agissons, a play on words which translates as "If nothing (in Syria) changes, then act”.

Former captive Iraqi doctor tells of dissent and despair within Islamic State's ranks

“I founded the organisation in January 2014. The idea was to reach out to families in similar situations, to warn them of the dangers of radical Islam and the spread of jihadism,” she tells Middle East Eye.

Bons’s organisation counts over 150 families today, all of whom are coping with either a child’s departure for Syria – or their death.

She says she hopes to “help families and raise awareness to prevent other young people from enlisting.”

In her battle for further prevention, Bons condemns what she calls the government’s “reluctance” to help families whose children left to fight in Syria, particularly those families of Muslim and North African origin.

According to Bons, the government views close relatives as “black sheep”, undeserving of help, and “it’s even worse for Muslim and North African families”.

Those families, already “frowned upon because of their origins and religion”, are now being “tracked for terrorism”, she adds.

'Zero opportunities for young people'

Saliha Ben Ali, the daughter of Tunisian immigrants in Belgium, also voiced concerns to MEE over issues of “stigmatisation” and “racism”.

Her son, Sabri Refla, left for Syria at the age of 19. He died in the region of Aleppo a few months later.

Ben Ali writes about her son being subjected to 'frequent ID checks, suspicious attitudes and widespread racism within the Flemish community' (AFP)

“The problems of racism, discrimination, joblessness and zero opportunities for young people, these are major challenges that need to be addressed along with prevention says,” says Ben Ali.

And she makes no bones about it.

“It’s not just a fight against radicalism, it’s a fight against violence,” she adds, insisting on the need to “raise awareness, prevent enlistments, and help families at risk”.

Six years ago, after the departure of her son, she decided to act. She founded the association Save Belgium, to “accompany other parents struggling [with radicalism]. We participate in conferences, share our experiences and take on jihadist propaganda,” she told MEE.

In October 2018, Ben Ali published “Maman, entends-tu le vent?” (Mother, do you hear the wind?), in which she tells her story and “exposes jihadist recruitment strategies”.

“I try to understand what made young people leave for Syria to fight,” she explains.

Her book points to “the problem of the far right” in particular, which Ben Ali says is “a form of political violence”.

“The far right has been normalised, just like violence has,” Ben Ali continues.

“Just because terrorist attacks are being called 'Islamist' doesn’t mean that other, more elusive forms of attacks are not turning out in strength,” she insists, referring to Islamophobic attacks such as the Christchurch, New Zealand shootings of 15 March that killed 51 worshippers.

Ben Ali writes about Sabri being subjected to “frequent ID checks, suspicious attitudes and widespread racism within the Flemish community”.

And the wariness continued even after his death.

'The wrong kind of victim'

In October 2018, Ben Ali and her husband were scheduled to fly to the United States via Dublin to attend a conference. They were turned back in Ireland.

The immigration authorities, she says, had been instructed by Washington not to let through her husband, Larbi Refla.

“My son’s last name is a problem because he’s on a list of terrorists thought to be alive. He’s not dead, he’s ‘presumed dead', and having Refla as a last name constitutes grounds for rejection,” Ben Ali comments bitterly.

Belgium not obliged to repatriate Islamic State supporters and their children, court rules

Sabri was sentenced in Belgium to a five-year prison term and a 18,000 euros ($20,227) fine.

An international arrest warrant was also issued against him, as the courts lack evidence of him having died in Syria.

“For example, travellers with my son’s last name [minors included] are denied entry in some countries. Or they are held for questioning for so long, they end up missing connecting flights,” Ben Ali goes on.

“It’s as if we’re not allowed to talk about our pain because we’re the wrong kind of victim.

“European families whose children have left for Syria are treated differently than Muslim families.

“But it is neither my fault nor my husband’s that Sabri went to Syria”, she insists.

Despite the difficulties, Ben Ali refuses to “lose hope” because for her fighting violence and radicalism is tantamount to “having my son at my side” and fighting “the people who kidnapped him”.

'I have faith'

In May 2013 Nora, aged 18, left for Syria without a word.

Since then her mother, Samira Laakel, has never been the same. The 47-year-old Belgian woman “is fighting tooth and nail” so that other families and children will be spared “her misfortune”.

“I have faith. My only hope is that I will see her safe and sound,” Laakel tells MEE.

Her daughter is still in a camp in Syria, along with her four grandchildren.

Nora became a mother after losing her first husband in Syria and being forcibly “remarried” by members of the Islamic State (IS).

“My daughter was hit by a shell and seriously injured while waiting to be moved to another camp,” Laakel goes on.

Samira Laakel, right,demonstrates for the repatriation of the children of deceased fighters, Brussels (Facebook)

Though still fighting “violent radicalism” through awareness campaigns, Laakel today has taken up another battle: the repatriation of the orphaned children of foreign fighters.

“Most of the children in the camps in Syria are suffering from malnutrition, injury and neglect,” she says.

“They are the primary victims of the chaos in Syria, and they are innocent. They are Belgian citizens, and we must do everything we can to repatriate them,” she insists.

“Public opinion is negative even when it comes to children, it’s crazy. People say they can just go ahead and die over there,” she says indignantly, though they have “grandparents who are hoping to give them a home. First, we need to repatriate these children, then the courts can see to the rest.”

'Orphaned, isolated and particularly vulnerable'

France, though particularly reluctant to recover its nationals including children who are by default denied entry with their mothers, has repatriated the children of 12 French fighters who were in northeastern Syria, along with two Dutch citizens who will be returned to the Netherlands, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced on 10 May.

All of the French children are “orphaned, isolated and particularly vulnerable. Some are sick and malnourished,” a ministry official reported at a press conference, adding that “medical examinations [were] underway”.

Syria Kurds repatriate 14 French and Dutch orphans from IS families

Local Kurdish authorities in Syria handed them over to a French delegation earlier this month.

This is the second such return since the last IS pockets of resistance were wiped out in eastern Syria: five orphans were repatriated to France on 15 March.

In addition, a three-year-old girl, whose mother is imprisoned for life in Iraq, was returned on 27 March.

According to reports from the French foreign ministry, approximately 450 IS-affiliated French nationals are being detained in prisons and refugee camps.

On Monday, a ministry spokesperson said a third operation to repatriate nationals based on “the same criteria – orphaned, isolated and vulnerable” was liable to take place “in the future”.

Deleted from history

Every Wednesday, Laakel marches with other parents and grandparents whose children left for Syria, to demand the repatriation of the families stuck in camps. “Bring them back!” the protesters chant.

“My daughter and my grandchildren need to be rescued. My daughter didn’t go there to fight. She went to Syria out of love. She felt useless in Belgium. She wanted to do something worthwhile, she went to Syria to help,” Laakel disconsolately explains.

In 2015, Laakel published her story, Le Bonheur est parti avec toi (Happiness left when you did), described as the “heartfelt cry of a mother fighting to get her daughter back, and to save other young people and families from dying”.

Laakel is determined to stop “the indoctrination of youths”.

Her own daughter, Nora, was deleted from the official family record book at the local town hall.

“She was stripped of her status by her own country, by Belgium, but she can never be erased from our hearts”, her mother says.

“I will continue fighting for you until you come back,” she says as if addressing her daughter, “I will never give up.”

Israeli court convicts Sara Netanyahu for misusing state funds

Prime minister’s wife admits to lesser charge in plea bargain and pays £12,000 fine

Sara Netanyahu, who illegally spent £79,000 of public money on catering, has been fined £12,000. Photograph: Gali Tibbon/AFP/Getty Images

Oliver Holmes in Jerusalem-Sun 16 Jun 2019 13.45 BST

Sara Netanyahu, the wife of Israel’s prime minister, has been convicted of illegally misusing thousands of pounds of public funds on lavish meals.

A Jerusalem court on Sunday accepted a plea bargain in which Netanyahu agreed to admit to a lesser charge than the original fraud accusations. She will pay about $15,000 (£12,000) in fines and reimbursements to the state.

The sentencing ended one of the long-running cases against the family. However, Benjamin Netanyahu still faces the prospect of three corruption indictments later this year that may end his decade as leader and even result in a prison sentence. He denies all charges.

According to the original indictment against Sara Netanyahu, of fraud and breach of trust, she and a government employee were accused of spending roughly $100,000 (£79,000) on catering from expensive restaurants between 2010 and 2013, despite having a in-house cook provided by the state.
In Sunday’s settlement, she admitted to taking unfair advantage of another person’s mishandling of state money and reduced the overspending charge to $50,000. Former caretaker Ezra Saidoff also reached an agreement with the prosecution and was fined $3,000.

“As in every plea bargain, each side makes concessions, sometimes hard concessions,” said the prosecutor, Erez Padan, at the Jerusalem magistrates court. “It is right and proper for the public interest to bring this case to an end.”

Netanyahu’s lawyer, Yossi Cohen, told the court his client had already been punished by public humiliation in the closely watched investigation. “Four years of ugly leaks and denigrations” constituted “inhuman punishment”, he said.

“No other person could have withstood this. This lady is made of steel,” he added.

The 60-year-old child psychologist has been a controversial presence at her husband’s side throughout his political career. In addition to the fraud case, she has faced mistreatment accusations from employees and was described in a newspaper as “Israel’s Marie Antoinette”.

In 2017, Netanyahu was ordered to pay tens of thousands of pounds in damages in a dispute with two former domesticstaff who accused her of bullying. She faces a third lawsuit from an employee who alleged staff were treated like “slaves”.

Last year, an audio recording emerged of Netanyahu furiously scolding a family publicist over a gossip column. She was angry with him for not highlighting her professional qualifications in the press.

“BA, MA,” she was heard shouting, exclaiming each syllable in reference to her bachelor and master’s degrees. Her husband responded to public shock over the tirade, saying on Facebook that everyone “gets angry and says a few words that [they] didn’t mean”.

Benjamin Netanyahu is entangled in a series of more severe corruption investigations and is due to appear at a pre-trial hearing in October after Israel’s attorney general announced his intention to indict in all three cases.

He could face up to 10 years in prison if convicted of bribery and a maximum three-year term for fraud and breach of trust.

One case, called Case 1,000, involves allegations of receiving gifts, including cigars, champagne and jewellery, from billionaires, among them the Australian casino operator James Packer, allegedly in exchange for favours. In Case 2,000, Netanyahu is accused of colluding with the country’s top-selling newspaper, Yedioth Ahronoth, to hurt its competition in exchange for favourable coverage.

The third and most damning, Case 4,000, involves allegations that Netanyahu offered incentives to the Israeli telecoms provider Bezeq in exchange for positive stories on an online news website it owns.

Netanyahu has denied all accusations, dismissing them as part of a witch-hunt orchestrated by the press. He will fight for re-election in September, weeks before the pre-trial hearing is due to start.

A win for Netanyahu has been portrayed domestically as a lifeline to block the graft cases as some of his parliamentary allies have suggested they might back laws to grant him immunity.
Agence France-Presse contributed to this report

How Europe Is Handing Off Its ISIS Militants to Iraq

France is leading the way in washing its hands of its Islamic State fighters—whether they receive justice or not.

A French woman, Djamila Boutoutaou, attends her trial at the Central Criminal Court in Baghdad on April 17, 2018. She was sentenced to life in prison for belonging to the Islamic State. AMMAR KARIM/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

BY PESHA MAGID- JUNE 15, 2019, 6:00 AM

BAGHDAD—Standing in his prisoner’s yellow jumpsuit, Mustapha Merzoughi remained quiet at first. He shook slightly and brushed at his eyes, before assuming a neutral expression. His Arabic appeared to be limited, and when the judge first began to question him, he stayed silent, eventually saying in French:

“There is no point that I speak. Whatever I say, you will convict me to death.” About an hour later, he was.

Merzoughi was one of 11 French defendants that an Iraqi court sentenced to hang over the course of trials from May 26 to June 3. He was captured, however, not in Iraq but in neighboring Syria, by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) during the last battles against the Islamic State. Merzoughi and his fellow ISIS defendants were the first official cases of foreigners transferred from Syria to Iraq for trial—juridical guinea pigs in an experimental solution to the problem facing many European countries whose citizens left home to fight for the Islamic State. The Europeans do not want them to return, but the SDF does not have the sovereign power to sentence them, leaving their citizens in limbo.

Transferring them to Iraq allows Europe to sidestep the issue, but it comes with a price—or, to be more precise, a fee. Sources from both the Iraqi and U.S. sides have alleged that Iraq wants to be paid for the trouble of trying foreigners. Senior Western officials reportedly have said the Iraqis want $10 billion as an upfront fee, with an additional $1 billion each year to take in detainees. Three Iraqi officials reportedly said they would charge $2 million per suspect per year. The French government has denied making any payments, according to a Reuters report this week. However the article also noted that “a French official briefing reporters after a visit by Iraq’s prime minister in May said Paris expected Baghdad to make an official request, including financially, on what it needed to handle large number of Islamist fighters.”

Between 800 and 1,500 foreigners from countries including France, the United Kingdom, and Germany still remain in Syria detained by the SDF. France alone has about 450 citizensbeing held in Syria. Jean-Charles Brisard, the head of the Center for the Analysis of Terrorism (CAT) in France, believes that as long as public opinion holds steady in resisting their return, this is only the beginning of a new kind of injustice.

“I believe this is the first wave of trials and we can anticipate other waves in the future,” he told Foreign Policy. “From what we know, the trials were very expedited and had very little time for defense. It is the opposite of our own values of justice.”

For French President Emmanuel Macron, the Iraqi trials were an uneasy solution to an intractable problem. In late February, Macron faced a French public haunted by the trauma of the 2015 Paris attacks that left 130 people dead and hostile to the potential return of any French Islamic State members. On the other hand, there was mounting pressure from the United States and the SDF to take the foreign detainees out of their territory in northeastern Syria. Macron met with Iraqi President Barham Salih, and after long discussions, they held a joint press conference in which Macron pledged to deepen France’s military and economic support for Iraq. Salih confirmed that a total of 13 French nationals would be transferred to Iraq for trial.

“I think it was at this moment during this presidential visit that this deal was passed between Macron and the Iraqis,” said Myriam Benraad, a research fellow at the Institute of Research and Study on the Arab and Muslim Worlds in France. “The Iraqis said very clearly to the French, ‘We are ready to keep them, but that’s going to mean money, and that’s going to mean assistance, in particular arms and military assistance.’”

French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian has portrayed the prosecutions as just, stating recently that the defendants had received “fair trials.” His statements have
been condemned by lawyers and human rights organizations, but public opinion appears to be with the government. A recent poll in France showed that 89 percent of respondents believed the government was right to let Iraq judge the French nationals.

“Le Drian knows that this is purely a political move because he knows that the French population does not want them back. There’s a certain revenge mode for a lot of French people. They are getting what they deserve after everything we suffered,” Benraad said.

France claims that the transfer was an agreement between the Kurdish SDF forces and the Iraqis and that it was not involved in the decision. France has officially stated that it respects Iraq’s sovereignty in this matter, but Iraq did not claim jurisdiction over these cases until recently.

While Article 9 of the Iraqi Penal Code allows for the prosecution of foreign nationals who commit crimes outside of Iraq as long as those crimes affect Iraq, only a year ago senior judges’ interpretation of the law was quite different, said Belkis Wille, a senior Iraq researcher for the Middle East and North Africa division of Human Rights Watch. “Last year they were saying no,” she said. “Our interpretation of our jurisdiction is that we could not prosecute because they never committed a crime in our soil and they’re not our nationals.”

But this year, after Macron and Salih announced the French trials, Wille said senior judges flipped their reading of the article. “A few weeks ago, when I was back at the court, suddenly the tone had completely changed, and it’s obviously because politically they’ve been told that they have to prosecute,” she said.

The Iraqi justice system is infamous for its abuses: Trials lasting 10 minutes, torture, and forced confessions have all been widely reported. If a country pays for its nationals to be prosecuted in Iraq, it could potentially violate international law and make France complicit in torture. Paris is sensitive to these issues, and Wille said she does not believe France would make any public quid pro quo or direct payment for trials. “It would be increased military assistance or development money or whatever else,” she said.

Regardless of payment, France did not object to the transfer of its citizens to Iraq, a nation known for widely applying the death penalty in terrorism cases. Le Drian said France is in talks with Iraq to see if they can reduce the death sentences to life sentences.

The courts prosecute defendants in these cases under Iraq’s 2005 anti-terrorism law, which has been heavily criticized for consisting of broad articles that can be loosely interpreted: In the French cases, the judge needed to prove only that they were members of a terrorist organization to sentence them to death. Sentencing requires only confession, a system that incentivizes abuse and torture in order for interrogators to extract the necessary confessions.

In the French cases, only one of the 11 defendants, Fodil Tahar Aouidate, alleged torture. Aouidate told Iraqi Judge Ahmed Mohamed Ali that he had been forced to sign a confession saying that he fought battles in Syria and Mosul. “I was tortured so of course it says that,” he said. Ali asked him to show him his body, and Aouidate lifted his shirt. The judge ordered a medical exam and delayed his trial to June 2. A few days later, he read aloud the results of the medical exam, which found no signs of torture on Aouidate. The session finished quickly, and Ali sentenced Aouidate to death.
Wille said the forensic medical exams rarely make a difference. “Even in cases where the judge believes them enough to order a forensic medical exam, that rarely leads to them being acquitted.

And it rarely leads to the interrogators who are alleged to have committed the torture being investigated and eventually punished,” she said. “What we often see … [is] the defendant simply gets taken back into the hands of the same forces, gets tortured again, makes another confession, and the second time he’s too scared to tell the judge that he’s been tortured.”

A defense lawyer who did not want to be named said flatly that torture was common in these cases. “They’ll torture them with electricity to get them to sign something in a language they don’t understand,” he said in between court sessions.

Addressing the allegations that confessions are often obtained through torture, Ali toldForeign Policy in an interview following the trials: “I don’t know how they have been treated before, but they have confessed here [in the courtroom], and that’s enough.”

“No one touches them because they are foreigners,” he added. “Of the French, no one said they were tortured with one exception, and the medical report said he did not have one mark on his body.”

Both Ali and Khaled Taha Mashadany, the president of the court where Merzoughi was tried, seemed eager to demonstrate the fairness of the trials. They mentioned multiple times that they wanted the media to observe the trials and asked for journalists’ opinions on the proceedings. The trials themselves appeared better than the standard faced by most Iraqis accused of terrorism. Ali was careful to follow procedure, and the trials lasted from 45 minutes to two hours, as opposed to the brief 10-minute cases that have been previously reported. The defendants were given a chance to respond to the judge’s questions fully.

“We have experience. Iraqi justice is better than anywhere else in the world,” Mashadany said. “Human rights organizations have understood wrong. They don’t take the long investigations before the trials into consideration.”

But there were several issues present in the courtroom. Foreign Policy attended each of the court sessions of the defendants, and they followed a similar pattern. In the beginning, Ali read intelligence reports on the defendants’ crimes along with the confessions gathered in the investigative period. No witnesses were present. A slick video showing evidence against the defendant was played, accompanied by a dramatic orchestral music. The method of questioning Ali used established whether or not the defendants traveled to Syria to join the Islamic State, which under the counterterrorism law is enough for the death sentence. However, this meant that legally there was no need for the prosecution of individual crimes, leaving few roads for Islamic State victims to get justice.

“No one is really here to know the truth or what happened or the crimes they committed, which is … a denial of justice for the victims,” Benraad said.

At the end of the trial, both the prosecution and the defense stood up and read statements that rarely lasted for more than a minute. The defense lawyers Foreign Policy spoke to were appointed by the state on the day of the trial, and the longest one of them had met with one of the defendants was for 30 minutes the same day.

“The government—by agreeing that these French citizens be transferred from Syria to Iraq to be tried—is clearly a way to avoid handling its humanitarian role in France,” said Brisard, the CAT head. “This is why they are standing on the position to say the trials were fair even though we all know that they are not.”
Thousands of people left Europe to fight for the Islamic State, a fact that years later European countries still appear reluctant to reckon with. But as Europe debates how to dispose of the fighters, Iraqis are left with a different question.

“Iraq has the right not to be used as the most violent country,” said Pascale Warda, the president of the Iraqi Hammurabi Human Rights Organization, after attending the trials. “Why shouldn’t those countries take responsibility? Why should the responsibility be on our people?”

Jeremy Hunt’s missed NHS targets

By Georgina Lee-14 Jun 2019

Jeremy Hunt secured the backing of 43 Conservative MPs yesterday, placing him second in the race to become the next Prime Minister.

The member for South West Surrey was put in charge of the foreign office in July, but has been keen to stress his experience in an earlier role: health secretary.

He told the BBC this morning that “the case I’ve been making” is that he could become “the first prime minister to have run our biggest public service, the NHS”.

But what about the key targets he missed during his six-year stint?

GP numbers

In 2015, Mr Hunt said “we want 5,000 more GPs by 2020”.

Within a few days, he said the figure was the “maximum” that was achievable and that there would have to be “flexibility” on the commitment.

There are various ways to measure the number of GPs in the NHS. It’s understood the pledge was to increase the full-time equivalent (FTE) GP workforce by 5,000 by 2020-21, using the 34,592 FTE GPs in September 2015 as a baseline.

Figures from NHS Digital show that when Mr Hunt left the Department of Health in July 2018, there were 162 more GPs in the NHS than there were when he made his original commitment.

And the latest stats suggest his successor, Matt Hancock, is unlikely to meet the target. In March 2019, there were 34,736 GPs in the NHS. To make good on the original pledge, the service would have to get an extra 4,856 GPs on the books in the next nine months.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the government has now dropped the time limiton the commitment.

A&E waiting times

The handbook to the NHS Constitution says at least 95 per cent of patients attending A&E should be admitted, transferred or discharged within four hours.

When Jeremy Hunt took over as health secretary at the end of 2012, 94.9 per cent were seen in that time. By the time he left six years later, that figure had dropped to 84 per cent.

During the same period, the number of patients waiting more than four hours in A&E rose from just under 60,000 to over 190,000 when he left in July last year. That’s a threefold rise over his tenure.

In that time, there were some major peaks, as FactCheck reported last year.

Cancer waiting times

The NHS in England has a range of targets for cancer waiting times.

When Mr Hunt became health secretary, 95.4 per cent of patientsurgently referred by their GP were seen by a specialist within two weeks, exceeding the national 93 per cent target. When he left in July 2018, the proportion seen in that time had dropped to 91.9 per cent.

The NHS applies the same target specifically for breast symptoms, including when cancer isn’t initially suspected. In the three months before Mr Hunt took over, 95.7 per cent of such patients saw a specialist within a fortnight. By the end of his tenure, that figure was 88.4 per cent.

NHS targets say 85 per cent of cancer patients should begin their first treatment within two months of being urgently referred by a GP. When Mr Hunt started at the Department of Health, 87.3 per cent had started treatment in that time. When he left, that had dropped to 78.3 per cent.