INTERNATIONALARAB TIMES, SUNDAY, AUGUST 28, 2016

13

France ‘expels’ twoMoroccan militantsPARIS, Aug 27, (RTRS): France has deported two Moroccan nationals seen as a serious security threat after they became radicalised as Islamist militants, the interior ministry said in a statement late on Friday.

“Given the serious threat posed by their continuous stay on French soil, the interior ministry has decided to ex-pel them immediately,” the statement said without giving any further details about the individuals.

It said six expulsions had already been carried out under similar cir-cumstances in August, taking the total to 15 since the start of the year.

France is on heightened security alert following a series of Islamist militant attacks since January last year that have killed some 236 people.

Europe

Paris prosecutor opens probe: The Paris public prosecutor opened a pre-liminary investigation after French naval contractor DCNS filed a complaint for breach of trust over a leak of documents concerning six Scorpene submarines it is building for India, a judicial source said.

DCNS was left reeling after details from more than 22,000 pages of docu-ments relating to submarines it is building for India were published in The Australian newspaper this week, sparking concerns about the company’s ability to protect sensitive data.

“We filed a com-plaint against un-known persons for breach of trust with the Paris prosecutor on Thursday after-noon,” a spokesman for the shipbuilder said on Friday.

The Paris prosecutor’s office opened an investi-gation for breach of trust, receiving

stolen goods and complicity, the judicial source said later on Friday.

A French government source said on Thursday that DCNS had apparently been robbed and it was not a leak, adding it was unlikely that classified data was stolen.

The Australian government under its PM Malcolm Turnbull said on Friday it had asked DCNS to take new security measures in Australia, where the company is locked in exclusive negotiations to build a new fleet of submarines for 50 billion Australian dollars ($38 bln). (RTRS)

❑ ❑ ❑

‘Killing patients’: The head of an alter-native cancer treatment centre in Germany is under investigation after three patients died there in suspicious circumstances, German prosecutors said on Friday.

The non-medical practitioner, identified as Klaus R., is suspected of manslaughter in three cases and negligent injury in the case of two more patients who remain in serious condition, said Axel Stahl, senior prosecutor in the Krefeld prosecutor’s office.

Investigators are looking into allega-tions that the suspect treated patients with 3BP, an experimental drug that has not been clinically tested or approved for use as a cancer treatment. It is, however, used in alternative medicine, and the suspect was authorised to administer the drug on that basis. He has denied any wrongdoing.

“These are people who received treatment shortly before July 19 ... and immediately following this treatment had a dramatic decline in health”, Stahl said.

The investigation will mainly focus on whether a causal link existed between the deaths of the patients and their treatment, Stahl said. It will probably be several weeks until prosecutors had the first re-sults, he said. (RTRS)

❑ ❑ ❑

Activists stage protest: Anti-Islam activists have staged an hour-long demon-stration atop Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate.

The protesters unfurled a banner call-ing for “secure borders” in Germany as crowds of tourists milled around the iconic monument Saturday.

Police said 15 people were briefly detained over the protest and are likely to face charges of trespassing, harassment and breaching laws on public assembly.

Berlin police spokeswoman Patricia Braemer said the protesters belonged to the Identitarian Movement.

Germany’s domestic intelligence agency earlier this month said it was put-ting the far-right group under observation because it aims to subvert democracy.

Leaflets scattered by supporters of the group claimed the government is trying to replace Germany’s population with Muslim immigrants. (AP)

❑ ❑ ❑

Women-led mosque holds prayers: Scandinavia’s first female-led mosque has held its first Friday prayers in Copenha-gen, a milestone for an “Islamic feminist” project whose founder hopes will help combat Islamophobia.

But there was also criticism that the project did not go far enough in promoting women’s rights.

The khutba, or sermon, was held in the Mariam Mosque in an apartment in a busy Copenhagen shopping street six months after it opened.

Temperatures soared inside on a balmy summer’s day as more than 60 women, around half of them Muslim, came to hear Danish-born imam Saliha Marie Fetteh.

Friday’s event was opened by the mosque’s founder Sherin Khankan, who is herself becoming an imam.

She said that she had originally wanted to open a mosque where female imams could preach on Fridays to a mixed crowd, but later changed her mind.

“It turned out that a majority of the community wanted a Friday prayer for women only,” Khankan, born in Denmark to a Syrian father and a Finnish mother, told AFP. (AFP)

❑ ❑ ❑

Oslo appeal: Norway’s appeal against being found guilty of subjecting mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik to “inhuman” treatment by keeping him in solitary confinement, will go to court in January, judicial officials said Friday.

In an April 20 verdict that stunned observers, the Oslo district court found Norway guilty of violating the European Convention on Human Rights by keeping the rightwing extremist in isolation.

Breivik, who is serving a 21-year sentence for killing 77 people in a gun and bomb rampage in July 2011, has now been held apart from other inmates for more than five years.

He enjoys comfortable conditions at the Skien Prison, with three cells at his dis-posal equipped with two showers, as well as two televisions, an Xbox, a Playstation, books and newspapers.

But he testified that his isolation regime was having negative effects on his health, citing headaches and concentration dif-ficulties.

The state has appealed against the rul-ing. (AFP)

❑ ❑ ❑

Race too close to call: Estonia’s

Damaged houses are pictured in Casale, a central Italian village near Amatrice on Aug 26, two days after a 6.2-magnitude earthquake struck the region killing some 267 people. (Inset): A woman mourns next to the coffin of an earthquake victim, in a gymnasium arranged in a chapel of rest on Aug 27, in Ascoli Piceno, three days after a 6.2-magnitude earthquake struck the region. (AFP)

The Cipotegato, a hooded man dressed as an harlequin, climbs onto the monument erected in his honour on the main square of Tarazona on Aug 27. Yearly people throw toma-toes at each other waiting for the pas-sage of the Cipotegato who makes his way through the crowded streets to the main square where under a tomato bombardment he climbs on the monument erected in his honour, marking the start of the main festivi-

ties of Tarazona. (AFP)

Italy

Quake damaged roads threaten access to Italy town

SALETTA, Italy, Aug 27, (Agencies): Nowhere was hit harder by the earth-quake that brought death and devasta-tion to a remote corner of central Italy this week than Saletta.

And if you listen to the locals, the tiny mountain hamlet is never going to recov-er from the wounds it has suffered.

In a region which already has its fair share of abandoned villages, that is now the future beckoning for this one, they say.

Fewer than 20 people live full-time in the picturesque hamlet. On Wednes-day, with the population temporarily swollen at the height of Italy’s summer holiday season, 22 people died.

Stefania Nobile, a petite, white-haired resident, survived. But she doubts the village will.

“The place has been razed to the ground, there’s nothing left, nothing,” she told AFPTV.

“It’s a tragedy, there’s nothing left and we don’t think it has a future,” she said of the tiny locality which lies just north of the tourist town of Amatrice.

“Who would come and spend mon-ey here to rebuild?

“It’s a shame because it’s an amaz-ing area with a beautiful park, people who came to visit from northern Italy and Tuscany for walking holidays.”

Marco Beltrame, a lanky 28-year-old who lost his aunt and uncle in the earthquake, agrees.

“The hamlet is dead,” he said. “No-one’s going to think about Saletta, they’ll only think about Amatrice because Ama-trice is big. Saletta will disappear like so many tiny places. It’s over.”

Beltrame said he might easily have been among the victims.

“I was supposed to have come up that night but didn’t at the last minute.

Rushed“When I heard about the quake, I

rushed here. That house there -- the one that’s nothing but a mass of twisted stones -- is my aunt and uncle’s house. They never left it, they didn’t make it.”

Saletta is the kind of place that

could easily disappear. It essentially consists of one road loosely associated with a handful of houses dotted about higher up in the hills.

The only apparent communal space is a wooden bus stop, where a hand-ful of survivors shelter from the bak-ing sun while civil protection workers busy themselves sorting provisions in a field on the other side of the road.

A bit further on, a man was glumly tidying bits of rubble at the entrance to his half-destroyed property, his deflated body language suggesting he was wondering if it was really worth the effort.

In a nearby vegetable patch, the to-matoes have ripened nicely but no-one will ever taste them.

In the garden of the B&B Saletta, washing hung out to dry before the quake was still blowing gently in the breeze.

If Saletta had a focal point, this was perhaps it and now it has gone, along with three people who were trapped inside the half of the building that col-lapsed.

According to local accounts, one of the dead was a young man who had come up the night before the quake to join his girlfriend and her parents on holiday.

Such bad luck is hard to bounce back from, Stefania Nobile says.

“The inhabitants here were mainly grandparents whose families came to visit from the big cities, especially Rome, in the summer months,” she said.

“There could be as many as 250 people here at the height of summer, but fortunately many had left.

“Of the permanent residents, every-one knew everyone of course. There were elderly couples, really good people.

“I don’t think any of them sur-vived.”

Rescue workers acknowledged Friday they might not find any more survivors from Italy’s earthquake as they confronted a new obstacle to their recovery work: a powerful aftershock that damaged two key access bridges

to hard-hit Amatrice, threatening to isolate it.

RiskedMayor Sergio Pirozzi, warned that

if new roads weren’t quickly cleared to bypass the damaged ones, Amatrice risked being cut off at a time it needs as many transport options as possible to bring emergency crews in and some of the 281 dead out.

“With the aftershocks yesterday but especially this morning the situation has worsened considerably,” Pirozzi told reporters. “We have to make sure Amatrice does not become isolated, or risk further help being unable to get through.”

The biggest aftershock struck at 6:28 am, one of the more than 1,000 that have hit the area since Wednes-day’s quake. The US Geological Ser-vice said it had a magnitude of 4.7, while the Italian geophysics institute measured it at 4.8.

It left one key access bridge to Am-atrice unusable, and damaged another one. Crews began clearing trees to cre-ate an alternate bypass road to avoid the nearly 40-kilometer (25-mile) de-tour up and down mountain roads that they were forced to use Friday, slow-ing the rescue effort.

Even before the roads were shut down, traffic into and out of Amatrice was horribly congested with emergen-cy vehicles and dump trucks carrying tons of concrete, rocks and metal down the single-lane roads.

Multiple ambulances were also bringing the dead to an airport hangar in the provincial capital of Rieti, where four big white refrigerated trucks cre-ated a makeshift morgue to which rela-tives came in a steady stream Friday.

Premier Matteo Renzi declared a state of emergency and authorized 50 million euros ($56 million) for imme-diate quake relief. The Italian govern-ment also declared Saturday a day of national mourning and scheduled a state funeral to be attended by Presi-dent Sergio Mattarella.

Thirty-four caskets were lined up in a gym in Ascoli Piceno ahead of Sat-urday’s Mass. A memorial service for the Amatrice victims is scheduled for next week.

The first private funeral took place in Rome on Friday for the son of a pro-vincial police chief who was honored at one of Rome’s most important basil-icas. One of Pope Francis’ top advisers celebrated a funeral Mass for seven other victims south of Rome.

Rescue efforts continued, but by nightfall, two full days had passed since the last person was extracted alive from the rubble.

“There is still hope to find survivors under the rubble, even in these hours,” Walter Milan, a rescue worker, said Friday. But he conceded: “Certainly, it will be very unlikely.”

The head of the firefighting squad, Bruno Frattasi, said there was always hope of finding someone alive. But by Friday he was talking more about time running out and recovery efforts.

“We hope to recover all the bodies,” he said. “It’s necessary because even if they didn’t make it, they must be re-turned to their families.”

He said the toll had stabilized in the Arquata area of eastern Le Marche region, with 49 dead and no one else unaccounted for. In Amatrice, the situ-ation was more uncertain; Mayor Piro-zzi has estimated there could still be 15 people unaccounted for.

The vast majority of the dead were found in leveled Amatrice, the medi-eval hilltop town famous for its bacon and tomato pasta sauce. On Friday, three more bodies were pulled from the rubble in Amatrice, bringing the death toll there to 221.

On Friday, Pirozzi insisted the historic center of the town would be rebuilt as it was — not left to rubble and a “New Town” built. That was the strategy used in L’Aquila in nearby Abruzzo, where the historic center was demolished in the 2009 quake and modern housing built miles away for residents.

When death comes to stay

Rutte Wilders

parliament will vote Monday in the first round of a presidential election to replace two-term liberal leader Toomas Hendrik Ilves, with analysts saying the race is too close to call.

The contenders for the largely ceremo-nial role include popular liberal Foreign Minister Marina Kaljurand, former pre-mier and EU commissioner Siim Kallas, Mailis Reps of the centrist opposition and leftist parliamentary speaker Eiki Nestor.

A firefighter works at the site of a fire in a Moscow warehouse on Aug 27. At least 16 migrant workers died in a fire that broke out at a Moscow warehouse on Saturday morning, Russian authorities said. The head of the Moscow branch of the emer-gency ministry, Ilya Denisov, told Russian news agencies that the victims of the fire were migrant workers from Kyrgyzstan. A criminal investigation was launched to

determine whether the blaze erupted due to arson or negligence. (AFP)

Estonia’s head of state is elected by parliamentary rather than public vote and needs the support of two-thirds of the law-makers, at least 68, to avoid a run-off vote.

But with the votes split among six parties, it is unlikely that parliament will choose a president even in three rounds of voting.

In that case the decision would go to an election board, made up of the members of parliament and local government repre-sentatives.

“At this point it’s impossible to predict an outcome,” Tonis Saarts, a political analyst at Tallinn University told AFP Friday. (AFP)

❑ ❑ ❑

President’s ally probed: An ally of Kosovo’s president is under investiga-tion for allegedly granting jobs at state institutions and companies to people based on their political affiliation, Kosovo’s prosecutor said on Friday.

The investigation of Adem Grabovci is based on evidence from phone taps made in 2011 during an anti-corruption opera-tion by the European Union police and justice mission, known as EULEX.

EULEX did not file any charges, but later 1,200 tapes leaked to the investiga-tive news portal insajderi.com.

Grabovci at the time of the phone taps was head of the parliamentary caucus of the Democratic Party of Kosovo (PDK), then led by Hashim Thaci, who was elected president in 2016.

“Since 2011 he (Grabovci) used his position and official authority to ensure political power and influence on decision making on Kosovo’s government agencies and public enterprises,” Kosovo’s state prosecutor said in a statement.

It said Grabovci is being investigated in two counts for employing people based on their “political affiliation.” (RTRS)

Turnbull

‘I’m going on’ Prime Minister Mark Rutte an-nounced Friday his candidacy to head the Dutch government for a third succesive term in office, as the countdown moves towards next year’s parliamentary polls.

“I’m going on. I feel an incredible drive to continue,” the Liberal Rutte told popular tabloid De Telegraaf in an exclusive interview.

“Rutte also informed his top party leadership about his ambitions and it has been gladly accepted,” the newspaper added in the interview, published on its website.

Rutte’s free market-minded Peo-ple’s Party for Freedom and Democ-racy (VVD) with 40 seats has put together a majority with its junior coa-lition Labour Party (PvdA) partner, commanding 76 seats in the 150-seat lower house of parliament.

Support however for both parties in the coalition has fallen in recent years, notably in favour of far-right politician Geert Wilders, whose Free-dom Party (PVV) is leading the polls on an anti-Islam and anti-EU ticket.

The PVV is further backed by its ve-hement opposition to the influx of refu-gees from war-torn countries like Syria, which has created Europe’s biggest migrant crisis since World War II.

The latest IPSOS political opin-ion poll suggested that Rutte’s party would only gain around 25 seats if elections were held this month, with Labour getting as little as 13 seats. (AFP)