Onward With Iran'ian Resistance: Regime Change Is Within Reach

Onward With Iran'ian Resistance: Regime Change Is Within Reach

Saudi Supreme Court upholds death sentence against child rapist

RIYADH - Saudi Arabia's Supreme Court has upheld a death sentence handed down against a teacher convicted of kidnapping and raping eight young girls, a local daily reported on Sunday.

A lower court in the Red Sea port city of Jeddah had found the man guilty last year of kidnapping girls aged between six and 11 from public areas and taking them to his home to rape them, the Makkah newspaper reported without giving his name.

His last victim, a nine-year-old whom he abducted from a wedding hall, was able to guide police to the area of Jeddah where he lived, leading to his arrest in 2011.

Earlier reports said the man was 42 at the time of his arrest, and married with four children.

He reportedly offered the girls sweets to lure them into his car, and sent his family away while he raped his victims in the family home.

Rape is one of a raft of crimes punishable by death in ultra-conservative Saudi Arabia. Others include murder, apostasy, armed robbery and drug trafficking.

Baghdad push illustrates ISIL growing ambitions

A powerful jihadist group inspired by Al-Qaeda has opened a new battlefront with Iraqi security forces that could see it try to push into Baghdad, officials and analysts warn.

The latest clashes, just weeks before parliamentary elections, raise key questions over the capacity of the army and police to repel militant attacks.

Anti-government fighters currently hold all of Fallujah, a town that is just a short drive from Baghdad, and other pockets of territory.

The push by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) into the Abu Ghraib area, sparking clashes in nearby Zoba and Zaidan, as well as a failed assault on a military camp in Yusifiyah, illustrate the group's ambition, even with Fallujah under military siege.

In perhaps the most worrying sign of ISIL's capabilities, anti-government fighters paraded with dozens of vehicles last week in broad daylight in Abu Ghraib, just 20 kilometres (12 miles) from the capital, according to witnesses and videos posted to YouTube.

"ISIL fighters are trying to ease the pressure imposed on them in Fallujah," said an army lieutenant colonel, speaking on condition of anonymity.

"They have begun moving against weak villages between Baghdad and Fallujah, and to attack army units."

A police colonel, who also declined to be identified, added: "Members of ISIL have begun launching attacks on the army deployed in Abu Ghraib, and are threatening Baghdad."

In early January, militants overran Fallujah and parts of Ramadi, two towns in the western desert province of Anbar which shares a long border with Syria.

Government security forces have wrested back control of much of Ramadi.

But a stalemate has persisted in Fallujah, with periodic clashes on the city's outskirts and regular shelling of what the army says are militant strongholds.

But for around a week, soldiers have fought fierce battles in Zoba and Zaidan, which lie between the capital and Fallujah.

At least three people have been killed and more than 50 others wounded in the clashes and army shelling, according to medical sources.

"The objective appears to be to use this Anbar base as a launching pad for expansive operations towards the federal government in Baghdad," said Charles Lister, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Doha Center.

Lister said the massive convoy in Abu Ghraib, in particular, "underlines the sheer scale of (ISIL's) capacity to operate with near impunity in some Sunni areas of the country."

"Iraqi security forces face some serious challenges to confronting (ISIL's) continued expansion in Iraq."

Senior security officials insist, however, that any move towards Baghdad by the jihadists is doomed to failure, and that attempts to open a new battlefront are a sign of weakness rather than strength.

"Entering Baghdad is impossible, this is not logical," said Brigadier General Saad Maan, spokesman for the interior ministry and the Iraqi capital's security command centre.

"They do not have the power, and we have huge military reinforcements to stop them. Our military has launched attacks against them on a daily basis in the Fallujah suburbs, and they have suffered lots of casualties."

Another senior security official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said ISIL fighters were "dreaming" if they thought they could break through.

"The siege of Fallujah will continue until their gathered forces are depleted," the official said. "Fallujah is the last stronghold of ISIL in Anbar."

The latest battles are part of a protracted surge in bloodshed that has pushed violence to its highest level since 2008, when Iraq was emerging from a brutal Sunni-Shiite sectarian war that left tens of thousands dead.

The unrest has been driven principally by anger in the Sunni Arab minority over alleged mistreatment at the hands of the Shiite-led government and security forces, as well as spillover from the war in Syria.

Diplomats and analysts have urged the authorities to reach out to the Sunni community to undermine support for militancy.

But with parliamentary elections looming at the end of this month, Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and other Shiite leaders have been loath to be seen to compromise.

Turkey opposition seeks to annul election in Ankara

ISTANBUL - Turkey's opposition called Sunday for an annulment of last weekend's mayoral vote in the capital Ankara, alleging fraud by the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP).

The Ankara electoral board had on Friday rejected a bid for a recount by the Republican People's Party (CHP) of last Sunday's poll, which was narrowly won by the AKP incumbent.

The CHP challenger Mansur Yavas slammed the vote as "the most dubious in the country's history".

"It is our holy duty to protect Ankara's votes and will. We are here to defeat the dark shadow cast over our democracy," he told a news conference Sunday.

He said his party was prepared to take the issue to the Constitutional Court and even the European Court of Human Rights if necessary.

The Islamic-rooted AKP scored significant victories across Turkey, winning the key prizes of Ankara and Istanbul, in the municipal elections seen as a referendum on the 11-year-rule of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

But opposition parties claim the polls were marred by irregularities including ballot stuffing, widespread power blackouts during vote counting and misreporting of results.

The elections were the first since a wide-ranging corruption scandal erupted in December implicating the premier's inner circle.

The race was especially tight in Ankara, where the AKP Mayor Melih Gokcek -- in power for 20 years -- scored 44.79 percent against 43.77 percent for Yavas.

The mayor has rejected claims of any irregularities.

Across Turkey, results were contested in more than 41 cities, and in some cases the mayor's office changed hands after a recount.

On Saturday, the authorities annulled the election in the Kurdish-majority northeastern city of Agri after the AKP demanded a 16th vote recount.

The pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party had declared victory with a wafer-thin margin of 10 votes. A new election will take place in the city on June 1.

Violence hits rally for Bouteflika in Kabylie region

BATNA - Ali Benflis, the main challenger to incumbent Abdelaziz Bouteflika in Algeria's presidential election, on Sunday deplored violence that erupted at a rally for his rival east of the capital.

Campaigning for the April 17 election was launched two weeks ago, with the 77-year-old Bouteflika widely expected to clinch a fourth term without taking to the road due to health concerns.

Tensions over his re-election bid turned violent on Saturday when protesters stormed a campaign rally in Bejaia in the mainly Berber Kabylie region and torched his portraits before attacking a television crew covering the event.

Benflis condemned the violence, which prompted Bouteflika's campaign manager, former Prime Minister Abdelmalek Sellal, to scrap the rally.

"I regret that this campaign is taking place in a climate of tensions," Benflis said in a statement issued at a rally in his hometown of Batna, in another mainly Berber region, the Aures.

"I have to be honest and say nothing has been done to ensure it is taking place in a calm and serene" atmosphere, he was quoted as saying.

"I call for the respect of freedom of expression in all circumstances, a value which is the cornerstone of my policy of national renewal."

Bouteflika's campaign headquarters blamed the violence on the Barakat movement (Arabic for 'That's Enough') formed to oppose his candidacy.

Sellal and other Bouteflika aides have been doing the leg work for the president, who is too frail to campaign after a mini stroke last year confined him to hospital in Paris for three months.

Mali new Prime Minister in talks to form government

Mali's new prime minister was in talks on Sunday to appoint a government to lead the West African nation's post-war recovery after the surprise resignation of his predecessor and the entire cabinet.

Former planning minister Moussa Mara, 39, was promoted to the premiership on Saturday after Mali's first post-war Prime Minister Oumar Tatam Ly quit just six months into office, a statement from the presidency said.

He has not spoken in public since his appointment but wrote a brief message on Twitter thanking Malians for their support.

"Now the hard part begins. I count on the support but also the constructive criticism of all. Have a good Sunday and viva Mali," he said.

President Ibrahima Boubacar Keita's office gave no reason for the resignation of Ly and his ministers, but it emerged on Sunday that the prime minister had become frustrated over being unable to enact reforms in the administration.

Ly, 50, said in his resignation letter that he had been unable to convince Keita to act on "the inefficiencies and inadequacies that I found in the running of government that greatly reduce its ability to meet challenges".

"Accordingly, in consideration of these differing views which make the mission you have entrusted to me untenable, I am sorry to present my resignation as prime minister," Ly wrote.

A source close to Ly said he had "insistently, since early March, brought to Keita's attention the need not only to restructure the government team, but also to change old habits in the running of Mali".

"When you are in charge of running a government, you need your hands free to work. If this is no longer the case, you have to draw your own conclusions and that is what that Mr Ly has done," another close aide said.

The press in Bamako suggested that tensions between the two men had been exacerbated by the fact that Ly felt undermined by the president's son, Karim Keita, the deputy leader of the national assembly.

Keita appointed Ly, a leading economist but a surprise choice to many, after his inauguration in September last year, with Mali looking to set up a government that would turn the page on months of political chaos and war.

Mara, active in Bamako and then national politics since his late 20s, was a losing candidate in the August election, garnering 1.5 percent of the vote as president of Yelema -- "change" in Mali's Bambara language -- a party he founded in 2010.

Married with two children, Mara comes from a political family.

His father Joseph Mara was a soldier and justice minister who spent time in jail in the late 1970s under the military dictatorship of Moussa Traore.

Mara, his brother and his sister were brought up by their mother and grandmother, who taught him the value of "a strict adherence to discipline", according to his website.

An academic high achiever, he studied economics and remains one of the youngest members of Mali's institute of chartered accountants.

One of Mara's top priorities will be to make good on the president's pledge when he was inaugurated last September to unite Mali, get the economy back on track and end endemic corruption.

Keita's landslide victory in the first presidential polls since 2007 was seen as crucial for unlocking more than $4 billion (2.9 billion euros) in aid promised by international donors who halted contributions in the wake of Mali's 2012 coup.

Army officers angry at the level of support they had received to combat a separatist Tuareg rebellion in Mali's vast desert north overthrew the democratically elected government of president Amadou Toumani Toure on March 22, 2012.

In the chaos that followed, the Tuareg seized control of an area larger than France before being ousted by Al-Qaeda-linked groups who imposed a brutal interpretation of Islamic law on the local population, carrying out punitive amputations and executions.

Their actions drew worldwide condemnation and prompted France to launch a military offensive at Mali's behest in January last year that ousted the Islamists.

Benghazi declares civil disobedience over insecurity and ineffective authorities

BENGHAZI - Libya's restive eastern city of Benghazi was hit by a day of "civil disobedience" on Sunday that saw some public buildings close and included disruption to air traffic.

Civic groups late on Saturday urged the action to denounce security problems in the nation's second city more than three years after the onset of the revolution that ousted dictator Muammar Gaddafi.

They also demanded the suspension of the Tripoli-based General National Congress (GNC), the country's highest political authority, and the holding of parliamentary and presidential elections.

However, a reporter said Sunday's day of action was only partly observed, with some public institutions, schools and universities closed, while others and many businesses stayed open.

The education ministry said all classes were being held as normal.

Air traffic was hardest hit, with the international airport closed and all flights suspended "until further notice", an airport source said.

The GNC was elected in July 2012 to an 18-month mandate but stirred popular anger by extending its term from early February until the end of December this year.

Under pressure from demonstrators, it later announced early elections but gave no date for the vote.

Benghazi residents have staged repeated protests against the security problems plaguing their city, the cradle of the uprising that toppled Gaddafi.

Attacks in the city have claimed the lives of dozens of members of the security forces, judges and foreigners since rebels killed Gaddafi in October 2011.