Month: June 2021

Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said his government on Tuesday would pardon nine jailed leaders of the Catalonia region’s 2017 move for independence.   Sanchez told a group of civil society leaders in Barcelona that his Cabinet would approve the pardons.   Opposition parties have said they would challenge the pardons in court. Opinion polls showed a slim majority of the public opposed the pardons.   Spain’s Supreme Court sentenced nine Catalan leaders to jail in 2019 for sedition and other offenses, with the sentences ranging from nine to 13 years.   The government in Madrid had banned Catalonia from …

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The United States will seek to extradite a Turkish businessman from Austria so he can appear before a U.S. judge in Utah, where he is facing charges of conspiring to commit money laundering and wire fraud, the U.S. Justice Department said on Monday.   Sezgin Baran Korkmaz laundered more than $133 million in fraud proceeds through bank accounts that he controlled in Turkey and Luxembourg, the Justice Department said in a statement. Korkmaz, it said, was arrested in Austria on Saturday at the department’s request, following the unsealing of a superseding indictment charging him with conspiracy to commit money laundering, wire fraud and obstruction of an official proceeding. Reuters was not immediately able to identify Korkmaz’s …

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The United States, the European Union, Britain and Canada joined forces Monday to impose sanctions on several senior officials in Belarus over the forced diversion to Minsk of a passenger plane traveling between two EU countries last month. Asset freezes and travel bans were also imposed on a number of officials linked to the security crackdown that continues to rock the country some 10 months after President Alexander Lukashenko was returned to power in elections branded by the EU and others as “fraudulent.” “We are united in our deep concern regarding the Lukashenko regime’s continuing attacks on human rights, fundamental freedoms, and …

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Europe’s surging far-right has suffered setbacks recently — in Germany’s eastern state of Saxony, where Chancellor Angela Merckel’s ruling conservatives prevailed, and in France, where the National Rally party did not do as well as expected in the first round of regional elections Sunday.Far-right leader Marine Le Pen hoped to be celebrating this week. Polls gave her National Rally a shot at controlling at least one of France’s 13 regions for the first time — with budgets running into the hundreds of millions of dollars, and oversight of schools, transport and local economic development. Some considered this election a preview …

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U.N. human rights chief Michele Bachelet has issued a stark warning that rising poverty, inequality, injustice and the erosion of democratic values were gravely setting back the cause of human rights around the world. Bachelet addressed delegates at the opening of the U.N. Human Rights Council’s three-week session.In her opening remarks, Bachelet called for action to stop what she called the most wide-reaching and severe cascade of human rights setbacks in our lifetime.The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights backed up her assertion by zipping through the human rights records of dozens of countries around the world.No region escaped her …

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Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said Monday he will pardon nine imprisoned Catalan separatists charged with sedition over their roles in a 2017 referendum on Catalan independence.The announcement came during a speech in Catalonia’s capital, Barcelona, about the future of the region.Sánchez said his Cabinet would approve the pardons Tuesday.  Twelve separatists were convicted and given long prison sentences for their roles in holding the banned secession referendum in 2017. They then declared independence a few days after the results. Unionists boycotted the referendum, which was held amid a large police presence intent on stopping it.One of the separatists, Oriol …

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European Union foreign ministers announced Monday a fresh raft of sanctions against the Belarusian government, this time targeting 86 officials and state-owned entities. The United States and Britain are likely to follow with further sanctions of their own in the next few days, according to EU officials.  The new sanctions earmark officials suspected of involvement in the forced landing of a Ryanair plane last month as well as participation in the crackdown on opposition protests in Belarus mounted since last year August, when Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko claimed victory in an election widely seen as rigged. Lukashenko has been in power …

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German police arrested a Russian scientist working at an unidentified university, accusing him of spying for Moscow, prosecutors said on Monday, in a case that risks further inflaming bilateral tensions.Federal prosecutors said in a statement that the suspect, identified only as Ilnur N., had been taken into custody on Friday on suspicion of “working for a Russian secret service since early October 2020 at the latest”.Ilnur N. was employed until the time of his arrest as a research assistant for a natural sciences and technology department at the unnamed German university.  German investigators believe he met at least three times …

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