Month: February 2017

Chahed in Berlin: Tunisia is not a transit country for refugees

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The repatriation of 1500 irregular Tunisian emigrants took centre stage at a meeting between Prime Minister Youssef Chahed and German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Tuesday in Berlin. Chahed also discussed with the German Chancellor the Tunisia-Libya neighborhood and prospects for the Tunisian-German economic co-operation. The Prime Minister is making an official visit to Germany from February 14 to 15. Speaking at a press conference following her meeting with Chahed, Angela Merkel said the two sides agreed to promote a voluntary return of Tunisians targeted by repatriation, while offering them necessary…

Tunisia: BCT’s intervention on money market reaches record high in December

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After a slight easing in October 2016, bank liquidity pressures reemerged, the Central Bank of Tunisia (BCT) announced on Monday. These pressures are bearing the mark of restrictive effects stemming in particular from the persistence of a large current account deficit, the significant increase in banknotes and coins in circulation, and a greater reliance by the Treasury on domestic resources to fill the lack of external resources, it added. The BCT reports that monetary policy operations reached their highest level in December 2016 with an average of 7.476 billion dinars…

Libya: Why it went wrong, and what should be done

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The current power vacuum in Libya came about because of the poor intervention of the West, which in the wake of the revolution of 2011 did not contribute enough towards state building, and as a result, it will take one or two generations for a modern state to emerge. This is one of the conclusions of Professor Dirk Vandewalle, a leading expert on the North African country who gave a lecture on Tuesday entitled “The Libyan crisis and its implications on the broader Arab spring”. The talk was organized by…

ISIS-linked kickboxer gets six-year jail term

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Wife also among four convicted of terrorism charges – A Milan court on Tuesday sentenced Abderrahim Moutaharrik, a Moroccan competitive kickboxer who was jailed in April over accusations he is linked to ISIS, to six years in jail. The court also sentenced Moutaharrik’s wife, Salma Bencharki, to five years in jail and suspended the couple’s custody of their two children. Two other people were also convicted and sentenced to jail terms of six years and of three years, four months. (ANSA)

Tunisian PM bluntly rejects German blame for Berlin truck attack

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Tunisia’s prime minister on Tuesday rejected German claims that his country has been blocking the return of rejected asylum seekers including the key suspect in the Berlin attack, hours ahead of talks with Chancellor Angela Merkel. Merkel plans to press Tunisia’s Prime Minister Youssef Chahed to speed up the return of rejected asylum seekers when he visits Berlin Tuesday. The issue has become more urgent for Germany since the deadly jihadist attack on a Berlin Christmas market last December, blamed on Anis Amri, a Tunisian who should have been sent…

EBRD discussing co-investments with Gulf sovereign funds

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The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development is in talks with Gulf sovereign wealth funds to invest jointly, and hopes to complete a round of fund-raising for such investments by the end of this year, the bank’s president said on Monday. The multilateral bank, owned by 65 countries, aids economies by lending to companies and projects and taking equity stakes in them. In recent years it has expanded its activities beyond eastern Europe and after the Arab uprisings of 2011, began operating in Egypt, Jordan, Morocco and Tunisia. Suma Chakrabarti…

The Boy Who Started the Syrian War Tells His Story

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“If we had known what would happen, we’d never have written that graffiti,” says Mouawiya Syasneh in The Boy Who Started The Syrian War, a recent Al Jazeera documentary that tells his story. Mouawiya was 14 and in the seventh grade when he sprayed anti-government slogans on a school wall in Deraa in February 2011, never thinking his mischievous act of youthful defiance would spark a war that’s left over half a million dead. We saw what was happening in Egypt and Tunisia,” he tells Al Jazeera, referring to the Arab…

GNA Prime Minister to propose mini-government with Haftar as commander of Libya’s army

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The Head of the Presidential Council of the UN-brokered Government of National Accord, Fayez Al-Serraj, is going to propose an initiative for forming a mini-government as part of a transitional phase, aiming at getting Libya out of its current political impasse, reliable sources reported. According to the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity, Al-Serraj will announce his initiative in the few coming days and will propose that the suggested mini-government would have a unified military council headed by the eastern commander of Operation Dignity, Khalifa Haftar, in cooperation with…

Immigration not linked to increased crime levels, finds US study over four decades

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There is no link between immigration and increased levels of crime, a study spanning four decades has concluded. Donald Trump has said his administration will publish a weekly list of criminal offences committed by non-US citizens – despite evidence showing “little support for the notion that more immigrants lead to more crime”. A team of researchers led by the University at Buffalo in New York examined census data and crime reports from 200 US cities in the years between 1970 and 2010. They found “strong and stable evidence” that crime rates are not linked to…