Middle East & North Africa

12 June 2019; MEMO: Egypt’s Court of Cassation on Monday upheld 25-year prison sentences against 22 members of the Muslim Brotherhood including the group’s Mufti Abdul Rahman Al-Barr, a judicial source said.

The source, who preferred not to be named because he was not authorised to speak to the media, said the court has also supported prison terms ranging from five to 15 years against 290 other defendants.

The verdicts were originally issued by the Cairo Criminal Court in September 2017.

12 June 2019; MEMO: A Israeli court heard yesterday that radioactive material has leaked from the Dimona nuclear reactor several times since it was built, Arab48 reported.

This was revealed during a case against the reactor filed by a former worker who is battling cancer.

According to the Israeli general radio, the reactor recognised the leaks after workers complained; no further details were given.

JERUSALEM (AP) — When Palestinian preschooler Aisha a-Lulu came out of brain surgery in a strange Jerusalem hospital room, she called out for her mother and father. She repeated the cry over and over, but her parents never came.

Instead of a family member, Israeli authorities had approved a stranger to escort Aisha from the blockaded Gaza Strip to the east Jerusalem hospital. As her condition deteriorated, the child was returned to Gaza unconscious. One week later, she was dead.

12 June 2019; MEMO: Activists within the ruling Likud in Israel have filed a petition calling for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Election Commission to organise primary elections for the party, Arab48.com reported on Tuesday. Ori Peretz wrote in the petition that, according to the Likud constitution, once the Knesset was dissolved and a new General Election was decided upon, there must be primary elections for choosing the party’s president and parliamentary candidates.

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe landed in Tehran on Wednesday on a mission to ease tensions between the U.S. and Iran, just hours after Iranian-backed rebels in Yemen launched an attack on an airport in Saudi Arabia, wounding 26 people.

Abe’s trip is the highest-level effort yet to de-escalate the crisis as Tehran appears poised to break the 2015 nuclear deal it struck with world powers, an accord that the Trump administration pulled out of last year. It’s also the first visit of a sitting Japanese premier in the 40 years since the Islamic Revolution.

12 June 2019; MEMO: Visitors can obtain a tourist visa to Saudi Arabia within three minutes after purchasing an online ticket to the Jeddah Season festival, organisers of the 40-day long event have said. This online visa process aims to boost tourism to Saudi Arabia as part of the kingdom’s recent social and economic reforms.

12 June 2019; MEMO: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has reluctantly agreed to attend an October pre-indictment hearing which will decide his fate in three corruption cases.

Facing today’s deadline by which he must inform Israel’s Attorney General, Avichai Mandelblit, whether he will attend the hearing, Netanyahu’s lawyer Amit Hadad announced that “we will come to the hearing, but it would have been right to reconsider the date and delay it”.

12 June 2019; DW: Iranian authorities said on Tuesday that they had released Nizar Zakka, a Lebanese businessman arrested in Tehran in 2015 after being accused of spying for the US. Zakka, who is a permanent US resident based in Washington, arrived in Beirut on Tuesday evening.

12 June 2019; DW: Sudan's Transitional Military Council and The Declaration of Freedom and Change Forces (DFCF) alliance have agreed to resume talks regarding the formation of a transitional government, an Ethiopian envoy said on Tuesday

Special envoy Mahmoud Dirir told reporters in Khartoum that the military also agreed to release political prisoners as a confidence-building measure. 

11 June 2019; MEMO: Israel has forced 30 fundraising accounts associated with the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement to close in the past two years.