NEWS OF THE DAY

From Around the World

1 Militant arrested: Indonesian police have arrested a man believed to be the military leader of the al Qaedalinked Jemaah Islamiyah network who has eluded capture since 2003, authorities said Saturday. Aris Sumarsono, known as Zulkarnaen, was arrested by counterterrorism police in a raid at a house in East Lampung district on Sumatra island, police said. Zulkarnaen is suspected of being involved in the making of bombs used in a series of attacks, including the 2002 Bali bombings that killed 202 people and a 2003 hotel attack in Jakarta that killed 12. Police said they were tipped off to Zulkarnaen’s location after interrogating suspected militants arrested last month.

2 Peace pact broken: Armenia and Azerbaijan on Saturday accused each other of breaching a peace deal that ended six weeks of fierce fighting over the NagornoKarabakh region. The new clashes mark the first significant breach of the peace deal brokered by Russia on Nov. 10 that saw Azerbaijan reclaim control over broad swathes of NagornoKarabakh and surrounding lands which were held by Armenian forces for more than a quartercentury. Armenian defense officials said the Azerbaijani military mounted an attack in NagornoKarabakh. Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev reacted on Saturday by blaming Armenia for the new clashes.

3 Officers sentenced: An Egyptian court on Saturday sentenced nine police officers to three years in prison after their conviction for beating to death a street vendor. The Cairo court also acquitted a police officer in a case from November 2016 when Magdy Maken, 53, was arrested after an altercation with an officer. Hours later, his lifeless body was brought to a hospital with “torture marks,” his lawyer Ali alHalawani said at the time. The death of Coptic Christian Maken triggered public outrage over police abuse at the time. In a separate case of abuse, Italian prosecutors on Thursday put four highranking members of Egypt’s security forces under investigation over the 2016 kidnapping, torture and killing of Giulio Regeni, an Italian doctoral research student in Cairo.

4 Activist charged: Jimmy Lai, the Hong Kong media tycoon and advocate for democracy, was denied bail Saturday after being charged the previous day under the semiautonomous Chinese territory’s new national security law. Lai faces a charge of collusion with foreigners to endanger national security, apparently for tweets he made and interviews or commentaries he did with foreign media. Beijing imposed the national security law on Hong Kong this year after stormy protests in 2019 that started over an extradition bill and expanded to include demands for greater democracy in the former British colony. The new law outlaws secession, subversion, terrorism and collusion with foreign forces to intervene in Hong Kong’s affairs. It has constricted free speech in the city, and democracy activists see it as a way to suppress dissent.

5 Protest arrests: Paris police took nearly 150 people into custody at what quickly became a tense protest Saturday against proposed security laws. Police targeted protesters they suspected might coalesce into violent groups like those who vandalized stores and attacked officers at previous demonstrations. Long lines of riot officers and police vehicles escorted Saturday’s march, seeking to prevent the flareup of violence that marked many previous rallies. Marchers protested a proposed security law that has sparked successive weekends of demonstrations and against a draft law aimed at combating Islamist radicalism. The security bill’s most contested measure could make it more difficult to film police officers. The provision caused such an uproar that the government has decided to rewrite it.