Putin ‘only winner’ in no deal Brexit: UK minister

Navy rescued bomber in 2014

PARIS, July 31, (Agencies): Russia’s President Vladimir Putin would be the only winner in the event of Britain crashing out of the European Union next March without a withdrawal agreement, Britain’s foreign minister said Tuesday.

Jeremy Hunt said Russian aggression made it crucial to maintain close diplomatic, defence and trade relations between Britain and the EU after the split.

“Frankly, if we end up with no deal, the only person rejoicing will be Vladimir Putin,” he told France Inter radio on a trip to Paris, charging that Russia wants nothing more than to see the West divided.

“We have to recognise that this is a very unstable period in world history and we need to be working together,” Hunt added.

“There’s Crimea, there’s also the fact that we had chemical weapons used on the streets of England — something that we believe was authorised by the Russian government,” he said of the nerve agent attack on a former double agent which left a woman dead.

Hunt is on his first major international trip since his predecessor Boris Johnson resigned over Brexit earlier this month.

He started the tour in China on Monday and was set to head on from Paris to Vienna as British Prime Minister Theresa May despatches ministers to EU countries in a bid to drum up one-on-one support.

Pursuing

Putin

Hunt said a no-deal Brexit was “the last thing we want”, adding that May’s chosen strategy, including pursuing a UK-EU free trade area, was to push for continued close ties.

“We see our destiny, our economic destiny, our diplomatic destiny, our strategic destiny, as being close to Europe,” he said.

European Union countries decided Monday to move the headquarters of the bloc’s anti-piracy Atalanta patrols from London to the Spanish port of Rota on March 29, when Britain exits the EU.

The member countries also agreed to transfer at the same time the London-based Martime Security Centre Horn of Africa, which informs shipping about piracy threats off Somalia, to the French port of Brest, an EU statement said.

The security centre will remain under the Atalanta command.

The EU launched Atalanta in 2008 to fight brazen acts of piracy off the coast of Somalia, including the spectacular hijacking of a Spanish tuna boat in 2009. Although the pirates released the crew after receiving a ransom, two of them were detained days later by European military officers.

The suicide bomber who killed 22 people at a pop concert in Manchester was rescued by the British navy from conflict-ridden Libya three years earlier, it was reported on Tuesday.

Salman Abedi, a British man of Libyan heritage, was among 110 Britons and their families evacuated by the ship HMS Enterprise and taken to Malta in August 2014, the Daily Mail newspaper said.

Blew

In May 2017, the then 22-year-old blew himself up outside Manchester Arena in northwest England at the end of a concert by Ariana Grande. Seven children were among the dead.

“For this man to have committed such an atrocity on UK soil after we rescued him from Libya was an act of utter betrayal,” a government source told the paper.

His brother Hashem Abedi, who is currently being held in Libya under investigation over the Manchester attack, was also reportedly evacuated.

An official review published last December revealed that Salman Abedi was under active investigation by British intelligence agency MI5 between January and July 2014, but it was a case of mistaken identity.

It found however that MI5 had come across intelligence in the months before the attack which, “had its true significance been properly understood”, would have caused a new investigation to be opened. The Mail reported that Abedi had taken a year off before university and was visiting Libya on holiday at the time of the evacuation.

A former British soldier alleged to have fought alongside Kurdish forces battling the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria had terrorism charges against him dropped on Tuesday.

James Matthews, from east London, was due to face trial in November after being charged with receiving training in Iraq and Syria on or before February 15 2016 “for purposes connected to the commission of preparation of terrorism”. The 43-yearold was believed to be the first person to be prosecuted for terrorism in Britain for assisting a group already helped by the British government.

But state prosecutor Tom Little said at a hearing at London’s Old Bailey on Tuesday that there was no longer a realistic prospect of conviction on “evidential grounds”.

Hundreds of foreign fighters from countries including Britain, Canada, France, Germany and the United States have fought alongside the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) in northern Syria.

Britain’s Supreme Court ruled Monday that families of patients who are in a long-term persistent vegetative state do not need to seek a court’s permission to have life support removed, in a case seen as placing the right-to-die decision back in the hands of loved ones and doctors.

The landmark ruling comes in a case involving a man identified as Mr Y, a 52-year-old financial analyst who had suffered severe brain damage after a heart attack. Experts agreed that even if he had regained consciousness, he’d have profound cognitive and physical disabilities.

The case landed in the courts because as a matter of practice, doctors have sought the approval of a court before removing food and water from a patient — even if the family agreed that this was in the ill person’s best interest. Such cases can be costly and take months or years to resolve.