Egypt and Sudan to strengthen military cooperation
Landmark ruling by country’s highest court follows appeal by Libyan woman of twins
Mohamed Othman Al-Hussein, Sudan’s military chief of staff, and his Egyptian counterpart, Lt. Gen. Mohammed Farid, signed a military cooperation agreement at a meeting of the Egyptian-Sudanese military committee in Khartoum on Tuesday. An Egyptian military delegation visited Sudan to hold key meetings as part of joint military cooperation. Farid led a high-level military delegation to Khartoum to take part in the seventh meeting of the joint Egyptian-Sudanese military committee, headed by the chiefs of staff of both countries.
He will hold talks as part of military cooperation and strategic partnership between the two countries. Egypt and Sudan have extended their joint relations on security since Lt. Gen. Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan became president of the transitional Sovereignty Council of Sudan following the ouster of former President Omar Bashir.
Last November, Sudanese air force units and Egyptian commando teams conducted a joint Egyptian-Sudanese air drill, Nile Eagles1, the first of its kind. During a visit by Farid to Khartoum in November, Egyptian and Sudanese military leaders agreed to accelerate joint security and military cooperation.
They also agreed to carry out more drills for all armed forces branches, and step up cooperation in training, border security and combating terrorism, as well as technical insurance and military industries.
Last November, Sudanese air force units and Egyptian commando teams conducted a joint air drill, Nile Eagles1.
Migrants and refugees with children should be granted permanent residency in Italy, the country’s highest court has ruled. The Supreme Court of Appeal ruled in favor of a Libyan mother of twins born in the Italian city of Brescia in January 2017, saying children are a factor that heightens the “vulnerability” of refugees and migrants, and this cannot be ignored by the Interior Ministry or judges.
The ministry had refused protection to the woman, only known by her initials A. L. A court in Brescia had ruled that she “did not have specific personal and family problems.”
For this reason, in June 2019 it
gave the green light for the repatriation of the mother and her twins. Her lawyer Massimo Gilardoni filed an appeal.
The Supreme Court of Appeal ruled that the two children are “one of the personal and family issues that the judge should have considered.”
The binding principle outlined by the highest court is that “the presence of underage children in Italy” proves “on the one hand a particular fragility of the single members of the family and of the family as a whole, and on the other a specific profile of integration of the household in the national territory.” The family’s integration is “related to the inclusion of children in social contexts and in schools in Italy and, as a consequence, their natural tendency to absorb the values and concepts on which Italian society is founded,” the ruling added.
“In order to recognize humanitarian protection, the presence of underage children represents one of the elements that must be taken into account in evaluating whether a parent is vulnerable.”
The remains of four Filipino oil workers abducted and killed by Daesh in Libya have been located after a search lasting almost six years.
The discovery of the bodies in a Libyan cemetery will pave the way for their final journey back home to the Philippines, officials said. “We found the gravesite of the four OFWs (overseas Filipino workers) kidnapped and killed by (Daesh) six years ago,” Elmer Cato, Philippine Embassy charge d’affaires and head of mission, told Arab News on Tuesday. Philippine officials had been working with groups in Libya to locate and recover the remains of the four OFWs – Donato Santiago, Gregorio Titan, Roladan Blaza, and Wilson Eligue – after they, along with two co-workers from Austria and the Czech Republic, were abducted by Daesh militants who attacked the Ghani oilfield in southern Libya on March 6, 2015. Santiago was from the city of Mandaluyong in Metro Manila, Titan and Blaza from Laguna, and Eligue from Bataan. The victims were employed by Austrian contractor Value Added Oilfield Services (VAOS).
Reports said that Daesh members had broken into the company compound, killing security guards, before kidnapping the foreign workers.
“On Monday – five days before the sixth year of their disappearance – we broke the news to their families in the Philippines that we had finally found them. They were buried in a cemetery in the eastern city of Derna,” Cato said. Earlier, Cato had revealed that there had been no leads in the case until 2017 when authorities in Derna said that the abducted workers had been executed by retreating Daesh fighters. The news came after a video showing their execution was found on a laptop seized from the slain Daesh fighters in the coastal city of Derna.
However, the victims’ bodies could not be found.