Pardons issued for jailed Catalan activists

Barcelona: Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has said the Spanish cabinet will approve pardons for nine separatist Catalan politicians and activists imprisoned for their roles in the 2017 push to break away from Spain.

Mr Sanchez made the announcement in Barcelona during a speech set to lay the road map for the future of the north-eastern region.

Twelve separatist leaders were convicted for sedition and other crimes and nine of them were handed lengthy prison terms after they pushed ahead with a banned secession referendum and declared independence a few days later based on its results. Most unionists boycotted the vote, which took place amid police violence to stop it.

No prominent pro-independence supporters attended Mr Sanchez’s speech at the Catalan regional capital’s opera house.

“With this action, we materially get nine people out of prison, but we symbolically add millions and millions of people to coexistence,” Mr Sanchez said in his speech, titled Reunion: a project for the future of all Spain.

Berlin: A Russian man who worked at a German university has been arrested on suspicion of espionage for allegedly passing information to Russian intelligence, German prosecutors said.

The suspect, identified only as Ilnur N, was arrested on Friday, and his home and workplace were searched. Federal prosecutors said he worked as a research assistant for a science and technology professorship at a German university.

The man is accused of meeting at least three times with a member of a Russian intelligence service, which prosecutors did not identify, between October of last year and this month. He is alleged to have handed over information on the university in exchange for an unspecified amount of cash.

Jerusalem: Israel’s new foreign minister will head to the United Arab Emirates next week for the first-ever visit by a top Israeli diplomat to the Gulf country.

Foreign minister Yair Lapid’s visit comes after the two countries normalised relations last year in an agreement brokered by the Trump administration, the first of four similar deals with Arab states that had long shunned Israel over its conflict with the Palestinians.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry said Mr Lapid will visit the UAE on June 29-30, and will inaugurate an Israeli embassy in Abu Dhabi and a consulate in Dubai.

Mr Lapid was the driving force behind a new Israeli government that ended prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s record 12-year rule.