World news in brief
Wives and children of Isis fighters to be repatriated to Spain
Spain has decided to bring back several Spanish wives, widows and children of Isis fighters from detention camps in northeastern Syria, the government said yesterday. Thousands of foreigners including women and children had gone to Syria to live in the Islamic State’s caliphate until 2019, when US-backed Kurdish forces took the last pocket of Syrian territory from the jihadis.
Fleeing women and children were housed in overcrowded detention camps run by Kurdish authorities and international charities, who had pushed for repatriations due to rising violence and dire conditions in the camps. The source said Spain planned to repatriate before the end of the year at least three women who had asked to return to their homeland and 13 children.
The women could face prosecution in Spain, while the children’s situation will be studied on a case-by-case basis depending on their age, the source said. Repatriations have hit a record high in 2022 but more than 10,000 foreign women and children remain in the Al-Hol and Roj camps, Kurdish authorities have said.
New Zealand to consider allowing 16-year-olds to vote
Lawmakers in New Zealand will decide on lowering the national voting age from 18 to 16, said prime minister Jacinda Ardern, hours after the country’s Supreme Court ruled that not allowing those aged 16 and 17 to polling booths amounted to discrimination. Although Ms Ardern said she personally favours reducing the age, to actually convert the ruling into law would require legislation to be passed in the parliament, something that would require the support of a 75 per cent super majority, which proponents feel they do not have at the moment.
“I personally support a decrease in the voting age but it is not a matter simply for me or even the government, any change in electoral law of this nature requires 75 per cent of parliamentarian support,” Ms Ardern said yesterday. “It is our view that this is an issue best placed to parliament for everyone to have their say.”
Her statement came after the Supreme Court ruled that the current voting age of 18 was inconsistent with the country’s Bill of Rights, which gives people a right to be free from age discrimination when they reach the age of 16.
Bangladeshi militants on death row escape from court
Two Islamist militants sentenced to death for killing a Bangladeshi-American blogger and his publisher escaped from the premises of a crowded court in Bangladesh’s capital Dhaka on Sunday. Men on motorcycles attacked police officers escorting the convicts by spraying chemicals on them before snatching away the inmates, police said. Authorities launched a “massive manhunt” on Sunday to capture the convicts and those who helped them escape, home minister Asaduzzaman told reporters.
Five members of the al Qaeda-inspired domestic militant group Ansar Ullah Bangla Team were sentenced to death last year, with one sentenced to life for killing secular blogger Avijit Roy and his publisher Faisal Arefin Dipan. The 42-year-old blogger was hacked to death by machete-wielding assailants in February 2015 while returning home with his wife from a book fair in Dhaka. His wife, blogger Rafida Bonya Ahmed, suffered head injuries and lost a thumb in the attack.
Another eight militants were sentenced to death for hacking the publisher to death at his office in Dhaka’s Shahbagh area in November of the same year. Surveillance footage from Sunday showed three people on a motorbike followed by a rider on another motorbike fleeing from where the inmates were intercepted.
Former South African president ordered back to jail
South Africa’s Supreme Court of Appeal has ruled that the decision to release former president Jacob Zuma on early medical parole was “unlawful” and that he should return to prison to finish his sentence for contempt of court. The former leader was sentenced last year to 15 months imprisonment after ignoring a court order to testify at a government inquiry into widespread corruption during an almost decade-long period as president that ended in 2018 when incumbent Cyril Ramaphosa replaced him.
He was released on medical parole in September 2021 after only serving a fraction of the sentence. But in December, the high
court set aside the parole decision and ordered him to return to jail. Zuma appealed that ruling and the judgment was delivered yesterday after the department of correctional services said in October that his prison sentence has finished. “In other words, Mr Zuma, in law, has not finished serving his sentence. He must return to the Escourt Correctional centre to do so,” the Supreme Court of Appeal judgment read.
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