Foreign News
Wife of murdered journalist Jamal Khashoggi wins US political asylum
The wife of Jamal Khashoggi, the journalist who was murdered at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, has been granted political asylum in the US.
Khashoggi died in October 2018, and US intelligence has said it believes Saudi Arabia was behind the killing.
Hanan Elatr, Khashoggi’s wife, feared for her safety and came to the US in August 2020 to apply for asylum. The BBC reviewed documents showing she was granted indefinite asylum status on 28 November.
“We did win,” Ms Elatr told the BBC, emotion catching in her throat. “Yes, they took Jamal’s life and they destroyed my life, but we did win.”
It has been more than three years since Ms Elatr first applied for political asylum in the US. She has maintained that her life would be in danger if she returned to Egypt, where she is from, or the United Arab Emirates – her home of more than 25 years.The former Emirates flight attendant came to the US and lived afraid for her safety in Maryland for many months, abandoning her job and life, her attorney Randa Fahmy said in an interview. “It’s been a lengthy process,” she said.
Eventually she was able to obtain a work permit in October 2021 to begin her new life in the US. Ms Elatr now has a job and apartment – though she struggles to make ends meet.
Despite the time it took, Ms Elatr expressed gratitude to President Joe Biden and his administration for “opening the door for me”. She said she is “relieved from feeling scared”.
Ms Elatr finally interviewed with US immigration services in March in a process that her attorney described as “pretty traumatic” for the level of detail and repetition that it required.
They expected to receive a response in 60 to 90 days, but Ms Fahmy believes that the application process was held up by ongoing negotiations between the US, Saudi Arabia and Israel.
The two women enlisted the help of various members of Congress, but called congressman Don Beyer and Senator Tim Kaine their “champions on Capitol Hill”.
Both lawmakers told the BBC that they were happy to help Ms Elatr and were relieved to hear the news. Mr Beyer said it was “the clearest case for political asylum imaginable. After all that she and her family have been through, it is good to see them granted this recognition and the measure of security that will come with it,” Beyer said in a statement. “I will continue to support Mrs Khashoggi as she seeks accountability for her husband’s murder, a terrible injustice which I will not forget.”
Ms Elatr and her attorney said that obtaining political asylum will serve as a springboard “to take our case further to bring justice for Jamal”.
They are seeking compensation from Saudi Arabia for Mr Khashoggi’s death and are working to obtain the journalist’s electronic devices from the Turkish government. They also intend to pursue legal action against Israeli spyware firm NSO Group, which has faced widespread allegations that its Pegasus software has been sold to and used by authoritarian governments across the world.
The BBC has reached out to NSO Group for comment, but it has previously denied wrongdoing.
“We’re determined to get justice for Jamal and peace and justice for Hanan,” Ms Fahmy said
(BBC)
Seven students and a teacher have been killed in Bangladesh after a landslide hit a girls’ school inside a refugee camp
The Islamic study centre in the coastal city of Cox’s Bazar was buried by mud and debris on Wednesday afternoon, sparking frantic search and rescue efforts. It is unclear how many people were inside the school.
The country has been battered by monsoon rains since Sunday, with several deadly landslides reported in Cox’s Bazar.
More than one million Rohingya people live there in what is the world’s largest refugee settlement, having fled a deadly military crackdown in Myanmar.
Rescuers pulled 13 people from the mud that engulfed their school hut, eight of whom died, the Refugee Relief and Repatriation Commissioner Mohammed Mizanur Rahman said.
“Some of them are seven, eight, 11 or 12 years old,” Panna Akhter, a local district officer, told BBC Bangla.
The other five children were taken to hospital for treatment.
Earlier, officials said other landslides had killed at least eight Rohingya refugees, including five children, since Sunday.
Thousands of Rohingya, one of Myanmar’s many ethnic minorities, were killed and more than 700,000 fled to neighbouring Bangladesh during an army crackdown in Myanmar in 2017
The group, which is primarily Muslim, are denied citizenship by the government of Myanmar, a Buddhist-majority country.
Many face poor living conditions in Bangladesh, living in makeshift homes of tarpaulin and bamboo on steep hillsides.
More rain is forecast for the coming days, with authorities issuing warnings for more landslides and floods, and evacuating families in high risk areas.
(BBC)
Pakistan is searching for a Boeing cargo aircraft missing over the Arabian Sea with five crew members on board.
The Karachi-bound 737-400 plane operated by a Pakistani carrier took off from Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates and lost contact with air traffic control about 9:18pm (16:18 GMT) on Tuesday after reporting a navigational system fault, the Pakistan Airports Authority said.
Minutes later, data from Flightradar24, a global flight-tracking service, showed the plane losing nearly 1,525 metres (5,000ft) of altitude in less than a minute before climbing about 1,830 metres (6,000ft) in the next 30 seconds. It then entered a final, near-vertical descent from a height of 11,140 metres (36,550ft).
Its last transmitted position placed it at 335 metres (1,100ft), descending at 22,400 feet per minute, or about 400 kilometres per hour. All contact was lost about 155 nautical miles (287km or 178 miles) west of Karachi.
Security sources told Al Jazeera a Pakistani navy ship, a merchant vessel operated by the Pakistan National Shipping Corporation and two navy aircraft are taking part in the search.
No wreckage or survivors have been found so far.
“We continue to pray, earnestly, for the safety of our colleagues,” K2 Airways, the Karachi-based private cargo airline that operated the flight, said in a statement on Wednesday, adding that it was fully cooperating with authorities on the search.
It was the only plane in the K2 Airways fleet.
If a crash is confirmed, the incident would mark Pakistan’s first major civilian air disaster since May 2020 when a Pakistan International Airlines plane crashed short of the runway in Karachi, killing 97 of the 99 people on board.
The 27-year-old K2 Airways’ 737-400 has flown for six operators.
Delivered to Russia’s Aeroflot as a passenger aircraft in 1999, it later flew for Garuda Indonesia before being converted into a freighter in 2012 for Belgium’s TNT Airways.
Aircraft tracking records show it was withdrawn from service in June 2023 and parked in France for about 10 months.
Irish company AerCap reactivated the aircraft in April 2024 before placing it back into storage, first in Jakarta and later in Karachi, where it remained for nearly six months before entering service with K2 Airways in December 2024.
In a statement, Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif expressed grief over the incident and offered his sympathies to the families of the missing crew members.
(Aljazeera)
The woman suspected of carrying out a parcel bombing in Monaco which injured a sanctioned Ukrainian multi-millionaire and his family has been found dead, Ukraine’s security service (SBU) has said.
A cross-border manhunt had been launched for Anastasiia Berezovska, a Ukrainian woman who officials believed had fled the wealthy city-state after planting the bomb in the entrance hall of an apartment building on 29 June.
The 39-year-old’s body was found with gunshot wounds to the head, according to the SBU.
Two people including a current officer within Ukraine’s Ministry of Defence (MoD) have been detained on suspicion of murder.
Berezovska arrived in Ukraine two days after the attack on 1 July, the SBU said in its statement, citing law enforcement sources.
There, she communicated with her family and two men – a former law enforcement officer and a current officer in the MoD’s main intelligence directorate.
The two men were investigated as possible accomplices in the Monaco attack based on information that they “repeatedly transferred funds” to Berezovska’s “crypto and bank accounts”.
The intelligence officer subsequently confessed to Berezovska’s murder and said he had done so with “another suspect”, the agency said.
It continued: “During the search of the former law enforcement officer’s home, a basement room resembling a torture chamber was found.
“Both suspects were detained on suspicion of committing murder with premeditation by a group of individuals.”
An investigation is ongoing with the “personal assistance” of the head of the intelligence directorate Oleg Ivashchenko.
Monaco’s deputy prosecutor Morgan Raymond said Berezovska had spent days casing out the residence and was “disguised as a man” during the attack last Monday.
Three people were injured, two of them seriously, when a package exploded just as they entered the building shortly after 21:00 local time (19:00 GMT).
Berezovska was believed to have fled in a hire car to Italy and onwards to Germany – where special forces searched an apartment rented by a 39-year-old Ukrainian woman “currently on the run” in the central state of Hesse on Thursday, police said.
The SBU said Ukrainian authorities had shared all available information with officials in Monaco, with who its prosecutor general was in “close co-operation”.
Law enforcement authorities were working to identify “other suspects” in the attack, it added.
Authorities in Monaco have not confirmed the victims’ identities, but local media reported Vadym Yermolaiev, his partner and his 13-year-old son had been targeted.
Yermolaiev, a real estate developer, was named the 39th richest Ukrainian by Forbes magazine in 2020 with a reported fortune of $230m (£173.8m).
He has major interests are in wine and alcohol in Crimea, which Russia illegally annexed in 2014, and has been the subject of sanctions imposed by the government in Kyiv since 2023.
He is a Cypriot citizen, having renounced his Ukrainian citizenship in 2019, and has been living in Monaco.
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