4Gulf Times Friday, February 26, 2016 REGION/ARAB WORLD CRACKDOWN ‘DEFENSIVE’ MEASURES REGIONAL TENSIONS CIVIL STRIFE ‘NOT FIGHTING’ Bahrain jails four men on terrorism charges Hamas not seeking war with Israel: top official Israel’s president delays Aussie trip for Putin talks UN chief goes to S Sudan in latest push for peace French advisers ‘helping’ Libyan forces in Benghazi A Bahraini court has sentenced four people to five years in prison for plotting to receive explosives and weapons training to carry out attacks in the Gulf Arab kingdom, the public prosecutor said in a statement yesterday. According to the statement carried by state news agency BNA, several wanted Bahrainis have fled to Iraq and are attempting to lure other nationals to militant training camps. Two of the suspects were convicted of facilitating the travel plans of the other two for the purpose of “carrying out terrorist crimes inside the kingdom of Bahrain”, BNA said. Bahrain has reported a growing number of attacks using home-made explosives in the last two years. A senior leader of the Islamist group Hamas said the Palestinian movement is not seeking a new war with Israel and insisted a network of tunnels it is digging, some of which have reached into Israel in the past, was “defensive”. Speaking to members of the Foreign Press Association in Gaza, Mahmoud al-Zahar, a medical doctor seen as a hardliner, also suggested the prospects of reconciliation with Fatah were slim. “I think nobody here in the region is looking for a war,” said Zahar. “We are not looking for any confrontation with Israel, but if they are going to launch an aggression we have to defend ourselves.” Israeli President Reuven Rivlin said yesterday he was delaying a scheduled visit to Australia next month to instead hold talks in Russia that are likely to focus on Syria. “Due to regional developments which have occurred in the Middle East, and the need for a meeting between the two presidents in Moscow, President Rivlin has been forced to postpone his planned visit to Australia”, Rivlin’s office said. Rivlin was due to visit Australia between March 13-22. A date for a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin has not yet been released. A spokesman for Rivlin could not specify the nature of the meeting with Putin. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon arrived in Juba yesterday to try and revive a shaky peace deal that has so far failed to end South Sudan’s two-year-old civil war. Ban was greeted at Juba’s airport by Foreign Minister Barnaba Marial Benjamin before being driven to see President Salva Kiir whose dispute with rival Riek Machar triggered civil war in December 2013. The August deal, signed under international pressure, leaves Kiir as president and returns Machar to his old job as deputy, but in a sign of the levels of mistrust between the two men Machar remains in exile despite his reappointment earlier this month. French military advisers have been helping co-ordinate Libyan forces fighting Islamic State insurgents in the eastern city of Benghazi. “The French military group in Benghazi are just military advisers who provide consultations to the Libyan National Army, but they are not fighting with our Libyan forces,” special forces commander Wanis Bukhamada told Reuters. There was no immediate French comment. Le Monde reported on Wednesday that French special forces and intelligence commandos were engaged in “a secret war” against Islamic State in Libya. France’s Defence Ministry declined comment on the report. Kuwait celebrates Egypt jails 3 teens for contempt of Islam AFP Cairo A n Egyptian court yesterday sentenced three Coptic Christian teenagers to five years in jail for contempt of Islam after they were seen in a video mocking Muslim prayers. A judge in the central Egyptian province of Minya also sent a fourth defendant, aged 15, to a juvenile detention centre for an indefinite period. Defence lawyer Maher Naguib said the four had not intended to insult Islam in the video, but merely to mock the beheadings carried out by militants of the Islamic State group. The video was filmed on a mobile phone in January 2015 when the three teenagers who were sentenced to five years were aged between 15 and 17. Their teacher who is also seen in the video has already been sentenced to three years in jail. The four teenagers were still free as of yesterday and Naguib said he planned to appeal the judgement. “They have been sentenced for contempt of Islam and inciting sectarian strife,” Naguib told AFP. “The judge didn’t show any mercy. He handed down the maximum punishment.” In the video, one teenager can be seen kneeling on the ground and reciting Muslim prayers while others stand behind him, laughing. Later one of them is seen making a sign with his thumb to indicate the beheading of the one who is kneeling. The Egyptian Commission for Rights and Freedoms, an independent rights group, said ahead of yesterday’s judgement that it watched the video and found that the four teenagers were performing scenes “imitating slaughter carried out by terrorist groups”. The Commission said in a statement that the four were detained for 45 days and subjected to “ill-treatment” before being released pending trial. The group warned that there was a return “of using contempt of religion as accusations against writers and religious minorities”. Another rights group, the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, said that between 2011 and 2013, 42 defendants were tried in similar cases and of them 27 were convicted. Egypt’s constitution outlaws insults against the three monotheist religions recognised by the state - Islam, Christianity and Judaism. Copts, who comprise up to 10% of Egypt’s 90mn population, are the Middle East’s largest religious minority. Kuwaiti paragliders decorated with a Qatari, Kuwaiti and the GCC union flags, fly during celebrations in Kuwait City yesterday marking the Gulf state’s 55th Independence Day and the 25th anniversary of the end of the Gulf war. Troubled economy takes centrestage in Iran elections AFP Tehran T he state of Iran’s postsanctions economy is dominating voter concerns ahead of today’s elections but no matter who wins major obstacles are lying in wait. After more than a decade of seeing their prospects battered by sanctions, Iranians are anxious to feel the results of the nuclear deal with world powers that took effect earlier this year. President Hassan Rouhani who became the key architect of the nuclear agreement after taking office in 2013 - has vowed the next 12 months will be “a year of economic prosperity” for the nation. He is encouraging foreign money to flow in, saying investments will boost jobs for a population with a 10% unemployment rate, but a much higher 25% of joblessness among youth. Rouhani’s moderate and reformist allies are hoping that message will chime with voters as they cast ballots in today’s vote for seats in the 290-seat parliament and 88-member Assembly of Experts, a powerful committee of clerics. But conservatives seeking to retain their dominance of the legislature are blaming the government for failing to tackle the Islamic republic’s economic woes. They are insisting a “resistance economy” - focused on domestic investment and production - is the key to revival. For Iranians like 50-year-old taxi driver Abdollah, the debate is far from academic. “When the economy is stopped, nobody has any money and morale suffers,” said Abdollah, a father-of-two who earns 1.2mn rials ($35) a day. A sixth of his salary pays for fuel and servicing his car, the rest goes to paying the family’s bills. “When I leave home in the morning I have nothing,” Abdollah said. He is hardly alone in worrying. In a public opinion survey for news website Tabnak ahead of the vote, 64% of Iranians said the economy was their main concern. Only 17% said politics was most important, and social problems were the top concern for just 11.5%. But fundamental challenges - from falling oil prices and persistent inflation to ageing infrastructure and high public debt - will complicate any efforts to revive Iran’s economy. The plunge in global oil prices by nearly 70% since mid-2014 had hit Iran, which has the world’s fourth-largest proven reserves, harder than most. Production plummeted under sanctions and while Iran increased exports to 1.5mn barrels per day after the nuclear deal, the Egyptians poke fun at Sisi TV speech Reuters Cairo P resident Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who once enjoyed widespread popular support, yesterday came under withering criticism from Egyptians on social media after delivering a long televised speech on Wednesday. During his address on his vision for the future, Sisi seemed unsure of himself, at times delivering a barrage of random sentences. One Egyptian historian, Khaled Fahmy, compared Sisi to the late, eccentric Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi when he delivered a speech threatening to hunt down opponents in every corner of Libya as rebels challenged his rule. “Sisi’s speech is a historic speech in all ways,” he wrote on his Facebook page, suggesting the Egyptian president is on the defensive. Sisi toppled President Mohamed Mursi of the Muslim Brotherhood in 2013 after mass protests against his rule. Security forces then shot dead hundreds of Mursi supporters and imprisoned thousands of others in a fierce crackdown, before being elected president. Sisi often spoke in an aggressive tone in the speech, wagging his finger while providing few details on how he planned to improve life for Egyptians. “Don’t listen to anyone except me,” said Sisi. “I am speaking in all seriousness. I don’t lie or go around in circles and I don’t have any interest except my country.” Sisi asked Egyptians to donate a pound every morning towards tackling Egypt’s debt problem, and then said he would sell himself if he could to ease the burden. “I swear to God Almighty, if I could be sold I would sell myself,” he said. Shortly after the speech, Ahmed Ghanem, an Egyptian living in the US, took the leader at his words and listed Sisi on online auction site eBay. “For sale: Field Marshal, Philosopher with a military background in good shape,” said the advertisement. Within hours the bids reached $100,000, before it was taken down. Several Egyptians interviewed by Reuters said they could not care less about the speech. “Since he took power he has been talking and nothing has changed,” said shop owner Mohamed Nabil, 32. “People are about to explode again and he (Sisi) feels that his throne is shaky.” level is still barely half of what it was before a US and European embargo was imposed in 2012. Iran’s economy minister Ali Tayebnia has said the country’s debt - made worse because of lower oil sales income and subsidies that Rouhani wants to eliminate - is a key burden. Rouhani has sought to reduce the country’s reliance on crude, raising taxes to boost state revenues and seeking economic reforms including privatisation of state firms. Analysts say Iran needs major international investment - Rouhani has said up to $50bn annually - to fund new technology and update key infrastructure including in its energy sector, factories and transport network. Conservatives are instead focusing on the untapped capacity of Iran’s domestic economy, saying the county’s highly educated citizens could prove the motor of growth. Rouhani inherited many of the economic problems from his predecessor, the hardline conservative Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who despite record high oil prices plunged the economy into the red. Inflation was more than 40% when Rouhani was elected in June 2013 and with prices skyrocketing the rial currency had already lost two thirds of its value against the dollar. In Rouhani’s first full year in office he returned annual growth of three%. He has also reduced inflation to 13%. But his efforts appear to be stagnating and analysts say Rouhani’s growth target or five% will be difficult to achieve. “Economic growth has been negative or around zero during the first six months of the current year,” Moussa Ganinejad, a top economist, wrote in financial daily Donyaye Eqtesad last week, referring to the Persian year that began in March 2015.