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LONDON: Ambassador of Russia to the UK Andrei Kelin (left) talks during a pre-recorded interview with British journalist Andrew Marr. Britain said yesterday that it “stands in full support of our Czech allies” after Prague expelled 18 Russian diplomats identified as secret agents of the Russian intelligence service.— AFP Europe on alert over ‘Russia spying’ Moscow says will respond to ‘unprecedented’ Czech expulsions PARIS: Three years after the mass expulsion of expel 18 Russian diplomats identified as secret agents. AFP. Andrei Soldatov, editor of the Russian news site Russian diplomats from the West over the poisoning “We will take retaliatory measures that will force the Agentura.ru, agreed. of Sergei Skripal, Moscow’s representatives in authors of this provocation to understand their full “Russia thinks that the slightest action by the West, Europe are coming under scrutiny again following a responsibility for destroying the basis of normal rela- such as criticism of human rights violations or the raft of new spy scandals. From Austria to Bulgaria, the tions between our countries,” the Russian foreign work of foreign journalists, could spark a revolution.” Germany mourns Czech Republic, the Netherlands, Norway and ministry said in a statement. As Russia battles to maintain its great-power status, it Sweden, Russian diplomats have been expelled from The ministry did not specify which measures has begun tearing up the post-Cold War spy book. its 80,000 COVID several European countries in the past few months would be taken, but called the Czech announcement Two Russian military intelligence agents are accused over Moscow’s increasingly aggressive spying tactics. “absurd”. On Saturday, Czech authorities said they of poisoning former Russian double agent Skripal, The issue has become all the more acute over would expel 18 Russian diplomats identified by local who was found slumped on a bench with his daughter dead at memorial alleged cyberattacks by Russia on the United States, intelligence as secret agents of the Russian SVR and in the English city of Salisbury in March 2018. BERLIN: Germany held a national memorial which Moscow has dismissed as nonsense but GRU security services suspected of involvement in a A year later, a former Chechen rebel commander service yesterday for its nearly 80,000 victims of prompted the EU to issue a strong statement of soli- 2014 explosion. was murdered in broad daylight in a Berlin park in the coronavirus pandemic, putting aside deep darity. Italy was the latest country to send Russian Czech police also said they were seeking two an attack German prosecutors also believe was divisions over COVID restrictions to share the envoys packing earlier this month after a navy captain Russians in connection with the blast that killed two ordered by Russia. The West also accuses Russia of pain of grieving families. Chancellor Angela was caught handing over classified documents to a people, and who carried passports used by suspects poisoning leading opposition figure Alexei Navalny Merkel and President Frank-Walter Steinmeier Russian agent. Italian Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio in the attempted poisoning of former Russian double with a nerve agent. Navalny, who survived after joined an ecumenical service in the morning at summoned Russia’s ambassador to Rome and agent Sergei Skripal in 2018. spending five months in a German hospital, was Berlin’s Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, a expelled two diplomats over what he called a “hostile jailed on his return to Moscow. While the ruthless- memorial against war and destruction. act”. While Russia routinely shrugs off espionage alle- ‘War-time mindset’ ness of the attacks caused shock, analysts say the They will later attend a ceremony at the capi- gations as part of an “anti-Russian campaign” orches- For Mark Galeotti, a professor at University fact that that some of the operations fell short of tal’s Konzerthaus concert hall, where the president trated by the US or Britain, analysts say that covert College London who specializes in Russian affairs, their objectives, and that several Russian agents will make a speech. “Sickness, dying and death Russian activities in Europe have hit a new post-Cold 2014 marked a turning point, with the uprising in have been unmasked, points to a surprising degree cannot be just pushed away in this long year, they War peak. Ukraine that forced out a pro-Moscow government of sloppiness. Skripal and Navalny both survived the have cut deeply into the lives of many people,” and was seen by Russia as a Western plot. “The poisoning attacks but a British woman died after said Georg Baetzing, the chairman of the German Moscow response Russian intelligence community is now operating with picking up a perfume bottle believed to have carried Bishops’ Conference, at the morning service. Russia yesterday said it would retaliate against the a war-time mindset. They think they are in an existen- the poison used against Skripal, and a British police With pandemic curbs still in force restricting Czech government’s “unprecedented” decision to tial struggle for Russia’s place in the world,” he told officer was also seriously injured. —AFP the number of people who can attend, the cere- monies were being broadcast live on public tele- vision. “As president I believe it is very important for us to stop to say goodbye in dignity to those Berbers mark 20 years since who died during the pandemic-including those who did not fall victim to the virus but who also ‘Black Spring’ protests died in loneliness,” said Steinmeier as he announced the national service. ALIGIERS: Twenty years ago, an streets of villages and towns to Besides suffering the pain of losing a loved one, Algerian teenager’s death in police demand the closure of all gendarmerie restrictions in place to curb infections mean that custody in the heartland of the North posts in the region. relatives are often unable to even hold their family African country’s Berber minority An estimated 126 people, many of members’ hands as they lay dying. Others have sparked an uprising that helped blaze them youths shot in clashes with riot been left grieving on their own, as funerals or the trail for future protests. police, died in two months of unrest, memorials are curtailed by pandemic curbs. Massinissa Guermah, a high school and more than 5,000 people were In a dialogue with the president earlier this student, was hit by a hail of bullets on hurt. Almost two decades later, in an year, relatives of coronavirus victims voiced their April 18, 2001, at a gendarmerie post echo of boiling anger against the loneliness. Michaela Mengel broke down in tears in Beni-Douala, near Tizi Ouzou, the authorities, then-president Abdelaziz as she recalled her daughter’s last minutes as she capital of Kabylie. Bouteflika’s bid for a fifth term in died from the coronavirus in hospital. He had been arrested following an office sparked the birth of the Hirak “Last time I saw her alive was on Christmas altercation between youths and gen- pro-democracy protest movement in Eve when I had to leave the hospital. She had In this file photo taken on May 6, 2001, the grandmother (left) of Massinissa darmes, and died from his wounds two February 2019. oxygen piped into her nose, she looked at me with Guermah, a teenager who was shot dead by the police while in their custody on days later. “Nobody could imagine her big eyes,” Mengel told the president at the April 20, demonstrates with family members and friends of the teenager, to mark that a gendarme at his post could kill a ‘Shooting at its children’ time. “Since she could not talk I told her, bye my his 20th birthday, in Beni-Douala, near Tizi Ouzou, the capital of Kabylie. — AFP dear, I love you, mama will be back.” Mengel is to young man in cold blood,” recalled The unprecedented protest move- attend the memorial ceremony yesterday after- Said Sadi, an emblematic figure in the ment-this time nationwide, peaceful noon. Steinmeier stressed that it was important to Berber culture and identity movement. and peaking with hundreds of thou- the Berber movement in 1989. Bouteflika’s fall, protesters view the look beyond the daily victim counts. “Behind The Berbers are descendants of pre- sands on the streets-forced Bouteflika Since then, street demonstrations political system as essentially every number, there’s a human fate,” he said. Arab North African populations, to resign weeks later after he lost the have become citizens’ principal means unchanged and illegitimate. Bouteflika Regional leaders urged citizens to join in the whose homelands stretch from the backing of the army. But the Hirak has of expressing discontent. Social ten- was elected in 1999 on a promise of remembrance including by lighting candles by extreme west of Egypt to Morocco. kept up demonstrations, demanding a sions and problems including access to bringing peace to the country, as a their windows from Friday to Sunday. “We want “The people’s reaction was one of sweeping overhaul of a ruling system housing and drinking water have given 1992-2002 civil war pitted the army to be aware of what we lost, but we also want to anger,” Sadi said. Kabylie had been in place since Algeria’s independence rise to protests that have sometimes against multiple Islamist and jihadist find hope and strength together,” the premiers of preparing to celebrate the 21st from France in 1962. The “Black turned into riots. In 2011, the year of the groups, leaving an estimated 200,000 Germany’s 16 states said in a statement. — AFP anniversary of the April 1980 uprising, Spring” saw “the birth of a new form Arab Spring uprisings in several coun- people dead. When the “Black known as the “Berber Spring”, of protest (in Algeria) that translated tries in the Middle East and North Spring” broke out in 2001, Sadi’s RCD demanding recognition of the commu- into occupying the streets,” noted Africa, Algeria registered more than was a member of the governing coali- nity’s culture and language. Instead, Sadi, former head of the Rally for 10,000 protests, Sadi said. The demon- tion. He recalled telling Bouteflika: the boy’s death sparked the “Black Culture and Democracy (RCD), a sec- strations have largely failed to bridge “we cannot be part of a government Spring” riots, as people took to the ular opposition party formed out of the divide with the state-even after that shoots at its children.” — AFP

“For the moment, the number of dead stands at “What concerns us a lot is this escalation of vio- Nineteen civilians 19 and two people have been wounded in an attack lence and insecurity that is recently taking place in by armed men on motorbikes in the village of the region,” Tillaberi governor Tidjani Ibrahim Gaigorou” in the Tillaberi region on Saturday Katiella said in March, pointing to the increased killed in new evening, said the municipal official from Dessa. An imposition of Islamic taxes by militants, theft of live- unknown number of unidentified assailants, known stock, and violence against civilians. Thirteen peo- locally as bandits, initially attacked people attending ple were killed last month when armed men on west Niger attack a funeral at a cemetery, before going on to the vil- motorbikes raided the villages of Zibane-Koira lage where they “shot at everyone they saw,” the Zeno, Zibane Koira-Tegui and Gadabo. BERLIN: The daughter of a victim stands in Nineteen civilians were killed NIAMEY, Niger: official said. The Tillaberi region is situated on the Attacks against civilians have increased since front of a candle to pay her respects during a when armed men raided a village in west Niger lawless “three-border” zone where the frontiers of the beginning of the year — more than 300 peo- ceremony for Germany’s victims of the coron- close to the border with Mali, a local official Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso converge and has reg- ple died in three series of attacks in the western avirus pandemic at the Konzerthaus concert said yesterday, in the latest bloodshed in the ularly been the target of jihadist groups affiliated to Niger. No one has claimed responsibility for the hall yesterday. —AFP troubled region. the Islamic State group. attacks so far. — AFP