Headline News 21/10/2020

Headlines:

• Turkey Begins Dismantling Syria Positions

• US to Remove Sudan from State Sponsor of Terror List

• Journalist's Fiancée Sues Saudi Crown Prince

Details:

Turkey Begins Dismantling Syria Positions

The Turkish military has begun withdrawing from the Morek observation post in Idlib, Syria. They set up the post in 2018 and have reinforced it, ruling out ever abandoning it. Officials now say it has no military value and that they are dismantling the base. This was one of 12 posts which were meant to support Syrian rebels in Idlib. Some Turkish officials are reporting that four observation posts and two military sites in Idlib will be going. The sites are said to be inconvenient to defend, and of little use to the rebels. The Turkish military has denied the withdrawal from the positions, but other officials are confirming it. Now that the Syrian uprising been thwarted and the different groups have been either defeated or integrated into the Western led talks the architecture used to achieve this is no longer useful as its purpose has been achieved. Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Jordan were all part of this strategy to divert and thwart the uprising, which is all the clearer now.

US to Remove Sudan from State Sponsor of Terror List

US President Donald Trump announced on Twitter that the US will remove Sudan from its list of state sponsors of terror after Khartoum pays out $335 million to US terror victims and families.

Sudan’s Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok thanked President Trump on Twitter. “Thank you so much, President Trump! We very much look forward to your official notification to Congress rescinding the designation of Sudan as a state-sponsor of terrorism, which has cost Sudan too much,” he wrote. The removal of Sudan from the terror list is believed to be a prelude to the African country normalizing relations with ‘Israel’, following the UAE and Bahrain. Two unnamed US officials told The New York Times that Sudan could normalize with the Jewish entity within days after the details of Sudan’s removal from the terror list are worked out. Congress needs to approve the removal after being formally notified by the president. The $335 million is expected to be paid out to families of victims of the 1998 al-Qaeda attacks on US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. The US responded to the embassy bombing by launching cruise missiles at a pharmaceutical manufacturing plant in Khartoum. The US claimed at the time that the Al Shifa medicine factory was being used to make nerve gas for al-Qaeda, but no evidence ever corroborated the claim. The factory was destroyed in the strike. Since Al Shifa produced half of the country’s pharmaceuticals, its destruction caused a devastating impact on Sudan’s civilian population.

Journalist's Fiancée Sues Saudi Crown Prince

The fiancée of slain Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi has filed a lawsuit against Saudi Arabia's crown prince, accusing him of ordering the killing. Hatice Cengiz and the rights group Khashoggi formed before his death are pursuing Mohammed bin Salman and more than 20 others for unspecified damages. Khashoggi was killed by a team of Saudi agents during a visit to the kingdom's consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, in 2018. The crown prince has denied ordering the killing. Khashoggi was a prominent critic of the Saudi government and had been living in self-imposed exile in the US, frequently writing for the Washington Post. The whole affair exposed both the US and Saudi. Saudi’s brutal assassination and constant changing of story and Donald Trump openly proclaiming the US needs Saudi defence sales shows these nations have no values and human life is just a means to an end.