DUBAI: Citizens of seven mainly Muslim countries banned from the US by President Donald Trump can resume boarding US-bound flights, several major airlines said on Saturday, after a Seattle judge blocked the executive order.
Qatar Airways was the first to say it would allow passengers from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen to fly to US cities if they had valid documents.
Air France, Spain’s Iberia and Germany’s Lufthansa all followed suit after the federal judge’s ruling, which the White House said it planned to appeal as soon as possible.
Emirates and Etihad Airways said they will allow barred passengers to board US-bound flights.
US Customs & Border Protection (CBP) has advised them they can board travelers from seven Muslim-majority countries and all refugees who had been banned under the order, the airlines said.
“Acceptance will naturally be subject to checks completed by U.S. authorities as existed prior to the issuance of the Executive Order on Jan. 27,” an Etihad spokesman told Reuters in e-mailed comments.
Emirates and Qatar Airways spokeswomen confirmed the airlines were again accepting all passengers with valid travel documents.
Trump's suspension on the entry of nationals from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen, and all refugees caught airlines off guard, with some carriers forced to re-roster flight crew in order to abide by the order.
Budget airline Norwegian, which operates transatlantic flights including from London and Oslo, said many uncertainties remained about the legal position. “It’s still very unclear,” spokeswoman Charlotte Holmbergh Jacobsson said. “We advise passengers to contact the US Embassy ... We have to follow the US rules.”
In Cairo, aviation sources said Egypt Air and other airlines had told their sales offices of Friday’s ruling and would allow people previously affected by the ban to book flights.
But for some who had changed their travel plans following the ban, the order was not enough reassurance.
In Dubai, Tariq Laham, 32, and his Polish fiancee Natalia had scrapped plans to travel to the US after they get married in July in Poland. Laham said the couple would not reverse their decision.
“It is just too risky,” said Laham, a Syrian who works as a director of commercial operations at a multinational technology company. “Every day you wake up and there is a new decision.”
A Reuters poll earlier this week indicated that the immigration ban has popular support, with 49 percent of Americans agreeing with the order and 41 percent disagreeing. Some 53 percent of Democrats said they “strongly disagree” with Trump’s action while 51 percent of Republicans said they “strongly agree.”
At least one company, the ride-hailing giant Uber, was moving quickly Friday night to take advantage of the ruling.
CEO Travis Kalanick, who quit Trump’s business advisory council this week in the face of a fierce backlash from Uber customers and the company’s many immigrant drivers, said on Twitter:
Meanwhile, 72 Iranian professors in Sharif University of Technology, one of the most reliable universities in Iran, have requested in a letter to the Iranian government to react in a different way to Trump’s “improper action” on the visa ban.
They proposed to President Hassan Rouhani and Foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif to allow US citizens come to Iran without obtaining a tourist visa and related formalities in the country and to issue visas for them at the Iran’s airport with two-weeks validity during the next 90 days.
They said that Americans can see the hospitality and goodwill of Iranians for themselves.
Airlines take barred fliers as Trump travel ban ‘grounded’
Airlines take barred fliers as Trump travel ban ‘grounded’
Thousands of Libyans gather for the funeral of Qaddafi’s son who was shot and killed this week
- As the funeral procession got underway and the crowds swelled, a small group of supporters took Seif Al-Islam’s coffin away and later performed the funeral prayers and buried him
- Authorities said an initial investigation found that he was shot to death but did not provide further details
BANI WALID, Libya: Thousands converged on Friday in northwestern Libya for the funeral of Seif Al-Islam Qaddafi, the son and one-time heir apparent of Libya’s late leader Muammar Qaddafi, who was killed earlier this week when four masked assailants stormed into his home and fatally shot him.
Mourners carried his coffin in the town of Bani Walid, 146 kilometers (91 miles) southeast of the capital, Tripoli, as well as large photographs of both Seif Al-Islam, who was known mostly by his first name, and his father.
The crowd also waved plain green flags, Libya’s official flag from 1977 to 2011 under Qaddafi, who ruled the country for more than 40 years before being toppled in a NATO-backed popular uprising in 2011. Qaddafi was killed later that year in his hometown of Sirte as fighting in Libya escalated into a full-blown civil war.
As the funeral procession got underway and the crowds swelled, a small group of supporters took Seif Al-Islam’s coffin away and later performed the funeral prayers and buried him.
Attackers at his home
Seif Al-Islam, 53, was killed on Tuesday inside his home in the town of Zintan, 136 kilometers (85 miles) southwest of the capital, Tripoli, according to Libyan’s chief prosecutor’s office.
Authorities said an initial investigation found that he was shot to death but did not provide further details. Seif Al-Islam’s political team later released a statement saying “four masked men” had stormed his house and killed him in a “cowardly and treacherous assassination,” after disabling security cameras.
Seif Al-Islam was captured by fighters in Zintan late in 2011 while trying to flee to neighboring Niger. The fighters released him in June 2017, after one of Libya’s rival governments granted him amnesty.
“The pain of loss weighs heavily on my heart, and it intensifies because I can’t bid him farewell from within my homeland — a pain that words can’t ease,” Seif Al-Islam’s brother Mohamed Qaddafi, who lives in exile outside Libya though his current whereabouts are unknown, wrote on Facebook on Friday.
“But my solace lies in the fact that the loyal sons of the nation are fulfilling their duty and will give him a farewell befitting his stature,” the brother wrote.
Since the uprising that toppled Qaddafi, Libya plunged into chaos during which the oil-rich North African country split, with rival administrations now in the east and west, backed by various armed groups and foreign governments.
Qaddafi’s heir-apparent
Seif Al-Islam was Qaddafi’s second-born son and was seen as the reformist face of the Qaddafi regime — someone with diplomatic outreach who had worked to improve Libya’s relations with Western countries up until the 2011 uprising.
The United Nations imposed sanctions on Seif Al-Islam that included a travel ban and an assets freeze for his inflammatory public statements encouraging violence against anti-Qaddafi protesters during the 2011 uprising. The International Criminal Court later charged him with crimes against humanity related to the 2011 uprising.
In July 2021, Seif Al-Islam told the New York Times that he’s considering returning to Libya’s political scene after a decade of absence during which he observed Middle East politics and reportedly reorganized his father’s political supporters.
He condemned the country’s new leaders. “There’s no life here. Go to the gas station — there’s no diesel,″ Seif Al-Islam told the Times.
In November 2021, he announced his candidacy in the country’s presidential election in a controversial move that was met with outcry from anti-Qaddafi political forces in western and eastern Libya.
The country’s High National Elections Committee disqualified him, but the election wasn’t held over disputes between rival administrations and armed groups.
