ANKARA: Turkey may need to draft a bill to allow for troop deployment to Libya and its parliament is working on the issue, Presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kalin said on Tuesday, after Ankara signed a military cooperation agreement with Tripoli last month.
“There might be a need for an authorization in line with the developments over there. The parliament is conducting work on this issue,” Kalin told a news conference in Ankara.
“We will continue to support the internationally recognized Libyan government. This support may be in terms of military training, or other areas, such as political support,” Kalin said.
Speaking in Ankara after a cabinet meeting, Kalin added that Turkey would continue to provide the necessary support to Fayez Al-Serraj’s Tripoli-based government. Turkey has already sent military supplies to the Serraj’s government despite a United Nations arms embargo, according to a report by UN experts seen by Reuters last month.
Ankara says Fayez Al-Serraj’s Government of National Accord (GNA) has not yet asked Turkey to deploy troops to Libya. However, President Tayyip Erdogan said on Sunday that Turkey would increase its military support to Libya if necessary and would evaluate ground, air and marine options.
Last week, Russia said it was very concerned about Turkey’s potential troop deployment in Libya, adding that the military accord between the two countries raised questions. A Turkish delegation traveled to Moscow on Monday to discuss developments in Libya and Syria.
Turkish parliament readying bill to allow sending troops to Libya
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Turkish parliament readying bill to allow sending troops to Libya
Palestinian NGO condemns Israeli act of ‘revenge’ after prisoner abuse video
- A Palestinian NGO has denounced what it called an Israeli act of revenge after a video showed far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir overseeing the abuse of detainees in a military prison
RAMALLAH: A Palestinian NGO has denounced what it called an Israeli act of revenge after a video showed far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir overseeing the abuse of detainees in a military prison.
Just days before the start of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, Ben Gvir held a tour of Ofer Prison in the occupied West Bank, Israel’s Channel 7 reported.
In footage filmed on Friday and broadcast by the channel, around 20 police officers are seen storming a hallway leading to prison cells, brandishing their weapons and firing stun grenades.
They then pull five detainees from their cells, their hands tied behind their backs, forcing them face-down onto the floor.
The operation took place as a bill proposing the death penalty for Palestinian prisoners convicted of terrorism awaited a final vote in the Israeli parliament.
“This is all part of ongoing displays meant to take revenge on Palestinian detainees,” Abdallah al?Zaghari, head of the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club, told AFP on Saturday.
“Everything Ben Gvir and the far?right government are doing affects not only the Palestinian people and prisoners in detention camps — it also impacts the global legal and human rights system,” he added.
Ben Gvir, known for his inflammatory rhetoric, is considered one of the most hard-line members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling coalition.
“It is simply a source of pride — arriving at a prison like this, a prison for terrorists, the vilest of the vile, seeing them like this,” Ben Gvir said in the video.
“I want one more thing: to execute them — the death penalty for terrorists,” he added.
Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas on Saturday said the remarks were “a new war crime and a blatant challenge to international humanitarian law regarding prisoners.”
International rights groups have repeatedly warned of alleged abuse and mistreatment inflicted in Israeli prisons since Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack on Israel.
While the death penalty exists for a small number of crimes in Israel, it has become a de facto abolitionist country, with the Nazi Holocaust perpetrator Adolf Eichmann the last person to be executed in 1962.
