TIRANA, Albania: Albanian military and police ships saved 50 Syrian refugees trapped by bad weather as they tried to reach Italy by boat, police and local media reported Saturday.
A police statement said that, in collaboration with Italy’s financial police, on Friday evening they found the packed inflatable boat at the Vjosa River delta, some 100 kilometers (60 miles) south of the capital, Tirana, where it had been blocked for about three hours due to high waves in the Adriatic Sea. No one was believed to be missing.
Two decades ago, the route was regularly used by local traffickers to take poor Albanians to Italy.
The Balkanweb.com media portal said the 50 Syrian migrants, including women and children, were found after one of them called police to say the boat was stuck due to bad weather and an engine problem. Sixteen migrants, including three children, were hospitalized.
The migrants allegedly had paid up to 2,000 Euros ($2,450) each for the illegal transport toward Italy. Police did not find the traffickers.
Albania, a NATO member since 2009 and hoping to launch EU membership negotiations soon, cooperates with the European border agency Frontex to control its southern borders with neighboring Greece, from where most of the migrants arrive.
Though it has not been a major transit route for migrants through Europe so far, small groups have tried crossing it.
Albania rescues 50 Syrian migrants heading for Italy by boat
https://arab.news/6f6bj
Albania rescues 50 Syrian migrants heading for Italy by boat
- The Balkanweb.com media portal said the 50 Syrian migrants, including women and children, were found after one of them called police
- The migrants allegedly had paid up to 2,000 Euros ($2,450) each for the illegal transport toward Italy
Activist Peter Tatchell arrested over ‘globalize the intifada’ placard
- Arrest in London during Saturday protest an ‘attack on free speech,’ his foundation says
- Intifada ‘does not mean violence and is not antisemitic,’ veteran campaigner claims
LONDON: Prominent activist Peter Tatchell was arrested at a pro-Palestine march in central London, The Independent reported.
According to his foundation, the 74-year-old was arrested for holding a placard that said: “Globalize the intifada: Nonviolent resistance. End Israel’s occupation of Gaza & West Bank.”
The Peter Tatchell Foundation said in a statement that the activist labeled his Saturday arrest as an “attack on free speech.”
It added: “The police claimed the word intifada is unlawful. The word intifada is not a crime in law. The police are engaged in overreach by making it an arrestable offense.
“This is part of a dangerous trend to increasingly restrict and criminalize peaceful protests.”
Tatchell described the word “intifada,” an Arab term, as meaning “uprising, rebellion or resistance against Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.
“It does not mean violence and is not antisemitic. It is against the Israeli regime and its war crimes, not against Jewish people.”
According to his foundation, Tatchell was transported to Sutton police station to be detained following his arrest.
In December last year, London’s Metropolitan Police said that pro-Palestine protesters chanting “globalize the intifada” would face arrest, attributing the new rules to a “changing context” in the wake of the Bondi Beach attack in Australia.
“Officers policing the Palestine Coalition protest have arrested a 74-year-old man on suspicion of a public order offense. He was seen carrying a sign including the words ‘globalize the intifada’,” the Metropolitan Police said on X.
According to a witness, Tatchell had been marching near police officers with the placard for about a mile when the group came across a counterprotest.
He was then stopped and “manhandled by 10 officers,” said Jacky Summerfield, who accompanied Tatchell at the protest.
“I was shoved back behind a cordon of officers and unable to speak to him after that,” she said.
“I couldn’t get any closer to hear anything more than that; it was for Section 5 (of the Public Order Act).
“There had been no issue until that. He was walking near the police officers. Nobody had said or done anything.”
