GENEVA: The UN human rights office has updated a list of companies doing business with Israeli settlements, removing 15 companies from the database that were no longer involved, a spokesperson said on Friday.
The long-awaited update comes amid surging violence in the West Bank in the past 15 months including deadly clashes during army raids in volatile cities like Jenin, a spate of fatal attacks by Palestinian gunmen against Israeli settlers, and rampages by settler mobs in Palestinian villages.
However, the UN list was limited in scope due to budget restrictions and the rights office was only able to review the original list of 112 companies, spokesperson Ravina Shamdasani told a press briefing.
There was no immediate comment from Israel. Its Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected the previous version, as did Washington which has long protested the “disproportionate attention” given to Israel by the Geneva-based council.
The database was mandated by the UN Human Rights Council in 2016 but was not released until 2020. Civil society groups say the database is an important tool to ensure transparency around business activities in the West Bank and to prompt companies to rethink their activities in the occupied territories.
Most of the firms named in the database when it was set up were domiciled in Israel but it also included international firms listed in the United States, Britain and France, among others.
Packaged food maker General Mills was the only international firm removed from the list. Among those that remained were online travel sites Booking.com and Expedia and home-rental company Airbnb.
UN pares down list of firms doing business with Israeli settlements
https://arab.news/y2cmh
UN pares down list of firms doing business with Israeli settlements
- The long-awaited update comes amid surging violence in the West Bank in the past 15 months
- Most of the firms named in the database when it was set up were domiciled in Israel
Over 2,200 Daesh detainees transferred to Iraq from Syria: Iraqi official
- Iraq is still recovering from the severe abuses committed by the terrorists
BAGHDAD: Iraq has so far received 2,225 Daesh group detainees, whom the US military began transferring from Syria last month, an Iraqi official told AFP on Saturday.
They are among up to 7,000 Daesh detainees whose transfer from Syria to Iraq the US Central Command (CENTCOM) announced last month, in a move it said was aimed at “ensuring that the terrorists remain in secure detention facilities.”
Previously, they had been held in prisons and camps administered by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in northeast Syria.
The announcement of the transfer plan last month came after US envoy to Syria Tom Barrack declared that the SDF’s role in confronting Daesh had come to an end.
Saad Maan, head of the security information cell attached to the Iraqi prime minister’s office, told AFP on Saturday that “Iraq has received 2,225 terrorists from the Syrian side by land and air, in coordination with the international coalition,” which Washington has led since 2014 to fight Daesh.
He said they are being held in “strict, regular detention centers.”
A Kurdish military source confirmed to AFP the “continued transfer of Daesh detainees from Syria to Iraq under the protection of the international coalition,” using another name for Daesh.
On Saturday, an AFP photographer near the Kurdish-majority city of Qamishli in northeastern Syria saw a US military convoy and 11 buses with tinted windows.
- Iraq calls for repatriation -
Daesh seized swathes of northern and western Iraq starting in 2014, until Iraqi forces, backed by the international coalition, managed to defeat it in 2017.
Iraq is still recovering from the severe abuses committed by the terrorists.
In recent years, Iraqi courts have issued death and life sentences against those convicted of terrorism offenses.
Thousands of Iraqis and foreign nationals convicted of membership in the group are incarcerated in Iraqi prisons.
On Monday, the Iraqi judiciary announced it had begun investigative procedures involving 1,387 detainees it received as part of the US military’s operation.
In a statement to the Iraqi News Agency on Saturday, Maan said “the established principle is to try all those involved in crimes against Iraqis and those belonging to the terrorist Daesh organization before the competent Iraqi courts.”
Among the detainees being transferred to Iraq are Syrians, Iraqis, Europeans and holders of other nationalities, according to Iraqi security sources.
Iraq is calling on the concerned countries to repatriate their citizens and ensure their prosecution.
Maan noted that “the process of handing over the terrorists to their countries will begin once the legal requirements are completed.”
