Gibraltar has refused a request by the United States to seize an Iranian oil tanker at the centre of a diplomatic standoff between Tehran and Europe.
British Royal Marines had seized the vessel in Gibraltar in July on suspicion that it was carrying oil to Syria, a close ally of Iran, in violation of European Union sanctions.
That detention ended last week, but on Friday a US court issued a warrant for the seizure of the tanker, on the grounds that it had links to Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), which Washington has designated a "terrorist" organisation.
Gibraltar's government said on Sunday it could not comply with the US request because of European law.
"The Central Authority's inability to seek the Orders requested is a result of the operation of European Union law and the differences in the sanctions regimes applicable to Iran in the EU and the US," the government said in a statement.
"The EU sanctions regime against Iran - which is applicable in Gibraltar - is much narrower than that applicable in the US."
Iran has denied the tanker was ever headed to Syria.
Al Jazeera's Andrew Simmons, reporting from Gibraltar, said the authorities in the overseas British territory had determined that US sanctions on Iran were not applicable in the EU.
"The US action is based on US sanctions, while the action taken by Gibraltar and the UK was enforced under EU sanctions, and as far as that issue goes there is compliance now. There was an assurance [from Iran] that this cargo on board, 2.1 million barrels of light crude oil, is not destined for Syria," he said.
Tehran said on Sunday it was ready to dispatch its naval fleet to escort the tanker - now renamed the Adrian Darya-1 - if required.
"The era of hit and run is over ... if top authorities ask the navy, we are ready to escort out tanker Adrian," Iran's navy commander, Rear Admiral Hossein Khanzadi was quoted as saying by Mehr news agency.
Gulf tensions
On Sunday, video footage and photographs showed the tanker flying the red, green and white flag of Iran and bearing its new name, painted in white, on the hull.
Its previous name, Grace 1, had been painted over. The vessel's anchor was still down.
Hamid Baeidinejad, Iran's ambassador to Britain, said the vessel was expected to leave Gibraltar on Sunday night. Tehran has not disclosed the vessel's intended destination.
Gibraltar's Supreme Court on Thursday ordered the release of the vessel after 43 days in detention.
The decision came after Gibraltar's government said it had received written assurances from Iran that the ship would not be headed for countries "subject to European Union sanctions".
The seizure triggered a sharp deterioration in relations between Iran and the United Kingdom. Tehran subsequently detained the British-flagged tanker in what was seen as a tit-for-tat move.
That tanker, the Stena Impero, is still in custody.
Al Jazeera's Simmons said the British authorities "hope there is a reciprocal action from Iran at some point".
The release of the British tanker would ease tensions in the Gulf, he said, but much depended on the US's next move.
"Will the US seize this ship in international waters? That would be extreme and elevate tensions to a very high extent," he said.
US-Iran frictions have been mounting since Washington reimposed fresh sanctions on Tehran after exiting an international accord curbing its nuclear programme last year.
The pact's remaining signatories - UK, France, Germany, Russia and China - oppose the US move and have pledged to protect Tehran from the sanctions imposed by Washington.
Despite heavy rain, threats from Beijing, and weeks of clashes with the police, hundreds of thousands of protesters marched through the streets of Hong Kong on Sunday for the 11th weekend in a row.
The huge turnout for the demonstrations — which began as an objection to a controversial extradition bill and have since evolved into a broader call for greater political freedoms — suggests that the threat of a military crackdown by the state has not caused the protest movement to lose momentum.
Protesters first gathered in Victoria Park, the starting point for several marches in June. The crowd was reportedly a mix of old and young Hongkongers, and filled with families. The protesters then marched through Hong Kong’s Central district — in defiance of a police ban — clogging up streets and jamming up traffic and public transportation. At certain points the lines of protesters stretched for miles.
Many people could be heard chanting: “Hong Kong people, keep going!”
There were questions about what turnout might look like after an especially tense week for protesters, but the New York Times estimates that Sunday’s protest could be the biggest demonstration in weeks.
Some accused the protesters of having gone too far, and there were questions over whether the incidents at the airport would depress turnout during this weekend’s demonstrations. But Grace, a 26-year-old Hongkonger at the protests on Sunday, told Vox that protesters dismiss the controversy as “drama set up by the airport authorities” and that ultimately clashes at the airport have energized protesters.
“I would say protesters are furious, and [that the airport protests] encouraged more people to be here today,” she told us. She also said the response to the airport controversy and Beijing’s increased shows of military force at the Hong Kong border have pushed many protesters to demand more sweeping reforms: “After the [airport] incident, more protesters are eager to shout out, ‘Revive Hong Kong, revolution of the time!’ which most protestors didn’t agree with before.”
Obstacles for protesters go well beyond the controversy surrounding the airport incidents. Beijing is growing impatient with the protests, calling them “the work of the US” and has stationed several thousand troops in Shenzhen near the mainland’s border with Hong Kong. That paramilitary force conducted very public exercises in the area last week.
Chinese military personnel arrive in Shenzhen.
STR/AFP/Getty Images
For now, that force — and the 6,000 People’s Liberation Army troops routinely stationed in Hong Kong — have not moved against protesters, but in recent weeks, Hong Kong police have been increasingly inclined to use force against demonstrators, and have made over 700 arrests. And protesters and residents’ complaints over police use of tear gas in subway stations and nonlethal force that has nevertheless left demonstrators injured (one woman’s eye was ruptured last Sunday) have only increased tensions between civilians and officers. Protesters have taken to decrying the police at protests, and have also called on their local government to rein in officers they see as being overly quick to employ force.
Protesters have also had violent showdowns with pro-establishment groups, including with bands of mysterious white-clad individuals (demonstrators typically wear black) who many suspect to be associated with the city’s triad criminal gangs.
Sunday’s march was organized by the Civil Human Rights Front, the same group that has organized many of the mass protests since they began. The group says that marches will continue until their demands are met, which include a complete retraction of a bill that wold allow Hongkongers to be extradited to mainland China, universal sufferage to elect Hong Kong’s leaders, and amnesty for all arrested protesters.
As Riley Beggin has explained for Vox, the protesters’ grievances and objectives have morphed over time:
The demonstrations began in early June as a challenge to legislation that would allow extradition to mainland China; critics feared the bill would allow Chinese officials to detain anyone seen as a threat.
Debate on the bill was postponed indefinitely due to the protests, but the demonstrations have continued as a platform for citizens to push back against what they call “police brutality” at the protests, Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam’s dismissal of protesters as rioters and “stubborn children,” and Beijing’s growing influence in the city’s politics.
The question of Beijing’s influence over Hong Kong’s political affairs is a major one. As Rachel Withers has explained for Vox, historically Hong Kong has a unique degree of freedom from Beijing’s government, and Hongkongers are reluctant to give that up.
While Hong Kong is technically under the control of the People’s Republic of China, under the terms of the 1997 handover of power from the UK to China, the city is supposed to be allowed to govern itself until 2047 under a policy known as “one country, two systems.” Essentially, this means that while Hong Kong is under Chinese sovereignty, it is supposed to be free to retain its own political and legal systems. However, Beijing has been pressuring Hong Kong’s leaders to pass laws that bring it more closely in line with the Chinese government, including this recent extradition law, which is sponsored by the pro-Beijing government.
While the protests have expanded in scope, demonstrators have not lost sight of the fact the extradition law that set off the protests has only been shelved rather than completely removed from consideration. Jason, a protester and 30-year-old finance professional, told Vox the protest won’t end before “the complete withdrawal of the bill.”
The protests have now gone on for 11 weeks, and neither Hong Kong’s local government nor party officials in Beijing have shown any willingness to grant protesters any additional concessions.
As tensions rise, a number of US lawmakers have called for bipartisan legislation designed to pressure Hong Kong to align with protesters and to push back against creeping influence from Beijing. Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA) and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) reintroduced the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act earlier this year, a bill that would make it harder for Hong Kong to maintain its special trade status with the US if does not maintain a sufficient degree of autonomy from mainland China.
You Wenze, a spokesman for China’s ceremonial legislature, has condemned criticism from American lawmakers as “a gross violation of the spirit of the rule of law, a blatant double standard and a gross interference in China’s internal affairs.”
The European Union has called for protesters and government authorities to enter talks in order to prevent further escalation.
“It is crucial that restraint be exercised, violence rejected, and urgent steps taken to de-escalate the situation,” the European Union’s High Representative Federica Mogherini said in a statement. “Engagement in a process of broad-based and inclusive dialogue, involving all key stakeholders, is essential.”
Protesters are showing no signs of fatigue. In fact, Grace and Jason both spoke of expansions to the movement that go beyond street demonstrations — “Aside from walking out to the street, we are striking Beijing economically,” Grace said. “It’s a change in battlefield.”
“Chains and shops are already being affected by their perceived or expressed political stance with the current protests. People are boycotting shops because of the ultimate owner’s stance or what they’ve said about the protests,” Jason said. “Even movies are being boycotted,” he added, alluding to the recent #BoycottMulan campaign — a push to boycott Disney’s upcoming Mulan remake due to its star’s support of Hong Kong’s police and her criticism of the city’s protesters — something Grace also spoke of.
As demonstrations expand and weekly marches continue, protesters and their government appear to be at an impasse. Since Beijing is not yet inclined to use military force to quash protests, it’s unclear what kind of event might trigger a sweeping crack down.
Grace believes there could be a day of reckoning on October 1, when China celebrates the 70th anniversary of Communist rule and a massive military parade will take place in Beijing.
“President Xi will not want anything to happen on that day,” she said. “I think the People’s Republic of China will try to end [protests] on October 1, no matter what measures [must] be taken.”
But she said she is unafraid of that happening. “[That would] be the endgame,” she said. “We could foresee that. Protestors are not afraid of that since it will definitely bring US into the game.”
And either way, Grace said the protests will not stop: “For protestors, we will continue to fight even after October 1.”
At least 63 people were killed and nearly 200 others were wounded by a suicide bomber at a wedding hall in Afghanistan on Sunday, officials said.
The attacker set off the explosives among the roughly 1,200 guests at the event at the Dubai City wedding hall in Kabul, Nusrat Rahimi, a spokesperson for the Interior Ministry, told The Associated Press. An affiliate group of the Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack.
"There are so many dead and wounded," survivor Ahmad Omid said. "I was with the groom in the other room when we heard the blast and then I couldn't find anyone. Everyone was lying all around the hall."
The blast, which left 182 people injured, occurred in a western Kabul neighborhood that's home to many of the country's minority Shiite Hazara community, was the deadliest attack in Kabul this year.
At least 63 people were killed at Dubai City wedding hall in Kabul, Afghanistan, by a suicide bomber on Sunday, officials said.
(AP Photo/Rafiq Maqbool)
A local affiliate of ISIS in Afghanistan wrote on an ISIS-linked website on Sunday that a Pakistani-ISIS fighter seeking martyrdom was responsible for the suicide bombing, and claimed a car bomb was also detonated in the attack.
The bombing broke a period of relative calm in Afghanistan's capital city, after 14 people were killed and another 145 were wounded — most of them women, children and other civilians — on Aug. 7 when a Taliban car bomb aimed at Afghan security forces detonated explosives.
Kabul's huge, brightly lit wedding halls are centers of community life in a city weary of decades of war, with thousands of dollars spent on a single evening. Such wedding halls also serve as meeting places and, in November, at least 55 people were killed when a suicide bomber sneaked into a Kabul wedding hall where hundreds of Muslim religious scholars and clerics had gathered to mark the birthday of the Prophet Muhammad.
The Taliban denied involvement in that attack, and IS did not claim responsibility.
The United States faced an against-the-clock legal battle to re-seize an Iranian supertanker caught in a diplomatic standoff before the vessel's shipping agent said Saturday he would go ahead with the ship's planned departure from Gibraltar on Sunday or Monday.
The head of the company sorting paperwork and procuring for the Grace 1 oil tanker in the British overseas territory said the vessel could be sailing away in the next "24 to 48 hours," once new crews dispatched to the territory take over command of the ship.
"The vessel is ongoing some logistical changes and requirements that have delayed the departure," Astralship managing director Richard De la Rosa told The Associated Press.
He said the new crews were Indian and Ukrainian nationals hired by the Indian managers of the ship and that his company had not been informed about the supertanker's next destination.
The tanker, which carries 2.1 million tons of Iranian light crude oil, had been detained for over a month in Gibraltar for allegedly attempting to breach European Union sanctions on Syria. The arrest fueled tension between London and Tehran, which seized a British-flagged tanker in the Strait of Hormuz in apparent retaliation.
Analysts had said the release of the Grace 1 by Gibraltar could see Britain's Stena Impero go free.
But late on Friday, a day after the tanker was released from detention, the U.S. obtained a warrant to seize the vessel over violations of U.S. sanctions, money laundering and terrorism statutes. Washington is seeking to take control of the oil tanker, all of the petroleum aboard and $995,000, unsealed court documents showed.
The latest turn of events come as tensions continue to rise in the Persian Gulf since President Donald Trump last year unilaterally pulled the U.S. out of the 2015 nuclear deal signed by Iran and other world powers. In recent weeks, oil tankers in the region have been the subject of attacks and seizures, dragging among others London and Tehran into a bitter diplomatic row.
The Gibraltar Supreme Court didn't immediately respond to requests for comment on whether the U.S. request had been filed there. Britain's Foreign Office deferred questions to the government of Gibraltar, but calls and emails to its offices on how authorities planned to respond to Washington's move went unanswered.
Messages left with the U.S. Embassy in London were not immediately returned.
The chief minister of Gibraltar, Fabian Picardo, had warned the U.S. that a new legal case would need to be examined by the territory's courts following the end of the tanker's detention this week. Picardo said he had been assured in writing by the Iranian government that the tanker wouldn't unload its cargo in Syria.
Richard Wilkinson, a lawyer representing three crew members of the Grace 1 oil tanker, including its Indian captain, said he was "not aware of any reason why the ship won't sail on Sunday, as it is to be planned."
"As far as Europe is concerned, and it's common ground, there's been no criticism or complaints that this vessel is carrying oil from Iran, the only problem from the European point of view was the destination of the vessel and that has been sorted," Wilkinson said.
He also said that he doubted that the U.S. had any jurisdiction to enforce its own sanctions in Gibraltar, where he saw "little political will" to re-seize the tanker.
The time window for a new seizure was also rapidly closing, as workers were seen by an AP crew hanging on a ladder to repaint the vessel's bow with the name "Adrian Darya 1" over the place where "Grace 1" had already been blackened out.
The ship was reportedly no longer sailing under a Panamanian flag, but no signs of a new one could be seen on Saturday.
The shipping agent, De la Rosa, said that "if the Americans came forth with some kind of request or specific order, it would have to be looked into by the judges, but I don't think that's materialized."
The sea animal that captured hearts across Thailand and the world has died, officials told The Guardian.
The dugong developed an infection after eating plastic in the ocean, according to the report.
The rare marine mammal had become a national sensation in the country after it was rescued as an orphan in waters near the province of Krabi in April. Video of the Dugong — named Marium — playing with rescuers went viral.
The creature, a relative of the manatee, had stopped eating and begun to deteriorate rapidly before dying early Saturday. An autopsy confirmed plastic lodged in Marium’s intestines had played a role in the creature’s death.
Dugongs are considered a “vulnerable” species, according to IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, and primarily live in coastal regions across Southeast Asia.
“Everyone is sad about this loss,” Nantarika Chansue, director of Chulalongkorn University’s aquatic animal medicine unit in Bangkok told The Guardian. “The thing that needs to be resolved, if we’re going to preserve rare marine animals, is to protect the environment for both people and animals.”
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