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Honour killing of YouTube star causes outrage in Iraq - Al Jazeera English
CAIRO -- Italys prime minister held talks in Libya on Saturday with officials from the countrys west-based government focusing on energy and migration, top issues for Italy and the European Union. During the visit, the two countries' oil companies signed a gas deal worth $8 billion the largest single investment in Libyas energy sector in more than two decades.
Libya is the second North African country that Premier Giorgia Meloni, three months in office, visited this week. She is seeking to secure new supplies of natural gas to replace Russian energy amid Moscow's war on Ukraine. She previously visited Algeria, Italys main supplier of natural gas, where she signed several memorandums.
Meloni landed at the Mitiga airport, the only functioning airport in Libyas capital, Tripoli, amid tight security, accompanied by Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani and Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi, her office said. She met with Abdel Hamid Dbeibah, who heads one of Libyas rival administrations, and held talks with Mohamed Younis Menfi, who chairs Libyas ceremonial presidential council.
At a round-table with Dbeibah, Meloni repeated her remarks from Algeria, saying that while Italy wants to increase its profile in the region, it doesnt seek a predatory role but wants to help African nations grow and become richer.
During the visit, Claudio Descalzi, the CEO of Italys state-run energy company, ENI, signed an $8 billion deal with Libyas National Oil Corporation to develop two Libyan offshore gas fields. NOC's chairman Farhat Bengdara also signed.
The agreement involves developing two offshore fields in Block NC-41, north of Libya and ENI said they would start pumping gas in 2026, and estimated to reach 750 million cubic feet per day, the Italian firm said in a statement.
Meloni, who attended the signing ceremony, called the deal significant and historic and said it will help Europe securing energy sources.
Libya is clearly for us a strategic economic partner, Meloni said.
Saturday's deal is likely to deepen the rift between the rival Libyan administrations in the east and west, similar to previous oil and military deals between Tripoli and Ankara. It has already exposed fractions within the Dbeibahs government.
Oil Minister Mohamed Aoun, who did not attend the signing, criticized the deal on a local TV, saying it was illegal" and claiming that NOC did not consult with his ministry.
Bengdara did not address Aouns criticism during his conference but said those who reject the deal could challenge it in court.
ENI has continued to operate in Libya despite ongoing security issues, producing gas mostly for the domestic market. Last year, Libya delivered just 2.63 billion cubic meters to Italy through the Greenstream pipeline well below the annual levels of 8 billion cubic meters before Libya's decline in 2011.
Instability, increased domestic demand and underinvestment has hampered Libyas gas deliveries abroad, according to Matteo Villa of the Milan-based ISPI think tank. New deals are important in terms of image, Villa said.
Also, because of Moscow's war on Ukraine, Italy has moved to reduce dependence on Russian natural gas. Last year, Italy reduced imports by two-thirds, to 11 billion cubic meters.
Meloni is the top European official to visit oil-rich Libya since the country failed to hold presidential and parliamentary elections in December 2021. That prompted Libya's east-based parliament to appoint a rival government after Dbeibah refused to step down.
Libya has for most of the past decade been ruled by rival governments one based in the country's east, and the other in Tripoli, in the west. The country descended into chaos following the 2011 NATO-backed uprising turned civil war that toppled and later killed longtime autocratic ruler Moammar Gadhafi.
Piantedosis presence during the visit signaled that migration is a top concern in Meloni's trip. The interior minister has been spearheading the governments crackdown on charity rescue boats operating off Libya, initially denying access to ports and more recently, assigning ports in northern Italy, requiring days of navigation.
At a joint news conference with Meloni later Saturday, Dbeibah said that Italy would provide five fully equipped boats to Libyas coast guard to help stem the flow of migrants to the European shores.
Alarm Phone, an activist network that helps bring rescuers to distressed migrants at sea, criticized Italys move to provide the patrol boats.
While this is nothing new, it is worrying, the group said in an email to The Associated Press. This will inevitably lead to more people being abducted at sea and forced to return to places they had sought to escape from.
Jalel Harchaoui, a Libya expert and an associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, said that Meloni needs to show some kind of a step-up, compared to her predecessor in terms of migration and energy policy in Libya.
But it will be difficult to improve upon Romes existing western Libya tactics, which have been chugging along, he said.
The North African nation has also become a hub for African and Middle Eastern migrants seeking to travel to Europe, with Italy receiving tens of thousands every year.
Successive Italian governments and the European Union have supported the Libyan coast guard and militias loyal to Tripoli in hopes of curbing such perilous sea crossings.
The United Nations and rights groups, however, say those European policies leave migrants at the mercy of armed groups or confined in squalid detention centers rife with abuse.
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Associated Press writer Colleen Barry in Milan, Italy, contributed to this report.
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This story has been corrected to show that Libya is the second North African country that Meloni visited in January, not third; she did not travel to Tunisia.
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Italy, Libya sign $8B gas deal as PM Meloni visits Tripoli
Over the last two decades, the Rev. Al Sharpton has become the leading eulogist for Black victims of police violence.
On Wednesday, he is speaking at the funeral of Tyre Nichols, who died three days after a Jan. 7 traffic stop that turned into a brutal assault by five officers who have been charged with second-degree murder.
It is a familiar position for Mr. Sharpton. He has delivered remarks at the funerals of George Floyd, whose 2020 death in Minneapolis sparked national protests; Daunte Wright, who was shot by a police officer during a traffic stop outside Minneapolis in 2021; Eric Garner, whose dying words on a New York City street, I cant breathe, became a national rallying cry; Alton Sterling, who was shot by the police in Baton Rouge, La., in 2016; and much older cases, including the 1997 death of William J. Whitfield, an unarmed man shot on Christmas Day in Brooklyn.
Mr. Sharpton is eulogizing Mr. Nichols at the Mississippi Boulevard Christian Church in Memphis, a few miles from the Mason Temple, where, 55 years ago, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his searingMountaintop speechin support of striking Black sanitation workers the day before he was assassinated.
It was at the Mason Temple on Tuesday night thatMr. Sharpton, surrounded by clergy leaders, relatives and supporters crowding the pulpit, spoke about thecontinued struggle against police violence. With images of Mr. Nicholss brutalized body behind him, framed with the words I Am a Man a slogan the striking workers used more than a half-century ago Mr. Sharpton invoked Dr. Kings, speech, in which he said he had been to the mountaintop and seen the promised land.
We wanted to bring this family, the night before the funeral, the night before Dr. King was killed, where he spoke and theyre standing on that ground because we will continue, in Tyres name, to head up to Martins mountaintop, Mr. Sharpton said.
Mr. Sharpton alsodirectly addressed the officers who assaulted Mr. Nichols.
When you can beat a man, chase him down and beat him some more, and then let him lay there wounded for over 20 minutes, and think nothing would happen, you thought that no one would respond, you thought no one would care, Mr. Sharpton said on Tuesday. Well, tomorrow, the vice president of the United States is coming to his funeral. And people are coming from all over the world. And were coming because were all Tyre now. Were all going to stand up with this family. They will never, ever recover from the loss.
Criminal justice reform has long been at the center of Mr. Sharptons activism, including protests in the wake of the brutal attack on Abner Louima, a Haitian immigrant who was tortured inside a Brooklyn precinct station in 1997. Mr. Sharptons National Action Network, founded in 1991, has pushed against racial profiling, stop-and-frisk policing and other law enforcement approaches that are often decried as racist.
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Al Sharpton Again Stands at the Pulpit After a Death Involving the ...
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Rev. Al Sharpton gave the eulogy at the funeral for Tyre Nichols. Sharpton thanked the families of others killed at the hands of police brutality for being there. Nichols died following a brutal police assault in Memphis on Jan. 7.Feb. 1, 2023
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Watch full Rev. Al Sharpton eulogy at Tyre Nichols funeral
In his eulogy for Tyre Nichols on Wednesday, the Rev. Al Sharpton singled out the five Black Memphis police officers indicted for their roles in Nichols's death.
Noting that the alleged crimes took place not far from the Lorraine Motel, where Martin Luther King Jr. was murdered on April 4, 1968, while waging a protest campaign to try to ensure the safety of Black workers in the city, Sharpton drew a line connecting the legacy of the slain civil rights hero to the killing of Nichols.
The reason why, Mr. and Mrs. Wells [Nicholss stepfather and mother], what happened to Tyre is so personal to me is that five Black men that wouldnt have had a job in the police department, would not ever be thought of to be in an elite squad in the city that Dr. King lost his life, not far away from that balcony, you beat a brother to death, Sharpton said in his address.
The Rev. Al Sharpton delivers the eulogy at the funeral service for Tyre Nichols in Memphis on Wednesday. (Andrew Nelles/The Tennessean via AP)
"There's nothing more insulting and offensive to those of us that fight to open doors that you walk through those doors and act like the folks we had to fight for to get you through them doors," Sharpton added. "You didnt get on the police department by yourself. The police chief didnt get there by herself. People had to march and go to jail, and some lost their lives to open the doors for you, and how dare you act like that sacrifice was for nothing!
Sharptons remarks come amid a debate about whether Nicholss killing should be seen as another example of racism against Black Americans given that Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley, Justin Smith, Emmitt Martin III and Desmond Mills Jr., the officers indicted for second-degree murder, aggravated assault and two charges of aggravated kidnapping, are all also Black.
On Tuesday, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., noted that the city is Democrat-controlled and the five officers that have been arrested and charged are Black. And I think that this isnt an issue of racism or anything like that.
Sharpton's speech, by contrast, singled out the behavior of the officers and framed it in the larger context of racial relations in the U.S.
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The funeral of Tyre Nichols at Mississippi Boulevard Christian Church in Memphis. (Andrew Nelles/The Tennessean via AP)
The tape speaks for itself. They never asked this man for his license. Never asked for the car registration. Snatched him out of the car and began beating him, Sharpton said. Nobody mentioned nothing about no girlfriend. Nobody mentioned nothing about they started beating an unarmed man.
In the city that they slayed the dreamer, he continued, what has happened to the dream? In the city where the dreamer lay down and shed his blood, you have the unmitigated gall to beat your brother, chase him down and beat him some more, call for backup and they take 20 minutes, and you watch him and you are too busy talking among each other, no empathy, no concern.
As with the protests that followed the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis in 2020, many Americans have demanded that Nicholss death push the country to embark on systemic changes in law enforcement. Sharpton clearly shares that wish, but he took pains to highlight the behavior of the officers who have been charged.
We understand that there are concerns about public safety. We understand that there are needs to deal with crime, but you dont fight crime by becoming criminals yourself. You dont stand up to thugs in the street [by] becoming thugs yourself. You dont fight gangs by becoming five armed men against an unarmed man. That aint the police, thats punks.
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Sharpton's message to 5 Black officers accused of killing Tyre Nichols ...