Category World News

The leader of the far-right Britain First group has been charged with an offence under the Terrorism Act, which the BBC reported stemmed from refusing to provide police with the pin code to his phone at the airport.

London’s Metropolitan Police said Paul Golding, 38, was charged “with wilfully failing to comply with a duty” under the so-called Schedule 7 powers in the Terrorism Act, which give police the authority to search travellers at borders and makes it a crime to fail to comply.

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The BBC said he refused to provide the pin codes to access to his phone in October when he was stopped by police at Heathrow Airport on his way back from Russia.

He was charged earlier this month and will appear at Westminster Magistrates Court on February 27, the police said.

While some celebrated the move as a victory against the far right, Tarek Younis, a psychology lecturer at Middlesex University, issued a caution.

“Please think twice before celebrating this news,” he tweeted. “The point was never that the far right are never charged – it was that these laws disproportionately impact Muslims, and never could it be more obvious than it is with Schedule 7 stops at airports.”

Paris, France – Julian Assange’s European legal team has said it intends to seek political asylum in France for the whistleblower, days before his US extradition trial is set to begin in London.

“We will ask to meet with [French President Emmanuel Macron] in the coming days, if not in the coming hours,” Assange’s French lawyer Eric Dupond-Moretti told journalists during a press conference.

“France is the homeland of human rights,” he added.

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Assange spent three years living in France, from 2007 to 2010, and his youngest child still lives in the country with his mother.

The French government previously denied a 2015 asylum request from Assange, after he published an open letter in Le Monde asking then President Francois Hollande for refugee status.

At the time, the government said Assange’s situation did not “present an immediate danger”.

The WikiLeaks founder was arrested in London last April, after being evicted from the Ecuadorian Embassy where he had spent more than seven years holed up to avoid extradition to Sweden over rape allegations.

Assange’s lawyers said they now feared for the 48-year-year-old Australian national’s life, citing health concerns and alleged human rights violations in prison.

“In my whole career as a lawyer, I have never seen such a systematic violation of victim’s rights,” said Baltasar Garzon, the Spanish head of Assange’s European legal team.

Assange is fighting his extradition to the US over 18 criminal charges – 17 of which fall under the country’s Espionage Act.

He is accused of helping former US army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning publish hundreds of classified State Department documents. If extradited, he could face up to 175 years in jail in the US.

Those who support Assange insist the charges have nothing to do with spying and pose a threat to journalists and freedom of the press worldwide.

“[Assange] has made an incredible contribution to journalism, and we must defend him,” Christophe Deloire, the secretary-general of Reporters Without Borders, told Al Jazeera.  

The Paris-based NGO has launched a petition against Assange’s extradition, stating the charges set a “dangerous precedent” to journalists who publish classified information of public interest.

Assange’s lawyers also reiterated claims from a member of his UK defence team that he was offered a pardon from a member of the Trump administration in exchange for publicly denying any Russian involvement in the hacking of Democratic emails during the 2016 elections.

The White House has denied the claim, but Garzon said the team would provide “documentary proof” at the extradition hearing that begins on February 24.

Assange’s father John Shipton, who was also present at Thursday’s press conference, said he continued to fear for his son’s life.

Ukraine’s effort to quarantine more than 70 people evacuated from China over the new virus outbreak has plunged into chaos, as residents opposing the move hurled stones at the evacuees and clashed with police.

Officials deplored Thursday’s violence and the country’s health minister pledged to share evacuees’ quarantine for two weeks in a bid to reassure protesters who fear they could be infected.

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Buses carrying evacuees were finally able to reach the designated place of quarantine after hours of clashes. The masked evacuees, exhausted by the long journey, were peeking through bus windows as they drove slowly under a heavy police escort.

Stones shattered a window in one of the buses but the evacuees appeared unhurt.

Since the early morning, several hundred residents of the village of Novi Sanzhary in Ukraine’s central Poltava region had cut off the road to a sanitarium intended to host the evacuees, fearing they could become infected.

Demonstrators, some of whom appeared drunk, put up road blocks, burned tyres and clashed with riot police who moved to clear access. One protester tried to ram police lines with his car.

Nine police officers and one civilian were hospitalised, the regional police said in a statement.

Ukrainian police said 24 protesters were detained. Interior Minister Arsen Avakov, who personally visited the site to try to calm the crowd, said he was shocked by the aggression.

“What we saw was shameful,” he said in televised remarks. “It was one of the biggest disappointments in my life.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy weighed in, saying the protests showed “not the best side of our character”.

He tried to reassure people that the quarantined evacuees would not pose any danger to residents.

In a statement published on his Facebook page, Zelenskyy said the people evacuated from China were healthy and would live in a closed medical centre run by the National Guard in the village as a precaution.

“In the next two weeks it will probably be the most-guarded facility in the country,” Zelenskyy said.

Ukraine’s health minister, Zoryana Skaletska, said she would join the evacuees in quarantine for two weeks to help assuage villagers’ concerns. She urged residents to show sympathy and support for the evacuees and emphasised that the quarantine facility fully conformed with international standards.

“I was shocked by the panic, rejection, negative feelings and aggression,” she said. “It was even a greater shock for the people who were evacuated from China.”

But municipal legislators in the village vowed to continue opposing the evacuation, saying that the sanitarium’s sewage system was linked to the one in the village and ended up in a nearby wastewater facility.

“We can’t allow putting the health and life of local residents at risk, and demand that top officials take urgent moves to prevent people from China from being put here,” they said in a statement.