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US Treasury Department says Iran relies on brokers, front companies to finance proxies across region, including Hamas.

The United States Department of the Treasury has announced new sanctions targeting 21 Iranians, foreign nationals, and firms accused of involvement in an illicit financial network for the benefit of the Iranian military.

In a statement on Wednesday, the department said that Iran relies on an array of “foreign-based front companies and brokers” to fund regional armed groups such as the Palestinian group Hamas and the Lebanon-based group Hezbollah.

“Iran generates the equivalent of billions of dollars via commodity sales to fund its destabilizing regional activities and support of multiple regional proxy groups, including Hamas” and Hezbollah, the statement said.

Iran engages in “illicit finance schemes to generate funds to fan conflict and spread terror throughout the region,” said Brian Nelson, Treasury’s undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence.

“The United States remains committed to exposing elements of the Iranian military and its complicit partners abroad to disrupt this critical source of funds,” he added.

The US has issued sanctions targeting Iran-backed groups across the region since Hamas launched a deadly attack on Israel on October 7, sparking fears of a wider conflict that could draw in Washington and Iran’s formidable network of proxies.

 

Those sanctioned, including firms based in the United Arab Emirates, Hong Kong, and Iran, help generate funds for several branches of the Iranian military, including the Ministry of Defence, Armed Forces Logistics, and Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the department said.

The sanctions package includes the Iran-based firm Sepehr Energy and employees, brokers, and buyers connected to it. The Associated Press news agency reported that the company did not respond to a request for comment.

The designations block access to US property and financial assets and generally bar people in the US from dealing with them.

The announcement came on the same day that Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said that he would miss an important meeting on the Israel-Hamas conflict at the United Nations headquarters because US authorities did not deliver visas for him and his delegation on time.

“The Americans issued visas for me and all my companions at 1:00 am [21:30 GMT],” Amir-Abdollahian said after a cabinet meeting, noting that this made it “not possible” for the Iranian delegation to attend.

An Indian government official directed an unsuccessful plot to assassinate a Sikh separatist in New York City, US justice chiefs have claimed.

They allege the Indian government employee, who worked in security and intelligence, recruited another Indian national named as Nikhil Gupta to plan the assassination of a US citizen who had advocated for a Sikh sovereign state in northern India.

It comes after the Canadian government sparked a diplomatic row by claiming India may have been involved in the June killing of Sikh separatist leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar in British Columbia.

On Wednesday, US Department of Justice (DoJ) officials announced charges against Gupta, 52, who they claim worked with the Indian government employee on the alleged plot to kill the US citizen.

The Indian government official is named only as CC-1 but has described himself as a “senior field officer” with responsibilities in “security management” and “intelligence” and also claims to have served in India’s Central Reserve Police Force and been trained in “battle craft” and “weapons,” an indictment against Gupta said.

Prosecutors allege the Indian official recruited Gupta in May 2023 to orchestrate the assassination, and he then reached out to someone he believed was a criminal associate for help hiring a hitman.

However, prosecutors said the associate was actually an undercover agent with the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA).

According to the indictment, released on Wednesday, Gupta agreed to a $100,000 (£79,000) fee for the killing and paid $15,000 (£12,000) upfront via an associate.

The target of the assassination was not named in the court documents, but the Associated Press identified him as Gurpatwant Singh Pannun – a US-based Sikh separatist whom the Indian government considers a terrorist.

The indictment said that, in June, the Indian government employee gave Gupta the home address of Pannun, his phone numbers and details about his daily conduct, including surveillance photographs, which Gupta then passed on to the undercover DEA agent.

It added that Gupta told the undercover agent to carry out the murder as quickly as possible, but also warned the agent not to act during meetings between US and Indian officials.

US Attorney Damian Williams said: “The defendant conspired from India to assassinate, right here in New York City, a US citizen of Indian origin who has publicly advocated for the establishment of a sovereign state for Sikhs, an ethnoreligious minority group in India.”

Gupta, who faces two counts of murder-for-hire and murder-for-hire conspiracy, was arrested by Czech authorities in June and is awaiting extradition.

The news agency Reuters says he could not be reached for comment.

The charges come after an official of President Joe Biden’s administration last week said authorities had thwarted a plot to kill Pannun.

The official also issued a warning to India over concerns the government in New Delhi may have had knowledge of the plot.

On Wednesday, India’s foreign ministry said New Delhi would formally investigate the concerns aired by the US.

“India takes such inputs seriously since they impinge on our national security interests as well,” the ministry said, vowing to “take necessary follow-up action” on the findings.

Read more from Sky News:
US urges India to cooperate with Sikh separatist death probe
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The Indian government has complained about the presence of Sikh separatist groups outside India, including in Canada and the US.

The groups have kept alive the movement for Khalistan – the demand for an independent Sikh state to be carved out of India.

The movement is considered a security threat by India – who have blamed Sikh militants for the 1985 bombing of an Air India Boeing 747 flying from Canada to India when all 329 people on board were killed.

In October, Canada’s prime minister, Justin Trudeau, said there were “credible allegations” that India was involved in the killing of Nijjar.

The Indian government accused Nijjar in 2020 of being a leader of a Sikh independence militant group, reported Reuters, which also said New Delhi claims he was associated with a “terrorist organisation”.

Nijjar, a 45-year-old Canadian citizen, was shot dead outside a Sikh temple in Surrey, British Columbia, on 18 June.

Claims it was involved in Nijjar’s death were dismissed as “absurd” by India, which threatened to revoke the diplomatic immunity of Canadian diplomats following Mr Trudeau’s comments.

Canada responded by withdrawing 41 of its 62 diplomats from India. It also expelled an Indian diplomat from Ottawa over the affair.

Mr Trudeau has responded to the latest allegations against Gupta by saying that the US investigation underscores the need for India to take similar allegations by Canada seriously.

The White House – which has placed a high priority on improving ties with India to counter China – declined to comment directly on the charges against Gupta, but said administration officials acted quickly.

White House National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson said in a statement: “When we were made aware of the fact that the defendant in this case had credibly indicated that he was directed to arrange the murder by an individual who is assessed to be an employee of the Indian government, we took this information very seriously and engaged in direct conversations with the Indian government at the highest levels to express our concern.”

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This is the moment two children were shot by Israeli soldiers during a raid in Jenin in the occupied West Bank. An 8-year-old boy was shot in the head and a teenager in the chest. Israel had declared the area a closed military zone.

Hebron, occupied West Bank – After eight months in Israeli prisons without being charged or processed, 18-year-old Mohammad Salhab Tamimi was finally able to return to his family as part of an ongoing prisoner exchange deal.

His boyish face was serious as he embraced his parents and stood, slightly bewildered, as if he was unsure whether to speak to the press or not.

He had been through a lot in the past eight months of uncertainty, torment that only increased since the start of the Al-Aqsa Flood operation on October 7.

The last thing he was told by the forbidding Israeli prison guards was that he would be rearrested and put back into the limbo of administrative detention if his family and friends showed any signs of celebrating his return.

“’Tell your friends [they said]’… If we have a big celebration, I will return to prison,” he recalled.

Wary of the Israeli military checkpoint and illegal settlement next to their home, his family kept their happiness on mute, with only the immediate family and some uncles present.

Shackled, kicked around, humiliated

Luckily for the family, smiles don’t make any noise, and nobody could stop the smiles on his mother Fatima and father Murshid’s faces as they held tightly to their “little boy”.

Their boy was among the fourth batch of Palestinian prisoners to be released from Ofer prison near Ramallah in the small hours of Tuesday overnight. Up to the last minute, he had not been sure what was happening to him.

At 7am (05:00 GMT) on Monday, November 27, a guard at Rimon Prison demanded that Mohammad get ready to be transferred to Ofer Prison. That was all; nothing about the reason why he was being moved. Just told to strip off completely, put on just a grey prison sweatsuit, and gather all his belongings.

“I put my clothes in one of those plastic envelopes and walked to the cell door where they cuffed my hands and forced my head down so I was looking at the ground.

“The officer then kicked me, hard. His boots have steel in them, so it felt like he crushed my feet, it really hurt.

“He dragged me to the prison yard but, as he was dragging me out of the prison, he stopped to take my clothes from me and threw them into a garbage pail. Then, cursing me with obscene language, he dragged me out,” Mohammad recalled haltingly.

Mohammad was loaded into a prisoner transfer vehicle known as a “bosta” – a van with blacked-out windows and tight cells with metal seats, to which prisoners are chained.

Bosta rides can take 12 hours or more. There are no rest stops, food, or toilet breaks. “I was kept in the vehicle cell without anything to eat or drink until after midnight,” said Mohammad.

His father and uncle were standing there outside Ofer, waiting for him, when he was finally released in the wee hours on Tuesday so they could drive him home to Hebron in the south of the occupied West Bank.

A decision to humiliate

Things were more unpleasant than usual in prison after October 7, which was when Hamas launched a surprise attack from Gaza on southern Israel killing some 1,200 people.

People held in several institutions have reported severe beatings, denial of medical attention, lawyer and family visits, yard time, electricity, water, and hygiene essentials from the prison shop.

At least six Palestinian prisoners died or were killed in Israeli custody since October 7, including some shortly after their arrest.

Israel’s relentless bombing of the Gaza Strip after the Hamas attack lasted 48 days and killed more than 15,000 Palestinians, including more than 6,000 children.

On the 49th day, Friday, a four-day “humanitarian pause” negotiated by Egypt and Qatar began. Both sides said they would release captives – Hamas would release batches of people it took captive on October 7 in return for three times as many Palestinians held – with and without cause – in Israeli detention facilities.

As the exchanges continued and optimism rose, the truce was extended by two days to keep the exchanges going.

Over the same days that it released some 150 Palestinian detainees, Israel arrested 133 people, nearly as many, from the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, according to Palestinian prisoner associations. Since October 7, Israel carried out 3,290 arrests in the same areas, which it has occupied since 1967.

Mohammad is not the first released person to say that there is extreme overcrowding in Israeli prisons.

“There were 10 prisoners shoved into cells that only had six beds. We used to have to spread blankets or something on the floor to sleep,” he said.

The amount of food they were given was insufficient, as it was also for six prisoners, not 10. The cellmates had to ration what food they got carefully.

Several prisoners were injured one day as well, Mohammad said, when prison guards attacked two sections of Rimon Prison

Aside from injuries and the reported deaths, Mohammad said: “The [Israeli] occupation had pretty much decided that they would humiliate the prisoners, ever since the outbreak of Al-Aqsa Storm.”

Cut off from any news of the outside world, the detainees found themselves stripped of almost everything, including all possessions that were in their cells like utensils and appliances, they used to make things a little more pleasant. They were deprived of buying hygiene supplies, including laundry detergent, and barred from using the washing machines to wash their clothes.

Prison authorities also kept the prisoners away from their only outlet to let off some steam – the “fora”, or prison yard, and prevented them from making any noise.

“I used to love making the call to prayer from inside my cell so the whole section could hear, but that too was forbidden.

“It felt like they didn’t want us to even breathe.”

The man running COP28 has denied claims the UAE wanted to use the conference to strike new oil and gas deals.

The opening of COP28 in Dubai tomorrow risked being overshadowed after leaked documents suggested the Emirates planned to use meetings with other countries to promote trade with it national oil and gas companies.

But as pressure mounted on Wednesday, COP28 president Sultan Al Jaber addressed the accusations.

As he answered the second of only two questions from journalists, Mr Al Jaber said: “These allegations are false, not true, incorrect, and not accurate. It’s an attempt to undermine the work of the COP28 president.”

He did not specify the inaccuracies or deny the existence of such documents. But he said he had never seen or used “these talking points that they refer to”.

Mr Al Jaber’s dual role as president of the climate talks and boss of the state oil company ADNOC has long been criticised as a potential conflict of interest, but calls for him to resign from his position at the firm while running COP have gone unheeded.

He suggested neither his country nor he needed “COP or the COP Presidency to go and establish business deals or commercial relationships”.

When it comes to engaging with fossil fuel companies on cleaning up the energy system, he said: “We’re damned if we do and damned if we don’t.”

Read more:
What is COP28, who is going, and what’s at stake?
Who is Sultan al Jaber, and can an oil boss really run a climate conference?

Mr Al Jaber said his team had been “clear, open, clean, honest and transparent on how we’re going to conduct this COP process”.

The claims were first reported by the BBC and Centre for Climate Reporting on Monday.

On Wednesday – a hoax statement sent to the press purportedly from the COP28 team – claimed Mr Al Jaber had agreed to step down as ADNOC CEO.

A COP28 spokesperson said it “has no basis in truth, and must be entirely disregarded as fake news.

“As the COP president said in today’s press conference: ‘It is an attempt to undermine the work of the COP28 presidency’.”