التصنيف: estaql

Venables, who guided England to the Euro 96 semifinals and Barcelona to the 1986 European Cup final, died after a long illness.

Terry Venables, the former manager of England’s national football team, Tottenham Hotspur and Barcelona, has died aged 80 after an illness, his family said.

Venables guided England to the semifinals of the 1996 European Championship on home soil before losing to Germany on penalties.

“We are totally devastated by the loss of a wonderful husband and father who passed away peacefully yesterday after a long illness,” the family said in a statement on Sunday.

In addition to his spell in charge of Tottenham, during which he won the FA Cup in the 1990-91 season, he also took charge of Crystal Palace, Leeds United and Barcelona in a glittering managerial career.

During his time at Barcelona, Venables earned the nickname El Tel, winning La Liga and reaching the European Cup final in 1986. Venables was also responsible for bringing British strikers Gary Lineker and Mark Hughes to the Nou Camp.

“The best, most innovative coach that I had the privilege and pleasure of playing for,” Lineker, who also played under Venables at Spurs and England, wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter.

“He was much more, though, than just a great manager, he was vibrant, he was charming, he was witty, he was a friend.”

Devastated to hear that Terry Venables has died. The best, most innovative coach that I had the privilege and pleasure of playing for. He was much more, though, than just a great manager, he was vibrant, he was charming, he was witty, he was a friend. He’ll be hugely missed.…

— Gary Lineker (@GaryLineker) November 26, 2023

Venables started his professional career as a player with Chelsea in 1960 and played for Tottenham Hotspur, Queens Park Rangers and Crystal Palace before retiring to take over the manager’s role there.

As a player, he made more than 500 league appearances and won the League Cup with Chelsea in 1965 and the FA Cup with Spurs in 1967. He made two international appearances for England.

Venables also had a two-year stint as chief executive of Spurs from 1991-93.

“We are extremely saddened to learn of the passing of Terry Venables, our former player, manager and chief executive, who passed away on Saturday,” Spurs said in a statement.

The club said they would pay tribute to his memory by holding a minute’s applause ahead of their Premier League fixture with Aston Villa on Sunday.

The League Managers Association also paid tribute to him.

“The LMA is deeply saddened to hear of the passing of LMA member and former LMA President Terry Venables,” said LMA chief executive Richard Bevan.

“Our thoughts are very much with Yvette and all of Terry’s family at this time.”

Since February 2019, Mustapha Bendjama, the editor of the daily newspaper Le Provincial, has been held by police forces and interrogated at least 35 times.

In his hometown of Annaba in eastern Algeria, he has been under constant pressure from authorities due to what his allies say are his consistent challenges to government policies.

In February, he was arrested at the newspaper’s headquarters in Annaba in connection with the escape of a noted dissident to France through Annaba and Tunisia, despite a ban on them leaving the country.

Wider context

Bendjama’s case is far from unique. Each day, the National Committee for the Liberation of Detainees (CNLD) – created in 2019 to monitor politically motivated detentions – announces new arrests, trials, releases and judicial procedures.

There are so many that some prisoners end up lost within the system while others are so afraid that they and their families refuse to publicise their cases for fear of reprisals.

According to human rights activist Zaki Hannache, there are currently 228 prisoners of conscience in Algeria, most of whom have been charged with “terrorism”.

At least 1,200 people have been jailed since 2019 in connection with participation in the Hirak, Algeria’s nationwide pro-democracy protest movement, or because of criticism posted online, he said.

Many have been brought in for regular questioning and dozens have been repeatedly imprisoned.

Countrywide, local media also have experienced intense repression, with 17 journalists sent to prison, including the editor of Radio M and Maghreb Emergent, Ihsane El Kadi, who is currently behind bars.

Thwarted justice

After 10 days in custody, during which he said he had been physically mistreated under interrogation, Bendjama was charged in two separate cases.

In one, he was charged at the end of August – along with Algerian researcher Raouf Farrah – with receiving foreign funding to commit acts against public order, as well as sharing classified information, and sentenced to two years in prison.

In November, he was given a six-month sentence in another case for “participating in illegal emigration” for allegedly contributing to the escape of opposition figure Dr Amira Bouraoui, who had been banned from leaving Algeria while waiting for her appeal against numerous convictions.

Both Bendjama and Farrah had their initial sentence reduced, and Farrah was released.

During the first trial, a member of his defence team, Zakaria Benlahrech, pointed out that the “sharing classified information” charge had come very close to the investigation of Bouraoui’s departure, suggesting that the true cause for the official harassment of Bendjama may lie elsewhere.

“There is a woman who left the country illegally,”  Benlahrech told the court, “They told themselves: Who is in Annaba? There is Mustapha Bendjama who does not want to fall into line.”

Currently in detention at the Boussouf prison in Constantine, Bendjama started a hunger strike on October 3.

In an interview with Al Jazeera, Benlahrech confirmed that an appeal had been lodged.

“We hope that the court of appeal will acquit him since he has nothing to do with these charges. He is a young journalist who is independent and very professional. He loves his country and his profession. His place is not in prison,” he said.

In February 2019, hundreds of thousands of Algerians came out for weekly demonstrations nationwide, first to prevent long-term president, the publicly absent and unfit paraplegic octogenarian Abdelaziz Bouteflika, from standing for a fifth term, and later to demand greater transparency among the country’s political elite, many of whom they wanted to be held accountable for past rights abuses.

However, the protest movement, the largest since Algeria’s independence, vanished from the streets following the onset of the coronavirus pandemic two years later, with few of the changes activists hoped for having been achieved.

With streets empty, a government crackdown on past dissent followed. Several organisations that supported the Hirak, such as the Youth Action Rally (RAJ), the Algerian League for the Defense of Human Rights (LADDH) and two opposition parties, the Socialist Workers’ Party (PST) and the Democratic and Social Movement (MDS), were banned by court decisions. Unsurprisingly, activists from these groups were targeted when they refused to step back.

“The repression affected more than 10 PST executives and activists,” Mahmoud Rechidi, the secretary-general of the PST told Al Jazeera. “It reminds us of the single-party era before October 1988,”

Since 2019, at least seven LAADH members have been incarcerated, including Ahmed Manseri, an experienced activist and director of the organisation’s bureau in Tiaret, in the west of the country.

Since the Hirak, Manseri has been summoned and detained by security forces on at least 20 occasions, as well as being charged with “praising terrorism”.

On October 8, 2023, after he had been repeatedly prosecuted, Manseri was apprehended along with his wife, who was later released, while their home was searched by police.

Two days later, his previous sentence of a year in prison was confirmed by the Algiers court.

According to a statement released on the CNLD’s Facebook page, Manseri stated in late October that “his arrest was predictable due to the deterioration of freedoms, freedom of opinion and expression, and human rights” in Algeria.

Along with Manseri, hundreds of other protesters and activists have been placed under judicial control, meaning they have to regularly sign in at the court, and have their activities, movements and daily encounters monitored. In many cases, they are forbidden to leave the country.

For now, at least, it appears as if Algeria’s social movements, including those in the south, have been silenced.

According to the editor of Al Hogra news website, Merzoug Touati, Algeria’s ongoing campaign of repression suggests that, though the Hirak may have receded, the fear of its return persists.

Touati himself has been prosecuted in 10 cases and has served three sentences in prison.

“The Algerian people broke down the wall of fear…The regime has more or less succeeded in rebuilding it,” Touati said.

“However, the spirit of the Hirak remains despite the repression and if [the regime] lets go of the pressure, it could come back.

“An illustration is the fact that Algerians have been even forbidden to demonstrate in support of Gaza because the regime knows the crowds will shout the Hirak’s slogans again.”

NewsFeed

There were concerns that the Gaza truce was at risk of derailing as Hamas accused Israel of not upholding its end of the deal to allow aid deliveries. Eventually, hostages were released, including a nine-year-old girl whose father thought she would’ve been better off dead than in Hamas captivity.

Only one of 14 crew members found from the sunk cargo ship Raptor as Storm Oliver pummels the Mediterranean coast.

A major rescue operation is under way after a cargo ship carrying 14 crew members and a load of salt, sank off the coast of Lesbos island in Greece as high-speed winds tilted the vessel causing it to take on water.

The Comoros-flagged ship Raptor, which was travelling from Dekheila, Egypt to Istanbul, sank 4.5 nautical miles (8.3km) southwest of Lesbos early on Sunday.

According to the Greek coastguard, five cargo ships, three coast guard vessels, air force and navy helicopters as well as a navy frigate have joined the rescue effort to search for the crew members, of whom only one has been rescued.

The crew member was airlifted from the sea by a navy helicopter during gale force winds, according to the coastguard and taken to Lisbon General Hospital for treatment.

The ship first reported a mechanical failure at 7am local time (05:00 GMT), but by 8:20am, the captain had sent out a Mayday distress call and reported that the ship was tilting. The ship disappeared from the radar shortly after. Authorities suspect that the heavy load caused the ship to list and sink once it took on water.

The Athens News Agency (ANA), quoting the operating company of the ship based in Lebanon, said that crew members included Syrian, Indian and Egyptian nationals.

‘Dangerous weather phenomena’

Ships remained docked across several parts of Greece over the weekend, with wind speeds reaching 9-10 on the Beaufort scale, meaning a strong gale to storm force. The Beaufort scale which ranges from 0 to 12 estimates wind strength.

An emergency weather warning by the Hellenic National Meteorological Service (EMY) was upgraded on Saturday from “worsening weather” to “dangerous weather phenomena”, as Storm Oliver (also called Bettina) moved from the Adriatic Sea toward Greece.

The country has been struck by repeated flooding over recent months after being hit by a series of storms.

Central Greece was devastated in September by cataclysmic amounts of rain dumped by Storm Daniel, destroying crops and killing tens of thousands of farm animals across a wide area that is the heart of Greece’s agricultural production.

Russian air defences intercept Ukrainian drones over four regions inside its territory, including Moscow, a day after its attack on Kyiv.

Russian air defences have intercepted Ukrainian drones over several regions inside its territory, including Moscow, just a day after Kyiv reported the “largest drone attack” on Ukraine since Moscow invaded the country in February last year.

“Air defence destroyed four Ukrainian drones over the territory of the Bryansk, Smolensk and Tula regions,” Russia’s Ministry of Defence said in a statement on Sunday. Earlier, Russia said some drones were shot down over the Moscow region.

The Russian army said it had also downed two Ukrainian missiles headed for Russia over the Sea of Azov, between the two countries.

Ukraine, meanwhile, said its air defence had downed eight out of nine drones over the country on Sunday.

On Saturday, Ukraine said Moscow had launched 75 drones into the country, mostly aimed at the capital.

The attack came as Kyiv marked Holodomor, the Soviet-engineered starvation tragedy that killed millions of Ukrainians during the Stalin era.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called the attack an act of “willful terror”, saying “the Russian leadership is proud of the fact that it can kill”.

Ukraine has hit Russian regions and the annexed Crimean Peninsula with drones for months, launching a counteroffensive this summer to push back Russian forces.

Russia annexed Crimea and backed separatists in eastern Ukraine after the pro-Moscow government of President Viktor Yanukovych was overthrown following a popular uprising in 2014.