Video shows Saudi father torturing toddler goes viral
Father took videos to pressure the mother of the boy to come back and reverse a divorce
Caution: video is a little disturbing to watch
Published: September 06, 2020 21:22
Khitam Al Amir, Senior Staff Writer
Gulf News
Dubai: Saudi authorities opened an investigation into a video, which went viral on social media, showing a two-year boy being beaten up and tortured by his father, local media reported on Sunday.
The video has triggered a nationwide outrage amid calls for legal authorities and the Child Protection Unit to take legal action against the abusive father.
The boy’s Egyptian mother, who got divorced from her Saudi husband, has appealed to authorities to save her son from the violence and physical abuse he was subjected to by his father.
In an interview with local media, the mother said that the father has been beating and torturing her son for more than a year since she got divorced from him “It is an act of revenge, because I succeeded in getting divorced from him."
The Domestic Violence Centre received complaints about the incident. The Family Protection Unit has immediately taken the action and managed to reach to the toddler.
The father was referred to competent authorities to take legal action against him in line with the child protection law stipulating negligent and abusive parents should be held accountable for their acts.
The mother told media “My ex-husband used to send me images and videos showing my son being tortured and beaten up via "WhatsApp" in order to piss me off and to force me to return to him.”
The Family Protection Unit is urging community members to report any case of child abuse by calling the domestic violence Centre on 1919.
Three sentenced to death in Saudi Arabia over terrorism charges
Six others sentenced to different jail terms for being members of a terrorist cell
Published: September 06, 2020 21:00
Khitam Al Amir, Senior Staff Writer
Gulf News
The four casualties had helped carry out the attack at the police station in Zulfi,
a small city around 250 km northwest of the capital Riyadh.
Dubai: Saudi Arabia’s Criminal Court handed out a death penalty to three members of a terrorist cell for their involvement in several terror attacks across the Kingdom, local media reported on Sunday.
The Riyadh Criminal Court issued the preliminary ruling against the members of the terrorist group, known as “Al Harazat Jeddah”. Evidence used in court stated that the three terrorists were planning to assassinate security men and to attack security checkpoints in Jeddah.
The court also sentenced six other members to different jail terms for financing terrorism and for possession of explosives.
The ruling states that the group members had supported the terrorist organisation Daesh and were planning to assassinate members of the Kingdom’s security forces and attack security centres in the Red Sea city of Jeddah.
Court linked the terrorists to the group that targeted worshippers in the Prophet's Mosque on July 5, 2016 in Madina, by providing the suicide bomber with an explosive belt.
They handed over the explosive belt to the suicide bomber who blew himself up when he was intercepted by security officers and prevented him from entering the Prophet's Mosque, resulting in his death and the killing of four security officers and injuring five others.
They were also linked to the terrorist attack that took place in the parking of the Dr. Soliman Fakeeh Hospital in Jeddah on July 4, 2016. By which they provided an explosive belt to the suicide bomber who blew himself up.
It is also found that the convicted terrorists killed one of the cell members because they suspected that he intends to turn himself to security and to confess on other cell members and operations.
According to investigations, they killed him by shooting a bullet into his head with a silencer then threw his body into a hole in a rented house.
Earlier, the Ministry of Interior confirmed that the terrorist cell members were linked to terrorist activities, and that they had rented a rest house and a house in a neighbourhood in Jeddah, as a shelter for the cell members and as a factory for making explosive belts and explosives before moving to other locations in Al Harazat neighbourhood.
500 Ethiopian Christians slaughtered in door-to-door attacks since June
By Anugrah Kumar, Christian Post Contributor
Christian migrants from Eritrea and Ethiopia pray and read the bible before Sunday mass at the makeshift church
in "The New Jungle" near Calais, France, August 2, 2015. | (Photo: Reuters/Pascal Rossignol)
At least 500 Christians have been killed in an ongoing spate of coordinated door-to-door attacks and thousands of traumatized survivors have fled for their lives over the last two months in southern Ethiopia’s Oromia regional state, including its capital Addis Ababa, according to reports.
Members of Qeerroo (which means “bachelors”), a youth movement of men from the ethnic Oromo group who have traditionally been Muslim, have allegedly gone on a killing spree in some parts of the Oromia regional state, extending south, southeast and east of Addis Ababa, since the assassination of a popular Oromo singer, Hachallu Hundessa, on June 29, according to Barnabas Fund, an international Christian aid agency.
“Some of the Qeerroo militants held lists of Christians and were helped by local authorities, often run by Muslims in the Oromia region, to find individuals, particularly those actively involved in supporting the Church,” the agency reported, after receiving reports from its regional contacts.
“The Qeerroo extremists arrived in cars and, armed with guns, machetes, swords and spears, sought out and slaughtered Christians. Children were forced to witness their parents being brutally murdered with machetes,” it added.
An Oromo Christian was beheaded after he refused to tear off the thread around his neck, which is worn by many Ethiopian Christians as a sign of their baptism. The attackers told his wife that only those who prostrate before Allah for prayer are considered part of the Oromo community.
While local Muslims in the Bale Agarfa area saved some Christians risking their lives, police in some incidents stood by and watched as the Christians were murdered.
Christians’ businesses and houses were burned down, vandalized or destroyed.
In the town of Dera, a witness said the attackers desecrated corpses by “dancing and singing, carrying the chopped or hacked body parts of those they slaughtered.”
In Gedeb Asasa, a witness said the hacked bodies of an elderly Christian couple, who were beaten to death in their home, were dragged through the streets.
“Many still live in fear. Christian leaders from all denominations visited the areas. I watched news where priests and pastors physically wept in tears while listened to horrors from the victims’ families,” a regional contact told Barnabas Fund.
The agency said while the Ethiopian government suspended the internet in the region for several weeks in an attempt to reduce incitement to violence through social media channels, security forces had been slow to intervene to halt the atrocity.
Oromo is the country’s largest ethnic group but remains marginalized. While Oromos have been fighting for self-rule, opposition groups are banned and critics are jailed. The singer, Hundessa, was an activist and known for his songs of resistance. He sang songs about romance and political freedom.
Attorney General Adanech Abebe claimed in July that two men had confessed to killing the singer, saying an armed splinter wing of the Oromo Liberation Front, an opposition group, was behind the singer’s killing to incite ethnic tension and overthrow the government, according to The New York Times.
Ethiopia is primarily a Christian country, with the Ethiopian Orthodox Church being heavily intertwined with Ethiopian identity, U.S.-based persecution watchdog International Christian Concern said earlier.
“Those who move away from this are often seen as pariahs or not a part of the Church at all. Also, in some parts of Ethiopia, there are primarily Muslim areas where Christianity is seen as a false religion. In these areas, both Orthodox and Protestant Christians are targeted for their faith,” ICC added.
Last year, Mekane Yesus Evangelical Church in the town of Robe in Bale zone, southeast of the capital Addis Ababa, was ordered by the Oromia Regional State Authorities to leave its premises within 30 days. The eviction letter, signed by the mayor, Birhanu Dadi Tafesse, said the church’s neighbors had complained of noise.
2 Catholic nuns, 60 others remain missing for weeks in Mozambique
By Anugrah Kumar, Christian Post Contributor
Women carry water home in Mozambique. | (Photo: World Vision)
Two Catholic nuns and 60 others who were under their care remain missing since Islamic State group-linked militants seized control of a port city in Mozambique in early August, and the authorities have no answers.
Sister Inés Ramos, who is in her 70s, and Sister Eliane da Costa of the congregation of St. Joseph of Chambéry were in their convent on the port of Mocímboa da Praia in the gas-rich northern province of Cabo Delgado at the time of the attack but no one knows what happened to them, according to Aid to the Church in Need.
“We are hoping that they are still alive but have no means of communication. We have not had any official notification,” Fr. Kwiriwi Fonseca of the Diocese of Pemba in northern Mozambique said, noting that no travel is allowed to the area.
“If the sisters have returned to the convent, we have no way of knowing it, because there is no place there where they can buy a new mobile phone. Without any news of these people we have no idea whether they have disappeared, died or been abducted. We don’t know anything.”
After a series of attacks between Aug. 5 and 11, the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or IS, declared it had seized two military bases near the port town, which has remained cut off from the rest of the country since then.
There were about 60 people, mostly elderly people and a few children, in the convent in the care of the two sisters at the time of the attack, and authorities say they do not know what happened to them.
Aleteia reported that a member of the community informed the diocese of Pemba on the phone that the sisters’ convent was attacked.
“Their silence since then makes us think that they must have lost their phones and are perhaps hiding out somewhere. Hence we have to assume that Sister Inés and Sister Eliane … ‘whereabouts unknown’ and [are] therefore among the “disappeared.” We have no information, so we can’t make it up,” Fonseca said.
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