TUNIS: Plainclothes security officers in Tunisia detained a prominent critic of President Kais Saied in the early hours of Saturday after a military court ruling, his lawyer said.
Seifeddine Makhlouf had been found guilty of insulting police during a standoff at Tunis airport in March 2021.
Makhlouf, head of Islamist nationalist party Al-Karama, shouted “down with the coup” and “long live Tunisia” before being bundled into a car, according to a Facebook video posted by the lawyer.

LONDON: Reports from Iran suggest authorities are set to clamp down on the city of Zahedan, the site of assaults on protesters in 2022 that left multiple people dead or injured.
Sixty-six people are known to have died after security forces opened fire on demonstrators on Sept. 30, a day subsequently known as “Bloody Friday,” at a march to protest the death earlier that month of 22-year-old Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini while in the custody of the country’s morality police for not wearing her hijab correctly.

BAB AL-HAWA: The first batch of cholera vaccines reached opposition-held areas in the northwest of war-ravaged Syria, where the extremely virulent disease is spreading.
Syria’s first outbreak since 2009, which the UN and local officials say has killed dozens of people since August, has been attributed in part to dilapidated infrastructure after more than a decade of conflict.
Two trucks loaded with vaccines entered Syria’s Idlib province through the Bab Al-Hawa crossing, linking Turkiye with areas under extremists’ control, an AFP correspondent said.

DAVOS: People with special needs must be involved in the design of climate change policies, a panel of speakers at the World Economic Forum in Davos said on Friday.

During an open forum titled “In Case of Fire, Use Stairs,” the panel said that people with special needs, who number more than 1 billion around the world, were among those most affected by climate change.

The speakers stressed the need to create emergency response plans and infrastructure that cater to such people during natural disasters.

BEIRUT: A European legal team on Friday wrapped up the first round of questioning of Lebanese bankers and current and former Central Bank officials in Beirut.

The questioning is part of a probe into money laundering linked to Central Bank Governor Riad Salameh.

The delegation will quiz Salameh, in addition to some of his relatives, in the second round of the investigation, said State Prosecutor Judge Ghassan Oueidat.