TUNIS: The head of Tunisia’s powerful UGTT trade union confederation on Thursday rejected conditions set by the International Monetary Fund for a new loan to bail out the country’s struggling economy.

“We reject the conditions set by the IMF, given Tunisians’ low salaries, lack of means, rising poverty and unemployment,” Noureddine Taboubi told reporters.

The global lender has called for “ambitious reforms” to tackle the heavily indebted country’s public finances and reform its state-owned companies.

BEIRUT: Videos circulated by activists on social media on Wednesday showed a young man beating Lebanese and Syrian workers employed to pick cherries on his land in Majdel Akoura, northern Lebanon.

The shocking footage also showed evidence of torture on the bodies of the young men, who were filmed as they pleaded for mercy.

The families of the abused men from nearby poverty-stricken villages said that the employer accused the workers of stealing money, a wristwatch and sunglasses after four days of working for him so he could get away with not paying their wages.

TRIPOLI: The United Nations said Thursday it will broker new talks between rival institutions from war-torn Libya next week to try to break a deadlock on the rules for long-awaited elections.

“(Parliament speaker) Aguila Saleh and President of the High Council of State Khaled Al-Mishri have accepted my invitation to meet at the UN Office at Geneva 28-29 June to discuss the draft constitutional framework for elections,” the UN’s top Libya official Stephanie Williams tweeted.

TUNIS: Tunisian police on Thursday arrested former prime minister Hamadi Jebali, an ex-senior figure in the Ennahdha party which is the nemesis of current President Kais Saied, Jebali’s lawyer said.
He could not say why Jebali was detained.
“The police arrested Mr.Jebali in his car in Soussa, then took him to Tunis,” Zied Taher said.
For more than a month, Jebali has been under investigation over activities at his boiler factory in Soussa, a coastal city south of the capital, Taher said.

RAMALLAH: Fourteen Palestinian security force members on trial over the killing of prominent activist Nizar Banat, whose death sparked rare protests against the Palestinian Authority, have been released on bail, multiple sources said on Wednesday.

The group formally asked for their release on Tuesday, which was granted by the prosecution on condition that they attend their court hearings.

The risk of coronavirus spreading in the West Bank prison where they were held was cited as grounds for their release.