DUBAI: Bahrain insisted Monday on the extradition from Thailand of a footballer convicted for a terrorism offense.

Hakeem Al-Araibi was jailed in absentia in 2014 for 10 years on charges related to an attack on a police station in 2012.

The 25-year-old, who played for Bahrain’s national youth team, fled his homeland while on bail and was granted asylum in Australia where he plays semi-professionally in Melbourne.

He was detained on an Interpol notice in November as he entered Thailand for a vacation.

“Al-Araibi was arrested in Thailand and proceedings to extradite him to Bahrain are in process so that he can serve his sentence,” a Bahraini government statement said.

“He had all the rights and opportunities to defend himself in the criminal case, in which some of the suspects with him were acquitted by the court,” Bahrain’s interior minister Sheikh Rashid bin Abdullah Al-Khalifa said in the government statement.

He added that Al-Araibi may appeal the verdict if he is returned to Bahrain.

The minister said Al-Araibi, who was allowed to travel with the national soccer team while on bail, had fled to Iran from Qatar “never to return.”

Sheikh Rashid criticized what he described as “external interference” in Manama’s internal affairs.

“Those who speak now of Al-Araibi having been mistreated and those who question the integrity of Bahrain’s courts ignore the fact that Al-Araibi was released on bail of 100 dinars by the courts,” he said.

The footballer denies the charges against him and the Australian government have called for his release.

RAMALLAH: Palestinian officials say President Mahmoud Abbas has decided to shake up his government.
The move is the latest sign of failure in more than a decade of attempts to reconcile with the rival Hamas movement.
The officials say Abbas appointed a four-member committee from his Fatah movement on Sunday to consult with political factions about forming a new government.
The three officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were discussing internal deliberations.
The official Wafa news agency said Fatah had decided to form a political government to replace the current Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah’s Cabinet of technocrats.
Hamdallah’s government was formed in 2013 following a power sharing agreement with Hamas. But the government couldn’t assume its responsibilities in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip ruled due to deep disputes.

SARAJEVO: Toys, house keys and diaries hang suspended from the ceiling or sit on plain white pedestals at Sarajevo’s War Childhood Museum in a simple tribute to the children living in the shadow of the war in Syria.
Driven by memories of his own childhood during the Balkans conflict in the 1990s, founder Jasminko Halilovic has made the museum a treasure trove of personal items donated by those who were children then too.
He now wants to turn it into the world’s biggest archive on wartime childhoods. Sunday’s exhibition relied on items donated by children in Syrian refugee camps in Lebanon. A colorful keychain in the shape of sandal was given to the museum by 15-year-old Marwa.
“The keys opened the doors to the most beautiful house I have ever seen. My room had pink and green walls. Unfortunately, the house burned during the war, so we don’t have the house anymore,” she wrote.
According to UNICEF, there are 2.5 million Syrian refugee children living outside Syria and 2.6 million internally displaced.
“We want to show that war children are not only the passive victims, as we often see them, but also resilient survivors,” Halilovic said. Having amassed more than 4,000 exhibits and over 150 hours of a video archive of oral history interviews, his team started collecting personal items from children affected by other wars, such as Syria, Ukraine and Afghanistan.
The Syrian collection was assembled with the help of Abed Moubayed, 35, from Aleppo, during his two-month internship with the museum, part of his master degree program in post-war recovery at the University of York.
“This is a chance for the Syrian children to raise their voices and tell the whole world about their experience and suffering. It is really important to show that history is repeating itself and we, all of us, need to do something to stop it,” Moubayed, who left Syria in 2012, told Reuters.
“Syrian children have no idea what the future holds for them and you can see it from their stories.”
The Bosnian 1992-95 war, which claimed 100,000 lives and displaced more than 2 million people, was Europe’s bloodiest since World War Two.

BEIRUT: The chief of Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement has warned Israel against continuing strikes in Syria targeting mainly Iranian positions, saying it could fuel war in the region.
Israel’s army has since 2013 claimed hundreds of attacks on what it says are Iranian military targets and arms deliveries to Tehran-backed Hezbollah, with the goal of stopping its main enemy Iran from entrenching itself militarily in neighboring Syria.
In the latest strikes nearly a week ago 21 people were killed, the majority of them Iranians, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor.
Addressing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu directly, Hassan Nasrallah said Saturday in an interview with Al-Mayadeen television: “Don’t make an error of judgment and don’t lead the region toward war or a major clash.”
“At any moment the Syrian leadership and the axis of resistance can take a decision to deal with the Israeli aggression in a different manner,” he said, referring to the alliance between Syrian President Bashar Assad’s government, Iran and its ally Hezbollah.
When asked whether a retaliation could take the form of air strikes on Tel Aviv, Nasrallah said “anything is possible,” adding that Hezbollah possessed “high-precision missiles” capable of hitting anywhere in Israel.
The Israeli army announced the strikes against facilities it said belonged to the Iranian Revolutionary Guards’ Quds Force on Monday as they were occurring.
It said they were in response to a medium-range missile the Quds Force fired from Syria at the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights on Sunday, which Israeli air defenses intercepted.
Israel has caried out hundreds of air strikes in Syria and its warplanes have been targeted by anti-aircraft fire during such raids, but it has rarely faced surface-to-surface missile fire in response.
Israel has warned it will continue to target positions in Syria held by Iran and its ally Hezbollah.
Netanyahu and other Israeli officials have been speaking more openly about the country’s strikes in Syria in recent days, which some analysts partly attribute to the premier wanting to burnish his security credentials ahead of April 9 elections.
Others say it carries a strategic military purpose as well by sending a stronger message.
But Israel also risks an escalation with Syria and Iran, as well as possibly further angering Russia at a time when the United States is seeking to withdraw its forces from Syria.
In Saturday’s rare television interview — which was more than three hours long — Nasrallah also said that Israel took “years” to discover cross-border tunnels from Lebanon.
“The Israelis discovered a number of tunnels after many years, and it’s not a surprise, the surprise is that these tunnels, they took some time to find,” he said.
Earlier this month Israel concluded an operation to unearth and destroy tunnels which the army accused Hezbollah of digging across the border from Lebanon.
“Yes, there are tunnels in southern Lebanon,” Nasrallah said, in his first comments on the issue since Israel announced the operation on December 4.
The Hezbollah leader refused to specify whether they were built before the 2006 war between the militia group and Israel, or who had constructed them.
The month-long war killed more than 1,200 Lebanese, mostly civilians, and more than 160 Israelis, mostly soldiers.

KHARTOUM: Sudanese President Omar Al-Bashir will travel to Cairo for talks with his Egyptian counterpart, state media reported Saturday, as protesters called for more nationwide demonstrations against his government.
Bashir’s visit to Cairo on Sunday will be his second trip abroad since deadly protests erupted at home on December 19.
On Wednesday, he met Qatar’s ruler Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani on a trip to the Gulf state.
“President Omar Al-Bashir will travel to Cairo on Sunday for a one-day visit,” Sudan’s official news agency SUNA reported.
“He will hold bilateral talks with Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi and also discuss regional issues that concern the two countries.”
Bashir’s visit was also confirmed by Sudan’s ambassador to Cairo, Mahmoud Abdel Halim.
Protests erupted in Sudan last month after a government decision to triple the price of bread.
The rallies swiftly mushroomed into nationwide calls for an end to Bashir’s three decades in power, as protesters clashed with security forces.
Officials say 30 people have died in the violence, while rights groups say more than 40 people have been killed including medics and children.
The Sudanese group that is leading the protest campaign has called for more rallies over the next few days, including night-time demonstrations on Saturday.
Bashir, who came to power in an Islamist-backed coup in 1989, has remained steadfast in rejecting calls to resign.
While the spark for the first protests was the rise of bread prices, anger has been mounting for years over worsening economic hardships and deteriorating living conditions in Sudan.
That ire has now spilt onto the streets as protesters chant their main slogan calling for “freedom, peace, justice.”
Bashir has blamed the economic woes on the United States.
Washington lifted its trade embargo on Sudan in October 2017 after two decades of bruising economic punishment, but that failed to revive the country’s financial situation.
Experts say cash injections from the Gulf states, led by wealthy Qatar, have helped stave off economic collapse.
There was no announcement, however, of any financial assistance from Qatar for Bashir during his latest visit.
Egypt, which has deep historical ties with Sudan, has called repeatedly for stability in its southern neighbor.
“Egypt fully supports the security and stability of Sudan, which is integral to Egypt’s national security,” El-Sisi told a top Bashir aide who visited Cairo earlier this month.
Relations between Cairo and Khartoum had deteriorated sharply in 2017 over territorial disputes and accusations from Bashir that Egypt’s intelligence services were supporting opposition forces fighting his troops in the country’s conflict zones like Darfur.
But in recent months the two governments have ironed out their differences, with Sudan lifting a 17-month ban on Egyptian agricultural produce.