LONDON: In a letter written inside Tehran’s notorious Evin prison, Sepideh Qolian, a prominent female Iranian activist, revealed how prisoners are tortured to extract confessions, the BBC reported.

Qolian was arrested in 2018 and convicted of acting “against national security” for her support of a strike and protest by workers at a sugar factory in Iran’s Khuzestan province. She is serving a five-year sentence and studying law in prison.

ISTANBUL: A Turkish court on Wednesday released an internationally respected medic who outraged President Recep Tayyip Erdogan by backing a probe into the army’s alleged use of chemical weapons in Iraq.

Turkish Medical Association head Sebnem Korur Fincanci was detained and jailed in October for using a television interview to highlight claims that first surfaced in media close to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party.

The militia alleged that 17 of its fighters had died in Turkish chemical weapons attacks in the mountains of northern Iraq that month.

JERUSALEM: Bolstered Israeli restrictions against flying the Palestinian flag are “a shameless attempt to legitimize racism,” rights group Amnesty International said Tuesday.
Israel’s new firebrand National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir ordered the police commander on Sunday to authorize officers to remove Palestinian flags flying in public spaces.
“I have instructed the Israeli police to enforce the ban on flying a PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization) flag in public spaces, a sign of identification with a terrorist organization,” Ben-Gvir wrote on Twitter.

‘ARA, Israel: One of Israel’s longest serving Palestinian prisoners walked free on Thursday after completing a 40-year sentence, as members of the new right-wing government called for him to be stripped of his citizenship.

Karim Younis, 65, began serving his sentence in 1983 after being convicted of killing Israeli soldier Avraham Bromberg, who had been making his way home from his base in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.

AL-MUKALLA: At least seven Yemeni infants have died recently in tents in the central province of Marib as a result of extreme cold, local Yemeni authorities said on Tuesday.

Khaled Al-Shajani, deputy head of the internationally recognized government’s executive unit for camps for the internally displaced in Marib, told Arab News that his office had received reports of the deaths of six newborns in Al-Ma’asher camp and one at another camp in Marib city due to the recent drop in temperatures and chronic scarcity of heaters and adequate shelters.