by Patrick Wintour -- theguardian.com -- Mohammed bin Nayef – the detained former Saudi crown prince and interior minister – has been the victim of a sustained and coordinated attack from inside Saudi Arabia on social media that risks endangering his personal safety, lawyers acting for him have warned. The lawyers have written to YouTube demanding it take down a video, saying the content claiming he had been plotting to bring down Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman runs the risk of inviting serious retribution and harm to him. YouTube has not yet acted on the complaint. Separately, it has emerged that an apparently spontaneous surge in the number of tweets ahead of the US elections claiming Mohammed bin Nayef was part of a Democrat-led “deep state” plot to destabilise the Saudi Arabian royal family was orchestrated largely through bots run by supporters of Bin Salman, research shows.

The two developments serve to underline the perilous state of the 60-year-old Bin Nayef, who was close to the Obama administration and to then-vice-president Joe Biden. The former interior minister, seen as critical to bringing al-Qaida under control inside Saudi Arabia in the wake of the 9/11 attacks in New York, has been under house arrest since March. He was ousted as crown prince in 2017. A cross party group of British MPs has been denied access to him but is due to produce a report on his welfare before Christmas. The report is likely to call on the incoming Biden administration to press for his release. In the letter to YouTube, the lawyers point out the claims in the video that Bin Nayef has been at large and at one point seen next to Biden are totally false, and part of an elaborate conspiracy theory that he is working to undermine Mohammed bin Salman.

by AFP --- Lebanon has detained a Lebanese-French businessman who was close to former French president Nicolas Sarkozy after receiving a request for his arrest from Interpol, a judicial source told AFP Friday. "Internal security forces have detained (Ziad) Takieddine, based on an arrest warrant Interpol sent the public prosecution, over him being wanted by the French authorities over involvement in corruption and funding Sarkozy's campaign," the source said. Takieddine was once the main accuser in an inquiry into suspected Libyan financing of Sarkozy's 2007 election campaign. The businessman was investigated in late 2016 after he told the press he had delivered millions of euros in cash from Libyan dictator Moamer Kadhafi.

Sarkozy caught a break last month when Takieddine suddenly retracted his claim. The 70-year-old businessman fled to Beirut after a French court in June condemned him to five years in jail in a separate case involving millions of euros in kickbacks from arms sales to Pakistan and Saudi Arabia signed in 1994. The judicial source said Takieddine was being questioned by the security forces under a judge's supervision and would be transferred to the general prosecution for further investigation on Monday. If the charges against him were found to be justified, he could be tried in Lebanon as a Lebanese citizen, or extradited to France, the source said. On Thursday, former French interior minister Claude Gueant was charged with being part of a criminal conspiracy in the case over Libyan funding.

by dw.com -- Foreign donors have said Lebanon needs fundamental reforms before the debt-ridden country gets any more support. But a new international aid package runs the risk of fostering a business-as-usual approach in Beirut. After a video conference involving 32 nations and 12 international organizations, including the United Nations, the European Union and the World Bank, a new package of financial and humanitarian aid for Lebanon was agreed on. The explosion of ammonium nitrate stored in the Lebanese capital, Beirut's port in early August was just the latest blow to the country, where a political and economic crisis has been ongoing. Following a financial crisis in 2019, popular protests against a government widely perceived as corrupt and ineffective began in mid-October that year. The Beirut port explosion, which killed over 200 and did over $4 billion worth of damage, led to eventual resignation of the prime minister and his Cabinet. A new government has yet to be formed. Since 2019, inflation has soared as has unemployment and locals living in poverty. The value of the Lebanese pound has plummeted, and local banks have restricted cash withdrawals. The COVID-19 pandemic has only exacerbated Lebanon's problems and some now call this the worst crisis the country has faced since its 15-year civil war ended in 1990.

Lebanon to get fresh funds

Last night's decision to establish a new fund — the Reform, Recovery and Reconstruction framework, or 3RF for short — will see Lebanon receive additional funds. Details of the fund and how it will be managed are to be announced on Friday. According to the French government, more than €280 million($338 million ) in emergency aid have already been handed out, after the first donor conference, held immediately after the port explosion. Now, member states of the European Union alone are pledging a further €100 million, on top of the almost €70 million handed out already, European Council President Charles Michel said in a statement. French President Emmanuel Macron has been pressuring Lebanese officials to reform and will visit the country again later this month. He has previously said that until the political problems at the heart of the Lebanese financial crisis are solved, the country should not get a bailout.

BY JACK DETSCH -- foreignpolicy.com -- The Trump administration is worried that Syria’s Bashar al-Assad regime is working to undermine neighboring Lebanon by driving up exchange rates for its weakened currency and ratcheting up influence on the fragile government through Iran-backed Hezbollah, according to a State Department finding shared with Congress this summer and obtained by Foreign Policy. Under pressure from U.S. and international sanctions over its human rights abuses and chemical weapons use during the nearly decadelong Syrian civil war, the Assad regime has long been dependent on siphoning money from the Lebanese banking system and smuggling the cash across the border along with fuel, flour, and wheat, experts said, something that Lebanon’s authorities have had trouble preventing. ,

“The Assad regime continues to exert influence inside the Lebanese government through Hizballah and other political allies, undermining Lebanon’s independence and sovereignty. Such influence poses significant challenges to Lebanon’s stability,” the report says. “The Assad regime contributed to Lebanon’s recent economic collapse by attempting to extract as much foreign currency from the Lebanese market as possible, making dollars very scarce in Lebanon and driving up the exchange rate for the Lebanese lira.” Lebanon’s currency has seen an 80 percent devaluation in the past year, a drop that has pushed many skilled workers, such as doctors, to leave the country.