Released Lebanese businessman Zakka: ‘I was virtually sentenced by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard’

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BEIRUT (Rahnuma): Nizar Zakka, who has barely been out of Tehran’s Evin Prison 24 hours after spending nearly four years in it, still feels the impact of what happened to him. After his release, Zakka summarized what happened to him — his tears streamed down his face more than once during the interview. Zakka said he visited Iran only four times previously on official invitations, and on a fifth after an invitation from the country’s vice president to participate in a conference on informatics. “Three days after my participation in the conference, I did not feel that I was an unwanted guest and had not received any remarks. On my way back to the airport, a car with people in civilian clothes intercepted us. They took me out of the car and spoke to me in English saying that no one would see me anymore,” he told Arab News. “They arrested me, and said that they would kill me. There was no explanation for what happened, and I was tortured. They asked me to say on camera that I was working with the Americans and I planned on overthrowing the regime in Iran. I was there because of an official invitation. So, I refused their request. I felt that if it was going to end in death, why not resist what was happening to me unjustly? “They knew that I was innocent, but it seems that they wanted to send a message. The kidnappers were members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and they wanted to show that they could do what they wanted. I was an activist in the field of human rights and had free access to the internet, and expressed my opinion at a conference in Tehran. They exploited this as a weak link for international companies, to send them a message that they are forbidden to enter Iran. They succeeded, they stopped coming to Iran — they feared their safety.”

Sham trial

Regarding the trial he was subjected to, he smiled. “It was only for show. I stood in front of the judge and they began to mock me. One of them said that I was detained for inciting the revolution in Ukraine. I laughed and told the judge they had the wrong file. The representative of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps read out the accusations, without asking me a single question, and that’s how I was sentenced. The cell I stayed in had 50 detainees living in the worst conditions.” He said that in the cell, he knew Americans Ziyu Wang and Karen Godafari, former Iranian Vice President Hamid Mashaki, and Mahdi Rafsanjani, the son of former Iranian President Hashemi Rafsanjani. He said that he also met “an Iraqi detainee and many Iranians, Kurds and Arabs. There were many Iranian diplomats, all accused of treachery because it is the easiest charge. “Every person who was arrested was subjected to physical torture of all kinds, which later turned into a psychological torture. I slept every night hoping not to wake up the next day.” As for his contact with the outside world, Zakka said: “At first they allowed us to call family members, but only for 4 minutes that would go by without speaking, and later, when they transferred me to the public prison, those who ran it allowed us a 15-minute phone call. They dealt with us more compassionately than the Revolutionary Guard did. “A year ago, I met with the director general of the Lebanese Directorate of General Security, but nothing happened. I lost hope. I was informed that Lebanese Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil spoke about my release date during Ramadan. The month went by, then Eid came, and nothing happened. Two days ago, those who imprisoned me came to tell me that I would be released.”

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Lebanese U.S. Resident Nizar Zacca Convicted Of Spying Leaves Iran For Lebanon

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by bbc.com -- Nizar Zakka, who is a US permanent resident, arrived in Beirut on a plane with the head of Lebanon's General Security directorate, Abbas Ibrahim. The information technology expert was arrested while visiting Tehran in 2015 and was subsequently sentenced to 10 years in jail for anti-state activity. Zakka was freed following a request by Lebanon's President Michel Aoun. But Iranian state television cited official sources as saying that his release was secured only after Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of the Iran-backed Lebanese Shia Islamist militant group Hezbollah, intervened. Accompanied by Colonel Abbas Ibrahim, head of the Lebanon's General Security intelligence agency, Zaka headed directly to the presidential palace,for a meeting with Lebanese President Michel Aoun and his family. A spokesman for Iran's judiciary said an Iranian court had agreed on Zakka's "conditional release," adding that the man would be handed over to Lebanese authorities.

The spokesman, Gholamhossein Esmaili, did not give details of the conditions of Zakka's release. Lebanon's president and foreign minister had urged Iran to grant an amnesty to Zakka, and Iranian media reported on June 10 that he was to be released "only because of the respect and dignity" Iran has for Iran-backed Hizballah leader Hassan Nasrallah. A Washington, D.C., resident and a U.S. Green Card holder, Zakka was head of an Arab IT organization that advocated for Internet development in the Middle East. He was detained in September 2015 in Tehran after attending a government-organized conference. In 2016, the 52-year-old was sentenced to 10 years in prison and handed a $4.2 million fine after a court convicted him of espionage -- a charge he denied. He had been invited to speak by Iran's then Vice-President for Women and Family Affairs, Shahindokht Molaverdi. Zakka was arrested while on his way to the airport to leave the country by men believed to belong to the Revolutionary Guards and was transferred to Tehran's Evin prison, where he was kept in solitary confinement for almost a year. In October 2016, the judiciary said Tehran's Revolutionary Court had sentenced Zakka to 10 years in prison for co-operating with a foreign enemy state - an allegation rejected by his family and associates. An appeals court upheld the sentence at the end of 2017.

Last September, Ms Molaverdi told the Associated Press that the government of President Hassan Rouhani, a moderate, had "in no way approved" Zakka's prosecution by the hardline judiciary. "We did all we could to stop this from happening, but we are seeing that we have failed to make a significant impact," she said. Last week, it emerged that Lebanon's president had asked the Iranian authorities to pardon Zakka as a gesture to mark the end of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan. On Tuesday, Iranian judiciary spokesman Gholamhossein Esmaili announced that the relevant court had agreed to Zakka's conditional release because he had served at least a third of his sentence and shown good behaviour. Mr Esmaili revealed Iranian officials had been told by Hezbollah's leader that the move would be "expedient", but he insisted "no political issue has been involved", the judiciary's Mizan Online news agency reported.

Zakka is one of a number of dual citizens and foreign nationals detained in Iran, mostly on spying charges, in recent years. The Americans being held include:

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New Vatican document says gender theory is 'cultural and ideological revolution

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The document calls on Catholic schools to resist 'attempts to negate the male-female duality of human nature' A Vatican department has issued a sweeping denunciation of so-called gender theory, and affirmed the principles of human dignity, difference, and complementarity. “In all such [gender] theories, from the most moderate to the most radical, there is agreement that one’s gender ends up being viewed as more important than being of male or female sex,” the Congregation for Catholic Education wrote June 10, in a new document entitled “Male and Female He Created Them.” “The effect of this move is chiefly to create a cultural and ideological revolution driven by relativism, and secondarily a juridical revolution, since such beliefs claim specific rights for the individual and across society.”

The document says it aims to set out an intellectual framework “towards a path of dialogue on the question of gender theory in education.” Published at the beginning of “Pride Month,” during which many cities and corporations mark the campaign of LGBT advocacy, the document says that the Church teaches an essential difference between men and woman, ordered in the natural law and essential to the family and human flourishing. “There is a need to reaffirm the metaphysical roots of sexual difference, as an anthropological refutation of attempts to negate the male-female duality of human nature, from which the family is generated,” the document explains. “The denial of this duality not only erases the vision of human beings as the fruit of an act of creation but creates the idea of the human person as a sort of abstraction who ‘chooses for himself what his nature is to be.’”

The text, signed by Cardinal Giuseppe Versaldi, prefect of the Congregation for Catholic Education, outlines the philosophical origins of the gender theory movement, and notes the broad movement to enshrine its distinct anthropology in policy and law. The Congregation explains that, beginning in the middle of the twentieth century, a series of studies were published which proposed that external conditioning had the primary determinative influence on personality. When such studies were applied to human sexuality, the document says, they did so with a view to demonstrating that sexuality identity was more a social construct than a given natural or biological fact. “These schools of thought were united in denying the existence of any original given element in the individual, which would precede and at the same time constitute our personal identity, forming the necessary basis of everything we do.” “Over the course of time, gender theory has expanded its field of application. At the beginning of the 1990s, its focus was upon the possibility of the individual determining his or her own sexual tendencies without having to take account of the reciprocity and complementarity of male-female relationships, nor of the procreative end of sexuality,” the document says. The result was a “radical separation between gender and sex, with the former having priority over the later.”

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On Lebanese-Israeli Border, US And Iran Are Negotiating

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This is an opinion article and does not necessarily represents khazen.org

by Joe Macaron --lobelog.com --- On May 13, while The New York Times reported that the White House was reviewing military plans to attack Iran, a plane carrying the State Department’s Acting Assistant Secretary for Near Eastern Affairs David Satterfield quietly landed in Beirut on an unannounced trip. Heightened tensions between Washington and Tehran did not prevent the US official from rushing to seize a breakthrough as the Iran-backed Hezbollah finally endorsed the Lebanese government’s stance to enter direct negotiations to settle the border dispute with Israel. These negotiations are expected to begin in the coming weeks as the United States and Iran may explore direct talks for the first time since President Donald Trump took office in 2017. Since 2012, the United States has been mediating a maritime border dispute between Lebanon and Israel over a triangular area of 860 square kilometers (330 square miles) off the Mediterranean coast where gas was discovered in 2009. Last year, a consortium of France’s Total, Italy’s ENI, and Russia’s Novatek was awarded a contract to start drilling in two blocks off the Lebanese coast, including the disputed block 9. This led to tensions between the two countries. There was no breakthrough in those talks until last month.

While preparing Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s visit to Beirut on March 22-23, Satterfield held a tense meeting on March 5 with Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, who plays a key role in Lebanon regarding the border dispute with Israel. The Trump Administration wanted Berri to join President Michel Aoun and Prime Minister Saad Hariri in agreeing on talks with Israel so “Lebanese leaders reach a consensus position on a path forward on boundary negotiations.” On April 6, a news report floated the idea that Washington might sanction Berri’s inner circle in a clear message to the Amal Movement’s leader, who is a close ally of Hezbollah. The breakthrough came when Berri, with the obvious consent of Hezbollah, shifted position on April 23. He told Major Stefano Del Col, head of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) in South Lebanon: “We are ready to draw Lebanon’s maritime borders and those of the Exclusive Economic Zone using the same procedure that was used to draw the Blue Line under the supervision of the United Nations.” The Blue Line is the land border that was drawn after Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000. Incidentally, the next day, al-Akhbar leaked diplomatic cables sent from the Lebanese embassy in Washington to the Lebanese foreign ministry, which detailed a March 15 meeting Satterfield had in Washington with visiting Lebanese officials. The Trump Administration official reportedly warned that Lebanon can take or leave the US offer to “find another party capable of mediating.”

The Lebanese Initiative and the Sticking Points

On May 9, President Michel Aoun formally presented an initiative to US Ambassador to Lebanon Elizabeth Richard. It had two main components: 1) forming a military committee to hold meetings at the UNIFIL headquarters in Naqoura, South Lebanon, under UN sponsorship with the United States as the de facto mediator; and 2) negotiating the land and maritime borders simultaneously. In a sign of preliminary acceptance of this initiative, on May 27 Israel’s energy minister, Yuval Steinitz, said these talks are “for the good of both countries’ interests in developing natural gas reserves and oil.” Israel, however, responded via Satterfield with a counter offer of expanding the military committee to diplomats as it seems interested in luring the Lebanese side into substantial negotiations that normalize bilateral talks. Beirut conceded on the necessity of negotiating with Israel instead of letting the United Nations unilaterally demarcate the maritime border based on international maps that prove Lebanon’s ownership. The American and Israeli view was that maritime demarcation does not fall within the UN mandate. While largely skeptical of the UN role, Israel conceded on its logistical role in the negotiations. Another contentious issue was that whether to discuss the maritime and land borders in parallel, as Lebanon offered in the initiative, or restrict the talks to the maritime border as Israel is suggesting. The United States maintained that in international law there is no correlation between land and maritime demarcation. While Israel has hinted it will only discuss the maritime border, it is not clear yet how Lebanon will respond.

Both Lebanon and Israel want to set these parameters—most notably the time frame and the framework—before beginning negotiations in Naqoura. Israel is seeking to set a six-month deadline for these talks; however, the Lebanese side insists on open-ended negotiations until an agreement is reached, arguing that Israel might procrastinate if a time frame were set. The framework revolves around deciding the role of both the United Nations and the United States during these negotiations. Lebanese officials want the UN cover as any agreement would be immediately formalized and recorded by the international organization; they also expect Washington to pressure the Israeli side when needed. Satterfield sees the US role as “a facilitator” without being overly involved in these talks. The Trump Administration seems not to be willing to repeat previous failed US mediation efforts, when in 2012, Ambassador Frederic Hof drew a maritime line giving Lebanon 60 percent of the disputed area, which became known as the “Hof line” and left the United States at the center of these difficult talks.

The Border Dispute: Motivations and Calculations

Despite the diplomatic and military escalation last month between Washington and Tehran, it was telling how this breakthrough unfolded in the Lebanon-Israel border dispute, which offers a unique model for defusing tensions between the United States and Iran, and between Israel and Iran. The Iranian flexibility in Lebanon reflects the fact that Hezbollah is no longer imposing a veto on negotiations with Israel to settle border issues. Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah noted in a speech on May 31 that “we stand behind the state and we trust the officials tackling this issue [border dispute] and we do not interfere.” It is worth noting that Israeli officials and media have been largely silent on the breakthrough in this border dispute while Lebanese officials and media leaks were dominating the air waves and driving the coverage of Satterfield’s shuttle diplomacy. While both the Lebanese and Israeli governments are in a rush to begin benefiting from gas exploration, there are three main motivations behind the Lebanese initiative. First, a concern that Netanyahu, enabled by Trump, might unilaterally define Israel’s maritime border with Lebanon. Second, there is US pressure on the Lebanese government to embark on talks with Israel, which was evident in Pompeo’s trip to Beirut in March. Third, the Lebanese government is facing an acute economic crisis and is in dire need of gas revenues. Lebanon aims to begin drilling gas in the disputed block 9 (on the maritime border with Israel) in January 2020 and opened the door last April for bidders on the five remaining blocks, including two adjacent to the Israeli coast, which was an added motivation for Beirut to resolve this border dispute. It is also in Israel’s interest to have a safe environment for foreign companies drilling for gas in the Mediterranean. The resignation of the hawkish Avigdor Lieberman from Israel’s defense ministry last November helped mitigate the tensions as the negotiation portfolio fully moved to Minister of Energy Steinitz instead.

US pressure in the period leading to Pompeo’s visit to Beirut last March led to some changes in the Lebanese government’s views regarding negotiations with Israel and how to handle Hezbollah’s weapons. On April 26, Lebanese Minister of National Defense Elias Bou Saab noted7 that President Aoun would soon call for a national dialogue to discuss “a national defense strategy to restrict weapons only in the hands of the Lebanese army.” On May 16, President Aoun asked the United States “to help increase stability along the border with Israel by drawing permanent borders.” However, these moves are meant to absorb US pressure rather than to spur a significant shift in Lebanon’s policy. The Trump Administration sees these Israeli-Lebanese talks as crucial for weakening Hezbollah’s argument about retaining its weapons while coming under increasing US financial pressure. Berri has pushed back on this issue and said through sources on May 29 that Lebanon “looks forward to the completion of the negotiation process with Israel, provided that the issue of Hezbollah’s arms would not be linked to the demarcation file.” In his May 31 speech, Nasrallah asserted that border disputes should not be linked to giving up Hezbollah’s precision guided missiles.

There are obstacles that might impede the US mediation and the negotiation process down the road. Netanyahu’s preparation for the next parliamentary elections, expected in September, might make him less likely to approve a border agreement that might be used against him as a weak point in his election campaign. Political tensions have also recently grown in Lebanon and if they reach a level of paralyzing the government, this might impact the current unified stance between Aoun, Berri, and Hariri. Moreover, Satterfield might soon have to take on a new position as US ambassador to Turkey, now that the nomination of his successor as assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, David Schenker, was confirmed by the Senate. This might delay the negotiation process as Schenker will have to familiarize himself with the major interlocutors if he is selected to continue Satterfield’s mediation.

It is hard to see how both sides could reach a border agreement soon. The United States has pressured Lebanon to accept negotiations but forcing a border agreement might be counterproductive (as was the case when Beirut rejected the “Hof line”). These talks will also be overshadowed by what might happen between Washington and Tehran in the near future. Furthermore, the United States seems reluctant to be directly involved in initiating ideas to resolve this dispute, which might constrain its mediation as both sides will not unilaterally concede. The challenge for Washington is to maintain a balanced approach in this mediation. For instance, last December Pompeo rejected an Israeli request to sanction Lebanon over the discovery of Hezbollah’s weapons, which helped build some confidence between the Trump Administration and Lebanese leaders. The expected output of Lebanese gas will barely cover domestic needs; settling this border dispute would allow the Lebanese government to begin gas exploration against the background of deeply rooted governance and fiscal crises. Using the gas exploration by either the United States or Iran to impose new regional alliances on Lebanon would weaken the already fragile Lebanese political system. The United States should continue to intensify its mediation efforts by keeping both sides on the path of resolving their border dispute through negotiations.

Joe Macaron is a Resident Fellow at Arab Center Washington DC. To learn more about Joe and read his previous publications click here. Reprinted, with permission, from Arab Center Washington DC.

Lebanese Emigration Reduces Unemployment, Strengthens Economy

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by aawsat.com --The number of Lebanese emigrants under the age of 40 is expected to reach 56,000 by the end of 2019, according to a study by Lebanon-based Information International. The same study said that 34,502 Lebanese have left their country in 2018 and did not return. While some studies link emigration to the spread of corruption and the looting of public funds, most politicians’ statements bear a warning about the dangers of this phenomenon, not only on the country’s economic and social conditions, but also on the political level, in terms of demographic imbalances. In a follow-up to the file of Lebanese emigrants, the US Department of State has classified Lebanon since 2011 in the “very high alert” circle. External migration is the most important social issue in the Lebanese society, especially since about 30 percent of its residents are non-Lebanese, a level unknown to any other country. “The number of Lebanese migrants is normal due to the conditions in their country,” said Haitham Jomaa, the former director-general of the Expatriates Department at the Lebanese Foreign Ministry and the head of the Lebanese Forum for Development and Migration. In this regard, Jomaa pointed to the lack of employment opportunities in state facilities, the absence of a national plan to direct human resources, and the growth of the number of university graduates in parallel with a decline in the number of institutions in the productive sectors and the closure of companies because of economic recession. “But this situation might not continue until the end of the year, after the adoption of the state budget and the implementation of the CEDRE recommendations, which will encourage production and hence reduce the pace of emigration,” he added.

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Look up, it's Uber's newest service

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Uber’s latest venture? An 8-minute helicopter ride from Lower Manhattan to JFK Airport that will set you back between $200 and $225 — but bargain, it includes the Uber ride on the ground for both parts of the trip. The new business, known as Uber Copter, will launch July 9 and although bookable on the app, it's only available to top-tier Uber members. However, the ride-hail giant will not only contend with several other helicopter companies in Manhattan offering a similar type of service, but also with groups protesting against the use of commercial flights over the Big Apple.