Iran has blacklisted the U.S. ambassador to Yemen in retaliation to sanctions imposed by Washington against Tehran's envoy to the Huthi rebels fighting in the war-torn Middle Eastern country.

"Highlighting his key role in Yemen's humanitarian crisis, Iran puts Christopher Henzel's name on its sanctions list," Iran's Foreign Ministry announced on its website on December 9.

Tehran's action, coming a day after the U.S. move targeting Iran's envoy to Yemen's Huthi rebels, allows the seizure of any assets the U.S. ambassador might hold in Iran. However, the move is seen as symbolic.

In announcing the sanctions against Iranian envoy Hassan Irlu on December 8, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said that "Iran's support for the Huthis fuels the conflict in Yemen and exacerbates the country's instability."

In addition to the sanctions imposed against Irlu, the U.S. Treasury Department also blacklisted the Qom-based Al-Mustafa International University for recruiting members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps' (IRGC) Quds Force.

The Iranian-backed Huthis have been engaged in a bloody civil war in Yemen against the Yemeni government and a Saudi-led coalition for the past five years. The U.S. move was reportedly seen as a possible effort to force the group to reach a peace agreement.

With reporting by Reuters

The ultraconservative former chief of Iran's judiciary, Mohammad Yazdi, has died at the age of 89, the official IRNA state news agency reported.

Yazdi, a student of Islamic republic founder Ruhollah Khomeini, died on December 9 due to "illnesses of the digestive system," IRNA said.

Yazdi was named to head the judicial authority in 1989, shortly after Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei came to power following Khomeini's death.

Yazdi headed the judiciary for a decade before he was replaced in the aftermath of the 1999 student protests.

A long-standing member of the Assembly of Experts -- a body of clerics that is empowered with selecting the supreme leader -- Yazdi served as its head in 2015.

Yazdi was defeated in his bid for a new term on the 88-member clerical body the following year, after facing opposition from moderates and reformists aligned with President Hassan Rohani.

In 2020, Ayatollah Yazdi resigned from the Guardians Council due to poor health.

The Assembly of Experts remained under the control of ultraconservatives.

Khamenei offered his condolences to Yazdi's family, IRNA said.

Based on reporting by AFP and IRNA

BISHKEK -- Kyrgyz lawmakers have approved in the first reading the controversial law on holding a referendum on constitutional amendments that would decide between the parliamentary and presidential systems of governing in the Central Asian state.

While the majority of lawmakers voted for the law on December 9, several lawmakers voted against, including the leader of the opposition Ata-Meken (Fatherland) party, Omurbek Tekebaev, who said there were many irregularities and legal mistakes in the text of the draft law that could lead to legal problems and additional financial expenses.

About a dozen civil-rights activists rallied in front of the parliament building on December 9 protesting the amendments.

The proposal to change the constitution was pushed by Sadyr Japarov, who was named prime minister and obtained presidential powers in mid-October amid protests against the official results of parliamentary elections that ousted the government and led to the resignation of President Sooronbai Jeenbekov.

Japarov's critics have said that by changing the constitution, the current interim leadership is trying to cement power in its hands.

Japarov, who suspended his duties as acting president and prime minister in mid-November in order to be eligible to take part in the early presidential election on January 10, has publicly defended the proposed draft constitution and called for a national referendum on the amendments to be held simultaneously with the presidential election.

According to the current constitution, the duties of the executive branch are divided between an elected president and a prime minister chosen by parliament.

The controversial draft under discussion calls for a single executive -- the president -- along with a smaller parliament and a new body called the People's Kurultai (Congress) that would control the government and parliament.

Rights groups and activists have criticized the draft reforms as a threat to the democratic process by putting too much power in the hands of the president. They also say the current caretaker government does not have the legitimacy to initiate such deep changes.

The publication of the draft constitution on November 17 triggered several demonstrations in Bishkek.

Several politicians who officially announced their intention to take part in the presidential election said at a press conference in Bishkek on December 9 that they had called on the Central Election Commission (BShK) not to register Japarov as a presidential candidate, as the law does not allow acting presidents to seek office.

They said that even though Japarov resigned from the posts of prime minister and acting president in November, he was still not eligible to take part in the election because, while serving for a short time as acting president, he had appointed politicians loyal to him to key posts, such as chief of the State Committee for National Security and the prosecutor-general, which gives him an advantage over other candidates.

Electoral authorities said on December 9 that 19 individuals, including Japarov, who submitted applications and fees to the BShK, were now considered official presidential candidates.

The United States has imposed sanctions against former Kyrgyz customs official Raimbek Matraimov, a wealthy and influential political player who is currently under house arrest in Kyrgyzstan.

The U.S. Treasury Department announced on December 9 that it had slapped sanctions on Matraimov for his role in a vast corruption and money laundering scheme in the Central Asian nation.

The $700 million scheme involved a company controlled by Matraimov bribing officials to skirt around customs fees and regulations, as well as engaging in money laundering, “allowing for maximum profits,” the Treasury Department said.

“Matraimov, utilizing his former position as deputy of the Kyrgyz Customs Service, made hundreds of millions of dollars as a result of his involvement in the customs scheme,” it said.

The sanctions fall under the Magnitsky Act, a piece of legislation passed by the United States in 2012 that penalizes individuals responsible for committing human rights violations or acts of significant corruption.

Last year, a joint investigation by RFE/RL's Kyrgyz Service, the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), and the Kyrgyz news site Kloop, implicated Matraimov in a corruption scheme involving the transfer of hundreds of millions of dollars out of Kyrgyzstan by Chinese-born Uyghur businessman Aierken Saimaiti, who was assassinated in Istanbul in November 2019.

SEE ALSO:

Plunder And Patronage In The Heart Of Central Asia

Records leaked from the Turkish investigation into Saimaiti's killing showed that he had named Matraimov as one of two people who would be responsible should something happen to him, according to a subsequent report by RFE/RL.

The other individual was Khabibula Abdukadyr -- a Chinese-born Uyghur cargo magnate with a Kazakh passport for whom Saimaiti said he had laundered money.

In June, a Kyrgyz parliamentary commission tasked with examining the circumstances of Saimaiti's killing finalized a report that did not indicate a possible motive for the crime, or who might have ordered it. Matraimov has denied that he had any connection to Saimaiti or his death.

Critics accused the commission of failing to tackle the evidence of corruption revealed in the investigation by RFE/RL, OCCRP, and Kloop. But following the collapse of the Kyrgyz government following disputed elections in October, a Bishkek district court placed Matraimov under house arrest on corruption charges.

The new Kyrgyz authorities had earlier detained Matraimov, an ally of former President Sooronbai Jeenbekov, as part of a new corruption investigation.

The State Committee for National Security (UKMK) said in a statement that Matraimov had been detained "as part of a pretrial investigation into corruption by customs authorities," adding that the former customs official was part of a corruption scheme that resulted in damages to the state budget "on an especially large scale."

The UKMK also reportedly said that Matraimov had agreed to pay about 2 billion soms ($23.5 million) in damages to the state, and that 80 million soms (almost $1 million) had been transferred to its account.

Matraimov is one of three brothers from what is rumored to be one of the wealthiest and most powerful families in Kyrgyzstan. He was a key financial backer for political parties and presidents, including Jeenbekov and the Mekenim Kyrgyzstan party, which dominated the controversial October 4 parliamentary elections along with a party called Birimdik, which listed Jeenbekov's brother among its ranks.

Protesters, angry at evidence of vote-buying and other improprieties during the vote, seized government buildings days after results were announced, prompting officials to annul the balloting and Jeenbekov to step down.

In the resulting power vacuum, Sadyr Japarov, a former nationalist lawmaker and convicted kidnapper who was freed from prison when a mob stormed a Bishkek prison during the protests, was elected prime minister by parliament and then had the presidential powers transferred to him when Jeenbekov left office.

One of Japarov's public pledges after he obtained presidential powers was to fight corruption and support and protect investigative journalists. Prior to Matraimov's detention, Japarov had also expressed concerns that the former customs official might have fled the country.

In addition to Matraimov, two individuals from Macau and Liberia were sanctioned under the Magnitsky Act on December 9, along with three entities from Hong Kong, Palau and Cambodia. All property of the individuals and entities that fall under U.S. jurisdiction will be frozen as a result of the sanctions.

The moves, coming just over a month before U.S. Democratic President-elect Joe Biden is to take office, are the latest in a spate of recent sanctions imposed by the administration of outgoing U.S. President Donald Trump.

BAKU -- Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has arrived in the Azerbaijani capital, Baku, for a two-day visit with officials of Ankara's close ally.

Azerbaijan's foreign minister said ahead of the visit, which started on December 9, that Erdogan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev will discuss bilateral relations and the situation around Azerbaijan's breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh.

Turkey supported Baku during a conflict with Armenia over the breakaway region that started on September 27 and ended with a Moscow-brokered truce struck on November 10.

Under the deal, some areas in and around the region were placed under Azerbaijani administration after almost 30 years of control by ethnic Armenian forces following the 44-day war that claimed thousands of lives on both sides.

Erdogan is expected to attend a military parade in Baku on December 10 to mark Azerbaijan's victory in the war. Turkish military personnel who arrived in Baku earlier this week will also take part in the parade.

The Moscow-brokered deal was a blow to Armenia and the Yerevan-backed ethnic Armenian forces who had controlled the territories since 1994.

After the truce, Turkey signed a memorandum with Russia to create a joint monitoring center in Azerbaijan.

Russian officials have said that Ankara's involvement will be limited to the work of the monitoring center on Azerbaijani soil, and Turkish peacekeepers will not enter Nagorno-Karabakh.

Nagorno-Karabakh is internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan, but the ethnic Armenians who make up most of the region's population reject Azerbaijani rule.

CHISINAU -- The Moldovan government has approved recalling the ambassador to Russia amid a scandal over an alleged attempt to smuggle anabolic steroids to Moscow.

Announcing the decision on December 9, Prime Minister Ion Chicu said Ambassador Andrei Neguta bore responsibility for the "shameful" smuggling attempt.

Moldovan authorities say a minibus carrying anabolic steroids was stopped on December 5 by customs officers and agents of the Security and Intelligence Service at the Palanca crossing on the border with Ukraine.

The vehicle, which carried diplomatic plates, belonged to the Moldovan Embassy in Moscow.

The illicit shipment was said to be worth more than $480,000.

This is the second time Neguta has been recalled as Moldova's envoy to Moscow.

The first time was in 2012, after he made remarks in support of keeping Russian troops in Moldova's breakaway region of Transdniester.

Neguta was reappointed to the post in 2017.

MINSK -- The first prime minister of post-Soviet Belarus, Vyachaslau Kebich, has died of COVID-19 at the age of 84.

Citing Kebich's family, Belarusian media reported that he died in a Minsk hospital on December 9, almost two weeks after he was hospitalized with the coronavirus.

Kebich served as prime minister of Soviet Belarus in 1990-91 and led the government of independent Belarus from 1991 to 1994.

Kebich, along with parliament Chairman Stanislau Shushkevich, signed the Belavezha accords on the dissolution of the Soviet Union on December 8, 1991.

In 1994, Kebich lost a presidential election to Alyaksandr Lukashenka, who has ruled the country since.

Belarus has been in upheaval since the most recent presidential election in August, that Lukashenka claims to have won.

Opposition leaders and several Western countries have disputed the results and refuse to acknowledge him as the country's head of state.

Belarus has been wracked by mass protests since the vote. Lukashenka has arrested thousands amid a violent crackdown against the demonstrators, independent journalists and opposition members. Several people have died in the violence.

MOSCOW -- Russia's Investigative Committee has launched a probe into the head of the Klin district in the Moscow region, Alyona Sokolskaya, following an investigative report by RFE/RL over possible corruption.

A senior aide to the Investigative Committee's Moscow regional directorate chief, Olga Vrady, told RFE/RL on December 9 that the probe of Sokolskaya was launched after the report was issued in mid-August about her relatives, friends, and acquaintances allegedly being fictitiously hired at local kindergartens.

According to Vrady, no one had been charged as of December 9 as the investigation continued into the "large-scale embezzlement from the state budget."

In 2018, after another investigative report by RFE/RL about undeclared property in Spain belonging to Sokolskaya's family, her husband, Aleksandr Kozlov, resigned from the post of chief prosecutor of the Tula region south of Moscow.

Kozlov was not investigated at the time and his departure from the post was officially described as retirement.

TBILISI -- The ruling Georgian Dream party and opposition politicians have failed again to agree on a deal after another round of talks at the residence of the U.S. ambassador in Tbilisi as they look to solve an ongoing political crisis sparked by disputed parliamentary elections in October.

The opposition accuses Georgian Dream and its supporters of vote buying, making threats against voters and observers, and of violations during the counting of ballots.

Eight opposition parties have said they will boycott parliament's first session on December 11, prompting a fourth meeting between the two sides in talks that have been facilitated by U.S. and EU officials.

Parliament speaker Archil Talakvadze of Georgian Dream reiterated after the talks on December 9 that the official results of the elections that handed victory to the ruling party were valid.

"Despite the pandemic, up to 2 million of our fellow citizens have made their choice and there is no reason to question their choice," Talakvadze said, rejecting opposition claims that the elections were rigged and demands to hold new parliamentary elections in 2021.

The Central Election Commission has announced final results showing Georgian Dream, founded by billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili, took 48.22 percent of the vote. The opposition United National Movement bloc had 27.18 percent and European Georgia was third with 3.79 percent.

Six other smaller parties also crossed the 1 percent threshold to enter parliament.

A leader of the opposition European Georgia party, Davit Bakradze, stated after the December 9 meeting that the ruling party and opposition remained at odds over the issue of possible new elections and release of individuals, whom the opposition considers political prisoners, adding though that some compromise might be reached.

The leader of the opposition Citizens party, Aleko Elisashvili, said on December 9 that he would accept his parliamentary mandate if he received guarantees that the electoral laws will be reformed.

Authorities in Denmark say they have charged a Russian citizen living in the Scandinavian country with espionage for allegedly providing information about Danish energy technology to Russia.

The suspect, whose identity was not revealed, has been held in custody since early July, the Danish prosecution service said in a statement on December 9.

It said the Russian is accused of providing "information about, among other things, Danish energy technology to a Russian intelligence service" in exchange for money.

The Russian Embassy in Copenhagen identified the suspect as a man and called his arrest "a mistake."

Danish prosecutors said the case is connected to “a major investigation” by the Danish Security and Intelligence Service.

If found guilty, the Russian suspect faces imprisonment or deportation.

The Russian Embassy called on the Danish judiciary to “take an unbiased approach to the case,” and said it hoped "our compatriot" would be acquitted in court and freed.

The district court of Aalborg, northern Denmark, will handle the case but has yet to set a date on the proceedings, which are expected to be held behind closed doors

In 2012, a Finnish national working with the University of Copenhagen as a researcher was sentenced to five months in prison for spying on Denmark on behalf of Russia.

Based on reporting by Reuters and AP

Russian authorities say they have opened a criminal case into the theft of equipment from a military aircraft dubbed the "doomsday plane" that was designed to shield top officials from the effects of a nuclear explosion.

The Rostov regional branch of Russia’s Interior Ministry said in a statement on December 9 that more than 1 million rubles ($13,600) worth of equipment was stolen from the Ilyushin Il-80 plane at the Taganrog airfield, raising questions about the safety of Russia's strategic military equipment.

Speaking to journalists, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov described the breach as an "emergency situation" and vowed that "measures will be taken to prevent this from happening again.”

Russian media earlier reported that thieves broke into the aircraft, described as among Russia's most-classified military planes, and stole electronic equipment, including radio boards.

Military experts say the plane is one of four Il-80s designed to be used as airborne command posts for the Russian president and other top officials in the event of a nuclear conflict.

Officials from the Taganrog Aviation Scientific and Technical Complex reported the theft to local police on December 4, according to Interfax.

The Interior Ministry North Caucasus directorate reported on December 7 that the state-controlled Beriev Aircraft Company, which was carrying out maintenance of the Il-80 plane, had informed police that a cargo hatch breach had been discovered during an inspection of the aircraft, according to TASS.

Broadcaster Ren-TV, which first reported the break-in, said all equipment was intact at the last inspection on November 26.

The Il-80 had reportedly been undergoing repairs since the beginning of 2019.

The plane, based on the Ilyushin Il-86 jetliner, has been in use since the mid-1980. It is designed to have some protection from the effects of a nuclear blast.

The United States also operates a fleet of airborne command posts called E-4B Nightwatch.

With reporting by the BBC, AFP, Interfax, and TASS

Russia’s lower house of parliament has approved the final reading of a bill that would grant sweeping lifetime immunity to former presidents.

The legislation approved by the State Duma on December 9 is part of a package of constitutional amendments approved in a referendum earlier this year that could potentially see President Vladimir Putin stay in power until 2036.

The draft stipulates that any former head of state and their families automatically obtain lifetime immunity from criminal or administrative charges. They also cannot be detained, arrested, searched, or interrogated.

The only exception is for treason, which must first be approved by the State Duma and the Supreme and Constitutional courts.

Under the current law, former presidents are only immune from prosecution for crimes committed while in office.

The legislation now must be approved by parliament's upper chamber, the Federation Council, before heading to Putin's desk for his signature.

Dmitry Medvedev, who was president between 2008-2012, is Russia's only living former president.

The immunity amendments are widely viewed as a way to protect Putin and his family, if, or when, he steps down.

Based on reporting TASS and Interfax

Human Rights Watch (HRW) says it has analyzed a leaked list of more than 2,000 Uyghur detainees in China's Xinjiang suggesting that the authorities are using an expansive data-collection program to "arbitrarily" select Turkic Muslims in the region for possible detention.

In a report on December 8, the New York-based human rights watchdog says the list from Aksu prefecture, provided in 2018 by Radio Free Asia, contains detainees flagged by a Chinese predictive policing program that collects data and identifies candidates for detention.

“The Aksu list provides further insights into how China’s brutal repression of Xinjiang’s Turkic Muslims is being turbocharged by technology,” said Maya Wang, senior China researcher for HRW.

“The Chinese government owes answers to the families of those on the list: why were they detained, and where are they now?”

Asked about the report, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman told a daily briefing that it was not worth refuting and accused the human rights group of being "full of bias."

Beijing has come under intense international criticism over its policies in Xinjiang, where the UN have estimated at least 1 million ethnic Uyghurs and other mostly Muslim indigenous people have been detained in what it described as "counterextremism centers" in the region.

'Being Generally Untrustworthy'

The UN has also said millions more have been forced into internment camps.

Beijing insists that the facilities are "vocational education centers" aimed at helping people steer clear of terrorism and allowing them to be reintegrated into society.

Speaking during her year-end press conference on December 9, UN High Commissioner Michelle Bachelet voiced concern at "ongoing reports of a range of serious human rights violations in Xinjiang" and expressed hope to send a team from her office to China in the first half of 2021 to prepare for her visit there.

HRW says the Aksu list details detentions in Aksu from mid-2016 to late 2018 and the reasons for these detentions.

It says the authorities cited “terrorism” and “extremism” as the reasons for detaining about 10 percent of those on the list, without mentioning whether these detainees had “committed, incited, supported, or plotted any acts of violence, much less any acts that would rise to the level of terrorism.”

The group says its analysis of the Aksu list “strongly suggests that the vast majority of the people flagged by the...system are detained for everyday lawful, nonviolent behavior” and is further evidence that the government selected Uyghurs for detention based on religion, personal relationships, contact with overseas relatives, and age.

Other reasons for detention included activities like repeatedly switching off a smartphone, having "unstable thoughts," or "being generally untrustworthy."

HRW says it was able to confirm the identities of people on the list with Uyghurs living abroad.

The rights group said that to protect the source of the list, it had obscured its precise location, precise dates, and some of the numbers throughout the analysis.

Authorities in Xinjiang have been accused in recent years of using technologies such as facial recognition, iris scanners, and artificial intelligence across Xinjiang in the name of preventing terrorism.

In a report on December 8, U.S.-based surveillance research firm IPVM said that Chinese telecoms giant Huawei and facial recognition provider Megvii have worked together to test and validate facial-recognition software that could detect ethnic Uyghurs and send alerts to authorities.

IPVM cited an internal Huawei report dated January 2018 showing the software as passing tests for "Uyghur alarms" and "recognition based on age, sex, ethnicity, angle of facial images."

Huawei said on December 9 the program "has not seen real-world application" and that the company "only supplies general-purpose products for this kind of testing."

With reporting by Reuters and AFP

MAGADAN, Russia -- Russia's Nedorazumeniya Island, a major transit center for prisoners sent to gulag camps during Soviet dictator Josef Stalin's Great Purge campaign in the 1930s, is once again uninhabited after its last resident died.

Sergei Yartsev, a fisherman from the port city of Magadan located near the island, told RFE/RL on December 9 that his colleagues have managed to bring the body of Galina Khishchenko, who died two days earlier, from the island to the port after city authorities refused to transport her body, saying that it can be done only in February when the waters dividing the island and the shore are frozen.

According to Yartsev, Khishchenko's 69-year-old husband, Sergei Khishchenko, died in late November of complications caused by a stroke he had in September. His body was also transported by local fishermen to a morgue in Magadan after authorities refused to perform the task.

Thousands of residents started leaving the island in the 1990s following the collapse of the Soviet Union, leaving Sergei and Galina Khishchenko as the last two residents to call the island home.

The island, only 4.5 square kilometers in area, is located in the Sea of Okhotsk off the western Pacific Ocean and about 20 kilometers from Magadan. Its name, translated literally from Russian, is the Island of Misunderstanding.

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is urging Iran to cease jailing members of the press for their work after a 72-year-old journalist began a three-year prison sentence over his coverage of protests last year.

“Jailing an elderly journalist in the middle of a raging pandemic shows how much contempt the Iranian judiciary has for the press,” CPJ’s Middle East and North Africa Program Coordinator Sherif Mansour said in a statement on December 8, a day after authorities arrested Kayvan Samimi and took him to serve a three-year sentence at Tehran’s Evin prison.

Mansour said Samimi “must be released immediately and unconditionally, as should all of the journalists being held in Iran in retaliation for their reporting.”

Samimi was arrested in Tehran in May 2019 while he was covering labor protests for the Iran-e Farda magazine, where he worked as editor in chief.

He was freed on bail in June 2019 while facing charges of “colluding against national security” and “spreading antiestablishment propaganda.”

In April this year, a Tehran court tried Samimi in absentia, sentencing him to six years in prison.

Another court confirmed his conviction in May but reduced his sentence to three years, a decision that was upheld on further appeal in June.

Samimi previously served six years in prison over his coverage of the contested 2009 presidential election.

Since March, Iranian authorities have granted temporary release to tens of thousands of prisoners following concerns over the spread of the coronavirus in prisons in the Middle East's worst-hit country. Many have since returned behind bars.

With reporting by Radio Farda

Prominent U.S. cybersecurity firm FireEye says it has recently been targeted by hackers with “world-class capabilities,” believing that the hacking was state-sponsored.

In a blog post on December 8, FireEye CEO Kevin Mandia said the hackers broke into its network and stole tools used for testing customers' security.

"The attacker primarily sought information related to certain government customers," Mandia wrote, without naming them.

The blog post did not say when the attack was detected. It said the company is investigating the hack with the FBI.

Matt Gorham, assistant director of the FBI's cyberdivision, said the hackers' “high level of sophistication [was] consistent with a nation state.”

Cybersecurity experts say sophisticated nation-state hackers could modify the stolen “red team” tools and wield them in the future against government or industry targets.

Many in the cybersecurity community suspect Russia for the hack, including Jake Williams, president of cybersecurity firm Rendition Infosec.

"I do think what we know of the operation is consistent with a Russian state actor," Williams said. "Whether or not customer data was accessed, it’s still a big win for Russia."

FireEye is a California-based firm used by companies and governments throughout the world to protect them from hacking.

The company has been at the forefront of investigating state-backed hacking groups and played a key role in identifying Russia as the protagonist in numerous hacks, including the attacks in 2015 and 2016 on Ukraine’s energy grid.

Mandia said he had concluded that "a nation with top-tier offensive capabilities” was behind the attack.

The attackers “tailored their world-class capabilities specifically to target and attack FireEye,” using “a novel combination of techniques not witnessed by us or our partners in the past," the blog said.

The hack was said to be the biggest blow to the U.S. cybersecurity community since hackers in 2016 released hacking tools stolen from the National Security Agency (NSA).

The United States believes Russia and North Korea capitalized on the stolen tools to unleash global cyberattacks.

With reporting by AP and the BBC

WASHINGTON -- Former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright told a congressional committee on December 8 that corruption is “crippling” the Western Balkans and urged Washington to devote more attention to the strategically important region to counter Russian and Chinese influence.

Albright, who served under President Bill Clinton from 1997 to 2001, also said the United States needs to work closer with Europe on resolving the region’s lingering political and economic problems.

“We must attack the rampant corruption that is crippling political institutions and undermining the rule of law across the region,” Albright told the House Foreign Affairs Committee during a hearing dedicated to Balkan policy recommendations for the incoming Biden administration.

“In every country, leaders seem to regard political office as a source of patronage to stay in power. Addressing the so-called state capture and rooting out these influences must be a top priority,” she said.

The United States has been seeking to integrate the Balkans into Western organizations such as the European Union and NATO in order to bring peace and prosperity to a region that has suffered from ethnic wars. Serbia’s reluctance to recognize its former province of Kosovo as an independent country and Republika Srpska's threats to secede from Bosnia-Herzegovina are the two key issues hindering that goal.

Albright said the United States has pulled back from the region following its deep involvement in stopping the ethnic wars of the 1990s. The United States led two NATO military campaigns in the Balkans that decade, including the 1999 bombing of military targets in present-day Serbia to halt the cleansing of ethnic Albanians in Kosovo.

Russian, Chinese Influence

Albright was one of three experts to speak at the hearing, which also addressed the growing influence of Russia and China in the region, the autocratic tendencies of Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic, and the need for U.S. leadership to solve outstanding problems.

“This may sound too simplistic, [but] we have to pay attention,” Albright said when asked about how to counter Russian and Chinese influence. “We have not paid the kind of attention that is necessary to this area, feeling kind of ‘oh well, we did everything that we could.’”

Daniel Serwer, a professor at Johns Hopkins University and a former State Department special envoy to Bosnia, also called for more U.S. involvement in the region in cooperation with Europe to solve the most critical issues.

Serwer said that Europe has been unable to solve Balkan regional problems by itself in part because some EU states refuse to recognize Kosovo. Europe has been leading the effort to solve the political impasse between Serbia and Kosovo for a decade.

“The essential precondition for solving the remaining Balkan problems is American recommitment to the region in tandem with European allies,” Serwer said. The EU “demonstrated it cannot do the job on its own,” he said.

The experts said Biden should push Vucic to recognize Kosovo, end military cooperation with Russia, and improve the state of democracy inside the country if Serbia wants to join Western institutions. Vucic, who vowed to lead Serbia toward European Union membership, has been accused of curbing media freedoms and intimidating critics.

“The Biden administration will need to toughen up on Belgrade together with Europe,” Serwer said.

The experts warned Congress against pulling NATO forces from Kosovo, saying it would be a sign of a lack of commitment to the region at a time when rival powers are getting more involved.

NATO has a force of 3,500 in Kosovo, including slightly less than 700 U.S. military personnel.

“If it were ended at the moment, it would be something that would continue to make the people in the region think well, the rest of the world doesn't care,” Albright said of the troop deployment.

Janusz Bugajski, a Balkan expert and senior fellow at the Jamestown Foundation, a Washington-based think-tank, told the committee that the United States needs to "pay more attention" to building up a security force in Kosovo.

“In that way, Kosovo will be in NATO rather than NATO being in Kosovo,” he said.

Lawmakers in Kosovo in December 2018 passed legislation to build a full-fledged army, a move that has inflamed tensions with Serbia but that would take years to accomplish.

Turning to Bosnia, the experts warned that the 1995 Dayton agreement, which created a political settlement based on ethnic power sharing following years of war, is no longer viable and only serves to perpetuate corruption.

“The United States and the European Union must focus their efforts in Bosnia on the abuse of government and state-owned enterprises, taking away the levers of power that keep the current system in place,” Albright said.

Serwer said the United States should pressure the EU to sanction those pushing for the breakup of Bosnia and to move EU peacekeeping forces to the country’s northeast to block secession by Respublika Srpska, the country’s ethnic Serb region.

Amnesty International has hailed a letter sent by UN experts to the Iranian government pressing for accountability over notorious prison massacres of dissidents in 1988.

The human rights experts warned in their letter that past and ongoing violations related to the massacres “may amount to crimes against humanity,” Amnesty International said on December 9 in a news release.

Amnesty International and other rights groups have long pushed for accountability over what they describe as the extrajudicial executions of thousands of mainly young people across Iran in 1988 just as the war with Iraq was ending.

Those killed were mainly supporters of the People's Mujahedin of Iran, a banned group in the country that had backed Baghdad during the conflict.

Activists say thousands were killed in executions that took place without proper trials. The actual number is still unclear. Amnesty International said in a 2018 report that the executions took place in at least 32 cities across Iran within a matter of weeks in July-September 1988.

Amnesty International, which described the massacres as crimes against humanity in its report two years ago, accuses Iran of "systematically" concealing the circumstances surrounding the deaths and the whereabouts of remains.

The London-based rights organization called the letter "a momentous breakthrough" that marks a turning point for the victims’ families and survivors.

“Top UN human rights experts have now sent an unequivocal, and long overdue, message: the ongoing crimes of mass enforced disappearances resulting from the secret extrajudicial executions of 1988 can no longer go unaddressed and unpunished,” said Diana Eltahawy, Amnesty International’s deputy director for the Middle East and North Africa.

The letter, first sent to the Iranian government in September, says the UN experts “are seriously concerned by the alleged continued refusal to disclose the fate and whereabouts” of the people who were killed.

They say they are alarmed by the authorities’ refusal to provide families with death certificates, harassment of the families, and other matters such as the destruction of mass graves and statements from the government denying the cases.

The experts call for independent investigations into all cases, the return of human remains to their families, and the prosecution of the perpetrators among other things.

The UN confirmed the contents of the letter, which is only now being made public.

With reporting by AFP

The outgoing administration of U.S. President Donald Trump has stepped up its pressure on Iran by imposing sanctions on the country's ambassador to Yemen's Huthi rebels.

The fresh sanctions, announced on December 8, target envoy Hassan Irlu as well as the Qom-based Al-Mustafa International University for recruiting members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps' (IRGC) Quds Force as part of an effort to destabilize the situation in Yemen and Syria.

The Huthis have been engaged in a bloody civil war in Yemen for the past five years, and the move was reportedly seen as a possible effort to force the group to reach a peace agreement.

Under the sanctions, any assets the blacklisted targets may have in the United States will be frozen and U.S. citizens will be barred from doing business with them.

"Iran's support for the Huthis fuels the conflict in Yemen and exacerbates the country's instability," Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a statement.

The U.S. Treasury described Irlu as an official with the Quds Force, the elite foreign paramilitary and espionage arm of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, and alleged that Mustafa International University was using its foreign branches as a recruitment platform.

The university, which has close links with Iran's Shi’ite clerical leadership, has allegedly been active in recruiting Pakistanis and Afghans to fight in Syria on behalf of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

The moves come just over a month before Democratic President-elect Joe Biden is to take office and adds to Trump's recent efforts to step up pressure on governments his administration opposes.

In his statement, Pompeo said that through ambassador Irlu's presence in Yemen, the IRGC was "signaling its intent to increase support to the Huthis and further complicate international efforts to reach a negotiated settlement to the conflict."

Trump is reportedly also considering designating the Huthi rebels, who share religious ties with Iran and control large areas of Yemen including the capital, as terrorists.

Members of the U.S. Democratic Party have warned against the move, fearing it would jeopardize relief efforts as Yemen suffers a humanitarian catastrophe brought on by a civil war involving the Huthis, the Yemeni government, a Saudi-led coalition, and other militant groups.

Before the sanctions were announced, Irlu wrote on Twitter that "what is happening in the Saudi siege & aggression against the Yemen is merely the implementation of the American Zionist policies."

The Quds Force has already been designated as a terrorist organization by the Trump administration.

In January, General Qasem Soleimani, the Quds Force commander, was assassinated in a drone attack near Baghdad as he arrived for a visit to Iraq. The United States claimed responsibility for the attack.

Based on reporting by AP, Reuters, and AFP

An investigation by Norway's Police Security Service (PST) has concluded that a cyberattack and data breach of the country's parliament was likely carried out by Fancy Bear, a hacker group that has ties to Russian military intelligence.

In a December 8 press release announcing the findings of its investigation into the August attack, the PST said there was not enough evidence to press charges relating to damage to Norway's national interests.

Norwegian officials had previously announced that a "vast" cyberattack on August 24 had gained access to the e-mails of some parliamentarians and parliamentary employees, although the identity of the attackers was not revealed. Norwegian Foreign Minister Ine Eriksen Soreide subsequently accused Russia of being behind the attack against the NATO-member Scandinavian country.

The investigation in the attack bolstered that allegation, with the PST saying the attack was part of a broader campaign domestically and internationally "that has been going on at least since 2019" and "was carried out by the cyber actor referred to in open sources as APT28 or Fancy Bear."

APT28, also known as Fancy Bear, is a Russian hacker group that is believed to be associated with Russia's GRU military intelligence agency that has been blamed for carrying out numerous cyberattacks on Western governments, think tanks, and corporations in recent years.

Fancy Bear is perhaps best known for interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, and was recently accused of targeting both the Joe Biden and Donald Trump campaigns ahead of this year's U.S. election.

In its press statement, the PST said that Fancy Bear was specifically linked to the GRU's 85th Main Special Services Center, whose officers were recently implicated in taking part in a 2015 cyberattack against the German Bundestag.

The PST investigation also provided information about the scope of the cyberattack, including that the perpetrators obtained "valid usernames and passwords" using brute-force attacks on a "high number" of e-mail accounts used by the parliament. Brute-force attacks involve hackers submitting numerous passwords in an effort to eventually guess the correct combination.

The investigation also found that after passwords were obtained, the attackers were able to log into a smaller number of accounts and that "sensitive content" had been extracted.

The attackers were not successful in their attempts to further breach parliament's computer systems, according to the analysis of the breach, but the PST said that it could not go into further detail due to the sensitivity of the matter.

The investigation revealed vulnerabilities in how insecure passwords used "in both work and private contexts" exposed both individuals and parliament as a whole, and showed the need for better security mechanisms such as two-factor authentication, according to the PST.

The Russian Embassy in Norway, which in October called Norwegian Foreign Minister Eriksen Soreide's allegations "unacceptable" and a "provocation," has not commented on the results of the PST's investigation.

Spy cases involving both Russia and Norway, which share a 200-kilometer border in the Far North, have soured relations between the countries in recent years, and Norway's intelligence agency regularly identifies Russia as one of its main espionage threats.

Following Eriksen Soreide's accusation, the Russian Embassy in Norway said that Moscow had notified Oslo about malicious online activities originating in Norway on six occasions in 2019 and four times in 2020.

In a tit-for-tat row that played out earlier this year, Moscow and Oslo expelled one diplomat each after a Norwegian citizen was jailed in Norway on suspicion of spying for Russia. In 2019, a retired Norwegian border inspector was sentenced in Russia to 14 years in prison after being accused of collecting information about Russian nuclear submarines for Norwegian intelligence. The man was later released as part of a spy swap.

Russia has repeatedly denied any involvement in any cyberattacks, including relating to the 2016 U.S. election.

With reporting by AFP, AP, and dpa

Seven former Bosnian Serb police officers and army fighters were arrested on December 8 on suspicion of committing atrocities against non-Serbs during the 1992-95 Bosnian War.

The prosecutor's office of Bosnia-Herzegovina said in a statement that the group is suspected of crimes against humanity over the imprisonment and torture of some 150 Bosnian Muslim and Croat civilians around the central town of Donji Vakuf in the spring and summer of 1992.

The statement said that many prisoners died as a result of inhuman treatment, beatings, and harassment, or suffered permanent trauma.

Bosnian police said the arrests were made in the northern Bosnian Serb city of Banja Luka.

"The suspects will be handed over to the case prosecutor within the legal deadline, in compliance with the security measures due to the COVID-19 pandemic, who will interview them and then make a decision on further activities in the case," the statement said.

More than 100,000 people were killed before in the conflict that ended in a U.S.-brokered peace agreement in 1995 that divided Bosnia into two entities -- the Muslim-Croat Federation and Republika Srpska -- held together by joint central institutions.

With reporting by AP

A report from a Russian news outlet claims that the Kremlin has built an office for President Vladimir Putin in Sochi that is identical to his office outside Moscow, and that Putin has frequently -- and secretly -- worked in the Black Sea resort city in recent months.

There was no independent confirmation of the December 8 report by the online publication Proyekt Media, which said that Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov had declined to answer questions it posed.

Another Russian online publication, Daily Storm, quoted Peskov as dismissing the Proyekt report as “stupidity,” saying that Putin "is working in Moscow" and sometimes goes on work-related trips. He did not mention any specific dates.*

If true, however, the report would add further evidence to the lengths that the Kremlin has gone to isolate Putin amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, and also to hide those efforts in order to present the image that Putin continues his work uninterrupted.

In its report, Proyekt cited two unnamed sources it said were “familiar with the schedule for the head of state and a top manager at a state-run company.” The publication also analyzed flight-tracking records for the official presidential aircraft used by Putin to travel in and out of the country, as well as a comparison of photographs of Putin’s office in the Moscow suburb of Novo-Ogaryovo.

Like many countries, Russia has imposed lockdowns aimed to stem the spread of the coronavirus, restricting movement and requiring many to work remotely as much as possible.

Reducing In-Person Meetings

Putin has appeared to largely sequester himself at Novo-Ogaryovo, holding video conferences with governors and cabinet ministers and giving televised speeches. He’s also had only a few publicized in-person meetings with a select group of individuals, for example with top security officials and the head of the state-run oil company Rosneft.

As part of its evidence, Proyekt cited a video conference that Putin held on November 2 with a group of Russian schoolchildren. A photograph released by the Kremlin said Putin was in the Moscow region when he held the conference.

But, the publication said, members of the presidential staff were in Sochi that day, according to one person familiar with the situation. And on November 3, the presidential jet was shown departing from Sochi en route to St. Petersburg, where Putin attended the unveiling of a new icebreaker.

Proyekt also said that many journalists in the Kremlin press pool have had more limited access to Putin in recent months.

Other efforts that the Kremlin has devised to reduce the risk of Putin being infected include the installation of disinfectant tunnels at the Kremlin and at Novo-Ogaryovo: devices that resemble airport security screeners and appear to spray visitors with an antiseptic mist as they walk through.

SEE ALSO:

Kremlin 'Installs Disinfectant Tunnels' To Protect Putin Against Coronavirus

Russian media have investigated similar reports of the Kremlin efforts to hide or deceive Russians of Putin’s whereabouts in the past.

In February, Putin told the state news agency TASS that in the early 2000s, during the Second Chechen War, he declined an offer by security agencies to use a “body double” -- a lookalike actor to help protect Putin against attack.

In 2015, Putin was not seen publicly for more than a week, prompting a host of conspiracy mongering and humorous Russian-language memes.

Proyekt, a new Russian news outlet that bills itself as an independent, crowd-funded publication, has had several major news scoops recently. Last month, the site reported that Putin, who has two daughters from his earlier marriage, might be the father of a 17-year-old whose mother is a secretive St. Petersburg millionaire.

With reporting by Current Time

* CORRECTION: A previous version of this story contained a reference to The Daily Stormer, instead of Daily Storm, a Russian online site.

YEREVAN -- The office of the former Armenian President Serzh Sarkisian has declined to expound on a leaked audio recording of a conversation the former president had four years ago with Belarusian leader Alyaksandr Lukashenka about a deal with Azerbaijan concerning seven districts around the breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh region.

In a statement issued on December 8, Sarkisian's office said that the conversation in question, during which Sarkisian and Lukashenka talked about a possible deal with Azerbaijan regarding the seven districts around Nagorno-Karabakh that at the time were under the control of Armenian armed forces, took place in Yerevan on October 16, 2016, at a closed gathering during a session of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO).

It added that it was "unclear" how the recording appeared on the Internet on December 7. The recording sparked a controversy in Armenia, as Lukashenka can be heard calling on Sarkisian to turn the districts back over to Azerbaijan, saying that the CSTO should place its joint peacekeepers in the breakaway region to secure the safety of ethnic Armenians there.

"I do not understand why those territories should be given away just like that," Sarkisian can be heard saying in the two-minute audio clip, to which Lukashenka responds: "Just like that...he will pay, he [Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev] offered you $5 billion in the first round."

Sarkisian then counters that he is ready to offer $6 billion to Aliyev to give up Azerbaijan's claims to the districts in question.

"The office of the third president of the Republic of Armenia considers the appearance of the audio recording in public as a fact and refrains from any comment, as all talks held in a closed format at the session cannot be commented on, just as they have not been commented on before," the statement said.

Sarkisian also said during the conversation that Armenia cannot give up the seven districts "for which 5,000 Armenian soldiers paid with their lives."

Azerbaijani officials have not commented on the audio clip.

The audio was posted on the Internet amid an ongoing political crisis in Armenia in the wake of a Moscow-brokered deal struck on November 10, ending a 44-day war between Azerbaijan and ethnic Armenian forces that left thousands dead on both sides.

Under the deal, Azerbaijan took back control over parts of Nagorno-Karabakh and surrounding districts where the Azerbaijani population had been pushed out by Armenian forces almost three decades earlier.

The Moscow-brokered deal was a blow to Armenia and Yerevan-backed ethnic Armenian forces who controlled the territories since 1994.

Nagorno-Karabakh is internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan, but the ethnic Armenians who make up most of the region's population reject Azerbaijani rule.

A Chinese citizen of ethnic Kazakh origin from China's northwestern province of Xinjiang told RFE/RL that he has obtained asylum seeker status in Ukraine.

Ersin Erkinuly, 23, said on December 8 that he was released from custody in Ukraine's western city of Lviv a day earlier after a local appeals court canceled the November 8 decision of a lower court to deport him back to China.

Erkinuly also said that he plans to move to Kyiv, where a local Kazakh community is waiting for him.

Ukrainian border guards arrested Erkinuly in October when he tried to cross into Poland without proper documents.

Erkinuly said at the time that he had lost his Chinese passport and insisted that he would face torture and prison time if he is deported to China.

In recent years, many ethnic Kazakhs have fled Xinjiang, fearing placement in detention centers that Beijing says are reeducation camps.

In October, Kazakh authorities gave refugee status to four ethnic Kazakhs from Xinjiang, after they illegally crossed Chinese-Kazakh border.

The U.S. State Department has said as many as 2 million Uyghurs, Kazakhs, and members of Xinjiang's other indigenous, mostly Muslim, ethnic groups have been taken to detention centers.

China denies that the facilities are internment camps.

Kazakhs are the second-largest Turkic-speaking indigenous community in Xinjiang after Uyghurs. The region is also home to ethnic Kyrgyz, Tajiks, and Hui, also known as Dungans.

BAKU -- Azerbaijan has extended the coronavirus quarantine and toughened movement restrictions amid an increasing number of infections in the country.

The government's coronavirus task force said on December 8 that the quarantine has been extended until January 31.

The statement also said that the capital, Baku, and several other key towns and cities will be put under a full lockdown from December 14 until January 18.

Transportation between the towns and cities will be suspended and residents will be allowed to leave their homes three times a day after receiving text-message permits for essential shopping and critical situations.

Additionally, all customer services in the county will be suspended as well, meaning that all shops and catering facilities, including restaurants, cafes, and teahouses, will be allowed to offer clients only takeaway or online services, the statement said.

Health officials said on December 8 that the daily number of new coronavirus cases has been on the rise in recent weeks.

The total registered number of coronavirus cases in the South Caucasus nation is 154,152, including 1,713 deaths.