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Algeria Strips MP of his Mandate over Past Involvement in French Foreign Legion

An Algerian lawmaker was stripped of his mandate by parliament following revelations about his past involvement in the Foreign Legion in France. (Reuters)
An Algerian lawmaker was stripped of his mandate by parliament following revelations about his past involvement in the Foreign Legion in France. (Reuters)
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Algeria Strips MP of his Mandate over Past Involvement in French Foreign Legion

An Algerian lawmaker was stripped of his mandate by parliament following revelations about his past involvement in the Foreign Legion in France. (Reuters)
An Algerian lawmaker was stripped of his mandate by parliament following revelations about his past involvement in the Foreign Legion in France. (Reuters)

An Algerian was stripped of his mandate by parliament following revelations about his past involvement in the Foreign Legion in France.

Parliament announced in a statement on Wednesday that it had decided by a majority of its members to strip Mohamed Bekhadra of his mandate as deputy in a vote behind closed doors.

Citing a report by the parliament’s legal commission, local media reported that Bekhadra had served in the Foreign Legion.

The report, which AFP was able to consult, concludes that the deputy "was not qualified to run" in the elections.

According to the text, "the fact that the member admitted having served in a foreign army with the rank of corporal means that his loyalty is to a foreign state."

Bekhadra published a video on Facebook saying that "he had joined the French army to obtain his residence papers and finance his studies"

"I cannot be stripped of my mandate simply because I served as a military nurse with a short-term contract in a foreign army," he said.

“I turned this page 15 years ago, I did not betray my country because no law prohibits what I did.”

A member of the Algerian National Front (FNA), Bekhadra was elected deputy of the Algerian community abroad in the constituency of Marseille, during the legislative elections of June 2021.

The Foreign Legion is a unit of the elite and special forces of the French Armed Forces. It consists of more than 9,000 men aged between 17-39 from around the world. After years, the soldier could become a French citizen.

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An Israeli Strike that Killed 3 Lebanese Journalists Was Most Likely Deliberate

A destroyed journalists car is seen at the site where an Israeli airstrike hit a compound housing journalists, killing three media staffers from two different news agencies according to Lebanon's state-run National News Agency, in Hasbaya village, southeast Lebanon, Friday, Oct. 25, 2024. (AP)
A destroyed journalists car is seen at the site where an Israeli airstrike hit a compound housing journalists, killing three media staffers from two different news agencies according to Lebanon's state-run National News Agency, in Hasbaya village, southeast Lebanon, Friday, Oct. 25, 2024. (AP)
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An Israeli Strike that Killed 3 Lebanese Journalists Was Most Likely Deliberate

A destroyed journalists car is seen at the site where an Israeli airstrike hit a compound housing journalists, killing three media staffers from two different news agencies according to Lebanon's state-run National News Agency, in Hasbaya village, southeast Lebanon, Friday, Oct. 25, 2024. (AP)
A destroyed journalists car is seen at the site where an Israeli airstrike hit a compound housing journalists, killing three media staffers from two different news agencies according to Lebanon's state-run National News Agency, in Hasbaya village, southeast Lebanon, Friday, Oct. 25, 2024. (AP)

An Israeli airstrike that killed three journalists and wounded others in Lebanon last month was most likely a deliberate attack on civilians and an apparent war crime, an international human rights group said Monday.
The Oct. 25 airstrike killed three journalists as they slept at a guesthouse in southeast Lebanon in one of the deadliest attacks on the media since the Israel-Hezbollah war began 13 months ago.
Eleven other journalists have been killed and eight wounded since then, Lebanon's Health Minister Firass Abiad said.
More than 3,500 people have been killed in Lebanon, and women and children accounted for more than 900 of the dead, according to the Health Ministry. More than 1 million people have been displaced since Israeli ground troops invaded while Hezbollah has been firing thousands of rockets, drones and missiles into Israel - and drawing fierce Israeli retaliatory strikes.
Human Rights Watch determined that Israeli forces carried out the Oct. 25 attack using an air-dropped bomb equipped with a US produced Joint Direct Attack Munition, or JDAM, guidance kit.
The group said the US government should suspend weapons transfers to Israel because of the military´s repeated "unlawful attacks on civilians, for which US officials may be complicit in war crimes."
There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military on the report.
The Biden administration said in May that Israel’s use of US-provided weapons in the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza likely violated international humanitarian law but that wartime conditions prevented US officials from determining that for certain in specific airstrikes.
The journalists killed in the airstrike in the southeastern town of Hasbaya were camera operator Ghassan Najjar and broadcast technician Mohammed Rida of the Beirut-based pan-Arab Al-Mayadeen TV, and camera operator Wissam Qassim, who worked for Hezbollah's Al-Manar TV.
Human Rights Watch said a munition struck the single-story building and detonated upon hitting the floor.
"Israel’s use of US arms to unlawfully attack and kill journalists away from any military target is a terrible mark on the United States as well as Israel," said Richard Weir, the senior crisis, conflict and arms researcher at Human Rights Watch.
Weir added that "the Israeli military’s previous deadly attacks on journalists without any consequences give little hope for accountability in this or future violations against the media."
Human Rights Watch said that it found remnants at the site and reviewed photographs of pieces collected by the resort owner and determined that they were consistent with a JDAM guidance kit assembled and sold by the US company Boeing.

The JDAM is affixed to air-dropped bombs and allows them to be guided to a target by using satellite coordinates, making the weapon accurate to within several meters, the group said.
In November 2023, two journalists for Al-Mayadeen TV were killed in a drone strike at their reporting spot. A month earlier, Israeli shelling in southern Lebanon killed Reuters videographer Issam Abdallah and seriously wounded other journalists from France´s international news agency Agence France-Presse and Qatar´s Al-Jazeera TV on a hilltop not far from the Israeli border.