عربي English Türkçe اردو فارسى
Logo
Latest News
World

Israeli Prof. Appeals to Netanyahu to ‘Rescue Him from Biden’

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu chairs a cabinet meeting at the prime minister's office in Jerusalem, on February 23, 2023. (AFP)
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu chairs a cabinet meeting at the prime minister's office in Jerusalem, on February 23, 2023. (AFP)
TT
20
TT

Israeli Prof. Appeals to Netanyahu to ‘Rescue Him from Biden’

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu chairs a cabinet meeting at the prime minister's office in Jerusalem, on February 23, 2023. (AFP)
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu chairs a cabinet meeting at the prime minister's office in Jerusalem, on February 23, 2023. (AFP)

Israeli professor Gal Luft has appealed to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other officials to “rescue” him from being imprisoned in the US.

The Larnaca District Courthouse held on Friday a session to look into the American authorities' request to extradite Luft to be brought to trial in the US over breaching the law of selling oil and weapons.

Luft said the prosecution is politically motivated over incriminating information he has in a corruption case against Hunter Biden, the son of US President Joe Biden.

Luft, 56, an energy security and diplomatic expert, serves as the co-director of the Washington-based Institute for the Analysis of Global Security (IAGS).

He was arrested at the Larnaca International Airport, in Cyprus, after Interpol issued an arrest warrant against him on suspicion of arms trafficking to Libya and China.

Luft went on to deny suspicions leveled against him, stressing that he has “never been an arms dealer” and further claiming that the US Justice Department is “trying to bury me to protect Biden” and his family.

He added that he was being targeted for information handed in 2019 as part of Hunter Biden’s alleged corruption case.

After his arrest, Luft sent letters to Netanyahu, Foreign Minister Eli Cohen, Defense Minister Yoav Galant, Justice Minister Yariv Levin, and the International Cooperation Department at the Ministry of Justice and asked them to intervene to rescue him.

Speaking to the Ynet studio on Sunday, Luft's attorney Mordechai Tzivin said: “When there is a political motive, Interpol does not extradite, or when there is a danger to someone’s life. I don't want to say that he is in mortal danger, but he is indeed in great danger.”

Tzivin expressed concern about handing over his client to the US.

The Cypriot court on Friday decided to release Luft but keep him under house arrest and made him turn over his passport.

Most Viewed

 
World

Russia Awaits Ukraine's Confirmation on Planned Exchange of Dead Fighters, Officials Say

A member of the Ukrainian Territorial Defense Forces prepares to use a drone at a damaged school after a missile strike, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, at a residential area in Kharkiv, Ukraine Jun 2, 2022. REUTERS/Ivan Alvarado
A member of the Ukrainian Territorial Defense Forces prepares to use a drone at a damaged school after a missile strike, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, at a residential area in Kharkiv, Ukraine Jun 2, 2022. REUTERS/Ivan Alvarado
TT
20
TT

Russia Awaits Ukraine's Confirmation on Planned Exchange of Dead Fighters, Officials Say

A member of the Ukrainian Territorial Defense Forces prepares to use a drone at a damaged school after a missile strike, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, at a residential area in Kharkiv, Ukraine Jun 2, 2022. REUTERS/Ivan Alvarado
A member of the Ukrainian Territorial Defense Forces prepares to use a drone at a damaged school after a missile strike, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, at a residential area in Kharkiv, Ukraine Jun 2, 2022. REUTERS/Ivan Alvarado

Russian officials said Sunday that Moscow is still awaiting official confirmation from Ukraine that a planned exchange of 6,000 bodies of soldiers killed in action will take place, reiterating allegations that Kyiv had postponed the swap.

On the front line in the war, Russia said that it had pushed into Ukraine's Dnipropetrovsk region.

Russian state media quoted Lt. Gen. Alexander Zorin, a representative of the Russian negotiating group, as saying that Russia delivered the first batch of 1,212 bodies of Ukrainian soldiers to the exchange site at the border and is waiting for confirmation from Ukraine, but that there were “signals” that the process of transferring the bodies would be postponed until next week, The AP news reported.

Citing Zorin on her Telegram channel, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova asked whether it was Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's “personal decision not to take the bodies of the Ukrainians” or whether “someone from NATO prohibited it."

Russia and Ukraine each accused the other on Saturday of endangering plans to swap 6,000 bodies of soldiers killed in action, which was agreed upon during direct talks in Istanbul on Monday that otherwise made no progress toward ending the war.

Vladimir Medinsky, an aide to Russian President Vladimir Putin, led the Russian delegation. Medinsky said that Kyiv called a last-minute halt to an imminent swap. In a Telegram post on Saturday, he said that refrigerated trucks carrying more than 1,200 bodies of Ukrainian troops from Russia had already reached the agreed exchange site at the border when the news came.

In response, Ukraine said that Russia was playing “dirty games” and manipulating facts.

According to the main Ukrainian authority dealing with such swaps, no date had been set for repatriating the bodies. In a statement on Saturday, the agency also accused Russia of submitting lists of prisoners of war for repatriation that didn’t correspond to agreements reached on Monday.