8/12/07

Child Prisoners in Iraq Suffering Same Abuse as Adults
Ahora
…I’m speaking of a form of abuse worse than those on the long list of violations committed during America’s intervention: the imprisoment of children. The UN’s Integrated Regional Information Networks, commonly known as the IRIN news agency, recently confirmed the existence of minors imprisoned in some Iraqi jails. “They are treated as adults” and subjected to “abuse and torture” during interrogations, reported the news agency. The investigations began after several families went to a humanitarian organization, Association for Justice for Prisoners (AJP), seeking psychological assistance for their children who had just been released from jail. This case involved five minors, between the ages of 13 and 17, who were detained during operations of the Iraqi army in the Baghdad neighborhoods of Adhamiya, Latifiya, Alawi, Dura and Hay al Adel. They were held under the charges of supporting the insurgency….

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=39030

Siege that spells slow death for the innocents
Sick patients requiring urgent medical care among those penned in hell-hole
Ed O’Loughlin, Sunday Herald
FOR THREE weeks, seven-month-old Mohammed Abu Amra has been lying in Gaza’s main paediatric hospital, suffering from immune deficiency and suspected cystic fibrosis. His doctors do not have the drug they need to relieve his symptoms, which include fever and distressed breathing, racking his thin ribs at almost twice the healthy rate of breaths per minute. Nor does any hospital in the sealed-off Gaza Strip have the equipment or expertise needed to clinically diagnose Mohammed’s condition. For eight days his doctors have been waiting for a reply to their request to transfer the baby to a hospital in Israel. If it is not granted, they say, he will probably die….

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Civil rights group: Israel has reached new heights of racism
Yuval Yoaz and Jack Khoury, Haaretz Correspondents
Racism against Israel’s Arab citizens has dramatically increased in the past year, including a 26 percent rise in anti-Arab incidents, according to the Association for Civil Rights in Israel’s annual report. Author Sami Michael, the association’s president, said upon the release of the report that racism was so rife it was damaging civil liberty in Israel.”Israeli society is reaching new heights of racism that damages freedom of expression and privacy,” Michael said. The publication coincides with Human Rights Week, which begins Sunday….

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Fear grips Basra and Najaf in wake of murder of 40 women
Kareem Abedzair, Azzaman
More than 40 women have been brutally murdered and their bodies dumped in the streets of the southern cities of Basra and Najaf, police and eyewitnesses say. The killings come as religious and sectarian factions who wield immense power in southern cities have begun applying strict Islamic jurisdiction by force. Female students are now barred from entering university campuses in Basra if not covered from head to toe. Lt. Gen. Abduljaleel Khalaf, head of Basra police, confirmed the deaths and said women in the city were “under an unprecedented reign of terror.”….

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Petraeus Says Moqtada al-Sadr Helped Curb Violence
Defense Secretary Sees Extended 15-Month Iraq Tours Continuing Until Next Fall
Ann Scott Tyson, Washington Post Staff Writer
Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top American commander in Iraq, said Thursday he applauds Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr for helping, through a cease-fire, to reduce violent attacks in Iraq by 60 percent since June. It was unusual praise by a U.S. official for a relentless critic of the American role here. But Petraeus and other commanders also warned of enduring threats to Iraq’s security, saying the Sunni insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq is again carrying out suicide bombings and trying to gain control of towns in northern Iraq — and the U.S. military must therefore carefully calibrate any future troop reductions….

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Fake reports: The hunt of Izzat al-Duri
Roads to Iraq
This is a good headline for the people who believe everything: “Iraqi forces swoop in hunt for Saddam deputy”. This is very funny, this morning alarabiya reported that they found documents that the Ba’ath Party contacted Al-Qeada later they removed this line. After he was spotted in Yemen, another Arbic newspaper reported that Al-Douri in Saudi Arabia [let alone early reports that he is in Syria], and now we hear that he is back to Iraq….

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The Central Bank; Silent partner in the bloodletting
Mike Whitney
A nation’s economy is a reflection pool. The face that looks back from the water; is the face of the culture and the prevailing ethos. It’s no different with America. The stewards of the US economic system—Paulson and Bernanke—are inextricably linked to a political/military establishment which has been thoroughly marinated in a culture of violence and corruption. Paulson’s “Marshall Plan” for subprime homeowners is just the gloved hand of the despot. The other hand is still busy gouging out eyes at Guantanamo, or clubbing foreign nationals at CIA black sites, or dropping incendiary bombs on schoolchildren in Falluja. It’s all the same. The culture of war and demagoguery has its roots in the economic system….

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Iraqi Resistance Report for events of Saturday, 8 December 2007
Translated and/or compiled by Muhammad Abu Nasr, member, editorial board, the Free Arab Voice. www.freearabvoice.org
In a dispatch posted at 1:49pm Baghdad time Saturday afternoon, the Yaqen News Agency reported that an Iraqi Resistance bomb exploded by a US patrol in the al-Bunuk section of Baghdad. Yaqen reported a source in the puppet police as saying that American troops quickly closed off the area to prevent any information on the nature or extent of US casualties from being reported….

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Bethlehem under attack while Har Homa settlement expands
Palestinian Grassroots Anti Apartheid Wall Campaign
Nine families from around Bethlehem are to be made homeless after Occupation forces this week issued them with notice that their homes are to be demolished. The Occupation also announced the construction of 307 units in the nearby Har Homa settlement, which pushes up against the edge of Bethlehem. The demolition orders hit areas across the Bethlehem district. In Um Rukbe, south of al-Khadr, West Bethlehem, six houses close to the Apartheid Wall and settler-only road were targeted: five are newly built and one is in the final stages of construction. Further orders were issued in Nahalin village, west Bethlehem for a house belonging to local man Saidi Ahmad Najajra, in Za’atara east of Bethlehem for a four story house belonging to Issa Mahmoud Ta’mre, and in Ras al Wad to a large house belonging to Ibrahim Mahmoud Awad Salahat….

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Omar Barghouti: “ No State Has the Right to Exist as a Racist State “
Silvia Cattori*
Omar Barghouti belongs to a new generation of Palestinians who never adhered to the solution of “ Two States, Two peoples “. They are advocating, instead, the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) of Israel as well as a “secular, democratic state” solution, where Palestinians and Israelis would share equal rights, after historic injustices are redressed and the refugees are allowed to return…

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THE GREENING OF PALESTINE~~ A SPECIAL POST… A SPECIAL APPEAL
Desert Peace
It’s been almost a year since israeli soldiers brutally murdered this gorgeous child Abir Aramin. She was one of over 100 Palestinian children murdered in cold blood by Israeli soldiers in 2007. A wonderful group in the States is attempting to immortalise the name of this little Martyr by building a garden in her memory…. a project that all of you can participate in and support….

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=39028

Palestinians stuck within wall, Green Line
MEL FRYKBERG (Middle East Times)
The lives of 10,000 Palestinians trapped within West Bank enclaves – cut off from Israel to the west by the Green Line and separated from the West Bank proper to the east by the barrier – have been ruined socially and economically, with their education disrupted and their livelihoods destroyed or seriously damaged. Some have died or been close to it while waiting for medical treatment while ambulances are turned back at Israeli checkpoints or delayed for hours while medical personnel raced to fulfill increasingly strict criteria for permits to cross the barrier into Israel or to a hospital elsewhere in the West Bank…

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A Gaza patient dies because of the Israeli siege
Rami Almeghari – IMEMC
Palestinian medical sources in Gaza announced today the death of one more patient due to having been denied access to referral to hospitals outside the Gaza Strip, as Israel continues to impose restrictions on movement of Gaza patients. The medics identified the dead as Zuhair Hussain, a cancer patient of his sixties, saying that the ministry has asked for his referral to a hospital outside Gaza, yet the Israeli authorities refused to grant him access. The sources added that this case is the thirty since Israel has placed the coastal Strip under complete closure in mid June, after the Hamas party took over the region….

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Iran abandons dollar in oil deals
PRESS TV – IRAN
Iran has completely stopped carrying out its oil deals in dollar fallowing the OPEC proposal to trade crude in non-dollar currencies. “The dollar is no longer a reliable currency, considering its devaluation and the loss suffered by oil exporters,” said Iranian Oil Minister Gholam-Hossein Nozari. “Iran proposed in the last OPEC (Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries) summit that member states use a reliable currency in their oil transactions to prevent further losses,” he said, adding that the organization will come to a decision on the issue in the Vienna meeting on February 2…

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Fantastic Audio Interview with Gilad Atzmon on Indymedia UK
Peacereporter
Anyone reading this blog is well aware of the aggressive smear campaign that Tony Greenstein, Mark Elf, Lenni Brenner and a few others have brought against Gilad Atzmon, including the accessory harassment of any of those who are affiliated with him in any way. One of the “new entries” in the kill list is FTP, who, like all of the others who had been pressured, did not cave in to the demands to pull Atzmon from the site. He conducted a great interview with Gilad, where they discuss the issues of Zionism, gatekeeping, activism in the UK, philosophy, Jewish identity politics, anti-Semitism and more…

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=39035

Saturday: 48 Iraqis Killed, 88 Wounded
Margaret Griffis, Antiwar.com
At least 48 Iraqis were killed or found dead and 88 more were wounded in the latest round of violence. In Baiji a significant attack caused a large number of casualties. Meanwhile, Mosul is considering digging a security trench around the city. No Coalition casualties were reported. The city of Baiji suffered two bombings. The first one targeted the home of the anti-terrorism police department chief. In that explosion, 11 were killed and 44 wounded when a suicide bomber detonated his cargo near the chief’s house. A separate car bomb struck the Masafi street police station where six people died and 15 more were hurt….

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The “Joy” of Christmas Has Been Cancelled in Bethlehem
Under The Holly Tree
…Yet somehow, most church goers have a romantic vision of Bethlehem, that it was brought to light by Christ’s birth, that celebrations must go on there, pilgrims make their way there, and it is the most “holy” of places. The facts could not be further from the truth for Bethlehem today. Surrounded by the wall that Israel has erected, the wall that encroached into what is Palestinian land and which was said by Vice Premier Haim Ramon to be the Israel/West Bank border (which goes to prove that the wall was fully intended to make “facts on the ground”) Bethlehem is a walled city, not romantic or “holy” in any manner at all…

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“The smell of deals is getting stronger…” (Updated)
Arablinks
…it’s still not clear if the truce between the US and Iran has launched similar moves by Arab countries toward Iran and Israel, to start a qualitatively new chapter in the entire Middle East. The smell of deals is getting stronger and the timing is intriguing, especially in Iraq, Palestine and Lebanon – three issues that distinguish regional and international relations. The preparations are underway to create a US military base in Iraq, by virtue of the understanding and agreement governing bilateral US-Iraqi ties, and this requires an understanding with Iran, according to the analysts…

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=39015

Visiting European medics warn of a health disaster in Gaza
Rami Almeghari – IMEMC
A delegation of European medics in Gaza warned on Saturday of an imminent health disaster in the Gaza Strip, due to the ongoing Israeli siege. The delegation’s remarks came on the sideline of a visit to the Gaza-European hospital, to the south of the coastal region. Dr. Walter Konty, Swiss head of the five-member delegation, was quated as saying “ it is unfair to punish an entire community, as what Israel is currently imprisoning the Palestinians at a big jail, the same as what Jews went through during the II World War”….

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US, Iraq to begin ‘cooperation agreement’ negotiations early 2008
Earthtimes
The US administration and the Iraqi government were to begin negotiations early January on the of sealing a “long- term cooperation and friendship” treaty, Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari told the press. In statements published Saturday, Zebari said the Iraqi government and the Foreign Ministry regarded the matter of extending the UN- mandated US presence in Iraq for another year as “a priority.” “Iraq hopes that this extension of forces will be the last,” Zebari was quoted as saying by the state-run al-Sabah newspaper on Saturday….

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US intelligence agency uses Jordan for torture of prisoners
Joe Kay, WSWS
The revelation that the CIA organized the destruction of videotapes documenting the interrogation of prisoners at secret CIA detention facilities abroad has focused attention on one aspect of the US torture program. Another important component is the policy of “extraordinary rendition”—the transfer of prisoners to the control of other countries that specialize in torture. One of the countries that has been most frequently used by the CIA in this way is Jordan, a key US ally in the Middle East. An article in the Washington Post published on Saturday (”Jordan’s Spy Agency: Holding Cell for the CIA” by Craig Whitlock) documents the close relationship that has developed over the past seven years….

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Shame on Indonesian normalizers
From Khalid Amayreh in Occupied East Jerusalem
This week, Israeli media reported that a delegation of Indonesian Muslim religious leaders arrived in occupied Palestine and was being hosted by Israeli President Shimon Peres. According to the reports, the clerics, who claimed to represent up to 70 million people in the most populous Muslim country, told Peres that they wanted to present the moderate face of Islam that seeks cooperation and peace with other countries and religions and repudiate Islamic extremists. Peres reportedly welcomed the delegation, claiming that Israel’s enemy is not Islam, but “terror,” an allusion to Palestinian resistance to Israel’s decades-old Nazi-like occupation of Palestinian land and brutal treatment of Palestinians….

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Blackwater’s Bu$ine$$
Jeremy Scahill, The Nation
…In short, Blackwater is moving ahead at full steam. Individual scandals clearly aren’t enough to slow it down. The company’s critics in the Democratic-controlled Congress must confront the root of the problem: the government is in the midst of its most radical privatization in history, and companies like Blackwater are becoming ever more deeply embedded in the war apparatus. Until this system is brought down, the world’s the limit for Blackwater Worldwide—and as its rebranding campaign shows, Blackwater knows it….

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=39020

Iraqi Resistance Report for events of Friday, 7 December 2007
Translated and/or compiled by Muhammad Abu Nasr, member, editorial board, the Free Arab Voice. www.freearabvoice.org
…In a dispatch posted at 7:31pm Baghdad time Friday night, the Association of Muslim Scholars of Iraq (AMSI) reported that Iraqi puppet regime troops and police arrested 60 residents of areas to the north and south of Samrarra’, 120km north of Baghdad, during two days of raids, searches, and roundups in the city. The AMSI reported source in the puppet police anr army as saying that 50 local residents were arrested by the puppet army and “Emergency Police” of Salah ad-Din Province in the ar-Rakb are to the south of the city. The provincial puppet police arrested 10 more residents in the al-Mahsurah area between Samarra’ and ad-Duwar on Friday morning….

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Extremist Jewish settlers threaten secession from Israel
Palestinian Information Center
Extremist Jewish settlers from West Bank settlements, who are opposed to a political settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, threatened to break away from Israel and set up their own Jewish state. The settlers say that if the Israeli occupation government decided to evict the settlers, from the settlements they built on confiscated Palestinian lands, within the framework of a final peace agreement with the Palestinians then they would not abide by the government decision and would declare secession from Israel….

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Israel accused of racism against Ethiopian Jews
Saed Bannoura – IMEMC
In addition to the ongoing and well-documented racism agianst the Palestinian people, the Israeli society is now being accused of severe racism by some of its own members. Ethiopian Jews, imported in large numbers by the Israeli government beginning in the mid-1980s, have revealed multiple examples of a society that discriminates heavily against them, even segregating them in schools and workplaces. The study, reported Friday in the Israeli press, shows that the incidents of racism against Ethiopians in Israel are not just limited to a single city or region, but occur in every part of Israel where Ethiopians live….

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Cheney: No reason to doubt the new intelligence report on Iran
JPOST.COM STAFF
US Vice President Dick Cheney on Thursday said he had no reason to doubt a new US intelligence report assessing that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003. “There’s always the possibility that circumstances will change. But I think they’ve done the best job they can with the intelligence that’s available,” Cheney told Politico.com. The vice president stressed that the administration would not change its policy towards Iran…

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Desperation comes in all professions
Caroline Brothers
An educated Iraqi, an English-speaking veterinary surgeon who asked to be called Omar, arrived on the coast of Italy this summer after 30 hours drifting at sea. In a small backpack, which was all he carried on the overcrowded rubber dinghy, was a computer memory stick containing copies of his passport, diplomas and letters. Those documents, upon which his future depended, portray an often unnoticed group of migrants trying to get into Europe: The professional people who move by any desperate means from one unwelcome way station to another….

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Israeli minister ‘in fear of arrest’ cancels UK visit
Donald Macintyre
A senior Israeli minister has turned down an invitation to visit Britain because of fears he could have been arrested on war crimes charges arising from the assassination of a top Hamas military commander five years ago. The Israeli foreign ministry advised Avi Dichter, the Public Security minister, that what it described as an “extreme leftist” group was likely to file a legal complaint over the July 2002 bombing attack in Gaza on Saleh Shehadah which killed at least 13 civilians…

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JORDAN: Iraqi asylum-seekers fall victim to resettlement scams
IRIN News
Many Iraqi asylum-seekers in Jordan have fallen victim to resettlement scams in which they are approached by individuals claiming to guarantee their resettlement in a third country with the help of the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), according to UN officials and Iraqi residents. There are no exact figures about the number of those who have been defrauded but testimonies of individuals and police records show they are in the thousands. Officials from the Ministry of Interior declined to say how many people have been arrested in connection with such scams….

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Review of Iran Intelligence to Be Sought
As Conservatives Reject New NIE, Republican Senators to Urge Congressional Panel
Robin Wright and Glenn Kessler, Washington Post Staff Writers
Senate Republicans are planning to call for a congressional commission to investigate the conclusions of the new National Intelligence Estimate on Iran as well as the specific intelligence that went into it, according to congressional sources. The move is the first official challenge, but it comes amid growing backlash from conservatives and neoconservatives unhappy about the assessment that Iran halted a clandestine nuclear weapons program four years ago. It reflects how quickly the NIE has become politicized, with critics even going after the analysts who wrote it, and shows a split among Republicans….

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Gulf countries speak out against military option in Iran
Africasia, UK
Gulf countries, cautious about the nuclear standoff between the United States and Iran, signalled loudly at a regional security conference on Saturday their opposition to any military option against Tehran. Washington, wrong-footed by its own National Intelligence Estimate in its accusations that Iran wanted nuclear weapons, has emphasized that no options have been ruled out in forcing it to end its nuclear enrichment programme. The NIE on Tuesday said that Iran, which insists its current programme is for peaceful power generation, had halted a secret nuclear weapons programme four years ago…

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Olson and Othman: Summit’s goal: Perpetuate repression of Palestinians
Barb Olson and Amal Othman
“After meeting their own low expectations for the Annapolis conference amid intense skepticism, Bush administration officials crowed with delight,” said an Associated Press story. And well they might. It was more symbolism than substance, but President Bush looked almost presidential. But all Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert really agreed on was to negotiate — Bush called it “hard bargaining.” “Hard bargaining” with Olmert and Abbas (and Bush too) at record low levels of support domestically?…

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ISRAEL-OPT: Only 41 percent of Gaza’s food import needs being met
IRIN News
Food imports into the Gaza Strip are only enough to meet 41 percent of demand, the World Food Programme (WFP) has said, though critical UN humanitarian food supplies are being allowed in. The cost of many basic items, such as beef, wheat and some dairy products have increased significantly, while locally grown produce is fetching extremely low prices on the local market, as exports are banned, threatening the livelihood of farmers. Since the Hamas takeover of Gaza in June, the commercial crossing points with Israel have been all but shut, except for the import of basic humanitarian goods….

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Izzat so?
Eli Stephens, Left I on the News
A year and a half ago TIME Magazine published an interview with Izzat al-Douri, Iraq’s former vice-president who it appears is, more than anyone, directing the resistance in Iraq. Today we learn he’s still out there: Former Iraq’s vice president under Saddam Hussein has escaped an Iraqi security raid on him in Salaheddin province, north of Baghdad. A senior provincial official told Xinhua on Friday that Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri escaped an overnight raid on his hideout in a village east of Tikrit City, 170 kilometers north Iraqi capital. Back in 2003 the U.S. arrested al-Douri’s wife and daughter to try to force him out of hiding; it didn’t work. At least six months later they were still being held; for all we know they still are, just like the still un-charged Gen. Amer al-Saadi (crime: telling the truth to Colin Powell’s lies), Tariq Aziz, and many others who have for all intents and purposes been “disappeared…

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Apartheid: Israeli school segregates, totally isolates, 4 black Jewish/Ethiopian students
Sabbah’s blog
If you thought racism is unacceptable by the Apartheid Israel against Palestinians because they are Arab (Muslims and Christians), then what do you call racism within so called “Jewish citizens”? and where… a Jewish religious school!!! A religious school in Petah Tikva may be more suited to the American South of the 1950s than to 21st century Israel. It was recently discovered that four Ethiopian girls enrolled in Lamerchav Elementary School are learning in complete isolation from their peers. They study in separate classrooms, have their own recess time and are even reportedly given daily cab fare so as not to ride home on the bus with other students. …

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Basra’s murderous militias tell Christian women to cover up or face death
By Ali Hamdani in Basra and James Hider in Baghdad
On her first day at Basra University this year a man came up to Zeena, a 21-year-old Christian woman, and three other Christian girls and ordered them to cover their heads with a hijab, or Islamic headscarf. “We didn’t listen to him, and thought he might just be some extremist student representing only himself,” she said. The next day Zeena and two of her friends returned to class with uncovered heads. This time a man in the black clothes of the Shia militia stopped them at the entrance and took them aside. “He said, ‘We asked you yesterday to wear a hijab, so why are you and your friends not covering your hair?’. He was talking very aggressively and I was scared,” Zeena recalled….

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