Brazil deported a Palestinian Hamas member and his family at the request of the US State Department, Brazilian federal police sources told Reuters on Monday.
The Muslim MA Abuumar and his seven-month pregnant wife, his son and his mother-in-law, were detained upon entering the country at the Guarulhos airport in São Paulo and in turn boarded a Qatar Airways flight back to Doha last Sunday, they said. the sources.
“The request came from the United States Department of State,” said a senior Brazilian federal police official. “It was proven before a judge that he was deeply involved with Hamas”said the source.
Initially, a federal judge in San Pablo stopped the deportation on Saturday and requested information from the police, when they provided it he ended up approving the deportation of Abuumar and his family.
According to the court order presented by Abuumar’s lawyer, Bruno Henrique de Moura, the Palestinian family was detained by police upon entering the Guarulhos airport without a court order.
He said they were coming to visit his brother who lives in Brazil. Abuumar, 37, is executive director of the Asia Middle East Center, and his wife is Malaysian and his children were born in Malaysia, according to the court order.
Tracking via Kuala Lumpur
A police source said Abuumar first flew to Brazil last year and arrived on January 1, the day President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was sworn in.
The Palestinian ambassador in Brasilia, Ibrahim Al Zeben, said no one officially contacted the embassy about Abuumar. “We trust Brazilian politics,” he added in a message.
For his part, lawyer Moura said that the Brazilian police “simply acceded to a US request that was politically motivated,” based on Abuumar’s name appearing on the US government’s terrorist watch list. “The United States uses this list to make life difficult for pro-Palestinian activists,” Moura said.
Judge Milenna da Cunha said in her ruling that Brazilian federal police received an alert from the US embassy that “a Hamas agent, the Muslim Abuumar” would arrive in Brazil on Friday from Kuala Lumpur.
The judge’s decision approving the deportation cited Abuumar’s social media posts of his meeting in Doha with Ismail Haniyeh, a senior Hamas political leader.
He also cited Brazilian police’s suspicion that Abuumar was traveling to Brazil with his family so that his wife could give birth and his son could be naturalized as a Brazilian citizen.
Moscow threatens “consequences” for Crimea attack
The Russian government on Monday threatened the United States of possible “consequences” and summoned its ambassador to the country, due to its belief that the Ukrainian bombing in Crimea was carried out with American missiles.
The spokesman for the Russian presidency, Dmitri Peskov, described the bombing of Sevastopol as “barbarism” and accused Washington of “kill Russian children”. Two of the four victims of the attack on the peninsula annexed by the Kremlin in 2014 were minors.
“It is clear that the participation of the United States in the fighting, its direct participation, which leads to the death of Russian citizens, has to have consequences,” Peskov insisted.
“Time will tell what they will be,” he added. For its part, the Russian Foreign Ministry announced that it had summoned Lynne Tracy, the US ambassador in Moscow, to inform her of “retaliatory measures.” Washington “bears the same responsibility as the kyiv regime for this atrocity,” she later added in a statement. The attack “will not go unpunished,” she insisted.
According to Russia, Sunday’s bombing of Sevastopol was carried out with Atacms missiles supplied by the United States and loaded with cluster warheads. Moscow-appointed authorities in Crimea said the missiles hit an area with beaches and hotels in the port city.
Fourteenth package of EU sanctions against Russia
Recently agreed upon by the ambassadors of the twenty-seven member countries of the European Union (EU), the round of sanctions approved on Monday is directed against Russian liquefied natural gas (LNG), as well as against ships that, with their activity, contribute to the war against Ukraine.
See alsoRussia blames the US for the attack on Crimea and talks again about nuclear weapons Likewise, the new package includes restrictive measures against another 69 individuals and 47 entities (some located in China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates) responsible for actions that undermine or threaten the territorial integrity, sovereignty and independence of Ukraine.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitro Kuleba reacted to the approval of the new package of measures with a message on X’s account, in which he stressed the importance of the new sanctions: “I have underlined the importance of the fourteenth package of sanctions of the EU to further stifle Putin’s war economy and I have welcomed the EU’s latest steps to use frozen Russian assets for the benefit of Ukraine,” Kuleba wrote, thus alluding to the words of Borrell, who is exploring formulas to mobilize a total of 2.5 billion of euros from frozen Russian assets.
Of that amount, a first tranche of 1.4 billion could arrive in Ukraine at the beginning of July.
Kuleba also thanked his European colleagues for the decision to start negotiations for Ukraine’s accession: “I thanked the 27 Member States for approving the negotiating frameworks for Ukraine and Moldova. Our EU accession talks will begin tomorrow.” Kuleba wrote.
