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Moroccan Ex-Minister Hit With Five-Year Jail Sentence

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Moroccan opposition figure and former minister Mohamed Ziane has been sentenced to five years in prison while serving a three-year term in another case, his lawyer said on Saturday.

The former Rabat bar association president was convicted on charges of “embezzlement and squandering of public funds,” the lawyer Ali Reda Ziane, who is also his son, told AFP.

The charges relate to funds the Moroccan Liberal Party (PML), of which Mohamed Ziane was the founder and chief, received in a 2015 electoral campaign.

“This is a form of life sentence for an 81-year-old man, while legally nothing has been proven,” said the lawyer, who plans to appeal the ruling.

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Ziane, who was human rights minister between 1995 and 1996, has been in detention since November 2022, after being sentenced to three years on appeal.

The opposition figure had become known in recent years for statements criticising the authorities in Morocco, particularly the intelligence services.

He said he was being judged “because of his opinions.”

The proceedings follow an interior ministry complaint on seven counts, among them contempt of public officials and justice, insults against a constituted body, defamation, adultery, and sexual harassment.

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In the same case, the financial crimes chamber of the Rabat appeals court sentenced the PML treasurer and a party administrative employee to five years in prison and one year in prison plus a one-year suspended sentence, respectively.

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“Sleeping Prince of Saudi Arabia” reportedly wakes up after 20 years in coma

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A member of the Saudi royal family, Prince Al-Waleed bin Khaled bin Talal Al Saud, popularly called the “Sleeping Prince of Saudi Arabia” who reportedly fell into a coma has allegedly been woken up after 20 years.

The “Sleeping Prince of Saudi Arabia”, the son of billionaire Prince Khaled bin Talal spent two decades in a coma after he suffered a traumatic brain injury in a car accident while studying at a military college in the UK in 2005.

There has not been an official statement from the Saudi royal family and close relatives regarding the claims that Prince Al-Waleed has been woken up after 20 years in a coma but several reports indicated that he has been recovered from the traumatic brain injury.

It would be recalled that Prince Al-Waleed reportedly showed signs of moving a finger or turning his head which Doctors described as semi-conscious reactions after his father refused ending life support advice from Doctors.

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Billionaire Prince Khaled bin Talal expressed hope that God will deliver his son from the 20 years decades in coma hence the decline of the ending life support advice.

He was of the view that the living God who saved his son’s life during the accident could heal him and unite with his family.

The Prince has been on life support at King Abdulaziz Medical City in Riyadh.

The claims on social media that the “Sleeping Prince of Saudi Arabia” can not be fully relied on as Elvisanokyenews.net is waiting for official statement from the Saudi royal family and close relatives for confirmation.

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The news of the Prince waking up has generated a heated reaction on social media.

While some refute the reports, others are still calling on the Living God to show the Prince His miracle powers and bring him back to his family.

Source: Elvisanokyenews.net

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Rising cricketer passes away in India plane crash

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Tragedy strikes as Dirdh Patel, a 23-year-old rising Indian cricketer, passes away in the India plane crash.

Recall that social media was flooded with tributes following the Air India crash that occurred in Ahmedabad, India, resulting in 241 fatalities.

According to reports, Patel was a student at the University of Huddersfield, where he completed his Master’s degree in Artificial Intelligence.

He was also an accomplished cricketer, playing for Leeds Modernians Cricket Club as their overseas player in 2024.

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The cause of the crash is still under investigation, with preliminary reports suggesting issues with thrust during takeoff.

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Trump cautions Iran’s Supreme leader, says “we know where you’re”

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President Trump has revealed that the US knows “exactly” where Iran Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei is hiding but is letting him live “for now,” as Israeli and US sources say the commander-in-chief is heavily weighing whether to conduct military strikes on Tehran’s nuclear facilities.

And the world was waiting on his decision Tuesday.

Trump, who ran three times for president on an “America First” platform of opposing costly Mideast quagmires, openly threatened Tehran and called for Iran’s “unconditional surrender” following Israel’s punishing bombardment of the country’s military and nuclear infrastructure.

“We know exactly where the so-called ‘Supreme Leader’ is hiding,” Trump truthed. “He is an easy target, but is safe there – We are not going to take him out (kill!), at least not for now.”

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“But we don’t want missiles shot at civilians, or American soldiers. Our patience is wearing thin. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”

He convened an 80-minute meeting with his top national security officials in the West Wing’s Situation Room on Tuesday a little after 2 p.m. to weigh the legacy-defining decision.

But, “as always, President Trump alone will make the call,” a source close to the Pentagon said Tuesday.

The source speculated that there’s an 80% chance the president would launch airstrikes to support Israel.

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Early Tuesday morning the president told reporters he was “not too much in the mood to negotiate” and was seeking a “real end” to the Iran-Israel conflict.

The Situation Room meeting featured Vice President JD Vance, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and intelligence director Tulsi Gabbard.

A source familiar with Trump’s deliberations said he “likes people who know what they’re talking about and are honest with him.”

Additional sources in both the US and Israel told The Post they suspect that the president will act militarily — pushing past an outcry from some of his populist movement’s leading figures who doubt the wisdom of doing so.

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Similarly, an Israeli official said Trump’s positioning of military assets in the region suggests the US is willing to help Israel destroy Iran’s nuclear sites.

Another Israeli source told The Post that Israel and the US has “reached a strategic window of opportunity” — where the parties have both the proper intelligence and weapons capabilities to wipe out Iran’s nuclear program.

The precise conversation within the Situation Room was unclear, though key players have well-known views on Iran and regional military operations.

Vance and Gabbard in particular are associated with the non-interventionist wing of Trump’s political base — with the VP putting up internal resistance to a decision earlier this year to bomb Iran-backed Houthi fighters in Yemen.

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Gabbard, a former Hawaii congresswoman, left the Democratic Party and backed Trump in last year’s election largely over foreign policy.

A source said Gabbard has been at the White House and in the Situation Room consistently since the conflict started on June 13 — after reportedly missing a June 8 gathering at Camp David where Trump was informed that Israel’s attack on Iran was imminent.

Gabbard said in March that Iran wasn’t close to developing a nuclear bomb — contradicting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s claims.

Hegseth and Rubio are more firmly tied with the Republican Party’s hawkish wing.

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They were joined at the Situation Room meeting by Steve Witkoff, Trump’s Mideast special envoy, who led efforts in recent weeks to force Tehran to strike a deal to avoid a looming Israeli attack.

Although Trump floated hours earlier delegating Witkoff and Vance to negotiate with Iran, the Situation Room meeting ended with no plans for any such diplomacy, The Post confirmed.

While the president initially vetoed Israel’s plan over the weekend to take out Khamenei, both Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have indicated that the nations are nearly done waiting for Tehran to give up its nuclear program.

Trump ran for office in three general elections on a platform of keeping the US military out of Mideast quagmires — but has at moments taken limited military action in the region, including in 2020 ordering an airstrike to assassinate Iranian Gen. Qasem Soleimani in Iraq.

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The US military has guided 30,000-pound “bunker buster” bombs that could more effectively collapse underground nuclear facilities — averting a potential incomplete demolition of sites by Israel, which has been dropping 2,000-pound bombs sourced from America.

Netayahu on Monday night told ABC News that he was not ruling out killing Khamenei, 86, if necessary.

“We are doing what we need to do,” the prime minister said.

Khamenei has served as Iran’s supreme leader since 1989 following the death of revolutionary leader Ayatollah Khomeini, who established the country’s theocratic regime after Iran’s US-allied shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, fled in 1979.

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Opponents of the Iranian government described its feckless defense against Israel as evidence that the regime was on the verge of collapse.

Reza Pahlavi, the last shah’s 64-year-old son, on Tuesday called on Iranians to stage an uprising to topple the government.

“The Islamic Republic has reached its end and is in the process of collapsing. Khamenei, like a frightened rat, has gone into hiding underground and has lost control of the situation,” Pahlavi claimed in a Persian-language video posted to X.

“The regime’s apparatus of repression is falling apart. All it takes now is a nationwide uprising to put an end to this nightmare once and for all. Now is the time to rise; the time to reclaim Iran.”

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Pahlavi claimed that “Iran will not descend into civil war or instability. We have a plan for Iran’s future and its flourishing. We are prepared for the first hundred days after the fall for the transitional period for the establishment of a national and democratic government.”

Israel on Monday secured air superiority over Tehran, and Trump on Tuesday said “we” now have control over Iran’s entire airspace — seemingly indicating that the US and Israel are standing strongly together.

“We now have complete and total control of the skies over Iran. Iran had good sky trackers and other defensive equipment, and plenty of it, but it doesn’t compare to American made, conceived, and manufactured ‘stuff.’”

“Nobody does it better than the good ol’ USA.”

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