Al Jazeera World

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Filmmaker: Bahiya Namour Fifty years ago, United States Senator Robert F Kennedy was assassinated at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles just moments after he'd won California's Democratic presidential primary. Sirhan Bishara Sirhan, a Palestinian with Jordanian citizenship, was arrested at the scene of the shooting in what the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) thought was an open-and-shut case. Sirhan was tried and jailed for Robert Kennedy's murder. But since the 1970s, there have been calls for a new investigation into the assassination, based on differing witness accounts, the number of shots fired and distance of Sirhan from Kennedy when he fired. "We're trying to prove there was a travesty of justice in 1969 at Sirhan's trial. We're trying to prove that there was no way that he could have shot the senator, let alone have killed the senator," says Laurie Dusek, a member of Sirhan's defence team. Kennedy's wounds suggest his assassin - or assassins - stood behind him, but eyewitnesses place Sirhan about a metre away and almost in front of him. This has led to suggestions that a second gunman may have fired the fatal shot, a theory supported by Chief Medical Examiner-Coroner for the County of Los Angeles, Thomas Noguchi, who stated in his report that the shot that killed Kennedy was fired at the point-blank range next to his right ear. "The only way to explain this that there was a second gunman in a position behind Kennedy, but the prosecution never proved that Sirhan was behind Kennedy or was able to shoot him point blank," says eyewitness Paul Schrade. Witness accounts and more recent forensic analysis support the view that more bullets were fired at the scene than Sirhan could have had in his gun. Sirhan's .22 Iver-Johnson revolver could only hold eight bullets, yet as many as 13 shots may have been fired at the scene. Two FBI investigators who attended the crime scene right after the assassination stated that they had discovered two bullets in a door frame - bullets that were not mentioned in the LAPD's report. "If a second gun is not firing, there cannot be any bullet holes in the wooden door frames," explains William Klaber, a journalist and writer who has studied the case extensively. "So the police take those door frames down and they bring them to the police station to do work on them. It turns out these bullets represent too many bullets. Sirhan's gun holds eight bullets." Robert Kennedy's death, like the 1963 assassination of his older brother, President John F Kennedy, has been the subject of many conspiracy theories. One suggests that if Bobby were ever elected president, it's almost certain he would have ordered a fresh investigation into his brother's assassination, unconvinced as he was by the official version in the Warren Commission report. Other theories include had Robert Kennedy been elected president, he would have taken steps to end the war in Vietnam. RFK was a principled politician, a New York senator who cared about poverty in the south and racial segregation everywhere. His ideals of a more equal society were never realised but the scale of grief following his death showed how much people appreciated him. After his body had been flown from California to New York, it was put on board a train to Washington, DC for burial next to his brother John at Arlington National Cemetery - and the railway line was lined with millions of mourners. The journey, however, to establish clearly how he died is still incomplete. More from Al Jazeera World on: YouTube - http://aje.io/aljazeeraworldYT Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/AlJazeeraWorld Twitter - https://twitter.com/AlJazeera_World Visit our website - http://www.aljazeera.com/aljazeeraworld Subscribe to AJE on YouTube - http://aje.io/YTsubscribe - Subscribe to our channel: http://aje.io/AJSubscribe - Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/AJEnglish - Find us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aljazeera - Check our website: https://www.aljazeera.com/

A look at how Soviet rule has shaped present-day Georgia while exploring if it was a union of equals or a military and cultural occupation by Russia. Journalist Tamila Varshalomidze grew up in Georgia after the downfall of the Soviet Union, but she is very aware of how the USSR's influence has affected her life, her family and community and her country. In 1937, during Stalin's "Great Terror," her great great grandfather, a wealthy peasant, was purged. In the middle of the night, someone knocked on his door; he was told to get dressed and leave with the authorities. His family never saw him again. "It has been 80 years ... but I think that finding the truth still matters. I feel it helps us to understand why and how we were controlled as a country," says Tamila. "After almost 30 years of independence, the USSR is still with us and I believe we cannot have a future before we have dealt with this past." Tamila sets out to explore her family's history and how Soviet rule has shaped present-day Georgia. Was it a union of equals or a military and cultural occupation by Russia? And how does the existence of Soviet-era monuments and buildings continue to dominate life in the former Soviet republic? She also examines the impact of this legacy on the psyche of those who live in their shadows, and asks why her fellow Georgians actively avoid dealing with their Soviet past? "One of the means to show the power of the state has always been architecture, be it pyramids or baroque palaces," Georgian architect and urban planner, Irakli Zhvania says. "It was always the means to show your own people how powerful you are, to show them that they are small, they are little and they should be afraid of the state." These structures, which Tamila refers to as the "Soviet scar", are a constant reminder of Georgia's long, painful struggle for independence. For others, they are simply a fact of daily life. While some buildings reveal a kind of Soviet grandeur, many, like the "Khrushchev" residence blocks, named after the Soviet leader's promise of housing for the masses, are an outward symbol of hard times and oppression. Poorly made, limited in functionality and lacking in design, the buildings are nonetheless home to many Georgians, including Tamila's parents. "I think we actively avoid dealing with our past," she says. "This has always been the mindset of my parents' generation. They were born into a Soviet Union which was against people asking questions and curiosity got you into trouble." In The Soviet Scar, Tamila looks into Georgia's complex past to find out if there might be a way to heal the collective memory of pain. - Subscribe to our channel: http://aje.io/AJSubscribe - Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/AJEnglish - Find us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aljazeera - Check our website: https://www.aljazeera.com/

There are 68.5 million people forcibly displaced worldwide, according to the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR). Of these, 25.4 million are refugees, and 68 percent of all the refugees come from just five countries: Syria, Afghanistan, South Sudan, Myanmar, and Somalia. Even though they are hosted by several countries, many of them aim for one final destination: Europe. The European Union declared a "refugee crisis" in 2015, and the "crisis" intensified as thousands kept pouring into the continent. EU member states have failed to agree on a solution with increased political tension as a result. But whose fault is this crisis? And are all countries in the world - all of them - doing enough to ease the situation, or are only a few carrying the burden? Amin Awad, the director for the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) Bureau of the UNHCR, talks to Al Jazeera. "The international community have paid, to a certain extent, generously for the Syria situation ... Traditional donors like the European Union, the EU member states ... The Arab world, thanks to Iraq, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, plus Turkey, have received six million refugees, and others have contributed to the Syria cause," says Awad. "But we also have Iraq, we have Libya and we have Yemen. We have many other crises in Africa that are also facing problems and a shortage of funding. Not all funding appeals from the UN are met." Asked about the prospect of a central processing centre for migrants hoping to start a new life in Europe, located somewhere strategic in Africa, such as Morocco which had been formerly proposed, Awad sees the move as a potentially positive action as opposed to one which sees Europe shirking its responsibilities. "I think what the Europeans are trying to do is to share the burden of the hundreds of thousands - or millions - that have crossed over in the last few years," he says. "The way out of this [multiple transit centres in North Africa] is robust policies to govern the assistance given by sub-Sahara and North Africa in order to stabilise this population." "The second thing is," continues Awad, "the world has to come up with a comprehensive system to fight and contain smuggling and trafficking. Smugglers and traffickers are coordinating as gangs with those who are trading in arms and in drugs. Those people are working in the smuggling and trafficking of human beings share intelligence, resources, they exchange heavy weapons, and they are bent on controlling those three things: drugs, people and weapons. This is very destabilising for the world at large. And this is billions of dollars of trade." "If the world does not come up with a mechanism to control this and put it as one of the most important agenda items today to the top of the world agenda, the situation will get worse and worse." According to Awad, "there is a humanitarian disaster in the making [in Yemen]. The world is watching this. And one day the world will wake up and find out that we have gone through one of the worst famine crises of our time. The world has to act - not one region or another - internationally to contain this problem, to reverse the situation. There is a need for huge humanitarian intervention." "That war has to stop. Saudi Arabia and other countries have to come to the assistance of the Yemeni people now. What is being done now is not enough." When asked about countries that may not contribute as generously as others are perceived to, Awad says there are many reasons why this occurs, not least of which is the way GDP is distributed for each respective world nation; but there could be a more fair way forward. "There ought to be a new order to make these contributions more equitable," he says. "The number of countries that contribute, for example, to these crises is not more than 15. The countries that are capable and able of contributing are more than 15. So, it is left to a very small number of countries that cannot meet the demand of humanity. And the demands are increasing every year." - Subscribe to our channel: http://aje.io/AJSubscribe - Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/AJEnglish - Find us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aljazeera - Check our website: https://www.aljazeera.com/

Filmmaker: Mostafa Bouazzaoui For almost his whole political career, Abraham Serfaty was a thorn on the side of authorities in Rabat, both during the days of French rule and later, under the reign of King Hassan II. Described by his closest supporters as "the Moroccan Mandela", Serfaty endured 17 years of imprisonment, torture and 13 years of exile for his political views, including his opposition to Morocco's position on Western Sahara. Part of the minority Jewish population in Morocco, he never embraced Zionism. After the 1967 war, he distanced himself from Israel and became a vocal advocate for the Palestinian resistance movement, a burning issue that dominated discussion on Arab streets at the time. Serfaty once famously told the media: "Conveying the image of a democratic Israel is a fantasy. You cannot be a democrat while oppressing another people. Zionism goes against democracy. I was 10 in 1936, when my father told me at the synagogue that 'Zionism goes against our religion.'" His unique identity allowed him to break taboos and inspire others, according to those who met him. "He established a new concept of the Arab Jew who didn't renounce any element of his origins as a Moroccan and an Arab Jew," explains university teacher Michelle Fay. "One can be a hundred percent Jewish and a hundred percent anti-Zionist." Together with Abdellatif Laabi, Serfaty developed an artistic journal called "Souffles", meaning "Breaths". Printed in Arabic and French, it was a creative space for political expression that its authors felt had been silenced for so long by politicians and the monarchy. "It gave a new orientation to both journalism and creativity in an era that was giving birth to new ideas in Morocco, Palestine and the world," says Noureddine Saoudi, a former prisoner and teacher. As a champion of universal human rights and democratic principles, Serfaty sits alongside the likes of Che Guevara, Martin Luther King and Patrice Lumumba. A product of his environment, he belonged to the freethinking era of the 1960s and 70s; and of the post-independence period when many Arab countries were freed from colonial rule. There was a global movement to end authoritarian rule, war, poverty, racism and the nuclear threat in which primarily young people inspired by left-wing Marxist ideology, saw spreading political awareness as a duty. It's ironical, on reflection, that several figures who wrestled their countries away from foreign influence later used oppressive styles of government against their own people - like Hafez al-Assad in Syria, Saddam Hussein in Iraq and Muammar Gaddafi in Libya. Years after Abraham Serfaty's death in 2010, the Arab Middle East is still grappling with many of the major issues that preoccupied him - searching for forms of government acceptable to people and politicians, free from outside influence, without media restrictions or powerful instruments of state. - Subscribe to our channel: http://aje.io/AJSubscribe - Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/AJEnglish - Find us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aljazeera - Check our website: https://www.aljazeera.com/

Despite an uneven global economic recovery since the 2008 financial crisis, adequate and affordable housing is increasingly out of reach to hundreds of millions of people, according to the United Nations Special Rapporteur for Adequate Housing, Leilani Farha. In her latest report on global housing need, Farha wrote that the world's money markets have priced people out of cities, with speculators and investors treating housing as a "place to park capital". Farha, who presented her findings before the Human Rights Council in Geneva in March 2017, said that "housing has lost its social function and is seen instead as a vehicle for wealth and asset growth. It has become a financial commodity, robbed of its connection to community, dignity and the idea of home." Leilani Farha spoke to Al Jazeera about the growing global housing crisis and the steep challenges ahead for the more than one billion people who do not have adequate housing. At an estimated global net worth of $163 trillion, the residential real estate market is equivalent to more than twice the world's total economy and dwarfs the approximate seven-trillion-dollar-value of all the gold ever mined, Farha told Al Jazeera. Housing is viewed as a way to "grow wealth and that has changed the way in which housing operates", she said. "It means ... you have investors, private equity firms, vulture funds, buying up housing. Who is their principle concern? It's their investor and if they're using housing to satisfy their investor interests, what do they have to do with that housing if it's rental housing? It's obvious, they have to increase the rents." The right to adequate housing is enshrined in Article 25 of the United Nations Universal Declaration for Human Rights, which states that "Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care." Housing "has tentacles into every other human right, practically. Housing is not just about four walls and a roof [but] about living in a place where you have peace, security and most importantly, dignity. And once you start playing with the idea of dignity, you can imagine what that means. It means living in a place with proper sanitation and basic services ... toilets, running water." Adequate housing is also about "security of tenure", Farha explained. "You should not be fearful that you're going to lose your home [at any time]." Today, approximately 900 million people are living in "informal settlements" without the security of tenure - entire communities that have grown up in slum-like conditions. These communities are often razed by profit-driven developers and governments with little notice and no offer of substitute housing. Forced eviction is "considered a gross violation of human rights ... No community should be evicted unless there is absolutely no viable alternative." The incidence of homelessness is also rising. "If you look at North America, if you look at Europe, what are we seeing? Rising rates of homelessness in the richest countries in the world. That, to me, is where we get into extremely shameful territory, extremely shameful. Why is that? How is it acceptable that GDPs are increasing all the time ... and homelessness is rising all the time?" "I don't think that homelessness has been viewed as the human rights issue that it is. I don't think it's been given the urgency of political will, of social policy that it deserves and so, I think that's also part of the problem ... Once people lose their housing and become homeless, they often are open to any of a number of social ills," Farha said. "People are always like, 'Oh, the people who are homeless, they're all crazy; they all have psychological problems'. Many, many people who hit the streets are completely of sound mind. It's the trauma of being on the street that can trigger psycho-social disability ... The trauma of living on the street is what often leads people to do things like drugs." Asked whether the United Nations 2030 agenda for sustainable development, which includes solving the problem of inadequate housing, can be achieved by its target date, Farha said that "we have to strive to reach that goal in 12 years. States have that obligation, they've made that commitment ... I think that huge strides could be taken ... [to] ensure accountability of governments to the people, that ensure equality, those sorts of things ... If that was guiding housing policy, maybe we would inch towards that 2030 deadline and More from Talk To Al Jazeera on: YouTube - http://aje.io/ttajYT Facebook - http://facebook.com/talktoaj Twitter - http://twitter.com/talktoaljazeera Website - http://www.aljazeera.com/talktojazee - Subscribe to our channel: http://aje.io/AJSubscribe - Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/AJEnglish - Find us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aljazeera - Check our website: https://www.aljazeera.com/

Every summer, Amira Abujbara boards a nine-seater plane at a tiny air taxi office. It is the same plane, with the same pilot, that she has flown in almost every year of her childhood. The 50-minute flight will take her over a snowy mountain range, a volcano and an elaborate tundra of blueberries and mushrooms, tea leaves and caribou moss, wildflowers and spider webs. She is heading to her mother’s childhood home and the place where she spends her summers – the remote Alaskan village of Iliamna. Without any roads connecting it to the outside world, this is her only way of going ‘home’. Iliamna, which is an Athabascan word meaning “big ice” or “big lake” sits on the shore of the lake that shares its name. The largest in Alaska, it spans more than 2,500 square kilometres, is pure enough to drink from and is home to the biggest sockeye salmon run in the world. Iliamna shares a post office, school, airport, medical clinic and two small stores with the neighbouring village, Newhalen. Together, they have fewer than 300 residents. It is a far cry from her father’s home country, Qatar, where Amira spends the rest of the year. Her father is Qatari and her mother is Dena’ina - a subset of the Athabascan Alaska Natives. Amira was born in Alaska and is registered as an Alaska Native. When her father married her mother he promised her parents that they would return regularly and so Amira and her sister spent their summers in Iliamna. Their grandmother ran a bed and breakfast for fishermen, so she would help make the beds, clean and prepare the meals for her guests. She learned how to subsistence fish – catching, smoking, brining and canning salmon during the summer months to store for the rest of the year. For the villagers, their home is a beautiful and fruitful land, but it is also a place of incredible hardships. Tiny villages are dwarfed by the vast wilderness that surrounds them, and while the region is rich in natural resources, many Alaska Natives struggle to remain above the poverty line. According to the Alaska Department of Labor and Workforce Development, over any five-year period between 1993 and 2013, an average of 11 percent of the state’s rural population moved into urban areas. Those aged 18 to 24 are the most likely to leave. But life in the city can be overwhelming for those used to the safety net of a tight-knit rural community. Then there are the alcohol and substance abuse rates: in Alaska, age-adjusted rates of alcohol-induced deaths are 71.4 per 100,000 for Alaska Natives and 12.1 for whites. Suicide rates for Alaska Natives are almost four times the national average, and Alaska Natives are far more likely to succumb to each of the state’s leading causes of death – cancer, heart disease and unintentional injury – than their white counterparts. In Alaska, Native children are nearly three times as likely as white children to die before their fifth birthday. The situation Alaska Natives face can, perhaps, best be summarised by a note in the minutes of a meeting of Newhalen residents. In a list of wishes for the community’s future, one states simply: “To still be here.” But why is this community so at risk and will a proposed gold and copper mine, located close to the villages, endanger it further still? Residents know it offers the promise of jobs, but there are fears it could ruin the salmon run, and with it, their way of life. We Are Still Here tells the story of a community fighting to preserve its culture and its connection to the land.

The design of online games has reached a new level of sophistication, appealing to millions of people. There are more than 2.3 billion active gamers in the world this year, of which almost half spend money on games. A recent report by the international games market research company Newzoo estimates that the global games market will reach $137.9bn in 2018, with digital revenues accounting for 91 percent. As the gaming phenomenon grows, the World Health Organization (WHO) has identified a new disease - gaming disorder. The WHO defines the disorder as "a pattern of gaming behaviour with increasing priority given to gaming over other activities ... and continuation or escalation of gaming despite the occurrence of negative consequences." So what does gaming disorder really mean and how can it be treated? "What happens when we are immersed in a video game, is that the brain starts to activate the sort of exciting reward system, neurological pathways that are associated with excitement and pleasurable activities, and of course it makes us want to do it more and more," children and adolescent psychiatrist Dr Richard Graham told Al Jazeera. "So game designers and perhaps social media platforms have learned how to activate those systems to keep us in game and on screen for as long as possible." With many of his patients in the 14 to 15-year range, Graham said that many youths are facing increasing stress due to the pressure of school. One of the ways they try to escape the ordinary pressures of life is through technology - which then can become an unhealthy escape. "Where we start to move into the territory of addiction is when what was once almost a healthy way of coping with stress starts to have a grip of its own. That person is no longer able to have control over their use and they feel compelled to keep increasing the amount of whatever is is - a substance or gaming," Graham explained. "The loss of control is absolutely key to an addiction. But also when they do try to stop, they do get that withdrawal reaction..." In the gaming and digital detox programmes that Graham runs, the withdrawal reactions can sometimes be extreme. According to him, there's "such agitation and aggression the police could be called. Violence could erupt … the young person might also become acutely distressed and panicked and sometimes place themselves at risk of harm to themselves. And that was scary, and so a service was set up to provide a safe place to support people." Real-time immersion into virtual realms is enhanced by the sheer volume of real-time players, the lure of competition and rewards such as high scores, or ranking within the game. This combination, according to Graham, intensifies the addiction: "One then gets into large group or crowd experiences that I think amplify those trends even more. And the buzz of being part of something that's massive and online … [where players] are swept along in some astonishing crowd-like process to be online, and in game, for as much of the time as they could." Graham said the "digital economy", from social media to mass multi-player gaming is also driven by unbridled competition among companies and developers who are in "a sort of arms race to get people more and more on screen to the point where it will affect everyone's health and well-being." He recommends that developers consider functionality and the installation of features that allow players to pause, or to save their position without losing their rank, or rewards accrued during the game. "For young people, it's incredibly distressing to get to a certain point in a game and then their parents say it's time to eat and they just don't want to stop, because they don't want to lose all of that, and a simple piece of functionality would actually make a huge difference if they could pause." Families can run interventions, take their children for camping trips or walks in nature. Though not always immediately successful, this approach, said Graham, can provide enough time out of game for those suffering from the disorder to actually see what they've been missing. "The interesting thing is that once you take that step, you sort of wake up to the fact that something else is going on around you, and there actually might be some impact on your life. Perhaps you are missing friends that no longer come and knock to see if you want to join them on a trip to the cinema … or that you realise that you're going to have to repeat your year - Subscribe to our channel: http://aje.io/AJSubscribe - Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/AJEnglish - Find us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aljazeera - Check our website: https://www.aljazeera.com/

Journalist James Gannon has inherited a controversial family legacy - that of a clear descendancy from General Robert E Lee, who led the Confederate Army against the Union during the American Civil war in the mid-19th century. Gannon grew up in Richmond, Virginia, the former capital of the Confederacy, where an 18-metre high statue of his ancestor dominates the landscape in Monument Avenue, the city's grandest street. For over 100 years, Richmond has honoured Lee as one of its greatest heroes. Until recently. In 2015, 21-year-old white supremacist Dylann Roof shot nine African Americans in a church in Charleston, North Carolina. Photographs of Roof draped in and posing with the Confederate flag emerged on a now defunct white supremacist website. Soon after, the city council in New Orleans voted for their Confederate monuments to be removed. Public consultations over Confederate memorials took place in Virginia, which once had the largest enslaved population in the United States. When a "Unite the Right" rally to protest against the removal of a Robert E Lee statue in Charlottesville, Virginia, turned into violent clashes in August 2017, it accelerated the national debate about what to do with the country's more than 1,500 monuments and publically-installed symbols memorialising the American Civil War. What happened that weekend in Charlottesville made Gannon consider the true legacy of his slave-owning ancestors. On a journey into his family's legacy, Gannon explores why people across the US are so divided on the subject of Confederate monuments and whether the oppression of enslaved people by his ancestors still has an effect on black lives in the US today. Travelling across Virginia and Maryland to meet key actors in the ongoing moral dilemma the US finds itself in regards to the Civil War and glorification of Confederate monuments, Gannon finds himself face to face with the debate for justice, reparations and the fight to tear these statues down. - Subscribe to our channel: http://aje.io/AJSubscribe - Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/AJEnglish - Find us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aljazeera - Check our website: https://www.aljazeera.com/

Since the age of 10, Svetlana Zakharova has devoted her life to ballet. Originally from Ukraine, her extraordinary talent catapulted her to world fame as the prima ballerina of Russia's renowned Bolshoi Ballet. Considered one of the greatest ballerinas of her generation, Zakharova is often compared with Russia's iconic male ballet dancers, Rudolf Nureyev and Mikhail Baryshnikov. But her success has come at a price. "At the age of 10, my childhood was over and I started a new grown-up life," she told Al Jazeera. Zakharova gave up her childhood to practise the art form she says she was physically designed for, despite ballet being "unnatural for a human body. The stretching, the turnouts and the training load." "You get used to living with pain," she said. "I sometimes ask myself if I made any sacrifices. But I don't know any other way of life ... I have no regrets. Even when I'm exhausted and tired, when I want to hide from everyone and everything, I never think about quitting." In 2006, Zakharova became a member of Russia's Presidential Council for Culture and Art, and in 2008, she was elected to a term in the Russian parliament. "I did not just join the parliament to do something I didn't know," she said. "I was in the Culture Committee, which was my territory. So I worked there for some time. But I did not come back after my convocation because, first of all, I gave birth to my daughter and I understood that it's impossible to be a ballerina, a parliamentarian and a mother at once." "Russia has always been strong in culture," she said. "In my opinion, if there's money to pay attention to the arts, all the other spheres are more or less in a good state." Asked about relations between her native Ukraine and Russia, Zakharova said: "Now, I am not related to Ukraine in any way ... I believe that our politicians will do what's right. I'm just really sad that our nations, that used to be as close as sisters, have such a wrong relationship now." Given her previous support for Russian President Vladimir Putin, Al Jazeera asked Zakharova about Russia's current trajectory. "The most important thing for me is that everyone, not only the Russian president, but all the world leaders talk to each other and avoid war," she replied. "It's the most important thing, so that there are no dead children, no separated families, because nothing can be worse. But I'm not the person to answer this question. I live in my own closed world." - Subscribe to our channel: http://aje.io/AJSubscribe - Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/AJEnglish - Find us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aljazeera - Check our website: https://www.aljazeera.com/

Filmmaker: Bashar Ghannam Nearly seven years after the death of Muammar Gaddafi, the British government apologised for handing over a Libyan dissident and his wife to Libya's intelligence in 2004, knowing that as an opponent of the government, they would be likely to be imprisoned and tortured. Fatima Boudchar was pregnant when she was tortured and kidnapped in Thailand in 2004, in a process that has become known as extraordinary rendition. It was carried out by MI6 and the CIA in collaboration with the Libyan External Security Organisation, the ESO. Her only "crime" was that she was married to a Libyan opponent of the Gaddafi regime, Abdelhakim Belhaj. Belhaj was the former leader of an opposition group called the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) which Gaddafi accused of having links to al-Qaeda. He and his wife were planning to seek asylum in the UK. However, they were abducted in their transit in Thailand and taken to a CIA detention centre where they were tortured and later handed over to Libyan intelligence. "I refused to be interrogated by them … and had nothing to do with al-Qaeda or any organisation outside Libya. My problem was with the Libyan security services" says Belhaj. This was not an isolated case and the subject of rendition is one that Western governments need to be accountable for. Until 2003, Gaddafi had been labelled by the West as the "mad dog of the Middle East". But after the US-led invasion of Iraq failed to unearth Saddam Hussein any weapons of mass destruction, Gaddafi seized an opportunity, not simply for redemption but complete rehabilitation, by claiming to possess WMDs and offering to surrender them. Sanctions against Libya were lifted, lucrative oil deals struck and collaboration between the CIA, MI6 and Libya stepped up in the so-called "fight against terrorism". This led directly to the rendition of Gaddafi's opponents like Belhaj and many others. After the US-led invasion of Iraq, Gaddafi sought better relations with the West [Michel Euler/AP] None of this may ever have come to light were it not for a large cache of documents found in Tripoli after the Libyan revolution in 2011. Thousands of papers were discovered in what looked to journalists and human rights organisations like the abandoned office of the former head of Libyan intelligence, Moussa Koussa. One of the most revealing finds was a letter from Sir Mark Allen, then head of MI6 counterintelligence, to Moussa Koussa. "I congratulate you on the safe arrival of [Belhaj]. This was the least we could do for you and for Libya," it read. Belhaj and another former member of the LIFG, Sami al-Saadi, were released from prison in 2010 and 2011 respectively. In 2012, the two men and their families decided to sue the British government for what they believed was its role in their arrest, imprisonment and subsequent torture. Al-Saadi accepted an offer of compensation by the British government of 2.2 million British pounds ($2.5m). But Belhaj rejected a financial settlement, maintaining that he and his wife instead wanted a full apology. Six years later, on May 10, 2018, the British government apologised for its role in their rendition and the couple's suffering. Human Rights Watch published a report in 2012 called, Delivered into Enemy Hands, which details the rendition process and cites a number of cases. Among them was that of Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi who was rendered to Libya by the US in either 2005 or 2006. In 2009, he was found dead in his prison cell after allegedly committing suicide. But Human Rights Watch said al-Libi died because he was tortured. Human rights lawyer Cori Crider believes that despite the British government apology this isn't the end of the rendition issue. "Right now, as we speak, in Yemen", she says, "the United Arab Emirates is running black sites in which detainees are tortured and in which rape is used as a technique of torture; and these are people with whom the US and the UK are in coalition." Editor's note: Al Jazeera wrote to the CIA to ask it to comment on allegations made in this film but did not receive a reply. It's also important to note that although the British government apologised for rendering Abdelhakim Belhaj and Fatima Boudchar to Libya, former British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, and the former head of counter-intelligence at MI6, Sir Mark Allen, have not accepted any personal responsibility or admitted any wrong-doing in the case of Abdelhakin Belhaj and Fatima Boudchar. More from Al Jazeera World on: YouTube - http://aje.io/aljazeeraworldYT Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/AlJazeeraWorld - Subscribe to our channel: http://aje.io/AJSubscribe - Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/AJEnglish - Find us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aljazeera - Check our website: https://www.aljazeera.com/

In October of last year, US President Donald Trump signed an executive order lifting some trade and economic sanctions against Sudan. It followed a US Department of State report that said Khartoum had improved its fight against armed groups. But the US still designates Sudan as a "state sponsor of terrorism" - along with Iran, North Korea and Syria. Regionally, it's mediating a peace deal between the warring parties in South Sudan, which gained independence in 2011. Sudan has also been playing a role in the Saudi-led coalition in the war in Yemen with troops on the ground and several fighter jets. Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir, has been in power since 1989. He's the first head of state to be indicted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for suspected war crimes. He dissolved his government last month amid a widespread economic crisis. But after almost 30 years as president, will Bashir seek another term in 2020? What's the state of human rights in Sudan? Why is Omar al-Bashir mediating South Sudan peace talks? Sudan's Foreign Minister Al-Dirdiri Mohamed Ahmed talked to Al Jazeera about his country's human rights record, the lifting of US sanctions, the war in Yemen, and Sudan's role as peacemaker in South Sudan. According to him, ending the conflict between warring parties in South Sudan is a matter of regional security and that recently improved relations between Sudan and Uganda are related to national and regional stability. "Sudan is the most connected to South Sudan for so many obvious reasons ... Uganda is a neighbouring country that will benefit from peace and stability in South Sudan ... The new thing is that Sudan and Uganda started working together ... We found that if South Sudan is going to continue as is and the situation in South Sudan is going to deteriorate, we will be having a black hole in the region, another Somalia," he told Al Jazeera. Sudan's position as a member of both the African Union and the Arab League makes it vulnerable to fraught relations between Egypt and Ethiopia over the Nile and potentially shifting political axes with Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Egypt on one side and Qatar and Turkey on the other. "We are working with all the players in the region to ensure that the region is stable, Turkey included and Qatar included. And we hope, also, that this will not mean that Sudan is also taking sides in any dispute. We hope for the best for all of the region and we are doing our best to see that all the problems that are being faced by the states in the region will be resolved peacefully and amicably," he said. Asked about rights groups, including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International and their reports of ongoing human rights violations in Sudan, including the suppression of peaceful protests, attacks on the media, torture and ongoing violence, he said: "Democracy needs time to take root." "We have started a process of democratisation in our country. We have right now a constitution that everybody respects and accepts, opposition parties included. Some of the people who are right now fighting with us are all of the time voicing concern about respect of the Constitution. This has not been the case a few years ago before that constitution was put in place. This is a huge step taken forward, and then democracy will gradually take root." - Subscribe to our channel: http://aje.io/AJSubscribe - Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/AJEnglish - Find us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aljazeera - Check our website: https://www.aljazeera.com/

- Subscribe to our channel: http://aje.io/AJSubscribe - Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/AJEnglish - Find us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aljazeera - Check our website: https://www.aljazeera.com/ More from Al Jazeera World on: YouTube - http://aje.io/aljazeeraworldYT Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/AlJazeeraWorld Twitter - https://twitter.com/AlJazeera_World Visit our website - http://www.aljazeera.com/aljazeeraworld Subscribe to AJE on YouTube - http://aje.io/YTsubscribe

In an unprecedented move against a member state, the European Parliament has triggered Article 7 of the EU's governing treaty meant to protect its core principles: human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and respect for human rights, including minority rights. The EU accuses the Hungarian government led by Prime Minister Viktor Orban of breaching those values by passing anti-refugee laws, manipulating the media, disregarding government corruption and removing independent judges. Hungary has taken a harsh stance on refugees and migrants since the 2015-2016 migration crisis. It was the first country to erect barbed wire fences at the borders and went on to pass laws aimed at deterring migrants from attempting transit through its territory or from seeking asylum in Hungary. The decision to trigger Article 7 followed Hungary's ongoing refusal to comply with mandatory migrant quotas put in place by the EU and came two weeks after Hungarian authorities stopped food distribution for rejected asylum seekers being held in transit zones on the country's border with Serbia. Budapest denies the accusations and defends its policies. But with EU Parliament elections scheduled to take place in May 2019, could the divisions that have been exposed lead to political change across the EU? And what is next for Hungary and Europe? "We are not violating them [EU core values]," Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto told Al Jazeera. "The report which was pushed through the European Parliament has a list of 69 points, 69 accusations against Hungary out of which 13 points have been totally agreed upon by the European Commission and the government ... and there are 37 points which are qualified lies ..." he said, adding that the vote against Hungary involved "cheating" because abstentions were not counted. Hungary could potentially get stripped off its EU voting rights, but according to Szijjarto, "the Polish government and Czech prime minister have made it clear that they will veto any sanctions against Hungary." He believes that the "EU needs to undergo some reforms" and when asked about different visions for Europe and global governance, Szijjarto said "when the French president speaks about multilateralism and then I look at his European policies, I am a little bit concerned because the measures he would like to see in the European Union would be rather unfavourable for Hungary ... And his [Macron's] vision for Europe when it comes to migration, social issues, taxation, economic issues is totally showing to another direction compared to our vision for the future." Szijjarto said Hungary has been accused of being nationalistic many times. "We are a country which will never give up the right to make the decision about the future of Hungary on our own. We will never give up the right to make a decision with whom we would like to live together in our country ... whom we would like to let enter the territory of our country - and whom we don't." "We will always be a nation of freedom fighters. We don't like colonialism. Sometimes when the French foreign minister or the French president speaks about Hungary, they speak as if we were a colony ... So, I think mutual respect is what is lacking from the global set of foreign policies currently." In response to criticism of Hungary's tough stance on refugees Szijjarto said: "We have sealed off the green border. So the only way you can enter the country is the legal way ... My question is whether … anyone could show me any point in international relations which could say that you have the right to wake up in the morning, pick a country you would like to live in and, in order to get there, violate a series of borders." "It's not a human right ... My question is how you can be a refugee and violate the borders of five or six safe countries." Szijjarto denies allegations that Prime Minister Orban has selected judges friendly to his government and that the prime minister channelled public and EU development funds to projects run by family members and friends in Lake Balaton. "It's simply a lie that the prime minister uses public funds for private reasons," he said. "It's simply a lie. I have to reject that and it's really a scandal that such kind of things can be said, to be honest." - Subscribe to our channel: http://aje.io/AJSubscribe - Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/AJEnglish - Find us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aljazeera - Check our website: https://www.aljazeera.com/

Filmmaker: Hala Mourad In the heart of Lebanon's second-largest city, Tripoli, is a "Khan", an ancient guest house dating back to the period of Mamluk rule in the 14th century. The city fell to the Ottomans in 1516 and, under the Muslim charitable practice of "Waqf", the Khan was donated to the community to house widows unable to support themselves. The Islamic philanthropic tradition of Waqf dates back to the Prophet Muhammad's time and is intended to be "in perpetuity". Waqf in Islamic law was developed in the medieval Islamic world, but bears a resemblance to English trust law. Every Waqf was required to have a waqif (founder), mutawillis (trustee), qadi (judge) in addition to its beneficiaries, with continuity being "secured by the successive appointment of trustees or mutawillis." Now called the "Khanka", few Tripolitans may be aware of the guest house's existence, or its governance by the Ministry of Endowments. When this film was made, the Khanka had fallen into disrepair and its 12 rooms offered its residents only the most primitive accommodation. "Everything leaks here," says Khanka resident Um Fadi, a mother of three. "We wake up in the morning to find our mattresses and clothes completely wet. My little daughter fell ill because of this problem." While the widows depend on charitable donations for sustenance, some of them do menial jobs like cleaning apartments and cooking for meagre pay. Everything leaks here. We wake up in the morning to find our mattresses and clothes completely wet. My little daughter fell ill because of this problem. Um Fadi, Khanka resident Many of the widows have quite sad stories to tell. One of them, Um Ahmed al-Tahesh, had seven sons and two daughters, but moved to the Khanka when her husband died in the Lebanese civil war. "I had a very good life. We lived well and I had a housemaid. My husband was killed in Beirut and my life was turned upside down," she says. Her children have all grown up with their own families to care for but Um Ahmed doesn't mind her place in the Khanka. "Yes, it's a small room, but at least it shelters me. I don't mind sleeping on a mattress on the floor." Life in the Khanka can be lonely, isolated and uncomfortable for the widows and their families. But sometimes the residents are there by choice. When the ministry conducts an audit, it discovers that all but two of the residents, Um Ali Sikkari and Um Fadi, actually have family capable of supporting them. The rest are asked to leave. "Any woman who has a house or another shelter will be discharged from the Khanka," says supervisor Sheikh Nazih Musa. "This Khanka is exclusively for widows who have no financial support and no place to stay in." Charity in this part of the world has its limits and if the terms of the Waqf are breached, residence in the Khanka is unceremoniously terminated, regardless of one's age or time served. Since this film was originally made in 2016, the Ministry of Endowments announced that it would renovate the Khanka to better serve the needs of its residents in 2019. - Subscribe to our channel: http://aje.io/AJSubscribe - Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/AJEnglish - Find us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aljazeera - Check our website: https://www.aljazeera.com/ More from Al Jazeera World on: YouTube - http://aje.io/aljazeeraworldYT Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/AlJazeeraWorld Twitter - https://twitter.com/AlJazeera_World Visit our website - http://www.aljazeera.com/aljazeeraworld Subscribe to AJE on YouTube - http://aje.io/YTsubscribe