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Egyptian official urges mass death sentence be put ‘in perspective’
By Mick Krever, CNN
An Egyptian official urged on Tuesday that a death sentence for 528 supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood be put “in perspective.”
The people in question were “implicated in acts of sabotage and violent offenses,” Salah Abdel Sadek, chairman of Egypt's State Information Service, told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour.
“There is the right to challenge the verdict.”
An Egyptian court on Monday sentenced the defendants on charges related to violent riots in the southern Egyptian city of Minya last August, including the murder of a police officer, the country's official news agency said.
The riots took place after a deadly crackdown by security forces on two large sit-ins in Cairo, where demonstrators were supporting ousted President Mohammed Morsy.
Sadek insisted that the Egyptian judiciary is independent, free from interference of “executive authority.”
“Egypt does not have an independent judiciary”, Shadi Hamid of the Brookings Institution, and author of “Temptations of Power,” told Amanpour. “It’s a very politicized judiciary.”
'Unprecedented' oppression in Egypt
Shadi Hamid of the Brookings Institution tells Christiane Amanpour there is "bloodlust" in Egypt.
“And let’s recall [the judiciary] played a very active role in supporting the military coup on July 3rd [2013]. So we can’t treat Egypt as a normal democratic state, where there’s a separation of powers.”
Hamid called the decision the “largest mass death sentence in modern Egyptian history.”
Web extra: Despite Putin claim, Kosovo bears ‘no resemblance’ to case of Crimea, says former U.S. diplomat
By Mick Krever, CNN
Russian President Vladimir Putin last week cited the “well-known Kosovo precedent” in justifying his country’s annexation of Crimea from Ukraine.
Strobe Talbott, who served as U.S. Deputy Secretary of State during the Kosovo conflict, under U.S. President Bill Clinton, called that analogy “bizarre.”
“That couldn’t be further from the truth,” Tablott said.
“Kosovo, remember, was a Muslim-dominated part … of Serbia, where the central government – dominated by the Serbs – were carrying out acts of virtually genocide. They were certainly doing ethnic cleansing, they were massacring people.”
“And it was a result of that there was an international invention, an armed intervention, to stop the killing.”
It was only years later peace was brokered – brokered with the assistance of Russian President Boris Yeltsin, Talbott said – that Kosovo gained independence from Serbia.
“It bears no resemblance whatsoever to the case of Crimea and Ukraine.”
‘Embarrassingly old math’ used to pinpoint plane route
By Mick Krever, CNN
The implementation may have been new, but the technique a British satellite company used to say that Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 crashed in the Southern Indian Ocean is “embarrassingly old math,” Inmarsat Senior Vice President Chris McLaughlin told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on Monday.
“It’s a technique for the first time, but the technology is ancient,” he said. “It’s a method of trigonometry.”
“It’s not a new technology. It’s an old technology. It’s called science.”
Why then, Amanpour asked, had it taken so long to report this information?
“We reported on the Tuesday the 11th our suggestion of the north/south route,” he said.
“It is an immensely complicated thing to have to go into the network and look at other flights and build a picture, and that has taken the last six or seven days, which our engineers have been working very hard on to create a model. It hasn’t been done before.”
Click above to watch the whole interview, and hear how McLaughlin says issues like this could be solved “tomorrow.”
Russian standoff in ‘11th hour,’ says first post-Soviet Russian foreign minister
By Mick Krever, CNN
The standoff between Russia, Ukraine, and the West has reached the “eleventh hour,” Andrei Kozyrev, the first post-Soviet Russian foreign minister, told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on Monday.
“The [stakes are] still very, very high,” he said. “Let me just remind whoever concerned that Russia is still [a] nuclear superpower. So the [stakes] might be life and death. And maybe sooner than somebody is thinking.”
“It’s [the] eleventh hour for Russians, and for anybody else, to reconsider.”
A week after Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine, there is still considerable concern and uncertainty about what Russian President Vladimir Putin’s next move might be.
Russian military forces are massed along Ukraine’s eastern border. NATO’s top military official called them “very, very sizable and very, very ready.”
Ready for what exactly is not clear.
“We can only guess what actually happens next,” Kozyrev said. “It’s very much an impromptu kind of show.”
Crimea is just Putin’s ‘opening game,’ says Swedish foreign minister Carl Bildt
By Mick Krever, CNN
Russia’s annexation of Crimea could be just the first move in President Vladimir Putin’s geopolitical chess match with Ukraine, Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour.
“I think that Crimea is the opening game,” he said. “It is not that President Putin is primarily interested in Crimea. He is interested in Ukraine.”
“If you read carefully what President Putin said in his big speech in the Kremlin the day before yesterday, what he says there about sort of historical claims and those sorts of things, apply not only to Crimea but also to southern parts of Ukraine.”
“That is where we should be extremely alert at the risk of President Putin moving further, even militarily, beyond Crimea.”
Bildt: Putin's agenda is Kiev, not Crimea
Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt tells Amanpour he believes President Putin is playing a "long game" for Ukraine.
And in terms of his play for influence in Ukraine, Bildt thinks Putin’s goals know few bounds.
“I’m pretty convinced that his real agenda is not Crimea, but Kiev.”
“I think he is prepared to use both economic measures, subversion, destabilizing issues, [and] economic issues – but at the end of the day what we have seen during the last few weeks is that he is also prepared to use military instruments. And that is what is scary and what is deeply worrying.”
It may not happen immediately, Bildt said, but Putin is “prepared to play this long.”
Saudi minister responds to damning human rights report
By Mick Krever, CNN
Saudi Arabia is responding to a damning new United Nations reports, listing a catalogue of human rights abuses in their country.
“We have very significant changes, real [changes] happening in Saudi Arabia,” Deputy Labor Minister Ahmad al-Fahaid told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on Thursday.
The U.N. made 225 recommendations on a range of issues, including the rights of migrant workers as well as freedom of expression and the death penalty.
Saudi Arabia insists it is making progress, but admits there is still a long way to go, particularly in the realm of women's rights and on child marriages, with no minimum legal age set so far.
“Women issue is very important, and in fact we are tackling it from two different angles,” al-Fahaid said. “The first one is about, you know, education background, educational view. The second, which is very important, is that economically, also empowerment.”
“We are trying our best to find…suitable and decent jobs for our women.”
Meanwhile, Saudi women are still barred from driving.
In an interview with Amanpour in 2012, Saudi activist Manal al-Sharif made her plea.
Pilot against ‘any form of extremism,’ says Malaysian opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim who knows him
By Mick Krever, CNN
Zaharie Ahmad Shah, the pilot of missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, is not an extremist, Malaysian opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim told CNN's Christiane Amanpour Wednesday.
"He supports our multi-racial coalition. He supports democratic reform. He is against any form of extremism," Anwar said of Zaharie, whom he said he has met "on a number of occasions." "And we take a very strong position in clamoring for change through constitutional and democratic means."
Pilot was 'against any form of extremism'
Malaysian opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim speaks with Amanpour about his relationship with missing pilot Zaharie Ahmad Shah.
With frustratingly few answers about the fate of Flight 370 nearly two weeks after it disappeared, some have starting probing the possible political inclinations of crew members.
Anwar, who has been the target of ongoing attacks from the ruling government, constitutes the main Malaysian opposition.
Some have tried to tie Zaharie to Anwar as a family relation.
Anwar's press secretary told CNN that Zaharie is the opposition leader's - wait for it - son's wife's mother's father's brother's son.
"What my daughter-in-law told me is that he is a family member, not too close, but she calls him 'uncle,' which is quite common here," Anwar said. "But I know him... basically as a party activist."
Religions unite over anti-slavery initiative
By Mick Krever, CNN
Major religious faiths around the world are joining forces to fight the scourge of modern-day slavery and human trafficking.
Australian billionaire and mining magnate Andrew Forrest has signed up major religious heavyweights –Pope Francis, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the Grand Imam of the al-Azhar mosque in Egypt, Islam's highest-ranking Sunni cleric.
This week their representatives gathered at the Vatican to sign on to Andrew Forrest’s initiative, the Global Freedom Network.
Forrest joined Amanpour in her London studio, along with Archbishop David Moxon of the Anglican Church and Bishop Marcelo Sanchez Sorondo of the Catholic Church.
“I got dragged, really, kicking and screaming, into this cause by my daughter, Grace,” Forrest said. “When she was 15, she worked in an orphanage in Nepal and our intelligence was that there was something was suspect about the orphanage.”
When she returned to the orphanage they discovered that the only children left were “severely disfigured” or “mentally handicapped, i.e. could not be sold.”
The Global Freedom Network has ambitious goals: to get 162 governments to publicly endorse the fund, get 50 multi-national businesses to modern slavery-proof their supply chains, and convince the G20 to adopt an anti-slavery initiative.
Ukraine on brink of ‘very dangerous conflict,’ warns Ukrainian member of parliament
By Mick Krever, CNN
Ukraine is at the beginning of a “very dangerous conflict,” Ukrainian member of parliament and former foreign minister Petro Poroshenko told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on Tuesday.
“Several weeks ago we had a guarantee that nothing [would] happen with the Crimea. Several weeks ago we had [a situation] that there is not any military presence on Ukrainian territory, including the Crimea.”
A Ukrainian officer was killed at a Crimean military base on Tuesday, and a second person injured, by armed men in masks.
Ukraine’s armed forces then announced that it had authorized units stationed in Crimea to use weapons “to protect and preserve the life of Ukrainian soldiers.”
Ukraine on edge of 'dangerous conflict'
Ukrainian member of parliament Petro Poroshenko tells Christiane Amanpour he fears conflict between Russia and Ukraine.
“We have a feeling that we are at the beginning of a very dangerous conflict. And we should do our best to stop this process.”
The Kremlin now says that Ukraine’s Crimea region is part of Russia, and President Vladimir Putin signed a draft annexation agreement on Tuesday, which still needs the Duma’s rubber stamp.
Russian billionaire says West is ‘in love’ with ‘Russian dirty money’
By Mick Krever, CNN
Western sanctions on Russia will not hurt, because “the Western side” is “a bit in love with certain spheres of the Russian dirty money,” Russian billionaire Alexander Lebedev told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on Monday.
“And secondly,” he said, “I don't think any restrictions of travel for any members of the parliament or Russian Federation, are really anything of substance.”
Nonetheless, he admitted that if a “Cold War economic sphere” set in, punitive measures could have an effect.
“Russia will have to pay a price with prices going up because we're too dependent on imports and exports,” he said.
Europe and the United States imposed asset freezes and travel bans on 28 Russian and Ukrainian officials on Monday over their involvement in a Crimean referendum to join Russia, a vote Western officials called illegal.
Lebedev, a former KGB agent turned businessman and Kremlin-critic, was not on the sanctions list. He now runs four British newspapers, including The Independent and the Evening Standard.
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