Get the latest Asian news from Codewit News in Asia: breaking news, features, analysis and special reports plus audio and video from across the Asian continent.
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — Asiana Airlines Inc. has offered $10,000 to each of the 288 surviving passengers of the flight that crash landed in San Francisco last month.
Asiana spokeswoman Lee Hyomin said Tuesday the payout is not a settlement and accepting the money does not prevent passengers from suing the airline.
The Asiana Boeing 777 landed short of the runway on July 6, killing three passengers and injuring dozens.
Lee said Asiana has already made payments to the families of three passengers who were killed. She did not know the amount.
A mother of one passenger said an Asiana manager contacted the family by telephone last week offering $10,000. The family declined because the offer wasn't made in writing and they feared accepting the payment would bar lawsuits.
Anthony-Claret is a software Engineer, entrepreneur and the founder of Codewit INC. Mr. Claret publishes and manages the content on Codewit Word News website and associated websites. He's a writer, IT Expert, great administrator, technology enthusiast, social media lover and all around digital guy.
Little Viet was born with one of the world's rarest facial deformities: a cleft palate and bilateral facial clefts. In the bone on each side of his face the two-year old has a two-inch gap, which will increase as he grows. His condition does not just affect the way he looks; it makes him blind in both eyes too.
If Viet doesn't have surgery now, he will not be able to speak or eat properly — ever. This documentary is the story of one British medical team's attempt to rebuild Viet's face and offer him a future.
Viet's mother, Nho, has been desperate for something to be done ever since her son was born. Now she has found hope in the form of Niall Kirkpatrick, one of the world's leading cranio-facial surgeons.
For years Niall has been going to Vietnam to help children with facial disfigurements, but when he meets Viet, he decides that his case is so complex that he needs to bring him back to the UK for surgery. We follow Viet and Nho as they travel from their small fishing village to London.
As Niall and his team embark on a series of lengthy and extremely challenging operations on her son, Nho has to cope with homesickness, anxiety and deeply unfamiliar surroundings. But if the operations have the effect everyone hopes they will, it will transform both of their lives.
Anthony-Claret is a software Engineer, entrepreneur and the founder of Codewit INC. Mr. Claret publishes and manages the content on Codewit Word News website and associated websites. He's a writer, IT Expert, great administrator, technology enthusiast, social media lover and all around digital guy.
BEIJING (AP) — A medicine mogul spent six years building his own private mountain peak and luxury villa atop a high-rise apartment block in China's capital, earning the unofficial title of "most outrageous illegal structure." Now, authorities are giving him 15 days to tear it down.
The craggy complex of rooms, rocks, trees and bushes looming over the 26-story building looks like something built into a seaside cliff, and has become the latest symbol of disregard for the law among the rich as well as the rampant practice of building illegal additions.
Angry neighbors say they've complained for years that the unauthorized, 800-square-meter (8,600-sq. feet) mansion and its attached landscaping was damaging the building's structural integrity and its pipe system, but that local authorities failed to crack down. They've also complained about loud, late-night parties.
"They've been renovating for years. They normally do it at night," said a resident on the building's 25th floor, who added that any attempts to reason with the owner were met with indifference. "He was very arrogant. He could care less about my complaints," said the neighbor, who declined to give his name to avoid repercussions.
Haidian district urban management official Dai Jun said Tuesday that authorities would tear the two-story structure down in 15 days unless the owner does so himself or presents evidence it was legally built. Dai said his office has yet to receive such evidence.
The villa's owner has been identified as the head of a traditional Chinese medicine business and former member of the district's political advisory body who resides on the building's 26th floor. Contacted by Beijing Times newspaper, the man said he would comply with the district's orders, but he belittled attempts to call the structure a villa, calling it "just an ornamental garden."
Authorities took action only after photos of the villa were splashed across Chinese media on Monday. Newspapers have fronted their editions with large photographs of the complex, along with the headline "Beijing's most outrageous illegal structure."
The case has resonance among ordinary Chinese who regularly see the rich and politically connected receive special treatment. Expensive vehicles lacking license plates are a common sight, while luxury housing complexes that surround Beijing and other cities are often built on land appropriated from farmers with little compensation.
China's leader Xi Jinping has vowed to crack down on official corruption, and Beijing itself launched a campaign earlier this year to demolish illegal structures, although the results remain unclear.
Demand for property remains high, however, and the rooftop extralegal mansion construction is far from unique. A developer in the central city of Hengyang recently got into hot water over an illegally built complex of 25 villas on top of a shopping center. He later won permission to keep the villas intact as long as they weren't sold to others.
While all land in China technically belongs to the state — with homebuyers merely given 70-year leases — the rules are often vague, leaving questions of usage rights and ownership murky.
A city in Sichuan province recently caused a minor stir when it was discovered to have cut the length of land leases from the normal 70 years to just 40 years.
The local government's response to public queries drew even more jeers. Officials posted a statement online maintaining that the law allows for lease periods of less than 70 years and adding: "Who knows if we'll still be in this world in 40 years. Don't think too long-term."
Anthony-Claret is a software Engineer, entrepreneur and the founder of Codewit INC. Mr. Claret publishes and manages the content on Codewit Word News website and associated websites. He's a writer, IT Expert, great administrator, technology enthusiast, social media lover and all around digital guy.
BAGHDAD — A wave of car bombings targeting those celebrating the end of Ramadan across Iraq killed 69 people Saturday, a bloody reminder of the inability of Iraqi authorities to stop violence threatening to spiral out of control.
Violence has been on the rise across Iraq since a deadly crackdown by government forces on a Sunni protest camp in April, and attacks against civilians and security forces notably spiked during Ramadan. The surge of attacks has sparked fears that the country could see a new round of widespread sectarian bloodshed similar to that which brought the country to the edge of civil war in 2006 and 2007.
The bloodshed also comes after Iraqi security forces promised to step up efforts to increase security to protect the public during the Eid al-Fitr celebrations that mark the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. This year's Ramadan was the most violent since 2007, with 671 people killed.
"My shop's windows were smashed and smoke filled the whole area," said shoe shop owner Saif Mousa, who survived an attack near his store in New Baghdad. "I went outside of the shop and I could hardly see because of the smoke. … At the end, we had a terrible day that was supposed to be nice because of Eid."
Many of the attacks occurred within an hour of each other, suggesting a level of coordination in the assaults. No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attacks, though security forces and civilians are frequently targeted by al-Qaida's Iraq branch.
Police said the deadliest of Saturday's attacks took place when a suicide bomber drove his explosive-laden car into a residential area in the town of Tuz Khormato, killing eight people and wounding dozens, Mayor Shalal Abdool said. The town is about 130 miles north of the Iraqi capital.
Police said a car bomb exploded near an outdoor market in the Baghdad's southeastern suburbs of Jisr Diyala shortly before sunset, killing seven people and wounding 20.
Also in southeastern Baghdad, officials said a car bomb went off inside a parking lot in the mainly Shiite New Baghdad neighborhood, killing three people. Another car bomb exploded in a busy street in the Shiite neighborhood of Amil, killing three people and wounding 14, authorities said.
In the holy Shiite city of Karbala, police said four people were killed in a car bomb attack near a cafe at night. Karbala is 50 miles south of Baghdad.
Police said four people were killed and 15 wounded when a car bomb exploded near a cafe in Baghdad's Shiite neighborhood of Abu Dashir.
In northern Baghdad, a car bomb hit a restaurant in the Shiite area of Khazimiyah, killing five people and wounding 14, authorities said. Police also said that five people were killed when a car bomb exploded near a cafe in Baghdad's southwestern neighborhood of Baiyaa.
Six people were killed and 15 were wounded in a car bomb explosion in the Shiite neighborhood of Shaab in northeastern Baghdad, officials said.
A car bomb hit near restaurant in the city's northeastern suburb of Husseiniyah, killing seven people and wounding 15, police said.
Also, a car bomb explosion a commercial street in the Dora area in southern Baghdad killed five and wounded 15, authorities said.
Earlier in the day, four people, including two children, were killed when a bomb exploded near a park just south of Baghdad, authorities said.
Later, a car bomb exploded in a busy street in Nasiriyah city in southern Iraq, killing four people and wounding 41 others, officials said. Nasiriyah is about 200 milessoutheast of Baghdad.
In the oil-rich city of Kirkuk, a car bomb hit near a Shiite mosque, killing one person and wounding 20 others, police said.
Medical officials confirmed the casualty figures for all the attacks. All officials spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to talk to journalists.
The death toll in Saturday's attacks is the highest single-day total since July 20, when brazen assaults on two prisons near Baghdad plus other attacks left 71 dead.
More than 1,000 people were killed in Iraq in July, the highest monthly death toll in five years, according to the United Nations. The U.N. described the increase as particularly troubling because the numbers had begun declining five years ago following a series of U.S.-led offensives and a Sunni revolt against al-Qaeda in Iraq.
Iraqi officials have attributed the recent uptick in the death toll figures to a change in tactics by insurgents who are now trying to attack crowded, soft civilian targets such as cafes, mosques and markets in order to kill as many people as possible.
Anthony-Claret is a software Engineer, entrepreneur and the founder of Codewit INC. Mr. Claret publishes and manages the content on Codewit Word News website and associated websites. He's a writer, IT Expert, great administrator, technology enthusiast, social media lover and all around digital guy.
Kesha told the British publication Heat that she was born with the tail but that it was removed before she could shake it.
“I had a tail when I was born. It was a tiny tail, about a quarter of an inch, then they chopped it off and stole my tail,” she told Heat. “That was when I was little. I’m really sad about that story.”
A 12-year-old boy in Chandigarh, India has what looks like a 7-inch tail sticking out of his back.
Arshid Ali Khan is worshipped as the living incarnation of the Hindu monkey god Hanuman, and has faithful followers who refer to him as “Balaji,” Nairaland.com reported.
Doctors have a different, less spiritual, theory: The appendage is actually meningocele, a rare form of spina bifida that causes the spine to grow abnormally.
As a result, Arshid Ali Khan is worshipped as the living incarnation of the Hindu monkey god Hanuman, and has faithful followers who refer to him as “Balaji,” Nairaland.com reported.
Although medical experts believe Khan should have the “tail” removed because he risks further medical problems, he is philosophically opposed to it.
“I love my tail. It’s a gift from God. It’s unusual, but people respect me and bow before me because of it,” he said, according to the Sun. “I feel special.”
Anthony-Claret is a software Engineer, entrepreneur and the founder of Codewit INC. Mr. Claret publishes and manages the content on Codewit Word News website and associated websites. He's a writer, IT Expert, great administrator, technology enthusiast, social media lover and all around digital guy.
, Yemen — Yemen's government said Wednesday that it thwarted an al-Qaeda plot to to take over strategic ports and attack oil pipelines in the latest threat to foreign interests by al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.
More suspected U.S. drone strikes struck terrorist targets Wednesday in the country's south. The strikes killed seven suspected al-Qaeda terrorists, according to the Yemen government.
The embassies of the United States and Britain remained closed in Sanaa following the interception of a communication between al-Qaeda's leader Ayman al-Zawahiri and the leader of al-Qaeda in the Arabia Peninsula that suggested terror groups were planning an attack in the capital.
On Wednesday, hundreds of military vehicles were positioned around the city. Tanks and troops protected embassies and government offices and the airport.
A spokesman for the Yemen prime minister's office said Wednesday that al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula had been conspiring to attack several ports on Yemen's southern coast and on the western Red Sea shoreline.
The Arabian Sea ports of Mukalla, the provincial capital of Hadramaut, and Balhaf, farther west on the coast in Shabwa province, were said to be on the list of targets, according to press adviser Rajeh Badi.
Balhaf is home to the country's main gas liquefaction plant and liquefied natural gas export terminal, developed by Total.The ports are major installations for Yemen oil and gas and employ many foreign workers
International oil and gas companies including American Hunt Oil, Occidental Petroleum Corporation and Houston-based Schlumberger have already evacuated all their foreign staff in wake of the al-Qaeda terror alert raised by Washington last week.
"There were attempts to control key cities in Yemen like Mukala and Bawzeer," Badi said.
"This would be coordinated with attacks by al-Qaeda members on the gas facilities in Shebwa city and the blowing up of the gas pipe in Belhaf city," he said.
Badi said the plot included plans by militants to disguise themselves in military uniforms to carry out attacks on the 27th night of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, known as Laylat al-Qadr or the "Night of Destiny," which was last Sunday.
Details of the alleged plot emerged after Yemen's government criticized the USA and U.K. for their withdrawal of embassy staff Tuesday. Yemen's Foreign Ministry said the reaction undermined co-operation in the fight against terror and served "the interests of extremists."
The U.S. military flew Americans out of Yemen early Tuesday. The United States has closed 18 other embassies and consulates in the Middle East and Africa as well.
The double drone strike early Wednesday morning targeted two vehicles in one of the oil exploration blocks operated by Oxy in the southeastern province of Shabwa. It was the second drone attack in just over 24 hours.
Anthony-Claret is a software Engineer, entrepreneur and the founder of Codewit INC. Mr. Claret publishes and manages the content on Codewit Word News website and associated websites. He's a writer, IT Expert, great administrator, technology enthusiast, social media lover and all around digital guy.
Karachi – A bomb killed 11 people in a poor district of Pakistan’s financial hub of Karachi on Wednesday, mostly teenagers playing street football at a crowded market, officials said.
The sweltering port of 18 million people is largely inured to violence with a dozen bodies found around the city every day but the killing of so many youngsters shocked many residents.
“There was total chaos when the bomb went off. People were screaming and running for safety,’’ said resident Zafar Baluch.
It was unclear who was behind the blast in the Lyari district, a stronghold of the main opposition Pakistan People’s Party.
Karachi is home to many militant groups, including the Taliban. Many political parties there have armed wings to fight turf wars.
The attack appeared to be aimed at a provincial minister, Javed Nagori, who had come to hand out prizes at the football match, said provincial information minister Sharjeel Memon.
The children had been playing while their parents shopped for the upcoming Muslim holiday of Eid. In the run-up to Eid, many markets open all night since residents are fasting during the day.
“There was smoke everywhere and people were covered in glass,’’ said Sheree, who didn’t want to give her last name.
She was near Nagori’s convoy when the blast knocked her off her feet. She saw the bodies of three children, she said.
In the capital of Islamabad, security forces have been put on high alert until the holiday is over. (Reuters/NAN)
Anthony-Claret is a software Engineer, entrepreneur and the founder of Codewit INC. Mr. Claret publishes and manages the content on Codewit Word News website and associated websites. He's a writer, IT Expert, great administrator, technology enthusiast, social media lover and all around digital guy.
Kim Ki-hoon earns $4 million a year in South Korea, where he is known as a rock-star teacher—a combination of words not typically heard in the rest of the world. Mr. Kim has been teaching for over 20 years, all of them in the country's private, after-school tutoring academies, known as hagwons. Unlike most teachers across the globe, he is paid according to the demand for his skills—and he is in high demand.
Kim Ki-Hoon (SeongJoon Cho/WSJ)Mr. Kim works about 60 hours a week teaching English, although he spends only three of those hours giving lectures. His classes are recorded on video, and the Internet has turned them into commodities, available for purchase online at the rate of $4 an hour. He spends most of his week responding to students' online requests for help, developing lesson plans and writing accompanying textbooks and workbooks (some 200 to date).
"The harder I work, the more I make," he says matter of factly. "I like that."
I traveled to South Korea to see what a free market for teaching talent looks like—one stop in a global tour to discover what the U.S. can learn from the world's other education superpowers. Thanks in part to such tutoring services, South Korea has dramatically improved its education system over the past several decades and now routinely outperforms the U.S. Sixty years ago, most South Koreans were illiterate; today, South Korean 15-year-olds rank No. 2 in the world in reading, behind Shanghai. The country now has a 93% high-school graduation rate, compared with 77% in the U.S.
Tutoring services are growing all over the globe, from Ireland to Hong Kong and even in suburban strip malls in California and New Jersey. Sometimes called shadow education systems, they mirror the mainstream system, offering after-hours classes in every subject—for a fee. But nowhere have they achieved the market penetration and sophistication of hagwons in South Korea, where private tutors now outnumber schoolteachers.
Viewed up close, this shadow system is both exciting and troubling. It promotes striving and innovation among students and teachers alike, and it has helped South Korea become an academic superpower. But it also creates a bidding war for education, delivering the best services to the richest families, to say nothing of its psychological toll on students. Under this system, students essentially go to school twice—once during the day and then again at night at the tutoring academies. It is a relentless grind.
The bulk of Mr. Kim's earnings come from the 150,000 kids who watch his lectures online each year. (Most are high-school students looking to boost their scores on South Korea's version of the SAT.) He is a brand name, with all the overhead that such prominence in the market entails. He employs 30 people to help him manage his teaching empire and runs a publishing company to produce his books.
To call this mere tutoring is to understate its scale and sophistication. Megastudy, the online hagwon that Mr. Kim works for, is listed on the South Korean stock exchange. (A Megastudy official confirmed Mr. Kim's annual earnings.) Nearly three of every four South Korean kids participate in the private market. In 2012, their parents spent more than $17 billion on these services. That is more than the $15 billion spent by Americans on videogames that year, according to the NPD Group, a research firm. The South Korean education market is so profitable that it attracts investments from firms like Goldman Sachs, the Carlyle Group and A.I.G.
It was thrilling to meet Mr. Kim—a teacher who earns the kind of money that professional athletes make in the U.S. An American with his ambition and abilities might have to become a banker or a lawyer, but in South Korea, he had become a teacher, and he was rich anyway.
The idea is seductive: Teaching well is hard, so why not make it lucrative? Even if American schools will never make teachers millionaires, there are lessons to be learned from this booming educational bazaar, lessons about how to motivate teachers, how to captivate parents and students and how to adapt to a changing world.
To find rock-star teachers like Mr. Kim, hagwon directors scour the Internet, reading parents' reviews and watching teachers' lectures. Competing hagwons routinely try to poach one another's celebrity tutors. "The really good teachers are hard to retain—and hard to manage. You need to protect their egos," says Lee Chae-yun, who owns a chain of five hagwons in Seoul called Myungin Academy.
The most radical difference between traditional schools and hagwons is that students sign up for specific teachers, so the most respected teachers get the most students. Mr. Kim has about 120 live, in-person students per lecture, but a typical teacher's hagwon classes are much smaller. The Korean private market has reduced education to the one in-school variable that matters most: the teacher.
It is about as close to a pure meritocracy as it can be, and just as ruthless. In hagwons, teachers are free agents. They don't need to be certified. They don't have benefits or even a guaranteed base salary; their pay is based on their performance, and most of them work long hours and earn less than public school teachers.
Performance evaluations are typically based on how many students sign up for their classes, their students' test-score growth and satisfaction surveys given to students and parents. "How passionate is the teacher?" asks one hagwon's student survey—the results of which determine 60% of the instructor's evaluation. "How well-prepared is the teacher?" (In 2010, researchers funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation found classroom-level surveys like this to be surprisingly reliable and predictive of effective teaching in the U.S., yet the vast majority of our schools still don't use them.)
"Students are the customers," Ms. Lee says. To recruit students, hagwons advertise their results aggressively. They post their graduates' test scores and university acceptance figures online and outside their entrances on giant posters. It was startling to see such openness; in the U.S., despite our fetish for standardized testing, the results remain confusing and hard to interpret for parents.
Once students enroll, the hagwon embeds itself in families' lives. Parents get text messages when their children arrive at the academies each afternoon; then they get another message relaying students' progress. Two to three times a month, teachers call home with feedback. Every few months, the head of the hagwon telephones, too. In South Korea, if parents aren't engaged, that is considered a failure of the educators, not the family.
If tutors get low survey marks or attract too few students, they generally get placed on probation. Each year, Ms. Lee fires about 10% of her instructors. (By comparison, U.S. schools dismiss about 2% of public school teachers annually for poor performance.)
All of this pressure creates real incentives for teachers, at least according to the kids. In a 2010 survey of 6,600 students at 116 high schools conducted by the Korean Educational Development Institute, Korean teenagers gave their hagwon teachers higher scores across the board than their regular schoolteachers: Hagwon teachers were better prepared, more devoted to teaching and more respectful of students' opinions, the teenagers said. Interestingly, the hagwon teachers rated best of all when it came to treating all students fairly, regardless of the students' academic performance.
Private tutors are also more likely to experiment with new technology and nontraditional forms of teaching. In a 2009 book on the subject, University of Hong Kong professor Mark Bray urged officials to pay attention to the strengths of the shadow markets, in addition to the perils. "Policy makers and planners should…ask why parents are willing to invest considerable sums of money to supplement the schooling received from the mainstream," he writes. "At least in some cultures, the private tutors are more adventurous and client-oriented."
But are students actually learning more in hagwons? That is a surprisingly hard question to answer. World-wide, the research is mixed, suggesting that the quality of after-school lessons matters more than the quantity. And price is at least loosely related to quality, which is precisely the problem. The most affluent kids can afford one-on-one tutoring with the most popular instructors, while others attend inferior hagwons with huge class sizes and less reliable instruction—or after-hours sessions offered free by their public schools. Eight out of 10 South Korean parents say they feel financial pressure from hagwon tuition costs. Still, most keep paying the fees, convinced that the more they pay, the more their children will learn.
For decades, the South Korean government has been trying to tame the country's private-education market. Politicians have imposed curfews and all manner of regulations on hagwons, even going so far as to ban them altogether during the 1980s, when the country was under military rule. Each time the hagwons have come back stronger.
"The only solution is to improve public education," says Mr. Kim, the millionaire teacher, echoing what the country's education minister and dozens of other Korean educators told me. If parents trusted the system, the theory goes, they wouldn't resort to paying high fees for extra tutoring.
To create such trust, Mr. Kim suggests paying public-school teachers significantly more money according to their performance—as hagwons do. Then the profession could attract the most skilled, accomplished candidates, and parents would know that the best teachers were the ones in their children's schools—not in the strip mall down the street.
Schools can also build trust by aggressively communicating with parents and students, the way businesses already do to great effect in the U.S. They could routinely survey students about their teachers—in ways designed to help teachers improve and not simply to demoralize them. Principals could make their results far more transparent, as hagwons do, and demand more rigorous work from students and parents at home in exchange. And teacher-training programs could become far more selective and serious, as they are in every high-performing education system in the world—injecting trust and prestige into the profession before a teacher even enters the classroom.
No country has all the answers. But in an information-driven global economy, a few truths are becoming universal: Children need to know how to think critically in math, reading and science; they must be driven; and they must learn how to adapt, since they will be doing it all their lives. These demands require that schools change, too—or the free market may do it for them.
Anthony-Claret is a software Engineer, entrepreneur and the founder of Codewit INC. Mr. Claret publishes and manages the content on Codewit Word News website and associated websites. He's a writer, IT Expert, great administrator, technology enthusiast, social media lover and all around digital guy.
Iraqi security forces killed 11 suspected militants and arrested dozens in a large military-led operation north of Baghdad on Monday in response to a deadly attack on a checkpoint last month, military sources said.
The security sweep in Sulaman Pek, a town 160 km (100 miles) north of Baghdad, turned fatal when some militants opened fire on officers inspecting homes, the sources said, adding that a number of the militants had been wearing suicide vests.
Thousands of troops and several helicopters were deployed in what appeared to be one of the largest security operations this year.
Sunni Islamist militants have been regaining momentum in their insurgency against the Shi’ite-led government since the start of the year and have been emboldened by the civil war in neighboring Syria, which has inflamed sectarian tensions.
Security has been ramped up across the country after a mass jailbreak near Baghdad last month when more than 500 convicts, including senior al Qaeda operatives, escaped after militants attacked two prisons.
Monday’s operation was a response to an attack late last month when militants shot dead 14 Shi’ite tanker-drivers when checking their identity papers at a makeshift roadblock on the main route leading north from Baghdad.
Also on Monday, in Tal Afar, a town 420 km northwest of Baghdad, a bomb in a parked car killed four people and wounded seven. In the capital itself, a roadside bomb planted near a bakery killed four people and wounded 21 in an eastern district.
Increased attacks in Iraq have raised fears of a return to full-blown sectarian conflict. More than 1,000 Iraqis were killed in July, the highest monthly death toll since 2008, the United Nations said last week.
Anthony-Claret is a software Engineer, entrepreneur and the founder of Codewit INC. Mr. Claret publishes and manages the content on Codewit Word News website and associated websites. He's a writer, IT Expert, great administrator, technology enthusiast, social media lover and all around digital guy.
The trial of three Lebanese businessmen accused of terrorism and illegal importation of arms has continued with two of the suspects, Mustapha Fawaz and Abdalla Tahini denying any link with the Hezbollah of Lebanon, saying they are business men based in Nigeria and have no interest in the relations between Lebanon and Israel.
The two suspects told the federal high court in Abuja also that they were interrogated by six Israeli Mossad agents.
Lawyer to the accused persons, Ahmed Raji in concluding his defence called three witnesses including a lawyer from Lebanon. The lawyer, Joseph Faniano explained the activities of Hezbollah saying it is an organisation conceived primarily to resist Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon.
The accused persons also told the court that Hezbollah has never been a terrorist group in Lebanon.
The first accused person, Mustapha Fawaz in his defence told the court how he was interrogated by Israeli agents for fourteen days and made to undergo a polygraph test without being allowed to sleep. He however denied any link with Hezbollah.
Under cross examination by the prosecutor, Mustapha Fawaz admits having undergone basic training in weapons handling but denies having any form of animosity against the state of Israel.
Also crossed examine was Abdullah Tahini, who said he has never seen the arms and ammunitions belonging to one of the suspects, Abdulhassan Tahal or has he been to his house in Kano.
Mister tahini while being cross examined by the prosecutor, Simon Igede admits being a member of Hezbollah between 1986 and 1989 but has severed relationship with the organisation since his relocation to Nigeria.
Although the director of public prosecution was unavailable for comment, the defence lawyer, Ahmed Raji was confident that the court will see the merit of his case.
Justice Ademola Adeniyi adjourned the case to the 30th of September for adoption of written addresses, as he ordered that the Department of State Service (DSS) to allow agents of the accused persons to have access to their properties, twice a week, at wonderland and amigo supermarket for the purpose of inspection and maintenance.
Anthony-Claret is a software Engineer, entrepreneur and the founder of Codewit INC. Mr. Claret publishes and manages the content on Codewit Word News website and associated websites. He's a writer, IT Expert, great administrator, technology enthusiast, social media lover and all around digital guy.
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