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WEDNESDAY MAY 20, 2015 • THISDAY INTERNATIONAL G ‘Iran Violated Sanctions by Purchasing Aircraft’ A senior Israeli official took a swipe at Washington yesterday over Iran’s purchase of secondhand civilian aircraft, saying the acquisition violated U.S. sanctions and went ahead despite a tip-off from Israel. Iranian Transport Minister, Abbas Akhoondi, was quoted on May 11 by the Iranian Students News Agency as saying Tehran bought 15 used commercial planes in the last three months. He did not say who sold them or how they had been acquired. A long-standing ban on the export of aircraft spare parts to Iran was eased under an interim nuclear deal between Tehran and world powers in late 2013, but the U.S. sanctions regime continues to restrict sales of planes. “Israel learned from intelligence sources about this very significant breach of the sanctions in advance The mother of American reporter, Austin Tice, who has been missing in Syria for more than three years, believes her son is alive and well, urging Washington and Damascus to work together to free him. Tice went missing in Damascus in 2012 and the U.S. State Department said in March Washington had been in periodic, direct contact with the Syrian government regarding his case, a statement his mother said provided a glimmer of hope. “We ask both governments to work together and to work effectively to locate Austin and to secure his safe release,” Debra Tice told Reuters in Beirut yesterday during a trip to mark more than 1,000 days since he disappeared. She said the family had received information from unspecified sources about her son’s condition several weeks ago. “We hear that he is well, that he is safe, which is of course of it occurring,” the Israeli official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters. “We flagged the issue to the U.S. administration,” the official said. “Unfortunately, the deal still went through and there was no success in preventing it.” U.S. and Iranian officials could not immediately be reached for comment. The Israeli official’s comments appeared to be an attempt to portray the United States as being lax in enforcing current economic restrictions even as it promises to reimpose them if Iran fails to honor terms of a nuclear deal now under negotiation with six world powers including Washington. Israel, Iran’s arch regional adversary and widely believed to be the Middle East’s only nuclear power, says Tehran cannot be trusted to honor such an agreement. The official said the aircraft Mother of US Missing Reporter Cries for Help very important, and the most important thing is for us to stay patient.” Tice had worked for publications including Mc- Clatchy Newspapers and The Washington Post. His family says it is unclear who is holding him. Reporters Without Borders have been saying that 25 journalists are being held by hardline groups in Syria, five of them foreigners. It says 30, mainly Syrian journalists, are in government prisons. “The Syrian government denies holding Austin Tice, but we believe that it has the ability, it can do a lot, so that Austin Tice returns home safe and sound,” Reporters without Borders Secretary-General Christophe Deloire told a news conference. He said Tice was not being detained by “religious extremist groups” and his mother told reporters he was not being held by “any part of the opposition.” “We do not know where he is nor who is holding him,” she were sold to an airline that had been blacklisted by the United States “because of its involvement with the Iranian Revolutionary Guards” and Lebanon’s Hezbollah guerrillas. The official did not name the company. But the Iranian state news agency IRNA said on May 12 that Iran’s Mahan Air -- which is blacklisted by Washington -- recently acquired nine used Airbus commercial aircraft. IRNA did not identify the seller. London’s Financial Times reported last week the deal was brokered through a complex series of arrangements with apparently unwitting companies across Europe. The U.S. Commerce Department first blacklisted Mahan Air in 2008 after it found that the firm had imported three Boeing Co 747 jumbo jets into Iran without U.S. authorisation. said. “Someone, someone possibly near this place, knows something about my son and his whereabouts.” She said a friend of the family, who is known to Shi’ite Muslim leaders in Lebanon, had offered to act as an intermediary and called on her son’s captors to consider allowing that person to meet with her son. She said the U.S. government had not offered her family enough support and that there had been too long a delay in establishing contact with Damascus. “I grossly overestimated that those that I believed would be qualified in my government would step up to help my family.” The United States vowed last week to “work tirelessly” to bring him home. “I long to hold my son in my arms,” she said, holding back tears. “I want my family to be whole again.” UN: 25,000 Fled IS Attack on Ramadi in Iraq Close to 25,000 people fled the Iraqi city of Ramadi after it was attacked by Islamic State militants and most of them headed towards Baghdad, the United Nations said on Monday. United Nations and other aid agencies have begun distributing food, water and medical supplies as well as setting up temporary camps and latrines, the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Iraq said. However, funds for aid operations in Iraq were running out and aid stocks were almost gone, it said. Ramadi fell to the militants at the weekend and those fleeing were thought to be escaping from Islamic State for a second time, having been among 130,000 who fled from the western Iraqi city in April. “Thousands of families who had fled earlier had returned to their homes in Ramadi, when fighting again broke out, forcing them to flee a second time,” the U.N. statement said. “Nothing is more important right now than helping the people fleeing Ramadi. They are in trouble and we need to do everything possible to help them,” the U.N. Humanitarian Coordinator in Iraq, Lise Grande, said in the statement. “Thousands of people had to sleep in the open because they didn’t have places to stay. We would be able to do much more if we had the funding, he added.” U.N. agencies and other aid organizations are giving life-saving assistance to more than 2.5 million displaced people and refugees in Iraq, but funding is nearly exhausted and 56 health programs will have to close by June, the statement said. “In July, the food pipeline will break,” it said. Shi’ite militia fighters arrived near Ramadi on Monday as Baghdad moved to retake the city.
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