The U.S. will try al Qaeda spokesman Abu Ghaith in New York

The United States has arrested Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, a son-in-law of Osama Bin Laden and an al Qaeda "spokesman." He will appear before a federal court in New York on Friday. Abu Ghaith was arrested in Jordan and will be arraigned by the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York on charges of conspiring to kill Americans. He could face a life sentence. He is one of the first and most high profile al Qaeda suspects to be tried on U.S. soil. The FBI says Abu Ghaith held a "key position in al-Qaeda, comparable to the consigliere in a mob family or propaganda minister in a totalitarian regime." He first drew attention when he appeared in a video alongside Bin Laden as he claimed responsibility for the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. He isn’t believed to have been involved in plotting any attacks, but has been considered a voice of al Qaeda, often threatening Americans. The case has reignited debates on whether terror suspects should be tried in civilian or military courts. The Obama administration attempted to try Khaled Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, in a federal court in New York. But after unrelenting criticism from congress, the trial was moved to a military court at Guantánamo. Some U.S. lawmakers have also called for Abu Ghaith to be tried in a military court. However, an administration official responded, "The administration is seeking to close Guantánamo, not add to its population."

Syria

An opposition group in Syria, the "Martyrs of Yarmouk" brigade, has refused to release  21 Filipino U.N. peacekeepers who captured on Wednesday until Syrian troops reposition themselves. Raul Hernandez, the spokesman for the Filipino Foreign Ministry,  said negotiations are continuing. However, Abu Essam Taseel, the spokesman for the rebel brigade, said on Friday that talks are not taking place. The observers are being held in the village of Jamlah, about a mile from the ceasefire line that they were monitoring between Israel and Syria in the Golan Heights. Jamlah has been under constant bombardment by government forces for the past week, and the rebel brigade has demanded that the troops move out with their heavy weaponry. Meanwhile, in an interview with the BBC, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said there is "absolutely" no chance that Moscow will press Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to step down. He said Russia is not in the "regime-change game." He added that Assad "is not bluffing" about his determination to remain in power. Lavrov is set to travel to London next week for talks with British Foreign Secretary William Hague, during which they expect the Syrian conflict to top the agenda.

Headlines

• Thousands of police officers went on strike across Egypt on Thursday, protesting conflicting pressures from the government and the public and demanding the resignation of the interior minister.
• Several people have been injured in clashes between Israeli police and Palestinian worshippers outside the al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem.
• Intermittent violence continues in Egypt’s Port Said as tensions increase ahead of a March 9 verdict on the 2012 football riots that killed 74 people. 

Arguments and Analysis

Netanyahu’s violent fingerprint (Gideon Levy, Haaretz)

"Benjamin Netanyahu‘s children attacked an Arab cleaning man on the seaside promenade in Tel Aviv and caused him serious injuries. They attacked an Arab waiter in a Tel Aviv restaurant with chairs and their fists. They attacked an Arab from Upper Nazareth at the shore of Lake Kinneret because they heard him speaking Arabic. Netanyahu’s children waved hate-filled signs against Muslim players of the Beitar Jerusalem soccer team and set fire to its clubhouse. Netanyahu’s children attacked an Arab woman on a Jerusalem light rail train just because she was an Arab.

All these events took place in Israel within a few days. The attackers were of course not the prime minister’s biological children, but they all were the creation of his spirit, students of his views and pupils of his government’s policies. These Israeli skinheads are the fruits of the nationalistic and racist atmosphere that has grown greatly in recent years, the Netanyahu years.

Such a streak of anti-Arab violence is not just a coincidence of course. So many of these kind of violent acts in such a short time never happened here before. Their source is planted deep within the Israeli experience that Likud-led governments have acted to nurture. A Jewish child grows up in Israel with the feeling he is a member of the chosen people, one who is allowed to do almost anything. He learns that only his people have rights to this land. This child knows his country must be Jewish, and only Jewish."

Arab revolutions have made women worse off (Moha Ennaji, The Daily Star)

"Though women across the Middle East participated actively in the Arab Spring protests that began in late 2010, they remain second-class citizens, even where popular uprisings managed to topple autocratic regimes. Indeed, the Islamist governments now in power in several countries seem more determined than the despots that they replaced to keep women out of politics. In conducting interviews with women in the region, I am struck by their pessimism. They fear the loss of their rights. They see economic disintegration all around them, raising the possibility of a further increase in violence. As social bonds fray, they feel increasingly vulnerable. More than once, I heard them express the view that things were better before the revolutions.

Female representation in parliaments and Cabinets after the Arab Spring has been either absent or meager, and women activists fear Islamist parties will implement reactionary policies that discriminate on the basis of gender. In Egypt, for example, the Freedom and Justice Party, which dominates parliament, claims that a woman cannot become president. Egyptian women were heavily represented in the protests that brought down President Hosni Mubarak’s regime in 2011, but they have been largely excluded from any official decision-making role ever since."

–By Jennifer Parker and Mary Casey