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Supporters of former Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili released him from a vehicle of Ukrainian special service by breaking the back door.
After being released, Saakashvili addressed his supporters saying he “will die for Ukraine”. He called to gather on Maidan to liberate the country from “Poroshenko and his gang”.
“There are millions of us, we are strong, we are very strong. Let’s take to the streets, Poroshenko’s regime will be over,” he said.
Independent journalist Mesut Mohammed, who works in Syria’s Kurdish region, informed that the Syrian government army has freed several Armenian and Assyrian families in Raqqa, and who could not leave the town ever since the Islamic State took control there, according to Agos Armenian weekly of Istanbul.
One of these Armenian women, Saus Karapetyan, said the Islamic State militants had forced them to wear a head covering, but not to cover their face, to differ from Muslim women.
And the other Armenians said they were ridiculed and debased every so often, and forced to pay tremendous amounts of taxes.
They have been taken into IS captivity after the jihadist group overran Sinjar
FALLUJAH — A Kurdish Yazidi official in Dohuk province revealed that over 350 Yazidi abductees have been freed from the Islamic State (IS) by the Iraqi forces in Fallujah.
Hadi Dubani, the director of Yazidi Affairs in Dohuk province, told BasNews that they were informed today, June 19, by the Iraqi forces that 354 Yazidi women and girls, previously abducted by the IS militants in Sinjar, have been freed in Fallujah by the Iraqi forces.
Dubani said “The freed Yazidi women are now in Amirya area in Fallujah under the protection of the Iraqi forces. they are expected to arrive in Kurdistan Region in the near future.
Earlier this month, 4 Yazidi girls were freed by the Iraqi forces soon after the Fallujah offensive was launched; they were later reunited with their families in Erbil.
The Directorate of Yazidi Abductees Affairs in Dohuk province, which works to locate and free Yazidi captives, previously told BasNews that hundreds of Yazidi girls, who were abducted by the IS militants during the Sinjar massacre, were held in Fallujah with an uncertain future.
IS militants enslaved over 5000 Yazidi girls, women and children after they attacked the Yazidi major town of Sinjar in August, 2014; near 2000 Yazidi abductees have so far been freed from the grip of the IS militants with thousands more still being held by the extremist group.
The rescue of the Yazidi women comes after the Iraqi government forces entered Fallujah last Friday and liberated most of the city from IS.
Two prominent Turkish journalists from a leading opposition newspaper have been freed in the early hours of Friday after Turkey‘s top court ruled that their detentions had violated their rights.
A large group of supporters greeted Cumhuriyet newspaper’s editor-in-chief Can Dündar and the paper’s Ankara representative, Erdem Gül, as they emerged from a van after being freed from Silivri prison on the outskirts of İstanbul.
The arrest of journalists last November drew international condemnation and revived concern about media freedom in Turkey under President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
They were detained after the publication of video footage purporting to show the state intelligence agency helping send weapons to Syria.
“We think the Constitutional Court’s ruling is a historic one,” Dündar told reporters outside the prison, next to their friends and families. “This verdict has cleared the way not only for us but for all of our colleagues and freedom of press and expression,” he said. He also said his release on Friday would be “a present” on Erdoğan’s 62nd birthday.
The two were charged with intentionally aiding an armed terrorist organization and publishing material in violation of state security. Cumhuriyet published photos, videos and a report last May that it said showed intelligence officials transporting arms to Syria in trucks in 2014.
Dündar also said the Wait for Hope vigil in front of Silivri Prison where he was held — which initially was started to show solidarity with him, Gül and other imprisoned journalists — should be continued, and that they would follow the fight of their imprisoned colleagues until the end. Saying that their case is about freedom of the press, Dündar vowed to fight for humanity, for press freedom and for freedom of expression until the Silivri Prison “turns into a museum,” as it is the prison where most of Turkey’s imprisoned journalists are kept.
Two Vice News journalists arrested earlier this week in Turkey’s southeast on charges of having links to a terrorist organization have been released, a Turkish government source told the Hürriyet Daily News on Sept 3.
The two British journalists, correspondent Jake Hanrahan and cameraman Philip Pendlebury, and their Turkey-based assistant were detained last week in Diyarbakır, the main city in Turkey’s mostly Kurdish southeast, where renewed fighting has killed scores of people.
A court ordered the three formally arrested late on Aug. 30 on charges of aiding a terror organization. All three have rejected the accusation.
Although the Aug. 27 tipoff that led to the Aug. 28 detention of the two journalists claimed they had helped the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group, the court issued the ruling for their arrest on suspicion they had supported the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in the southeastern Mardin, Şırnak and Diyarbakır, provinces.
The abbreviations and English translations of organizations linked to the PKK written in a notebook were mentioned among the evidence seized by the police in the arrest of the journalists.
Turkish authorities had transferred the arrested journalists to a prison more than 500 kilometers (300 miles) away from their lawyers and the courthouse where they face trial, a lawyer said Sept. 3.