Excerpts: Iran jails 2 charged as US and Israel spies. Druze former MP gets
1 year for visit to 'enemy country". Obama re confronting Hizbullah. Jordan
first in Arab 'freedom index' September 01, 2015

+++SOURCE: Saudi Gazette 1 Sept.’15:”Iran jails two for 10 years on
espionage charges”,by Reuters
SUBJECT: Iran jails 2 charged as US and Israel spies

FULL TEXT:DUBAI — A Revolutionary Court in Iran has sentenced two people to
10 years each in jail on charges of spying for the United States and Israel,
the judiciary spokesman said on Sunday[20Aug] without naming those
convicted.

“These two people were sentenced to 10 years in jail by the Revolutionary
Court,” Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei was quoted as saying by the Fars news
agency.

The announcement came as the world waits for news of Jason Rezaian, an
Iranian-American reporter for the Washington Post who has been held for more
than a year on espionage charges and whose final hearing took place earlier
this month.

“Our understanding is the judiciary spokesman said later that he had no new
information on Jason,” the Post’s foreign editor, Douglas Jehl, said in a
statement: “For that reason, we believe that Jason was not among those whose
sentences, but not identities, were announced today.” — Reuters


+++SOURCE:Israel Confirms Jail for Druze ex-MP. over Syria Trip”, Agence
France Presse
SUBJECT: Druze former MP gets 1 year for visit to ‘enemy country’

FULL TEXT:Israel's Supreme Court on Monday[31 Aug] confirmed a one-year jail
sentence handed down to a Druze former MP for visiting Syria, an "enemy
country."

Said Naffaa had appealed a September 2014 verdict sentencing him to 18
months for traveling to Syria and making contact with a "foreign agent."

He went in 2007 to Syria, with which Israel is technically still at war, as
part of a delegation of 300 Druze religious leaders.

A member of parliament at the time, he met a leader of the PFLP-General
Command, an offshoot of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine,
which Israel designates a "terror organization."

After Monday's[31 Aug] Supreme Court decision, he will now be jailed for one
year from October 6, plus six months suspended.

Public radio said the former parliamentarian with the nationalist Arab Balad
party also visited the offices of Hamas chief Khaled Meshaal, who was then
based in Damascus.

Adalah, an NGO defending the rights of Israeli Arabs, in a statement Monday
denounced a conviction it said resulted from "political and not legal
considerations."

"The ban on travel to Arab countries is discriminatory and repressive," it
said.

Israel has 130,000 Druze citizens out of a population of around eight
million. Unlike other Arab citizens of the Jewish state, they are obliged by
law to do three years of military service.

The Druze are native to parts of central Lebanon, southern Syria and the
Israel-occupied Golan Heights

+++SOURCE:Naharnet(Lebanon) 1 Sept.’15:”Obama Calls for Better Cooperation
with Israel to Confront Hizbullah” by Naharnet Newsdesk
SUBJECT:Obama re confronting Hizbullah
QUOT E:”U.Ss President Barack Obama has stressed the importance of better
intelligence cooperation between Washington and Tel Aviv to stop Hizbullah
from obtaining more missiles with which to target Israel”‘
U.S. President Barack Obama has stressed the importance of better
intelligence cooperation between Washington and Tel Aviv to stop Hizbullah
from obtaining more missiles with which to target Israel.

“As much intelligence cooperation and sharing as we’re already doing, we
need to do better if we want to stop Hizbullah from continuing to get
missiles that can be trained on Tel Aviv,” Obama told The Forward, a
newspaper published in New York for a Jewish-American audience, in an
interview.

He said Washington should discuss more with Israel on whether “there (are)
additional capabilities that Israel may be able to use to prevent Hizbullah,
for example, from getting missiles.”

He said Iran has been effective in its destabilizing activities because it
has used proxies.

Tehran has “invested in places like Lebanon for decades and become
entrenched. And the reason we haven’t done a better job of stopping that is
not because they’re outspending us. The reason is because we haven’t been as
coordinated, had as good intelligence and been as systematic in pushing back
as we need to be,” Obama told The Forward.

The U.S. president reiterated that his disagreement with Israel over the
terms of the Iran nuclear deal was a "fight within the family."

"Over the next several weeks as we get to the conclusion of the
congressional debate, I think it is important for everybody to just take a
breath for a moment and recognize that people on both sides of the debate
love the United States and also love Israel," he said.



+++SOURCE:Jordan Times 1 Sept’15:”Jordan tops Arab countries in freedom
index”,by MohammadGhazal

SUBJECT:”Jordan first in Arab ‘freedom index’

QUOTE:Jordan ranked first among the Arab states and 78th globally in the
Human Freedom Index(HFI) this year”

FULL TEXT:AMMAN — Jordan ranked first among the Arab states and 78th
globally in the Human Freedom Index (HFI) for this year.

FULL TEXT:The report, issued by the US-based Cato Institute, Canada’s Fraser
Institute and Germany’s Liberales Institut at the Friedrich Naumann
Foundation for Freedom, showed that Jordan was first among the Arab states
and was ahead of Lebanon which ranked third place and Bahrain, which landed
in fourth place.

The report, which covers issues including the rule of law, religion,
expression, freedom to trade internationally, business regulation and legal
system, showed that Kuwait came fifth and was followed by Oman, Tunisia,
Qatar, the UAE, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Algeria and Yemen respectively.

In the personal freedom index, Jordan scored 5.89 out of 10. It scored 7.86
in economic freedom and 3.8 in the democracy index, the report indicated.

Covering 152 countries and based on data from 2012, the most recent
available, the HFI is “the most comprehensive freedom index so far created
for a globally meaningful set of countries”, according to Cato.

In terms of the rule of law Jordan scored 5.4 out of 10. In terms of
security and safety it scored 7.7, while in movement it got 8.3 points, the
report indicated.

In religious freedoms, it scored 7.5 points; expression and information
(5.9); assembly and civil society (6.9).

In its report covering data from 2011, Jordan ranked 82nd globally in the
Human Freedom Index.

Commenting on the report, Basel Tarawneh, the government coordinator on
human rights, said: “This is a great achievement for Jordan and a testimony
to the successful collaboration between civil society organisations and the
government agencies.”

“There are great efforts exerted by all stakeholders to enhance freedoms and
human rights in Jordan, and the Kingdom has a strategy for supporting human
rights that will play a key role in advancing Jordan’s position in this
field,” he told The Jordan Times on Monday[31 Aug].

“We need to do more to further enhance our position and Jordan has always
been keen on taking recommendations by local and international agencies into
account,” he said.

Founded in 1977, the Cato Institute is a public policy research organisation
dedicated to the principles of individual liberty, limited government, free
markets and peace.
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Sue Lerner - Associate, IMRA