Saudi Arabia urged Iran on Saturday to allow a daughter of Osama bin Laden, who fled house arrest and sought refuge in the Saudi embassy in Tehran, to leave the country if she wishes.
Iman bin Laden and five siblings had been held in Tehran since the US-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, Saudi newspaper Asharq al-Awsat reported last month. Iman, 17, escaped during a rare trip outside in November and made her way to the embassy, the paper said.
Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal told a press conference in Riyadh that Iman should be allowed to leave Iran.
“We consider this to be a purely humanitarian issue and we are in talks with the Iranian government to treat it as such and leave the choice of leaving to the girl,” he said.
Asharq al-Awsat, owned by a cousin of Prince Saud, has reported that the Saudi embassy has issued Iman with a temporary travel permit to allow her to return to Saudi Arabia.
Relations between Saudi Arabia and non-Arab Iran have been marked by regional rivalry and mutual mistrust mainly because of sectarian tensions in the region between Sunnis and Shiites — Islam’s two main factions — and more recently over Tehran’s nuclear plans.
Iman’s father, Osama bin Laden, was born into a wealthy Saudi family, but had his nationality revoked. The al-Qaeda head is believed to be hiding in the mountainous border areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of
IN PURSUIT: Israel’s defense minister said the revenge attacks by Israeli settlers would make it difficult for security forces to find those responsible for the 14-year-old’s death Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday condemned the “heinous murder” of an Israeli teenager in the occupied West Bank as attacks on Palestinian villages intensified following news of his death. After Benjamin Achimeir, 14, was reported missing near Ramallah on Friday, hundreds of Jewish settlers backed by Israeli forces raided nearby Palestinian villages, torching vehicles and homes, leaving at least one villager dead and dozens wounded. The attacks escalated in several villages on Saturday after Achimeir’s body was found near the Malachi Hashalom outpost. Agence France-Presse correspondents saw smoke rising from burned houses and fields. Mayor Amin Abu Alyah, of the