East Timor yesterday said it will ask an international court in the Netherlands to order Australia to return documents seized by the Australian secret service relating to a legal dispute over oil and gas revenue-sharing between the countries.
East Timorese Minister of State Agio Pereira said in a statement that his government will ask the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague for an interim order requiring Australia to hand over the documents to the court.
That order would stand pending a final decision on East Timor’s demand for their return.
BUGGED
Australian Security Intelligence Organization (ASIO) agents last month raided the homes in the Australian capital, Canberra, of a lawyer and a former spy who intended to testify before the same court that Australia allegedly bugged the East Timorese Cabinet ahead of sensitive oil and gas revenue-sharing negotiations.
Pereira said the agents also seized the spy’s passport, preventing him from traveling to The Hague to testify.
Pereira said the documents related to East Timor’s challenge to the validity of a bilateral treaty struck with Australia in 2006 over sharing seabed oil and gas reserves between the countries worth billions of US dollars.
CONFIDENTIAL
East Timor is arguing that the agreement is invalid because Australia had illegally bugged government offices and listened to confidential discussions relating to the negotiations.
“Timor-Leste contends that the ... treaty is invalid and ineffective because Australia secretly and unlawfully spied on Timor-Leste, bugging its government offices and listening in to highly confidential discussions during the course of the negotiations on the treaty,” Pereira said, referring to East Timor by its Portuguese name.
Australian Attorney General George Brandis, who authorized the ASIO raids, said in a statement yesterday that “it would be inappropriate to comment on the substance of the dispute” because it was before the court.
He had previously revealed that he had told ASIO that none of the seized information was to be shared with lawyers representing Australia in The Hague.
Australia negotiated the treaty after East Timor, a half-island nation, broke away from Indonesia in a 1999 UN sanctioned independence ballot.
Indonesia had previously struck a similar agreement to share the seabed.
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
A prominent Christian leader has allegedly been stabbed at the altar during a Mass yesterday in southwest Sydney. Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel was saying Mass at Christ The Good Shepherd Church in Wakeley just after 7pm when a man approached him at the altar and allegedly stabbed toward his head multiple times. A live stream of the Mass shows the congregation swarm forward toward Emmanuel before it was cut off. The church leader gained prominence during the COVID-19 pandemic, amassing a large online following, Officers attached to Fairfield City police area command attended a location on Welcome Street, Wakeley following reports a number