Mozambique leader meets opposition chief to reset relations

WASHINGTON: The US government has alleged that Columbia University student and pro-Palestinian demonstrator Mahmoud Khalil withheld that he worked for a United Nations Palestinian relief agency in his visa application, saying that should be grounds for deportation.
The UN agency known as UNRWA provides food and health care to Palestinian refugees and has become a flashpoint in the Israeli war in Gaza. Israel contends that 12 UNRWA employees were involved in Hamas’ attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, leading the US to halt funding of the group.
UNRWA said Khalil was briefly an unpaid intern.
The administration of US President Donald Trump on March 8 detained Khalil, a prominent figure in the pro-Palestinian protests that rocked Columbia’s New York City campus last year, and sent him to Louisiana in an attempt to remove him from the country.

The case has drawn attention as a test of free speech rights, with supporters of Khalil saying he was targeted for publicly disagreeing with US policy on Israel and its occupation of Gaza. Khalil has called himself a political prisoner.
The US alleges Khalil’s presence or activities in the country would have serious foreign policy consequences.
A judge has ordered Khalil not be deported while his lawsuit challenging his detention, known as a habeas petition, is heard in another federal court.
Khalil, a native of Syria and citizen of Algeria, entered the US on a student visa in 2022 and later filed to become a permanent resident in 2024.
In a court brief dated Sunday, the US government outlined its arguments for keeping Khalil in custody while his removal proceedings continue, arguing first that the US District Court in New Jersey, where the habeas case is being heard, lacks jurisdiction.
The brief also says Khalil “withheld membership in certain organizations” which should be grounds for his deportation.
It references a March 17 document in his deportation case that informed Khalil he could be removed because he failed to disclose that he was a political officer of UNRWA in 2023.
A UNRWA spokesperson said Khalil was never on the payroll of the agency during his short internship and that the group does not have in its job descriptions the post of political affairs officer.
The UN said in August an investigation found nine of the agency’s 32,000 staff members may have been involved in the October 7 attacks.
The US court notice also accuses Khalil of leaving off his visa application that he worked for the Syria office in the British embassy in Beirut and that he was a member of the group Columbia University Apartheid Divest.
Attorneys for Khalil did not respond to a request for comment.
One attorney, Ramie Kassem, a co-director of the legal clinic CLEAR, was quoted in the New York Times as saying the new deportation grounds were “patently weak and pretextual.”
“That the government scrambled to add them at the 11th hour only highlights how its motivation from the start was to retaliate against Mr. Khalil for his protected speech in support of Palestinian rights and lives,” Kassem said, according to the Times.

N’DJAMENA: Chad on Monday warned its traditional foe Sudan that it “reserves the legitimate right to respond” if attacked, following threats made by a senior Khartoum military official.
In a video broadcast Sunday on Al Jazeera, the deputy commander of the Sudanese forces, Yasser Al-Atta, warned that the airport in the Chadian capital N’Djamena and at Amdjarras in northeastern Chad “are legitimate targets for the Sudanese armed forces.”
The remarks “could be interpreted as a declaration of war if followed through,” Chadian foreign ministry spokesman Ibrahim Adam Mahamat said.
“Such rhetoric could lead to a dangerous escalation for the entire sub-region,” and “Chad reserves the legitimate right to respond vigorously to any attempted aggression,” he added.
“Sudan has just declared war on Chad,” declared former Chadian prime minister Saleh Kebzabo on his official Facebook page.
“We must take this very seriously, prepare for it militarily, and mobilize,” he added.
Chad has accused the Sudanese government for over six decades of doing everything it can to destabilize its neighbor, notably by “orchestrating rebellions” and supporting the Boko Haram militant group.
Since April 2023, Sudan has been torn apart by a conflict pitting General Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan, head of the army and de facto ruler of the country since a 2021 coup, against his former deputy, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti, the chief of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).
At the end of October 2024, N’Djamena denied any involvement in the Sudanese conflict but Khartoum’s de facto rulers accused it of playing an active role in arms deliveries to the RSF.
The alleged support for the RSF has been highlighted in various reports — including one from the United Nations in January 2024 — but Chad has consistently denied involvement.
The presence in El Fasher in Sudan’s perennially restive Darfur region of a Zaghawa rebellion — an ethnic group also present in Chad — is N’Djamena’s main concern.
It is led by Ousman Dillo, the younger brother of Chadian opposition leader Yaya Dillo Djerou who was killed by the Chadian army.
In February 2008, a Zaghawa rebellion based in Sudan launched a lightning offensive in Chad alongside other groups, forcing former president Idriss Deby Itno to take refuge in his presidential palace, before successfully repelling the rebels with decisive support from former ruler France.
The war in Sudan since April 2023 has left tens of thousands dead, displaced more than 11 million people and created the risk of widespread famine, in what the UN considers the worst humanitarian crisis in recent times.
Two million people have also fled to neighboring countries, including 1.5 million to Chad.