FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 2019 The Boston Globe TheWorld A
By William Booth
and Michael Birnbaum
WASHINGTON POST
LONDON — In England’s
long history, telling false tales
to the monarch has often been
a bad move. Fabricators could
lose favor — or their heads.
And so Prime Minister Bo-
ris Johnson gave the correct
answer when asked Thursday
by reporters if he had lied to
Queen Elizabeth II about his
reasons for wanting to sus-
pend Parliament ahead of his
promised ‘‘do or die’’ Brexit at
the end of October.
‘‘Absolutely not,’’ said John-
son, speaking with the British
press during a visit to a light-
house tending ship docked in
the Thames River.
The embattled prime min-
ister was specifically asked
about a Scottish high court
opinion on Wednesday that
found his request to suspend
parliament was ‘‘unlawful.’’
A panel of Scottish judges
ruled the Johnson government
had been misleading — per-
haps, even to the monarch —
about its true motivation for
the five-week halt.
The Scottish judges said the
time-out ‘‘had the purpose of
stymying Parliament’’ ahead of
the latest deadline for Britain
to leave the European Union.
Johnson on Thursday de-
nied this was so. The prime
minister said he suspended this
Parliament — filled with vexa-
tious rebels, including within
his own party — so he could
craft a new Conservative Party
legislative agenda, full of his
promised bold new proposals,
to swell the ranks of the police
force and to fund care for the
infirm and elderly, for example.
But many lawmakers
weren’t buying it.
Johnson’s suspension of
Parliament — what’s called a
prorogation — is the longest in
almost a century. And it is hap-
pening in the middle of what is
arguably Britain’s worst peace-
time crisis since World War II.
Even Johnson’s fellow To-
ries say the prime minister is
playing politics — and trying
to outflank moves to block a
general election and to stop a
no-deal Brexit.
On Thursday Johnson said,
‘‘I’m very hopeful that we will
getadeal’’atacrucialEU
summit in late October. ‘‘I
think we can see the rough ar-
ea of a landing space, of how
you can do it — it will be
tough, it will be hard, but I
think we can get there,’’ the
prime minister said.
Johnson said there would
still be plenty of time for law-
makers to argue about Brexit
when Parliament resumes on
Oct. 14. British lawmakers and
European negotiators are lesssure about that.
The legal wrangling is far
from over.
A high court in Northern
Ireland on Thursday dis-
missed the claim that a no-
deal Brexit and the imposition
of a hard border on the Irish
island would wreck the peace
process there. The court said
the matter was political and
not legal. It didn’t consider the
question of whether Johnson’s
suspension Parliament was
unlawful.
On Tuesday, the United
Kingdom’s Supreme Court will
wrestle with the question of
whether Johnson’s decision to
suspend Parliament can be
scrutinised by any judge, fol-
lowing opposing decisions by
two of Britain’s high courts, in
Scotland and in England.
In Brussels, Britain’s top Br-
exit negotiator David Frost has
been making very non-newsy,
twice-weekly visits for discus-sions with his European coun-
terparts. But anxious EU dip-
lomats say talks actually seem
to be moving backward.
‘‘If solutions are proposed,
they will be debated, all of
them — provided they respect
the guiding principles of the
EU,’’ said European Parliament
President David Sassoli. ‘‘But,
up to now, I can say the UK
hasn’t proposed any alterna-
tives, anything that’s been le-
gally credible and workable.’’
Few in Brussels are taking
it for granted that Johnson
will obey the law passed by
Parliament that he ask for a
delay to the Oct. 31 departure
date if he doesn’t strike a deal
in the meantime.
Instead, embassies have
canceled vacations for their
diplomats in late October,
emergency preparations for a
chaotic, no-deal Brexit have
stepped up, and many in the
EU capital are bracing for
what one diplomat called ‘‘the
most horrible crisis of recent
years.’’
Johnson’s remarks came as
his government was forced to
release a five-page document
assessing the impact of a no-
deal Brexit. The document —
which was previously leaked
and reported on — predicted
there could be days-long de-
lays of trucks moving through
British and French ports; that
electricity prices might spike;
some medicines would be in
short supply; that food prices
would rise; and there could be
a rise in public disorder.
On Thursday, Johnson also
told a group of school children
about his idea of building a
bridge across the Irish Sea be-
tween Scotland and Northern
Ireland. ‘‘It would only cost
about 15 billion pounds,’’ or
$18 billion, he said.
Johnsonsuggestedthe
megaproject — which he has
asked government officials to
investigate from a feasibility
standpoint — could help ame-
liorate Brexit woes.
‘‘There is so much more we
can do, and what grieves me
about the current approach to
Brexit is that we are just in
danger of not believing in our-
selves, not believing in Brit-
ain,’’ the prime minister said.By Andrew Higgins
NEW YORK TIMES
MOSCOW — In a nation-
wide crackdown to prevent dis-
content in Moscow from
spreading to far-flung regions,
Russian security forces Thurs-
day raided and searched hun-
dreds of homes and offices
across the country of activists
affiliated with opposition lead-
er Aleksei A. Navalny.
The raids, the biggest opera-
tion yet against Navalny and his
supporters, were carried out in
more than 40 cities and towns
as part of a criminal money
laundering investigation an-
nounced in August by the au-
thorities against his Anti-Cor-
ruption Foundation. The foun-
dation has been the vanguard
of recent street protests in Mos-
cow that led to the arrests of
more than 2,000 people.
Navalny issued a statement
denouncing the raids as the big-
gest police operation, in geo-
graphical reach, in Russia’s
modern history and a clear at-
tempt to “intimidate” and “de-
moralize.” He said security offi-
cials from the police, the na-
tional guard, and the Federal
SecurityService,orFSB,hadsi-
multaneously raided more than
200 sites in 41 towns and cities.
Also raided as part of the
same investigation were the
homes of activists in Golos, an
independent organization that
monitors elections.
Navalny, the highest-profile
Russian opponent of President
Vladimir Putin, has alarmed
the authorities by trying to ex-
pand his reach beyond Moscow,
traditionally a center of opposi-
tion sentiment. Putin has gen-
erally enjoyed strong support in
regions where many people,
unlike Muscovites, get their
news primarily from state-con-
trolled television channels that
do little more than praise the
president.Putin’s allies suffered signifi-
cant losses in Moscow City
Council elections on Sunday,
even after officials kept many
opposition candidates off the
ballot. But pro-Kremlin candi-
dates performed well else-
where, winning all 16 regional
governor races despite a slow
but steady decline in living
standards in many parts of the
country.
Leonid Volkov, a senior aide
to Navalny, described Thurs-
day’s raids as an “act of mass
political repression” on his Fa-
cebook page and said that they
signaled a “desperate but hope-
less” effort by the authorities to
stop future elections from erod-
ing the authority of pro-Krem-
lin forces. Putin’s party, UnitedRussia, is so unpopular that
many of its members who com-
peted in Sunday’s elections did
so as independents.
Volkov said that all of the
Anti-Corruption Foundation’s
45 regional offices had been
raided this week — two on
Tuesday and the rest on Thurs-
day.
The foundation, which
draws much of its support from
younger Russians, is the only
opposition organization to have
built up a network of offices
and supporters across the coun-
try.
The money laundering case
against Navalny’s organization,
announced in early August, is
widely viewed as transparently
political.By Aurelien Breeden
NEW YORK TIMES
PARIS — A French court on
Thursday found a Saudi prin-
cess guilty of being complicit
in the assault of a contractor
in her Paris apartment three
years ago, in which he had ac-
cused her of saying of him,
“This dog must be killed.”
The princess, Hassa bint
Salman, was given a 10-month
suspended prison sentence
and fined nearly $11,000 — a
pittance to a Saudi royal
whose family contains many
billionaires.
The princess, 42, is the
daughter of King Salman, the
Saudi monarch, and the half-
sister of the crown prince, Mo-
hammed bin Salman.
She had accused the con-
tractor of trying to take a pic-
ture of her that could be used
against her in the tabloid
press.
Hassa’s bodyguard and as-
sistant at the time, Rani Saïdi,
was found guilty of assault. He
received an eight-month sus-
pended sentence.
The incident occurred on
Sept. 26, 2016, at an apart-
ment belonging to the Saudi
royal family in the upscale
16th arrondissement of Paris.
Ashraf Eid, the contractor,
told investigators that he was
working on a paint job on the
residence’s seventh floor when
he was asked to come to the
fifth floor to repair a wash ba-
sin.
Eid said that when he took
out his cellphone to record the
damage in the bathroom, the
princess accused him of trying
to take a picture of her in the
reflection of a mirror.
In Eid’s telling, Hassa
called out to Saïdi, who hit
and threatened him, tied his
hands, and ordered him to
kneel and kiss the princess’s
feet.
The contractor told investi-
gators that the princess alsosaid, “He doesn’t deserve to
live.”
The contractor said his
phone was taken away — the
princess’s lawyers contend
that he gave it willingly — and
he was let go several hours af-
terward.
The princess and her body-
guard were taken into custody
after Eid filed a complaint
with the Paris police.
Saïdi was detained for over
two months, but Hassa was re-
leased after several hours, and
returned to Saudi Arabia. She
has not appeared in court in
France since then, despite an
arrest warrant that the French
authorities issued in Decem-
ber 2017.
Only Saïdi testified at the
trial, which was held in July
and relied mostly on conflict-
ing testimonies, given the ab-
sence of visual evidence. An
employee of the princess de-
stroyed Eid’s phone, and there
was no surveillance video.Raids target allies of Putin foe
Navalnytrying
toexpandreach
beyondMoscow
DANIEL LEAL-OLIVAS/ASSOCIATED PRESSBritish Prime Minister Boris Johnson visited a lighthouse tender moored on the Thames.
Johnsonsayshedidn’tlie
to queen about Parliament
Insistssuspension
wasnotmotivated
byBrexitpolitics
Johnson’s
suspensionof
Parliamentis
happeninginthe
middleofwhatis
arguablyBritain’s
worstpeacetime
crisissinceWorld
WarII.
Saudi princess gets no royal treatment
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