36 2GM Friday August 28 2020 | the times
Wo r l d
Saudi Arabia has arrested the son-in-
law of its former spy chief, who has
accused Mohammed bin Salman, the
crown prince, of sending a hit squad
to Canada to kill him.
Salem Almuzaini has been held in
Riyadh without charge, say the family
of Saad al-Jabri. “Salem’s where-
abouts are unknown [in] an obvious
attempt to intimidate and blackmail
my father,” said Mr Jabri’s son.
Mr Jabri, 61, was the right-handJamal Khashoggi was dismembered
in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.
The plot, the lawsuit claims, was
thwarted by Canadian border guards.
Bill Blair, Canada’s public safety
minister, said: “We are aware of inci-
dents in which foreign actors have at-
tempted to monitor, intimidate or
threaten Canadians and those living
in Canada.” Saudi Arabia has not
commented on the accusations.
Relations between Ottawa and
Riyadh have been frosty since 2018,
when Canada demanded the release
of jailed human rights activists.Saudis hold son-in-law of ex-spy chief
man to Muhammed bin Nayef, who
in 2017 was deposed as crown prince
by MBS, as he is known. After the pal-
ace coup, Mr Jabri fled to Toronto.
The family accuse MBS, 34, of de-
taining Mr Jabri’s relatives to lure him
out of exile.
In March, 50 state officials alle-
gedly held his son Omar, 21, and
daughter Sarah, 20, who have not
been heard from since.
This month Mr Jabri filed a lawsuit
in the US, alleging that MBS had sent
a hit squad to kill him in 2018, less
than a fortnight after the journalistCanada
Charlie Mitchell Ottawanomical prison costs to keep him safe
in our prison system,” Mr Peters said.
However, Scott Morrison, the Aus-
tralia prime minister, said he felt no
responsibility or obligation to trans-
fer Tarrant to a jail in his homeland.
Tarrant was born and lived in Graft-
on in northern New South Wales but
moved to New Zealand in 2017 to
train himself to use high-powered
weapons for the massacre of non-
white peoples he believed were
“crushing” European culture.
“It’s normal practice that criminalsA dispute has erupted over whether
the murderer of 51 worshippers at two
mosques in New Zealand, who was
sentenced to serve the rest of his life
in prison yesterday, should be jailed
in his native Australia instead.
After Brenton Tarrant, 29, was
handed an unprecedented life
sentence without parole by a New
Zealand court, Winston Peters, the
country’s deputy prime minister,
demanded that Australia accept
responsibility for him.
Mr Peters said that New Zealand
had already suffered enough from
Tarrant’s crimes and should not have
to carry the cost of keeping him in
prison for the remainder of his life.
He issued his demand after a judge
handed down the maximum sen-
tence available under New Zealand
law to Tarrant for the slaughter of
Muslims at two mosques in a gun
rampage in the southern city of
Christchurch in March last year. The
white supremacist broadcast his
crimes live on the internet.
“The Islamic community and all of
New Zealand has already suffered
enough without having to pay astro-Australia snubs call to pay for
keeping mosque killer in jail
convicted of these offences serve
their sentences in that jurisdiction,
and that’s my understanding of what
the arrangements are and no request
has been made to Australia for that to
be any different,” Mr Morrison said.
Over the next two years alone, ac-
cording to government calculations,
it will cost taxpayers about
NZ$3.6 million (£1.8 million) to hold
Tarrant in the top maximum security
jail, the notoriously violent Paremo-
remo prison outside Auckland.
Sensitivity on the issue has been
heightened by the Morrison govern-
ment’s policy of forcibly deporting
New Zealanders in Australia who
commit crimes that attract a jail sen-
tence of a year or more. Many of
those forced to return to New Zea-
land left as infants or young children
and have little or no connection with
the country. Some have resumed
offending in New Zealand and the
issue has caused substantial tension
between the two governments.
Justice Cameron Mander, senten-
cing Tarrant in a packed Christ-
church courtroom, told him: “Your
crimes are so wicked that even if you
are detained until you die, it would
not exhaust the requirements of
punishment and denunciation.”New Zealand
Bernard Lagan SydneyTaj Mohammad Kamran, a survivor
of the attacks, hails the sentenceAustralia’s giant bats have long
thought to be stay-at-home types,
happy to roost in one spot and make
life noisy and often pungent for resi-
dents of the cities they share.
Research now shows that flying
foxes, with a 5ft wingspan, are among
the most nomadic species with a pen-
chant for new places to stay.
The fruit-eating bats hang from
trees in their thousands in Australian
cities. Efforts to move them are often
in vain, but scientists believe they
may have an answer.
“At all times you have
individuals coming in
and other individuals
moving out, like you
would in a youth
hostel,” Justin Welber-
gen, of Hawkesbury
Institute for the Envi-
ronment near Sydney,
who led the study, said.
“The idea of being able
One flying fox covered 7,600 miles
between Victoria and Queensland
Get out of here: giant bats
don’t like hanging around
Curtain up Iana Salenko and Marian Walter rehearsing for last night’s show by Staatsballett Berlin, the first since the lockdownCLEMENS BILAN/EPAto disperse flying foxes by teaching
them they are not welcome in a parti-
cular location doesn’t hold because
every morning there will be new fly-
ing foxes coming in and they don’t
know they’re not welcome.
“They are not so much migratory
as profoundly nomadic,” Dr Welber-
gen told the Australian Broadcasting
Corporation.
Satellite trackers on 201 animals in
eastern Australia, showed that most
travel 900 to 3,700 miles a year.
One grey-headed flying fox was
tracked travelling 7,600 miles in a
criss-cross pattern between Melb-
ourne and central Queensland.
Dr Welbergen, the president of the
Australasian Bat Society, said the bats
were “in the same league as some mi-
gratory birds” or even whales,
which travel huge distances.
The grey-headed flying fox
that travelled 7,600 miles visited
123 roosts across eastern Aus-
tralia. Dr Welbergen said
the next step was to pre-
dict their movement
by learning what
drives them to make
the long journeys.Australia
Bernard Lagan Sydney