Turkey has opened the trials of 221 suspected organizers of a failed July 2016 coup against the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

The hearings began at the Sincan prison complex near the capital, Ankara, on Monday. The prime suspects are alleged members of the so-called Peace at Home Council, a group on whose behalf a coup declaration was read on state television on July 15 last year.

They include Gen. Akin Ozturk, a former air force commander. He was transferred to the courtroom amid high security. A crowd of jeering Erdogan supporters reportedly called for him to be executed as he was being transferred past them.

Other defendants include US-based cleric Fetullah Gulen, a former Erdogan aide, whom Erdogan accuses of masterminding the putsch. Gulen has denied the accusation. Aside from Gulen, eight other defendants will be tried in absentia.

Source: Presstv

Thousands of Yemenis have rallied in the port city of Aden in support of a so-called autonomous body set up to rule the south by officials of ex-president Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi.  Protesters, who had reached the southwestern city from several southern provinces, chanted, “Independence is our objective,” the Middle East Eye news portal reported.

The autonomous body to manage the war-wracked country’s south was launched by Hadi’s governor for Yemen’s port city of Aden after he was fired by the Saudi-backed former president.  Hadi sacked Maj. Gen. Aidarous al-Zubaidi over his perceived close ties with the United Arab Emirates after accusing the UAE of acting “like an occupation power in Yemen rather than a force of liberation.”

The autonomous body gathers 26 members, including the governors of five southern provinces and another Hadi minister. It has proclaimed that it aims to “run the southern provinces” and “represent them inside and outside” the country.

Hadi’s loyalists have accused the men of setting up secret liason with the Emirates, buying arms from it and forming military units. Yemen’s Houthi movement has also rejected the new council, calling it a “threat to the territorial unity of the Yemeni republic,” and a part of a “colonial plot.”

Aden has been racked by armed clashes, explosions and assassinations since Houthi fighters were pushed out of the city in July 2015 by Saudi-backed militants. Al-Qaeda and Daesh terrorists are now audaciously driving their armed vehicles around the city, passing checkpoints set up by Hadi loyalists.

The United Arab Emirates has a strong military presence in the area as part of a Saudi-led coalition which has been pommeling Yemen for more than two years now in order to return Hadi to power and dislodge Houthis and their allies from their areas of control.

Aden has been grappling with a spread of arms, where arms possession is unprecedented, especially among young people.  Residents in the city have complained that armed groups usually clash with one another in the streets and go unpunished when they kill civilians.

Source: Presstv

Some 5,000 refugees bound for Italy have been rescued in waters off the coast of Libya between Thursday and Saturday morning by Italian and Libyan coastguards, statements from both countries say.

Around 2,900 people were rescued Thursday, 2,300 of whom were found in international waters and taken to Italy, while 580 picked up in Libyan waters were returned to the North African country.

Through Friday until Saturday morning, coastguards rescued another 2,100 refugees packed in 17 vessels, but found the body of one man who drowned, the Italian coastguard said.

The number of refugees arriving in Italy has soared this year by more than 30 percent in comparison with the same period last year, with 46,000 people arriving so far.

But of every 39 refugees, who survive the perilous journey across the Mediterranean, one dies, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said, adding that 1,244 refugees were known to have died so far this year.

(Source: AFP)