(NewsNation) — Former President Donald Trump called for the suspension of the Constitution on social media Saturday.

The message comes ahead of a heated runoff race for Georgia’s Senate seat, with Trump-backed Republican Herschel Walker running against Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock. Both parties have poured massive amounts of resources into the race, which will help determine whether the Democrats hold a full majority in the Senate.

On his social media network, Truth Social, Trump cited Twitter files released by Elon Musk as well as false claims of election fraud in the 2020 election. He called for all rules and regulations to be suspended to return him to office, including the Constitution.

The Twitter files included controversy surrounding President Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden and a decision by Twitter to limit the spread of the story. Originally reported by the New York Post, the story included allegations that emails found on a laptop belonging to Hunter Biden showed him using his influence to connect his father, then vice president, to a Ukrainian businessman.

At the time, there were concerns over the authenticity of the laptop’s content, though major news networks were later able to verify some of the emails.

The White House condemned Trump’s comments, calling the Constitution “sacrosanct.”

This latest Trump controversy comes on the heels of his dinner with Ye and white supremacist Nick Fuentes, a move even his allies have denounced.

Trump announced his intention to seek another term as president in the 2024 election earlier this year, but some prominent Republicans appear to be gearing up to challenge the former president in hopes of moving the party in a new direction.

This year has been a tough one for the world’s worst authoritarians: Russian President Vladimir Putin, Chinese leader Xi Jinping, and Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Each of them ends 2022 reeling from self-inflicted wounds, the consequences of the sorts of bad decisions that hubris-blinded autocrats find far easier to make than to unwind.

Given that, the United States and its global partners should double down in 2023 to shape the contest unfolding between democrats and despots that will define the post-Cold War order. US President Joe Biden has consistently focused on this competition as a historic “inflection point.” His third year in office provides him his best opportunity yet to score lasting gains in that contest.

At the beginning of this year, autocracy seemed to be on the march. Putin and Xi in early February 2022, just ahead of the Beijing Olympics, entered a “no limits” strategic partnership. That was followed by Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

But since then, in all three cases—Russia, China, and Iran—autocratic leaders’ errors of commission have deepened their countries’ underlying weaknesses while breeding new difficulties that defy easy solutions. 

That’s most dramatically the case with Putin, whose reckless, unprovoked, and illegal war in Ukraine has resulted in 6,490 civilian deaths, per the United Nations’s most recent estimate, and has prompted more than a million Russians to flee his country. International observers point to proof of crimes against humanity.

Beyond that, Putin has set back the Russian economy—some experts believe by as much as a decade—and sanctions are only beginning to bite. He’ll never regain his international reputation, and his military has revealed itself—despite many years of investments—as poorly trained, badly disciplined, and lacking morale.

Xi’s mistakes are less bloody in nature thus far. The excesses of his zero-COVID policy set off large-scale, spontaneous protests that amounted to the most serious challenge of his decade in leadership. Just last month, the Twentieth National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party anointed Xi with a third term as China’s leader, but the protests that followed shortly thereafter shattered that aura of invincibility and apparent public support. 

“Xi is in a crisis of his own making, with no quick or painless route out,” wrote the Economist this week. “New COVID cases are near record levels. The disease has spread to more than 85 percent of China’s cities. Clamp down even harder to bring it back under control, and the economic costs will rise yet higher, further fueling public anger. Allow it to spread and hundreds of thousands of people will die… China’s leaders appear to be searching for a middle ground, but it is not clear there is any.” 

Beyond COVID-19, what is in danger is the unwritten social contract between the Chinese Communist Party of just 96 million members and the total Chinese population of 1.4 billion. Namely, the Chinese people accept restricted freedoms and fealty to the party so long as the party provides economic rewards and social security. A series of policy mistakes has slowed Chinese growth to just 3 percent in 2022, yet Xi continues to prioritize party control over economic freedoms. 

Though the global stakes of Iran’s protests are less obvious, the Mideast and world would be far better off with a more moderate and pluralistic Iran that focuses on its public needs, retreats from its regional adventurism, and steps back from the nuclear brink. Here, too, the regime’s problems have been self-created, the protests being a result of excessive regime brutality and endemic corruption. 

So, what should be done in 2023 to transform these authoritarian setbacks into a more sustainable advance of the “free world” (helping to reverse a sixteen-year global decline of democracy, as measured by Freedom House’s 2022 report)?

First and most immediately, the United States and its partners should deepen and expand their military and financial support for Ukraine. The Biden administration’s top officials understand this is the defining battle of our post-Cold War era. Without US military and financial support, and without US rallying of allies, all of Kyiv’s remarkable courage and resilience might not be enough.

That said, Biden’s caution and his often-stated fears of setting off World War III have limited the sorts and amounts of armaments Ukraine receives—and the speed at which they reach the battlefield. Faster delivery of more and better air defense could have saved Ukrainian lives. 

It’s remains difficult to understand continued limits put on Ukraine’s ability to strike the targets from which they are being hit as Putin murderously pummels more civilian targets and infrastructure. 

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has rightly accused Putin of weaponizing winter in the hope of freezing Ukraine’s citizens into submission. Perhaps the greater danger is that of Western fatigue in supporting Ukraine and growing external pressure on Kyiv to negotiate, when only further battlefield gains will prompt Putin to withdraw his troops and provide concessions that would allow a secure, sovereign, and democratic Ukraine to emerge.

Even as Russia requires action now, managing the Chinese challenge requires a more patient course, one that will be made easier should Putin be strategically defeated in Ukraine. Biden was right to meet with Xi in Bali, on the margins of the Group of Twenty meeting, to build a floor which can keep the world’s most crucial bilateral relationship from sinking.

Where the United States should step up its efforts in 2023 is in coalescing allies in Europe and Asia around a sustainable, consensus-driven approach to China that recognizes Beijing’s underlying weaknesses and deters its efforts to absorb Taiwan and remake the global order.

There are three potential outcomes at this “inflection point”: a reinvigoration and reinvention of our existing international liberal order, the emergence of a Chinese-led illiberal order, or the breakdown of world order altogether on the model of Putin’s “rule of the jungle.”

As 2022 ends, the failures and costs of those alternative models are clearer than ever.

Therefore, what’s crucial in the year ahead is for democracies to unify in common cause to shape the global future alongside moderate, modern non-democracies that seek a more secure, prosperous, and just world.

Frederick Kempe is president and chief executive officer of the Atlantic Council. You can follow him on Twitter @FredKempe.

This article originally appeared on CNBC.com.

THE WEEK’S TOP READS

#1 China’s failing COVID strategy leaves Xi with no good options
ECONOMIST

To understand Xi’s dilemma, read this smart Economist essay breaking down the consequences China will face if it abandons Xi’s “zero-COVID” policy—and the consequences it will face if it doesn’t.

One jarring image of Xi’s determination to go all-in on “zero-COVID” is an empty vaccine factory. “The stifling of debate,” the Economist writes, “has had baleful consequences. China has not approved the use of foreign vaccines, including the most effective ones, the mRNA jabs made by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna.”

What experience shows is “the protection accorded by Chinese shots appears to wane significantly after six months. Worse, the authorities have focused on testing and building quarantine sites this year, while failing to administer third (or even fourth) doses to all, even though these would require no new infrastructure or political messaging.”  Read More →

#2 Enough about democracy’s weaknesses. Let’s talk about its strengths.
Fareed Zakaria | WASHINGTON POST

CNN’s Fareed Zakaria, one of the premier strategic thinkers out there, has written a compelling defense of democracy’s virtues in the face of authoritarianism’s setbacks.

“It is astonishing to remember that when America’s Founding Fathers were constructing their experiment in government,” Zakaria writes, “they were virtually alone in a world of monarchies. These politicians were drawing on the writings of Enlightenment intellectuals such as Montesquieu and John Locke, studying historical examples from ancient Greece and Rome, and embracing key elements of English governance and common law. But they were mostly making it up in their heads. They had failures; their first effort, the Articles of Confederation, collapsed. In the end, however, they concocted something stunning: a system that protected individual rights, allowed for regular changes in leadership, prevented religious hegemony, and created a structure flexible enough to adapt to massive changes.”  Read More →

#3 Kevin Rudd on Jiang Zemin, steward of China’s rise

Kevin Rudd | INTERPRETER

Former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, one of the keenest observers of China anywhere, has delivered a brilliant obituary on former Chinese leader Jiang Zemin that provides insight into China’s reformist past and puts in perspective its unfortunate return to Marxism-Leninism under Xi.

His narrative recalls his own experience of Jiang, then mayor of Shanghai, singing O Sole Mio at the Sydney Opera House in 1987. It then tracks how this larger-than-life individual navigated the shoals of Communist Party politics to usher in China’s era of rapid economic growth and private sector expansion. 

“Jiang’s death this week at 96,” writes Rudd in the Lowy Institute’s Interpreter, “marks the final, flickering embers of that now-distant reformist age—and the unambiguous beginning of the brave, new world of Xi Jinping.” Read More →

#4 The Russian Billionaire Selling Putin’s War to the Public
Betsy McKay, Thomas Grove, and Rob Barry | WALL STREET JOURNAL

This WSJ investigation is a powerfully reported exposé of Yuri Kovalchuk, also known as “Putin’s banker,” an oligarch and media baron, who has used his banking and media empires to promote Putin’s murderous war in Ukraine.

“A physicist by training,” three WSJ reporters write, “Kovalchuk is motivated more by patriotic ideology than by the trappings of wealth, say people who know him. He doesn’t hold a formal position in the Russian government. Yet he has deep influence over Kremlin policy and personnel, and helps supply dachas and yachts for Putin’s use, and lucrative jobs and stockholdings to the president’s family and friends, according to people familiar with the deals, financial documents and anticorruption groups.”

“Kovalchuk,” the WSJ adds, “controls the US-sanctioned Russian Bank Rossiya. The bank, in turn, built a network of offshore companies that have benefited Putin and his associates, and invests in projects important to the state, according to interviews with former US officials and Kremlin analysts as well as public documents and information revealed in the Panama Papers, a trove of leaked documents detailing offshore financial holdings.” Read More →

#5 Rise in Iranian assassination, kidnapping plots alarms Western officials
Shane Harris, Souad Mekhennet, and Yeganeh Torbati  | WASHINGTON POST

This week’s must-read is chilling. In a remarkable narrative, the Washington Post pieces together a large-scale Iranian campaign of kidnapping, intimidation, and assassination against critics and opponents, which has escalated in recent years.

One heartbreaking case is that of the Iranian journalist Ruhollah Zam, who was lured to Iraq where he was arrested and turned over to Iranian authorities. “The IRGC,” the Post writes, referring to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, “publicly boasted of its own deception, portraying Zam’s capture as a triumph for the Iranian security services, which had outfoxed their Western adversaries. Zam was tried and sentenced to death for ‘corruption on Earth.’ He was hanged on Dec. 12, 2020, at the age of 42.”

“Another chilling example is of a failed Iranian plot to kidnap Masih Alinejad, an American citizen. “The plan to kidnap Alinejad from her home in Brooklyn is illustrative of a global effort to intimidate exiled Iranians by showing they aren’t safe anywhere outside Iran,” the Washington Post authors write. “Last year, the Justice Department indicted four alleged Iranian intelligence officials and agents in the plot, saying they targeted Alinejad because she was ‘mobilizing public opinion in Iran and around the world to bring about changes to the regime’s laws and practices.

“The operatives allegedly hired private investigators to photograph and take video recordings of Alinejad and her family and researched how they might use speedboats to secret her out of New York and eventually on to Venezuela, ‘a country whose de facto government has friendly relations with Iran,’ the Justice Department said in a statement.” Read More →

Atlantic Council top reads

Atlantic Council Strategy Paper Series
Nov 30, 2022

Preparing for victory: A long-haul strategy to help Ukraine win the war against Russia—and secure the peace

By
Stephen J. Hadley, William Taylor, John E. Herbst, Matthew Kroenig, Melinda Haring, and Jeffrey Cimmino

Ukraine’s counteroffensives, backed by expanded and accelerated US and allied support, continue to push Russian forces out of Ukrainian territory, although at a reduced rate. These hard-won successes, however, bring with them possible challenges that also must be addressed. 

Europe & Eurasia
Politics & Diplomacy

New Atlanticist
Dec 2, 2022

What to expect from the new Russian oil price cap

By
Reed Blakemore, Charles Lichfield, Brian O’Toole

As the EU comes to an agreement on a $60 price cap, here’s how it will work—and what impacts the world will see on the global and Russian economy.

Economy & Business
Energy & Environment

TURKEYSource
Dec 1, 2022

The risks and rewards of Erdogan’s next military operation

By
Rich Outzen

The November 13 bombing in Istanbul, blamed on the PKK, is spurring a planned Turkish offensive against PKK affiliates in Northern Syria, fulfilling a long term goal to better secure the country’s southern border.

Conflict
Iraq

The post Autocratic setbacks offer Biden his ‘inflection point’ for democracies appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman hosts China’s leader this week at a delicate moment in U.S.-Saudi ties, signalling Riyadh’s resolve to navigate a polarised global order regardless of the wishes of its Western allies, analysts said.

The ruler of the oil giant has made a comeback on the world stage following the 2018 murder of Jamal Khashoggi, which cast a pall over Saudi-U.S. ties, and has been defiant in the face of U.S. ire over the kingdom’s energy policy and pressure from Washington to help isolate Russia.

In a show of strength as an aspiring leader of the Arab world, Prince Mohammed will also gather rulers from across the Middle East and North Africa for a Chinese-Arab summit during the visit by President Xi Jinping expected to start on Tuesday.

“Riyadh is working according to strategic calculations that it must accommodate Beijing, as it is now an indispensable economic partner,” said Ayham Kamel, head of Middle East and North Africa at Eurasia Group.

Though the United States remains partner of choice for Gulf states reliant on it for their security, Riyadh is charting a foreign policy that serves its national economic transformation as the world pivots away from hydrocarbons, Saudi’s lifeblood, the analysts said.

“There is certainly a risk that expanding relations with China backfires and lead to a (further) split in the U.S.-Saudi relationship… but MBS is certainly not pursuing this out of spite,” Kamel said.

Xi’s visit comes at a time when U.S.-Saudi ties are at a nadir, uncertainty weighs on global energy markets with the West imposing a price cap on Russian oil and as Washington warily eyes China’s growing influence in the Middle East.

The Saudi government did not respond to requests for comment on Xi’s visit and its agenda.

In a sign of irritation with U.S. criticism of Riyadh’s human rights record, Prince Mohammed told The Atlantic magazine in March that he did not care whether U.S. President Joe Biden misunderstood things about him, saying Biden should be focusing on America’s interests.

He also suggested in remarks carried by Saudi state news agency SPA that same month that while Riyadh aimed to boost its ties to Washington it could also choose to reduce “our interests” — Saudi investments — in the United States.

Saudi Arabia is deepening economies ties to China. It is China’s top oil supplier, although fellow OPEC+ producer Russia has increased its Chinese market share with lower-priced fuel.

Beijing has also been lobbying for use of its yuan currency in trade instead of the U.S. dollar. Riyadh had previously threatened to ditch some dollar oil trades to confront possible U.S. legislation exposing OPEC members to antitrust lawsuits.

U.S.-Saudi ties under Biden’s administration, already strained over human rights and the Yemen war in which Riyadh leads a military coalition, have frayed further due to the Ukraine war and OPEC+ oil policy.

Diplomats in the region said Xi would have a lavish reception akin to the one shown then-President Donald Trump when he visited the kingdom in 2017, and in contrast to Biden’s awkward visit in July that had aimed to mend ties with Riyadh.

Trump was met by King Salman at the airport amid fanfare while clinching over $100 billion in contracts for U.S. military industry. Biden, who once vowed to make Riyadh “a pariah” over the Khashoggi killing, had downplayed his meetings with Prince Mohammed, to whom he gave a fist-bump rather than a handshake.

The Chinese delegation is expected to sign dozens of agreements with Saudi Arabia and other Arab states covering energy, security and investments, diplomats have told Reuters.

Prince Mohammed is focused on delivering his Vision 2030 diversification plan to wean the economy off oil by creating new industries, including cars and arms manufacturing as well as logistics, though foreign direct investment has been slow.

The kingdom is investing heavily in new infrastructure and megaprojects in tourism and initiatives like the $500 billion NEOM zone, a boon for Chinese construction firms.

Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies have said they would continue to diversify partnerships to serve economic and security interests, despite U.S. reservations about their ties with both Russia and China.

Prince Mohammed wants to demonstrate to his own constituency that the kingdom is important to many global powers, said Jonathan Fulton, non-resident senior fellow at Atlantic Council.

“Perhaps he’s signalling to the U.S. as well, but…he’s more concerned about what people within the kingdom think.”

Biden pledged “consequences” for Riyadh after the OPEC+ output move but Washington has since reiterated its support for the kingdom’s security, with U.S. officials stressing the U.S. “comparative advantage” in building integrated defence structures in the Gulf.

White House national security spokesman John Kirby told reporters on Wednesday that Washington wants to make sure that its “strategic” relationship with Riyadh was working “in our best interests”.

U.S. officials have declined to comment when asked about Saudi-China bilateral relations ahead of Xi’s visit.

Washington has voiced concern over Gulf Arab use of Chinese 5G technology and Chinese investments in sensitive infrastructure like ports, including in the United Arab Emirates which halted a Chinese port project due to U.S. concern.

Riyadh and Abu Dhabi are buying Chinese military equipment and a Saudi firm signed a deal with a Chinese company to manufacture armed drones in the kingdom.

Saudi analyst Abdulaziz Sager, chairman of Riyadh-based Gulf Research Center, told Saudi TV Asharq News that Arab states wanted to tell Western allies that they have alternatives and their relations are primarily based on economic interests.

Though Saudi ties with China appear to be growing “much more quickly” than with the United States, the actual relationships are not comparable, said Jon Alterman, director of the Middle East programme at Washington’s Center for Strategic and International Studies.

“The relationships with China pale versus those with the United States in terms of both complexity and intimacy,” he said.

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Vandalism may have caused a mass power outage in a central North Carolina county, leaving about 45,000 homes and businesses in the dark Saturday night into early Sunday, affecting everything from Sunday worship services to golfers teeing off at well-known Pinehurst Resort.

Outages began around 7 p.m. Saturday, and utility workers found evidence at multiple electric substations that “indicated intentional vandalism had occurred,” Moore County Sheriff Ronnie Fields said in a statement.

About 64% of Moore County’s electric customers remained without power on Sunday morning in the largely rural area about 90 miles (145 km) east of Charlotte, according to tracking site poweroutage.us.

Jeff Brooks, a spokesperson for Duke Energy (DUK.N), told the media late Saturday that there was “no estimate on restoration time because a number of facilities are involved and the work will be complicated.”

Neither Brooks nor another representative for Duke Energy was immediately available for comment on Sunday. But Brooks told NBC News that he could not further describe the nature of the possible crime.

In Pinehurst, the county’s largest community of about 20,000 residents, church was canceled at the Pinehurst United Methodist Church, which holds three services every Sunday.

“Read your Bible, pray…and stay safe,” church leaders posted on its Facebook, leaving open whether its Christmas concert would go on in the late afternoon.

At its famed golf Course, Pinehurst Resort, an operator said that managers were “scrambling” to see make sure patrons with reservations could still tee-off in the morning.

Ukraine’s military said Russia had pulled some troops from towns on the opposite bank of the Dnipro River from Kherson city, the first official Ukrainian report of a Russian withdrawal on what is now the main front line in the south..

* Spain has stepped up security at public and diplomatic buildings after a spate of letter bombs, including one sent to Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez and another to the Ukrainian embassy in Madrid, where an official suffered minor injuries.

* Air raid alerts were issued across all of Ukraine following warnings by Ukrainian officials that Russia was preparing a new wave of missile and drone strikes. “An overall air raid alert is in place in Ukraine. Go to shelters,” country’s border service wrote on Telegram messaging app.

* Ukraine’s military said it had found fragments of Russian-fired nuclear-capable missiles with dud warheads in west Ukraine, and that their apparent purpose was to distract air defences.

* The recently liberated Ukrainian city of Kherson has lost its power supply after heavy shelling by Russian forces, the regional governor said.

* European Union governments tentatively agreed on a $60 a barrel price cap on Russian seaborne oil, with an adjustment mechanism to keep the cap at 5% below the market price, an EU diplomat said.

* Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on that big problems had accumulated in the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), accusing the West of spurning the chance to make it a real bridge with Russia after the Cold War.

* Lavrov said that discussions with Washington about potential prisoner exchanges were being conducted by the two countries’ intelligence services, and that he hoped they would be successful.

* The European Union needs patience as it sanctions Russia for its invasion of Ukraine, as most measures will only have an impact in the medium and long term, Lithuania’s prime minister said in an interview at  the  Reuters NEXT conference.

* Switzerland has frozen financial assets worth 7.5 billion Swiss francs ($7.94 billion) as of Nov. 25 under sanctions against Russians to punish Moscow for its invasion of Ukraine, the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO) said.

* Russia said the German parliament’s move to recognise the 1932-33 famine in Ukraine as a Soviet-imposed genocide was an anti-Russian provocation and an attempt by Germany to whitewash its Nazi past.

* Ukraine sacked a top engineer at the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, accusing him of collaborating with Russian forces, and urged other Ukrainian staff at the plant to remain loyal to Kyiv.

* Russia must withdraw its heavy weapons and military personnel from the Zaporizhzhia plant if the U.N. atomic watchdog’s efforts to create a protection zone are to succeed, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said.

* In a grim sign of the energy crisis caused by Russian attacks on Ukraine’s electricity grid, nine people have been killed in fires over the past 24 hours as Ukrainians resorted to emergency generators, candles and gas cylinders in violation of safety rules to try to heat their homes after power outages.

* “Remember one thing – the Russians are afraid. And they are very cold and no one will help them, because they do not have popular support,” – Andriy Yermak, chief of Ukrainian presidential staff.

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Idaho Murders – The News And Times – 10:44 AM 12/4/2022 thenewsandtimes.blogspot.com/2022/12/idaho-…

 Idaho Murders – The News And Times

• Tweets – The News and Times – 9:48 AM 12/4/2022December 4, 2022
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• Idaho Murders Review: Selected Articles: 11.30.22 – 12.3.22 | FBI joins investigation into murder of University of Idaho students — with multiple suspects still possible posted on Nov 30 2022 17:51:39 UTC via nypost.comDecember 3, 2022
• FBI #FBI | Both the house and its residents were “targeted”, “in crosshairs”, under close surveillance, and for some time. This looks like a highly professional, carefully planned and executed operation, possibly with the specialized Knife Killer Drone.December 2, 2022
• #FBI FBI Idaho Murders #IdahoMurders: #DRONE? “The targeting of the house itself, not … the individuals” is consistent with the hypothesis of the KILLER DRONE ATTACK (Russian:”Bloody Hand of #MOSCOW”? Revenge for #Zawahiri? Etc.) #MOB-INTEL operation | This makes sense: the convenient location, long prepared access to lock code, etc.: “the house itself was in somebody’s crosshairs, not necessarily any individuals themselves.” Prosecutor in Idaho Murders Says House Was Targeted, Not IndividualsDecember 2, 2022
• Idaho Murders #IdahoMurders #FBI FBI: Publish all the relevant info, including the photos or the schematic drawings of the victims, their positions, wounds, crime scene: let the public help you in analysis. What is Crime Scene Analysis? (with pictures) | Analysis of crime scene – GSDecember 1, 2022
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An Egyptian-American national detained while visiting the United Arab Emirates fears he will be extradited to Egypt for criticising authorities there ahead of the country hosting the COP27 climate conference last month, his fiance said on Sunday.

The UAE, a close ally of Egypt, arrested Sherif Osman, who resides in the United States, on Nov. 6 at the request of an Arab League entity responsible for coordinating law enforcement and security matters, a UAE official confirmed to Reuters on Thursday.

The official said Emirati authorities were working to secure “requisite legal documentation required in preparing the extradition file”, without specifying to which country or if a specific extradition request had been made.

Osman’s fiance, Saija Virta, said he was detained outside a restaurant in Dubai, where she was with him, and was told by the public prosecution that Egypt had requested the detention on charges including “speaking negatively against government institutions”.

Egyptian authorities have not issued any statements on the case, first reported by the Wall Street Journal, and did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

The United States was aware of Osman’s arrest in Dubai, a U.S. State Department spokesperson said on Thursday, and was “watching his case closely and providing appropriate consular support”.

Osman had posted a YouTube video on Oct. 31 criticising Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and calling for peaceful protests in Egypt on Nov. 11, when U.S. President Joe Biden was attending the COP27 conference in Sharm El Sheikh.

“He (Osman) tells me he is being treated well…(but) we are all very shocked and traumatized,” Virta, who is Finnish-American, told Reuters, saying she spoke to him on Sunday.

“I would like to ask for diplomatic intervention because… I don’t think he would get a fair trial in Egypt,” she said.

Osman’s fiance said she had travelled to the UAE with him to meet his sister, who lives in Dubai, and his mother who had planned to visit from Egypt.

Virta, who left Dubai on Nov. 16 to return to work in the United States, said Osman had only on Wednesday been able to sign power of attorney for a lawyer to access his file.

The UAE official had said the UAE “strictly adheres to all internationally accepted standards” in detention cases including regular consular access and legal council.