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LONDON: Egyptian real estate tycoon Hisham Talaat Moustafa on Friday won his bid to throw out a London lawsuit brought against him by a former kickboxing world champion for ordering the murder of a Lebanese pop star in 2008.

Talaat Moustafa, CEO of Talaat Moustafa Group, was convicted in Egypt of paying a former police officer to stab Suzanne Tamim, 30, to death at her luxury apartment in Dubai.

He was initially sentenced to death in 2009, before his conviction was overturned on appeal. Following two retrials, Talaat Moustafa was convicted again and jailed for 15 years. He was pardoned by Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi in 2017.

Tamim, who rose to fame after winning a television talent show in the 1990s, had been in a relationship with Iraqi-British kickboxer Riyadh Al-Azzawi before she was killed.

Al-Azzawi sued Talaat Moustafa at London’s High Court in 2022, seeking damages for the psychological and emotional damage he said he suffered as a result of Tamim’s murder.

Talaat Moustafa sought to have the case thrown out, arguing Al-Azzawi’s lawyers did not provide all relevant evidence when they were given permission to bring the case and that it should be heard in Dubai, rather than London.

In a ruling dismissing the case on Friday, Judge Christopher Butcher said Al-Azzawi did not disclose relevant information about whether the lawsuit was brought too late when he sought permission to serve the case on Talaat Moustafa in Egypt.

The judge also said that “the courts of Dubai are clearly and distinctly more appropriate” if the case were to proceed.

Talaat Moustafa’s English lawyers did not immediately comment. Al-Azzawi’s lawyers could not be contacted for comment.

BAGHDAD/LONDON: A restart of Iraq’s Kurdish oil exports is not imminent, sources close to the matter said on Friday, despite Iraq’s federal government saying on Thursday that shipments would resume immediately.

Baghdad and the Kurdistan Regional Government have been in negotiations since February to end a stand-off that has halted flows from the north of the country to Turkiye’s port of Ceyhan. The KRG was producing about 435,000 barrels per day (bpd) before the pipeline closure in March 2023.

On Thursday the federal government said that Iraqi Kurdistan would resume oil exports immediately through the pipeline to Turkiye despite drone attacks that have shut down half of the region’s output.

But on Friday a source at APIKUR, a group of oil companies working in Kurdistan, said that a restart depended on the receipt of written agreements. Another at KAR Group, which operates the pipeline, said that no preparations had been made for a restart.

Baghdad and the companies have not yet agreed how to restart the exports, a KRG government source said, while a source at Turkiye’s Ceyhan said there was also no preparation at the terminal for a restart of flows.

On Thursday, a statement from KRG Prime Minister Masrour Barzani said the government had approved a joint understanding with the federal government and it was awaiting financial details.

Similar agreements in the past failed to secure a resumption in exports and it remains unclear if this deal will succeed.

Oil companies working in Kurdistan have previously demanded that their production-sharing contracts should remain unchanged and their debts of nearly $1 billion be settled under any agreement.

On Friday Genel Energy and Gulf Keystone Petroleum declined to comment, while DNO, Hunt Oil and HKN Energy did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

DRONE ATTACKS
Oilfields in Iraqi Kurdistan have been attacked by drones this week, with officials pointing to Iran-backed militias as the likely source of the attacks, although no group has claimed responsibility.

They are the first such attacks on oilfields in the region and coincide with the first attacks in seven months on shipping in the Red Sea by Iran-aligned Houthi militants in Yemen.

On Thursday a strike hit an oilfield operated by Norway’s DNO in Tawke, the region’s counter-terrorism service said.

It was the week’s second strike on a site operated by DNO, which operates the Tawke and Peshkabour oilfields in the Zakho area that borders Turkiye.

No casualties have been reported, but oil output in the region has been cut by between 140,000 bpd and 150,000 bpd, two energy officials said.