Crimes

Israel has carried out its deadliest incursion into southern Syria since the fall of President Bashar al-Assad. At least 13 people were killed in Beit Jinn. Al Jazeera’s Osama Bin Javaid reports Syrian officials reject Israel’s narrative and accuse it of violating international law.

A special tribunal in Bangladesh’s Dhaka has found former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina guilty of crimes against humanity over her government’s violent suppression of last year’s student-led protests.

Nov. 15 (UPI) — President Donald Trump has issued second pardons to supporters who breached the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, this time on separate related offenses.

The clemancy for Dan Wilson and Suzanne Kaye were announced online on Saturday by Ed Martin, a longtime supporter of the Jan. 6 rioters who is the Justice Department’s pardon attorney.

They were signed Friday by Trump.

“Thank you: Post! Danny Wilson is now a free man. When I was DC’s U.S. Attorney, and now as U.S. Pardon Attorney, I advocated for this clemency, which the president granted Friday.@POTUSThank you,” Ed Martin posted on X with a copy of the pardon.”

In another post with the document, Martin wrote: “Thank you: POTUS! The Biden DOJ targeted Suzanne Kaye for social media posts-and she was sentenced to 18 months in federal lock up. President Trump is unwinding the damage done by Biden’s DOJ weaponization, so the healing can begin.”

In May 2024, Wilson pleaded guilty to conspiracy to impede or injure a federal officer and was sentenced to five years in prison.

But the Louisville, Ky., man was in prison for possession of a firearm by a prohibited person and possession of an unregistered firearm. He was sentenced in August 2024 to prison until 2028.

It stems from when his home was searched in June 2022 as part of the federal government’s investigation of the intrusion.

A White House official told Politico that “because the search of Mr. Wilson’s home was due to the events of January 6, and they should have never been there in the first place, President Trump is pardoning Mr. Wilson for the firearm issues.”

When Trump retook office on Jan. 20, he pardoned him along with clemency to about 1,500 Jan. 6 defendants, including pardons and commutations.

But Wilson had remained in prison on another conviction, along with a few other defendants for other federal crimes.

The Department of Justice at the time said “numerous firearms and ammunition” were recovered and forbidden because of previous felony convictions.

“For too long, my client has been held as a political prisoner by a government that criminalized dissent,” George Pallas, his attorney, said in a statement to CBS News. “President Trump’s pardon rights this wrong and sends a clear message that peaceful Americans will not be persecuted for their beliefs. Mr. Wilson is innocent, he has always been innocent, and this pardon proves it.”

Wilson had occasionally discussed bringing firearms to the Capitol, but ultimately arrived unarmed.

During the day, he posted messages and spoke to other members of his far-right groups, the Oath Keepers and Gray Ghost Partisan Rangers militia.

Initially, the Justice Department argued that Trump’s pardons did not extend to Wilson’s gun charges, but later changed its position. They received “further clarity on the intent of the Presidential Pardon.”

U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich, who oversaw Wilson’s case, criticized extending the pardon to cover offenses discovered in the course of the investigations. He was nominated by Trump.

Kaye, of Boca Raton, Fla., was sentenced two years ago to 18 months in prison for threatening to shoot FBI agents who had sought to question her about her involvement in the Capitol attack.

She denied that she had been at the Capitol that day, according to court records obtained by The New York Times. Before meeting FBI agent, she posted a series of videos online threatening the agents.

Jeremy Brown, also an Oath Keeper, was released from a seven-year sentence after his attorneys and the Justice Department claimed the pardon covered Brown’s unrelated conviction for illegally possessing classified information and grenades.

Elias Costianes also was released from jail after the Justice Department declined to fight the appeal of his conviction for illegally possessing firearms.

Edward Kelley was recently sentenced to life in prison for conspiring to kill the officers and FBI agents who investigated his involvement in the Jan. 6 attack. Kelley had contended Trump’s pardon covered the conspiracy charge, but the Justice Department opposed him.

The Justice Department has opposed efforts by David Daniel after the FBI discovered child pornography on his computer during a Jan. 6-related search.

Gov. Gavin Newsom’s former chief of staff was arrested Wednesday on federal charges that allege she siphoned $225,000 out of a dormant state campaign account and wrote off $1 million for luxury handbags and private jet travel as business expenses on her tax returns.

According to the 23-count indictment, unsealed Wednesday morning, political consultant Dana Williamson and her employees Greg Campbell and Sean McCluskie billed the dormant campaign account for bogus consulting services through shell companies they controlled starting in the spring of 2022.

Many of those payments went to McCluskie’s wife, federal authorities allege.

The indictment does not name the California politician whose campaign fund the trio allegedly drained.

Williamson left her job at the statehouse last December.

“Today’s charges are the result of three years of relentless investigative work, in partnership with IRS Criminal Investigation and the U.S. Attorney’s Office,” said FBI Sacramento Special Agent in Charge Sid Patel. “The FBI will remain vigilant in its efforts to uncover fraud and corruption, ensuring our government systems are held to the highest standards.”

Williamson is scheduled to make an initial court appearance Wednesday afternoon in Sacramento.

Thousands of children in Gaza have been forced to take on adult responsibilities such as providing food, water and caring for family members injured by Israeli attacks. The UN says this ‘lost generation’ of children needs urgent help to get over the trauma of war.

The International Criminal Court confirmed 39 charges against Kony, paving the way for a trial if he is ever captured.

Judges at the International Criminal Court (ICC) have confirmed war crimes and crimes against humanity charges against Ugandan rebel leader Joseph Kony, nearly two decades after the court first issued a warrant for his arrest.

Kony, who remains at large, faces 39 charges, including murder, sexual enslavement and rape, making him the ICC’s longest-standing fugitive.

Judges from the ICC’s Pre-Trial Chamber III said there are “substantial grounds to believe that Mr Kony is criminally responsible for the crimes” committed in northern Uganda between 2002 and 2005, when he commanded the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA).

Besides crimes committed by his rebels, the judges said Kony could also be held responsible for 10 crimes he allegedly committed himself, linked to two women he forced to become his wives.

“Mr Kony issued standing orders to attack civilian settlements, kill and mistreat civilians, loot and destroy their property and abduct children and women to be integrated into the LRA,” the judges said in their ruling.

The ruling marks the first time the ICC has confirmed charges in a suspect’s absence, meaning the case can formally proceed to trial if Kony is ever captured. Under ICC rules, a full trial cannot begin without the defendant’s presence in court.

Prosecutors said efforts to track down and arrest Kony, now 64, are ongoing.

The ICC’s decision followed a three-day hearing in September in which prosecutors and victims’ lawyers presented evidence and testimony without Kony present – an unusual procedure that set the stage for Thursday’s ruling.

Years of investigations and witness accounts formed the basis of the decision.

Emerging from northern Uganda’s Acholi region in the late 1980s, Kony’s LRA combined Christian mysticism with an armed rebellion against President Yoweri Museveni’s government.

The United Nations estimates about 100,000 people were killed and 2.5 million displaced during the conflict.

Even after being pushed out of Uganda, LRA fighters launched deadly raids across South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Central African Republic, burning villages, looting communities and abducting tens of thousands of children – the abducted boys forced to fight and girls forced into sexual slavery.

Kony came back into international focus in 2012 when a viral video about his crimes led to the #Kony2012 campaign on social media.

Despite the global attention and years of military operations to apprehend Kony, he remains at large.

After months of blockade and starvation in Gaza, Israel allowed a new United States venture – the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) – to distribute food. Branded as a lifeline, its sites quickly became known by Palestinians and dozens of human rights groups as “death traps”.

Fault Lines investigates how civilians seeking aid were funnelled through militarised zones, where thousands were killed or injured under fire.

Through the testimonies of grieving families, a former contractor, and human rights experts, the film exposes how GHF’s operations replaced UNRWA’s proven aid system with a scheme critics say was designed for displacement, not relief. At the heart of this investigation is a haunting question: was GHF delivering humanitarian aid – or helping turn breadlines into killing fields?

A senior Sudanese diplomat has accused the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) of committing war crimes in the country’s North Darfur state, as survivors who escaped the city of el-Fasher recounted mass killings and sexual assault by the paramilitary troops.

Sudan’s ambassador to Egypt, Imadeldin Mustafa Adawi, made the allegations on Sunday as he accused the United Arab Emirates (UAE) of helping the RSF paramilitary group in the ongoing civil war.

The Gulf state denies the claim.

Adawi’s remarks followed an earlier statement by Sudanese Prime Minister Kamil Idris, who told the Swiss newspaper Blick that the RSF should be tried in the international courts.

But Kamil rejected the “illegal” idea of foreign troops being deployed to his country, which has been ravaged by a civil war between the RSF and the Sudanese army since April 2023.

The calls for action come a week after the RSF seized the capital of North Darfur, el-Fasher, after an 18-month siege and starvation campaign, resulting in thousands of reported civilian deaths. The city was the Sudanese army’s last stronghold in the region.

In the days since its capture, survivors have reported mass executions, pillaging, rape and other atrocities, sparking an international outcry.

The Sudanese government said that at least 2,000 people were killed, but witnesses said the real number could be much higher.

Tens of thousands of civilians are still believed to be trapped in the city.

“The government of Sudan is calling on the international community to act immediately and effectively rather than just make statements of condemnation,” Adawi told reporters during a news conference in the Egyptian capital, Cairo.

The envoy urged the world to designate the RSF as a “terrorist” organisation, as well as condemn RSF “for committing massacres amounting to genocide” and denounce “its official regional financier and supporter, the United Arab Emirates”.

He also said that Sudan would not take part in talks led by Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United States and the UAE to end the conflict if the latter remains part of the negotiations.

“We do not consider them [the UAE] as a mediator and someone reliable on the issue,” Adawi stressed.

Mass killings, sexual assault

The UAE, however, denies allegations that it is supplying the RSF with weapons.

At a forum in Bahrain’s capital, Manama, an Emirati presidential adviser said that the Gulf state wants to help end the war, and acknowledged that regional and international powers could have done more to prevent the conflict in Sudan.

“We all made the mistake, when the two generals who are fighting the civil war today overthrow the civilian government. That was, in my opinion, looking back, a critical mistake,” Anwar Gargash said.

Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and the US, as mediators, have all condemned the mass killings and called for increased humanitarian assistance.

As the world’s worst humanitarian crisis further spirals into chaos, residents who managed to escape el-Fasher recalled their harrowing experience.

Adam Yahya, who fled with four of his children, told Al Jazeera that his wife was killed in an RSF drone strike shortly before el-Fasher fell. He said that he and his children barely had time to mourn before they found themselves on the run from the paramilitary group.

“The streets were full of dead people. We made it to one of the sand barriers set up by the RSF. They were shooting at people, men, women and children, with machineguns. I heard one saying, ‘Kill them all, leave no one alive’,” Yahya recounted.

“We ran back and hid. At night, I slowly crept out with my children and crossed the barrier. We walked to a village, where someone took pity on us and gave us a ride to the camp here.”

Another 45-year-old woman in the displacement camp of Al Dabbah in Sudan’s Northern State told Al Jazeera that RSF fighters sexually assaulted her.

The woman, who only gave her first name, Rasha, said she left her daughters at home when the RSF seized the army headquarters on Sunday and went to look for her sons.

“The RSF asked me where I was going, and I told them I’m looking for my sons. They forced me into a house and started sexually assaulting me. I told them I’m old enough to be their mother. I cried,” she said.

“They then let me go, and I took my daughters and fled, leaving my sons behind. I don’t know where they are now,” she said.

“We just fled and ran past dead bodies till we crossed the barrier and reached a small village outside el-Fasher,” she added.

Aid agencies, meanwhile, said that thousands of people are unaccounted for after fleeing el-Fasher.

Caroline Bouvard, the Sudan country director for Solidarites International, said that only a few hundred more people have turned up in Tawila, the closest town to el-Fasher, in the past few days.

“Those are very small numbers considering the number of people who were stuck in el-Fasher. We keep hearing feedback that people are stuck on the roads and in different villages that are unfortunately still inaccessible due to security reasons,” she said.

Bouvard said there is a “complete blackout” in terms of information coming out of el-Fasher after the RSF takeover, and that aid agencies are getting their information from surrounding areas, where up to 15,000 people are believed to be stuck.

“There’s a strong request for advocacy with the different parties to ensure that humanitarian aid can reach these people or that, at least, we can send in trucks to bring them back to Tawila,” she added.