Crimes

Palestinians take Al Jazeera on journey showing how hard it is to get food at the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation’s distribution hubs. Israeli forces have killed more than 1,000 people at GHF sites since May. Observers say Israel’s aid management is cruel and farcical.

Odeh Hadalin, an activist, football player and participant in the Academy Award-winning documentary No Other Land, has been shot in the chest and killed by an Israeli settler in the occupied West Bank. The suspect, Yinon Levi, has been under sanctions by the EU and the US.

Patrice-Edouard Ngaissona and Alfred Yekatom have been sentenced for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The International Criminal Court has convicted two leaders of a predominantly Christian rebel group in the Central African Republic for multiple war crimes committed against Muslim civilians during the country’s civil war in 2013 and 2014, sentencing each to more than a decade in prison.

The former president of the CAR Football Federation, Patrice-Edouard Ngaissona, along with Alfred Yekatom, a rebel leader known as “Rambo,” were found guilty on Thursday of their involvement in atrocities including murder, torture and attacking civilians.

The court sentenced Yekatom to 15 years for 20 war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Ngaissona received 12 years for 28 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The charges stem from their roles as senior leaders in a militia known as the anti-Balaka, which was formed in 2013 after mainly Muslim Seleka rebels stormed the capital Bangui in March of that year and toppled then-President Francois Bozize, a Christian.

The violence that ensued left thousands of civilians dead and displaced hundreds of thousands of others. Mosques, shops and homes were looted and destroyed.

The ICC’s presiding Judge Bertram Schmitt read harrowing details in The Hague of the violence committed by the militia against suspected Seleka Muslims.

Yekatom’s men tortured one suspect by cutting off his fingers, toes, and one ear. This man’s body was never found. Others were killed and then mutilated.

Appearing in court dressed in a light brown suit and waistcoat, white shirt, and dark tie, Yekatom listened impassively as the judge read out the verdict.

Dressed in a bright blue jacket, Ngaissona nodded to the judge as his sentence was delivered.

The court found Yekatom not guilty of conscripting child soldiers and acquitted Ngaissona of the charge of rape.

Both men had pleaded not guilty to all charges laid out in the trial, which opened in 2021. It is the first case at the ICC, which began in May 2014, to focus on the violence that erupted after the Seleka seized power in the CAR in 2013.

Yekatom was extradited to The Hague in late 2018, after being arrested in the CAR for firing his gun in parliament. Ngaissona was arrested in France in December 2018 and extradited to The Hague.

The trial of an alleged Seleka commander, Mahamat Said Abdel Kani, is ongoing.

Last year, judges at the ICC unsealed another arrest warrant in the investigation. According to prosecutors, Edmond Beina commanded a group of about 100-400 anti-balaka fighters responsible for murdering Muslims in early 2014.

Separate proceedings against Beina and five others at a specially-created court are slated to begin in the CAR on Friday.

The CAR is among the poorest nations in the world and has endured a succession of civil wars and authoritarian governments since gaining independence from France in 1960.

Violence has subsided in recent years, but fighting occasionally erupts in remote regions between rebels and the national army, which is backed by Russian mercenaries and Rwandan troops.

Belgian authorities have interrogated two members of the Israeli military following allegations of serious breaches of international humanitarian law committed in Gaza, the Federal Prosecutor’s Office in Brussels said.

The two people were questioned after legal complaints were filed by the Hind Rajab Foundation and the Global Legal Action Network. The complaints were submitted on Friday and Saturday as the soldiers attended the Tomorrowland music festival in Belgium.

“In light of this potential jurisdiction, the Federal Prosecutor’s Office requested the police to locate and interrogate the two individuals named in the complaint,” said the prosecutor’s office in a written statement on Monday. “Following these interrogations, they were released.”

The questioning was carried out under a new provision in Belgium’s Code of Criminal Procedure, which came into effect last year. It allows Belgian courts to investigate alleged violations abroad if the acts fall under international treaties ratified by Belgium – including the 1949 Geneva Conventions and the 1984 UN Convention Against Torture.

The prosecutor’s office said it would not release further information at this stage of the investigation.

The Hind Rajab Foundation, based in Belgium, has been campaigning for legal action against Israeli soldiers over alleged war crimes in Gaza. It is named after a six-year-old Palestinian girl who was killed by Israeli fire while fleeing Gaza City with her family early in Israel’s war on Gaza.

Since its formation last year, the foundation has filed dozens of complaints in more than 10 countries, targeting both low- and high-ranking Israeli military personnel.

The group hailed Monday’s developments as “a turning point in the global pursuit of accountability”.

“We will continue to support the ongoing proceedings and call on Belgian authorities to pursue the investigation fully and independently,” the foundation said in a statement. “Justice must not stop here – and we are committed to seeing it through.”

“At a time when far too many governments remain silent, this action sends a clear message: credible evidence of international crimes must be met with legal response – not political indifference,” the statement added.

Israel’s Foreign Ministry confirmed the incident, saying that one Israeli citizen and one soldier were interrogated and later released. “Israeli authorities dealt with this issue and are in touch with the two,” the ministry said in a statement cited by The Associated Press news agency.

The incident comes amid growing international outrage over Israel’s conduct in its war on Gaza. More than two dozen Western countries called for an immediate end to the war in Gaza on Monday, saying that suffering there had “reached new depths”.

After more than 21 months of fighting that have triggered catastrophic humanitarian conditions for Gaza’s more than two million people, Israeli allies Britain, France, Australia, Canada and 21 other countries, plus the European Union, said in a joint statement that the war “must end now”.

“The suffering of civilians in Gaza has reached new depths,” the signatories added, urging a negotiated ceasefire, the release of captives held by Palestinian armed groups and the free flow of much-needed aid.

On Sunday, the World Food Programme accused Israel of using tanks, snipers and other weapons to fire on a crowd of Palestinians seeking food aid.

It said that shortly after crossing through the northern Zikim crossing into Gaza, its 25-truck convoy encountered large crowds of civilians waiting for food supplies, who were attacked.

“As the convoy approached, the surrounding crowd came under fire from Israeli tanks, snipers and other gunfire,” it said on X, adding that the incident resulted in the loss of “countless lives” with many more suffering critical injuries.

“These people were simply trying to access food to feed themselves and their families on the brink of starvation. This terrible incident underscores the increasingly dangerous conditions under which humanitarian operations are forced to be conducted in Gaza.”

Gaza’s Health Ministry described the Israeli attack, which killed at least 92 people, as one of the war’s deadliest days for civilians seeking humanitarian assistance.

More than 59,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since Israel began its war on Gaza in October 2023, according to local health officials. Much of the territory lies in ruins, with severe shortages of food, medicine and other essentials due to Israel’s ongoing blockade.

SEOUL, July 21 (UPI) — South Korea’s special prosecutor is intensifying its probe into the Unification Church, focusing on its top leadership over allegations of financial crimes and unlawful political activities.

The team led by Special Prosecutor Min Jung-ki conducted a second raid Monday at the church’s headquarters in Seoul’s Yongsan District, during which investigators seized additional internal records and digital data.

The operation followed a broader crackdown Friday, when authorities searched more than 10 church-affiliated sites, including the Cheon Jeong Gung palace in Gapyeong and the private residence of former church executive Yoon Young-ho.

According to the Hankook Ilbo, the search warrants identified several senior officials as criminal suspects: Han Hak-Ja, the church’s current chairwoman; Jung Wonju, executive secretary to Hak and vice president of the Cheon Mu Won, the church’s highest administrative body; and Lee Cheong-woo, director of the Central Administration Office.

Jung Wonju has emerged as a central figure in the case, with prosecutors focusing on her behind-the-scenes coordination of operations, reportedly enabled by her close ties to Han.

All three are being investigated for alleged violations of the Act on the Aggravated Punishment of Specific Economic Crimes, particularly involving brokered bribery and influence peddling.

Yoon Young-ho is accused of offering cash and luxury gifts to lawmaker Kweon Seong-dong in return for political favors. Rep. Kweon, a close ally of then-presidential candidate Yoon Suk-yeol, allegedly played a key role in facilitating the candidate’s appearance at an event hosted by a Unification Church-affiliated organization on Feb. 13, 2022.

Yoon Young-ho served as the co-organizing chair and delivered the opening declaration at the event, raising suspicions that Kweon may have acted as an intermediary between Yoon Young-ho and the Yoon presidential couple.

Beyond the financial and political charges lies a deeper theological rift within the church. According to multiple former insiders, a group of church leaders and members who remained faithful to the original teachings and spiritual mission of founder Rev. Sun Myung Moon were systematically expelled by the current leadership.

These reformers opposed what they described as opportunistic reinterpretations of Rev. Moon’s core teachings — altered, they argue, to legitimize the centralization of power and the silencing of dissent, while elevating Han to a quasi-divine status.

Prosecutors are now examining three years of financial records and digital evidence seized during the raids, seeking to trace suspicious financial flows and uncover evidence of systemic wrongdoing.

Analysts say the outcome of the investigation may determine not only the legal future of the Unification Church, but also its spiritual legitimacy in the eyes of its followers and the public.

US president has pushed other countries to crack down on manufacturing and exportation of fentanyl.

United States President Donald Trump has said that China may start sentencing people to death for involvement in the manufacture or distribution of fentanyl, whose trafficking Trump has sought harsh measures to counteract.

Speaking as he signed anti-drug legislation on Wednesday, the US president said that the need to combat fentanyl was one of the reasons for his imposition of tariffs on countries across the world.

“I think we’re going to work it out so that China is going to end up going from that to giving the death penalty to the people that create this fentanyl and send it into our country,” Trump said. “I believe that’s going to happen soon.”

China, which has long imposed severe penalties on people involved with drug distribution, including capital punishment, has been at the centre of Trump’s ire over the opioid that helped fuel an overdose epidemic in the US.

The country raised outrage when it executed four Canadian dual citizens earlier this year for drug-related offences, despite pleas for clemency from the Canadian government.

Experts have questioned whether such penalties will help address the distribution of fentanyl, which China has said is driven largely by demand from people in the US.

Trump has previously linked his tariffs on countries such as Mexico and Canada to fentanyl, although trafficking from the latter into the US is close to nonexistent.

Drug overdoses in the US have been a subject of concern and political debate for years, with the country’s opioid epidemic beginning with the aggressive promotion of painkillers by pharmaceutical companies but later being mostly driven by synthetic opioids such as fentanyl.

Overdose deaths have started to drop in recent years, giving experts cause for optimism after years of communities being ravaged by opioids. Overdoses over a 12-month period ending in June 2024 dropped by 12 percent compared with the same period the previous year, down from 113,000 to 97,000.

Lawyers for victims of human rights abuses committed during Peru’s decades-long armed conflict have pledged to appeal to international bodies to overturn a law passed by the country’s Congress, which would grant amnesty to prosecuted military and police members, as well as other forces.

“We’re not only going to the domestic arena to seek its invalidation, but we’ve already taken some action at the international level,” lawyer Gloria Cano, director of the Pro Human Rights Association, said during a news conference on Thursday.

A congressional commission on Wednesday approved the bill granting amnesty to members of the armed forces, national police and local self-defence committees, said legislator Alejandro Cavero, third vice president of the country’s Congress.

Cano also said her association had already alerted the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and Inter-American Court of Human Rights, and planned to go to the United Nations, as well.

After the Peruvian Congress passed the bill, Volker Turk, the UN’s national human rights coordinator, said on X that “impunity does not hide the crime, it magnifies it.”

Amnesty International earlier urged the legislature to side with victims and reject the bill. “The right to justice of thousands of victims of extrajudicial executions, forced disappearances, torture, and sexual violence would be violated,” the rights group said on X.

A coalition of human rights organisations in Peru said the new law could wipe out 156 convictions and another 600 cases that are being prosecuted.

The law, which awaits President Dina Boluarte’s approval, benefits uniformed personnel who were accused, are still being investigated or are being tried for crimes stemming from their participation in the country’s armed conflict from 1980 to 2000 against left-wing rebels. Boluarte has not made any comment on the amnesty, even before its passage.

The bill was presented by Congressman Fernando Rospigliosi, from the right-wing Popular Force party of Keiko Fujimori, daughter of the late former leader Alberto Fujimori.

Fujimori’s decade as president from 1990 was marked by ruthless governance.

He was jailed for atrocities – including the massacre of civilians by the army – but released from prison in 2023 on humanitarian grounds.

The new law specifies that a humanitarian amnesty will be granted to people more than 70 years old who have been sentenced or served a prison sentence.

Critics have warned that the legislation would hinder the search for truth about the period of violent conflict, which pitted state forces against Shining Path and Tupac Amaru rebels, and killed about 70,000 people.

“Granting amnesty to military and police officers cannot be a reason for impunity,” Congressman Alex Flores of the Socialist Party said during debate on the bill.

There have been numerous attempts in recent years to shield the military and police from prosecution in Peru for crimes committed during the conflict – but opponents of amnesty have found success before at international bodies.

The Inter-American Court of Human Rights has at least twice previously declared amnesty laws in Peru invalid for violating the right to justice and breaching international human rights standards.

Human rights advocates believe that Peru’s membership of the Inter-American System of Human Rights and the obligations this entails make the amnesty law unconstitutional.

Amnesty laws passed in 1995 in Peru shielded military and police personnel from prosecution for human rights abuses committed during the conflict, including massacres, torture, and forced disappearances.

Peru’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission found that the majority of the conflict’s victims were Indigenous Peruvians caught between security forces and the Shining Path. It also found that there are more than 4,000 clandestine graves across the country as a result of the two decades of political violence.

In August 2024, Peru adopted a statute of limitations for crimes against humanity committed before 2002, shutting down hundreds of investigations into alleged crimes committed during the conflict.

The initiative benefitted the late Fujimori and 600 prosecuted military personnel.

The Hague court’s Deputy Prosecutor Nazhat Shameem Khan warns civil war ‘has reached an intolerable state’.

A senior International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor has concluded that there are “reasonable grounds to believe that war crimes and crimes against humanity” are being committed in war-ravaged Sudan’s western Darfur region.

ICC Deputy Prosecutor Nazhat Shameem Khan presented her assessment before the United Nations Security Council on Thursday of the devastating conflict, which has raged since 2023, killing more than 40,000 people and displacing 13 million others.

Khan said the depth of suffering and the humanitarian crisis in Darfur “has reached an intolerable state”, with famine escalating and hospitals, humanitarian convoys and other civilian infrastructure being targeted.

She said it was “difficult to find appropriate words to describe the depth of suffering in Darfur”.

“On the basis of our independent investigations, the position of our office is clear. We have reasonable grounds to believe that war crimes and crimes against humanity have been and are continuing to be committed in Darfur,” she said.

The prosecutor’s office focused its probe on crimes committed in West Darfur, Khan said, interviewing victims who fled to neighbouring Chad.

She detailed an “intolerable” humanitarian situation, with apparent targeting of hospitals and humanitarian convoys, while warning that “famine is escalating” as aid is unable to reach “those in dire need”.

“People are being deprived of water and food. Rape and sexual violence are being weaponised,” Khan said, adding that abductions for ransom had become “common practice”.

In June, the UN Independent International Fact-Finding Mission for Sudan warned that both the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) had escalated the use of heavy weaponry in populated areas and weaponised humanitarian relief, amid the devastating consequences of the civil war.

ICC chief prosecutor Karim Khan had told the Security Council in January that there were grounds to believe both parties may be committing war crimes, crimes against humanity or genocide in the region, while the administration of then-US President Joe Biden determined that the RSF and its proxies were committing genocide.

The Security Council had previously referred the situation in Darfur to the ICC in 2005, with some 300,000 people killed during conflict in the region in the 2000s.

In 2023, the ICC opened a new probe into war crimes in Darfur after a new conflict erupted between the SAF and RSF.

The RSF’s predecessor, the Janjaweed militia, was accused of genocide two decades ago in the vast western region.

ICC judges are expected to deliver their first decision on crimes committed in Darfur two decades ago in the case of Ali Mohamed Ali Abd-Al-Rahman, known as Ali Kosheib, after the trial ended in 2024.

“I wish to be clear to those on the ground in Darfur now, to those who are inflicting unimaginable atrocities on its population – they may feel a sense of impunity at this moment, as Ali Kosheib may have felt in the past,” said Khan.

“But we are working intensively to ensure that the Ali Kosheib trial represents only the first of many in relation to this situation at the International Criminal Court,” added Khan.

Staff at the Tony Blair Institute participated in a project to redevelop Gaza into the Donald Trump-envisioned ‘riviera of the Middle East’, a report has found. The plan includes expelling Palestinians, as Soraya Lennie explains.

July 8 (UPI) — The International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants Tuesday for two top Taliban officials over a plethora of allegations of crimes against women and young girls.

The court, based in the Hague, Netherlands, issued its international arrest warrants for the Taliban’s supreme leader Haibatullah Akhundzada and its chief justice, Abdul Hakim Haqqani, over “reasonable grounds” of crimes against humanity on girls, women and “other persons non-conforming with the Taliban’s policy on gender, gender identity or expression.”

ICC officials stated the alleged crimes were believed to be committed in Afghanistan from around the time the Taliban seized power until as late as January of this year.

According to the ICC, Akhundzada and Haggani held defect authority in Afghanistan starting at least August 2021.

It accused the two Taliban leaders of “severe” violations of fundamental rights and freedoms against the Afghan population.

Last week, Russia became the first nation to officially recognize Afghanistan’s extremist Taliban government.

The tribunal on Tuesday pointed to “conducts of murder, imprisonment, torture, rape and enforced disappearance.”

“Specifically, the Taliban severely deprived, through decrees and edicts, girls and women of the rights to education, privacy and family life and the freedoms of movement, expression, thought, conscience and religion,” court officials wrote in a release.

It added that other individuals were “targeted” due to “certain expressions of sexuality and/or gender identity” thought to be inconsistent with the Taliban’s policy on gender.

“The Chamber found that gender persecution encompasses not only direct acts of violence, but also systemic and institutionalized forms of harm, including the imposition of discriminatory societal norms,” the ICC ruling continued.

In addition, the court also found that even people simply perceived to be in opposition to Taliban policies were targeted, which the court says included “political opponents” and “those described as ‘allies of girls and women.'”

The International Criminal Court, ratified in 2002 and created to try global cases of genocide, war crimes and other crimes against humanity, was the product of 50 years of United Nations efforts.

The court’s stated goal was to publicly disclose the two warrants existence in hopes that public awareness “may contribute to the prevention of the further commission of these crimes.”

However, the chamber opted to keep the warrants under seal to protect victim witnesses and future court proceedings.

Human rights lawyer Geoffrey Nice says the acting director of the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation is a fundamentalist Christian who shares some of Israel’s objectives. Hundreds of unarmed Palestinians have been killed at aid sites led by GHF.

The death sentence has been removed from eight criminal offences in Vietnamese law and replaced with life imprisonment for offenders.

Vietnam will end capital punishment for eight categories of serious crime – including embezzlement, attempts to overthrow the government and sabotaging state infrastructure, state media has reported.

The state-run Vietnam News Agency reported on Wednesday that the country’s National Assembly unanimously passed an amendment to the Criminal Code that abolished the death penalty for eight criminal offences.

Starting from next month, people will no longer face a death sentence for bribery, embezzlement, producing and trading counterfeit medicines, illegally transporting narcotics, espionage, “the crime of destroying peace and causing aggressive war”, as well as sabotage and trying to topple the government.

The maximum sentence for these crimes will now be life imprisonment, the news agency said.

Those who were sentenced to death for capital offences before July 1, but have not yet been executed, will have their sentences commuted to life imprisonment, the report said.

The death penalty will remain for 10 other criminal offences under Vietnamese law, including murder, treason, terrorism and the sexual abuse of children, according to the report.

During a National Assembly debate on the proposed criminal code amendment last month, the issue of dropping the death sentence for drug trafficking was the most contentious.

“Whether it’s a few grammes or a few tonnes, the harm caused by drug transport is immense,” one legislator said, while another said removing the death sentence for drugs would send the wrong signal at a time when drug cases were increasing in the country.

Capital punishment data is a state secret in Vietnam and it is not known how many people are currently on death row in the country.

Execution by firing squad in Vietnam was abolished in 2011 and replaced by the administration of a lethal injection.

A new wave of Iranian missiles has struck multiple sites across Israel, damaging a hospital, and Israel has attacked Iran’s Arak heavy water nuclear reactor as the two countries trade fire for a seventh consecutive day.

Rescue operations were under way on Thursday after an Iranian missile hit the Soroka Medical Center in the city of Beersheba in southern Israel. Iran said it was targeting a military site in the attack.

Reports said the Iranian projectiles made impact in at least six other locations, including in Tel Aviv and two of its districts – Holon and Ramat Gan. Emergency crews said at least 50 people were injured, including four who were in critical condition.

The Israeli army said its fighter jets struck dozens of sites in Iran, including the Arak heavy water nuclear reactor.

The partially built reactor was originally called Arak and is now named Khondab.

The military said it specifically targeted “the structure of the reactor’s core seal, which is a key component in plutonium production”.

Iranian media reported air defences were activated in the area of the Khondab nuclear facility and two projectiles hit an area close to it.

Officials told Iranian state TV that evacuations were made before the strikes and no risk of radiation or casualties was detected. There was no mention of any damage.

The attacks were carried out as the two countries traded fire for a seventh day after Israel launched a major attack on Friday on Iranian military facilities and nuclear sites, killing senior military officials and top nuclear scientists.

Iran responded to that attack with air strikes on Israel, and the conflict has since widened to include civilian targets, including residential areas and oil and gas facilities.

Iran has fired hundreds of missiles and drones at Israel although most have been shot down by Israel’s multitiered air defences.

Major hospital

The Soroka Medical Center, which has more than 1,000 beds and provides services to about 1 million residents of southern Israel, said in a statement there was “extensive damage” in several areas of the hospital and the emergency room was treating several minor injuries. The hospital was closed to all new patients except for life-threatening cases.

Many hospitals in Israel have activated emergency plans in the past week, converting underground parking to hospital floors and moving patients underground, especially those who are on ventilators or are difficult to move quickly.

“This is a war crime committed by the Iranian regime,” Israeli Health Minister Uriel Buso was quoted as saying by Israeli Army Radio in reference to the attack on Soroka. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned the Iranian leaders they would pay “a heavy price” for the attack.

The Iranian news agency IRNA said the “main target” of the Beersheba attack “was the large [Israeli army] Command and Intelligence (IDF C4I) headquarters and the military intelligence camp in the Gav-Yam Technology Park”. The facility is next to the Soroka Medical Center, it said, claiming the health facility suffered only minor damage from the shockwave resulting from the missile strike.

Tight military censorship in Israel means information about sites such as military and intelligence facilities are not released to the public. According to Israeli media reports, a building next to the hospital described as “sensitive” sustained heavy damage.

Ori Goldberg, an Israeli political commentator, told Al Jazeera that Israeli authorities were focusing on the hospital attack and trying to send a “message that the Iranians target hospitals”.

“Of course, Israelis target hospitals as well. It’s important to mention that there really are very sensitive installations and headquarters very near to the hospital because Israel places its military headquarters in the midst of civilian neighbourhoods and towns,” he added, speaking from Tel Aviv.

Iranian state TV, meanwhile, reported the attack on the Arak site, saying there was “no radiation danger whatsoever”. An Iranian state television reporter, speaking live in the nearby town of Khondab, said the facility had been evacuated and there was no damage to civilian areas around the reactor.

Israel had warned earlier on Thursday morning that it would attack the facility and urged the public to leave. The Israeli military said its latest round of air strikes also targeted Tehran and other areas of Iran, without elaborating.

The strikes came a day after Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei rejected United States calls for a surrender and warned that any US military involvement in the conflict would cause “irreparable damage to them”.

A Washington, DC-based Iranian human rights group said at least 639 people, including 263 civilians, have been killed in Iran in the past week of air strikes and more than 1,300 have been wounded. Iran has fired about 400 missiles and hundreds of drones at Israel, killing at least 24 people and wounding hundreds.

Fugitive and former Prime Minister of Bangladesh Sheikh Hasina has officially been charged with crimes against humanity.

Prosecutors in Dhaka accuse the 77-year-old of orchestrating a “systematic attack” on demonstrators during protests last year that ended her 15-year rule.

Bangladesh’s interim leader Muhammad Yunus has promised to ensure that Hasina and other key figures face justice.

But his caretaker government is facing discord over when it will hold elections.

So will Sheikh Hasina face punishment, and will Bangladeshis forgive Muhammad Yunus if she does not?

Presenter: Mohammed Jamjoom

Guests:

Rumeen Farhana – Assistant secretary for international affairs of the Central Executive Committee, and former Bangladesh Nationalist Party MP

Sreeradha Datta – Professor at OP Jindal Global University

Abbas Faiz – Independent South Asia researcher with a focus on Bangladesh

Lawyers for the six victims say ‘historic’ court decision recognises the plight of survivors who demanded justice for decades.

A top Guatemalan court has sentenced three former paramilitaries to 40 years each in prison after they were found guilty of raping six Indigenous women between 1981 and 1983, one of the bloodiest periods of the Central American nation’s civil war.

The conviction and sentencing on Friday mark another significant step towards attaining justice for the Maya Achi Indigenous women, who were sexually abused by pro-government armed groups, during a period of extreme bloodshed between the military and left-wing rebels that left as many as 200,000 dead or missing.

Former Civil Self-Defence Patrol members Pedro Sanchez, Simeon Enriquez and Felix Tum were found guilty of crimes against humanity for sexually assaulting six members of the Maya Achi group, Judge Maria Eugenia Castellanos said.

“The women recognised the perpetrators, they recognised the places where the events took place. They were victims of crimes against humanity,” she said, praising the women’s bravery in coming to court to testify on repeated occasions.

“They are crimes of solitude that stigmatise the woman. It is not easy to speak of them,” the judge said.

Indigenous lawyer Haydee Valey, who represented the women, said the sentence was “historic” because it finally recognised the struggle of civil war survivors who had demanded justice for decades.

Several Maya Achi women in the courtroom applauded at the end of the trial, where some dressed in traditional attire and others listened to the verdict through an interpreter.

One of the victims, a 62-year-old woman, told the AFP news agency she was “very happy” with the verdict.

Pedro Sanchez, one of the three men convicted, told the court before the sentencing, “I am innocent of what they are accusing me of.”

But Judge Marling Mayela Gonzalez Arrivillaga, another member of the all-women, three-panel court, said there was no doubt about the women’s testimony against the suspects.

The convictions were second in the Maya Achi women’s case against former military personnel and paramilitaries. The first trial, which took place in January 2022, saw five former paramilitaries sentenced to 30 years in prison.

Advocacy group Impunity Watch said the case “highlights how the Guatemalan army used sexual violence as a weapon of war against Indigenous women” during the civil conflict.

In 2016, a Guatemalan court sentenced two former military officers for holding 15 women from the Q’eqchi community, who are also of Maya origin, as sex slaves. Both officers were sentenced to a combined 360 years in prison.

Amnesty International says torture, killings and enforced disappearances have taken place in areas under rebel control.

M23 rebels in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) have committed serious abuses against civilians, “including torture, killings and enforced disappearances”, in areas under their control, according to Amnesty International.

“These acts violate international humanitarian law and may amount to war crimes,” Amnesty said in a statement on Tuesday.

The allegations come amid a renewed surge in violence that erupted in January, when the Rwandan-backed M23 group captured the strategic city of Goma in North Kivu province. The rebels went on to seize Bukavu in South Kivu in February, escalating a conflict that has displaced hundreds of thousands.

Between February and April, Amnesty researchers spoke to 18 people who had been detained by M23 in Goma and Bukavu. Many said they were held on accusations of supporting the Congolese army or government – claims for which no proof was presented. Several were not told why they were being held.

According to Amnesty, detainees were crammed into overcrowded, unhygienic cells, lacking adequate food, water, sanitation and medical care. Some of those interviewed said they saw fellow prisoners die due to these conditions or from acts of torture.

Witnesses described gruesome scenes, including two detainees being bludgeoned to death with hammers and another shot dead on the spot.

All of the former detainees said they were either tortured or saw others being tortured with wooden sticks, electric cables or engine belts, the rights group said.

Relatives searching for the missing were often turned away by M23 fighters, who denied the detainees were being held – actions Amnesty says amount to enforced disappearances.

Peace deal remains elusive

“M23’s public statements about bringing order to eastern DRC mask their horrific treatment of detainees. They brutally punish those who they believe oppose them and intimidate others, so no one dares to challenge them,” said Tigere Chagutah, Amnesty International’s regional director for East and Southern Africa.

“Regional and international actors must pressure Rwanda to cease its support for M23,” added Chagutah.

The United Nations and DRC’s government say Rwanda has supported M23 by providing arms and sending troops – an accusation Kigali denies.

The UN estimates that about 4,000 Rwandan soldiers support M23.

M23 is among roughly 100 armed groups fighting for control in eastern DRC, a region rich in minerals and bordering Rwanda. The ongoing conflict has driven more than seven million people from their homes, including 100,000 who fled this year alone.

Despite recent pledges by the Congolese army and the rebels to seek a truce, clashes have continued. M23 previously threatened to advance as far as the capital, Kinshasa, more than 1,600km (1,000 miles) away.

In April, Rwanda and DRC agreed to draft a peace deal by May 2, committing to respect each other’s sovereignty and refraining from providing military support to armed groups.