detained

Aug. 7 (UPI) — Argentinian professional soccer player Matías Pourrain has been detained by U.S. immigration officials in Florida while traveling with his American team, club officials said Friday.

Pourrain, a 34-year-old midfielder for Club de Lyon FC of the National Independent Soccer Association, was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents at Fort Lauderdale Airport on Thursday while preparing to board a domestic flight to Los Angeles, the team said in a social media post.

“Matías was not attempting to enter or leave the United States. He was simply traveling from one U.S. city to another,” the statement read.

Pourrain “is not a criminal,” the team said in pleading for help to secure his release.

“Today, he remains in ICE custody while his attorney is working to secure his release and ensure that all of his rights are respected,” Club de Lyon FC said.

“Right now, we urgently need one thing from everyone who knows Matías, has crossed paths with him, or simply believes his story deserves to be heard.”

The player has been living in the United States for seven years and, according to his team’s statement, has a pending asylum case, a Florida state ID, and no criminal record.

His brother, Juan Pourrain, told Argentinian broadcaster Todo Noticias that while Matias was indeed in the United States on asylum status, “he also had Social Security, a work permit, all his papers were in order.

“But he was waiting for his appointment. It seems that now they are arresting those who have pending appointments.”

Before coming to the United States, the footballer played for Real Pilar, San Martín de Burzaco and Mercedes in Buenos Aires. He was a member of the latter squad when it won promotion to Primera C in 2019 and eliminated top-flight Vélez Sarsfield from the Copa Argentina, Infobae reported.

Aug. 3 (UPI) — Myanmar’s detained and ousted democratically elected leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi met with the International Committee of the Red Cross resident representative in Myanmar on Monday morning, the junta-controlled President’s Office said.

Myanmar’s Presidential Press and Information Bureau published four photos of Aung San Suu Kyi, two showing her with Arnaud de Baecque. In one, she is seen shaking his hand. In a second, they are sitting around a coffee table.

A third photo published by the President’s Office is of a birthday cake with the words “Happy Birthday Aunty Suu, 19.6.2026” written in icing on top of the cake. The fourth photo is of Aung San Suu Kyi cutting the pink-and-white cake with a spatula.

The one-sentence statement accompanying the photographs did not provide context for the meeting or say what Aung San Suu Kyi and de Baecque discussed.

Little information and visual evidence of Aung San Suu Kyi have been made public by the junta government since it detained her and seized control of Myanmar on Feb. 1, 2021. It also appears to be the first confirmed meeting with a foreign representative since her detention.

Aung San Suu Kyi is currently serving an 18-year sentence sentence on multiple charges, including corruption and election-related offenses.

In late April, she was moved from prison to house arrest.

This is a developing story.

Seven Palestinians, including two children, have been detained by Israeli forces in overnight and predawn raids across the West Bank, according to Palestinian local sources.

Israeli settlers separately assaulted a Palestinian man and his wife on their own farmland on Saturday.

The couple was attacked in the al-Zarqa area of Beitillu, northwest of Ramallah, when a group of settlers stormed the farm where they were working, leaving both with injuries and bruising that required hospital treatment.

The latest settler attacks and raids by Israeli forces are a single day’s snapshot of activity now unfolding “in every direction” across the occupied West Bank, said Al Jazeera’s Nour Odeh, reporting from Ramallah.

Odeh said Israeli military jeeps were roaming constantly through Ramallah on Saturday, as soldiers used tear gas inside a supermarket in the city. This level of everyday disruption, she said, has become difficult to separate from the settlement expansion driving it.

Settlers have erected another illegal outpost this week, Odeh added, the 12th such construction in the past seven days alone.

The military raids that produced Saturday’s detentions spanned three governorates at once. In Tubas, forces searched a family home in the town of Tammun and detained a 16-year-old; in Nablus, four Palestinians were picked up in predawn raids on the villages of Urif, Einabus and Burqa; and in Bethlehem, a second 16-year-old was detained in Wadi Fukin, with another man held at the Container Checkpoint.

In the nearby town of Asira ash Shamaliya, troops went further still, storming dozens of homes overnight and converting one house into a makeshift field interrogation centre, security sources told Palestinian news agency Wafa.

Further south, in Khashem al-Daraj near Hebron, Israeli forces chased down and detained 11 workers, beating them in the process, according to local activist Osama Makhamreh.

Israeli settlers, meanwhile, were active on parallel fronts.

In Surif, near Hebron, residents from the Bat Ayin outpost set fire to one car, damaged another, and sprayed racist graffiti on a house, the town’s mayor, Hazem Ghneimat, said.

Later on Saturday, three young Palestinian men were assaulted with pepper spray on the road between al-Mughayyir and Abu Falah, northeast of Ramallah, after settlers rammed their vehicle with an all-terrain vehicle – an attack that village council head Amin Abu Aliya said has become almost a daily occurrence along that stretch of road.

In Beit Jala, near Bethlehem, Israeli authorities forced three residents to demolish their own homes rather than face the fines and costs of a state-led demolition, which, Palestinians say, is a practice used routinely to sidestep Israel’s near-total refusal to grant them building permits.

Saturday’s events fit a pattern that rights monitors have been documenting for months. Palestinian sources recorded more than 11,000 attacks by Israeli forces and settlers across the West Bank in the first half of this year alone, with Hebron, Ramallah and Nablus the worst affected.

The figures echo recent United Nations warnings – including from UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, who has said settler violence and forced displacement are accelerating alongside plans to expand and legalise outposts, all of which the UN maintains have no legal validity under international law.

British Prime Minister Andy Burnham added his own criticism on Saturday, calling the scale of the humanitarian crisis in Palestine “unacceptable” and saying his government was weighing further measures on Israeli settlements, including possible restrictions on arms exports.

Police detained several protesters in Lahore, Pakistan as they rallied in solidarity with Pakistan-administered Kashmir. A banned Kashmiri activist group says that at least 30 people have been killed in clashes during regional elections this past week.

Kizza Besigye, who faces treason charges, is reported to be ‘unconscious’ in hospital after collapsing in court.

Detained Ugandan opposition leader Kizza Besigye has been hospitalised in an unresponsive state after he collapsed during a court hearing on Wednesday, according to his wife.

Besigye, who has been in prison since late 2024 on treason charges, is now “unconscious, unable to speak, and unresponsive”, his wife, Winnie Byanyima, said in a post on X on Thursday.

He has been admitted to the intensive care unit at Mulago National Referral Hospital in the capital, Kampala, added Winnie Byanyima, who also ‌heads the United Nations AIDS programme UNAIDS.

Byanyima has called for her husband to be transferred out of Mulago hospital, a public facility, and into a private facility where he can be treated by his personal physician.

“[Besigye’s] family is saying he needs special treatment and they do not trust the government hospital,” reported Al Jazeera’s Catherine Soi from Nairobi in neighbouring Kenya.

“There’s a lot of frustration. The court has not granted that permission for him to be transferred.”

‘Not responding to anything’

Besigye, 70, was seen falling into the dock during his Wednesday courtroom session while protesting against his trial without lawyers of his own choosing, after authorities also detained and charged his main lawyer, Erias Lukwago.

“Before he collapsed, he cried out that he was being injured,” said Byanyima.

Ingrid Turinawe, a close confidant of Besigye, told The Associated Press that she and others were not allowed to see Besigye at Mulago hospital.

“He is in the ICU, and he is not responding to anything,” she said, adding that Besigye’s personal physician was able to see him several hours after he collapsed.

Besigye, a former ally-turned-critic of longtime President Yoweri ‌Museveni, has been in custody since November 2024. He was jailed together with his aide Obeid Lutale in Kenya and ⁠both were repatriated to Uganda where they were subsequently charged with treason.

Besigye’s lawyers, ⁠supporters and rights activists say ⁠that the charges are politically motivated and that his prolonged detention is part of an ongoing crackdown on opponents by ‌Museveni.

Both Museveni and his son, military chief Muhoozi Kainerugaba, have already weighed in against Besigye.

Kainerugaba, alleging that Besigye plotted to kill his father, has previously described the opposition figure as “a dead man walking”. And Museveni himself has said Besigye must answer for “the very serious offences he is alleged to have been planning”.

In recent days, prosecutors have moved to present evidence they say will prove Besigye and others plotted to overthrow the government

Museveni, 81, was declared winner of the last election in January although the results were rejected by ‌runner-up ‌Bobi Wine, who has since gone into exile in the United States.

A video showing the final moments of Moroccan-born Abderrahim Fakir, who was struggling to breathe while being detained by police in Italy’s Bologna, has sparked protests demanding answers over his death.

July 15 (UPI) — U.S. President Donald Trump said Wednesday evening that Iran has freed a U.S. citizen detained in the country since 2024 as a “gesture of goodwill.”

In a social media post, Trump said Iran wrongfully detained the woman in December 2024.

“She is now safely outside of Iran, and in good condition,” Trump wrote. He did not identify the woman but said the United States appreciated the gesture.

Lawyer Jared Genser said in a social media post that the woman is Dena Karari, a client of his trapped in Iran on “bogus charges.” Genser said Karari is safe and traveling back to the United States. He said her freedom wouldn’t have happened without “extraordinary and relentless efforts” by Trump.

Genser said in a further statement that Karari is a U.S.-Iranian citizen who ran a nonprofit called the Children of Mehr Foundation, ABC News reported. The foundation’s Instagram page says that it works to empower children “through education, creativity and opportunity.”

Genser said she visiting her family when she was detained and interrogated by Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security, suffering “enormous physical and psychological hardship.”

On Wednesday night, the United States military struck Iranian targets for the fifth straight day, with Iran hitting several U.S. military targets Tuesday in Jordan, Bahrain and Kuwait.

As rights advocates decry the detention of United States Congressman Ro Khanna by armed Israeli settlers, Israel and its allies are launching political attacks to discredit the progressive legislator.

Israeli officials have already ruled out apologising to Khanna or holding the settlers accountable. Instead, several have gone on the offensive against the congressman.

Khanna said he was travelling to a Palestinian village in the occupied West Bank on Wednesday when armed settlers stopped his van for 20 minutes. The settlers were later joined by Israeli soldiers who continued to block the road.

The whole ordeal lasted more than an hour, according to Khanna, and was only resolved after he reached out to the US embassy in Israel.

On Sunday, Michael Leiter, Israel’s ambassador to the US, appeared to blame Khanna for the mistreatment he received, saying that the California Democrat had failed to coordinate his trip with the Israeli government.

“He decided to coordinate his trip not with Israel, but with Palestinian activists and with J Street,” Leiter told CBS News, referencing a Jewish nonprofit.

Leiter went on to claim, without evidence, that Khanna may have waited to release his video of Wednesday’s incident to distract from his support for politician Graham Platner.

Platner dropped out of the Senate race in Maine on Friday amid sexual misconduct allegations. Khanna published his video on Saturday.

“Maybe this had more something to do with his support of Graham Platner beforehand and the difficulties he had with that, and trying to shift the focus to something else. Perhaps? I’m asking a question,” Leiter said.

Khanna is not backing down, however. He said he did inform Israel of his travel and has called for the arrest of settlers who held up his van.

Khanna responds

The Israeli military has disputed Khanna’s version of the events, saying that it “dispersed” civilians who were blocking the road. But in an appearance on Sunday with NBC News, Khanna refuted that account.

“The [Israeli military] is lying,” Khanna said.

“What happened was unprecedented. They had violent settlers detain American citizens, including an American government official. You had these settlers brandishing M4s [rifles], kicking the tyres of our van, laughing at us, mocking at us, videotaping us.”

He added that the Israeli military participated in blocking their path and detaining them.

“How dare they mistreat people with an American passport that way?” Khanna said.

Pro-Israel politicians, however, claimed that Khanna provoked his own detention by carrying out a political stunt.

“Sounds like another plea for publicity. Anything to get in front of the camera. Why else would you be there? It isn’t your country,” Republican Congressman Greg Murphy wrote in a social media post.

Critics were quick to point out that Murphy’s first trip as part of a congressional delegation was to Israel.

Khanna also responded to Murphy, urging him to be on “Team America” and join the push for any settlers and soldiers who mistreat US citizens to face consequences.

“I would be calling for that if you had been in our shoes,” Khanna said.

Conservative commentator Tucker Carlson was among those who came to Khanna’s defence. He criticised Mike Huckabee, the US ambassador to Israel, for failing to speak out about the incident.

“An American member of congress is threatened by foreign terrorists carrying American rifles, backed by a foreign military paid for by American taxpayers, and the US ambassador to that country says not a word in defense of his own countryman,” Carlson wrote on the social media platform X.

“It’s too much, too insulting and humiliating to America.”

Still, many pro-Israel figures in the US expressed scepticism about Khanna’s experience. David Friedman, a former US envoy to Israel, accused Khanna of “self-victimization”.

Friedman argued, without evidence, that Khanna had purposely entered a restricted zone to provoke the incident.

“As was entirely predictable, he was asked a few questions and sent on his way. But he got the photo op and all he needed for his pre-conceived false narrative,” Friedman said in a social media post. “Well played Ro.”

Several other pro-Israel advocates echoed that take.

Attacks on US citizens

Israel’s military and settler presence in the occupied West Bank is illegal under international law.

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled in 2024 that the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territory, including Gaza, is unlawful.

“Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and the regime associated with them, have been established and are being maintained in violation of international law,” the top United Nations tribunal said.

Israeli settlers – often under the protection of the Israeli military – regularly attack Palestinian communities in the West Bank, ransacking farms and property and assaulting people who come in their way. That includes Americans.

One year ago, for instance, Israeli settlers beat 20-year-old US citizen Sayfollah Musallet to death.

Three weeks later, another American citizen, a father of five from Chicago named Khamis Ayyad, was also killed in a settler attack.

No suspects have been charged with crimes after the two attacks.

Despite well-documented abuses against US citizens, Israel was added to the US visa waiver programme in 2023, allowing Israelis to travel visa-free to the US.

Israel is the largest cumulative recipient of US military aid in history, having received more than $21bn in the last two years alone.

His release comes after journalist Mousa al-Omar dropped a complaint over online criticism.

British Syrian activist Hassan Akkad has been released from a prison in Damascus after four days detention for alleged criticism of public figures.

Akkad was taken into custody from a cafe in the al-Maliki neighbourhood of Damascus on Wednesday at about 9:45pm local time (18:45 GMT), a statement by his organisation said on Friday.

Akkad is the founder of the “Give Us the Money That You Owe!” campaign, which tracks large financial commitments made by public figures during a donation drive to fund Syria’s reconstruction.

His detention followed a legal complaint filed by Syrian journalist and presenter Mousa al-Omar in relation to “Hassan’s social media activities and public comments” after Akkad criticised al-Omar for allegedly failing to deliver on his financial pledges during the donations campaign.

Public Prosecutor Judge Hossam Khattab confirmed last week that Akkad had been detained due to warrants issued against him for failing to present himself to the Cybercrime Control Division in relation to al-Omar’s complaint. Khattab also said other plaintiffs had filed cases against Akkad for slander and defamation.

The activist’s release on Sunday came after al-Omar told Al Jazeera that he had instructed his lawyer to withdraw the complaint against Akkad, and said that everything pledged to the campaign had been paid.

On Sunday, al-Omar again posted on X that he had withdrawn the complaint against Akkad.

“My legal representative dropped the right and the lawsuit against my brother Hassan this morning and pardoned him for the sake of Almighty God … I was saddened by what he brought upon himself, and I wish him success in his social media activities and I will always be a supporter of him,” he wrote in Arabic.

Akkad, who is also a filmmaker, was imprisoned twice by President Bashar al-Assad’s regime for documenting anti-government protests in 2011.

After fleeing Syria, he stayed in the Middle East before making an 87-day journey across Europe to reach the UK in September 2015.

Video of his gruelling trip was included in the documentary series, Exodus: Our Journey to Europe, which went on to win a British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) Award.

Syrian journalist Mousa al-Omar reportedly filed a complaint about Akkad’s social media comments prior to his arrest.

British Syrian activist Hassan Akkad has been detained by security forces in Damascus, in an alleged response to his online comments criticising a prominent journalist.

Akkad, founder of the Give Us the Money That You Owe! campaign, was taken into custody on Wednesday at about 9:45pm local time (18:45 GMT) while at a cafe in the capital’s al-Malki neighbourhood, the statement said.

His detention appears to be related to a legal complaint filed by Syrian journalist and presenter Mousa al-Omar in relation to “Hassan’s social media activities and public comments”, the campaign reported.

It added that he was summoned by the cybersecurity branch on June 4. Al Jazeera understands that Akkad is still detained.

“He later became aware that additional cases had also been filed against him, although he was not informed of the identities of the complainants,” the campaign said.

Al Jazeera reached out to the Syrian government regarding he case but has yet to receive a response regarding the activist’s arrest.
Public Prosecutor Judge Hossam Khattab confirmed that Akkad had been detained due to a search warrant being issued for him, but that the case against him had been dropped.

Al-Omar told Al Jazeera that he had instructed his lawyer to tell the police that he had dropped the case against Akkad and said he was “saddened” by what had happened.

“I am sorry for what happened to Hassan as a result of his mistakes; I followed the legal path under the cybercrime law… Everything I pledged, amounting to $700,000 in projects and cash, was paid in the donations,” he said.

Akkad’s campaign tracks financial commitments related to a public drive for donations to fund Syria’s reconstruction since the ouster of President Bashar al-Assad.

The activist reportedly criticised al-Omar on social media in recent weeks for allegedly failing to deliver on his financial pledges to the country’s rehabilitation efforts, pledges he claimed were worth thousands of dollars.

The campaign said after Akkad was summoned, he paused his online activities related to the case, to “allow the investigation and legal process to proceed”.

Akkad, a refugee and former English teacher in his late 30s, previously won BAFTA and International Emmy awards for documenting his journey from Turkiye to Europe after fleeing the Syrian civil war that began in 2011, during which he was arrested by the al-Assad’s authorities.

He eventually settled in the United Kingdom in 2015, returning to Syria after years in exile when al-Assad fled the country.

According to witness accounts cited in the statement, five plainclothes security officers entered the coffee shop where Akkad was meeting with several journalists.

Witnesses said the officers initially requested Akkad’s mobile phone before informing him that he was being arrested.

His lawyers said the arrest raises questions about whether authorities followed established legal procedures.

“No legal basis for the arrest … was presented at the time of his detention,” the statement said,

It added that since the allegations appear to be related to his online commentary, the arrest raises “broader concerns regarding the protection of freedom of expression”.

The statement further questioned the reported use of a cybersecurity law enacted during the rule of al-Assad, arguing that reliance on such legislation “appears inconsistent with the interim government’s commitments to expand protections for freedom of expression following the collapse of the previous regime”.