Human Rights

Tehran, Iran – Iran’s judiciary has promised to continue taking “decisive” action against people it accuses of working for foreign interests as it reports more executions and asset seizures.

Judiciary and security authorities said they will “act decisively against the enemies’ mercenaries without leniency until the very last one”, according to a state television report aired late on Monday.

The report came hours after judicial authorities executed three men who were arrested in the northeastern city of Mashhad during nationwide protests in January, which top officials have called a “coup” attempt led by the United States and Israel.

State media aired what it presented as confessions by the men, who were labelled “agents” of the Israeli intelligence service Mossad and “leaders of riots” by the authorities. The report said the men acted against the government by using knives and swords against paramilitary Basij forces and damaging public property.

An increasing number of prisoners have been hanged over recent weeks, particularly since the start of the US-Israel war on Iran on February 28. The executions are connected to the antiestablishment protests, during which thousands of people were killed amid a state-imposed internet shutdown.

In Isfahan last week, 21-year-old Sasan Azadvar was executed for “cooperation with the enemy” for acts that included, according to the judiciary, “attacking a minibus carrying security forces with stones and a club and breaking windows of public buses and private vehicles”.

The authorities maintained that while the judicial process has been significantly speeded up for those arrested in connection with the protests, the proceedings remain legal and executions are carried out after being greenlit by Supreme Court judges.

Foreign-based human rights organisations and opponents of Iran’s government have said prisoners are not given fair trials and their families are pressured into remaining silent about arrests and executions, charges Iranian authorities reject.

A number of prisoners have also been executed after being convicted of espionage for Israel and other national security charges. Security offences can lead to a conviction of moharebeh, or “waging war against God”, and other sentences that carry the death penalty.

Earlier this week, two men were hanged for allegedly sending images of military facilities to the Mossad, trying to recruit others for sabotage activities and calling security authorities with fabricated leads to divert them.

Multiple members of the Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK), a foreign-based group considered a “terrorist” outfit by Iranian authorities, have also been executed over recent weeks.

Foreign-based human rights organisations reported that Iranian authorities have in 2025 and 2026 carried out the largest number of hangings since 1989 when political dissidents and MEK members received death sentences in large numbers.

A report by Iran Human Rights and Together Against the Death Penalty last month said at least 1,639 executions were recorded in 2025, which was 68 percent higher than the year before.

The United Nations confirmed at the end of April that since the start of this year’s war, at least 21 people have been executed and more than 4,000 arrested on national security-related charges. Iranian authorities have not commented on the figures.

Economic measures

Iranian authorities have also confiscated the private assets of Iranians inside and outside the country in response to perceived antiestablishment activities.

The latest such move was announced on Tuesday morning when the judiciary announced that authorities in Semnan province, located east of Tehran, had seized the assets of 22 “traitors to the nation and people who are linked with the Zionist regime [Israel] and hostile countries”.

During the naval blockade imposed by the US, which has exacerbated the already dire economic conditions in Iran, authorities have also warned that they will act against any disruptive measures, such as hoarding goods, and have threatened prison time of up to 20 years, lashings and fines for anyone convicted.

Judiciary chief Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei also warned that those hoarding, price gouging or selling expired goods will be met with “decisive” legal action.

Prices surged this week across the country, especially for food, medicine, cars and electronic devices. And there are potentially challenging times ahead with little sign of a lasting resolution to the conflict with the US and Israel despite an ongoing ceasefire.

“The current price levels are unacceptable. The price increases are due to the war tumult and sanctions,” Central Bank of Iran chief Abdolnasser Hemmati said on Tuesday. “But the people should not be worried because their resistance is working and, God willing, victory will be achieved soon.”

The attack, the second in a week, follows months of relative calm in the city after government forces regained control last year.

A drone strike carried out by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has killed five civilians in Khartoum, according to an NGO.

The attack, which Emergency Lawyers, an independent legal group supporting victims of human rights violations in Sudan, reported on Saturday, is the second to take place in the capital within a week. It follows months of relative calm in the city after government forces regained control last year.

The NGO said it holds the RSF fully responsible for the strike, accusing the group of breaching international humanitarian law.

Emergency Lawyers said the incident forms part of an ongoing pattern of attacks on civilians. Nearly 700 civilians were killed in drone strikes in the first three months of this year, according to UN figures.

‘Completely free’

On Tuesday, a drone struck a hospital in the Jebel Awliya area, around 40 kilometres (25 miles) south of central Khartoum, a security source and eyewitnesses told the AFP news agency. It was the first such attack in the area in months.

The Sudanese army, which now enjoys a solid grip in the north and east, launched a rapid counteroffensive last year that pushed the paramilitary forces out of the capital.

Following intense fighting around the capital last year, Sudan’s military government declared the Khartoum region “completely free” of RSF.

Since then, the RSF has largely concentrated on expanding its control in its stronghold in the western Darfur region and pushing into neighbouring areas, capturing valuable oil-producing assets.

Violence has also spread to southeastern Blue Nile state near the border with Ethiopia, raising fears of a more prolonged and fragmented conflict.

The RSF carried out a series of drone strikes on Khartoum last year, largely targeting military sites, power stations and water infrastructure.

In recent months, however, the capital has seen relative calm. More than 1.8 million displaced residents have returned, and the airport has resumed domestic flights. That said, much of the city remains without electricity or basic services.

The conflict between the Sudanese government and the RSF – a former ally – began in April 2023. Since then, around 14 million people have been displaced and two-thirds of the population are in urgent need of humanitarian support, according to the United Nations.

Mohammadi has lost consciousness twice and suffered a severe cardiac crisis, her foundation has announced.

Iranian human rights activist and 2023 Nobel Peace Prize laureate Narges Mohammadi has been transferred from prison to a hospital due to a sharp decline in her health.

Mohammadi had two episodes of complete loss of consciousness and a severe cardiac crisis, her foundation announced on Friday.

“This transfer was done as an unavoidable necessity after prison doctors determined her condition could not be managed on-site, despite standing medical recommendations that she be treated by her specialized team in Tehran,” the Narges Mohammadi Foundation said.

Earlier on Friday, Mohammadi had fainted twice in prison in Zanjan in northwestern Iran, according to the foundation.

She was believed to have suffered a heart attack in late March, according to her lawyers, who visited her a few days after the incident. At the time, she appeared pale, underweight and needed a nurse to help her walk.

‘Life-threatening mistreatment’

Mohammadi, 53, has been imprisoned since December 12 after she was arrested during a visit to the eastern Iranian city of Mashhad.

In February, she was sentenced to more than seven years in prison. Her lawyer said six years of that sentence was for the accusation of “gathering and collusion to commit crimes”.

Her family said in February that her health was worsening in prison, in part because of an alleged beating she had endured during her arrest in December. They said multiple men hit and kicked her in her side, head and neck.

The Nobel committee condemned the “ongoing life-threatening mistreatment” of Mohammadi in a statement in February.

The Iranian government has not commented on the alleged attack.

Prior to her arrest in December, Mohammadi had already been serving a sentence of 13 years and nine months on charges of collusion against state security and propaganda against Iran’s government, but had been released on furlough since late 2024 due to medical concerns.

Warning follows Jewish man’s arrest over brutal attack in which a nun was pushed and kicked in Jerusalem this week.

The head of a Greek Orthodox Church in Jerusalem has condemned a brutal attack on a nun in the city earlier in the week and warned of growing concerns over the future for Christians living in the Holy Land.

Archbishop Atallah Hanna said on Facebook that “the attack on a nun in the city of Jerusalem comes amid escalating violations against Christian institutions in the city”.

He added that “this reflects increasing concerns about the future of the historic Christian presence in the Holy Land”.

In his post, which was accompanied by a video, he warned that such attacks “are no longer isolated incidents, but part of a recurring pattern that threatens the Christian presence,” calling for international action to stop them.

On Thursday, Israeli police released a video showing what witnesses said was an attack by a Jewish man on a French nun in Jerusalem on Tuesday.

Video footage showed the man following the nun, forcibly pushing her to the ground, causing an injury to her head, then briefly walking away before returning to kick her as she lay on the ground, before bystanders intervened.

According to The Times of Israel, police said they had arrested a Jewish man suspected of assaulting the nun in Jerusalem.

“The suspect, a 36-year-old male, was identified and subsequently arrested by police,” the police said in a statement on Wednesday, adding it viewed with “utmost severity” any violent act “driven by potentially racist motives and directed toward members of the clergy”.

Father Olivier Poquillon, director of Jerusalem’s French School of Biblical and Archaeological Research, told the AFP news agency the 48-year-old nun is a researcher at the institution and did not wish to speak publicly.

Rising attacks on Christians

Attacks on Christian communities in occupied East Jerusalem and Israel have risen in recent years, according to the Rossing Center for Education and Dialogue, which tracks such incidents.

Churches in Jerusalem have repeatedly called on Israeli authorities to act decisively to put a stop to them.

On Tuesday, Israel’s Foreign Ministry called the incident a “shameful act” in a statement on X.

“In a city sacred to Jews, Christians, and Muslims alike, we remain committed to protecting all communities and ensuring those responsible for violence are held accountable,” the ministry added.

Last month, a viral photograph showing an Israeli soldier smashing a statue of Jesus Christ in southern Lebanon with a sledgehammer caused outrage.

The military said an investigation had been opened and that “appropriate measures will be taken against those involved in accordance with the findings”.

Israel later said the soldier had been jailed for 30 days, along with another soldier who had been filming him. Six other soldiers have been summoned for questioning.

Israel’s military reportedly seized 22 vessels sailing among the Global Sumud Flotilla.

More than ‌160 activists on board aid ships forming a flotilla bound for Gaza have been taken to the Greek ⁠island of Crete ⁠after Israeli forces seized their vessels in international waters near Greece earlier this week, Freedom Flotilla organisers have said.

The organisers told the Reuters news agency on Friday that 168 members of the flotilla crew had been taken to Crete while two activists remained with Israeli authorities.

According to the group’s tracker, 22 boats have been intercepted so far by Israel, while 47 others are still sailing.

On Wednesday, Israeli military forces intercepted the boats travelling with the Global Sumud Flotilla from Barcelona in Spain, using drones, communications jamming technology, and armed raiding parties to halt the humanitarian fleet in the middle of the Mediterranean as it headed to Gaza, according to organisers and Israeli media.

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said the activists on the intercepted boats would be taken to Greece.

On Friday, an Israeli army ship transferred 168 members of the flotilla crew to Greek boats, which then took them to Crete, where buses and an ambulance car waited for them, organisers said and Reuters footage showed.

A source who asked not to be identified also told Reuters that the remaining 47 boats at sea were still sailing off southern Crete and planned to anchor there at some point before continuing onwards to Gaza.

Each ship is carrying about a tonne of food, medical supplies and other equipment, the source added.

‘A straight-up attack’

In an interview with Al Jazeera on Wednesday, Gur Tsabar, a spokesperson for the Global Sumud Flotilla, described Israel’s boarding of its vessels as “a straight-up attack on unarmed civilian boats in international waters”.

“This is illegal under international law. Israel has no jurisdiction in these waters. Boarding these boats amounts to illegal detention, potentially kidnapping on the high seas,” Tsabar added.

Officials around the globe have condemned the interception of the boats bound for Gaza as a violation of international law, with Turkiye calling it an “act of piracy”.

“By targeting the Global Sumud Flotilla, whose mission is to draw attention to the humanitarian catastrophe faced by the innocent people of Gaza, Israel has also violated humanitarian principles and international law,” Turkiye’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement.

Spain called the interception “illegal”, while Germany and Italy expressed “great concern” and called for the release of detainees.

But in a statement on Thursday, the US Department of State threatened “to impose consequences” against those who support the flotilla, which it cast as “pro-Hamas”.

Pro-Palestinian activists say Israel and the United States wrongly conflate their advocacy for Palestinian rights with support for Hamas fighters.

Last October, Israel’s military intercepted about 40 boats from the first Global Sumud Flotilla as they tried to carry aid to besieged Gaza, arresting more than 450 participants, including the grandson of South African leader Nelson Mandela, Swedish campaigner Greta Thunberg and Member of European Parliament Rima Hassan.

Detained and taken to Israel, several of the flotilla activists claimed they were subjected to physical and psychological abuse while in Israeli custody.

Israel later expelled the arrested crew members and activists.

The move comes as part of a larger prisoner pardon tied to a Buddhist religious holiday.

Myanmar’s ⁠former leader Aung San ⁠Suu Kyi ⁠has been moved to house ‌arrest, state media report, more than five years after the military toppled the civilian government that the Nobel laureate had led and jailed her.

President Min Aung Hlaing, who ordered the coup in 2021, said in a statement on Thursday that he “commuted the remaining sentence to be served at the designated residence”.

State media broadcast a photograph of Suu Kyi seated on a ‌wooden bench and flanked by two uniformed personnel – the first public image of the democracy campaigner in years.

Translation: Change the location where Daw Aung San Suu Kyi is serving her sentence (change her remaining sentences to continue serving at her designated residence).

Earlier on Thursday, authorities had announced her prison sentence was being reduced as part of a larger prisoner pardon tied to a Buddhist religious holiday. State media said in addition to the amnesty granted to 1,519 prisoners, including 11 foreigners, the sentences of remaining convicted prisoners were cut by a sixth.

Suu Kyi was originally sentenced to 33 years in prison in late 2022 for several offences that her supporters and rights groups described as attempts to discredit her and legitimise the army takeover that removed her from office and to prevent her return to politics.

Thursday’s amnesty, the second applied to her in recent weeks, would bring her sentence down to 18 years with more than 13 years left to serve, according to the calculation.

The decision to move the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize winner to house arrest was welcomed as a “meaningful step” towards a “credible political process”, a spokesman for United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said.

“We appreciate the commutation of Aung San Suu Kyi to a so-called house arrest in a designated residence. It is a meaningful step towards conditions conducive to a credible political process,” Stephane Dujarric told reporters.

He reiterated the UN’s call for the “swift release” of all political prisoners in Myanmar.

“It is good to hear that the house arrest has been confirmed, but we haven’t received any direct notification,” a member of Suu Kyi’s legal team told the Reuters news agency.

“We only found out about it from the news announcement.”

More amnesties for other prisoners

The amnesty is the second in two weeks after one on April 17 when more than 4,500 prisoners were granted amnesty.

The amnesties come after Min Aung Hlaing was sworn into office as president on April 10 after an election that critics said was neither free nor fair and was orchestrated to maintain the military’s tight grip on power.

In his inauguration speech, he said his government would grant amnesties aimed at promoting social reconciliation, justice and peace.

Suu Kyi, who is now 80 years old, has been serving her prison term at an undisclosed location in the capital, Naypyitaw.

Information about her condition has remained tightly controlled. Reports in 2024 and 2025 indicated declining health, including low blood pressure, dizziness and heart problems, but these claims could not be independently verified. Her legal team has not been allowed to meet her in person since December 2022.

The 2021 army takeover triggered enormous public resistance that was brutally suppressed, triggering a bloody civil war that has killed thousands of people.

According to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, a rights monitoring organisation, 22,047 people have been in detention in Myanmar since the army takeover.

Suu Kyi spent almost 15 years as a political prisoner under house arrest between 1989 and 2010. Her tough stand against military rule in Myanmar turned her into a symbol of nonviolent struggle for democracy.

President Alexandr Lukashenko is hoping to improve relations with the West once more.

Belarus has released Polish-Belarusian journalist Andrzej Poczobut from jail as part of a prisoner exchange.

Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk confirmed the release on Tuesday, noting that Warsaw had been helped in a joint diplomatic push on Minsk by the United States, Romania and Moldova.

The prisoner swap with Poland saw 10 prisoners released overall, with signs that Belarusian President Alexandr Lukashenko is hoping to improve relations with the West once more. Ties have deteriorated due to his support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Poczobut was detained by Belarusian authorities in 2021 and later sentenced to eight years in a labour camp after a trial widely criticised by rights groups and Western governments as politically motivated.

Concerns had grown in recent years about his health while in detention.

“Andrzej Poczobut is free! Welcome to your Polish home, my friend,” Tusk posted on social media.

Belarus also ⁠released Polish priest ⁠Grzegorz Gawel and a Belarusian who helped Polish ‌services, whose name was not to be revealed, ⁠the Polish leader added.

‌Russians and Moldovans were also among the prisoners swapped in a “five ⁠for ⁠five” exchange.

Joint-effort

Tusk also noted that the release followed lengthy diplomatic efforts.

“The exchange at the Polish-Belarusian border is the finale of a two-year-long intricate diplomatic game, full of dramatic twists,” he said.

“It succeeded thanks to the outstanding work of our services, diplomats and prosecutors, as well as the tremendous help from our American, Romanian and Moldovan friends.”

The announcement came hours after Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski published a photograph of a meeting with US Special Envoy to Belarus John Coale, saying the pair had discussed “important issues”.

Coale later said that the US had helped to secure the release of three Polish nationals and two Moldovans.

“We thank Poland, Moldova, and Romania for their invaluable support in this effort, as well as President Lukashenko’s willingness to pursue constructive engagement with the United States,” he said.

“Under President Trump, America shows up for its allies and delivers diplomatic victories no one else can,” he claimed.

Poczobut, who had worked as a correspondent for the Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza, has been arrested numerous times in Belarus over the past decade.

In 2011, he was fined and jailed for 15 days for his participation in protests following Belarus’s 2010 presidential election. He was later detained again in 2011 and 2012 on accusations of insulting Lukashenko.

His cases drew international condemnation, with the European Parliament, Reporters Without Borders and Amnesty International among organisations calling for his release.

Earlier this year, the European Parliament awarded Poczobut and Georgian journalist Mzia Amaglobeli the Sakharov Prize.

Rights groups have described the move as a “blatant abuse of power”.

Bahrain has stripped dozens of people of their citizenship for allegedly supporting Iranian attacks on the country.

Bahrain’s Ministry of Interior announced on Monday that it had revoked the citizenship of 69 people, some of whom were related, after accusing them of sympathising with Iran and “colluding with foreign entities”. The move comes after Tehran carried out strikes on facilities in Bahrain as part of the war launched against Iran by Israel and the United States.

The directive, issued by King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa, stated that all 69 people were “of non-Bahraini origin”. Under Bahraini law, a person can be stripped of citizenship if they are deemed to have caused harm to the country or shown disloyalty.

The London-based Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy described the move as “dangerous” and a clear violation of international law.

The organisation said the individuals had not been publicly identified, and it remained unclear whether they had been arrested, whether they were inside or outside Bahrain, and whether they held another nationality.

Iranian strikes

Tehran began striking its Gulf neighbours on February 28, shortly after Israel and the United States began the war by launching attacks on Iran.

Tehran accused the targeted countries of allowing the US to conduct its strikes from their territory. Iran’s retaliatory attacks reportedly caused significant damage to US military sites across the region, including a Navy base in Bahrain, which was hit by missiles and drones.

Iran ceased its attacks on Gulf neighbours on April 9, following the introduction of a ceasefire brokered by Pakistan. Negotiations to permanently end the war are ongoing three weeks later.

Bahrain’s Shia population has long accused authorities of marginalising them. During the Arab Spring in 2011, mass protests against the country’s leadership broke out. The Bahraini government has long blamed Iran for fomenting unrest against it.

Israel has violated the so-called Gaza “ceasefire” more than 2,400 times in the more than six months since the agreement was reached. Al Jazeera’s Hala Al Shami gives an overview of the deteriorating situation.

Hamas says the Israeli escalation represents the failure of the international community to uphold the truce in Gaza.

Israeli forces have killed 12 Palestinians in attacks throughout Gaza, medical sources in the enclave tell Al Jazeera, as Israel continues its daily violations of the ceasefire struck last year.

An Israeli attack on a police vehicle on Friday killed at least eight people, including three civilian bystanders, in Khan Younis. A separate attack in Gaza City also killed two police officers.

Two other people were killed in the bombing of a house in Beit Lahiya in northern Gaza.

Gaza’s Ministry of Interior called on the international community on Friday to intervene and end the Israeli targeting of local police forces working to restore security in civilian areas.

It said the attack in Khan Younis came after security forces intervened to break up a fight in the area.

“The continued silence of international organisations … regarding the targeting of civilian police officers constitutes complicity with the Israeli occupation, encouraging it to commit further crimes against a civilian institution protected under international law,” the ministry said.

“We emphasise that the police force provides services to citizens in the Gaza Strip across various aspects of daily life. There is absolutely no justification for targeting it or killing its personnel.”

Israel has been systemically killing police officers in Gaza, as it allies itself with criminal gangs in the occupied territory.

During its genocidal war on Gaza, which started in October 2023, the Israeli military regularly targeted officers securing aid convoys, which led to intensified looting. That, in turn, deepened the hunger crisis that Israel imposed on the territory.

A ceasefire, brokered by United States President Donald Trump, came into effect in October of last year. That decreased the intensity of the Israeli bombardment.

But Israel has nevertheless continued its attacks on the territory, killing at least 984 people and injuring 2,235 others since the truce was announced, according to health authorities.

Just this week, Israeli strikes killed five people, including three children, on Wednesday.

The overall death toll in the war has surpassed 72,500, with more than 172,000 others injured. Thousands of missing people are believed to be dead and buried under the destroyed buildings.

The number of confirmed casualties represents more than 7 percent of the enclave’s population of two million people. The Israeli assault also turned most of Gaza’s structures into piles of rubble.

Leading rights groups and United Nations investigators have concluded that the Israeli military campaign amounts to genocide: an effort to destroy the Palestinian people.

Under the far-right government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel has continued to bomb Gaza as it simultaneously attacks south Lebanon, in violation of a separate truce with Hezbollah.

Hamas on Friday called the deadly attacks in Gaza part of the Israeli government’s “unprecedented bloody, fascist approach”.

“This escalation … by the government of the war criminal Netanyahu represents a clear failure of the role of the mediators and guarantors [of the ceasefire] and the international community to quell the barbaric Zionist killing machine,” it said.

More than six months into the ceasefire, Trump has struggled to implement the 12-point plan on which the truce was based.

Israel continues to occupy most of Gaza. Reconstruction in the territory has not begun. An international security force envisioned by the agreement has not been formed.

In February, Trump convened his so-called Board of Peace that is supposed to govern Gaza through a council of Palestinian technocrats, but it is not clear when or how these forces will take over government agencies in the territory.

Judge had previously blocked move to end temporary legal status for those who entered US via Biden-era application.

The administration of President Donald Trump plans to again end the temporary legal status of hundreds of thousands of people who applied for asylum in the United States via the CBP One app.

The plan was detailed in a court filing in Boston, Massachusetts, and comes after a judge ruled that Trump’s earlier effort to terminate the legal status of those individuals was unlawful.

Under US President Joe Biden, individuals who registered for an appointment with US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) were preliminarily vetted and granted temporary legal status in the US as their asylum cases were adjudicated.

About 900,000 people were granted so-called humanitarian parole under the programme.

But in April of last year, just months after Trump took office for a second term, many of those individuals received emails saying their status had been terminated.

The message told its recipients it was “time for you to leave the United States”.

Federal Judge Allison Burroughs subsequently ruled that the Department of Homeland Security did not follow the proper procedures in terminating the legal status immigration status of CBP One users.

The US Department of Justice, in the new filings, told Burroughs that the Trump administration was complying with ⁠her order.

However, the department said the administration would begin issuing new parole termination notices, pursuant to a Tuesday memo from CBP’s head, Rodney Scott.

The memo is not public, but according to the Justice Department, Scott provided ‌an explanation for why, in his opinion, “parole is no longer appropriate for those aliens”.

Lawyers for Democracy Forward and Massachusetts Law Reform Institute, which represent the individuals whose status faces termination, urged Burroughs in a subsequent filing to prevent what they called a “deliberate attempt to evade compliance with the court’s order”.

The next hearing was set for May 6.

During his second term, Trump has pursued a hardline immigration policy that has included staunching nearly all asylum claims at the southern border.

Shortly after taking office, Trump’s officials also dissolved the CBP One app and relaunched it as CBP Home, a tool for self-deportation.

His administration has claimed there was an “invasion” at the border that constituted a “national emergency”, thereby allowing Trump to bypass legal requirements to allow individuals seeking asylum into the country.

Asylum, however, is a right enshrined both in domestic and international law, to protect people fleeing persecution on the basis of race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a particular social group.

Separately, on Friday, a federal appeals court ruled against the Trump administration’s ban on asylum at the southern US border, potentially clearing the way for applications to once again be processed.

The administration is expected to appeal the decision.

Judges say Trump’s order for swift removal at the border ‘cast aside federal laws affording’ right to seek asylum.

An appeals court has ruled that President Donald Trump’s ban on asylum applications in the United States is unlawful, dealing a setback to the administration’s immigration crackdown.

In a decision released on Friday, a three-judge panel from the US Court of Appeals in Washington, DC, found that existing laws — namely the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) — give people the right to apply for asylum at the border.

Trump had issued the asylum ban in a proclamation on January 20, 2025, on the first day of his second term.

But the appeals court questioned whether suspending asylum unilaterally was within the president’s power.

“Congress did not intend to grant the Executive the expansive removal authority it asserts,” the ruling said.

“The Proclamation and Guidance are thus unlawful to the extent that they circumvent the INA’s removal procedures and cast aside federal laws affording individuals the right to apply and be considered for asylum or withholding of removal protections.”

The decision validated a ruling by a lower court. While the judges blocked Trump’s order, it is unclear what its immediate impact will be. Already, the White House has signalled it plans to appeal.

Trump made immigration a major pillar of his 2024 re-election campaign, pledging to repel what he describes as an “invasion” of migrants by shutting down the southern border of the US.

Asylum in the US can be granted to people facing “persecution based on race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or membership in a particular social group”. Such protections have been recognised as a fundamental human right under international law.

But unauthorised border crossings reached record levels during the administration of President Joe Biden, which had itself imposed asylum restrictions.

Millions of migrants — many suffering from gang violence and political persecution in Central and South America — have claimed asylum upon reaching the US.

Nearly 945,000 filed for asylum in 2023, according to the Department of Homeland Security.

In his January 2025 decree, Trump suspended “the physical entry of aliens involved in an invasion into the United States across the southern border”.

The proclamation was quickly challenged in court, as other measures in Trump’s immigration crackdown have been.

But the appeals court panel concluded that the INA does not authorise the president to remove the plaintiffs under “procedures of his own making”.

Nor does it allow him to suspend the plaintiffs’ right to apply for asylum or curtail procedures for adjudicating claims of torture and persecution.

“The power by proclamation to temporarily suspend the entry of specified foreign individuals into the United States does not contain implicit authority to override the INA’s mandatory process to summarily remove foreign individuals,” wrote Judge J Michelle Childs, a Biden appointee.

The Trump administration will likely appeal the ruling to the full appellate court and subsequently to the Supreme Court.

The White House stressed after the court’s decision that banning asylum is part of Trump’s constitutional powers as commander-in-chief.

“We have liberal judges across the country who are acting against this president for political purposes. They are not acting as true litigators of the law. They are looking at these cases from a political lens,” White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt told reporters.

Press freedom advocates have warned of hostile rhetoric towards journalists and increasingly restrictive policies under Milei.

The administration of Argentina’s Javier Milei has restricted access to the presidential palace, the Casa Rosada, as part of an escalating feud with the country’s journalists.

Accredited journalists reportedly arrived at the Casa Rosada on Thursday and attempted to enter the building through fingerprint scanning, as they usually would.

But they were unable to pass the scan. As confusion hit the news corps, the head of Argentina’s Secretariat of Communication and Press issued a clarification that their press accreditation had not been revoked.

“The decision to remove the fingerprints of journalists accredited to the Casa Rosada was taken as a preventive measure in response to a complaint filed by the Military Household regarding illegal espionage,” Secretary Javier Lanari wrote on social media.

“The sole objective is to guarantee national security.”

Lanari’s post cites an incident wherein two journalists from the Argentinian channel TN were accused of secretly filming inside the government palace.

After their report was broadcast, the Milei administration accused the journalists of endangering government security by showing parts of the Casa Rosada that were reportedly off limits.

On Wednesday, Milei himself took to social media to call the journalists “repugnant trash”. He then challenged other members of the news media to justify their actions.

“I would love to see that filthy scum — the 95% who carry press credentials — come out and defend what these two criminals did,” Milei wrote on X.

Since then, the president has repeatedly reposted messages critical of the news media, often accompanied by the acronym “NOLSALP” or “NOL$ALP”. It stands for: “We don’t hate journalists enough.”

“Someday, that filthy journalistic scum (95%) will have to understand that they are not above the law. They abused legal precedent. It does not come without a price,” Milei added in one of his posts on Thursday, as he continued to slam the news media.

This week’s actions are the latest in a series of policy changes under Milei designed to tighten restrictions on journalists.

Last year, for instance, his government capped entry to certain rooms in the Casa Rosada and placed other areas out of bounds.

Critics say the policies are part of a wider broadside against journalism in Argentina. The media advocacy group Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has said that, since Milei took office in 2023, the country has seen “a sharp decline in press freedom”.

And PEN International, an organisation for writers, warned last year of a “serious deterioration” in free-speech rights.

It pointed to legislation that further restricted which government documents could be made public and to Milei’s dismantling of public media, as well as the installation of a “mute” button to silence journalists during news conferences.

Already, the decision to bar journalists from entry into the Casa Rosada has faced pushback, including from Argentinian lawmakers.

Marcela Pagano, a former journalist turned deputy in Argentina’s legislature, announced on Thursday that she had filed a criminal complaint against Milei.

“The Casa Rosada is not private property,” Pagano wrote in a statement.

“Still less does a head of state — or his henchmen officials — have the authority to decide whether the press may access the building.”

She called Thursday’s incident “an unprecedented occurrence since the return of democracy” in Argentina in 1983.

“Prohibiting journalists from exercising their freedom of expression is the first step toward silencing any dissenting voice — a situation that we in Argentina have experienced during our country’s darkest moments,” she added. “THEY WILL NOT SILENCE US.”

Rights advocates have accused the Trump administration of using third-country deportations to intimidate asylum seekers and migrants.

Fifteen South American migrants and asylum seekers recently deported from the United States to the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) say they are facing pressure to return to their countries of origin, despite concerns for their safety.

Women from Colombia, Peru and Ecuador told the Reuters news agency that, since being deported to the Central African nation last week, they have been given no credible options other than going back to their home countries.

“We feel pressured to agree to go back to our country, regardless of the risks,” a 29-year-old Colombian woman, who asked to remain anonymous out of fear of reprisals, told Reuters.

The group arrived in the DRC last week as part of a controversial third-country agreement with the administration of US President Donald Trump.

Since returning to the presidency for a second term, Trump has implemented hardline measures to restrict immigration to the US and expel immigrants already in the country, some of whom have legal status.

Among the 15 South Americans who were deported to the DRC, some say they had sought asylum — a legal immigration process — in the US after fleeing persecution in their home countries.

The 29-year-old woman, for example, wrote in her asylum application in January 2024 that she left Colombia after being kidnapped and tortured by an armed group, as well as suffering abuse at the hands of her ex-husband, who was a police officer.

A US immigration judge ruled in May 2025 that she was more likely than not to be tortured if she was sent home, according to court records reviewed by Reuters.

The AFP news agency also reported that a 30-year-old Colombian woman named Gabriela only learned that she was being sent to the DRC a day before last week’s flight. During a 27-hour trip, the hands and feet of the deportees were shackled.

“I didn’t want to go to Congo,” she told AFP. “I’m scared; I don’t know the language.”

Immigration advocates have said that third-country deportations are an effort to intimidate migrants and asylum seekers into agreeing to leave the US.

Such removals involve sending immigrants to places with which they have no familiarity. Many, including the DRC, are known for human rights concerns or are sites of active conflict.

“The goal is clear: Put people in a place so unfamiliar that they give up and agree to return home, despite the immense risk they face there,” said Alma David, a US-based lawyer representing one of the asylum seekers in the DRC.

Washington, DC – Requests for legal support related to pro-Palestine advocacy remained high in the United States last year, as President Donald Trump threatened activists and universities with penalties.

In an annual report released on Tuesday, Palestine Legal, an organisation that “supports the movement for Palestinian freedom in the US”, said it received 1,131 queries for legal support in 2025.

The figure is below the record 2,184 requests the group received in 2024, when pro-Palestine protests swept US campuses — and were regularly met with crackdowns from both school administrators and law enforcement.

Despite universities enacting new restrictions on protests across the country, the figures from 2025 show that pro-Palestine advocacy has persisted, according to Dima Khalidi, the executive director of Palestine Legal.

“Our 2025 year-end report shows that while universities have largely cowered and caved to coercive pressure from the Trump administration and its pro-Israel supporters, student activists for Palestinian and collective freedom remain a model of moral conviction and courage,” Khalidi said.

“Even when facing punitive consequences for speaking out, they are holding the line of dissent against injustice from the US to Palestine, because they understand the cost of surrender for all of us.”

Palestine Legal said that the “overwhelming majority of requests” for legal support came from university students and faculty in 2025, but a growing number, 122, were categorised as “immigration and border-related”.

The group received 851 requests from people or organisations targeted for their Palestine-related advocacy, as well as 280 more asking for legal guidance on conducting advocacy.

Despite the drop from 2024, the rate of complaints last year remained 300 percent higher than in 2022, the year before Israel began its genocidal war in Gaza on October 7, 2023.

Since then, at least 72,560 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza.

Pressure campaigns

In 2024, Trump campaigned for a second term in the White House in part on a pledge to crack down on the pro-Palestinian protest movement, which sought to shine a light on the human rights abuses unfolding during the war.

He has framed such protests as anti-Semitic, and since his inauguration in 2025, he has led a campaign to penalise schools that played host to pro-Palestinian activism.

To date, five universities have struck deals with Trump after he threatened to withhold billions in federal funding. They include Columbia University, where a pro-Palestine encampment and resulting police crackdown drew international attention.

Columbia eventually reached a $200m settlement with the Trump administration and moved to make several policy changes it said were aimed at combatting anti-Semitism.

Rights groups have condemned such policies as conflating pro-Palestine advocacy with anti-Jewish sentiment. They also warn that Trump’s actions risk dampening free speech, a protected right under the First Amendment of the US Constitution.

All told, nearly 80 of the students who took part in Columbia’s protests faced serious academic discipline, including expulsions, suspensions, and degree revocations, as of July 2025.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration used immigration enforcement to target pro-Palestine protesters and advocates, including scholars like Rumeysa Ozturk, Mohsen Mahdawi, Badar Khan Suri and Mahmoud Khalil.

To date, the deportation proceedings against Ozturk, who was in the US on a student visa, and Mahdawi, a US permanent resident detained at his citizenship hearing, have been abandoned.

Ozturk has since voluntarily returned to her native Turkiye after completing her doctoral studies at Tufts University.

The government is still proceeding with deportation efforts against Khan Suri, a Georgetown University researcher, and Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University graduate and permanent US resident.

Separately, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) raided five homes connected to pro-Palestine activists at the University of Michigan in April 2025, sparking outrage. Federal authorities seized properties, but no arrests were made.

Legal victories

Despite the restrictive climate across the country, Palestine Legal hailed a string of legal victories in 2025 that upheld the right to pro-Palestinian protest.

Last August, for instance, a federal court dismissed a complaint that sought to penalise UNRWA USA, a non-profit that supports the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), under the Antiterrorism Act of 1990.

A separate lawsuit launched by Palestine Legal and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) charged that the University of Maryland had tread on the free speech rights of students by banning Students for Justice in Palestine (UMD SJP). That case resulted in a $100,000 settlement.

Meanwhile, federal judges have sided with Harvard University and the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), in their challenges to the Trump administration’s defunding efforts.

“The fights that Palestine Legal and our partners have waged affirm that the Trump administration, universities, and Israel advocacy groups cannot, without consequence, run roughshod over growing demands to respect and protect Palestinian rights,” Palestine Legal said at the conclusion of its report.

“The developments throughout 2025 made crystal clear that if we allow our right to stand for Palestinian freedom to be trampled, all of our fundamental rights will be in jeopardy in the face of an authoritarian slide.”

In a letter to EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas, the three governments say Israel is violating ‘human rights’.

Spain, Slovenia and Ireland have urged the European Union to debate suspending its association agreement with Israel, saying the bloc can no longer remain “on the sidelines” as conditions worsen in Gaza, the occupied West Bank and Lebanon.

Speaking before a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Luxembourg on Tuesday, Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares said the three countries had formally requested that the issue be placed on the agenda.

“Spain, along with Slovenia and Ireland, has requested that the suspension of the Association Agreement between the European Union and Israel be discussed and debated today,” Albares said.

“I expect every European country to uphold what the International Court of Justice and the UN say on human rights and the defence of international law. Anything different would be a defeat for the European Union,” he added.

In a joint letter sent last week to EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas, the three governments said Israel had taken a series of measures that “contravene human rights and violate international law and international humanitarian law”, adding that it breached the 1995 agreement that outlines political, economic and trade relations between the EU and Israel.

They said repeated appeals to Israel to reverse course had been ignored. The ministers pointed to a proposed Israeli law that would impose the death penalty by hanging on Palestinians convicted in military courts, describing it as “a grave violation of fundamental human rights” and a further step in the “systematic persecution, oppression, violence and discrimination” faced by Palestinians.

They also cited the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, saying conditions there were “unbearable”, with continuing violations of the ceasefire agreement and insufficient aid entering the territory.

The letter warned that violence in the occupied West Bank was also intensifying, with settlers acting “with absolute impunity” alongside ongoing Israeli military operations, causing civilian deaths.

“The European Union can no longer remain on the sidelines,” the ministers wrote, calling for “bold and immediate action” and saying all options should remain on the table.

The three countries argued Israel was in breach of Article 2 of the EU-Israel Association Agreement, which ties relations to respect for human rights. An earlier EU review had already found Israel was failing to meet those obligations, they said, adding that the situation had deteriorated further since then.

During a donor conference in Brussels, Kallas said the estimated cost of rebuilding Gaza had risen to $71bn.

Ireland and Spain first pushed for a review of the agreement in 2024, but the effort failed to win enough backing from member states supportive of Israel. A later Dutch-led initiative succeeded in triggering an EU assessment, which concluded Israel had “likely” breached its obligations under the pact.

Possible trade measures, including suspending parts of the relationship, were later discussed but not implemented after Israel pledged to significantly increase humanitarian aid entering Gaza.

Occupied Territories Bill

Ireland is also seeking to revive its Occupied Territories Bill, first introduced in 2018, which would ban trade in goods and services from illegal settlements in the occupied Palestinian territory, including the West Bank. Progress has stalled despite unanimous backing in the lower house of parliament, the Dail.

Meanwhile, Spain and Slovenia have moved to curb trade with illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank following sustained public protests and growing political pressure. In August last year, Slovenia banned imports of goods produced in Israeli-occupied territories, becoming one of the first European states to take such a step.

Spain followed later that year with a decree banning imports from illegal Israeli settlements, with the measure coming into force at the start of 2026.

All three countries formally recognised the State of Palestine in May 2024, in what was widely seen as a coordinated diplomatic move aimed at increasing pressure for a two-state solution.

Kharkiv, Ukraine – Hushruzjon Salohidinov, 26, was working as a courier in Saint Petersburg, Russia’s second-largest city and President Vladimir Putin’s hometown.

But last year, the Tajik man and practising Muslim says he was arrested while picking up a parcel which police claimed contained money stolen from elderly women.

Salohidinov says he never interacted with the alleged criminals, but nevertheless spent nine months in the Kresty-2 pre-trial detention centre about 32km (20 miles) from the city, while a judge refused to start his trial because of the “weak evidence” against him.

But instead of releasing him after that, prison wardens threatened to place him in a cell with HIV-infected inmates who, they said, would gang-rape him – unless he “volunteered” to fight in Ukraine.

“They said, ‘Oh, you’ll put on a skirt now, you’ll be raped,’” Salohidinov, who has raven black hair and a messy full beard, told Al Jazeera at a centre for war prisoners in northeastern Ukraine, where he is now being held, having been captured in January this year by Ukrainian forces.

Using a carrot-and-stick tactic, the wardens also promised him a sign-up bonus of 2 million rubles ($26,200), a monthly salary of 200,000 rubles ($2,620) and an amnesty from all convictions.

So, in the autumn of 2025, Salohidinov signed up as he “saw no other way out”.

Officials in Kresty-2, St Petersburg’s prosecutors’ office and Russia’s Ministry of Defence did not respond to any of Al Jazeera’s requests for comment.

‘Catching migrants’

Salohidinov is just one of tens of thousands of labour migrants from Central Asia coerced by Russia to become soldiers as part of the Kremlin’s nationwide campaign, according to human rights groups, media reports and Russian officials.

Hochu Jit, a Ukrainian group that helps Russian soldiers surrender, has published verified lists of thousands of Central Asian soldiers like Salohidinov.

“They are literally sent to be killed, no one considers them soldiers that need to be saved,” the group wrote in a 2025 post on Telegram. These soldiers’ life expectancy on the front line is about four months. “Losses among them are catastrophic,” the group reported.

With its low birthrate and large oil wealth, Russia has for years been a magnet for millions of labour migrants from ex-Soviet Central Asia, especially Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan.

The campaign by the Kremlin to force Central Asians to fight in Ukraine dates back to 2023 – the year after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – when police began rounding up anyone who didn’t look Slavic and charging them with real or imagined transgressions such as a lack of registration, expired or “fake” permits or blurred stamps on their documents. Sometimes, migrants are simply bused straight to conscription offices.

In 2025, Al Jazeera interviewed another Tajik man who said he had been detained with an expired work permit and was then tortured into “volunteering” while being subjected to countless xenophobic and Islamophobic slurs from his officers.

Migrants say they are abused, tortured and threatened with jail or having their entire families deported.

“The main way of recruiting as many migrants as possible is pressure on them with threats of deportation,” Alisher Ilkhamov, the Uzbekistan-born head of the London-based Central Asia Due Diligence think tank, told Al Jazeera.

Sometimes, migrants are simply duped.

Salohidinov said one serviceman in his squad was an Uzbek who “didn’t speak a word of Russian” and was fooled into “volunteering” while signing papers at a migration centre.

In their reports about “catching” migrants, officials frequently use derogatory terms about them, and also when they describe men who have obtained Russian passports but skipped registration at conscription offices. Since the Soviet era, such registration has been obligatory for all men and, since 2024, a newly naturalised Russian national can lose his citizenship if he fails to do it.

“We’ve caught 80,000 such Russian citizens, who don’t just want to go to the front line, they don’t even want to go to a conscription office,” chief prosecutor Alexander Bastrykin said in May 2025, referring to the migrants’ alleged patriotic sentiments.

He boasted that 20,000 Central Asians with Russian passports were herded to the front line in 2025.

The year before, he said 10,000 Central Asians had been sent to Ukraine.

Such remarks resonate with the Russian public that lives with “a high level of xenophobia in the stage of fear and helplessness,” Sergey Biziyukin, an exiled opposition activist from the western city of Ryazan, told Al Jazeera.

“For them, such phrases from Bastrykin are a form of sedative.”

What makes Central Asians easy targets is that they hail from police states, which depend on Moscow politically and economically, observers say.

“While the migrants are frightened into signing contracts, their motherland doesn’t really pay any attention,” Galiya Ibragimova, an Uzbekistan-born, Moldova-based regional expert, told Al Jazeera.

Despite hefty signup bonuses and relentless propaganda, the number of Russians who want to fight in Ukraine fell by at least one-fifth this year, and Moscow will strive to recruit more Central Asians, she said.

‘We’ll have our fingers broken’

After signing the contract and leaving his debit card with his sign-up bonus with his parents, Salohidinov was sent to the western city of Voronezh for three weeks of training that did little to prepare him for the war.

“We just kept running back and forth with guns,” he said.

Their drill sergeants, he says, told the conscripts that the standard-issue flak jackets, helmets, boots and flashlights were of subpar quality and urged them to pitch in a million rubles ($13,100) each for “better” gear.

The incident corroborates reports on dozens of similar cases in Russian military units.

Salohidinov was ordered to work in a kitchen – and was verbally abused and beaten for the slightest transgression.

Of 28 men in his unit, 21 were Muslims – but their ethnic Russian officers ignored their pleas not to have pork in meals, repeating a decades-old practice of ignoring religion-related dietary restrictions dating back to the Soviet army.

The commanders demonised Ukrainians, telling them “that if we surrender, we’d be tortured, have our fingers broken, maimed, get [construction] foam up our a**, have our teeth yanked out one by one, have our arms broken”, Salohidinov says.

In early January this year, the conscripts were bused to the Russia-occupied Ukrainian region of Luhansk.

Salohidinov says he was tired, frightened and disoriented – Ukrainian drones were “always” above them and a grenade explosion nearby damaged his left eardrum.

‘Glad I got captured’

On the fourth day of his service, Salohidinov was ordered to run beyond Ukrainian positions as part of Russia’s new tactic to send two or three servicemen to infiltrate the porous front line.

The mission was suicidal because the terrain was open, dotted with landmines and the bodies of dead Russian soldiers, while Ukrainians were firing machineguns and flew drones above them.

“I ran and ran and saw we were being shot at,” he said. “Me and my commander decided to surrender voluntarily instead of dying for nothing.”

They detached their assault rifles’ magazines, raised their hands and yelled they were surrendering.

What followed was “a calm feeling, beautiful”, he said. “They fed us, let us have a smoke, gave us food and water and even cake.”

Now, Salohidinov hopes to return to Tajikistan and panics at the thought of being made part of a prisoner swap – these have taken place several times each year – and returning to Russia because he would be sent back to the front line.

Tajikistan and other Central Asian nations have never endorsed Russia’s war in Ukraine, but nor have they openly criticised it.

In August 2025, Tajikistan’s Prosecutor General Habibullo Vohidzoda declared that no Tajik national would be charged for fighting in Ukraine.

So, what Salohidinov needs right now is an extradition request.

“I’m even glad that I got captured, because I’m not fighting anyone now, not risking anything,” he said. “I’ll even say thanks to Ukraine for taking me prisoner.”

The Tajik embassy in Kyiv did not respond to Al Jazeera’s request for comment.

With the global attention fixated on the diplomatic efforts to end the war on Iran, Israel has systematically escalated its attacks on Gaza and choked off vital aid, plunging the besieged enclave into what economic experts are now calling an “engineered, compounded famine”.

The number of aid trucks entering Gaza has dropped drastically in violation of the October 2025 ceasefire with Hamas. Since then, the Government Media Office in Gaza has recorded 2,400 military violations by Israeli forces, resulting in the killing of more than 700 Palestinians.

On Tuesday, Israel’s military killed at least 11 Palestinians, including two children, in separate attacks across the war-torn Strip.

The intensity of these attacks spiked during peak regional tensions. Between February 28 and April 8, while Israel and the US were engaged in a bombing campaign against Iran, Israeli forces bombed Gaza on 36 out of those 40 days.

In the last five weeks alone, more than 100 people have been killed, including Al Jazeera journalist Mohammed Wishah. Israel has killed more than 72,336 people since launching the brutal military offensive on October 7, 2023.

The ‘truck deception’

While Israel frequently claims it is allowing hundreds of aid trucks into Gaza, Palestinian officials and economic experts argue these figures are a deliberate mathematical deception.

According to the Government Media Office, only 41,714 aid and commercial trucks have entered Gaza over the past six months. This represents a mere 37 percent of the 110,400 trucks stipulated under the ceasefire agreement. The fuel situation is even more critical, with only 1,366 fuel trucks entering out of a promised 9,200 – an abysmal 14 percent compliance rate.

Recent daily logs highlight the severity of the bottleneck. On April 13, a total of only 102 aid trucks and 7 fuel trucks were allowed into the entire Strip, alongside 216 commercial trucks – a fraction of the more than 600 total trucks required daily under the “ceasefire” deal. By April 14, the numbers remained critically low with 122 aid trucks and 12 fuel trucks entering.

Crucially, Israeli authorities entirely shut down additional entry points like the Zikim and Kissufim crossings, which had processed dozens of commercial and aid trucks just a day prior, bottlenecking all limited traffic exclusively through Karem Abu Salem.

Mohammed Abu Jayyab, a Palestinian economic expert based in Gaza, told Al Jazeera that Israel utilises a “technical and commercial deception” to inflate these numbers.

“An Israeli truck carries up to 32 or 34 pallets… which are then unloaded into two or three smaller, dilapidated Palestinian trucks on the Gaza side,” Abu Jayyab explained. “Consequently, the UN and Israel count double or triple the actual number of Israeli trucks entering.” One pallet holds roughly 1 tonne of goods or food items.

Furthermore, Israel recently banned mixed-load shipments. If a merchant brings in 20 pallets of sugar, the remaining 12 pallet spaces on the truck must remain empty, yet it is still registered as a full commercial truck.

“The political agreement stipulated a ‘truck’ but did not specify quantities, weights, or the number of pallets,” Abu Jayyab noted, allowing Israel to weaponise logistics to restrict aid while appearing compliant.

Engineering starvation

This logistical strangulation is part of a broader strategy. Hassan Abu Riyala, undersecretary of the Ministry of National Economy in Gaza, stated in a meeting published on the ministry’s official Telegram channel that Israel is “engineering a policy of starvation”.

To ensure chaos in the local markets and sky-high prices, Israel has deliberately dismantled civil regulatory bodies. “The occupation targeted the majority of the crews that monitored prices, and assassinated the [former] undersecretary of the Ministry of Economy and five directors general during the war,” Abu Riyala said.

The results have been devastating, basic commodities have become scarce, and bread production has plummeted to 200 tonnes daily, far below the 450 tonnes required to feed the population.

“We manage this structural deficit under exceptional and coercive conditions,” Ismail Al-Thawabteh, director general of the Government Media Office, told Al Jazeera.

He described the ongoing reduction of supplies despite the truce as a “systematic restriction of basic supplies” that pushes the population towards dangerous levels of food insecurity. Fresh produce has skyrocketed, with 1kg (2.2lb) of tomatoes jumping from $1.50 to nearly $4 in a matter of weeks.

Moreover, the humanitarian catastrophe is being accelerated by the withdrawal of major aid groups. Al-Thawabteh noted that the scaling back or suspension of operations by key international institutions, most notably the World Food Programme (WFP), due to Israeli restrictions, represents a “highly dangerous development” that threatens the complete collapse of Gaza’s relief system.

“We issue an urgent appeal to the international community and the guarantors of the agreement to immediately pressure Israel to open the crossings… before reaching a point of no return and an imminent human explosion,” he said.

A ‘compounded famine’

The crisis has evolved beyond a simple lack of food; it is now a complete collapse of the Palestinian economy.

Abu Jayyab described the current situation as a “compounded famine”. With unemployment soaring to 80 percent and the destruction of more than 160,000 jobs across industrial, agricultural, and commercial sectors, the population has entirely lost its purchasing power.

“It has become illogical to link the entry of food supplies from the crossings to their availability to Palestinian citizens,” Abu Jayyab told Al Jazeera. Even when goods reach the market, between 70 to 80 percent of families simply cannot afford to buy them due to the total absence of income.

This extreme deprivation is forcing civilians into life-threatening alternatives. “The return of long queues for bakeries, and citizens resorting to burning plastic and waste in the absence of cooking gas, are dangerous field indicators of an unprecedented deterioration,” Al-Thawabteh warned, noting that government health facilities are currently struggling to treat respiratory and skin diseases resulting from this toxic pollution.

The medical blockade

Meanwhile, the stranglehold extends to Gaza’s most vulnerable patients. While the ceasefire agreement mandated the opening of the Rafah crossing for medical evacuations, Israel has kept the borders tightly restricted.

Over the past six months, only 2,703 people have been allowed to cross through Rafah out of an expected 36,800 – a compliance rate of just 7 percent. Consequently, only 8 percent of the severely wounded and chronically ill patients slated for urgent medical evacuation have been permitted to leave. According to the World Health Organization, roughly 18,000 people are still trapped in Gaza waiting for life-saving treatment abroad.

A day after the chavista-controlled National Assembly gave the cold shoulder to Magaly Vásquez, and confirmed Larry Devoe as Attorney General, I spent the day going through the latter’s public record as a “Venezuela agent” in multilateral spaces.

It was a shocking way to spend a Friday afternoon. What was I expecting? Back in 2014, Devoe was handed the so-called Human Rights Council just as Venezuela was about to spiral into a multi-dimensional crisis. Súper Bigote seemingly set three tasks in the international arena:

Find excuses and someone to blame for the disaster that was about to unfold, by casting the chavista government as the victim.

No matter how bad the humanitarian situation can get and the extent to which social indicators were reversed, insist that Chávez lifted millions out of poverty forever. 

Every time other diplomats, foreign officials or humanitarian personnel showed details and data that showed a dire country, answering that Venezuela was sovereign and democratic and no one needed to meddle with our own mess.

Devoe was one of the three main bureaucrats that defined such diplomatic chavista wisdom in those days. These three had fancy degrees from European schools, and were clever enough to fabricate a good headline amidst pervasive criticism. Besides Devoe, there was a lady called Delcy Rodríguez, disgraced in the late-Chávez years but handed the Information Ministry soon after el comandante passed, with studies from London’s Birkbeck University and Paris Nanterre University. There was also Bernardo Álvarez, Maduro’s representative in the OAS who had been the man in Washington when Chavez’s beef with Bush reached peak levels.

Soon after they started to defend Maduro in Venezuela and abroad, the international perception about his regime suffered a deep setback. In July 2016, dozens of Venezuelan NGOs addressed Ban Ki-moon complaining about the behavior of UN agencies in reaction to the country’s humanitarian situation. The letter was based on a report that covered plummeting indicators in the previous four years (measuring institutional quality, human rights and the conditions of vulnerable groups). On August 10, the South Korean secretary general said Venezuela was undergoing a humanitarian emergency, quoting that very report.

In 2016, Devoe said an opposition-drafted amnesty law was a “serious threat” to human rights.

Rodríguez, Álvarez and Devoe had work to do. Footage of Delcy denying the humanitarian crisis in June 2016 (did so again in 2018 before the UNHCR) has circulated in recent days, but it was actually Álvarez who first established the regime’s position. In an IACHR human rights hearing that featured the likes of Alfredo Romero, Carlos Correa, Rafael Uzcategui, Liliana Ortega and other prominent human rights defenders—many of which the newly minted prosecutor will have to deal with— , Álvarez said: “It’s not a humanitarian crisis, that has a political intentionality.”

A 43-year-old UCAB lawyer, with human rights studies from the iconic Alcalá de Henares University, sat next to Álvarez and in front of Romero et al. He was Larry Devoe, and came with the goods in his turn to speak, praising the “23,146 health centers across the territory, a 333% in terms of infrastructure” that Maduro had inherited by 2015.

He made another remark that day that now sounds like a prescient spell. Back then, the opposition-led parliament approved an amnesty bill aimed at 82 political prisoners held in Venezuela. Devoe said its contents were a “serious threat” to human rights with the allegation that the bill pardoned international crimes like the use of minors to commit crimes, drug trafficking, terrorism and corruption.

Whataboutism at its best

Devoe would use that technique several times after. In October 2018, he was invited as a conference speaker in the Autonomous University of Santo Domingo to discuss OAS’ record in defending human rights in the region. His lecture’s talking points: Venezuela became “the theater of operations of OAS and US actions” and the OAS whitewashed the pre-Chávez regime. Before that, he showed up in a local TV program, El Matinal, where interviewer Pablo McKinney tried to make him feel at ease by introducing the brotherly ties between Dominicans and Venezuelans. Devoe started speaking of Venezuela’s all-round, positive transformation since 1999 in terms of human rights. When McKinney raised his eyebrows, Devoe claimed Venezuela had one of the best social security programs in the Americas, but the nation was under MECANISMOS DE AGRESIÓN since 2013.

Devoe kept going. Chavez had ended illiteracy and handed out two million homes, and so goes that famous song. Unconvinced by the explanation, McKinney said he couldn’t bear Venezuelans wandering the streets of his city. Es demasiado grave, to which Devoe replied that Maduro was getting the Allende treatment, and that Venezuelan migrants were returning home from Colombia and the DR because of the treatment they got in those countries.

Is this surprising?

Not really. That was the standard rhetoric wielded by chavista diplomats, or Cuban officials since the 1960s, which Devoe also liked to quote. That doesn’t exempt Devoe from being a cold liar that now heads one of Venezuela’s most important institutions. He’s still good for Delcy, as he was good for the three tasks that I listed several paragraphs ago. 

Devoe could not acknowledge the humanitarian crisis in public. It was too embarrassing. It would give credibility to widespread reports about malnutrition, tropical diseases and growing maternal mortality rates.

The videos show how Devoe reacts to well-documented accusations to “defend the country” and conceal responsibility. Take for instance this occasion in 2018, two years after Ban Ki Moon’s now-historic statement, where Devoe addressed Venezuelan experts in the Inter American Commission on Human Rights. He admits the scarcity of medical supplies, but attributes its cause to “sanctions and economic blockades” (sectoral sanctions then in place affected Venezuelan credit). When asked about Maduro’s public refusal to accept humanitarian assistance, Devoe said:

“Commissioner, Venezuela has the capacity to buy and provide the resources to guarantee the rights of its population.”

A kidney transplant patient, Francisco Valencia, interrupted Devoe to tell him he had not received medical treatment for six months. “I am dying.” Devoe replied: “Well Francisco, I ask you to leave this room and ask Euroclear to unfreeze the 1,650 million dollars that would let us buy your treatment.”

The problem with that statement is not only Devoe’s audacity in talking back to a helpless patient. Venezuelan humanitarian organizations were, at that point, getting resources because of international cooperation. That cooperation was, to an extent, greenlighted by the Venezuelan State. ECHO, Caritas International, the Red Cross, the International Rescue Committee and others were already in the country, liaising with local groups.

Like Maduro and Delcy, Devoe could not acknowledge it. It was too embarrassing. It would give credibility to reports that maternal mortality grew 90% between 2016 and 2017, of 11.4% of acute malnutrition among kids under 5 years old, and claims that the government was hiding data on spikes of tuberculosis, diphtheria and malaria.

Hard Left roots?

It recently emerged that Larry Devoe is the maternal grandson of Pompeyo Márquez, who had been a communist militant during Betancourt and Leoni’s war against Cuba-funded guerrillas. Márquez later joined the party system with Movimiento Al Socialismo (MAS) through Caldera’s pacification process. He broke with Chávez when MAS endorsed his 1998 candidacy, and spent his final years opposing chavismo from within the Left.

On that shocking Friday afternoon, I also came upon a book about Venezuelan universities in the second half of the 20^th century. One chapter speaks about the political climate in Caracas’ Universidad Central in the 1970s. It mentions a Larry Devoe in the youth ranks of MAS, which clashed with the Leftwing Revolutionary Movement (MIR)—where Jorge Antonio Rodríguez, father of Jorge and Delcy, was a student leader—on campus and in student council elections. (At this point, everyone knows the fate of Jorge Rodríguez padre, murdered in the custody of DISIP in 1976 after the kidnapping of William Niehous).

Albeit rivals in the halls of UCV, it seems like the fathers of Larry Devoe and the Rodríguez siblings were part of the same political community 50 years ago. There’s a chance the new prosecutor general, born after the killing of Rodriguez padre, has known Delcy and Jorge for quite a while. Devoe Sr. was a MAS member along with Jorge Valero, a former Venezuelan ambassador to the UN and OAS this century, whom Devoe defended in his Santo Domingo speech.

Delcy, Ernesto Villegas and Larry Devoe presented a 2017 report denying the State’s responsibility for the great majority of deaths during that year’s protests.

Part of what people like Devoe and the Rodríguez siblings likely absorbed early on were accounts of the extrajudicial killings and torture Venezuelan communists endured in the 1960s. Then came the 1976 case of Rodríguez. And later, when Devoe was 11, the Caracazo—preceded by massacres like Cantaura and El Amparo, carried out by state officials, often with impunity.

These events are not just real; they must be remembered as part of the bloodier side of our recent history, one that did not begin in 1999. What is striking is that Devoe, now prosecutor in this “new political moment”, has repeatedly covered up similar crimes, the very kind the Rodríguez siblings have long grieved over.

In 2023, Devoe dismissed the ongoing investigation in the International Criminal Court as a political ploy, said Caracas proved crimes against humanity were never committed, and echoed Tarek William Saab’s claims that Venezuelan courts were doing their job in dealing with the bad apples. That now contradicts the discourse of the Rodríguez siblings, who got rid of Saab to appoint him. Six years before that, Delcy, Ernesto Villegas and Larry Devoe presented a report denying the State’s responsibility for the great majority of deaths during the 2017 protest cycle. This denialism has been a recurring pattern in his career as a Venezuelan State agent, and remains a part of chavismo’s rhetoric about “political violence since 1999.”

Someone told me that Devoe was respectful and decent in one-on-one interactions, even after heated debates over the causes and scale of the Venezuelan crisis. That perhaps he was caged by his own surroundings. Let’s see if Devoe can somehow turn that record around.

After all these years, we have reasonable doubts he’ll do so.

The killings mark the fourth US deadly strike in the past four days on vessels in the eastern Pacific Ocean.

The US military has killed four more people in its fourth deadly attack on vessels in the eastern Pacific Ocean over the past four days.

US Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) announced the attack in a social media post on Tuesday, alongside a video that showed a stationary boat with outboard engines being hit by a missile and exploding into a huge ball of flames.

SOUTHCOM, which is responsible for US military operations in Latin America and the Caribbean, claimed that the four people killed were “narco-terrorists”, but provided no evidence to support its claims.

Justification for the lethal attack, according to SOUTHCOM, was due to intelligence – details of which were not provided – that confirmed that “the vessel was transiting along known narco-trafficking routes in the eastern Pacific and was engaged in narco-trafficking operations”.

The latest killing of people on board vessels in international waters in the eastern Pacific Ocean and Caribbean brings the overall death toll to at least 175 since early September, when US President Donald Trump ordered the attacks to stop what the White House claims are Latin American cartels transporting drugs to the US.

Tuesday’s killings came after two people were killed in a US strike on Monday, and five people were killed in two separate strikes on Saturday, also in the eastern Pacific.

The Associated Press news agency reported that the US coastguard has suspended a search for one survivor from the two attacks reported on Saturday.

International legal experts and rights groups say the US military campaign amounts to “extrajudicial killings” in international waters and that the attacks have targeted civilian fishing boats.

Legal experts have said that if some vessels were involved in drug trafficking, those on board should face the law, rather than deadly attacks.

Critics have also questioned the effectiveness of the US military operation in part because the fentanyl behind many fatal overdoses in the US, which Trump has used to justify his campaign, is typically trafficked to the US over land from Mexico, where it is produced with chemicals imported from China and India.

The late Argentinian football legend’s childhood home has been converted into a soup kitchen serving those affected by President Javier Milei’s austerity measures.

At 523 Amazor street in Fiorito, a Buenos Aires suburb where the “Golden Boy” experienced extreme poverty growing up, locals can now receive meals and clothing assistance.

This neighbourhood of about 50,000 residents living in modest brick homes features numerous murals commemorating the career of the iconic number 10, who passed away in 2020 at the age of 60.

As a criminal negligence trial begins on Tuesday against the seven-member medical team responsible for Maradona’s final care following brain surgery, his childhood community continues his legacy of compassion.

Neighbours visit “Diego’s house” carrying containers that volunteers fill with chicken stew and other meals prepared in large cauldrons in the yard, while cumbia music – Maradona’s preferred genre – plays in the background.

“Diego would say there is a lot of hunger and we have to help, because the need is so great,” explained Diego Gavilan, who benefits from the kitchen’s services.

Gavilan, who collects cardboard and scrap metal, began visiting the soup kitchen after Milei implemented radical free-market reforms following his December 2023 election.

“You can’t make ends meet,” Gavilan noted.

Despite statistics showing poverty reduction under Milei, primarily due to decreasing inflation, family finances remain in crisis, according to Central Bank reports. Increased imports and plummeting consumption have resulted in more than 20,000 business closures.

Gavilan appreciates receiving assistance from Maradona’s former home: “He suffered so much hunger here as a child. For the people of the neighbourhood to receive a plate of food is special.”

The facility operates without dining accommodations. Volunteers prepare food over open fires in the yard, distributing it in bags to those waiting at the entrance.

Maradona frequently referenced his humble origins in an area without running water or paved streets. Sixty-six years after his birth, hardship remains visible on the faces of those queueing for food.

“People are going hungry,” said Maria Torres, one of the centre’s cooks, who believes Maradona would approve of his childhood home’s charitable repurposing.

Latest attack brings death toll from US strikes on vessels in the Pacific and Caribbean to at least 170 since September.

The ⁠United States military has ⁠carried out another attack on a vessel in the eastern Pacific, killing two people, in the latest deadly strike by US forces on boats that Washington alleges have links to Latin American drug trafficking cartels.

US Southern Command (SOUTHCOM), which is responsible for Washington’s military operations in Latin America and the Caribbean, confirmed the attack in a post on social media late on Monday, claiming to have killed two “male narco-terrorists”, without providing any evidence.

SOUTHCOM claimed that, based on intelligence reports, the boat was “⁠transiting along known narco-trafficking routes ⁠in the ⁠Eastern Pacific” and was targeted with “a lethal kinetic strike” on the orders of US Commander General Francis L Donovan.

A grainy video clip released with the statement shows a stationary boat with outboard engines and what appear to be floats from fishing nets nearby. The boat comes under attack from the air and explodes into flames.

The attack marked the second day in a row that SOUTHCOM announced a deadly strike on boats in the Pacific. On Sunday, the US military said it blew up two boats in the eastern Pacific a day earlier, killing five people and leaving one survivor. It was not immediately clear what happened to the person who survived the attack, though SOUTHCOM said the US coastguard was notified.

With the attack on Monday, the US military has now killed at least 170 people in dozens of strikes on vessels in the eastern Pacific and Caribbean Ocean since September.

International law experts, human rights groups and regional governments have accused the administration of US President Donald Trump of carrying out extrajudicial killings in international waters, which have likely targeted civilians, often fishing crews, who do not pose an immediate threat to the US.

The Trump administration claims that such attacks are part of its war on drug trafficking cartels in Latin America, but has provided no solid evidence that any of the vessels targeted since last year have been involved in drug trafficking.