Human Rights

Authorities were warned about dangers of hitting Mohammad Ghamira, who suffered from the rare medical condition haemophilia.

A Syrian police officer has been arrested and may be criminally prosecuted after an investigation found that he hit a detainee with a medical condition who died shortly after being released from custody.

Syria’s Interior Ministry said on Thursday that Mohammad Ghamira, 29, died after being slapped by police investigator Ahmad Jawad, who has since been detained and referred to the public prosecutor.

Ghamira, who died on Sunday, suffered from haemophilia, a rare condition that prevents blood from clotting properly, making sufferers bleed more easily and for longer periods.

The father of two was a member of the White Helmets, the civil defence organisation made up of volunteers that operated in rebel-held areas in Syria. They went on search and rescue operations and provided medical care following government attacks.

The investigation found that Ghamira had told internal security personnel about his condition, while his wife twice informed authorities about the potential danger.

Ahmad Latouf, head of the investigation committee and assistant interior minister for police affairs, confirmed that Ghamira died after suffering a brain haemorrhage believed to have been caused by the slap.

Two other police officers are also being investigated but are not currently due to be prosecuted.

Ghamira’s death has provoked widespread anger among Syrians, reminding many of the gross human rights abuses that were systematic under former President Bashar al-Assad, who was overthrown by rebels in December 2024.

New leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa, has promised to usher in a new era, prioritising human rights and overseeing an inclusive government. However, human rights organisations have documented widespread abuses by government forces, particularly against minority groups.

Commenting on Ghamira’s death on Thursday, the Interior Ministry accused Jawad of violating ministerial instructions and the code of conduct, which strictly prohibit any form of humiliating or abusive treatment of detainees.

Syrian Interior Minister Anas Khattab said in a statement that the investigation results showed the ministry’s “commitment to reaching the truth and holding accountable those proven to have overstepped”.

“We rose up against the former tyrant’s regime in rejection of injustice and impunity, and therefore, building a state of law begins with our ability to hold the wrongdoer accountable, to give restitution to the victim, and not to do injustice to anyone who has not been proven responsible” for wrongdoing, he said.

Reporting from Syria’s northwestern port city of Latakia, Al Jazeera’s Heidi Pett said the Syrian government has vowed to take further action.

“There will be surveillance put into police stations and better training provided to officers but they say all of this will take time,” Pett said.

“Part of the reason it has resonated so widely is because of who Mohammad was. He was a young man, 29 years old, and he had two children and was a volunteer with the White Helmets. They were basically seen as heroes. His father joined the revolution and so he’s a figure who many people here in his community and nationally respected,” she added.

“That’s part of why there’s been so much sadness and anger and it’s also [because of] the fact that Mohammad is not the first to be mistreated in detention by the new authorities. Syrian rights organisations have documented other cases of deaths in detention.”

Ghamira was arrested last week accused of theft. He was later released and died at a hospital in Latakia on Sunday.

During a forensic examination, medical experts found no visible signs of violence or severe force, as well as no skull fractures or traumatic wounds.

Since Myanmar’s civil war escalated following a coup in 2021 more than 150,000 Rohingya have been purged from their homes and forced to seek asylum across Asia.

Most flee to neighbouring Bangladesh, where a million other members of this persecuted minority barely survive in some of the largest resettlement camps on Earth, following a brutal military crackdown in 2017.

Caught in the crossfire between the ruling military government and rebel fighters in Myanmar, some Rohingya refugees claim members of their families have been forcibly conscripted, subjected to targeted attacks and even massacred.

These atrocities are occurring in their homeland, Rakhine State, a secretive, inaccessible corner of the country largely controlled by a local armed group called the Arakan Army.

Rohingya witnesses allege that the violence and oppression they face now from the Arakan Army, Myanmar’s most powerful rebel group, is just as brutal as ethnic cleansing by the military in 2017 that first drew global attention to their plight.

Both the military and Arakan Army deny the allegations and blame each other

Working with human rights investigators from Myanmar Witness and Rohingya citizen journalists, Al Jazeera examines what has happened to this Muslim minority during the Arakan Army’s takeover of Rakhine.

This documentary also exposes how the rebel group is connected to the human trafficking of Rohingya refugees out of Myanmar, including young children and women who are subjected to sexual violence and brutality.

The Arakan Army declined to address the allegations raised in this film.  However, its leaders have previously denied accusations of targeted attacks on civilians, including two mass killings of Rohingya villagers in Rakhine. In a written statement to Al Jazeera, Myanmar’s military alleges that the Arakan Army is inciting hatred against Rohingya Muslims and has “reportedly committed acts of genocide” against them since taking control of much of the state.

With growing violence and a transnational crisis on their doorstep, Bangladesh wants to send all the refugees back to the war-torn country through a repatriation scheme.

But increased activity by Rohingya armed groups aligned with the military government is making that harder. Rohingya rebels active in the conflict reject those allegations.  When questioned about their conduct by Al Jazeera, one armed group called Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) denied burning civilian homes, participating in activities that cause harm to Rohingya villagers and encouraging refugees to fight against the Arakan Army.

Using leaked documents, covertly filmed footage and exclusive interviews, Al Jazeera investigates the driving forces behind this largely forgotten humanitarian emergency.

This story is part of Myanmar Exposed, a series of reports by Al Jazeera Investigates which uncover the hidden truths of an ongoing crisis caused by the 2021 coup and civil conflict.

The transfer is the first from Lebanon involving a Syrian military officer who fled after al-Assad’s government was toppled in 2024.

Lebanon has handed over a former senior Syrian army officer to Damascus to face charges related to murder and torture, the first such transfer since former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was toppled in 2024.

The transfer involved Major-General Adel Issa, a former commander of the Syrian army’s 17th Division who later led ground forces in the eastern province of Deir ez-Zur.

Syria’s Ministry of Interior confirmed his delivery into Syrian custody in a statement on Wednesday.

“Today, Syrian authorities received from the Lebanese authorities the former officer in the defunct regime army, Major-General Adel Issa,” the ministry said.

It added that a Syrian arrest warrant had accused Issa of charges including intentional homicide, facilitating a felony, killing more than two people, torture leading to death, and crimes aimed at inciting civil war and sectarian strife.

A Damascus referral judge will hear his case, which could then be sent to a criminal court for trial, the ministry added.

Issa, 67, has denied the accusations, the Reuters news agency reported, citing two people familiar with his arrest and extradition.

He was detained on August 8 after going to the Syrian embassy in Beirut to complete paperwork.

Embassy officials alerted the prosecutor’s office in Lebanon that he was wanted in Syria, and Lebanese investigators took him into custody, Reuters reported.

His transfer follows months of pressure by Damascus for Lebanon to act against former government officers, as well as security and military officials, who sought refuge in Lebanon after the Assad regime collapsed in December 2024.

President Ahmed al-Sharaa, a former rebel leader, has led the country since.

In January, Syrian authorities gave Lebanese security officials a list of more than 200 former senior officers wanted by Damascus.

Earlier this month, a Damascus court sentenced al-Assad to death in absentia on charges including murder, arbitrary detention and torture. Al-Assad lives in exile in Moscow.

Israeli air strikes on Gaza kill 10 Palestinians, targeting police headquarters and a refugee camp in separate attacks.

Israeli strikes have killed at least 10 Palestinians in two separate attacks targeting a Gaza City police post and Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza.

Hamas, which governs the Gaza Strip, condemned what it called “a new war crime”.

On Wednesday, medical sources at al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City said they received nine Palestinian bodies following an attack on the municipal police headquarters in the centre of Gaza City. Another 15 people were wounded.

Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud, reporting from Gaza City, said the bombardment occurred at a busy time near a park crowded with civilians, including children.

Victims of the Gaza City strike included a newly-appointed Gaza City police chief, the director of a women’s police force, and several officers.

Earlier in the day, a strike on Nuseirat refugee camp killed one Palestinian, medics said, increasing Wednesday’s death toll to at least 10.

The Israeli army claimed its air force struck two Hamas commanders in Nuseirat, and that it later struck a Hamas commander in the Tuffah area of Gaza City, without providing evidence of their affiliation.

In a statement, Hamas rejected Israel’s justification that the strike targeted “resistance leaders”, calling the claim “baseless and false allegations used to justify its aggression and cover up its deliberate targeting of civilian police and unarmed civilians”.

Hamas accused the Israeli government of “deliberately undermining these efforts and dangerously pushing towards reigniting the war of extermination against our people in the Gaza Strip”.

On Tuesday, Israeli strikes killed seven people – including a child – and wounded 14 others at a crowded cafe on Gaza City’s harbour. The city’s port has been turned into a displacement camp, according to Wafa news agency.

The Israeli military again claimed, without providing evidence, that it had targeted Hamas commanders in the enclave.

Diplomatic deadlock

Wednesday’s attacks occurred two days after US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and Middle East envoy Jared Kushner visited the region to push for a Trump-backed deal to end to Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza.

Kushner’s meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu failed to break a diplomatic deadlock after Netanyahu rejected an agreement for Israel to withdraw from the Strip in exchange for Hamas disarming.

Following the meeting, Kushner reiterated “Israel’s right to defend itself”. He threatened that Hamas must disarm or the US would support Israel to “finish the job in the appropriate way”.

New Delhi, India – In a crowded ward of New Delhi’s All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), India’s premier public hospital, a mother sits quietly beside her 29-year-old son, Piyush Singh*.

Diagnosed with stomach cancer a year ago, Singh has already undergone five rounds of chemotherapy. He now lies in the hospital’s palliative care unit, where the goal is no longer to cure the disease but to relieve pain and preserve his dignity.

“The world comes to AIIMS when they are not well. But where shall we go?” asks his mother. “My son has already received five doses of chemotherapy, but his condition has not improved. The doctors are not telling us anything. I don’t know what to do next.”

Piyush’s family is not asking for his life to end. They simply don’t know what comes when treatment fails.

A few floors away, Aryan* has come to AIIMS from Auraiya, a small town in Uttar Pradesh state, to accompany his 40-year-old brother Amit (name changed), who has been battling mouth cancer for four years. Two surgeries, radiation and two rounds of chemotherapy later, doctors say there is little hope of him surviving. The final checkup has been done. There is nothing more left to try.

“There is no duvidha [dilemma in Hindi],” says Aryan. “The doctors have said no. So it is clear now.”

He plans to take Amit to his rented flat in Gurgaon and give him whatever painkillers he has been prescribed. Beyond that, he has no plan, because no one has given him one.

“I don’t know about palliative care. I don’t know how to ease his pain. I have nothing apart from the medicines I got today,” he said.

Piyush and Amit are no exceptions. They represent a reality that many Indians are coming to terms with – with little institutional help.

India recorded an estimated 1.56 million new cancer cases in 2024, according to an Indian Council of Medical Research study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. But cancer patients are not alone. Families of patients with traumatic brain injuries and degenerative neurological conditions also hit the same wall.

According to a 2025 analysis by ecancermedicalscience, an open-access medical journal, an estimated seven to 10 million people require palliative care in India, but only about 4 percent receive it.

Such families find themselves with little or no awareness or preparedness for what comes next. Many have never heard of palliative care, or that the law gives them the right to document their treatment preferences before a crisis arrives.

The problem is also rooted in how many Indians confront death – a phenomenon that is one of the least-discussed subjects within families or societies. In many households, conversations about dying are considered inauspicious.

In such a worldview, to think of interventions in how or when someone dies carries a moral weight that goes beyond medicine or law. Families often avoid discussing medical wishes until a loved one is critically ill, leaving relatives to make deeply personal decisions during moments of grief and uncertainty.

From caregiving to court

The answers are increasingly being shaped not just by medicine, but also by the law.

In 2018, India’s Supreme Court recognised that the “right to die with dignity” was part of the fundamental right to life, enshrined in Article 21 of the Indian Constitution.

The court also allowed such patients to record their wishes about life-sustaining treatment if they lose the capacity to decide in an advanced stage of their ailment.

The top court’s ruling was in response to a petition filed by Common Cause, an NGO, which called for legal procedures allowing terminally ill individuals to execute Advance Medical Directives, commonly known as “living wills”, to refuse life-prolonging medical treatment.

A living will is a legal document that highlights an individual’s preferences for medical treatment when they cannot voice their choices. The provision allows them to nominate a loved one to decide for them.

“It [judgement] broadens the scope of Article 21. It now affirms, kind of completely, that the right to life includes the right to die with dignity. That is the bottom line for us,” Vipul Mudgal, director of Common Cause, the organisation behind the 2005 petition, told Al Jazeera.

Yet, for most Indians, that right largely existed on paper – until six years later.

In 2024, a family in Ghaziabad, an industrial district on the outskirts of New Delhi, filed a petition in the Delhi High Court and later in the Supreme Court, asking for a decision on the fate of a 32-year-old patient who was in a vegetative state for nearly 13 years.

Harish Rana’s case was a first in India where passive euthanasia, or withdrawal of life support, was permitted by the top court. On March 11, the Supreme Court directed the withdrawal of his life support at AIIMS, New Delhi. He passed away two weeks later.

But the journey from caregiving to courtroom was not easy.

Rana’s family managed his feeding tube, tracheostomy and urine bag every day for 13 years, and it had drained them.

“A family reaches such a decision when it sees no scope for improvement. Harish Rana could not speak, we were his voice,” Rana’s father Ashok told Al Jazeera. “He was not in that state for 13 days or 13 months, but for 13 years.”

All those years, said Ashok, he watched his son breathe but not recover, with only one question on his mind: “I am around 63 years old, and my wife is 58 years old. If something happens to either of us, who would take care of him?”

That is when they decided to approach the court.

While the Rana case is a landmark, experts say it is unlikely to set an immediate precedent in a country where death is an uncomfortable topic. That is why, despite being legalised in 2018, living wills remain uncommon and largely unheard of.

As a result, terminally ill patients do not discuss their wishes while they still can, and families end up making decisions for them without preparation or guidance.

A 2019 survey across seven cities, including New Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata, by Healthcare at Home (HCAH), a health advocacy group, found that 73 percent of urban Indians were unaware of their right to a living will. Even among people aware of their right, only 6 percent had actually drafted such a will.

“The Harish Rana case was made more complex because there was no living will,” said Manish Jain, the lawyer who represented the family in court. “Living will clinics are absent across India.”

There are only two such clinics in India. The first opened in Mumbai last year, followed by one in New Delhi – both operated by private hospitals, which are beyond the reach of most Indians.

Fears of misuse of living wills

Concerned over a likely misuse of living wills, the Supreme Court made its guidelines complex. However, in the process, the court ended up making it difficult to navigate for most people.

To make a living will legally valid, an individual would sign it before two witnesses and get it countersigned by a magistrate. If the patient later became terminally ill, the treating doctor would be required to form a board of specialists with at least 20 years of experience each, whose findings then had to go to a district magistrate, who would form a second medical board. Only after both boards agreed could the process move forward, and any disagreement meant the matter went to the regional High Court.

In 2019, the Indian Society for Critical Care Medicine, a nonprofit group of physicians, approached the Supreme Court, arguing its guidelines were unworkable. In 2023, a five-judge top court bench simplified the process, removing the requirement of a magistrate’s countersignature, reducing the minimum medical experience requirement for review boards from 20 years to five, and allowing multiple nominees instead of one.

“Decisions are being made every day, sometimes by the family members, sometimes by the doctors, sometimes because of paucity of money,” said Mudgal.

He said if the families, doctors and courts can make end-of-life decisions for an individual, why cannot the individuals make those decisions for themselves? This recognition, while respecting individual autonomy, also relieves family members from the guilt of deciding for their loved one, he added.

“If there is no meaning left in life, somebody is kept alive artificially, just beating the heart with some mechanical device, that life has no meaning,” he said.

Yet, such questions remain unanswered by law. Living wills and the right to die exist entirely through judicial interpretation. There is no parliamentary law governing the same.

“There is no framework [of parliamentary law] passed by the parliament,” Jain said. “The Supreme Court of India itself requested the government to pass legislation regarding this issue,” he added, first in 2018 and again in 2023.

But lack of a law is only one part of the challenge.

For families, the absence of palliative care means little or no guidance on what comes after treatment options run out. Even families like Piyush’s, who have access to palliative care, don’t know what comes next.

“There are many patients like this who don’t have legal awareness of passive euthanasia. Not only patients, but their doctors also do not have full awareness about palliative care,” Dr Saipriya Tewari, principal consultant and unit head of pain management and palliative care at Max Super Speciality Hospital in New Delhi, told Al Jazeera.

She said families often look confused when told there is no treatment left, and that they should take the patient home.

“What will they do after taking the patient home? Nobody tells them. It is only discussed if the palliative care doctor is involved in the treatment,” Tewari said. “And even if the end is coming, then how do we maintain dignity in time? That is the question.”

Piyush’s mother has a different question.

“If he is sick, then we have to get treatment. We have to do something to keep him alive. What should we do? We are not able to think of a way out of this. Nobody is giving us any suggestions about where to go.”

*Names changed to protect the identity of the patients and their families.

Palestinian politicians and analysts have warned against what they describe as an Israeli plan to illegally annex the occupied West Bank by implementing a series of decisions and actions under different pretexts.

Israel’s Defence Minister Israel Katz, on Friday, ordered the military to prepare a plan for transferring civilian law enforcement in the occupied West Bank to the Israeli police.

According to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, the decision follows criticism over the army’s handling of Israeli settlers who besieged a Palestinian home in the village of Qusra.

Katz justified the shift, saying, “The army’s role is to combat Palestinian terrorism … and not chase hilltop youth.”

The Defence Ministry indicated the police would establish a dedicated force to handle these civilian matters.

However, Palestinian officials and a wide array of political experts warn this structural shift represents a dangerous acceleration of illegal annexation, apartheid, and ethnic cleansing.

Mustafa Barghouti, secretary-general of the Palestinian National Initiative, told Al Jazeera that the settlers are the “spearhead in the process of annexation and Judaisation”.

He drew direct historical parallels to the mass displacement of Palestinians, stating, “They repeat what the Zionist terror gangs did in 1948, like the Haganah and the Stern Gang.”

Barghouti warned that placing security in the hands of National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and illegal Israeli settlements under Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich amounts to “handing over the West Bank to the settlers”.

He stressed that this is an open war on the population, adding, “The actual ruler in the West Bank is the known fascist terrorist Smotrich.”

De facto annexation

Analysts argue that replacing military occupation law with domestic civilian law fundamentally alters the legal reality of the territory. Mohanad Mustafa, an academic and researcher in Israeli affairs, told Al Jazeera that the decision legally erases the borders.

“The government is dealing with the West Bank not as an occupied territory,” Mustafa said. He explained that by transferring power to a civilian police force, “this means that the government has annexed the West Bank”.

He noted this move absolves the military of its obligations under international law, placing enforcement under Ben-Gvir.

Mustafa warned that Ben-Gvir, who previously oversaw the demolition of thousands of Arab homes in Israel, will now command the police to “support the settlers more and more and push them more and more towards deepening their repression and terrorism against the Palestinians”.

Palestinian leadership strongly condemned the mandate. Hussein al-Sheikh, secretary-general of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s executive committee, described the move as a blatant violation of international agreements and an attempt to “impose Israeli law and sovereignty over the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and to entrench the illegal annexation of Palestinian land”.

The Palestinian group Hamas echoed this sentiment, releasing a statement calling the order a “dangerous step on the path to imposing de facto annexation” that provides “cover and more protection for the escalating attacks and crimes of the settlers”.

Fascist militias

The Palestinian Authority has accused the Israeli government and its military of sponsoring settlers’ violence. Even Israeli members of parliament have accused the army of being complicit.

Analysts stress that relieving the military of its duties essentially deputises settler violence, turning them into an armed extension of the state.

Nihad Abu Ghosh, an expert in Israeli affairs, told Al Jazeera that there is no contradiction between the army and the settlers. He noted that the settlers have evolved into “fascist militia formations” that perform the state’s dirty work.

“These are fascist militia formations, and there are similar precedents in many countries that were ruled by fascism, whether in Spain, Italy, Germany, or even Chile,” Abu Ghosh said.

He added that these militias carry out roles that “require evading any discipline, rules, or laws” to achieve a “creeping, gradual annexation to make it a reality”.

Apartheid and displacement

The dual legal framework resulting from this shift has drawn sharp international and local criticism. Shadi al-Shurafa, a researcher in Israeli affairs, told Al Jazeera that the situation is a textbook definition of segregation.

“We are facing an application of an overt racist apartheid system in the West Bank,” al-Shurafa said, noting it involves one regime operating with two entirely different laws based on ethnicity.

He added that the ultimate goal of the current government is carrying out complete ethnic cleansing and trapping Palestinians in “isolated cantons and isolated Bantustans”.

Other experts argue that the move completely alters the international legal status of the territory, pushing the crisis into a new, more dangerous phase.

“The subject has bypassed the issue of annexation to a post-annexation phase and creating a reality where the Palestinian finds himself forced to think about migration,” said Adel Shadid, expert in Israeli affairs.

International complicity

Analysts also pointed to the role of the international community, particularly the United States, in enabling this systemic shift.

Shadid dismissed recent US condemnations of settler violence as mere theatre to “mislead global public opinion”.

He argued that the underlying project has full US backing, noting that “all that is happening now is an American-Israeli plan and there is harmony between the two right-wing administrations in Washington and here in Israel”.

Andrew Whitley, a former United Nations official and director of the Balfour Project, stressed that the planned transfer is “completely illegal” and urged immediate global intervention.

He told Al Jazeera that the “Palestinian state is disappearing before our eyes”, demanding that the international community move beyond rhetoric.

“We have to do much more than just wring our hands and complain that governments are not doing anything about this,” Whitley said, calling for concrete sanctions to halt the rapid erasure of the Palestinian presence.