Human

An EU diplomatic service audit report, seen by Reuters and AFP, looked at Israel’s actions in Gaza and occupied West Bank.

There are indications Israel may have breached its human rights obligations under the terms of a pact governing its ties with the European Union, a review of the agreement shows.

According to an EU document seen by the Reuters and AFP news agencies on Friday, the European External Action Service said that Israel’s actions in Gaza were likely not in line with rules laid out in the EU-Israel Association.

“On the basis of the assessments made by the independent international institutions … there are indications that Israel would be in breach of its human rights obligations,” the audit drafted by the EU’s diplomatic service read.

The report comes after months of deepening concern in European capitals about Israel’s operations in Gaza and the humanitarian situation in the enclave.

“Israel’s continued restrictions to the provision of food, medicines, medical equipment, and other vital supplies affect the entire population of Gaza present on the affected territory,” it said.

The document includes a section dedicated to the situation in Gaza – covering issues related to denial of humanitarian aid, attacks with a significant number of casualties, attacks on medical facilities, displacement and lack of accountability – as well as the situation in the occupied West Bank, including settler violence, Reuters reported.

The document said it relies on “facts verified by and assessments made by independent international institutions, and with a focus on most recent events in Gaza and the West Bank”.

The audit was launched last month in response to the deteriorating humanitarian situation in Gaza, in a push backed by 17 states and spearheaded by the Netherlands.

The EU’s top diplomat, Kaja Kallas, is expected to present the findings of the report to the bloc’s foreign ministers in Brussels on Monday.

EU-Israel agreement

Under the EU-Israel agreement, which came into effect in 2000, the two parties agreed that their relationship would be based on “respect for human rights and democratic principles”.

Suspending the agreement would require a unanimous decision from the bloc’s 27 members, something diplomats have said from the beginning was virtually impossible.

According to AFP, diplomats have said that they expect Kallas to propose options on a response to the report during the next foreign ministers’ meeting in July.

“The question is … how many member states would still be willing not to do anything and still keep on saying that it’s business as usual,” an unnamed diplomat told the news agency ahead of the review’s findings.

“It’s really important to not fall into the trap of Israel to look somewhere else,” they said.

The EU is Israel’s largest commercial partner, with 42.6 billion euros ($48.2bn) in goods traded in 2024. Trade in services reached 25.6 billion euros ($29.5bn) in 2023.

Israel’s mission to the EU did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment about the contents of the document.

Israel’s attacks on Tehran have not only targeted military bases and nuclear sites, but they also have penetrated the bedrooms, kitchens and living rooms of ordinary citizens. Children have been killed. Teachers have fallen silent. Athletes have been buried in the rubble. All of them were as far removed from politics as possible.

The attacks between Israel and Iran started on Friday, when Israel launched what it called preemptive air strikes targeting more than a dozen Iranian sites — including key nuclear facilities, nuclear scientists and military leaders — in an operation it said was aimed at preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons.

According to the Iranian Ministry of Health and Medical Education, at least 224 people have been killed and 1,481 wounded.

Iran has retaliated with a wave of ballistic missile strikes against Israel, claiming the lives of at least 24 people and wounding 380, in an escalation that has raised fears of a broader regional conflict.

In Tehran, the full scale of the destruction remains to be seen. But in the streets, evidence of the lives lost emerges from the wreckage of bombed-out buildings. A child’s lifeless body in the rubble. A dirt-covered doll abandoned in the street. A sketchbook lost among the concrete and dust.

For many Iranians, these scenes evoke memories of the Iran-Iraq War. But this time, the war is not at the borders; it’s in the heart of the capital. Residents say the night sky in Tehran — now dotted with missiles and fires — is not the one they know.

In a mass panic, people are fleeing the city in droves. Petrol stations are overrun. Highways are jammed. Homes that once promised safety stand vulnerable with no emergency shelters or warning sirens.

Here are some of the victims who died in the recent attacks on Tehran.

The Pilates instructor

On Saturday morning, Tehran reeked of dust and smoke. Israeli missiles had landed on homes that were filled with laughter just hours before. One of the silenced voices belonged to Niloufar Ghalehvand, whose friend Ghazal* recalled the last time she saw her at a cafe sipping coffee, just one night before the bombs fell.

Ghalehvand, a 32-year-old Pilates instructor, was killed along with her father, Kamran Ghalehvand, and her mother, Fatemeh Sedighi, in their home on Ozgol Street in northern Tehran.

“We were at the cafe, having coffee, and she said, ‘Iran is so beautiful. I just wish we could live in peace, like people in other countries,’” Ghazal told Al Jazeera. “I still can’t believe she’s gone. We were making plans to celebrate her 32nd birthday on June 28. She was so full of hope.”

Ghazal said Ghalehvand lived near the residence of Iran’s highest-ranking military commander, General Mohammad Bagheri, the target of the strike.

“They were ordinary people,” Ghazal said of Ghalehvand’s family. “They didn’t engage in political activity.”

Ghalehvand dreamed of becoming a famous Pilates instructor.

“The last time we met, she asked me to help her launch an Instagram page to post her workout videos. She never imagined she would become famous for her death.”

Ghalehvand had been a professional instructor for eight years, but Ghazal said her income was never enough. She worked on commission at local gyms and was always seeking more private clients.

The athlete

On Friday morning, Parsa Mansour, a 27-year-old professional paddle tennis player, was asleep at home in Shahrara, a densely packed district in northern Tehran, when an Israeli missile struck nearby.

The blast shattered the windows, and debris collapsed on top of him, killing him instantly. His parents, who were in the next room, miraculously survived.

“Parsa was full of laughter and always joking,” said Saman*, his best friend. He noted that Parsa was a self-made athlete who trained alone without a coach.

“When I saw the Tennis Federation’s announcement of his death, I was in shock. I didn’t believe it at first. Then I went to his home. It was in ruins,” Saman said.

“Parsa’s father is in a terrible state. He still can’t believe his son is gone.”

The son who lost his father

On Sunday afternoon, Amin Ahmad, a 30-year-old taekwondo athlete, witnessed his father’s horrific death in eastern Tehran.

“I saw it with my own eyes,” said Ahmad. “My father was blasted out of the house. His face was burned, and his ears were torn off.”

Ahmad’s voice trembled as he recalled his father’s final moments.

“We were trapped inside. I had to force the window bars open and call out for help. Someone brought a ladder, and my mother and I escaped,” he said.

“My father was a teacher. He bought this home after a lifetime of hard work, so he could retire in peace. Now he’s dead, and the house is destroyed. What was his crime? I don’t know what to do.”

The photographer

On Sunday at midday, after two nights of Israeli fighter jets buzzing Iranian airspace, an explosion struck the relatively wealthy neighbourhood of Tajrish in northern Tehran. Water pipes burst, flooding the streets.

Ehsan Bayrami, a 35-year-old freelance photographer and graphic designer who was walking nearby, was killed instantly.

Ali*, a colleague, said Bayrami had just left a work meeting and was on his way home.

“He used to film videos for sports clubs and photograph sporting events,” Ali explained.

On Sunday morning, he recalled telling Bayrami to be careful.

“He told me not to worry because it’s safe during the day. ‘Israel only attacks at night when people are asleep,’ he said.”

Ali paused before adding, “Ehsan was incredibly talented and hardworking. He never let anything stop him from working.”

*Ghazal, Saman and Ali preferred not to use their full names while speaking with Al Jazeera to protect their identities.

This article is published in collaboration with the news consortium Egab.

In March, the Trump administration deported 238 Venezuelans to El Salvador, allegedly for membership in the criminal organization Tren de Aragua. According to White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, these men were “terrorists” and “heinous monsters.” President Trump echoed her, calling them “monsters” on his social media platform, Truth Social. In May, ProPublica reported that the White House knew that most of the men had no criminal convictions in the U.S., and earlier reporting indicated that more than 50 of them had entered the U.S. legally and had not violated immigration law.

“Monster” conjures a threat distinct from “foreign,” “different,” “other” or even “alien.” Here it implies that the deportees are different from “normal” people (read “white, Anglo, native-born Americans”) in ways that go beyond merely committing a garden-variety crime. Their transgression of the social contract seemingly even exceeds the violent crimes of which they are accused, because U.S. citizens suspected of being “rapists, murders, kidnappers” — the administration’s allegations about these “monsters” — don’t get trafficked to gulags overseas.

Monstrifying these people was part of a strategy to justify deporting them by invoking the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 without proof of any crime or gang membership. By doing so the administration threatens to normalize not just the deportation of a handful of individuals but also depriving all residents (legal and undocumented) and U.S. citizens of the right to challenge the legality of their detention or imprisonment. Because one cannot prove legal residence or citizenship without due process, deporting people without legal proceedings is to deny rights that must be extended to all if they are to exist for anyone — a violation all the greater when individuals are sent to a prison from which, in the words of the Salvadoran president, “the only way out is in a coffin.”

Monstrifying individuals and groups is nothing new. The 11th-century chronicler Gerald of Wales, descended from Norman conquerers and Welsh nobility, dismissed the English as “the most worthless of all peoples under heaven … the most abject slaves” and Ireland as an island inhabited by werewolves, ox-humans and other human-animal hybrids. In 1625, an English Puritan travel editor published a claim (without having set foot in North America) that the Algonquians had “little of humanitie but shape … more brutish than the beasts they hunt.”

In 1558, the Scottish Protestant and firebrand preacher John Knox published a pamphlet against the rule of Mary I of England, arguing that a woman who ruled in her own right was “a monster of monsters,” her country a monstrous body politic, unlikely to survive for long. In the age of Atlantic slavery, legal instruments known as “black codes” invented Black Africans transported to the colonies as a new category: the chattel slave who served for life and had fewer rights than white Christian servants.

The current president’s history of monstrifying people extends to U.S. citizens. In August 2016, Trump called Hillary Clinton “a monster”: supposedly “weak,” “unhinged,” “unbalanced,” someone who would be “a disaster” as president and who allegedly threatened “the destruction of this country from within.” In October 2020, Trump twice called Kamala Harris “this monster.”

The distinctions drawn by people in power trying to divide a population are often unworkable. How do you tell a law-abiding person from a terrorist gang member? From their tattoos, according to this administration. Neither citizenship nor immigration status is visible on a person’s body or audible in their voice, yet people of color of every immigration and citizenship status have long faced racial profiling. Attempts to define visible signs of the monster are not new either; nor is the fact that monster-making sweeps up an immense number of people in its dragnet.

But monsters are never hermetically sealed from the group whose borders they were invented to define. This ham-fisted attempt at an evidence-based reason for trafficking people to El Salvador echoes earlier attempts to identify distinct groups in a population where human variety existed on a continuum. Notorious among these examples was the monstrification and mass slaughter, in Nazi Germany, of Jewish, Roma, Sinti, LGBTQ+, disabled and neurodiverse individuals as well as political dissidents.

In the U.S. today, to tolerate, permit or encourage the monstrification of any non-citizen and consequently deny them due process is to tolerate, permit and encourage this to happen to U.S. citizens.

The category of the human is shrinking as politicians, tech bros and right-wing pundits monstrify everyone who isn’t a cis-het white man. Today’s dehumanizing language extends beyond the Venezuelan deportees that this administration labeled as “monsters.” It extends to women, minorities and LGBTQ+ people by questioning their right to bodily autonomy, privacy and dignity. It extends to people who are unhoused, poor, disabled or elderly, as social services are cut.

These narratives hail back to a broader, centuries-long Western tradition of gazing at other people and framing them as monstrous: as beings who supposedly broke the category of “human” and could be legitimately denied of fundamental rights.

Monster-making campaigns always serve a purpose. For European colonizers, claiming that Indigenous people were less than human disguised European land grabs. Laws defining enslaved Black Africans as chattel property legalized their enslavement and broke the labor solidarity between white servants and enslaved Africans. And the Nazis claimed that Jews and other minorities had caused Germany to lose the First World War and were responsible for the nation’s economic collapse.

Again today, the goals of monstrification serve the myth of white supremacy, including the notion that the U.S. was meant to be a white ethnostate. Thus while the Trump administration terminated a program for refugees fleeing Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela, it welcomed white Afrikaners from South Africa by calling them refugees.

Furthermore, by exploiting Jews’ proximity to whiteness, this administration is monstrifying Palestinians in order to justify the Israeli government’s human rights violations. By declaring that protesters, including those who are Jewish, calling for an end to the Gaza slaughter are antisemitic, and by withholding research funds from and interfering with universities by calling them hotbeds of antisemitism, the administration attempts to convince people that Palestinian civilians do not deserve food, homes, safety or even life — and that recognizing the humanity of Jews requires denying that Palestinians are human and have human rights. Yet the administration’s own antisemitism is clear: Trump has pardoned leaders of antisemitic and white supremacist organizations and hosted prominent antisemites as dinner guests.

This multi-pronged campaign of monstrification strengthens the personal loyalty of white supremacists and Christian nationalists towards Trump and sows discord and poisons solidarity among his targets and critics.

Monstrifying narratives have been undermining the possibility of a more inclusive body politic for millennia. But there’s an antidote to us-them messages of hate, fear and exclusion that claim that only a tiny minority of people are truly human. That antidote is to realize that by recognizing the humanity of others we don’t disavow our own humanity: We demonstrate it. It behooves us to demand that all people receive equal protection under the law, and to call out monstrifying narratives that, in the end, dehumanize us all.

Surekha Davies is a historian, speaker and monster consultant for TV, film and radio. She is the author of “Humans: A Monstrous History” and writes the newsletter “Strange and Wondrous: Notes From a Science Historian.”

Emily Feng is an award-winning Chinese American journalist who spent a decade reporting from China and Taiwan. In 2022, Feng was barred from returning to the Chinese mainland and labelled a “race traitor” for her journalism.

Her recent book, Let Only Red Flowers Bloom: Identity and Belonging in Xi Jinping’s China, tells the human stories of resistance and rebellion against the Chinese state’s vision of a unified national identity.

In this episode, Ken Roth and Emily Feng examine Xi Jinping’s past, exploring what distinguishes his style of authoritarianism and how this affects human rights both within China and globally.

Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran man who was wrongfully deported from the United States, has pleaded not guilty to human smuggling charges in a federal court in Nashville, Tennessee.

Friday marked the first opportunity for Abrego Garcia, a Maryland construction worker, to confront the criminal charges the administration of President Donald Trump has levelled against him.

The Trump administration has sought to portray Abrego Garcia as a member of the MS-13 criminal gang following his deportation to El Salvador on March 15.

Abrego Garcia had been protected from deportation under a 2019 protection order, given his fear of gang violence if he returned to El Salvador. His removal to that country sparked public outrage and questions about the legality of Trump’s “mass deportation” campaign.

In the months since, the Trump administration has faced increasing pressure to return Abrego Garcia to the US, with the Supreme Court in April affirming that the government needed to “facilitate” his release.

A lower court, led by US District Judge Paula Xinis, had signalled that it was considering whether to hold the Trump administration in contempt of court for not complying with orders to secure his return.

That abruptly changed, however, on June 6, when Attorney General Pam Bondi announced Abrego Garcia was on his way back to the US to face charges that he helped smuggle undocumented migrants in the US.

In a 10-page indictment, the Trump administration accused Abrego Garcia of leading “more than 100 trips between Texas to Maryland and other states”, starting in 2016.

It cites as evidence a traffic stop in Tennessee around November 30, 2022, when Abrego Garcia was observed driving a Chevrolet Suburban with nine passengers, all of whom appeared to be undocumented men headed to Maryland.

The administration has released body camera footage of that incident, where a police officer can be heard speculating that Abrego Garcia is part of a smuggling ring. But the footage shows no confrontation, and Abrego Garcia was not charged with any offence following the traffic stop.

Prosecutors have noted that Abrego Garcia could face a maximum of 10 years in prison for each migrant he smuggled, if convicted.

Critics, however, question whether the recently unveiled criminal indictment was an attempt by the Trump administration to save face and dodge contempt charges, given the scrutiny over whether it was defying court orders.

Abrego Garcia’s defence team, meanwhile, has called the charges against him “preposterous”.

“There’s no way a jury is going to see the evidence and agree that this sheet-metal worker is the leader of an international MS-13 smuggling conspiracy,” one of his lawyers, Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, told The Associated Press.

His case has nevertheless gained a national profile, with the Trump administration facing multiple legal challenges over whether it violated migrants’ right to due process: the right to a fair legal hearing.

Even administration officials have acknowledged that his swift deportation had been the result of an “administrative error”.

In Friday’s court hearing, US Magistrate Judge Barbara Holmes spoke directly to Abrego Garcia, assuring him that he would receive a fair trial.

“You are presumed innocent, and it is the government’s burden to prove at trial that you are guilty beyond a reasonable doubt,” Holmes said, reiterating fundamental principles of the US justice system.

The Trump administration has sought to keep Abrego Garcia detained while the trial unfolds, using additional allegations that are not included in the indictment as justification. Prosecutors have accused Abrego Garcia, among other things, of child pornography, abusing women and taking part in a murder in El Salvador. They also argue he is a flight risk.

But Judge Holmes warned on Friday that the court cannot keep someone in detention simply on the basis of allegations.

The human smuggling charges against Abrego Garcia have already caused discord within the Justice Department, with one prosecutor appearing to step down in protest.

That prosecutor, Ben Schrader, was the chief of the criminal division at the US Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Tennessee.

He posted on social media on the day of the indictment that he was leaving. “It has been an incredible privilege to serve as a prosecutor with the Department of Justice, where the only job description I’ve ever known is to do the right thing, in the right way, for the right reasons,” he wrote.

Outside the court on Friday, Abrego Garcia’s wife, Jennifer Vasquez Sura, called on supporters to keep fighting for his freedom: “Kilmar wants you to have faith.”

She saw her husband for the first time in three months on Thursday.

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Kilmar Abrego Garcia, whose mistaken deportation has become a flashpoint in President Trump’s immigration crackdown, pleaded not guilty on Friday to human smuggling charges in a federal court in Tennessee.

The plea was the first chance the Maryland construction worker has had in a U.S. courtroom to answer the Trump administration’s allegations against him since he was mistakenly deported in March to a notorious prison in El Salvador.

The Republican administration returned Abrego Garcia to the U.S. last week to face criminal charges related to what it said was a human smuggling operation that transported immigrants across the country. The charges stem from a 2022 traffic stop in Tennessee during which Abrego Garcia was driving a vehicle with nine passengers. His lawyers have called the allegations “preposterous.”

Friday’s hearing will also focus on whether Abrego Garcia should be released from jail while awaiting trial on the smuggling charges. A federal judge will hear arguments from Abrego Garcia’s lawyers and attorneys for the U.S. government.

Before the hearing began in Nashville, Abrego Garcia’s wife told a crowd outside a church that Thursday marked three months since the Trump administration “abducted and disappeared my husband and separated him from our family.”

Her voice choked with emotion, Jennifer Vasquez Sura said she saw her husband for the first time on Thursday. She said, “Kilmar wants you to have faith,” and asked the people supporting him and his family “‘to continue fighting, and I will be victorious because God is with us.’”

Abrego Garcia is a citizen of El Salvador who had been living in the United States for more than a decade before he was wrongfully deported by the Trump administration. The expulsion violated a 2019 U.S. immigration judge’s order that shielded him from deportation to his native country because he likely faced gang persecution there.

While the Trump administration described the mistaken removal as “an administrative error,” officials have continued to justify it by insisting Abrego Garcia was a member of the MS-13 gang. His wife and attorneys have denied the allegations, saying he’s simply a construction worker and family man.

U.S. attorneys have asked U.S. Magistrate Judge Barbara Holmes to keep Abrego Garcia in jail, describing him as a danger to the community and a flight risk. Abrego Garcia’s attorneys disagree, pointing out he was already wrongly detained in a notorious Salvadoran prison thanks to government error and arguing due process and “basic fairness” require him to be set free.

The charges against Abrego Garcia are human smuggling. But in their request to keep Abrego Garcia in jail, U.S. attorneys also accuse him of trafficking drugs and firearms and of abusing the women he transported, among other claims, although he is not charged with such crimes.

The U.S. attorneys also accuse Abrego Garcia of taking part in a murder in El Salvador. However, none of those allegations is part of the charges against him, and at his initial appearance June 6, the judge warned prosecutors she cannot detain someone based solely on allegations.

One of Abrego Garcia’s attorneys last week characterized the claims as a desperate attempt by the Trump administration to justify the mistaken deportation three months after the fact.

“There’s no way a jury is going to see the evidence and agree that this sheet metal worker is the leader of an international MS-13 smuggling conspiracy,” private attorney Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg said.

In a Wednesday court filing, Abrego Garcia’s public defenders argued the government is not even entitled to a detention hearing — much less detention — because the charges against him aren’t serious enough.

Although the maximum sentence for smuggling one person is 10 years, and Abrego Garcia is accused of transporting hundreds of people over nearly a decade, his defense attorneys point out there’s no minimum sentence. The average sentence for human smuggling in 2024 was just 15 months, according to court filings.

The decision to charge Abrego Garcia criminally prompted the resignation of Ben Schrader, who was chief of the criminal division at the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Tennessee. He posted about his departure on social media on the day of the indictment, writing, “It has been an incredible privilege to serve as a prosecutor with the Department of Justice, where the only job description I’ve ever known is to do the right thing, in the right way, for the right reasons.”

He did not directly address the indictment and declined to comment when reached by The Associated Press. However, a person familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a personnel matter confirmed the connection.

Although Abrego Garcia lives in Maryland, he’s being charged in Tennessee based on a May 2022 traffic stop for speeding in the state. The Tennessee Highway Patrol body camera video of the encounter that was released to the public last month shows a calm exchange between officers and Abrego Garcia. It also shows the officers discussing among themselves their suspicions of human smuggling before sending him on his way. One of the officers says, “He’s hauling these people for money.” Another says Abrego Garcia had $1,400 in an envelope.

Abrego Garcia was not charged with any offense at the traffic stop. Sandoval-Moshenberg, the private attorney, said in a statement after the video’s release that he saw no evidence of a crime in the footage.

Meanwhile, the lawsuit over Abrego Garcia’s mistaken deportation isn’t over. Abrego Garcia’s attorneys have asked a federal judge in Maryland to impose fines against the Trump administration for contempt, arguing that it flagrantly ignored court orders forseveral weeks to return him. The Trump administration said it will ask the judge to dismiss the lawsuit, arguing that it followed the judge’s order to return him to the U.S.

Loller, Mattise and Finley write for the Associated Press. Finley reported from Norfolk, Va.