overturns

Saudi Arabia’s Supreme Court has set aside the death sentence handed to a Sri Lankan migrant worker over a comment he made on Facebook, Colombo’s Deputy Foreign Minister Arun Hemachandra said.

Anojan Sivarasa, 27, was sentenced to death in September after a Saudi appellate court convicted him of blasphemy against Islam and the Prophet Muhammad over his comment.

The case sent shockwaves through Sri Lanka, spurring diplomatic efforts to seek clemency.

Saudi Arabia’s top court set aside the sentence on Wednesday, Hemachandra said in a post on Facebook, where he thanked the authorities and legal teams of both nations for their efforts.

In late June, footage of a young Muslim man kicking a dog following Hindu pilgrims circulated widely on social media, triggering religious arguments online.

During the exchange, a user posted derogatory remarks about a Hindu deity, leading Sivarasa to respond in Tamil insulting the Prophet Muhammad.

Although Sivarasa promptly deleted the comment and posted an apology video, a screenshot of it was brought to the attention of his employer and Saudi officials, leading to his arrest in July.

It is not clear if there will be further legal proceedings or whether Sivarasa will remain in detention, and for how long. He was initially sentenced to five years in prison as well as a fine of three million Saudi riyals ($0.8m; £0.6m) by the Al-Ahsa Criminal Court.

Faizer Mustafa, a Sri Lankan lawmaker who is involved in legal negotiations with Saudi Arabia regarding Sivarasa’s case, confirmed to BBC Sinhala that Saudi Arabia had overturned the death sentence, adding that they are reviewing the Supreme Court’s latest ruling.

Sivarasa’s family had earlier said they have had no direct contact with him since 28 September.

International rights groups had also joined calls for Saudi to spare his life.

“Saudi authorities should end their use of abusive laws to hand out extraordinary sentences for speech-related offenses, especially against migrant workers who are already in a vulnerable position with limited protections,” Joey Shea, senior Saudi Arabia researcher at Human Rights Watch, said on Tuesday.

Israel’s top court has overturned an election panel’s ban on Arab parties contesting parliamentary elections this month, saying the decision had not met the legal requirements for excluding them, according to Israeli media.

The Supreme Court justices ruled unanimously on Friday to undo the Central Elections Committee’s disqualification of the country’s two main Arab-majority political lists – Ra’am, also called the United Arab List, and the Joint List, which is an alliance of Hadash, Ta’al and Balad.

The decision keeps Palestinian citizens of Israel, who make up about 20 percent of the population, in the race after critics accused the committee of double standards ahead of the October 27 Knesset vote.

The court also voted 7-2 to reinstate Ofer Cassif, a sitting Jewish member of the Knesset from the Arab-Jewish Hadash party and an outspoken critic of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, media reports said.

The two dissenting justices said Cassif backs “armed struggle against the state of Israel”, which is grounds for his disqualification.

In September, the elections committee voted to disqualify the Joint List and Ra’am as parties, as well as Cassif and Sami Abu Shehadeh, head of the Balad party, as individuals.

Balad leader withdraws

The Supreme Court has nearly always overruled the committee when it votes to ban candidates.

However, at a hearing on Thursday, Supreme Court President Yitzhak Amit told Abu Shehadeh that a majority of the nine justices favoured disqualifying him from the election.

They gave him until Friday to withdraw, saying that if he did not, he would be disqualified, according to the Israeli Public Broadcasting Corporation.

Abu Shehadeh withdrew from the election after that.

National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, a far-right ally of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, led the push to bar him over an article written after the Hamas attacks on October 7, 2023. Abu Shehadeh described the attack as “an important historical event” in the piece, but denies supporting it.

Balad said in a statement that a court-ordered removal, rather than a voluntary one, would have had “grave consequences for the country’s political and parliamentary life” as it would set a precedent around the removal of Arab candidates.

Double standards

The Ra’am party made history after the 2021 election, becoming the first Arab party to join an Israeli government when it took part in a disparate coalition that briefly removed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from power. Most Palestinian citizens of Israel had stayed out of coalition politics until then.

In this election, Ra’am is also fielding a Jewish Zionist candidate for the first time, Yoav Segalovitz, who won popularity in Arab communities for his work to curb crime as deputy minister for internal security.

The election committee’s September vote drew accusations of a double standard, as Palestinian-led parties faced exclusion while parties led by far-right ministers, some of whom have been sanctioned internationally, stayed on the ballot.

Speaking to Al Jazeera on Friday, Abu Shehadeh said he withdrew because he “didn’t have any other choices”.

Although the Supreme Court has restored the Arab parties to the ballot, Abu Shehadeh said the reversal did not make the original disqualifications acceptable.

“In the end, what happened yesterday was a historical catastrophe for democracy, or the very narrow margins of democracy in the State of Israel,” he said. “I was disqualified because I think differently, because I have a different narrative on how to read history, the present, and the future in the place that we live today.”

SEATTLE — A judge on Thursday overturned President Trump’s decision to fire the court-appointed top U.S. prosecutor in Seattle, the latest development in a legal tug-of-war over the administration’s efforts to control who occupies the powerful Justice Department posts.

The 17 active and senior judges in the Western District of Washington unanimously named Roger Rogoff, a former judge and veteran prosecutor, U.S. attorney in July, after Trump failed to fill the post with a nominee confirmed by the U.S. Senate.

The president fired Rogoff less than an hour later. Rogoff sued, and in a ruling Thursday, U.S. District Judge Stanley Bastian found the termination unlawful and reinstated him.

Bastian noted that when presidents fail to fill a U.S. attorney post with a nominee confirmed by the Senate, federal law authorizes the judges of that district to appoint someone “until the vacancy is filled.”

“It does not say ‘until the president fires the person selected,’” Bastian said.

He concluded: “Mr. Roger Rogoff is the United States attorney for the Western District of Washington and has been the rightful holder of that office since July 15, 2026, when he took the oath of office.”

The Justice Department said in a written statement it disagreed with the decision and would appeal.

Rogoff is the latest in a series of judicially appointed U.S. attorneys to be ousted by the Trump administration, and he is believed to be the first to sue over the removal, setting up a direct legal battle over the issue.

Presidents normally appoint U.S. attorneys, the top federal prosecutor in each judicial district. The positions require Senate confirmation, except in temporary appointments, which can last up to 120 days. When temporary appointments expire before a nominee is confirmed, the judges in a judicial district can name a U.S. attorney.

But under Trump, the Justice Department has sought to leave unconfirmed prosecutors in their positions indefinitely, often through novel personnel maneuvers. Trump named Charles Neil Floyd, who previously served as an immigration judge, interim U.S. attorney in Seattle in October 2025 but never forwarded his nomination to the Senate.

When Floyd’s time as interim U.S. attorney expired, Trump simply shifted his title, a tactic the administration has also tried in other federal judicial districts: It named him first assistant U.S. attorney, while leaving the top post empty.

Trump last month nominated Pete Serrano, the first assistant U.S. attorney in eastern Washington, to be the U.S. attorney in Seattle. But Serrano has not been confirmed, and his nomination is opposed by Washington’s senior Democratic senator, Patty Murray.

“Today’s ruling is an important victory for the rule of law and the people in Western Washington who deserve a U.S. attorney that answers to the law, not Donald Trump,” Murray said in a written statement Thursday.

Bastian is the chief judge in eastern Washington. He heard the case because the judges in western Washington were recused.

In December, Alina Habbaresigned as the top federal prosecutor for New Jersey after an appeals court said she had been serving in the post unlawfully.

Lindsey Halligan, who pursued indictments against a pair of Trump’s adversaries, left her position as an acting U.S. attorney in Virginia after a judge concluded her appointment was unlawful and that indictments she brought against James and former FBI Director James Comey must be dismissed.

The judges there named James Hundley, who had handled criminal and civil cases for more than 30 years, but the administration fired him. It also fired a court-appointed U.S. attorney in northern New York.

Johnson writes for the Associated Press.