sentenced

A brawl broke out between the two MMA fighters and their team members inside a hotel before a wrestling event.

The Abu Dhabi Criminal Court has convicted 10 people over a mass brawl ⁠involving mixed ⁠martial artists Usman Nurmagomedov, Merab Dvalishvili and their teammates at a hotel.

The brawl broke out ahead of a wrestling event organised ⁠by Real American Freestyle (RAF), where Usman Nurmagomedov’s brother Umar and Dvalishvili were scheduled for matches against different opponents.

“An Abu Dhabi court has convicted 10 defendants in connection with a brawl ‌inside a hotel and has sentenced them to six months’ imprisonment … along with deportation from the country,” read the announcement from the Abu Dhabi Judicial Department on Friday.

ESPN reported that six members of Team Nurmagomedov were sentenced to six months in prison, fined 300,000 dirhams (approximately $81,600) and ordered to be deported after serving their sentences.

According to Abu Dhabi-based The National newspaper, former UFC bantamweight ⁠champion Dvalishvili and a friend were fined 50,000 dirhams ($13,600) for “disturbing public security and assaulting others”.

Two additional people were handed six-month prison sentences for privacy violations after they filmed the ⁠brawl and published the footage online, the reports added. The court also ordered the confiscation of their phones and deletion of the footage.

The brawl broke out on Wednesday when Georgian Dvalishvili, who was scheduled to appear at RAF Abu Dhabi on Saturday, was being interviewed in the lobby of the Yas Hilton.

PFL lightweight champion Usman – the cousin of retired MMA legend Khabib Nurmagomedov – and his associates approached Dvalishvili. Videos shared online showed ‌Usman coming in from behind and slapping Dvalishvili, which started the melee.

Usman was not scheduled to feature at the RAF Abu Dhabi card but travelled to the UAE capital to accompany his older brother, Umar, who was scheduled to face Urijah Faber.

Later on Friday, the event organisers removed Umar from the card, replacing him ‌with ‌Saba Lazishvili, Dvalishvili’s friend who was also involved in the brawl.

RAF cofounder Chad Bronstein said Dvalishvili has been released from custody. He remains available for his scheduled match with Marlon Moraes.

“I’m pleased to share that Merab Dvalishvili is back with us in Abu Dhabi,” Bronstein said in a statement. “We would like to express our sincere appreciation to the relevant authorities in Abu Dhabi for their professionalism and support.”

Dvalishvili posted several videos on social media after the incident and released his personal statement on X, saying: “Just want to let everyone know I have been released, and I am good, healthy and ready to go.

“I want to thank everyone in Abu Dhabi for your help in resolving this matter … I do hope that they release everyone; I would not press charges. I want peace and the best for all,” he added.

Wednesday’s incident wasn’t the first time Dvalishvili and Team Nurmagomedov clashed. Tensions also escalated in January last year after Dvalishvili defeated Usman’s older brother Umar in a UFC bantamweight title fight. They also had a smaller altercation at an RAF event in Georgia in July.

A London judge on Monday sentenced British actor-turned-religious influencer Russell Brand to 10 and a half years in prison after he was convicted on rape and sexual assault charges in the U.K. last week.

Brand, the 51-year-old former bad boy star of comedies including “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” and “Get Him to The Greek,” was convicted by a jury last week of one count of rape and three counts of sexual assault involving four different women.

He was also acquitted of two rape counts and one count of attempted indecent assault. The criminal charges originated from his interactions with six different women in the U.K. spanning from the late 1990s to the late aughts. He pleaded not guilty to all charges leading up to the trial, which began Oct. 12 and lasted three weeks.

Brand was first publicly accused of sexual assault in 2023 when the Times of London and Britain’s Channel 4 published a joint investigation into allegations involving several women between 2006 and 2013. More women came forward with their accusations against Brand in wake of the investigation, including a woman who alleged in a civil suit in New York that Brand sexually assaulted her on the set of his 2011 film “Arthur.”

British police first pressed charges against Brand in April 2025, accusing him of single counts of rape, indecent assault, oral rape and two counts of sexual assault involving incidents from 1999 to 2005. Prosecutors accused Brand of raping a woman in the English seaside area of Bournemouth in 1999. Officials also accused Brand of indecently assaulting a second woman in 2001, orally raping and sexually assaulting a third woman in 2004, and sexually assaulting a fourth woman between 2004 to 2005, incidents that allegedly occurred in Westminster, according to U.K. officials. Prosecutors tacked on two additional charges — one count of rape and another count of sexual assault — against Brand in December 2025 for incidents involving two more women in 2009.

He was convicted of sexually assaulting a woman during a birthday party at a London bar in 2004, but acquitted of orally raping her in a restroom, the Associated Press reported. Jurors also found the actor guilty of kissing and groping another woman at a London radio station in 2004 or 2005 and of anally raping a fan at his home after meeting her backstage at one of his comedy shows in 2009. His final conviction was for sexually assaulting another woman who alleged the comedian demanded a massage and pressed his face into her groin while filming an advertisement in 2009.

Shortly after the jury handed down its verdict, police confirmed it provided prosecutors with investigations into two additional rape allegations against the actor.

Prosecutor Riel Karmy-Jones described the comedian as ruthless, “calculating,” “manipulative” and as a “sexual predator” during the trial while Brand, ex-husband of pop star Katy Perry, denied forcing any of his accusers into sexual encounters. “Consent is fundamental, essential, necessary, and indeed in may ways more important than sex itself,” he told jurors.

Brand also told jurors of the personal toll of the high-profile rape and sexual assault allegations, claiming friends and collaborators cut ties and that no one with relevant evidence wanted to testify on his behalf. Laura Gallacher, Brand’s wife since 2017 and mother of their three children, testified on the actor’s behalf, describing him as a devoted father.

Jurors also heard testimony from Brand’s ex-personal assistant and the actor’s former roommate, who spoke to Brand’s “insane sexual appetite” and ambitious sexual goals, respectively. The actor also acknowledged during cross-examination by Karmy-Jones, he spent part of his earlier life pursuing “beyond reckless philandering” and that he grew “comfortable” using his fame to “facilitate sexual access.” He said that “was wrong.”

“My entire life has been consumed by these events, these allegations, these accusations,” he said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Wong, in prison since 2020, was found guilty of colluding with foreign entities in violation of the city’s national security law.

Hong Kong pro-democracy activist Joshua Wong, who has been in prison since 2020, has been jailed for an additional 10 years.

Hong Kong’s High Court found Wong guilty of colluding with foreign entities in violation of the city’s national security law on Thursday.

The sentence comes just two months before he was expected to be released in January 2027.

“The punishment must fit the gravity of ⁠the crime,” High Court Judge William Tam told a packed courtroom while delivering the sentence.

“It is also necessary for the court to express the community’s abhorrence of the defendant’s scheme and acts with others to collude with foreign forces or external elements to endanger national security.”

Wong, now 30, was accused of conspiring with self-exiled activist Nathan Law and others to ask foreign countries, bodies or individuals outside China to impose sanctions or blockades, or engage in other hostile activities against the government.

He pleaded guilty to the charge in September. Tam said he considered a 13-year prison sentence as a starting point but reduced it to 10 because of Wong’s guilty plea and mitigation.

Wong was once the face of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement and has been in jail since 2020. He was imprisoned over his role in protests held a year earlier.

The demonstrations were prompted by plans to allow extradition to mainland China but soon evolved into a wider pro-democracy movement. Wong became a prominent representative of the movement, regularly appearing on news channels. He later pleaded guilty to inciting and organising an unauthorised antigovernment assembly.

‘Endless political persecution’

Governments and rights groups criticised the court’s decision on Thursday.

The United States consulate in Hong Kong said that it “strongly condemns” the additional sentence handed to Wong, and called for his “immediate release”.

“Wong has been unjustly imprisoned since December 2020, demonstrating that Beijing will go to extraordinary lengths to silence those who advocate for fundamental freedoms in Hong Kong,” a consulate spokesperson said in a statement to the AFP news agency.

After his sentencing, Taiwan also criticised the “endless political persecution” of Hong Kong pro-democracy activists.

Beijing and the Hong Kong government use “authoritarian tools” to “fabricate charges … engage in endless political persecution, and suppress the people’s legitimate rights to pursue freedom, democracy, and human rights,” Taiwan’s top China policy body said.

Human Rights Watch denounced the latest charge against Wong. “The harsh sentence on baseless charges against Joshua Wong is cruel and unjust. Young people promoting social change are an asset for any vibrant society, but the Hong Kong government puts them behind bars,” said Elaine Pearson, the group’s Asia director.

Amnesty International also criticised Wong’s additional sentence, saying it was “another grim reminder of how Hong Kong’s National Security Law has become a tool to punish dissent”.

Iran has sentenced award-winning filmmaker Jafar Panahi to five years and one month in prison and ordered the seizure of of all of his assets.

The “It Was Just an Accident” director was sentenced Monday, according to the Associated Press. The charges against Panahi, who’d returned to the country in March, remain unclear, per the outlet.

One of Iran’s most politically outspoken filmmakers, Panahi has been critical of the country’s leadership and condemned violence against anti-government protesters. He has previously been convicted of “propaganda activities against the system” and has repeatedly been imprisoned, banned from traveling and put under house arrest by Iranian authorities over the years.

Panahi filmed the Palme d’Or-winning “It Was Just an Accident” clandestinely in Iran following his release from a seven-month stint in prison in 2023 after he declared a hunger strike.

“I felt a huge burden on my shoulders when I left prison that made me feel I owed something to my fellow prisoners who were left behind,” Panahi told The Envelope earlier this year.

Panahi was detained by Iranian authorities in 2022 after inquiring about the arrests of fellow filmmakers Mohammad Rasoulof and Mostafa Al-Ahmad. Authorities then reimposed a six-year prison sentence that had never been enforced stemming from a 2010 conviction related to a documentary he was making about the disputed reelection of Iran’s then-president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and the protests that followed.

“This arrest was more like banditry and hostage-taking than the execution of a judicial sentence,” Panahi said in a statement from Tehran’s Evin Prison at the time.

Panahi’s lawyer, Mostafa Nili, told Iranian news site Emtedad that the filmmaker was currently involved in three open legal cases but had not been notified of the hearing date for the latest one, according to a report by the Guardian. Nili also said that the court imposed a two-year travel ban and has barred Panahi from using social media for two years.

A father whose two-year-old boy fell to his death at a five-star hotel in Cyprus has been fined 3,000 euro (£2,500).

Joshua Foster thought the window was closed when he placed the boy on a sill to show him the view of a waterpark and “lost control” of him, Paphos District Court previously heard.

The boy fell nearly 40ft (12.1m) from the fourth floor of the King Evelthon Beach Hotel and Resort on 12 July, the first day of the family’s holiday in Chlorakas.

Foster, 37, from Essex, admitted causing death through a reckless, rash or dangerous act and was sentenced on Friday morning.

He held back tears as his sentence was handed down by the judge, before hugging his lawyer and parents.

Foster had lifted his son on to the windowsill to show him the view of a water park, the court in Cyprus was previously told.

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