Category Archives: Law

Sharing deepfake intimate images to be criminalised in England and Wales

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Under online safety bill, maximum sentence where intent to cause distress is proved will be two years

Sharing deepfake intimate images is to be criminalised in England and Wales. Amendments to the online safety bill will make it illegal to share explicit images or videos that have been digitally manipulated to look like someone else without their consent.

The Ministry of Justice said the use of deepfakes had been increasing in recent years, with a website that virtually strips women naked receiving 38m hits in the first eight months of 2021.

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China is state most dangerous to its own citizens’ civil rights, report finds

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China scores better on food, health and housing, while crackdowns have worsened Hong Kong’s ratings

China has been ranked as the worst country in the world for safety from the state and the right to assembly, in a human rights report that tracks social, economic and political freedoms.

The Human Rights Measurement Initiative (HRMI), a New Zealand-based project, has been monitoring various countries’ human rights performance since 2017.

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Joe Biden says mass shootings plague the US ‘every damn day’ – as it happened

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President makes speech in Connecticut at summit marking passage of tougher gun control law last year

The Minneapolis police force use excessive force and discriminate against marginalized groups, including Black and Native Americans and people with behavioral issues, attorney general Merrick Garland said as he announced the findings of the justice department’s investigation following George Floyd’s death.

“We found that MPD … engages in a pattern or practice of using excessive force, unlawfully discriminating against Black and Native American people in enforcement activities, violating the rights of people engaged in protected speech and discriminating against people with behavioral disabilities and … when responding to them in crisis,” Garland said.

The city council approved the court-enforceable agreement on Friday on an 11-0 vote, but not before several members expressed harsh criticism of the Minneapolis police department and other city leaders over the years.

“The lack of political will to take responsibility for MPD is why we are in this position today,” council member Robin Wonsley said.

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Bar for street sexual harassment offences in England and Wales set too high, charities say

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Open letter says burden on victims to prove intent leaves door open for perpetrators to claim they were joking

Proposals to tackle sexual harassment in the street in England and Wales do not go far enough because the bar for offences has been set too high, charities have warned.

The Fawcett Society, Girl Guiding and Refuge are among organisations who say the requirement to prove perpetrators intended to cause alarm or distress undermines the provisions of two bills intended to protect women and girls going through parliament.

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Anguish as rape survivors in Sudan unable to access vital medication

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Emergency contraception, HIV-prevention and abortion drugs are locked in a warehouse in Khartoum – leaving women to turn to desperate measures

Rape survivors in the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, are struggling to get hold of emergency contraception and abortion medication.

Access to a warehouse where 47,000 medical post-rape kits are stored has been cut off since the conflict began in April. Women are using social media to share information about where to find drugs to prevent pregnancies and infections – or are using herbal remedies.

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Calls for abortion to be decriminalised amid row over jailing of UK woman

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Leading expert warns of ‘sustained attacks’ on reproductive rights after sentence imposed on Monday

Leading women’s health experts have warned of an attack on women’s reproductive rights and the potential for more prosecutions, following the jailing of a woman for terminating her pregnancy after the legal time limit.

The president of the UK’s leading body for sexual health professionals said that women should be “more worried than they are” following the sentencing, adding that it could lead to sustained attacks on established rights, and efforts to curtail reforms.

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Call to overhaul ‘out of date’ UK abortion laws after woman jailed

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Tory MP speaks out amid anger over 44-year-old’s sentence for taking abortion pills beyond legal limit

Abortion legislation is “very much out of date” and should be overhauled, the chair of the Commons women and equalities committee has said, after a woman was jailed for procuring drugs to induce an abortion after the legal limit.

There was outrage on Monday after the woman, a mother of three, was sentenced to more than two years in prison.

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Thousands of Afghan refugees in UK set to be made homeless

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Downing Street crisis meeting hears that about 8,000 who arrived under Operation Warm Welcome will be evicted this summer with nowhere to go

Thousands of Afghan refugees in the UK face homelessness this summer, the government was warned last week at a secret crisis meeting in Downing Street.

Council officials told No 10 and Home Office civil servants that about 8,000 Afghan refugees, allowed into the country in 2021 under the slogan Operation Warm Welcome, are due to be evicted from hotels as early as August because of a government deadline, yet have nowhere to go.

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Iraq’s central bank to blame for dispute behind jailing of Australian Robert Pether, tribunal finds

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Engineer’s family says International Court of Arbitration decision strengthens the case for freeing him

An international tribunal has found Iraq’s central bank was to blame for a contractual dispute with an engineering firm that led to the jailing of Australian engineer Robert Pether, prompting his family to make a renewed plea that he be freed from the Baghdad prison cell where he has spent two years.

Pether and his colleague Khalid Radwan were arrested and jailed in 2021 over a contractual dispute between their employer, Cardno ME (CME), and the Central Bank of Iraq, which had hired the firm to help build its new Baghdad headquarters.

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EU agrees radical reforms on migration and asylum laws

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After years of infighting, 27-state bloc sets out new policies including charge of €20,000 a head for members that refuse to take refugees

The EU has agreed radical reforms of its migration and asylum laws including charges of €20,000 (£17,200) per head for member countries that refuse to host refugees.

After almost 12 hours of intense negotiations in Luxembourg, and years of fighting, interior ministers struck a deal on Thursday on what they described as a “historical” new approach to what one politician described as an often “toxic topic”.

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Activists take Canada’s environment minister to court in fight to save northern spotted owl

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Advocacy group says continued destruction of critical habitat leaves it no choice but to take legal action against Steven Guilbeault

Environmental groups in Canada are taking legal action against the country’s environment minister, arguing his delay in protecting old growth forest is harming the critically endangered northern spotted owl.

In February, Steven Guilbeault said he would recommend an emergency order after determining the species was facing “imminent threats” to its survival.

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Ukraine and Myanmar make 2022 most violent year in a decade for medical staff

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Report demands accountability for war crimes and singles out Russia for ‘mind-boggling’ targeting of hospitals in Ukraine

Russian attacks on medical facilities in Ukraine made 2022 the most violent year in a decade for hospitals and health workers operating in conflict zones, according to a new report by a coalition of humanitarian organisations.

With 750 reported attacks in 2022, Russia set a 10-year record, according to the Safeguarding Health in Conflict Coalition, which includes Human Rights Watch and the Johns Hopkins Center for Humanitarian Health.

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Conservative donor has defamation case against Tory MP struck out

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Mohamed Amersi criticised by high court judge for his conduct in proceedings against Charlotte Leslie

A major Conservative party donor has had his defamation claim against a former Tory MP struck out by a high court judge, who criticised his conduct.

The telecoms businessman Mohamed Amersi, who has donated more than £500,000 to the party since 2018, sued Charlotte Leslie – the director of the Conservative Middle East Council (CMEC), which was also a defendant – claiming several documents that were circulated to influential individuals between late December 2020 and early January 2021were defamatory of him.

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Covid inquiry legal challenge over WhatsApp messages to be heard ‘very soon’

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MPs told UK government’s attempt to avoid handing over evidence to inquiry had been ‘misinterpreted’

The high court will decide “very soon” whether ministers should be forced to hand over all unredacted files demanded by the Covid inquiry, MPs have been told.

In an attempt to allay concerns of a cover-up, the Cabinet Office minister Jeremy Quin faced down fractious MPs on Monday and denied there was any political involvement in the scrutiny of such material.

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Ugandan president signs anti-LGBTQ+ law with death penalty for same-sex acts

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Global outcry over Museveni’s assent to draconian new anti-gay law, condemned as a ‘permission slip for hate and dehumanisation’


Uganda’s president, Yoweri Museveni, has signed into law the world’s harshest anti-LGBTQ+ bill, which allows the death penalty for homosexual acts. The move immediately drew widespread international outrage as well as condemnation from many Ugandans.

Early on Monday, the speaker of the Ugandan parliament, Anita Annet Among, released a statement on social media confirming Museveni had assented to the law first passed by MPs in March. It imposes the death penalty or life imprisonment for certain same-sex acts, up to 20 years in prison for “recruitment, promotion and funding” of same-sex “activities”, and anyone convicted of “attempted aggravated homosexuality” faces a 14-year sentence.

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Hong Kong court rebuffs effort to dismiss Jimmy Lai national security trial

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Lawyers acting for pro-democracy activist argued that proceedings could be biased due to judge selection

Hong Kong’s high court has rejected an attempt by lawyers acting for the jailed pro-democracy activist Jimmy Lai to have his national security trial dismissed.

The court ruled on Monday that the argument the trial may appear to be biased had “no merits”, and gave the proceedings, which are scheduled to start in September, the green light.

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Number of people prosecuted in China’s courts up 12% in five years, report shows

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Experts point to crackdown on national security and legal system that encourages guilty pleas

Chinese courts prosecuted 8.3 million people in the five years to 2022, a 12% increase on the previous period. There was also a nearly 20% increase in the number of protests against court rulings.

The figures released by the supreme people’s procuratorate (SPP) in March give a glimpse of how China’s notoriously opaque justice system has operated in recent years, amid a tightening domestic security environment.

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Guantánamo detainee accuses UK agencies of complicity in his torture

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Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri wants to bring case examining alleged role of MI5, MI6 and GCHQ in his mistreatment by CIA

A Guantánamo Bay prisoner tortured by the CIA has accused British intelligence agencies of complicity in his mistreatment in a new case before one of UK’s most secretive courts.

Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, who is alleged by the US to have plotted al-Qaida’s bombing of an American naval ship, is seeking to persuade the court to consider his complaint against MI5, MI6 and GCHQ.

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Australian judge apologises after claiming that colleagues are appointed regardless of merit

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Justice Joshua Wilson planned to tell an international conference that court positions are filled on the basis of politics rather than ability

A federal and family court justice who planned to deliver a speech at an international conference claiming that progressive governments appointed diverse judges regardless of merit has been forced to apologise to his colleagues and told he can no longer attend the conference.

The speech by Justice Joshua Wilson had been uploaded on the court’s website before Justice William Alstergren, the chief justice of the family court and chief judge of the federal circuit court, was alerted to its contents and ordered that it be removed this week.

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Rwandan ex-police chief arrested in South Africa over 1994 genocide

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Fulgence Kayishema, 62, charged with playing leading role in church killing of more than 2,000 people

One of the world’s most wanted genocide suspects, a Rwandan former police chief, Fulgence Kayishema, has been arrested in South Africa and charged with playing a leading role in the murder of more than 2,000 people in a church in April 1994.

Kayishema has spent more than two decades as a fugitive and was living under a false name at the time of his arrest on Wednesday afternoon in Paarl, 35 miles (60km) north-east of Cape Town. He was detained by the South African police and members of a tracking team from the Rwandan war crimes tribunal based in Arusha, Tanzania.

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