Charges – including 59 counts of murder – linked to UN exhibition of torture photographs in 2015
Germany has charged two alleged former Syrian secret service officers with crimes against humanity, federal prosecutors have announced.
The two men were arrested in the capital, Berlin, and the southern state of Baden-Württemberg in February, in a coordinated operation by German and French police.
Continue reading...Syrian Democratic Forces also claim they played a key role in tracking down Baghdadi to a compound in northern Syria
Syrian Kurds say they managed to place a spy in Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s inner circle who stole a pair of the Isis leader’s underpants to prove his identity and then helped guide US soldiers to his Syrian hideout.
The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) claim they played a key role in tracking down Baghdadi to a compound in northern Syria where he was reportedly planning his escape over the nearby border into Turkey.
Continue reading...Arrest warrant issued for Abd al-Rahman Milad, suspected of drowning dozens of people
The UN-backed government in Libya has ordered the arrest of a man described as one of the world’s most notorious human traffickers who was this month revealed to have attended meetings between Italian officials and a Libyan delegation to discuss controls on migration flows from north Africa.
In a note released on Monday by the interior ministry in Tripoli, authorities said Abd al-Rahman Milad, described by the UN security council as a ruthless human trafficker suspected of drowning dozens of people, was “a wanted man and an arrest warrant was issued against him”.
Continue reading...Top Democrats reacted with anger to Donald Trump’s decision to go ahead with the Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi raid without giving them advance notice, on grounds that they were not to be trusted with such highly sensitive information.
Related: Trump impeachment: Schiff expects battle over key witness John Bolton
Continue reading...The hunt for the Islamic State leader had lasted years until Iraqi officials got a break last month
Cornered in a dead-end tunnel, with a robot creeping towards him, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi had nowhere left to run. Dogs barked in the darkness, a US soldier called out … and then came the thundering explosion that killed the world’s most wanted man – together with three terrified children he was using as human shields.
The US military finally caught up with the Islamic State leader in a remote hamlet of northwestern Syria, but not before he detonated a suicide vest strapped to his body as special forces troops disgorged from helicopters and crouched near the frugal stone house in which he was hiding.
Continue reading...Donald Trump confirmed on Sunday that Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was killed in a US special forces raid in the north-west of Syria. According to the president, the Isis leader died 'running into a dead-end tunnel, whimpering and crying and screaming all the way'. Trump made the announcement in Washington hours after tweeting: 'Something very big has just happened!'
In aftermath of Isis’s toxic mix of chaos and intolerance, new spheres of influence are being demarcated
Reports of his death had been frequent – and exaggerated. But not this time. Even as US forces were flying to Iraq the remains of the Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who was killed in Syria in the early hours of Saturday, a debate about his legacy was stirring.
For more than five years, Baghdadi, who was known by birth as Ibrahim Awwad Ibrahim Ali al-Badri, was the most wanted man on the planet – a figure who had turned an already potent post-invasion insurgency in Iraq into a formidable terrorist juggernaut that changed the course of history.
Continue reading...The US president has said Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of Islamic State, was killed in a raid by US special forces in north-west Syria. Baghdadi detonated a suicide vest after running into a dead-end tunnel, killing himself and three of his children, Donald Trump said
Donald Trump makes statement following US raid in north-west Syria
President Donald Trump has just started speaking. He says last night the US brought the “world’s greatest terrorist leader to justice”. “Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is dead,” he says.
President Trump is about to give a press conference at the White House. You can follow it live above or on YouTube here.
Continue reading...Anti-government grassroots movement says it wants to foster feeling of national unity
Tens of thousands of protesters in Lebanon have attempted to form a human chain running across the entire country to symbolise newfound national unity.
Demonstrators planned to join hands from Tripoli to Tyre, a 170km (105-mile) chain running through the capital, Beirut, as part of an unprecedented cross-sectarian mobilisation.
Continue reading...Hundreds refuse to leave Tahrir square in Baghdad despite further deadly clashes with security forces
Hundreds of Iraqi protesters remained in Baghdad’s central Tahrir square on Sunday, defying a bloody crackdown that killed scores and an overnight raid by security forces seeking to disperse them.
Young men had erected barricades on a bridge leading to the capital’s fortified Green Zone between them and security forces who continued to lob tear gas canisters towards them.
Continue reading...Self-declared caliph was operational leader of Isis and symbol of its Islamic credentials
Baghdadi is thought to have been born in the central Iraqi city of Samarra in 1971. Though a weak student, whose poor eyesight disqualified him from joining the Iraqi military, he rose to command al-Qaida’s Iraqi division and then broke away to form Islamic State (Isis).
Continue reading...Protesters had tried to reach the capital’s heavily fortified Green Zone
At least six more Iraqi protesters were killed on Saturday in clashes with security forces in Baghdad and the southern town of Nasiriyah, as thousands took part in nationwide anti-government protests, officials said.
Protesters were trying to reach Baghdad’s heavily fortified Green Zone, home to embassies and government offices.
Continue reading...Arab forces have allegedly been filmed torturing Kurdish fighters and mutilating bodies
Calls for war crimes investigations into the conduct of militias used by Turkey in Syria are mounting after a spate of new videos depicting Ankara-linked fighters torturing captives and mutilating dead bodies.
Footage of atrocities allegedly committed by Arab forces in northern Syria is circulating widely across Kurdish regions of the country, sparking fears of renewed fighting and a deepening ethnic divide in the region, even as a tenuous ceasefire begins to settle.
Continue reading...Two people died in Baghdad on Friday and more than 350 people were injured as Iraqi security forces used teargas and stun grenades to repel crowds marching towards the capital's heavily fortified Green Zone, protesting against corruption and economic hardship. The authorities have struggled to address protesters' grievances since unrest erupted in Baghdad on 1 October, spreading to southern cities. Demonstrators blame corrupt officials and political elites for failing to improve their lives.
Continue reading...Unrest is seemingly everywhere. We look at the some of the reasons for and responses to it in Hong Kong, Lebanon, Chile, Catalonia and Iraq
In Lebanon they are against a tax on WhatsApp and endemic corruption. In Chile, a hike in the metro fare and rampant inequality. In Hong Kong, an extradition bill and creeping authoritarianism. In Algeria, a fifth term for an ageing president and decades of military rule.
The protests raging today and in the past months on the streets of cities around the world have varying triggers. But the fuel is familiar: stagnating middle classes, stifled democracy and the bone-deep conviction that things can be different – even if the alternative is not always clear.
Continue reading...Amnesty claims people bussed out in handcuffs were beaten or signed ‘voluntary return’ forms in belief they would get blankets
Hundreds of Syrian refugees in Turkey have been compelled to return to their war-torn home country, some in handcuffs, after receiving threats of violence or being tricked into signing “voluntary return” agreements.
These are the claims contained in a hard-hitting report by Amnesty International, released on Friday, which claims to have documented at least 20 cases of forced illegal deportations by Turkish authorities.
Continue reading...The US is reportedly planning to deploy tanks and other heavy military hardware to protect oil fields in eastern Syria, in a reversal of Donald Trump’s earlier order to withdraw all troops from the country.
The most likely destination for US armoured units is a Conoco gas plant near the city of Deir Ezzor, the site of a February 2018 clash between US special forces and Syrian regime-backed militias fighting with Russian mercenaries.
Continue reading...Aidan James, 28, is first Briton to stand trial for travelling to Syria to join battle against Isis
A British man who trained to fight with Kurdish units against Islamic State has been found guilty of a terrorism offence in a retrial at the Old Bailey.
Aidan James, 28, from Formby in Merseyside, was found guilty of training in weapons with the banned Kurdistan Workers’ party (PKK) in Iraq.
Continue reading...Amnesty calls for end to detentions under male ‘guardianship’ system
Amnesty International has called on Jordan to end what it has described as an abusive system that jails women if they disobey their male “guardians” or have relationships deemed inappropriate.
Despite recent efforts to give women better protections, Amnesty said in a new report published on Wednesday that Jordan still allows the arbitrary detention of women, including when male family members – usually fathers or brothers – complain to the authorities that they have been absent without permission.
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