More than 150 psychiatrists sign letter condemning contract to host exams in country with well-documented human rights abuses
The Royal College of Psychiatrists is facing a backlash from members over a controversial partnership with Qatar’s state healthcare provider.
The college has signed a contract with the state-owned Hamad Medical Corporation to host international exams in Doha, enabling psychiatrists from across the Middle East and beyond to apply for membership.
Continue reading...Security operations came as Syrian president Ahmed al-Sharaa arrived in Washington to meet Donald Trump
Syria has carried out nationwide preemptive operations targeting Islamic State cells, a spokesperson for the interior ministry said on Saturday, as the country’s president arrived in the US for talks with Donald Trump.
Syrian security forces carried out 61 raids, with 71 people arrested and explosives and weapons seized, the spokesperson told state-run Al Ekhbariya TV.
Continue reading...Iran’s police say Omid Sarlak, 22, shot himself, but fellow activists suspect he may have been killed for his views
The death of a young Iranian man who had filmed himself burning a photograph of the country’s supreme leader has sparked a war of words between state media and activists over how he died.
Government-sanctioned news websites reported that Omid Sarlak, who was in his 20s, had been found in his car on Saturday in western Iran with a gunshot wound to his head and traces of gunpowder on his hands. Iranian police said Sarlak had “died by suicide”.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Detainees at Rakefet include nurse deprived of natural light since January, and teenager held for nine months
Israel is holding dozens of Palestinians from Gaza isolated in an underground jail where they never see daylight, are deprived of adequate food and barred from receiving news of their families or the outside world.
The detainees have included at least two civilians held for months without charge or trial: a nurse detained in his scrubs, and a young food seller, according to lawyers from the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI) who represent both men.
Continue reading...Israeli PM, ministers and army chief accused of crimes against humanity ‘perpetrated systematically’ in Gaza
Turkey has issued arrest warrants for alleged genocide against the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and senior officials within his government.
Among 37 suspects listed were the Israeli defence minister, Israel Katz, the national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, and the army chief Lt Gen Eyal Zamir, said a statement from the Istanbul prosecutor’s office, which did not publish the complete list.
Continue reading...Accusations of violent interceptions and human rights violations levelled at EU-funded Libyan services by NGOs
More than a dozen NGO rescue vessels operating in the Mediterranean have suspended communication with the Libyan coastguard, citing escalating incidents of asylum seekers being violently intercepted at sea and taken to camps rife with torture, rape and forced labour.
The 13 search-and-rescue organisations described their decision as a rejection of mounting pressure by the EU, and Italy in particular, to share information with the Libyan coastguard, which receives training, equipment and funding from the EU.
Continue reading...Exclusive: British government adopted ‘least ambitious’ option months before RSF’s massacres in El Fasher
Britain rejected atrocity prevention plans for Sudan despite intelligence warnings that the city of El Fasher would fall amid a wave of ethnic cleansing and possible genocide, according to a report seen by the Guardian.
Government officials turned down the plans six months into the 18-month siege of El Fasher in favour of the “least ambitious” option of four presented.
Continue reading...Three towns attacked despite truce with Hezbollah in what Israeli military says was effort to prevent group rearming
The Israeli military has carried out a wave of airstrikes in southern Lebanon in what it described as an attempt to prevent Hezbollah rearming.
Israeli warplanes struck the towns of Kfar Dounine, Tayr Debba and Zawtar al-Sharqiya on Thursday, about an hour after issuing evacuation warnings to residents. No deaths had been reported at the time of publishing.
Continue reading...International mediators broker three-month halt to civil war as further evidence emerges of mass civilian killings
A Sudanese paramilitary group accused of killing thousands of unarmed civilians in an ethnically motivated massacre has agreed to a truce.
The Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which is facing mounting criticism over apparent war crimes committed by its fighters in the city of El Fasher last month, said it had agreed to a “humanitarian ceasefire” put forward by the quad countries of the US, Egypt, the UAE and Saudi Arabia.
Continue reading...Osama Almasri Najim was arrested in Italy in January on an ICC warrant, only to be released and flown back to Libya
A Libyan general wanted by the international criminal court (ICC) for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity has been arrested in Tripoli.
Osama Almasri Najim, the former chief of Libya’s judicial police, was arrested over allegations of torturing prisoners, leading to the death of one, at Tripoli’s main prison, Libya’s prosecutor’s office said on Wednesday.
Continue reading...António Guterres calls for the violence to end but there appears little appetite for ceasefire proposed by US
The UN secretary general, António Guterres, has said the war in Sudan is spiralling out of control as he called for a halt to the fighting and an end to the violence.
The Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which are reportedly backed by the United Arab Emirates, seized El Fasher in Darfur last week after a near 18-month siege. Some of its soldiers have posted videos of civilians being shot, including in the town’s maternity hospital.
Continue reading...After mass killings in El Fasher and four years on from a coup, UAE now admits its Sudan policy has gone wrong
The United Arab Emirates’ diplomatic machine is for the first time admitting to mistakes in its Sudan policy after suffering reputational damage over its support for the Rapid Support Forces, the Sudanese paramilitary group that has carried out mass killings in El Fasher since it captured the city late last month.
Speaking in Bahrain on Sunday, Anwar Gargash, the UAE’s senior diplomatic envoy, said the UAE and others had been wrong not to impose sanctions on the instigators of the 2021 coup – led jointly by the RSF and the army – that overthrew Sudan’s transitional civilian government.
Continue reading...Nasser Abu Srour says prisons became like ‘another front’ in Gaza conflict and tells of struggle to adjust to life outside
A celebrated Palestinian author who was freed last month after more than 32 years in Israeli prisons has said the use of torture increased dramatically during his last two years of captivity as Israel came to treat its jails as another front in the Gaza war.
Nasser Abu Srour, whose prison memoir has been translated into seven languages and is tipped to win a major international literary prize this month, was among more than 150 Palestinians serving life sentences who were freed as part of the US-brokered Gaza ceasefire and then immediately exiled to Egypt, where most remain in limbo.
Continue reading...Resolution may be delayed without agreement over the force’s mandate and a timetable for Israeli withdrawal
A UN security council resolution mandating the introduction of an international stabilisation force into Gaza is likely to be ready within two weeks, but may be delayed if disputes cannot be resolved over the force’s mandate, including the question of US military leadership, its relationship with the Palestinian civil police force and a timetable for Israeli military withdrawal.
At a meeting in Istanbul of Muslim countries considering offering troops on Monday, the Turkish foreign minister, Hakan Fidan, said: “The countries will shape their decisions based on the mission and authority of the International Stabilization Force. I believe that if the mission conflicts with the principles and policies of the countries that will send troops, it will be difficult for these countries to send troops.”
Continue reading...Rightwing politicians and pundits have called the soldiers accused of attack on Palestinian detainee ‘heroes’ and military investigators traitors
Police in Israel have arrested and detained the military’s top legal officer after she admitted leaking footage of soldiers allegedly attacking a Palestinian detainee and then in effect lying about her actions to Israel’s high court.
The military advocate general, Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi, said in a resignation letter last week that she had authorised publication of the video to defuse attacks on military investigators and prosecutors working on the case.
Continue reading...Hamas hands remains of three soldiers to Israel and bodies of 45 Palestinians are returned to Gaza amid fragile ceasefire
Israel has announced that the remains of three soldiers killed by Hamas during its raid into Israel on 7 October 2023 have been handed over by the militant group.
The transfer is the latest since the precarious ceasefire in Gaza came into effect just over three weeks ago.
Continue reading...Israel’s defence minister accuses Beirut of delaying efforts to disarm militant group a day after deadly Israeli airstrike
Israel has threatened to step up its attacks against Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, a day after the Lebanese health ministry reported that four people had been killed in an Israeli airstrike.
Despite the November 2024 ceasefire, Israel maintains troops in five areas in southern Lebanon and has kept up regular strikes.
Continue reading...For months, Mohamed Khamis Douda shared accounts of what life was like under siege. He was killed when RSF fighters finally took the Darfur city, raising fears activists and civil society figures are being hunted down
For months, militiamen on the perimeters of El Fasher have asked those few who managed to escape the besieged Sudanese city whether Mohamed Khamis Douda was still inside. They shared videos threatening to kill him, which, as they hoped, made their way to the activist.
Even as the hunger and fear of living under siege and bombardment made him desperate to leave, Douda remained inside El Fasher, constantly working to let the outside world know what was happening to the people there. Then, on Sunday 26 October, Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces overran the city and it was too late. His friends and family have confirmed to the Guardian that Douda has been killed.
Monday 4 August
I awake each morning tired from the efforts of the previous day. Our first struggle is the merciless hunger and the second is the constant artillery shelling.
Continue reading...Abdulrahman al-Qaradawi has been imprisoned in the UAE for almost a year for criticising Emirati, Egyptian and Saudi governments
The UN special rapporteur on torture is being urged to investigate Lebanon’s role in the treatment of the Egyptian-Turkish poet and activist Abdulrahman al-Qaradawi, a dissident who has been imprisoned in the United Arab Emirates for more than 10 months over a post he made on social media.
Legal counsel representing Qaradawi filed a complaint to the UN rapporteur on Thursday, asking it to examine the situation.
Continue reading...Reports of indiscriminate violence and ethnic targeting in El Fasher have led to growing global outrage
Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces claim to have arrested several of their fighters after outrage over the extent of killing in the city of El Fasher continues to build.
But the paramilitary group’s move has been greeted with scepticism from human rights campaigners and Sudanese people, who see it as an attempt to temper criticism over the violence.
Continue reading...