Rishi Sunak’s Rwanda admission sparks legal action from detained asylum seekers

Migrants seek redress for ‘immense distress’ from deportations now thrown into chaos by election announcement

Asylum seekers detained by the Home Office and threatened with deportation to Rwanda are set to take legal action against the government after Rishi Sunak admitted that no flights will take place before the general election.

The Home Office started raiding accommodation and detaining people who arrived at routine immigration-reporting appointments on 29 April in a nationwide push codenamed Operation Vector.

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Hong Kong police arrest six people under new security law

Chow Hang-tung, a prominent barrister, among those held over social media posts before Tiananmen Square anniversary

Hong Kong police have arrested six people, marking the first time that the city’s new national security law, known as Article 23, has been used against suspects since it was implemented in March.

The six people, aged between 37 and 65, are accused of publishing messages with seditious intent ahead of an “upcoming sensitive date”, according to a police statement.

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Pakistani poet was abducted because of human rights activism, says wife

Ahmad Farhad was pushed into vehicle hours after posting about threats from country’s spy agency, says Syeda Urooj Zainab

The wife of a Pakistani poet and journalist who was abducted from outside his house last week has accused the country’s spy agency of responsibility, saying it acted because of his activism.

Ahmad Farhad was pushed into a vehicle after returning from a dinner in the early hours of Wednesday 15 May and driven away.

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Children and elderly people tortured at Syria military prison, Paris court told

Three top officers close to Bashar al-Assad are on trial in absentia over the deaths of a student and his father

Witnesses have told a Paris court how children and elderly people considered enemies of the ruling Syrian regime were tortured in a notorious military prison, at the trial of three high-ranking officers close to the country’s president, Bashar al-Assad.

The three are being tried in absentia for crimes against humanity and war crimes in connection with the deaths of two French-Syrian dual nationals, Patrick Dabbagh, a 20-year-old student, and his father, 48.

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Whistleblowers allege widespread abuses at Israeli detention camp

Sources describe Palestinian inmates being beaten, kept shackled to hospital beds or made to stand for hours

Prisoners held at an Israeli detention camp in the Negev desert are being subjected to widespread physical and mental abuses, with at least one reported case of a man having his limb amputated as a result of injuries sustained from constant handcuffing, according to two whistleblowers who worked at the site.

The sources described harrowing treatment of detainees at the Israeli Sde Teiman camp, which holds Palestinians from Gaza and suspected Hamas militants, including inmates regularly being kept shackled to hospital beds, blindfolded and forced to wear nappies.

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Summary of advice that UK arms sales to Israel not unlawful to be released

Andrew Mitchell preparing to share details of assessment that there is no clear risk in breaching international human law

The British government is preparing to publish a summary of its legal advice stating there are no clear risks that selling arms to Israel will lead to a serious breach of international humanitarian law (IHL).

In a pre-prepared concession to the business select committee, the deputy foreign secretary, Andrew Mitchell, said: “In view of the strength of feeling in the IHL assessment process, I will look to see what more detail we could offer in writing on the IHL assessments in relation to Israel and Gaza both in process and substance.”

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No signal from helicopter that crashed killing Iran’s president, Turkish minister says

Initial investigation by rescue group finds ageing aircraft either did not have transponder fitted or had it turned off

The helicopter that crashed killing the Iranian president, Ebrahim Raisi, and the foreign minister, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, either did not have a transponder fitted or had it turned off, according to an initial investigation by the Turkish rescue group that found the wreckage.

The Turkish transport minister, Abdulkadir Uraloğlu, told reporters that on hearing news of the crash, Turkish authorities had checked for a signal from the helicopter’s transponder that broadcasts height and location information. “But unfortunately, [we think] most likely the transponder system was turned off or that the helicopter did not have one,” he said.

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Rwanda denies entry to senior human rights researcher

Human Rights Watch says Clementine De Montjoye’s case raises fresh questions about UK’s asylum seeker scheme

The Rwandan government has barred a senior human rights researcher from entering the country, prompting accusations that officials are seeking to dodge independent scrutiny just weeks before the UK government is due to send asylum seekers there for the first time.

Rwandan immigration authorities denied entry to Clementine de Montjoye, a senior researcher in Human Rights Watch’s Africa division, when she arrived at Kigali International Airport on 13 May.

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Assad officials face landmark Paris trial over killing of student and father

Prosecution of three high-ranking Syrian officials to be tried in absentia could pave way for president’s case

At midnight on 3 November 2013, five Syrian officials dragged arts and humanities student Patrick Dabbagh from his home in the Mezzeh district of Damascus.

The following day, at the same hour, the same men, including a representative of the Syrian air force’s intelligence unit, returned with a dozen soldiers to arrest the 20-year-old’s father Mazzen.

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Red Cross and Foreign Office to discuss plan to visit Palestinians in Israeli detention

ICRC is denied access to prisoners in what is said to be breach of Geneva conventions but critics say UK plan may weaken rule of law

Red Cross officials are to hold talks with the UK over a Foreign Office plan to visit Palestinian detainees held by Israel. Critics say this bypasses a duty on Israel under the Geneva conventions to give the Red Cross access to detainees.

Israel has suspended the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) from access to Palestinian detainees since the Hamas attack on 7 October, and says it will not rescind the policy until Hamas grants access to Israeli hostages.

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Concerns grow for Chinese citizen journalist after supposed jail release

Zhang Zhan, jailed for reporting on Covid in Wuhan, has made no contact with outside world

Concerns are growing about the wellbeing of one of China’s most prominent citizen journalists who has failed to make contact with the outside world after she was supposed to have been released from prison.

Zhang Zhan, 40, a lawyer turned citizen journalist, was detained in May 2020 after she travelled to Wuhan to report on the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic. Her videos and social media posts drew attention to the government’s stifling of information about the spread of the disease and the harsh lockdowns that were being imposed.

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UN denies Gaza death toll of women and children has been revised down

Spokesperson says confusion results from Gaza health ministry’s new way of classifying those not yet fully identified

The UN has denied that the estimated death toll of women and children in the war in Gaza has been revised downward, pointing towards a confusion between the total numbers of dead bodies recorded, and the number of those who have so far been fully identified.

After the Gaza health ministry’s revised totals of those killed first appeared on the website of the UN’s office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs (Ocha), they were quickly seized on as proof by pro-Israel media and commentators that the UN had previously been exaggerating the toll.

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UK politics: government to appeal against ruling that blocks Rwanda deportations in Northern Ireland – as it happened

Rishi Sunak says Belfast judgment will not affect his plans and the Good Friday agreement should not be used to obstruct Westminster policy

Sunak starts with global security threats.

The dangers that threaten our country are real.

There’s an increasing number of authoritarian states like Russia, Iran, North Korea and China working together to undermine us and our values.

People are abusing our liberal democratic values of freedom of speech, the right to protest, to intimidate, threaten and assault others, to sing antisemitic chants on our streets and our university campuses, and to weaponize the evils of antisemitism or anti-Muslim hatred, in a divisive ideological attempt to set Britain against Britain.

And from gender activists hijacking children’s sex education, to cancel culture, vocal and aggressive fringe groups are trying to impose their views on the rest of us.

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Could new US sanctions threaten future of West Bank settlements? | Emma Graham-Harrison and Quique Kierszenbaum

Joe Biden’s latest executive order gives scope to target the finances of Israeli politicians and businesses linked to extremists

Escalating US sanctions on violent settlers, initially taken as a mostly political rebuke to extremists, are now seen by some inside Israel as a potential threat to the financial viability of all Israeli settlements and companies in the occupied West Bank.

The Biden administration’s new controls on a handful of men and organisations linked to attacks on Palestinian civilians, first announced in February then expanded twice in March and April, have generally been treated in Israel and beyond more as a humiliating public censure of a close ally than as a major political shift.

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Flawed immigration detention risk assessment tool can’t be upgraded as ABF data ‘riddled with errors’

Exclusive: One detainee recorded as being involved in ‘over 3,000 incidents’ in a year – an ‘incredibly unfeasible’ scenario, FOI documents say

The secretive risk assessment tool used in Australia’s immigration detention centres could not be replaced by a better model due to insufficient data collection by Australian Border Force, documents reveal.

The security risk assessment tool is meant to determine whether someone is low, medium, high or extreme risk for escape or violence. It calculates risk ratings based on factors including pre-detention history and episodes that can occur in detention, such as possessing contraband or refusing food or fluids.

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Children ‘piled up and shot’: new details emerge of ethnic cleansing in Darfur

As El Fasher stands on the ‘precipice of a massacre’, rights groups call for sanctions after new testimony describes atrocities carried out by RSF paramilitaries in Sudan

Gruesome new testimony details one of the worst atrocities of the year-long Sudanese civil war – the large-scale massacre of civilians as they desperately tried to flee an ethnic rampage in Darfur last summer.

Witnesses describe children, still alive, being “piled up and shot” by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) as they attempted to escape the regional capital of El Geneina in June last year during a bout of ethnic violence in which thousands of civilians were killed.

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UK officials under fire for congratulating ‘repressive’ new chief of Uganda’s army

Activists call move ‘absurd’, as Gen Muhoozi Kainerugaba, son of President Museveni, is accused of torture and abusing critics

Senior British government officials have congratulated the newly appointed head of the Ugandan army, a man accused of torture, in a move that has been called “absurd” and “disappointing”.

Gen Muhoozi Kainerugaba, Uganda’s new chief of defence forces and son of President Yoweri Museveni, received a congratulatory letter from Britain’s most senior military officer, Adm Sir Tony Radakin, at a meeting with the British high commissioner, Kate Airey, and the British defence attache.

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Ghent students occupy university building in climate and Gaza protest

More than 200 expected to join protest calling for climate action and to cut ties with Israeli institutions

More than 100 students have occupied Ghent University in the first European protest to fuse demands about Gaza and the climate crisis.

Ghent’s centrepiece UFO building was peacefully taken over by students calling for concrete action to meet the university’s 2030 climate plans, and asking the university to cut ties with institutions connected to the Israeli military.

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Number of writers jailed in China exceeds 100 for first time, says report

Freedom to Write index says there are 107 people in prison for published content in China, with many accused of ‘picking quarrels’

The number of writers jailed in China has surpassed 100, with nearly half imprisoned for online expression.

The grim milestone is revealed in the 2023 Freedom to Write index, a report compiled by Pen America, published on Wednesday.

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Arrest warrant issued for Central African Republic’s former president over crimes against humanity

François Bozizé is wanted by special criminal court over alleged crimes including murder and torture

A UN-backed court has issued an arrest warrant for the Central African Republic’s former president François Bozizé over possible crimes against humanity committed by the nation’s military between 2009 and 2013.

The alleged crimes include murder, enforced disappearance, torture, rape and other inhumane acts, according to the special criminal court (CPS), a hybrid jurisdiction located in the capital Bangui with Central African and foreign magistrates.

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