Salem Al-Salem, 58, has appeared in a UK court facing charges of crimes against humanity, including murder and torture. Al-Salem, who attended proceedings with a breathing tube, is accused in a landmark prosecution by British authorities. The charges stem from his alleged activities in Damascus in 2011. He faces three counts of murder, three counts of torture, and one charge of conduct ancillary to murder, marking the first prosecution of its kind in the UK.
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
Russia has intensified attacks on Ukraine's power grid, generating facilities, and heating infrastructure, in efforts to disrupt electricity, heat, and water services - especially in winter. Clearly, Russia is targeting Ukraine's civilian population. The mayor of Kyiv, Vitali Klitschko, recently told that Kyiv, with a population of 3.6 million people, has only about half the electricity that it needs as
The academic and political activist discusses what he sees as a moral collapse in the US and a leadership crisis in the Democratic Party. In this episode of Talk to Al Jazeera, American philosopher and activist Cornel West delivers a searing critique of the United States, describing what he sees as moral collapse, democratic decay and spiritual bankruptcy. Drawing on the Black freedom struggle and his own run in the 2024 presidential election,
Writing on New Year's Day 2026, I feel the need to try to make some sense of the worst year of my 73-year life. I don't mean worse personally. My close family and I live in the relative safety and affluence of London, England, and we are all healthy and have fulfilling jobs. I mean, worst in the global sense.
Both were born in a free Ukraine, but have lived for more than a decade in territory occupied by the Russian army. Last week, Ukrainian lawyer and international law expert Katerina Rashevska showed their photos before the United States Senate. She denounced that the organization she works for in Kyiv, the Regional Center for Human Rights (RCHR), has documented 165 camps where Ukrainian children are subjected to a process of Russification.
For more than a month, the court has heard about rape used as a weapon of war, sexual slavery, forced labour, torture, mutilation, summary executions, systematic looting, extortion, and the plundering of resources, including diamonds. The alleged atrocities were committed in 2002-2003 during Operation "Erase the Slate", conducted in the northeast of the country by the Rally of Congolese Democrats and Nationalists (RCD-N) -- Lumbala's rebel group.
Witnesses, aid workers, rebel groups and the United Nations have said the victims were civilians at the hospital. In a statement published by the state-run Global New Light of Myanmar newspaper on Saturday, the military's information office said armed groups, including the ethnic Arakan Army and the People's Defence Force, used the hospital as their base. It said the military carried out necessary security measures and launched a counterterrorism operation against the general hospital in Mrauk-U township on Wednesday.
Dozens have been killed in a military strike on a hospital in Myanmar's western Rakhine state, according to an aid worker, a rebel group, a witness and local media reports, as the junta wages a withering offensive ahead of elections beginning this month. The situation is very terrible, said on-site aid worker Wai Hun Aung. As for now, we can confirm there are 31 deaths and we think there will be more deaths. Also there are 68 wounded and will be more and more.
The paper reported that US forces hit the targeted boat once, then hit it again the second strike killing two survivors clinging to the wreckage. According to the Post, the defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, had issued a verbal command to kill them all. Now that incident is under congressional scrutiny, with even some Republicans uneasy about what appears to be a clearcut case of a war crime.
The whistleblower's testimony alleged that commanders at the highest levels knew about suspected executions as early as 2011, but chose to bury the claims rather than report them to military police. The evidence suggests the inaction allowed the killings to continue for at least two more years, raising questions about accountability within one of the world's best training and lethal military units.
The former director of UK special forces and other senior military officers tried to cover up concerns that SAS units were carrying out unlawful killings in Afghanistan, an inquiry has heard. A senior special forces whistleblower said the chain of command failed to stop extrajudicial shootings, including of two small children, after the alarm was first raised in early 2011. That failure allegedly allowed them to continue until 2013.
Hundreds of civilians were killed and hundreds more injured on 26 April 1937 when planes from the German Condor Legion, operating alongside aircraft from fascist Italy, spent hours bombing Guernica on market day. Adolf Hitler had loaned the Luftwaffe unit to Gen Francisco Franco's nationalist forces to help them in their coup against the republican government, and to allow Nazi Germany's pilots to practise the blitzkrieg tactics they would later use in the second world war.
On Yablonska Street in Bucha, nothing remains to remind us that the Russian army committed its worst crimes during the war in Ukraine here. In March 2022, at the start of the invasion, more than 450 civilians were killed in this municipality north of Kyiv. Yablonska was one of the places where the largest number of bodies were recovered. The only building on the street that provides evidence the war continues today is the local military recruitment office.
A Russian soldier, with his face blurred, poses in front of the bodies of three Ukrainian soldiers lying face down in a pool of blood, their hands clasped behind their heads. The image, shared by the Russian Rusich unit on its Telegram channel, is accompanied by an announcement for a contest: The first three people to submit a photo of prisoners who have clearly been erased from existence will receive a cryptocurrency reward.
The complaint centers on alleged abuses committed between July and September 2021 by soldiers belonging to a joint task force (JTF) that was deployed to protect the Cabo Delgado gas site. The JTF, paid by TotalEnergies under an agreement with the government, was made up of Mozambican armed forces, with the alleged actions taking place following a jihadi attack on the site that led to operations being suspended there.
Prosecutors in Azerbaijan are seeking life sentences for five Armenian defendants who previously held leading positions in the breakaway territory of Nagorno-Karabakh. Charges include war crimes and terrorism. In Azerbaijan, prosecutors have said on Thursday that they were seeking life sentences for five former leaders and officials of Nagorno-Karabakh. This comes two years after Azerbaijani forces retook full control of the region, which had been controlled by ethnic Armenians, who referred to the region as Artsakh. Most of the estimated 100,000 Armenians in the region fled after Azerbaijan's offensive in 2023 amid allegations of Azerbaijani troops conducting ethnic cleansing. The five Armenians were among at least 15 former government and military officials arrested upon Baku's seizure of the region. They stand trial for charges of war crimes, terrorism and forcible seizure of power.
More than three decades after the siege of Sarajevo, Italian prosecutors have launched an investigation into what may well be one of the darkest and least-known aspects of the Bosnian War, which ran from 1992 until 1995. The investigation centers on so-called "hobby snipers" or "sniper tourists." These were foreigners who allegedly paid to shoot at civilians in the city of Sarajevo, during what were called "Sarajevo safaris." At the time, Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina, was besieged by Bosnian Serb forces.
Irina Cesic celebrated her first birthday on October 8, 1993. Four days later, she was killedby a sniper's bullet on the streets of the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo. "Since Irina had just learned to walk, my wife Stana was holding her by the hand," Irina's father, Samir Cesic, told RFE/RL. "We never understood why someone would shoot at a 50-60-centimeter target -- the height of a one-year-old girl -- instead of a much larger one, like my wife, who would have been easier to hit."
We have submitted documentation full of evidence that warrants further investigation, which we have suggested to the court. We firmly believe that it can lead to the identification of at least some of those responsible for these horrendous crimes,
