In a high-stakes BBC interview, Greg Bovino, the former U.S. Border Patrol leader who led the Trump administration’s deeply polarizing immigration enforcement sweep in Minneapolis earlier this year, has forcefully justified the operation, framing the subsequent pullback of hundreds of federal agents from the city as a humiliating “surrender” by the Trump White House. Bovino, who was ousted from his post shortly after two U.S. citizens, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, were fatally shot by deployed agents in January, refused to address the pending civil lawsuit filed by Good’s surviving family over her death, dismissing legal accountability as a routine, trivial occurrence. “People do lawsuits all the time,” he asserted, while lavishing praise on the frontline officers deployed to the Minnesota metro, whom he described as the true victims of the operation. The two fatal shootings, both captured on widely circulated public video, sparked rare bipartisan condemnation and sweeping grassroots protests across the state, prompting then-President Trump to announce a partial de-escalation and order roughly 700 immigration agents to exit Minnesota, a move that coincided with Bovino’s removal from his leadership role. The controversial operation was subsequently transferred to Tom Homan, the White House’s designated border czar. Earlier this month, Good’s family filed two separate civil suits against the Trump administration, alleging wrongful death and a coordinated conspiracy to violate the civil rights of peaceful local protesters. One of the filings names Bovino and Jonathan Ross, the ICE agent who shot Good, as individual defendants, charging that the federal operation created “an unprecedented environment for state-sponsored violence” in Minneapolis. In response to Bovino’s dismissive public comments, the family’s legal team slammed the former border chief for “spewing propaganda,” rejecting his attempts to act as “judge, jury, and executioner” ahead of scheduled legal proceedings. A prior statement from a White House spokeswoman had already dismissed the family’s lawsuits as entirely “baseless.” Speaking on the sidelines of a Detroit campaign event where he advocated for harsher national immigration policies, Bovino declared the Trump administration had “thrown the towel in” on robust enforcement, claiming ongoing deportation efforts across the country are now at a “virtual standstill.” Expressing unreserved regret that he did not pursue even more aggressive tactics during the Minneapolis sweep, Bovino stated he wished he had “gone harder in Minnesota and arrested even more illegal aliens.” When pressed by BBC journalists to address public video evidence that appeared to contradict official accounts of the two fatal shootings, Bovino rejected any suggestion the footage undermined his claim that Good and Pretti had posed an active violent threat to federal agents. He doubled down, stating that all individuals who perpetrate violence against U.S. federal agents must face the legal consequences of their actions. Trump initially placed full blame on Good for her own death, claiming hours after the shooting that she had “violently, willfully and viciously ran over the ICE officer,” before later backtracking to describe the killing as a “tragedy” and acknowledging that frontline agents would occasionally “make a mistake.” Bovino, who has since retired from the Border Patrol, has emerged as an outspoken hardline immigration advocate whose public statements often outflank even the most restrictive official Trump administration policies. He has repeatedly made unsubstantiated claims that as many as 100 million undocumented people reside in the U.S. and should be deported, and has called for sweeping “total spectrum immigration enforcement” backed by U.S. military support, envisioning a mass expulsion system that would use cruise ships, planes, trains, and vehicles to transport millions of people out of the country. He has also publicly floated the possibility of exploring a 2028 presidential run, telling the BBC that he may step into electoral politics if sitting elected officials fail to deliver on strict enforcement promises. Most recently, Bovino delivered a speech at a far-right activist rally in Michigan, where attendees are demanding the deportation of Abdul El-Sayed, an American-born Democratic U.S. Senate candidate in a fiercely competitive state race. If elected, El-Sayed would make history as the first Muslim member of the U.S. Senate. The controversial Minneapolis operation also coincided with the departure of Kristi Noem, who served as Homeland Security Secretary at the time of the sweep, and who was fired by Trump in March. Responding to Bovino’s public remarks, a current White House spokesperson reaffirmed the administration’s claim that Trump had overseen “the largest reduction in illegal immigration in modern history,” asserting that more than 3 million undocumented people had left the U.S. as a result of his border policies.
作者： admin
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How Brazil’s changing working class is reshaping the presidential race
In the post-industrial São Paulo satellite city of Osasco, long-shuttered manufacturing facilities have made way for sprawling shopping complexes and gig economy tech hubs, earning the municipality the informal nickname of São Paulo’s “Silicon Valley.” Once a reliable stronghold for leftist President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in the 2022 national election, Osasco delivered a surprise first-round victory this month for right-wing challenger Flávio Bolsonaro, setting the stage for a high-stakes runoff that breaks a 35-year national precedent: no first-round leader has failed to claim Brazil’s presidency since 1989.
For long-time Lula ally Gilberto Almazan, head of a local metalworkers’ union that formed the backbone of the president’s historic electoral coalition, the shifting political tides are a source of visible distress. He breaks into tears recounting Lula’s iconic origin story: a child raised in crippling poverty in Brazil’s Northeast who climbed from factory floor worker to union organiser to three-term head of state. Even so, Almazan does not mince words about the obsolescence of the traditional labour movement he leads, describing it as trapped in the “Middle Ages” and ill-equipped to represent the drastically transformed local workforce. “We suffered devastating deindustrialisation here,” he explained. “The old working class is gone. Factories for metal, chemicals and textiles all vanished, and in their place we now have five large malls. The vast majority of local workers are no longer on assembly lines, they’re in service, retail or gig roles.”
For the swelling ranks of Bolsonaro supporters in Osasco, the single most repeated phrase across conversations is “change.” Many struggle to name specific policy proposals from Flávio Bolsonaro that draw their backing, but say they are exhausted by persistent economic strain, high crime rates and longstanding political corruption — even as the challenger himself faces unproven (and firmly denied) corruption allegations. Gisele Bonfim, a local lawyer who voted for Lula in 2022, is among these defectors. “He gives us hope that Brazil can be something different than what it is right now,” she said of Bolsonaro’s campaign.
Lula’s path to re-election has been undermined not just by active defections, but by record-high voter abstention not seen since 1998, with 33 million eligible Brazilians skipping the first-round ballot. The seismic shift in the Brazilian working class, embodied by communities like Osasco, is the core driver of this volatility. At a bustling open-air market adjacent to one of Osasco’s new mega-malls, every vendor operates a portable card terminal, selling everything from street food to handmade goods. Tairine, a hot dog vendor who used to skip voting entirely despite Brazil’s mandatory polling rules that impose fines for non-attendance, says she will cast her first-ever ballot for Bolsonaro. She cites cripplingly high taxes on all consumer goods and stubborn inflation that leave low-income families trapped in cycles of deprivation, arguing that “nothing has gotten better for poor people” since Lula returned to office. Flávio Bolsonaro’s platform centres on sharp cuts to federal spending, downsizing government ministries and targeted tax relief, while promising to preserve Lula’s flagship anti-poverty welfare programmes that benefit millions of vulnerable households.
For generations of long-time Lula loyalists, the president remains a legendary working-class champion who led landmark strikes to expand labour rights and lifted tens of millions out of extreme poverty during his prior terms. But today, a growing share of Brazil’s workforce participates in what Almazan describes as widespread “Uber-isation”: gig drivers, food delivery couriers, informal market vendors and independent service workers who crave flexible scheduling and individual autonomy far more than the collective bargaining and state-led welfare systems Lula built his career on. Richard Lapper, a leading political biographer who has published full studies of both Lula and Flávio’s father, former far-right president Jair Bolsonaro, notes that the collapse of manufacturing and rise of individualised informal work are global trends, but their impact has been uniquely sharp in Brazil because the country industrialised late and underwent premature deindustrialisation. He describes Lula as a “victim of his own success”: while the president has overseen a record-low unemployment rate and successfully removed Brazil from the United Nations global hunger map, widespread public frustration stems from a crisis of unmet expectations, as soaring consumer prices, record household debt and elevated interest rates leave many households feeling economically squeezed even as aggregate national metrics improve.
Robson, a 53-year-old municipal civil servant in Osasco who was born in Lula’s home state of Pernambuco and grew up a devoted Lula supporter, is one such disaffected voter. He blames the current administration’s overspending and fiscal mismanagement for Brazil’s ballooning public deficit and record-high tax burdens, saying ordinary families now face impossible daily trade-offs: “You have to choose between making your car payment or putting food on the table.”
In response to the first-round setbacks, Lula’s campaign has launched an aggressive mobilisation drive focused on turning out millions of apathetic non-voters for the runoff, centred on mass street rallies that draw hundreds of thousands of participants, including a São Paulo event the campaign estimates drew a crowd of 1 million. Organisers have intentionally curated viral social media content from these events, including a widely shared clip of a muscular topless Lula supporter waving the president’s flag that racked up tens of millions of views across platforms. The 80-year-old Lula has also leaned heavily into social media to push back against claims he is too old for office, dubbing himself the “king of selfies” and posting fast-paced clips of himself moving energetically between campaign stops. Supporter Leila summed up the campaign’s core messaging: “So many people stayed home because they thought their vote wouldn’t change anything. Our whole fight now is to convince them their voice matters.”
Even as Lula retains strong support among Brazil’s poorest communities, abstention rates ran well above national averages in Rio de Janeiro’s massive Maré favela, a sprawling territory controlled by rival armed gangs. 18-year-old single mother Vitoria, who earns less than £300 per month, still backs Lula, praising his administration’s minimum wage hikes, mandated paid time off for workers and free access to essential prescription medications. But she is deeply fearful of Flávio Bolsonaro’s pledge to designate the local gang Comando Vermelho as a terrorist organisation, a policy the candidate previously lobbied the U.S. government to adopt. She warns the policy would trigger violent, deadly police raids that would “kill, destroy, ruin families, leave blood and bodies on the ground,” referencing a 2023 Rio security operation that killed more than 130 residents. Local resident Andreza Dionísio attributes the high local abstention rate to both last-minute polling station relocations and a pervasive “sense of hopelessness about the future.”
That pervasive sense of disillusionment has created a massive opening for Brazil’s fast-growing evangelical Christian community, which now makes up roughly a quarter of the national population. Mega-churches offer far more than spiritual guidance to working-class neighbourhoods, providing free childcare, employment support, and food distribution, and their influential conservative pastors have become some of the country’s most powerful political kingmakers. Silas Malafaia, a high-profile pastor with millions of social media followers who leads the Rio-based Assembleia de Deus Vitória em Cristo church and officiated at Jair Bolsonaro’s wedding, is currently under investigation for alleged obstruction of the 2023 coup trial targeting the former president, allegations he denies as politically motivated. In an interview with the BBC, he argued that the evangelical movement is the only institution keeping vulnerable communities from collapse. “It gives people purpose, it helps them build better lives,” he said, noting that Flávio Bolsonaro’s platform aligns closely with the church’s conservative priorities, including traditional family values, opposition to progressive gender education policies, and strict anti-abortion rules.
While the church has mobilised a dedicated bloc of voters to support Bolsonaro, most of the shift away from Lula appears to be a rejection of the incumbent rather than an enthusiastic endorsement of his challenger. Back in Osasco, union leader Almazan voices a bittersweet, poignant fear: “There will never be another Lula.” What he intends as a tribute to the president’s historic legacy also doubles as a stark political reality. Lula’s legendary personal story still resonates deeply with older generations of working-class Brazilians, but his hopes for a second full term in office may now hinge entirely on whether he can convince a drastically transformed national electorate that he still has a compelling new story to offer the Brazil of 2024. -
South Africa: Durban mayoral candidate says he would welcome Netanyahu despite ICC warrant
A leading mayoral hopeful for Durban’s eThekwini municipality has ignited a firestorm of public condemnation and widespread mockery after publicly stating he would roll out the welcome mat for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, provided such a visit delivered tangible benefits to the coastal city’s residents. Haniff Hoosen, the mayoral nominee for South Africa’s main opposition Democratic Alliance (DA), made the controversial remarks during a recent televised mayoral debate, with local media outlets circulating footage of the exchange across digital platforms in recent days.
When directly posed with the question of whether he would formally receive Netanyahu if the Israeli leader traveled to eThekwini, 54-year-old Hoosen did not hesitate to defend the hypothetical gesture. “Why shouldn’t I if he comes to visit the city?” he responded, doubling down by adding, “If there is a benefit for the people of the city through that visit, I will certainly do it.” Hoosen went on to frame his position as part of a pragmatic governance approach, noting that Durban is currently “falling apart” and that his top priority as mayor would be reversing the city’s declining living standards for all its residents.
The context of Hoosen’s comments, however, makes his stance deeply contentious: Netanyahu is currently the subject of an active International Criminal Court (ICC) arrest warrant issued in November 2024, accused of perpetrating war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza Strip. Independent monitoring groups confirm over 250,000 Palestinians have been killed or wounded amid the ongoing genocide in Gaza. As a signatory to the Rome Statute that established the ICC, South Africa is legally obligated to cooperate with the court’s arrest orders, creating a direct conflict with Hoosen’s stated openness to hosting the indicted leader.
The timing of the candidate’s remarks amplifies the public backlash: they emerged exactly two weeks after Durban-born international human rights icon Navi Pillay was awarded the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize for her decades of work upholding global legal standards. Pillay most recently led the United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, which formally concluded in 2025 that Israel had committed acts of genocide in Gaza. While South Africa’s national government issued a full public statement congratulating Pillay on her historic award, the Democratic Alliance, Hoosen’s party, has to date released no official comment recognizing the local figure’s achievement.
Pillay’s Nobel win itself has already sparked fierce pushback from the South African Zionist Federation and other local pro-Israel advocacy groups. One South African political commentator currently residing in Israel went so far as to dismiss the award as “a stain on the rule of international law and justice.”
When confronted by reporters after the mayoral debate to clarify his remarks, Hoosen refused to backtrack, reaffirming his position unapologetically. “I speak the truth all the time, and people will know what they can expect from me,” he told press, adding, “What I will not do is tell people one thing and do something completely different.”
Hoosen’s willingness to host Netanyahu stands in stark contrast to the South African national government’s ongoing high-profile case at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), where it is leading global efforts to secure accountability for alleged Israeli human rights violations in Gaza. The controversy unfolds in the lead-up to South Africa’s national local government elections scheduled for November 4, where control of the eThekwini municipality is a fiercely contested prize. Voters across the city have expressed widespread, long-running frustration over systemic crises including persistent water shortages, raw sewage spills, soaring violent crime, and crumbling public infrastructure, a situation that has recently spurred a surge in targeted attacks on Black African foreign nationals. Just days before the debate, local law enforcement confirmed that a mob of nearly 50 people had killed a Black African migrant in central Durban, highlighting the city’s spiraling public safety challenges. -
France prepares for day of protest a week after nationwide riots
As France braces for a second wave of nationwide demonstrations scheduled for Saturday, the country remains on unprecedented high alert exactly one week after it witnessed some of the most severe civil unrest in recent memory. In response to widespread rioting, looting and property destruction that unfolded across dozens of cities on 17 October, national authorities have rolled out sweeping new restrictions on public assembly, even as organisers representing student unions, labour federations and broader anti-government movements vow to push ahead with planned gatherings.
France’s Interior Ministry has confirmed it will deploy 70,000 law enforcement officers across urban centres nationwide, a sharp escalation of security presence after opposition parties publicly slammed the Macron administration for failing to anticipate the scale of last weekend’s violence. “We will not tolerate a single act of destruction going unaddressed,” Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez stated in a press briefing, adding that authorities had traced multiple calls for targeted violence circulating on social media originating from far-left and radical extremist factions. Over recent days, hundreds of people detained for offences ranging from vandalism and arson to looting have been sentenced via fast-track judicial proceedings, with Justice Minister Gérald Darmanin revealing Friday that 232 individuals have been formally imprisoned, more than 1,100 have appeared in court, and roughly 260 face charges related to organised gang activity. Darmanin has also instructed public prosecutors to pursue maximum punitive measures for convicted offenders, including protest bans, temporary revocation of voting rights, and restrictions on social media access.
In a series of conflicting local rulings, a patchwork of demonstration regulations has emerged across French cities: the national government initially decreed that only events formally organised by certified trade unions would be permitted on Saturday, while major cities including Lyon, Nice and Montpellier went a step further to impose blanket bans on all public gatherings. Other municipal authorities have reversed initial prohibitions at the last minute: Marseille’s earlier total protest ban was quickly rescinded to allow a union-arranged march to proceed. In Paris, the student union and labour-backed demonstration has been ordered to follow a pre-approved route that avoids the city’s central core, even as iconic cultural institutions including the Louvre, Orsay and Picasso museums announced they will close their doors for the day, and Paris Saint-Germain’s scheduled weekend home football match has been rescheduled to the following Monday. Small businesses and public buildings across the capital and other major urban hubs have boarded up their storefronts in preparation for potential property damage.
The upcoming protests have drawn additional momentum from a resurgence of the gilets jaunes (yellow vest) movement, the populist grassroots campaign that paralysed large swathes of France with disruptive demonstrations during Emmanuel Macron’s first presidential term. A platform affiliated with the group has listed more than 500 separate planned gatherings and 200 smaller direct actions across the country for Saturday, alongside a public demand that Macron resign from office. The movement’s official statement rejected widespread public condemnation of last week’s rioting, claiming law enforcement had initiated unprovoked attacks on peaceful demonstrators.
The surge of public discontent is unfolding against a backdrop of deepening national frustration: French households are grappling with sustained cost-of-living pressures, while successive government warnings of impending drastic public spending cuts to rein in ballooning national debt have further eroded public trust. With Macron set to step down from office next spring, the country is entering what analysts warn could be the most polarised and unpredictable presidential election cycle in a generation. Recent polling indicates that candidates from Macron’s centrist governing bloc may fail to qualify for the two-candidate final run-off, leaving voters facing a choice between Marine Le Pen’s hard-right National Rally party and Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s radical-left La France Insoumise faction. Both opposition leaders have seized on public anger over the government’s handling of the recent unrest to rally their bases: Mélenchon has condemned the administration’s new protest restrictions as an attack on republican institutions and called for his supporters to join Saturday’s marches, while Le Pen’s National Rally is set to host a two-day national party conference in Orléans, roughly 75 miles south of Paris, that local officials have identified as a major potential flashpoint. The Orléans mayor has announced that thousands of additional police officers will be deployed to the city to prevent clashes between far-right conference attendees and planned counter-protests by left-wing groups, with all local public transport suspended for the duration of the event.
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Arrest made after fire at Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest retreat
A major fire broke out at the Kehlsteinhaus, widely known as the Eagle’s Nest — Adolf Hitler’s former Alpine mountain retreat in southern Germany’s Bavaria state — late Friday evening, prompting a large-scale emergency response that remains active into early Saturday, local law enforcement confirmed. Emergency dispatchers based in Traunstein received an automatic fire alert from the iconic mountaintop structure at 21:15 local time (19:15 GMT) on Friday, with arriving fire crews finding the building fully engulfed in spreading flames. Rough, steep alpine terrain surrounding the site has significantly complicated firefighting operations, even as roughly 200 emergency personnel have been deployed to contain the blaze, which was still actively burning as of early Saturday. No casualty reports have been registered to date, Bavarian police stated. Authorities have taken an unidentified suspect into custody in connection with the incident, launching a full criminal probe to verify the individual’s potential links to the fire. Completed by the Nazi regime in 1938, the Eagle’s Nest sits perched high above the town of Berchtesgaden. It served as a part-time operational seat of government for Hitler, where top Nazi military commanders gathered in 1941 to strategize the launch of the invasion of the Soviet Union. The site was also used as a filming location for Nazi propaganda productions crafted to frame Hitler as a gentle figure devoted to nature and wildlife, a deliberate public relations facade that concealed the regime’s genocidal agenda. Unlike many prominent Nazi-era structures, the Eagle’s Nest avoided intentional demolition following Germany’s 1945 defeat in World War II. It has since been transformed into a high-traffic tourist attraction that hosts a popular mountain inn, with its official website framing the site as a deliberate, cautionary reminder of the unfathomable atrocities and moral abysses of the inhumane Nazi dictatorship. The Nazi regime led by Hitler orchestrated the deaths of tens of millions of people across Europe, including the systematic industrialized genocide of Jewish communities across the continent.
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‘A Zionist framing of Palestinian history’: Why a book on Palestine was pulled from its publisher
Two prominent Palestinian-American public figures and online advocates, Alana Hadid and Jenan Matari, spent two years crafting a young adult nonfiction manuscript centered on Palestinian history, which they hoped would serve as a accessible educational tool for teen readers to understand the realities of Palestinian displacement and anti-occupation struggle. The pair initially secured a highly anticipated publishing deal with Penguin Random House, the world’s largest trade publishing group, to release their work *Displacement and the Palestinian American Story* as part of the publisher’s Race to Truth series – a curated seven-book nonfiction collection designed to center marginalized community perspectives, including narratives from African American and Indigenous populations. What the authors expected to be a landmark opportunity to amplify underreported Palestinian history to a broad youth audience quickly unraveled amid a deeply unconventional, fraught editorial process. Matari, speaking on behalf of both authors to Middle East Eye, explained that the manuscript moved through multiple rounds of internal and external reviews, with input from the publisher’s legal and public relations teams, long before the authors were granted full access to the revised text. At the time the book was already listed for pre-order, with a scheduled September 2026 release, the pair had to formally petition Penguin Random House leadership in June 2026 just to review the full edited manuscript they had never approved. Upon accessing the text, the authors discovered multiple unauthorized, unilateral changes that distorted core historical and legal facts most notably, a line inserted into a chapter introduction that framed the events of October 7, 2023, as a violation of international law, with no corresponding context acknowledging that under established international humanitarian law, populations living under foreign military occupation hold the legal right to pursue armed resistance against that occupation. When Hadid and Matari pushed to remove the misleading line, they say Penguin Random House leadership explicitly told them the entire book would be deemed unpublishable if the disputed text was cut, and admitted outright that editorial teams’ top priority was not factual accuracy. The authors also reported that the publisher pressured them to swap historically precise terminology referencing pre-1948 Jewish paramilitary groups – terms the pair had sourced directly from period reporting in outlets including *The New York Times* and *The London Times* – to falsely equate the labels “Jewish,” “Zionist,” and “Israeli,” a framing Matari rejected as not only historically false but also dangerous to the safety of global Jewish communities by conflating religious identity with a specific political nationalist movement. Matari stated that the edits appeared designed to cater to a Zionist framing of Palestinian history, prioritizing the comfort of readers sympathetic to Israeli state narratives over documenting verified Palestinian lived experience and historical fact. Rejecting the publisher’s demands, Hadid and Matari formally walked away from the seven-figure mainstream publishing deal, secured full reversion of their manuscript rights, and partnered with independent, Palestine-focused Interlink Publishing to release their work as originally intended. This latest editorial dispute is the third recent high-profile case of institutional pushback against Matari’s pro-Palestine educational work: just weeks prior, she and a co-author filed a civil lawsuit against the Los Angeles Public Library over the cancellation of a planned Read Palestine Week event, alleging that baseless accusations of antisemitism and terrorist ties from a library staff member constituted viewpoint discrimination and a violation of First Amendment free speech protections. Last year, a promotional event for Matari’s previously released Palestinian children’s book *Everything Grows in Jiddo’s Garden* at a New Jersey bookstore was also scrapped following a targeted pressure campaign from pro-Zionist groups. Matari told Middle East Eye that the repeated pattern of censorship is rooted in widespread institutional discomfort with introducing young audiences to unvarnished decolonial Palestinian history, but that the pushback only fuels her commitment to the work, noting that the fierce institutional backlash is a clear sign the material is filling a critical unmet educational gap. Middle East Eye reached out to Penguin Random House for an official statement on the allegations, but received no response at the time of publication.
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‘Everybody is terrorised’: El-Fasher population drops to just seven percent of last year’s high, Amnesty says
In a damning new investigative report released Friday, Amnesty International has revealed that El Fasher, the capital of Sudan’s North Darfur state, has lost over 90% of its pre-raid population, just one full year after the Emirati-backed breakaway Rapid Support Forces (RSF) seized control of the southwestern Darfur city. Once a critical safe haven hosting more than 1 million displaced civilians, per 2025 estimates from Sudan’s federal government and on-the-ground humanitarian groups, the city now holds barely 70,000 remaining residents.
Documented over two months of rigorous field research, human rights investigators collected firsthand, anonymized testimony from 25 civilian witnesses: 19 current and former El Fasher residents, plus 6 frontline humanitarian workers. Seventeen of the interviewed survivors had been detained in RSF-run makeshift facilities, with 15 of the group fleeing the city between July and August 2026. The testimonies paint a harrowing portrait of unrelenting abuse: unlawful extrajudicial killings, arbitrary detentions, systematic torture, pervasive surveillance, and targeted ethnic persecution have become normalized across all areas of RSF-held El Fasher, casting a suffocating blanket of terror over the remaining civilian population.
Multiple survivors shared graphic accounts of unprovoked violence in RSF detention sites, many of which repurposed local public schools to hold hundreds of captives at a time. 29-year-old Modathir, a member of the targeted Zaghawa ethnic group who escaped an RSF prison, described arbitrary execution as a constant threat: “Torture is permanent in every RSF detention site. They execute people just for glancing at them the wrong way. If you fall asleep, they get angry and kill you, saying they will give you the permanent rest you supposedly wanted.” 38-year-old Hatim, from the Berti ethnic group, was detained in spring 2026 when he returned to El Fasher to retrieve personal belongings, despite still recovering from a serious shrapnel wound to his jaw. Held for four months alongside roughly 300 other detainees in a repurposed school, he was beaten repeatedly when he tried to escape, including direct blows to his unhealed injury, before succeeding on his third attempt. 33-year-old Zaghawa survivor Mamoun explained that captives were selected for abuse at random, with no formal process: “They drag people out of cells whenever they want, accuse you of siding with the Sudanese Joint Forces or regular army, and beat you until you pass out. Sometimes I was assaulted four times in a single day, depending entirely on the mood of the guard on duty.”
Detention facilities that housed women, children, and elderly or wounded captives also suffered catastrophic rates of malnutrition, with ethnic slurs and dehumanizing treatment directed specifically at members of marginalized Darfuri groups. A 45-year-old Zaghawa woman identified as Haram for protection said RSF fighters routinely targeted women from her community with racial slurs referencing enslavement, while forcing captives to perform unlawful unpaid forced labor in violation of international humanitarian law.
Amnesty International confirmed it formally reached out to RSF leadership on October 9 to share its preliminary findings and request a formal response, but received no communication of any kind from the paramilitary group. Even as a small handful of humanitarian organizations have been permitted limited re-entry to El Fasher as of September 2026, witnesses reported that all staff movements are closely monitored, no private conversations with residents are allowed, and all aid activities are overseen by RSF forces, who ban photography, independent interviews, and unregulated civilian interactions with aid teams. “Everyone is watched so closely that no one dares speak freely,” one local resident told investigators. “No one feels safe at all.”
The widespread atrocities in El Fasher form part of a broader, years-long pattern of crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing perpetrated by the RSF across Darfur, Amnesty’s report concludes, enabled by unimpeded arms flows from the United Arab Emirates that have continued despite a longstanding UN Darfur weapons embargo. Since Sudan’s civil war escalated in April 2023 following the collapse of a fragile power-sharing agreement between the RSF and Sudan’s regular armed forces, the conflict has claimed more than 150,000 lives, displaced 10 million people internally, and pushed an additional 4 million to seek refuge across international borders. Out of Sudan’s total 52 million population, more than 21 million now face life-threatening acute food and water shortages.
Human rights advocates note that the lack of meaningful diplomatic pressure to curb UAE arms shipments to the RSF has been exacerbated by the Trump administration’s reluctance to confront its Emirati ally, even as its appointed African affairs envoy Massad Boulos previously signaled support for a negotiated path to peace earlier in 2026, with no visible progress in recent months. The ongoing diplomatic campaign of UAE Assistant Minister for Political Affairs Lana Nusseibeh for the position of next UN Secretary General has also raised concerns among Sudan advocacy groups that the UAE faces limited international accountability for its role in fueling the Sudanese conflict.
In its formal set of demands, Amnesty International has called on the RSF to immediately release all arbitrarily detained civilians, end all acts of torture, extrajudicial killing and forced labor across its territory, and grant full unobstructed humanitarian access to El Fasher. The organization further urged all global states to immediately halt all arms transfers to every party to the Sudanese conflict, specifically to end all weapons sales to the UAE until the country ceases its violations of the UN Darfur arms embargo, and called on the UN Security Council to expand the existing Darfur weapons embargo to cover the entire territory of Sudan. The longstanding Amnesty campaign also renewed its call for an immediate nationwide ceasefire and the urgent deployment of a dedicated international civilian protection force to shield vulnerable populations across Sudan from ongoing violence.
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Australian MP’s condition improves after alleged car attack
Veteran Australian federal lawmaker Helen Haines has recorded a notable uptick in her medical status nearly one week after a targeted car ramming incident outside her regional electorate office in Wangaratta, northeast Victoria, according to an official update from Melbourne’s Alfred Hospital on Saturday morning. The 65-year-old independent parliamentarian, who was airlifted to the major metropolitan trauma center immediately following the Monday attack, has moved from previously listed critical condition to serious but stable, marking the first positive shift in her clinical trajectory since the assault.
Authorities have classified the incident as a deliberate targeted attack: the suspect, 43-year-old Brendan Nugent, is alleged to have driven a Toyota LandCruiser directly into Haines as she stood outside her local constituency office. Haines, a former nurse and midwife who first won her federal seat in 2019 and is widely recognized for her advocacy for more ambitious national climate action, required emergency double leg amputation to address life-threatening injuries sustained in the collision.
Nugent was taken into custody by local law enforcement within seconds of the incident, and has since made a first appearance before a local court to answer three preliminary charges: dangerous driving causing serious injury, intentional infliction of grievous bodily harm, and harming a Commonwealth public official. Investigators from Victoria Police, working in partnership with the Australian Federal Police, have indicated additional charges including attempted murder may be filed as the probe progresses. The suspect’s legal representative confirmed in court filings that Nugent lives with documented mental health concerns, but declined to share further contextual details about his condition.
Notably, members of Nugent’s immediate family have publicly stated they have shared a longstanding, friendly personal relationship with Haines for years, a detail that has deepened the sense of shock rippling through the tight-knit rural community of Wangaratta in the wake of the violence. Investigators have yet to identify a clear motive for the alleged attack, and are currently evaluating whether substance abuse or unregulated medication use may have contributed to the events of that day.
In a public statement issued three days after the attack, Haines’ husband Phil Haines told reporters that while the “horrendous, unthinkable incident” left his wife with catastrophic physical wounds, her mental fortitude and characteristic resolve remained unshaken. Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese addressed the attack in a broadcast interview shortly after it unfolded, framing the assault as a troubling symptom of a broader deterioration in Australian public discourse, noting that national political dialogue had seen a worrying “rise in temperature” in recent years, marked by excessive hostile rhetoric and a sharp decline in constructive, respectful debate. -
‘Escalation is coming’: Middle East on edge as new Israeli-US attack on Iran looms
Across the Middle East, US diplomatic personnel are actively making contingency arrangements to evacuate embassy staff, while Israeli fighter jets have ramped up regular patrols along Iran’s border. Multiple Arab and US officials operating in the region, speaking on condition of anonymity to Middle East Eye, uniformly convey that a resumption of joint US and Israeli military strikes against Iran is no longer a matter of if, but when. The tense calculus comes as Iranian authorities have explicitly warned of retaliatory strikes targeting trillions of dollars in US-linked data centers, artificial intelligence facilities, critical energy installations and major airports across the Gulf, laying the groundwork for a widely anticipated second phase of the ongoing regional conflict.
Aaron David Miller, a seasoned former Middle East negotiator who served under both Republican and Democratic US administrations, confirmed the trajectory of escalation in comments to MEE. “An escalation is coming. Whether it’s before the US midterms or after is not relevant. The purpose of the escalation is clear,” he stated. Direct, large-scale hostilities between US and Iranian forces were temporarily halted after a fragile ceasefire agreed in April, but a 14-point Memorandum of Understanding signed by both sides in June to pave the way for a long-term settlement was never implemented. The landmark deal was widely perceived to include extensive concessions to Iran that the Trump administration finds politically unacceptable, creating an uncrossable impasse.
“There is a foundational gap, galactic in scope, that can’t be bridged. The Iranians are not going to change their position on the Strait of Hormuz, the nuclear issue or the Houthis to the extent that Trump needs in order to spin a win,” Miller explained. Senior envoys representing the Trump administration are now actively laying the operational groundwork for a return to full-scale military conflict. “We are going to have to keep working at this to make sure there’s a regime change eventually,” noted prominent Republican Senator Rick Scott, a close Trump ally, during a Thursday interview with Fox News.
Mike Waltz, the US ambassador to the United Nations, told the Financial Times that the White House has fully prepared for a prolonged, drawn-out conflict in the region. “The president and the US Navy can maintain this blockade [on Iranian ports] for the foreseeable future,” he remarked in a Friday-released interview. What began in February as a US-led military campaign framed as an operation to neutralize Iran’s nuclear program has gradually evolved into a sweeping, zero-sum battle for geopolitical dominance across the Middle East. Current flashpoints include Iran’s push to impose transit fees on all commercial vessels passing through the strategic Strait of Hormuz, with months of tit-for-tat strikes between US and Iranian forces in the waterway. The sweeping US naval blockade on Iranian ports has crippled Iran’s domestic economy, while Iranian retaliatory attacks on commercial shipping have sent global maritime freight rates skyrocketing: at least 27 separate vessel attacks were recorded in the current month alone, marking the highest monthly total since March.
The deepening bilateral tensions have also shattered a separate ceasefire in Yemen, where fierce fighting has reignited between Iran-aligned Houthi militants and the Saudi-backed internationally recognized Yemeni government. Geopolitical and regional affairs analysts largely agree that a return to full-scale war appears all but inevitable, as the current unstable status quo satisfies neither the Trump administration nor Tehran, while neither side perceives itself as militarily or politically weak enough to make the concessions required to reach a negotiated settlement.
Gregory Brew, a leading energy and Iran specialist at global geopolitical consultancy Eurasia Group, noted that both the Trump administration and Iranian leadership are closely monitoring fluctuations in the global oil market, drawing vastly different strategic conclusions from recent trends. Data published this week by energy analytics firm Kpler shows that total Middle East oil and petroleum product exports rebounded to pre-February war levels last week, though experts caution the figures are skewed by a short-term surge in shipments. The increased export volumes stem almost entirely from US-aligned Gulf nations, while Iran’s own oil exports remain severely constrained by the enforced US naval blockade. Saudi Arabia has expanded exports via a newly operational Red Sea pipeline that circumvents the Houthi-controlled Bab el-Mandeb strait, routing crude directly to Mediterranean markets. Other Gulf states with coastlines on the Strait of Hormuz now rely on a shuttle transfer system, in which small state-owned vessels ferry crude out to much larger tankers waiting safely in the Gulf of Oman, with the US Navy providing armed escort at significant operational cost.
Despite the rise in regional export volumes, global energy prices have not fallen. Brent crude, the international benchmark for oil prices, has surged 43% since the June MoU was signed, while global diesel prices have climbed roughly 35%, and gasoline prices have risen by just under 10%. Iran’s domestic economy is clearly under severe strain, with official September inflation figures hitting a staggering 90%, but Brew points out that Iranian leadership remains convinced it can outlast the Trump administration through another round of intensified hostilities. “If the US is watching export volumes in Hormuz, the Iranians are watching price. And they are pretty confident they can withstand pressure over a longer period of time than Trump can,” Brew told MEE. “In a context where the US and Israel are bombing Iran again directly, we are certain to see more aggressive Iranian strikes on energy infrastructure. The US will also have fewer resources to manage this escort system,” he added, predicting global energy prices will remain elevated for the foreseeable future.
In the lead-up to the original US-Israeli strike on Iran in February, multiple Gulf states launched an intense last-minute lobbying campaign to prevent the military operation from moving forward. During the initial phase of the war, Saudi Arabia and the UAE joined US forces in launching strikes against Iranian targets, but Riyadh later pivoted to support diplomatic mediation efforts, and Reuters reported the UAE paid Tehran significant sums to secure a pledge that Iran would halt attacks on Emirati territory. For the anticipated second round of conflict, analysts note that Gulf states will struggle to maintain any meaningful strategic relevance, even as they find themselves on the front line of anticipated Iranian retaliatory strikes. Following the February 2024 attacks on Iran, Gulf states endured thousands of drone and missile assaults originating from Iranian territory.
“From the Gulf perspective, this is going to be devastating,” said Abdullah Baabood, a prominent Omani academic and international relations expert. “Already we see serious economic problems in the Gulf.” Recent reporting from Asharq Bloomberg indicates Bahrain is poised to receive a UAE-led financial bailout to prop up its rapidly depleting foreign currency reserves. Qatar’s economy contracted 15% year-on-year in the most recent quarter, the IMF projects the UAE’s economy will shrink by 4% this year, and Saudi Arabia was forced to cancel its flagship annual international investment conference due to persistent Houthi security threats. “The Gulf is hostage to a crisis that has no end,” Baabood observed. “Qatar is trying to mediate. Oman has been pushed aside by Trump. The UAE, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia are very quiet. They just don’t know what to do. They can’t read Trump.”
“Other than Israel, no one has real interest in a serious continuation of the war,” noted Marwan Muasher, a former Jordanian foreign minister and current vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. The growing expectations of renewed major hostilities coincide with the upcoming Israeli general elections scheduled for next week. In his recent public endorsement of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump dramatically raised the stakes for fresh military action against Iran, stating he intended to assist Israel to “finish the job” against Iran “unless they change their ways rapidly.” Analysts note that the military campaign against Iran remains broadly popular among the Israeli public, meaning a resumption of large-scale fighting could deliver significant political benefits to Netanyahu ahead of the vote, or help him retain his position as prime minister even if election results are inconclusive.
Baabood acknowledged that there is no question the US and Israeli militaries possess the capability to inflict catastrophic damage on Iran’s civilian and military infrastructure, but emphasized that the Islamic Republic retains the capacity to inflict significant, painful harm on Gulf state targets. In an interview with Dropsite News earlier this week, Major General Mohsen Rezaei, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, left no ambiguity about Tehran’s intent to target Gulf energy facilities the moment US forces resume hostilities. “If the US strategy is to prolong the war while using neighbouring countries’ energy infrastructure to offset the pressure arising from Hormuz and maintain the blockade of Iran, those governments should not assume they can participate in economic warfare against Iran without putting themselves at risk,” he warned.
One of the most critical unresolved variables ahead of a second round of conflict is the ability of Gulf state defense systems to fend off Iranian drone and missile attacks that could send global energy prices spiraling even higher. A September report from the US Department of State Inspector General confirmed that the US military is facing “strategic inventory shortfalls” of key precision munitions, and MEE previously reported in March that US stockpiles of critical interceptor missiles were already depleted, a situation that has only worsened following months of high-intensity military operations across the region. The Trump administration has repeatedly and publicly denied that it is facing any munitions shortages. The Gulf states’ acute vulnerability to Iranian drone capabilities has been laid bare by a recent wave of Houthi attacks on Saudi territory: the kingdom has been reeling from repeated strikes targeting major airports and high-profile energy sites, with Saudi authorities confirming at least 21 people, including religious pilgrims, have been killed in Houthi attacks on Saudi airports since the start of October. A September attack attributed to Iran-aligned Iraqi militias also targeted the kingdom’s critical East-West Pipeline.
“Continuing the war will only bring more difficulties to countries in the Gulf, and it’s clear it will not result in regime change in Iran. Meanwhile, Trump is suffering domestically because of rising fuel and food prices” across the US, Muasher noted. But Miller, now a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, argues that Trump may face far fewer constraints on military action than most observers assume, particularly given his lingering frustration that Iran derailed his original plans for a quick, decisive military victory earlier this year. “There is no cost-benefit analysis because Donald Trump is going to be OK. He may lose the House and maybe the Senate in midterms, but he will be OK. His family will be OK. He will build his presidential library,” Miller said. “Trump’s urgency to end this thing is not evident. There is no accountability. Where is the pain for Donald Trump?”
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Woman, 65, becomes second patient to die of Ebola in Kenya
Kenya’s Ministry of Health has confirmed the country’s second Ebola-related fatality, marking a critical update to its first ever recorded outbreak of the viral disease. The 65-year-old deceased woman was an immediate close family contact of the outbreak’s first victim, a Congolese traveller who arrived in Nairobi after seeking treatment at multiple medical facilities across the Democratic Republic of Congo in September, and died on 5 October. The latest fatality had been placed under mandatory quarantine when she first developed symptoms on 13 October, health authorities verified. At present, seven additional Ebola patients are receiving dedicated care across two specialized isolation facilities in the country: three are remaining relatives of the initial index case, three are frontline healthcare workers, and one is a hospital cleaning staff member. The health ministry has stressed that all confirmed cases belong to a single, contained transmission cluster, with zero verified evidence of widespread community spread to date. This outbreak is part of a broader regional crisis that has claimed over 4,000 lives across Africa since Ebola resurfaced in the DRC in May, making it the second deadliest Ebola outbreak in global history. The strain circulating in this cluster is the rare Bundibugyo variant, for which no fully approved vaccine or targeted therapeutic treatment is yet available, though multiple clinical trials are currently ongoing. The International Rescue Committee, which has been collaborating with regional governments to curb transmission, warns that Kenya faces sustained, elevated risk of new imported cases given the DRC’s tally of more than 9,500 total infections. In response, Kenyan authorities have rolled out strict, multi-layered cross-border screening protocols covering travellers arriving from 10 high-risk nations: the DRC, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi, Angola, Zambia, Ethiopia, South Sudan, and the Central African Republic. All inbound passengers from these countries must complete a digital health surveillance form prior to boarding their flights, and present a corresponding QR code to port health officials for verification upon arrival, while all aircraft originating in the high-risk zones are subject to enhanced disinfection and public health checks. Domestically, the government has launched a widespread public awareness campaign to educate residents on Ebola’s transmission risks, urging prompt reporting of any suspected symptoms and immediate medical care-seeking, alongside guidance on core preventive measures including frequent handwashing and avoiding unprotected close contact with visibly ill individuals. The U.S. State Department has issued an official travel advisory warning its citizens against non-essential travel to Kenya, while neighbouring states including Uganda, Ethiopia, and Somalia have activated their own national public health alert systems to prepare for potential imported cases. In a separate related development, Nigerian Health Minister Professor Ali Pate announced that the single confirmed Ebola case recorded in Nigeria appears to be genetically linked to the strain circulating in Kenya. Pate noted that there is no current evidence that the Kenyan index case travelled to Nigeria directly, though additional confirmatory testing is still underway to clarify transmission links. Investigators are exploring whether Nigeria’s single patient and Kenya’s first deceased case crossed paths at Uganda’s Entebbe International Airport earlier in October, as both are confirmed to have transited through the facility.