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A senior Israeli military commander has publicly framed illegal settler outposts in the occupied West Bank as critical security assets, pulling back the curtain on explicit state support for a network that human rights and research groups say is a core tool for driving Palestinians off their ancestral land.

Major-General Avi Bluth, commander of Israel’s Central Command which oversees the West Bank and a settler himself, made the remarks Wednesday during a conference hosted by the Israeli Farm Union. Bluth argued that so-called agricultural outposts are fully aligned with Israeli military security strategy, saying: “It integrates with it, provided that this is also reflected in operational conduct, as well as ethical conduct, and in accordance with the law.” The general went further to voice unreserved personal support for the settlers maintaining these outposts, stating: “All of this greatly strengthens security… I love you, I appreciate you and appreciate what you do.”

Every Israeli settlement and outpost built in the occupied Palestinian territories is illegal under binding international law, and even violates Israel’s own domestic legal framework. This explicit endorsement by a top military official directly undermines the carefully crafted public narrative Israeli officials have promoted to global audiences, which frames violent extremist settlers as a small, unruly fringe unconnected to official state policy. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly echoed this framing, describing settler attacks on Palestinians as the actions of a “small minority” that do not represent the broader settler movement or official Israeli policy. Bluth’s comments mark a rare, unguarded admission that these outposts are integrated into official Israeli military strategy.

Ori Goldberg, an independent Israeli political analyst and commentator, told Middle East Eye that Bluth’s remarks confirm outposts function as forward operating posts for the Israeli military rather than independent civilian settlements. “This indicates a complete submersion of settlements and these farms, as he calls them, but what they are violent, radical posts, they’re not even outposts, they are posts, and as he says, they serve the IDF [Israeli Defense Forces] agendas in that they control the tactical territory that the IDF can’t,” Goldberg explained. He added that these outposts are the primary actors behind targeted violence against Palestinians and play a central role in the ongoing ethnic cleansing of Palestinian communities from the West Bank.

The “farming outposts” model allows a small number of settlers to seize huge swathes of Palestinian land by grazing livestock across private and communal Palestinian property, blocking local Palestinian shepherds from accessing traditional pastures and carrying out sustained campaigns of intimidation and violence against nearby Palestinian villages. A July 7 joint report from Israeli peace and research organizations Peace Now and Kerem Navot found that 120 new farming outposts established since October 2023 have been linked to violence and harassment that forced 118 Palestinian communities to leave their land.

Prime Minister Netanyahu’s far-right government has actively supported the expansion of these outposts, providing settlers with state-funded equipment, agricultural subsidies for livestock, and pushing through legislation to retroactively legalize the already built outposts. Human rights organization Amnesty International has repeatedly characterized these mass expulsions of Palestinian communities as a state-led campaign of ethnic cleansing, rejecting Israeli claims that violence is carried out only by isolated extremists or rogue ministers. Amnesty’s research confirms that settler outposts and farming operations operate as a deliberate strategic tool to displace Palestinian herding communities and expand Israeli state control over occupied Palestinian territory.

Across the heavily fortified border dividing the Korean Peninsula, a quiet cultural revolution has been unfolding: forbidden South Korean K-pop has slipped past state censorship, reshaping how generations of North Koreans see the world, and in many cases, pushing them to risk everything for a life of personal freedom. For defectors who have settled in the South, this music has done more than entertain—it has helped them heal, build new identities, and embrace the autonomy they were denied for decades.

Lee Yeon-su, a North Korean defector who fled to South Korea in 2011, knows this transformation firsthand. On a warm Saturday in June, she traveled from Seoul to Busan to attend her third BTS concert in three months, chasing a sense of joy she once never could have imagined. After a distant view at the group’s Seoul comeback concert in March and a rain-soaked opening tour stop in April that drowned out the music, the Busan show lived up to every expectation. “Every time I come to a BTS concert, I realise how happy I am that I can like and support someone of my own free will,” she said, asking to keep her real name private to protect family still in North Korea. “That would have been unimaginable in North Korea.”

Born and raised in the closed authoritarian state, Lee grew up cut off from all outside media, where access to public events required state approval and the regime maintained strict control over every aspect of daily life through surveillance and ideological loyalty requirements. “You had to be selected to attend events and if you weren’t, you had to stay home with your curtains closed,” she recalled. Raised in a military family that was taught to view South Korea as an enemy, she avoided South Korean culture after first escaping—but music eventually found its way to her. Today, screaming, jumping, and singing along to high-energy BTS hits like *Fire* and *Mic Drop* alongside thousands of other fans is more than a hobby: it is a celebration of the personal choice she was denied for most of her life.

Today, accessing or sharing South Korean media remains a serious criminal offense in North Korea, punishable by imprisonment, labor camp detention, and even execution. Yet interviews with multiple defectors published by the BBC reveal that K-pop has quietly permeated daily life across the country, spreading through hidden SD cards, smuggled MP3 players, and illegally accessed cross-border TV signals. Young people have embraced the music so thoroughly that references to the global supergroup BTS (known as Bangtan Sonyeondan in Korean) have even entered coded everyday slang, with defectors reporting phrases like “Have you tried on a Bangtan vest?” used to discuss contraband South Korean goods.

For many North Koreans, the first encounter with K-pop is a jarring, eye-opening experience. Kang Gyu-ri, who defected from North Korea in 2023, first encountered BTS’s disco-infused global hit *Dynamite* while still living in a coastal North Korean county, where families could pull South Korean TV signals across the water with homemade antennas. Even though she did not understand the song’s English lyrics when she first heard it, the upbeat melody won her over immediately. “Everything was shocking. I thought they were Korean like us, but they looked very different,” she said of the colorful hair, stylized makeup, and sharp choreography that define K-pop performances. Rap, a genre entirely absent from state-approved North Korean music, was a novelty at first, but the cool confidence of K-pop idols dancing while they rapped quickly made it a hit among local teens, who began copying the groups’ signature dance moves. By her account, learning a popular K-pop choreography became a widespread underground trend, with groups like 2010s electro-pop outfit Teen Top gaining a massive following among young people.

Unlike the state-mandated music of North Korea, which almost exclusively centers on themes of revolution and political loyalty, K-pop and other South Korean music offers North Koreans something entirely new: songs about love, personal struggle, joy, and self-acceptance. For Hannah Oh, a 25-year-old defector who fled North Korea in 2019, smuggled SD cards of South Korean music often had corrupted file names, leaving her with no way to know the title or artist of the songs she listened to. She focused on the lyrics, and one sentimental ballad stayed with her for years: after she arrived in the South, she eventually identified it as *It’s Not Too Late* by 1990s popular duo Green Zone. “It was all in Korean, so it was much easier to understand than the K-pop I was listening to,” she said. “It was the first time I thought, ‘so this is how people express love.’”

Consuming this forbidden content comes with extreme risk. Oh recalled hiding her contraband music on a separate SD card, keeping an empty card ready to hand over to authorities if she was searched. Public criticism sessions and public executions are used to deter people from accessing foreign media: in 2022, three North Korean teenagers were reportedly publicly executed for distributing South Korean content, and Kang says she knew two young boys who were executed for possessing forbidden media. The North Korean regime has worked for decades to isolate its population from outside influence, framing life under the Kim family as superior to all other alternatives and cracking down on any information that suggests greater freedom exists across the southern border. The isolation is intentional: it is central to the regime’s hold on power.

Even with these harsh penalties, North Koreans continue to seek out South Korean music, calling it their “breathing hole” and “window to the outside world.” A 2023 survey of North Korean defectors found that 98% had consumed South Korean film or television before escaping, and 80% said the content increased their curiosity about the South and shaped their speech, fashion, and cultural habits. For Oh, this cultural shift is exactly what the regime fears: “Some start wearing shorter skirts or dyeing their hair. Once people begin expressing themselves, it affects a system where everyone is supposed to think and move together.” For Kang Gyu-ri, exposure to K-pop and South Korean media was the direct reason she decided to escape: after seeing glimpses of a freer life, the contrast with North Korea’s surveillance and control became impossible to ignore. “It was our breathing hole, our window to the outside world. People risk their lives for it because they gain hope to endure another day,” she said.

For defectors who have built new lives in South Korea, K-pop has continued to play a transformative role, helping them adjust to a new country and embrace their own identities after decades of hiding. Lee Yeon-su struggled to adjust to life in South Korea after her escape, facing discrimination in job searches and hiding her North Korean origins for years. That changed when she discovered BTS, joined the group’s global fandom known as ARMY, and began attending events and connecting with other fans. For the first time, she felt comfortable sharing her background, and she found the group’s message of self-acceptance—central to their *Love Yourself* album trilogy—deeply resonant. The track *Answer: Love Myself*, with its lyrics encouraging listeners to embrace even their past mistakes and scars, helped her find the courage to stop hiding her identity. “I found the courage to stop running and face that part of myself,” she said. “As I understood myself, I found I had more room in my heart to embrace others.”

Other defectors report similar experiences of connection and healing. Hana Kang, who arrived in South Korea 20 years ago, found that BTS’s 2017 track *Spring Day*, a meditation on separation and longing, perfectly captured the quiet homesickness she feels for the family and hometown she left behind in North Korea. For both Hana and Lee, BTS’s open discussion of their own struggles and hardships resonated deeply, giving them the confidence to keep pushing forward with their own new lives. “Looking at them made me think, ‘If they can keep trying like that, maybe I can too,’” Hana said.

For newer defectors like Hannah Oh, life in South Korea brings a different kind of change: the freedom to choose not just to listen to music, but to build any life they want. “There were so many other things I could do,” she said. “In a way, I’m now living in the kind of world I used to only see in dramas.” Even as the North Korean regime doubles down on its crackdown on foreign media, K-pop continues to spread across the border, proving that the desire for personal expression and freedom cannot be contained by censorship or force.

In a decision that has sparked fierce backlash from environmental, legal, and human rights advocates, Israel’s Environment Ministry has revoked the protected status of Nile crocodiles, clearing a legal path for a far-right minister’s extremist proposal to build a Palestinian detention facility ringed by the large predatory reptiles. Israeli public media first reported on the policy shift Thursday.

Environment Minister Idit Silman signed the official decree Wednesday that reclassifies Nile crocodiles into a newly created legal designation: “specially managed wild animal.” This new category explicitly authorizes Israeli state bodies to hold the species for security uses, according to Israeli news outlet Ynet. The decree formalizes the change, granting Israeli security forces permission to keep crocodiles under loosely defined “specific conditions.”

Multiple sources confirm the approval moved forward despite explicit opposition from the Environment Ministry’s own top legal advisor, the country’s leading wildlife conservation authority, and a coalition of Israeli environmental organizations. The policy shift comes after months of relentless lobbying from National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, the far-right leader who first unveiled the outlandish plan for a crocodile-encircled prison in December 2023.

Ben Gvir, who directly oversees the Israel Prison Service (IPS), has openly stated he drew inspiration from Florida’s widely condemned “Alligator Alcatraz” immigration detention center, a facility that drew global outrage for its use of alligators as a natural deterrent to escape attempts.

Prior to Silman’s decree, the Israel Nature and Parks Authority (INPA), Israel’s official wildlife management body, had long held that Nile crocodiles — a protected species in the country since 2013 — could only be held in captivity for educational and scientific research purposes. Neta Drori, the Environment Ministry’s in-house legal advisor, also formally opposed the reclassification, arguing the proposal lacked any solid legal or professional justification.

The IPS attempted to defend the plan by claiming its staff could manage crocodiles based on their existing experience working with security attack dogs, an argument Drori rejected outright in her formal assessment. “The IPS does not appear to have expertise in raising dangerous wild animals such as crocodiles,” Drori wrote, adding that the proposal failed to meet basic legal requirements for the reclassification.

Despite the unified opposition from legal and wildlife experts, Silman moved to approve the policy change this week. Ben Gvir quickly celebrated the decision on his official Facebook page Thursday, sharing an AI-generated image of himself holding a crocodile on a leash alongside a threatening message: “Damn terrorist, thinking of trying to escape? Think again.”

The controversial plan comes amid a documented collapse of conditions for Palestinian detainees held in Israeli prisons since the start of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza in October 2023. Under Ben Gvir’s leadership, reports of torture, systematic starvation, and degrading treatment of detainees have skyrocketed. Leading international human rights organizations have accused Israeli authorities of widespread, systematic abuses against detainees, going so far as to label several Israeli detention facilities “torture camps.”

Conservation groups and the INPA have doubled down on their opposition in the wake of Silman’s announcement, arguing the reclassification is unlawful and creates unnecessary risks for both the crocodiles and the general public. The INPA emphasized there is “no sufficient professional basis” to allow the Israel Prison Service to hold crocodiles at security facilities. The agency, which holds legal responsibility for protecting Israel’s native and protected wildlife, warned that housing crocodiles in prison facilities would create “significant risks” and expressed grave doubt that the IPS could meet the complex care requirements the species needs to survive in captivity.

In a joint statement released after the decision, a coalition of Israeli environmental organizations said they “strongly object to the use of animals as a means of guarding and deterrence.” The groups noted that “crocodiles are sentient beings, with complex needs for space, water, temperature and natural behavior,” arguing that Israeli prison authorities should rely on proven, conventional security measures rather than experimental and unethical use of wild animals.

The organizations also questioned the practical effectiveness of the proposal, pointing out that Nile crocodiles slow their metabolic rate during winter months, become extremely sluggish, and stop eating entirely — a biological trait that would render them useless as a deterrent to escape. “Security should be achieved through real means, not through animals,” the statement concluded.

Nile crocodiles have held protected status across Israel since 2013. Prior to that designation, commercial crocodile farms operated primarily as tourist attractions, but many operations shifted to breeding the animals for their luxury skins after tourist numbers declined. The issue of crocodile management in Israel already made headlines last year, when the Israeli military killed more than 250 Nile crocodiles at a farm located in an Israeli settlement in the occupied West Bank. That massacre drew widespread condemnation from global and local animal welfare groups, which accused the military of unlawfully killing a protected species.

This report was originally sourced from independent coverage of the Middle East by Middle East Eye, a publication that specializes in independent, on-the-ground reporting of the region.

A sharp escalation of conflict across the Middle East unfolded on Friday, as Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) announced it had targeted a United States special operations command center near Syria’s al-Tanf border outpost, marking the first reported Iranian attack on Syria-linked US positions since the US-Israeli campaign against Iran began in late February. The strike, which Iran framed as retaliation for the recent killing of Iranian soldiers in the southeastern city of Iranshahr, was detailed in a statement carried by Iran’s Tasnim News Agency, but independent verification of the IRGC’s claim remains unavailable through Middle East Eye. A Syrian military source speaking to Reuters clarified that while an Iranian attack did occur in the al-Tanf area – a strategic zone located near Syria’s triple border with Jordan and Iraq, from which the US military confirmed its withdrawal earlier this year – the strike did not actually hit the former base compound, and no casualties or material damage were recorded. Syria has long sought to insulate itself from the widening regional conflict, with President Ahmed al-Sharaa reaffirming in March that the country would remain neutral unless directly attacked. The IRGC’s cross-border strike came as the US military carried out its sixth straight night of bombing operations across Iran, extending a campaign that resumed on June 22. Fresh strikes on Friday targeted Iranshahr Airport in southeastern Iran, damaging critical infrastructure including electrical facilities and a fuel storage tank that sparked a widespread power outage in the area. Iranian state television reported that at least one civilian was wounded in the attack. Additional US strikes on bridges across southern Iran killed at least seven civilians, Iranian state media confirmed, with at least five key crossings damaged, including the vital Gariveh Bridge in Hormozgan province’s Khamir County. Explosions were also reported Friday in the southeastern port city of Chabahar, and a separate US strike on a residential neighborhood in the southern coastal city of Bandar Abbas left one person dead and eight injured, according to local media. These escalating military moves come even as the White House has signaled openness to diplomatic de-escalation. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt stated Thursday evening that President Donald Trump remains “open to diplomacy” and that backchannel talks between US and Iranian officials are continuing despite soaring tensions. As of Friday, Iran’s Ministry of Health reported that the ongoing US bombing campaign has left at least 38 people dead and more than 400 injured across the country. Ministry spokesperson Hossein Kermanpourm confirmed that the casualty toll includes one child and three women killed, with an additional nine children and 22 women wounded. The IRGC’s retaliatory actions extended across the region Friday, with drone and missile attacks targeting US military assets positioned in multiple neighboring Gulf states. Kuwait’s military announced its air defense systems activated to intercept “hostile missile and drone attacks” launched from Iranian territory. In Bahrain, national emergency sirens were activated across the country, with the interior ministry urging civilians to seek shelter in the nearest safe location. Tasnim News Agency reported that Iran’s strike targeted US helicopters and a reconnaissance aircraft at Bahrain’s Sakhir Air Base. Early Friday, multiple explosions shook Qatar’s capital city of Doha, after Qatari authorities confirmed they intercepted an incoming missile attack. Qatar’s interior ministry reported one child was wounded by falling shrapnel from the interception operation. The IRGC also confirmed it targeted a US maritime surveillance radar installation in Oman. Jordan’s military announced three Iranian missiles bound for Jordanian territory were successfully intercepted, with no casualties or damage reported. In northern Iraq’s Kurdish region, the US-led international coalition shot down multiple drones over the city of Erbil, according to local Kurdish counterterrorism forces. Parallel to the cross-border escalation between Iran and the US, Israeli forces are moving to solidify their control over southern Lebanon, with Israeli daily newspaper Maariv reporting that the Israel Defense Forces has begun constructing a new line of permanent military outposts along the southern part of the country. This development adds another layer of instability to an already fractured region.

Just over a year ago, former U.S. President Donald Trump delivered a blunt, dismissive remark to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office amid Ukraine’s war against Russian invasion: *“You don’t have the cards.”* Today, that line has flipped: it is Trump, now locked in a tense military standoff with Iran, who finds himself holding no winning hand over control of the world’s most critical energy chokepoint, the Strait of Hormuz.

Militarily, Iran cannot match the full conventional power of the United States. But Tehran has mastered asymmetric tactics to exert outsized leverage over the 21-mile-wide waterway, through which roughly 20% of the world’s daily oil and gas supplies, plus large global shipments of critical industrial commodities including sulphur, ammonia, urea and helium, pass. No matter how many public declarations Trump issues guaranteeing open commercial transit, he lacks the ability to enforce that guarantee.

This week, the U.S. resumed air bombardments targeting Iranian positions along the strait in an attempt to break Tehran’s control. But military analysts warn the situation could spiral into far broader conflict if Trump is pushed into a corner by his own political and military positioning.

### How Iran Turned Geopolitics Into Leverage
Iran’s power over the strait stems from a core asymmetric warfare strategy: acting as a disruptive spoiler. Every day the strait remains effectively closed to unimpeded transit, it ratchets up economic and political pressure on the U.S. and its Persian Gulf partner states to end hostilities.

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Iran’s elite military force, has already demonstrated its ability to disrupt commercial shipping at will over the past week, using drones and missile strikes to threaten vessels. Despite sustained U.S. bombardments since the outbreak of the current conflict, the majority of Iran’s missile emplacements along the strait have been restored and are fully operational once again.

This persistent threat has had a direct impact on global shipping: major international insurers including Lloyd’s of London have either refused to underwrite policies for voyages through the strait, or hiked premiums to prohibitive levels that make commercial transit unprofitable. Beyond disrupting shipping, the IRGC has carried out large-scale strikes across every Gulf state this week, inflicting severe damage on dozens of U.S. military bases stationed across the region. The long-held perception among Gulf monarchies that hosting U.S. military forces would guarantee their national security has been completely dismantled by these attacks.

### Why Broader Escalation Remains a Clear Risk
A cold hard reality shapes the current standoff: there is no purely military solution that will force the Strait of Hormuz open permanently. At the same time, neither the Iranian regime nor the Trump administration has an interest in spiraling into large-scale escalation, as both face massive potential losses. U.S. military operations alone have already topped $100 billion in costs, with no clear strategic gains to show for the spending.

But the domestic calculus on both sides pushes toward greater conflict. In Tehran, hardline factions have been emboldened by a wave of national mourning following the death of long-serving Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, leaving them far more willing to pursue prolonged conflict than pragmatic leaders in other capitals. Analysts assess that Iranian hardliners can withstand a U.S. naval blockade and sustained bombardment for many more months, and the Iranian regime is actually in a stronger strategic position today than it was when the war began, even as the conflict remains unpopular with the majority of the Iranian public.

For Trump, meanwhile, political pressure to be seen as a winner is intense. And with many of the conventional institutional checks and balances that limit presidential war power having been weakened in recent years, the risk of reckless, unplanned escalation is very real. Trump has repeatedly threatened to strike Iranian civilian critical infrastructure, including power grids and desalination plants – a move that would almost certainly prompt Iran to retaliate against energy infrastructure across Gulf states. Such a retaliation would have immediate, long-lasting impacts on the global economy, as seen when Iran targeted Gulf energy sites earlier in the conflict.

If escalation proceeds even further to target the more than 400 desalination plants that supply nearly all of the Gulf’s drinking water, the humanitarian consequences would be catastrophic. Iran could also pressure the Houthi movement in Yemen to abandon its current limited blockade of Israeli shipping in the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, the critical chokepoint at the southern end of the Red Sea that carries 10% of all global trade, and resume attacking all commercial vessels transiting the waterway. Until now, the Houthis have held back from broader attacks, in large part because they reached a detente with neighboring Saudi Arabia after years of war. But that ceasefire is now teetering, following this week’s airport attack that the Houthis have blamed on Saudi Arabia.

### A Ground Invasion Would Be A Catastrophic Failure
History and geography make any U.S. ground campaign against Iran a disastrous proposition. Air power alone has never achieved regime change, and for all its unmatched military might, the U.S. has not won a major interstate war in more than 80 years. A full escalation against Iran would require deploying U.S. ground troops, echoing the 2003 invasion of Iraq. But even a coalition of hundreds of thousands of troops failed to bring lasting stability to Iraq after the invasion, and Iran is nearly four times larger than Iraq.

Assembling the massive force required to control even just Iran’s mountainous southern coast is effectively inconceivable. What is more, the spread of modern drone technology has created a new era of asymmetric warfare that Iran is far better positioned to exploit than the U.S. Iran has built up a deep, self-sufficient domestic military industrial base that has allowed it to create a far more balanced fight against the world’s most powerful military than many analysts predicted. For any U.S. force attempting to occupy even limited territory such as the Iranian coast or key Kharg Island energy terminal, the opposition would be formidable and sustained.

Even the most extreme outcome, the deployment of U.S. tactical nuclear weapons, remains a small but non-negligible risk – a move that would open a Pandora’s box of unforeseen catastrophic consequences for the entire global order.

In the end, what is Trump’s least bad option? Allowing Iran to cement its new level of control over the Strait of Hormuz sets a dangerous precedent for global maritime security, but analysts argue it remains the better outcome compared to the catastrophic costs of further escalation.

As a long-imprisoned Sahrawi independence activist enters his sixth week without food behind bars in Morocco, global and regional human rights organizations are sounding the alarm and demanding his immediate release.

Naama Asfari launched an indefinite hunger strike on June 8 while being held at Kenitra Prison, located north of Morocco’s capital Rabat. His protest targets Moroccan authorities, demanding they comply with multiple United Nations rulings that have ordered his freedom after more than 14 years in detention.

Asfari’s incarceration traces back to his participation in the 2010 Gdeim Izik protest camp, a mass gathering of native Sahrawi in Morocco-occupied Western Sahara. The camp was organized to draw international attention to systemic human rights violations, widespread poverty, and systemic discrimination that Sahrawi communities have endured under Moroccan rule.

Erected in October 2010 on the outskirts of Laayoune, Western Sahara’s largest city, the protest camp was violently dismantled by Moroccan security forces in November that same year. Official and independent reports differ on casualty counts: rights groups estimate up to 36 civilian protesters were killed during the operation, while roughly 3,000 additional Sahrawi were arrested. Moroccan authorities confirm that 11 police officers also died in the unrest.

The violent crackdown drew broad international condemnation, and many regional analysts now point to the Gdeim Izik incident as an important precursor to the wave of pro-democracy Arab Spring uprisings that swept across North Africa and the Middle East just weeks after the camp was cleared.

Following the crackdown, Asfari and dozens of other Sahrawi protest organizers were convicted of charges tied to the deaths of the Moroccan police officers. But United Nations bodies have repeatedly challenged the validity of these convictions. The UN Committee Against Torture (CAT) has confirmed that the statements used to convict Asfari and his co-defendants were obtained through torture and coercion, and has formally called on Morocco to overturn all convictions in the case. In 2023, the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention also issued an official opinion ordering Asfari’s immediate release.

As his hunger strike enters its sixth week, Asfari’s family has shared alarming updates on his declining health. The activist has lost roughly 9 kilograms (nearly 20 pounds) since starting the strike, and he has refused to be examined by prison medical staff and halted his daily out-of-cell exercise.

The International Service for Human Rights (ISHR), an independent global rights watchdog, has become one of the most prominent voices calling for action. The organization reiterated its demand that Morocco implement both the CAT ruling and the 2023 UN Working Group order. In a formal statement, ISHR said, “ISHR is gravely concerned by the risks posed to Asfari’s health and calls on the Moroccan authorities to take urgent steps to safeguard his life and physical integrity.”

The case unfolds against a decades-long unresolved dispute over the status of Western Sahara. Morocco has occupied most of the territory since 1975, following the withdrawal of colonial power Spain. The indigenous Sahrawi people claim full sovereignty over the territory, and the Algeria-backed Polisario Front has waged a campaign for independence, including an armed struggle that spanned decades. Today, hundreds of thousands of Sahrawi refugees reside in camps in southwestern Algeria, while Sahrawi independence activists remaining in occupied Western Sahara face consistent political repression from Moroccan authorities, a pattern widely documented by international human rights groups.