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In a high-stakes move set to reshape regional geopolitics in the Middle East, Turkey and Pakistan have formally committed to a rapid deployment of military forces to Saudi Arabia under a newly activated mutual defense agreement dubbed the Mecca Pact, a decision that is expected to further isolate Houthi forces amid an escalating Yemeni conflict.

The joint pledge followed an emergency gathering of senior representatives from the three nations in Riyadh, where attendees issued a unified condemnation of recent attacks targeting Saudi territory — specifically strikes targeting the Islamic holy cities of Mecca and Medina — opting not to name the Houthis directly in their official communique. In the joint statement released after the meeting, the three allies reaffirmed their unwavering rejection of any act of aggression or threat targeting the kingdom’s national security and territorial sovereignty. They further agreed to move forward without delay with the practical execution of collective defense obligations, taking all required steps to deploy the pre-agreed military personnel and capabilities and ensure their swift positioning within Saudi Arabia.

The emergency summit coincided with a major new offensive launched by Yemeni government forces, backed by Saudi-led military support, which aims to recapture all territory seized by the Houthis over the course of 12 years of full-scale civil war. To date, the immediate tactical effect of the Turkish and Pakistani troop deployment on the trajectory of the Yemeni war remains unclear. Pakistan already maintains a substantial troop presence in Saudi Arabia, and just last week, Reuters reported that Pakistan dispatched four plane loads of military weaponry to the Yemeni port city of Aden to reinforce the Saudi-backed Yemeni government. One Western official based in the Gulf told Middle East Eye that Pakistani personnel are already stationed in southern Yemen, though there is no public clarity on whether they are embedded with Saudi forces under private contracts or deployed as official Pakistani military units.

While the operational impact remains to be seen, the timing of the deployment announcement — coming as the anti-Houthi offensive gains momentum — carries significant symbolic weight for all parties involved. A second anonymous Western Gulf official told Middle East Eye that Riyadh has been actively working to secure broad international and regional backing ahead of its large-scale counter-offensive against the Houthi movement.

Both Pakistan and Turkey bring unique geopolitical leverage to the new alliance. Pakistan stands as the only nuclear-armed state in the Muslim world, and has long positioned itself as a neutral mediator between Iran and the United States, marketing itself as an impartial honest broker in regional disputes. Turkey, meanwhile, is a longstanding member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and has recently carved out a regional profile as a leading critic of Israel amid its ongoing military campaign in Gaza — a conflict that has sparked widespread anger across the Arab and Muslim world, with United Nations officials and leading human rights experts labeling Israel’s actions a genocide.

For Saudi Arabia, formal activation of the Mecca Pact and the public backing of Pakistan and Turkey serves to underscore that its counter-offensive against the Houthis enjoys widespread support across the broader Middle East. Just last week, Saudi Arabia hosted United Arab Emirates Vice President Mansour Bin Zayed in a separate diplomatic push to demonstrate unified regional opposition to the Houthis.

In a parallel diplomatic development on Monday, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman held a two-hour meeting with U.S. Democratic Senator Chris Murphy, Murphy confirmed publicly. Murphy has been one of the most vocal U.S. critics of the Saudi-led military intervention in Yemen, a stance that held through the 2022 United Nations-brokered ceasefire that paused large-scale fighting for two years. That truce collapsed in July 2024 after the Houthis resumed attacks on Saudi commercial and military vessels in the Red Sea. Two months after the ceasefire ended, Houthi forces launched their own offensive along the Red Sea coast. As of Monday, Saudi-backed Yemeni government forces announced they have recaptured the vast majority of coastal territory seized by the Houthis in that recent push.

This report was published by Middle East Eye, a media outlet that provides independent, on-the-ground coverage and analysis of the Middle East, North Africa and surrounding regions.

New graphic video footage circulating across major social media platforms has drawn international attention to alleged war crimes committed by fighters aligned with Yemen’s internationally recognized government amid an ongoing counter-offensive against Houthi forces along the country’s strategic Red Sea coast. Three separate verified clips posted by open-source observers document repeated incidents of an armored military vehicle intentionally ramming and running over both armed combatants and unarmed surrendering fighters, raising urgent questions about compliance with international humanitarian law in the resurgent Yemeni civil war.

The first clip, which has been viewed hundreds of thousands of times since being posted, captures the armored vehicle accelerating directly into a gathered crowd of opposing fighters. While some men in the group carry rifles, two individuals are clearly seen with their hands raised above their heads in a clear gesture of surrender. The vehicle driver strikes both surrendering men without hesitation, before continuing over multiple prone men lying along the roadside. As the vehicle rolls over the motionless and twitching bodies on the ground, the driver and a passenger are heard shouting “Allahu Akbar” (God is Great). Distinct thuds of the vehicle’s chassis impacting bodies are audible over the camera’s shaky recording, with intermittent small arms gunfire audible in the opening seconds of the clip – though it remains unclear which side initiated the shooting.

A second video shows another encounter along the same stretch of road, where a lone armed man stands on the ground aiming his rifle at the oncoming armored vehicle. After striking the first man, the driver turns the vehicle toward a group of men lying on the ground, who open fire on the vehicle as it accelerates toward their position. The third clip, filmed in a coastal beach area, captures the armored vehicle searching for additional targets after the earlier clashes. The driver spots an armed man lying alone on the sand, yells an Arabic insult translating to “this dog” before ramming and running the man over. After the impact, the vehicle comes to a stop, and at least one occupant opens fire on a group of unarmed men walking slowly along the beach who do not return fire. Multiple men can be seen falling to the sand after being hit by gunfire from the vehicle.

While independent outlet Middle East Eye has not been able to independently confirm the affiliation of the vehicle crew or the men targeted in the clips, leading open-source conflict analysts have assessed that the armored vehicle is operated by soldiers serving under Yemen’s Saudi-backed government. The disturbing footage emerged just days after the internationally recognized Yemeni government launched a large-scale counter-offensive to retake Red Sea coastal territory captured by the Iran-aligned Houthi movement just one month prior.

In an official announcement Sunday, Yemeni government officials confirmed the sweeping goal of the new campaign: to recapture all territory lost to Houthi control over the 12 years of ongoing civil conflict. By Monday evening local time, Saudi-led coalition forces and Yemeni government allies announced they had already seized control of the Arabian Gulf flank of the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, as well as the strategic Red Sea port city of Mocha, which Houthi fighters captured from government forces in September.

The ramming footage is just one slice of the brutal, chaotic fighting unfolding across Yemen’s Tihamah Plain, the low-lying coastal strip at the center of the current offensive. Other videos circulating from the region show dozens of teenage boys, allegedly recruited as child soldiers by the Houthi movement, who have been captured by advancing pro-government forces.

Yemen’s devastating civil war first erupted in 2014, when Houthi fighters seized control of the capital city of Sanaa, forcing the internationally recognized government into exile in the southern port city of Aden. The following year, a Saudi-led military coalition intervened to back the Yemeni government, launching a large-scale air and ground campaign aimed at ousting the Houthis from power. A fragile UN-brokered ceasefire that brought a rare period of reduced violence to the country in 2022 collapsed in July of this year, allowing fighting to resume across multiple front lines.

The recent Houthi advance along the Red Sea coast has elevated the stakes of the conflict for global security, adding a new transnational dimension to the years-long civil war. After seizing the coastal territory, the Houthi movement declared a naval embargo against all commercial vessels owned by Saudi Arabia operating in the Red Sea – a critical global shipping corridor that carries a large share of Saudi Arabia’s oil exports. The strategic waterway has also become a new flashpoint in ongoing tensions between the United States and Iran, which have clashed repeatedly over access to the nearby Strait of Hormuz.

In a high-stakes case that has thrown renewed focus on surging far-right extremism targeting Palestinian communities across Israel and the occupied territories, a 60-something mathematics lecturer from Tel Aviv’s Bar-Ilan University has been formally indicted on charges of plotting coordinated mass casualty attacks designed to force hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homes. Details of the chilling plot, first reported by leading Israeli outlet Yedioth Ahronoth, are laid out in a detailed prosecution indictment, with the suspect’s identity remaining sealed under a court-ordered gag order.

Prosecutors lay out a premeditated, years-long plan that the accused codenamed “AIT”, an abbreviation for a Hebrew phrase translating to “the nation will carry out transfer” — a reference to the forced ethnic expulsion of Palestinians. The indictment outlines that the lecturer began conceptualizing the attack blueprint in February 2023, months after widespread intercommunal violence ripped through Israel in 2021. He dramatically escalated his organizational work following the October 7, 2023 attacks led by Hamas on southern Israel, the document claims.

According to the prosecution’s narrative, the plot was structured to deploy 72 armed attackers, including the lecturer himself, divided into 12 six-person cells. Each cell would be outfitted with firearms, axes, and hammers to carry out synchronized strikes across a broad range of targets: Palestinian citizens of Israel, Bedouin communities within Israel’s recognized borders, Palestinian residents of occupied East Jerusalem, and Palestinian communities across the occupied West Bank. The end goal, prosecutors allege, was to inflict mass casualties that would trigger widespread panic and force all targeted Palestinians to flee permanently to Jordan, Lebanon, and the Gaza Strip.

Court documents detail that the accused carried out pre-attack surveillance on multiple target locations, including the Bedouin community of Tuba-Zangariyye in northern Israel, where he mapped potential entry routes for attackers. Over more than a year, he repeatedly attempted to recruit co-conspirators to carry out the plot, but prosecution records confirm no individuals agreed to join. The lecturer also allegedly reached out to far-right Israeli politician Moshe Feiglin, leader of the Zehut party, in an attempt to secure help sourcing participants. When Feiglin failed to respond to his outreach, the suspect resorted to blackmail, sending threatening letters that warned he would release damaging private information to ruin Feiglin’s public reputation. Feiglin and his party’s members immediately reported the threats to Israeli law enforcement, a move that ultimately uncovered the full plot.

The case is now working its way through Israeli courts, with both sides presenting opposing arguments on pre-trial detention. Prosecutors have formally requested that the suspect remain in full custody through the conclusion of all legal proceedings, arguing that his violent far-right ideology and the advanced, detailed nature of his attack planning mark him as an immediate threat to public safety. The lecturer has pushed for release to house arrest, telling a recent court hearing that he poses no current danger to any person and needs to return home to grade student exams, reporting Israeli news outlet Ynet.

Bar-Ilan University, the suspect’s employer, has already taken formal action: officials announced the lecturer’s immediate suspension pending the outcome of the trial, and issued a formal statement condemning the allegations, noting the institution maintains “zero tolerance” for any violent or extremist activity that matches the accusations.

This indictment comes at a moment of already intense international scrutiny over rising far-right settler violence targeting Palestinians in Israel and the occupied West Bank, particularly after the outbreak of the Israel-Gaza war in October 2023. Data from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) documents a staggering surge in attacks: between January 1 and September 14, 2024 alone, OCHA recorded more than 1,600 settler attacks that left Palestinians injured, caused property damage, or both. Since the start of 2023, more than 1,300 Palestinians have been killed in violence across the occupied West Bank.

Earlier in 2024, the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory labeled the ongoing escalation of Israeli settler violence against Palestinian communities as “unprecedented” and sustained. The commission’s report further found that the Israeli government actively enables these attacks through a combination of direct financial backing, logistical support, and military protection for extremist settlers.

This independent reporting on the case was first published by Middle East Eye, a media outlet focused on original, in-depth coverage of the Middle East, North Africa, and broader global affairs.

In a landmark address that marks the first public condemnation of orbital weapon deployment by a NATO leader, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has spoken out against the militarization of outer space, following the United States’ unprecedented confirmation last month that it has placed an armed military asset in Earth’s orbit.

Speaking at the 77th International Astronautical Conference (IAC), hosted this year in Antalya, southern Turkey, Erdogan told an audience of senior diplomats, global space agency representatives and industry leaders that the cosmos should be reserved exclusively for peaceful scientific discovery, not turned into a new battlefield for great power conflict.

“Sending weapons to space, or turning space into a ground for an arms race, will be totally wrong,” Erdogan stated during his keynote address on Monday. “It will be a direct threat to the joint future for humanity, and I see that this race is becoming widespread – which, of course, we do not welcome.”

Erdogan’s condemnation comes just weeks after the U.S. Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall III (referred to as Troy Meink in the original report) confirmed that the U.S. has deployed an “on-orbit” space-control weapon, designed to counter what U.S. military officials describe as “evolving threats” from rival powers. While Kendall declined to share specifics on the weapon’s launch date, capabilities or exact orbital location, he confirmed that the deployment aligns with long-standing U.S. policy to achieve and maintain “space superiority” – a goal that U.S. military leaders argue is necessary to counter Chinese and Russian programs designed to disable or destroy American satellites in the event of future conflict.

Beyond the U.S.’s confirmed deployment, Israel has also publicly hinted at plans to develop its own space weapons, with the stated goal of protecting Israeli satellites from hostile spacecraft and developing strike capabilities that can target locations on Earth from orbit. China has already issued its own formal condemnation of the U.S. announcement, calling on Washington to reverse course and “stop expanding its military capabilities and preparing for war in outer space.”

The current framework governing activities in outer space, the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, only prohibits the deployment of weapons of mass destruction in orbit. This leaves a critical legal gap that major global powers including the U.S., China, and Russia have exploited in recent decades to develop anti-satellite capabilities, targeting systems critical to enemy military communications, surveillance, and navigation operations.

Beyond his remarks on space militarization, Erdogan used his keynote address to the summit – the first IAC ever hosted by Turkey – to outline Ankara’s expanding ambitions in the global space sector. The Turkish president announced plans to construct a new spaceport in Somalia and confirmed that Turkey is moving forward with plans to send its own national astronauts to the lunar surface.

The annual IAC summit, first established in 1950 during the early days of the Cold War to maintain open scientific communication across global space research communities, serves as a key global platform where government space agencies, private commercial firms, and international delegates gather to announce new mission plans, negotiate bilateral cooperation agreements, and debate the future of global space policy. This year’s summit in Antalya marks a major milestone for Turkey’s growing role in the international space sector.

A wave of anxiety has swept across Sri Lanka as 24-year-old migrant worker Anojan Sivarasa awaits a potential execution in Saudi Arabia, convicted of blasphemy against Islam and the Prophet Muhammad over a social media comment. His mother, Rasamanickam Yogalakshmi, issued a tearful, desperate appeal to authorities this week, begging for mercy for her eldest son. “I plead for mercy for the wrongs committed by my son. Please forgive him and send him back to us,” she said, as the family has now gone more than a week with no contact from Anojan.

The origins of the case stretch back to a heated religious dispute on Sri Lankan social media in late June. Footage of a young Muslim man kicking a dog accompanying Hindu pilgrims went viral, sparking tense cross-religious arguments online. After another user made derogatory comments about a Hindu deity, Anojan responded in Tamil with an insult targeting the Prophet Muhammad. Though he quickly deleted the comment and released a public apology video, opponents captured the post in screenshots and shared it with Saudi authorities, where Anojan had been working as a migrant laborer.

Anojan’s brother, Hamsidan Sivarasa, told BBC Sinhala that the case did not originate in Saudi Arabia at all. “People in Saudi Arabia knew nothing about this matter. It was individuals in Sri Lanka who sent emails to the company where my brother worked. I do not even wish to mention who those people are,” he said. Anojan’s employer subsequently notified Saudi officials, leading to his arrest in July. Authorities seized all of his personal electronic devices and deleted his social media accounts.

Initially, the Al-Ahsa Criminal Court sentenced Anojan to five years in prison and a fine of 3 million Saudi riyals (approximately $800,000 USD). When prosecutors launched a surprise appeal on September 17, however, the appellate court agreed to reclassify the case under Sharia law instead of Saudi Arabia’s existing cybercrime statutes. The ruling revised his sentence to death, an outcome that has shocked communities across Sri Lanka.

Since the verdict was handed down, cross-sector and cross-religious support for Anojan has quickly mobilized. Sri Lanka’s President Anura Kumara Dissanayake met with the worker’s family at the Presidential Secretariat on September 21, giving a formal assurance that the government would leave no diplomatic avenue unused to secure a full pardon. Multiple political parties and state agencies have coordinated diplomatic outreach to Saudi officials to plead for clemency, and senior Buddhist and Hindu religious leaders across the country submitted an official memorandum to the presidency calling for urgent government intervention. This week, a four-member legal delegation from Sri Lanka is traveling to Saudi Arabia to meet with Anojan’s two local defense attorneys to coordinate next steps in the legal battle. “We are going there to meet the lawyers from these two firms, discuss the case and plan what can be done next,” delegation member and Member of Parliament Upul Kumarapperuma told BBC Sinhala.

Despite these efforts, Anojan’s family has received no updates on his status or location since September 28, and Sri Lankan officials have instructed the family to avoid public comments while diplomatic efforts are ongoing. Saudi authorities have not released any public timeline for the execution, a fact that has deepened the family’s anxiety. Human rights advocates note that Saudi Arabia has a well-documented pattern of carrying out executions without prior warning to the condemned person’s family or home country government, only notifying relatives after the sentence is completed. Under Saudi prison protocol, death row inmates are typically stripped of access to personal mobile devices, with all external communication strictly controlled by prison administration.

The case has reignited longstanding international concerns over the treatment of migrant workers and harsh sentencing for online speech in Saudi Arabia. The International Organization for Migration estimates that more than 10 million foreign workers reside in Saudi Arabia, and rights groups consistently highlight that low-wage migrant laborers face disproportionate vulnerability in the kingdom’s legal system due to systemic barriers including language gaps and limited access to qualified legal representation.

This is not the first high-profile case of a death sentence handed down for social media commentary in Saudi Arabia. In 2023, retired Saudi schoolteacher Mohammed Al Ghamdi was sentenced to death for opinions he shared on two anonymous Twitter accounts that had just 10 total followers. “The death sentence against Mohammad bin Nasser al-Ghamdi, who is accused of nothing other than expressing his opinions on social media, is ludicrous,” Philip Luther, Amnesty International’s Research and Advocacy Director for the Middle East and North Africa, said at the time. Al Ghamdi’s death sentence was eventually overturned and replaced with a 30-year prison term, per data from independent Saudi human rights organization ALQST. While executions for blasphemy remain far less common than executions for drug offenses or murder in Saudi Arabia, rights advocates warn the case against Anojan highlights the ongoing risks facing foreign workers who inadvertently run afoul of the kingdom’s strict religious speech laws.

Launched in early 2025 by a coalition of seven nations seeking to hold Israel accountable for alleged violations of international law in Gaza, The Hague Group now finds itself navigating deep internal rifts and political backlash, as a wave of right-wing electoral wins across Latin America has stripped the bloc of three of its four founding members in just six months.

The most recent departure came in August 2026, when Colombia — once a co-chair of the coalition — formally exited the group, just two months after right-wing populist Abelardo de la Espriella defeated former pro-Palestinian president Gustavo Petro. Under Petro, Colombia had taken bold action to cut ties with Israel over its military campaign in Gaza: the former president issued a national ban on coal exports to Israel, even calling on Indigenous Wayuu communities in La Guajira to block transport lines after bureaucratic and diplomatic efforts stalled. He also joined South Africa’s landmark genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ).

De la Espriella has reversed nearly all of these policies in his first months in office. Within weeks of taking power, he signed a decree resuming coal exports to Israel, recognized Israel’s illegal claim to the Golan Heights, lifted visa requirements for Israeli citizens, restored the suspended Colombia-Israel free trade agreement, and pulled Colombia’s support from the ICJ genocide case. He also withdrew the nomination of prominent pro-Palestinian Colombian lawyer Carolina Olarte-Bacares for a seat on the International Criminal Court (ICC), eliminating any possibility of Latin American and Caribbean representation on the court despite the region holding 8.2% of the global population.

Colombia’s exit follows the departures of two other Latin American founding members earlier this year: Bolivia and Honduras, both of which withdrew shortly after right-wing candidates won presidential elections in March. Honduran President Nasry Asfura has already moved to deepen bilateral ties with Israel, extending an open invitation to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — who faces an ICC arrest warrant for alleged crimes against humanity — even before his inauguration. Today, only South Africa remains as the bloc’s co-chair, steering the coalition alone.

Founded to fill a global gap in enforcing international law amid widespread inaction on the Gaza crisis, The Hague Group operates as a coordination platform rather than a lawmaking body, bringing member states together to align diplomatic and legal action against Israel. Guillaume Long, the group’s diplomatic advisor, explains that the coalition was formed specifically to counter a coordinated push by the U.S. and its allies to weaken the global legal and humanitarian order that has long held states accountable for atrocities.

“The Hague Group was born to advance international law in an era of impunity, not only for the people of Gaza but for the future of a world where justice prevails over impunity,” South African Minister of International Relations Ronald Lamola told members at a recent gathering. At the 81st UN General Assembly session this month, 40 aligned nations met to discuss how to turn rhetorical support for international law into tangible, enforced action, with accountability for atrocities in Gaza at the top of the agenda.

Yet the coalition faces not only external pressure from great power politics but internal contradictions that have undermined its core mission. Most notably, South Africa — the group’s standard-bearer in the ICJ case — has been accused of hypocrisy after allowing Anglo-Swiss mining giant Glencore, which for decades supplied Colombian coal to Israel, to relocate its export operations to South Africa’s Richards Bay after Colombia’s original ban. Critics note that the South African government holds full regulatory authority to block these exports under existing dangerous goods trade rules, but has failed to act, in large part due to deep ties between the country’s ruling elite and the extractive industry.

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, who has repeatedly called for accountability for Palestinian civilians at global forums including the BRICS summit, was forced to divest personal mining interests linked to Glencore when he took office, but his family still retains close ties to the industry. His brother-in-law, billionaire Patrice Motsepe, co-runs ARM Coal in a joint venture with Glencore that holds operational rights to export infrastructure at Richards Bay. “The South African government talks ‘left’ by going to The Hague and walks ‘right’ by ignoring the sources of profit and trade,” said Patrick Bond, director of the Centre for Social Change at the University of Johannesburg, calling the continued coal exports “the most extreme form of hypocrisy” that directly fuels Israel’s military campaign.

Not all member states have failed to deliver on their commitments, however. Earlier this year, Malaysian authorities seized two separate shipments of strategic cargo bound for Israel at the Port of Tanjung Pelepas, in a move Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said aligned with the country’s Hague Group obligations to avoid becoming a trade conduit for Israeli atrocities. “This action demonstrates Malaysia’s firm stance to ensure that our country will never serve as a conduit for trade that could support or contribute to the Israeli regime’s atrocities against the Palestinian people,” Ibrahim said.

Long argues that the coalition’s purpose is not to demand uniform perfect action from all members, but to create space for coordinated progress toward shared goals, noting that member states already face severe repercussions for joining the bloc. South Africa lost hundreds of millions in U.S. aid after launching the ICJ case, while Petro had his U.S. visa revoked after speaking out against Israel’s campaign. “It is because of the fact that states are not all in compliance with their third-state obligations that The Hague Group was created,” Long said. “Our role … is to try and consolidate coordinated state action.”

Observers and insiders say the coalition’s future depends on adapting to shifting political landscapes by expanding partnerships beyond national governments. Former Colombian deputy foreign minister Mauricio Jaramillo Jassir, who served under Petro, argues that the bloc can strengthen its position by opening channels to civil society and making membership more flexible to include a broader range of actors. He added that de la Espriella’s policy reversal may not be legal under international law, noting that the 1948 Genocide Convention binds all third-party states to take action to prevent and punish genocide, regardless of changes in government.

In Colombia, civil society groups have already continued the fight to block coal exports to Israel, even after the government reversed course. The NGO Resist Glencore, which organizes in solidarity with Indigenous communities displaced and harmed by Glencore’s massive El Cerrejon coal mine in La Guajira, worked closely with the Petro administration to tighten export bans, cutting Colombian coal supplies to Israel from 34% to just 6% in months. The group is now working with former Petro administration officials to push an energy embargo bill through Colombia’s Congress, where Petro’s Historic Pact remains the largest bloc.

A representative for Resist Glencore noted that the same coal that powers Israel’s infrastructure in Gaza is also destroying the local environment in La Guajira, driving disproportionate child mortality among Indigenous communities that have lived on the land for generations. “These things are completely connected,” they said.

As Israeli military operations continue in Gaza and ethnic cleansing accelerates in the West Bank, The Hague Group faces steep challenges to uphold its founding mission. Proponents of the coalition argue that despite its setbacks and contradictions, it fills a critical role in a global order where powerful states face little accountability for mass atrocities. “There is a growing consensus that these attacks to destroy the institutions of international justice are completely outrageous,” Long said.

A urgent new warning from Human Rights Watch (HRW) has drawn global attention to the grave danger facing nearly 5,700 men and boys transferred to Iraq from northeast Syria earlier this year, with the rights organization saying the group faces widespread abuse, unfair prosecutions, and even the threat of execution.

The detainees, who include more than 440 children as young as 12 years old, represent a diverse cross-section of nationalities: roughly 3,500 are Syrian, 2,200 are Iraqi, and the remaining come from 65 other countries around the world. For up to seven and a half years before their transfer between January 21 and February 12, 2026, the group was held in Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) facilities in northeast Syria, where conditions had already been documented as life-threatening. The sudden transfer was triggered by escalated fighting between the SDF and Damascus’ transitional government, which sparked widespread fears of mass jailbreaks that would allow detainees to reoffend. With only a few days’ advance notice to Iraqi authorities, U.S. military forces coordinated the transfer of all 5,704 detainees, moving them across the border by airlift and ground transport.

HRW’s assessment paints a grim picture of the risks the detainees now face in Iraq. Adult detainees face imminent prosecution in deeply flawed trials that regularly fail to meet international due process standards, with convictions often followed by mandatory death sentences. Multiple reports from inside Iraqi detention facilities confirm systemic torture, unsanitary living conditions, and preventable deaths in custody. Adding to the public health crisis, more than 1,100 transferred detainees arrived with serious contagious illnesses, including active tuberculosis, which can spread rapidly through overcrowded detention populations.

Letta Tayler, senior counterterrorism advisor at HRW, emphasized the dual responsibility of the international community and Iraqi authorities in a public statement. “The thousands of boys and men sent to Iraq deserve humane treatment and due process, just as the thousands of survivors of ISIS crimes deserve genuine justice,” Tayler said. “The international community shouldn’t leave Iraq to manage this immense responsibility on its own.”

The background of this crisis stretches back more than a decade, when the Islamic State group seized large swathes of territory across Iraq and Syria in 2014. Backed by a U.S.-led international coalition, Iraqi forces declared victory over the group’s territorial control in 2017, and the Islamic State lost its final remaining stronghold in Syria in 2019. For the seven years following that defeat, SDF forces held thousands of suspected IS affiliates in makeshift detention facilities, struggling with limited resources and mounting security pressure.

Iraq’s legal system has long faced criticism from global rights groups over its handling of terrorism cases. To date, Iraqi courts have handed down hundreds of death sentences and life imprisonment terms to people convicted of terrorism-related offenses, including hundreds of foreign citizens. These convictions are routinely issued after summary, unfair trials that fail to meet basic international fair trial standards. Just last week, Iraqi authorities executed 10 people convicted of terrorism charges under the country’s sweeping Anti-Terrorism Law Article 4, security and health officials confirmed to Agence France-Presse.

HRW is calling on foreign governments to step up and accept responsibility for their citizens held among the transferred detainees, urging widespread repatriation rather than leaving the group to face the well-documented risks of Iraq’s broken judicial system. The organization also emphasized that any response to terrorism must balance accountability for atrocities with respect for basic human rights, calling for systemic reform to ensure fair justice for both detainees and survivors of IS violence.

Since the full-scale escalation of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, Turkey has emerged as a key supplier of defensive military equipment to Kyiv, and a newly revealed transfer of advanced air defence systems highlights the depth of this military cooperation. Multiple anonymous sources familiar with the deal told independent outlet Middle East Eye that Ankara shipped a batch of Turkish-made Korkut anti-drone air defence systems to Ukraine earlier in 2024, granting Ukrainian forces the opportunity to field-test the new hardware while strengthening Ukraine’s air defence capabilities against Russian aerial attacks.

For 41-year-old Palestinian father Adham Heriz, every day for nearly three years has carried the same heavy, unfulfilled weight: the need to find, recover and give a proper burial to the family he lost in an Israeli airstrike on Gaza City. That long, agonizing search reached a partial, bittersweet milestone last month, when civil defense crews recovered the remains of his 37-year-old wife Hiam — but the body of his 17-year-old eldest son Anas remains missing, swallowed by miles of collapsed concrete in eastern Gaza’s Al-Yarmouk neighborhood.

Hiam, Anas, and two of Heriz’s other daughters — 18-year-old Shahad and 15-year-old Dareen — were killed on October 25, 2023, when a massive wave of Israeli bombardment leveled the entire residential block where the family lived. The attack flattened 18 multi-story buildings holding roughly 175 occupied apartments, according to Mahmoud Basal, spokesperson for Gaza’s Palestinian civil defense. Around 450 people, including doctors, academics, journalists, infants and children, were inside the structures when the strikes hit.

The intensity of the bombardment left an unprecedented scene of destruction. “There were people thrown by the explosion around 200 metres. Entire families were wiped out. Many dead bodies were completely disintegrated, leaving little or no trace behind because of the massive explosives used in the bombs,” Basal told Middle East Eye in an interview. In the immediate aftermath of the attack, Israeli forces continued advancing and launching strikes on the area, leaving civil defense teams unable to conduct a full, systematic search. Most of their heavy machinery and excavation vehicles were also destroyed in the bombing, meaning crews could only recover 120 bodies in the initial response, leaving hundreds more trapped beneath thousands of tons of rubble.

Heriz, who lived with his seven-member family on the sixth floor of a seven-story apartment building, still carries sharp, searing memories of the day his life collapsed. The family had just finished lunch together; Hiam and two of their daughters had stepped into the kitchen to wash dishes when the first strike hit. “It was like a black cloud covering everything,” Heriz recalled. “I felt like I was flying and being thrown under the rubble with each strike. I could not hear anything. I could not breathe because of the bomb powder and dust.”

Though most of his bones were broken in the collapse, Heriz managed to pull himself free from the debris. He found his 8-year-old son Ahmed alive beside him, bleeding badly, and soon learned his two youngest daughters — 3-year-old Siwar and 10-year-old Dima — had also escaped, though both suffered serious injuries. Ahmed survived, but Hiam, Anas, Shahad and Dareen remained trapped. Heriz’s brother and his brother’s five family members were also killed in the strike. “People moved me to an ambulance while I was crying for my family under the rubble. ‘Forgive me, my children. I can’t pull you out. I can’t feel my hands; they are broken,’” he said.

Local search teams and residents were eventually able to recover the bodies of Shahad and Dareen, but the sheer volume of rubble left Hiam, Anas and dozens of other victims beyond reach. For years, Heriz and his relatives made repeated trips to the site, digging through debris by hand with no heavy machinery to move the larger chunks of concrete. He had largely lost hope of ever recovering his wife and son’s remains until last month, when Gaza civil defense launched a coordinated 20-day search operation in Al-Yarmouk, supported by the International Committee of the Red Cross, with excavation vehicles supplied by Egypt and fuel provided through the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

Over three weeks of digging, crews recovered the remains of 105 people from the neighborhood’s rubble, including Hiam, Heriz’s brother, and his brother’s entire family. Heriz described the devastating small discoveries the team made as they cleared debris: “We found a less-than-one-year-old child in his crib beneath the rubble, still holding his milk pacifier in his hand. When his father saw him and identified him by the clothes he was wearing, he collapsed from the shock.” Across the 20-day operation, Heriz said crews recovered 37 dead children from the ruins of his former apartment building alone. Still, after sifting through tons of concrete, Anas’s body was nowhere to be found.

For other survivors of the October 25 attack, the long-delayed recovery operation has dragged traumatic, vivid memories back to the surface. Just hours before the bombardment, 21-year-old Abd Al Rahman Heriz had been sitting with relatives and neighbors in Al-Yarmouk, talking about their hope that the ongoing conflict would soon end with a ceasefire. He had just returned home to help his younger sister with a primary school math lesson when the bombing began.

His home was only partially damaged, sitting just a short distance from the 18 buildings leveled in the strike. When he and his family rushed outside, they could barely recognize the neighborhood they had grown up in. “The sky was black with dust, rubble and fire. Injured and killed people were everywhere. Houses were destroyed. There were no trees, no signs of anything,” Abd Al Rahman said. Outside his building, he found the body of a neighbor cut in half by the blast, a bundle of bread still lying at his side. Most of the relatives and neighbors he had been sitting with just hours earlier were killed, their bodies trapped under the ruins.

With civil defense teams blocked from entering the area by ongoing fighting, Abd Al Rahman and other local survivors used nothing but basic hand tools — hammers, shovels, metal cutters — to dig through rubble for days in search of survivors. “I remained for three days with many of my surviving neighbours, doing our best to help pull people out,” he recalled. The small team managed to pull two young sisters out alive; their father lay dead beside them, and the children cried for him as rescuers moved his body to an ambulance and tried to calm them. They also pulled a woman alive from the rubble after she had been trapped for three days. But as Israeli attacks intensified, the survivors were forced to flee, even as they could still hear voices calling for help from beneath the concrete.

“We could hear the voices of people who were still alive but trapped under the rubble, as well as the bodies of hundreds of others, including people of my extended family,” Abd Al Rahman said. The trauma of that experience has never faded. “I still have nightmares. I hear in my mind the voices of people calling for help: ‘Help us, pull us out.’ One girl was calling, ‘My sister is dead beside me. Pull her and me out.’”

Of the 105 remains recovered in the recent 20-day operation, 36 have not yet been identified. Basal, the civil defense spokesperson, explained that teams face enormous challenges identifying victims who have been buried for months. “They had reached an advanced stage of decomposition and their facial features were no longer recognisable. There is no DNA testing or any other means of identifying who they are,” he said.

The tragedy in Al-Yarmouk is just one small part of the broader humanitarian catastrophe unfolding across the Gaza Strip. Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza has killed approximately 75,000 people to date, and official estimates suggest roughly 8,000 more people remain missing, still trapped beneath rubble across the enclave.