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  • An Indian bride dies. Rival claims of murder and suicide set off media frenzy

    An Indian bride dies. Rival claims of murder and suicide set off media frenzy

    In a country where thousands of young women lose their lives annually to dowry-related violence, most such cases fade into obscurity. But the sudden death of 33-year-old model and former beauty queen Twisha Sharma in the central Indian city of Bhopal on May 12 has detonated a national media firestorm, turning a tragic domestic case into a flashpoint for long-simmering anger over India’s persistent dowry culture.

    Warning: This report contains details that some readers may find distressing.

    Just five months after Sharma married Bhopal-based lawyer Samarth Singh, she was found dead in the home she shared with her new husband and his family. Sharma’s relatives have leveled damning accusations against Singh and his mother, Giribala Singh, a retired high court judge. The family alleges the pair subjected Twisha to repeated physical and psychological torture over unmet dowry demands, and ultimately killed her.

    Giribala Singh has forcefully denied all claims, dismissing the allegations as entirely baseless. She has countered that Twisha struggled with untreated mental health conditions and died by suicide. Law enforcement have confirmed they have filed formal dowry death charges against both Singhs and are working to determine whether Twisha’s death was a homicide or suicide.

    The investigation has been complicated by Samarth Singh’s disappearance. Authorities have issued a nationwide lookout notice to prevent him from fleeing India, and announced a cash reward for any tip that leads to his arrest. A Bhopal court granted anticipatory bail to Giribala Singh earlier this month, but rejected bail for Samarth and ordered him to surrender by May 23.

    Speaking to reporters, Giribala Singh claimed she has no knowledge of her son’s whereabouts, but said he intends to file a new bail application with the state high court and will surrender if that request is also denied. She claimed her son has been advised to lay low amid widespread public anger, arguing that he would face mob violence if he appeared in public. “Our son has lost the person he loved most, his life partner, and we cannot even grieve openly – everyone has turned against us,” she said in an interview with digital platform Mojo Story.

    Twisha’s family has refused to cremate her body amid their fight for transparency. The initial autopsy report, reviewed by the BBC, recorded cause of death as hanging, but also noted multiple injuries sustained before Twisha’s death. The family has demanded a second independent post-mortem examination; while a court rejected that request, it ordered authorities to preserve the body to prevent decomposition. An Instagram page calling for “Justice for Twisha Sharma” has gained tens of thousands of followers, amplifying public pressure for a full, transparent investigation.

    What makes this case unusual, and has driven its relentless media coverage, is the profile of both the victim and the accused. A multi-talented public figure, Twisha won the Miss Pune beauty pageant in 2012, went on to feature in national advertising campaigns, and appeared in a Telugu-language feature film before transitioning to a career in corporate marketing. Friends and family describe her as a vibrant, ambitious, and generous woman who met Samarth Singh on a dating app in 2024. The pair married in December 2025, with wedding photos showing a smiling, happy newlywed couple.

    Yet tensions erupted almost immediately after the wedding, according to the Sharma family. Though they provided a dowry as demanded, the Singhs repeatedly taunted the couple that the gift did not meet their social standards – a claim Giribala Singh denies. While giving and receiving dowry has been banned in India for more than 60 years, the practice remains deeply entrenched in marriage customs across much of the country.

    The friction escalated dramatically in April, when Twisha discovered she was pregnant, her family says. They allege that Samarth and Giribala questioned Twisha’s character, claimed the child was not Samarth’s, and forced her to undergo an abortion in the first week of May. Giribala Singh has rejected this account, asserting that Twisha herself requested the procedure because she was not ready to have children.

    Twisha’s family has released what they say are private WhatsApp messages from Twisha sent in her final weeks, in which she described her life with the Singhs as “a living hell.” The last contact the Sharmas had with their daughter came on the night of May 12, when Twisha called her father via WhatsApp at 9:41 p.m. local time. Twisha’s father, Navnidhi Sharma, told BBC Hindi that Twisha was speaking with his wife when the call suddenly cut out. For 20 minutes, repeated calls to Twisha’s phone went unanswered, until Giribala Singh finally picked up and told the family “she is no more.”

    The Sharmas have questioned why the Singhs did not contact police immediately after Twisha’s death, noting that as a retired judge, Giribala Singh would certainly be aware of standard protocol for unexpected deaths. Giribala Singh has responded that the delay occurred because the family’s first priority was rushing Twisha to the hospital to try to save her life.

    Giribala Singh has also drawn widespread public backlash for her public comments about Twisha, in which she brought up the late model’s mental health and described her as “liberal” – a term she clarified to mean promiscuous during one interview. The remarks sparked national outrage, with many activists and commentators calling for her bail to be revoked and for her immediate arrest. Twisha’s father called the comments a deliberate campaign to defame his daughter and distract from the family’s accusations.

    Criticism has also extended to law enforcement, with the Sharma family alleging multiple major lapses in the ongoing investigation. Earlier this week, Bhopal Police Commissioner Sanjay Kumar acknowledged to the BBC that procedural missteps had occurred, but stood by the preliminary finding that the case is a suicide, based on the initial autopsy and current investigative work. Navnidhi Sharma has rejected both the autopsy findings and the police conclusion, insisting his daughter was murdered and claiming that powerful, well-connected figures are working to derail the inquiry.

    The case has now drawn involvement from the highest levels of state government. Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Mohan Yadav has announced he will request a formal probe by India’s federal Central Bureau of Investigation, and has given the Sharma family a public assurance that the state government will support their quest for answers.

    For Navnidhi Sharma, the fight is non-negotiable. “My daughter was wronged while she was alive, and now there are efforts to deny her justice even after her death,” he said. “We will not rest until we get the justice she deserves.”

  • Labour Party group accused of faking independent candidates in local election

    Labour Party group accused of faking independent candidates in local election

    A growing electoral fraud scandal has shaken UK politics, centered on a local Labour Party faction in Tameside, Greater Manchester, where party members are alleged to have planted non-existent independent candidates to siphon votes away from opposition contenders in May’s local elections. Greater Manchester Police have confirmed that five individuals — four men and one woman, ranging in age from 23 to 47 — were taken into custody on suspicion of conspiracy to defraud, as investigators probe claims of deliberate electoral rule-breaking.

    Local independent outlet the Manchester Mill first broke the story, reporting that fake independents Muhammad Ali and Marie Fairhurst were listed on the St Peter’s Ward ballot paper as part of the alleged scheme. Together, the two fake entries collected 291 votes in the 7 May poll. In a striking confirmation of the fraud allegations, a real local woman named Marie Fairhurst told reporters she had never consented to run for office and had no idea her name appeared on the ward’s ballot.

    In the end, the Labour Party candidate for the ward, Attar Ul-Rasool, secured a narrow victory, beating legitimate independent candidate Ahmed Mehmood by just 177 votes — a margin smaller than the total votes collected by the two alleged fake candidates. This controversy carries national political weight: the Tameside council region overlaps with Ashton-under-Lyne, the parliamentary seat of Angela Rayner, deputy leader of the national UK Labour Party.

    The arrests come at a highly sensitive moment for UK Labour, coming less than four weeks ahead of a critical by-election in the Greater Manchester constituency of Makerfield. Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham is widely expected to win the Makerfield seat, a result that would put him in position to launch a challenge to current Labour Party leader Keir Starmer for the top job. Any proven electoral fraud linked to the party could have major reputational ramifications ahead of the upcoming by-election and the next general UK election.

    Outlining the scope of the investigation in an official statement, a Greater Manchester Police spokesperson said: “This morning, officers in Tameside arrested five people on suspicion of conspiracy to defraud, as part of an investigation into alleged offences committed leading up to the local elections. In the days leading up to and following the election on May 7, we received reports surrounding concerns about candidates within the St Peter’s ward. Following initial enquiries last week, we have launched a full investigation into the allegations.”

    “The work is specifically investigating the process of how candidates were put forward and represented in the ward, and if this adhered to the relevant legislation and electoral procedures,” the spokesperson added. “The five people … were arrested at addresses in Tameside this morning. They remain in custody for questioning. We are working closely with the Electoral Commission and local partners as part of our enquiries. We will provide further updates as we progress our investigation further.”

  • The Renewal of Islam: An Oxford academic’s antidote to bigoted narratives

    The Renewal of Islam: An Oxford academic’s antidote to bigoted narratives

    Against a backdrop of rising anti-Muslim rhetoric pushed by far-right activists and mainstreamed by influential British political figures, a new academic book has emerged as a critical, evidence-based corrective to widespread ignorance and bigotry surrounding modern Islamic thought. Last weekend, far-right agitator Tommy Robinson drew crowds to a central London rally peddling the false claim that white Britons face existential harm, echoing longstanding conspiracy theories that falsely frame Islam as incompatible with Western society and cast any pushback against these lies as an attack on free speech. This toxic narrative is not limited to the far-right fringe: figures across the mainstream political spectrum, from Nigel Farage of Reform UK to senior Conservative Kemi Badenoch, along with large sections of the British media, regularly amplify anti-Muslim falsehoods built on ignorance, sustained by conspiracy, and unmoored from factual analysis.

    Against this misleading public discourse, Oxford scholar Fitzroy Morrissey’s *The Renewal of Islam: Thinkers and Believers of the Modern Era* offers an accessible, deeply researched historical overview of modern Islamic reformation movements that directly counters these distorted popular narratives. Rooted in the Arabic concept of tajdid, which refers to centuries of efforts to renew Islamic faith and practice, the book traces a continuous intellectual lineage of Islamic reform stretching back to the late 16th century.

    Morrissey begins with the Ottoman Damascus-based scholar Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulusi, who challenged 16th-century religious puritanism to defend controversial practices including coffee drinking, smoking, music appreciation, and saint grave visitation. Crucially, al-Nabulusi argued that all Muslims, not just elite initiated Sufi leaders, had equal access to religious practice and knowledge, rejecting the idea that religious elites should hide core teachings from the general public. This position made him an early proponent of two defining themes of modern Islamic reform: egalitarianism that breaks down rigid religious hierarchies, and a call to return to original scriptural sources instead of blindly accepting inherited scholarly opinions. A key argument running through the book is that modern Islamic reformers drew far more heavily from classical Islamic tradition than most Western scholarship has previously acknowledged, particularly the metaphysical thought of medieval Andalusian mystic Ibn Arabi and his doctrine of the “unity of existence,” which holds that all existence is a reflection of God’s singular true being.

    Morrissey brings long-overdue nuance to thinkers that historians have often incorrectly lumped together as generic fundamentalists. For example, 18th-century Indian scholar Shah Wali Allah, frequently stereotyped as a rigid puritan, was actually an admirer of Ibn Arabi who sought to harmonize scripturalism and mysticism. By contrast, Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, founder of the movement that would become the ideological foundation of Saudi Arabia’s ruling House of Saud, rejected Ibn Arabi’s thought, opposed popular Muslim practices like saint veneration, and labeled competing Muslim thinkers heretics. Today, the House of Saud remains a key Western ally even as it continues to export its strict interpretation of Islam globally.

    The book also unpacks the complex history of the Deobandi movement, which emerged in 19th-century northern India after the collapse of Mughal rule. With nearly half of all British mosques following Deobandi tradition, the movement is regularly framed as a uniformly fundamentalist threat in Western media. Morrissey corrects this oversimplification: Deobandis are traditional adherents of the Hanafi school of Islamic law, a position that puts them at odds with Abd al-Wahhab’s rejection of established legal schools. While the movement does adhere to conservative positions on religious innovation, it also embraces a restrained form of Sufism, and the fact that the Taliban emerged from Deobandi tradition does not represent the views of the global Deobandi community.

    The book’s most consequential contribution is its detailed, nuanced analysis of how modern Islamism emerged from earlier Islamic modernist thought, tracing transnational intellectual connections between disparate Sunni and Shia thinkers across different regions. Early foundational figures like Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, a Persian rationalist philosopher labeled a subversive by the British Empire, traveled across the Muslim world and Europe to advocate for Muslim unity against European colonialism. His student Muhammad Abduh, an Egyptian Islamic modernist exiled for opposing British rule, argued for gender equality, a position that foreshadows contemporary feminist Islamic scholarship that shows many patriarchal teachings associated with Islam were added by later scholars, not found in the Quran itself. This lineage of thought shaped the Aligarh Muslim University in India, which educated a generation of Muslim leaders involved in the early 20th-century Khilafat Movement and the All-India Muslim League that led to Pakistan’s independence, including the revered poet-philosopher Muhammad Iqbal, who was even praised as a genius by British novelist E.M. Forster. Morrissey notes that Iqbal’s argument that God alone holds sovereignty, in opposition to modern secular nationalism, became the core ideological concept of Islamism, defined as the movement to renew Islam through political action.

    This detailed historical analysis directly undermines the clumsy definition of “Islamist extremism” put forward by the British government’s 2024 social cohesion strategy, which frames Islamism as a monolithic, inherently violent threat that seeks to impose a global Islamist state. The book shows that the reality is far more diverse. For example, Abu l-’Ala’ Mawdudi, who claimed Iqbal’s intellectual legacy and founded Pakistan’s Jamaat-i Islami, shaped the thought of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, which was founded in 1928 by Sufi scholar Hasan al-Banna as a movement focused on peaceful social reform through education and outreach. It was only after the Brotherhood was violently suppressed by Egyptian nationalist leader Gamal Abdel Nasser in the 1950s that a minority faction led by imprisoned scholar Sayyid Qutb developed a radical, armed vision of Islamism that would later inspire global jihadist movements. Most Brotherhood members followed the lead of figures like Yusuf al-Qaradawi, who argued that Islam was compatible with democracy and emphasized the flexibility of divine law to adapt to modern contexts. Similarly, Tunisian Brotherhood-affiliated leader Rached Ghannouchi embraced democratic politics after the Arab Spring, moved away from traditional Islamism to embrace “Muslim democracy,” and is now a political prisoner under Tunisia’s authoritarian current regime.

    Morrissey also brings valuable perspective to Shia Islamism, showing that Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini, founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran, shared core ideological commitments with Sunni Islamists, including a belief in God’s sovereignty, and even drew on Sunni scholarly thought like Ibn Arabi’s mystical framework to shape his doctrine of wilayat al-faqih, or the rule of the jurist as the guardian of the public good. Khomeini, who argued women deserved equal political and economic rights including the right to vote, work, and own property, nevertheless mandated compulsory headscarves and framed opposition to this rule as Western-backed corruption. Khomeini’s ideology has been widely influential among Sunni Islamists, but it has also faced sharp criticism from leading Shia scholars, including prominent Iraqi scholar Ayatollah Ali Sistani and dissident Iranian scholar Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, who argued that Islam requires separation of powers and rejects concentration of authority in a single fallible leader.

    While the book is a straightforward work of intellectual history that leaves some readers wanting more direct engagement with contemporary anti-Muslim discourse, it stands as an essential counterpoint to the pernicious falsehoods that dominate Western public conversation about Islam. At a time when far-right and great replacement theory narratives are gaining traction and becoming increasingly dangerous across Britain and the West, Morrissey’s work fills a critical gap in public understanding, offering a nuanced, historically grounded alternative to ignorance and bigotry.

  • Father of Gaza flotilla activist says UK ignored call for help after son seized by Israel

    Father of Gaza flotilla activist says UK ignored call for help after son seized by Israel

    The tense fallout of an Israeli military raid on a Gaza-bound humanitarian aid flotilla in international waters has left a British family pleading for government intervention, with the father of the detained student activist saying official UK authorities have largely ignored their pleas for help.

    Twenty-four-year-old Hasnain Jafer, a student organizer at King’s College London originally from Birmingham, was taken into custody by the Israeli navy earlier this week when Israeli forces intercepted the Gaza Sumud Flotilla off the coast of Cyprus, in international waters. Jafer was among dozens of international peace and humanitarian activists on board the convoy, which set out to challenge Israel’s years-long naval blockade of the Gaza Strip and deliver badly needed aid to the besieged Palestinian enclave.

    In an emotional interview with Middle East Eye, Jafer’s father Jafer Taasleem described his family’s overwhelming distress, saying they have received no official updates on their son’s condition or whereabouts since the raid, which flotilla organizers have labeled an act of illegal high-seas aggression.

    Taasleem last spoke to his son roughly one hour before Israeli commandos boarded the vessel on Monday. Since that conversation, all contact has been cut off. “We’re totally distressed, worried and in extreme emotional and personal pain right now,” Taasleem said. “I just hope he’s well, sound and good and not being hurt in any way physically or mentally. At this present moment, I doubt that hasn’t happened.”

    Taasleem singled out his local member of parliament Shabana Mahmood for failing to offer any assistance to the family, noting that only two UK MPs – veteran pro-Palestine campaigner Jeremy Corbyn and Ayoub Khan – have stepped up to offer support. The father added that while ordinary students at King’s College London have reached out to express solidarity, university leadership has not directly contacted the family to offer information or support. In a brief public statement issued on May 20, the university told student outlet Roar News it was coordinating with the student union and British Consulate to monitor the situation and work to secure Jafer’s well-being, but Taasleem said the institution’s silence has been disappointing. “Hasnain really, deep down from his heart and soul, loves and values King’s,” he said. “The university leadership has to say something, has to do something.”

    The family’s anxiety deepened after far-right Israeli Interior Minister Itamar Ben Gvir published footage and photos online showing detained activists being held in an Israeli facility. The images showed more than 100 activists handcuffed and forced to crouch, while guards manhandled some detainees and waved Israeli flags directly in their faces, in what was widely seen as a taunting display. The provocative post drew formal condemnation from multiple Western governments, including the UK, the U.S., France, Italy and Canada.

    Israeli officials have attempted to frame the flotilla as a provocative operation aligned with Hamas, claiming Gaza already receives an abundance of humanitarian aid despite widespread international reports of critical shortages and a unfolding humanitarian catastrophe in the blockaded territory. In an unusual split within the Israeli government, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu distanced himself from Ben Gvir’s actions, saying the footage was “not in line with Israel’s values” and ordered that all detained activists be deported “as soon as possible.” Current reports indicate the activists are on track to be transferred to Turkey by the end of Thursday.

    Despite this development, Taasleem said he has seen little meaningful action from the UK government to secure the immediate release of his son and other British detainees, even after the incident was raised in the House of Commons earlier this week. The perceived lack of urgency from official authorities, he said, has shaken his long-held trust in the British state, where generations of his family have lived. “It makes me feel like nobody’s doing anything… Is this really my country? Are these people really mine?” he asked. Taasleem has made an urgent plea for the UK government to step in immediately and use diplomatic channels to secure the safe return of his son and all other detained British citizens.

  • Israelis slam Ben Gvir for ‘damaging country’s image’ with flotilla abuse video

    Israelis slam Ben Gvir for ‘damaging country’s image’ with flotilla abuse video

    A leaked video showing Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir overseeing the mistreatment of detained activists from the Gaza-bound Global Sumud Flotilla has triggered widespread condemnation both inside Israel and across the global community, exposing deep rifts within the country’s political establishment over the incident and its international fallout. The footage, which went public in late May 2026, captures Ben Gvir waving an Israeli flag while confronting detained activists, who are seen being manhandled and forced to kneel face-down on the ground by officers from the Israel Prison Service (IPS).

    The controversy unfolded days after Israeli naval forces intercepted the flotilla—made up of 77 vessels carrying hundreds of activists seeking to break Israel’s long-running blockade of Gaza—while it was still in international waters. More than 30 activists on board were taken into Israeli custody following the raid, with the vast majority deported by Thursday, with only Israeli citizens remaining in detention. According to Israeli public broadcaster Kan 11, Israeli officials had originally planned to process the detainees quietly, deport them via the southern port of Ashdod, and avoid public provocation. Multiple branches of Israel’s security and diplomatic apparatus, including the foreign ministry, top security establishment leaders, and the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesperson unit, had even opposed the publication of any official footage from the raid, to align with this low-profile approach.

    Internal planning shows the IDF spokesperson unit had intended to release curated footage showing activists being treated respectfully, to shape global public perception of the operation. But the foreign ministry vetoed that plan, opting instead to hand-select what imagery would be made public. That carefully managed narrative collapsed after Ben Gvir published the video of his presence at the detention facility, a move that senior Israeli security sources have described as causing “enormous damage” to the country’s international standing.

    Already, the incident has drawn sharp condemnation from world leaders, particularly from nations whose citizens were among the detained activists. Activist testimonies collected by Adalah, an Israeli legal center representing Palestinian and minority rights, confirm that detainees faced systemic abuse in custody. Suhad Bishara, Adalah’s legal director, says activists reported severe violence at the hands of Israeli forces, with at least two people hospitalized after being struck by rubber bullets during the raid. Additional allegations from Ynet, an Israeli mainstream news outlet, add that naval forces fired rubber bullets at approaching flotilla vessels and blasted loud, disruptive music through the ships’ communication systems during the interception. Adalah’s account further alleges that detainees endured extreme violence, sexual humiliation, and serious injuries both during the naval raid and after being brought to Ashdod port. An IPS spokesperson defended the operation in a statement to Haaretz, claiming all treatment of detainees followed official standard operating procedures, and noting that any footage showing abuse was captured in areas controlled by the IDF and national police, not the IPS.

    Within Israel, criticism of Ben Gvir has been widespread—even from the minister’s own political allies—though most internal condemnation has focused on the damage the video caused to Israel’s global reputation, rather than the abuse of the activists documented in the footage. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who appointed Ben Gvir to his national security post, acknowledged that the minister’s handling of the confrontation “is not in line with Israel’s values and norms” amid mounting international pressure. Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar went further, saying Ben Gvir’s “disgraceful display” had caused tangible harm to the state, and that the far-right minister “is not the face of Israel.”

    Opposition leaders have gone a step further, placing blame squarely on Netanyahu for allowing Ben Gvir to hold a senior government post. Yesh Atid party leader and opposition head Yair Lapid said Netanyahu bears ultimate responsibility for the damage done to Israel’s international public diplomacy, known locally as hasbara. Yair Golan, leader of the opposition Democrats party, called Ben Gvir “a criminal and a strategic liability” to the state, while fellow Democrat Gilad Kariv added that the minister “does not represent Israel” or Israeli values, calling him “a disgrace to Judaism and Zionism.”

    Not all Israeli political figures have criticized Ben Gvir, however. Transport Minister Miri Regev, a member of Netanyahu’s ruling Likud party, was also present at the detention facility and published her own footage from the site. She defended the operation in a social media post, writing “This is what should be done to terror supporters who came to break the siege on Gaza,” and falsely claiming the activists had been under the influence of drugs and alcohol. On Channel 14, a pro-Netanyahu Israeli outlet, panelists openly defended Ben Gvir’s actions, with one commentator stating “We want to show the world that we treat these people like cockroaches here.” Even some critics of Ben Gvir’s messaging have defended his core position: Amichai Stein, diplomatic correspondent for i24NEWS, wrote that Ben Gvir had every right to label the activists as anti-Israel terrorists, but argued he should not be in charge of shaping the country’s international messaging.

    Ahmed Tibi, a Palestinian member of the Israeli Knesset, pushed back on claims that Ben Gvir does not represent Israeli values, arguing that the far-right minister’s actions, and the widespread support they have received within the ruling establishment, accurately reflect the current attitudes of Israel’s government and its core political positions. The controversy has already created significant friction between Israeli security and diplomatic institutions, and has reinforced global criticism of Israel’s ongoing blockade of Gaza and treatment of pro-Palestinian activists seeking to challenge it.

  • Jailed Vietnamese tycoon’s Birkin bags sells for more than $550K

    Jailed Vietnamese tycoon’s Birkin bags sells for more than $550K

    In a high-profile state-led auction held in Ho Chi Minh City, two ultra-luxury Hermès Birkin handbags seized from imprisoned disgraced Vietnamese businesswoman Truong My Lan have sold for a combined total of more than $535,000, after just half an hour of competitive bidding. The sale, part of a broader effort to liquidate thousands of Truong’s confiscated assets to cover court-ordered reparations, has drawn global attention for the extraordinary price fetched by the rare designer goods, highlighting the enduring hype and investment value of Hermès’ most exclusive product line.

    Of the two Birkins sold on Monday at the Ho Chi Minh City Asset Auction Service Center, the larger 30-centimeter model brought in $94,858, while a smaller, embellished 25-centimeter version—adorned with rhinestones on its clasp and trim—sold for an eye-watering $440,144, nearly seven times its original opening bid. The bags were among roughly 1,200 seized assets put up for auction as authorities move to recoup billions in stolen funds tied to Truong’s massive financial fraud scheme.

    Truong My Lan, once one of Vietnam’s most high-profile business figures, was convicted in April 2024 for orchestrating a decade-long embezzlement scheme centered on her secret control of Saigon Commercial Bank, Vietnam’s fifth-largest lender. Over more than 10 years, she siphoned $44 billion from the bank through a complex network of shell companies, and courts ordered her to repay $27 billion in reparations to cover the missing funds. Originally sentenced to death, Truong’s sentence was commuted to life in prison in June 2024, when Vietnam abolished capital punishment for a range of financial and non-violent crimes.

    Throughout her trial, Truong fought to retain ownership of the two handbags, telling courts she had purchased one during a trip to Italy and received the second as a gift from a Malaysian business executive. She argued the bags were intended to be passed down as personal keepsakes for her children and grandchildren, but courts ultimately ordered the assets seized as part of her reparations ruling. Back in January, Ho Chi Minh City’s Civil Judgment Enforcement Agency announced it would bring in independent luxury experts to appraise the rare crocodile-skin Birkins ahead of the planned auction, signaling the high value placed on the items.

    Industry experts note that the extraordinary final price paid for the bags aligns with a years-long trend of rising values for rare Hermès Birkin bags, which have become popular alternative investment assets for wealthy collectors. Nicholas Parnell, founder of Agency Parnell, a leading wholesale luxury fashion agency, explained that Hermès’ intentional limited distribution strategy has kept demand far outstripping supply for the iconic line for decades. “It is one of the most sought-after bags and that has been achieved primarily by Hermès restricting access to people,” Parnell noted, adding that rare and custom Birkins are widely viewed as tangible works of art rather than just accessories. “The price is quite limitless in a way because there are so many special editions,” he said, noting that many collectors view the bags as long-term holdings that hold or gain value over time.

    The auction sale comes just months after another historic Birkin sale that underscored the market’s sky-high appetite for rare examples: in July 2025, Sotheby’s Paris sold an original prototype Birkin bag for €8.6 million (equivalent to $10.1 million at the time), marking the highest price ever paid for a handbag at auction up to that point. Major auction houses including Sotheby’s now regularly list rare Birkins for tens of thousands of dollars, with special editions and custom pieces regularly selling for hundreds of thousands or even millions.

  • Exclusive: Sudan’s Burhan open to talks with UAE but ceasefire not imminent

    Exclusive: Sudan’s Burhan open to talks with UAE but ceasefire not imminent

    More than two years into Sudan’s devastating civil conflict between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) led by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), diplomatic overtures are stirring tentative movement between the SAF-aligned transitional government and the United Arab Emirates, a major backer of the RSF. In an exclusive interview with Middle East Eye, Burhan laid out clear preconditions for any formal dialogue with Abu Dhabi: the UAE must immediately end its military and logistical backing for the RSF, honor Sudan’s territorial sovereignty, and conduct all negotiations on terms set by Khartoum’s recognized military leadership.

    MEE can exclusively confirm that Burhan’s high-profile visit to Bahrain last week was not a routine diplomatic stop: it formed the core of a deliberate mediation push by Manama, which leverages its long-standing close political ties to Abu Dhabi to act as a trusted intermediary between the Sudanese government and Emirati officials. Multiple sources, including a senior Sudanese intelligence official and four European diplomatic figures with direct knowledge of the talks, confirm that while efforts to open a sustained communication channel remain ongoing, they have yet to yield any tangible breakthrough.

    Burhan’s recent Gulf tour, which also included stops in Oman and Saudi Arabia, comes amid growing cautious optimism among SAF leadership based in Port Sudan that the UAE could eventually be pressured to curb or end its support for the RSF, a force that has faced widespread international accusations of perpetrating genocide in the Darfur region. This tentative optimism has been fueled in large part by a wave of high-profile defections from the RSF in recent months, with every departing senior commander publicly corroborating claims of ongoing Emirati military and financial support for the paramilitary group.

    Even as new mediation efforts get underway, however, veteran regional diplomats warn that there is little sign Abu Dhabi is prepared to alter its core stance in the near term. This comes after Burhan launched a rare public rebuke of both the UAE and Ethiopia in recent weeks over their ongoing backing of the RSF. MEE previously confirmed that the RSF operates from an Ethiopian army base, plunging already fraught relations between Khartoum and Addis Ababa to a new low, with the UAE also implicated in channeling weapons to the RSF through Ethiopian territory.

    Abu Dhabi has repeatedly rejected all accusations of support for the RSF, dismissing claims from the Sudanese government as “unfounded accusations and deliberate propaganda.” In an official statement to MEE, the Emirati foreign ministry claimed the allegations were a deliberate deflection tactic by the SAF, designed to shift blame for the continuation of the war away from military leadership and obstruct genuine peace efforts.

    This is not the first attempt to open direct dialogue between Burhan’s leadership and the UAE. Over the past three years, multiple initiatives have been launched to bridge the divide, with only rare limited successes. The most recent successful contact came in July 2024, when Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed mediated a direct phone call between Burhan and UAE President Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan. A separate effort was launched during indirect Quad mechanism talks between the SAF and RSF in Washington last year: the Quad, which includes the United States, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Egypt, arranged a closed-door face-to-face meeting between Sudanese military delegates and senior Emirati officials to de-escalate tensions. But the talks collapsed within minutes, far ahead of the scheduled one-hour timeline.

    According to three sources briefed on the collapsed meeting, the SAF delegation arrived with documented evidence of Emirati military and logistical support for the RSF, a set of accusations Abu Dhabi continues to publicly deny. Led by UAE Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Shakhboot bin Nahyan Al Nahyan, the Emirati delegation cut the discussion short after the Sudanese side focused exclusively on the support allegations. “The atmosphere became tense very quickly,” one participating diplomat recalled. “The Sudanese side focused almost entirely on accusations regarding Emirati support for the RSF, and the Emiratis saw no basis for continuing the discussion.”

    Senior regional figures say the collapse of that meeting reflects a deeper, persistent rift: Abu Dhabi remains deeply distrustful of Burhan’s leadership, clinging to the perception that the SAF is heavily influenced by Islamist political networks and has grown increasingly aligned with Iran, a regional rival of the UAE. Burhan’s recent Gulf tour was in part designed to counter this narrative, with multiple stops in key Gulf Cooperation Council states intended to signal that his administration does not side with Tehran in regional tensions.

    One senior regional diplomat explained that broader geopolitical alignments are the primary driver of the UAE’s intransigence, noting that meaningful change will only come if external powers pressure Abu Dhabi to alter its course. “Without a major change in the approach taken by Washington and Tel Aviv towards the region, there is unlikely to be enough pressure on Abu Dhabi to reconsider its current strategy in Sudan,” the source said. Both the U.S. and Israel maintain close strategic alliances with the UAE, even after a recent public disagreement when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office unilaterally revealed a “secret meeting” between Netanyahu and Mohammed bin Zayed weeks after Israel launched its war on Iran.

    Sudan’s April 2023 outbreak of conflict has long since evolved from an internal power struggle into a proxy battleground, with competing regional powers including Gulf states, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, and Turkey backing rival factions to advance their own strategic interests. Despite repeated public denials from Abu Dhabi, a growing body of open-source evidence – including testimony from defected RSF commanders, satellite imagery, flight tracking data, weapons serial numbers, and on-the-battlefield evidence – confirms ongoing Emirati support for the RSF. Emirati academic Abdulkhaleq Abdulla, who has close ties to Abu Dhabi’s leadership, has pushed back on international criticism, arguing that the RSF receives support from multiple regional states including Uganda, Ethiopia, and Chad, and that the UAE is being unfairly singled out.

    The four diplomatic sources interviewed by MEE uniformly agree that there is currently no unified consensus among international and regional actors on a path to end the war, with deep divisions emerging within the Quad mediation framework that have left each member pursuing its own separate interests inside Sudan. “The problem is that everyone officially wants peace, but they all imagine a different Sudan after the war,” one European diplomat explained. “That makes coordinated pressure almost impossible.”

    Another senior diplomatic source assessed the current fragmented diplomatic landscape as unlikely to produce any major breakthrough before the final quarter of 2025, an assessment that aligns with recent comments from U.S. Special Envoy for Africa and Arab countries Massad Boulos, who openly acknowledged the severe challenges of bringing Sudan’s warring factions to the negotiating table.

    Parallel to Bahrain’s mediation efforts, Saudi Arabia has recently ramped up its own diplomatic engagement in Sudan, seeking to counter growing Emirati influence over both civilian and military actors in the country. According to a senior regional diplomat and a Sudanese political figure with direct knowledge of Riyadh’s recent outreach, Saudi officials have quietly expanded contacts with Sudanese civilian political groups over the past several months, hosting a series of closed-door meetings since Ramadan that included members of the Sumoud civilian coalition led by former Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok (currently based in the UAE) and delegates from the Democratic Bloc.

    These meetings are part of a broader Saudi strategy to build political leverage inside Sudan comparable to the extensive influence the UAE has cultivated across sections of Sudan’s civilian political sphere since the war began. Riyadh is also working to build a broad civilian political coalition aligned with Burhan’s SAF-aligned administration. One Sudanese political figure familiar with the discussions said Saudi officials have privately expressed regret over their approach to Sudan following the 2019 popular uprising that toppled long-time ruler Omar Hassan al-Bashir, acknowledging that Riyadh and other Gulf states overrelied on Emirati guidance when backing the country’s post-revolution transitional military leadership.

    “The Saudis increasingly believe that their previous approach helped deepen instability rather than contain it,” the source said. Today, Saudi officials are prioritizing the formation of a civilian-led governing structure, a position that came to the fore during recent debates over Burhan’s appointment of a new civilian prime minister. Multiple sources confirm that Riyadh pushed Burhan aggressively to appoint a civilian premier before he ultimately named Kamil Idris to the role. That push created public tensions with Cairo, which favors a slower, more deliberate transition process and is cautious about rapid restructuring of Sudan’s wartime government. “The Egyptians opposed the idea,” one diplomat confirmed. “But the Saudis pushed hard for Burhan to move ahead with appointing a civilian prime minister.”

    The competing approaches taken by Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Egypt underscore the growing zero-sum competition among regional powers for influence over Sudan’s war and its uncertain post-conflict future. While all Gulf states continue to publicly voice support for diplomatic initiatives to end the conflict, diplomats privately acknowledge that competing strategic interests are the primary driver of their engagement with Sudan’s military and civilian factions.

    For the immediate future, diplomats broadly agree that Bahrain’s indirect mediation is unlikely to produce a quick breakthrough between the SAF and the UAE. Even so, the resumption of backchannel contacts signals that despite high-profile public hostility between the two sides, lines of communication remain open behind closed doors, as regional powers continue to jockey for position in a conflict that has killed hundreds of thousands of people and displaced millions more across Sudan.

  • Israel revokes permits for dozens of Al-Aqsa Mosque staff

    Israel revokes permits for dozens of Al-Aqsa Mosque staff

    A controversial new decision by Israeli authorities to cancel entry permits for dozens of senior administrative and religious staff at Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque has escalated long-running tensions over control of one of the world’s most contested religious sites, multiple sources familiar with the policy confirmed to Middle East Eye.

    The revocation, set to take effect in June 2026, will impact approximately 30 long-tenured employees of the Jerusalem-based Islamic Waqf, the Jordanian-appointed body tasked with administering the holy site under decades-old international governance agreements. The affected staff include high-ranking Waqf officials such as senior treasurer Ayyash Abu Ayyash, as well as mosque-based teachers who are administratively affiliated with the Palestinian Ministry of Education. The move will bar these employees from accessing the site they have managed for years.

    Palestinian religious and political leaders have condemned the decision as the latest step in a systematic campaign to consolidate Israeli control over Al-Aqsa, reduce Palestinian and Islamic institutional influence at the site, and dismantle the long-standing status quo arrangement that has governed the compound for generations.

    Ekrima Sabri, imam of Al-Aqsa Mosque and head of the Higher Islamic Council, framed the permit revocation as part of a sharp escalation of “unprecedented actions” by Israeli authorities in recent months. “Every action taken by the occupation authorities is intended to change the status quo and pave the way for imposing Israeli sovereignty over the mosque, while stripping the Islamic Waqf of its authority,” Sabri told Middle East Eye. “In the past, we used to say Al-Aqsa was in danger, but now we say Al-Aqsa faces multiple dangers, not just one,” he added.

    Omar Rajoub, director of the media office for the Jerusalem Governorate, traced the recent wave of restrictions to the outbreak of US-Israeli military operations against Iran in February. During that conflict, Israeli forces implemented an unprecedented 40-day full closure of Al-Aqsa, one of the holiest sites in Islam. While the mosque reopened following a ceasefire in April, Rajoub said many of the emergency restrictions imposed during the closure have been made permanent.

    These ongoing restrictions include a ban on Waqf staff carrying out routine maintenance work across the mosque’s courtyards, from pruning overgrown trees to clearing vegetation. The permit revocations announced this month are not an isolated measure, Rajoub emphasized: already this year, at least 30 other Waqf employees, plus six additional sheikhs and imams, have been denied entry or had their permit applications rejected. Israeli authorities have also expanded restrictions on general worshippers, barring more than 600 Palestinian worshippers from accessing the compound in 2025 alone, he said. “The entire status quo at Al-Aqsa Mosque is rapidly deteriorating in favour of Israeli violations,” Rajoub added.

    The Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, located in Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem, sits on a plateau that is revered as the Temple Mount, the holiest site in Judaism. For decades, the site has operated under an internationally recognized “status quo” agreement that designates Al-Aqsa as an exclusively Islamic holy site, with exclusive responsibility for access, worship rights, maintenance and daily management held by the Islamic Waqf.

    In recent years, however, Israeli authorities have systematically eroded this arrangement and the Waqf’s governing authority. Most notably, Israeli police have allowed near-daily incursions into the compound by ultranationalist Jewish groups, who conduct Jewish prayer and religious rituals under armed police protection, a direct violation of the status quo agreement.

    The permit revocation announcement comes amid a string of escalating provocative actions targeting the site in recent weeks. Earlier this week, Israeli cabinet ministers advanced a plan to seize privately owned Palestinian land near the Chain Gate (Bab al-Sila), one of the main entry points to the Al-Aqsa compound, to advance long-standing plans to Judaising the area around the site. Just days before that vote, dozens of Israeli ministers and members of parliament led a mass incursion into the Al-Aqsa compound, during which Israeli flags were raised, Jewish religious rituals were conducted, and one far-right lawmaker publicly called for the mosque to be demolished and replaced with a Jewish temple.

    International law does not recognize Israel’s claim of sovereignty over occupied East Jerusalem, and the Fourth Geneva Convention explicitly prohibits occupying powers from making permanent territorial changes or asserting sovereignty over territory captured in conflict.

  • Legal groups file complaint against barristers over role in UK Lawyers for Israel

    Legal groups file complaint against barristers over role in UK Lawyers for Israel

    Two London-based legal advocacy organizations have launched a formal complaint with Britain’s top legal regulator, accusing three of the country’s most high-profile King’s Counsel barristers of abusing their professional seniority to silence pro-Palestine advocacy. The complaint, submitted Thursday by the European Legal Support Centre (ELSC) and the Public Interest Law Centre (PILC), names Lord David Pannick, Lord Anthony Grabiner, and Stephen Hockman, all three of whom serve as patrons for UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI), a pro-Israel advocacy group.

    At the core of the complaint is the allegation that UKLFI routinely highlights the elite legal standing of its patrons in formal correspondence sent to individuals and groups engaged in lawful Palestine solidarity work. The complainants argue that prominently displaying the barristers’ senior titles and reputations intentionally inflates the perceived threat of legal action, creating disproportionate pressure on recipients who often lack the resources or access to legal representation to push back against complex legal claims.

    Founded in 2011, UKLFI frames its core mission as countering efforts to “delegitimize Israel” and opposing the global Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement targeting Israel over its policies toward Palestinians. Structured as a guarantee-limited company with an affiliated registered charitable trust, UKLFI is not regulated by the Solicitors’ Regulation Authority (SRA), meaning its activities do not face the same strict oversight required of licensed law firms. The group has a well-documented history of sending legal warnings and formal complaints to individuals and institutions that organize or participate in pro-Palestine activity, and has publicly described its patrons as “some of the most distinguished members of the legal profession in the United Kingdom.”

    Under UKLFI’s standard practice, the names of its high-profile patrons, including the three barristers named in the complaint, are listed at the bottom of every legal threat sent to groups suspected of violating equality or terror legislation. The complainants argue that this practice leads pro-Palestine campaigners, teachers, healthcare workers, students, and artists to overestimate the severity and credibility of the legal threats they receive, because the barristers’ senior standing lends unearned authority to the correspondence.

    The complaint was filed on behalf of a broad coalition of individuals and organizations working across education, healthcare, migrant advocacy, trade unions, and the arts, many of whom provided formal impact statements detailing how receiving UKLFI’s correspondence disrupted or chilled their Palestine-related work. ELSC data shows UKLFI appears 128 times in its Britain Index of Repression, a database tracking what the organization calls systematic efforts to suppress Palestine solidarity activism across the United Kingdom. The cumulative impact of these tactics, the complainants argue, has created a “chilling environment” that pushes groups and individuals to abandon or alter completely lawful pro-Palestine activity out of fear of costly, drawn-out legal action.

    ELSC and PILC are calling on the Bar Standards Board (BSB), the independent regulator for barristers practicing in England and Wales, to open a full investigation into whether the three barristers’ conduct violates the BSB’s Code of Conduct, specifically provisions requiring barristers to uphold integrity, maintain professional independence, and preserve public trust in the legal profession. Beyond a formal investigation and compliance assessment, the groups are also pushing the BSB to issue new formal guidance governing how senior legal titles can be used in communications directed at non-lawyers and civil society organizations.

    An ELSC spokesperson emphasized that the complaint exposes a clear pattern of weaponizing professional legal status to intimidate people engaged in protected, lawful advocacy. “The effect is a chilling environment that deters lawful public support for Palestine, particularly amid a mass global movement in response to the situation in Gaza,” the spokesperson said. “As our report On All Fronts sets out, these mechanisms are deliberate attempts to erase Palestine from public consciousness. This narrows democratic space, threatens freedom of expression, and must be examined by the regulator to protect public confidence in the legal profession.”

    A PILC spokesperson echoed that sentiment, noting that the prestige associated with senior barrister titles should never be deployed to silence legitimate public debate. “For small charities and grassroots campaign groups showing solidarity with Palestine, receiving legal correspondence that appears to carry the backing of some of the most senior figures at the Bar can be deeply intimidating,” the spokesperson said. “At the heart of this complaint is the public interest – protecting democratic participation, safeguarding freedom of expression, and ensuring that people are not discouraged from speaking out or organising lawfully because of the fear of legal intimidation.”

    This is not the first time the two advocacy groups have taken legal action against UKLFI. Last year, ELSC and PILC filed a separate complaint with the SRA against Caroline Turner, a UKLFI director, accusing her of violating the SRA’s professional conduct rules through the use of strategic lawsuits against public participation, commonly known as SLAPPs—legal tactics designed explicitly to deter and silence free speech on matters of public interest. The groups claim that between January 2022 and May 2025, UKLFI sent at least eight threatening legal letters to pro-Palestine groups and individuals, a pattern of “vexatious and legally baseless” correspondence aimed at silencing campaigners, academics, and civil society organizations.

    At the time of that earlier complaint, a UKLFI spokesperson denied all allegations, stating that the group “seeks to promote respect for the law in matters relating to Israel and the Jewish people by drawing attention to conduct which is or may be illegal and explaining the relevant facts and law. This sometimes upsets people who are not complying with the law and their supporters. They may seek to disrupt our work by making misinformed complaints to various bodies.”

    The spokesperson added that UKLFI is a non-profit membership organization, not a law firm, and is not required to register or be authorized under UK law for the activities it conducts. “Nevertheless, its work is carried out to the highest professional standards. Many of its members and supporters are practising lawyers who are regulated by the applicable professional regulators. UKLFI has not conducted any activity that can be described as a SLAPP,” they said.

    As of press time, neither the BSB nor UKLFI had issued a public response to the new complaint, and Middle East Eye had not received a reply to its requests for comment from either organization.

  • A veteran Panama Canal engineer becomes first woman to lead the interoceanic waterway

    A veteran Panama Canal engineer becomes first woman to lead the interoceanic waterway

    PANAMA CITY – In a historic announcement Thursday, Panamanian President José Raúl Mulino confirmed the appointment of Ilya Espino de Marotta as the next chief administrator of the Panama Canal, marking the first time a woman has taken on the top leadership role of the strategic interoceanic waterway. Espino de Marotta will begin her seven-year term on October 1, stepping into the role after serving as deputy administrator of the canal since 2020.

    The appointment wraps up a multi-week selection process led by the Panama Canal Board of Directors, which evaluated a pool of high-profile, qualified candidates before settling on Espino de Marotta. At 64, the incoming administrator brings more than three decades of on-the-ground experience with the canal, having built a reputation for delivering results on large-scale infrastructure projects – most notably the canal’s landmark $5 billion expansion effort. A recognizable figure across the waterway’s operations, she is widely known for her signature pink hard hat alongside her track record of decisive project leadership.

    Following the official announcement, President Mulino shared his reaction on the social platform X, writing: “I have spoken with the new Administrator of the Panama Canal… to congratulate her and reaffirm the commitment to work in coordination on strategic projects that generate jobs, prosperity and progress for Panamanians.”

    Espino de Marotta takes the helm at a pivotal moment for the canal, which faces both major infrastructure priorities and growing geopolitical friction between the United States and China. Her immediate policy agenda centers on advancing a suite of new development projects designed to expand and diversify the canal’s operational capacity: two new ports, one at each end of the waterway, will have tender documents released in the coming months, paired with upcoming bidding processes for a new natural gas pipeline and a cross-country logistics corridor.

    Beyond infrastructure planning, the canal sits at the heart of a simmering international rivalry between Washington and Beijing. Tensions flared in early April this year, after Panama seized control of two key canal-connected ports from a subsidiary of a Hong Kong-based firm. U.S. Senator Marco Rubio subsequently accused China of “bullying” Panama by detaining dozens of Panama-flagged vessels for a short period, a claim Chinese authorities have outright denied. The U.S. has repeatedly pushed to counter China’s expanding economic and political influence across Latin America, and the Panama Canal has emerged as a central flashpoint in this rivalry – last year, former U.S. President Donald Trump went so far as to falsely accuse Beijing of controlling the strategic waterway.

    A trained engineer, Espino de Marotta holds a bachelor’s degree in Marine Engineering from Texas A&M University and a master’s degree in Economic Engineering from Panama’s Universidad Santa María La Antigua.