Human Rights

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — A Minnesota judge has dismissed a third-degree murder charge filed against the former Minneapolis police officer who pressed his knee against George Floyd’s neck, saying there was not enough probable cause for that count to proceed to trial. The more serious second-degree murder charge against Derek Chauvin remains.

22 Oct 2020; MEMO: The Israeli occupation authorities on Wednesday banned the student branch of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) in the occupied West Bank, calling it an “illegal and terrorist” organisation, Quds Press reported.

22 Oct 2020; MEMO: Human Rights Watch has called on Egyptian authorities to immediately halt executions and retry detainees on death row after they executed 49 people in 10 days.

“Egypt’s mass executions of scores of people in a matter of days is outrageous,” says deputy MENA director Joe Stork.

“The systematic absence of fair trials in Egypt, especially political cases, makes every death sentence a violation of the right to life.”

22 Oct 2020; MEMO: Two hundred twenty-two members of the European Parliament (MEPs) sent an open letter to Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi on 21 October to voice their: “Deep concern about the ongoing detention of prisoners of conscience in Egypt.” The MEPs also called on him to end reprisals against human rights activists, according to German website DW.

(AP) --- The Guantanamo detainees were promised they were being sent to a Muslim country for rehabilitation that would help integrate them into society, opening the way to jobs, money, and marriage, according to their lawyers and families.

It was a lie.

Instead, the detainees -- 18 Yemenis and one Russian, swept up from Afghanistan and Pakistan after the Sept. 11 attacks -- have languished in custody in the United Arab Emirates for as long as five years, their families and lawyers tell The Associated Press.

21 Oct 2020; MEMO: Israel’s High Court will look into the petition related to exporting Israeli arms used to carry out ethnic cleansing in Rwanda in the 1990s, Arab 48 reported on Tuesday.

According to a report published by the Israeli newspaper Maariv, the High Court will look into the case despite the objection of the public prosecution.

21 Oct 2020; MEMO: The prime minister of Kuwait has insisted that his country is continuing to support the Palestinian cause. “This is our central cause,” Sabah Khaled Al-Hamad Al-Sabah told fellow parliamentarians. “We affirm that we stand on the Palestinian people’s side for the sake of reaching a just solution to the cause.”

21 Oct 2020; MEMO: On a dusty plain in the Israeli occupied Golan Heights, a golden-lettered sign with Israeli and American flags stands before a rusty wire fence as the gateway to “Trump Heights.”

The Trump Heights settlement, which was inaugurated as a celebration to mark US President Donald Trump’s recognition of the Golan as Israeli territory, has started to attract investors in the region.

21 Oct 2020; MEMO: Sudan’s Acting Minister of Finance and Economic Planning has said that the country’s removal from the US list of “countries supporting terrorism” is because it paid compensation to the families of US citizens who were killed in Africa in 1998, and not any promise to normalise relations with Israel.

Mumbai, Oct 20 (PTI) A Mumbai court has aquitted 20 foreign attendees of a Tablighi Jamaat event who were booked by the city police for allegedly violating prohibitory orders during the coronavirus-enforced lockdown.

Metropolitan Magistrate (Andheri) R R Khan acquitted the 20 persons on Monday as the prosecution failed to prove the charges against them.