Indonesia’s government has bestowed ‘national hero’ status on former president Soeharto. The award caused uproar amongst critics who say Soeharto’s legacy is one of mass murder, even genocide. They accuse the government of whitewashing a violent regime. Soraya Lennie explains.
Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy is to be released from prison after serving three weeks of a five-year sentence for criminal conspiracy.
A Paris court ruled on Monday that Sarkozy, 70, will be placed under judicial supervision pending an appeal against his conviction.
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He is banned from leaving France and could be required to wear an electronic tag while living at home.
In September, Sarkozy was found guilty of criminal conspiracy for his role in efforts to secure funding for his 2007 presidential campaign from the late Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.
He was acquitted of separate charges of corruption and illegal campaign financing.
Sarkozy was sent to La Sante prison in Paris on October 21, where, reports said, he was mocked by other inmates.
Appearing via videolink from prison on Monday, Sarkozy described his time behind bars as “very hard” and “exhausting”, insisting he had been the target of political vengeance.
“I had never imagined I would experience prison at 70,” he said. “This ordeal was imposed on me, and I lived through it. It’s hard, very hard. I would even say it’s gruelling.”
During a 50-minute hearing, the former president again denied all wrongdoing. “I will never confess to something I didn’t do,” he told the court. “I am fighting for the truth to prevail.”
He was accompanied in court by his wife, Carla Bruni, and his sons Pierre and Jean. Just after 1:30pm (12:30 GMT), the court’s president declared the application for release admissible and placed Sarkozy under judicial supervision.
Under the terms of his release, Sarkozy has been barred from contacting Minister of Justice Gerald Darmanin. He will face an appeal trial expected next year.
Under French law, defendants are generally released pending appeal unless deemed a flight risk or a danger to public order.
Prosecutors have accused Sarkozy of promising to help rehabilitate the image of Gaddafi internationally in exchange for campaign funding. Libya was still facing global condemnation at the time for the 1988 Lockerbie bombing, an attack on a passenger plane that killed 270 people.
While the court ruled that Sarkozy had conspired to secure funds, it did not establish that he had personally received or used them in his 2007 campaign.
Thailand has suspended the implementation of a United States-brokered peace agreement with neighbouring Cambodia after a landmine blast near their border injured two of its soldiers.
Thai Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul said after Monday’s incident that all action set to be carried out under the truce will be halted until Thailand’s demands, which remain unspecified, are met.
“The hostility towards our national security has not decreased as we thought it would,” Anutin asserted. He did not elaborate on what Thailand’s demands were.
There was no immediate response from the Cambodian government.
Thailand and Cambodia signed a ceasefire on the sidelines of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit in Malaysia last month after territorial disputes between the two Southeast Asian countries led to five days of border clashes in July.
Those hostilities killed at least 43 people and displaced more than 300,000 civilians living along the border.
The Thai army said in a statement that Monday’s mine explosion in Sisaket province injured two soldiers.
Thai Defence Minister Natthaphon Narkphanit said the army is still investigating whether the mine was newly laid.
Thailand has previously accused Cambodia of laying new mines in violation of the truce, a charge that the Cambodian government denies.
Similar landmine explosions have occurred both before and since the deal, and tension has simmered.
Under the terms of the ceasefire, Thailand should release 18 Cambodian soldiers, and both sides must begin removing heavy weapons and land mines from the border.
Natthaphon said Thailand will postpone the release of the Cambodian soldiers, initially scheduled for this week.
The two sides have reported some progress on arms removal, but Thailand has accused Cambodia of obstructing mine clearance.
Cambodia said it’s committed to all terms of the truce and urged Thailand to release its soldiers as soon as possible.
Thailand and Cambodia agreed to a truce mediated by Malaysia in July after US President Donald Trump threatened to impose tariffs.
The dispute is among eight conflicts that Trump has taken credit for resolving, although critics have noted that the peace deals he has helped to initiate often implant swift and simplistic ceasefires, leaving complex issues behind the conflicts unresolved and likely to reignite hostilities.
While the Thai-Cambodian truce has generally held since July 29, both countries have traded allegations of ceasefire breaches.
A riot in a prison in southern Ecuador has killed at least 31 inmates, according to prison authorities.
In a statement released on Sunday, Ecuador’s SNAI prison authority said 27 of those found dead at the Machala prison in El Oro province had been hanged. A further four died amid an armed riot that also left 33 inmates and one police officer injured.
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The violence, during which residents reported hearing gunfire, explosions, and cries for help, came less than two months after 14 inmates died at the same facility in what authorities described as a dispute between gangs.
Authorities said they were still working to “fully clarify the facts”, and forensic medical personnel were on site to verify information. The conditions of the injured were not immediately clear.
The deadly day at Machala’s prison, which began at about 3:00am (08:00 GMT), marks the latest spasm of prison unrest in the South American country.
Elite police teams entered the prison immediately and regained control after the riot broke out, said the SNAI authority.
It did not specify the identities of the deceased or confirm whether the violence was another case of inter-gang fighting.
The riot is believed to have broken out amid the start of an operation to move some inmates into a new maximum-security prison, built by President Daniel Noboa’s government in another province, that is due to be inaugurated this month.
Ecuador’s prisons are among the deadliest in Latin America as overcrowding, corruption and weak control by the authorities have allowed gangs connected to drug traffickers in Colombia and Mexico to proliferate.
At the end of September, an armed confrontation at the prison in Machala left 14 inmates and a prison official dead. Days later, another 17 people were killed in a prison riot in the northern city of Esmeraldas, near the border with Colombia.
Noboa’s administration, which has pledged to take a tough stance on crime, blames the violence on rival gangs battling for dominance and territorial control.
Palestine’s ambassador to Brazil told the COP30 climate summit that Israel’s genocide in Gaza and occupation of Palestinian land has added significantly to the climate crisis.
Tehran, Iran – Iran has branded accusations from the United States and Israel that it was hatching a plot to assassinate the latter’s ambassador to Mexico as “ridiculous”.
Ministry of Foreign Affairs Spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei told reporters on Monday that Tehran believes Israel is trying to damage its “friendly relations” with other countries through an “absurd allegation”.
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Unnamed US and Israeli senior officials told news outlets late last week that the Quds Force, the external operations arm of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), plotted to assassinate Israeli envoy Einat Kranz Neiger beginning in late 2024 and remaining active into mid-2025.
The plot was contained and does not pose a current threat, the officials said, without offering any evidence.
Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs then released a statement thanking the Mexican security and law enforcement services for “thwarting a terrorist network directed by Iran that sought to attack Israel’s ambassador to Mexico”.
“The Israeli security and intelligence community will continue to work tirelessly, in full cooperation with security and intelligence agencies around the world, to thwart terrorist threats from Iran and its proxies against Israeli and Jewish targets worldwide,” a ministry spokesman said.
However, Mexico’s foreign relations and security ministries have since denied knowledge of such an incident.
In a joint statement, they said they have “no report with respect to a supposed attempt against the ambassador of Israel in Mexico”.
The statement emphasised that Mexico has not initiated disruption to diplomatic ties with any country.
Iran’s embassy in Mexico on Monday called the accusation “a media intervention and a great lie” and said it considers “betraying Mexico’s interests to be betraying our own”.
Baghaei said: “Our embassy stated that we found this allegation so absurd and ridiculous that we did not even think it required an official response from the spokesperson.”
Baghaei was quick to point out that Israel has previously made similar accusations against Iran, citing attacks on Jewish synagogues in Australia in late 2024.
That appeared to be a reference to a testimony given by the New South Wales Police Force to the upper house of the Australian parliament in early October, which presented the result of an investigation into suspected Iranian links to 14 incidents of attacks on synagogues, graffiti, firebombings, and attacks on cars and homes.
“The NSW Police Force has nil holdings in relation to foreign agents perpetrating these incidents,” a police representative told lawmakers at the time.
“Despite official statements by Australian police rejecting any connection to Iran, Israel has continued to insist on Tehran’s involvement,” Baghaei said.
However, in late August, Australia accused Iran of directing two “anti-Semitic” arson attacks in the cities of Sydney and Melbourne and gave Tehran’s ambassador seven days to leave the country, the first such expulsion since World War II.
Canberra also designated the IRGC a “terrorist organisation” and withdrew its diplomats from Tehran.
At the time, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation had gathered credible evidence that Iran “orchestrated” last year’s attacks on a kosher restaurant and a synagogue, but did not release the evidence.