Category World News

Russian missile and drone attacks targeting energy and civilian infrastructure across western Ukraine on Wednesday left at least 25 people dead and dozens injured.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) director James Comey’s grand jury did not receive a copy of the final indictment against him, according to the US Department of Justice.

Comey’s attorneys sought to have the indictment dismissed from court on Wednesday as a result of that revelation.

Comey’s attorneys argued at a 90-minute hearing in a federal court in Alexandria, Virginia, that the case should be completely dismissed because of both President Donald Trump’s interventions and the prosecution’s errors.

One of three well-known Trump critics who has been charged between late September and the middle of October is Comey.

Comey’s attorneys claimed that Trump was using the legal system as a tool for political retribution at the hearing, which took place before US District Judge Michael Nachmanoff.

Michael Dreeben, the attorney for the prosecution, described the indictment as “a blatant use of criminal justice to achieve political ends,” saying, “This is an extraordinary case and it merits an extraordinary remedy.”

The Justice Department argued that the indictment passed the legal test for trial hearing, as evidenced by prosecutor Tyler Lemons.

However, Lemons did acknowledge, under questioning, that the grand jury that decided the indictment had not seen the final draft.

The prosecutor responded, “That is my understanding,” when Judge Nachmanoff inquired if Lemons had never seen the final version.

It was the Justice Department’s most recent error in its investigation of Comey, who is accused of lying to senators under oath and obstructing a congressional investigation.

Comey has entered a not-guilty plea to the other charges, and his defense team has spearheaded a multifaceted legal fight to have the case dropped due to numerous irregularities.

Intolerance toward grand jury proceedings

Since last week, rumors had been rifling about the indictment and what the grand jury had seen.

US District Judge Cameron McGowan Currie posed questions on November 13 regarding a time when it appeared that the grand jury proceedings had been “no court reporters present.”

Then, on Tuesday, Magistrate Judge William Fitzpatrick demanded that the Comey defense team receive the grand jury’s materials, citing “a disturbing pattern of profound investigative missteps.”

The grand jury probably did not go over the final indictment in full, despite the use of false search warrants from the prosecution and the use of separate search warrants.

In a separate question, Judge Nachmanoff questioned acting US Attorney Lindsey Halligan on Wednesday during the hearing.

She acknowledged after receiving repeated questions that only the grand jury’s foreperson and a second grand jury were present when the indictment was returned.

Comey, New York Attorney General Letitia James, and former National Security Advisor John Bolton were the three people charged in the three indictments.

All three of them have argued that their prosecution is a step in the direction of political vengeance, and they have all denied any wrongdoing.

Spotlight on the Trump-Comey conflict

Comey’s attorneys pointed to statements Trump made that pushed for the indictments during Wednesday’s hearing, which aimed primarily at establishing that argument.

The tension between Comey and Trump, which dates back to the president’s decision to fire Comey from his position as FBI director in 2017, was raised by Comey’s defense team.

Trump’s victory in the 2016 election had drawn mixed reviews of Comey’s investigation into the FBI.

For instance, Trump called his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, a “slime ball,” a “phony,” and “a real nut job,” while also accusing the former FBI director of going easy on him.

In that he gave Hillary Clinton a free pass for many bad deeds, FBI Director Comey said in a tweet in May 2017, Trump wrote that the best thing that had ever happened to her.

Meanwhile, Comey quickly established himself as a prominent critic of the Trump administration.

He is not considered medically unfit to serve as president, he said. Comey told ABC News in 2018 that he believes he is morally unfit to serve as president.

A president must “embody respect” and adhere to fundamental principles, such as truth-telling, he added. Comey remarked, “This president is unable to do that.”

Comey’s defense also cited the string of circumstances that led to the former FBI director’s arrest at Wednesday’s hearing.

Comey and James were called “guilty as hell” by Trump in a message to Attorney General Pam Bondi last September, and Trump urged her to “delay any longer” in seeking their indictments on social media.

According to Dreeben, Comey’s attorney, that statement “effectively admitted that this is a political prosecution.”

Halligan was sworn in as the Eastern District of Virginia’s acting US attorney shortly after the message was posted online.

She reportedly replaced Erik Siebert, the prosecutor, who had reportedly declined to charge Comey and others due to lack of evidence. Trump had labeled him a “woke RINO,” an abbreviation for “Republican in name only,” when asked about it.

Dreeben argued that Switcheroo also spelled out Trump’s vindictive intentions and his involvement in the Comey indictment.

“We’ve already started putting that together.” Donald Trump, the president of the United States, stated that his administration is looking for a possible resolution to the Sudanese conflict. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had a conversation with him about the issue, he continued.

Israeli airstrikes across Gaza on Wednesday left at least 23 people dead, with many of the targets containing displaced families. Since its inception in October, Israel has committed over 393 ceasefire violations, and it claims that the most recent breach was a result of Hamas attacks.

Torture, abuse, and contempt for life are not just the norm for Palestinians held within Israel’s prison network; they are also the norm.

According to a report released this week by the non-profit Physicians for Human Rights-Israel (PHRI) [PDF].

At least 94 Palestinian prisoners were killed while being held in Israeli custody, according to the report’s PHRI. The authors of the report acknowledge that the actual figure is likely much higher. All those who were killed perished from malnutrition, torture, assault, or willful medical neglect.

A number of human rights organizations have published a number of pieces of evidence of abuse and torture, both domestically and internationally, in the report.

Oneg Ben Dror, one of the report’s authors, told Al Jazeera, “It’s not just far-right national security minister Itamar] Ben-Gvir’s policy; it’s an Israeli policy directed at Palestinians both in Israeli custody and military and civilian deterioration facilities.”

The West Bank resident Abd al-Rahman Mar’i, 33, whose body was a latticework of bruises, contusions, and fractures after his death in Megiddo prison in November 2023, was included in the testimonials]PDF].

Walid Khaled Abdullah Ahmad, 17, from Nablus, was released from prison and returned to his family with next to no muscle or fat on his body despite his family’s claim that he had been an athlete prior to his arrest in September 2024. Walid passed away six months after his arrest, according to a post-mortem report that revealed his condition had “severe and prolonged malnutrition.”

Arafat Hamdan, 25, from Beit Sira, an occupied West Bank villager, spent just two days in military custody before passing away. Arafat, a type 1 diabetic, needed frequent insulin injections to maintain his health. Arafat’s death was the subject of brutal beatings and the withholding of his medication, according to witnesses.

hatred-related systems

According to testimony, official records, and extensive evidence gathered by PHRI and other organizations, there has been a never-before-seen assault campaign against Palestinians detained after Israel’s genocidal war against Gaza.

Since the start of the Gaza War in October 2023, it is thought that Israel has detained more than 18,500 Palestinians. Many of those have been the victims of routine abuse perpetrated by organizations like Human Rights Watch (HRW), B’Tselem (Israel), and the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR).

Unknown numbers of people were taken as part of an Israeli policy of enforced disappearances in the first few months of the war, which Israel’s Unlawful Combatants Law legalized, in addition to the thousands whose detention has been documented.

Many of those who disappeared may no longer be alive two years later. “The Israeli military reportedly took hundreds of Palestinians from Gaza, of whom, according to reports, thousands are missing.” Many of them are no longer alive, according to Ben Dror, which raises questions.

Nearly the entire war has been alleged that Israel has been torturing its prisoners, including members of the UN. In its report on the Israeli prison system, B’Tselem outlined the physical, psychological, and sexual abuse perpetrated against Palestinians who were taken into Israeli custody in August 2024.

In blatant violation of international law, both PHRI and HRW have previously investigated the specific acts of the Israeli military against healthcare workers. Among other instances of brutal treatment were threats to cut off prisoners’ hands because they were “dentists,” and forcing doctors to bray like donkeys.

Israel has previously stated that it treats Palestinian prisoners in accordance with international law.

System of denial

Ben Dror’s account of the gang rape of a Palestinian man in the Sde Teiman military prison in July 2024, whose prosecution, if not actual murder, has divided Israeli society, is “the only case that has reached the Israeli public, but we are aware of many more.”

Delegates to a public hospital where a large number of people became aware of the case, “Sde Teiman was only reported because the injuries were so extensive,” she continued.

Israel hasn’t received much attention from any other reports of rape and sexual abuse committed against Palestinian prisoners, including the suspected, ultimately fatal, rape of Dr. Adnan al-Bursh in the Ofer prison in March 2024.

Instead, Israeli politicians who are in charge of the country’s prison system are self-assured enough to boast about ensuring that prisoners’ food is only served when they are “minimum of the minimum,” in contrast to a report released in July from the Palestinian rights organization Addameer that documented what researchers called the deliberate and drastic reduction in the amount of food and water given to prisoners.

According to Israeli political analyst Nimrod Flaschenberg, who refers to the well-known liberal Israeli news outlet Haaretz, “Haaretz tends to cover these things, but that’s about it.” However, if I examine the coverage provided for this most recent [PHRI] report, nothing is missing. That’s it, though, because a few individual leftist websites may have picked it up.

“People simply don’t know,” he said. He continued, “I’m not saying there would be a great moral outcry, but there would be something there,” he continued. “For the moment, statements like those made by Ben-Gvir about prison conditions are common. If they weren’t, he wouldn’t say them.

However, in spite of the mounting allegations of abuse in Israel’s prison networks, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz extended the restriction on inspection of its prisons until late October.