In solidarity with the Gaza-bound flotilla activists who had been intercepted and detained by Israeli forces, dozens of Turkish boats were seen sailing off Hatay in the south of the nation with Palestinian flags.
Published On 2 Oct 2025
After being intercepted by the Israeli navy, several boats from the Global Sumud Flotilla made their way to Israel’s Ashdod port on Thursday, flying Palestinian flags. At least 40 vessels from the flotilla have been intercepted, according to Israel, and those aboard have been detained.
Published On 2 Oct 2025
Jane Goodall, a renowned British conservationist and primatologist who conducted groundbreaking chimpanzee research, passed away at the age of 91. Goodall became a global advocate for wildlife and the planet and revolutionized the study of people’s closest animal relatives.
Published On 2 Oct 2025
European Union leaders are considering a “reparations plan” that would use frozen Russian state assets to provide Ukraine with a $164bn loan to help fund its reconstruction after the war with Russia ends.
Leaders expressed a mixture of support and caution for the plan on Wednesday as they met in the Danish capital, Copenhagen, days after drones were spotted in Denmark’s airspace, prompting airport closures. While the drones in Denmark were not formally identified as Russian, other European countries, including Poland, Romania and Estonia, have accused Russia of drone incursions into their airspace in September.
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“I strongly support the idea,” Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said. Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson also said he was “very much in favour” of the plan. Others said there could be legal complications, however.
Here is what we know about Europe’s “reparations plan”, how it may work and what the response from Russia is likely to be.
The reparations plan was first outlined by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in mid-September, and backing for it has grown as United States financial support for Ukraine wanes.
During his 2024 presidential campaign, US President Donald Trump promised voters he would pull the US back from providing high levels of financial and military aid to Ukraine.
Since the beginning of his term in January, Trump has made it clear the US will take a back seat in terms of providing financial support and security guarantees to Ukraine, indicating Europe should fill the gap instead.
Europe’s plan would use Russian assets frozen in European banks as collateral for a 140-billion-euro ($164.4bn) loan to Ukraine. Repayments for the loan would be recouped via war reparations from Russia, but the loan would also be guaranteed either in the EU’s next long-term budget or by individual EU member states.
“We need a more structural solution for military support,” von der Leyen said on Tuesday. “This is why I have put forward the idea of a reparations loan that is based on the immobilised Russian assets.”
About $300bn in Russian Central Bank assets have been frozen by the US and European countries since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Most of this – $246.9bn – is held in Europe, of which $217.5bn – the vast majority in cash – is held by Euroclear, a Belgium-based capital markets company.
On June 30, Euroclear reported the Russian sanctioned assets on its balance sheet generated $3.2bn in interest during the first half of 2025, a drop from the $4bn in interest earned over the same period last year.
Under international law, a sovereign country’s assets cannot simply be confiscated. Hence, loaning this money to Ukraine would be an infringement of Moscow’s sovereign claim over its central bank assets.
Since most of the assets are held in Belgium, the country has asked for the plan to be fleshed out in case it is required to return the assets to Russia.
“I explained to my colleagues yesterday that I want their signature saying, ‘If we take Putin’s money, we use it, we’re all going to be responsible if it goes wrong,’” Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever told reporters in Copenhagen on Thursday.
On Wednesday, von der Leyen said: “It’s absolutely clear that Belgium cannot be the one who is the only member state that is carrying the risk. The risk has to be put on broader shoulders.”
Yes. Besides De Wever, other European leaders have expressed hesitation or have asked their fellow leaders to work out more details of the plan before they agree to it.
Dutch Prime Minister Dick Schoof said the proposal should be considered very carefully, given the legal and financial risks that could arise.
Others also signalled caution. “I think that’s a difficult legal question,” Luxembourg Prime Minister Luc Frieden told reporters. “You can’t just take over assets that belong to another state so easily.”
Frieden added: “There are now other proposals on the table, but these also raise a whole host of questions. I would like to have answers to these questions first. Among other things, how would such a loan be repaid? What would happen if Russia did not repay these reparations in a peace treaty?”
Experts said European leaders would likely have to find a way to make the plan viable as the prospects of further US aid for Ukraine dry up.
“It is going to happen because with the US walking away, Europe is left with $100bn-plus annual funding needs for Ukraine,” Timothy Ash, an associate fellow in the Russia and Eurasia programme at Chatham House, told Al Jazeera.
Ash explained that the bigger challenge for Europe would be to not go ahead with the plan if it means leaving Ukraine underfunded generally and placing it at higher risk of losing the war with Russia. “Risks to Europe would then be catastrophic,” he said, including the prospect of tens of millions of Ukrainians migrating west into Europe.
If a Ukrainian loss in the war becomes more likely, European nations would be forced to ramp up defence spending to 5 percent of their gross domestic products (GDPs) much faster than expected.
In June, members of NATO pledged to increase their defence spending to 5 percent of their GDPs by 2035.
Such an acceleration “would mean higher budget deficits, higher borrowing costs, more debt, less growth and a weaker Europe and euro”, Ash said.
Moscow has rebuked the EU plan, calling it a “theft” of Russian money.
“We are talking about plans for the illegal seizure of Russian property. In Russia, we call that simply theft,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Wednesday.
Peskov said anyone involved in seizing Russian assets “will be prosecuted in one way or another. They will all be called to account.”
He added: “The boomerang will very seriously hit those who are the main depositories, countries that are interested in investment attractiveness.”
Ash said Russia could take legal action against European countries if the plan goes ahead. However, “it would have to lift its own sovereign immunity to be able to launch any such legal action. And a legal action by Russia would take years – decades to conclude.”
Russia is protected by sovereign immunity, which is a legal principle shielding foreign governments from being sued in courts outside their own country. If Russia wants to legally pursue this, it would need to waive this immunity, which, in turn, would mean Russia could also be sued or tried in a foreign country.
Ash added that another course of action Russia could take would be to seize Western assets under its jurisdiction, but this also does not come without challenges. “Russia has 10 times more assets in the West than vice versa,” Ash said. “It’s just more vulnerable through this channel.”
Moscow said the value of all foreign assets it holds is comparable to the frozen Russian reserves held in the West. Citing data from January 2022, Russia’s state-run RIA news agency reported there were about $288bn of assets in Russia that could potentially be seized by Moscow.
However, Russian Central Bank records from 2022 show there were $289bn in “derivative and other foreign investments” in Russia. By the end of 2023, these foreign assets had dropped in value to $215bn.
International protesters have condemned Israel’s intercept of the humanitarian flotilla heading for Gaza and its arrest of activists in international waters.
Published On 2 Oct 2025
Joseph Kabila, the former head of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, was sentenced to death on Tuesday by a high military court on suspicion of treason, war crimes, and other serious crimes in connection with the country’s eastern border.
Kabila was sentenced in absentia for alleged collaboration with the Rwanda-backed rebel group, M23, which launched lightning offensives in January this year and seized swaths of territory, including the strategic eastern hub of Goma. Nearly a million people were forced to flee and over 3, 000 people died as a result of the group’s advance.
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The DRC government and M23 rebels’ representatives have been negotiating slowly for peace since July, which Qatar has mediated. However, Kabila’s sentence raises the possibility that the conflict will get worse and the country’s divided political system will get worse.
The DRC has been in the throes of a decades-long conflict, which escalated in January. Despite the ceasefire in the peace negotiations, there are still reports of violence. Kabila, who served as president between 2001 and 2019, has accused the current president of using the courts to settle political disputes. He is competing with Felix Tshisekedi in the political debate.
Here’s what you need to know about Kabila’s sentencing:
A panel of experts from the UN found Kabila guilty of treason, war crimes, conspiracy, and organizing an insurrection with the M23 rebel group, which he supported. The group claims that Tshisekedi’s overthrow is their goal. Rwanda denies being the force behind M23.
By a majority vote, Lieutenant General Joseph Mutombo Katalayi, who presided over the DRC’s military tribunal, found Kabila guilty of “war crimes committed by intentional murder, war crimes committed by rape, war crimes committed by torture, and war crimes committed by attacks against protected property,”
It imposes the death penalty, the most severe sentence, under Article 7 of the Military Penal Code, according to Katalayi.
The court also ordered the former president to pay $29bn in damages to the DRC government, and $2bn each to the war-affected regions of North Kivu and South Kivu, in the eastern DRC. According to legend, Kabila was actually born in the South Kivu area.
North Kivu and South Kivu provinces were represented by prosecutor Richard Bondo during the trial, who praised the court’s ruling. “Justice rendered in the name of the Congolese people gives satisfaction to its people”, Bondo told reporters outside the court.
Kabila was not present, and his legal team did not.
Kabila, 53, took office at age 29, following the assassination of his father and former president, Laurent Kabila. He served in the Congo Wars as the army’s chief of staff. 2016 saw the end of Kabila’s term, which was fraught with allegations of corruption and human rights violations. He unconstitutionally delayed elections until December 2018, citing voter registry challenges.
Kabila and opposition candidate Tshisekedi of the Union for Democracy and Social Progress (UDPS) were forced to agree to a power-sharing deal after the election when the candidate he supported lost. Kabila’s People’s Party for Reconstruction and Democracy (PPRD) allies were able to have their names removed from the cabinet as a result of the agreement. However, in 2020, Tshisekedi ended the alliance after he began systematically removing Kabila’s allies from government.
Kabila and his close allies were accused of corruption charges by the DRC government in November 2021. Kabila reportedly has been living in South Africa since April 2023 when she was under increasing pressure to enter self-imposed exile.
He was largely quiet until February 2025, when he wrote an opinion editorial in the Sunday Times, a South African newspaper, accusing Tshisekedi of attempting to hold on to power, and of mishandling the ongoing conflict with M23. President Tshisekedi claimed Kabila financially supported the rebel group during a speech at the Munich Security Conference the same month.
In the past, the president said Kabila’s close links to rebel leader Corneille Nangaa, who is allied with the M23, were proof of his relations with the rebels. Under Kabila, Nangaa oversaw the 2018 elections that resulted in Tshisekedi becoming president. In 2021, he and Tshisekedi broke up over how the elections were conducted, formed the rebel Alliance of the Congo River (ACF), and teamed up with the rebels in December of that year.
Reports that Kabila landed in Goma in April angered Tshikedi’s government, prompting it to ban the PPRD and order Kabila’s assets seized. In order to prepare for a trial, the DRC parliament overwhelmingly voted in favor of lifting Kabila’s presidential immunity, which shields former presidents from prosecution if they don’t commit “gross misconduct.” In a YouTube video, Kabila responded, calling the Tshisekedi government a “dictatorship.” He also presented a 12-point peace plan he said could end the conflict in the east.
Kabila was in Goma for a meeting with local religious leaders and other residents two days later, according to the M23. No formal alliance existed between his party and M23, despite the fact that both had the “same goal” of overthrowing Tshisekedi, according to a member of his entourage.
In July, the military trial against Kabila began. According to the court, prosecutors on Tuesday provided evidence linking Eric Nkuba, a former Nangaa employee who was found guilty of rebellion in August of that year and is currently imprisoned, to Kabila’s testimony. Nangaa and Tshisekedi exchanged phone calls about their plans to overthrow Tshisekedi, according to the court.
Location of the former president is not known at this time. He was last seen in public in May after Goma was confirmed to have him. The military court on Tuesday ordered his immediate arrest.
Goma-based legal analyst, Nzanzu Masomeko Hubert, faulted the trial, saying concrete evidence against Kabila was lacking. According to him, the sentencing runs the risk of stifling the ongoing Doha discussions with the M23, which according to researchers are only going to continue slowly and with great success because of both sides’ grandstanding.
Hubert, a member of the provincial government, told Al Jazeera, “I believe this trial was politically motivated.” “Convicting Joseph Kabila for his alleged links to the AFC/M23 while the government is negotiating with the M23 in Doha is inconsistent. He claimed that it was in opposition to the need to “enforce national unity,” particularly in this difficult time.”
Kambale Musavuli, a staffer for the US-based Center for Research on Congo-Kinshasa, claimed that Kabila’s trial represented “dramatic punishment” rather than a thorough investigation of the numerous allegations against the former president or a more comprehensive transitional justice system for the DRC, which the UN has recommended since the civil war.
“Congolese people want accountability indeed (but) Joseph Kabila’s gravest betrayals go far beyond his recent contacts with M23”, he said, citing allegations of fraudulent elections under Kabila’s watch and failed promises by his government to investigate killings of opposition members and activists during his term.
“Selective justice directed at one man for political reasons risks more harm than good.” Musavuli reaffirmed that real justice must be objective, accessible, and inclusive.
Meanwhile, some residents of Goma, where calm has largely prevailed following fighting earlier in the year, have voiced concerns that the sentencing could prompt a violent reaction from the M23.
Analysts warned that the political unrest in the nation, where Kabila still enjoys considerable influence, could grow. A temporary ban on executions that had been in place since 2003 was lifted by the DRC in March 2024 to deter military personnel from collaborating with M23 or engaging in mutiny. Thirteen soldiers were sentenced to death in January, but no executions have been carried out.
The fragile peace with Rwanda and the increased violence in the DRC could become even more unstable.
Following negotiations led by Qatar and the United States, the two nations signed a peace agreement in June 2025. It is separate from the Qatar-mediated peace deal signed in July between the DRC and M23.
PPRD permanent secretary Emmanuel Ramazani Shadary criticized the court’s sentence as a “political, unfair decision” in an interview with The Associated Press.
“We believe that the clear intention of the dictatorship in power is to eliminate, to neutralise, a major political actor”, Shadary is quoted as saying.