Media Coverage

France has opened its first trial into officials from the Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad with three top security officers tried in absentia for complicity in crimes against humanity and war crimes. The Paris Criminal Court was on May 21 hearing the cases against the officials for...

The leaders of Norway, Ireland and Spain have said their countries will formally recognize Palestine as a state next week for the sake of “peace in the Middle East,“ prompting Israel to immediately recall its envoys. Norway’s Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store said on May 22 that a two-state solution...

José Rubén Zamora has spent nearly two years locked in a dark 16 by 13-foot cell in a Guatemalan prison, allowed only one hour a day in the sunlight. The journalist’s money laundering conviction was tossed out, and last week a judge finally ordered his conditional release to await a new trial. But...

A Russian playwright and theatre director accused of “justifying terrorism” have told a Moscow court that they are innocent on the first day of their trial over the staging of an award-winning play. The arrest of director Yevgeniya Berkovich and writer Svetlana Petriychuk in May last year sent shock...

A prominent Tunisian lawyer and two journalists have been arrested in the latest move of a presidential administration that has shown little tolerance for criticism. The arrest of lawyer and commentator Sonia Dahmani on the night of May 11 was caught on camera as she was bundled out of the Lawyers’...

Hundreds of mothers of missing people, relatives, and activists marched in protest through downtown Mexico City on May 10 to mark a sad commemoration of Mother’s Day. The marchers, angry over what they say is the government’s lack of interest in investigating the disappearances of Mexico’s over 100...

Switzerland’s top criminal court has convicted a former interior minister of the Gambia for crimes against humanity during repression by the west African country’s security forces against opponents of its longtime dictator, a legal advocacy group said on May 15. The trial that began in January was...

A facility was opened at the Srebrenica Memorial Centre to store the remains, personal belongings, and clothes of victims of the Srebrenica genocide who haven’t been identified—intended as a place of dignified remembrance. The new facility to store remains of victims of the July 1995 genocide of...

Al-Qaeda-linked and warring ethnically based armed groups are committing atrocities in Mali, Human Rights Watch reports. The watchdog said in a report released on May 8 that fighters from Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wa al-Muslimeen and Dozo militia killed 45 people in separate attacks on villages in...

Every year on May 3, UNESCO commemorates World Press Freedom Day. It is being marked at a particularly perilous time for journalists globally, with Israel’s war on Gaza becoming the deadliest conflict for journalists and media workers. More than 100 journalists and media workers, the vast majority...