SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
Amnesty International Calls on Iraqi Authorities to Stop Clampdown on Peaceful Protests
Amnesty International has called on the Iraqi authorities to end their clampdown on peaceful protests following the arrest of 15 pro-reform activists in Baghdad in recent days.
Four protesters were arrested by plain clothed security forces last Friday morning during a peaceful demonstration in Baghdad's Tahrir Square. They are still being held and are reported to be facing trial on charges of possessing fake ID cards.
WASHINGTON
Amnesty International has called on the Iraqi authorities to end their clampdown on peaceful protests following the arrest of 15 pro-reform activists in Baghdad in recent days.
Four protesters were arrested by plain clothed security forces last Friday morning during a peaceful demonstration in Baghdad's Tahrir Square. They are still being held and are reported to be facing trial on charges of possessing fake ID cards.
Eleven other activists were arrested when security forces raided the Baghdad headquarters of Ayna Haqqi, a local NGO, on Saturday. Four were later released but the others, including the NGO's secretary-general, Ahmed Mohammad Ahmed, are still being held on suspicion in organizing demonstrations in Tahrir Square.
"These arrests provide further evidence of the Iraqi authorities' intolerance of peaceful dissent and are very worrying," said Malcolm Smart, Amnesty International's director for the Middle East and North Africa. "If they are being held solely for their peaceful exercise of the rights to freedom of expression or assembly they must be released immediately and unconditionally."
"Rather than clamping down on protests, the Iraqi authorities should be upholding and protecting the right of Iraqis to engage in peaceful protests in support of calls for political and economic reform," said Smart. "Iraqis should be free to express their opinions without fear of arrest or harassment by the security forces."
All 11 detainees are currently held at al-Muthanna Prison in Baghdad. They have been denied access to their families and lawyers, raising fears that they could be subject to torture or other ill-treatment.
"The Iraqi authorities must ensure that these detainees are protected against such abuse, including by being allowed immediate access to their lawyers and families," said Smart.
Protests first erupted in Iraq in mid-2010 over the federal government's failure to provide basic services such as water and electricity. They then gathered momentum, inspired by the popular protests in Tunisia and Egypt, and culminated in a "Day of Rage" on February 25, when tens of thousands of demonstrators marched in cities across Iraq.
The Iraqi and Kurdistan regional governments responded by issuing regulations giving the authorities virtually unlimited discretion to determine who can demonstrate, but many Iraqis have continued to protest in defiance of official restrictions.
Published last month, Amnesty International's report Days of Rage: Protests and Repression in Iraq describes how Iraqi and Kurdish forces have shot and killed protesters, including three teenage boys, and threatened, detained and tortured political activists, and targeted journalists covering the protests.
Amnesty International is a worldwide movement of people who campaign for internationally recognized human rights for all. Our supporters are outraged by human rights abuses but inspired by hope for a better world - so we work to improve human rights through campaigning and international solidarity. We have more than 2.2 million members and subscribers in more than 150 countries and regions and we coordinate this support to act for justice on a wide range of issues.
LATEST NEWS
Experts Warn That MAHA Bait-and-Switch by RFK Jr. and Trump 'Means Big Money for Big Wellness'
"They sell consumers their own version of the grift."
Feb 05, 2026
Government watchdog Public Citizen on Thursday issued a report outlining the major conflicts of interest held by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his allies in the Make America Healthy Again, or MAHA, movement.
In particular, the report focuses on Kennedy and three key allies: Wellness influencer Dr. Casey Means, who is President Donald Trump's nominee to be US surgeon general; her brother Calley Means, a senior adviser to Kennedy at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS); and the siblings' business partner Dr. Mark Hyman.
Public Citizen centers its report on these individuals' ties to the wellness industry, which "encompasses nutritional supplements and fitness products, and increasingly overlaps with non-science-based health beliefs."
Taken as a whole, the report says, "MAHA's influence in US healthcare means big money for Big Wellness."
Among other things, the report noted that Casey Means owns a metabolic testing company that "may have already benefited from Secretary Kennedy’s promotion of wearable health tracking devices."
The report states that Dr. Means "has also potentially violated [Federal Trade Commission] rules on influencer marketing by failing to adequately disclose sponsorship relationships in dozens of web and social media posts" that promote assorted wellness products.
"Public Citizen’s review of Dr. Means’ website, newsletter, and social media feeds found that for the almost two dozen companies from which Dr. Means reported receiving affiliate fees, Dr. Means disclosed her financial relationship inconsistently and ambiguously," the report says. "In total, she failed to disclose her financial relationship 79 out of 140 (56%) times she promoted affiliated products."
Calley Means, meanwhile, comes under scrutiny for his company TrueMed, which Public Citizen said "relies on a legally dubious business model." The report also criticizes Means for regularly promoting "dangerous and false health information," including attacks on fluoridated water and Covid-19 vaccines, and the promotion of drinking raw milk.
And Mark Hyman, states the report, "oversees a wellness empire that stands to benefit significantly from HHS policies under Kennedy."
Eileen O’Grady, a researcher in Public Citizen’s Congress Watch division, acknowledged the appeal of many MAHA influencers' sales pitch, stating that "they accurately identify that much of the US healthcare system is beholden to corporate interests like Big Pharma and the insurance industry."
However, O'Grady said that what the Means siblings and Hyman are peddling isn't much different than what they criticize in the US healthcare system.
"They sell consumers their own version of the grift," she explained. "Excessive testing, unproven and underregulated health supplements, and assurances that only their products hold the key to better health. While MAHA influencers reap the benefits of lucrative sponsorship contracts and, in some cases, political appointments, regular Americans are once again being cheated."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Private Jet of Billionaire Trump Donor Used to Deport Palestinians From US to Occupied West Bank
“They dropped us off like animals on the side of the road,” said 24-year-old Maher Awad, who’d lived in the United States for nearly a decade and was taken from his girlfriend and newborn son in Michigan.
Feb 05, 2026
A private jet owned by a top donor for President Donald Trump was used to secretly deport Palestinians out of the United States to the occupied West Bank, where they have been separated from their families, according to an investigation published Thursday by the Guardian and the Israeli-Palestinian publication +972.
On January 22, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that a private jet containing eight Palestinian men touched down at the Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv before dumping them off at a checkpoint near an Israeli settlement, where they were released into the occupied territory.
Security sources familiar with the case described it as "highly unusual," as chartering a private jet to Israel costs about $300,000—vastly more than the commercial jet travel that the US government typically uses for deportations.
But the Guardian and +972 have learned that the jet, which carried another set of Palestinian deportees to be dropped in the West Bank on Monday, is owned by Trump's longtime business partner, the Florida real estate tycoon Gil Dezer.
Dezer and his father, the Israeli-American Michael Dezer, have collaborated with Trump on six different residential towers in Miami and have donated at least $1.3 million to Trump's presidential campaign, according to campaign filings.
The jet was found to have been chartered by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) through the Florida-based company Journey Aviation. Before it dropped Palestinians off in Israel, the group Human Rights First determined that it had been used for at least four other "removal flights" to Kenya, Liberia, Guinea, and Eswatini.
US officials did not answer questions about how much money they paid to charter the flights, but aviation industry sources told the outlets that chartering the two flights to Israel would probably cost between $400,000 and $500,000.
Maher Awad, a 24-year-old Palestinian man who was deported, said the men were carried on Dever's plane with their arms and ankles shackled after being taken out of a notoriously squalid ICE detention hub in Phoenix, Arizona.
When they arrived at the checkpoint, he said, “they dropped us off like animals on the side of the road.” All he had to show Israeli authorities was his Michigan driver’s license.
The men went to a house near the checkpoint, owned by a university professor named Mohammad Kanaan.
Kanaan said the men stayed at his home for about two hours. During that time, he learned that many of them had been in ICE detention for so long that some of them were considered missing.
“Their families were so happy to hear their voices,” he said. “One mother started screaming and crying over the phone.”
According to the outlets, the flights were "part of a secretive and politically sensitive US government operation to deport Palestinians arrested by ICE to the Israeli-occupied West Bank."
The Trump administration has aggressively targeted Palestinians for deportation, stripping legal status from hundreds of people who have protested or otherwise expressed solidarity with Palestinians amid Israel's two-year genocide in Gaza.
972+ reported that several of the deported men have held green cards in the United States. Many had wives, children, and other family members living there.
Awad, who had lived in the US for nearly a decade, was taken away from his girlfriend and his newborn son in Michigan. “I grew up in America,” he said. “America was heaven for me."
“I was feeling safe and secure in the United States until ICE arrested me," he said.
The secret deportation program has shocked many immigration attorneys, who described it as highly unusual and potentially illegal for the US to deport Palestinians to the West Bank, where they face systemic persecution and violence from Israel's occupation.
In recent weeks, state-sanctioned Israeli settler violence has exploded. In the three days following the first deportation flight, the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) reported that "at least 10 serious Israeli settler attacks were recorded" in the West Bank, resulting in "extensive property damage, arson attacks, injuries, and forcible displacement of Palestinian families."
“Aside from the many irregularities with the deportation of eight Palestinians on a private jet and no due process, this transfer also violates the principle of nonrefoulement, which prohibits the forcible return of individuals to a country where there are substantial grounds for believing that the person would be at risk of irreparable harm upon return, including persecution, torture, ill treatment, or other serious human rights violations,” Gissou Nia, director of the Strategic Litigation Project at the Atlantic Council, told +972.
"The United States is bound by international treaties that explicitly prohibit this, including the Convention Against Torture,” she continued. “Therefore, the US violated this principle in sending Palestinian asylum seekers and Palestinians with other statuses back on a flight to Israel, where they face persecution."
Keep ReadingShow Less
'I Am Speechless': Historians Sickened as Trump Set to Remove Mention of Racism from Medgar Evers Monument
"The murder of Medgar Evers was an act of racial terror," said human rights activist Martin Luther King III.
Feb 05, 2026
Historians and other critics expressed disgust on Thursday after news broke that the Trump administration was removing references to racism from the monument dedicated to civil rights icon Medgar Evers.
According to a report from Mississippi Today, the National Park Service has removed visitor brochures from the Medgar & Myrlie Evers Home National Monument in Jackson, Mississippi.
Two Park Service employees tell Mississippi Today that the brochures are expected to undergo significant revisions, including removing references labeling Evers' killer, Byron De La Beckwith, as a racist.
In fact, Beckwith was a member of both the White Citizens Council and the Ku Klux Klan, and remained a committed white supremacist up to his death in prison in 2001.
Mississippi Today noted that the removal of the brochures at the Evers monument aren't a one-off event, and the publication cited an earlier report from the Washington Post detailing how the Trump administration "has ordered the removal of signs and exhibits related to slavery at multiple national parks, including an 1863 photo that Christian abolitionists used to prove the horrors of slavery."
US Civil War historian Kevin Levin reacted with shock to the Trump administration's latest effort to whitewash American history.
"I am speechless," he wrote in a social media post referencing the changes to the Evers monument.
Historian Todd Arrington, site manager of the James A. Garfield National Historic Site, noted the suspicious timing of the change in the monument brochures.
"Today is the 32nd anniversary of Byron De La Beckwith’s February 5, 1994 conviction for murdering Medgar Evers in 1963," he wrote. "I’m sure it’s just a coincidence that this news broke today. That racist POS—who bragged about killing Evers at Klan meetings and rallies—died in prison in 2001."
Human rights activist Martin Luther King III, son of civil rights icon Martin Luther King, Jr., slammed the Trump administration for trying to distort history.
"The murder of Medgar Evers was an act of racial terror," wrote King. "That fact is not partisan. It is historical. Calling it anything else is not 'restoring truth.' It is erasing it."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular