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Release of Guantanamo detainee Asadullah Haroon Gul who was unlawfully imprisoned
Asadullah Haroon Gul has been released from Guantanamo Bay after fifteen years of detention without charge and returned to his home country of Afghanistan, where he will be reunited with his wife and daughter.
LONDON
Asadullah Haroon Gul has been released from Guantanamo Bay after fifteen years of detention without charge and returned to his home country of Afghanistan, where he will be reunited with his wife and daughter.
The US rendered Asadullah to Guantanamo 2007. His family feared him dead for many years and for the first nine years of his captivity, he did not have access to a lawyer, despite multiple attempts to obtain legal representation. Reprieve and the law firm Lewis Baach Kaufmann Middlemiss filed a writ for a petition of habeas corpus on his behalf in 2016, in which they demanded his release.
After years of litigation, in October 2021, they prevailed: the District Court for the District of Columbia ruled that Asadullah's detention was not legal, because he had only been a part of Hezb-e-Islami (HIA), a group that has been formally at peace since 2016, and he was not a part of Al Qaeda. The judge thus ordered his release. Asadullah was the first Guantanamo Bay detainee in over ten years to win a habeas case.
Asadullah was also cleared for release by unanimous decision of six US federal agencies, namely the departments of State, Homeland Security, Justice, Defense, plus the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the office of the Director of National Intelligence in October 2021.
After months of waiting for the government to act, on April 25, 2022, Asadullah's lawyers moved to hold the government in contempt of court for failing to comply with its order of release. His release today is the result of a hard-fought battle.
Asadullah has suffered severe physical and psychological torture during his detention, including being beaten, hung by his wrists, deprived of food and water, and prevented from praying. He has been subjected to sleep deprivation, extreme cold temperatures and solitary confinement.
Asadullah's lawyer at Reprieve US, Mark Maher, said:
"After 15 years imprisoned without charge or trial and after a Federal judge declared his detention illegal, Asad is finally free.
"Asad missed his daughter's entire childhood and he will never get back what has been taken from him, but he is now at least able to rebuild his life with his family, who have waited so long to see him.
"Ending Asad's unlawful detention is an important step and we hope that the State Department will move quickly to release other detainees who have been cleared to leave but remain stuck in limbo, wondering when their long ordeal will end."
Asadullah Haroon's lawyer at Lewis Baach Kaufmann Middlemiss, Tara Plochocki, said:
We are thrilled that, after fighting us every step of the way, the government has finally released Asad. The decision in this case shows that no one, not even the US government, is above the law. We thank the State Department for its efforts over the last two months to effectuate the court's order and hope that they apply the same diligence to the other detainees who are eligible for release.
Reprieve is a UK-based human rights organization that uses the law to enforce the human rights of prisoners, from death row to Guantanamo Bay.
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Senate Dems Push Trump DOJ to Reveal All Talks With Lobbyists About Ouster of Antitrust Chief
The removal of Gail Slater "raises significant concerns about this administration’s commitment to enforcing the antitrust laws for the betterment of consumers and small businesses," the lawmakers warned.
Feb 16, 2026
A group of Democrats in the US Senate is pressuring President Donald Trump's Justice Department to hand over any and all communications between the agency and corporate lobbyists related to last week's ouster of antitrust chief Gail Slater, which came weeks before the scheduled start of the closely watched Live Nation-Ticketmaster trial.
In a Saturday letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi—herself a former corporate lobbyist—the Democratic lawmakers raised concerns about the timing of Slater's departure, pointing to Live Nation-Ticketmaster's ongoing "attempts to evade responsibility by convincing Justice Department leadership to settle the case on terms favorable to the company, rather than fans, artists, and independent venues."
Slater's ouster as head of the Justice Department's Antitrust Division less than a year after she was confirmed in a bipartisan vote, wrote Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and six other Democratic lawmakers, "raises significant concerns about this administration’s commitment to enforcing the antitrust laws for the betterment of consumers and small businesses, including seeing through its cases against monopolies."
The antitrust suit against Live Nation, Ticketmaster's parent company, was launched in 2024 by the Biden administration and a coalition of state attorneys general. Their complaint accuses Live Nation of unlawful anticompetitive conduct that "allows them to exploit their conflicts of interest—as a promoter, ticketer, venue owner, and artist manager—across the live music industry and further entrench their dominant positions."
Semafor reported earlier this month that Live Nation executives and lobbyists "have been negotiating with senior DOJ officials" in an effort to "avert a trial over whether the company is operating an illegal monopoly." Those negotiations are reportedly being held outside of the antitrust division previously headed by Slater, who was ousted days after Semafor published its story.
The American Prospect reported that Kellyanne Conway and "MAGA influencer" Mike Davis are among those lobbying the Justice Department on behalf of Live Nation.
In their Saturday letter, the Senate Democrats called on the Justice Department to provide "the dates of each meeting with any representatives of Live Nation-Ticketmaster and the individuals present from the Justice Department, White House, or Live Nation-Ticketmaster for each meeting" and "all communications" between the DOJ and Live Nation-Ticketmaster regarding the dismissal of Slater or her deputies.
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Alford pointed specifically to the merger settlement deal that the Justice Department cut with Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Juniper Networks last year. Bondi's chief of staff reportedly overruled Slater's team to push through the settlement.
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Human rights advocates, United Nations officials, and prominent international artists are among those defending UN independent Palestine expert Francesca Albanese in recent days amid a smear campaign by several European foreign ministers and pro-Israel groups, who are demanding her firing over alleged antisemitic remarks she never made.
The foreign ministers of Austria, the Czech Republic, France, and Germany have publicly called for Albanese's resignation or termination after the pro-Israel group UN Watch—which is unaffiliated with the world body—circulated an edited video of the 48-year-old Italian jurist purportedly calling Israel "the common enemy of humanity" during a February 7 speech at a forum in Doha, Qatar organized by Al Jazeera.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said last week that he will demand Albanese’s resignation or removal during the upcoming UN Human Rights Council meeting, calling her alleged remarks “outrageous and reprehensible."
Other European officials piled on, with German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul calling her continued service as a UN expert “untenable."
However, what's "reprehensible," Amnesty International secretary general Agnès Callamard argued Saturday, is that the foreign ministers attacked Albanese "based on a deliberately truncated video to misrepresent and gravely misconstrue her messages."
This is what Albanese actually said in Doha:
The fact that instead of stopping Israel, most of the world has armed, given Israel political excuses, political sheltering, economic and financial support. This is a challenge. The fact that most of the media in the Western world has been amplifying the pro-apartheid genocidal narrative is a challenge. At the same time, here also lays the opportunity. Because if international law has been stabbed in the heart, it's also true that never before the global community has seen the challenges that we all face. We who do not control large amounts of financial capitals, algorithms, and weapons, we now see that we as a humanity have a common enemy, and freedoms, the respect of fundamental freedoms is the last peaceful avenue, the last peaceful toolbox that we have to regain our freedom.
“The ministers that have spread disinformation must act beyond merely deleting their comments on social media—as some have done," Callamard said. "They must publicly apologize and retract any calls for Francesca Albanese’s resignation. Their governments must also investigate how this disinformation happened with a view to preventing such situations."
“If only these ministers had been as loud and forceful in confronting a state committing genocide, unlawful occupation, and apartheid as they have in attacking a UN expert," she added. "Their cowardice and refusal to hold Israel accountable stand in stark contrast to the special rapporteur’s unwavering commitment to speaking truth to power."
On Monday, Philippe Lazzarini, who heads the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), said in a statement that "how we act in the face of fake news and vicious disinformation campaigns is a sign of our moral compass."
"Over and over during the war in Gaza, we have seen how coordinated campaigns seek to discredit and silence those who speak out about human rights impacts and violations of international humanitarian law," Lazzarini added. "The latest attacks on Francesca Albanese—an independent expert mandated... to monitor the situation in the occupied Palestinian territory—aim at silencing her voice and undermining the few remaining independent human rights reporting mechanisms."
Israeli forces have killed more than 370 UNRWA staff members since October 2023. Lazzarini and others have also accused Israeli forces of torturing UNRWA staffers in a bid to force false confessions corroborating their dubious allegations that members of the humanitarian agency are Hamas fighters. The International Court of Justice (ICJ)—which is weighing a genocide case against Israel filed by South Africa—found last year that UNRWA has not been infiltrated by Hamas, as claimed by Israeli leaders.
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"According to the Israeli army itself, at least 83% of those murdered are civilians," the letter states. "What has the French state done about this for over two years? It has not imposed sanctions against a state that is openly—and even proudly—flouting international law."
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The letter's signers including actors Javier Bardem, Mark Ruffalo, and Susan Sarandon; musicians Brian Eno, Peter Gabriel, and Annie Lennox; and authors Annie Ernaux and Alice Walker.
Albanese has long been targeted for her vocal opposition to what she and a UN expert panel on which she did not serve call Israel's genocide in Gaza. The administration of President Donald Trump has imposed sanctions on her after she highlighted US companies' complicity in the Gaza slaughter. US officials have also attempted to discredit her work and called for her removal.
Reminder that Francesca Albanese is not being targeted for a sentence twisted and lifted out of context in a speech. She is being targeted for daring to name the names of giant companies complicit in the crime of genocide. They would rather destroy international law than be accountable to it.
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— Naomi Klein (@naomiaklein.bsky.social) February 15, 2026 at 9:32 AM
Albanese responded to the attacks by highlighting the number of Palestinian children killed by Israeli forces in Gaza, saying on X Friday that "three European governments accuse me—based on statements I never made—with a virulence and conviction that they have NEVER used against those who have slaughtered 20,000+ children in 858 days."
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“We have very serious concerns about what the Trump administration could do with the voting records of thousands of people from Fulton County."
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