Human Rights

22 May 2023; MEMO: Syrian government officials should be investigated for crimes against humanity, Human Rights Watch has said against the backdrop of the UAE's invitation to Bashar Al-Assad to attend the UN climate conference COP28.

It would be the Syrian President's first appearance at a global conference since the Syrian uprising and subsequent war began in 2011.

22 May 2023; MEMO: The Turkish Foreign Ministry on Sunday "strongly condemned" Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir's storming of the Al-Aqsa Mosque complex in occupied East Jerusalem, Anadolu reports.

22 May 2023; MEMO: Israel's occupation government held a cabinet meeting on Sunday in a tunnel underneath Al-Aqsa Mosque in an attempt to demonstrates the Zionist state's sovereignty over the occupied city of Jerusalem and its holy sites. The tunnel in question is located under Al-Buraq Wall (the "Western Wall") of the Noble Sanctuary of Al-Aqsa.

22 May 2023; MEMO: The Israeli occupation forces shot dead three more Palestinians on Monday morning during raids in Balata refugee camp in the northern West Bank city of Nablus.

Palestinian medical sources identified the three as Fathi Jihad Rizq, 30, Abdullah Yousef Abu Hamdan, 24, and Mohammad Bilal Zaytoun, 32. According to the sources, six other Palestinians were wounded during the violent raid, one of them seriously.

17 May 2023; MEMO: Two Turkish journalists were released several hours after their arrest by the German police on Wednesday, sparking a diplomatic row between Ankara and Berlin, Anadolu News Agency reports.

17 May 2023; MEMO: The late Iraqi President Saddam Hussein rejected a US proposal to name his vice president without power in return for his release, the head of Saddam's legal defence team has revealed. Khalil Al-Dulaimi told Al-Arabiya TV that the US also asked Saddam to stop fighting against US soldiers in Falluja and leave the country, but he refused.

17 May 2023; MEMO: Jordanian authorities have handed over a wanted man to the UAE, the Emirates News Agency (WAM) reported today.

Dual Emirati-Turkish citizen, Khalaf Abdul Rahman Al-Romaithi was detained at Amman's Queen Alia International Airport on 7 May, having arrived from Turkiye where he had been living in exile following a 2013 court ruling sentencing him in absentia to 15 years in prison.

17 May 2023; MEMO: The French government is to pay reparations to thousands more Algerians and their families who were held in internment camps in France after the North African country's war of independence, AFP reports.

According to the report, the French government agreed to increase the number of Algerians and their relatives eligible to claim compensation for being forced to live in deplorable and squalid living conditions several decades ago.

15 May 2023; MEMO: A coalition of workers affiliated with 11 Egyptian opposition parties have demanded the Israeli embassy in Cairo be shut and the occupation state's ambassador be expelled as well as the cancellation of trade deals with Israel.

16 May 2023; MEMO: Palestinians, on Monday, commemorated the 75th anniversary of the Nakba or 'Catastrophe', which is marked on 15 May to remember the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homes and lands in 1948 after the founding of Israel, Anadolu News Agency reports.