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Amnesty: Russia may be ‘slowly’ killing Alexey Navalny

Alexey Navalny, the prominent opponent of Russian President Vladimir Putin, is imprisoned in conditions that amount to torture and may slowly be killing him, human rights group Amnesty International said on Wednesday. Navalny, who last year was poisoned with a military-grade nerve agent, was now being subjected to sleep deprivation and did not have access to a doctor he could trust in jail, it said. “Russia, the Russian authorities, may be placing him into a situation of a slow death and seeking to hide what is happening to him,” Agnes Callamard, Amnesty International’s secretary general, said ahead of the publication of the group’s annual report. “Clearly the Russian authorities are violating his rights. We have to do more,” she said. “[They] have already attempted to kill him, they are n...

Report: US says ex-Egypt premier had diplomatic immunity from lawsuit

The Biden administration has said a lawsuit seeking to hold former Egyptian Prime Minister Hazem el-Beblawi accountable for alleged involvement in torture against an Egyptian-American activist should be thrown out because he held diplomatic immunity, the Washington Post reported on Monday. In a submission to the US District Court in Washington, DC, shared by the Post, lawyers for the US Justice Department said “El Beblawi held diplomatic status at the time when the suit was commenced” and the court should dismiss “claims falling with the scope of his immunity”. El-Beblawi had served as Egypt’s representative to the International Monetary Fund, but quit and left the US in late October, the Post reported. The department said in its court filing that it was not making any judgements on the me...

Egypt editor detained outside Cairo jail

Egyptian security services on Sunday detained the editor-in-chief of prominent independent news outlet Mada Masr, its lawyer said, the latest in a crackdown against journalists. Lina Attallah was arrested outside Cairo’s Tora prison as she was interviewing rights activist Laila Soueif, mother of jailed activist Alaa Abdel Fattah who recently began a hunger strike. “The prison security guards asked Attallah to show her identification card and later called her in for an investigation that lasted three hours,” lawyer Hassan al-Azhari told AFP. He said she was later taken a police station and was expected to appear before the prosecution Monday morning, adding the reason for her arrest and charges remained unclear. Later on Sunday, Mada Masr tweeted that the prosecution ordered Attallah’s rele...