
Syrian security forces detain cousin of toppled leader Assad
June 21 (Reuters) - Syria's security forces have detained Wassim al-Assad, a cousin of toppled leader Bashar al-Assad, state news agency SANA said on Saturday.
Wassim al-Assad was sanctioned by the United States in 2023 for leading a paramilitary force backing Assad's army and for trafficking drugs including the amphetamine-like drug captagon.
Bashar al-Assad was toppled by an Islamist-led rebel insurgency in December and fled to Moscow. Most of his family members and inner circle either fled Syria or went underground.
Syria's new security forces have been pursuing members of the former administration - mainly those involved in the feared security branches accused of rights abuses.
Rights groups have called for a fully-fledged transitional justice process to hold them to account.
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


The Independent
an hour ago
- The Independent
Israeli-backed group seeks at least $30 million from US for aid distribution in Gaza
A U.S.-led group has asked the Trump administration to step in with an initial $30 million so it can continue its much scrutinized and Israeli-backed aid distribution in Gaza, according to three U.S. officials and the organization's application for the money. That application, obtained by The Associated Press, also offers some of the first financial details about the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation and its work in the territory. The foundation says it has provided millions of meals in southern Gaza since late May to Palestinians as Israel's blockade and military campaign have driven the Gaza to the brink of famine. But the effort has seen near-daily fatal shootings of Palestinians trying to reach the distribution sites. Major humanitarian groups also accuse the foundation of cooperating with Israel's objectives in the 20-month-old war against Hamas in a way that violates humanitarian principles. The group's funding application was submitted to the U.S. Agency for International Development, according to the U.S. officials, who were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity. The application was being processed this week as potentially one of the agency's last acts before the Republican administration absorbs USAID into the State Department as part of deep cuts in foreign assistance. Two of the officials said they were told the administration has decided to award the money. They said the processing was moving forward with little of the review and auditing normally required before Washington makes foreign assistance grants to an organization. In a letter submitted Thursday as part of the application, Gaza Humanitarian Foundation secretary Loik Henderson said his organization 'was grateful for the opportunity to partner with you to sustain and scale life-saving operations in Gaza.' Neither the State Department nor Henderson immediately responded to requests for comment Saturday. Israel says the foundation is the linchpin of a new aid system to wrest control from the United Nations, which Israel alleges has been infiltrated by Hamas, and other humanitarian groups. The foundation's use of fixed sites in southern Gaza is in line with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's plan to use aid to concentrate the territory's more than 2 million people in the south, freeing Israel to fight Hamas elsewhere. Aid workers fear it's a step toward another of Netanyahu's public goals, removing Palestinians from Gaza in 'voluntary' migrations that aid groups and human rights organizations say would amount to coerced departures. The U.N. and many leading nonprofit groups accuse the foundation of stepping into aid distribution with little transparency or humanitarian experience, and, crucially, without a commitment to the principles of neutrality and operational independence in war zones. Since the organization started operations, several hundred Palestinians have been killed and hundreds more wounded in near-daily shootings as they tried to reach aid sites, according to Gaza's Health Ministry. Witnesses say Israeli troops regularly fire heavy barrages toward the crowds in an attempt to control them. The Israeli military has denied firing on civilians. It says it fired warning shots in several instance, and fired directly at a few 'suspects' who ignored warnings and approached its forces. It's unclear who is funding the new operation in Gaza. No donor has come forward. The State Department said this past week that the United States is not funding it. In documents supporting its application, the group said it received nearly $119 million for May operations from 'other government donors,' but gives no details. It expects $38 million from those unspecific government donors for June, in addition to the hoped-for $30 million from the United States. The application shows no funding from private philanthropy or any other source.


Telegraph
an hour ago
- Telegraph
BBC must reveal if money for axed Gaza film ‘ended up in the hands of Hamas'
BBC bosses are under pressure to establish whether licence payers' cash used to make a cancelled Gaza documentary ended up in the hands of Hamas. MPs and peers said the broadcaster must launch an investigation into the money spent on commissioning the film Gaza: Doctors Under Attack. The show was pulled from the schedules on Friday after its director branded Israel 'a rogue state that's committing war crimes and ethnic cleansing'. It is the second documentary about Gaza that the BBC has been forced to cancel, amid accusations that it is 'biased' against Israel in its reporting. The corporation was forced to apologise in February after it aired a 'propaganda' film that was narrated by the son of a leading Hamas minister. In light of that controversy it had already delayed the planned release of Gaza: Doctors Under Attack, and has now said it will not be shown at all. In a statement, the BBC said it had cancelled the show because it ' risked creating a perception of partiality ' about its coverage of Israel. Stuart Andrew, the shadow culture secretary, said the decision ' raises yet more serious questions over its coverage of events in Gaza'. 'The BBC must provide a full accounting of how it ended up commissioning the abandoned documentary and whether any money ended up in the bloody hands of Hamas terrorists during the production process,' he said. Lord Austin, a former Labour MP, said that staff responsible for commissioning the cancelled documentary should face disciplinary action if any wrongdoing took place. 'What we need to know is whether the makers of this programme paid Hamas terrorists or anyone linked to them,' he said. Call for 'urgent investigation' 'There must now be another urgent investigation to find out what has happened. When is the BBC going to start sacking those responsible for these appalling failures?' Baroness Deech, a crossbench peer, added: 'An urgent investigation is needed to assure the British public that its licence fee hasn't ended up in the hands of Hamas terrorists. 'Questions must be urgently answered. What went wrong at the BBC, whether Hamas received money for granting access to Hamas-run hospitals, and whether the national broadcaster has breached counter-terrorism legislation by funding a proscribed terror group.' The decision to pull the documentary came after Ramita Navai, its director, appeared on BBC Radio 4's Today programme to discuss it. She said: 'Israel has become a rogue state that's committing war crimes and ethnic cleansing and mass-murdering Palestinians'. Last month, a letter signed by 600 people, including Harriet Walter, Miriam Margolyes, Maxine Peake and Juliet Stevenson, called for the release of the film. In a statement on Friday, the BBC said: 'For some weeks, the BBC has been working... to find a way to tell the stories of these doctors on our platforms. 'Yesterday, it became apparent that we have reached the end of the road with these discussions. 'We have come to the conclusion that broadcasting this material risked creating a perception of partiality that would not meet the high standards that the public rightly expect of the BBC. 'Impartiality is a core principle of BBC News. It is one of the reasons that we are the world's most trusted broadcaster.' Gaza: Doctors Under Attack is the second film to have been pulled by the BBC, coming after controversy over Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone. That programme, created by production company Hoyo, was aired, before being removed from the BBC's iPlayer amid huge controversy. BBC bosses apologised after it emerged a major contributor was the son of Ayman Alyazouri, a Hamas minister, which was not disclosed to viewers. The corporation insisted it was not aware of the Hamas link, but Hoyo later claimed it was. A BBC spokesman said: 'We can confirm that no money spent on this documentary has been paid to Hamas. As we said yesterday, production of the documentary was paused in April, and any film made will not be a BBC film.'


Daily Mail
2 hours ago
- Daily Mail
Mahmoud Khalil arrives in NJ after being granted release... and vows to continue fight 'even if they kill me'
Columbia University graduate student and Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil has landed in New Jersey, telling reporters that he will continue to fight for his country 'even if they kill me.' Khalil, 30, arrived at Newark Liberty International Airport on Saturday to an eruption of cheers after he was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement for over 100 days. New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez greeted him at the airport and stood by his side as he spoke to the press. Khalil defiantly spoke, telling reporters: 'If they threaten me with detention, even if they would kill me, I would still speak up for Palestine.' 'I just want to go back and continue the work I was already doing, advocating for Palestinian rights, a speech that should actually be celebrated rather than punished.' Khalil, a lawful resident of the US, was granted release and freed on bail by a New Jersey federal judge on Friday. The green card holder was taken into custody on March 8, 2025, as the Trump administration cracked down on pro-Palestine demonstrations on college campuses. Khalil was one of the primary organizers of protests that took over Columbia as the Israel - Hamas conflict was ignited. In the ruling Friday, Judge Michael E. Farbiaz said that none of the Trump administration's allegations against Khalil justified his continued detention, and sided with Khalil's argument that he was locked up as an unlawful retaliation for his activism. In his ruling on Friday, Farbiarz said: 'There is at least something to the underlying claim that there is an effort to use the immigration charge here to punish Mr. Khalil - And of course that would be unconstitutional.' Khalil has not been charged with a crime, but the judge's order to free him comes as the Trump White House continues efforts to deport him back to Algeria, where he is a citizen. When he was detained earlier this year, Khalil's case gained national attention as he was the first pro-Palestinian protester to be arrested by the Trump administration in its crackdown on college campuses. Several protests he organized and led at Columbia turned violent, with one seeing 112 students arrested when they stormed a campus building and occupied it as NYPD officers tried to shut their demonstration down. His arrest sparked protests across the country as critics accused the Trump administration of unlawfully arresting a legal resident without charging him with a crime in violation of his free speech. He was detained under the Cold War–era Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, which states that non-US citizens can be deported if they are antagonistic against US foreign policy. Secretary of State Marco Rubio accused Khalil of spreading anti-Semitism, and White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said he was 'siding with terrorists.' But in the three months that Khalil has been detained, the Justice Department hasn't disclosed any substantive connection between Khalil and Hamas, which attacked Israel on October 7, 2023, and killed around 1,200 civilians. In their successful filing to free Khalil this week, the graduate student's attorneys argued that he was not spreading anti-Semitism when he campaigned for Palestine in its war with Israel. They cited past quotes from him such as comments he made to CNN during a campus protest, where he said that 'the liberation of the Palestinian people and the Jewish people are intertwined and go hand by hand, and you cannot achieve one without the other.' Judge Farbiarz had previously ruled that the foreign policy law was not enough to justify Khalil's detention, and his ruling on Friday shot down further allegations from the Trump administration that Khalil made paperwork errors when applying for citizenship last year. A number of other pro-Palestine protestors have been arrested and freed in the time that Khalil was detained.