Well, the British parliament just voted to enter the air war against ISIS in Syria, having up till now limited its air-strikes to Iraq as part of the US-led coalition. (WP) The Independent boasts that its Patrick Cockburn (assailed as a "media missionary" for the Assad dictatorship by supporters of the Syrian revolution) was invited by Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn to "brief MPs on the facts about...Syria" ahead of the vote in the House of Commons. By "facts," they actually mean fictions, of course. Putting aside the actual question at hand (that of air-strikes), Cockburn's "briefing" was in fact dedicated to dissing and dismissing the Syrian resistance that is fighting both Assad and ISIS on the ground...

The prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), Fatou Bensouda, announced May 13 that she will reopen a preliminary investigation into alleged mistreatment and killings of Iraqi detainees in Iraq by UK military forces from 2003 through 2008. Bensouda stated that her office received new information in January from two human rights organizations implicating UK officials in detainee abuse. The Rome Statute (PDF) of the ICC allows the prosecutor to "initiate investigations ... on the basis of information on crimes within the jurisdiction of the Court." Although Iraq is not a State Party to the ICC, the ICC does have jurisdiction over alleged crimes committed by state nationals in Iraq. To comply with the statute, the ICC must examine several factors during the preliminary investigation, such as "jurisdiction, admissibility and the interests of justice" to determine if such issues meet the Statute's criteria for opening a full investigation. The ICC's original preliminary investigation into this matter, which ended in 2006, did not meet the "required gravity threshold" of the statute. Luis Moreno-Ocampo, prosecutor of the ICC in 2006, emphasized that if new information were to surface, the statute affords the ICC the ability to reopen the investigation. The new information received by the ICC in January alleges additional cases and details of detainee mistreatment than were available in the original investigation.