Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said July 9 that her government plans to seek criminal complaints in the United States over the deaths of Mexican citizens while in immigration custody or during anti-immigration operations.

The trial of Syria's former grand mufti, Ahmed Bareddin Hassoun, opened at the Palace of Justice in Damascus on June 26. Hassoun led Syria's official religious establishment under the Bashar Assad dictatorship. He is accused of incitement to murder and abusing his position as a mufti to provide religious cover for the crimes of the regime, as well as participation in war crimes and crimes against humanity. He famously issued fatwas justifying the bombing of civilians and called the regime's use of indiscriminate barrel bombs "liberation," winning him the epithet "Barrel Bomb Mufti." He also issued a fatwa in 2017 authorizing the execution of detainees held at the notorious Sednaya Prison, where the Assad regime killed thousands, many through torture and starvation.

Amnesty International raised concerns June 26 over an absolute blanket ban by the Turkish government on all protests in the capital Ankara ahead of the NATO summit that is to be held in the city next week. The statement also decried the pretrial detention of more than 100 people in the city, including lawyers, academics and activists.

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk on June 26 called for independent investigations into dozens of deaths in US Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody. He urged authorities to take immediate measures to prevent further fatalities as the number of deaths in detention continues to rise.

Indian authorities have deported thousands of Bangladeshi citizens in the month since Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won elections in the state of West Bengal. Shortly after taking power in West Bengal, BJP officials ordered the creation of detention centers both for undocumented Bangladeshis and Rohingya Muslims who are fleeing persecution in their native Burma and mistreatment in overcrowded refugee camps in Bangladesh.

Amnesty International called June 4 on Egyptian authorities to immediately release jailed activists and uphold international law, following the arrest of a group involved in organizing a peaceful protest.

The head of the World Health Organization has appealed for a ceasefire in the Democratic Republic of Congo's Ituri province, where Ebola is rapidly spreading. Director-general Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus' statement said even a temporary truce would allow health workers through and save lives. "I urge you, I implore you: give us the space to help the people who need it most," he said, addressing the armed factions active in the province. Out of nearly a thousand suspected Ebola cases in the DRC and Uganda, over 220 people may have died, with the WHO warning that the outbreak could potentially be much larger.

The administrative subpoenas issued for Hasan Piker and Medea Benjamin over their participation in the Cuba caravan are to be opposed—in part because the subpoenas will only give their sinister politics greater cachet among neophyte activists! Piker's shameless shilling for the dictatorships of Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin invisibilizes the victims of their ethno-supremacist detention states—such as the Uyghurs of Xinjiang and the Crimean Tatars. This more critical point is obscured in the endless outrage over his supposed anti-Semitism. And with Xi and Putin joining with Trump to build a fascist world order, Piker's brand of campist pseudo-opposition (however overheated) is compromised from the start, mirroring what it ostensibly opposes—subpoenas notwithstanding. In Episode 330 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg breaks it down in his typically unsparing manner.