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Foiling assassination plans

Iran's security forces have thwarted plans for assassination of several senior Sunni clerics, judges and members of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps. That’s according to Iranian Intelligence Minister Esmail Khatib. The minister said Iran's adversaries had made plans to carry out the assassinations in late September. Khatib added that the assassinations were aimed at fueling ethnic and religious discord in the country. He said Iran’s enemies are planning to foment insecurity along the country’s eastern borders, urging Shia and Sunni clerics to remain vigilant. The new revelation came after security forces foiled a terrorist plot to carry out 30 simultaneous bomb attacks at populous areas in the capital Tehran. More than two dozen Daesh-affiliated terrorists were also arrested.

Israel detention policy

Israeli forces have detained more than 135,000 Palestinians since the al-Aqsa Intifada against the regime broke out in 2000. This, according to the Palestinian Commission for Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs. The commission said the detainees hailed from all sectors of Palestinian society, including children, women, and the elderly. During that period, nearly 21,000 Palestinian children were put behind bars, in addition to the hundreds of academics, journalists, and civil society activists. The report said more than 2,600 Palestinian girls and women have been also arrested and kept under difficult conditions in Israeli jails. Israeli authorities have also issued more than 32,000 administrative detention orders since 2000. It allows them to detain Palestinians without charge or trial for indefinite periods of time. Palestinian administrative detainees have frequently resorted to open-ended hunger strikes to protest their illegal detention, which violates international law.

Racism in US jails

United Nations human rights experts have harshly criticized systemic racism in the United States' criminal justice system. They say certain practices in US prisons amount to "an affront to human dignity." In their report, the experts especially turned the spotlight on the plight of people of color in US prisons. They said black women were shackled during childbirth and lost their babies as a result of that practice. The experts added that black male inmates were forced to work in plantation-style conditions, which amounted to contemporary forms of slavery. They also raised the alarm about the widespread use of solitary confinement saying it was applied disproportionately to inmates of African descent. The report was based on testimonies from 133 individuals in five US cities as well as those collected from five detention centers.

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