More and more Russian officials are urging Vladimir Putin to get the hell out of the Kremlin as Moscow suffered another series of humiliating defeats in Ukraine this weekend.

Just one day after several municipal deputies in Putin’s hometown of St. Petersburg called on the State Duma to try the Russian leader for treason, their colleagues in Moscow joined in and demanded he step down because his views are “hopelessly outdated.”

The open letter to Putin from municipal deputies in the Russian capital’s Lomonosovsky district started out by seemingly trying to let him down gently, telling him he had “good reforms” in his first term and part of his second.

But then, “everything went wrong,” the deputies said.

“The rhetoric that you and your subordinates use has been riddled with intolerance and aggression for a long time, which in the end effectively threw our country back into the Cold War era. Russia has again begun to be feared and hated, we are once again threatening the whole world with nuclear weapons,” the letter read.

“We ask you to relieve yourself of your post due to the fact that your views and your governance model are hopelessly outdated and hinder the development of Russia and its human potential,” the deputies said in closing.

The criticism of the Department of Justice continues to grow: Detractors see the department as too far behind the Jan. 6 committee. They want to know why Atty. Gen. Merrick Garland and the Justice Department have yet to come forward with a serious criminal charge against Donald Trump.

These gloomy observations miss at least one crucial point: There is a gap in the committee’s development of the Jan. 6 evidence for the most serious yet fitting charge against Trump. And it seems likely that only the Justice Department can fill it.

First, remember that the Justice Department may be much further along than we know; its work initially is always largely opaque. And the department has also had its hands full dealing with hundreds of on-the-ground rioters, as well as investigating false elector schemes and other possible crimes connected to the 2020 election and committed by figures in the former president's inner circle.

It's also important to bear in mind the fundamentally different tasks of the department and the committee. The House hearings aim to present a general narrative of Team Trump’s attempt to undo President Biden’s victory, along with the facts to back it up. The Justice Department, on the other hand, needs to develop a legal case consisting of admissible evidence proving criminal guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, and if possible beyond Republican cavil as well.

What crime exactly? Here’s another important difference between the department’s task and Congress’. The committee’s work has given rise to a sort of parlor game of “name that Trump crime” among commentators, everything from manslaughter to destruction of federal property. That won’t cut it for the Justice Department.

Even assuming that the department could prove any number of offenses on the part of Trump, Garland would not take the unprecedented step of prosecuting a former president unless the charge involved a grave crime against the U.S. Most likely, that charge would be seditious conspiracy. It’s the most serious of any leveled so far against those involved in the insurrection attempt, and for most Americans, it captures the fundamental evil that Trump has wrought.

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The Justice Department’s critics are wrong to conclude that Garland’s work has been done for him in Congress, much less to upbraid him for not having already brought charges against the former president. Garland deserves the presumption that, as promised, he is going after insurrectionists “at all levels,” and that the department will do the heavy lifting to induce a loyalist to turn on the former president.

Unless and until Garland succeeds, Trump, by virtue of the committee’s outstanding work, may stand guilty in the public’s mind and in the judgment of history, but there’s no holding him criminally accountable in a court of law.

“It’s definitely not a slam-dunk,” Paul Rosenzweig, a former federal prosecutor (and anti-Trump Republican), told me last week. “It will require tough decisions.”

The problem isn’t lack of evidence. The former Trump aides who have testified before the House committee and been interviewed by the FBI have taken care of that.

The problem, Rosenzweig and other former prosecutors said, is that convincing a jury that Trump is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt will still be difficult — especially when the former president, armed with good lawyers, can challenge that evidence.

“We know from the polls that about 30% of the American people think Trump did nothing wrong on Jan. 6,” Rosenzweig said. “Thirty percent of a jury is three or four people. I think getting a unanimous conviction will be nearly impossible, even in the liberal District of Columbia.”

And a trial that ends in Trump’s acquittal, he warned, would backfire.

“It would not only have the effect of giving Trump impunity,” he said, "it would give him impunity and an aura of invincibility.

Others disagree. Donald B. Ayer, another Republican former prosecutor, thinks a conviction would be possible. “Trump was ready to have Mike Pence be killed,” Ayer said. “You tell that story to a jury, and I think you win.”

But Ayer notes that Justice Department regulations require that prosecutors believe they have a high probability of winning a conviction before they can indict. By that standard, what Garland is doing is both correct and by the book. He’s investigating aggressively — but prosecuting cautiously.”

TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — Palestinian authorities in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip systematically torture critics in detention, a practice that could amount to crimes against humanity, an international rights group said Friday.

Human Rights Watch called in its report for donor countries to cut off funding to Palestinian security forces that commit such crimes and urged the International Criminal Court to investigate.

The report alleged that Palestinian security forces “use solitary confinement and beatings, including whipping their feet, and force detainees into painful stress positions for prolonged periods, including hoisting their arms behind their backs with cables or rope, to punish and intimidate critics and opponents and elicit confessions.”

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The report alleged that Palestinian security forces “use solitary confinement and beatings, including whipping their feet, and force detainees into painful stress positions for prolonged periods, including hoisting their arms behind their backs with cables or rope, to punish and intimidate critics and opponents and elicit confessions.”


“Systematic abuse by the PA and Hamas forms a critical part of the repression of the Palestinian people."

The group listed Palestinians who it said had been arbitrarily arrested in the aftermath of [an outspoken critic of the Palestinian Authority Nizar] Banat's death.

HRW said security forces are not held to account for the alleged torture and that given their systematic nature over many years, the practice could amount to crimes against humanity.

Fri, June 17, 2022, 6:41 AM

JERUSALEM (AP) — A Palestinian reporter working for an Iranian news agency was briefly abducted, beaten and threatened by Palestinian gunmen after covering the violent dispersal of an Islamist student demonstration in the West Bank earlier this week.

The Tasnim news agency says the men forced Samer Khuaira into a car at gunpoint on Tuesday, beat him and threatened him. The men said his coverage harmed the Palestinian Authority and the secular Fatah movement that dominates it, Tasnim said. He was released around a half hour later.

Khuaira identified one of his abductors as a member of Palestinian security forces, Tasnim reported Thursday. The Palestinian Journalists Union condemned the attack on their colleague.

There was no comment from Palestinian officials.

Security guards at al-Najah University in Nablus had violently dispersed the Islamist students earlier on Tuesday. Videos circulated online showed the guards beating students and what appeared to be plainclothes security forces firing into the air near the university.

Fatah dominates security agencies that operate in the parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank where the PA has limited autonomy.

Both the Fatah-led PA and its main rival, the Islamic militant group Hamas that rules Gaza, routinely crack down on political opponents in the areas they control. Iran supports Hamas and other Islamic militant groups.


The Daily Beast

Earlier this week, Russia’s Foreign Ministry summoned Israel’s Ambassador in Moscow Alexander Ben Zvi.

Unhappy with Israel taking Ukraine’s side in the war, Russia sharply criticized Israel for its actions on the Temple Mount, a senior Israeli diplomatic source said on Wednesday.

“Russia is unhappy with us about Ukraine, and is taking it out on us through the Palestinians,” said the source. “This is their traditional stance on the Palestinians, and they play with the volume knob. We didn’t think Russia would be happy with our stance on Ukraine, and we’re not happy with their attack on a sovereign state.”

Still, the source stated, Israel has to consider its security, with an emphasis on continuing the deconfliction mechanism with Russia in Syria.

At the same time, Israel sees some caution in the Russian response, pointing out that the readout of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s call with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas did not include a condemnation of Israel.