Last year, Saudi teacher Asaad al-Ghamdi was given 20 years in prison for criticising the government online one of a wave of heavy sentences that drew international condemnation. Saudi Arabia frees prisoners in apparent easing of crackdown Last month he was unexpectedly released, joining dozens of political prisoners to be freed as the authorities seek…
Abdullah Ocalan, the imprisoned leader of a Kurdish guerrilla movement that has been waging a bloody insurgency against the Turkish state for decades, has called on his fighters to lay down their arms and disband. The rare message from Mr. Ocalan on Thursday raised the possibility that a conflict that has killed more than 40,000…
A court in Vietnam sentenced one of the country’s most influential journalists to two and a half years in prison Thursday for “abusing democratic freedoms” with about a dozen posts on Facebook that criticized or questioned the government. The journalist, Truong Huy San — known to many by his pen name, Huy Duc — was…
The Hong Kong government has strongly condemned some US senators for smearing the city’s national security laws after they submitted a resolution accusing Beijing of destroying the financial hub’s autonomy and credibility as an international business centre. Authorities on Thursday night called the resolution put forward by Jim Risch and Jeanne Shaheen, chairman and ranking…
The mother of a jailed British Egyptian activist has been hospitalized and is at risk of sudden death, a doctor has said, as her hunger strike to demand her son’s release reached 151 days. Laila Soueif, the mother of Alaa Abd El Fattah, one of Egypt’s best-known political prisoners, has survived since late September on…
Six months after the opposition leader Aleksei A. Navalny died in a Russian prison above the Arctic Circle, Konstantin A. Kotov woke up to find his Moscow apartment under siege. After breaking down the door, Russian officers set about confiscating everything to do with Mr. Navalny, down to a campaign button from the activist’s 2018…
The senior American diplomat slipped quietly into Belarus, a police state run by a strongman reviled for decades in the West, traveling by car across the border for meetings with President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko and the head of his KGB security apparatus. It was Mr. Lukashenko’s first meeting with a senior State Department official in…
Belarus, Russia’s closest ally, has released an American prisoner and two others from jail, an exiled opposition group said on Wednesday, in the latest sign that the autocratic Belarusian president, Aleksandr G. Lukashenko, was looking for ways to improve frozen relations with the West. The releases, announced by an opposition group led by Svetlana Tikhanovskaya…
A Russian imprisoned in the United States will be freed “in the coming days” in exchange for the release this week of the American schoolteacher Marc Fogel, the Kremlin said on Wednesday. Dmitri S. Peskov, the Kremlin’s spokesman, told reporters that Russia would not identify the prisoner until after the release. Mr. Peskov said that…
An emotional Marc Fogel, the American teacher held captive in Russia for more than three years, told President Trump on Tuesday night that he was forever indebted to him for securing his release as he was greeted at the White House. With an American flag draped around his neck, Mr. Fogel stepped out of a…