Olympians call on Iran to halt execution of boxing champion; The Guardian, November 11, 2025

Sarah Johnson , The Guardian; Olympians call on Iran to halt execution of boxing champion

"More than 20 Olympic medallists, coaches and other international athletes, including the tennis player Martina Navratilova and the swimmer Sharron Davies, have signed a letter calling for a halt to the execution of a boxing champion and coach, who is on death row in Iran.

Amid growing international outrage over Iran’s escalating use of capital punishment as a tool of oppression, the strongly worded letter condemns the Iranian regime’s decision to uphold the death sentence of Mohammad Javad Vafaei Sani.

Vafaei Sani, 30, from Mashhad in north-east Iran, was arrested for taking part in nationwide protests in 2019 and accused of supporting an opposition group, the People’s Mojahedin Organisation of Iran (MEK). He has spent five years in prison, where he has been tortured and kept in solitary confinement."

Inside Trump’s Deportation of Venezuelans: Four Months in a Salvadoran Prison; The New York Times, November 8, 2025

Julie Turkewitz, Tibisay Romero, Sheyla Urdaneta, and Isayen Herrera

Photographs by Adriana Loureiro Fernandez

, The New York Times; Inside Trump’s Deportation of Venezuelans: Four Months in a Salvadoran Prison 

"But the men received little to no due process before being expelled to the terrorism prison in El Salvador, and they were abruptly released in July, part of a larger diplomatic deal that included the release of 10 Americans and U.S. residents held in Venezuela.

Mr. Trump, speaking at the United Nations General Assembly in September, praised Salvadoran officials for “the successful and professional job they’ve done in receiving and jailing so many criminals that entered our country.”

In interviews, however, the men sent to the prison described frequent, intense physical and psychological abuse. Beyond the beatings, tear gas and trips to the isolation room, the men said they were mocked or ignored by medical personnel, forced to spend 24 hours a day under harsh lights and made to drink from wells of fetid water.

The New York Times interviewed 40 of the former prisoners, many at their homes in cities and towns across Venezuela. We then asked a group of independent forensic experts who help investigate torture allegations to assess the credibility of the men’s testimony.

Several doctors from that team, known as the Independent Forensic Expert Group, said the men’s testimonies, along with photographs of what they described as their injuries, were consistent and credible, providing “compelling evidence” to support accusations of torture. The group’s assessments in other cases have been used in courts around the world...

The forensic experts said that they were struck by how similar the men’s allegations were. The former prisoners, each interviewed separately, described the same timeline and methods of abuse, with many of the same details.

When such “identical methods of abuse” are described by multiple people, the experts wrote in their assessment, it “often indicates the existence of an institutional policy and practice of torture.”

Presented with the men’s accusations and the experts’ findings, a White House spokeswoman, Abigail Jackson, said: “President Trump is committed to keeping his promises to the American people by removing dangerous criminal and terrorist illegal aliens who pose a threat to the American public.”

Inside Syria’s Most Fearsome Prison Tens of thousands of Syrians were thrown into Sednaya during the Assad regime. The New York Times created a 3-D model of the prison.; The New York Times, August 29, 2025

Christina Goldbaum, Charlie Smart, Helmuth Rosales, Anjali Singhvi and Reham Mourshed, The New York Times; Inside Syria’s Most Fearsome Prison: Tens of thousands of Syrians were thrown into Sednaya during the Assad regime. The New York Times created a 3-D model of the prison. 

[Kip Currier: This story about Syria's brutal Sednaya prison is a difficult one to read and view. It's shocking to see how monstrously the people -- activists, artists, politicians, writers, citizens of all kinds -- warehoused to languish and die in this savage place were mistreated, tortured, and murdered.

But it's also an important one to digest and contemplate and not look away from. To think about all of the human beings who were impacted by this horrific prison. And to reflect on the human beings -- the leaders with power and privilege -- who sanctioned the existence of such a barbaric place and system for so long.

The sermon of an Episcopal priest I was fortunate to hear yesterday encouraged the parishioners to pray for individuals who are in prisons, as well as for humane treatment of the imprisoned by those who are charged with looking after them during their incarceration. We were reminded by the priest that some people are also imprisoned unjustly. Just as the 1st century Apostle Paul was imprisoned by the Roman Empire, merely for speaking and evangelizing.

Specifically, too, we were asked to pray for detainees in an ICE facility in Philipsburg, Pennsylvania.

We mustn't become indifferent to the injustices and suffering that people in this world experience. Or to the dignity, respect, due process, and rule of law to which every person is entitled, no matter their economic circumstances or legal status.]

[Excerpt]

"NO PLACE IN SYRIA was more feared than Sednaya prison during the Assad family’s decades-long, iron-fisted rule.

Situated on a barren hilltop on the outskirts of Damascus, the capital, Sednaya was at the heart of the Assads’ extensive system of torture prisons and arbitrary arrests used to crush all dissent.

By the end of the nearly 14-year civil war that culminated in December with the fall of President Bashar al-Assad, it had become a haunting symbol of the dictator’s ruthlessness.

Over the years, the regime’s security apparatus swallowed up hundreds of thousands of activists, journalists, students and dissidents from all over Syria — many never to be heard from again.

Most prisoners did not expect to make it out of Sednaya alive. They watched as men detained with them withered away or simply lost the will to live. Tens of thousands of others were executed, according to rights groups."

Venezuelans deported by Trump to El Salvador describe ‘horror movie’ mega-prison; The Guardian, July 24, 2025

Marina Dunbar and agency , The Guardian; Venezuelans deported by Trump to El Salvador describe ‘horror movie’ mega-prison

"Arturo Suárez, whose reggaeton songs surfaced on social media after he was sent to El Salvador, arrived at his family’s home in the Venezuelan capital, Caracas, on Tuesday. His sister hugged him after he emerged from a vehicle belonging to the country’s intelligence service.

“It is hell. We met a lot of innocent people,” Suárez told reporters, referring to the prison he was held in. “To all those who mistreated us, to all those who negotiated with our lives and our freedom, I have one thing to say, and scripture says it well: vengeance and justice is mine, and you are going to give an account to God [the] Father.”...

Meanwhile, Andry José Hernández Romero, a gay makeup artist who had been deported to Cecot under an obscure wartime law invoked by the Trump administration, was among those released.

Romero had entered the US legally through the CBP One app last summer, seeking asylum, but eventually was detained and removed to El Salvador with the others.

The Immigrant Defenders Law Center, based in Los Angeles, is now appealing Romero’s case, according to ABC, asserting that he was denied his legal right to seek asylum.

Romero broke down in tears when he was finally reunited with his parents in Venezuela on Wednesday, reported ABC News 10.

“His entire town was waiting for him, preparing a meal,” said Melissa Shepard, legal services director at the California non-profit."

Tears of joy and sadness as ‘disappeared’ Syrians emerge from Assad’s prisons; The Guardian, December 8, 2024

 Bethan McKernan, The Guardian; Tears of joy and sadness as ‘disappeared’ Syrians emerge from Assad’s prisons

"s Syrian rebels led by the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) captured city after city on the road to Damascus, forcing Bashar al-Assad to flee the country, they also opened the doors of the regime’s notorious prisons, into which upwards of 100,000 people disappeared during nearly 14 years of civil war...

Verified videos from Damascus showed dozens of women and small children being held in cells, the rebels opening the doors telling them not to be afraid...

The photos and videos of reunited families are bittersweet. The stories of the prisoners are astonishing; they will take years to be told in full, further grim evidence of the crimes the Assad family committed against so many of their own people...

Raghad al-Tatary, a pilot who refused to bomb the city of Hama during the uprising against Hafez al-Assad in the 1980s, was freed after 43 years; Tal al-Mallouhi, 19 when she was arrested in 2009 for a blogpost criticising state corruption, was found alive."

We can’t ignore this brutal cleansing in China; The Washington Post, August 14, 2018

Editorial Board, The Washington Post;

We can’t ignore this brutal cleansing in China

 

"Hundreds of thousands of ethnic Uighurs, along with Kazakhs and other Muslim minorities, have been sequestered in the camps, which now number more than 1,000, according to outside experts. An estimated 2 million other people have been forced to undergo indoctrination sessions without formal detention. Those detained include Uighur intellectuals and relatives of journalists who have reported on the campaign, including those of U.S.-sponsored Radio Free Asia. Ms. McDougall said more than 100 Uighur students returning from abroad had disappeared and some had died.

Inside the camps, detainees are bombarded with propaganda, forced to recite slogans and sing songs in exchange for food, and pressured to renounce Muslim practices. A statement released by Chinese dissidents last week said torture in the centers is common, as are deaths. In all, the campaign is the largest and most brutal repression the regime has undertaken since the Cultural Revolution."