Monday, February 16, 2026
■ Today's Top News
The Hind Rajab Foundation filed the complaint, citing universal jurisdiction and Chile's law against genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes.
By Brett Wilkins
A Brussels-based human rights group on Monday filed a criminal complaint in Chile seeking the prosecution of an Israel Defense Forces sniper accused of taking part in the deadly 2024 siege and destruction of Gaza’s largest hospital.
The Hind Rajab Foundation (HRF)—named after the young Palestinian girl who was killed in January 2024 along with six relatives and two rescue workers by IDF troops in Gaza City—said it filed the complaint in the 8th Guarantee Court in Santiago, the Chilean capital, requesting investigation and prosecution of Rom Kovtun, an Israeli Ukrainian sniper in the 424th “Shaked” Battalion of the Givati Brigade, under Chilean Law 20.357.
The law criminalizes genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes under the Rome Statute, the 1998 treaty establishing the International Criminal Court (ICC), which in 2024 issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for alleged murder and forced starvation in Gaza.
HRF’s complaint was formally submitted by Chilean lawyer Pablo Andrés Araya Zacarías, a partner at Silva-Riesco Abogados. The filing invokes universal jurisdiction—the legal principle empowering states to investigate and prosecute individuals for heinous crimes regardless of where they occurred—based on Kovtun’s presence in Chile and Israel’s refusal to prosecute him.
According to the complaint, Kovtun took part in the March-April 2024 siege and attack on al-Shifa Hospital in the Rimal neighborhood of Gaza City. The World Health Organization said at least 21 patients were killed during attacks on the facility, while Gaza officials claimed the toll was much higher.
Survivors and witnesses said IDF troops executed civilians during the raid on al-Shifa, including 13 children. The IDF denied the allegations. Doctors, nurses, and other hospital workers were also abducted and allegedly tortured by their IDF captors. Israeli claims that Hamas fighters were using al-Shifa as a command center were subsequently debunked as lies.
Hundreds of Palestinian bodies—some with bound limbs and signs of torture and execution—were found outside the hospital after IDF troops withdrew from the area, although it is not known if they were all killed there.
“The targeting and destruction of a functioning hospital during a military siege strike at the core of international humanitarian law,” HRF general director Dyab Abou Jahjah said on Monday. “When evidence indicates that a sniper participated in such an operation, domestic courts cannot look away. Universal jurisdiction exists to ensure that the most serious crimes do not go unexamined simply because they were committed abroad.”
HRF head of litigation Natacha Bracq said that “international humanitarian law grants special protection to hospitals, medical personnel, and the wounded.”
“The encirclement and destruction of a functioning medical complex, combined with the deprivation of food, water, and medical care, are not collateral damage—they constitute war crimes, crimes against humanity, and acts of genocide,” she added.
Israel is facing a genocide case filed by South Africa at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which has issued multiple provisional orders for Israel to avoid genocidal acts in Gaza. Critics say Israel has ignored the orders.
Chile embraced universal jurisdiction in the decades following the fall of the US-backed military dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet, whose 1998 arrest in London for crimes against humanity stemmed from an international warrant issued by Spanish judge Baltasar Garzón based on universal jurisdiction.
HRF, which was founded in the Belgian capital in September 2024, has filed numerous legal complaints targeting alleged IDF war criminals. In one case, Israel helped an IDF soldier targeted by the group while vacationing in Brazil to flee the country in order to avoid arrest.
In October 2024, HRF filed what it called an “unprecedented” complaint at the ICC—which, like the ICJ, is located in The Hague, Netherlands—against 1,000 IDF troops accused of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide in Gaza. One year later, HRF filed another ICC complaint against 24 IDF members allegedly involved in the killing of Hind Rajab, her relatives, and two paramedics.
While there have been no known prosecutions of any individuals targeted by HRF, last May Peru formally opened a probe into “an Israeli national accused of participating in the genocide in Gaza.”
A government agency "cannot arbitrarily decide what is true, based on its own whims or the whims of the new leadership, regardless of the evidence before it," said the Republican-appointed judge.
By Jessica Corbett
“Happy Presidents Day!” a journalist declared Monday in response to a federal judge’s opinion that compares President Donald Trump’s administration removing displays about slavery from a historical site in Philadelphia to the actions of the propaganda agency in George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984.
Judge Cynthia Rufe—appointed to the Eastern District of Pennsylvania by former Republican President George W. Bush—began by quoting the iconic 1949 critique of totalitarianism: “All history was a palimpsest, scraped clean, and reinscribed exactly as often as was necessary. In no case would it have been possible, once the deed was done, to prove that any falsification had taken place.”
The judge then wrote that “as if the Ministry of Truth in George Orwell’s 1984 now existed, with its motto ‘Ignorance is Strength,’ this court is now asked to determine whether the federal government has the power it claims—to dissemble and disassemble historical truths when it has some domain over historical facts. It does not.”
“The President’s House is a component of Independence National Historical Park that commemorates the site of the first official presidential residence and the people who lived there, including people enslaved by President George Washington,” she explained on the federal holiday established to honor the first US president. “On January 22, 2026, the National Park Service (NPS) removed panels, displays, and video exhibits that referenced slavery and information about the individuals enslaved at the President’s House.”
The removal followed Trump’s March executive order aimed at ensuring “federal sites dedicated to history, including parks and museums,” are not subjected to what he called “ideological indoctrination or divisive narratives that distort our shared history,” which is just one piece of the president’s “war on history” and embrace of authoritarianism.
Relying on the Administrative Procedures Act, Philadelphia sued the NPS and acting Director Jessica Bowron, as well as the parent agency, the US Department of the Interior, and its secretary, Doug Burgum, over the removal of the slavery exhibits.
“In its argument, the government claims it alone has the power to erase, alter, remove, and hide historical accounts on taxpayer and local government-funded monuments within its control. Its claims in this regard echo Big Brother’s domain in Orwell’s 1984,” Rufe wrote in her 40-page opinion. She cited the novel’s description of the largest section in the fictional government’s Records Department, which “consisted simply of persons whose duty it was to track down and collect all copies of books, newspapers, and other documents which had been superseded and were due for destruction.”
According to Rufe, “The government here likewise asserts truth is no longer self-evident, but rather the property of the elected chief magistrate and his appointees and delegees, at his whim to be scraped clean, hidden, or overwritten. And why? Solely because, as defendants state, it has the power.”
“An agency, whether the Department of the Interior, NPS, or any other agency, cannot arbitrarily decide what is true, based on its own whims or the whims of the new leadership, regardless of the evidence before it,” Rufe stressed. She found that the federal defendants “completely ignored their legislatively imposed duties,” took actions that “impede the separation of powers instituted by the Constitution,” and “acted in excess of their authority as agencies authorized by Congress within the executive branch.”
The judge determined that Philadelphia “is likely to prevail on its claims that the removal was arbitrary and capricious,” and “met its burden to establish irreparable harm.” She concluded that “the balance of harms and the public interest tip in the city’s favor.” Her preliminary injunction requires the reinstallation of “all panels, displays, and video exhibits that were previously in place,” and bars defendants from “any additions, removals, destruction, or further changes of any kind to the President’s House site.”
Politico senior legal affairs reporter Kyle Cheney flagged the opinion on social media, highlighting the Orwell references. His posts gathered thousands of reposts and responses, including from observers who were alarmed by the administration’s actions and welcomed the judge’s decision.
“Federal judges continue to speak up and speak out. It is amazing to see one quote George Orwell, but it also feels appropriate at a time when we see so many attacks on the rule of law,” said Lawyers Defending American Democracy.
Democratic Montgomery County Commissioner Neil Makhija wrote on Bluesky: “Proud of this result. The court cited Orwell’s 1984 recognizing that we can’t just erase hard truths from our history. Montgomery County was proud to join Bucks, Chester, and Delaware Counties in filing an amicus brief to support preserving the President’s House slavery exhibits. Happy Presidents Day.”
"Minnesota needs impartial investigations into the shootings of American citizens on our streets," said Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz. "Trump’s left hand cannot investigate his right hand."
By Brad Reed
President Donald Trump’s administration has officially denied law enforcement officials in Minnesota access to evidence related to the fatal shooting of Minneapolis intensive care nurse Alex Pretti last month.
In a Monday announcement, the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA) revealed that the FBI on Friday delivered a formal notification informing the agency that will not receive “access to any information or evidence that it has collected” related to Pretti’s shooting at the hands of federal immigration enforcement officials.
BCA described the refusal to share evidence as “concerning and unprecedented,” but it vowed to conduct a “thorough, independent, and transparent” investigation into the Pretti shooting “even if hampered by a lack of access to key information and evidence.”
In addition to requesting evidence gathered in the Pretti shooting, the BCA reiterated its call for federal law enforcement to share whatever evidence it has collected in relation to last month’s fatal shooting of Minneapolis mother Renee Good and the shooting of Venezuelan immigrant Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis.
“BCA investigations of these incidents continue,” the agency vowed. “The BCA will present its findings without recommendation to the appropriate prosecutorial authorities for review.”
Democratic Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz slammed the Trump administration for denying his state’s officials access to evidence, and he demanded a real investigation into Pretti’s killing.
“Minnesota needs impartial investigations into the shootings of American citizens on our streets,” he wrote in a social media post. “Trump’s left hand cannot investigate his right hand. The families of the deceased deserve better.”
In a Sunday interview with CBS News Minnesota, Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty revealed that her office was not getting any help from the federal government in its investigation into the Pretti shooting, though she said her team was continuing to gather evidence and interview witnesses.
Moriarty emphasized that her office, which is currently working with the Minnesota BCA in its investigation, can bring criminal charges against federal immigration officers if they have enough evidence to do so, even without the cooperation of the Trump administration.
The head of Amnesty International slammed the "reprehensible" attacks on Albanese "based on a deliberately truncated video."
By Brett Wilkins
Human rights advocates, United Nations officials, and prominent international artists are among those defending UN independent Palestine expert Francesca Albanese in recent days amid a smear campaign by several European foreign ministers and pro-Israel groups, who are demanding her firing over alleged antisemitic remarks she never made.
The foreign ministers of Austria, the Czech Republic, France, and Germany have publicly called for Albanese’s resignation or termination after the pro-Israel group UN Watch—which is unaffiliated with the world body—circulated an edited video of the 48-year-old Italian jurist purportedly calling Israel “the common enemy of humanity” during a February 7 speech at a forum in Doha, Qatar organized by Al Jazeera.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said last week that he will demand Albanese’s resignation or removal during the upcoming UN Human Rights Council meeting, calling her alleged remarks “outrageous and reprehensible.”
Other European officials piled on, with German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul calling her continued service as a UN expert “untenable.”
However, what’s “reprehensible,” Amnesty International secretary general Agnès Callamard argued Saturday, is that the foreign ministers attacked Albanese “based on a deliberately truncated video to misrepresent and gravely misconstrue her messages.”
This is what Albanese actually said in Doha:
The fact that instead of stopping Israel, most of the world has armed, given Israel political excuses, political sheltering, economic and financial support. This is a challenge. The fact that most of the media in the Western world has been amplifying the pro-apartheid genocidal narrative is a challenge. At the same time, here also lays the opportunity. Because if international law has been stabbed in the heart, it’s also true that never before the global community has seen the challenges that we all face. We who do not control large amounts of financial capitals, algorithms, and weapons, we now see that we as a humanity have a common enemy, and freedoms, the respect of fundamental freedoms is the last peaceful avenue, the last peaceful toolbox that we have to regain our freedom.
“The ministers that have spread disinformation must act beyond merely deleting their comments on social media—as some have done,” Callamard said. “They must publicly apologize and retract any calls for Francesca Albanese’s resignation. Their governments must also investigate how this disinformation happened with a view to preventing such situations.”
“If only these ministers had been as loud and forceful in confronting a state committing genocide, unlawful occupation, and apartheid as they have in attacking a UN expert,” she added. “Their cowardice and refusal to hold Israel accountable stand in stark contrast to the special rapporteur’s unwavering commitment to speaking truth to power.”
On Monday, Philippe Lazzarini, who heads the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), said in a statement that “how we act in the face of fake news and vicious disinformation campaigns is a sign of our moral compass.”
“Over and over during the war in Gaza, we have seen how coordinated campaigns seek to discredit and silence those who speak out about human rights impacts and violations of international humanitarian law,” Lazzarini added. “The latest attacks on Francesca Albanese—an independent expert mandated... to monitor the situation in the occupied Palestinian territory—aim at silencing her voice and undermining the few remaining independent human rights reporting mechanisms.”
Israeli forces have killed more than 370 UNRWA staff members since October 2023. Lazzarini and others have also accused Israeli forces of torturing UNRWA staffers in a bid to force false confessions corroborating their dubious allegations that members of the humanitarian agency are Hamas fighters. The International Court of Justice (ICJ)—which is weighing a genocide case against Israel filed by South Africa—found last year that UNRWA has not been infiltrated by Hamas, as claimed by Israeli leaders.
More than 100 prominent international actors, musicians, writers, and other creatives with Artists for Palestine have also signed an open letter supporting Albanese.
“According to the Israeli army itself, at least 83% of those murdered are civilians,” the letter states. “What has the French state done about this for over two years? It has not imposed sanctions against a state that is openly—and even proudly—flouting international law.”
“Worse yet, through political, diplomatic, moral, and material support, the French state, like many of its European counterparts, allowed this senseless massacre to continue, thereby violating all its legal obligations,” the letter continues. “On July 29, 2025, a complaint against [French President] Emmanuel Macron, Jean-Noël Barrot, and other members of the French executive was filed by 114 lawyers before the [International Criminal Court], for ‘complicity in genocide in Gaza.’”
The letter’s signers including actors Javier Bardem, Mark Ruffalo, and Susan Sarandon; musicians Brian Eno, Peter Gabriel, and Annie Lennox; and authors Annie Ernaux and Alice Walker.
Albanese has long been targeted for her vocal opposition to what she and a UN expert panel on which she did not serve call Israel’s genocide in Gaza. The administration of President Donald Trump has imposed sanctions on her after she highlighted US companies’ complicity in the Gaza slaughter. US officials have also attempted to discredit her work and called for her removal.
Albanese responded to the attacks by highlighting the number of Palestinian children killed by Israeli forces in Gaza, saying on X Friday that “three European governments accuse me—based on statements I never made—with a virulence and conviction that they have NEVER used against those who have slaughtered 20,000+ children in 858 days.”
Albanese underscored that her Doha remarks clearly meant that “the common enemy of humanity is THE SYSTEM that has enabled the genocide in Palestine, including the financial capital that funds it, the algorithms that obscure it, and the weapons that enable it.”
"You are being screwed, and that story is not a cultural one but a class one."
By Brad Reed
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Sunday fleshed out her vision for progressive politics in the US during a town hall-style event at
Technical University Berlin in Germany.
While discussing the domestic political situation in the US, Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) argued that enormous disparities in wealth inequality were leaving voters open to appeals from far-right movements that scapegoat immigrants and minorities for problems being caused by unchecked corporate power.
“When you have economic stagnation for the working class, especially in an environment where GDP is growing, that is the stuff of populist movements,” said Ocasio-Cortez. “The choice is what direction those populist movements can go... One direction is, ‘We are going to blame this on the vulnerable, on immigrants, on people of different gender identities.”
The New York Democrat then argued that right-wing populism “is all done as a distraction from the truth, which is that economic elites have taken the lion’s share of growth for themselves” while “leaving crumbs for the working class.”
“The alternative is a populist movement that tells the truth,” she continued. “That says, ‘This is an injustice, you are being screwed over, and that story is not a cultural one, but a class one.’”
Elsewhere in the talk, Ocasio-Cortez downplayed speculation about potentially running for higher office in 2028, instead outlining her goals for reshaping the political environment.
“My ambition has always been about conditions,” she said. “I remain ambitious, but my ambitions are in changing our political environment. That’s why, when I was first elected, my ambition was to change the Democratic Party, and to make it more economically populist and responsive to working-class Americans... Frankly, I think the ambitions of a progressive movement go so far beyond an elected office. We are coming for power for working people.”
Ocasio-Cortez also gave a shoutout to the resistance to federal immigration enforcement operations as an example of building community solidarity in the face of an external threat.
“Every one of us can be sand in the gears of an injustice,” she said. “I think about how all the people in Minneapolis refused to let [US Immigration and Customs Enforcement] officers use the bathroom in their establishments. I mean, it’s a small thing, but it matters! It matters... We create a culture of protection of one another, a culture of solidarity with one another, and it’s rebellious.”
Ocasio-Cortez’s remarks on Sunday came after she participated in a panel discussion at the Munich Security Conference on Friday where she argued that “a working-class-centered politics” was the key to defeat “the scourges of authoritarianism, which provide political siren calls to allure people into finding scapegoats to blame for rising economic inequality, both domestically and globally.”
One analyst called the US secretary of state's address "one of the most revisionist and imperialist speeches I've ever seen a senior American official make, and that's saying something."
By Jake Johnson
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s defense of Western colonialism and imperial power at the Munich Security Conference and the applause his remarks received from attendees were seen as deeply unsettling in the context of the Trump administration’s brazen trampling of international law, including the recent kidnapping of the president of a sovereign nation.
While Rubio gave lip service in his remarks to multilateral cooperation with Europe in what he called the global “task of renewal and restoration,” he made clear the US would carry out its agenda alone if needed and accused European allies of succumbing to a “climate cult,” embracing “free and unfettered trade,” and opening their doors to “unprecedented wave of mass migration that threatens the cohesion of our societies,” echoing the rhetoric of his boss, US President Donald Trump.
Rubio lamented the decline of the “great Western empires” in the face of “godless communist revolutions and by anti-colonial uprisings that would transform the world and drape the red hammer and sickle across vast swaths of the map in the years to come”—and made clear that the Trump administration envisions a return to “the West’s age of dominance.”
“We in America have no interest in being polite and orderly caretakers of the West’s managed decline,” said Rubio. “We do not seek to separate, but to revitalize an old friendship and renew the greatest civilization in human history.”
Attendees at the Munich conference—which notably did not include representatives of Latin America at a time when the Trump administration is embracing and expanding the Monroe Doctrine—gave Rubio a standing ovation:
“Standing ovation for Rubio in Munich. Standing ovation for Netanyahu in Washington,” wrote Progressive International co-general coordinator David Adler, referring to the Israeli prime minister’s visit to the US capital last week. “We are ruled by a transatlantic clique of criminals and midwit minions who clap like seals when their white supremacy is laundered by the language of ‘Western values.’ Sick stuff.”
Critics viewed the US secretary of state’s speech—both the explicit words and its undertones—as a self-serving interpretation of the past and a dangerous vision of the future, and expressed alarm at the celebratory response from the Munich crowd.
Geopolitical analyst Arnaud Bertrand called Rubio’s address “one of the most revisionist and imperialist speeches I’ve ever seen a senior American official make, and that’s saying something.”
“Basically the man is openly saying that the whole post-colonial order was a mistake and he’s calling on Europe to share the spoils of building a new one,” Bertrand wrote on social media. “When an imperial power is speaking to you of sentiments, of how much they like you and how they want to partner with you—the much weaker party—that’s cause for worry, not applause.”
Nathalie Tocci, a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Europe, compared Rubio’s address to US Vice President JD Vance’s openly hostile attack on European nations during his Munich speech last year.
“Rubio’s message was more sophisticated and strategic than Vance’s. But it was just as dangerous, if not more so, precisely because it lowered the transatlantic temperature and may have lulled Europe into a false sense of calm,” Tocci wrote in a Guardian op-ed on Monday. “As Benjamin Haddad, France’s Europe minister, said in Munich, the European temptation may be to press the snooze button once again.”
“If Europeans were comforted by a false sense of reassurance as they walked away from the packed Bayerischer Hof hotel in Munich,” Tocci added, “they risk walking straight into the trap that MAGA America has laid for them.”
