cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/2693133

Former Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan has been given three-year jail sentence over corruption allegations.

A court in Islamabad found him guilty of not declaring money he had earned from selling state gifts. He denies the charges and says he will appeal.

After the verdict, Mr Khan was taken into custody from his home in Lahore.

The former cricketer, 70, was elected in 2018, but was ousted in a no-confidence vote last year after falling out with Pakistan's powerful military.

Mr Khan is facing more than 100 cases brought against him since his removal - charges he says are politically motivated.

Saturday's verdict centred on charges that he incorrectly declared details of presents from foreign dignitaries and proceeds from their alleged sale.

The gifts - reported to be worth more than 140 million Pakistani rupees ($635,000) - included Rolex watches, a ring and a pair of cuff links.

Mr Khan's barrister Gohar Khan said the verdict was "a murder of justice".

"We weren't even given a chance. We weren't even allowed to cross [examine], to say anything in defence or conduct our arguments. I haven't seen this kind of injustice before," he told Dawn newspaper.

As the court decision was announced, a crowd, which included some prosecuting lawyers, began chanting "Imran Khan is a thief" outside the building.

His party, Tehreek-e-Insaf, confirmed to the BBC that after being arrested in Lahore, Mr Khan was flown to the capital, Islamabad, to begin serving his sentence.

For months he had avoided arrest, with his supporters at times fighting pitched battles with police to keep him out of custody.

In May, Mr Khan was arrested for not appearing at court as requested. He was then released, with the arrest declared illegal.

Since then, his party has been under intense pressure from the authorities.

Many senior officials have left and thousands of supporters have been arrested, accused of being involved in the protests that followed Mr Khan's arrest.

Pakistan's army plays a prominent role in politics, sometimes seizing power in military coups, and, on other occasions, pulling levers behind the scenes.

Many analysts believe Mr Khan's election win in 2018 happened with the help of the military.

In opposition, he has been one of its most vocal critics, and analysts say the army's popularity has fallen.

Since being ousted, Mr Khan has been campaigning for early elections.

Conviction would disqualify Mr Khan from standing for office, possibly for life.

Pakistan's parliament will be dissolved on August 9, leaving a caretaker government to take over in the run up to the elections.

No election date has been announced, although constitutionally they should take place by early November.

Canada's PM Justin Trudeau and his wife Sophie are separating after 18 years, following "meaningful and difficult conversations".

The couple said they would remain "a close family with deep love and respect" in an Instagram post.

They were married in Montreal in 2005 and have three children together.

In a statement, Mr Trudeau's office said that while the couple had signed separation agreement they will still make public appearances.

"They have worked to ensure that all legal and ethical steps with regards to their decision to separate have been taken, and will continue to do so moving forward," the statement said, adding they would be on holiday as a family next week.

The couple have asked for privacy for the "well-being" of their children, Xavier, 15, Ella-Grace 14, and Hadrien, nine.

"We remain a close family with deep love and respect for each other and for everything we have built and will continue to build," Mr Trudeau, 51, and Ms Gregoire Trudeau, 48, said.

They have been seen together publicly less frequently in recent years, though they attended the coronation of King Charles III together in May and hosted US President Joe Biden in Canada in March.

In a wedding anniversary post on Instagram in May 2022, Ms Gregoire Trudeau wrote about the challenges of long-term relationships, saying "we have navigated through sunny days, heavy storms, and everything in between".

The two began dating in 2003, when Ms Gregoire Trudeau was working as a TV personality. She is also known for her charity work around mental health and eating disorders.

Mr Trudeau was first elected prime minister in 2015.

Former President Donald Trump was indicted for an unprecedented third time on August 1, adding another set of serious federal charges to the mounting legal issues he faces.

Trump wasindicted as part of the Department of Justice’s criminal investigation, led by special counsel Jack Smith, into the January 6, 2021 insurrection at the US Capitol. The indictment marks the second time Trump has faced federal charges, and he remains the only president to have been federally indicted.

The indictment is the product of a months-long investigation in which Smith’s team questioned several high-profile members of Trump’s circle, including his son-in-law Jared Kushner and former White House communications director Hope Hicks. It follows the House January 6th committee’s investigation last year, which concluded that Trump incited the insurrection and conspired to defraud the US government, referring him and other associates to the DOJ for prosecution.

Trump seemed to know the indictment was coming. He posted August 1 on TruthSocial that Smith “will be putting out yet another Fake Indictment of your Favorite President, me,” and previously posted on the platform that he’d received what’s known as a target letter from Smith. He wrote, “They have now effectively indicted me three times,” and called the investigation a “WITCH HUNT” as well as “POLITICAL WEAPONIZATION OF LAW ENFORCEMENT” in that earlier, July 18 post.

Here’s what you need to know about what happens next.

Will Trump be arrested and go to jail?

Trump is not expected to be jailed following his arraignment, following a pattern established by his previous arraignments in New York and Miami. Trump was previously fingerprinted in those cases but was not put in handcuffs and did not have his mugshot taken. There were cameras allowed in the courtroom in New York, but not in Miami. He was also allowed to return home following both arraignments.

What does this mean for Trump’s 2024 campaign?

So far, Trump has simply brushed off his legal entanglements, and they appear to be helping him in the 2024 polls. He remains the frontrunner in the GOP primary, polling more than 30 percentage points on average ahead of Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

Whit Ayres, a Republican pollster, notes that previous indictments were easy for GOP voters to dismiss, but it’s unclear whether this latest indictment will follow that trend.

Many legal analysts have said Trump’s first indictment in New York has weak underpinnings, and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg had previously boasted about how many times he had sued the Trump administration during his campaign. Together, those factors left many Republicans waving away that indictment as a “partisan witch hunt.”

The second, in the case concerning Trump’s retention of classified documents after he left office, was a “blockbuster legally,” Ayres said, but given Bragg’s indictment had come before it, was easy for Republicans to brush it off yet again.

It’s difficult to know exactly what will happen now that Trump has been indicted for a third time. But if Republicans’ reaction to the House January 6 committee’s investigation is any indication, it might do little to sway the base.

“It was an article of faith among Republican voters that they weren’t going to watch the January 6 hearings. They just determined ahead of time that it was a partisan witch hunt, even though the vast majority of the witnesses were Trump employees, Trump confidants, and Trump staff members,” Ayres said.

That means that when it comes to the primary, this latest indictment seems unlikely to have a major effect on voters. However, it remains to be seen whether these indictments will cause moderates and independents to turn away from the former president.

Trump has already lost once to President Joe Biden, but in head-to-head matchups over the last month, some polls have him winning by as much as 7 percentage points, while others have him losing by as much as 6 percentage points. Much could change before November 2024, but should Trump be his party’s nominee, those numbers suggest a tight race in which losing moderates and independents in states like Georgia or Pennsylvania could be the difference between victory and defeat.

Overall, even in the best-case scenario for the former president, in which the legal issues have zero effect on his support, the cases will take away valuable time and money he could be spending on his campaign.

How are Trump’s Republican rivals reacting?

Republicans seeking the 2024 nomination have treaded lightly in using the investigations against Trump to attack him as unfit for another term.

Before news of the indictment broke, DeSantis said that Trump “should have come out more forcefully” against violence on January 6, but also told CNN, “I hope he doesn’t get charged.” Vivek Ramaswamy said that he “would have made very different judgments than President Trump did” that day. Nikki Haley suggested that she’s tired of the drama and said that, “We can’t be sitting there focused on lawsuits over and over again.”

All three indictments have presented a conundrum for those looking to displace Trump as the GOP frontrunner. Recognizing his continued grip on the Republican primary voters and the risk of alienating them, the candidates have largely refrained from criticizing Trump directly. But in so doing, they have also struggled to carve out distinct lanes and present a clear argument for why the party should dump Trump. What happens next?

As with the cases against Trump in New York and Florida, the January 6 case could extend well into the 2024 campaign season — or even beyond the election.

Smith has sought a speedy trial in the classified documents case, which is currently scheduled for May 2024, and it’s possible that he will do so in the January 6 case. (Trump, on the other hand, had pushed to delay the trial in the documents case later than the 2024 election to accommodate his campaign calendar.)

Kevin O’Brien, a former federal prosecutor in New York, said it’s unclear whether the January 6 case can feasibly be decided before the 2024 election. It is much bigger in scope and therefore may take longer to resolve, but also carries significant public interest.

“The subject matter has had direct implications for our democratic process. And you can argue the voters should be exposed to that evidence and know [the jury verdict] in that case,” he said.

If Trump wins the 2024 election, then it “would be a brouhaha,” O’Brien said. Any unresolved federal charges would likely become moot under the longstanding DOJ policy that a sitting president cannot be indicted. But if he’s convicted before assuming office, that would create a constitutional question: whether he could later pardon himself

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/2375580

A powerful bomb ripped through a rally by supporters of a hardline political and Muslim leader in the country’s northwestern Bajur district that borders Afghanistan on Sunday, killing at least 35 people, local officials said.

Azam Khan, head of the emergency room at Khar’s main hospital, said 35 bodies were brought to the hospital while the number of wounded was now more than 100.

Government administrator Mohibullah Khan Yousufzai confirmed the toll, adding that those serious wounded were being airlifted to the provincial capital, Peshawar, for better medical care.

No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack.

Senior police officer Nazir Khan said the workers’ convention of Maulana Fazlur Rehman’s Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam party was taking place on the outskirts of Khar, the capital of Bajur district, when the explosion took place.

Akhtar Hayat Gandapur, the inspector general of police for Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, said explosion took place before the senior party leader’s arrival.

Al Jazeera’s Kamal Hyder, reporting from Islamabad, said that while the attack was confirmed as a suicide bombing, there were fears that the armed group Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP) may be responsible for it.

Rehman is considered to be a pro-Taliban cleric and his political party is part of the coalition government in Islamabad.

Meetings are being organised across the country to mobilise supporters for the coming elections, due to be held by October.

Rapper Ye’s account on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, is no longer suspended, a journalist from the New York Times first reported.

“Twitter/X says Kanye West’s account is being “turned back on,” the Times’ tech reporter Ryan Mac posted. “It will be ineligible for a monetization and no ads will appear next to his posts, according to the company.”

Mac also pointed out that the account has been given a gold check mark — supposedly reserved for “official business accounts.”

Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, was suspended from the platform — owned by billionaire Elon Musk — more than six months ago, after sharing an image depicting the Star of David with a swastika inside of it.

“I tried my best. Despite that, he again violated our rule against incitement to violence. Account will be suspended,” Musk wrote after the suspension.

In the months leading up to Ye’s suspension, he repeatedly made antisemitic comments online and offline. Watchdog group StopAntisemitism.org even named him “Antisemite of the Year” after he became embroiled in controversy over a string of derogatory comments against Jews.

When Musk bought the platform, he touted plans to change its content moderation rules to allow for more “free speech.” However, when Ye tweeted the controversial image, he drew the line.

Musk has not publicly commented on the renewal of Ye’s account nor responded to requests for comment.

The US Department of Justice has opened a civil rights investigation into the city of Memphis and its police department, months after the beating death of a 29-year-old Black motorist catapulted local law-enforcement tactics into the national spotlight.

At a news conference on Thursday, Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke acknowledged the outrage that followed the killing of Tyre Nichols, who died in hospital after being pulled from his car during a traffic stop, and tackled and assaulted by police.

“In January of this year, the nation witnessed the tragic death of Tyre Nichols at the hands of Memphis police,” Clarke told reporters.

“City and police department leaders recognised the need to scrutinise the police department’s practices to prevent such incidents from ever happening again.”

But Clarke underscored that the investigation was not “based on a single incident or event”, and she described “multiple reports of officers escalating encounters” in the city.

“There are also indications that officers made use of force punitively when faced with behaviour they perceived to be insolent,” she said. “The information we reviewed also shows that officers may use force against people who are already restrained or in custody.”

Clarke also said that traffic stops like Nichols’s are not uncommon in Memphis, where nearly 65 percent of residents identify as Black, according to the 2022 census.

“Our review indicates that even in a majority Black city, MPD’s [Memphis Police Department’s] traffic enforcement may focus disproportionately on the Black community,” she said.

Memphis is the latest city in the United States to face a federal civil rights investigation as the country continues to grapple with widespread calls to address police violence, particularly against Black people and other people of colour.

In June, the Justice Department concluded a similar probe in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where the 2020 police killing of George Floyd sparked protests around the world.

The investigation found that Minneapolis police had discriminated against Black and Indigenous people, among others. It also found “unjustified deadly force” had been used.

Similarly, the Justice Department found civil rights violations in Louisville, Kentucky, in a separate investigation that concluded in March.

Those findings echoed widespread concerns about abuse of power and discriminatory practices in US police departments.

A 2021 report in the medical journal The Lancet found that half of all deaths due to police violence between 1980 and 2018 went unreported in a federal database. Of those, an estimated 9,540 Black deaths went unaccounted for or mislabelled.

The study also noted that Black men were 2.5 times more likely to be killed by police than their white counterparts.

In the Nichols case, much of the attention has focused on Memphis’s so-called “Scorpion Unit”, the elite police team that carried out his arrest.

The Scorpion Unit was designed to address violent crime in the city, though advocates say it has contributed to an aggressive, “cowboy” police culture.

Memphis has seen a 5.4 percent increase in violent crime since 2022, part of an upward trend since 2011.

Clarke acknowledged that the Tennessee city faced “one of the country’s highest rates of violent crime”. “When crime is high, there is an understandable urgency to respond,” she said.

But Kevin Ritz, the US attorney for the Western District of Tennessee, emphasised that law enforcement’s primary responsibility is to protect. “Here’s the thing. Public safety requires public trust in law enforcement,” he said.

“The police officers who risk their lives every day in the line of duty need the public to trust them. Community trust makes policing more effective and less dangerous for both officers and the people they protect.”

The civil rights investigation will weigh whether Memphis and its police violated the US Constitution or federal civil rights law in a “systematic way”.

Unlike a criminal investigation, which may end with charges, the probe will culminate in a report if violations are found.

The Justice Department will then work with the city and police officials to reach an agreement on next steps. Should the parties fail to agree on remedies, the Justice Department has the option to bring a civil lawsuit against Memphis.

The Memphis probe is the Justice Department’s ninth such investigation during US President Joe Biden’s administration.

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