Former Bosnian Serb Army commander Ratko Mladi? was sentenced to life imprisonment by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, for crimes committed during the Bosnian conflict from 1992 to 1996. Mladi? was found guilty of two counts of genocide and five counts of crimes against humanity, including persecution, extermination, deportation and inhuman acts.
Riot police raided a bookstore in the Belarusian city of Hrodno, interrupting a lecture by anarchist historian Pyotr Ryabov, who was visiting from Moscow, and arresting him on the pretext of breaking up an "unsanctioned mass gathering." Ryabov, who had been giving a presentation on "Libertarian Social Thought," was convicted on charges of "hooliganism" and sentenced to six days in jail. He spent the six days on hunger strike
Hundreds of thousands filled the streets of Barcelona as a general strike was called to protest “grave violation of rights and freedoms” by Spanish security forces during the vote on independence for Catalonia. Civil Guard troops mobilized to Catalonia are being cheered along the way by crowds of right-wing Spanish nationalists waving the national flag and chanting provocatively, “Viva Franco!”
Crimean Tatar leader Ilmi Umerov was convicted by Russian-appointed judges on spurious "separatism" charges, and sentenced to two years. Human Rights Watch called his sentencing "ruthless retaliation" for his opposition to Moscow's annexation of Crimea and suspension of the Tatars' autonomous government.
A UN Human Rights Office report charges Russia with forced disappearances, torture and persecution of the Tatar minority in annexed Crimea. Ukraine meanwhile passes an education law that discriminates against minority languages such as Russian and Hungarian.
A Moscow district court rejected a lawsuit by relatives of Raoul Wallenberg, seeking to access uncensored documents concerning his death in Soviet captivity. Wallenberg was a Swedish diplomat who rescued thousands of Hungarian Jews during World War II. Soviet forces detained Wallenberg in 1945, supposedly for espionage. He was reported to have died two years later in Moscow's notorious Lubyanka Prison.
The Security Service of Ukraine stated that the hackers behind the recent global cyber-attack are the same Kremlin-backed outfit that conducted an attack on Ukraine's power grid in December.
The first hearing in Russia's case against Crimean Tatar leader Ilmi Umerov opened in Simferopol, in what Ukrainian rights advocates decry as a "Soviet-style" show trial.
The yellow press and much of the "left" react identically to the Manchester terror: by blaming "regime change" in Libya and demonizing refugees from the Arab world.
The UN Special Rapporteur on Belarus reports that the human rights situation in the ex-Soviet republic has dramatically deteriorated since the repression of a new round of protests.
A Ukrainian general closely linked to the intelligence services called for "destruction" of the country's Jews—providing fodder for the portrayal of Russian aggression as "anti-fascism."
Separatist group ETA said in a communique that it will not abandon its goal of an independent Basque state on the French-Spanish borderlands despite surrendering its arms.
