Suit claims state department is deliberately bypassing the Leahy law. Plus, New York grand jury charges Luigi Mangione with first-degree murder
Good morning.
The US state department is facing a new lawsuit – brought by Palestinians and Palestinian Americans – accusing it of deliberately circumventing a decades-old human rights law by continuing to fund Israeli military units accused of widespread atrocities in the occupied Palestinian territories.
What is the Leahy law? Enacted in 1997, it was designed to prohibit US assistance to any security forces that the US identifies as being ineligible due to a gross violation of human rights. But, as one former state official told the Guardian earlier this year: “The rules were different for Israel.”
What are the aims of the lawsuit? With the death toll in Gaza since last October reportedly approaching 45,000, humanitarian aid to the territory severely restricted, millions of people displaced and infrastructure decimated, the legal challenge demands judicial intervention to force the US to comply with the law.
What happens now? The Kremlin has not yet indicated how it will retaliate. But RIA reported that the former president Dmitry Medvedev, now a senior Russian security official, said Ukraine’s military and political leadership faced revenge.
What’s the latest on the frontlines? Russian forces took control of the villages of Trudove and Stari Terny in eastern Ukraine, RIA claimed. Meanwhile, North Korean forces have suffered “several hundred” casualties, according to a senior US military official.
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