The Stockholm Center for Freedom reports that two international legal organizations—Lawyers for Lawyers and the Law Society of England and Wales—have called on Turkish authorities to release three attorneys detained ahead of the NATO summit in Ankara. In a joint statement, the groups said the detention of Semra Demir, Kürşat Bafra, and Doğa İncesu appeared …
Human Rights Watch reports that Turkish police arrested at least 209 people in Ankara in overnight raids on June 22–23, 2026, ahead of the NATO summit scheduled there for July 7–8. Those detained included political activists, lawyers, an academic, and a journalist known as a prominent LGBT rights advocate. Authorities cited efforts to counter “terrorist …
Dozens of prominent Israelis — including two former prime ministers (Ehud Olmert and Ehud Barak), former heads of the country’s security services, retired judges, a Nobel laureate, and leading cultural figures — have threatened legal action against the Israeli government over what they describe as state-enabled “Jewish terrorism” in the occupied West Bank, according to …
Three International Criminal Court judges — Kimberly Prost (Canada), Solomy Balungi Bossa (Uganda), and Reine Adelaide Sophie Alapini-Gansou (Benin) — filed a lawsuit in a Manhattan federal court on June 24, 2026, challenging sanctions the Trump administration imposed on them last year. The judges argue the sanctions were unlawful, exceeding the scope of the International …
In this opinion piece for THISDAY, Dr Eyimofe Atake, SAN, condemns what Nigeria’s Court of Appeal recently labeled “judicial rascality”—the practice of lower-court judges deliberately ignoring orders from higher courts. The article centers on a case in which the Court of Appeal stayed proceedings over the deregistration of five political parties, yet a Federal High …
The Commonwealth Lawyers Association (CLA) has condemned the detention of Ugandan lawyer Erias Lukwago by the Uganda People’s Defence Forces (UPDF) on June 15, 2026. Lukwago is a lead defence counsel in the ongoing treason trial of Dr. Kizza Besigye and Hajji Obeid Lutale before Uganda’s High Court. The CLA also raised alarm that his …
A prominent Ugandan lawyer, Erias Lukwago, was charged on June 17, 2026 with “misprision of treason”—failing to report treason to authorities—days after security forces arrested him. Lukwago, a senior opposition figure and former mayor of Kampala, denied the charge in court and was remanded in custody. He represents detained opposition leader Kizza Besigye in a …
A new OHCHR dataset, Human Rights Count 2026, reported by UN News on June 17, 2026, finds that attacks on human rights defenders—a category that includes lawyers and other legal advocates—reached record levels over the past year. Preliminary data indicate that roughly 950 human rights defenders, journalists, and trade unionists were killed or forcibly disappeared …
In Ecuador, prosecutor Gloria Alexandra Bravo Cedeño was shot and killed in the coastal city of Manta on June 14, 2026, in an attack that also killed her sister, Human Rights Watch reported on June 16. Bravo handled homicide, kidnapping, and organized-crime cases and had investigated recent drone strikes on fishing vessels; the Attorney General’s …
On June 17, 2026, the European Parliament adopted a resolution on the 2025 Commission report on Türkiye that delivers one of its most forceful indictments to date of the Turkish judiciary’s role in dismantling the rule of law. The text condemns the harassment and prosecution of defense lawyers for their professional work, naming the continued …