Responding to a landmark judgement by an Athens court which found four individuals linked to spyware maker Intellexa, guilty of unlawful access to private communication systems and data, and of violating privacy and data protection laws, Rebecca White, Amnesty International’s Security Lab Researcher said:
“Almost four years since the ‘Predatorgate’ scandal hit Greece, we are finally seeing consequences for those involved in the abuse of surveillance technology.
“Amnesty International and other organizations have shown time and again that Intellexa’s products have been used to mount brazen attacks against journalists, activists, academics and politicians around the world.
“We hope this landmark ruling signals the end of the era of impunity for the surveillance industry.
“Questions remain about the role of the Greek government which has consistently denied purchasing or using Predator. Transparency is a crucial part of accountability – as is remedy for the many victims of the human rights violations brought about by the unlawful use of this technology.”
Background
The ‘Predatorgate’ scandal surfaced in March 2022 when journalist Thanasis Koukakis discovered that his phone had been infected with the highly invasive spyware, Predator and that he had been wiretapped by the Greek National Intelligence Service. Four months later, Nikos Androulakis, leader of the opposition party PASOK-KINAL, also discovered his phone had been targeted with Predator while serving as a Member of the European Parliament.
On 26 February 2026, the Athens court sentenced four individuals – Tal Dilian, a former Israeli intelligence officer and founder of Intellexa, Sara Hamou – Dilian’s business partner, Felix Bitzios – a former deputy administrator and shareholder of Intellexa and Yiannis Lavranos – owner of Kriel, the company through which Predator was allegedly procured, to 126 years and eight months in prison each, though the sentence has been suspended pending an appeal. A prosecutor has asked for their investigation along with eight others for espionage and any other people who maybe involved in the case citing the possibility of collaboration with foreign state forces.
To mark Poland’s official withdrawal from the Ottawa Convention or the Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Treaty, Julia Głębocka, Human rights researcher for Amnesty International Poland, reflects on what the return of these indiscriminate weapons means for human rights in Europe.
Not so long ago, in 2020, the European Union was funding mine relief efforts in Lebanon and hoping to see an anti-personnel mine-free world within five years. HALO Ukraine, an EU-supported organization, had already been making tangible change, removing explosives from Ukrainian soil since 2016. In Chad, the EU-funded project PRODECO, was reintegrating anti-personnel mine victims into society through long-term medical care and rehabilitation, as well as supporting demining efforts.
At the beginning of 2025, all 27 EU member states had been parties to the Ottawa Convention, which bans the use, production, stockpiling and transfer of anti-personnel mines, for over two decades.
But any hope for a more peaceful world was short lived.
While many of us dreamed that one day these indiscriminate weapons would be eradicated, these ghosts of twentieth century warfare are making a comeback.
In March 2025, the governments of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland announced their intention to withdraw jointly from the Ottawa Convention. Finland followed suit with a similar announcement in April 2025. While the withdrawal has already come into effect for other countries, Poland’s exit entered into force on Friday. The move from multiple EU member states marks a disturbing shift in national security policies undermining the bloc’s credibility on its own adherence to international humanitarian law.
For decades, Brussels has been an avid supporter of the Ottawa Convention. EU strategies on conventional weapons explicitly condemn anti-personnel mines as indiscriminate tools that cause harm far beyond the battlefield. EU funds are routinely channeled into demining operations, victim assistance programmes and international advocacy against anti-personnel mines. And yet, when several of its own members openly abandon this consensus, the EU refused even to utter words of condemnation.
Meanwhile, in my home country, Poland, arms companies wasted no time in seizing on the opportunity that the Ottawa withdrawal presented.
Almost immediately after Poland announced its withdrawal, two major arms-industry companies signaled their readiness to restart anti-personnel mine production. State-owned Bydgoszcz Electromechanical Plant Belma and Niewiadów Polish Military Group JSC declared that they could produce enough mines to secure the entire 800-kilometre eastern border of Poland, with plans to sell any surplus to the Baltic states and Ukraine.
The Polish government justifies its decision in the language of military deterrence. But according to international monitoring organisations, roughly 80 to 85 percent of anti-personnel mine victims worldwide are civilians, many of them children. In Ukraine, where anti-personnel mines have been deployed on a massive scale, their effects extend far beyond military targets. It is worth mentioning that severe mine contamination affected local communities not only in terms of physical safety, but also economically. Ukrainian farmers had to take the initiative and start demining operations themselves and were then reimbursed by their government. Anti-personnel mines do not end wars. They survive them.
Absent, however, from public debate is how the use of these mines might put refugees and migrants at risk.
Julia Głębocka
In 2021-2022 Amnesty International documented Poland’s unlawful pushbacks and ill-treatment of refugees and migrants at its border with Belarus, the adoption of legislation limiting access to the border for humanitarian organizations, and the granting of powers to the Polish Border Guard to reject asylum applications without examination, in breach of international law standards.
On the other side of the border, Amnesty International revealed how Belarusian authorities ruthlessly forced people under duress across the border, in full knowledge of the violence they would face at the hands of Polish border guards on the other side. seeking protection in Europe.
Since then, restrictions to accessing the border were once again re-introduced through the creation of a “buffer/exclusion zone” in June 2024, the effects of which were repeatedly extended and remain active to date. Soon after, the law regulating the use of arms by the Border Guard was amended, limiting their accountability for excessive force.
In a flagrant violation of international law, in March 2025 (at the same time Poland announced its withdrawal from Ottawa) the right to seek asylum at the border was temporarily suspended. Humanitarian organizations warned at the outset that these measures were a slippery slope.
Amnesty International has serious concerns about how a possible re-introduction of anti-personnel mines compounds risks for refugees and migrants, creating a new horrifying and dangerous reality for people seeking protection in Europe.
These developments along Europe’s northeastern borders are retrograde moves that will only further weaken the global consensus aimed at minimizing civilian harm during armed conflict. Antipersonnel mines’ devasting impact on civilians, sometimes decades after they are deployed, and unexploded anti-personnel landmines can blight whole regions for generations.
The decision to leave the Convention must be reversed.
Europe once committed itself to leave anti-personnel mines in the past. Allowing them to return uncontested means accepting that some ghosts are welcome after all.
This article was originally published in EUobserver.
Since December 2025, Israeli authorities have unleashed a series of unlawful measures deliberately designed to dispossess Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and to make the annexation of the territory an irreversible reality, Amnesty International said today.
These decisions represent an unprecedented escalation – in scale and speed – in Israel’s project to expand illegal settlements. They facilitate the takeover of more Palestinian land, authorize a record number of new settlements, expanding existing ones, and formalize registration of land in the West Bank as Israeli state property. While successive Israeli governments have pursued policies aimed at expanding settlements and entrenching occupation and apartheid, the latest measures underscore how the current Israeli government has turbocharged these efforts, in the shadow of the genocide in Gaza.
“What we are witnessing is a state, led by a Prime Minister wanted by the International Criminal Court on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity, openly gloating about its defiance of international law. Despite hundreds of UN resolutions, Advisory Opinions from the International Court of Justice and global condemnation, Israel continues to brazenly expand illegal settlements, entrenching its cruel system of apartheid and destroying Palestinian lives and livelihoods,” said Erika Guevara-Rosas, Amnesty International’s Senior Director for Research, Advocacy, Policy and Campaigns.
“The unconditional support of the USA government, combined with the pervasive lack of international accountability for Israel’s genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, decades of crimes under international law linked to its unlawful occupation and its system of apartheid, has further emboldened Israel to escalate its illegal actions. This includes formalizing land grabs with full confidence that it will face no consequences
The accelerating expansion of unlawful settlements and the rise in state-backed settler violence and crimes across the occupied West Bank are a direct indictment of the international community’s catastrophic failure to take decisive action.
Erika Guevara-Rosas, Amnesty International’s Senior Director for Research, Advocacy, Policy and Campaigns.
“The accelerating expansion of unlawful settlements and the rise in state-backed settler violence and crimes across the occupied West Bank are a direct indictment of the international community’s catastrophic failure to take decisive action. Third states have failed to respect their own legal obligations, refusing to use the tools at their disposal, such as suspension of the EU Israel Association Agreement, to deter Israel from pursuing its unlawful agenda.”
On 10 December 2025 the Israel Land Authority published a tender for 3,401 housing units in the E1 area, east of Jerusalem in the occupied West Bank. The plan seeks to expand the illegal settlement of Ma’ale Adumim and create a continuum with occupied East Jerusalem. This would sever the West Bank in two, permanently rupturing urban Palestinian contiguity between Ramallah, occupied East Jerusalem, and Bethlehem. Together with the construction of a bypass road which is set to begin this month, this plan will also lead to the forcible transfer of the Palestinian communities living in the area.
While since the 1990s successive Israeli governments have attempted to implement the E1 plan, it remained largely dormant for decades due to international pressure. Its current advancement with such speed signifies a government that is brazenly pursuing its settlement expansion agenda amidst insufficient international pushback.
Since its occupation of Palestinian territory in 1967, Israel has introduced and developed an oppressive administrative and legal architecture of dispossession and control against Palestinians. The current government has been relentlessly accelerating this project by fast-tracking settlement expansion and land seizures. On 11 December 2025 Israel’s security cabinet approved plans to establish 19 new settlements, bringing the total number approved by the current coalition government to 68 in just three years and the total number of official settlements to about 210. Around 750,000 Israeli settlers currently live illegally in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.
The new settlements include the retroactive “legalization” of outposts built in violation of even Israel’s own domestic laws. Credible media reports indicate at least three of these sites sit upon land from which Palestinian communities, such as Ein Samia and Ras Ein al-Ouja, were recently forcibly transferred following state-backed settler violence.
According to Peace Now, an Israeli organization monitoring settlement expansion, in 2025 alone, a record 86 outposts were established, primarily “herding” or “farming” outposts” which have significantly contributed to the spike in state-backed settler violence and forcible transfer of Palestinian communities. Protected by the Israeli military and funded by the Israeli Ministry of Agriculture, the outposts have turned the lives of Palestinian farmers and shepherds, particularly in Area C, into a living hell. Settlers in the outposts aggressively prevent Palestinian shepherds from accessing their grazing land, depriving them of their main livelihood, as well as seizing land by force, vandalizing property, stealing livestock and attacking Palestinians and their homes.
According to the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem, 21 Palestinian communities were fully or partially uprooted in 2025 as a result of state-backed settler violence. A mother of three from Ras Ein al-Ouja, near Jericho, told Amnesty International: “The fear of attacks forced us to put our children to bed with their shoes on, because we might have to flee at any moment.” In January 2026, she and her family were driven out in the freezing cold along with another 122 families; in total more than 600 Palestinians have been forcibly displaced from this community.
A declaration by the Israeli civil administration on 5 January 2026 designating 694 dunams of land belonging to the Palestinian towns of Deir Istiya, Bidya and Kafr Thulth in the northern West Bank as “state land”, along with a series of measures to expand control over the West Bank announced by Israel’s security cabinet on 8 February marked a further escalation in Israel’s land grabs.
These measures include repealing Jordanian legislation still in force to allow Israeli settlers to purchase Palestinian land without oversight increasing Israeli civil administrative control over planning and construction in Hebron City and Rachel’s Tomb in Bethlehem, as well as granting Israeli authorities new enforcement powers in archaeological sites and in issues related to water and environment in Areas A and B.
On 15 February 2026 the Israeli cabinet issued a decision that amounts to annexation under Israeli law. It allocated over 244 million NIS (Israeli shekels) for the establishment of a government mechanism to facilitate land registration in Area C, transferring the powers of land registration from the civil administration to Israel’s Ministry of Justice.
Currently, nearly 58% of the land in Area C of the occupied West Bank is unregistered, according to Peace Now. Israel has already seized more than half of that area through state land designations. Palestinians face almost insurmountable hurdles to prove land ownership due to Israel’s archaic interpretation of Ottoman land laws which require Palestinians to provide an array of documents, maps and other records that most Palestinians do not have access to.
Make no mistake: full annexation is the goal, and Israel has already laid much of the groundwork for achieving it. Ministers in the current Israeli government no longer feel any need to conceal their intentions.
Erika Guevara-Rosas
“Land registration is yet another Israeli euphemism for land grabs and dispossession. Make no mistake: full annexation is the goal, and Israel has already laid much of the groundwork for achieving it. Ministers in the current Israeli government no longer feel any need to conceal their intentions,” Erika Guevara-Rosas said.
“Israel has totally disregarded its obligations as an Occupying Power towards Palestinian civilians and instead has deliberately and consistently advance its aggressive annexation agenda, in blatant violation of international law, which categorically prohibits annexation and establishment of settlements in occupied territory.
“These measures are in brazen defiance of the International Court of Justice’s Advisory Opinions of 2004 and 2024, the latter of which unequivocally found Israel’s presence in the OPT to be unlawful. A subsequent UN General Assembly resolution set September 2025 as the deadline to end Israel’s unlawful occupation. Yet instead of complying, Israel has simply invented new ways to violate international law, further entrenching its unlawful occupation and apartheid – while the international community continues, at best, to pay lip service to Palestinians’ rights and taken no effective action.”
Open Letter to Lebanon’s Justice Minister and Deputy Prime Minister
The Lebanese government should take immediate, concrete steps to help secure access to justice, truth, and reparations for thousands of civilian victims of abuses stemming from the armed conflict with Israel, five Lebanese and international human rights organizations said today in a letter to Lebanon’s justice minister and deputy prime minister, who heads Lebanon’s National Committee for International Humanitarian Law.
The groups are Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Legal Agenda, the Union of Journalists in Lebanon, and Reporters without Borders.
A year after the deadline for Israel to withdraw its troops from southern Lebanon, ongoing Israeli attacks and large-scale destruction of infrastructure have prevented tens of thousands of people from returning to their homes or rebuilding their lives. Israel has conducted near-daily attacks in Lebanon, killing over 380 people, including at least 127 civilians, since the ceasefire agreement came into effect. The Israeli military remains in parts of Lebanese territory and has continued to extensively destroy civilian structures along the border, leaving entire communities to grapple with destruction and loss.
The Lebanese government is ignoring a concrete set of legal actions it could have taken during this past year, starting with domestic investigations and accepting the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) jurisdiction over international crimes committed in Lebanon, the organizations said. They should now act on them as a matter of urgency.
Israel must immediately allow safe return for Lebanese still displaced from their villages and provide full, effective and adequate reparations for all serious violations of international humanitarian law and international human rights law committed by its military. For thousands of families, ‘post-ceasefire’ has not meant safety or stability. It has meant prolonged displacement, devastated livelihoods, and the anguish of living in limbo, while accountability and reparations are nowhere in sight.
The organizations are urging the Lebanese government to explore every available legal avenue, both at the domestic level and internationally, to ensure that crimes under international law are investigated and prosecuted. A critical step the government could immediately take is filing a declaration with the ICC, accepting the court’s jurisdiction under article 12(3) of the court’s treaty, the Rome Statute, to investigate and prosecute crimes under international law committed on Lebanese territory since at least October 7, 2023. The government should also consider ratifying the Rome Statute.
The government should support the establishment of prompt, thorough, independent, and impartial domestic judicial investigations into war crimes committed on Lebanese territory, the groups said. This includes providing judicial investigators with the authority, protection, and resources necessary to complete their work effectively and impartially. To provide a legal framework for these efforts, the government should urgently issue and introduce in parliament a law criminalizing war crimes and other acts that are crimes under international law.
The government should establish a registrar to record all killings, injuries, and other damages to civilians, and invite the United Nations special rapporteur on the promotion of truth, justice, reparation and guarantees of non-recurrence to visit Lebanon and to recommend measures that Israel, Hezbollah, and the government of Lebanon should take to uphold victims’ rights.
The Lebanese government has the opportunity to take historic steps towards dismantling the entrenched impunity that has defined past periods of armed conflict in the country, the organizations said. By doing so, it can begin laying the foundation for victims and affected communities to fully realize their right to justice, truth, and reparations, and be able to rebuild their lives.
Other countries, especially the United States, should immediately suspend all arms transfers and other forms of military assistance to Israel, due to the significant risk that these weapons could be used to commit or facilitate serious violations of international law, the groups said.
Given the long-standing pattern of serious violations of international humanitarian law committed by Israeli forces in Lebanon and beyond, other countries should also urgently step up efforts to ensure accountability, including by exercising universal or other forms of extraterritorial jurisdiction to investigate violations amounting to serious international crimes and, where sufficient evidence exists, bring prosecutions. The government of Lebanon should cooperate fully with such efforts.
Background
The ceasefire deal between Lebanon and Israel entered into effect in November 2024 and included a requirement for the Israeli military to withdraw from southern Lebanon within 60 days. However, on February 18, 2025, Israel announced it would maintain a military presence in, and temporarily control, five “strategic” vantage points in southern Lebanon.
On February 27, Israel’s defense minister stated that Israeli forces were “staying indefinitely” in a buffer zone on the border. In August, Israel’s prime minister further linked the “phased reduction” of troops to the disarmament of Hezbollah.
Lebanese and international rights groups have previously reported on the devastating impact on civilians caused by the hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah. This includes the Israeli military’s use of white phosphorus, indiscriminate simultaneous mass explosions targeting electronic devices, and attacks on journalists, health facilities, ambulances, and paramedics.
Other reports documented unlawful air strikes against civilians and civilian objects, the extensive and ongoing destruction of Lebanon’s border villages even after the ceasefire, as well as Hezbollah’s repeated firing of unguided rockets into populated civilian areas in Israel.
Detainees routinely taken out of cell and shot dead
Suspects tortured to make confessions
Families of suspects that died suddenly harassed for seeking justice
Point of Sale (POS) used to extract lucrative bribes
A Nigerian police unit set up to tackle kidnapping and armed robbery in Imo state has instead been unlawfully killing suspects, torturing and ill-treating detainees to coerce them into confessing to bogus crimes, and arresting people for the sole purpose of extracting lucrative bribes for their release, Amnesty International said today.
Based in Owerri, the capital of Imo state, the police unit known as “Tiger Base” is increasingly being used to arrest and detain people to settle scores, including land disputes and family conflicts. Amnesty International’s investigation Tiger Base of Atrocities: Human Rights Violations by Nigeria Police Anti-Kidnapping Unit in Owerri published today found that detainees are kept in filthy, windowless cells and subjected to regular beatings. Many are locked up for weeks or months, without charge. Others have been shot or forcibly disappeared.
“Tiger Base has become synonymous with police operating outside of the law and abusing their power to enrich themselves through extortion. The atrocities committed by the Tiger Base police unit is yet another sign of the Nigerian authorities’ failure to end widespread torture, extrajudicial execution, extortion and other crimes at the hands of law enforcement. Many are traumatized forever. Despite the horrific violations they have suffered, there has been no accountability to date,” said Isa Sanusi, Director of Amnesty International Nigeria.
Torture, ill-treatment and prolonged unlawful detention
Many detainees locked up at Tiger Base’s detention centre are not asked for their statements regarding the allegations they face, and neither are they brought before a court. This enables the police to unlawfully detain people for indefinite periods of time without arraignment, thereby depriving them of essential procedural safeguards.
One survivor of prolonged unlawful detention told Amnesty International:
“They arrested me insisting I bought stolen items. I told them I didn’t know anything about it. They locked me up and seized my phone. After about three weeks, a police officer came to take my statement. Still, they kept me locked up…. They later told us that the complainant claimed her loss was worth ₦14 million (US$9,500) but that she agreed to collect ₦4.5 million (US$3,100) instead. They said if I wanted to be released, my family would pay.”
Former detainees said they were forced to write incriminating statements under torture, which included severe beatings with iron rods and cables. Knives, machetes, batons, water and whips were also used to torture suspects. Some detainees were tied up with ropes so that their bodies were hanging. Then they were cut and their wounds left to bleed.
Many people disappeared after being moved to Cell 1; nobody ever saw them again.
Former detainee
The resulting coerced “confessions” were used by police to demand a bribe that would have to be paid before a detainee could be released on bail. Former detainees said Tiger Base officers illegally arrest and detain dozens of people every day with the sole aim of extorting money from their relatives in exchange for suspects being released.
There is a thriving illegal point of sale (POS) business within the premises of the Tiger Base detention centre. In Nigeria, handheld POS machines act like an ATM allowing people to withdraw cash instantly from their bank accounts.
Our investigation shows that, at Tiger Base, officials from time to time take out inmates from the cells and shoot them. A survivor told our organization: “The other guy took him out, we heard gunshots, we thought they had killed him but after some hours in the night he came into the cell. We looked at his leg, and they shot him. He is carrying bullet wounds inside the cell with us; nobody cares.”
Inhuman and degrading conditions in detention
Each of Tiger Base’s four main detention cells measures about 12 feet by 12 feet with more than 70 people squeezed inside. As a result, detainees are forced to take turns either to sit or squat.
Testimonies collected by Amnesty International indicated that few people sent to Cell 1 came out alive. According to a former detainee: “If you survive Cell 1, it is only by God’s grace. Many people disappeared after being moved there; nobody ever saw them again.”
Former detainees said they were forced to write incriminating statements under torture, which included severe beatings with iron rods and cables.
There are no windows in the cells and only one toilet per cell, which overflows with waste as people are forced to urinate, defecate and sleep in the same small place. The stench is unbearable. Former detainees reported seeing their cellmates passing out from overcrowding, intense heat and exhaustion.
“People [in the cells] will be crying: ‘someone is dying here!’ They [officials] will still lock the cell gate…Then, even if they bring you out, they will still beat you up to see whether you are pretending or not. Then, they will take you out and keep you in the corridor for air. If you regain consciousness, they will throw you back into the cell…” one former detainee told Amnesty International.
Deaths in detention
Several people were reported to have died in the Tiger Base detention centre. In 2022, three youth leaders handed over a suspect to the Tiger Base unit. About three months later, the young man, Okechukwu Ogbedagu, died in detention.
Amnesty International has reviewed an autopsy report which showed that Okechukwu Ogbedagu died of asphyxiation. To cover up their atrocity, Tiger Base officers charged the three youth leaders who handed Okechukwu Ogbedagu to them with murder. They were released after about six months.
In another case documented by Amnesty International, on or around 5 May 2025, Japhet Njoku, a security guard who was accused of stealing, died in Tiger Base detention. Police officials told his family members following days of repeated demands, that he was beaten to death in his cell. Since then, Tiger Base officials have frustrated every attempt to conduct a coroner court-ordered autopsy to ascertain the cause of Japhet Njoku’s death—they have failed to turn up for the autopsy on four different occasions, despite the availability of the court-appointed pathologists.
Police impunity
“The atrocities committed by the Tiger Base police unit is yet another sign of the Nigerian authorities’ failure to end widespread torture, extrajudicial execution, extortion and other crimes at the hands of law enforcement. It appears the police have not learnt any lessons from the #EndSARS protests. Instead of being held accountable, corrupt police officers have been emboldened to commit human rights violations by the impunity they enjoy,” said Isa Sanusi.
The atrocities committed by the Tiger Base police unit is yet another sign of the Nigerian authorities’ failure to end widespread torture, at the hands of law enforcement.
Isa Sanusi, Country Director, Amnesty International Nigeria
The Nigerian authorities must promptly establish an independent, impartial and effective investigation of the atrocities committed by Tiger Base unit police officers in Owerri, Imo state. The investigation must also examine the conduct of the Commander and other officers at the Tiger Base detention centre, their involvement in human rights violations, corrupt practices and other misconducts.
Police officers at Tiger Base are not above the law and must comply with the provisions of section 62 of the Police Act, which requires anyone arrested for a non-capital offence to be released within 24 hours with or without surety.
“Under Nigeria’s constitution and international and regional human rights treaties authorities have an obligation to ensure that human rights violations uncovered at Tiger Base are investigated and suspected perpetrators brought to justice, while victims receive adequate reparation,” Isa Sanusi.
BACKGROUND
The Anti-Kidnapping Squad, popularly known as Tiger Base, operates under the Imo state Police Command located in Owerri south-east Nigeria. Originally established to investigate and combat kidnapping-related crimes, the unit has significantly deviated from its core mandate. In recent years, Tiger Base has become notorious for systemic abuse, including, unlawful arrests, prolonged arbitrary detention, torture, extortion, enforced disappearances – including the removal of children from their mothers without records – and corruption.
