South Korean court sentences former president to life in prison
Yoon Suk Yeol, South Korea’s president, attends a hearing for his impeachment trial at the Constitutional Court in Seoul, South Korea, on Thursday, Feb. 13, 2025. (SeongJoon Cho/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
(SEOUL)– The Seoul Central District Court sentenced former South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol to life in prison Thursday.
The court found him guilty of leading an insurrection linked to his declaration of martial law on Dec. 3, 2024.
The court ruled that Yoon’s central offense was mobilizing military and police forces to seize control of the National Assembly and detain key political figures.
“The deployment of martial law troops to the National Assembly during the state of emergency constitutes ‘rioting,’ a key legal element required to establish the crime of insurrection,” presiding judge Ji Gui-yeon said Thursday. Ji said declaring martial law can constitute insurrection if intended to obstruct or paralyze constitutional institutions.
The court acknowledged political tensions between Yoon’s administration and the opposition-controlled legislature. However, it said those circumstances did not justify declaring martial law under the constitution.
Judges also said Yoon showed no remorse or acknowledgment of wrongdoing during the proceedings, which they considered in determining his sentence.
Yoon’s attorneys criticized the ruling as “a mere formality for a predetermined conclusion.”
“Watching the rule of law collapse in reality, I question whether I should even pursue an appeal or continue participating in these criminal proceedings,” Yoon’s attorney, Yoon Gab-geun, told reporters after the ruling. “The truth will be revealed in the court of history.”
Yoon was taken into custody immediately after the ruling and transferred to the Seoul Detention Center. He will remain there unless the court grants release pending appeal.
If Yoon appeals, the case will move to the Seoul High Court, which can review legal interpretations and factual findings. A final appeal could be filed with the Supreme Court.
Prosecutors had sought the death penalty, arguing Yoon’s actions posed a grave threat to the constitutional order.
Thursday’s ruling addressed only the insurrection charge. Other criminal cases tied to the December 2024 martial law declaration, including abuse of power and obstruction of official duty, remain pending.
In a separate case last month, Yoon was sentenced to five years in prison for obstructing his arrest, the first criminal conviction tied to the crisis.
“Yoon’s sentencing does not represent a national catharsis since most Koreans have already emotionally moved on from the former president,” Leif-Eric Easley, a professor at Ewha University in Seoul, told ABC News. “Nor does this televised verdict mark closure because many cases and appeals related to Yoon’s martial law debacle have yet to be fully adjudicated.”
Thousands of people protest in Berlin, Germany for the overthrow of the current Iranian regime and the creation of a democratic government in Iran on February 7, 2026. (Omer Messinger/Getty Images)
(LONDON) — One month after Iran was rocked by the beginning of the deadliest crackdown in its modern history, the full toll of the regime’s response to nationwide protests is still coming into focus.
On Jan. 8 and 9, Iranian security forces launched what activists describe as the most brutal assault yet on citizens who had poured into streets across the country, chanting for regime change.
While international media coverage has gradually shifted toward renewed negotiations between the United States and the Islamic Republic over Tehran’s nuclear program, human rights groups and Iranians inside and outside the country warn that repression on the ground has intensified. They describe an atmosphere of fear, torture, and systemic violence ruling the country.
As of Monday, more than 6,400 protesters have been killed and over 51,500 arrested on charges linked to the demonstrations, according to the U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA). Over 11,000 more related deaths remain under review. ABC News cannot independently verify these numbers.
Farsi-language social media remains flooded with images of the dead, missing and detained. Videos show families grieving loved ones killed in the streets, while others are pleas from relatives searching for missing family members in morgues and prisons, or seeking legal support for those behind bars.
Many wounded protesters still seek medical advice from doctors on social media on how to treat their injuries at home, because they fear getting arrested in hospitals by regime forces, who closely monitor hospitals in order to track wounded protesters. An Iranian lawyer told ABC News last week that several of doctors who provided home treatment to wounded protesters have been arrested.
The volume of such social media posts has shown no sign of slowing.
200 students were killed The Coordinating Council of Iranian Teachers’ Trade Associations (CCITTA) published the names on Sunday of 200 students they said are confirmed killed during the protests.
“Each name carries a wish with it: I wish he were alive; I wish his school was still waiting for him,” CCITTA said in a statement on X, adding that “the empty benches are not just a sign of absence; they are a reminder of a crime that has reached the classroom.”
Mounting concerns over detainees Over the weekend, in a post on X, the Hengaw human rights organization warned of widespread sexual violence during this wave of arrests, citing interviews with former detainees. Hengaw described the mental condition of those still in custody as “dire,” because of the torture during detention.
Among those arrested is Iranian journalist and activist Vida Rabbani, who was detained after signing a joint statement declaring the downfall of the Islamic Republic “inevitable.” Her husband says she has been tortured after her arrest.
“There were many obvious bruises on Vida’s body. She had been severely beaten,” Hamidreza Amiri wrote on Instagram this weekend after visiting her in prison.
He said that when Rabbani refused to wear the compulsory hijab in prison, guards pulled out her hair.
“The artist girl had made a bracelet from a handful of her own hair,” he wrote. “The bracelet, next to the bruises on her hand, created a strange and deeply moving scene.”
Activists warn that if such abuse is inflicted on high-profile figures with media visibility, the treatment of ordinary protesters whose cases often go unreported may be far worse.
Waves of forced confessions According to HRANA, at least 331 forced confessions related to the protests have been broadcast so far.
One recent case involves Mohammad Ali Saedinia, a prominent business owner who had supported the protests by closing all branches of his well-known confectionery chain nationwide and joining strike actions.
On Monday, state-affiliated Fars News published a scanned letter allegedly signed by Saedinia, calling his decision to shut down his stores in January a “mistake,” condemning Israel and the U.S., and apologizing to the Iranian people. Earlier this month, the judiciary’s spokesperson confirmed Saedinia’s arrest, and that his properties were ordered seized by the Iranian regime.
Arrests of reformist figures The Iranian regime also arrested several prominent reformist figures on Monday, according to Fars News, after they allegedly criticized the authorities’ handling of the protests. They face charges including “attacking national unity” and “coordinating with enemy propaganda,” according to Fars News.
Speaking anonymously for security reasons, an Iranian analyst told ABC News on Monday that the arrests are “significant,” since the Trump administration might be weighing the possibility of engaging with some insiders of the Iranian government if the regime collapses.
The analyst added that the move could be hardliners aligned with Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei tightening their grip on power, given the uncertainty of the future of the ongoing negotiations with the U.S.
Automobiles pass a former postal and telegraph building, where Bank of America Corp. is leasing space for 400 workers, in Paris, France, on Wednesday April 10, 2019. (Photographer: Christophe Morin/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — Two additional teenagers have been detained in what authorities in France are investigating as an attempted terrorist attack in which a third teenager allegedly tried to detonate an explosive device outside a Bank of America in Paris, according to a police source close to the investigation.
The incident occurred shortly before 3:30 a.m. local time on Saturday, according to police and the French Interior Ministry. Police were patrolling the street near where the Bank of America is located in the 8th arrondissement neighborhood, authorities said.
One suspect was arrested after he allegedly left two bottles of flammable liquid attached with adhesive tape and 650 grams of explosive powder, authorities said. The suspect was attempting to set fire to the device with a lighter, according to police.
Two suspects were detained on Sunday, a law enforcement source close to the investigation told ABC News. All three suspects, including one arrested at the scene on Saturday, are under the age of 18, according to the source.
The French Interior Ministry confirmed that two additional suspects were detained in the case.
One of the teenagers detained on Sunday is believed to have fled the scene of the thwarted alleged attack after being spotted across the street from the Bank of America building allegedly filming the incident, officials said.
French Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez congratulated French police for thwarting the “violent” attack in Paris overnight Saturday, where the suspect attempted to set off the explosive outside the Bank of America building in the central part of the city.
The “swift intervention” of police prevented the attack, which Nuñez described as a “violent action of a terrorist nature” in a post on X.
“Vigilance remains at a very high level,” Nuñez wrote. “I commend all the security and intelligence forces fully mobilized under my authority in the current international context.”
The National Anti-Terrorist Prosecutor’s Office is leading in the investigation, Nuñez said.
A Palestinian mother hugs her child as eight children evacuated from Gaza to Egypt through the Rafah Border Crossing during 2023 land attacks due to health issues return to Gaza after completing treatment, coordinated by the World Health Organization (WHO) at Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Yunis, Palestine, on March 30, 2026. (Photo by Hani Alshaer/Anadolu via Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — When Sundus al Kurd and her daughter Bissan were separated at the start of the Israel-Hamas war in 2023, she wasn’t sure she’d see her again. Bissan was only a few days old when her mother allowed her to be medically evacuated from the Gaza strip to Egypt.
The premature baby’s life was saved, along with others, by the World Health Organization and Palestinian Red Crescent during the height of the conflict, but now the two have been reunited.
“After all this time, my daughter is finally back in my arms!” al Kurd, a young Palestinian mother, exclaims as she held her child for the first time in over two years.
“Every day, I lived with fear — fear that I might never hold her again, fear that she might forget me. But the moment I held her in my arms again, it felt like she had never been away. That moment was complete joy!” the 27-year-old al Kurd told ABC News.
Bissan, who has spent the last 2 1/2 years in Egypt, had been one of 33 premature babies trapped inside the Al Shifa hospital as the Israeli military laid siege to it in November 2023.
“Being reunited with my daughter is something I cannot fully describe. It is a mix of relief, love, and something deeper — like life returning to me after being paused for years,” al Kurd said.
“The first night we spent together was very emotional. I couldn’t sleep. I kept watching her, holding her, making sure she was really there beside me. I was afraid to close my eyes, as if it was all a dream that might disappear,” she said.
Bissan’s life had been in imminent danger in November 2023, doctors said. The neonatal unit she was in at Al Shifa hospital was running out of fuel and oxygen, cut off by the Israeli army, which had encircled the hospital, saying that Hamas had a hidden command center in its precincts, something both Hamas medical teams there strongly denied.
“They were meant to die without incubators, without oxygen, without water, but they survived every single stage of this terrible reality,” Dr. Ahmed Mokhallalati, the former head of plastic surgery at Al Shifa Hospital, told ABC News.
Mokhallalati was one of the few doctors who remained at Al Shifa throughout the Israeli siege.
“Most of the doctors were surgeons, not even pediatricians, but we felt we had to do our best to keep these kids alive,” he said. “We felt these kids were like our own babies. Every morning, we would go just to make sure they were still alive.”
He said that the extreme danger of the situation forced some parents to abandon their babies.
“There were no parents because the hospital was bombed and people were forced to flee to save their other children,” Mokhallalati said. “In the calculus of survival, mothers fled with the children who could run and left behind those who could not, making an impossible choice.”
The premature babies were left fighting for their lives for days, with one doctor and six nurses caring for them in ever-worsening conditions, he said.
“We did not know their names, we did not know their parents. They had no one to take care of them. They were wearing only small wristbands, usually with their mothers’ names, and that was the only thing we knew about them,” Mokhallalati said.
Not all the babies survived those difficult days. Five died as the team struggled to keep them fed and warm, but Mokhallalati was amazed that so many of the babies made it.
“They were meant to die at many stages but they survived every single challenge,” adding, “They were the only feeling of hope we had in all of this chaos and destruction.”
On Nov. 19, 2023, they were rescued after the WHO and the Palestinian Red Crescent were given access to the hospital. They carried the precious cargo through a war zone to a hospital in Rafah, in southern Gaza, before taking them across the border to Egypt, officials said.
“Twenty-eight were evacuated to Egypt, but seven more died there due to the difficult conditions, leaving 21 survivors. Of those, 11 have now returned on March 30, while four others came back earlier when Rafah crossing opened, and six remain in Egypt with their families,” Dr. Ahmed Al-Farra, the head of pediatrics and neonatal care at Nasser Hospital in Gaza, told ABC News.
Among those returning was 2-year-old Azzhar Kafarna. Her mother, Heba Saleh, described the ordeal of their separation to ABC News.
“For two and a half years, I felt something missing all the time,” she said.
“I missed everything — her first smile, her first steps, even the little things that any mother waits for. I used to imagine her … how she looks now, how her voice sounds, and if she would recognize me when we finally meet,” Saleh said.
She was nervous about their reunion, “When I saw her again, I didn’t know what to feel. I just hugged her tightly. It felt like I was holding all the days we lost in that one moment.”
Al-Farra examined all the toddlers when they returned to Gaza this week.
“All of the children are in generally good condition, with normal weight and growth, but many are facing complications linked to extreme prematurity,” he said.
Al-Farra says many of them, “have vision problems and need glasses because their eye nerves were not fully developed,” like Bissan, who wears a bright red pair of spectacles.
However, not all of them have come back to happy reunions.
“I don’t think all of these children have parents to return to. Some of their families were likely killed during the war,” Al-Farra said.
“In one case, there is real confusion over the child’s identity, with more than one person claiming the baby. We are still trying to identify the family, but without access to DNA testing in Gaza, we cannot confirm who the child belongs to,” he said.
Fear returning to Gaza
Both the mothers ABC News spoke with were nervous about their children returning to Gaza.
“As a mother, I feel everything at once. I’m happy she’s finally with me … but at the same time, I feel guilty, even though I had no choice. I keep thinking about all the moments I wasn’t there for.” Saled said.
“And of course, I’m worried about raising her in Gaza. I want her to feel safe, to live a normal life, but the situation here is not easy,” Saled said.
That sentiment was echoed by al Kurd.
“I am also worried. My daughter has never heard the sound of bombing before. I am afraid of how she might react if she experiences it here in Gaza. This fear is always in my heart.”
“I wish for my daughter to have a better future, a life that is safer and more stable than the one we are living now,” al Kurd said.
