TV News LIES

A jury on Wednesday convicted an Illinois sheriff’s deputy of second-degree murder, a lesser charge, in the shooting death of Sonya Massey, a Black woman who called 911 to report a suspected prowler.

Sean Grayson could be sentenced to up to 20 years in prison or even probation. The jury did not convict him of first-degree murder, a crime that carries a sentence of 45 years to life.

Massey’s supporters were angered by the result. Her father, James Wilburn, called it a “miscarriage of justice.”

“She called for help and she was murdered in her own home. ... Second-degree murder — that is not right. That is not justice for anybody’s family,” Teresa Haley, a civil rights activist in Springfield, Illinois, told reporters outside the courthouse.

More...

Not only did U.S. Border Patrol boss Gregory Bovino show his face in a federal courtroom Tuesday, but he and a judge will be getting to know each other a lot better in the days to come.

That’s because U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis said she wants to meet with the Border Patrol’s commander-at-large every weeknight over the next seven days, as federal agents continue their aggressive deportation campaign that’s stretched from Little Village to Lake View.

Their daily meeting around 6 p.m. will give the judge a chance to speak with Bovino about the events of the day.

And as they do so, Ellis will have in her back pocket a request that she fully ban the feds from using tear gas amid the immigration blitz. The judge said Tuesday that, if agents continue to deploy gas, “they’d better be able to back it up.”

“And if they can’t,” she added, “then they will lose that as something they can use.”

Tuesday’s hearing revealed that Bovino has no body-worn camera — nor the training to use one. Bovino admitted that fact, even after telling the judge that 99% of U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents here have that technology.

More...

The detention by immigration authorities of a Chicago man whose 16-year-old daughter is undergoing treatment for advanced cancer is illegal, and he must be given a bond hearing by 31 October, a federal judge has ruled.

Attorneys for Ruben Torres Maldonado, 40, who was detained on 18 October, have petitioned for his release as his deportation case goes through the system. While US district judge Jeremy Daniel said in an order on Friday that Torres’s detention by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is illegal and violates his due process rights, he also said he could not order his immediate release.

“While sympathetic to the plight the petitioner’s daughter faces due to her health concerns, the court must act within the constraints of the relevant statutes, rules, and precedents,” the judge wrote on Friday.

Torres’s attorney took the ruling as a win – for now.

“We’re pleased that the judge ruled in our favor in determining that ICE is illegally detaining Ruben. We will now turn the fight to immigration court so we can secure Ruben’s release on bond while he applies for permanent residence status,” his attorney, Kalman Resnick, said in a statement on Friday night.

More...

A group of Democrats is demanding Israel release 16-year-old Mohammad Ibrahim after the Palestinian American child has described the horrific abuses he’s facing at the hands of Israeli officers in military prison.

On Tuesday, Defense for Children International-Palestine (DCIP) shared testimony from Mohammad. Israel has held Mohammad in pre-trial detention for eight months, during which Israel has barred him from seeing his family. He has lost a significant amount of weight and contracted scabies in that time.

The boy, who faces charges of rock throwing from Israeli authorities, detailed overcrowding and deprivation in Ofer military prison.

“[My] section consists of 19 rooms, each equipped with four bunk beds,” Mohammad told DCIP. “In each room, eight children occupy the beds, while the remaining children sleep on mattresses on the floor.”

“The mattresses, whether on the beds or on the floor, are extremely light and inadequate. Each prisoner receives two blankets, yet we still feel cold at night. There is no heating or cooling system in the rooms. The only items present are mattresses, blankets, and a single copy of the Quran in each room,” he said.

More...

Zionist troops from Ben Dunkelman’s 7th brigade celebrate on July 17th, 1948, after the surrender of the mostly Christian Palestinian city of Nazareth. The Toronto Star calls Dunkelman a “hero” because he protected the residents from death or expulsion. But hold on. According to the UN partition plan, Nazareth was not supposed to be in Israel. And Dunkelman’s concern for Christians did not extend to Muslims. So what kind of hero is that? Read more

A feel-good Christmas story by Toronto Star writer Mitch Potter, told readers about Ben Dunkelman, the Canadian from Toronto who “saved” Nazareth. According to the Star article, “The Toronto man who saved Nazareth” Dunkelman is a hero because he protected the Christians in Nazareth from the Israeli military as it carried out its ethnic cleansing of the Galilee in 1948.

Dunkelman, who was an heir to the TipTop Tailor fortune, was the commander of one of the main Zionist forces which had already completed the expulsion of thousands of Palestinian Muslims. But Dunkelman hesitated when he came to Nazareth, a predominantly Christian city.

He asked for written orders to carry out the expulsion from David Ben Gurion, who had become Premier of Israel a few months earlier. Ben Gurion, concerned about how the expulsion of Christians from Nazareth would look in Europe, declined. Lacking explicit written orders, Dunkelman prudently decided to instead negotiate the surrender of Nazareth rather than attack it and expel its Christian residents.

More...

They were freed in exchange for Israeli hostages held in Gaza, but instead of going home, 154 Palestinian ex-prisoners were exiled to Egypt, where they are confined to a hotel and kept under tight surveillance.

All of them had been sentenced by Israeli military court to life in prison on charges of murder, belonging to Palestinian militant groups banned by Israel, and other acts of violence.

But when a ceasefire took effect in Gaza earlier this month, the group was put on buses and sent to Egypt, where authorities have put them in a five-star hotel that they cannot leave without clearance.

"We were separated from our families for 20 years," Murad Abu al-Rub, a 45-year-old who spent two decades behind bars for murder and for belonging to a Palestinian organisation banned by Israel, told AFP.

Now, he is living in uncertainty and under close surveillance, far from the Palestinian city of Jenin where he was born.

"Nothing has changed. I still can't see mother or my siblings," Abu al-Rub told a team of AFP journalists who were able to access the hotel.

Since the US-brokered ceasefire took hold on October 10, Hamas has freed all 20 surviving Israeli hostages in exchange for nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners, most of whom returned to Gaza and the West Bank.

During previous truces in the war sparked by Hamas's October 2023 attack, thousands of other Palestinian prisoners were freed in similar exchanges.

The vast majority of those with life sentences were exiled to Egypt, which has formal ties with Israel and played a key mediation role.

Rights groups have long criticised Israel's use of military courts to try Palestinians suspected of security offenses, saying they do not offer fair trial guarantees.

More...