Lebanon’s judicial authorities have decided to hand over a former senior Syrian military officer under ousted President Bashar Assad to Damascus after questioning him over crimes he allegedly committed during the country’s conflict, officials said Tuesday. 

The Trump administration has added the head of the International Criminal Court (ICC) and one of its senior lawyers to a list of sanctioned individuals. United States Secretary of State Marco Rubio framed the widening sanctions on Tuesday as part of his campaign to “dismantle” the ICC.

A Syrian court on Tuesday issued a death sentence to detainee Wassim al-Assad, a cousin of long-time ruler Bashar al-Assad who was himself sentenced to death in absentia a week ago. 

Judge Fakhr al-Din al-Aryan said Wassim al-Assad was convicted of multiple murders and "murder accompanied by torture and brutality... classified as crimes against humanity and war crimes", adding that "he is therefore sentenced to death". 

Myanmar’s military-backed government said Saturday that more than 300,000 Rohingya refugees living in camps in Bangladesh are former residents of western Rakhine state and that it will accept their return once security conditions improve.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs statement comes as the Rohingya refugee crisis enters its ninth year, with hundreds of thousands of refugees still living in camps in Bangladesh after fleeing Myanmar in August 2017 when the military launched a crackdown following attacks by a Rohingya insurgent group on guard posts in Rakhine.

Venezuela says it has freed 131 people considered political prisoners, in a sign of progress for national reconciliation following the United States’ removal of former President Nicolas Maduro. 

Those released had been granted “alternative measures from incarceration” under the Program for Peace and Democratic Coexistence, the country’s interim government said on Friday. 

Taliban rulers and other officials gathered at Afghanistan’s traditional Loya Jirga assembly hall on Saturday to celebrate the fifth anniversary of their return to power, touting what they described as restored stability and an end to decades of conflict. 

A top United Nations official, however, warned of a grave human rights crisis in Afghanistan, where girls over age 12 are barred from attending school. 

More than two decades after Zimbabwe seized thousands of mainly white-owned commercial farms, some of those properties are set to change hands again. 

But President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s government insisted the move is not a reversal of the land redistribution programme that reshaped Zimbabwe’s countryside after 2000. 

Instead, officials said they are resolving three separate categories of land claims involving foreign investors, Black Zimbabwean owners, and white farmers who remained on acquired land. 

Israeli settlers have been besieging two Palestinian families in their homes in the occupied West Bank since Sunday, with the families saying their supplies were running out and rights groups urging the authorities to step in. On Wednesday Israeli security forces were reported to have withdrawn from the Jewish settler outpost in the village of Qusra near Nablus, following clashes with a crowd of extremist settlers. About a dozen settlers are said to remain at the site.

Lebanon’s parliament Wednesday passed a controversial general amnesty law, a day after a majority of legislators voted to formally abolish the death penalty. 

Lawmakers who backed the bill call it a beginning to correcting past overreach by the judiciary and security agencies and help reduce prison overcrowding, but critics say it is skewed and largely benefits Sunni Islamist prisoners.