6th January 2017

Egypt freed uprising activist Ahmed Maher after three years in prison.
Chad closed its border with Libya and deployed forces in an attempt to block the flow of militant fighters.
The three French judges investigating allegations that French peacekeeping forces raped children in the Central African Republic have not requested any charges.
Several peacekeepers are reportedly dead in separate instances of violence across the Central African Republic.
Descendants of the Namibian Herero and Nama people are suing the German government over an early 1900s genocide by German colonial troops that resulted in more than 100,000 deaths.
Developing now: Gunfire erupted at two military camps in the Ivory Coast after ex-soldiers demanded back pay and the AP is now reporting mutinies in three cities over pay.
Burundi’s environment minister, Emmanuel Niyonkuru, was assassinated in Bujumbura
As former Kenyan president Uhuru Kenyatta’s ICC trial threatens to collapse for lack of evidence, Kenyans fear they will never get justice.
The World Wildlife Foundation is facing a human rights investigation after reports that the anti-poaching guards the organization partially funds and supports destroyed property and made physical threats against the Baka tribe in Cameroon’s rainforests.
In Gambia, President Jammeh continues to refuse delivery on his election loss and is hiring mercenaries.
A New Year’s Eve nightclub attack in Istanbul left 39 people dead. The attacker remains at large and is believed to be an ethnic Uighur.
The attack was the final act of a brutal year for Turkey, a year which not only included a failed coup and intense crackdown, but a series of deadly terror attacks.
Israeli forces killed 32 Palestinian children in the occupied West Bank in 2016, making it the deadliest year for children in the West Bank in a decade.
An Israeli soldier, Sgt. Elor Azaria, was convicted of manslaughter for killing a wounded Palestinian attacker in the West Bank in March. The trial centered on a video of the killing taken by the Abu-Shamsiya family, who have decided to document nearby violence as a means of resistance.
Twice this week, investigators questioned Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu over possible corruption.
Even since the ceasefire, bombs have rained down on the Wadi Barada valley.
Fighting north of Damascus has disrupted the city’s water supply, and the UN is warning the government that targeting water sources is a war crime.
Russia says it is beginning to draw down forces in Syria.
The State Dept added Osama bin Laden’s son, Hamza, to its Specially Designated Global Terrorist list.
At least 17 people were killed in two car bomb attacks in Baghdad on Thursday.
Iraqi paramilitary forces are using weapons sourced from 16 different countries, and have a pattern of systematic human rights abuses.
According to Iraq’s joint operations commander, 70 percent of Mosul has been retaken from the Islamic State.
Russia’s plans for Afghanistan in the coming year may include a growing relationship with and support for the Taliban in service of battling the Islamic State.
The wife of Paul Overby, a Massachusetts man missing in Afghanistan for two years, revealed in a statement that he was kidnapped by the Haqqani network.
In a gunfight in Dhaka, Bangladesh police killed the prime suspect in the July café attack that left 20 hostages dead.
A photo of a dead Rohingya toddler named Mohammed Shohayet, who drowned last month trying to escape persecution by government forces in Myanmar, evokes the image of Aylan Kurdi.
A policeman’s video footage of officers abusing Rohingya villagers has also garnered a lot of attention.
A commission set up by Myanmar’s government says there is no evidence of genocide against the Rohingya, but the report’s conclusions and methodology were strongly condemned by Human Rights Watch.
Experts say that North Korea has the capacity to make good on its promise to test an ICBM this year.
In court, a French olive farmer defended helping dozens of refugees crossing illegally from Italy.
Greek anarchist leader Panagiota Roupa, called the country’s most-wanted terrorist, was arrested in Athens.
In 2016, he United States dropped 26,171 bombs in seven countries (this is probably not the full number).
Outgoing Director of National Intelligence James Clapper defended the intelligence community’s assessments of Russian hacking at a Senate Armed Services hearing. This came after Trump continued to question the conclusions of multiple agencies and tweeting approvingly of Julian Assange and WikiLeaks.
A new intelligence report presented to President Obama on Thursday identified the go-betweens Russians used to provide WikiLeaks with the stolen emails. Intercepted messages also showed Russian officials celebrating Trump’s victory.
Longread: Cyberwar for sale.
Trump’s Twitter account is the most powerful publication in the world and it is very insecure.
Four Yemeni prisoners were released from Guantánamo and settled in Saudi Arabia.
The US Army issued updated rules to grant religious accommodations for turbans, beards, and hijabs.
Another weekly round-up to keep tabs on: The New York Times’ This Week in Hate.

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