Trump-sanctioned ICC wins EU Parliament’s human rights prize

Polico, Max Griera, October 22, 2026 

Court nominated by center-left weeks after sanctions imposed by Donald Trump.

This photograph shows a view of the International Criminal Court in The Hague on September 23, 2026. | Remko de Waal/ANP/AFP via

STRASBOURG — The International Criminal Court has won this year's Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought, awarded by the European Parliament, according to two people with knowledge of the decision. 

The €50,000 prize honors defenders of human rights and freedom of thought, with past winners including Nelson Mandela, Alexei Navalny, Belarusian journalists, and the people of Ukraine. 

Parliament President Roberta Metsola announced the decision later on Thursday: “The European Union is built on respect for multilateralism and international institutions, and this prize recognizes the important work of the Court in upholding international law and justice.” 

The Socialists and Democrats group nominated the ICC following U.S. President Donald Trump's sanctions on the court, announced on Oct. 9. 

Inside the room, European People's Party chief Manfred Weber was counting on the right-wing groups to back his group's pick for the prize, Tanzanian politician Tundu Lissu — but needed the Patriots’ support to secure a majority. The Patriots, however, stood by their own nominees, the Iranian twin sisters imprisoned for protesting, one of whom has been sentenced to death. 

Weber first asked the right-wing ECR to lobby Patriots chief Kinga Gál. When that failed, he approached her himself, according to two officials, granted anonymity to speak about the internal process. Gál ultimately recused herself from voting, allowing the Socialists, Renew, Greens and The Left to prevail with a relative majority of votes. 

"It is a great achievement for the European Socialists that we led this proposal despite the EPP’s opposition. We are on the right side of history. This vote shows that the majority of this Parliament, together with our group, stands with international law,” Spanish S&D lawmaker Hana Jalloul, one of the promoters of the ICC nomination, told POLITICO. 

French MEP Chloé Ridel said: "This is a message of hope and resistance sent to Donald Trump. No, we will not abandon the rule of law and international justice. We will stand with the ICC for as long as it takes.” 

The prize is named in honor of Andrei Sakharov, a Soviet physicist and political dissident. Shortlisted candidates are traditionally invited to the Parliament’s award ceremony, which takes place during the December plenary session in Strasbourg. The Parliament plans in the coming months to increase the prize money from €50,000 to €100,000, according to an internal note seen by POLITICO.

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Dutch spies hacked Jared Kushner’s phone, alleges book

DutchNews.nl, October 23, 2026 

Jared Kushner. Photo: Depositphotos.com

The Dutch military intelligence service (MIVD) hacked and monitored the phone of Trump’s son-in-law and current special envoy Jared Kushner in 2018, a new book alleges, allowing them to see hundreds of millions of dollars passing through a UAE bank account. 

The allegations were published on Thursday night in Vanity Fair, and come from an excerpt of a book called Princes and Thieves by journalist Matthew Cole, which examines Kushner’s dealings as Trump’s adviser in the Middle East. 

Kushner has vehemently denied the accusations on social media, calling them “completely insane”, and “outrageous fabrications”. 

The book says that the MIVD gained access to Kushner’s phone in 2018 after a Russian spy was caught in the UK and offered a deal to avoid arrest: he could help the Dutch espionage efforts instead, which he agreed to. 

After the spy helped the MIVD gain access to a Russian server, they found screenshots of Kushner’s phone and began conducting their own hack, which succeeded in gaining access. They could then watch everything he did on his screen from 2018. 

They saw him log in to an account at First Abu Dhabi Bank, the book claims, which had received around $750 million. The account was owned by an Emirati charity, with Kushner as a signatory, and the money had come from the UAE and Saudi Arabia but was routed through Azerbaijan to hide its origin. 

In total the two states allegedly put at least $2 billion into accounts for Kushner, including around $1 billion held in Israel. It is not clear from the excerpt whether the MIVD knew about that account, or shared its findings with the US. 

The book says Kushner may have broken US disclosure, bribery and foreign agent laws. Kushner’s lawyer told Vanity Fair he had no connection to the charity or bank accounts and had abided by all legal requirements. The MIVD has not yet commented publicly. 

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Pope does not need further treatment after lung cancer surgery

BBC, Cachella Smith, 21 October 2026 

Pope Leo returned to St Peter's Square on Wednesday for his weekly general audience

 Pope Leo XIV does not need any further treatment following an operation to remove a cancerous growth from his lung, his doctors have said. 

Test results on tissue removed during surgery confirmed he had had a lung adenocarcinoma, as was initially diagnosed, and that the disease was localised, according to a statement shared by the Vatican. 

"A subsequent oncological assessment has confirmed that no further treatment is necessary," it added. 

The 71-year-old was discharged from Rome's Gemelli Hospital over the weekend four days after his operation - stopping to speak to well-wishers as he left the grounds. 

It comes as he held his first weekly general audience since leaving hospital at St Peter's Square on Wednesday. 

The surgery, which took place on 13 October and lasted for 90 minutes, included the removal of the lower lobe of the Pope's right lung. 

The pontiff himself had announced during his weekly Sunday prayers that he would be having the procedure - telling those gathered in St Peter's Square that doctors had found a nodule on his lung. 

He said at the time that it had been caught "at an early stage". 

Images shared days after his operation, on Friday, showed the Pope celebrating Mass from the hospital wearing green vestments and standing behind a makeshift altar. 

On the same day, the Vatican said he spoke to Russian President Vladimir Putin over the phone to urge a ceasefire in the blockaded Russian-occupied Ukrainian city of Oleshky to allow the delivery of food aid, and to call for "dialogue and peace". 

The pontiff had a similar phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Monday. 

Those close to the Pope have also previously said he was keen not to delay a trip to Latin America which is planned for early November.

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US closely monitoring case of lab worker who ‘possibly’ died of plague in Siberia, says Rubio

The Guardian, Mon 5 Oct 2026, Pjotr Sauer and Luke Harding 

Quarantine measures in place in several hospitals in eastern Russia amid uncertainty over death of Darya Shipilova 

Darya Shipilova died on the night of 2 October at a regional hospital in
Shelekhov. Photograph: Social Media

The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, has said the US is closely monitoring the case of a Russian laboratory worker who died last week after a reported accident at a plague research institute in Siberia.

“We’re watching and monitoring it closely,” Rubio said on Monday before leaving for a trip to Europe. “I ⁠don’t think it’s cause for alarm, but it is cause for focus and a cause just to keep an ⁠eye on it.”

Darya Shipilova, a 28-year-old employee at the anti-plague institute in the city of Irkutsk, became ill at work. She died two days later on the night of 2 October at a regional hospital in the nearby town of Shelekhov.

It remains unclear how she became unwell. Unconfirmed reports in Russian media have suggested Shipilova may have been infected after a mishap at the laboratory. Officials have not publicly confirmed that account.

Local media have reported that the institute has subsequently been locked down, with staff forced to sleep on the floor and on chairs. “They’ve been isolating everybody since Friday – more than 60 people,” one relative, Roman, told the news portal Siberia.Realities.

He said family members were allowed to drop off food at a checkpoint while tests were carried out inside the building. Similar quarantine restrictions have been placed on several other hospitals in and around the city.

Rubio, citing what ‌Russians have released about the death, said it seemed a worker in the lab became ​infected and there was concern the disease may have spread internally.

“There’s very limited travel between the US and Russia, obviously,” he said. “But like anything else, something like that gets out, it just quickly spreads.”

Senior Russian officials have added to public disquiet by sending conflicting messages. Alexey Tsydenov, the head of the Buryatia region, which neighbours Irkutsk, initially wrote that Shipilova had died of plague, before editing his post to say she had “possibly” died of the disease.

Rospotrebnadzor, Russia’s health watchdog, said Shipilova died from “pneumonia of unknown aetiology”. It insisted that tests found no micro-organisms linked to her professional work and described the “sanitary and epidemiological” situation in the area as stable.

Authorities in the nearby city of Baikalsk briefly urged residents to avoid travelling to Shelekhov and surrounding settlements after what they said was unofficial information about a possible plague infection. They later deleted the post from social media.

“There are no obvious changes to daily life on the streets, but people are worried and anxious. Locals are angry that they are not being told anything,” said Elena Trifonova, a journalist with People of Baikal, an exiled Russian media outlet specialising in Siberia.

Despite the lack of a confirmed diagnosis, precautionary measures appear to have been introduced across the region. The US-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported on Monday that several hospitals in Irkutsk had been placed under quarantine.

The outlet confirmed that staff from Shipilova’s workplace, the Irkutsk Anti-plague Research Institute of Siberia and the Far East, had been kept inside the institute since 2 October.

Patients at Irkutsk city clinical hospital No 1 and the Ivano-Matreninskaya children’s hospital said relatives were not being allowed to visit and people inside were not permitted to leave.

On social media, local residents described some of the precautions being introduced.

Ulyana Gavryunina, who went on Monday to one of Irkutsk’s main maternity hospitals for a routine check-up on Monday, said doctors refused to allow her mother in, citing a quarantine imposed over the suspected plague case. Gavryunina said staff member checked her for flu-like symptoms and asked her to fill out a screening form for infections, on which “plague” was listed. She posted a photograph of the form on Instagram.

Elsewhere, a mask requirement was introduced at the Irkutsk aluminium smelter in Shelekhov. The plant’s director, Artyom Fominykh, called it a preventive measure, saying: “Better safe than sorry.” Over the weekend several public events in Irkutsk were cancelled.

Shipolova’s death has prompted intervention from senior federal health officials. Anna Popova, the head of Rospotrebnadzor and the country’s chief sanitary doctor, travelled to Irkutsk on Friday.

She attended an emergency meeting of the regional sanitary and anti-epidemic commission over what officials called a suspected case of a “particularly dangerous infection”.

Igor Kobzev, the governor of the Irkutsk region, urged residents to remain calm after meeting Popova to coordinate the response. “All identified contacts have been placed under medical observation. As of today, none is showing signs of illness and laboratory tests have returned negative results,” he wrote on Telegram.

Kobzev made no reference to reports that a laboratory worker had died.

US politicians have raised concerns about the incident, which follows longstanding and unfounded allegations by the Kremlin that Ukraine has secretly carried out biological weapons research with the support of Washington.

A Republican representative, Don Bacon, a senior member of the House armed services committee, wrote on social media: “I remember hearing from anti-Ukraine voices about their so-called bio labs. It was Russian disinformation ops at their best. But in reality it is Russia with the bio labs.”

Plague remains endemic in parts of Siberia and the Russian far east, where the bacterium persists naturally among wild rodents and their fleas.
But human cases in Russia are rare. Before the suspected Irkutsk case, the country’s last recorded human infection was in 2016, when a 10-year-old boy in Siberia’s Altai Republic contracted plague after helping butcher a marmot.

“This case here seems like a rare lab accident and is unlikely to go much further,” Prof Ian Jones, a professor of virology at the University of Reading, in the UK, said. “Although it is true that pneumonic plague is directly transmissible, the contacts of the primary case are known and can be treated if they show any sign of infection.”

He added: “Plague carries a huge history and is still present in many parts of the world, including Russia, but the living conditions associated with previously spread plague are no longer generally true, antibiotics are available and its potential is therefore limited.”

The victim was working at the anti-plague institute in 

the Siberia city of Irkutsk. AFP via Getty Images.

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