Jurors in the trial of the former DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson will hear about “difficult and traumatic incidents” the two alleged victims in the case allege occurred to them as children, Newry Crown Court has heard.
People at the vigil for Yves Sakila on Henry Street. Photo by Shamim Malekmian.
It reminded him of George Floyd, pinned to the ground and dying under the knee of a cop on the streets of Minneapolis, said Jude Hughes, a Black Irish community activist.
“It’s literally George Floyd on the streets of Dublin. I can’t believe that scene and that guy with his knee on his neck,” he said, in a Zoom meeting on Monday night.
The emergency meeting was organised by the Africa Centre for Black people across the country to come together and process their feelings about what had happened on Friday – and strategise on how to respond.
More than 100 people had joined.
On Friday, Yves Sakila was pinned to the ground on Henry Street by a few men, a video circulated on social media showed.
At one point, one of them, an older man in a black suit, throws himself onto his neck and pushes down with his right knee.
A few seconds later, he removes his knee, but keeps pressing on his neck with his hands. Someone else is pinning his head to the ground. Other men press on his body.
You can hear Sakila grunting and moaning amidst the chatter of the passersby.
By the end of it, he seemed unconscious. He was later pronounced dead.
The ex-taoiseach and Fianna Fáil leader is helping to create a new far-right cover which will be used to justify fresh atrocities at accommodation centres, random attacks on immigrants, racist violence and murder.
There is blood on Bertie’s hands. Perhaps Fianna Fáil will expel Ahern again.
Ahern resigned from FF in 2012, days before he was due to be expelled. The state’s Mahon Tribunal ruled he was financially corrupt. This was Ahern’s stellar achievement : the dimmest dogs 🐶 in Irish ☘️ streets know the Fianna Fáil party has been corrupt since its foundation in 1926! The former leader rejoined the Soldiers of Destiny in 2023.
Getting expelled from an organization more financially dodgy than the average Swiss Bank is an Olympian feat.
Bertie continues to cause no end of trouble for his party – so, perhaps, he will jump into the Independent Ireland party, where he can wallow in racist gutters alongside other ex-colleagues such as the dangerous and eccentric Cork North-Central TD Ken O’Flynn.
Donnacha Ó Beacháin discussed the Hungary elections with Flor MacCarthy and
@shonamurray.bsky.social on Oireachtas TV. Defeating Orbán is one thing, dismantling Orbánism quite another Expectations are high and Magyar’s support base is diverse, even contradictory. Managing expectations will be key to avoiding fragmentation
Discussed Hungary elections with Flor MacCarthy and @shonamurray.bsky.social on Oireachtas TVDefeating Orbán is one thing, dismantling Orbánism quite anotherExpectations are high and Magyar’s support base is diverse, even contradictory. Managing expectations will be key to avoiding fragmentation
Kavita Krishnan examines the fall of Orbán in greater detail here :
Writing in The Hindu after Viktor Orbán’s 12 April 2026 electoral defeat, Indian Marxist-feminist Kavita Krishnan draws six lessons for an international readership and, above all, for India under Narendra Modi. She argues that illiberal democracies can be ousted at the ballot box; that obituaries for universal democracy are premature; that Ukraine won the Hungarian vote; that regime-change accusations are confessions; that Orbán’s fall is a defeat for Xi Jinping as well as Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin and Benjamin Netanyahu; and that pro-democracy forces must now discard the “West versus rest” map and consolidate their gains across borders. [AN]
Hungarian voters have swept their far-right strongman Viktor Orbán out of office, ending his 16-year run as Prime Minister and electoral autocrat. Here are six lessons the world can take from them.
President Donald Trump said he would “suspend the bombing and attack of Iran for a period of two weeks” subject to Iran reopening the Strait of Hormuz.
Iran’s foreign minister said his country’s armed forces would halt military operations and allow safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz if the US stops its attacks.
Brent crude, the international benchmark, fell 5 per cent, while WTI, the US benchmark, fell 9 per cent.
Pakistan had requested Trump extend his 8pm ET deadline for bombing civilian infrastructure in Iran and asked the Islamic republic to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
Trump had on Tuesday morning escalated his rhetoric against Iran and warned that a “whole civilization will die tonight” if Tehran does not strike a deal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz by his deadline.
The US president had previously warned of major attacks on Iran’s bridges and power plants if Tehran did not agree to his deadline.
Attacks on “objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population” are prohibited under international law. – Source : Financial Times
A ceasefire won’t erase the #WarCrimes already committed by the Trump regime during this illegal war. And Trump has flip flopped before. Find or host an emergency protest at bit.ly/nowar45
The Irish News columnist Patrick Murphy tells many home-truths about the Good Friday Agreement and the Stormont Assembly in Belfast.
This occurs in tandem with declining support for partition within the six-county bit of Ireland. A detonator of this trend was Brexit – the British state’s 2016 right-wing exit from the European Union.
Anti-Partition supporters of the Good Friday Agreement hope its referendum provisions will be enacted – forcing an electoral end on Ireland’s partition. These people need to address an ugly truth : an Irish unity referendum within the 6 county state can only happen with the permission of the British Secretary of State for “Northern Ireland” – an office currently held by Labour MP Hillary Benn.
Benn has categorically stated he will not authorise such a referendum. Credible opinion polls suggest that by the time of the next British general election (which must occur by 2029) the Westminster government could be controlled by the far-right ultra-Unionist Reform party led by Nigel Farage.
The best progressive way to end the partition of Ireland today can start with smashing Stormont.End institutionalised sectarianism and class collaboration – No coalition with right-wing parties such as the Democratic Unionist Party.
The way forward is :
1.Call for the formation of citizens’ assemblies which will draw up a political programme for the creation of a new 32 county Irish state
2. If the Irish state refuses to call a Citizens’ Assembly – something like the body which preceded the 2018 referendum in the 26 county bity of Ireland which repealed the anti-abortion 8th Amendment – the workers’ movement, women’s movement, trade unions, left-wing parties, and so on should take the initiative.
Yesterday Conor Gallagher in The Irish Times, working with the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, revealed shocking details about the supply chain linked to the Aughinish Alumina plant in Limerick.
His report outlined how significant quantities of alumina from this facility are being exported to Russia, where they are being used to make aluminium, which is then sold to a trading company supplying over 100 Russian weapons manufacturers. It is deeply alarming to see that shipments of Irish alumina to Russia have increased significantly since Putin’s brutal full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. It is horrific to see this. It is unconscionable that a plant operating in Ireland could be contributing to materials used in the destruction of so many communities and so much civilian infrastructure in Ukraine and can be used to kill children in Ukraine. This is appalling to see and I do welcome the Taoiseach’s commitment to review this report, but the question is clear: what urgent action will the Taoiseach take to ensure that no Irish-based industry or business is complicit in supporting Russia’s war machine?
Ivana Bacik is right to insist that the Irish government must take “urgent action” on this issue – words and good intentions are not good enough.
In the letters page of the Irish Times (Friday May 27) Conor O’Neill – Head of Policy, Christian Aid Ireland; Chair, Irish Coalition for Business & Human Rights points out :
Aughinish exposes a general trend in State attitude to Ukraine, Palestine, human rights …
Newspaper readers who followed reports of a very unusual Gerry Adams London trial were not surprised by its collapse.
Procedurally. for this category of case, there is a 3 year time limit. People injured in three IRA bombings – Old Bailey 1973; Docklands and Manchester 1996 – put Gerry Adams in the dock seeking nominal damages of £1 on the grounds that the former Sinn Féin president had been an IRA leader.
Claimants were well aware of these rules, – they did not have a leg to stand on legally. The only issue was whether Judge Jonathan Swift (yes, same name as the famous Irish satirist who wrote Gulliver’s Travels!) would apply the rules. Judge Swift would have looked a bigger fool than Lemuel Gulliver if he ignored the regulations, and an appeal court later overturned his verdict. [1]
Mark Hennessy contributed this analysis in the March 19 2026 issue of the Irish Times :
This excellent article appeared in the Friday March 20 2026 issue of the Irish Times :
Concerning the differences between the Ukrainian and Russian States, Catriona Crowe hits the nail on the head :
Casualties are breaking down at a ratio of 2-2.5 to 1, with Russia suffering the largest proportion, according to the Centre for Strategic and International Studies. While the international press can report from Ukraine, although with some difficulty and considerable danger from the front lines, the Kremlin has detained at least 27 journalists since 2022, and 355 international journalists have been branded “foreign agents”.
Irish Times March 20 2026
Catriona Crowe: The brave few risking everything to unmask Putin’s Russia
The Oscar-winning documentary Mr Nobody against Putin is a record of something totally unseen in the world outside Russia
Ukraine is now in the fifth year of its war with Russia, an unprovoked invasion of a sovereign state based on Vladimir Putin’s desire to reconstitute the Russian Empire. It is estimated that casualties for both sides (killed, wounded and missing) will amount to two million sometime this year.
Ian Hislop, Private Eye’s editor, said: “It’s nice to see that Private Eye was getting close enough to the truth fifteen years ago to make some really appalling people – and their fine upstanding legal representatives – nervous.”
Ian Hislop, Private Eye’s editor, said: “It’s nice to see that Private Eye was getting close enough to the truth fifteen years ago to make some really appalling people – and their fine upstanding legal representatives – nervous.🧵3/5
“In our experience, it usually does take quite a while for prosecutors, justice departments and governments to sit up and take notice of what Private Eye has been saying all along.”
“In our experience, it usually does take quite a while for prosecutors, justice departments and governments to sit up and take notice of what Private Eye has been saying all along.”🧵4/5
Individuals operating within the network created by the late Jeffrey Epstein hired numerous people who threatened media organisations which were investigating a vast child abuse and financial corruption racket. One such individual was the Belfast Lawyer Paul Tweed, who wrote to Jeffrey Epstein in 2011 calling the magazine Private Eye “an absolute rag” :
This is the relevant magazine cover :
Belfast Telegraph Political Correspondent Sam McBride has done a fine job investigating the murky professional relationships between Paul Tweed, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor and Jeffrey Epstein.
The big lesson here is that the British and USA states ignored credible evidence for many years uncovered by investigators. This “tug the forelock” behaviour must cease. A first step in Ireland is to cease all official visits by members of the corrupt British royal family.
The least we can say is this :
Read here here the carefully chosen recent words of Belfast journalist Suzanne Breen, Belfast Telegraph political correspondent and a frequent contributor to BBC NI politics programmes :
“Chris Moore says William McGrath worked for MI5, and it’s even possible that he was planted in the children’s home as part of an intelligence-gathering operation. The journalist makes a compelling case that MI5 — at the very least — knew about what was happening and kept quiet.
Shamefully, there has been no adequate inquiry into Kincora. Some files have been destroyed, while others have been locked away by the British government to 2065 and 2085.
The most marginalised and vulnerable children were raped by powerful men, allegedly including King Charles’ grand uncle.
The building at the centre of the scandal was demolished three years ago, but the cover up of the crimes committed behind its walls continues. It is long past the time that the full truth was told about what happened in the house of horrors.”
Tomás Ó Flatharta 