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      British Police Arrest Iranian Nationals in Counterterrorism Investigations

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      Seven Iranians were among eight men arrested in two investigations. Some of the detained were accused of preparing a terrorist attack on an unnamed site.British counterterrorism officers have arrested eight men, including seven Iranian nationals, in connection with two separate investigations London’s Metropolitan Police said on Sunday.In one of the cases, four Iranians and another man whose nationality has yet to be determined were detained on Saturday on suspicion of preparing a terrorist act against a single site.“The investigation relates to a suspected plot to target a specific premises,” the police said in a statement issued early Sunday. The police added that the site was not being named “for operational reasons.”Dominic Murphy, the head of the Metropolitan Police’s Counter Terrorism Command, said the investigation was “fast-moving” and that police were “working closely with those at the affected site to keep them updated.”He added: “The investigation is still in its early stages and we are exploring various lines of inquiry to establish any potential motivation as well as to identify whether there may be any further risk to the public linked to this matter.”The police said that two of the Iranian nationals were aged 29, one was 46 and the other 40. They were arrested in London and Swindon, about 80 miles west of the capital, and in Stockport and Rochdale in the northwest. The other man was arrested in the Manchester area.In a later statement, the police said that three Iranians, aged 39, 44 and 55, were detained at separate locations in London on Saturday but that those arrests were not connected to the other investigation.“All three men have been taken into custody and searches continue at the three addresses,” the police said. They added that the men were detained under the National Security Act 2023, which was introduced to tighten protections against hostile acts against Britain.Yvette Cooper, the home secretary, described the arrests as “serious events that demonstrate the ongoing requirement to adapt our response to national security threats.”She added: “The government continues to work with police and intelligence agencies to support all the action and security assessments that are needed to keep the country safe.”Further details of the type of plots being investigated were not given.In a speech last year, Ken McCallum, the head of MI5, Britain’s domestic security service, identified Iran was as a country of growing concern to counterterrorism police. He said that, since January 2022, the security services had responded to 20 Iranian-backed plots that posed potentially lethal threats to British citizens and residents.Mr. McCallum cited as an example the jailing of a man last December for reconnaissance of what was then the headquarters of Iran International, a Persian-language opposition TV channel that operates from Britain.Speaking to the BBC on Sunday, Wes Streeting, the health secretary, said that the government “will obviously keep the public updated as we can,” but added: “given these are live investigations it wouldn’t be appropriate for me to comment further.” More

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      Another Reason People Fear the Government

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      Why do Americans have such deep distrust of their government?It’s a simple question with a complex answer, but here’s part of the reason: All too often, the government wrongfully inflicts profound harm on American citizens and then leaves them with no recourse. It violates the law and leaves its victims with no way to be made whole.Let me give you two recent examples, both taken from Supreme Court cases that were argued this term and have not yet been decided.In the predawn hours of Oct. 18, 2017, an F.B.I. SWAT team detonated a flash-bang grenade at a home at 3756 Denville Trace in Atlanta. A team of federal agents rushed in.The family inside was terrified. Hilliard Toi Cliatt lived there with his partner, Curtrina Martin, and her 7-year-old son, Gabe. They had no idea who had entered their house. Cliatt tried to protect Martin by grabbing her and hiding in a closet.Martin screamed, “I need to get my son.” The agents pulled Cliatt and Martin out of the closet, holding them at gunpoint as Martin fell to the floor, half-naked. When they asked Cliatt his address, “All the noise just ended.”He told them: 3756 Denville Trace. But it turned out they were supposed to be at 3741 Landau Lane, an entirely different house down the block. The agents left, raided the correct house and then returned to apologize. The lead agent gave the family his business card and left the family, according to their Supreme Court petition, in “stunned disbelief.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      U.K. Counterterrorism Police Investigate After Crossbow Attack Injures 2 Women

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      The British police arrested a man on Saturday after an attack in Leeds, a city in northern England.Counterterrorism police in Britain are investigating an attack on Saturday that “seriously injured” two women in the northern English city of Leeds. The police said that they had recovered a crossbow and a firearm.The police arrested a 38-year-old man, who was taken to the hospital with what they called a “self-inflicted injury.”They said they were not looking for anyone else in connection with the attack, which happened on Saturday afternoon, and that the motive for the violence remained under investigation.“Clearly this has been a shocking incident,” said Carl Galvin, an assistant chief constable with the West Yorkshire Police, the force that led the initial police operation. He thanked civilians and emergency responders for helping the victims.“We would strongly urge people not to speculate online or share information or footage which could affect the active investigation,” he added.The incident comes amid debates about violence and terrorism in Britain, which is still reckoning with the killing of three young girls last July in Southport, in northwest England. The knife attack last year set off rioting, which was inflamed by disinformation and far-right agitators.Knife crime is more common than crossbow attacks in Britain, but the use of the weapon is not without precedent in the country. Last July, a man with a crossbow killed three women in London — his ex-partner, who had recently ended their relationship, as well as her sister and their mother.A separate crossbow attack, which the police said resulted in non-life-threatening injuries, was reported in London in March last year. More

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      2 Protesters at Marjorie Taylor Greene Town Hall Are Subdued With Stun Guns

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      A town hall for Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia outside of Atlanta on Tuesday quickly deteriorated into chaos, as police officers forcibly removed several protesters.Ms. Greene, a Republican firebrand and loyal ally of President Trump, had barely reached the podium to speak when a man in the crowd at the Acworth Community Center stood up and started yelling, booing and jeering at her. As her supporters stood and clapped, several police officers grabbed the man, later identified by the police as Andrew Russell Nelms of Atlanta, and dragged him out of the room.“I can’t breathe!” Mr. Nelms shouted, interjecting with expletives as he was told to put his arms behind his back. The police then used a stun gun on him twice.Back inside the room, Ms. Greene was unfazed as she greeted attendees at the event, in Acworth, Ga, northwest of Atlanta. She thanked the officers, drawing applause from the crowd of about 150 people.“If you want to shout and chant, we will have you removed just like that man was thrown out,” she said. “We will not tolerate it!”Minutes later, as Ms. Greene started to play a video of former President Barack Obama discussing the national debt, police forcibly removed and used a stun gun on a second man, identified later as Johnny Keith Williams of Dallas, Ga., who had stood up and started to heckle.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Protesters Amass in Seoul Ahead of Court Ruling on South Korea’s Yoon

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      The authorities in South Korea were expecting tens of thousands of protesters to descend on central Seoul on Friday as the nation’s Constitutional Court decides the fate of President Yoon Suk Yeol.At least 14,000 police had been deployed to the area around the court, closing subway stations and locking down an area near a former royal palace that is popular with tourists and home to major businesses. Drones have been banned from the area, and schools, vendors and businesses have been ordered to close.The first protests were set to start at 10 a.m. local time, ahead of a possible decision by the court that could come as early as 11 a.m. Mr. Yoon was not expected to attend the reading of the decision, which will determine whether he will be formally removed from office or returned to power.Millions of South Koreans have protested, mostly peacefully, since Mr. Yoon briefly declared martial law on Dec. 3, plunging the nation into political upheaval and prompting lawmakers to impeach him. Mr. Yoon was detained in January on insurrection charges but released unexpectedly last month after a Seoul court said his detention was procedurally flawed.Ahead of the Constitutional Court’s decision, which cannot be appealed, there have been growing worries that Mr. Yoon’s supporters will clash with those demanding he be removed from office. After his arrest in January, some of Mr. Yoon’s supporters overran a local court, breaking windows and threatening the judge hearing his case.The Constitutional Court with increased security on Thursday.Chang W. Lee/The New York TimesA supporter of President Yoon confronting police officers in Seoul, near the court on Thursday.Chang W. Lee/The New York TimesThe police have created a fortresslike environment outside the Constitutional Court, placing 15-foot-tall metal barriers on either side of the main avenue approaching the complex in an effort to keep the two camps from confronting each other. Between the added security gates, police have parked dozens of buses and put up smaller metal fences to deter people from occupying the area. The police response is not without precedent. In 2017, thousands of people tried to cross the police barricade near the court after it ruled that the president, Park Geun-hye, should be removed from office. At least four people died during the protests.On the eve of the Constitutional Court’s ruling this time, South Korea’s interim leader, Han Duck-soo, called on the nation to respect the decision “with calm.”“The government will not tolerate any illegal or violent acts,” he said on Wednesday, urging politicians not to incite violence. “This is a time to put the stability and fate of our community ahead of political interests.” More

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      A Columbia Campus Occupation Could Have Ended Without Police, Report Says

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      A university senate review concludes that some demonstrators who occupied Hamilton Hall were willing to leave voluntarily.Columbia University’s move to use police force to clear demonstrators from a campus building last spring could potentially have been avoided, as some students were urgently asking if they could leave voluntarily, according to a report released Tuesday by the university’s senate.The students, who early that morning had broken into Hamilton Hall and barricaded the doors, told faculty intermediaries that they had enlisted the help of a Harlem pastor to help them depart safely. But university administrators, saying time had run out, allowed hundreds of police officers to come onto the campus to remove protesters from the building.The new details of the final hours of the occupation of Hamilton Hall on April 30 were among the key revelations of the 335-page report, which was written by a group within the senate, a Columbia policymaking body that includes faculty members, students and administrators, with faculty in the majority. The senate is independent from the administration and has been critical of its protest response.Called the “The Sundial Report,” it provides a play-by-play chronology of the events surrounding the protests on campus related to the war in Gaza beginning in October 2023.The demonstrations and Columbia’s response put the school at the center of a national debate over how to protect students from harassment by demonstrators while also protecting the free speech and rights of protesters.The events of last spring resulted in significant disruption on the university’s Morningside Heights campus, and some critics of Columbia’s response said administrators waited too long to take action. The unrest culminated on April 30, when a smaller group of protesters — including some who were unaffiliated with Columbia — broke off from a tent encampment and took over Hamilton Hall.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      London Police Arrest Gaza Protest Planners at Quaker House

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      Quakers in Britain said the raid, in which six youth activists unaffiliated with the religious group were arrested, “clearly shows what happens when a society criminalizes protest.”Quakers in Britain are reeling from what they say is an unheard-of violation of one of their places of worship by police officers who forced their way into a meeting house in London and arrested activists gathered there to plan Gaza war protests.“No one has been arrested in a Quaker meeting house in living memory,” Paul Parker, the recording clerk for Quakers in Britain, said in a statement issued after the raid.But on Thursday evening, the pacifist group said, more than 20 uniformed police officers, some armed with tasers, forced their way into the meeting house in Westminster, breaking open the front door “without warning or ringing the bell.”The officers searched the building and arrested six women at a gathering of Youth Demand, an unaffiliated activist group that was renting a room to meet in, the Quakers in Britain said.The Metropolitan Police said the arrests followed Youth Demand’s plans to “shut down” London with protests next month, according to British media. The police said that while they recognized the right to protest, “we have a responsibility to intervene to prevent activity that crosses the line from protest into serious disruption and other criminality,” British media reported.The arrests raised alarms in England, and came amid a crackdown on Gaza War protesters in the United States, especially on college campuses, where some students have denounced Israel’s prosecution of the war against Hamas.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      $3.5 Million Settlement in Sacramento Jail Death

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      The fatal overdose of a homeless man at a Sacramento County jail is one of multiple deaths in which staff have been accused of medical neglect.The family of a man who died from an overdose in a Sacramento County jail after being left unattended for hours have agreed to a $3.5 million settlement.That man, David Kent Barefield Sr., 55, was dragged across a garage into the jail last May, not given a medical exam despite being visibly ill, handcuffed in a cart while awaiting booking and only offered medical aid in his final minutes, jail footage shows.Mr. Barefield’s relatives described the neglect in a civil case filed last December against the county’s Sheriff’s Office, its health department and the City of Sacramento police. The settlement was confirmed by the family’s lawyer and by a county spokeswoman; a copy of the document shows it was signed on March 5. The case with the city is still pending.The Sheriff’s Office investigated Mr. Barefield’s death and found that none of its employees violated any law or policy, according to a redacted report that was released to The New York Times and The Desert Sun on Thursday.Mr. Barefield being dragged inside the jail, as captured in surveillance footage.via Sacramento Sheriff Legal AffairsThe details of Mr. Barefield’s last hours are captured in surveillance and body camera video obtained by The Times and The Sun through a records request. The organizations previously reported some of that information, citing accounts from lawyers and medical experts who investigated the death and six others in the county’s jails last year as part of a federal court monitoring program. The court had appointed those monitors in a class-action lawsuit related to broader complaints about medical care in the facilities.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More