Judge Said Youssef of the Minya Criminal Court of Egypt on June 20 confirmed the death sentence of 183 Muslim Brotherhood members while simultaneously acquitting over 400 in the death of police officers over a year ago. Only 110 of the accused were present in a holding area outside of the court during the determination, while the remainder were tried in absentia. According to Egyptian law, each absentee will be retried upon apprehension. This marks a slight reversal of the initial mass death sentence of 683 members of the Brotherhood after a review of the mass trial by the Grand Mufti, the spiritual leader of Egypt. Multiple human rights organizations, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have critiqued the mass trial for lack of due process, as neither the defendants nor their attorneys were permitted to appear before the court. This is the second death sentence against former leaders in two days.

The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights on June 18 issued a report that cites increasing evidence of abductions, detentions, torture and killings in the two eastern regions of Ukraine where armed groups hold control. The report also cites a number of worrying trends emerging in Crimea. UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay urged the armed groups in Donetsk and Luhansk to "stop taking themselves, and the people living in their regions, down this dead end, which is leading simply to misery, destruction, displacement and economic deprivation... [A]ll they have achieved is a climate of insecurity and fear which is having a hugely detrimental impact on many thousands of people."

US military forces conducted a secret operation in Libya June 15, capturing Ahmed Abu Khatallah, the alleged mastermind behind the September 2012 attacks on US facilities in Benghazi that killed four Americans including US Ambassador Chris Stevens. Pentagon press secretary Rear Adm John Kirby released a statement June 17 saying, "There were no civilian casualties related to this operation, and all US personnel involved in the operation have safely departed Libya." According to the US State Department, Abu Khatallah is a senior leader in Islamist group Ansar al-Sharia [BBC backgrounder]. According to the BBC, he has been charged in a federal court in Washington, DC, with killing a person in the course of an attack on a federal facility, providing material support to terrorists and weapons charges.

The Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Syria on June 17 warned the UN Human Rights Council that the continuing civil war in Syria has "reached a tipping point, threatening the entire region." The Commission was established by the UN Human Rights Council in August 2011 to investigate and record all violations of international human rights law during the Syria conflict. Paulo Sergio Pinheiro, chair of the Commission, condemned the international response to the conflict in Syria, stating:

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said June 17 that the numerous executions that have occurred over the past week in Iraq "almost certainly amount to war crimes." Pillay cited reports of "cold-blooded" killings of hundreds of non-combatant men and civilians, including religious leaders and government affiliates, by militants of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS). The killings have taken place primarily in the Tikrit area and have included several Imams who allegedly refused to swear allegiance to ISIS. Pillay commented on Iraq's struggles over the past decade and commended its citizens on their resilience. Pillay fears the provocative language of the Sunni insurgents indicates that more chaos and bloodshed is likely and urged national leaders to unite in resisting the opposition's "efforts to rip the country apart along sectarian or geographic lines."

Kuwait's Supreme Court on June 15 upheld the two-year jail sentence of an opposition online activist for writing tweets found to be offensive to the country's Emir. After the ruling, activist Hejab al-Hajeri said on his Twitter account that his "determination is bigger than their jail." Al-Hajeri, a law student in his early 20s, was sentenced by the emirate's lower court last April after it found that comments he made on his Twitter account were critical of the emir, Shaikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Sabah. The appeals court upheld the sentence six months later. Al-Hajeri has been out on bail, but now must serve the jail term, as the high court's verdicts are final. Criticizing the emir is illegal in Kuwait, and carries a jail term of up to five years.

The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit on June 10 dismissed (PDF) a lawsuit brought by a former Guantánamo detainee against former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. According to the original complaint (PDF), the plaintiff, Sami Abdulaziz Allaithi, was an Egyptian professor working in Kabul teaching English. When the US started its bombing campaign, the plaintiff fled to Pakistan, was captured and then transferred to the Guantánamo Bay Detention Camp where he claims he was tortured and prevented from practicing his religion. This treatment continued even though he was classified as a non-enemy combatant by the Department of Defense's Combatant Status Review Tribunal until he was released. In the opinion, written by Judge Janice Rodgers Brown, the court held that, "[t]he now-settled law reveals several flaws and inadequacies of the Appellants' complaint. ... In response, counsel invites us to remand this case to allow them an opportunity to rectify whatever mistakes lie in their pleadings... We cannot."

An Egyptian court on June 11 sentenced a prominent activist from the 2011 revolution to 15 years in prison for organizing an unsanctioned protest and assaulting a police officer last year. Activist and blogger Alaa Abdel Fattah was forced to wait outside of a courtroom at Cairo's Torah Prison while he was tried in absentia inside. Abdel Fattah, who was released on bail in March, was charged along with 23 other co-defendants for a protest in Cairo that occurred in November of last year. The men were protesting provisions in a new constitution that would allow civilians to be tried in military courts, breaching a law banning all but police-sanctioned protests. The defendants were additionally fined LE 100,000 ($14,000) each and will be placed on five years probation after the completion of their sentences. The conviction is the first of a leading activist since Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi took the office of the presidency this weekend. Abdel-Fattah is expected to be granted a retrial.