Three Congolese witnesses of Congolese war crimes for the International Criminal Court (ICC), were deported, Sunday, despite concerns about their safety in Congo, reports NL Times.

The trio, who were held in a Congolese prison before being called to The Hague in 2011 as witnesses of war crimes, had their asylum claims rejected by Dutch authorities.

Amnesty International, strongly opposed the Dutch decision, and warned that the three witnesses would face severe rights violations upon arrival in Congo.

The Ukrainian authorities last weekend seized control over a number of eastern towns after ignoring calls to extend a ceasefire, reports The Guardian.

Declaring a turning point in the conflict against separatists, Ukrainian President, Petro Poroshenko, said,

“It’s not a total victory. But the purging of Slavyansk of these bands, made up of people armed to the teeth, has incredible symbolic importance.”

Israel’s Foreign Minister, announced Monday that he was ending his party’s alliance with the ruling bloc after the Prime Minister refused to launch a full-scale attack on Gaza, reports The Times.

A Bosnian Serb who ran illegal camps where prisoners were tortured and killed during the Bosnian Serb conflict, Friday, was charged for committing crimes against humanity, reports Agence France Presse.

Bosnia’s war crimes court sentenced Branko Vlaco to 15 years in prison for setting up and running four ‘detention centres’ in Sarajevo.

“Vlaco took part in expulsions and executions of civilians,” judge Minka Kreho said while reading the verdict. 

Israeli police have made several arrests in relation to the murder of Palestinian teenager Mohammad Abu Khdair.

The police said the suspects were Jewish, and told the BBC that Khdair was murdered “because of his nationality”.

A post-mortem suggested that the teenager was beaten and burned alive, following his abduction in East Jerusalem.

His death has caused an escalation of tension in the region, already high after the deaths of three Israeli teenagers.

The Kurdistan president’s chief of staff, Faud Hussein, briefed American diplomats on Washington on plans to hold an independence referendum last week.

“We spoke with Americans about self-determination, and self-determination that is done through a referendum, said Faud Hussein speaking to Rudaw on Thursday.

Faud Hussein was on an official visit to Washington with the Kurdistan Foreign Relations Minister Falah Mustafa to meet their American counterparts.

Two former senior military officers have been found guilty of the murder of Bishop Enrique Angelelli in 1976, shortly after the junta seized power in Argentina.

Former army General Luciano Benjamin Menendez and former Vice-Commodore Luis Fernando Estrella were sentenced to life in prison for the killing.

The bishop, who was an outspoken left-wing member of the church, died in a car crash, and officials at the time claimed it was a traffic accident.

The former leader of a left-wing militant group in Guatemala has been sentenced to 90 years for his involvement in killings of government supporters.

Fermin Felipe Solano was found guilty of the killing of 22 pro-government farmers, the first time a civil war rebel leader has been convicted for crimes, reported the BBC.

The court said that Solano had ordered the killings, in the village of El Aguacate, when he was the leader of a rebel group belonging to the now extinct Revolutionary Organisation of the People in Arms (ORPA).

Five members of a Hong-Kong based activist group that organised a mass pro-democracy rally last week, were arrested Friday reports The Independent.

The members of the Civil Human Rights Front, based in Hong-Kong, said that the charges, of violating traffic safety, they were arrested on were politically motivated.

"The government did not respond to the 510,000 people who took to the streets of Hong Kong and instead made political arrests of organizers," it said in a statement.

The Palestinian militant group Hamas said on Friday that it is ready for a ceasefire in Gaza, if Israeli air raids on the territory were stopped.

Dozens of rockets and mortar attacks have been directed at Israel from the Gaza strip, as tensions escalated after the discovery of three Israeli teenagers and a suspected revenge killing which left a Palestinian child dead.