The struggle over a fallen police barrier lasted less than a minute, but it has forever altered the course of student Muhammad Ali’s life.
On June 3, 2024, the 21-year-old University of Pittsburgh senior was protesting in support of a pro-Palestine encampment in the center of campus. University police had set up metal barriers, held together with zip ties, to keep protesters from delivering food, water, and supplies to the encampment. Frustrated, some protesters tried to move the barriers.
Ali bent down to pick up a fallen barrier. An officer grabbed the other side and tried to pull it from his hands. After a brief exchange of words, Ali let go and stepped back, his hands raised. He thought that was the end of it. Weeks later, Ali was charged with multiple crimes, including three felonies. The most serious charges against him carry a maximum sentence of 34 years in prison.
Ali’s attorney and supporters say he is being treated harshly because he is Muslim and brown. They point out that the Allegheny County District Attorney’s office filed criminal charges against other protesters, but nearly all of them were offered plea deals with lesser charges, or a pretrial rehabilitation program that if completed would leave them with no criminal record.
Human Rights Glance
On September 25, 2025, David McIntosh filed a report to his bosses at Safe Reach Solutions (SRS) detailing an account of Israeli soldiers gunning down a young Palestinian boy as he was getting food at a site run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF). “There’s no way he survived,” McIntosh told Drop Site News and Middle East Eye in his first interview since returning from Gaza five months ago. “He was murdered. He was straight up murdered.”
The report, seen exclusively by Middle East Eye, is based on testimonies from Palestinian former prisoners gathered by the rights watchdog Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor.
Ritaj Abdulrahman Rihan was practising the subtraction of four-digit numbers during a maths lesson in Beit Lahia, northern Gaza.
A 68-year-old Palestinian woman was beaten to death by Israeli soldiers during a raid on her home in the town of Jayyous, in the northern occupied West Bank.
The firing of Attorney General Pam Bondi, who received widespread criticism for her handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files, was celebrated Thursday by the sexual predator’s surviving victims, who have long felt Bondi could be more transparent about their cases.
An Israeli court has drawn criticism after closing an investigation into the death of a Palestinian teenager in custody, despite finding indications he had been starved prior to his death.





























