A military court in Congo on Thursday sentenced 25 people, including the leader of a rebel coalition, to death after a high-profile televised trial that started late last month.

Corneille Nangaa, leader of the Alliance Fleuve Congo, or AFC, was found guilty of war crimes, participation in an insurrection and treason. Naanga and 19 other defendants sentenced to death were absent from the trial as they are currently on the run.

“This nauseating judicial saga reinforces our struggle for democratic normality in Congo,” Nangaa told the Associated Press in a text message from an undisclosed location.

The AFC is a political-military movement launched by Nangaa in December with the aim of uniting armed groups, political parties and civil society against Congo’s government. One of its most renown members is the M23, an armed group accused of mass killings in eastern Congo’s decadeslong conflict.

Congo’s president Felix Tshisekedi, along with U.S. and U.N. experts, accuse neighboring Rwanda of giving military backing to M23. Rwanda denies the claim, but in February it effectively admitted that it has troops and missile systems in eastern Congo to safeguard its security, pointing to a buildup of Congolese forces near the border.

The court’s decision against Nangaa follows the announcement of a cease-fire between Congo and Rwanda last week following talks mediated by Angola. The cease-fire took effect on Sunday but prospects are slim with previous truces not lasting more than a few weeks and fighting having already resumed near the border with Uganda.

The death sentence against Nangaa might be a way to have more leverage in possible future negotiations with Rwanda or the armed groups themselves, Yvon Muya, a conflict studies researcher at Saint Paul University, said.

The decadeslong conflict in eastern Congo has produced one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises, with over 100 armed groups fighting in the region, most for land and control of mines with valuable minerals. Some are fighting to try to protect their communities.

Many groups are accused of carrying out mass killings, rapes and other human rights violations. The violence has displaced about 7 million people, including thousands living in temporary camps. Many others are beyond the reach of aid.

Turkey on Wednesday filed a request with a U.N. court to join South Africa’s lawsuit accusing Israel of genocide in Gaza, the foreign minister said.

Turkey’s ambassador to the Netherlands, accompanied by a group of Turkish legislators, submitted a declaration of intervention to the International Court of Justice in The Hague.

With the development, Turkey, one of the fiercest critics of Israel’s actions in Gaza, becomes the latest nation seeking to participate in the case. Spain, Mexico, Colombia, Nicaragua and Libya have also asked to join the case, as have Palestinian officials. The court’s decision on their requests is still pending.

“We have just submitted our application to the International Court of Justice to intervene in the genocide case filed against Israel,” Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan wrote on the social media platform X. “Emboldened by the impunity for its crimes, Israel is killing more and more innocent Palestinians every day.”

“The international community must do its part to stop the genocide; it must put the necessary pressure on Israel and its supporters,” he said. “Turkey will make every effort to do so.”

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has accused Israel of genocide, called for it to be punished in international courts and criticized Western nations for backing Israel. In May, Turkey suspended trade with Israel, citing its assault on Gaza.

In contrast to Western nations that have designated Hamas a terrorist organization, Erdogan has commended the group, calling it a liberation movement.

South Africa brought a case to the International Court of Justice late last year, accusing Israel of violating the genocide convention through its military operations in Gaza.

Israel has strongly rejected accusations of genocide and has argued that the war in Gaza is a legitimate defensive action against Hamas militants for their Oct. 7 attack in southern Israel that killed around 1,200 people and in which 250 hostages were taken.

If admitted to the case, the countries who joined would be able to make written submissions and speak at public hearings.

Preliminary hearings have already been held in the genocide case against Israel, but the court is expected to take years to reach a final decision.

“No country in the world is above international law,” Turkish Foreign Ministry spokesman Oncu Keceli said on X earlier. “The case at the International Court of Justice is extremely important in terms of ensuring that the crimes committed by Israel do not go unpunished.”

Keceli also called for the immediate implementations of precautionary measures ordered by the court, including a halt to military offensive and an increase in humanitarian aid to Gaza.

Since Erdogan took power in 2003, former allies Turkey and Israel have experienced a volatile relationship, marked by periods of severe friction and reconciliation. The war in Gaza has disrupted the most recent attempts at normalizing ties.

Venezuela's President Nicolás Maduro said he asked the country's Supreme Court to conduct an audit of the presidential election, after opposition leaders disputed his claim of victory and amid international calls to release detailed vote counts.

Maduro told reporters Wednesday that the ruling party is also ready to show the totality of the tally sheets from Sunday's election.

"I throw myself before justice," he said to reporters outside the Supreme Court's headquarters in Caracas, adding that he is "willing to be summoned, questioned, investigated."

This is Maduro's first concession to demands for more transparency about the election. However, the Supreme Court is closely aligned with his government; federal officials propose the court's justices and they are ratified by the National Assembly, which is dominated by Maduro sympathizers.

Maduro's main challenger, Edmundo González, and opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, say they obtained more than two-thirds of the tally sheets that each electronic voting machine printed after polls closed. They said the release of the data on those tallies would prove Maduro lost the election.

Maduro insisted to reporters that there had been a plot against his government and that the electoral system was hacked, but he didn't give any specifics or present any evidence. He is expected to address national and foreign media Wednesday afternoon, his first official news conference since the election.

Pressure has been building against the president. The National Electoral Council, which is loyal to his United Socialist Party of Venezuela, has yet to release any printed results from polling centers as it did in past elections.

Attorney General Tarek William Saab on Tuesday told reporters that more than 700 protesters were arrested in nationwide demonstrations Monday and that one officer was killed.

The Venezuela-based human rights organization Foro Penal also on Tuesday reported that 11 people, including two minors, had been killed in unrest related to the election.

The Organization of American States was set to gather Wednesday to discuss Venezuela's election.

Maduro's closest ruling party allies quickly came to his defense. National Assembly President Jorge Rodriguez — his chief negotiator in dialogues with the U.S. and the opposition — insisted Maduro was the indisputable winner and called his opponents violent fascists.

Praising the arrests of the protesters, he said Machado should be jailed and so should González, "because he is the leader of the fascist conspiracy that is trying to impose itself in Venezuela."

In a Spanish-language post on X, the EU's Borrell urged Venezuelan authorities to "end detentions, repression and violent rhetoric against members of the opposition," calling threats against González and Machado "unacceptable."

Meanwhile, Machado and González urged their supporters to remain calm and avoid violence.

"I ask Venezuelans to continue in peace, demanding that the result be respected and the tally sheets be published," González said on X. "This victory, which belongs to all of us, will unite us and reconcile us as a nation."

New York’s highest court heard arguments Tuesday in a Republican challenge of a law that allows any registered voter to cast a mail-in ballot during the early voting period.

The case, which is led by Rep. Elise Stefanik and includes other lawmakers and the Republican National Committee, is part of a widespread GOP effort to tighten voting rules after the 2020 election.

Democrats approved the mail voting expansion law last year. The Republican challenge argues that it violates voting provisions in the state Constitution.

The hourlong arguments before the New York Court of Appeals in Albany hinged on technical readings of the Constitution, specifically whether certain passages would allow for the state Legislature to expand mail voting access.

At certain points in the hearing, judges quizzed attorneys on whether a constitutional provision that says eligible voters are entitled to vote “at every election” would mean a physical polling place or simply the election in general.

Michael Y. Hawrylchak, an attorney representing the Republicans, said that provision “presupposes a physical place” for in-person voting. Deputy Solicitor General Jeffrey W. Lang, who is representing the state, said the phrase “just refers to a process of selecting an office holder” and not any physical polling place.

Democrats first tried to expand mail voting through a constitutional amendment in 2021, but voters rejected the proposal after a campaign from conservatives who said it would lead to voter fraud.

Lower courts have dismissed the Republican lawsuit in decisions that said the Legislature has the constitutional authority to make rules on voting and the Constitution doesn’t require voting specifically to occur in person on election day.

It is unclear when the Court of Appeals will rule.

Montana’s Supreme Court on Tuesday said it would allow the signatures of inactive voters to count on petitions seeking to qualify constitutional initiatives for the November ballot, including one to protect abortion rights.

District Court Judge Mike Menahan ruled last Tuesday that Secretary of State Christi Jacobsen’s office wrongly changed election rules to reject inactive voter signatures from three ballot initiatives after the signatures had been turned in to counties and after some of the signatures had been verified. The change to longstanding practices included reprogramming the state’s election software.

Jacobsen’s office last Thursday asked the Montana Supreme Court for an emergency order to block Menahan’s ruling that gave counties until this Wednesday to verify the signatures of inactive voters that had been rejected. Lawyers for organizations supporting the ballot initiatives and the Secretary of State’s Office agreed to the terms of the temporary restraining order blocking the secretary’s changes.

Justices said Jacobsen’s office failed to meet the requirement for an emergency order, saying she had not persuaded them that Menahan was proceeding under a mistake of law.

“We further disagree with Jacobsen that the TRO is causing a gross injustice, as Jacobsen’s actions in reprogramming the petition-processing software after county election administrators had commenced processing petitions created the circumstances that gave rise to this litigation,” justices wrote.

A hearing on an injunction to block the changes is set for Friday before Menahan.

The groups that sued — Montanans Securing Reproductive Rights and Montanans for Election Reform — alleged the state for decades had accepted signatures of inactive voters, defined as people who filed universal change-of-address forms and then failed to respond to county attempts to confirm their address. They can restore their active voter status by providing their address, showing up at the polls or requesting an absentee ballot.

Backers of the initiative to protect the right to abortion access in the state constitution said more than enough signatures had been verified by Friday’s deadline for it to be included on the ballot. Backers of initiatives to create nonpartisan primaries and another to require a candidate to win a majority of the vote to win a general election have said they also expect to have enough signatures.