A French appeals court has found Airbus and Air France guilty of manslaughter in 2009 Rio de Janeiro – Paris crash that killed 228 people – the worst aviation disaster in the country’s history.

The Paris Court of Appeal ruled on Thursday that both companies were “solely and entirely responsible for the crash of flight AF447”, and ordered a payment of 225,000 euros ($261,720) for each passenger, the maximum fine possible for corporate manslaughter.

Although the penalties are largely symbolic, they capped an eight-week trial that victims’ families saw as a last chance to find justice two years after a lower court acquited Airbus and Air France.

Both companies have repeatedly denied all charges.

Following the ruling, Airbus said it would appeal to France’s highest court, saying the latest finding contradicted submissions from prosecutors and the 2023 acquittal.

Prosecutors previously warned that an appeal was likely and denounced the companies’ behaviour throughout the decade-plus legal process.

“Nothing has come of it – not a single word of sincere comfort,” said prosecutor Rodolphe Juy-Birmann as the trial was under way last November. “One word sums up this whole circus: indecency.”

The crash unfolded on June 1, 2009, when flight AF447 disappeared from radar screens as it headed from Rio de Janeiro in Brazil to the French capital Paris with 216 passengers and 12 crew.

Two years passed before a deep-sea search uncovered the plane’s black boxes, which record flight data.

Investigators found the pilots had pushed the jet into a climb as it struggled with sensors blocked with ice during a mid-Atlantic storm. The plane stalled and crashed into the ocean.

While Airbus and Air France have blamed pilot error, the lawyers for passengers’ families argued that both companies knew that there was a problem with the plane’s pitot tubes, which measure flight speed.

Pilots were not trained to deal with such an emergency as the tubes malfunctioned, prosecutors said, triggering alarms in the cockpit and turning off the plane’s autopilot function.

Air France lawyer Pascal Weil said in October that the company “had the means to conduct high-altitude training, but we did not do so because we sincerely believed it was unnecessary”.

[Aljazeera]

Israel has deported hundreds of foreign activists abducted by Israeli forces who stormed a Gaza aid flotilla earlier this week, following global outcry over their treatment in custody.

In Turkiye, dozens of flotilla participants arrived at the Istanbul airport throughout Thursday, some wearing keffiyehs and holding up their fingers in a peace sign. Crowds of supporters brandishing Palestinian flags welcomed them.

Ankara has evacuated 422 people on chartered flights, including 85 of its own citizens, and deployed doctors and ambulances to treat participants.

The French ⁠Foreign Ministry said ⁠the group included 37 ⁠French nationals. Some Spanish activists arrived in Madrid early evening on Thursday from Turkiye, while Jordan confirmed that two of its nationals had returned home via the southern crossing with Israel.

Israel’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Oren Marmorstein said earlier that all “foreign activists from the PR flotilla have been deported”.

“Israel will not permit any breach of the lawful naval blockade on Gaza,” he added.

The legal centre for Palestinian rights in Israel, Adalah, told Al Jazeera that most of the roughly 430 abducted activists were deported from Ramon airport in southern Israel, and the rest from Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv.

Julien Cabral, a 57-year-old Belgian who participated in his first flotilla voyage, arrived in Istanbul with a black eye and wound on his left temple – the result of a punch from an Israeli marine raiding his seven-person boat, he told AFP news agency.

“I heard them say in English, ‘Let’s have some fun’,” he said, adding that activists were slapped, verbally abused and forced to beg for food, water and sanitary products at every step of the detainment process. Israeli authorities also refused to let the injured see doctors, he said.

Alessandro Mantovani, an Italian journalist detained with the activists and deported before the others, told reporters in Rome that he and others were “taken to Ben Gurion airport in handcuffs and with chains on our feet” before being put on a flight to Athens.

Israeli forces “beat us up”, he said. “They kicked us and punched us and shouted ‘Welcome to Israel’.”

The latest round of abductions took place on Tuesday evening, when Israeli forces finished intercepting the last of the more than 50 boats of the Global Sumud Flotilla as they were sailing towards Gaza in international waters.

Israel’s raids were widely condemned, with the foreign ministers of 10 countries, including Spain, Brazil and India, slamming Israeli forces’ actions as “blatant violations of international law and international humanitarian law”.

Israel’s treatment of the activists has since been condemned by more countries, including several key allies.

The criticism comes after far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir posted a video on X on Wednesday of himself taunting activists who were kneeling on the floor with their hands tied behind their backs.

In response, several nations, including France, Canada, Spain, Portugal and the Netherlands, summoned the Israeli ambassadors to their capitals to express their outrage. Meanwhile, European Council President Antonio Costa said he was “appalled” by Ben-Gvir’s behaviour, calling it “completely unacceptable”.

Italy has demanded an apology from Israel. Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani contacted European Union foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas, requesting that sanctions against Ben-Gvir be discussed at the bloc’s next meeting of foreign ministers.

Ben-Gvir’s behaviour prompted a rare rebuke from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“Israel has every right to prevent provocative flotillas of Hamas terrorist supporters from entering our territorial waters and reaching Gaza. However, the way that Minister Ben-Gvir dealt with the flotilla activists is not in line with Israel’s values and norms,” said Netanyahu.

“It really goes to show how much Israeli authorities wanted to make a show out of [this] and how it’s very much an extension of the Israeli treatment towards Palestinians, which obviously gets a lot less of a public outcry,” Miriam Azem, the international advocacy coordinator at Adalah, told Al Jazeera.

Reporting from Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, Al Jazeera’s Nida Ibrahim said the ongoing deportations were the fastest Israel has ever carried out, as it scrambles to contain the public relations damage caused by Ben-Gvir’s video. Ibrahim added that many Palestinians believe the incident has gained more international attention because those mistreated were from foreign countries.

[Aljazeera]

Chennai Super King’s  (CSK) slim playoff hopes were crushed emphatically by Gujarat Titans [GT] in Ahmedabad on Thursday night as they sealed a top-two spot with an 89-run win.

Sent in to bat on a red-soil surface with pace and bounce, GT went all-in to post 229. Shubman Gill’s 23-ball half-century set it up for late fireworks from B Sai Sudarshan (84 off 53) and Jos Buttler (57 not out off 27).