Immigration and civil rights advocates have renewed concerns that immigrants detained at Guantanamo Bay are being held in extreme isolation, cut off from meaningful access to legal counsel or candid communication with relatives, according to a new court filing Saturday.

In a lawsuit brought on behalf or two Nicaraguan immigrants held at the U.S. Navy base on Cuba, attorneys say there is a climate of “extreme fear and intimidation” that interferes with constitutional rights to due process and legal counsel.

The revised lawsuit asks a federal judge in Washington to intervene on behalf of all future immigrants at Guantanamo, which authorities have used as a way station for immigrants whom President Donald Trump calls “the worst,” with final removal orders, as his administration seeks to ramp up mass deportations.

“Officers at Guantánamo have created a climate of extreme fear and intimidation where immigrant detainees are afraid to communicate freely with their counsel,” the lawsuit says, adding that conditions are more restrictive than at mainland facilities, prisons and in some instances law-of-war military custody at Guantanamo Bay.

U.S. Southern Command, which oversees the base, declined comment.

Letter written onboard the Titanic auctioned

A lettercard penned by one of the Titanic’s most well-known survivors from onboard the ship, days before it sank, has sold for 300,000 pounds ($399,000) at auction.

In the note, written to the seller’s great-uncle on April 10, 1912, first-class passenger Archibald Gracie wrote of the ill-fated steamship: “It is a fine ship but I shall await my journeys end before I pass judgment on her.”

The letter was sold to a private collector from the United States on Saturday, according to auction house Henry Aldridge & Son in Wiltshire, England. The hammer price far exceeded the initial estimate price of 60,000 pounds.

The letter is believed to be the sole example in existence from Gracie from onboard the Titanic, which sank off Newfoundland after hitting an iceberg, killing about 1,500 people on its maiden voyage.

Gracie, who jumped from the ship and managed to scramble onto an overturned collapsible boat, was rescued by other passengers onboard a lifeboat and was taken to the R.M.S. Carpathia. He went on to write “The Truth about the Titanic,” an account of his experiences, when he returned to New York City.

Ex-Taliban commander pleads guilty in deaths

A former Taliban commander pleaded guilty to providing weapons and other support for attacks that killed American soldiers and for key roles in the 2008 gunpoint kidnapping of a reporter for the New York Times and another journalist.

Speaking through an interpreter, Haji Najibullah entered the plea in Manhattan federal court to providing material support for acts of terrorism and conspiring to take hostages.

Najibullah, wearing a black skull cap over his shaved head, told Judge Katherine Polk Failla that he provided material support including weapons and himself to the Taliban from 2007 to 2009, knowing that his support “would be used to attack and kill United States soldiers occupying Afghanistan.”

“As a result of material support I provided to the Taliban, U.S. soldiers were killed,” Najibullah said.

Najibullah, 49, said he also participated in the hostage taking of David Rohde “and his companions” so demands could be made for ransom and for the release of Taliban prisoners held by the U.S. government.

Israel intercepts missile from Houthis

Yemen’s Houthi rebels launched a missile early Sunday toward Israel, which the Israeli military said it shot down.

Sirens sounded in parts of Israel around the Dead Sea over the attack, which the Houthis did not immediately claim.

“The missile was intercepted prior to crossing into Israeli territory,” the Israeli military said.

American airstrikes, meanwhile, continued targeting the Houthis overnight into Sunday, part of an intense campaign targeting the rebels that began on March 15.

The U.S. is targeting the Houthis because of the group’s attacks on shipping in the Red Sea.

Syria’s Kurds meet to unify political stance

Representatives of Kurdish groups in Syria called Saturday for a democratic state that gives the country’s Kurds their ethnic rights after the fall of Bashar Assad.

Some 400 people representing Syria’s main Kurdish groups met in the northeastern Syrian city of Qamishli to unify their positions a month after Syria’s new rulers signed a breakthrough deal with Kurdish-led authorities in the northeast.

Kurds in Syria were marginalized during the 54-year Assad family rule.

A statement issued at the end of the one-day meeting that was attended by groups including the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, the Democratic Union Party, or PYD, and the Kurdish National Council called for a “fair and comprehensive” solution for the Kurdish cause in a “democratic and decentralized country.”

— From news services