Seoul, South Korea (Reuters) — South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol attended on Tuesday a Constitutional Court hearing of his impeachment trial where he denied ordering military commanders to drag lawmakers out of parliament during his short-lived bid to impose martial law.

Near the start of the hearing, Yoon said he had worked in public service with “a firm commitment to free democracy,” when invited by the acting chief justice, Moon Hyung-bae, to speak.

Dressed in a navy-colored suit with a burgundy tie, Yoon, a career prosecutor before his 2022 election as president, pledged to answer any questions the court might have.

Yoon has been incarcerated since last week under a separate criminal probe on charges of leading an insurrection with his attempt to impose martial law in early December, a move that shocked the nation and was overturned within hours by parliament.

Yoon told the hearing that special forces troops sent to parliament on Dec. 3 were not there to disable the legislature or prevent it from blocking his martial law because he knew such an action would have led to an indefensible crisis.

“In this country, parliament and news media are far more powerful than the president, in a far superior position,” he told the court.

His lawyers outlined arguments in defense of Yoon’s martial law declaration, saying it was meant to sound the alarm over abuses committed by the opposition Democratic Party.

They argued the opposition’s actions had paralyzed government and pushed the country’s democratic and constitutional order to the brink of collapse.

“The decree was intended simply to establish the format of martial law and never intended to be executed, nor was it possible to execute it because of the potential for conflict with higher-level laws,” lawyer Cha Gi-hwan told the court.

Cha also denied testimony by military commanders involved in the martial law declaration who said Yoon and his top aides ordered the arrest of some members of parliament who had politically clashed with the president.

The opposition Democratic Party, joined by minority parties and also 12 members of Yoon’s People Power Party, voted with a two-thirds majority to impeach Yoon on Dec. 14.

Helicopters landing at parliament

The Constitutional Court began the trial on Dec. 27 to review an impeachment motion that accused Yoon of violating his constitutional duty by imposing martial law with no justifiable grounds.

The parliament’s legal team presented testimony from military commanders and video footage showing military helicopters landing on parliament grounds with special forces troops breaking into the main building, as well as troops moving in on the National Election Commission.

One of the lawyers also criticized unproven claims of irregularities at the election commission, which Yoon cited as a factor for justifying martial law.

“In South Korea’s current national chaos, the conspiracy theory of election fraud can destroy our community itself,” said the lawyer.

The Constitutional Court has up to 180 days to decide whether to remove Yoon from office permanently or reinstate him.

Yoon was driven to the hearing from the Seoul Detention Centre, where he is being held, in a correctional service vehicle escorted by a Presidential Security Service motorcade.

He was permitted to change from the khaki prison uniform he currently has to wear.

After the hearing, Yoon visited a medical facility to receive medical attention with prior authorization from the head of the detention center, the Justice Ministry which oversees correctional service said in a statement.

It did not provide further details on privacy grounds.

Yoon’s decision to attend the impeachment hearing contrasts with his vigorous resistance to criminal proceedings against him where he has refused to answer summons by investigators or attend interrogation sessions.

Yoon’s legal team has denied he masterminded an insurrection, a crime in South Korea punishable by life imprisonment or even technically by the death penalty.

Security was heightened at the Constitutional Court on Tuesday, after a mob of angry Yoon supporters went on a rampage through the district court that issued a warrant to extend his detention early on Sunday.

Dozens of police buses were lined bumper-to-bumper on both sides of the street, keeping hundreds of Yoon supporters more than 100 meters (109 yards) away from the court.

Bollywood actor Saif Ali Khan left a hospital in India’s financial capital Mumbai on Tuesday, less than a week after he suffered knife injuries in a scuffle with an intruder at his house, local media reported.

Khan, 54, was stabbed six times by the intruder during an attempted burglary at his home after midnight on Thursday. He had surgery after sustaining stab wounds to his spine, neck and hands, doctors said.

Khan was discharged from hospital on Tuesday afternoon. He smiled at TV cameras from his car and waved his bandaged hand.

On Sunday, police arrested a man, thought to be a citizen of Bangladesh, in connection with the attack and were continuing to investigate the crime.

The suspect, arrested on the outskirts of Mumbai, was using the name Vijay Das, but is believed to be Mohammad Shariful Islam Shehzad, who was working with a housekeeping agency after having come to the city five or six months ago, Dikshit Gedam, a deputy commissioner of police, told a press conference.

The attack on Khan shocked residents of Mumbai as well as fellow Bollywood actors, especially because it took place in an upscale neighbourhood of the city, in an apartment block that is strictly guarded.

Iraq’s parliament passed three divisive laws Tuesday, including amendments to the country’s personal status law that opponents say would in effect legalize child marriage.

The amendments give Islamic courts increased authority over family matters, including marriage, divorce and inheritance. Activists argue that this undermines Iraq’s 1959 Personal Status Law, which unified family law and established safeguards for women.

Proponents of the changes, which were advocated by primarily conservative Shiite lawmakers, defend them as a means to align the law with Islamic principles and reduce Western influence on Iraqi culture.

Iraqi law currently sets 18 as the minimum age of marriage in most cases. The changes passed Tuesday would let clerics rule according to their interpretation of Islamic law, which some interpret to allow marriage of girls in their early teens – or as young as 9 under the Jaafari school of Islamic law followed by many Shiite religious authorities in Iraq.

The parliament also passed a general amnesty law seen as benefiting Sunni detainees and that’s also seen as giving a pass to people involved in corruption and embezzlement. The chamber also passed a land restitution law aimed at addressing Kurdish territorial claims.

Intisar al-Mayali, a human rights activist and a member of the Iraqi Women’s League, said passage of the civil status law amendments “will leave disastrous effects on the rights of women and girls, through the marriage of girls at an early age, which violates their right to life as children, and will disrupt the protection mechanisms for divorce, custody and inheritance for women.”

The session ended in chaos and accusations of procedural violations.

“Half of the lawmakers present in the session did not vote, which broke the legal quorum,” a parliamentary official said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment publicly. He said that some members protested loudly and others climbed onto the parliamentary podium.

After the session, a number of legislators complained about the voting process, under which all three controversial laws — each of which was supported by different blocs — were voted on together.

“Regarding the civil status law, we are strongly supporting it and there were no issues with that,” said Raid al Maliki, an independent MP. “But it was combined with other laws to be voted on together…and this might lead to a legal appeal at the Federal Court.”

Parliament Speaker Mahmoud al-Mashhadani in a statement praised the laws’ passage as “an important step in the process of enhancing justice and organizing the daily lives of citizens.”

Also Tuesday, at least three officers, including the national security chief of the al-Tarmiyah district north of Baghdad, were killed and four others wounded in an explosion at an ammunition depot, a security official said.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief the media, said the explosion occurred as a joint force of the Iraqi army and the national security service conducted an operation following intelligence reports of the Islamic State group’s activity and an ammunition cache in the area.

Pope Francis is taking the highly unusual decision to dissolve an influential Catholic group from Peru which has been plagued by allegations of abuse from within its community, including allegations related to its founder, for more than a decade.

News of the decision to dissolve the Sodalitium Christianae Vitae, which at one point had 20,000 members across South America and parts of the United States, was confirmed in a statement by the group, although the Vatican has yet to comment or publish anything official about the move.

The decision to suppress the Sodalitium was first reported by Spanish-language site Infovaticana with the Sodalitum saying the “central information” in that report was true but that “it contained several inaccuracies,” although it did not specify what these were.

A papal decision to dissolve or suppress a Catholic religious community is rare and in the Sodalitium’s case follows attempts by the church hierarchy to reform the group and a 2023 Vatican investigation which uncovered “sadistic” abuses of power, authority and spirituality. Its founder, Luis Fernando Figari, had earlier been found to have sodomized recruits along with accusations of serious financial mismanagement, according to a 2017 outside investigation ordered by Sodalitium.

After the Vatican probe carried out by Archbishop Charles Scicluna and Monsignor Jordi Bertomeu, Figari was expelled from the order by the pope in August 2024 and a month later the pope expelled 10 more of its leading members. One of those expelled was found to have carried out “abuse in the exercise of the apostolate of journalism,” an unusual charge.

But the victims have waited years for church authorities to act, with victims lodging complaints with the Archdiocese of Lima in 2011 and reportedly even earlier. A turning point came with a 2015 book, “Half Monks, Half Soldiers,” written by one of the victims, Pedro Salinas, and journalist Paola Ugaz.

Founded in 1971 in Peru as a lay group (a “Society of Apostolic Life of Pontifical Right”), the Sodalitium exercised huge influence as it sought to recruit mostly young white boys from elite Catholic schools and upper and middle-class families with political or business links.

It was also politically driven as a fight back against the rise of liberation theology in Latin America, a radical movement which began in the 1960s and focussed on supporting the poor.