US President Barack Obama delivered a speech Thursday on US counterterrorism policy and efforts, outlining plans to restrict the use of unmanned drone strikes and to renew efforts to close the detention center at Guantanamo Bay . In Obama’s first major speech on counterterrorism since his re-election, he addressed the war on terror: “Our systematic [...]
Lawyers representing Guantanamo Bay prisoners filed a complaint Thursday alleging search policies restrict the detainees’ access to counsel. According to a new policy , detainees are subject to a genital pat-down whenever they wish to leave the detention camp, which they must do to meet with their lawyers. This caused representatives for more than a [...]
Amnesty International (AI) on Thursday published its annual report entitled State of the World’s Human Rights , which details the human rights landscape across the world in 2012. The report focuses on the increasing danger faced by those displaced from their homes. This includes international refugees displaced by violence and those internally displaced. More than [...]
The Malaysian Ministry of Home Affairs on Thursday seized more than 2,500 copies of newspapers published by opposition parties. The Ministry states that the seized newspapers were sold in violation of their publication licenses, which limit the distribution of opposition party newspapers to party members, not public retail sale. Malaysian authorities have also made several [...]
A Russian court on Thursday denied parole for Maria Alekhina, a member of the feminist rock band Pussy Riot . Band members Alekhina, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Yekaterina Samutsevich were sentenced to two years in prison for “hooliganism,” characterized by the court as driven by religious hatred, in connection to the band’s February 2012 “guerrilla performance” [...]
The North Cairo Criminal Court on Wednesday acquitted seven police officers accused of killing a protester and injuring 11 others during the January 2011 revolution. The public prosecution had charged these seven police officers with attempted and premeditated murder. The initial panel of judges on this case declined to review it, forcing the appeals court [...]
A Pakistani anti-terrorism court (ATC) refused Wednesday to grant bail to former president Pervez Musharraf over the detention of judges in 2007 when he imposed emergency rule. Musharraf has been detained since April 19 at his Islamabad farmhouse for the detention charges as well as conspiracy to murder former prime minister Benazir Bhutto . Just [...]
A bipartisan group of lawmakers from the US House of Representative advocated Wednesday for a law that would shield the press from giving information to a federal entity unless certain conditions are met. The push for legislation comes in response to an incident in which the US Department of Justice (DOJ) obtained journalists’ records. In [...]
The Japanese parliament approved a bill on Wednesday adopting the Hague convention on resolving cross-border abductions of children. Parliament unanimously passed the treaty in response to international pressure for Tokyo to address concerns that Japanese mothers from broken international marriages can take children away from foreign fathers, leaving the fathers without any recourse for the [...]
Several groups filed a lawsuit Wednesday challenging the constitutionality of a new Connecticut gun control law . The new law expanded the firearms banned as “assault weapons” under existing state law. It also limits magazine capacity to 10 rounds. The complaint alleges these new requirement are overly vague which makes them too difficult to follow. [...]
