The United Nations (UN) Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) on Tuesday announced that Bahrain has agreed to permit a UN commission to investigate human rights violations related to pro-democratic reform protests in the country. UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay and Bahrain’s health minister Fatima bint Mohammed Al Balooshi [...]
A Philippine court on Tuesday froze USD $23 million worth of assets owned by the Ampatuan family, who are accused of ordering the killing of 57 people. The Philippines Department of Justice (PDOJ) had implicated Andal Ampatuan Sr., the leader of a Muslim clan in the Philippines’ semi-autonomous southern province of Maguindanao, and several of [...]
A judge for the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia on Tuesday reaffirmed a ruling he issued two weeks ago striking down a ban on corporate donations to federal political candidates. On Friday, District Judge James Cacheris held a hearing during which US prosecutors said they failed to cite key precedent related [...]
Former Russian oil executive Mikhail Khodorkovsky on Tuesday reissued an appeal for release on parole that was returned to him due to insufficient documentation. Khodorkovsky has served half of a 13-year sentence for fraud, theft and money laundering, which under Russian law makes him eligible for parole. Once CEO of Yukos Oil and one of [...]
Human Rights Watch (HRW) and Amnesty International (AI) on Wednesday criticized Kyrgyzstan’s lack of judicial progress, marking the one-year anniversary of the June 2010 ethnic violence that resulted in more than 300 deaths and 2,000 injuries. Both reports alleged that investigations have been conducted through torture, and that typically, only confessions given through torture have [...]
California Governor Jerry Brown submitted a plan Tuesday to reduce the state’s prison population by over 30,000 inmates to satisfy a court order to reduce prison overcrowding . The plan is a response to the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Plata to uphold a federal three-judge panel order that California reduce its state prison [...]
Former Icelandic prime minister Geir Haarde pleaded not guilty Tuesday to charges that he was grossly negligent for failing to stop the nation’s banking collapse during the 2008 financial crisis . Haarde vowed that he would prove his innocence and claimed that the charges were a result of the first political trial in the nation’s [...]
Egypt officially declared the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) legal Tuesday for the first time since the powerful political organization’s inception nearly 80 years ago. An Egyptian elections commission approved the formation of the MB’s Freedom and Justice Party (FJP). The MB announced the FJP on April 30, which is set to challenge for half the parliament [...]
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay on Tuesday condemned the killings of protesters along the border between Golan Heights and Syria. Pillay reported that between 30 and 40 protesters had been killed by Israeli security forces along the ceasefire line between the occupied borders. Nearly 20 civilian protesters were reportedly killed during a [...]
Syrian and international human rights groups on Monday urged the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate the hundreds of civilian deaths during protests against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad . The ICC prosecutor’s office indicated it could not investigate the killings because it can prosecute only those crimes committed by nationals of ICC member states. Amnesty [...]
