Zimbabwe’s High Court in Harare on Tuesday ordered the release of six prisoners accused of plotting to overthrow Zimbabwe’s president. The former army officers have been in prison since 2007 after being accused of planning to violently topple President Robert Mugabe and replace him with the country’s defense minister, Emerson Mnangagwa. The court held it [...]
Serbian authorities have captured Ratko Mladic , it was announced Thursday, ending a 16-year manhunt for the former general colonel and commander of the army of the Serbian Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Mladic was one of the two remaining at-large war criminals sought by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) , [...]
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay on Tuesday called for a peaceful resolution to the escalating conflict in Abyei, the disputed oil-producing region between North and South Sudan. Last week a convoy of UN peacekeepers transporting troops of the northern Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) was attacked just north of Abyei, which is claimed [...]
The Colombian Senate passed a law on Wednesday to compensate citizens who have been victimized by ongoing civil turmoil. The Victims’ Law and Land Restitution Law will provide financial compensation and restitution of land to victims of internal armed conflicts involving paramilitaries and guerrillas during the past 30 years. Individuals who feel they have been [...]
Indonesian cleric Abu Bakar Bashir pleaded not guilty on Wednesday to terrorism charges for allegedly funding a terrorist training camp in the Indonesian province of Aceh to prepare Islamic radicals to carry out attacks in Jakarta. Prosecutors claim Bashir provided more than $62,000 to the group , which was allegedly planning attacks modeled after the [...]
Rwandan genocide suspect and former Hutu militia leader Bernard Munyagishari has been arrested in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) announced on Wednesday. Munyagishari was wanted on charges of genocide and several crimes against humanity for leading a militia in the mass killings and rapes of Tutsi [...]
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay on Wednesday a rebuked Australia for its political, rather than human rights based approach to indigenous people and asylum-seekers. Although she criticized some of the nation’s practices, she had considerable praise for “a strong history of commitment to human rights at the international level, and also of [...]
The Brazil House of Deputies passed reforms to the the country’s forest code Tuesday that ease restrictions on deforestation and provide amnesty for prior deforestation violations. The amended code would allow small farmers to cut down trees on hilltops and along rivers, two areas that were previously protected. It would also provide farmers with amnesty [...]
A judge for the US District Court for the Southern District of Ohio on Monday upheld an Ohio law that limits the use of the “abortion pill,” overturning a 2006 injunction . The law requires that the use of the pill, RU-486 , conform with federal guidelines, which currently do not allow the pill to [...]
Arizona Governor Jan Brewer (R) announced Tuesday the state is filing a federal lawsuit seeking a declaratory judgment over the legality of the state’s controversial medical marijuana law passed last November. Brewer said that it is necessary to see if the new law violates federal law in order to protect state workers charged with distributing [...]
