Fair elections in Pakistan are impossible as long as the judiciary remains beholden to Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf and scores of lawyers, activists and government critics remain in detention, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in a report released Wednesday. The 84-page report details how the November 3 declaration of emergency has been used to cripple [...]
Three UK residents released Wednesday from Guantanamo Bay were detained by UK authorities when they arrived in the UK later in the day. Libyan Omar Deghayes and Algerian Abdennour Sameur were arrested and Jordanian Jamil el Banna was detained under the UK Terrorism Act . Deghayes and el-Banna may face extradition to Spain, although the [...]
A French court Wednesday sentenced five Frenchmen released from the US detention center at Guantanamo Bay to one year in prison for "criminal association with a terrorist enterprise" after a retrial. A sixth defendant was acquitted. The men were charged with allegedly attending combat training at an al Qaeda camp in Afghanistan. They were repatriated [...]
A Spanish anti-terrorism court Wednesday convicted 47 Basque separatists of either leading, being a member of, or collaborating with a "terrorist organization," and sentenced each to between 2 and 20 years in prison. The 47 were members of various groups pushing for Basque independence, but prosecutors argued that all had ties to terror group ETA [...]
A judge on the US District Court for the Western District of Kentucky ruled Tuesday that former Pfc. Steven D. Green will stand trial on April 13, 2009, for his role in the March 2006 rape and murder of a 14-year old Iraqi girl and the murder of her family in Mahmudiya. The 2009 trial [...]
The Indonesian Supreme Court has rejected the final appeal of three men sentenced to death for their roles in the 2002 Bali nightclub bombings , an Indonesian prosecutor said Wednesday. The court's decision has not yet been formally released, but prosecutor Made Sudarmaja said Wednesday that his office has been notified of the court's decision. [...]
A court in Argentina on Tuesday convicted eight formal officials for human rights abuses committed during the 1976-83 Dirty War . The seven former army officers and a former police official were tried in connection with the kidnapping, torture and disappearances of a group of leftist guerrillas. Three defendants, including former Army chief Cristino Nicolaides, [...]
US District Court Judge Stephan Mickle of the Northern District of Florida granted a preliminary injunction Tuesday blocking the implementation of a new Florida voting law intended to prevent election fraud in the state. The law would prevent a person from registering to vote if their social security or driver's license numbers cannot be matched [...]
The Israeli government has failed to investigate and indict members of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) for acts of violence committed against Palestinian civilians, according to a report issued Tuesday by Israeli human rights group Yesh Din . According to the report, thousands of Palestinian civilians have been killed during the last seven years, but [...]
US military contractor CACI International is allegedly responsible for the torture of more than 250 former detainees held in Iraqi prisons, according to the amended complaint filed Tuesday in a class action lawsuit pending in US federal court. According to a press release from the Center for Constitutional Rights: The complaint alleges that these victims [...]
