The Cuban government on Friday paroled dissident Francisco Chaviano Gonzalez , after the former president of the Cuban National Council for Civil Rights served 13 years in prison. Chaviano was sentenced to 15 years in prison in May 1994 for allegedly "revealing state security secrets" and "falsifying public documents" by documenting cases of refugees who [...]
The US Supreme Court on Friday denied the request of Guantanamo Bay detainee Ahmed Belbacha to stay his transfer to Algeria . Belbacha has been cleared for release from Guantanamo Bay , but he has says that he will be tortured and perhaps killed if returned to Algeria. Belbacha filed the emergency application for a [...]
Lawyers representing exiled business tycoon Boris Berezovsky filed an appeal Friday against the latest arrest warrant issued by a Moscow district court on allegations that Berezovsky embezzled $13 million in credit funds from a bank he formerly owned. The court has also ordered the seizure of Berezovsky's Mediterranean real estate in France, which was allegedly [...]
Five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor reiterated allegations Friday that Libyan authorities subjected the six medics to torture during their eight years in Libyan custody on suspicion of deliberately infecting hundreds of Libyan children with the HIV virus . The six medics have consistently maintained their innocence, and in testimony before a Bulgarian investigation [...]
The Bush administration Friday announced new reforms that are designed to "address border security and immigration challenges." In a statement Friday, Bush said that the new meausres "represent steps my Administration can take within the boundaries of existing law to better secure our borders, improve worksite enforcement, streamline existing temporary worker programs, and help new [...]
The Supreme Court of Pakistan ordered the Pakistani government to produce complete voter registration records Friday after former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto petitioned that there were up to 30 million missing registrations. Bhutto's lawyer Latif Khosa argued that the 2002 registration had failed to account for 20 million eligible voters, and that an estimated additional [...]
China has released a prisoner initially sentenced to death for burning debris during the 1989 Tiananmen Square Protests , the Hong Kong-based Information Center for Human Rights & Democracy reported Friday. Former construction worker Xi Haoliang, who the center said was released Tuesday, was among an estimated 12 individuals still in detention for their alleged [...]
Three men charged with conspiracy to cause explosions for their alleged involvement in the July 7, 2005 London transit bombings pleaded not guilty Friday. The defendants – Mohammed Shakil, Sadeer Saleem, and Waheed Ali – are accused of plotting terror attacks against tourist attractions and public transportation in London between November 2004 and July 2005, [...]
US District Judge Marcia Cooke ruled Thursday that jurors in the terror trial of Jose Padilla and co-defendants Adham Amin Hassoun and Kifah Wael Jayyousi will not be able to consider the "defensive jihad" defense, agreeing with federal prosecutors that the defendants can be convicted even if they believed that their "conduct was religious, politically, [...]
The US Department of Defense has cleared for release one of the Guantanamo Bay detainees who was a legal resident in the UK before his detention, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Detainee Affairs Sandy Hodgkinson said Thursday. The US has not transferred the detainee, who was not identified, to his country of origin due [...]
