Sudan may have violated international law by conducting "indiscriminate and disproportionate" air attacks in late April on at least five Darfur villages, according to UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour . Sudanese officials have denied the attacks. Arbour said helicopter gunships and Antonov aircraft were responsible for the attacks on villages near El [...]

Britain's Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) said Friday that 11 Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) officers will not face disciplinary action for the fatal shooting of a Brazilian man two weeks after the July 2005 London transit bombings . The IPCC, however, is waiting to determine whether the four most senior officers involved in the shooting [...]

A two-week UN conference to toughen the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons failed to reach any agreement Friday, as the United States and Iran traded accusations of bad faith. The US and its allies said Iran stalled the process by objecting to a phrase emphasizing the "need for full compliance" with the treaty, [...]

Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko has dismissed a third judge from the Ukrainian Constitutional Court , little more than a week after dismissing two others for alleged oath and ethics violations . The Russian Itar-Tass news service Friday quoted Constitutional Court chairman Ivan Dombrovsky as saying in response that he was "deeply worried by the situation [...]

US District Judge Thomas Hogan approved an offer of immunity Friday for former Department of Justice aide Monica Goodling , clearing the way for Goodling's testimony before Congress on the firings of eight US Attorneys . Under Hogan's order, Goodling may not refuse to testify. The House Judiciary Committee voted in April to grant Goodling [...]

Two Vietnamese human rights lawyers were sentenced Friday for violating Article 88 of the Vietnamese criminal code by advocating that Vietnam adopt a multi-party system of government. Nguyen Van Dai and Le Thi Cong Nhan were arrested in February after they hosted a training session on human rights law. Dai, who said he rejected the [...]

Kamal Labwani, a Syrian political dissident who founded a pro-democracy group, was sentenced to 12 years in prison Thursday for "encouraging attack against Syria" after contacting a foreign country. Labwani met with officials from the White House during a visit to the US in 2005, and was arrested at the airport when he returned to [...]

Ali Hassan al-Majid, known in the Western media as "Chemical Ali" , told the Iraqi High Tribunal Thursday that he did not use or issue an order to use chemical weapons against Kurdish rebels in the late 1980s. During defense closing arguments , al-Majid defended the government of Saddam Hussein for its actions during the [...]

Maj. Gen. Richard A. Huck, commander of the US Second Marine Division in Iraq when 24 Iraqi civilians were killed at Haditha in November 2005, told a military panel Thursday that his staff failed to inform him of allegations that the civilians may have been killed in violation of the law of armed conflict, and [...]

Polish Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski said Thursday that the judges of Poland's Constitutional Tribunal could be charged if they act improperly in ruling on the legality of a so-called Lustration Law passed in October 2006 requiring over 700,000 Polish professionals – academics , journalists, lawyers, diplomats and managers of state-owned companies – to file affidavits [...]