Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri , the suspected mastermind of the 2000 USS Cole bombing and a Guantanamo Bay detainee, said his confession to the attacks was coerced through five years of torture, according to transcripts released Friday. The transcripts from his Combatant Status Review Tribunal hearing do not provide any details of the alleged torture, and [...]
The US Deputy Assistant Secretary for Fish, Wildlife and Parks violated federal rules against sharing non-public endangered species information with private industry groups, according to an investigative report released Thursday. Julie MacDonald, who joined the Bush administration in 2002, admitted that she gave internal US Interior Department and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) information to private [...]
A ground-breaking UN disabilities rights treaty opened for signature Friday. The treaty would protect the 650 million persons living with disabilities worldwide and is expected to be signed by more than 70 countries. The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities holds that all disabled people should be treated as full-fledged citizens and completely [...]
Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick (D) said Friday he plans to reverse the restrictions placed on stem cell research by former governor and Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney . Patrick emphasized during a meeting with the state Life Sciences Collaborative that "life sciences should be guided by science, not ideological politics." He also announced his intention [...]
The UN Human Rights Council passed a resolution Friday calling on Sudan to allow a group of rights experts to visit the region of Darfur , but did not actually criticize the Sudanese government for the atrocities occurring there. The resolution passed by consensus without a vote by the 47-nation council after Germany agreed to [...]
New US Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Thursday that the White House and Congress should collaborate to close the US prison camp in Guantanamo Bay by transferring the more dangerous detainees elsewhere. Gates told the US House Defense Appropriations Committee that less than 100 of the 385 total prisoners held at Guantanamo are considered "hard-core" [...]
The judge presiding over the military commission for Australian Guantanamo Bay detainee David Hicks said Friday that Hicks would be be subject to a maximum seven-year prison sentence under the terms of his plea bargain. The judge's comments came the day after the chief prosecutor in the case, USAF Col. Morris Davis , said that [...]
Thailand Prime Minister Surayud Chulanont declined a request to declare a state of emergency in Bangkok Friday, although he said he had not ruled out the possibility of doing so in the future. Military officials had sought the declaration to crack down on critics of the interim government; emergency powers would have allowed the government [...]
Bangladesh on Friday executed six Islamic militants convicted in the 2005 murders of two judges . Authorities previously stated that the executions were scheduled to occur in April . The six militants, members of the banned Jamaat-ul Mujahideen Bangladesh and the Jagrata Muslim Janata Bangladesh who admitted attacking judges because they want to replace the [...]
The Thua Thien Hue Provincial People's Court in Vietnam sentenced dissident Catholic priest Father Thadeus Nguyen Van Ly to eight years' imprisonment Friday for distributing anti-government documents and communicating with foreign pro-democracy activists. Ly had been accused of "harming national security" by advocating boycotts of Vietnam's upcoming national assembly elections, creating unsanctioned political parties, and [...]
