Senegal's foreign minister said Sunday that former Chad dictator Hissene Habre , wanted in Belgium for alleged human rights abuses committed during his 1982-90 rule of the north-central African nation, will have his fate decided by the 53-member African Union . Habre is in legal limbo after a Senegalese appeals court Friday said it was [...]
Leading Monday's international brief, Kenyan Vice-President Moody Awori has announced that the Kenyan government is outlawing all rallies by the Orange Movement, the anti-constitution coalition that handed Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki a solid defeat in last week's referendum . Awori said that the ban reflected the government's position that the referendum was simply a vote [...]
Viveca Novak, a TIME magazine reporter who covered the leak of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity, has been asked to testify by Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald in the leak investigation which is now going before a second grand jury . Novak has been asked to testify under oath about conversations she has had since [...]
The trial of Saddam Hussein resumed Monday, but was quickly adjourned until December 5 to allow two of Hussein's co-defendants, including former Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan, to find replacements for members of the defense team killed since the last trial session on October 19 . Defense lawyers had threatened to boycott the proceedings over [...]
In a bid to appeal to Sunni voters, former Iraqi interim prime minister Iyad Allawi , a Shiite, said in an interview with the UK's Observer newspaper Sunday that human rights abuses by Iraqi Shiites are as bad as they were under Saddam Hussein's regime. Sunnis claim that they have been unjustly targeted by Shiite-led [...]
Citizens in the former Soviet republic of Armenia voted Sunday on constitutional amendments to impose stricter separation of powers between the judicial, executive and legislative branches. The amendments also remove a clause in the Armenian constitution barring Armenian citizens from obtaining dual citizenship. The US and EU support the constitutional amendments which will strengthen democracy, [...]
Britain has caused a diplomatic stir by rejecting a proposal advanced by US ambassador to the UN John Bolton to block the upcoming UN budget as a way to press disputed reforms to the beleagured world organization. Bolton suggested last week that the UN push back the two-year budget talks as a means to overcome [...]
Former Philippines election commissioner Virgilio Garcillano emerged from hiding Sunday to clear President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo from election fraud allegations. Garcillano has not been seen in public since June, when the opposition released recordings of conversations that claimed to be of Garcillano and Arroyo planning to fix the results of the May 2004 national elections. [...]
Lawyers for Saddam Hussein, reinforced by the late addition of Johnson-era US attorney general Ramsey Clark and former Qatari justice minister Najib al-Nuaimi, said Sunday that they would ask for another adjournment of the ousted Iraqi dictator's trial when the proceeding resumes in a fortified Baghdad courtroom Monday. The trial was initially adjourned soon after [...]
A US military spokesman has said there is no secret detainee camp run by the US in Kosovo, although the US military there does share a well-known detention facility with NATO as part of the latter's KFOR operation. Major Michael Wunn spoke to AFP after Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights Alvaro Gil-Robles , [...]
