The Egyptian government ordered Sunday that five members of the banned Muslim Brotherhood be released after they had been detained for five months without charges. The Muslim Brotherhood, established in 1928 and banned in 1954, renounced violence in the 1970s and is thought to be Egypt's largest Islamist group. The order comes after the recent [...]
The Supreme Iraqi Criminal Tribunal (formerly known as the Iraqi Special Tribunal ), the court established to try Saddam Hussein and other former Iraqi officials, could violate international standards for fair trials, according to a briefing paper, The Former Iraqi Government on Trial , released Sunday by Human Rights Watch . HRW warns that the [...]
A British Royal Air Force medical officer has become the first member of the UK military to face criminal charges for disobeying a lawful command because he refused to fight in Iraq, claiming the war there is illegal. Flight-Lieutenant Malcolm Kendall-Smith, decorated from operations in Afghanistan and two previous tours in Iraq, will be court-martialed [...]
Muslim leaders and rights groups in Indonesia fear that plans to strengthen Indonesian anti-terror laws in the wake a of a second round of Bali bombings earlier this month will return the country to the days when former dictator Suharto used security forces to stifle dissent. Indonesia’s government Saturday tried to reassure citizens that the [...]
The UN human rights chief in Haiti said Friday that the human rights situation in the Caribbean nation had become "catastrophic". Thierry Fagart, who heads a team of some 30 UN observers, cited numerous violations of basic human rights, such as arbitrary arrests, torture and summary executions committed by Haitian National Police, and street violence [...]
Explicitly evoking images of Germany in the 1930s, senior British judges and lawyers are warning that the Blair government's efforts to put pressure on the judiciary in the interpretation of the Human Rights Act while restricting traditional civil liberties in anti-terror legislation risks turning the country into a police state. Former law lord Lord Ackner [...]
A spokesman for the UN-Afghan Joint Election Management Body said Sunday that "approximately 50" Afghan election workers had been dismissed under suspicion of fraud committed in last month's parliamentary elections . Some 680 ballot boxes alleged to have been stuffed – about 3% of the total – have been removed from the counting process. The [...]
Fears have arisen in The Netherlands over the safety of Dutch Integration Minister Rita Verdonk after police Friday arrested seven people suspected of planning to assassinate two other Dutch politicians named on a Islamist "hit list" pinned to the body of assassinated Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh last November. Last week Verdonk triggered outrage in [...]
Military prosecutors have re-charged US Army Second Lt. Erick Anderson in connection with the killing of a wounded Iraqi teenager in August 2004, according to Anderson's uncle. Anderson and the other soldiers involved in what witnesses described as a rescue attempt say the teen was inside a burning truck and they decided the best course [...]
US and local Iraqi sources suggested Sunday that the draft Iraqi constitution was heading towards approval after initial vote counts in Saturday's referendum . No formal results have as yet been issued, but local election officials described returns that would likely allow the charter to avoid defeat by two-thirds of voters in three of Iraq's [...]
