Egyptian prisons are rife with human rights abuses, according to a Monday report from Amnesty International. “What do I care if you die?” Negligence and denial of health care in the Egyptian prisons, the 74-page report, looked into eight key issues: mass arbitrary detention policy; cruel and inhuman detention conditions; barring prisoners’ contact with family; [...]
Ugandan authorities on Monday allowed restoration of some internet services in the country, five days after a shutdown that occurred as last week’s election approached. While connectivity has been restored to 90 percent of ordinary levels following the announcement of the election result—a landslide victory for President Yoweri Museveni, who has held office since 1986—Ugandans can [...]
Scotland’s top criminal court refused to overturn the murder conviction of the “Lockerbie bomber” in a 64-page appeal judgment released Friday. A panel of five judges in the Scottish High Court of Justiciary upheld the late Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi’s conviction for 270 counts of murder. The murders were committed in 1988 when Megrahi placed [...]
France’s Minister of Justice Éric Dupond-Moretti is set to be judicially investigated for alleged conflict of interest, officials said Friday. Prosecutor General François Molins, who was appointed in 2018 to the Court of Cassation, the country’s top court, announced the investigation. The announcement follows the Court of Justice of the Republic, a special French court [...]
The Greek government submitted a bill to the country’s Hellenic Parliament Friday in an attempt to increase its territorial waters. The five-article bill is titled, “Determination of the bandwidth of the Aegialitis zone in the maritime region of the Ionian and Ionian Islands up to Cape Coatro of the Peloponnese.” If passed, it would double [...]
The Cabinet of Iran approved a bill Sunday to bolster protections for women against violence in the country. The Cabinet meeting saw the Council of Ministers approve the Protection, Dignity and Security of Women against Violence bill, moving the bill along the country’s law-making process. The bill defines violence as “any behaviour that is committed [...]
Boston Mayor Martin Walsh signed an ordinance Monday to create a board independent of the Boston Police Department (BPD) to investigate police misconduct allegations. The ordinance was signed by Walsh in a ceremony conducted virtually. It establishes the Office of Police Accountability and Transparency (OPAT), which will “investigate complaints of police misconduct, ensure that the [...]
Well-known women’s rights activist Loujain al-Hathloul was sentenced to five years and eight months imprisonment Monday in Saudi Arabia’s Specialized Criminal Court (SCC) for terrorism and national security offences. Reuters reported that 31-year-old al-Hathloul was charged under sweeping counter-terrorism laws with “seeking to change the Saudi political system and harming national security”. Given that al-Hathloul [...]
Three petitions challenging the Sunday dissolution of Nepal’s Federal Parliament have been filed in the Supreme Court of Nepal, the highest court in the country. The petitions challenge Nepal’s Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli’s request to President Bidhya Devi Bhandari to dissolve Parliament. Bhandari granted the request and scheduled a new, brought-forward election to take [...]
Thai actor Inthira “Sai” Charoenpura was charged Monday with allegedly contravening Thailand’s lèse-majesté law which prohibits defaming the royal family despite occasions of her speaking publicly about the monarchy being unknown. The Associated Press reported that Charoenpura, among other protestors, answered a police summons to hear their charges of allegedly contravening section 112 of the [...]
