A UN human rights expert on Monday urged the UK and Sweden to accept the recent decision which determined that Julian Assange , founder of the controversial website WikiLeaks , has been arbitrarily detained since 2010. Assange was initially arrested in December 2010 following rape allegations in Sweden. Assange was placed on house arrest in [...]

The UN rights office on Tuesday condemned Monday’s airstrikes in Syria, which hit hospitals and schools in the region, saying they may constitute war crimes. The airstrikes resulted in 45 deaths and dozens of more injuries as missiles hit four hospitals and one school. Spokesperson for the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights [...]

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein on Tuesday expressed concern over China’s recent crackdown on lawyers and activists. The commissioner stated that civil society workers should be protected by the state, not harassed. He stated that during their meeting in Geneva, China’s response to his concerns indicate that they are confusing [...]

Bosnian police arrested three former policemen, including previously-convicted Darko Mrdja, on new charges of war crimes against non-Serb detainees during the Bosnian War. The three suspects have been accused of killing at least 10 non-Serbs as part of a massacre of over 150 detainees scheduled for transfer to nearby detention camps in 1992. Mrdja was [...]

A group of UN human rights experts on Monday demanded the immediate release of five foreign-national detainees that have been held by the United Arab Emirates (UAE) for the past 18 months. The prisoners were incarcerated for suspected terrorist activity under a new counter-terrorism law and have reportedly been subjected to torture, leading them to [...]

UN Special Rapporteur on the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea Marzuki Darusman is asking the UN to provide North Korea with notice that Kim Jong Un may be investigated for crimes against humanity. In a report to the UN Human Rights Council made public Monday, Darusman outlines that North Korea’s leader is ripe to be [...]

Former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert began his 19-month prison sentence on Monday following his attempts to appeal his conviction for bribery. Olmert was convicted in 2014 for accepting several bribes for housing projects in Jerusalem during his term as mayor. While his original six-year sentence was postponed and later reduced by the Israeli Supreme [...]

The Basic Court of Pec, a region in western Kosovo, has issued an indictment charging 14 Serbians in the region with committing war crimes in 1999. Although charging the suspects in Pec, the arrest warrants appear to show that at least some of the suspects reside outside of Kosovo. According to Ljubomir Pantovic, a lawyer [...]

The lawyer for a suspect in a 2015 bombing in Bangkok on Monday retracted his client’s earlier confession a day before a scheduled military court appearance to formally hear the charges against him. The suspect, Bilal Mohammed, maintains he had no involvement in the August bombing that left 20 people dead. Mohammed was arrested in [...]

The highest appeals court in Egypt on Sunday overturned the 15-year prison sentence levied against a police officer for the killing of a female protester in January 2015. The officer, Yaseen Mohamed Hatem, will face a new trial for charges of battery leading to death for the fatal shooting of Shaimaa el-Sabbagh. Sabbagh was a [...]