The US Department of State on Friday said that former Mexican president Ernesto Zedillo should be immune from a Connecticut lawsuit filed over the 1997 killings of 45 people in a Mexican village. The plaintiffs, 10 unidentified men and women, allege that Zedillo was responsible for war crimes, crimes against humanity, cruel, inhuman, and degrading [...]

A judge for the US District Court for the District of Southern of Florida ruled Friday that a suit against the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) over the agency’s failure to report Allen Stanford and his Ponzi scheme may proceed. The suit alleges that the SEC had identified that Stanford was running a Ponzi scheme four [...]

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay on Monday addressed the world’s most significant human rights issues as she opened the 21st session of the UN Human Rights Council . Pillay criticized Bahrain for its treatment of opposition figures and its failure to use fair trial practices. She expressed concern over the use of [...]

The head of the Council of Europe on Monday advocated for free and fair parliamentary elections in Ukraine as he condemned the imprisonment of former prime minister and opposition party leader Yulia Tymoshenko . Council Secretary-General Thorbjorn Jagland had visited Ukraine to give a speech on the implementation of the Council’s three-year €22 million action [...]

Oil workers in Kazakhstan face mistreatment and repression at the hands of the government and oil companies, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in a report released on Monday. According to HRW, Kazakh authorities and three companies operating in the oil and gas sector in western Kazakhstan restrict workers’ rights to freedom of assembly, association and [...]

The trial for Saif al-Islam , one of Muammar Gaddafi’s sons, will be postponed for five months so the prosecution can obtain evidence from Libya’s former intelligence chief Abdullah al-Senussi , government officials announced on Sunday. Al-Senussi was extradited to Libya from Mauritania last Wednesday on charges of murder and persecution for planning attacks on [...]

Former Iraqi Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi was sentenced to death after being convicted on three counts of murder on Sunday. The verdict was given in absentia because al-Hashemi has been in hiding since the arrest warrant was issued . Al-Hashemi, who is currently in Turkey to avoid trial in Iraq, denied accusations of him being [...]

The states of New York, Connecticut and Vermont filed an amicus brief along with several other groups in the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit on Friday in support of the lower court ruling that found the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) unconstitutional . Friends of the court included a group of family [...]

Bahrain on Saturday announced that it would pursue legal proceedings against the al Wefaq political party, which it labels an opposition group, for engaging in anti-government protests in the face of a ban of those activities. Bahrain officials claim that al Welfaq organized anti-government protests on Friday that resulted in the arrest of six dissidents. [...]

The Justice M.B. Shah Commission of Inquiry , an Indian judicial committee investigating illegal mining practices, issued a report Friday that indicted Digambar Kamat, the former Chief Minister of the state of Goa , for permitting illegal mining in the state during his 12 year tenure as the state’s minister of mining. The report detailed [...]