Syrian governmental forces have been committing crimes against humanity , including torture and unlawful killings of anti-government protesters in Homs, Syria , according to a Human Rights Watch (HRW) report released Friday. According to HRW, Homs, a governorate with some of the strongest anti-government leanings, has become “a microcosm of the Syrian government’s brutality.” HRW [...]

International Criminal Court (ICC) chief prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo said Friday that his office would prosecute individuals involved election violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The DRC is expected to hold presidential and parliamentary elections on November 28. The prosecutor’s statement follows a UN report published earlier this month encouraging an end to [...]

Prosecutors at the UN Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) urged the judge Friday to wait to commence the trial in absentia of four Hezbollah members indicted for killing former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri . The STL has faced great difficulty trying to arrest the members of Hezbollah in Lebanon where the Shiite militia Hezbollah, [...]

A US military court on Thursday convicted an army squad commander of three counts of premeditated murder for leading a “kill team” in Afghanistan that targeted unarmed civilians and collected body parts as war trophies. While three of the four defendants pleaded guilty and received reduced sentences, Sgt. Calvin Gibbs , 26, was given a [...]

The Ugandan High Court on Thursday sentenced a man to 30 years in prison for beating to death prominent gay rights activist David Kato. Enock Nsubuga confessed to the January 2011 killing, admitting to beating Kato with a hammer at his home before he died on the way to the hospital. Nsubuga claimed that he [...]

Human Rights Watch (HRW) on Wednesday urged the Tunisian government not to extradite former Libyan prime minister Al-Baghdadi Ali al-Mahmoudi , warning that he would be “at a real risk for torture” if he is returned to Libya. Al-Mahmoudi, who served under Muammar Gaddafi , has been held in Tunisia since September when he was [...]

The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit on Wednesday released a partially redacted opinion in Latif v. Obama, overturning the release order for Yemeni Guantanamo detainee Adnan Farhan Abdul Latif . The redaction at times covers entire sections, but reveals strong divisions between the deciding judges. The unredacted portion of the [...]

Former Croatian prime minister Ivo Sanader pleaded not guilty on Thursday to taking bribes worth €10 million from Hungarian energy group MOL in exchange for allowing MOL a dominant position in Croatia’s oil and gas group INA . Hernadi and MOL have also denied the allegations that Sanader capitalized on the country’s difficult position for [...]

The US Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday voted to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) , marking the first time a Congressional group has voted to repeal the law banning same-sex marriage. The vote was split along party lines, with 10 Democrats voting in favor of the legislation and eight Republicans voting in opposition. [...]

A Brazilian federal court ruled Wednesday that work on a dam being constructed on the Xingu River in the Amazon jungle may continue. The Federal Court of the First Region had ordered that dam construction cease until indigenous groups are consulted and given access to environmental impact reports, but the court reversed that decision in [...]