The Seoul District Court in South Korea sentenced five people to jail Monday for spying for North Korea . Group ringleader Korean-American Michael Jang received a nine-year sentence for encouraging anti-US sentiment in South Korea under orders from North Korea in 2005. Jang initiated contact with North Korean agents in 1998 and first established a [...]

The trial of Jose Padilla and two co-defendants on terrorism charges began Monday with jury selection. Defense attorneys have expressed concern that potential jurors may have been tainted by early accusations that Padilla had planned to set off a radioactive "dirty bomb" , an allegation not among the charges against Padilla, and that jurors might [...]

The governor of St. Petersburg has ordered an investigation into allegations of human rights violations during a Sunday rally opposing the policies of Russian President Vladimir Putin , according to a Monday press statement. Police arrested dozens of protesters Sunday before and during the rally in St. Petersburg, just one day after some 200 anti-Putin [...]

Human Rights Watch (HRW) said Monday that insurgents in Afghanistan are committing an increasing number of war crimes by launching attacks targeting civilians. In a 116-page report entitled "The Human Cost: The Consequences of Insurgent Attacks in Afghanistan", HRW found that in 2006 669 civilians died as a result of attacks by the Taliban, Hezb-e [...]

The Supreme Court of Nigeria ruled unanimously Monday that Nigerian Vice President Atiku Abubakar should not have been barred from running in the country's April 21 presidential election by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) . Specifically, the court held that the Nigerian Court of Appeal incorrectly ruled earlier this month that the INEC had [...]

Former Macedonian Interior Minister Ljube Boskovski and his former bodyguard Johan Tarculovski went on trial Monday at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) . The two men, the only Macedonians indicted by the ICTY, are charged with murdering seven ethnic Albanian civilians in the village of Ljuboten during a 2001 conflict between [...]

Arafat Rahman, the son of former Bangladeshi Prime Minister Khaleda Zia , was arrested Monday on corruption allegations, according to local media. Zia's elder son Tarique Rahman was also arrested on arrested corruption charges last month in Dhaka. Tarique, a senior member in the Bangladesh Nationalist Party , was widely expected to succeed his mother, [...]

A Croatian county court in Osijek issued indictments Monday for seven persons, including a former parliamentarian, on charges of war crimes committed against Serbs, including abduction, torture and murder, during Croatia's war of independence from the former Yugoslavia. Prosecutors charged opposition lawmaker and former member of the ruling party Branimir Glavas with ordering the killing [...]

The United States currently holds some 18,000 detainees in two US-run Iraqi detention facilities, Camp Bucca and Camp Cropper , the Washington Post reported Sunday, citing US military sources. In the past month, the US has increased security in Baghdad, leading to an additional 1,000 arrests. The detainees are considered "enemy combatants", similar to the [...]

Writing Sunday in a Washington Post op-ed , US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales denied any impropriety on his part in the firings of eight US Attorneys . Two days before his scheduled Congressional testimony on the firings, Gonzales said he had "nothing to hide": I know that I did not — and would not — [...]