Kevin Lanigan : "Last week I observed three military commissions hearings in Guantánamo: the arraignments of Afghani national Mohammed Jawad and Saudi national Ahmed Mohammed Ahmed Haza al Darbi, and a discovery motions hearing in the case of Canadian national Omar Ahmed Khadr. (Khadr's case, along with that of Salim Ahmed Hamdan, are the two [...]

Nepalese police arrested 50 protesters Tuesday after roughly 200 Tibetan exiles demonstrated near the country's UN headquarters in Katmandu, demanding a UN investigation into China's recent crackdown against pro-Tibet protests . The protesters, who were arrested after refusing to leave the site, began a hunger strike early Tuesday and were later joined by monks, forming [...]

Judges ousted by Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf after his declaration of emergency rule last November can only be reinstated if the newly elected members of the National Assembly of Pakistan strike down constitutional changes Musharraf introduced following the dismissals, Pakistani Attorney General Malik Qayyum said Tuesday. Qayyum said that reinstating the judges would require a [...]

Guantanamo Bay detainee Omar Khadr said in an affidavit released Tuesday that US interrogators in Afghanistan threatened him with rape, physically abused him, and forced him to swear to false statements. The 63-item statement, signed by Khadr on February 22, was heavily redacted by the US military before its release, omitting many of the specific [...]

The War Crimes Chamber of the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina Tuesday indicted a Bosnian Serb ex-soldier for crimes against humanity allegedly committed against Muslims in the Bosnian war of the early 1990s. Miodrag Nikacevic is accused of raping two Muslim women in April and June 1992, and is also alleged to have participated in [...]

A German state administrative court Tuesday upheld a ban on teachers wearing religious headscarves during school. The court in the federal district of Baden-Wuerttemberg ruled that the teacher who brought the lawsuit had violated her obligation to keep religious expression out of the classroom by wearing a headscarf in class. The ruling overturns a 2006 [...]

The US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit Tuesday rejected an appeal by three former Enron Broadband Services executives seeking the dismissal of remaining charges after a jury failed to reach a verdict on all counts in their 2005 fraud trial. Former VP Scott Yeager, former senior VP Rex Shelby, and former CEO Joseph [...]

Chief Human Rights Officer Norah Niland of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan Tuesday called on the Afghan government to do more to protect human rights and see that human rights violators are brought to justice. Speaking at a press conference in Kabul, Niland said a general sense that human rights violators could operate [...]

The trial of Chinese human rights activist Hu Jia began Tuesday on charges of inciting subversion of state power . Hu was formally charged last month after he made public letters and recordings from Chinese lawyer Gao Zhisheng alleging that Gao was tortured into confessing to subversion charges. Two local lawyers told AP that they [...]

Rights groups Tuesday marked the anniversary of a March 2003 crackdown on dissidents in Cuba by calling for the release of political prisoners detained during that round-up. Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) , Human Rights First (HRF) and other groups urged new Cuban President Raul Castro to release 55 detainees still in custody. Seventy-five journalists, [...]