US Army sniper Sgt. Evan Vela was convicted Sunday of unpremeditated murder for the killing of an unarmed Iraqi civilian near Iskandariyah and sentenced to 10 years in prison. The military jury also found Vela guilty of making a false official statement and of conduct prejudicial to good order and discipline. He had been charged [...]

Bilateral arms control agreements negotiated by the US and Russia during the Cold War should be replaced by multilateral agreements, former Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said Sunday. Ivanov, who now serves as Russian first deputy prime minister, referred to bilateral agreements, including the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (Salt 1) , as relics of the [...]

Former Cambodian Foreign Minister Ieng Sary , accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity for his role in the Khmer Rouge communist regime of the 1970s, has returned to ECCC custody after his hospitalization last week, an official for the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) said Sunday. In addition to a [...]

 The Rwandan Chamber of Deputies has passed legislation that would make promoting "genocide ideology" a crime, punishable by life in prison for the worse offenders. The bill was passed unanimously by the country's lower house Friday, and now must be approved by the Rwandan Senate and signed by President Paul Kagame before becoming law. Some of the [...]

Former Chinese newspaper editor Yu Huafeng has been released early from prison after serving four years on corruption charges , Reporters without Borders said Saturday. Yu and his colleague Li Minying were both convicted in 2004 for embezzlement, bribery and corruption. Both men claimed the money in question was obtained legally and used for routine [...]

Retired Argentinean military officers Paccagnini Ruben and Emilio Del Real were arrested by Argentina's Federal Police Saturday in connection with the August 1972 massacre of 16 leftist guerillas on a military base in the southern city of Trelew . Ruben and Del Real face charges of torture, homicide, attempted homicide and illegal detentions for their [...]

Ibrahim Ahmed Mahmoud Al Qosi and Ali Hamza Ahmad Suliman al Bahlul Charge Sheet, US Department of Defense, February 8, 2008 . Read the full text of the al Qosi and al Bahlul charges . Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.

Hundreds of conversations between lawyers and their incarcerated clients have been secretly taped by British police, according to a report in the UK Telegraph daily published Saturday. The tapings came to light after a a former police detective revealed that he had recorded conversations in 2005 and 2006 between Muslim Labour MP Sadiq Khan and [...]

The military government of Myanmar announced in a television broadcast Saturday that it will hold a constitutional referendum in May, with multi-party elections to follow in 2010. Last September a National Convention originally called in 1993 concluded work on guidelines for a new national charter. The exact subject-matter of the referendum has yet to be [...]

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour said Friday that waterboarding is clearly torture, echoing comments Wednesday by UN Special rapporteur on torture Manfred Nowak , who sharply criticized the White House for defending the use of waterboarding in remarks earlier this week. Arbour said Friday that she had "no difficulty" describing the practice [...]