Members of parliament in Nepal opened debate at a special session Thursday to address the status of King Gyanendra and the Nepalese monarchy. The Communist Party of Nepal – Maoists (CPN-M) reiterated their desire for the monarchy to be dissolved immediately. The party announced September 18 that it would vacate the interim government and boycott [...]

Defense lawyers representing Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi , the only person convicted in the 1998 bombing of a Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, Thursday requested access to evidence not previously provided to them that they claim could be used to clear al-Megrahi. Specifically, they are seeking disclosure of a "missing document" which allegedly [...]

Rwandan Information Minister Laurent Nkusi said Thursday that the government of Rwanda has completed setting up a commission charged with investigating the 1994 assassination of then-Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana . The downing of the plane carrying the Hutu leader sparked the 1994 genocide in which more than 800,000 people were killed in the span of [...]

Larry Frankel : " ABA study found that Pennsylvania fails to comply with over 93% of the ABA's 92 recommendations designed to improve the fairness and accuracy of the death penalty. The ABA recommends some very specific changes to the laws in Pennsylvania to minimize the risk of executing the innocent, eliminate shocking racial and [...]

Spanish lawmakers have reportedly come to an agreement on the text of the proposed anti-Franco Law for the Recovery of the Historical Memory presented to the Spanish Parliament. The legislation is aimed at healing the social wounds from the authoritarian regime of Gen. Francisco Franco that ruled Spain from 1939 to 1975 following a bitter [...]

The New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights filed a lawsuit against private security contractor Blackwater USA Thursday on behalf of an injured survivor and the families of 3 men killed during a September 16 shooting incident in Baghdad that took the lives of 17 Iraqi civilians. The complaint submitted in the US District Court for [...]

Human Rights Report 1 April – 30 June 2007, UN Assistance Mission for Iraq, October 11, 2007 . Read the full text of the report . Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.

Corruption in China's ruling Communist Party could ultimately result in political and economic destabilization within the country , according to a new report from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace . The report, written by Carnegie Endowment Senior Associate Minxin Pei , says that approximately 10 percent of government spending goes to officials who award [...]

The number of extrajudicial killings in Colombia at the hands of the Colombian military has almost doubled since 1997, according to a new report by a international conglomerate of human rights workers. The International Observation Mission on Extrajudicial Executions and Impunity in Colombia found there have been approximately 950 documented illegal killings in the last [...]

President Abdullah Gul of Turkey blasted the US House Foreign Relations Committee Thursday for approving a resolution declaring the World War I-era killings of over one million Armenians by Turkish soldiers genocide. Gul released a statement on the resolution: It's a pity that some politicians in the United States closed their ears to calls of [...]