A UN Human Rights Council investigatory team Wednesday cancelled a scheduled trip to the Darfur region of Sudan after Sudanese officials again refused to grant a visa to a team member. The UN refused to replace Bertrand Ramcharan , a former Acting UN High Commissioner for Human Rights who accused the Sudanese government of violating [...]

The UK's Serious Fraud Office (SFO) confirmed Tuesday that it had begun an investigation into whether UK firms paid illegal kickbacks to the Saddam Hussein regime in the now-defunct UN Oil-for-Food program , through which Hussein allegedly embezzled as much as $1.8 billion. According to the Guardian newspaper, drug manufacturers GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), AstraZeneca and Eli [...]

A French magistrate judge has issued a second summons to Djibouti President Ismail Omar Guelleh requesting testimony for an investigation into the May 1995 death of a French judge in Djibouti. Djibouti officials maintain that the death of Bernard Borrel , who advised the Djibouti justice ministry until he was found dead in a ravine, [...]

The US State Department Wednesday announced an expanded program to allow 7,000 Iraqi refugees to resettle in the US. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice met with UN High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres to discuss the plan, which will fast-track refugee applications from Iraqis who face retaliation for cooperating with US forces. Since the Iraq [...]

The trial of Saddam-era Iraqi Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan was flawed and he should not be executed, a UN Human Rights expert said Wednesday. Phillip Alston , appointed as UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions in 2004, said judicial misconduct, official statements declaring Ramadan guilty before his sentence, and the admission [...]

A senior Chinese official said Tuesday that the government plans to establish a "National Corruption Prevention Bureau" to ensure China's compliance with the UN Convention Against Corruption , which China signed in 2005. The proposed bureau is another step forward in China's fight against widespread corruption, following a year in which over 97,000 Chinese officials [...]

The Belgian government was complicit in Nazi persecution of the Jewish population during the Holocaust and the country's courts failed to hold Belgian authorities accountable for persecuting and deporting Jews after World War II, according to a government-supported report that was presented to the Belgian parliament on Tuesday. According to the report , titled "Submissive [...]

US Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy testified before the appropriations subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday on the topic of judicial pay, saying that low pay relative to private-sector jobs threatens the independence and integrity of the federal judiciary. While members of the Supreme Court rarely testify before appropriations committees, Kennedy said the [...]

A British judge announced Wednesday that he has dropped charges against five British soldiers accused of abusing Iraqi detainees in Basra, while continuing charges against two British co-defendants in their ongoing court-martial. The ruling was issued Tuesday, but was kept secret until Justice Stuart McKinnon read it to the jury of military officers on Wednesday [...]

The European Parliament voted 382-256 Wednesday to approve a report condemning member states for cooperating with the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in operating illegal secret prisons and extraordinary rendition flights in Europe. Seventy-four MEPs abstained from the vote. The report condemns the European countries who allowed the CIA to forcibly remove terror suspects from [...]