Pakistan's Supreme Court on Monday began hearing an appeal by Mukhtar Mai against the acqittal of five men who allegedly brutalized her in a gang-rape that attracted national and international attention and condemnation. Mai was raped in 2002, allegedly on the orders of a traditional village council after her younger brother offended the honor of [...]

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The Iraqi Special Tribunal released silent footage Sunday from a judicial interrogation last week of six of Saddam Hussein's former lieutenants concerning the killing and deportation of Shiite Kurds and the repression of a Shiite revolt in 1991 after the first Gulf War. Saddam's half-brothers Barzan Ibrahim Hassan al-Tikriti and Watban Ibrahim Hassan al-Tikriti , [...]

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The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and Human Rights Watch released a joint report Sunday claiming that the Bush administration has violated the material witness law by detaining nearly 70 terrorism suspects since September 11 without enough criminal evidence to keep them. All but one of the detainees were Muslims. The law permits witnesses who [...]

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Legislation to criminalize sexual harassment was presented Sunday to the Standing Committee of China's National People's Congress . The draft amendment to the Law of the People's Republic of China on the Protection of Rights and Interests of Women , designed to protect women's rights, mandates that no one shall be allowed to subject women [...]

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After visiting the Guantanamo Bay detention center Saturday , House Republicans and Democrats reported that conditions at the facility are improving. The lawmakers traveled to the detention facility to witness interrogations and observe living conditions of the suspected terrorists. Representative Ellen Tauscher (D-CA) said that "he Guantanamo we saw today is not the Guantanamo we [...]

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Sixteen US House members visited the Guantanamo Bay detention center on Saturday, with a Senate delegation to follow. The trip was planned in response to mounting concerns on both sides of the partisan aisle about alleged human rights violations at the prison. Military officials gave a classified briefing to lawmakers and then led them on [...]

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Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani , the relatively-moderate cleric and former president of Iran who lost Friday's run-off election to hardline conservative Mahmoud Ahmadinejad , contended Saturday that there had been what he called "organized and illegal" efforts to ensure his defeat. Rafsanjani, president from 1989 to 1997, ran on a platform calling for better relations with [...]

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