Letter dated 7 August from the UN Secretary-General to the President of the Security Council, August 7, 2006 . Excerpt: The attack on Qana should be seen in the broader context of what could, on the basis of preliminary information available to the United Nations, including eyewitness accounts, be a pattern of violations of international [...]

Police in Argentina have arrested three former officials suspected of human rights violations during the country's "Dirty War" , the former military junta's campaign against its domestic opponents – at least 13,000 of whom "disappeared" from 1976 to 1983. Authorities arrested Raul Antonio Guglielminetti, a former intelligence agent, late Wednesday in connection with a series [...]

Malawi President Bingu wa Mutharika on Thursday called for the resignation of Ishmael Wadi, Director of Public Prosecutions, who in July dropped corruption charges against former President Bakili Muluzi on the eve of Muluzi's trial. Mutharika, who was elected as Muluzi's hand-picked successor on a platform of ending government corruption, suspended the director of the [...]

Dutch prosecutors have charged a Rwandan immigrant arrested in Amsterdam with committing war crimes and torture in Rwanda, officials said Thursday. Specifically, prosecutors alleged that "Joseph M." ordered the killing of several Tutsis that were dragged out of an ambulance and shot during the 1994 Rwandan genocide . The defendant, who was arrested earlier this [...]

The Swiss Justice Ministry has decided to grant US investigators access to information about bank accounts of terrorism suspects, a justice ministry spokesman said Wednesday. Prosecutors in the US Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Virginia requested the information in a four-year old investigation into money laundering to support terrorist activities. The US prosecutors [...]

The human rights situation continues to deteriorate in some parts of Darfur despite the Darfur Peace Agreement signed in May by the Sudanese government and the main rebel group in the region, the Sudan Liberation Movement , according to a report released Wednesday by the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and [...]

The Australian House of Representatives approved the Migration Amendment (Designated Unauthorised Arrivals) Bill by a margin of 78-62 Thursday, a bill that will require asylum seekers arriving in Australia by boat to be processed in offshore camps. As expected , the bill passed despite opposition from four MPs within the governing Liberal Party . Three [...]

Efraim Zuroff, a director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center , urged Serbia on Wednesday to request the extradition of Ivo Rojnica and Milivoj Asner , two Croatian-born men accused of committing atrocities against Jews, Serbs and Gypsies during World War II. As part of Operation: Last Chance , an initiative committed to bringing elderly Nazi [...]

An attorney for former Enron CEO Kenneth Lay has indicated that he intends to ask a federal court to vacate Lay's criminal convictions and dismiss the indictment in the case. Lawyer Samuel Buffone filed a motion in federal court Wednesday to supplant Lay's name in court records with Lay's estate, clearing the way for the [...]

The US Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday introduced plans to give small public US companies and some foreign companies additional time to comply with restrictive internal control requirements relating to financial reporting. The requirements were adopted by Congress in 2002 as part of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act in an effort to protect investors, and gave [...]