The British government announced Wednesday that it has agreed to extradite Algerian Rachid Ramda , held on a French arrest warrant for the past eight years in connection with a Paris bomb attack in 1995 that took the lives of eight people. UK Home Secretary Charles Clarke agreed to the extradition in April but the [...]
EU External Relations Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner has called Tuesday's acquittal of 10 Libyan police officers charged with torturing six foreign medics – five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor – into confessions in an AIDS tainted blood scandal , "a matter for serious concern." Ferrero-Waldner noted that human rights lawyers had been denied visas to [...]
Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari Wednesday promised to continue fighting corruption in Iraq's new government. He said "administrative corruption" was one of many challenges Iraq must face, and that the government has "rolled up its sleeves and taken measures" to prevent it, including establishing a telephone hotline for reports. Judge Radhi Hamza al-Radhi, the head [...]
A British court Wednesday began a retrial of suspected Afghan warlord Faryadi Sarwar Zardad in what may be the first instance of a country prosecuting an alleged torturer for crimes committed abroad. Zardad is believed to have controlled key road checkpoints in the mid-1990s on the main route from Pakistan to Kabul where the alleged [...]
The US House Appropriations Committee Tuesday continued to press the FBI to adopt recommended reforms in hearings on the the FBI's new budget . On Monday, members of the 9/11 Commission also expressed concern that the Bureau hasn't made enough progress in restructuring and reorganizing since the 9/11 attacks. The battle over reforming the FBI [...]
After rejecting the proposed European Constitution , a poll of French citizens released Wednesday says 61 percent want the constitution renegotiated, while 35 percent say it should not be changed. 74 percent believed France could get "significant and positive" changes to the proposal. The proposed constitution's defeat in France and the Netherlands has European leaders [...]
Lawyers for the US Department of Justice Tuesday asked for less than one-tenth of the expected penalty in a civil racketeering case against major tocacco companies. At the conclusion of closing arguments , government lawyer Stephen D. Brody asked for just $10 billion of the original $130 billion dollar penalty calculated for what the US [...]
Fifteen Guantanamo detainees who have been cleared of wrongdoing in March by Combatant Status Review Tribunals that concluded they were not properly classed as "enemy combatants" are still being held at the facility more than two months later, according to a Reuters report Wednesday. The Pentagon says it has delayed their release because of concerns [...]
US Marines detained 19 employees of North Carolina-based Zapata Engineering for 3 days, after reportedly witnessing the contractors open fire on troops and civilians in Iraq, the US military announced Tuesday. The employees, including 16 Americans, most of whom were security personnel, and 3 Iraqi translators, have resigned their positions and have returned to the [...]
A father and son have been arrested and charged with lying to federal agents after the son admitted to attending an al-Qaida training camp in Pakistan, the FBI said on Tuesday. Hamid Hayat, 22, is charged with lying about attending the camp. Hamid's father, Umer Hayat, 47, is charged with lying about his son's activities [...]