The White House has proposed absolving CIA agents working abroad from proposed legislation barring "cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment" of detainees, the Washington Post reported Tuesday. The exemption introduced by Vice President Dick Cheney and CIA Director Porter Goss, would apply to counter-terrorism operations conducted abroad and operations conducted by "an element of [...]

Despite last week's murder of a defense lawyer involved in the proceedings, Baghdad is still a safe place to hold the trial of Saddam Hussein and his seven co-defendants, President Bush said Monday in an interview with Al-Arabiya television. Bush dismissed calls for an international trial and stressed the importance of the trial to Iraqis, [...]

US Vice President Dick Cheney was the first person to discuss Valerie Plame with his Chief of Staff I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby , lawyers involved in the leak investigation said Monday according to the New York Times. The revelation seems to be inconsistent with Libby's grand jury testimony that he learned the identity of the [...]

British Member of Parliament George Galloway Tuesday rejected fresh accusations from US congressional investigators that he profited from the now defunct UN Oil-for-Food Program in Iraq. The new report from the US Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations will be handed over to the US Justice Department and to British authorities. A hearing before the investigations [...]

At least 21 detainees have been killed while being held in US custody in Iraq and Afghanistan, many during or after interrogations, according to an ACLU analysis of Defense Department data released Monday. According to autopsy reports, at least eight of the 21 homicides resulted from abusive techniques by US military or intelligence officers, such [...]

Wire services are reporting that final results of the October 15 Iraqi referendum announced in Baghdad Tuesday show that the draft Iraqi constitution has been approved. 7:49 AM ET – According to officials, two provinces voted "no", but in the closest third province, Nineveh, 44% of voters had endorsed the constitution. Two-thirds of voters in [...]

Civil rights pioneer Rosa Parks , known as the "mother of the civil rights movement," died Monday evening at her home in Detroit. She was 92. Parks was best known for her arrest after refusing to give up her seat to a white man on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama on December 1, 1955, when [...]

FBI documents on Patriot Act surveillance of US citizens, Electronic Privacy Information Center, October 24, 2005 . Read the full text of the documents released by EPIC here. Reported in JURIST's Paper Case here.

Human rights implications of the Anti-terrorism Bill 2005 . Read the full text of the report . Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.

Prisoners in 2004, United States Department of Justice, October 24, 2005 . Read the full DOJ report here . Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.