Polish Jews in Israel are strenuously objecting to a proposal now in the Polish parliament to return private property to Jews because it may also offer some validity to the Nazi Nuremberg laws put in place leading up to and during World War II. The bill seeks to provide compensation to Polish Jews who had [...]

The Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission said Monday that the government of Afghanistan is considering creating a war crimes court to deal with allegations of human rights abuses dating back to the Soviet invasion in the 1970s. Earlier this month Human Rights Watch issued a report calling for investigation of several high-level government officials , [...]

A Serbian court Monday convicted eight former members of special police unit that took orders from then-Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic of killing ex-Serb President Ivan Stambolic in August 2000. The eight men were also convicted of the attempted asssassination of opposition leader Vuk Draskovic ; Milosevic saw both Stambolic and Draskovic as threats to his [...]

In the wake of a lawsuit from groups including the ACLU and Greenpeace , the US Department of Justice has admitted that the FBI has thousands of pages of records on file from scrutinizing US civil rights, environmental and other advocacy groups. The groups want the documents released and contend the files were compiled by [...]

TIME magazine reporter Matthew Cooper said Sunday in an article he has written on his grand jury testimony that Dick Cheney's chief of staff Lewis Libby contributed information to the story revealing the identity of Valerie Plame as a CIA operative. Cooper said he spoke to Libby regarding a trip to Africa that Plame authorized [...]

A Jordan Public Security Department spokesman said Sunday that five suspected al-Qaida prisoners started a hunger strike on Tuesday to protest sentences handed down by Jordan's State Security Court in 2000. The prisoners are being held in Jordan's Qafqa Prison for their convictions for terrorist-related activities. Two of the prisoners have received death sentences and [...]

Senators John McCain (R-AZ), Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and John Warner (R-VA) are drafting a bill which would provide clear and uniform rules for detention, interrogation and prosecution of prisoners during wartime, according to a new report in Newsweek magazine. The bill would follow international anti-torture laws and treaties, and revisions are being proposed for Army [...]

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour has called for ex-Liberian president Charles Taylor, currently in exile in Nigeria, to stand trial before the Special Court for Sierra Leone on 17 counts of war crimes committed during his 15-year rule. On a visit to Sierra Leone, Arbour said "I call and will continue to [...]

In a greatly anticipated move, the government of Zimbabwe has published a draft bill proposing sweeping changes to the country's constitution , including the creation of a new two-chamber parliament. Shortly after the elections last year, President Robert Mugabe , leader of the ruling Zanu PF party , announced plans to amend the constitution and [...]

A Serbian war crimes court Friday convicted and sentenced four former members of the Avengers parliamentary group to prison terms of fifteen to twenty years for their involvement in the 1992 abduction and murder of 16 Muslim men and women. Some consider the convictions an indication that Serbian courts are capable of conducting impartial investigations [...]