Former US President Jimmy Carter closed a two-day human rights conference at the Carter Center in Atlanta Tuesday by saying that the US should close the Guantanamo Bay military prison camp and two dozen other secret detention centers in order to show the country's commitment to protecting human rights. Carter's suggestion echoes US Senator Joseph [...]

Republican Congressman Henry Hyde , chair of the House International Relations Committee, introduced legislation in the US House of Representatives Tuesday calling for broad reforms to the UN. The UN Reform Act of 2005 alleges that the organization is rife with fraud and waste, citing the recent Oil-for-Food scandal as one example, and would permit [...]

The US military announced Tuesday that a riot broke out at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison over the weekend after an inmate made a failed attempt to escape from the prison. The "disturbance" took place late Sunday evening after a prisoner was caught trying to break out in the midst of a heavy sandstorm. Four guards [...]

Leading Tuesday's international brief, Sudanese Foreign Minister Mustafa Osman Ismail has told reporters that the Sudan government is not planning to challenge the recently announced probe into Darfur by the International Criminal Court . Ismail reiterated, however, Sudan's continued opposition to sending anyone charged with war crimes or crimes against humanity to a foreign jurisdiction [...]

Prosecutors for the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia said Tuesday that they will not appeal the provisional release of former Kosovo prime minister Ramush Haradinaj . A trial chamber of the court granted Haradinaj provisional release Monday pending his trial on charges of crimes against humanity and violations of the laws of war [...]

UN war crimes prosecutors at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia introduced evidence Tuesday that former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic used his police forces to directly control a brutal Serbian paramilitary group called "Scorpions" said to be responsible for the killings of Bosnian youths documented in a graphic video shown in court last [...]

The US Senate voted 65-32 Tuesday to limit debate on the nomination of California Supreme Court Justice Janice Rogers Brown to the federal appeals bench, against some opposition from Democrats, some of whom have been blocking her appointment for two years. After a recent bipartisan truce helped the Senate avoid a showdown over judicial nominees, [...]

A Spanish court official said Tuesday that a Spanish judge wants to question three US soldiers in connection with the 2003 killing of Spanish cameraman Jose Couso in Iraq when a US tank fired on a Baghdad hotel housing foreign journalists. High Court Judge Santiago Pedraz began requesting information about the death of Couso in [...]

British Prime Minister Tony Blair said in an interview Tuesday with the Financial Times that Britain will attempt to salvage some key components from the nearly-defunct EU Constitution. UK Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs Jack Straw stated meanwhile that provisions on the voting power of member nations and role of national parliaments [...]

A Libyan court announced Tuesday that nine police officers and one doctor have been acquitted of torturing five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor, who were allegedly forced to confess to deliberately infecting Libyan children with HIV. The six medical workers were convicted of infecting 426 children last year and then sentenced to death by [...]