5 Americans detained in Pakistan allege torture

SARGODHA, Pakistan -- Five Americans arrested in Pakistan on suspicion of terrorism told a court Monday that they had been tortured by police - charges that could add to political sensitivities surrounding the case.

The men made the allegations during a hearing before a special anti-terrorism court in the eastern town of Sargodha. The session was held in order for police to submit a charge sheet alleging that the suspects had conspired in a terrorist act, a formal legal step that brings them closer to a possible indictment.

Read more at the Washington Post

Abu Dhabi Royal Acquitted in Torture Trial

A court in Abu Dhabi ruled on Sunday that 45 minutes of video showing a member of the emirate’s ruling family torturing an Afghan grain merchant — by stuffing his face with sand, firing a machine gun close to his body, hitting him with a whip and an electric cattle prod, cutting his bare buttocks by striking him a nail embedded in a stick and driving over him — did not prove the prosecution’s case that the sheik was guilty of a crime.

As the Abu Dhabi daily The National reported, the court ruled that Sheik Issa bin Zayed al-Nahyan, a brother of president of the United Arab Emirates, had “diminished liability” for his actions, which he claimed took place while he was under the influence of medication. The trial was held in  Al Ain, an oasis city near Sheik Issa’s farm where the Afghan man, Mohammed Shah Poor, was tortured in 2004.

Read more at the New York Times

Amnesty International Press Release: USA continues to look the other way on 'war on terror' abuses

"A commitment to human rights starts with universal standards and with holding everyone accountable to those standards, including ourselves… When injustice anywhere is ignored, justice everywhere is denied. Acknowledging and remedying mistakes does not make us weaker, it reaffirms the strengths of our principles and institutions."

Not Amnesty International's words, but those of US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton last month in an address on the Obama administration's "Human Rights Agenda for the 21stCentury". - Accountability, she said, was elemental to the administration's approach, and it was under this principle that President Barack Obama had ordered an end to CIA torture and closure of the Guantánamo detention facility.


Read more at Amnesty International

Officials: DC trial eyed for Gitmo terror detainee

WASHINGTON -- The Obama administration is conducting an intense security review as part of a plan to bring one of the world's most notorious terrorism suspects from Guantanamo Bay to Washington for a trial just steps from the Capitol, officials said


Republican critics said the plan would make the city more dangerous, risk compromising U.S. intelligence methods and provide a powerful and expensive bullhorn for Osama bin Laden's alleged lieutenant, Riduan Isamuddin, and two associates. Isamuddin, better known as Hambali, is believed to be the main link between al-Qaida and Jemaah Islamiyah, the terror group blamed for the 2002 bombing at a Bali nightclub that killed 202 people.


Read more at the Washington Post

Illinois: New Charges in Terror Attacks

Two Chicago men were indicted on new charges stemming from a violent attack on a Danish newspaper and for the November 2008 terrorist rampage that killed 166 people in Mumbai. David Coleman Headley and Tahawwur Hussain Rana were named in a 12-count superseding indictment that for the first time said Mr. Rana was in on the planning of the Mumbai attacks by a team of 10 terrorists. Both men are in federal custody in Chicago. A reputed terrorist leader, Ilyas Kashmiri, who has been linked to Al Qaeda and described as a leader of the Pakistani terrorist group Harakat-ul Jihad Islami, was also charged in the new indictment.

Read at the New York Times

4 Dead After 20-Hour Gun Battle in Kashmir

NEW DELHI — A 20-hour gun battle prompted by a deadly militant attack on a police outpost in Kashmir’s summer capital ended Thursday at a hotel after the police killed two militants, including one Pakistani national, Indian police officials said.


Militants opened fire Wednesday afternoon on security forces in the middle of a busy market at the center of Srinagar, on the Indian side of the border. One policeman and a civilian were killed, and 10 people were wounded in what officials said was the first such militant attack in two years.


Read more at the New York Times

Bomber Kills 10 in Eastern Afghanistan

KABUL, Afghanistan — A suicide bomber aiming for a pro-government militia commander detonated his bomb-laden vest in the provincial capital of Gardez on Thursday, and witnesses said he killed 10 people and wounded 27, most of them civilians. Also on Thursday, the governor of a neighboring province survived a bomb attack.


In Gardez, capital of Paktia province, witnesses said the suicide bomber walked up to Nasir Paray, the commander of one of the many pro-government armed groups in the area, and detonated his vest up. Among the dead were four children.


Read more at the New York Times

Guidelines for Children Seeking Asylum

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees recently published guidelines for the treatment of child asylum seekers. Though not binding law, the document should be useful for those representing children in asylum claims, and hopefully for pushing forward the state of asylum law for children in the United States. Some highlights:


Read more at IntLawGrrls

Chile to open museum dedicated to Pinochet torture victims

SANTIAGO, Chile - -- What they'll put in and what they'll leave out -- that question haunts Margarita Iglesias as she considers next month's opening of the Museum of Memory and Human Rights. 


That Chile is recognizing victims of its military dictatorship in a striking new "monument to memories" is positive, said Iglesias, both a victim and a historian of Augusto Pinochet's bloody 17-year rule. As a high school student activist in Santiago in 1975, she was tortured before fleeing with her family to France.


Read more at the Chicago Tribune

West Bank forces end abuse of Hamas

NABLUS, West Bank - Palestinian security forces in the West Bank have stopped torturing Hamas prisoners, ending two years of systematic abuse, Hamas inmates said in jailhouse interviews.
The change, said to have taken effect in October, was confirmed by a West Bank Hamas leader, human-rights activists, and the Palestinian prime minister.
The news is expected to defuse a potential problem for Washington since the United States has been closely involved in training Palestinian troops under Western-backed Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, a rival of the Hamas militants.

Read more at the Philadelphia Inquirer