How we killed Archbishop Romero

Major Roberto D´Aubuisson participated in the conspiracy to assassinate Archbishop Romero, although a son of former president Molina provided the sniper, asserts Captain Álvaro Saravia. Thirty years later, he and some of the other people implicated in the crime reconstruct those days of arms trafficking, cocaine and kidnapping. Reduced to ignominy, Saravia has been a pizza delivery man, a used car salesman and a drug money launderer. Now he is burning in the hell he helped create during a time when killing “communists” was a sport.


He begins to read aloud slowly: “Several years after murdering Archbishop Romero, Captain Álvaro Rafael Saravia resigned his military commission, abandoned his family and moved to California.” He is holding several pages, a copy of a newspaper article published five years ago. He adjusts his glasses—two large lenses sustained by a wire—. His nails are broken and dirty, his eyes wide and nervous. He rereads the first paragraph. “Several years after murdering Archbishop Romero, Captain Álvaro Rafael Saravia…”  He pauses to repeat a name he has not pronounced for a long time: “Captain Álvaro Rafael Saravia”.


Read more at Elfaro

Iraqi refugees cautious about return after landmark election

BEIRUT, Lebanon, March 15 (UNHCR) – Early results from Iraq's national election, widely seen as a test of its democracy and a step towards stability after years of sectarian conflict, brought mixed reactions from Iraqi refugees still concerned about the situation back home.

Several Iraqi refugees said their country needs time to heal before they can safely return, while others said they were optimistic and many hoped the polls would end sectarianism and allow people to go home.

Read more at the UNHCR

Inside a Dictator's Secret Police

Eight years ago, Reed Brody stumbled upon the records of one of Africa's most brutal leaders, Chad's Hissène Habré. Now, two decades after he fell from power, Habré finally faces charges for his crimes -- if, that is, the trial actually happens.

For the two decades that he has been free, Souleymane Guengueng has constantly relived the two years he spent in a Chadian prison, where he watched hundreds of cellmates die from torture and disease. Thrown in jail in 1988 for still-unknown reasons, the deeply religious civil servant took an oath before God: If he ever got out alive, he would bring his tormentors to justice. So when the country's dictator fell in a 1990 coup and Guengueng walked out of prison, he used his considerable charm to persuade still-frightened victims to form an association and start preparing a case against their aggressor. But Chad's new government brought back many of the old henchmen and allowed the former tyrant -- Hissène Habré -- to live in quiet luxury in Senegal.


Read more at Foreignpolicy.com

Iran: Trial in Torture Deaths Begins

Twelve suspects accused of torturing to death three anti-government protesters during the widespread turmoil after the June presidential election went on trial on Tuesday, the official news agency IRNA reported. Iran’s judiciary last year charged 12 officials at the Kahrizak detention center in Tehran for involvement in the deaths of three protesters held there. The IRNA report did not identify any of the suspects, saying the judge had banned reporting details of the trial. In January, a parliamentary inquiry found a former Tehran prosecutor, Saeed Mortazavi, responsible for the deaths of the three at the detention center. There has been no word of any effort to punish him


From the New York Times

UK/US Asylum Seekers Find Death, Abuse, and Criminal Indifference

Editor’s note: Please see correction/update at the end of this report.

An article in the March 14 UK Observer reports that United Kingdom’s asylum immigration system is systematically denying claims of torture by asylum applicants, despite ample medical evidence by applicants of torture in their home countries. Since 2001, many asylum applicants have been sent to prison, with murderers and rapists, despite the fact they have never broken any law, making Britain the only European Union country to have such a practice.

Read more at the Public Record

Justices Weigh Claims Over Torture in Somalia

WASHINGTON — After the Supreme Court heard an hour of technical arguments Wednesday about whether foreign officials may be sued in the United States over torture claims, one of the plaintiffs in the case stood on the steps outside and recalled what had happened to him in Somalia in the 1980s.

“They destroyed my entire tribe,” Bashe Abdi Yousuf said of the regime of Maj. Gen. Mohamed Siad Barre. “I was tortured — waterboarded and put in electric shock.”

Read more at the New York Times

New UN resolution can help check doctors' role in torture

A new UN resolution could end doctors' participation in torture, says a new report.

According to experts on bmj.com, the resolution, passed in March 2009, can pose a challenge to torture and cruelty.

The resolution says, "states must never request or require anyone, including medical or other health personnel, to commit any act of torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment".


Read more at Africa Leader

19-yr-old dies after torture by husband, mother-in-law

A woman died on Tuesday evening after she was allegedly beaten up by her husband and mother-in-law. The accused allegedly beat up the 19-year-old victim twice since January 24.

The beatings were provoked by Harpreet Kaur’s inability to comprehend the gestures of her deaf and dumb husband, Kharar SHO, sub-inspector Harsimrat Singh Bal told Newsline.

Read more at the Indian Express

Report Faults 2 Authors of Bush Terror Memos

WASHINGTON — After five years of often bitter internal debate, the Justice Department concluded in a report released Friday that the lawyers who gave legal justification to the Bush administration’s brutal interrogation tactics for terrorism suspects used flawed legal reasoning but were not guilty of professional misconduct.

The report, rejecting harsher sanctions recommended by Justice Department ethics lawyers, brings to a close a pivotal chapter in the debate over the legal limits of the Bush administration’s fight against terrorism and whether its treatment of Qaeda prisoners amounted to torture.

Read more at the New York Times

Accused War Criminals Make Home in U.S

For many, mention of Somalia conjures images of a smoldering Blackhawk helicopter and AK-47-wielding pirates loaded onto an antique skiff.

What may not come to mind as quickly is the idea that the tipping point for Somalia's downward spiral into an international no-go zone may have come decades before U.S. troops landed on a Somali beachfront in the mid 1990s. It may have come during the regime of military dictator Siad Barre. 

Read more at ABC

Central Europe gets a new tool to measure refugee integration

BUDAPEST, Hungary, February 18 (UNHCR) – The UN refugee agency has unveiled an online tool that will allow governments in Central Europe to more effectively measure how refugees are integrating with host societies.

The Integration Evaluation Tool, developed for UNHCR by the Brussels-based Migration Policy Group, was recently presented in Budapest to representatives of Central European governments and non-governmental organizations interested in the new software. It is expected to be introduced throughout the region over the coming months.

Read more at the UNHCR

Darfuri refugees exposed to increased attacks if UN withdraws from Chad

Amnesty International Press release
11 February 2010

Amnesty International today called on the Chadian government to allow UN peacekeepers to continue protecting 250,000 refugees from Darfur and 170,000 internally displaced people (IDPs) in the east of the country.

The government has insisted that the United Nations Mission in the Central African Republic and Chad (MINURCAT) must leave Chad when its mandate expires on 15 March 2010, arguing that the force has failed its mandate. 


Read more at Hrea.Org

A California Reckoning in a Case of Abuses Abroad

The three refugees from Somalia came to the Bay Area several years ago to escape the violence of their homeland, to put the terror behind them. But they were shocked to learn in 2002 that a former Somali official they believed responsible for brutality against their family was living freely in the United States.



To Bashe and Omar Yousuf, who are brothers, and their cousin Amina Jireh, that did not seem right.

“I was really mad,” said Omar, a Caltrans engineer who now lives in Hercules. “The person who destroyed the country and killed thousands and thousands of people was in the United States, and we couldn’t do anything about it.”

Read more at the New York Times

Iraq Mends a System to Treat Trauma

BASRA, Iraq — During quiet moments, Fadel Khadum Adel, a former soldier, often hears someone speaking his name into his right ear. The voice is a welcome one, usually that of his mother or father, but when he looks there is no one there.

Mr. Adel, 43, turned his head to reveal a gnarled stub of an ear — the rest was forcibly amputated, without anesthesia, under Saddam Hussein, as punishment for his desertion from the army in 1987 during the Iran-Iraqwar.

Read more at the New York Times

High Court To Hear Torture Case

WASHINGTON - When the question of whether former officials of foreign countries can be sued in American courts for acts of torture goes before the U.S. Supreme Court next month, it will be a landmark moment for a nonprofit legal group in San Francisco.

Although the case comes out of Virginia, the legal brains behind the fight are from the Center for Justice and Accountability, based on Market Street. In its 12-year history, the group has never had a case reach the Supreme Court, a milestone that executive director Pamela Merchant has mixed feelings about.


Read more from the "How Appealing" Blog (article from The Daily Journal)

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

Obama Slams Security Breach

WASHINGTON -- The U.S. had multiple pieces of information about alleged bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, according to senior U.S. officials, including intelligence reports and communications intercepts suggesting a Nigerian was being prepped for a terror strike by al Qaeda operatives in Yemen.


The intercepts were collected piecemeal by the National Security Agency, which has been monitoring al Qaeda militants in that country, including former Guantanamo detainees believed to be leaders there.


Read more at the Wall Street Journal

Displaced and desperate in Gaza

One year has passed since the beginning of Operation Cast lead, Israel's 22-day military assault on the besieged Gaza Strip and suspended is a word that best describes daily life in the Strip; the internal reconciliation process, peace talks with Israel, and most importantly, reconstruction being halted until further notice.

On the street, conversations shift between two topics: The first is the 'internal peace process' between rival parties Fatah and Hamas. The other is a possible, even partial opening of the borders by Israel to allow rebuilding to begin; a topic alluded to casually with much cynicism and little hope.


Read More at Al Jazeera

Lesbian soldier inching to asylum in Canada

An American lesbian is breaking new ground in the fight for refuge from the U.S. military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy.

On September 11, 2007, Army Private Bethany Smith (right), then 21, fled to Canada after enduring taunts, physical abuse, and a death threat from her military cohorts because she is gay. 

On November 20, 2009, Judge Yves de Montigny of the Federal Court of Canada granted Smith's petition for judicial review of the Canadian Immigration and Refugee Board's denial of her application for asylum on the grounds that she had failed to seek state protection, which would have been adequate.

Read More at the IntLawGrrls Blog

Mumbai gunman recants confession, alleges torture

MUMBAI, India – The accused gunman in last year's bloody siege of Mumbai retracted his detailed confession Friday, saying police tortured him into admitting his role in the attacks that left 166 people dead.

Mohammed Ajmal Kasab, 21, who is being tried in a special court — and was photographed carrying an assault rifle during the attack onMumbai's main train station — told the judge he came to Mumbai as a tourist and was arrested 20 days before the siege began.

On the day the attacks started, Kasab said, police took him from his cell because he resembled one of the gunmen, shot him to make it look like he had been involved in the violence and re-arrested him.

Read more at Yahoo

Amnesty accuses Mexican military of torture

(CNN) -- The Mexican military has tortured and illegally killed citizens and committed other serious human rights violations as it battles the nation's drug cartels and organized crime groups, Amnesty International said in a report Tuesday.

The human rights group accuses authorities of failing to investigate allegations of abuses by the military, including abductions, extrajudicial and other unlawful killings, torture, ill treatment and arbitrary detentions.

Read more at CNN

Supreme Court rejects Guantanamo torture case

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court said on Monday that it rejected an appeal by four former Guantanamo Bay prisoners arguing that they should be able to proceed with their lawsuit against top Pentagon officials for torture and religious abuse

The justices refused to review a U.S. appeals court ruling that dismissed the lawsuit by the four British citizens over their treatment at the U.S. military base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba on the grounds the officials enjoyed immunity.

The four men -- Shafiq Rasul, Asif Iqbal, Rhuhel Ahmed and Jamal al-Harith -- were captured in late 2001 in Afghanistan and were transferred to Guantanamo in early 2002. Released in March of 2004, they were returned to Britain.

Read more at Reuters

Cleric's Death, Torture Case Jolt Iran

Iran's opposition on Sunday seized upon the death of one of the Islamic republic's founding fathers -- a revered ayatollah who was also a fierce critic of the nation's leadership -- to take to the streets in mourning.

Fearing that mourners could quickly turn into antigovernment protesters, Iranian authorities tightened security across the country. In Tehran, crowds held up pictures of the dead cleric and chanted, "This is the month of blood, the regime is coming down," according to eyewitnesses and videos posted on YouTube.

But the death of Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, who passed away in his sleep, was only one of two surprises to shake Iran over the weekend.

Read more at the Wall Street Journal

Appeals Chamber reverses Bemba's release

The Appeals Chamber of the International Criminal Court unanimously has reversed Pre-Trial Chamber II's grant of interim release to Jean-Pierre Bemba Gombo.
Bemba has been in ICC custody since July 3, 2008. On July 15, 2009, Pre-Trial Chamber II confirmed charges of crimes against humanity and war crimes against Bemba for his alleged command of Mouvement pour la Liberation du Congo forces, who purportedly murdered, raped and tortured Central African Republic civilians during attacks from October 26, 2002, to March 15, 2003.

Read More at the IntnlLawGrrls Blog

Human Rights Watch: 'Pakistan is notorious for its use of torture'

Afua Hirsch, legal affairs correspondent, on Human Rights Watch report claiming British complicity in Pakistani torture

Download the mp3 at the Guardian

Church photographer stopped under terror law

Seven officers sent to check on Grant Smith, who was taking pictures of Christ Church in City of London

One of the country's leading architectural photographers was apprehended by City of London police under terrorism laws today while photographing the 300-year old spire of Sir Christopher Wren's Christ Church for a personal project.

Grant Smith, who has 25 years experience documenting buildings by Richard Rogers and Norman Foster, was stopped by a squad of seven officers who pulled up in three cars and a riot van and searched his belongings under section 44 of the Terrorism Act, which allows police to stop and search anyone without need for suspicion in a designated area.

Read more at the Guardian

U.S. citizen charged with conspiring to aid terrorists in 2008 Mumbai attack

Federal prosecutors charged a Chicago resident Monday with serving as an advance man for Islamist terrorists who carried out the deadly 2008 Mumbai bombing, underscoring what they said is the potential for international terrorists to gain a foothold on American soil.

David C. Headley, 49, a U.S. citizen, is accused of conspiring to help the 10 men who mounted an armed siege of India's financial district over three days in November last year. Using firearms, grenades and improvised explosive devices, the attackers overtook luxury hotels, a Jewish cultural center and a train station, killing nearly 170 people, including six Americans.

Read more at the Washington Post

Obama urges Myanmar to free democracy leader Suu Kyi

Singapore (CNN) -- President Obama on Sunday called for the release of Myanmar democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi and other political prisoners.

"There are clear steps that must be taken: the unconditional release of all political prisoners, including Aung San Suu Kyi; an end to conflicts with minority groups; and a genuine dialogue between the government, the democratic opposition and minority groups," according to Obama, who said the regime should work to ensure its people's needs are met.

Read more at CNN

African immigrants drift toward Latin America

BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) – Stowed away on cargo ships and unsure where their dangerous journeys will take them, increasing numbers of African immigrants are arriving in Latin America as European countries tighten border controls.

Some head to Mexico and Guatemala as a stepping stone to the United States, others land in the ports ofArgentina and Brazil. Though many arrive in Latin America by chance, once in the region they find governments that are more welcoming than in Europe.

Read more at Yahoo News

Law firm's scam reopens hundreds of asylum cases

For years, Sacramento's Sekhon & Sekhon law firm was renowned as a beacon of hope.

The firm, boasting a 95 percent success rate, helped more than 1,000 immigrants from a half-dozen nations get political asylum in the United States based on a fear of persecution.

Many of those new asylees now stand to be deported, because as many as 700 – coached by the firm's lawyers and interpreters – told phony stories of torture and rape to immigration judges and asylum officers.

Read more at the Sacramento Bee

Pinochet soldiers ready to confess

Hundreds of former Chilean military conscripts have offered to reveal details of crimes they committed and witnessed during the late General Augusto Pinochet's rule.

The former soldiers, who served in the army during Pinochet's 1973 coup against Salvador Allende, the then president of Chile, made the offer to talk during a demonstration on Sunday to seek financial and medical benefits from the state.

Read more at Al Jazeera

Italy convicts former CIA agents in rendition trial

MILAN/ROME (Reuters) - An Italian judge sentenced 23 Americans to up to eight years in prison on Wednesday for the abduction of a Muslim cleric, in a symbolic condemnation of the CIA "rendition" flights used by the former U.S. government.

The Americans were all tried in absentia because the United States refused to extradite them.

Read more at Reuters

Brazil to probe its military past

Twenty four years after the military left power in Brazil, the government is to create a Truth Commission to investigate crimes committed by the security forces between 1964 and 1985.

Brazil is the only country in Latin America which has not investigated deaths, disappearances and torture which took place during its dictatorship, or put alleged perpetrators on trial.

Read More at BBC

The torture never stops: death by a hundred decibels

What do these artists have in common? AC/DC, the Bee Gees, Britney Spears, Bruce Springsteen, Don McLean, Eminem, James Taylor, Pink, Prince, Queen, Metallica and Nine Inch Nails.

Their music, along with many other songs — such as theSesame Street theme and theStar Spangled Banner — and the works of other performers have been used as implements of torture. This is not the age-old war between teenagers and parents played out in homes. This is serious. Loud rock music has been used by the US in the war against terror, specifically against inmates at Guantanamo Bay. It was labelled "futility music".

Read More at the Sydney Morning Herald

Fatah-Led PA Admits It Tortures Prisoners

(IsraelNN.com) The Palestinian Authority, led by the Fatah party, admitted to a British newspaper that its security forces commonly use torture on prisoners, as charged by the Hamas terrorist organization. The PA is heavily funded by overseas contributions as well as taxes collected for it by the Israeli government.

“This is a shame on the Palestinian Authority,” Haitham Arar, head of the human rights department of the PA Interior Ministry, told the Mail. She admitted that torture, beatings and extra-judicial murders have been common in the Abbas administration.

Read More at Artuz Sheva

Afghan Leader Said to Accept Runoff After Election Audit

KABUL, Afghanistan — Under heavy international pressure, President Hamid Karzai appears set to concede as early as Tuesday that he fell short of a first-round victory in the nation’s disputed presidential election, but the path to ensuring that the country has credible leadership remains uncertain, American and European officials said Monday.

The officials said Mr. Karzai was moving toward accepting the findings of an international audit that stripped him of nearly a third of his votes in the first round, leaving him below the 50 percent threshold that would have allowed him to avoid a runoff and declare victory over his main rival, Abdullah Abdullah.

Read More at the New York Times

British Court Orders Release of Guantanamo Bay Document

Binyam Mohamed spent four years in Guantanamo Bay, and claims that British and American authorities were aware of acts of torture he suffered while he was in Morocco.

A trial was held to determine if an American document that summarizes the accounts of the alleged torture should be released to the public. A British High Court ruled Friday that the documents should be released to the public.

In issuing the ruling, the court noted overwhelming public interest for the documents, and also noted that the report may shed light on illegal activities involving both the U.S. and British governments.

The British government immediately announced an appeal after the decision was announced. As a result, public disclosure of the documents will wait until after the appeal hearing resolved.

"The Government is deeply disappointed by the judgment handed down today by the High Court which concludes that a summary of US intelligence material should be put into the public domain against their wishes," British Foreign Secretary David Miliband told reporters.

Source: To The Center

In a Guinea Seized by Violence, Women Are Prey

CONAKRY, Guinea — Cellphone snapshots, ugly and hard to refute, are circulating here and feeding rage: they show that women were the particular targets of the Guinean soldiers who suppressed a political demonstration at a stadium here last week, with victims and witnesses describing rapes, beatings and acts of intentional humiliation.

“I can’t sleep at night, after what I saw,” said one middle-aged woman from an established family here, who said she had been beaten and sexually molested. “And I am afraid. I saw lots of women raped, and lots of dead.”

Read more at The New York Times

RIGHTS-INDIA: Kerala Women Are Battered Wives

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM, Oct 6 (IPS) - Kerala, the south Indian state which has the highest literacy levels and excellent social development indicators, has an unsavoury side - a land of violent husbands.

An IPS analysis of the data of domestic violence which was recorded in the Kerala State Crimes Records Bureau (KSCRB), under the state government's home department, has revealed a nearly 50 percent increase in wife-beating complaints registered at police stations in the state during the period 1998- 2008.

The number of incidents of crimes relating to spousal assaults on women was 2,333 in 1988 and reached up to 4,143 in 2008.

Read more at Australia.To News

Blast at U.N. Office in Pakistan Kills 5

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — A suicide bomber dressed in the uniform of one of Pakistan’s security forces struck the United Nations World Food Program offices in Islamabad on Monday, killing at least five people in what the police said was a serious breach in a building tightly guarded by private security officers.

The Pakistani interior minister, Rehman Malik, said that the bomber asked for permission to use the bathroom, walked inside, and detonated about 16 pounds of explosives in the lobby just after noon, when the compound was filled with people.

Read more at The New York Times

Zimbabweans sued for torture case

Nine Zimbabwean human rights activists and others tortured in custody are suing government officials for $510,000 (£322,000), their lawyer has said.

Jestina Mukoko and eight others are suing two cabinet ministers and various police officers.

The Supreme Court on Monday ordered that terrorism charges against her be dropped because she had been tortured.

Read more at BBC News

Berkeley agrees to U.N. rights treaties

(09-29) 23:08 PDT BERKELEY, CALIF. -- Berkeley became the first city in the United States, and possibly the world, to agree to international human rights treaties on Tuesday night, after the City Council approved a measure usually reserved for countries.

After a brief but spirited debate, the City Council voted unanimously to allow unpaid interns to report to the United Nations on how, or whether, Berkeley complies with treaties on civil liberties, racial discrimination and torture.

Read more at SFGate.com

U.N. Investigator Presents Report on Gaza War

GENEVA — The lead investigator in a recent United Nations inquiry into the Gaza conflict warned on Tuesday that the lack of accountability for war crimes in he Middle East has “reached a crisis point” and is undermining any hope of peace.

The investigator, Richard Goldstone, made his comments here as he presented the Human Rights Council with his final report on violations of human rights and international law in the three-week war in Gaza last winter, which accuses both Israel and Palestinian groups of committing atrocities.

“A culture of impunity in the region has existed far too long,” Mr. Goldstone said. “The lack of accountability for war crimes and possible crimes against humanity has reached a crisis point; the ongoing lack of justice is undermining any hope for a successful peace process and reinforcing an environment that fosters violence.”

Read more at the New York Times

Tbilisi Started '08 War, but Moscow Also at Fault, EU Finds

BRUSSELS -- Both Russia and Georgia claimed vindication Wednesday after a nine-month European Union investigation into last year's war in the Caucasus found that Tbilisi triggered the conflict, but that Moscow acted illegally in the extent of its invasion of Georgia and allowed "ethnic cleansing."

The roughly 1,000-page report, released on Wednesday by Swiss diplomat Heidi Tagliavini, found no evidence to support Russian claims Georgia committed genocide the night of Aug. 7-8, 2008.

The conflict, which briefly brought the U.S. and Russia into Cold War-style confrontation, left hundreds of people dead and 35,000 displaced, and severely weakened Europe's security agreements. Russian forces remain in occupation of two Georgian territories, Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Moscow has recognized them as independent states.

Read more at the Wall Street Journal

Clinton to chair Security Council session on sexual violence

Washington - Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton takes her campaign against sexual violence in conflict to the United Nations Wednesday, just as political strife in Guinea provides a fresh example of the kind of grisly actions she wants the world organization to stop.

Secretary Clinton, who has committed to making women's issues a "centerpiece" of her work as the Obama administration's chief diplomat, will chair a session of the UN Security Council on women, peace, and security. At the session Wednesday, she'll promote a US-sponsored resolution that seeks to expand and strengthen a measure approved last year, which condemns the use of rape in conflict and characterizes it as a threat to peace and security.

Read More at CS Monitor

Rethinking Our Terrorist Fears

WASHINGTON — Eight years after 9/11, the specter of terrorism still haunts the United States. Just last week, F.B.I. agents were working double time to unravel the alarming case of a Denver airport shuttle driver accused of training with explosives in Pakistan and buying bomb-making chemicals. In Dallas, a young Jordanian was charged with trying to blow up a skyscraper; in Springfield, Ill., a prison parolee was arrested for trying to attack the local federal building. Meanwhile, the Obama administration struggled to decide whether sending many more troops to Afghanistan would be the best way to forestall a future attack.

But important as they were, those news reports masked a surprising and perhaps heartening long-term trend: Many students of terrorism believe that in important ways, Al Qaeda and its ideology of global jihad are in a pronounced decline — with its central leadership thrown off balance as operatives are increasingly picked off by missiles and manhunts and, more important, with its tactics discredited in public opinion across the Muslim world.

Read more at the New York Times

Are displaced Kashmiri Hindus returning to their homeland?

Tens of thousands of Kashmiri Hindus, locally known as Pandits, fled their ancestral homes in droves 20 years ago after a bloody rebellion broke out against New Delhi’s rule in India’s only Muslim-majority state.

Now encouraged by the sharp decline in rebel violence across the Himalayan region, authorities have formally launched plans to help Pandits return home.

Will Pandits, who say they “live in exile in different parts of their own country” return to their homeland in Kashmir where two decades of violence has left nothing untouched and brought misery to the scenic region, its people and its once easy-going society?

Read more at Reuters

Cambodians in U.S. recall Khmer Rouge terror

LONG BEACH, Calif. - The tiny Cambodian woman trembled slightly and stared blankly ahead as she told the story that has haunted her for half a lifetime: Her parents and brother died in Khmer Rouge labor camps. Her baby perished in a refugee camp.

Roth Prom has wanted to die every day since and had never spoken those words so publicly until last week, when five minutes became the chance for justice she has longed for silently for so many years.

"I'm depressed in my head, I'm depressed in my stomach and in my heart. I have no hope in my body, I have nothing to live for," she said quietly. "All I have is just my bare hands."

Read more at MSNBC

The Tortured Brain

While we wait for Dick Cheney, the Pentagon, or the CIA to release evidence that "enhanced interrogation techniques" produced useful, truthful intelligence that could not be obtained without torture, neuroscientists are weighing in on how likely torture is to elicit such information—and they are not impressed.

It's become the conventional wisdom that the tortured will say anything to make the torture stop, and that "anything" need not be truthful as long as it is what the torturers want to hear. But years worth of studies in neuroscience, as well as new research, suggest that there are, in addition, fundamental aspects of neurochemistry that increase the chance that information obtained under torture will not be truthful.

Read more at Newsweek

Freed, Shoe-Hurling Iraqi Alleges Torture in Prison

Hours after his release from prison, the Iraqi journalist who hurled his shoes at former President George W. Bush said Tuesday that he had been tortured while in jail.

He said that he was beaten with pipes and steel cables, and that he received electric shocks while in custody. He added that there were many who would like to see him dead, including members of unidentified American intelligence agencies. Mr. Zaidi did not take questions after his brief remarks.

His brother Uday said that Mr. Zaidi flew to Greece, where he would receive medical and psychological care. Part of the reason he fears for his life, his brother said, is that he plans to identify the people who played a role in his mistreatment, including high-ranking security officials.

Read More At the New York Times

When scholars face threats, this global networker helps

NEW YORK – Robert Quinn has a plane to catch. He also has to write a speech for a conference in the Netherlands. But first he has to help a student from Azerbaijan get to a safe place. Because that’s what Mr. Quinn does: He saves scholars from danger.

“I just help the people who are helping other people,” says Quinn. As founder and executive director of Scholars at Risk (SAR), Quinn and his small staff match scholars with a network of more than 200 universities and colleges in 26 countries. The goal? To find a place where academics can work free from threats to their physical, emotional, and professional safety.

The SAR team takes threats to scholars seriously. As in the case of Taslima Nasrin, who first had her life threatened in 1994 in her native Bangladesh. Her crime? Writing about women’s rights. Later, in 2008, while living in her adopted country, India, she again had her life threatened by religious fanatics when she continued to write and speak about women’s freedom. She cannot return to either country. Now a SAR scholar at New York University (NYU), she says, “SAR came to my aid by helping me to survive in a new land.”

Read More At Despardes

France Closes Immigrants Camp

ECtHR’s interim measures ignored

In Saadi v Italy, the European Court of Human Rights held in 2008 that article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights prohibits expulsion of individuals to states where they would face a “real risk” of torture, inhuman or degrading treatment. In other words, the Court held that serious threats to the community presented by the suspected terrorist cannot be given priority over the risk of potential ill-treatment of this person in a state which is not a party to the ECHR.

Read more at the International Law Observer

Iraqi shoe-thrower claims he suffered torture in jail

Missing a tooth and draped in an Iraqi flag, Muntazer al-Zaidi used his first hours of freedom since hurling his shoes at George Bush to angrily defend his action, and claim he was tortured by government officials after his arrest.

Zaidi's release today– nine months into a three-year sentence for assaulting a foreign dignitary – was met with muted celebration in Baghdad but rapturous applause in some corners of the Arab world, where the 30-year-old television journalist is feted as a David and Goliath figure for his act of defiance.

Read more at The Guardian