Lawyers for Army Sgt. Michael Smith, currently facing court-martial for allegedly torturing prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison with unmuzzled dogs , have withdrawn a request for testimony from prison commander Army Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller . Miller's testimony was expected to help Smith's case, based upon findings in the 2004 Fay Jones report and [...]

Chinese police have detained protesters in preparation for the annual ceremonial start of session of the National People's Congress in Beijing and forced them to return to their homes, human rights groups said Friday. Protesters traveled from across the country to air grievances ranging from insufficient health care and redevelopment seizure to strict birth control [...]

Mohammed al-Qahtani, the so-called "20th hijacker" from the Sept. 11 attacks, has disclaimed information he provided about 30 Guantanamo Bay detainees, alleging that the statements were coerced by torture, TIME magazine reported Friday. Qahtani was refused entry into the US in August 2001 and was later captured in Afghanistan; he has since been held at [...]

Prosecutor Douglas Gansler of the Montgomery County State's Attorneys Office in Maryland said Thursday that he will not seek the death penalty for DC sniper suspect John Allen Muhammad , who is charged with six counts of first degree murder related to the three-week series of shootings in the Washington, DC area in October 2002. [...]

The Iraqi government placed Baghdad under a daytime vehicular curfew on Friday in an attempt to quell the sectarian violence between Sunnis and Shiites that has wracked the country since the bombing of the Askariya shrine on February 22. Similar to the three-day curfew that was lifted on Monday , the traffic ban prohibits Iraqis [...]

Ivory Coast President Lauren Gbagbo has signed an extradition order authorizing Youssef Fofana to be transferred to France where he is wanted in connection with the kidnapping, torture and killing of a Jewish man outside Paris. Ivory Coast Justice Minister Mamadou Kone said Friday that Gbagbo signed the document after a court approved the extradition [...]

Philippines President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo on Friday lifted a state of emergency , which Arroyo initially put in place last week after discovering a coup threat. Arroyo kept the state of emergency in effect for a week despite urging that she lift the order , and said Friday that she was now lifting the emergency [...]

Leading Friday's international brief, Kenyan police have conducted a night-time raid on the Standard Group, Kenya's second largest journalistic company, during which they confiscated television and radio broadcast equipment and destroyed several printing presses while allegedly searching for evidence of a specific journalistic investigation. Internal Security Minister John Michuki told a press meeting that the [...]

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has said that he is "chagrined" about the US opposition to a draft resolution that would create a new UN Human Rights Council to replace the widely criticized Commission on Human Rights . Annan told reporters Thursday that the hoped the US would be able to "find some way of associating [...]

At a hearing in Washington Thursday US District Judge Gladys Kessler questioned the treatment of Mohammed Bawazir, a former hunger striker at Guantanamo Bay eventually force-fed in treatment his lawyers say was torture contrary to the terms of the Detainee Treatment Act (DTA) . Bawazir, from Yemen, claims that he gave up his hunger strike [...]