Iraqi Interior Minister Bayan Jabr , the minister in charge of Iraq's prison facilities, is expected to resign in the near future, according to multiple security and political sources. The reports follow accusations that he ran secret prisons found in November and December where detainees were malnourished and apparently tortured. Jabr has downplayed the severity [...]

Algeria Wednesday asked the government of France to apologize for crimes committed during France’s colonization of Algeria, including France’s part in the massacres of 45,000 Algerians who demanded independence at the end of World War II. Since Algerian independence in 1962, France and Algeria have gradually normalized relations and are currently working toward a reconciliation [...]

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has agreed to hear arguments regarding the request of US Rep. Tom DeLay (R-TX) to speed up his money-laundering trial by either beginning the case immediately or dismissing the charges. Last week, an intermediate appellate court denied DeLay's request to shorten the filing period of the government's appeal of [...]

Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul said in a TV interview Wednesday that state slander laws used to prosecute Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk and implicated as recently as Tuesday in a possible prosecutorial probe of comments by a senior EU lawmaker could be changed if necessary to protect Turkey's reputation, though no decision would be made [...]

Lawyers for so-called "dirty bomber" Jose Padilla have responded to the government's contention that Padilla's US Supreme Court appeal is moot and should be denied, insisting that his case "raises questions of profound constitutional importance about the government's military power over citizens in the homeland." US Department of Justice lawyers petitioned the Court last month [...]

After a fifteen year-old girl was killed and six bystanders were injured Monday in a random shooting spree on a busy downtown shopping street, Toronto Mayor David Miller said Tuesday that weak US gun laws are partly to blame for a recent surge of violence in Canada's largest city. The shooting death was the 52nd [...]

Monitoring group Human Rights Watch Wednesday asked the G8 , the heads of government of the major industrial democracies, to convince Russian President Vladimir Putin not to sign a controversial bill that would create an oversight group with greatly increased control over the funding and activites of non-governmental orginizations, including the Russian arms of a [...]

Defense lawyers working on several high-profile terrorism cases plan to bring legal challenges to discover whether the National Security Agency (NSA) used illegal wiretaps against several dozen Muslims linked to Al Qaeda and whether the government misled judges and defense lawyers about the selection and monitoring of suspects. Lawyers for Jose Padilla say they plan [...]

The Greek Ministry of Justice has begun investigating the alleged torture in Greece of 28 Pakistanis suspected of involvement in the July 7 London bombings following a lawsuit filed by the men against Greek intelligence officers. A story in the Greek weekly Proto Thema Sunday revealed the identities of a British MI6 officer in Athens [...]

Alexander Torshin, the head of the Russian parliamentary commission investigating last year's Beslan school siege told the upper house of parliament Wednesday that despite their exoneration by prosecutors earlier this week, local law enforcement officials were in fact negligent in ignoring instructions to increase school security. Last year, Islamic militants seized Beslan's School No. 1, [...]