A Russian judge Friday found Nurpashi Kulayev guilty of all charges for his role in the September 2004 Beslan school siege , sentencing him to life in prison. Kulayev was charged with terrorism and murder, and earlier this month, the judge ruled that Kulayev committed an act of terrorism over the defendant's denial that he [...]

The UK Parliament Joint Committee on Human Rights took the government of Prime Minister Tony Blair to task Friday for urging the European Court of Human Rights to revisit its absolute prohibition against deporting people to states where they may be tortured and for entering into diplomatic agreements with those states purporting to guarantee good [...]

The Belarus Ministry of Justice has asked the Belarus Supreme Court to close down the Belarus Helsinki Committee , a leading human rights group that has consistently criticized the authoritarian government of President Alexander Lukashenko . A Ministry motion to the Supreme Court accused the local Helsinki Committee, chartered in 1995 to protect human rights [...]

As the British Ministry of Defence continues investigating the deaths of several Iraqi detainees in British military custody , a military tribunal judge on Thursday found a British soldier not guilty of manslaughter for allegedly forcing a 15-year-old Iraqi to swim across a Basra canal where he drowned. Recently-appointed Vice Judge Advocate General Michael Hunter [...]

The full US Senate has approved the nomination of Air Force General Michael Hayden to head the Central Intelligence Agency by a vote of 78-15 . Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (R-PA) was notably one of the senators opposed. The nomination went to the Senate floor Thursday after the Senate Intelligence Committee approved it [...]

The US Senate on Friday confirmed the nomination of White House staffer Brett Kavanaugh to the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia by a margin of 57-36 after a test vote Thursday cleared the way for his approval . Kavanaugh faced probing questions from the Senate Judiciary Committee during confirmation hearings, but [...]

Mexican President Vicente Fox on Thursday applauded the US Senate's approval of the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2006 that would tighten border security and allow illegal immigrants to follow a path to citizenship. Though Fox has criticized parts of the bill, including a 370 mile fence along the Mexican border and the potential for [...]

The US Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit on Thursday remanded an appeal from the Atlanta-based Cobb County School District asking the court to overturn a district court decision requiring the school district to remove stickers in their biology textbooks calling evolution "a theory, not a fact." The three-judge panel asked the district court [...]

In the wake of Thursday's release by UK Attorney General Lord Goldsmith of a disclosure statement outlining his actions in rendering advice on the legality of the Iraq war to the government of Prime Minister Tony Blair in the days before invasion, government critics and media have called for further action, describing the statement as [...]

A spokesman for the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission in Kandahar said Friday that some 34 Afghan civilians were killed in a US airstrike on a village in the south of the country earlier this week along with about 35 "unknown people" believed to be militants. The number of estimated civilian deaths is over twice [...]