Indonesia released over 1,400 Achenese rebel inmates Wednesday, granting them blanket amnesty in accordance with a decree signed by Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono Tuesday night. The newly freed prisoners have agreed to honor their monumental peace accord with the Indonesian government, which allowed the rebels to form a local political party in exchange for [...]

Revised draft of the final Iraqi constitution received by the Iraqi National Assembly, August 28, 2005. Read the full text as translated from the Arabic by the Associated Press .

US District Court Judge Denise Cote has ruled that a suit filed by the First Presbyterian Church of Sudan against Canadian oil and gas producer Talisman Energy should continue, despite US and Canadian government attempts to have the case dismissed. The church filed suit under the Alien Tort Claims Act , providing US district courts [...]

The Chinese government signed a Memorandum of Understanding Wednesday agreeing to collaborate with the UN's human rights agency to reform the Chinese legal system in preparation for the adoption of a key UN treaty on civil and political rights. The agreement to revise China's Criminal Procedure Law, its lawyers' law, and other related laws and [...]

Jailed Russian oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky , who is serving a nine-year prison sentence on fraud charges, officially announced his intention Wednesday to run for a Russian parliamentary seat . The election for Khodorkovsky's intended district in the State Duma , the lower house of the Russian parliament, will be held in December. The Central [...]

The Cambodian Supreme Court on Wednesday rejected the appeal of a reporter found guilty of defaming Cambodia's foreign minister by suggesting he was involved in prisoners' deaths during the brutal Khmer Rouge reign. Kay Kimsong and two American reporters working for the Cambodian Daily were sued over two 2001 articles that accused Foreign Minister Hor [...]

The ongoing battle against changes to rules that regulate US power plants continued Wednesday, after the Natural Resources Defense Council made public draft EPA regulations it insists will lead to dirtier power plants. The proposed standards would allow modernized power plants to operate longer hours, thus increasing the plants' allowed daily emissions. The Environmental Protection [...]

The Egyptian Organization for Human Rights (EOHR) , Egypt's leading non-governmental rights group, has said that it does not believe the upcoming presidential elections will be fair due to the lack of neutral election monitors. EOHR and other rights groups are concerned about the composition of the election oversight committee, the committee's decision to bar [...]

Human rights group Amnesty International reported Tuesday that two men who were formerly held at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp have been detained in Russia by men claiming to be security force officials. Airat Vakhitov and Rustam Akhmyarov were released from Guantanamo Bay last year with five other Russian men and returned to their home [...]

A US military tribunal in Iraq has ruled that a Reuters cameraman being held without charge in Abu Ghraib prison will be detained for another six months while the US reviews its case against him. Iraqi Ali Omar Abrahem al-Mashhadani was arrested on August 8 and will not be allowed to see a lawyer, family, [...]