UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour announced Friday that she intends to send an official observer to the Uzbekistan trial of protestors accused of plotting a rebellion during the spring Andijan uprising in the east of the country. Arbour had already written to the Uzbek government requesting information on the accused detainees and [...]

The White House Friday threatened to veto a $440.2 billion defense spending bill if the Senate amended it to establish a national commission on detainee operations or include provisions regulating the detention, treatment, or trial of terrorists. In an official policy statement , the administration insisted that such changeswould interfere with the protection of Americans [...]

The General Counsel of the US Government Accountability Office issued a scathing opinion letter Friday criticizing the Bush administration's use of news media and commentators to promote education policies like the No Child Left Behind initiative as "covert propaganda" prohibited by law. GAO auditors also said that hiring public relations firm Ketchum Inc. to analyze [...]

The Nebraska Supreme Court ruled Friday that members of the Nebraska Legislature overstepped their authority when they changed the minimum sentence for first-degree murder from life in prison to life in prison without parole in 2002. The legislature made the change during a 2002 special session called for by then-Governor Mike Johanns in response to [...]

US Army General George Casey , the senior US commander in Iraq, expressed concern over the Iraqi constitution at a news conference Friday, saying the draft had created divisiveness among the country's ethnic groups, as many Iraqi Sunnis are opposed to it and intend to vote against it. Casey cited this divisiveness as one reason [...]

Torture, "disappearances" and alleged unfair trials in Russian's North Caucasus, Amnesty International, September 30, 2005 . Excerpt: What the Russian government describes as its "war on terror" in this region is being used as a pretext for violations that include "disappearances", torture, arbitrary detention and incommunicado detention in unacknowledged as well as official places of [...]

Spain's conservative Popular Party Friday filed a constitutional challenge against a law passed earlier this year which legalizes gay marriage and allows homosexual couples to adopt children. The party filed the case in Spain's Constitutional Court , saying that the new law "denaturalizes the fundamental institution of marriage." Since it was passed, dozens of gay [...]

Attorneys for former WorldCom CEO Bernard Ebbers have filed a brief urging the US Second Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn fraud and conspiracy convictions against Ebbers saying his trial earlier this year was "fundamentally flawed," and arguing that his 25-year prison sentence is "unreasonable and legally erroneous." The 96-page brief said the lower court [...]

Amnesty International and Russia's Memorial Human Rights Center Friday accused Russian authorities of arbitrary and prolonged detentions of civilians, torture, and forced confessions . Amnesty International has released a new report claiming that Russia is utilizing its own "war on terror" to commit the human rights abuses, alleging that between 3,000 and 5,000 kidnappings have [...]

Joseph Serugendo, the former technical director of a Rwandan radio station that promoted the 1994 Rwandan genocide , pleaded not guilty Friday to five counts of genocide and crimes against humanity at the UN-backed International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda . ICTR prosecutors allege that Serugendo "planned, instigated, ordered, committed or aided and abetted in the [...]