Rights watchdog accuses Burundi agents of killings, torture News
Rights watchdog accuses Burundi agents of killings, torture

[JURIST] Human Rights Watch (HRW) [advocacy website] Wednesday accused agents of the Burundi [JURIST news archive] National Intelligence Service of widespread abuses [press release] since the new government came into power, including killings and torture [JURIST report]. HRW contended in a new report [text] that President Pierre Nkurunziza [BBC profile] has given agents at all levels authority to carry out the government's agenda by any means necessary, citing almost 40 extra-judicial executions and over 200 arbitrary arrests during the last year. The National Council for the Defense of Democracy-Forces for the Defense of Democracy [Wikipedia backgrounder], Burundi's largest rebel group, was successful in the country's 2005 elections.

The rights watchdog has called for the abusers to "be brought to justice" and has condemned excuses offered by the intelligence service that such responses are necessary due to threats from other rebel groups. UPI has more.

THIS DAY @ LAW

Thomas Becket, former Chancellor of England, murdered by Henry II's knights

On December 29, 1170, Archbishop Thomas Becket, former Chancellor of England, was murdered in Canterbury Cathedral by knights acting in the name of Henry II.

Becket and Henry had been entangled in a power struggle over, among other things, criminal jurisdiction over clergy. Read a contemporary account of the murder of Thomas Becket.

Texas attains US statehood

On December 29, 1845, Texas became the twenty-eighth state to join the United States of America when US President James K. Polk signed the Ordinance of Annexation. Texas had a complicated path to statehood because it had formerly been part of Mexico and then an independent republic. The US Congress passed the Annexation of the Republic of Texas Joint Resolution on March 1, 1845. Voters in Texas then approved the Ordinance of Annexation in October, before it was approved by the US Congress and signed into law by President Polk on this day in 1845. The US Supreme Court later ruled in Texas v. White that, despite its unique path to statehood, Texas did not have the right to secede from the union.