A court in Bahrain sentenced Zainab al-Khawaja, the daughter of jailed pro-democracy activist Abdulhadi al-Khawaja to one month in prison for trying to organize an anti-government protest.
With reprisals continuing against Tuaregs in Libya, similar reports are now emerging from regime-controlled Mali after the Tuareg uprising in the country’s north. But supposedly liberated “Azawad” provides no refuge, as Islamist factions vie for power.
John McCain’s demand that Pakistan pardon Dr. Shakeel Afridi, convicted of treason for helping the CIA locate Osama bin Laden, may not even be possible. Afridi was tried by a tribal court where Islamabad is constitutionally barred from interfering.
A Guatemalan judge ruled that former dictator Efrain Rios Montt will have a second genocide trial for ordering a 1982 massacre in which 201 people were killed at the jungle village of Dos Erres.
Qaddafi’s ex-intelligence chief, wanted by the International Criminal Court for organizing mass rapes and other human rights abuses, will first be charged with immigration violations in Mauritania, where he has taken refuge.
As the Friends of Yemen meeting in Riyadh concentrates on security issues, the economic chaos of the past year of unrest and revolution, coupled with diminishing oil stocks, has created a humanitarian crisis, with 44% of the population undernourished.
An Egyptian court convicted five police officers for the death of protesters last year and sentenced each to 10 years. Nearly 200 officers have been charged in the deaths of at least 846 protesters, but acquittals have been common.
An AQAP suicide bomber killed more than 90 Yemeni troops as they practiced for a parade in the capital Sana’a, two days after a US drone strike killed two presumed AQAP operatives. Fighting in southern Yemen has killed hundreds over the past week.
As NATO chiefs in Chicago broached negotiations with the Taliban, Amnesty International convened a “Shadow Summit” where women’s groups rejected the idea—while supporting the US/NATO occupation that collaborates with fundamentalist warlords.
After a week of clashes in Tripoli between pro- and anti-Assad Sunni factions, fighting spread to Beirut when a Sunni cleric and anti-Assad opposition leader was killed by government troops at a checkpoint.
Two anti-NATO protesters in Chicago are slapped with terrorism-related charges—days after Human Rights Watch issued a report calling for an investigation into possible war crimes by NATO in last year’s air campaign in Libya.
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights are demanding action following the torture-slayings of several reporters and photographers across Mexico in recent weeks.
