Saturday, Jan 24th
Last update10:02:43 AM GMT
Human Rights Glance
A British court said Friday that suspected Taliban captives face the risk of mistreatment in a Kabul jail, but rejected an attempt to ban British troops from handing them over to Afghan security forces.
The Helou family is so worried about getting expelled to Gaza by Israeli authorities that they're all but trapped in this West Bank town. They couldn't even leave to get their disabled son the best possible surgery to let him walk.
Some 20,000 Palestinians in the West Bank live under the same fear, because they hold residency papers from the Gaza Strip and Israeli authorities refuse to allow their papers to be updated - though they have lived in the West Bank for years.
A lawyer representing the City of Brotherly Love, David Smith, told the federal jury that the local scout leaders were "speaking out of both sides of their mouths" when they initially agreed with the city's anti-discrimination policy but then continued to use the national group's employment application, which stated that homosexuals, atheists, and agnostics would not be hired.
Ethan McCord, one of the soldiers seen in the now-famous Wikileaks video in which two American Apache helicopters fire upon a relaxed, unhurried gaggle of men in Baghdad, has stated in an interview with World Socialist Website that he witnessed numerous times the indiscriminate slaughter of civilians in Iraq after IED attacks. McCord is on of the soldiers seen helping two wounded children after the attack. He has stepped forward with open opposition to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and written a letter of apology for his part in the incident to the mother of the children, who has accepted his apology. The mother's husband was killed in the attack and found with his body shielding that of one of his children.
The Obama administration is considering partially lifting its suspension of all transfers of Guantanamo Bay detainees to Yemen, officials said, following a federal court ruling that found "overwhelming" evidence to support a Yemeni's claim that he has been unlawfully detained by the United States for more than eight years.
The case of Mohammed Odaini has become so pressing that senior administration officials, including the secretaries of defense and state, or their deputies, will discuss it next week.
The Prime Minister's Office announced on Thursday that the security cabinet had agreed to relax Israel's blockade on the Gaza Strip, but as it turns out, no binding decision was ever made during the cabinet meeting.
The Prime Minister's Office issued a press release in English following the meeting, which was also sent to foreign diplomats, was substantially different than the Hebrew announcement – according to the English text, a decision was made to ease the blockade, but in the Hebrew text there was no mention of any such decision.
For the first time in the war stricken story of mankind, waging aggressive wars has become a prosecutable crime in international law and given precise meaning and teeth before the ICC - this on the strength of an unexpected consensus reached between member states of the Court (or in ICC terminology 'states parties').
The conference in Kampala concluded with the adoption of a resolution that at last defined the crime of aggression listed in Article 5 of the Rome Statute - the Court's founding treaty - using the UN General Assembly Resolution 3314 (XXIX) as a guide.
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