Tuesday, Nov 26th
Last update09:25:46 AM GMT
Human Rights Glance
A US civil rights pioneer who confronted racial segregation in Alabama in the 1960s has died aged 70. James Hood died in his hometown of Gadsden in Alabama, a local funeral home said in an obituary notice.
Mr Hood was one of two black students to enter the all-white University of Alabama in June 1963. Their path was blocked by then Alabama Governor George Wallace and his state troopers until President John F Kennedy intervened.
Nato forces in Afghanistan have stopped sending prisoners to some Afghan jails after reports of torture and have asked Kabul to investigate allegations of abuse by members of a US-backed paramilitary police force.
The ban on transfers revives concerns about human rights in Afghan prisons, first raised in 2011 by a United Nations report. The report detailed widespread abuse, including the ripping out of detainees' toenails and the twisting of their genitals, and prompted Nato-led troops to halt prisoner transfers for several months.
The US military aircraft carrying the cargo is only used for missions like this.
Muhammed Farhan Latif and other members of his family waited at a gatehouse at Al-Dailami Air Base in Sana'a, Yemen's capital, for the plane to arrive from Ramstein Air Base in Germany. It touched down at around 9 PM on Saturday, December 15.
The special security detail assigned to the mission unloaded the cargo - a plain aluminum box - from the aircraft. A man and a woman from the US Embassy entered the gatehouse. They had papers they wanted Muhammed to sign, but they were written in English and Muhammed doesn't speak the language.
A judge has agreed that Top #Secret evidence against a Guantanamo Bay detainee can be kept from defense attorneys.
In a 13-page decision, U.S. District Judge Rosemary Collyer rejected the pleas of Wali Mohammed Morafa, an Afghan citizen. Specifically, Morafa's attorneys won't learn of the source of the information used against their client.
The U.S. government alleges Morafa used the cover of money-changing activities to provide financial services support to the operations of the Taliban and other terrorist organizations. Many complicated legal proceedings have ensued, during which time Morafa's attorneys have held Secret clearances.
A defense contractor whose subsidiary was accused in a lawsuit of conspiring to torture detainees at the infamous Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq has paid $5.28 million to 71 former inmates held there and at other U.S.-run detention sites between 2003 and 2007.
The settlement in the case involving Engility Holdings Inc. of Chantilly, Va., marks the first successful effort by lawyers for former prisoners at Abu Ghraib and other detention centers to collect money from a U.S. defense contractor in lawsuits alleging torture. Another contractor, CACI, is expected to go to trial over similar allegations this summer.
On the eve of Mexico's Day of the Dead this year, authorities in Veracruz declared triumphantly that they had solved one of the decade's most notorious slayings of a journalist in Mexico.
They trotted before reporters a sad-sack figure, one Jorge Antonio Hernandez Silva. They proclaimed him guilty of the April slaying of Regina Martinez, a highly respected reporter for the national Proceso magazine. He had confessed, the Veracruz government said, and the motive was robbery.
On Christmas Day this year the World will again celebrate the birth of Jesus but needs to loudly and publicly proclaim the truth that Jesus was a Palestinian. Goodhearted and honest Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs, Jains, Jews, Animists, Agnostics and Atheists would all agree that Jesus was a wonderful humanitarian, and an outstanding moral philosopher.
All of us, from Atheists to Zoroastrians, recognize Jesus as the most renowned Indigenous Palestinian.
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