Human Rights Glance
When the CIA sent word in 2005 to destroy scores of videos showing waterboarding and other harsh interrogation tactics, there was an unusual omission in the carefully worded memo: the names of two agency lawyers. Once a CIA lawyer has weighed in on even a routine matter, officers rarely give an order without copying the lawyer in on the decision. It's standard procedure, a way for managers to cover themselves if a decision goes bad.
But when the CIA's top clandestine officer, Jose Rodriguez, told a colleague at the agency's secret prison in Thailand to destroy interrogation videos, he left the lawyers off the note.
Key omission in memo to destroy CIA terror tapes
Behind the wire, remaining Guantánamo Bay captives wait and hope
The captive is one of the last remaining detainees at the Guantánamo Navy Base in Cuba, where 75 percent of the suspects captured in the war on terror have gone home. Four left in the last few days.
The majority of the 176 men left behind here spent the past months watching day-old recordings of World Cup matches, playing PlayStation 3, taking life-skills courses and occasionally seeing and chatting with their families via Skype. They enjoy Agatha Christie novels, but are awaiting the Twilight series in Arabic.
Chile denies pardon for dictatorship-era crimes
Chilean President Sebastian Pinera on Sunday denied a pardon to people jailed for dictatorship-era crimes, a move likely to ease tensions with the opposition and rights groups over a controversial call for clemency.
Chile's Catholic Church had asked Pinera to free or lower jail sentences of military officers convicted for human rights violations as well as other criminals in a call for clemency to mark the country's upcoming bicentennial celebrations.
Spanish activists to sue Israel over deadly raid on Gaza flotilla
Three Spanish activists who were aboard a humanitarian aid convoy raided en route to the Gaza Strip will file a law suit against Israel on Friday for alleged crimes against humanity.
The 83-page document takes aim at Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, his forum of top six cabinet ministers and the Israel Navy, whose commandos stormed the Turkish-flagged Mavi Marmara on May 31 and killed nine activists.
Yemeni psych patient ordered freed from Guantánamo
A federal judge ordered the immediate release of a Yemeni man who has spent long periods of captivity in the Guantánamo psych ward in split decisions Wednesday that upheld the indefinite detention of another Yemeni.
The U.S. District Court rulings left the so-called habeas corpus scorecard of government-detainee wins at 15-38. That means that judges have ruled more than twice as often for the release of detainees at Guantánamo, rather than holding them.
US gay rights group gets UN accreditation
The U.N. Economic and Social Council voted Monday to accredit the U.S.-based International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission after strong lobbying by the Obama administration.
Obama, in a statement issued by the White House, welcomed the vote as an "important step forward for human rights." With the group's inclusion, he said "the United Nations is closer to the ideals on which it was founded, and to values of inclusion and equality to which the United States is deeply committed."
Israel expelling hundreds of shepherds from the Jordan Valley
Which is crueler? Expelling an urban family from its home in Jerusalem's Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood, or bulldozing a meager tent encampment of shepherds living on private Jordan Valley land they leased, destroying their water tanks, their tents and their sheep pens, and expelling families with many children from the land on which they live?
It's hard to say. But while the Sheikh Jarrah expulsions are attracting interest in Israel and elsewhere, hardly anyone notices or protests what's going on in the Jordan Valley.
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