Wednesday, Dec 25th
Last update09:45:43 AM GMT
Human Rights Glance
The Shin Bet security service has been trying to coerce ill Palestinians to become informants in exchange for medical treatment, according to an 80-page report released recently by the Israel branch of Physicians for Human Rights.
"I would say it's self-explanatory and clear that you shouldn't extort patients," said Miri Weingarten of the group.
The government has repeatedly accepted US assurances that Diego Garcia has not been used to hold high-ranking members of al-Qaeda who have been flown to secret interrogation centres around the world in 'ghost' planes hired by the CIA. Interrogation techniques used on suspects are said to include 'waterboarding', a simulated drowning that Amnesty International claims is a form of torture. But now the government's denials over Diego Garcia's role in extraordinary rendition are crumbling. Senior American intelligence sources have claimed that the US has been holding terrorist suspects on the British territory as recently as two years ago.
Bosnian Serb wartime leader Radovan Karadzic was protected by the United States until a CIA phone bug caught him breaking the terms of his 'deal', Serb newspaper Blic reported Saturday, quoting a US intelligence source.
"Karadzic, indicted for genocide and war crimes, was under the US protection until 2000, when the CIA intercepted his telephone conversation that clearly proved he personally chaired a meeting of his old political party," the daily quoted a "well-informed US intelligence source" as saying.
TVNL Comment: Saddam was not given the chance to say the same.
In a graphic and hard-hitting film, Peter Beaumont speaks to Palestinians filming abuse from settlers and Israeli armed forces as part of a remarkable project called Shooting Back.
Uncle of 11-year-old Palestinian said to be killed by Border Guard police officer slams security forces; posters of Ahmed Musa posted across Palestinian village; dead child turns into symbol of resistance to West Bank fence
Claims that a senior army general and a defence minister misled MPs and peers over British troops' use of banned interrogation techniques will be examined by a public inquiry into the mistreatment of prisoners, the Defence Secretary, Des Browne, said.
He spoke out in response to a complaint by the Joint Committee on Human Rights that assurances given to it by the armed forces minister Adam Ingram in 2004 and Lt-Gen Robin Brims, Commander Field Army in 2006, that hooding and other practices were not used, appeared to be false.
The U.S. military admitted Sunday that American soldiers killed innocent civilians after opening fire on a car last month on the heavily secured Baghdad airport road.
The statement — which called the man and two women killed "law abiding citizens of Iraq" — reversed earlier military claims that they were suspected militants who shot at a parked American convoy.
The soldiers involved in the shooting were particularly nervous because they were regularly based in eastern Baghdad and were not familiar with the area on the airport road, according to Lt. Col. Steve Stover, a spokesman for U.S. forces in Baghdad.
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