British Prime Minister David Cameron has joined Barak Obama in warning Syria that any planned use or threat of use of their chemical weapons stockpile would be ‘completely unacceptable’. A Downing Street official said that the two leaders spoke on the telephone and said that if Assad made such a move it "would force them to revisit their approach so far”. Mr Cameron also discussed ways to increase support to the Syrian opposition with French president Francois Hollande. They agreed to "work more closely to identify how they could bolster the opposition and help a potential transitional Syrian...
The Ecuadorian deputy foreign minister, Marco Albuja, has confirmed that Ecuador will treat an extradition request from the Belarusian government for a former financial crimes investigator, Aliaksandr Barankov, with the same respect for human rights that guided its actions in the case of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. “Ecuador will put emphasis on not extraditing a citizen whose life is at risk, from the death penalty or life in prison,” Albuja told reporters. Barankov is backed by activists in Belarus , where President Lukashenko has ruled for 18 years by, fixing elections, quashing free speech, jailing dissidents and keeping 80 percent of industry in state hands.
Defectors from the Assad regime were bribed by European countries along with Arab states to make the leap, reports The Times . According to the newspaper, in May a meeting took place between European diplomats in Doha, Qatar, where it was agreed that Syrian officials should be "incentivised" to defect the regime and bring about its collapse. The paper's source is quoted as saying: “They came to the decision that publicly the Annan plan had to be supported, but privately they needed an alternative. Defections were not coming fast enough. They had to coerce and incentivise these guys to drive a wedge into the regime ,” “ Bribes were never mentioned explicitly, there was no need. Everyone understood precisely and left the meeting on the same page .”
The former chief of Guatemala’s police force has been sentenced to 70 years in prison, for orchestrating the kidnap of a university student, during the country’s civil war. Pedro Garcia, who was chief from 1974 until 1982, is now the highest ranking police official to have been convicted for war crimes in the latest string of cases against former government officials (see here , here and here ). Garcia was found guilty of crimes against humanity and the “forced disappearance” of engineering student Edgar Saenz in 1981. He faces further murder charges over the 1980 burning of the Spanish...
The Chinese state's media organ, Xinhua, has accused President Obama of intending to use Syria's chemical weapons as an 'excuse' for military intervention, after he warned that there would be 'enormous consequences' if there was any indication of Syria planning to use chemical or biological weapons. Xinhua criticised his comments as 'dangerously irresponsible' "Once again, Western powers are digging deep for excuses to intervene militarily," it said. "Apart from being ineffective to bring real peace, military interventions by the United States and its Western partners are always interests-...
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has warned the US against any military intervention in Syria, after US President Barack Obama warned the Syrian regime on the use of chemical weapons. Speaking after a meeting in Moscow with China's top diplomat, State Councillor Dai Bingguo and representatives from the Syrian government, Lavrov said there was a need to "strictly adhere to the norms of international law and the principles contained in the UN Charter, and not to allow their violation… I think this is the only correct path in today's conditions". Lavrov went on to state that only the UN Security Council can sanction the use of force, and warned against “democracy by bombs”. Meanwhile, Syrian Deputy Prime Minister Qadri Jamil dismissed Mr Obama's statements as "propagandistic threats" and blamed external interference for "hindering efforts for Syrians themselves to resolve this problem". See President Obama's statement on Syria's chemical weapons below. Comments on Syria at 18:30.
The Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in a report that rights groups were facing increased harassment and intimidation from government officials, consequently making it difficult for civil society groups to freely conduct their work in Uganda. Describing the intimidation the HRW noted that closure of meetings, reprimands, demands for apologies or retractions, threats, harassment and physical violence were prevalent tactics that government officials had been using to interfere with the work of civil society groups. The HRW recognised that civil society actors working on governance, human rights, land and oil were most susceptible to intimidation, because the regime perceived them “as threatening to undermine the regime’s political and financial interests.” The executive director of the Uganda government media centre, Fred Opolot, who had not read the HRW report, told Reuters that the report’s claims of intimidation were unsubstantiated and that the civil society were allowed to work freely, “as long as they did the right things”.
UN prosecutors acting in the case of a former Bosnian Serb general have called for a life sentence to be imposed, at a trial in The Hague. Speaking at the case of former intelligence chief Zdravko Tolimir, who faces charges of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes, prosecutor Peter McCloskey stated, "There is only one sentence for this crime and that is life in prison" Tolimir, who was under the command of the infamous Ratko Mladic, is accused of carrying out “the slow strangling of the Srebrenica and Zepa enclave” to create conditions that would force the Muslim population "to give up hope of survival."
The Burmese government has abolished pre-publication checks of the country’s media, according to the information ministry. The Press Scrutiny and Registration Department (PSRD) announced that reporters are not required to submit material to state censors before publication. "Censorship began on 6 August 1964 and ended 48 years and two weeks later," Tint Swe, head of the PSRD, told AFP news agency on Monday. "Any publication inside the country will not have to get prior permission from us before they are published. "From now on, our department will just carry out registering publications for keeping them at the national archives and issuing a license to printers and publishers," he said.
Germany’s foreign intelligence service has been aiding Syrian rebels in their battle against President Assad’s regime, reported a German newspaper this week. The Bild am Sonntag stated that a German boat stationed at a Turkish NATO base has spying equipment that can detect Syrian troop movements up to 600km inland. This information, along with telephone and radio conversations and information from sources inside Assad’s regime, is allegedly being passed to US and British intelligence services, who are in turn handing it to the rebels. A source from the Bundesnachrichtendienst or BND, Germany’...