Human Rights

The release of American freelance journalist Roxana Saberi after four months in an Iranian prison is a welcome decision that begins to redress the miscarriage of justice in her case, but not the larger problems that bedevil Iran, such as human rights abuses under President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his predecessors or the country's disregard for the rule of law. Saberi was detained in January and denied her rights under Iranian law to be charged and to see an attorney within 24 hours of arrest.

Human rights groups on Saturday condemned Iran for executing a 23-year-old woman who they maintained had received an unfair trial when she was convicted of murder as a juvenile. Delara Darabi was hanged Friday at Rasht Central Prison, according to Human Rights Watch, which said the woman was 17 when she was coerced into pleading guilty to killing her father's cousin. She later recanted, saying her 19-year-old boyfriend had committed the crime.

Nicaragua's total ban on abortion is a violation of human rights and is killing a growing number of women and children, Amnesty International said Monday in launching a campaign to have the measure repealed. In a report released in Mexico City, the international human rights organization said Nicaragua's law, which went into effect in late 2006, puts the Central American country among the 3% of the world's nations that do not allow abortion under any circumstance.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Friday that she would not emphasize contentious issues such as human rights in talks this weekend with the Chinese, focusing instead on topics on which progress may be more likely: the global economy, climate change and security issues. Clinton's weeklong tour of Asia culminates with meetings in China, where she is remembered for a tough 1995 speech on human rights.

Rep. Tom Lantos (D-Burlingame), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and, as Congress' only Holocaust survivor, a leading advocate for human rights, said Wednesday that he had been diagnosed with cancer and would not seek reelection in November. Another California Democrat, Howard L. Berman, could succeed him as the committee's chairman. Lantos, who turns 80 next month, is the latest in a wave of veteran lawmakers who have announced their departures from Congress.

In 10 years on China's highest court, Xuan Dong had a hand in the executions of 1,000 people -- most carried out by a bullet to the back of the head, often within weeks of the verdict. On his worst days, he considered himself a Communist Party hanging judge. Sitting on the Supreme People's Court, he represented the last hope of the condemned.

Re "Bush in Israel to offer 'significant nudge,' " Jan. 10 So President Bush now considers a Middle East peace agreement an imperative? I am tired of U.S. presidents spinning their wheels at the end of their terms trying to solve this problem so they can have a legacy. President Clinton tried to do the same thing. He might have succeeded too if then-Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat hadn't been so stubborn. Bush will be remembered as a warmonger. Besides, the last U.S.

The army of grievers climbed to the hilltop at dawn, waiting for the 365 flag-draped coffins to arrive. Some sat weeping in the stony dirt amid row after row of empty graves; others lined the streets for blocks. They clutched framed pictures of husbands and wives, sisters and brothers, sons and daughters -- all victims of Saddam Hussein's 1988 genocidal campaign against the Kurds. When the coffins came, carried up the hill on the backs of soldiers, the lamentation could wait no longer.

Seven years and $4.35 billion since the advent of a massive U.S. aid program, the Colombian military has been transformed from an outmatched "garrison force" that had yielded huge swaths of terrain to leftist guerrillas, to an aggressive force that has won back territory. The transformation, however, has had a dark side. Soldiers and police officers have committed rising numbers of human rights abuses, even as U.S. training intensifies, rights groups charge.

Broadcasts by the private Geo television network resumed Monday in Pakistan more than 2 1/2 months after its transmission was blocked during a state of emergency. Geo News and its sister sports channel came back on the air hours after President Pervez Musharraf began a four-country trip to Europe, where he expected to face tough questions on media restrictions and human rights.