Latest Morality Stories

By Jon Boyle STRASBOURG, France (Reuters) - The United States flew detainees to countries where they would be tortured and European governments probably knew about it, the head of a European human rights investigation said on Tuesday. But Swiss senator Dick Marty said in a preliminary report for the Council of Europe human rights watchdog that he had found no irrefutable evidence to confirm allegations that the CIA operated secret detention centers in Europe. His report kept pressure...

By Jon BoyleSTRASBOURG, France -- A European human rights investigator said on Tuesday there was evidence the United States had "outsourced" torture to other countries and it was likely that European governments knew about it.But Swiss senator Dick Marty, who heads an investigation by the Council of Europe human rights watchdog, said he had not uncovered any irrefutable evidence to confirm allegations that the CIA operated secret detention centers in Europe.His remarks, in a...

By Jon Boyle STRASBOURG, France (Reuters) - A European human rights investigator said on Tuesday there was evidence the United States had "outsourced" torture to other countries and it was likely that European governments knew about it. But Swiss senator Dick Marty, who heads an investigation by the Council of Europe human rights watchdog, said he had not uncovered any irrefutable evidence to confirm allegations that the CIA operated secret detention centers in Europe. His remarks, in...

By Steven Saint FORT CARSON, Colo. (Reuters) - The highest-ranking U.S. Army officer charged with killing a detainee in Iraq was found guilty on Saturday of negligent homicide but not guilty on the more serious charge of murder of an Iraqi general during an interrogation. A jury of six Army officers convicted Chief Warrant Officer Lewis Welshofer Jr. in charges resulting from the suffocation death of Iraqi Maj. Gen. Abed Hamed Mowhoush. The general was placed head-first in a sleeping...

By Deborah Charles WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Justice Department will seek to dismiss more than 180 cases involving inmates at Guantanamo Bay who have challenged their detention in court, court documents showed on Tuesday. The department filed a notice to judges presiding over the cases at the U.S. District Court in Washington to advise them that by the end of next week the Justice Department would file official motions to dismiss the cases. The notice comes a week after President...

By Philip Pullella VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Pope Benedict said in an annual peace message on Tuesday that countries have a duty to respect international humanitarian law even if they are at war. In the first peace message of his pontificate, he also appealed for worldwide nuclear disarmament and said countries considering acquiring such weapons should "change their course." In the message for the Church's World Day of Peace, celebrated on January 1, he also strongly condemned terrorism...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President George W. Bush said on Tuesday the United States does not secretly move terrorism suspects to foreign countries that torture to get information. The process known as "rendition" has come under the spotlight after reports that the CIA was operating secret prisons in Europe for terrorism suspects. "We do not render to countries that torture, that has been our policy and that policy will remain the same," Bush told reporters. Secretary of State Condoleezza...

By Lindsay BeckBEIJING -- The use of torture is widespread in China and the country's legal system needs a major overhaul for the situation to improve, a top U.N. envoy said on Friday, adding the government had obstructed his investigations.Manfred Nowak, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Torture, said his team was under frequent surveillance during a two-week trip that included Tibet and the northwestern Muslim-majority region of Xinjiang and was granted after 10 years of lobbying by his...

By Lorraine Orlandi MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexican police and prosecutors still use torture and their tactics have grown more sophisticated, despite President Vicente Fox's pledges to end such abuse, the national rights watchdog said on Tuesday. Jose Luis Soberanes, president of the national human rights commission, said torture increasingly comes in the form of psychological rather than physical abuse. "Unfortunately, torture is not a thing of the past," Soberanes told reporters,...

By Ben Blanchard BEIJING (Reuters) - The U.N. envoy on torture arrives in China on Monday as Beijing grapples with a series of cases in which people have been wrongly convicted after giving forced confessions, a practice rights groups says happens too often. Manfred Nowak, the U.N.'s Special Rapporteur on Torture, will stay for about two weeks and visit Beijing, Tibet and the restive western Muslim region of Xinjiang. He is also scheduled to visit detention centers. China says it does...