U.N. experts say Iran tortured to extract confessions

Three independent United Nations human rights experts have accused Iran of torturing confessions from detainees charged with fomenting political unrest, the international organization said Thursday. “No judicial system can consider as valid a confession obtained as a result of harsh interrogations or under torture,” said Manfred Nowak, who is the U.N

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Tehran’s Trials: Blaming the West, Google and Twitter

Iran’s hardline regime sharply escalated the post-election confrontation on August 8 by putting two foreign embassy staffers and a French teacher on trial alongside dozens of political dissidents. The stepped-up campaign to characterize the widespread unrest since the June 12 presidential election as a foreign-led attempted “soft overthrow” appears to be an effort by the ruling faction to rally the increasingly-splintered conservative base against a popular — and old — enemy: the West

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Reports: Ahmadinejad may face confidence vote in parliament

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad fired two members of his cabinet, and may have to face a vote of confidence in parliament for the final few days of his current term, two semi-official Iranian news agencies reported Sunday. But the state-run Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) quoted a government official as saying that only one cabinet member was fired, so no such vote would be needed.

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‘They circled above and watched U.S. soldiers die in front of them’

The Pentagon has revolutionized warfare during the past decade, making unmanned aerial vehicles, known as UAVs, a staple of modern combat in Afghanistan and Iraq. Remotely-controlled drones, such as the Predator and the Reaper, have allowed the U.S.

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Ecuador’s leader hotly denies FARC gave him money

Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa denied Saturday that a Colombian guerrilla group donated money to his 2006 presidential campaign, asking his country’s civil commission to investigate the allegation. Colombian media broadcast a 2008 video Friday in which guerrilla leader Víctor Julio Suarez Rojas, better known as Mono Jojoy, said the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia donated money to Correa’s campaign. The guerrilla group, known by its Spanish acronym FARC, also has had conversations with Correa’s emissaries and has reached “some accords, according to documents that we have,” Suarez said in a videotape

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