Pulling the microphone toward him, the dapper 61-year-old man in sunglasses creased his forehead, cleared his throat emphatically and introduced himself to the war-crimes court in the Hague: "My name is Dakpenah Dr. Charles Ghankay Taylor, the 21st President of the Republic of Liberia." Thus began the testimony of Charles Taylor, the reviled warlord and ousted Liberian President, at his landmark trial for war crimes and crimes against humanity. He is facing 11 charges relating to the murder, rape, ...

In another move to crack down on information flowing out of Iran, the Islamic Republic's judicial chief has ordered the prosecution of individuals "who cooperate with satellite television programming providers," a reformist newspaper reported Sunday. "The individuals, who in any way collaborate with these networks or are entrenched in the nucleus of organizations which are active through Internet sites, must be adequately and properly subject to legal actions. It is imperative that this phenomenon be seriously dealt with by all ...

The United States has created a "zone of impunity" by rarely investigating private contractors involved in the unlawful killing of civilians in Afghanistan and Iraq, a U.N. human rights envoy said. The U.S. government should track the number of civilians killed in its military operations abroad and limit collateral damage from unmanned drone attacks, Special Investigator Philip Alston said in a stinging report submitted Wednesday to the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva, Switzerland. "The government has failed to effectively ...

A conference of Islamic prosecutors in Iran worked Wednesday to draft an indictment against Israeli leaders, accusing them of crimes against humanity and war crimes in Gaza. The charges stem from Israel's late-December offensive into Gaza against Hamas militants. The Israeli military has been accused of using excessive and indiscriminate force in civilian areas. Israel is "a regime that only understands the language of violence and force," Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said at the gathering, in calling for the prosecution ...

Ever since Josef Fritzl, the authoritarian patriarch of a sprawling family in the north Austrian town of Amstetten, was discovered to have imprisoned his daughter as a sex slave in a cellar for 24 years and fathered seven children with her, Austria has been locked in an emotional debate over what could cause such a crime. Some have claimed Fritzl's sadism to be a vestige of Nazism's moral corruption, others that the psychological strain of living for years under the ...

An Indian court Monday rejected a plea by the alleged Mumbai attacker who asked for an Urdu translation of the 11,000-page document detailing the charges against him, public prosecutor Ujjwal Nikam told CNN. The court turned down Mohammad Ajmal Kasab's request after the prosecution argued that the court was not legally obligated to translate the charge sheet into the language of an accused person, Nikam said. Kasab, 21, is accused of being the only one of 10 gunmen to survive ...