In an address to fellow members of parliament from Turkey's Justice and Development Party (AK Parti), Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan "defended the nation's police and vowed to increase their powers to deal with unrest."   Erdoğan said that the police ...

The Bahrain Interior Ministry announced that it had identified members of the February 14 movement who have alleged links to "a string of crimes committed over the last few months." It named 11 arrested suspects as well as ...

Cairo Criminal Court released details of the NGO trial verdict and defended its ruling as a stand against external interests, arguing that foreign funding of civil society organizations is a form of  "control, predominance and soft imperialism practiced by ...

The White House as well as various senators and representatives have continued to issue statements regarding the verdicts in the NGO trial in Egypt Tuesday. Caitlin Hayden, the National Security Council Spokesperson, said on behalf of the White House that ...

Following a ruling by a criminal court in Cairo, which found 43 NGO workers guilty of using illegal foreign funding to foment civil unrest, Secretary of State John Kerry issued a statement expressing the United States' concern regarding the verdict and ...

A Cairo criminal court convicted 43 NGO workers of using foreign funds to incite unrest. Of the 43, 27 were tried in absentia and received the maximum sentence of five years. Of the remaining 16, two defendants were sentenced to two ...

Egypt's High Constitutional Court (HCC) ruled Sunday that the laws governing the election of the Shura Council - the legislature's consultative upper house - were invalid. Furthermore, the court ruled that the  laws governing the election of the ...

U.S. State Department Spoekswoman Jennifer Psaki expressed the U.S.'s concerns over a new draft of a controversial NGO law in Egypt that was presented by President Mohamad Morsi this week to Egypt's Shura Council. The bill seeks to reform Egypt's ...

Egypt's top jurists suspended participation today in a government-backed conference to move forward on judicial reform, reigniting a political showdown with the country's judges. Lawmakers in the Muslim Brotherhood dominated Shura Council announced it would reexamine a contentious proposal opposed ...

On Tuesday, Bahrain's foreign ministry and members of its parliament rejected the U.S. Department of State's 2012 report on human rights practices in the country, released on April 19th. The foreign ministry stated that "the report lacks objectivity ...

Human Rights Watch (HRW) praised a Yemeni court order to investigate the country's former president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, and 11 top aides in connection with a fatal attack on peaceful protesters in Sa'ana in March 2011 that killed 45. Calling ...

Compromise on a contentious draft law that would have forced nearly a quarter of Egypt's judges into retirement has been reached between the judiciary and the president's office. A crisis over the proposed law

The annual State Department report on human rights practices in Iraq details a host of human rights concerns in 2012 attributed to a weakened government, increased sectarian and societal divisions and a culture of impunity and widespread corruption that ...

The State Department's 2012 report on the status of human rights in Yemen identified "arbitrary killings and acts of violence committed by the government and various entities and groups; disappearances and kidnappings; and a weak and corrupt judicial ...

The State Department released its 2012 Human Rights Practices Report for Tunisia, which details a number of challenges including “security force laxity regarding extremist crimes, the use of excessive force during protester arrests, and some constraints on freedom of ...

The annual State Department country report on human rights practices in Bahrain detailed heavy-handed repression in 2012 and reports that the government maintains a system of extra-judicial detention facilities where torture routinely occurs. The most serious human rights problems ...

Leaders of Egypt's largest political opposition bloc, the National Salvation Front, have called for fresh demonstrations against the government of President Mohamed Morsi over a draft law to reform the judiciary. The proposed law, drafted by President Morsi's ...

The Department of State's annual country reports on human rights practices details restrictions on the freedom of assembly and association, lack of judicial independence, and overuse of pretrial detention that continue to tarnish the Algerian government's record in 2012 ...

The State Department released the 2012 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices. These reports provide detailed assessments of the status of human rights around the world. Uzra Zeya, Acting Assistant Secretary of the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor,