Press release me, let me go

You can watch the first ever public speech from a serving chief of MI6 here , delivered yesterday to a select gathering of journalists. Given that the UK only stopped pretending that MI6 doesn’t exist in 1994, on the surface this seems...

Its hard to imagine being woken up in the middle of the night by bulldozers which are literally tearing down your house while youre still in it. But this is a reality for nearly 200,000 people living in Nigerias town of Port Harcourt...

News that Tariq Aziz is to face hanging for crimes committed as deputy prime minister of Iraq isn’t going to lead to an international outcry of the kind we sometimes see with the death penalty. This, to use the Daily Express’ phrase...

The Sun carries a story today about police in Swansea being caught on camera using a Taser electro-shock weapon on a man who appears to already be on the ground. Another officer who’s restraining him then appears to punch the man...

Looks to me as if the devastating account in the WikiLeaks “Iraq War Logs” of how the abuse of detainees in Iraq occurred on a vast scale during 2004-9 has thrown a whole new light on this tragic, blood-soaked period in Iraq’s history...

It’s been a mixed bag in terms of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) news this week, to say the least. Which do you want first, the good news or the bad? Russia was told by the European Court of Human Rights yesterday that...

Cuts, cuts, cuts. Fair or unfair? I’m no economist (neither are Osborne, Alexander or Johnson!) and wouldn’t claim to be able to judge it properly. But – like many others – I can’t help worrying about the damage the spending review may...

Working for Amnesty you often come across things which turn your stomach, but I found news about the graphic video showing the torture of Papuan villagers- apparently by military personnel- intensely difficult to watch. The footage was...

The old Catch-22 thing where interviewers sometimes try to trap their interviewees with a loaded question that leads to two equally unpalatable answers – in this example, either (1) I haven’t stopped, or (2) I have stopped – comes to...

Tonight I’ll be attending a preview screening here at the Human Rights Action Centre of “The Stoning of Soraya M”, an award-winning feature film based on a true story. The title tells you everything you need to know really – based on a...

We are in the very midst of award season at the moment, today there is a lot of buzz about the Man Booker announcement , and the unprecedented move to grant the award to a comic novel, for the first time in the history of the prize...

Sometimes it’s good to get out of the office and visit the real world. And yesterday that meant a trip to Harris City Academy Crystal Palace in South London for the launch of Amnesty’s new education pack. The pack, entitled A Matter of...

Hundreds of men and women convicted of terrorism offences in Northern Ireland are planning to appeal against convictions based on confessions that were, they allege, beaten out of them. So says a new film on the Guardian site today...

The 9th of October is, as any self-respecting Beatles fan will probably tell you, the day John Lennon was born. Had he survived Mark Chapman’s bullets – and another 30 years of rock star fame and turbulence (not to mention ordinary...

For the past couple of days images have been emerging from Hungary of menacing toxic red sludge following a chemical spill from an alumina plant reservoir in Veszprem. Today the BBC has reported that the spill has contaminated water...

Cheryl’s decision to not give Gamu a shot at the live shows was clearly a bad one. Putting through two wannabe pop stars – in fact the only two of the eight contestants who fluffed their lines – at the expense of excellent singers such...

I’ve got to admit I was never a fan of Norman Wisdom, pratfalls and mugging not being my thing. But then again … there was something interesting about his whole screen persona and his amazing success. Was he a trailblazer for freedom...

Today it’s all been go in Brussels. The Belgian capital is playing host to the leaders of Europe and Asia for an all-important summit. And for Amnesty that means the perfect chance to push the problems in Burma back up the global...

Today's UN report detailing war crimes committed in the DRC between 1993 and 2003 has been beset with controversy and defensive rebuttals from first Rwanda and today Uganda. The much debated and well-leaked Mapping report details the...