Patrick Corrigan

5:30pm We are about to get serious – serious topics, serious votes. I'm already feeling seriously grumpy. I picked a 200/1 outsider for the Grand National in the Amnesty sweepstake. Then I missed the race (too busy protesting against...

5:00pm After the preparatory debates in the working parties of earlier today, the conference now moves on to take resolutions in plenary session and to either endorse or discard the proposals. First up for debate are two fairly non...

2:20pm Given the enormity of my cooked breakfast this morning, I really didn't need the pasta, chips, salad, carrot cake and two cups of coffee that constituted my lunch. But hey, a campaigner has to eat and at least it helped fuel my...

11:15am The four working parties are the fora where much of the substantive debate and discussion about each of the proposed resolutions takes place. It's where the key arguments for and against are put, where amendments (friendly or...

10:03am Glyn Isherwood, AIUK's treasurer, comes to the podium to lead us through our annual examination of the numbers. With economics dominating the world's headlines, backs are a little straighter and eyes a little less glazed-over...

9:10am Kate Allen, AIUK director takes the stage. She casts her mind back to 1999, one of the last times we gathered in Swansea. Amnesty's campaign for former-General Pinochet of Chile to be brought to justice; the refugee flows out of...

8:40am A powerful Amnesty video opposing torture is screened. A shocked set of delegates eventually remembers to applaud. Hell of a start to Saturday morning. AIUK Chair Tom Hedley welcomes delegates to the Taliesin theatre for the...

Amnesty's annual exercise in democracy is about to get underway. Yes, it's Grand National weekend and I find myself on a far-flung, redbrick university campus. It must be time for AIUK's National Conference and AGM. This year, 450...

BREAKING NEWS: Prof William Schabas, head of the Irish Human Rights Centre at NUI Galway and an authority on international justice, is reporting that, through a confidential source in the Registry of the International Criminal Court...

Gathering intelligence – the story so far Final session of the SDLP seminar on 'Policing and its oversight at times of threat', held Belfast, March 28 2009. Report continued from: 'Is this the start of our troubles?' Brian Rowan is a...

(continued from 'How do we respond to a time of threat? Lawfully.' ) Dame Nuala O'Loan is a solicitor and former law lecturer and was Northern Ireland's first Police Ombudsman from 1999 to 2007. She is the Irish government's special...

Policing and oversight at times of threat – how to respond (report continued from: Omagh: 'You can kill 31 people and get away with it' ) Chaired by Margaret Ritchie MLA, this was the second of three sessions presented at the SDLP...

The Omagh bombing, the Panorama programme and the needs of victims (report continued from Omagh bombing: 'Sir Hugh can't have it both ways' ) Michael Gallagher lost his 21 year-old son Aiden in the Omagh bomb . With other families he...

The Omagh bombing, the Panorama programme and the needs of victims Chaired by Alban Maginness MLA, this was the first of three sessions presented at the SDLP seminar, 'Policing and its oversight at times of threat', held on Saturday in...

Ten years on from the landmark Patten report on policing in Northern Ireland, authored by former Conservative minister and Hong Kong governor general Chris Patten, this Saturday the SDLP are to stage a half-day conference on "policing...

Secret Policeman on the loose in Britain. Whodda thought? Well done to my Amnesty colleagues whose persistence appears to be paying off in the case of Remzi Hoxha , who is believed to have died under torture at the hands of the...

Northern Irish politicians have never been shy about going cap in hand to Washington to ask for help with our political and economic problems. They were there again this week for the annual St Patrick's Day shindiggery . Now it's time...

Can't resist the provocative title of this public lecture , being staged next Thursday evening at the University of Ulster's Belfast campus. It is a Lenten initiative from the University chaplaincy and will be delivered by Dr David...

"Just … follow the money" was the advice given by Deep Throat to Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward in the brilliant 1976 film All the President's Men . It is sage advice to which I frequently turn when trying to get a handle on...

I see that BBC online has picked up on my blog about the killings in Northern Ireland and used it to reflect on some of the opinion being aired in the blogosphere. From my scanning of some my usual and not so unusual blog haunts, I'd...