By which I mean … are the mass trials in Iran ‘political’ and are people being set up by the Iranian authorities? OK, the authorities are certainly putting a lot of politicians – past and present – on trial, so they’re literally...

As my boss Mike was saying the other day , one of the mixed pleasures of working in the Amnesty media team is that you get to do TV and radio interviews (“And now we're joined by Amnesty spokesman Neil Durkin …”). Mixed, because they...

Bodies stacked up in make-shift morgues, hundreds killed and carted away in secret. These are the alarming claims being made about the secret death toll in the Iran elections crackdown. How true are they? Frankly, I think it’s still...

According to the Amnesty researcher on Russia talking to me yesterday, there used to be three key people when it came to uncovering human rights violations in Chechnya. These were the journalist Anna Politkovskaya, the lawyer Stanislav...

A personal anecdote. It’s 1984 and I’m walking in the city centre of Sheffield on a Saturday afternoon, having just been browsing in Virgin Records looking at stuff I couldn't afford to buy because I’m on the dole. When …. wham! A man...

That master of dramatic political interventions David Davis has been at it again. This time he’s been standing up in the House of Commons denouncing the way that British intelligence officials have allegedly sent British nationals for...

In one of these strange bits of journalistic shorthand, the “Middle East” is often used as a way of referring to the Israel-Palestine situation. To me this has always seemed slightly bizarre. OK, I get the part-for-the-whole metonymy...

Perhaps unaware of the significance of the date, on 1 April Chechnya’s Kremlin-approved president Ramzan Kadyrov announced that after 15 years of conflict and human rights abuse, things in this Russian republic had returned to “normal”...

What is a cat worth? Thought I’d ask not because I’m interested in selling a couple of dozen moggies or because I especially like furry felines (though I do), but because of this cryptic quote from the Hamas deputy leader, Moussa abu...

The BBC’s report about how 27 former detainees of the US military detention centre at Bagram in Afghanistan say they were abused doesn’t do a lot more than put more flesh on the bones of what we already knew. Journalists and...

I few years ago I had some hate mail from Combat 18, the neo-Nazi splinter group with historical links to the National Front and the BNP. Apparently C18 is a tiny organisation beloved of would-be bovver boys who really did absorb that...

What's going on in Iran? The results in the election have surprised commentators the world over. Mousavi supporters in Iran are naturally disappointed (to the point of saying the election’s been “stolen”) and the likes of Hillary...

Long, long ago, when I were a mere university undergrad, they used to talk a lot in my English Lit department about “doubles” and doppelgänger s. I was always reading essays called “Doubles in the longer tales of Edgar Allen Poe” or...

"Those crucified are beheaded first and then their heads are sewn back on their bodies.” This is from a CNN news account of an execution that took place in Saudi Arabia on Friday, one of about 40 there so far this year (there were at...

Another week, another MI5 torture collusion allegation. Or that’s how it‘s beginning to feel. The Guardian’s front-page story today on the torture and arbitrary detention a British man called Jamil Rahman says he suffered in Bangladesh...

He’s in a “very difficult position” politically. He’s “trapped” by the Senate’s decision to block money . Oh, dear, Barack Obama is a virtual prisoner and his plan to close Guantánamo is left in limbo. Listening to some news reports...

Being a Stanley Kubrick fan (which cinema lover doesn't love at least one Kubrick classic?) I've obviously seen that slightly ropey early effort, Spartacus . It's okay. Just. But, whatever you think about Kirk Douglas, Tony Curtis and...

I took a call this week from a reporter saying that her magazine had been investigating baby selling in Europe and found that you could buy a baby for as little as £1,200. Nice. This is the sort of stuff you hear about at Amnesty – ie...

So well done to Brixton Electric Radio. Winning four Sony radio awards is no mean achievement and amazing for a prison radio station. PopSugar might think it’s all about Chris Evans getting two awards or Vanessa Feltz getting hers, but...

Fancy buying a rare piece of 16th-century torture equipment? Something like a “shame mask” originally used to enforce silence? Or a “tongue-tearer” which was used to punish blasphemers and heretics. Or a three-metre-long “rack” for...