Press release me, let me go

Well, he hasn’t exactly got Max Clifford working for him, but after his big Mail On Sunday interview at the weekend we’ve now got his first broadcast interview today: Binyam on the BBC. Several other big human rights cases I’ve worked...

It’s almost a blast from the past with the Independent front-paging a powerful human rights story – but this one certainly deserves to be highlighted. Perwiz Kambakhsh, the 23-year-old student journalist from Afghanistan who was...

It’s not often that we get to link to the Sun but today they carry a harrowing video of Marnie Pearce, a British woman jailed in Dubai for adultery, handing over her children to her estranged husband, perhaps for ever. She denies the...

It’s fifty years today since a failed uprising in Tibet led to widespread repression and the Dalai Lama fleeing the country to India. Protests have continued throughout the year, with the Chinese authorities on high alert for a repeat...

Great news coming out from the Government this morning. For years we’ve been calling for a new integrated strategy to tackle violence against women – and now it appears it could well happen. Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, has...

This Sunday marks International Women’s Day. I know 8 March isn’t a date which many mark off on their calendar, and I doubt Clinton Cards will be selling cards celebrating Women’s Day. But this anniversary definitely deserves greater...

It’s interesting that saying somebody’s behaviour is “unhelpful” amounts to hard-hitting condemnation in some people’s books. (Stop stabbing me, that’s unhelpful …). But, in the highly charged atmosphere of the Israel-Palestine...

Momentous news from The International Criminal Court today. For the first time a sitting head of state has been issued with an international arrest warrant . But how long it will take before the President of Sudan is arrested is quite...

Yule E’s blog yesterday flagged up the shocking story of the Afghani equivalent of Angelina Jolie being forced into hiding because of the Taleban’s increasing dominance in the region, and the shocking story of girls in Mauritania being...

I was reminded this morning by Rev. Joel Edwards on the Today programme’s Thought for the Day that this week marks the run up to International Women's Day which is on Sunday 8 March. It was interesting listening to Rev. Edward’s...

You may have read some of the press reports about Marnie Pearce , a British woman living in Dubai who has been convicted – falsely, she claims – of adultery. She has just started serving a three-month jail sentence . Her conviction...

There are particularly concerning reports emerging today of the Kenyan army being accused of torture and murder of civilians. The UN Special Rapporteur on Extra-Judicial Executions’s report also revealed that Kenyan police chief has...

I had started off the day intending to flag up the humanitarian appeal launched by Archbishops of Canterbury and York for Zimbabwe. But news coming through this afternoon about three Sierra Leone rebel commanders who were found guilty...

The government should be squirming. Except, somehow it’s not. Strange. We’ve got a man alleging that Britain’s finest Daniel Craig wannabies were there in his Karachi jail back in 2002 issuing not-so-veiled threats about “cooperating”...

There’s a scene in the Emir Kusturica film Underground that has really stayed with me. It pictures Belgrade zoo being bombed during the Second World War, with animals in their cages panicking and howling. A young zoo-keeper with...

I was going to post earlier … but got waylaid doing media work responding to news that Binyam Mohamed is finally getting out of Guantánamo. Good news though. Meanwhile, what to make of the acquittals in Anna Politkovskaya case? It’s...

Here’s one for you – what do a high-minded international literary festival and the shrieking members of a tiny religious cult have in common? Answer – homophobia! While the people, language and general manner of each could not be more...

The reaction of our campaigns director, when I told him that the Abu Qatada deportation case was back in the news today, was priceless: “Oh God”. He was no doubt recalling one of his first live TV interviews, a head-to-head with...

Dame Stella Rimington, former head of MI5, has spoken out in a Spanish newspaper ( syndicated to the Telegraph ) about her worries that the government is exploiting fears of terrorism to expand its powers and undermine civil liberties...

News that the Pakistani government is likely to allow the authorities in the Swat valley area of Pakistan to set up shari’a courts ought to give us pause. It’s not that the imposition of shari’a law will automatically mean that human...