News stories by William Fisher

Poor defendants on death row, immigrants in unfair deportation proceedings, torture victims, domestic violence survivors and victims of racial discrimination - all these groups are consistently being denied access to justice while those responsible for the abuses are protected, according to a new report by the American Civil Liberties Union.

Nearly a year after advocacy groups sought documents to clarify the Department of Homeland Security's 'Secure Communities' programme, the government has largely failed to satisfy the requests for information, a federal judge has ruled.

Yemen is diverting U.S. military counterterrorism assistance to an abusive military campaign unrelated to terrorist threats, a prominent human rights group has learned from Wikileaks.

A prominent public interest law firm that has defended numerous Guantanamo Bay detainees charged Thursday that a recent government report on a high rate of recidivism among former inmates is loaded with 'vague and unsubstantiated claims and misinformation'.

As pro- and anti-Wikileaks forces draw their battle lines, and Wikileaks' impresario Julian Assange marks time in storied, overcrowded and very Victorian Wandsworth Prison in southwest London, a group of his supporters are taking a different tack.

A federal judge Tuesday dismissed a court challenge to the policy of the administration of Barack Obama to target and execute U.S. citizens outside combat zones who do not pose an imminent threat.

Last week's release of 900 pages of U.S. government documents dealing with the implementation of the nation's primary surveillance law suggests that the government has been systematically violating the privacy rights of U.S. citizens.

On Monday, Dec. 6, a district court in Texas will be asked — for the first time in that U.S. state's history — to decide whether the death penalty is unconstitutional based on the 'disproportionately high risk of wrongful convictions' in Texas.

Some of the United States' leading human rights organisations are concerned for the safety of human rights advocates in countries with repressive regimes, where disclosure by Wikileaks could put them in deadly harm.

A diplomatic cable published by Wikileaks corroborates images released earlier by Amnesty International (AI) showing that the U.S. military carried out a missile strike in south Yemen in December 2009 that killed dozens of local residents, including women and children, the rights group says.