Prosecutors in the United States have accused Venezuela’s former leader Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, of conspiracy to commit torture. The fresh charges against the couple were made public on Thursday and are in addition to the drug-trafficking and weapons charges already brought against them, which they have denied. Maduro, 63, and Flores,
A former Syrian military official convicted of torturing prisoners during President Bashar Assad’s regime is facing a possible decades-long prison sentence in the U.S. A federal judge in Los Angeles is scheduled to sentence Samir Ousman Alsheikh on Thursday. A jury found him guilty in March of one count of conspiracy to commit torture and
UNITED NATIONS — The United Nations estimates that more than 16,000 civilians detained by Russia during its war in Ukraine are still being “deprived of their liberty,” many held incommunicado and on grounds that don’t comply with international law. “Widespread and systematic torture and ill-treatment” of both Ukrainian civilian detainees and prisoners of war by
The prisons these men helped run are part of a detention system in which the UN human rights office (OHCHR) says torture and ill-treatment of civilians is “systematic and widespread”. It says former detainees describe beatings, electric shocks, mock executions and sexual violence, with civilians often arbitrarily detained and families left with little information. The
A former Syrian intelligence chief in the city of Raqqa was found guilty of torture and sexual abuse of opponents of former Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, in a court in Vienna, Austria. A second Syrian official, the former police chief of Raqqa, was also found guilty of abusing political opponents. The Vienna case was a
