FORT MEADE, Md. — An architect of the brutal CIA interrogation and detention program developed after the Sept. 11 attacks defended the agency and its practices on Tuesday as those techniques become the focus of an effort to dismiss key evidence against five men charged in the terrorist plot. James...
Pentagon Chief Fires Navy Secretary Over SEAL Controversy
WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Mark Esper has fired the Navy’s top official, ending a stunning clash between President Donald Trump and top military leadership over the fate of a SEAL accused of war crimes in Iraq. Esper said Sunday that he had lost confidence in Navy Secretary Richard Spencer and...
Will Trump Pardon U.S. Troops Accused of War Crimes?
President Donald Trump is considering pardons for several American military members accused of war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan. Trump was asked Friday at the White House about reports that he was considering pardons ahead of the Memorial Day holiday. The president said "some of these soldiers" have "fought hard...
Documents Shine Rare Light on Syrian Government Crackdown
BEIRUT — Thousands of documents purportedly collected from abandoned Syrian government offices during the country's civil war reveal the reach of President Bashar Assad's shadowy, labyrinthine security agencies as they spied on the population at large, sought to eliminate dissidents at all cost and systematically persecuted the Kurdish minority even...
NYT Shines Bright Light on Killing of Palestinian Medic
Are you trying to make sense of the deadly, seemingly neverending violence between Israel and the Palestinians? David M. Halbfinger, who is the Jerusalem bureau chief of The New York Times, points to the killing last June of 20-year-old Rouzan al-Najjar, a volunteer Palestinian medic in the Gaza Strip, as an...
Last Khmer Rouge Leaders Guilty of Genocide, Get Life Terms
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — The last surviving leaders of the Khmer Rouge regime that ruled Cambodia in the 1970s, when their reign of terror was responsible for the deaths of an estimated 1.7 million people, were convicted Friday by an international tribunal of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes....
UAE, Saudis May Have Committed War Crimes in Yemen
GENEVA — Three experts working for the U.N.'s top human rights body say the governments of Yemen, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia may have been responsible for war crimes including rape, torture, disappearances and "deprivation of the right to life" during 3½ years of battling Yemeni rebels. In...