The Pope and three top Vatican officials have been accused of crimes against humanity in a formal declaration lodged with the International Criminal Court (ICC).

Oil giant Royal Dutch Shell is to pay out $15.5m (€11.1m) to settle a lawsuit over its alleged complicity in the 1995 execution of several Nigerian environmental activists.

AN injured survivor and relatives of three Iraqis killed in Baghdad on September 16 when employees of private security company Blackwater USA opened fire on civilians sued the firm in US court yesterday.

The inmate who died at Guantanamo Bay in an apparent suicide was identified today as a Saudi military veteran and self-described Islamic holy warrior who denied he ever intended to kill Americans.

Germany’s federal prosecutors have rejected a lawsuit urging them to open a war crimes investigation against former US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

A US judge has struck down President George Bush’s authority to designate groups as terrorists, saying his post-September 11 executive order was unconstitutional and vague.

In a jail cell at an immigration detention centre in Arizona sits a man who is not charged with a crime, not suspected of a crime and not considered a danger to society.

US authorities will review the rules for handling and monitoring detainees at Guantanamo Bay following the suicides of three men there, military officials said.

The US government defended warrantless domestic surveillance in court for the first time today, saying the programme is well within the president’s authority but arguing that it would require revealing state secrets to prove that point.

The US government has released the most extensive list yet of the hundreds of detainees who have been held at the Guantanamo Bay prison – nearly all labelled enemy combatants, but only a handful of whom have faced formal charges.

THE US government has agreed to pay $300,000 (€252,000) to an Egyptian man who was detained for nearly a year following the September 11, 2001, attacks, but was never linked to terrorism.

The US government has agreed to pay $300,000 (€252,000) to an Egyptian man who was detained for nearly a year following the September 11, 2001, attacks but was never linked to terrorism.

A two-storey maximum security jail modelled on a US prison is being built in Cuba, exactly four years after the first terror suspects were placed in makeshift cells in Guantanamo.

Fifty-two prisoners being held at Guantanamo Bay have staged a hunger strike, US military officials confirmed tonight.

US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld offered to resign twice during the height of the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal last year. He said he wanted the decision on his future to be placed in President George Bush’s hands.

Gina Holland, Washington

US MARINES forced Iraqi youngsters to kneel while troops discharged a weapon in a mock execution, used electric shocks on one prisoner and set fire to a puddle of solvent that burned one of them, according to US Navy documents.

For the first time since the September 11 2001 attacks, a terror suspect held nearly incommunicado at a US prison in Cuba got his chance to convince his jailers that he should go free.

Some Guantanamo Bay detainees deemed not to pose a security threat could be released without first having access to civilian courts, a US Defence spokesman said.

A racketeering lawsuit filed by human rights lawyers accuses US civilian contractors at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq of conspiring to execute, rape and torture prisoners to boost corporate profits from military payments.

Videos capturing the actions of a US military squad assigned to subdue disobedient prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have emerged as key pieces of evidence as American politicians look into complaints of abuse.

Two British men released from the US prison camp at Guantanamo Bay say interrogators forced prisoners to strip, chained them to a floor for hours and used deafening music and dogs to extract confessions.

British actor Corin Redgrave called on the US to follow its release of five Britons detained in Guantanamo Bay with the return of all the estimated 660 people held at the US Navy base in Cuba.

THE Supreme Court will hear its first case arising from the American government’s anti-terrorism campaign following the September 11 attacks, agreeing yesterday to consider whether foreigners held at a Navy base in Cuba should have access to American courts.

The US Supreme Court will hear its first cases arising from the government’s anti-terrorism campaign following the September 11 attacks, agreeing today to consider whether foreigners held at the Guantanamo Bay Navy base in Cuba should have access to American courts.

Civil rights lawyers in the US have said they planned to sue US Attorney General John Ashcroft and other officials, alleging widespread abuse of Middle Eastern men detained on immigration violations after September 11.