You just could not make it up. In Indonesia, the public wants action on corruption, and on drugs. Judge Setyabudi Tejoahyono, deputy head of the Bandung court, had been trained to handle corruption cases. He was assigned to preside over a corruption trial. Last week, he was arrested...

Islamabad, Friday Oct. 5. This weekend I plan to spend traveling to Waziristan, the Pakistan province on the border with Afghanistan, where the CIA is currently waging its not-so-secret and entirely undeclared drone war. On Thursday, I was at the best-attended press conference I have ever witnessed - I counted...

Years ago, two men named William Jent and Earnest Miller were sentenced to death in Florida, only to be granted a new trial when evidence emerged, previously suppressed by the prosecution, pointing to their innocence. However, unwilling to admit his mistake, the District Attorney demanded that both should plead guilty...

In Pakistan there are 800,000 people playing Russian Roulette. They do it 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It's not a voluntary game. Someone else holding the gun, refusing to tell how many projectiles there are in the chamber, or even who the weapon is currently aimed at.

I have, once again, seen the future, and it's a disaster

I am writing from America. Indeed, I lived in your future for many years. This week, the figures are in: once again, we have seen the future, and it doesn't work.

The front page headline in the New...

Syed Akhunzada Chattan is a member of the Pakistan parliament, in the PPP, the ruling party lead. We meet in a huge complex which provides small apartments for each MP. Half a dozen constituents are sitting in his living room when I arrive, but he has agreed to share his...

For the past several days I have been staying at the Pearl Continental Hotel in Peshawar, as close to Waziristan as I can reasonably go. I have been meeting with various victims of the drone attacks. The Pearl would get two or three stars...

Too much bad news swirls around us; sometimes we should celebrate the positive. Yesterday the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office published William Hague's speech on consular services, committing 'to increase our focus on vulnerable people.'

This is welcome news for Reprieve and the British nationals we assist:...

Last week, lawyers representing the victims of CIA drone attacks wrote to the US Ambassador to Pakistan, Cameron Munter, to inform him that we were going to bring him to justice for his complicity in the illegal killing of Pakistan citizens.

We gave him a few days...

This week I visited Shaker Aamer, the last remaining British resident being held in Guantánamo Bay.

He was originally detained on 24 November 2001, so he is marking ten years in prison without any charge. I cannot disclose what he said to me because, as ever, complaints...

Some years ago I was talking to Robin Cook about his strong support of Reprieve's work against the death penalty. He was then Foreign Secretary, and I congratulated him on the slogan that had been attributed to him: that henceforth Britain would have "an ethical foreign policy." Cook could be...

There has been a surfeit of bad news of late. To be sure, some have viewed with schadenfreude the misfortunes of News International, but many other recent events have been indisputably catastrophic, from the Japanese earthquake and its nuclear fall-out, to the recent mayhem in Norway. When it comes to...