A former political police chief has been arrested in Chad, after he accused of killing and torturing hundreds during the 1980s.

Mahamat Djibrine is accused of “torture, acts of barbarism and illegal detention" and may find himself extradited to Senegal to face trial. He was arrested for crimes under former President Hissene Habre, who is accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Earlier this year, after much delay, Senegal agreed to hold the trial of Hissene Habre, where he has been held since fleeing Chad.

See our earlier post:

Senegal to hold trial of former Chad dictator (20 January 2013)

Iran will be the chair of a United Nations conference on nuclear disarmament in Geneva later this month.

The Conference on Disarmament will be attended by 65 countries and is the world’s most important forum to discuss disarmament.

The spokesperson to the US mission in Geneva, Erin Pelton, has said that his country will not be represented at the conference.

Pelton said that having Iran as president of the conference “runs counter to the goals and objectives of the Conference on Disarmament itself.”

“As a result, the United States will not be represented at the ambassadorial level during any meeting presided over by Iran,” she said.

Hillel Neuer, of UN Watch, an NGO that monitors the work of the United Nations, said it would protest outside the conference.

“Iran is an international outlaw state that illegally supplies rockets to Syria, Hezbollah, and Hamas, aiding and abetting mass murder and terrorism. To make this rogue regime head of world arms control is simply an outrage.”

“We urge world leaders to declare that allowing Iran to chair a U.N. disarmament body is simply unacceptable, given the fundamentalist regime’s illicit activities in precisely the opposite direction,” Neuer said in a statement.

A preliminary investigation into the 2010 Israeli on the Gaza flotilla will be opened said the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court on Tuesday, reports Reuters.

The flotilla, carrying humanitarian aid from Turkey was bound to the Gaza strip when Israeli forces raided it. Nine people died.

In a statement the prosecutor explained she a preliminary investigation was needed following a referral made by the island nation of Comoros in the Indian Ocean.

"My office will be conducting a preliminary examination in order to establish whether the criteria for opening an investigation are met," she said.

One of the raided vessels was registered here. Few such inquiries lead to investigations.

A anti-Assad fighter has defended a video of him purportedly cutting out and eating the organs of a dead Syrian soldier.

The video, which had surfaced earlier this week, was criticized by Human Rights Watch, who said,

"The figure in the video cuts the heart and liver out of the body and uses sectarian language to insult Alawites [Assad's minority sect]. At the end of the video [the man] is filmed putting the corpse's heart into his mouth, as if he is taking a bite out of it."

Peter Bouckaert, the emergencies director for the organisation went on to add,

“The desecration and mutilation of a killed person is definitely a war crime… This one is particularly disturbing because of the sectarian nature of the language used by Abu Sakkar.”

The fighter was identified as Khaled al-Hamad, known by the nom de guerre Abu Sakkar, who defended his actions when talking to Time magazine online. He stated that he had acted out of revenge and had further video footage of him cutting the body into pieces.

However the video was slammed by Syria’s National Coalition, the country's main opposition grouping, who issued a statement saying it "strongly condemns" the act. They stated,

"The Coalition stresses that such an act contradicts the morals of the Syrian people, as well as the values and principles of the Free Syrian Army,"

"The Syrian Coalition reiterates its condemnation of such an act and stresses that it is a crime, regardless of the perpetrator."

"The culprit will eventually be tried in court in front of an honest and fair judiciary."

The United Nations Human Rights Council, announcedlast week the appointment of a commission of inquiry to investigate alleged  “systematic, widespread and grave violations of human rights” in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK).

The three-member commission will  include Marzuki Darusman, the former Attorney General of Indonesia and the current UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in DPRK, Michael Donald Kirby, a retired judge from Australia; Sonja Biserko, founder and president of the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Serbia. 

The UK and the US have pledged to help strengthen the moderate opposition in Syria and create a transitional body to replace President Bashar al-Assad.

British Prime Minister David Cameron said in Washington that there was an "urgent window of opportunity before the worst fears are realised".

"There's no more urgent international task than this. We need to get Syrians to the table to agree a transitional government that can win the consent of all of the Syrian people," he said.

"There will be no political progress unless the opposition is able to withstand the onslaught and put pressure on Assad so he knows there is no military victory."

"I do believe that there is more we can do alongside technical advice, assistance, help, in order to shape them, in order to work with them," Mr Cameron said, stressing that no decision had yet been made regarding the supply of weapons to the Syrian opposition.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, welcomed the conviction of former Guatemalan dictator Efraín Ríos Montt for crimes against humanity and genocide, for which he was sentenced to 80 years in prison earlier this week.

Speaking on the conviction, Pillay said,

“Guatemala has made history by becoming the first country in the world to convict a former head of state for genocide in its own national court,”

“I salute the victims, relatives and survivors whose courage and perseverance made this possible against all odds, as well as the lawyers, prosecutors and judges who carried out their duties under exceptionally difficult circumstances in the face of serious threats and intimidation.”

The High Commissioner added that,

“Despite all the obstacles, interruptions and numerous legal challenges which slowed down the trial, Guatemala has shown the world, and even more importantly its own people, that it is possible to address past crimes and bring justice,”

“This historic verdict shows that no one is above the law, and that Guatemala’s institutions have the strength and solidity to carry this through – provided there is the will to do so.”

“Guatemala can now truly begin to heal the wounds of the past, as the suffering of so many people has been formally recognised,”

She praised the judges for recognizing that “for peace to exist, there must first be justice” and went on to say,

“Even five years ago, few people would have thought such a verdict was possible in Guatemala,” 

“Now the country has shown that justice for serious international crimes can – and should – take place anywhere and everywhere that they occur. This trial will bring encouragement to people all over the world struggling for justice for crimes committed thirty years ago, and for crimes being committed today. For this reason, the trial and conviction of Ríos Montt has been of monumental importance at the international as well as the national level.”

The four peacekeepers from the Philippines who had been abducted by Syrian rebels in the Golan Heights have been released.

Filipino army spokesperson Brigadier General Domingo Tutaan told AFP said that the soldiers are in good health.

"They are fine, but as a matter of procedure they will have to undergo stress debriefing and a medical check-up," he said.

The troops were abducted by the Martyrs of Yarmouk Brigade, who said they took the peacekeepers into custody “for their own safety”.

In a statement on their Facebook page, the rebels said the soldiers were not hostages, and the presence of the Syrian Army posed a danger to the peacekeepers.

Over 3000 Serbs protested against on Friday in Belgrade against the deal normalising relations with Kosovo, reports the Sacremental Bee and RT.

See RT for photographs.

Carrying banners "No EU" and "Kosovo is Serbia", protesters accused the government of treason and vowed to support hardline Serbs who had also rejected the deal.

Chants included "Kosovo is the heart of Serbia!", "traitors" and "you sold Kosovo!"

The EU brokered deal would be deemed vital to enable Serbia's EU bid to progress.

Supporters of former Guatemalan dictator Efraín Ríos Montt protested outside the prison where he is being held, after he was found guilty of crimes against humanity and genocide earlier this week.

At least 500 people dressed in white and some in military fatigues gathered outside the Matamoros prison, where they shouted slogans such as “Viva Rios Monnt!”

They were also holding signs which read “no hubo genocidio en Guatemala” – “There was no genocide in Guatemala”.

Protestors are demanding that the verdict be nullified, claiming that the whole judicial process was corrupt. Montt’s landmark verdict saw him become the first former head of state convicted of genocide within their own country.

A record breaking turnout in Pakistan’s elections resulted in the former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, topping the polls, to take power from the military that first ousted him in 1999.

Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League N party secured 125 of the 269 parliamentary seats.

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Sharif outlined intentions of collaborating with the U.S stating,

“the relationship with the U.S was quite good when I was in power. I’d like to take this relationship further. We need to strengthen the relationship.”

The U.S Secretary of State John Kerry welcomed the outcomes of the election, lauding the Pakistani public’s  voting reliance he said,

“The Pakistani people stood up resiliently to threats by violent extremists. We’ll be working with the new government to advance shared interests, including a peaceful, more prosperous and stable future for Pakistan and the region.”

Sharif's government is the first to be consecutively  re-elected in Pakistan since the country's formation in 1947.

"We are convinced that the acts the Ixil suffered constitute the crime of genocide… He had full knowledge of everything that was happening and did not stop it,"

"The Ixils were considered public enemies of the state and were also victims of racism, considered an inferior race,"

"The violent acts against the Ixils were not spontaneous. They were planned beforehand."

“sends a powerful message to Guatemala and the world that nobody, not even a former head of state, is above the law when it comes to committing genocide”.

"I feel happy. May no one else ever have to go through what I did. My community has been sad ever since this happened".

"Today we are happy, because for many years it was said that genocide was a lie, but today the court said it was true".

Nobel Peace Prize winner Archbishop Desmond Tutu has announced that he will no longer vote for the African National Congress.

"The ANC was very good at leading us in the struggle to be free from oppression," Archbishop Tutu wrote in an opinion for South Africa’s Mail & Guardian.

"But it doesn't seem to me now that a freedom-fighting unit can ¬easily make the transition to becoming a political party."

Archbishop Tutu also slammed past decisions made by the ANC government at the UN.

"The things we have voted for or against have been a disgrace. It has been a total betrayal of our whole tradition, and that's a very sad thing."

Read the opinion in full here.

The initial phase of the United Nations intervention brigade arrived in eastern Congo today, following an United Nations Security Council resolution in March that called for a peacekeeping force.

The resolution renewed the mandate of the peacekeeping mission in Congo, whilst also establishing a special intervention brigade that had an aggressive mandate to both fight armed groups and protect civilians.

Congo's prime minister, Augustin Matata Ponyo, welcomed the intervention Brigade, stating,

"With the first Tanzanian troops landing, a new dynamic will emerge in the east. Security problems cannot be solved in one day"