According to reports, late on Monday night the 37-year-old Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky suffered a fatal rupture of the abdominal membrane causing heart failure and death. He was being held in pre-trial detention in Moscow for almost a year, where he was subjected harsh conditions and refused proper medical...

The effusive praise President Barack Obama has for former Singaporean Prime Minister and now Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew is another gesture that has led many to wonder where the present administration sits on human rights issues. The forthcoming APEC summit in Singapore presents an opportunity for the president...

President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil, affectionately nicknamed Lula, comes as close to being a global rock star as a politician can get. But like any towering celebrity, there are some troubling developments behind all the glamour.

With less than a year to go before finishing his second...

Cable television news has an earned reputation for its tendentiousness, but still, every now and again I can get caught off guard. It happened to me again this morning, Oct. 26, at my hotel while watching the usually moderate Morning Joe on MSNBC, listening to Scarborough launch into a...

Sunday Oct. 25, 2009 will mark the sixth anniversary of the arrest at gunpoint of the Russian political prisoner Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Over these long years in which he has been illegitimately, unlawfully, and brutally held in a Siberian gulag between two show trials, I've seen both my client and...

One of Venezuela's most infamous prisons is located in the state of Miranda, southeast of Caracas. There, the Yare III facility, which occasionally garners headlines following one of its frequent deadly riots, is part of a prison system which is well known as one of the worst in...

The recent visits to Moscow and Tehran by Hugo Chavez raise a number of concerns about the deepening relations between Russia, Iran and Venezuela.

The motivation behind the Russia-Iran-Venezuela alliance is often misunderstood. On the one hand, there is the narrative that these governments are pursuing national interests, seeking to...

When an authoritarian leader like Fidel Castro or Robert Mugabe pretends to hold an election, we don't bother asking them to make it "a nice clean vote." So why do we go through the motions when it comes to political trials?

This troubling trend was illustrated again last week in...

Just a few years back, a savagely offensive and popular comedy starring Sascha Baron Cohen caused extraordinary embarrassment in Kazakhstan, as outraged citizens rightfully protested the portrayal of their country as a backward and ignorant third world hole. Kazakhstan actually does have a lot going for it, with enormous...

An important aspect of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez's political survival over these past ten years has been a carefully managed ignorance amongst the international community. While there may be some awareness of attacks on journalists, blacklists, political prisoners, and the occasional wielding of the authoritarian sledgehammer, Chávez and co. are...

It really is impressive the level of tolerance we've built up when it comes to Russia's confrontational antics. Take for example the move in early August to deploy two Akula II-class nuclear attack submarines off the East Coast of the United States. The Pentagon quickly discarded any potential...

Yesterday afternoon, Russia's RIA Novosti Spanish wire service reported on the arrival of the Deputy Prime Minister and Rosneft Chairman Igor Sechin to Caracas, Venezuela. The reason for the trip of Russia's energy czar (and leader of the "siloviki" network of former KGB officers), according to the Kremlin news...

Stop me if you've heard this one before: "Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez is above reproach for his authoritarianism because he is a model democrat, having won many majority elections." Perhaps more commonly, you have heard this one: "We cannot dare to speak about human rights violations in Venezuela when Washington...

Given where things stood going into Barack Obama's first visit to Russia, it was moderately successful from a diplomatic perspective. The new U.S. president brought a few billion in business deals, agreed to some cuts in nuclear arms and made it clear he'd be willing to compromise on the contentious...

President Barack Obama and his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev should be good friends by now. Following his visit with the family to the Kremlin earlier this week, the two traveled onward to L'Aquila, Italy for the G8 Summit. This is probably the most consecutive face time that Obama and Medvedev...

As Iran stumbles deeper into political crisis, with scores of protestors murdered and likely more deaths coming after Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami declared them "worthy of execution," the Republicans have diligently gone about exercising their best skills and resources to show support for these brave demonstrators - by sharply...

For as much as his friends and supporters, both college professors and baseball stars, assured us that Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez was a model democrat, his actions in the wake of the recent referendum victory seem to be exceeding even the worst nightmares of his many critics. Rather than being...

Despite the well worn campaign slogan, so far Washington's new foreign policy under President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton seems to embody a blend of both continuity and change, depending on the situation. By and large we have seen a reactionary series of policies, as the new...