Despite months of mass unrest, dozens of deaths and alleged rape and torture at the hands of the Iranian authorities, the MPs dealing with the issues seem to find the whole thing utterly hilarious. Read more and see the video...

"Minio", a young Iranian who was detained during the post-election repression, describes the humiliating experiences she went through at the hands of her jailers. Listen to it here...

Public confessions made by detained opposition activists in Iran are being made a mockery of by anti-government protesters. To illustrate how farcical they found the confessions, Web users from around the world, including a pet cat, a "crazy Jew from Israel", a brainwashed bald manikin and a CIA agent, have made their own confessions, all 'owning up' to instigating the attempted velvet revolution following the 12 June election. Read more and see their confessions...

Blogger Wael Abbas has published footage of a man being tortured in what he says is an Egyptian police station. The horrific scenes seem not to have greatly shocked the Egyptian public. Our Observers there, however, are asking why, and for whom, these images were filmed. Please be aware that this post includes images which you may find upsetting. Read more...

A Stanford University student grills former US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice over the Bush administration's torture policy. Who sounds more convincing: Rice or Jeremy Cohn? Read more...

The person we see in this video is none other than Sheikh Issa bin Zayed al Nahyan, the brother of Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed al Nahyan, emir of Abu Dhabi and president of the United Arab Emirates, and Mohammed bin Zayed al Nahyan, the crown prince of Abu Dhabi. Read more...

Three weeks after his arrest on June 4, a Burmese comedian known as "Zarganar" remains in an interrogation centre in Rangoon. The junta has as yet given any explanation as to why they arrested Zarganar, but it is assumed that his critical attitude towards the government in the aftermath of the Nargis cyclone has something to do with it. Read more...

 

In 2003 the U.S. Justice Department sent a memo to the Pentagon in which it conceived torture as a "self-defense" for the purpose of interrogating an "enemy combatant". An Iraqi deputy and a French colonel specialised in the Algerian War react to the document, declassified yesterday and published here in full. Read more...

Controversy over the US stance on the interrogation method called waterboarding, considered by many as torture, has caused bloggers to try out the method for themselves. See the videos here…