Good News

Every year more and more countries move towards abolishing the death penalty. Already this year the Mongolian Government has taken a step forward.

After being imprisoned without trial for nearly a year a wave of cards and letters from Amnesty International members sets a 17-year-old boy free.

AI Index: EUR 45/015/2007
7 August 2007
Further information on UA 196/07 

“Thank God, I am well, but just God that created us knows when I will come back”

Murat Kurnaz wrote these words to his family from Guantánamo in March 2002. His dreams of returning home to Germany have only now, finally, been realised.

Released from Guantánamo on 24 August 2006, Murat Kurnaz had been held for four years and eight months without charge or trial. The only contact he had been allowed with his family was through heavily censored letters.

Ziyad Hmeidan, a fieldworker with human rights organisation Al-Haq, is one of the prisoners of conscience cases that Amnesty Irish Section has been working on for some time. He was released on 18 March 2007. He had been held in Administrative Detention without charge or trial since his detainment in May 2005. While detained, he did not receive charge or trial and the conditions he was kept in did not meet fundamental human rights standards for the treatment of prisoners.

Zimbabwe's Supreme Court ordered a permanent stay of the criminal proceedings against prominent human rights activist Jestina Mukoko on Monday (28/09). The director of the Zimbabwe Peace Project (ZPP) was facing criminal proceedings on charges of recruiting persons for training as insurgents or saboteurs.

Amnesty International welcomes the release of journalist Alan Johnston. This is welcome news for all those who campaigned over the last 114 days for his release. It is also good news for the people of Gaza, where Alan Johnston was well liked and respected as the only international correspondent permanently based there.