Documents revealing the torture of Mau Mau Kenyans directed by the British authorities were a 'sort of guilty secret', a report says. UK Foreign Secretary William Hague said the papers should now be made public. The internal review found some Foreign Office officials had chosen to ignore the documents' existence. It comes as the High Court is due to rule on a compensation case brought by four Kenyans over alleged human rights abuses in the 1950s and 1960s.

Amid growing concern about al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) acquiring weapons from Libya, the Algerian army launched a large-scale surveillance and security operation along the joint border. Algerian military leaders met in Djanet to discuss ANP preparedness for possible security problems along the border with Libya, El Khabar reported. The defence ministry tasked the Ouergla and Tamanrasset regional commanders with monitoring security and humanitarian issues related to the influx of refugees.

Tunisia threatened to report Libya to the UN Security Council if it fired into Tunisian territory again, after Libya's three-month-old conflict spilled beyond its borders. Tunisia's state-run TAP news agency said the government would threaten Libya with diplomatic action over the 'continuing firing of rockets by Libyan forces towards Tunisian territory'. 'The Tunisian government views those acts as belligerent behaviour from the Libyan side who had pledged more than once to prevent its forces from firing in the direction of Tunisia and has failed to respect its undertakings,' TAP quoted a foreign ministry source as saying. On Tuesday at least four Russian-made Grad rockets fired from Libya landed inside Tunisia, according to a Reuters reporter at the scene.

The future of the regional human rights court remains uncertain, amid reports that justice ministers from across Southern Africa have agreed that the court’s decisions are null and void. The court was effectively suspended over Zimbabwe’s refusal to honour its 2008 ruling that Robert Mugabe’s land grab campaign was unlawful. The court ordered the then ZANU PF government to protect farmers from further attack, but Robert Mugabe and his party have repeatedly snubbed the court.

Sudanese armed forces have carried out another round of air strikes against a village in Darfur, this time striking a settlement in the north of the war-torn region, the joint United Nations-African Union mission in Darfur (UNAMID) reported on 18 May. Government aircraft struck the village of Sukamir, about 100 kilometres northeast of El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur state.

The indigenous forest dwellers of the Republic of Congo are in danger of extinction, warns David Lawson, UNFPA Representative in that country. His work with national and provincial leaders to promote and protect their rights will be the subject of a discussion at a side event of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. Advocacy on behalf of the Congo’s indigenous peoples culminated last February with passage of a bill protecting their rights in the Republic of Congo. It marked the first such legislation in Africa and has been called a ‘best practice’ by the Secretary-General Special Representative for Indigenous People, Mr. James Anaya.

Facilities in refugee camps in northeastern Kenya have been stretched to the limit, aid workers say, as more and more Somali refugees flee the conflict at home. 'Dadaab refugee camps continue to receive a significant number of new arrivals who are often very tired and exhausted, having travelled very far, sometimes from as far as [the Somali capital] Mogadishu, in some cases on foot [over 1,000km],' said Emmanuel Nyabera, spokesman for the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), in Kenya. As of 15 May, Nyabera said, Dadaab, the world's biggest refugee complex, was home to at least 348,605 people.

The request by chief prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo that arrest warrants for war crimes be issued against Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, his son Saif al-Islam, and the head of Libya’s intelligence service, Abdullah al-Senussi, only confirms the role of the International Criminal Court as a tool of the imperialist powers, says this article on the World Socialist Web Site. 'The warrants are, in effect, being issued on behalf of the United States, Britain and France—the chief architects of the ongoing bombardment of Libya. Moreno-Ocampo has gathered his evidence against the three accused with the aim of preventing any possibility of a negotiated end to the war, and to further isolate Gaddafi and pave the way for regime-change.'

The government says it is investigating the Ocampo Six, reports Kenya's The Daily Nation. It has dismissed claims by International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo and post-election violence victims that police and judicial reforms in the country could hinder it from trying the six locally. While defending its admissibility case at the ICC, the government said the elements necessary for success of its complementarity challenge to the court’s admissibility are in place, providing it with the right to investigate and prosecute.

A Kenyan official says a British human rights investigator looking into the illegal deportations and detentions of terror suspects from Kenya to Uganda has herself been deported. Hassan Omar Hassan of the government-funded Kenya National Commission on Human Rights says lawyer Clara Gutteridge was deported on government orders.

At least 120 people were injured, one of them critically, when Egyptian security forces attacked a pro-Palestine demonstration outside the Israeli embassy in Cairo on Sunday night, according to witnesses. Activists told Al Jazeera that army and internal security troops used tear gas, rubber-coated bullets and live ammunition to disperse thousands of protesters who had gathered to mark the 63rd anniversary of the 'Nakba' or 'catastrophe' - the day in 1948 that Israel declared its independence and thousands of Palestinians fled or were expelled form their homes.

Over 100 Somali refugees stranded at Zimbabwe’s border with South Africa have been hit by a malaria outbreak, authorities have said. They have warned of a worse disease outbreak if the situation was not addressed urgently. The Somalis were denied entry into South Africa where they wanted to apply for asylum and were now stranded at Zimbabwe’s border town of Beitbridge.

The number of refugees in 10 countries in Eastern Africa has risen to nearly 1.4 million, an eight per cent increase since September, the United Nations humanitarian office said 13 May in an update that shows that the majority of the new asylum-seekers travelled to Kenya and Ethiopia. Kenya received more than 50,000 of the total number of 103,874 new refugees, while some 19,000 entered Ethiopia. The majority of the refugees going to the two countries were Somalis fleeing drought and conflict in their homeland, according to the report prepared by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

UK Home Secretary Theresa May has stressed that Britain would not accept migrants fleeing Libya and Tunisia as divisions opened within the European Union over how to respond to the crisis of refugees from North Africa. May is resisting calls from Italy for other EU countries to 'share the burden' of accommodating the new arrivals. Britain is offering to help the Italian government cope with the refugees, but insisting none will be given shelter in the UK.

Egypt’s new leadership has promised to open the Rafah crossing into Gaza permanently after more than five years of partial and occasionally full closure, but observers wonder how far this will go to ease the situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT). 'Our intention is to alleviate the human problems and living conditions for the people in Gaza,' Ambassador Mahna Bakhoum, spokesman for the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, told IRIN. 'It is under study now - how, when and what [the opening of Rafah crossing will involve]. This is all being discussed by the government and by the whole country, not just the Foreign Ministry.'

Thousands of frustrated Ethiopian and Somali asylum seekers trying to make their way to South Africa have been marooned in overcrowded camps in northern Mozambique since the government introduced measures limiting their movements. The Maratane Refugee Camp in Nampula Province, which normally accommodates around 5,500 long-term residents from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi and Rwanda, now has a population of over 10,000, while an additional 1,000 asylum seekers are staying at a temporary site in the coastal town of Palma, near the border with Tanzania.

As the world focuses its attention on oil rich North Africa and the Middle East, a wave of police brutality within sub-Saharan African states of the Commonwealth has gone largely unnoticed and unpunished. Uganda, Swaziland and Mozambique have seen a wave of protests. But little attention has been paid to the uniformly brutal way in which they are being dealt with. These are all Commonwealth countries. The Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI) strongly condemns the routine use of intimidation, beatings, illegal detention, torture and excessive use of force being used within these countries to curb legitimate expressions of dissent and the right to freedom of speech and peaceful assembly.

Highly sensitive documents revealing the torture of Mau Mau Kenyans at the hands of the British authorities were a 'sort of guilty secret' for the UK Government, a report has found. Foreign Secretary William Hague said the documents, which detail how detainees were castrated, beaten and sexually abused while in British camps, should now be made public. His announcement comes as a High Court judge is set to decide whether the UK Government, which sanctioned 'systematic violence' in the detention camps, is liable for the torture of the Mau Mau people between 1952 and 1961.

Global Civilians for Peace in Libya is embarking on its second fact-finding mission into the war-torn country. The delegation is comprised of academics, professionals, journalists and ex-military personnel from Europe, North America, England, Middle East and Africa. The delegates are independent and not allied to any government or official body. An Italian camera crew will be embedded with the group, a TV producer from Britain and a French journalist.

Since January 2011, over 1,000 migrants have drowned while attempting to reach the fortified coasts of the southern shores of the European Union. These figures must be added to the 15,000 victims of the 'war against migrants' which reaches these days new peaks of inhumanity. According to informations, a boat carrying over 600 people is lost in the high seas off the Libyan coast, amidst general indifference.