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.
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.
Former Guatemalan dictator Efraín Ríos Montt has been found guilty of genocide and crimes against humanity by a Guatemalan court on Friday and sentenced to 80 years imprisonment.
The sentence marks the first time a former head of state has been convicted of genocide inside his or her country.
Judge Yasmin Barrios announced the sentence to cheers of “justice, justice!” inside and outside of the courtroom, packed full of survivors and relatives from Montt’s time in office.
"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."
The verdict was praised by human rights groups, including Human Rights Watch, with their Americas director José Miguel Vivanco stating that the conviction,
“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”.
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.
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 Filipino foreign minister Albert del Rosario said that he wants to pull out its UN peacekeepers from the Israeli occupied Golan Heights, after four members of its forces were kidnapped by Syrian rebels.
"The people that abducted our peacekeepers were actually under siege and they are using our people to get themselves out of the situation they find themselves in. That thing is not for us,"
Efraín Ríos Montt , the former Guatemalan dictator currently on trial facing charges of genocide and crimes against humanity has denied all charges in his closing statement.
The Bank of China has closed down accounts belonging to North Korea's Foreign Trade Brank (FTB), reports The Times, in an effort to exert pressure on North Korea.
The US and South Korea have accused the FTB of being used by North Korea to illicitly trade in arms.
The British government has called on the EU to lift sanctions on the supply of weapons to the main Syrian opposition.
In a discussion paper circulated to other EU members, the UK proposed two options to change the sanctions, which are coming to an end at the end of the month.
Spain’s Constitutional Court has declared that a sovereignty declaration passed by Catalan’s regional parliament earlier this year has been suspended, as pro-independence politicians vowed to push on.
The decision, made earlier this week, means that the Constitutional Court has suspended the declaration for the next five months, while they hear a central government appeal that claims it is illegal.
Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has issued an unofficial order to stop the approval of plans for new Jewish settlement construction in the West Bank.
