Human Rights Watch Daily Brief, 28 October 2014

Twelve Nobel Peace Prize winners have joined the global call for US President Barack Obama to release a 500-page summary of a report detailing the CIA's use of torture and other abuse as part of its post 9/11 interrogation programme. If released, the report would be the first official and public accounting of CIA misdeeds during the “war on terror". The UK government says it will not support any future search and rescue operations to prevent migrants and refugees drowning in the Mediterranean, claiming that saving people "encourages more people to attempt the dangerous sea crossing". Refugee and rights groups reacted with anger to the news. More than 2,500 people have drowned or gone missing in the Mediterranean since the start of the year. The British journalist John Cantlie, who is being held hostage by Islamic State (ISIS) militants, has appeared in a new video which was apparently shot in the war-torn Syrian town of Kobane. It's the latest in a series of videos featuring the 43-year-old reporter, who was seized in late 2012. Christians in the Iraqi city of Mosul are fleeing to safety in Jordan in ever larger numbers. At least 4,000 Iraqi Christians from Mosul have fled the country in the past three months, and their flight is part of a larger exodus of Christians leaving areas in the Middle East where religious intolerance is on the rise. It took the UK government 12 long years to deport the radical Islamic preacher Abu Qatada back to his native Jordan, where he faced terrorism-related charges. He was recently acquitted, in what the UK says was a fair trial, but because evidence allegedly obtained under torture was permitted in court, it's a hollow victory for Britain. Thousands of members of Ethiopia’s largest ethnic group, the Oromo, are being ruthlessly targeted by the state based solely on their perceived opposition to the government, Amnesty International said today. The report details how Oromos are subjected to arbitrary arrest, prolonged detention without charge, enforced disappearances, torture and even unlawful state killings - all as part of the government’s "incessant attempts to crush dissent". Egypt's media have pledged to limit their criticism of state institutions, just a day after the country's president warned of a "conspiracy" behind a militant attack last week in the Sinai peninsula which killed at least 31 soldiers. North Korea may allow a UN human rights inspector to visit the country. The move comes after a harrowing UN report was released earlier this year alleging that widespread and systematic crimes against humanity are being committed inside the reclusive state. Executions have surged in Iran and oppressive conditions for women in the country have worsened, a UN investigator has said on the eve of presenting his latest findings to the UN General Assembly. Investigator Ahmed Shaheed also said he was shocked by the execution of Reyhaneh Jabbari at the weekend, who was convicted of killing a man she accused of raping her.