An Indian court in Ahmedabad, Gujarat's main city, on Aug. 29 convicted 32 individuals for their roles in the deaths of 95 people during the 2002 Gujarat riots. Among the convicted was Maya Kodnani, the minister of education and child welfare in the Gujarat government, who was arrested in 2009 on charges of murder and criminal conspiracy. She resigned from her office when she was arrested but remained as the member of the state's legislative assembly. The riots began following the death of 60 Hindus in a fire aboard a train for which Muslims were blamed. The riots resulted in death of more than 2,000 people, mostly Muslims. With the conviction, the court acquitted 29 other defendants. The court is expected to announce the sentences imminently.

A judge for the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia on Aug. 28 awarded $21 million to seven Somalis in a lawsuit against former Somali prime minister  Mohamed Ali Samantar. The lawsuit, which started in 2004 and made it all the way to the US Supreme Court, alleges Samantar was responsible for the killing and torture of members of the Isaaq clan in Somalia throughout the 1980s under former dictator Siad Barre. The Somalis bringing the lawsuit, some of whom fled to the US and some of whom stayed in Somalia, were represented by the Center for Justice and Accountability. They claim to have been subjected to torture or potential executions at the hands of the Barre regime and brought the lawsuit under the Torture Victim Protection Act of 1991. The judgement included $2 million in punitive damages and $1 million in compensatory damages to the individual plaintiffs. Samantar's lawyers say they will appeal the ruling. The question of whether Samantar was improperly denied immunity is already on appeal.

Japan's Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda on Aug. 24 signed a resolution describing South Korea's control of islands in the Sea of Japan as an "illegal occupation." The resolution also calls for South Korean President Lee Myung-Bak to apologize and renounce comments he made during an Aug. 15 surprise visit to the disputed island territory. These comments included a request for Japan's Emperor Akihito to apologize for the nation's occupation of the Korean penninsula during World War II. The disputed islands, known as Takeshima in Japan and Dokdo in South Korea, are believed to contain valuable natural gas deposits. Noda has threatened to refuse to meet with Myung-Bak at the of the Asia- Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Vladivostok set for September.

Egypt President Mohammed Morsi issued a new law on Aug. 23 that bans pre-trial detentions of journalists for speaking out against the government. The new law, the first decree Morsi has issued since he granted himself executive and legislative powers last week, ends the Mubarak-era practice of jailing journalists who commit so-called "publication offenses" which include "offending the president of the republic." Morsi announced this new law in the wake of the arrest and detention of opposition newspaper editor Islam Afifi on charges of publishing false information about Morsi. Egyptian security officials confirmed that Afifi has been released from detention. Afifi, the editor of the newspaper El Dustour has been criticized by Islamists for allegedly making inflammatory statements against the Muslim Brotherhood. Morsi issued the law just hours after a court in Cairo convicted Afifi, sparking outrage amongst activists calling for freedom of the press.

The US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit on Aug. 24 upheld the life sentence imposed on a former Osama bin Laden aide after he stabbed a prison guard in the eye in 2000. Mamdouh Mahmud Salim, 54, is a Sudanese-born Iraqi who at the time of the stabbing was awaiting trial in a conspiracy case that included the 1998 attack on US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. In 2002 Salim pleaded guilty to attempted murder of and conspiracy to murder a federal official after he stabbed Louis Pepe, a guard at the federal jail in lower Manhattan, with a plastic comb in November 2000. Salim appealed his sentence primarily on the ground that his right to be physically present at the sentencing hearing was violated when he attended by videoconference. The court ruled that the US District Court for the Southern District of New York erred in finding that the government had met its burden of proving that Salim had waived his right to be present at the hearing, but under plain error review found that Salim was not prejudiced by the error. The court also rejected Salim's arguments that the life sentence was unreasonable.

A panel of UN human rights experts on Aug. 21 urged Chile to make sure that people who have been convicted of enforced disappearances all serve their sentences. The UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances (WGEID) stated that while Chile has made great strides since it transitioned to democracy, many challenges remain. While the WGEID praised Chile for combating human rights violations in recent years, it stated that Chile needs to do more to ensure that justice is served:

The International Criminal Court on Aug. 17 received requests to investigate Rwandan President Paul Kagame for backing armed rebels in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Rwandan and Congolese advocacy groups opposed to Kagame's rule have alleged that the Rwandan leader is guilty of war crimes for helping to create and arm rebel groups in eastern DRC including M23, which has been conducting a mutiny in North Kivu province under the leadership of a particularly notorious group of human rights violators. The calls for an ICC investigation follow the release of a UN report last month detailing investigations since late 2011 that revealed substantial evidence that the Rwandan government helped create the rebel groups and supplied them with weapons, armor and recruits, including children. In June UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay estimated that the armed conflict between the DRC government and the M23 movement has displaced around 218,000 people from their homes since April, specifically mentioning five M23 leaders and describing them as the "worst perpetrators of human rights violations in the DRC, or in the world for that matter."

The controversial trial of three members of the Russian feminist activist group Pussy Riot ended Aug. 17 with the announcement of a guilty verdict and two-year prison sentence for each of the three women. The Khamovnichesky District Court of Moscow found Pussy Riot members Natalia Tolokonnikova, Maria Alyokhina and Yekaterina Samutsevich guilty of "hooliganism" characterized by the court as driven by religious hatred. The three women were tried for their "guerilla performance" of a protest song in February at the altar of downtown Moscow's Christ the Savior Cathedral, a space maintained to be sacred to the Russian Orthodox Church. Defense counsel for the women lambasted the prosecution and reiterated their intent to appeal to the European Court of Human Rights both the verdict and alleged rights violations that have occurred throughout the trial.