UKRAINE: Take into custody of historian do research activities

Historian Russian Ability has been arrested by the security service of Ukraine, SBU, allegedly based on his research in the Ukrainian Insurgent Army and the Ukrainian independence movement in 1940 and 1950, the Kyiv Post reported 17 September.

Ability, head of the National Memorial Museum of Victims of the occupation regime, Thurman an Lonskoho Lvov, was arrested on 8 September 2010 and held for 14 hours after his laptop computer and two external hard disks seized .

The SBU says Ability illegally gathered state secrets with the intent to distribute.

More than 100 academics from around the world have signed a petition in favor of releasing Ability, and expressing their concern about access to information on the higher education system of Ukraine.

The petition states that "if we share views Russian Ability or not, consider it absolutely inadmissible for a security service to harass and obstruct investigators intellectual activities ... we believe Dispute depends on academic free flow of ideas and free access to historical sources, however controversial it may be. "

In the last years of his presidency Victor Yushchenko decreed that secret documents in the archives of Ukraine, which fell under the jurisdiction of the security services will be declassified.

There are concerns that access to archives has come to a standstill under the leadership of the current president, Viktor Yanukovych.

"A free society requires an honest conversation about his past, which is only possible when you allow access to files," said Timothy Snyder, renowned professor of history at Yale University with extensive experience in Europe East.

Iran: Jailed student leader releases letter of appeal

Abdullah Moment a letter, detained political activist and spokesman for the Student Alumni Organization and ADVAR-Tahoka has been sent to the supreme leader Ayatollah Khomeini, which recounts the torture and forced confessions, Radio Yamane reported on September 9.

The letter, published by the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, describing torture and forced confessions Moment faced before being forced to appear on the 'trials' in summer 2010.

In his letter Abdullah Moment describes "heavy beatings and suffocation by interrogators to knock", "solitary confinement for 86 days in a 1.6 × 2.2 meters (4.8 × 6.6 feet) cell cells "and" repeatedly threatened with execution be eminent. "

He also referred to the denial of legal representation and lack of independence of their judge.

Moment was arrested on 20 June 2009, during unrest after the disputed presidential election in June and is currently serving a sentence of four years imprisonment in Even Prison.

The reformist opposition has repeatedly denounced the trial show confessions were forced due to torture. The Iranian authorities deny this accusation.

Moment argues that the motivation for writing this letter stamp of approval came from Khomeini gave "confessions of the accused before the camera and millions of viewers." Moment stressed: "We still keep my beliefs before being arrested, and as I said I do not think I've read statements to the court under pressure as mine."