Sadakat Kadri

On 16 October 1859, a white anti-slavery agitator called John Brown led 21 followers in a raid on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia. A previous expedition against a Kansas slave-owning settlement had ended in five deaths, but Brown had far grander hopes for his new enterprise – to start an insurrection across the South. The plan was as optimistic as its execution was...

The anger may have subsided on the streets as hoodies, gangstas and other members of Kenneth Clarke’s ‘feral underclass’ retreated into the shadows after last month’s riots, but it soon burst out in courtrooms across England. The most egregious instance was the judge at Chester who gave two men without criminal records four-year prison terms for trying (and failing) to...

The misfortunes suffered by Muammar Gaddafi in Sirte on 20 October unfolded in a succession of confused online updates. A report of his capture in a firefight rapidly mutated into claims that crossfire somehow killed him as he was sped to hospital, or that his own bodyguards had shot him in the back. The fog of war was then pierced – or, more accurately, lit up – by a series of...

The scandals that have engulfed News International over the past year have given us many memorable moments, but Rupert and James Murdoch’s appearance before the Culture, Media and Sport Committee of the House of Commons last July is first among them. While James cut a predictably bitter figure, his octogenarian father could hardly have seemed less like his ruthless public persona. The...

In a case recently heard in the High Court the lead applicant, an Iraqi arrested by British forces based in Basra on 16 November 2006, offered a statement that was summarised as follows:

[The soldiers who arrested him] beat him severely, slammed him against a wall and forced him into a stress position in which they stood on his knees and back. His 11-month-old son’s arm was stamped on...