After U.S. Pushes, U.N. Rights Monitor Ousted
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Under U.S. pressure, the United Nations has eliminated the job of its top investigator on human rights in Afghanistan.
U.S. diplomats pressed the U.N. Commission on Human Rights to end the mandate of Cherif Bassiouni, a Chicago-based law professor who has repeatedly criticized the U.S. military for detaining prisoners without trial and for barring almost all human rights monitors from its prisons in the country.
An American official who asked not to be named said the U.S. had moved to scrap Bassiouni’s job partly because the human rights situation in Afghanistan was no longer troubling enough to require it. The U.N. high commissioner for human rights will now be responsible for monitoring the country.
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