Yvonne Ridley

By Yvonne Ridley in Kuala Lumpur IT’S OFFICIAL – George W Bush is a war criminal. In what is the first ever conviction of its kind anywhere in the world, the former US President and seven key members of his administration were yesterday (Friday) found guilty of war crimes. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and their legal [...]

There are a number of men being held without charge or trial in Britain’s own version of Guantanamo Bay. And while David Cameron’s government is willing to condemn the existence of this boil on the face of human rights in occupied Cuba, it remains silent about those being held in Wiltshire’s Long Lartin prison. Most of them [...]

As the news of Osama bin Laden’s death filtered out onto the streets of America it triggered unsightly scenes of undiluted hysteria, chest-thumping and back-slapping which has sadly become a trademark of the vengeful ‘hang’em high’ lobby that emerged from the rubble of 9/11. And just like George W Bush did on that horrific day [...]

Faces of young men stared back at me from family portraits proudly hung in the central square Benghazi and what struck me was how young they were. Just a few weeks ago I stood on a public platform and vigorously slammed proposals for Western military intervention in Libya. The hasty scramble by the Americans, French [...]

Welcome to Tora Land, declares the headline on a magazine rack which caught my eye as I was swept along in the rush hour inside Cairo’s chaotic train station. The bold declaration on the glossy front page confirms two things. The first is that Egyptians have a great sense of humour and the second is [...]

Something really wonderful happened outside the Tunisian Embassy in London the other day as a crowd of us gathered to continue the demand for justice in the people’s revolution. I was standing next to a woman, and, with tears in her eyes she revealed she had been inside the embassy that morning to get passports [...]

He might still be living in the lap of luxury, but make no mistake Tunisia’s former President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali and his family are prisoners. Like birds in a guilded cage, they are languishing in a palace in one of the most exclusive districts of Jeddah but the truth is Ben Ali and his equally [...]

Political opportunist Nicolas Sarkozy forgot three fundamental lessons when he decided to denounce the burka. The first one is that men should stay well clear of becoming embroiled in expressing opinions on women’s clothes, unless of course you happen to be called Lacroix, Gaultier, Lagerfeld or Ghesquiere. This was a lesson learned the hard way by [...]

Long before I became a Muslim, the North African country of Tunisia used to evoke two images in my mind … a sunny holiday destination for drunken chavs* and a temporary home base for Palestinian leader-in-exile, Yassir Arafat. I don’t suppose you could imagine two more different images than soccer-mad, binge-drinking Westerners and the revolutionary PLO [...]

I used to look at veiled women as quiet, oppressed creatures — until I was captured by the Taliban. In September 2001, just 15 days after the terrorist attacks on the United States, I snuck into Afghanistan, clad in a head-to-toe blue burqa, intending to write a newspaper account of life under the repressive regime. [...]