WASHINGTON (Reuters) –
Twelve inmates have been transferred from the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to Afghanistan, Yemen and the breakaway Somali enclave of Somaliland, the U.S. Justice Department said on Sunday.

Six Yemeni and four Afghan detainees were sent over the weekend to their home countries while two Somalis were transferred to regional authorities in Somaliland, an self-governing region within Somalia, the department said.

The transfers are the latest from the controversial prison President Barack Obama has pledged to close next month, but that deadline will likely be missed because of diplomatic and political hurdles.

With the latest moves, there are now 198 prisoners left at Guantanamo. Some of the remaining detainees will likely face trials in U.S. criminal or military courts while others are expected to be transferred abroad.

The transfers to Yemen are likely to revive concerns about moving individuals who were once considered terrorism suspects to a country where U.S. officials believe that al Qaeda elements are active.

Additionally, there have also been concerns about Al Qaeda activities in Somalia. In contrast, the breakaway region of Somaliland has enjoyed relative peace compared to the rest of Somalia since the Horn of Africa nation descended into chaos in 1991.

"These transfers were carried out under individual arrangements between the United States and relevant foreign authorities to ensure the transfers took place under appropriate security measures," the Justice Department said in a statement.

(Reporting by Jeremy Pelofsky, editing by Doina Chiacu)

Division 10 Specialties

Nearly all of the hundreds of houses excavated had their own bathing rooms. Generally located on the ground floor, the bath was made of brick, sometimes with a surrounding curb to sit on. The water drained away through a hole in the floor, down chutes or pottery pipes in the walls, into the municipal drainage system. Even the fastidious Egyptians rarely had special bathrooms.

Although some sources suggest that bathing declined following the collapse of the Roman Empire, this is not completely accurate. It was actually the Middle Ages that saw the beginning of soap production, proof that bathing was definitely not uncommon. It was only after the Renaissance that bathing declined; water was feared as a carrier of disease, and thus sweat baths and heavy perfumes were preferred.

TEHRAN, Iran – After months of denials, Iran acknowledged Saturday that at least three people detained in the country's postelection turmoil were beaten to death by their jailers.
The surprise announcement by the hard-line judiciary confirmed one of the opposition's most devastating and embarrassing claims against authorities and the elite Revolutionary Guard forces that led the crackdown after June's disputed presidential vote.
There was no immediate public reaction from the opposition, but some activists asserted that authorities under pressure over abuse claims were merely seeking to punish low ranking staff while shielding senior level officials who the opposition says are most to blame.
Still, the statement offered some rare vindication for the government's critics, who had rejected earlier explanations from the police and the judiciary that the detainees' deaths were caused by illnesses like meningitis, not physical mistreatment.
"The coroner's office has rejected that meningitis was the cause of the deaths and has confirmed the existence of signs of repeated beatings on the bodies and has declared that the wounds inflicted were the cause of the deaths," the judiciary statement said, according to the Web site of Iran's state TV.
The judiciary also said it has charged 12 officials at Kahrizak prison — three of them with murder, but it did not identify them. The prison, on the southern outskirts of the capital, Tehran, was at the center of the opposition's claims that prisoners were tortured and raped in custody.
Anger over the abuse claims, which emerged in August, extended far beyond the reformist camp, with influential conservative figures in the clerical hierarchy condemning the mistreatment of detainees.
The outrage forced Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to order the immediate closure of the Kahrizak facility.
The opposition says at least 72 protesters were killed in the postelection crackdown, but the government puts the number of confirmed dead at 30.
Authorities initially tried to repel the abuse claims by accusing the opposition of running a campaign of lies against the ruling system. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had even accused Iran's enemies of being involved in the crimes, a claim the opposition rejected as ridiculous.
Iran's police chief, Gen. Ismail Ahmadi Moghaddam, said in August that protesters were beaten by their jailers at Kahrizak, but he maintained at the time that the deaths were not caused by the abuse.
The opposition's criticism was implicitly aimed at the country's most powerful military force, the Revolutionary Guard, which operates with some autonomy from the ruling clerics and led the harsh crackdown and detention of protesters in the tense weeks after the election.
The unrest broke out after pro-reform candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi claimed he was robbed of the presidency through massive fraud in the vote.
Pressure around the abuse claims accelerated in early August.
One of the other pro-reform candidates defeated in the election, Mahdi Karroubi, said then that he had received reports from former military commanders and other senior officials that some detainees, male and female, were raped in custody to the point of physical and mental injury.
It also emerged that one of the detainees who had died in custody was the son of Abdolhossein Rouhalamini, a top aide to conservative presidential candidate Mohsen Rezaei. That was a central factor in raising anger among government supporters.
His son, Mohsen Rouhalamini, was arrested during a July 9 protest and taken two weeks later to a hospital where he died within hours.
Saturday's judiciary announcement named him as one of the three people it had found to be victims of abuse. The other two were identified as Amir Javadi and Mohammad Kamrani.

Further adding to the outcry, prosecutors said this month that a doctor who exposed the torture of jailed protesters died of poisoning from a delivery salad laced with an overdose of blood pressure medication.

Their findings fueled opposition suspicions that he was killed because of what he knew.

The 26-year-old doctor, Ramin Pourandarjani, had testified to a parliamentary committee, reportedly telling them that one of the protesters he treated was the younger Rouhalamini and that he died from severe torture. He said he was also forced by security officials to list the cause of death as meningitis, according to opposition Web sites.

Pourandarjani died on Nov. 10 in mysterious circumstances, and authorities initially gave conflicting explanations, saying he was in a car accident, had a heart attack or committed suicide. Forensic tests later showed that the doctor died of "poisoning by drugs" that matched doses of propranolol found in a salad that was delivered to him, Tehran prosecutor Abbas Jafari Dolatabadi said early this month.

The government's rivals did not immediately respond directly to the judiciary's statement Saturday.

One prominent reformist voice, former President Mohammad Khatami, told an audience of academics in western Iran on Saturday that the use of force against protesters demonstrates the government has little regard for human rights.

"A majority of the people are dissatisfied with the way the country is being administered," his Web site quoted him as saying.

He added that "a considerable portion of society" has objections over the official election results.

"These must be heard. They (people) must be convinced that the elections were really fair. Such convincing can't be achieved through jail, crackdowns and restrictions," Khatami said.

Iran's judiciary has also had a central role in authorities' efforts to silence the opposition. Since August, it has brought to trial more than 100 protesters, activists and pro-reform opposition leaders, accusing them of fueling the protests and being part of a plot to overthrow the government.

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. – A Missouri teenager charged with killing a 9-year-old neighbor cannot get a fair trial in her home county because residents are biased against her, the teen's attorney said.
Alyssa Bustamante, 15, is to be tried in Cole County on charges of first-degree murder and armed criminal action in the Oct. 21 slaying of Elizabeth Olten. But her attorney wants the trial to be moved.
"The inhabitants of this county are so prejudiced against the defendant that a fair trial cannot be had in this county," public defender Jan King wrote in a change of venue motion dated Tuesday.
The Cole County prosecutor's office did not immediately return a phone call Wednesday. But Prosecutor Mark Richardson said last month that he would like Bustamante to be tried in the county seat of Jefferson City, which also is the state capital.
Bustamante has pleaded not guilty to Elizabeth's killing. But authorities say Bustamante confessed in a police interview to slaying Elizabeth because she wanted to know what it felt like to kill someone. They contend Bustamante strangled Elizabeth without provocation, stabbed her and cut her throat.
Hundreds of volunteers participated in a two-day search after Elizabeth disappeared before authorities say Bustamante led them to the fourth-grader's body in a wooded area near St. Martins, where both girls lived. The small town is just west of Jefferson City.
King cited the publicity generated both at the time of the crime and at Bustamante's indictment last month while asking Cole County Circuit Judge Patricia Joyce to transfer the case. He attached copies of online public comments made in response to news stories posted by the Jefferson City News Tribune and the New York Daily News.
Some of those comments refer to Bustamante as a "monster" and "inherently evil" and suggest she should be locked up for life. But it is not clear whether the people posting those comments live in Cole County, from where the jury pool normally would be drawn.
Besides allowing a case to be transferred to another county, Missouri law also allows a case to be tried in the county where the crime occurred with jurors who are brought in from other counties.
"Our belief is that the judge will make a decision that hopefully takes into account the demands upon the witnesses and victim's family," Richardson said last month.