Jailed Afghan rape victim freed with no pre-conditions

Lawyer Kimberly Motley says this was clarified personally to her by President Hamid Karzai's office.

Mr Karzai pardoned the woman, named as Gulnaz, earlier this week, but some reports had said this was on condition that she married her attacker.

Gulnaz gave birth in jail to a daughter who has been kept with her.

On Friday, Ms Kimberly said that 21-year-old Gulnaz would be released with no pre-conditions and would then be free to marry whomever she chooses.

"She doesn't have plans for the future, she just wants to get out [of prison]," the lawyer said.

She added that Gulnaz had a "safe place" to go after her expected release.

The case has drawn international attention to the plight of many Afghan women 10 years after the overthrow of the Taliban.

Human rights groups say hundreds of women in Afghan jails are victims of rape or domestic violence.

Gulnaz earlier said that after she was raped in 2009 she was charged with adultery.

"At first my sentence was two years," she said. "When I appealed it became 12 years. I didn't do anything. Why should I be sentenced for so long?"

The most recent appeal saw her sentence reduced to three years before the presidential pardoning.

Hillary Clinton Burma visit: Suu Kyi hopeful on reforms

She welcomed reforms that have enabled her party to stand in elections, but said more needed to be done and called for political prisoners to be freed.

The democracy leader held a morning of talks with Mrs Clinton, the most senior US official to visit Burma in 50 years.

They promised to work together to promote democracy in Burma.

"I am very confident that if we work together... there will be no turning back from the road to democracy," said Ms Suu Kyi after the talks.

But she added that the country was "not on that road yet".Mrs Clinton told the BBC she had followed Aung San Suu Kyi over the years and it had been an honour to meet the pro-democracy leader.

"It was like seeing a friend you hadn't seen for a very long time even though it was our first meeting," she said.

"It was incredibly emotional and gratifying to see her free from the many years of house arrest."

She said Ms Suu Kyi was wise to take advantage of the signs of change in Burma but that continuing actions were needed from the Burmese authorities.

"There has to be a momentum behind reform and we're waiting and watching for that," said Mrs Clinton.

The Burmese government continues to hold hundreds of political prisoners and the country is still plagued by ethnic conflicts.

The US maintains tight sanctions on senior leaders in Burma, which was ruled by a brutal military junta from 1962 until 2010.

The army handed power to a civilian government last year, but the military's primacy is entrenched in the country's constitution.

However, the government has implemented a series of reforms.

It freed Ms Suu Kyi from detention and allowed to her take up a role in public life.

The reforms led to speculation that decades of isolation could be about to end.

Mrs Clinton and Ms Suu Kyi had a private dinner in Rangoon on Thursday.

They met again on Friday at Ms Suu Kyi's Rangoon home, where the Nobel Peace Prize winner was held under house arrest for many years.

'New chapter'

Ms Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy recently re-registered as a political party, and she is expected to stand for parliament in forthcoming by-elections.

The NLD won a landslide election victory in 1990, but the junta refused to recognise the result and the party was never allowed to take power.

Ms Suu Kyi spent much of the next 20 years in detention.

On Thursday, Mrs Clinton met President Thein Sein, a former general and top leader of the previous regime.he pair discussed upgrading diplomatic ties, and the US said it would support some modest changes in Burma's relationship with the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

But the US stopped short of easing sanctions on Burma, linking their removal to further progress on reform.

Thein Sein hailed a "new chapter" in relations with the US.

Mrs Clinton is the first secretary of state to visit Burma since John Foster Dulles in 1955.

After her talks with Ms Suu Kyi, she met members of Burma's ethnic communities and leaders of the country's developing civil society groups. She will fly out of Burma later in the day.

The visit comes weeks after President Obama toured Asia and made a series of announcements bolstering American commitments in the region.

African 2012 Olympic qualifying places at stake

Morocco take on Senegal in Tangiers at the same time as Nigeria play Algeria in Marrakesh.

A draw will be enough to take Morocco into the last four, but the other teams face some complicated mathematics.

The top three teams at the competition qualify for the Olympics while the fourth-placed side faces a play-off.Morocco coach Pim Verbeek says that he will not be playing for a draw.

"The best teams in the world can't play for a point and you have to play your own way," he told BBC Sport.

"It's only when you have ten minutes to play and you think you have no chance to win this game then you should play for a draw and change your tactics or players."

If Nigeria are to have any chance of making progress, they have to win their game and hope Morocco do them a favour and beat Senegal.

Wins for Senegal and Algeria would put them level on six points with Morocco and the head-to-head rule comes in.

If Nigeria and Morocco are victorious then the Nigerians, Senegal and Algeria will be level on three points in the battle for the runners-up spot in the group.

Members of Nigeria's Dream Team are expressing confidence, despite being bottom of the table going into the final round of matches and yet to register a single point.

"Any team that is playing against Nigeria in terms of Africa know the quality of our players - they know they are going into a big game and trying to get a win," striker Stephen Worgu told BBC Sport.

"Their coach must have been psyching them up so the realise the chances they've got and they'll be coming into the game optimisitic and I think it's going to be a battle of two teams wanting everything."

The games in Group B take place on Saturday.

ICC seeks Sudan defence minister arrest over Darfur

Luis Moreno-Ocampo said Abdelrahim Mohamed Hussein was suspected of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in 2003-04.

The Hague-based ICC has already indicted Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir on genocide charges in Darfur.

A senior Sudanese official has dismissed the warrant as "ridiculous".

Rabbie Abdal Attie told the BBC the ICC was a "tool of the West" and was trying to destabilise Sudan but that the warrant would not affect the country.

In another development, Kenya and Sudan have resolved their diplomatic row triggered by a Kenyan court issuing its own warrant for President Bashir after he was allowed to visit Nairobi in August in defiance of the ICC request.

'Pattern' of attacks

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We have voiced concerns about the manner in which the ICC has been pursuing African leaders”

Moses WetangulaKenyan Foreign Minister

The latest warrant request was made by Mr Moreno-Ocampo's office in a statement on Friday.

It asked the ICC "to issue an arrest warrant against the current Sudanese Defence Minister Abdelrahim Mohamed Hussein for crimes against humanity and war crimes committed in Darfur from August 2003 to March 2004".

The statement added that Mr Hussein was among those who "bear greatest criminal responsibility" for atrocities in Darfur.

At the time, Mr Hussein was both Sudan's interior minister and its representative in Darfur.

Mr Moreno-Ocampo said he was requesting the warrant now "to encourage further public focus" on Sudan's policy and actions, and to "promote cooperation" to arrest the three Sudanese officials the ICC has already indicted.Together with President Bashir, the court has also indicted another former Interior Minister Ahmad Muhammad Harun and Ali Muhammad Ali Abd-Al-Rahman, a suspected leader of the Janjaweed militia, over alleged atrocities in Darfur.

The ICC says that Mr Harun reported directly to Mr Hussein.

They all deny the charges and refuse to surrender to the ICC.

The mainly Arab Janjaweed militia is accused of carrying out a policy of ethnic cleansing and genocide against Darfur's black African population after rebels took up arms in 2003, accusing the government of ignoring the region.

According to the ICC, attacks followed a pattern, with Sudan's military surrounding a village, the air force bombing it and then soldiers and Janjaweed fighters going in on foot, killing, raping and looting.

The Hague-based court has also indicted two Darfur rebels, who are accused of attacking African Union peacekeepers in Darfur. The suspects surrendered to the court last year.

Despite the warrant, Mr Bashir has visited several countries, especially in Africa, without being arrested.

After the Kenyan court issued a warrant for Mr Bashir's arrest on Monday, Sudan ordered the expulsion of Kenya's ambassador in Khartoum, and threatened to expel Kenyan peacekeepers from Sudan and not to allow planes flying to Kenya to go through Sudanese airspace.

But on his return from an emergency trip to Khartoum, Kenyan Foreign Minister Moses Wetangula on Friday said relations were now "back to normal" and that no diplomats would be expelled.He said that while the government respected the court, he said he would guarantee that Mr Bashir would not be arrested on Kenyan territory.

Mr Wetangula said Kenya would not withdraw from the ICC but, like other African countries, it was concerned that the court was unfairly targeting the continent.

"We have voiced concerns about the manner in which the ICC has been pursuing African leaders and leaving leaders with much, much heavier responsibility of human rights and murderous actions," he said, pointing to the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The African Union has urged the UN Security Council to defer the warrant against Mr Bashir in order to help the search for peace in Darfur.

Mr Moreno-Ocampo is set to be replaced as ICC chief prosecutor by his deputy, Fatou Bensouda, from The Gambia.

She is the only candidate in the 12 December election and is to take up her new duties in June 2012, the ICC says.

Some 2.7 million people have fled their homes since the conflict began in Darfur in 2003, and the UN says about 300,000 have died - many from disease.

Sudan's government says the conflict has killed about 12,000 people and the number of dead has been exaggerated for political reasons.

DR Congo election: Kabila guards 'shot UDPS supporters'

Human Rights Watch says at least four more people were killed during the poll - claims dismissed by the government.

It says LRA rebels killed three people in the north-east of this vast country as they went to vote.

The first official results give Mr Kabila a narrow lead.

With 15% of the votes counted, the election commission says Mr Kabila has 940,000 votes against 912,000 for his main rival, Union for Democracy and Social Progress (UDPS) leader Etienne Tshisekedi.

These results largely come from areas seen as Kabila strongholds.

Election officials also said that their website had been hacked into and false results published there.

The election was marred by widespread logistical problems, as well as the violence and voting in some areas was extended until Thursday to allow voting material to be delivered.

DR Congo is two-thirds the size of Western Europe but has hardly any road or rail links between its major cities, so the UN peacekeeping mission distributed some election equipment by helicopter.

On Wednesday, five African observers said the elections had been "successful", despite opposition calls for the polls to be annulled.