Although forever identified with Algeria and its former colonial ruler France, Henri Alleg was originally a Londoner, his Russian Jewish grandparents having fled the poverty and pogroms of the 19th century to install themselves in the East End.

The disgraced Chinese politician and former rising star of the Communist Party, Bo Xilai, was finally charged with corruption today in what is shaping up to be China’s trial of the century.

Gyula Horn was the last Communist Foreign Minister of Hungary, who started opening the Iron Curtain. On 27 June 1989 he joined Alois Mock, the Austrian Foreign Minister, to pull down a section of the barbed wire dividing their countries. During the following months thousands of East Germans used the route to emigrate to Austria and West Germany. It was the beginning of the end for East German Communism. In Hungary Horn is better known for a massive austerity programme when he was Prime Minister in 1995. The package sparked massive opposition.

Former IMF chief, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, delivers confident lecture two years after claims he sexually assaulted maid

Remote village in China becomes scene of bloodiest unrest since 2009

Authorities in central China executed a former Communist Party official for raping 11 underage girls, state media said today, following an online uproar about the latest case of abuse of power.

Conspiracy theories swirled around then premier Giulio Andreotti - who died earlier this year - for opposing any sort of negotiation with the kidnappers

As a student at Cornell he was a leader in the youth wing of the Communist Party of the USA

The Public Accounts Select Committee members are the Reservoir Dogs of Parliament. It’s not just their capacity to terrorise, but the black humour they use for light relief as they hunt down the multibillion-pound stashes of public money absorbed by government departments.

Mikhail Gorbachev, the last President of the Soviet Union, has been admitted to the Kremlin hospital in Moscow for tests, amid growing concern over his health.

'A regrettable tragedy that could have been avoided,' he later said of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre

The families of protesters killed during the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown in Beijing have written an open letter strongly criticising the new leadership of Xi Jinping for failing to introduce political reforms.

The mother deserves space, sympathy and a second-chance. The state deserves scrutiny