International Criminal Court (ICC) Chief Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda said Friday that attacks on UN peacekeepers in the Darfur region of Sudan may constitute war crimes. A recent attack left seven UN peacekeepers from Tanzania dead and another 17 military and police personnel of the African Union/UN Hybrid Operations in Darfur (UNAMID) wounded. In her statement, [...]
The New Jersey Supreme Court ruled Thursday that police must obtain search warrants before obtaining tracking information from cell phone providers. The unanimous ruling marks the first time a state supreme court has recognized a Fourth Amendment protection for cell phone location data. In the decision, Chief Justice Stuart Rabner noted that cellphone tracking technology [...]
A judge for the US District Court for the Northern District of Georgia on Friday dismissed a lawsuit seeking to scrap a key part of Georgia’s sweeping anti-illegal immigration law. The lawsuit challenges a 2011 statute that gives police the option to investigate the immigration status of certain suspects. Should it be determined that someone [...]
The US Marine Corps on Friday released Sgt. Lawrence Hutchins III after the Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces overturned his murder conviction. In the June 26 decision, the court reversed the Navy-Marine Corps Court of Criminal Appeals (CCA) decision holding that while the attorney-client relationship had been improperly severed, Hutchins was not prejudiced. [...]
Judge Joe Heaton of the US District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma on Friday granted Hobby Lobby a temporary exemption from the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) provision requiring carriers to offer insurance coverage for birth control. Hobby Lobby and its sister company, Mardel, have argued that that having to provide [...]
Russian political activist and lawyer Alexei Navalny was freed from jail on Friday, less than 24 hours after he was sentenced to five years for embezzling 16 million rubles (USD $500,000). Navalny and his co-defendant, Petr Ofitserovon, were freed pending appeal on the condition that they not travel outside Moscow. Widespread protests erupted in several [...]
The International Criminal Court (ICC) on Thursday rejected Libya’s request to suspend the order to hand over Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, the son of the late Muammar Gaddafi. It also ruled that its forum is more appropriate than the Libyan forum because of the accused’s stated preference, genuine fear of bias, and the scope of crimes [...]
Texas Governor Rick Perry signed House Bill number 2 on Thursday, enacting three new restrictions on the practice of abortion. These changes require physicians performing the procedure to have admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles and the facility to meet ambulatory surgical center requirements, and reduces the allowable gestational period from 24 to [...]
More than 1,000 victims of former Chad dictator Hissene Habre filed for civil party status on Thursday, asking the Extraordinary African Chambers of Senegal to offcially recognize them as parties with an interest in the matter. Led by Jacqueline Moudeina , a human rights litigator, nearly 300 applicants claim to be direct victims of Habre, [...]
Bangladeshi prosecutors announced Thursday that they are charging the assistant secretary-general of the largest Islamist political party with six war crimes in the 1971 war of liberation. ATM Azharul Islam was required to report to the International Crimes Tribunal Bangladesh (ICTB) to answer charges of murder, genocide, abduction, torture, rape, looting and arson. Azharul was [...]
