A collection of human rights groups and free-press advocates issued a joint statement Tuesday calling for the release of a journalist and three others who have been detained in Somalia following one woman’s claim of rape by government security forces. Amnesty International (AI), Human Rights Watch (HRW) and the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) joined [...]
US Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta on Thursday announced plans to permit women in the US military to serve in front-line combat units. This is a significant change to the Department of Defense (DOD) 1994 direct ground combat definition and assignment rule that prohibits women from these serving in these roles. Panetta said that in [...]
Judge Harry Leinenweber of the US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois on Thursday issued a 35-year prison sentence to David Coleman Headley for his role in the 2008 terror attacks in Mumbai, India . Headley, a US citizen of Pakistani descent, facilitated the attack by conducting scouting missions in Mumbai for the [...]
JURIST Guest Columnists Richard Dicker and Elizabeth Evenson of the Human Rights Watch argue that the efficacy of the International Criminal Court depends upon international efforts to apprehend criminals… The International Criminal Court (ICC) has been in business for a decade and faces plenty of hurdles in delivering justice for the world’s worst atrocities. However, [...]
JURIST Guest Columnist Beverley Baines of the Queen’s University Faculty of Law says that the new framework forged by the Supreme Court of Canada in the recent niqab ban case, R. v. N.S., weakens the protections offered to niqab-wearing women…
UN Special Rapporteur on human rights and counterterrorism Ben Emmerson announced on Thursday that he will begin investigating the legality of the use of drone strikes. Emmerson said that after asking the US to allow an independent investigation of its use of targeted killings last year, there is still no consensus among the international community [...]
Human Rights Watch (HRW) on Thursday released a report accusing the Washington, DC Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) of failing to effectively respond to, document and investigate claims of sexual assault. The report , titled “Capitol Offense: Police Mishandling of Sexual Assault Cases in the District of Columbia,” is based on a 22-month investigation that found [...]
Police abuse and torture continue to be ongoing issues two years after the start of the Egyptian Revolution , an Egyptian rights group reported this week. In its report, the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR) said that police conduct has not improved since the abuses experienced under former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak . The [...]
A French court on Thursday ordered Twitter to allow for the identification of authors responsible for recent anti-Semitic messages, as well as to establish a mechanism to alert authorities of illegal hate messages. The lawsuit was brought by the Jewish Students’ Union of France (UEJF) last October after a series of anti-Semitic and racist tweets [...]
UN Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association Maina Kiai on Wednesday urged the UK to review certain legal and policing policies that negatively affect the right to peaceably assemble. The statement came at the end of a 10-day visit to the UK where Kiai visited with senior officials [...]
