Five UK Royal Marines were charged with murder on Sunday in connection with an incident in 2011 in Afghanistan. The charge allegedly arises out of a video that showed marines in an incriminating situation with a wounded member of the Taliban. An independent agency that supervises military prosecutions, the Service Prosecuting Authority , decided to [...]
Three publishing companies on Friday settled an antitrust lawsuit filed by attorneys general of 49 states, the District of Columbia and five US territories and commonwealths, who had accused the nation’s top publishers of a price-fixing conspiracy. The attorneys general brought suit against five publishing companies. Of those companies, Hachette, Harpers Collins and Simon & [...]
US President Barack Obama’s campaign staff and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) on Friday urged the US Supreme Court to reject Ohio’s request for an emergency stay of an injunction against the state’s new early voting regulation. The new regulation would end early voting for everyone except overseas military members three days before election day. [...]
A UN official on Thursday released a report indicating that the government of Iran is torturing human rights activists and threatening the activists’ families with rape or death. In a report to the UN General Assembly UN special rapporteur on human rights in Iran Ahmed Shaheed declared that human rights activists in Iran are being [...]
The Alabama Court of Civil Appeals ruled Friday that an Alabama law defining marriage as between one man and one woman bars a woman from adopting her female partner’s child. The case concerned a woman, Cari Searcy, who married her partner, Kimberly McKeand in California in 2008. The appeals court held unanimously that even though [...]
The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) called on Iran Friday to immediately stop all executions , including 11 planned for Saturday. The OHCHR stated that Iran has failed to provide the accused with due process and fair trials and that the death penalty is not appropriate for certain crimes for [...]
Nigerian government security forces and Islamist militant group Boko Haram have likely both committed crimes against humanity in the conflict between the two groups which began in 2009, Human Rights Watch (HRW) reported Thursday. The report states that Boko Haram attacks have killed more than 1,500 people, primarily police and government forces, Christians, and Muslims [...]
The High Court of Botswana on Friday struck down longstanding local customary laws that prevented women from inheriting their family home. Judge Key Dingake ruled that such laws are not in line with the Botswana constitution , which guarantees gender equality. According to the legal rights group Southern Africa Litigation Centre , which supported the [...]
The Special Court for the Sierra Leone (SCSL) on Friday sentenced four men to prison terms ranging from 18 months to 2 years on contempt charges stemming from allegations of witness tampering. Three of the men were convicted last month after a fourth suspect, Samuel Kargbo, plead guilty and testified for the prosecution. Santigie Borbor [...]
The US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit on Thursday upheld a preliminary injunction against an Ohio state election law adopted in 2006 that discards provisional ballots cast in the wrong precinct. Pursuant to the law, the provisional ballots were rejected even if the error was caused by a poll worker. More than 14,000 [...]
