UN Special Rapporteur Maina Kiai on Thursday called on the international community to protect the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and association . In a report to the UN Human Rights Council , he provided several recommendations for improving the situation of countries that infringe upon the rights in question. He found that a [...]
A spokesperson for the Libyan government told reporters this week that the government has begun interrogations of the International Criminal Court (ICC) staff members detained in Libya. The Libyan government maintains that they have evidence some of the ICC staff may have broken the law . Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr visited Libya on Monday [...]
A five-judge panel for the West Jakarta district court in Jakarta, Indonesia, on Thursday sentenced Umar Patek to 20 years in prison for his role in several terrorist plots including the Jakarta church bombings in 2000 and the 2002 Bali nightclub bombing . Patek was found guilty of all charges for his participation in the [...]
The US Supreme Court on Thursday ruled unanimously that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) indecency guidelines were too vague to be properly enforced. The case, Federal Communications Commission v. Fox Television Stations, Inc. , hinges on indecency issues raised in two separate broadcasts: one in which a deliberate nudity scene appeared in a television crime [...]
The US Supreme Court ruled 5-4 Thursday that the Fair Sentencing Act (FSA) , which reduces minimum sentences for crack-cocaine convictions, applies to defendants who were sentenced after the act was in place, even if they were arrested before the act took effect. In the combined cases of Dorsey v. United States and Hill v. [...]
The US Department of Justice (DOJ) on Wednesday filed a memorandum on behalf of the Obama administration rejecting a request to reveal information about the targeted killing program against suspected terrorists and US citizens abroad. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a lawsuit on February under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) demanding the [...]
The International Crimes Tribunal in Bangladesh (ICTB) on Thursday indicted Ali Ahsan Mohammad Mojaheed, secretary general of the Jamaat e Islam (JI) on seven counts of crimes against humanity he allegedly committed during the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War . The panel of three judges read out the charges including genocide, conspiracy in killing intellectuals, murder [...]
The US Supreme Court ruled 6-2 Thursday that unions cannot increase mandatory fees of nonmembers for political expenditures without providing adequate notice and opportunity to object. In Knox v. Service Employees Int’l Union a group of nonunion, public employees in California sued their union, Service Employees International Union (SEIU), for imposing a fee increase for [...]
Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) police on Thursday arrested two former Bosnian Serb soldiers accused of involvement in the 1995 Srebrenica massacre . Ostoja Stanisic and Marko Milosevic were detained near the eastern town of Zvornik, according to the country’s prosecution office . The Special Department for War Crimes, which is responsible for prosecution of war [...]
The US Supreme Court ruled 6-3 Thursday that any fact other than a prior conviction which leads to a sentence greater than the statutory maximum must be submitted to the jury. In Southern Union Co. v. United States , the defendant was convicted under a criminal statute which imposed per diem fines for violations. The [...]
