The Michigan chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-MI) announced Friday the filing of a lawsuit against three US agencies over the repeated detention and questioning of Muslims about their religious beliefs and practices by federal agents at the US-Canada border. CAIR-MI filed the lawsuit in the US District Court for the Eastern District [...]
Four independent UN human rights experts on Friday called for the immediate release of Bahraini human rights defender Abdulhadi Al-Khawaja, who is serving a life sentence for terrorism-related charges after being tried before the Bahrain military National Safety Court in June 2011. Special Rapporteur on human rights defenders Margaret Sekaggya expressed concern that Al-Khawaja’s trial [...]
The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit on Wednesday struck down parts of a federal statute that prohibit public broadcasters from transmitting public issue and political advertisements. The suit was brought by the Minority Television Project on behalf of its public television station KMTP against the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) after the FCC [...]
UN Special Rapporteur on human rights and counterterrorism Ben Emmerson on Thursday expressed regret over a US court decision denying Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests by a member of the UK parliament and the UK All-Party Parliamentary Group on Extraordinary Rendition . Earlier this month the US District Court for the District of Columbia [...]
JURIST Guest Columnists Viviana Giacaman and Elsa Peraldí of Freedom House argue that the proposed constitutional amendment to federalize crimes against journalists in Mexico is an important and timely step, but more must still be done…
The Pakistani Parliament on Thursday approved recommendations for redefining the government’s relationship with the US and NATO, including calling for an end to CIA drone strikes. The new plan comes in response to the incidental drone strike that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers in November. The 14-point resolution covers everything from Pakistan’s nuclear program to the [...]
Arizona Governor Jan Brewer signed a bill on Friday that bans abortions after 20 weeks into a pregnancy unless there is a medical emergency. The bill imposes other restrictions such as requiring women seeking an abortion to receive an ultrasound 24 hours before an abortion, as opposed to the one-hour requirement which is currently the [...]
The Egyptian parliament on Thursday passed a bill preventing those who were high officials under former president Hosni Mubarak from running for president. The law bars candidacy for 10 years for anyone who held a rank of party leader or higher during Mubarak’s tenure as president. The law must still be ratified by the country’s [...]
The Supreme Court of the Netherlands ruled Friday that the relatives of Bosnian men murdered by Serbian forces in 1995 cannot sue the UN for failing to protect them during the massacres. The ruling essentially held that the UN is immune from prosecution in Dutch courts. The group bringing the lawsuit, known as the Mothers [...]
JURIST Guest Columnist Dmytro Vorobey is an LL.M. Candidate at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, and has interned at the district prosecutor’s office and the district court in Novomoskovk, Ukraine. Here Vorobey provides a critique of Ukraine’s progress towards implementing consistent international arbitration practices… In light of a recent changes in Ukrainian law, [...]
