The UN Special Rapporteur on torture Juan Mendez last week formally accused the US government of cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment towards Pfc. Bradly Manning , the US soldier held in solitary confinement for nearly a year based on his alleged involvement in WikiLeaks , the largest intelligence leak in US history. In assessing information [...]
The European Court of Justice (ECJ) on Tuesday upheld a lower court decision that a UK subsidiary of Bank Melli Iran (BMI) can be included in a list of entities engaged in nuclear proliferation. A 2007 UN Security Council Resolution requires member states to freeze the assets, funds and economic resources of entities and their [...]
A three-judge panel in Guatemala on Monday sentenced a former military official to 6,060 years in prison for his role in a 1982 massacre in which 201 people were killed. The judges sentenced Pedro Pimentel Rios, a former special forces solider whom the US extradited last July, to 30 years in prison for each of [...]
JURIST Contributing Editor Michael A. Olivas of the University of Houston Law Center says that recent state immigration laws restricting college access for undocumented immigrants are unnecessary and contradict deeply rooted principles of US law…
Paulo Pinheiro, chairperson of the UN-appointed Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Syria, on Monday told the UN Human Right Council in Geneva that the number of people suffering from the intensified violence in Syria is increasing. During the interactive dialogue in Geneva, an updated version of the report of the International Commission of Inquiry [...]
An independent UN human rights expert on Monday called on the government of Myanmar to ensure that human rights are protected . Tomas Ojea Quintana, the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar, presented his report in front of the UN Human Rights Council . In the report, Quintana praised recent [...]
US Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta indicated on Tuesday that a US soldier accused of shooting and killing 16 civilians in Afghanistan could face the death penalty if convicted of the charges. The identity of the US sergeant accused of the shootings has not been released, but the sergeant is alleged to have gone on [...]
Sri Lanka is employing “unlawful detentions” against many of its citizens, Amnesty International (AI) reported Tuesday. The report claims that detainees are subject to torture and even extrajudicial executions, often under laws designed to combat terrorism. AI claims that little has changed since the end of the government’s 26-year civil war with the Liberation Tigers [...]
An Istanbul court on Monday ordered four Turkish journalists to be released from prison while they wait for their trial to resume. Journalists Ahmet Sik, Nedim Sener, Coskun Musluk and Sait Cakir were released , although nine other journalists remain in prison. The journalists were arrested in March 2011 and are accused of being part [...]
The US Department of Justice (DOJ), the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and 49 state attorneys general on Monday filed in federal court a proposed $25 billion settlement agreement with the nation’s five largest mortgage servicers to address mortgage loan servicing and foreclosure abuses. Five consent judgments were filed in the US District [...]
