The Canadian government on Monday deported Rwandan war crimes suspect Leon Mugesera, after a Quebec Superior Court judge ruled that the court did not have jurisdiction to rule on immigration cases. Mugesera, who has been fighting deportation from Canada since 1995, is a former Rwandan politician accused of delivering a speech in 1992 urging fellow [...]
US Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich pleaded guilty Monday to the charge of negligent dereliction of duty, ending the final court-martial resulting from a five-year investigation into the 2005 deaths of 24 Iraqi civilians . Wuterich was charged with voluntary manslaughter, aggravated assault, reckless endangerment, obstruction of justice and dereliction of duty in court-martial proceedings that [...]
The second trial of Spanish Judge Baltasar Garzon began on Tuesday before the Spanish Supreme Court . Garzon has been charged with abusing power by opening an investigation into war crimes allegedly committed under Francisco Franco during the Spanish Civil War. In 2008, Garzon ordered the exhumation of 19 mass graves in Spain in order [...]
The French Senate on Monday passed a bill that outlaws denial of genocide crimes , including the World War I-era killings of more than one million Armenians by Turkish soldiers. The Senate voted 126-86 in favor of the bill, despite a Senate committee rejecting the bill last week and raising constitutionality concerns. The French National [...]
Convicted Serbian war criminal Radovan Stankovic was arrested Saturday in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) after being on the run since May 2007 when he escaped from a Bosnia prison. Stankovic was convicted of multiple war crimes in 2006, including rape, enslavement and torture. International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) prosecutor Serge Brammertz welcomed [...]
The US Supreme Court ruled 7-2 Monday in Reynolds v. United States that the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act (SORNA) does not require pre-act offenders to register before the attorney general validly specifies that the act’s registration provisions apply to them. The attorney general determined in 2007 that all states would have to follow [...]
The Maldives Minister of Foreign Affairs asked the UN Sunday to help them resolve what they are calling a judicial system failure over the detention of senior criminal court Judge Abdulla Mohamed. Mohamed was arrested for corruption in an unprecedented move by the military, following the ruling to release a government critic. The arrest has [...]
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay expressed disappointment Monday that the US government has failed to close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility. President Barack Obama ordered the facility closed by January 2010, but congressional opposition and administrative setbacks prevented the administration from meeting the deadline. In addition, the recently signed National Defense Authorization [...]
The US Supreme Court ruled unanimously Monday in National Meat Association v. Harris that the Federal Meat Inspection Act (FMIA) , which requires observation of animals that are unable to walk for possible disease, preempts a subsequent California law requiring slaughterhouses to “immediately euthanize” on its premises any such animals. The court ruled that the [...]
JURIST Guest Columnist Will Potter, an independent journalist who specializes in the topic of eco-terrorism, says the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act classification of activists as terrorists threatens to end activism, in part to stem corporate profit loss… A recent undercover investigation into one of the nation’s largest egg producers, Sparboe Farms, documented hens mangled in [...]
