Fatou Bensouda of the Gambia, Deputy Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) , will be formally recommended Thursday to succeed Chief Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo when his nine-year term expires next year. Liechtenstein’s UN Ambassador Christian Wenaweser, current president of the Assembly of States Parties (ASP) to the Rome Statute that set up the ICC, [...]
British American Tobacco (BAT) brought legal action in Australia’s High Court on Thursday in response to the country’s new tobacco packaging laws. Two weeks ago, Parliament enacted the Tobacco Plain Packaging Bill , which removes descriptive colors and logos from cigarette boxes and requires a depiction of the negative effects of smoking. The law will [...]
A Tunisian military court on Wednesday convicted former president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in absentia on torture charges. Ben Ali and eight others were found guilty of the torture of 17 military generals in connection with a 1991 coup attempt. Ben Ali was sentenced to five years in prison. This week’s sentence adds to [...]
A team of investigators from the International Criminal Court (ICC) arrived in Libya on Wednesday to begin an inquiry into new allegations of sex crimes committed by loyalists of former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi . Jane O’Toole is leading the ICC investigation into allegations that Gaddafi ordered mass rapes and provided troops with sexual stimulants [...]
Preliminary hearings for former Ukrainian prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko began on Thursday in the appeal of Tymoshenko’s seven-year prison sentence . Tymoshenko was convicted of corruption and abuse of authority while negotiating a gas contract with Russia in 2009, and has been barred from serving public office for three years. Health issues kept Tymoshenko from [...]
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Tuesday filed notice that it intends to appeal an injunction that blocked new graphic warning labels on cigarette packages. In early November, a judge for the US District Court for the District of Columbia temporarily blocked the implementation of graphic image and textual warning labels imposed by the [...]
JURIST Guest Columnist Paul Johnson, Senior Lecturer of Sociology at the University of Surrey, says that the latest ban by Russian authorities on the promotion of homosexuality to minors is only the most recent violation of the European Court of Human Rights ruling on the subject…
The US Supreme Court heard oral arguments in two cases on Wednesday. In Setser v. US , the justices heard arguments on a federal district court’s power to determine whether a federal sentence will be served consecutively or concurrently to an as-yet undischarged state sentence. The petitioner argued that under § 3584 of the Sentencing [...]
The US Senate voted Tuesday to reject an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act for 2012 that would have struck a provision authorizing the president to use “all necessary and appropriate force” to detain individuals suspected of terrorism. The amendment, authored by Senator Mark Udall and proposed by Senator Rand Paul , suggested to [...]
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and Facebook settled on Tuesday regarding Facebook’s practices relating to user privacy. The FTC filed a complaint against Facebook alleging that privacy settings on the site failed to apply to third party sites and applications . Under the settlement agreement Facebook must make users fully aware of all changes in [...]
