Malaysia’s government on Wednesday released 125 prisoners who were being held under a decades-old security law that has been widely criticized by human rights and opposition groups. In an address to Parliament earlier this week, Prime Minister Najib Razak announced the release of all individuals being held under the Restricted Residence Act of 1933 , [...]
A Bahrain civilian-military court on Wednesday sentenced 19 more protesters to prison terms of up to five years, bringing the total number of protesters sentenced this week to 85. The court sentenced 13 protesters to five years in prison and six people to one year for their participation in protests seeking greater rights for the [...]
German prosecutors intend to reopen hundreds of investigations involving former Nazi death camp guards, according to Wednesday reports. This initiative results from the conviction of John Demjanjuk , a retired US autoworker who served as a guard at a camp in Poland in 1943 and was deported to Germany in 2009 in order to stand [...]
The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit on Tuesday upheld the constitutionality of gun laws containing certain registration requirements and laws prohibiting the ownership of assault weapons and large-capacity magazines. The laws at issue represented a part of the Firearms Registration Amendment Act of 2008 (FRA) , which the district adopted [...]
A judge for the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia on Tuesday sentenced a pair of Somali men to life in prison for their involvement in the hijacking of a yacht that resulted in the deaths of four American citizens. This followed another pair of pirates’ sentencing the day before, with a [...]
The US Supreme Court heard oral arguments in three cases on Tuesday. In Maples v. Thomas , the court considered a death penalty appeal where Cory Maples missed his ability to appeal his sentence due to a clerk’s error. An Alabama trial court had dismissed Maples’ petition for post-conviction relief and sent notice of this [...]
JURIST Guest Columnists Micah Berman of New England Law | Boston, Kathleen Dachille of the University of Maryland School of Law, and Julie Ralston Aoki of William Mitchell College of Law say that the opinion in Sorrell v. IMS Health Inc., while troubling, will have minimal impact on well-drafted public health legislation…
Jury selection began on Tuesday for terror suspect Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab , the Nigerian accused of attempting to bring down a Northwest Airlines flight from Amsterdam to Detroit with a bomb in his underwear on Christmas Day, 2009. Abdulmutallab will stand trial for eight felony charges and may face life in prison if he is [...]
Several new US state election laws that become effective in 2012 may make it harder for some qualified voters to cast their ballots, according to a report released Monday by the Brennan Center for Justice . The report indicates that as many as five million voters may be affected by the changes and may find [...]
The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) on Tuesday called on authorities to end the hate speech and discrimination against the Roma migrants in Bulgaria. The UN human rights office expressed deep concern over the violence and discrimination accompanying the anti-Roma demonstrations. The demonstrations began when a Bulgarian youth was run [...]
