A judge for the US District Court for the District of Columbia on Friday denied a petition for writ of habeas corpus of a Yemeni man currently detained at Guantanamo Bay . Judge Ricardo Urbina held that the government proved by a preponderance of the evidence that Mashour Abdullah Muqbel Alsabri was a part of [...]
A Pakistani anti-terrorism court on Saturday issued a second arrest warrant for former military president Pervez Musharraf for not appearing in court for charges related to the 2007 assassination of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto . Authorities were unable to serve an arrest warrant issued last Saturday because Musharraf is currently living in self-imposed exile [...]
Kenneth Marende, Speaker of the Kenyan National Assembly , ruled Thursday that four nominations made by President Mwai Kibaki had violated the requirement of consultation with the prime minister under the new constitution . In the ruling, Marende found that Kibaki’s nominees to the positions of chief justice, attorney general, director of public prosecutions and [...]
A US military tribunal on Friday sentenced Sudanese Guantanamo Bay detainee Noor Uthman Mohammed to 14 years in prison following a plea agreement in which he admitted to helping al Qaeda and providing material support to terrorism. Mohammed admitted earlier this week to meetings with al Qaeda and acting as a weapons instructor and manager [...]
A jury in the US District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania reached a split decision on Friday in the corruption trial of former Pennsylvania judge Mark Ciavarella, convicting him of 12 counts, including racketeering, money laundering and conspiracy, and acquitting him of 27 counts, including extortion. Ciavarella, a former judge in Pennsylvania’s Luzerne [...]
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Thursday called for an end to violence against protesters in Bahrain, referencing recent attempts to quell protests sweeping across the Middle East and North Africa . Ban said that he is “disturbed by all these violent means of trying to disperse demonstrators, the freedom of expression, freedom of access to [...]
Three Turkish journalists allegedly involved with aiding the Ergenekon coup plot were jailed Friday amid foreign concerns for the treatment of journalists within the country. Members of the Ergenekon plot allegedly planned to assassinate prominent members of Turkey’s Christian and Jewish minority groups, blame Islamic terrorists for the deaths and use this to delegitimize the [...]
A judge for the US District Court for the Eastern District of New York on Thursday sentenced Russell Defreitas, a Guyanese airport cargo handler, to life in prison for conspiring to commit terrorist attacks on John F International Kennedy Airport (JFK) . Defreitas and co-conspirator Abdul Kadir, originally arrested in 2007, were convicted by a [...]
A Chinese appeals court on Friday upheld the conviction of US geologist Xue Feng , sentenced to eight years in prison for committing industrial espionage. The court’s decision was immediately met with expressions of disappointment by US Ambassador to China John Huntsman , who said that the US would ask China to consider an “immediate [...]
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay on Thursday urged Russian officials to reform institutions to protect the rule of law in Russia. Pillay claimed that the Russian people do not trust government institutions, in part because of the ongoing harassment of journalists and human rights activists. She said that the “rule of law, [...]
