Iranian opposition leader Mahdi Karroubi on Monday publicly invited the government to put him on trial for the civil unrest and violence that erupted in the wake of the hotly disputed 2009 re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad . Karroubi said his only request is that the trial be open and fair, a challenge that could [...]
Liberal Russian political activist and former deputy prime minister Boris Nemtsov was sentenced Sunday to 15 days in jail for his part in an unauthorized protest march in Moscow on December 31. Nemtsov, leader of the opposition group Solidarity , and an outspoken critic of Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin , was arrested alongside about [...]
The Obama administration has filed a motion with the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit to delay the briefing schedule in US v. Log Cabin Republicans, a case regarding the constitutionality of the military’s “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” (DADT) policy . The government asked Wednesday for a 90-day delay in the briefing schedule [...]
Iranian chief prosecutor Abbas Jafari-Dolatabadi delivered a speech at Tehran University on Friday indicating that he would prosecute opposition leaders for political unrest that took place after the country’s 2009 presidential election . Dolatabadi threatened to prosecute former presidential candidates Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mahdi Karroubi and former Iranian president Mohammad Khatami . Mousavi and [...]
The Yemeni Parliament on Saturday agreed in principle to adopt a constitutional amendment that will abolish presidential term limits. Currently, the Yemeni constitution permits the president to sit for a maximum of two consecutive seven-year terms, but the draft amendment would shorten the term length to five years and eliminate the two-term cap. The measure [...]
Lawyers for jailed former Russian oil executive Mikhail Khodorkovsky and his business partner, Platon Lebedev , filed an appeal Friday challenging their six-year extended sentences for embezzlement and fraud. Unless the appeal succeeds, Khodorkovsky and Lebedev are expected to remain imprisoned through 2017 after being convicted and sentenced last week in the Khamovinchesky District Court [...]
Officials from the United Nations on Friday warned supporters of ousted Ivory Coast president Laurent Gbagbo not to attack the Golf Hotel, where UN peacekeeping forces now stand guard over president-elect Alassane Ouattara . Y.J. Choi, head of the UN Ivory Coast Operation (UNOCI) , said Gbagbo’s supporters “Cannot possibly take the Golf Hotel. We [...]
The Washington Supreme Court ruled 7-2 on Thursday that holding death row inmates in solitary confinement indefinitely is not an impermissible increase in the severity of punishment. The suit was initiated by Jonathan Gentry, who was sentenced to death in 1991 for the rape and murder of a 12-year-old girl and is the longest serving [...]
The state of Texas filed a petition Thursday in the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit asking the court to overturn rules limiting greenhouse gas emissions set to go into effect January 2. The petition challenges the legality of a rule enacted Thursday by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) partially reversing its approval [...]
The Bangkok Criminal Court sentenced 84 members of Thailand’s People’s Alliance for Democracy Network (PAD) , known as the “yellow shirt” movement, to between six and 30 months in prison Thursday for their roles in a 2008 invasion of a Thai television station. The convictions are among the first handed down to yellow shirts, though [...]
