Commander of the rebel Mai Mai Cheka Lieutenant Colonel Sadoke Kokunda Mayele was arrested Tuesday by UN peacekeepers and Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) government forces for allegedly leading rebel groups in mass rapes in the DRC. The UN Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUSCO) arrested Mayele under the mandate [...]
The human rights situation in East Timor has continued to improve over the last year, despite the need for further reform, according to a report released Tuesday by the UN Integrated Mission In Timor-Leste (UNMIT) . The report, Facing the Future, chronicles the human rights situation in the country between July 2009 and June 2010. [...]
Canadian military officer Captain Robert Semrau was sentenced Tuesday by a Canadian military judge for the killing of an unarmed Afghan insurgent, avoiding a possible five-year prison sentence. At his sentencing, the judge decided against prison time, but demoted Semrau and ordered him to be discharged from the military within 30 days. Semrau was convicted [...]
Sweden’s international prosecutor Magnus Elving unveiled war crimes charges Tuesday against Swedish citizen and former Bosnian prison guard Ahmet Makitan. Makitan is accused of violating the Geneva Convention on the Treatment of Prisoners of War by kidnapping people and torturing and insulting prisoners at a camp in Dretelj, Bosnia-Herzegovina, during the Balkan War . Twenty-one [...]
A panel of Dutch judges on Tuesday rejected claims of judicial bias, ordering the trial of politician Geert Wilders on charges of making anti-Islamic statements to resume. The panel considered the accusation , but found that language used by Amsterdam District Court Judge Jan Moors on Monday was unobjectionable . Moors had said that Wilders [...]
The US Supreme Court heard oral arguments Tuesday in NASA v. Nelson on informational privacy. The issue is whether the government violates a federal contract employee’s constitutional right to informational privacy when it asks in the course of a background investigation whether the employee has received counseling or treatment for illegal drug use or when [...]
A judge for the US District Court for the Southern District of New York on Tuesday sentenced Pakistani-born US citizen Faisal Shahzad to life in prison for attempting to detonate a car bomb in New York City’s Times Square in May. Judge Miriam Goldman Cedarbaum found that Shahzad did not show any remorse for the [...]
A dispute among the Pakistani judiciary worsened on Monday as more than 1,300 civil judges resigned in protest over the treatment of judges by lawyers and to express solidarity with Lahore District and Sessions Judge Zawar A Sheikh. The resignations come amid nationwide demonstrations by lawyers protesting police treatment of lawyers when members of the [...]
The Bangkok Criminal Court on Tuesday dismissed money laundering and fraud charges against suspected Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout , paving the way for his extradition to the US. The court found that there was insufficient evidence , in addition to other technicalities, to prosecute Bout. The charges were filed by US prosecutors in February [...]
The US Department of Justice (DOJ) on Monday announced the filing of a civil antitrust lawsuit against credit card companies Visa, MasterCard and American Express . The lawsuit, filed in the US District Court for the Eastern District of New York , challenges rules utilized by the companies that prevent merchants from providing discounts and [...]
