The EU Parliament on Thursday approved the adoption of an agreement giving the US access to bank data in order to track the finances of suspected terrorists. Under the agreement, the US can use the Terrorist Finance Tracking Program (TFTP) to access information from the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) , an interbank [...]
The US Department of Justice (DOJ) on Wednesday announced charges against five members of al Qaeda allegedly involved in the New York City subway bomb plot in September 2009. The attempted bombing is thought to be part of a larger plot that included a failed terrorist attack in the UK. The indictment, filed in the [...]
The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit released a partially redacted opinion Wednesday denying habeas corpus relief to Guantanamo Bay detainee Fawzi Khalid Abdullah Fahad Al Odah . In its opinion, the court affirmed the district court’s ruling that there was sufficient evidence against al Odah for him to be considered [...]
A Sudanese terrorism suspect held at Guantanamo Bay pleaded guilty on Wednesday before a military judge to charges of conspiracy and providing material support for terrorism. Ibrahim Ahmed Mahmoud al Qosi admitted that he supported al Qaeda since 1996 in their hostilities against the US, acting as the terrorist group’s cook and accountant in the [...]
The Hamburg Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information announced Wednesday that he has initiated legal proceedings against Facebook for accessing and saving non-users’ personal information. Dr. Johannes Caspar stated the social networking site could be fined tens of thousands of euros for violating Germany’s strict privacy laws . Caspar was alerted that non-users [...]
The Turkish Constitutional Court on Wednesday annulled portions of the government-approved constitutional amendments aimed at limiting the power of the judiciary and bringing the traditionally-secular military and judiciary under government control. The court declined to annul the entire package of amendments, as requested by Turkey’s opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) , and indicated that the [...]
Ingrid Burke, Pitt Law ’11, writes on the detention of Peter Erlinder, law professor and defense counsel at the ICTR, in light of her recent visit to the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda… In a recent piece for JURIST Dateline, I wrote about a visit that I had made to the International Criminal Tribunal for [...]
The Obama administration filed a brief Tuesday asking a federal appeals court to reinstate the offshore drilling ban ordered after the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The filing in the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit argues that the court should allow for the six-month offshore drilling moratorium to be [...]
A complaint was filed with the Dutch prosecutor’s office on Tuesday alleging that three Dutch soldiers, operating as UN peacekeepers, were complicit in the commission of war crimes and genocide during the 1995 Srebrenica massacre , which resulted in the death of 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys. The complaint was filed by the relatives [...]
A group of Chicago citizens on Tuesday filed suit against the city and Mayor Richard Daly claiming the the city’s new gun control ordinance infringes on their constitutional rights. The new ordinance bans gun shops in Chicago and prohibits gun owners from stepping outside their homes, including porches and garages, with a handgun. The complaint, [...]
