Iraq Interior Minister Jawad al-Bolani told the Associated Press Wednesday that the Iraqi government has ordered approximately 250 former Blackwater employees to leave Iraq by the end of the week. The Iraqi government was reacting to a US federal court's December decision to dismiss charges against five former Blackwater employees accused of killing 17 innocent [...]
JURIST Special Guest Columnist Gail Davidson, Executive Director of Lawyers Rights Watch Canada, says that the Supreme Court of Canada was simply wrong in taking the extraordinary step of denying Canadian Guantanamo detainee Omar Khadr the remedy ordered by the courts below — the only remedy available — based on the arbitrary power of the [...]
Representatives from the African Union/United Nations Hybrid Operation in Darfur (UNAMID) met with members of the Transitional Darfur Regional Authority (TDRA) and the Darfur Compensation Commission Wednesday to discuss the compensation of Darfur conflict victims. UNAMID's mandate calls for the organization to work with state governments to ensure that victims are compensated. The DCC, which [...]
Former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich pleaded not guilty Wednesday to amended corruption charges. Blagojevich entered the plea in response to eight amended charges , including racketeering, attempted extortion, bribery, conspiracy to commit bribery, and conspiracy to commit extortion. Those additional charges allow prosecutors to try Blagojevich without relying on the federal honest services fraud statute [...]
A court in Myanmar on Wednesday convicted rights activist and US citizen Kyaw Zaw Lwin, also known as Nyi Nyi Aung , on charges of fraud and forgery. Aung was sentenced to three years in prison for forging an identity card, and one year each for failing to declare foreign currency and immigration violations, to [...]
The Supreme People's Court of China on Tuesday issued new guidelines for limiting capital punishment in Chinese courts, according to the state-run Xinhua news agency. The guidelines rely on a policy of "justice tempered with mercy" and instruct courts to issue the death penalty only to those who commit "extremely serious" crimes. According to the [...]
The acting head of the UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti said Tuesday that while conditions are currently stable, the Haitian people must turn in the thousands of prisoners that escaped when the January 12 earthquake destroyed prisons and jails. Edmond Mulet called upon the residents of Haiti to turn over to authorities the more than [...]
The Office of Immigration Statistics of the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) released a report Wednesday estimating that the total number of illegal immigrants living in the US fell to 10.8 million during the year ending in January 2009. The DHS calculates the "unauthorized resident population" by subtracting the number of legal permanent residents, [...]
The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled Tuesday that strip searching all incoming inmates does not violate the Fourth Amendment and is necessary to prevent illegal substances from entering prisons. San Francisco Sheriff Michael Hennessey had enacted the policy to strip search new inmates in response the rising amount of drugs and [...]
The England and Wales Court of Appeal on Wednesday ruled that the government must disclose the seven previously withheld paragraphs outlining the alleged torture of former Guantanamo Bay detainee Binyam Mohamed . In rejecting the government's appeal, the court found that, "publication of the redacted paragraphs would not reveal information which would be of interest [...]
