A Spanish Supreme Court judge ruled on Thursday that National Court judge Baltasar Garzon may have exceeded his jurisdictional authority when he launched an investigation into war crimes allegedly committed under Francisco Franco during the Spanish Civil War . In October 2008, Garzon ordered the exhumation of 19 mass graves in Spain, and ordered government [...]
Neil Hicks : "The leaders of the Islamic Republic know well the value of violence and brutality as political control mechanisms. In recent months, the authorities have unleashed random beating of protesters, arbitrary detention and torture, apparently including rape of detainees, running down protesters with motor vehicles, shooting with live ammunition into crowds of unarmed [...]
The Italian Chamber of Deputies approved a bill Wednesday that would allow cabinet ministers, including Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi , to postpone criminal proceedings against them on the grounds that they would interfere with official duties. The legislation, passed by a vote of 316-239 with 40 members abstaining, would allow officials to suspend trials against [...]
The president of China's Supreme People's Court , Wang Shengjun , called Wednesday for increased efforts to fight corruption in the country's court system. While Shengjun noted that progress has been made, he said that efforts must continue to establish a system to prevent and punish instances of corruption in the courts. Chinese courts are [...]
Spokesperson for Iraq's Shi'ite government Ali Al-Dabbagh said Thursday that a decision by an appeals court to allow candidates with suspected ties to the outlawed Baath party to run for office is illegal and unconstitutional. Under Wednesday's decision by the appeals panel of the Iraqi electoral commission, some 500 candidates who were barred from running [...]
US Attorney General Eric Holder on Wednesday defended his decision to charge suspected terrorist Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab , the so-called Christmas Day bomber, in US federal court. Holder, who has resisted calls from high-level Republicans to try Abdulmutallab in front of a military tribunal, said that the civilian criminal justice system was capable of handling [...]
A jury in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York on Wednesday convicted Aafia Siddiqui , a Pakistani woman with alleged ties to al Qaeda, on charges of attempting to murder US personnel at the Afghan facility where she was being held. Prosecutors claimed that while in US custody in Afghanistan, [...]
An Amsterdam trial court ruled Wednesday that it has jurisdiction to try right-wing politician Geert Wilders for statements against Islam. The court rejected Wilders's claim that he should be tried by the Supreme Court as a member of parliament, finding that Wilders's alleged crime was committed outside his capacity as an MP. The court also [...]
Shaista Shameem : "The United Nations Working Group on the use of mercenaries as a means of violating human rights and impeding the exercise of the rights of peoples to self-determination welcomes the decision announced by the US Vice President Joe Biden to appeal a ruling dismissing charges against the five Blackwater guards in connection [...]
A federal appeals court on Tuesday upheld the majority of an injunction against an Oklahoma anti-illegal immigration law, but did permit the state to enact a provision whereby businesses would have to check their employment roster against a state list of eligible workers through a pilot program. The three-judge panel, sitting at the US Court [...]
