Paris prosecutors requested Tuesday that former prime minister Dominique de Villepin receive an 18-month suspended prison sentence and a €45,000 fine for his role in an alleged plot to defame several businessmen including current President Nicolas Sarkozy . Prosecutors claim de Villepin failed to stop the circulation of false documents alleging Sarkozy profited from illegal [...]
Spanish Judge Santiago Pedraz on Tuesday ordered the release of accused Somali pirate Abdou Willy to the Spanish Juvenile Court. Pedraz ordered the release after medical examinations could not determine his age to be over 18. Willy and one other man were charged last week with multiple counts of kidnapping and armed assault for allegedly [...]
Colombian prosecutor Luis Gonzalez said Monday that at least 27,384 civilians disappeared between 1988 and 2002, with nearly 75 percent of them allegedly kidnapped by illegal right-wing militias. The government's judicial Justice and Peace Office compiled the list after a three-year investigation of forced disappearances that included testimonies of the relatives of the missing persons. [...]
The trial of Rwandan genocide suspect Jean-Baptiste Gatete began Tuesday with opening statements from the prosecution and defense before the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) . Gatete, the former Mayor of Murambi Commune in Byumba prefecture, is charged with six counts of genocide including complicity in genocide, conspiracy to commit genocide, and crimes against [...]
Brian Moulton and Michelle Litteken : "The Human Rights Campaign (HRC) applauds the Department of Justice's (DOJ) statement regarding increased efforts to fight LGBT discrimination. In his speech to the Civil Rights Division, Assistant Attorney General Tom Perez said that the Department must "ensure that there's a level playing field in which our LGBT brothers [...]
The US Supreme Court on Tuesday granted certiorari in two cases. In Kiyemba v. Obama , the court will consider whether a group of 13 Uighur Guantanamo Bay detainees can be released into the US. In February, a panel of the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit reversed an October 2008 [...]
The Uruguayan Supreme Court on Monday found unconstitutional the country’s Expiry Law, which granted amnesty to military officials accused of human rights violations during the country's 1973-1985 dictatorship. The court's ruling applies only to the case of Nibia Sabalsagaray, allegedly murdered by the military in 1974, but the law is also subject to a voter [...]
Joseph Schaeffer, Pitt Law '12, attended a talk on a proposed national security court system given by US Coast Guard Captain Glenn Sulmasy*, a law professor at the US Coast Guard Academy and a National Security and Human Rights Fellow at Harvard University… Over the past seven years the Guantanamo Bay detention facility has excited [...]
The US District Court for the Southern District of Ohio on Thursday issued a stay of execution for Ohio death row inmate Kenneth Biros, as the state continues to review its lethal injection procedures. Biros is the fourth Ohio death inmate to be granted a stay of execution since the failed attempt to execute Romell [...]
The Iraqi Parliament delayed a vote Monday that would have updated the controversial provincial election law it passed in September 2008. The proposed election law changes, which include ballots that list candidates rather than closed lists of parties, particularly affects the city of Kirkuk and is designed to make the election process more transparent. The [...]
