International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) President Jakob Kellenberger on Wednesday called for greater compliance with the Geneva Conventions , making the documents' 60th anniversary . Kellenberger said that the conventions were tested in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, with the global "war on terror" posing a "huge challenge": The traumatic events [...]
The Supreme Court of Argentina ruled Tuesday that individuals cannot be required to submit blood samples to test whether they were abducted as children during the "Dirty War" . The court issued two rulings in the cases of brothers Guillermo Gabriel Prieto and Emiliano Matias Prieto , finding that genetic material can be collected from [...]
Pakistani police on Tuesday filed charges against former president Pervez Musharraf alleging that he illegally detained members of the judiciary after declaring emergency rule in November 2007. Sixty judges, including Supreme Court Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry , were forced to remain in their homes after refusing to swear an oath to uphold the Provisional [...]
Lawyers for Myanmar opposition pro-democracy advocate Aung San Suu Kyi and American John Yettaw said Wednesday that they will file appeals against Tuesday's guilty verdicts . Suu Kyi and Yettaw were convicted of violating state security laws after Suu Kyi, who was under house arrest, allowed Yettaw to stay in her home after he swam [...]
Chechen human rights activist Zarema Sadulayeva and her husband Alik Dzhabrailov were found dead in the trunk of their car Tuesday, after being abducted Monday. Saulayeva and Dzhabrailov were taken from the office of her organization, Let's Save the Generation, which works to aid children affected by violence in Chechnya. The pair were reportedly removed [...]
Christina Hill : "It has been reported that local communities in the Indonesian province of West Papua have filed a $30 billion lawsuit against the local subsidiary of US mining company Freeport-McRoRan Copper & Gold – operator of the giant Grasberg mine. The company is being sued for environmental and human rights violations. As reported [...]
The US House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday released testimony and e-mails purporting to show that Bush administration political advisor Karl Rove was involved in the firing of nine US Attorneys in 2006. Among the 5,400 pages of documents released by the committee are e-mail communications between Rove, former White House counsel Harriet Miers , and [...]
Former financial chief for Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC, Frank DiPascali, pleaded guilty Tuesday to 10 criminal counts for his role in the Ponzi scheme that defrauded investors of billions of dollars. DiPascali delivered his plea to Judge Richard Sullivan of the US District Court for the Southern District of New York , admitting [...]
Sean Turnell : "The conviction and sentencing of democracy icon, Aung San Suu Kyi, on absurd charges in a farcical 'trial' has rightly outraged the world. The sentence, of an 18 month extension to her (already manifestly unjust) house arrest is part of a crude effort by Burma's military junta to ensure that she is [...]
The US District Court for the Southern District of California on Tuesday dismissed a consumer class action lawsuit against telecommunications company Qualcomm . Christopher Lorenzo sued Qualcomm in November, alleging that the chipset manufacturer holds patents on technologies necessary for CDMA cellular networks, and has used the licensing of these technologies to adversely affect competition [...]
