Serbian prosecutors charged 17 former members of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) Friday for war crimes committed during the war in Kosovo . The charges include rape, murder, mutilation, and torture resulting from the kidnapping of 159 Serb civilians and others in Gnjilane, Kosovo in 1999. The charges allege the death of 52 Serbs, Roma, [...]
Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva on Friday approved a controversial bill that would allow legal privatization of publicly held Amazon land. The measure is aimed at stabilizing ownership of nearly 260,000 square miles of Amazon land, the contested ownership of which has sparked violence in the region. Da Silva vetoed sections of the [...]
The US Senate Armed Services Committee announced Friday the approval an appropriations bill that would alter the rules of evidence used in military commission trials. The version of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2010 , which cleared the committee unanimously, would add language to the Military Commissions Act of 2006 reforming the [...]
A federal bankruptcy judge on Thursday approved a motion to allow General Motors (GM) to borrow $33.3 billion in debtor in possession financing from the US and Canadian governments to finance a new company. Judge Robert Gerber quickly approved the motion , allowing the proceedings to continue without delay. The motion, which also argues to [...]
Impeached federal judge Samuel Kent on Thursday resigned from his seat on the US District Court for the Southern District of Texas effective at the end of June. Kent's resignation comes a day after US Senate began impeachment trial proceedings against him, alleging that he sexually harassed his secretary and case manager, obstructed a judicial [...]
Bahukutumbi Raman : "Even before the Mumbai terrorist attack of November, 2008, India had been repeatedly demanding the arrest and handing over to India by Pakistan of 20 terrorism suspects – Indian as well as Pakistani nationals – wanted for trial in India in terrorism-related cases. According to Indian investigators, they were living in Pakistan. [...]
Honduran President Manuel Zelaya rejected a Supreme Court decision Thursday that called for the reinstatement of a military general whom Zelaya fired Wednesday. Zelaya's decision comes amidst a controversy over a referendum on constitutional change scheduled for Sunday at which the president hopes to gain supporters for drafting a new constitition. Zelaya fired General Romeo [...]
A judge in the US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois on Thursday set the corruption trial of former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich for June 3, 2010. Lawyers for two aids indicted with Blagojevich , Alonzo Monk and John Harris, indicated that their clients may agree to plea deals . Blagojevich's attorneys said [...]
JURIST Guest Columnists Olga Martin-Ortega of the Centre on Human Rights in Conflict, University of East London (UK), and Jordi Palou-Loverdos, a lawyer who has represented Rwandan, Congolese and Spanish victims of crimes against humanity before the Spanish courts, say that preserving Spain's broad universal jurisdiction law from growing political pressure to narrow it is [...]
Self-exiled Russian business tycoon Boris Berezovsky was found guilty of fraud in absentia Thursday by a Moscow regional court. The court found that Berezovsky and his business associate Yuli Dubov embezzled $4.5 million from their LogoVAZ car dealership. The charges , filed last November under the Russian Criminal Code , stem from a deal arranged [...]
