US President Barack Obama on Thursday asserted his intention not to investigate individuals who used or authorized enhanced interrogation techniques the same day the Department of Justice (DOJ) released memos outlining CIA use of these techniques. The president urged the country to look forward, rather than to the past, saying: We have been through a [...]
Two families whose children were killed in the 2007 Virginia Tech school shooting filed separate lawsuits Thursday in the Circuit Court of Fairfax County, asking for $10 million in compensatory damages. The parents of Julie Pryde and Erin Peterson , who were shot and killed by fellow student Seung-Hoi Cho , filed suit against the [...]
Iraqi insurgent Wesam al Delaema was sentenced to 25 years in prison Thursday for conspiracy to murder US nationals outside the US. Al Delaema, who was charged with the crime in 2005, is the first Iraqi insurgent to be tried in a US federal court. Al Delaema's final sentence will be determined by a Dutch [...]
A Swedish court on Friday found four defendants guilty of abetting copyright infringement for hosting the file-sharing website The Pirate Bay and sentenced them to one year in prison. The popular website is hosted by defendants Peter Sunde, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Fredrik Neij, and Carl Lundstrom and uses Bittorrent technology to allow the distribution of [...]
The Indonesian Supreme Court overturned Thursday a 2007 decision against TIME magazine awarding the late former Indonesian president Haji Mohammad Suharto $106 million in damages in Suharto's defamation suit against the publication. Suharto sued TIME over a 1999 article that said Suharto had hidden billions of dollars in foreign banks. The Supreme Court overturned the [...]
The US Department of Justice (DOJ) on Thursday released four top secret memos from the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) outlining controversial CIA interrogation techniques and their legal rationale. The previously undisclosed memos were released with redactions in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) [...]
New York Governor David Paterson announced Thursday the introduction of legislation that would legalize same-sex marriage in the state. If passed, the legislation would amend the state's Domestic Relations Law to give same-sex couples the opportunity to enter into civil marriages, which would give them the same rights under New York law as heterosexual married [...]
Spanish Attorney General Candido Conde Pumpido announced Thursday that he will not recommend that the Spanish government seek action against members of the Bush administration behind the establishment of the Guantanamo Bay detention center. Spanish judge Baltasar Garzon had asked prosecutors to examine the possibility of bringing a lawsuit against the US lawyers reportedly responsible [...]
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay on Wednesday urged Fijian President Ratu Josefa Iloilo to reinstate dismissed judges and lift media restrictions imposed after Iloilo suspended the country's constitution. Pillay said that the 5-year interim government declared by Iloilo and the reappointment of Commodore Josaia Voreqe "Frank" Bainimarama were improper uses of emergency [...]
Human Rights Watch (HRW) on Wednesday urged the Pakistani government to reverse a recently signed ordinance that imposes Islamic Sharia law in the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) area of Swat, saying it poses a "grave threat" to human rights by putting the Taliban and its affiliates in administrative control. HRW said that the Nizam-e-Adl [...]
