The Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL) on Wednesday sentenced former Revolutionary Union Front (RUF) commanders Issa Hassan Sesay, Morris Kallon, and Augustine Gbao to jail terms of 52, 40, and 25 years, respectively. The three men were each found guilty in February of war crimes and crimes against humanity for their roles in the country's [...]

Human rights activists in Russia are being attacked with greater frequency, Russian Human Rights Commissioner Vladimir Lukin said Wednesday in an interview with Vesti television . Lukin was responding to the recent beating of Lev Ponomarev, leader of advocacy group For Human Rights. Lukin said that even though it wasn't clear whether the attack was [...]

The US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit ruled Tuesday that a female Muslim police officer is not entitled to wear a religious headscarf while on duty. Officer Kimberlie Webb of the Philadelphia Police Department was appealing the ruling of the US District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania entering summary judgment against [...]

The conviction of former Peruvian president Alberto Fujimori on Tuesday was met with widespread approval from the current Peruvian government and human rights organizations. Peruvian Prime Minister Yehuda Simon said that the verdict highlighted the country's judicial autonomy . Amnesty International trial observer Javier Zuniga expressed the hope that the trial and conviction are "just [...]

The US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit ruled Tuesday that US courts cannot prevent the government from transferring detainees held at Guantanamo Bay to foreign countries on the grounds that detainees may face prosecution or torture in the foreign country. The three-judge panel found it had jurisdiction to hear the habeas corpus claims [...]

JURIST Guest Columnist Benjamin Davis of the University of Toledo College of Law says that three memos written by the DOJ Office of Legal Counsel in the Bush administration authorizing specific interrogation techniques amounting to torture need to be disclosed and should not be held back for fear of political reprisals…. Rather than mid-April being [...]

The government of Bangladesh said Tuesday it is working with the UN to organize war crimes prosecutions for alleged violations stemming from the country's 1971 War of Independence against Pakistan and is considering trial in the International Criminal Court (ICC) . Rights group Amnesty International welcomed the move , which will bring war crimes experts [...]

Amir A. Fakhravar : ""Iran, a Nation of Bloggers" is the name of a short animated film that I saw a few days ago. In only 100 seconds, Mr. Aaron pointed out a subject that has remained out of sight amid the commotions over Iran's nuclear program – the power of the Iranian youth and [...]

Justice Ian MacDonnell of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice ruled Tuesday that officers of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) , Canada's federal police force and the country's largest law enforcement entity, can form unions. MacDonnell's ruling struck down a portion of the RCMP Regulations that established a labor representation scheme that infringed on [...]

A federal appeals court in Baghdad on Tuesday reduced the sentence for the Iraqi journalist accused of throwing his shoe at former US president George W. Bush from three years to one year. Lawyers for Muntadar al-Zaidi based their appeal on an Iraqi law that provides a maximum two-year sentence for the public insult of [...]