US Attorney General nominee Eric Holder told the Senate Judiciary Committee in confirmation hearings Thursday that he believes waterboarding constitutes torture and that it could take a long time to close the Guantanamo Bay prison despite the incoming Obama administration's pledge to do so. In his opening statement to committee members he nonetheless pledged to [...]
UK Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs David Miliband said Thursday in a Guardian editorial that the "war of terror" embraced by the US and UK governments in recent years was a "misleading and mistaken" term and that terrorism should be fought by championing the rule of law, not subordinating it, for it [...]
Sudanese authorities on Wednesday detained prominent political opposition figure and Islamist leader Hassan al-Turabi in response to al-Turabi's calls for President Omar al-Bashir to turn himself over to the International Criminal Court (ICC) . Turabi, the leader of the Popular Congress Party (PCP), was expecting to be detained after telling reporters Monday that Bashir is [...]
Asim Qureshi : "One of the key components of the Bush administration's understanding of torture is the extreme technicality with which they approach the topic. When the teenager Mohammed Jawad was captured in Afghanistan in 2002, his abuse at the hands of his captors was by Afghans and not US personnel. It is this fact [...]
The US Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit on Wednesday upheld a Georgia law that requires voters to present government-issued photo identification in order to vote. The suit was filed by two elderly voters in Georgia, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) , and other civil rights groups that argued [...]
The Venezuelan National Assembly on Wednesday approved a constitutional amendment eliminating presidential term limits. The amendment must now be approved by voters in a referendum likely to be held on February 15. The amendment, which would allow President Hugo Chavez to seek re-election in 2012, was passed by an Assembly made up of a majority [...]
The Kazakhstan Parliament on Thursday approved legislation designed to ensure that there is representation from at least two political parties in the lawmaking body. The election law reform measure is seen as a way to enhance democracy in Kazakhstan before it takes over as chair of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) [...]
International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo on Wednesday said that the ICC has no jurisdiction to investigate possible war crimes committed by Israel in Gaza. Moreno-Ocampo's statement came after calls by the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) for the UN Security Council to refer Israel to the ICC for an investigation. Moreno-Ocampo said [...]
JURIST Guest Columnist Victor Kattan of the Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, says that Israel's Gaza offensive cannot be legally justified by any right of self-defense and instead constitutes aggression and a forcible deprivation of the Palestinian people's right to self-determination… The images speak for [...]
Iraq has become the 186th nation to join the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) by acceding to the 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention , the organization announced Wednesday. A spokesperson for UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon praised Iraq's move , saying that it showed the Iraqi government's "commitment to disarmament and non-proliferation," and adding: [...]
