Former Guatemalan President Alfonso Portillo was extradited Tuesday from Mexico to Guatemala, where he is accused of authorizing transfers of $15.8 million from the budget of the Guatemalan Ministry of Defense during his presidency from 2000 to 2004. Portillo fled to Mexico at the end of his term amid corruption allegations, reportedly fearing he would [...]
US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents Tuesday arrested more than 300 people suspected of being illegal aliens during an immigration sting at a Columbia Farms poultry processing plant in South Carolina. ICE officials said the raid was part of a 10-month criminal investigation into employment practices at Columbia Farms, which has already led to [...]
Lawyers providing free legal advice to parents of children in China sickened by tainted milk products have been pressured by Chinese officials to stop providing legal services, according to one of the lawyers speaking to the Associated Press Tuesday. The group of at least 100 lawyers, who were told that the scandal has become a [...]
The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) said Tuesday that it has begun an agency review of US financial accounting procedures, including "mark-to-market" rules, pursuant to the recently-passed $700 billion financial rescue bill . The SEC statement coincided with the testimony Tuesday of current and former executives of insurance giant American International Group (AIG) before [...]
The US Supreme Court heard oral arguments Tuesday in three cases, including two raising issues of criminal procedure. In Herring v. United States , 07-513, the Court will decide whether evidence seized during a search incident to an arrest must be suppressed when the sole premise for the arrest was information later found to be [...]
A US district judge ordered the Bush administration Tuesday to release 17 Uighur detainees from the military prison at Guantanamo Bay , ruling that the Constitution forbids their indefinite detention without cause. In a ruling read from the bench, Judge Ricardo Urbina of the US District Court for the District of Columbia gave the government [...]
Thirteen United Nations experts on Monday urged the international community to respect the rights of detainees . The statement of the 13 special rapporteurs, including Philip Alston , the Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, and Manfred Nowak , the Special Rapporteur on torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment, comes [...]
Former Bosnian Serb leader and war crimes suspect Radovan Karadzic has requested, in a motion released Monday by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) , that prosecutors release information regarding an alleged immunity deal with former US ambassador to the UN Richard Holbrooke . Writing on his own behalf, Karadic said the [...]
The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit on Monday stayed a district order requiring senior Bush administration officials to give the House Judiciary Committee information about the forced resignations of nine US attorneys . In July, a federal district judge rejected claims of executive privilege by former presidential counselor Harriet Miers [...]
Five Palestinians represented by Israeli rights group Yesh Din filed suit against the State of Israel seeking $427,000 in damages for failing to protect Palestinian-owned land in the West Bank from trespassers and an illegal outpost, according to Yesh Din lawyers Monday. The suit, brought in the Magistrate Court in Jerusalem, alleges that the Migron [...]
