Former Rwandan deputy state prosecutor Siméon Nchamihigo was sentenced to life imprisonment Wednesday by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) . Nchamihigo was charged with four counts of genocide, murder, extermination, and other crimes against humanity. According to an amended indictment , Nchamihigo ordered an accomplice to kill a Tutsi victim by lighting a [...]
Congress passed legislation Tuesday to reduce inequities in the insurance coverage of mental health and addiction treatment, bringing the insurance costs for such treatment in line with those of conventional medical procedures. The bill, known as the "Paul Wellstone and Pete Domenici Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act of 2008," and often referred to [...]
JURIST Guest Columnists Victor Hansen and Lawrence Friedman of New England School of Law say that if Vice President Dick Cheney is permitted to avoid the requirements of the Presidential Records Act, the door is left open for a future administration to create a shadow government within the executive branch, one that operates without the [...]
The Finnish Interior Ministry on Wednesday announced that it is drafting new gun control legislation in response to the fatal shootings of 10 people at a vocational school in the Finnish city of Kauhajoki. Interior Minister Anne Holmlund said the amendments to the Firearms Act of 1998 , to be presented to the Finnish Parliament [...]
A judge for the US District Court for the Southern District of New York on Tuesday entered a not guilty plea and ordered a psychiatric evaluation in the trial of Aafia Siddiqui , a Pakistani woman with alleged ties to al Qaeda. Siddiqui was charged in August with assault and the attempted murder of a [...]
Prosecutors in the case of former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic filed a motion to amend his indictment in the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) on Tuesday, as was planned earlier this month. The indictment in question was issued in 2000, and contains 11 charges against Karadzic, including genocide, murder, persecution, deportation [...]
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is currently investigating Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Lehman Brothers, and AIG along with 22 other financial institutions for possible mortgage fraud , US media outlets reported Tuesday. The investigations follow a market collapse that led to a Bush administration proposal circulated over the weekend that would authorize the Treasury Department [...]
US Marine Col. Ralph Kohlmann , chief judge of US military commissions , said Tuesday at a pretrial hearing for five suspects in the September 11 attacks that he is scheduled to retire next April. During voir dire, in which defense attorneys questioned Kohlmann about potential bias, the judge said he had submitted retirement paperwork [...]
Serbia submitted a draft resolution to the UN General Assembly Tuesday seeking an International Court of Justice (ICJ) advisory opinion on the legality of the unilaterally-proclaimed independence of Kosovo . The draft resolution was presented following an address to the General Assembly by Serbian President Boris Tadic . The draft resolution and Tadic's address follow [...]
The US Department of Justice (DOJ) on Tuesday announced that it would not post criminal prosecutors at the polls for the November 4 presidential election, responding to concerns raised by civil rights groups. The decision represents a departure from the DOJ's longstanding practice. Grace Chung Becker , assistant attorney general for the DOJ's Civil Rights [...]
