UN Under-Secretary-General for Legal Affairs Patricia O’Brien has found that prison overcrowding in countries with UN peacekeeping missions threatens the success of those missions, the UN Press Centre reported Monday. O'Brien made the remarks at a UN Department of Peacekeeping (DPKO) meeting, and blamed the frequent overcrowding on ineffective judicial systems and long pre-trial detentions. [...]
The UK Ministry of Defence (MOD) has admitted the unlawful abuse of nine Iraqi detainees, solicitors for the detainees announced Tuesday. As part of the settlement, the detainees are to receive damages of as much as £1 million (US $1.79 million). While acknowledging that the detainees' treatment was unlawful, the MOD did not admit to [...]
Members of the US Congress spoke out about regulatory changes and investigations following a stock market drop propelled by Lehman Brothers' Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing and the sale of Merrill Lynch on Monday. Speaker of the House Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) reiterated plans for a new economic stimulus package designed to "create jobs and address [...]
The 2007 Crime in the US (CIUS) report released Monday by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) indicates that the level of violent crime in the US dropped by 0.7 percent between 2006 and 2007. The drop follows two years of increasing rates of similar crimes, including a 2006 increase of 1.3 percent and a [...]
Attorneys for former US Army researcher Dr. Steven Hatfill have filed a motion seeking to dismiss an appeal by former USA Today reporter Toni Locy challenging her contempt order for refusing to disclose sources for articles about the 2001 anthrax attacks . The motion, filed Thursday in the US Court of Appeals for the DC [...]
Senegalese publisher El Malick Seck is appealing a court ruling which sentenced him to three years in prison and closed his newspaper for three months as punishment for printing an article accusing Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade and his son of money laundering, according to a defense lawyer. Seck, publisher of 24 Hours Chrono, was convicted [...]
Officials from the monitoring committee of the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly (PACE) released a draft resolution Monday praising Serbia for the reforms it has made since joining the Council of Europe (COE) in 2003 but stressing that the country still has work to do. The committee particularly praised the Serbian government's continued efforts towards [...]
JURIST Guest Columnist Moeen Cheema, professor of Law & Policy at the Lahore University of Management Sciences in Lahore, Pakistan, says that in the wake of the election of Pakistan People's Party co-chairman Asif Ali Zardari as the President of Pakistan, the country's vaunted lawyer's movement may be dying a slow death without realizing its [...]
Andrea Kaminski : "In suing the Wisconsin Government Accountability Board (GAB), Attorney General Van Hollen is seeking to overturn a recent GAB decision and change election procedures – just before a presidential election. He wishes to impose an emergency rule dealing with matching the statewide voter registration list with the Department of Transportation database. The [...]
Zimabwean president Robert Mugabe and opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai on Monday signed a power-sharing agreement between their African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) and Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) parties. Under the agreement, Mugabe would remain president, Tsvangirai would become prime minister and each would have two deputies. During the signing ceremony for the agreement Mugabe said [...]
