The first woman scheduled to stand trial in the US on charges related to suspected al-Qaeda ties has been extradited to the US and appeared before the District Court for the Southern District of New York Tuesday on terrorism charges. Aafia Siddiqui , who comes from Pakistan, was charged with assault and the attempted murder [...]
The US State Department on Monday criticized Egypt's sentencing of Saad Eddin Ibrahim to two years in prison for defaming the country. Ibrahim has been a prominent human rights activist and outspoken critic of Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak , and has dual US and Egyptian citizenship. He is a professor of sociology at the American University in Cairo and [...]
A South African judge on Tuesday delayed a ruling on whether to drop corruption charges against politician Jacob Zuma until September 12 in order consider Zuma's argument that he should have been consulted before the charges were filed. In December 2007, South Africa's National Prosecuting Authority served an indictment on Zuma, charging him with corruption, fraud, [...]
Meetings between Guantanamo Bay detainees and representatives of their governments may have been recorded, according to a Tuesday Washington Post report . In 2002 and 2003, the US State Department advised foreign delegations that their meetings would be videotaped despite public assertions by the US Department of Defense (DOD) that it did not regularly record [...]
Navy Lt. Cmdr. William Kuebler, lawyer for Canadian Guantanamo detainee Omar Khadr , said on Monday that he has filed three separate motions to dismiss the case against his client due to alleged government misconduct. In the first motion, Kuebler alleged that government policy encouraged interrogators to destroy notes that could have been used to [...]
The prosecution for the military commissions trial of Salim Ahmed Hamdan moved Tuesday for the judge to recall the jury and issue new instructions on what constitutes a war crime. Prosecutors said that the instructions given by presiding judge Navy Capt. Keith Allred were flawed, but defense lawyers responded that if that were the case, [...]
Human Rights Watch (HRW) on Monday criticized proposed constitutional amendments put forth by Colombian President Alvaro Uribe that would strip the country's High Court of the authority to investigate sitting legislators for alleged relationships with right-wing paramilitaries . The amendments would require that cases against current members of Congress first go to a local Bogota [...]
US President George Bush on Monday signed into law the Libyan Claims Resolution Act , which allows the Secretary of State to settle remaining civil claims brought by US citizens against Libya for bombings allegedly carried out by groups linked to the government in the late 1980s. The bill is seen as an effort to [...]
Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi deployed about 3,000 military troops to major Italian cities on Monday in a movement designed to reduce crime throughout the country. The plan is part of a larger package approved by the Italian Senate last year, meant to reduce petty crime and Mafia activity and to slow illegal immigration. The [...]
The US Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit held on Monday that federal courts must rule on an international petition for child repatriation unless a state court has already fully considered and ruled on the petition. The ruling came in a case involving a father's petition under the International Child Abduction Remedies Act (ICARA) [...]
