The US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit Tuesday dismissed a lawsuit brought by Canadian citizen Maher Arar , who sought a declaratory judgment against US government officials for deporting him to Syria. The court ruled that Arar had failed to state a claim for which it had jurisdiction to grant relief: We do [...]
Huzaifa Parhat v. Robert M. Gates, et al., US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, June 20, 2008 . Read the declassified text of the decision . Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.
The man suspected of killing Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya has fled to Western Europe, an investigator at the Russian Prosecutor General's Office said Tuesday. In May, Russian authorities named Chechen Rustam Makhmudov as the main suspect in the murder, charging him in absentia and issuing an international warrant for his arrest. In June, authorities formally [...]
A French court Monday ordered Internet auction house eBay to pay $63 million in damages to LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton (LVMH) , finding that the website failed to prevent the sale of counterfeit luxury goods that infringed on registered designs. LVMH praised the holding as a victory for designers seeking to control the distribution [...]
A Chinese reporter for US-based Chinese news website Boxun.com received a four-year prison sentence Tuesday in Nanjing on charges of illegal weapons possession and public disorder. Sun Lin, who writes under the pen name Jie Mu, has reported on sensitive topics including crime, police brutality, and corruption in China, and Boxun said Sun was being [...]
The US Department of Justice (DOJ) filed papers in the US District Court for the Southern District of Florida Monday asking the court to force a Swiss bank to hand over the names of American clients suspected of hiding funds from tax collectors. The DOJ is requesting permission for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to [...]
Nearly $100 million in annual funding is needed to fix California's "dysfunctional" prison system, according to a state commission's report released Monday. The California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice (CCFAJ) was asked to evaluate instances of wrongful convictions and to make informed recommendations for future changes. The CCFAJ report found: The system is [...]
The US does not appropriately protect its citizens and foreign nationals from executions that are out of line with international law, UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions Philip Alston said Monday. Alston said state death penalty systems need stronger safeguards against racial bias and wrongful convictions. He added that investigations into the deaths [...]
A Polish appeals court has ruled that the trial of former communist military leader General Wojciech Jaruzelski can proceed, overturning a lower court decision that halted the trial while prosecutors gathered more evidence against other communist officials. Jaruzelski was charged in March 2006 with "organizing crimes of a military nature" and carrying out crimes that [...]
Four former Abu Ghraib detainees filed lawsuits Monday against two private US military contractors and three of their employees, alleging torture, war crimes and civil conspiracy. The former detainees said that employees of CACI International and L-3 Communications , which performed interrogation and interpretation work for the US military, violated the Geneva Convention, the Army [...]
