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 [...]
US Department of Defense prosecutors announced Monday they had filed charges related to the 2000 al Qaeda attack on the USS Cole against Guantanamo Bay detainee Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri . Al-Nashiri, a Saudi national, is charged with terrorism, attempted murder, and providing material support to terrorism, among other offenses. The charges fall under the Military [...]
The United States should set a concrete deadline for closure of the military prison at Guantanamo Bay , according to a Monday report by an investigator from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe Parliamentary Assembly (OSCEPA) . OSCEPA's special Guantanamo envoy Anne-Marie Lizin said that the major problems blocking closure include questions over [...]
Colombian President Alvaro Uribe Monday moved forward with plans for a national referendum on the country's 2006 presidential election. Last week, the Colombian High Court ruled that a legal inquiry should be held into the election after it found that a legislator had been bribed to help push constitutional amendments allowing Uribe to seek a [...]
The Pakistani constitution must be amended in order to reinstate the judges who were ousted last year by Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf , Pakistani Law and Justice Minister Farooq H. Naik said Sunday. He said that while the constitution provides for the appointment of judges, it does not speak to the reinstatement of ousted judges. [...]
Unknown bombers made unsuccessful assassination attempts on the lives of five Iraqi appeals court judges Monday. The five judges – Ali al-Alaq, Suleiman Abdullah, Ghanim Janab, Alaa al-Timimi, and Hassan Fouad – are all members of the al-Rasafa Court of Appeal in eastern Baghdad. While all five were unharmed in the separate attacks, the wife of [...]
A German man's right to a fair trial was not violated by police torture threats, the European Court of Human Rights ruled Monday. In 2003, Magnus Gaefgen was convicted of kidnapping and killing a six-year-old child after German police threatened Gaefgen with torture to get him to reveal the location of the body. Gaefgen argued [...]
Thana Tansiri, a lawyer for former Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra , began serving a six-month prison sentence Monday for his role in an attempt to bribe officials overseeing a corruption case against Thaksin. Thana is one of three lawyers sentenced last week for delivering a paper bag containing $60,000 to a court official. The [...]
