Iran's Revolutionary Court sentenced an Iranian electronics salesman to death Monday after convicting him of espionage, according to a state media report . Ali Ashtari, who was arrested last year, was charged with using his sales connections in the military to pass information on Iran's Atomic Energy Organization to Israeli intelligence agents. Israeli officials denied [...]
Maureen Aung-Thwin : "The UNHRC is wise to keep up public pressure on the Burmese military regime for its continued abuse of human rights. The generals probably thought they could take a breather when the outgoing Special Rapporteur Paulo Sergio Pinheiro completed his mandate as rights envoy last month. Pinheiro's hard-hitting final report to the [...]
The Dutch Public Prosecution Service (OM) will not prosecute politician Geert Wilders for his video and printed statements against the Quran and Islam because the statements are not punishable under anti-discrimination laws . Wilders, who is an official with the right-wing People's Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD) , released written statements in 2006 and [...]
Malaysian opposition politician Anwar Ibrahim filed a lawsuit on Monday against a former aide who had accused him of sodomy on Saturday. In the lawsuit, Anwar said that the aide's allegations against him were baseless and politically motivated. Also on Monday, Anwar left the Turkish Embassy in Kuala Lumpur, where he had taken refuge , fearing for [...]
The US House Judiciary Committee has issued a subpoena to Attorney General Michael Mukasey for documents relating to the Valerie Plame leak scandal and other Committee investigations. The Committee specifically requested transcripts of interviews with US President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and five White House aides, all of whom were questioned during [...]
International leaders and human rights groups have criticized last Friday's presidential run-off election in Zimbabwe , calling the elections unfair and characterizing the government of newly sworn-in president Robert Mugabe as illegitimate. A committee of the Pan-African Parliament (PAP) , the legislative branch of the African Union, reported Monday that killings, intimidation and violence were [...]
JURIST Guest Columnists Steven Solomon of the World Health Organization and David Kaye of the UCLA School of Law say that while the recently concluded Dublin Cluster Bomb Treaty represents a major advance in the law of war, it is not a clear victory or clear defeat for anyone, including the United States… Late last [...]
Malaysian law enforcement authorities have launched an investigation into a new sodomy complaint against opposition politician Anwar Ibrahim filed by an aide Saturday. Under Malaysian lawyer sodomy is punishable by 20 years in prison regardless of whether or not it was consensual. Anwar was convicted for sodomy in 1999 in the midst of political scandal [...]
The Canadian Human Rights Commission has dismissed a Muslim group's complaint against Maclean's , Canada's leading newsmagazine, for publishing an article it alleged exposed Muslims to abuse or contempt. The Canadian Islamic Congress brought the complaint in respect of a 2006 article published by Mark Steyn entitled "The future belongs to Islam" . In its [...]
JURIST Guest Columnist Lt. Col. Stephen Abraham (US Army, ret.), formerly assigned to the Office for the Administrative Review of the Detention of Enemy Combatants, says that the US Supreme Court's opinion in Boumediene v. Bush is the consequence of mistaken policy decisions made over the past six years and is a clear instruction to [...]
