The UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) Wednesday criticized the government of Myanmar for its continued human rights abuses and refusal to cooperate with humanitarian groups. The resolution calls on the Myanmar government to free political prisoners, stop recruiting child soldiers and to implement earlier UNHRC resolutions regarding the country's human rights situation. The Council adopted [...]
A US military judge at Guantanamo Bay Thursday set October 8 as the date for the military commission trial of Canadian-born Omar Khadr . Khadr's military defense lawyer Navy Lt. Cmdr. William Kuebler said that judge Col. Patrick Parrish, who replaced Col. Peter Brownback as presiding judge last month, is pushing ahead to complete the [...]
Chief Justice Royce Lamberth of the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia held an off-the-record meeting Wednesday with defense lawyers for enemy combatants being held at Guantanamo Bay to discuss court procedures in light of the US Supreme Court's recent opinion in Boumediene v. Bush . The group reportedly discussed how Guantanamo [...]
Former Serbian chief of state security Radomir Markovic was sentenced to 40 years in prison Thursday for his role in a 1999 assassination attempt on then-Yugoslav opposition leader Vuk Draskovic . The Supreme Court of Serbia also sentenced ten other individuals, including special police commander Milorad Ulemek , for orchestrating a highway crash intended to [...]
Italy's highest court of appeal, the Court of Cassation , Thursday ruled that Italian courts lack jurisdiction to try a US soldier accused of shooting an intelligence agent in Iraq. Last year, Italian prosecutors filed an appeal of a Rome court's dismissal of the criminal case against US Army Spc. Mario Lozano for the alleged [...]
Malaysian rights group Suaram Thursday published its annual report on the state of human rights in the country, saying that conditions had significantly worsened over the past year. The group cited the country's judicial fixing scandal and lax prosecution of human rights offenders by the Human Rights Commission of Malaysia as evidence of weak protections [...]
The Indonesian Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) began investigating the country's Supreme Court Monday for suspected embezzlement . The Court collects administrative fees from appellants but has so far not accounted for the money. Late last month officials from Indonesian Corruption Watch (ICW) , an NGO that monitors government organizations for corruption, encouraged a KPK investigation [...]
The Vestre Landsret , one of the two second-highest appeals courts in Denmark, denied Wednesday an appeal of a 2006 lower court judgment dismissing a lawsuit concerning caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad . The defamation lawsuit was brought by seven Muslim groups against Jyllands-Posten , a Danish newspaper that printed satirical cartoons depicting the Prophet [...]
Thirty-nine accused Darfur rebels appeared before special courts in Sudan to be tried under a 2001 anti-terrorism law Wednesday. The accused allegedly belong to the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) , which Sudanese officials accuse of terrorism, rebellion and conspiring against the constitution. Lawyers for the rebels have expressed skepticism that the special courts, which [...]
The US congress voted late Wednesday to override President George W. Bush's veto of the new Farm Bill . The override passed easily in both chambers, with votes of 80-14 in the Senate and 317-109 in the House. Bush had vetoed the legislation earlier Wednesday, calling it fiscally irresponsible. The original version of the text [...]
