A US military commission pre-trial hearing for Canadian Guantanamo detainee Omar Khadr will go ahead Wednesday as planned notwithstanding Thursday's Supreme Court ruling on detainee habeas rights , military judge Col. Patrick Parrish ruled Friday. Khadr defense attorney Navy Lt. Cmdr. William Kuebler had requested additional time to study the impact of the Supreme Court’s [...]
A protest march by members of the Pakistani lawyers' movement reached the Parliament House in the capital Islamabad on Friday night, JURIST's correspondent in Pakistan reports. The so-called "long march" began in Lahore Monday, and is aimed at pressuring the government of President Pervez Musharraf into reinstating judges ousted after the declaration of emergency law [...]
Judith Sunderland : "On June 11, 2008, the UK House of Commons narrowly approved a measure giving the government the power to detain terrorism suspects for up to six weeks (42 days) without charge. Such lengthy pre-charge detention is manifestly incompatible with the UK's obligations to guarantee the fundamental right to liberty and security of [...]
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a class action lawsuit Thursday against the Texas Youth Commission (TYC) , alleging that five girls imprisoned at the Ron Jackson State Juvenile Correctional Complex were subjected to punitive solitary confinement, physical abuse and invasive strip searches. The ACLU alleged that the treatment violated the girls' rights under [...]
Richard C. Dieter : "The Supreme Court's decision in Baze v. Rees on April 16, 2008, approving Kentucky's lethal injection process opened the door to a resumption of executions. Since the decision, six executions have taken place, all in the south and all by lethal injection. Many of these cases raised questions that have continuously [...]
The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Friday ruled that certain parts of a lawsuit brought by the Chabad Lubavitch Jewish Orthodox movement against the Russian government could proceed. Chabad Lubavitch seeks the return of an archive of 18th century religious texts that it alleged the Russian government had appropriated in violation [...]
A Burundi court Thursday released six former police officers convicted of killing a World Health Organization (WHO) official because two key witnesses against the accused escaped from custody. In May of 2005, four of the men were sentenced to death and two were sentenced to twenty years in jail for their role in the 2001 murder [...]
Amnesty International Friday condemned Egypt for plans to deport approximately 1,200 detained Eritrean refugees despite the possibility that they may face torture in their home country. The group called for Egypt to allow the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to communicate with the refugees to investigate their claims for asylum; UNHCR said that the [...]
A US District Court Judge Thursday ordered US Marine Corps Sgt. Ryan G. Weemer jailed for refusing to testify about the deaths of Iraqi detainees during the Multinational Force-Iraq's November 2004 offensive in Fallujah . Weemer reportedly refused to testify about the role of former Marine Sgt. Jose Nazario before a federal grand jury Thursday [...]
Irish Justice Minister Dermot Ahern said Friday that a referendum to ratify the new EU reform treaty has failed, with early results showing 53.4 percent of Irish citizens voting against it . The result could halt European Union plans to implement the instrument, properly known as the Treaty of Lisbon , as it cannot take [...]
