Shayana Kadidal : "It was in February of 2002 that the Center for Constitutional Rights and our co-counsel brought the first habeas case in federal court on behalf of detainees held at Guantánamo. Yesterday, June 12, 2008, the United States Supreme Court ruled that the part of the Military Commissions Act that attempted to block [...]
Approximately 870 inmates escaped from the main prison in Kandahar City in southern Afghanistan Friday when members of the Taliban conducted a bomb and rocket attack. Prison officials said that nine police were killed. NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) estimates that the number of escaped prisoners is closer to 1,100. A Taliban spokesperson said [...]
Netherlands Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende said Friday that he would press on with ratification of the the EU reform treaty formally known as the Treaty of Lisbon even after Irish voters rejected it in a referendum Thursday. The Irish vote casts a shadow over the future of the pact as it must be approved [...]
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 [...]
