The US House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform heard testimony on Thursday regarding potential abuse of the Defense Base Act of 1941 (DBA) in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Act requires contractors working on military installations to provide workers' compensation insurance coverage for their employees, the cost of which is reimbursed to the contractors using [...]
Ashley Deeks : "Last week the Department of Defense confirmed that Abdullah Saleh Ali al Ajmi, a former Guantanamo detainee, was one of the people responsible for three suicide bombings in Mosul in April, which reportedly killed seven members of the Iraqi security forces. While this event is, for several reasons, unlikely to cause significant [...]
UN Special Rapporteur on human rights and counterterrorism Martin Scheinin praised anti-terrorism efforts in Spain Wednesday, but urged Spanish officials to reform the country's legal standards for treatment of terror suspects . The Special Rapporteur's comments came in response to concerns over allegations of torture and ill-treatment of terrorism suspects in Spanish jails. At the [...]
US Solicitor General Paul Clement announced Wednesday that he is resigning from his post, effective June 2. Perhaps best-known for his Supreme Court advocacy of Bush Administration positions on rights and procedures at Guantanamo Bay , including such notable cases as Hamdi v. Rumsfeld and Hamdan v. Rumsfeld . Clement began working for the Department [...]
US military judge Col. Ralph Kohlmann set June 5 as the tentative date for the military commission's arraignment of the five men charged with plotting the Sept. 11 attacks in an email to military defense attorneys Wednesday. The group, held at Guantanamo Bay , includes the alleged mastermind of the attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed . [...]
US Air Force Reserve Brig. Gen. Thomas Hartmann , a top Pentagon legal advisor on the Guantanamo military commission trials, said Wednesday that he will not resign despite questions concerning his objectivity. Hartmann serves as legal advisor to Susan J. Crawford, the Convening Authority for the military commissions, but last week was disqualified from participating [...]
JURIST Guest Columnist Christina Wells of the University of Missouri School of Law says that to restrict peaceful protests aimed at disseminating a message simply because we find that message offensive is inconsistent with common sense notions of privacy and the spirit of the First Amendment…. Since 2006 the Reverend Fred Phelps and the Westboro [...]
Amrit Singh : "For almost four years now, the ACLU has been litigating under the Freedom of Information Act for the disclosure of government documents relating to the torture of prisoners held in U.S. custody abroad since September 11, 2001. The Bush administration, however, continues to fight tooth and nail to withhold key policy documents [...]
A Texas appeals court Wednesday overturned a jury verdict that found pharmaceutical giant Merck liable for the death of a 71-year-old man who died from a heart attack within a month of taking Merck's painkiller Vioxx . The jury had ordered Merck to pay $32 million in damages to the family of Leonel Garza – [...]
A Polish judge ruled on Wednesday that prosecutors must amend their indictment against former communist leader General Wojciech Jaruzelski and other former communist officials to present a greater range of evidence against the defendants. Jaruzelski was charged in March 2006 with "organizing crimes of a military nature" and "carrying out crimes that consisted of the [...]
