The US Senate Judiciary Committee has approved the State Secrets Protection Act , sending the legislation to the Senate floor for consideration. The legislation, approved by a 11-8 vote on Thursday, would place restrictions on when the executive can assert the so-called state secrets privilege in lawsuits involving the federal government. According to the Congressional [...]
US Army Sgt. 1st Class Trey A. Corrales was acquitted by a military jury on Friday of charges connected to the 2007 killing of an unarmed Iraqi civilian near the city of Kirkuk . Corrales was cleared of all charges against him, including premeditated murder, wrongful solicitation of another soldier to shoot an unarmed, wounded [...]
A panel of the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit on Friday overturned a lower court ruling dismissing an antitrust class action lawsuit against a group of banks that require credit cardholders to use arbitration to settle disputes. The cardholders argue that the banks, which include Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and Citigroup [...]
The Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) was cleared of financial mismanagement in an independent audit released Friday. The review was ordered by the ECCC Project Board in hopes that it would quell concerns raised by some foreign donors after the court made a formal request for an additional $114 million last month [...]
Zimbabwean police Friday raided the offices of independent election observers and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) , arresting hundreds in an alleged crackdown on anti-government subversives. Witnesses say that police were searching for vote counting materials that might show that MDC candidate Morgan Tsvangirai won the contested March 29 presidential election . The [...]
Over 3,000 prison inmates convicted of crack cocaine offenses have had their sentences reduced under an amendment to the Federal Sentencing Guidelines , according to a study released Thursday by the US Sentencing Commission . Of the 3,647 applications for early release, 3,075 have been granted and 572 denied, but most prisoners denied turned out [...]
US Marine Sgt. Jermaine A. Nelson should face court-martial for the November 2004 murder of an Iraqi detainee in Fallujah , a US Marine hearing officer found following an Article 32 pretrial hearing . Nelson was charged in December with murder and five counts of dereliction of duty after allegedly killing an unarmed captive during [...]
The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) said Friday that it has transferred a former Bosnian Croat leader who was convicted of war crimes related to the torture and persecutions of Muslims during the Bosnian War to an Italian prison to serve out his sentence. In 2003, the ICTY convicted Mladen Naletilic of [...]
The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) on Thursday ruled that Russia violated the civil rights of 13 men accused of terrorism in Uzbekistan by detaining them without trial for 20 months. In 2006, Russia agreed to extradite the 13 men to Uzbekistan to face charges connected with a 2005 uprising in Andijan that resulted [...]
Argentinean politician and former police chief and mayor Luis Abelardo Patti, wanted by Argentina for allegedly torturing and killing several people during Argentina's 1976-1983 "Dirty War" , was arrested in Buenos Aires Thursday. Patti, who was elected to Argentina's lower Congressional house in 2005, had just this month received approval by the Supreme Court to [...]
