The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a lawsuit Thursday seeking to compel the US government to release unredacted transcripts of military hearings conducted at Guantanamo Bay in early 2007 for 14 "high-value" prisoners , during which the prisoners allegedly described torture and abuse sustained during detention in CIA secret prisons . The complaint argues [...]
Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki has established a panel to investigate the December 2007 disputed presidential election that sparked mass violence in the country, according to a Thursday statement from his office. The panel is expected to probe the election's outcome, as well as the independence of the Electoral Commission of Kenya . Tensions have settled [...]
The FBI has continued to improperly use so-called national security letters (NSLs) , with the number of violations increasing in 2006 over previous years, according to a US Department of Justice follow-up review released Thursday. Last March, the DOJ found in its initial review on NSL abuse that NSL violations similarly rose between 2003 through [...]
The trial chamber of the International Criminal Court (ICC) on Thursday postponed the trial date of former Union of Patriotic Congolese militia leader Thomas Lubanga until June 23, 2008. Lubanga's trial was originally scheduled to begin March 31 . Lubanga is charged with enlisting child soldiers in the violence-plagued Ituri district . He has denied [...]
A US military judge ruled Thursday that some correspondence between the US and Canadian government officials regarding Guantanamo detainee Omar Khadr must be turned over to Khadr's defense team. Prosecutors argued that they had found no such correspondence in US State Department records, but military judge Army Colonel Peter Brownback ordered that they conduct another [...]
A Review of the FBI's Use of National Security Letters: Assessment of Corrective Actions and Examination of NSL Usage in 2006, US Department of Justice, March 13, 2008 . Read the full text of the report . Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.
Armenian President Robert Kocharian Thursday issued a decree lifting media restrictions put in place during a state of emergency declared after last month's contested presidential election. The decree is set to take effect Friday, but restrictions on rallies and public gatherings will still be in force. AP has more. Kocharian declared a state of emergency [...]
An ongoing Pentagon investigation into the videotaping of terror suspect interrogations has uncovered at least 50 videotaped interrogations, the New York Times reported Thursday. Most of the videotaped interrogations involved two terror detainees, Jose Padilla and Ali al-Marri . Officials denied that any of the tapes depict interrogation tactics that would qualify as torture, although [...]
The Chinese State Council said Thursday that a US Department of State report critical of the Chinese human rights record is hypocritical given the number of human rights problems in the US. In a report entitled the Human Rights Record of the United States in 2007 , the Chinese detail alleged human rights violations by [...]
The US Environmental Protection Agency said Wednesday that a stricter air quality rule on ground-level ozone and smog will go into effect in May, requiring some 345 US counties to reduce air pollution in order to come into compliance with the new standard. The revisions to the National Ambient Air Quality Standards For Ozone were [...]
