The US House Judiciary Committee filed a lawsuit Monday to enforce subpoenas seeking information from former White House legal counsel Harriet Miers and White House Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten regarding the US Attorneys firing scandal . Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers (D-MI) said Monday: It is extremely rare that Congress must litigate in order [...]
A Mauritanian detainee held at Guantanamo Bay has threatened to sue US officials, alleging that he has been tortured in US custody. Lawyers for Mohamed Ould Sillahi told Reuters Monday that Sillahi was also tortured by officials in Jordan and Mauritania , whom he is also threatening to sue, after his arrest in 2001 and [...]
Chinese prosecutors increased the number of corruption convictions against government officials by 30 percent in the past five years, according to a Monday report by Chinese Procurator-General Jia Chunwang at the First Session of the 11th National People's Congress. Jia, who has headed the Supreme People's Procuratorate since 2003, said that prosecutors investigated 209,487 and [...]
A court in the Philippines acquitted Imelda Marcos and two co-defendants of 32 counts of illegal fund transfers Monday, ending a 17-year criminal trial in which prosecutors accused the widow of former President Ferdinand E. Marcos of illegally transferring up to $863 million to Swiss bank accounts. Marcos, who is accused along with her husband [...]
Thai prosecutors formally filed new corruption charges Monday against former Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra and other high-level officials, accusing Thaksin and the officials of illegally approving and operating funds from the state lottery. The military-appointed Assets Examination Committee has frozen nearly $2 billion of Thaksin's assets and is seeking up to $500 million in [...]
The US Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) have launched a criminal investigation into troubled mortgage lender Countrywide Financial , according to a New York Times report Sunday. Federal authorities are investigating whether Countrywide criminally misrepresented its financial condition. The FBI is also cooperating with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) [...]
JURIST Guest Columnist Douglas NeJaime of UCLA School of Law says that in the California marriage case the state's lawyers are attempting a difficult balancing act between an increasingly institutionalized pro-gay perspective held by those at the highest level of state government and the state’s own marriage restriction, itself a remnant of ideas that have [...]
JURIST Guest Columnist Roland Amoussouga, Spokesperson and Senior Legal Adviser at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), says that the recent United Nations agreement with Rwanda over the detention in Rwanda of convicted ICTR prisoners is simply an agreement with the country's lawful government on any sentences that may be served in Rwanda, and [...]
Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe has signed into law a bill requiring key industries, like mining and banking, to be controlled by local owners, a government newspaper reported on Sunday. Government officials have tried to address concerns around the "Indigenization and Economic Empowerment Bill" by saying that it will not result in the immediate seizure of [...]
The Constitutional Court of Armenia Saturday rejected a challenge brought by an opposition candidate against the results of February's disputed presidential election, ruling that although polling discrepancies existed they did not affect the election's outcome. Tens of thousands of supporters of opposition candidate and former President Levon Ter-Petrosian staged protests after the results were announced, [...]
