The US House of Representatives voted Thursday to hold former White House legal counsel Harriet Miers and White House Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten in contempt for failing to cooperate with an inquiry into the US Attorneys firing scandal . Members of the House voted 223-32 to issue contempt citations for Miers for failing to [...]
Mexico's National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) is not doing enough to promote remedies and reforms needed to end abuses, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in a report released Wednesday. After examining the commission's work on more than 40 human rights cases, HRW said that CNDH often fails to push for accountability for human rights abuses [...]
Acting head of the US Department of Justice (DOJ) Office of Legal Counsel Steven G. Bradbury testified at a US House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties hearing Thursday that the use of waterboarding has been barred by measures enacted since it the interrogation technique was used on three terror detainees [...]
Argentinean police Wednesday arrested retired naval officer Luis Emilio Sosa in Buenos Aires in connection with the August 1972 massacre of 16 leftist guerrillas on a military base in the southern city of Trelew . Two other former officers, Paccagnini Ruben and Emilio Del Real, were also arrested over the weekend for their alleged roles [...]
US Rep. Edward Markey (D-MA) said Wednesday that he has introduced a bill in Congress aimed at guaranteeing unfettered access to the Internet and limiting the ability of Internet providers to restrict users' access. Markey said that the Internet Freedom Preservation Act would ensure so-called "net neutrality:" The open architecture nature of the Internet is [...]
The US Marine Corps has ordered Lance Cpl. Stephen Tatum to testify against Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich about the killing of 24 Iraqi civilians at Haditha in November 2005, according to Wednesday media reports. Both men currently face court-martial for their alleged roles in the incident. Tatum's lawyer said that Tatum has received an immunity [...]
The US District Court for the Northern District of California dismissed a lawsuit against Jeppesen Dataplan Wednesday, ruling in favor of the US government's motion to dismiss on state secret grounds. The US Department of Justice had argued that the lawsuit, brought by the American Civil Liberties Union over Jeppesen's alleged role in the CIA's [...]
Prisons and courts in Iraq have been overwhelmed with an influx of detainees corresponding to the surge in American troops in Iraq over the last year, American advisers visiting Iraq said on Wednesday. Iraq's prison system does not have nearly enough beds to house all of the detainees in custody, nor does the court system [...]
The Iranian Guardian Council , the upper parliamentary chamber composed of twelve members, on Wednesday reinstated more than 280 parliamentary candidates in preparation for next month's parliamentary elections. Last month, Iran's Interior Ministry banned over 2,000 moderates and reformists from running in the March parliamentary election. Among those banned were 190 of 200 candidates from [...]
The US Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing Wednesday on the state secrets privilege in preparation for debate on the State Secrets Protection Act , a bill introduced by committee leaders "to enact a safe, fair, and responsible state secrets privilege." The bill, introduced by Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-MA) and co-sponsored by Sen. Patrick Leahy [...]
