The Grand National Assembly of Turkey Wednesday preliminarily approved a proposed amendment to the country's constitution that would ease a current ban on Islamic headscarves and allow women to wear headscarves in universities. The measure passed 401-99 in a secret ballot. A final vote on the constitutional revision proposed by the ruling Justice and Development [...]
UN Special Rapporteur on Torture Manfred Nowak sharply criticized the White House Wednesday for defending the use of waterboarding , calling the practice "absolutely unacceptable under international human rights law." Nowak's comments, as well as the White House defense of the interrogation technique, came after CIA Director Michael Hayden confirmed at a Tuesday Senate Intelligence [...]
UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown Wednesday said he supports allowing UK courts to hear some evidence obtained through wiretap surveillance , telling parliament that the long-time prohibition against wiretap evidence should be lifted in situations where "key conditions" are met. Brown said that admissible wiretap evidence would be limited to only information which cannot be [...]
The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) said Wednesday that the trial of former Croatian general Ante Gotovina and two other military commanders will begin March 11. Gotovina and commanders Ivan Cermak and Mladen Markac were indicted in 2001 for alleged crimes against humanity and violations of the laws or customs of war [...]
Peter Herby, head of the Arms Unit of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) , expressed hope Wednesday that text of a treaty to ban the use of cluster bombs could be approved at a conference in Dublin in May and signed by most countries within the year, even if the world's leading [...]
US Attorney General Michael Mukasey is expected to testify before the House Judiciary Committee Thursday in opposition to a unanimous December 2007 decision by the US Sentencing Commission to retroactively reduce penalties for crack cocaine offenders . That decision gives retroactive effect to an earlier amendment to the Federal Sentencing Guidelines intended to narrow the [...]
Spanish National Court Judge Fernando Andreu Wednesday indicted 40 members of the Rwandan military on genocide and terrorism charges stemming from crimes allegedly committed during the 1994 Rwandan genocide that claimed some 800,000 lives. Andreu reportedly began investigating the Rwandan case in 2005 and indicated Wednesday that he could have also indicted Rwandan President Paul [...]
The White House Wednesday defended the use of waterboarding , saying that the technique is legal. In response to questions as to whether waterboarding constituted torture, White House spokesman Tony Fratto reiterated that the US does not practice torture and "that the programs have been reviewed, and the Department of Justice has determined them to [...]
A Russian court Wednesday denied former Yukos executive and lawyer Vasily Aleksanian temporary release from jail to receive medical treatment, even as the trial was suspended to allow him to be treated for health issues. Aleksanian's lawyers had requested that he be admitted to a hospital for treatment for AIDS-related cancer and tuberculosis, but the [...]
US District Judge James Ware of the US District Court for the Northern District of California heard arguments Tuesday on the government's motion to dismiss a lawsuit against Jeppesen Dataplan on state secrets grounds. The Justice Department argued that the lawsuit, brought by the American Civil Liberties Union over Jeppesen's alleged role in the CIA's [...]
