The Malaysian lawyer whose 2001 video of a deal over a judicial appointment has sparked accusations and investigations into judicial corruption, claimed Monday he must have been intoxicated when he appeared to be arranging for the appointment of "friendly" senior judges. V.K. Lingam told an official inquiry that he "must have had one too many [...]
Human Rights Watch Sunday condemned the appointment of a suspected Janjaweed militia leader as an advisor to Sudan's Ministry of Federal Affairs and special advisor to President Omar El Bashir . Musa Hilal is a tribal leader from northern Darfur and is suspected of running one of the 16 known Janjaweed bases. The Janjaweed are [...]
Alex Neve : "Over the past week there has been reason to both commend and chastise Canada for the approach it takes to assessing where torture is likely to occur. In the midst of court action launched by Amnesty International Canada and the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association, challenging Canada's practice of transferring battlefield detainees [...]
Faisal Naseem Chaudhry : "All was not well on the morning of December 27, yet it was not so unwell either. Elections were to take place on 8th of January. Benazir Bhutto, Nawaz Sharif and other politicians were on a move round-the-clock as part of their election campaign. The lawyers' boycott of judges who had [...]
JURIST Guest Columnist Rebecca Zietlow of the University of Toledo College of Law says that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was not just a dreamer but a doer whose activism helped bring about the civil rights legislation of the mid-1960s… Senator Hillary Clinton has been criticized for her recent remark that Martin Luther King’s “dream” [...]
A Turkish court has reordered telecom providers in the country to block access to popular video-sharing website YouTube . Reports surfacing in the Turkish media on Sunday suggest that the ban, originally reimposed Thursday, was a response to video clips insulting the founder of modern Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk . Users trying to access YouTube [...]
Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe has approved changes to the country's restrictive Public Order and Security Act ahead of upcoming presidential elections, Zimbabwean state media reported Saturday. The law formerly prohibited public political gatherings without prior police approval and if police turned down a party's application to hold a rally, the party could only appeal its [...]
Pakistani police have arrested two suspects in connection with the assassination of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto , officials said on Saturday. Aitzaz Shah and Sher Zaman were detained in the town of Dera Ismail Khan on the Afghan border, and were found in possession of explosives according to local reports. Shah, a teenager, told [...]
The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on Friday cited executive privilege in denying congressional requests for certain documents relating to the agency's decision to deny California a waiver from new auto-emissions standards. The waiver would have allowed California and 16 other states following its lead to impose stricter greenhouse emissions standards on cars and light [...]
Canadian Foreign Minster Maxime Bernier said Saturday that the Canadian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Trade will remove the US from an internal document that lists countries that employ interrogation methods that amount to torture and where prisoners risk being tortured. The document was part of a manual given to Canadian diplomats in a [...]
