The Liberian Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) , assembled to investigate possible war crimes that occurred during the Liberian civil war that ended in 2003, held its first public session on Tuesday. While the commission does not have authority to try cases, it intends to take testimony from approximately 5,000 victims and suspects in order [...]
Pojamarn Shinwatra, wife of former Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra , returned to Thailand from self-imposed exile Tuesday to face corruption and fraud charges. Pojamarn was arrested upon arriving in Thailand, and was released on bail after a brief appearance before the Thai Supreme Court for Political Appointees. A Thai court issued an arrest warrant [...]
The US Marine Corps on Monday launched a court of inquiry proceeding to investigate whether charges should be brought in connection with a March 4, 2007 incident in which 30 US Marines opened fire on civilians alongside a road in Nangahar province, Afghanistan, after a suicide bomber drove a vehicle carrying explosives into their convoy. [...]
United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon said Monday that the UN "needs some strengthened investigative capacity" to combat fraud and increase transparency. During his first press conference of the year, Ban said that although the United Nations Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS) has found fraud within the UN, more robust investigative authority would help the [...]
JURIST Special Guest Columnist Basil Fernando of the Asian Legal Resource Centre says that repression of the Burmese people by the military government of the country now officially known as Myanmar is a device used against a despairing people that cannot be legitimated by anti-terrorism rhetoric … Despite the assurances given by the Burmese military [...]
Chip Pitts : "The recent transfer home from Guantanamo of ten more Saudi prisoners (and reports from Qatar News Agency that more of the final 13 Saudis may soon follow) suggests that the prison is one step closer to being closed — as demanded by even our closest allies and as acknowledged as a desirable [...]
School District of the City of Pontiac et al. v. Secretary of the United States Department of Education, January 7, 2008 . Read the full text of the opinion . Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.
Violent crime rates in the US decreased by 1.8 percent between the months of January and June 2007, according to the 2007 Preliminary Semiannual Uniform Crime Report released Monday by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) . In addition to the overall decrease in violent crime, the report showed a 6.1 percent decrease in [...]
The Supreme Court of Sri Lanka Monday ordered the country's government to stop cordon-and-search security operations, in which security forces cut off access to a populated area before searching and arresting residents within. Human rights groups have criticized the practice , arguing that the arrests constitute collective punishment infringing on civil liberties and are used [...]
The US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit Monday ruled that a 2005 lawsuit challenging the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) should not have been dismissed by a lower federal court. The National Education Association and individual school districts in Texas, Michigan and Vermont filed the lawsuit in April 2005 to force the [...]
