Leading legislators from Lebanon's majority party were expected to file a petition in parliament Thursday seeking a constitutional amendment to allow Gen. Michel Suleiman to become president of Lebanon. Under the current Lebanese constitution , the presidency cannot be held by a sitting military commander . Anti-Syrian and pro-Syrian members of Lebanon's parliament have been [...]
Diane Orentlicher : "The history of U.S. efforts to punish genocide is full of paradoxes. The United States led postwar efforts to prosecute Nazi crimes in Nuremberg and played the lead role in establishing international tribunals to prosecute those responsible for the Rwanda genocide of 1994 and perpetrators of atrocities, including the 1995 Srebrenica genocide, [...]
Six French aid workers were sentenced to eight years of hard labor Wednesday after being convicted in a Chadian court for attempting to kidnap 103 African children . The six, affiliated with the Zoe's Ark charity, claimed that they were attempting to airlift orphaned children from the war-torn Sudanese region of Darfur to safety in [...]
Serbian War Crimes Prosecutor Vladmir Vukcevic said Wednesday that fugitive Bosnian Serb leader Ratko Mladic is in Serbia, and that authorities are closing in on him. Vukevic's comments are the first acknowledgement by a Serbian official that Mladic is hiding in the country, although that has been widely suspected. Vukcevic said that Serbian authorities have [...]
The Russian Supreme Court has overruled a lower court decision that had held that a new investigation into the activities of Yukos founder Mikhail Khodorkovsky and his partner Platon Lebedev was illegal. The Supreme Court decision permits Russian prosecutors to press ahead with charges of embezzlement, expropriation and money laundering. Khodorkovsky's lawyers say they will [...]
Former Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina went on trial on one of two alleged extortion charges in a Dhaka courtroom Wednesday, according to a court official cited by Reuters. Sheikh Selim, a former Minister of Government, also appeared on similar charges. Hasina is accused of extorting around $1.16 million from two businessmen. In October, she [...]
The Iraqi cabinet passed a draft law on Wednesday that would grant a general pardon to "innocent" detainees held in Iraqi and US prisons in the country, according to an Iraqi official speaking to AFP Wednesday. Currently, there are more than 26,000 detainees held in US-run Camp Cropper and Camp Bucca and some 24,000 more [...]
Cambodian students and Buddhist monks protested Tuesday in Phnom Penh, asking the Extraordinary Chambers in the Court of Cambodia (ECCC) to quickly begin trials against former leaders of the late-1970s Khmer Rouge communist regime for crimes against humanity. Over 600 demonstrators took to the streets over concerns that the trials are moving too slowly and [...]
Italian police have arrested former Uruguayan naval intelligence officer Nestor Jorge Fernandez Troccoli for crimes relating to the kidnapping and murder of Italian citizens and others who opposed South American military dictators during the 1980s, according to Italian media reports Monday. The Italian government has issued over 140 arrest warrants for various members of the [...]
An Israeli military prosecutor has concluded that Israel's use of cluster bombs during the 2006 Lebanon war was justified and did not violate any standards of international law, according to an Israeli army statement released Monday. Maj. Gen. Gershon HaCohen found that "the use of this weaponry was legal once it was determined that, in [...]
