JURIST Guest Columnist Kent Roach of the University Toronto Faculty of Law says that Canada's parliament needs to slow down and conduct an intelligent debate on the merits of two new anti-terrorism bills introduced in quick succession last week by Canada's minority Conservative government… Canadian Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day tabled new legislation in the [...]
Two Egyptian journalists and an opposition leader have been sentenced to a month in prison after being convicted in absentia of libel, court officials said Sunday. The journalists, Anwar el-Hawari and Younes Darwish, of opposition party Al-Wafd's daily newspaper and Al-Wafd leader Mahmoud Abaza, have appealed the verdict and remain free on bail. Two lawyers [...]
The American Bar Association (ABA) said Monday that there are serious flaws in the fairness and accuracy of several state death penalty systems , and called for a nationwide moratorium on executions . The ABA task force studied eight sample states – Alabama, Arizona, Georgia, Florida, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Tennessee – and found poor [...]
China's National People's Congress (NPC) Sunday adopted a draft amendment to the country's Law on Lawyers that will grant defense lawyers more power in criminal prosecutions. The amendment, the first since the original law's implementation in 1997, includes a loosening of restrictions on face-to-face meetings between lawyers and their clients, increased access to court documents [...]
Two websites with ties to Yemen's government Sunday denied earlier assertions that Jamal al-Badawi , one of the masterminds behind the 2000 terror attack on the USS Cole , had been set free. Yemeni security officials said Thursday that Al-Badawi, who along with 22 others escaped from a prison in 2004, was released after turning [...]
Liberia's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) has relaunched its investigations into atrocities committed in the region's civil wars that ended in 2003. The commission began its work in October last year, but it stalled in June for lack of funding. It has since received funds from the United Nations Development Program and the US Agency [...]
Iraqi Sunni Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi has urged fellow Vice President Adil Abdul-Mahdi and President Jalal Talabani to press the Iraqi parliament to pardon Iraqi detainees not classified as "dangerous elements" linked to the insurgency, according to AP Sunday. Of the 25,000 Iraqis now are being held by the US, 90 percent are believed to [...]
Former US Guantanamo Bay chief military prosecutor Col. Morris Davis said in an interview with the Wall Street Journal published Saturday that politics is interfering with Guantanamo prosecutions . Davis said that recently-approved rules governing prosecutions at Guantanamo result in the chief prosecutor reporting via the Legal Advisor to the Convening Authority to the Pentagon [...]
Canada's minority Conservative Party government introduced legislation Friday that would require Muslim women wearing a veil to show their faces before voting. Bill C-6 on "visual identification of voters" is said to be designed to combat voter fraud. If adopted, the new law could be enforced by Elections Canada staff taking voters to separate rooms [...]
The Supreme Court of Peru has convicted former Peruvian economy minister Jorge Baca Campodonico of embezzlement, according to the government's official gazette Saturday. Campodonico diverted $59.4 million from government funds to failing private bank Banco Latino. His three year prison sentence was suspended, but he has to pay 2 million nuevo sols in civil reparations [...]
