European and US-based rights groups filed a lawsuit against former US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld with the Paris prosecutor Friday coincident with Rumsfeld's arrival in Paris to deliver a speech sponsored by Foreign Policy magazine. In their complaint the French-based International Federation of Human Rights Leagues (FIDH), the US-based Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), [...]
Iraqi parliament speaker Mahmoud al-Mashhadani Thursday objected to the execution of former Saddam Hussein-era Defense Minister Sultan Hashim Ahmed al-Tai , joining a group of Iraqi political leaders speaking out against the planned execution. Al-Mashhadani said that executing al-Tai would cause military officers to question their commanders' orders out of fear that they could be [...]
Case of Lebedev v. Russia, European Court of Human Rights, October 25, 2007 . Read the full text of the judgment. Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.
Daniel Lee Siebert v. Richard Allen, Commissioner, Alabama Department of Corrections, et al., US Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, October 24, 2007 . Read the full text of the order . Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.
The High Administrative Court of Ukraine Thursday validated the results of the Sept. 30 parliamentary election after dismissing a legal challenge by the Communist Party of Ukraine contending the vote was invalid due to alleged violations associated with Ukrainians voting abroad. The coalition of President Viktor Yuschenko's Our Ukraine-People's Self-Defense Bloc and former Ukrainian Prime [...]
The White House Thursday agreed to let US Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and ranking Republican Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA) see classified documents pertaining to President George W. Bush's warrantless domestic surveillance program , in hopes that it would speed up the approval of proposed legislation to grant telecommunications companies immunity from [...]
Two key Democrats on the US Senate Judiciary Committee said Thursday that their votes on the nomination of retired federal judge Michael Mukasey as attorney general will depend on Mukasey's stance on whether the interrogation technique waterboarding constitutes torture. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL) , each [...]
Representatives in the US House of Representatives have asked Speaker Nancy Pelosi to delay a vote on a resolution labeling as genocide the World War I-era killings of over one million Armenians by Turkish soldiers . The proposed legislation was approved by the House Foreign Relations Committee earlier this month and was expected to reach [...]
The Supreme Court of Canada Thursday agreed to hear an appeal over the asserted right of Canadian Guantanamo Bay detainee Omar Khadr to see thousands of pages of Canadian government documents related to his case. Lawyers for Khadr, who was born in Toronto, will face off against Canadian Justice Department lawyers who oppose the access. [...]
The US Congress is taking steps to put all armed US contractors working in combat zones under the jurisdiction of the US military, according to Thursday reports. Earlier this month, the Senate included such a provision in its 2008 defense authorization bill , and Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee Sen. Carl Levin said [...]
