Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly of the US District for the District of Columbia ruled Monday that the National Archives cannot rely on an executive order by President George W. Bush that permits former presidents and vice-presidents to delay the release of administration records. Executive Order 13,233 , issued by Bush in November 2001 purportedly to further [...]
Former US Army Reserve Staff Sergeant Ivan "Chip" Frederick was released on parole Monday from a military prison in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, where he was incarcerated for three years after pleading guilty to abusing prisoners at the Abu Ghraib detention facility in Iraq . Frederick pleaded guilty to five charges of abusing inmates in 2004, [...]
Lawyers representing the opposition Pakistani Peoples Party filed new petitions at the Supreme Court of Pakistan Tuesday challenging President Pervez Musharraf's bid to run for another term in office. The opposition members argue that the Election Commission of Pakistan should not have formally accepted Musharraf's nomination as a presidential candidate because of his dual role [...]
US District Judge Charles R. Breyer of the Northern District of California extended a temporary restraining order Monday blocking the implementation of a new US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) regulations intended to make it more difficult for illegal immigrants to obtain US employment. The stricter rules, announced in August and originally slated to take [...]
UN special envoy to Myanmar Ibrahim Gambari met with opposition leader and democracy advocate Aung San Suu Kyi and with top Myanmar military leader Senior General Than Shwe during separate meetings Tuesday to discuss the rising political crisis in Myanmar, according to reports from foreign diplomats. Suu Kyi was released from house arrest on Sunday [...]
JURIST Contributing Editor David Crane of Syracuse University College of Law, former Chief Prosecutor for the UN Special Court for Sierra Leone, says that the recent meeting at Chautauqua of nine of the twelve living international prosecutors, spanning the Nuremberg Trials to the International Criminal Court, produced a landmark call for governments to back the [...]
JURIST Contributing Editor Geoffrey S. Corn, Lt. Col. US Army (Ret.) and former Special Assistant to the Judge Advocate General for Law of War Matters, now a professor at South Texas College of Law, says that effectively controlling the exponential increase in US reliance on civilian contractors in foreign military operations requires greater clarity regarding [...]
London's Metropolitan Police Service mistakenly killed Brazilian Jean Charles de Menezes ' because of a flawed plan to carry out an anti-terrorism operation after the July 21 London transit bombing attempts in 2005, prosecutor Clare Montgomery argued during opening statements Monday in the trial of the London police for breaches of health and safety laws [...]
Lawyers for Guantanamo Bay detainee Omar Khadr asked the US Court of Military Commission Review Monday to reconsider last month's decision reinstating charges against Khadr. In June, military judge Col. Peter Brownback dropped terrorism charges against Khadr, ruling that the court had no jurisdiction because a Guantanamo Combatant Status Review Tribunal found that Khadr was [...]
Four doctors and a New Jersey pharmaceutical company were acquitted Monday of all criminal charges surrounding the dissemination of a tainted blood clotting product in Canada in the 1980s and 1990s, a public health disaster that infected more than 20,000 people with hepatitis C and more than 1,000 people with HIV. Ontario Superior Court Justice [...]
