The government of the Philippines has used an immigration blacklist , consisting of 504 people allegedly linked to al Qaeda or the Taliban, to ban its critics from entering the country, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said Friday. The Philippines government confirmed the blacklist, but said it was created to prevent disturbances during a meeting of [...]
The US will donate $5 million to the UN-backed tribunal established to investigate and try suspects in the 2005 murder of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri , US Ambassador to the United Nations Zalmay Khalilzad announced Thursday. Khalilzad said the financial supportreflects our commitment to the process of accountability for political murder and assassination [...]
The Supreme Court of Pakistan dismissed legal challenges Friday to a bid by current Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf to run for another term as president while still serving as chief of the Pakistani army. The challengers had also opposed Musharraf's bid to avoid a general election by seeking re-election from the outgoing parliament and provincial [...]
The US Department of Defense has formally allowed fourteen "high-value" terrorism suspects held at Guantanamo Bay the right to request lawyers, the Washington Post reported Friday. The move could pave the way for the "high-value" detainees to challenge their status as enemy combatants in the US District Court for the District of Columbia . In [...]
Three senior Bush administration officials urged the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee to approve the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea Thursday. Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte, Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England and Vice Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Patrick Walsh argued that US military interests are at risk while the US [...]
An east Siberian court Friday ruled that former Russian oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky should remain in custody for another three months in order to prevent him from obstructing a new investigation into Khodorkovsky and his business partner Platon Lebedev . Russian prosecutors are investigating new charges against the former Yukos Oil executives, which include stealing [...]
The US Supreme Court issued a stay of execution Thursday for a a Texas inmate just hours before he was scheduled to be executed. Earlier this week, the Court granted certiorari in Baze v. Rees (07-5439) , where the Court will consider whether lethal injections of death row inmates constitute cruel and unusual punishment in [...]
US Rep. John Doolittle (R-CA) said Thursday that he would fight subpoenas issued by the US Department of Justice for documents, including legislative records, relating to disgraced former lobbyist Jack Abramoff . Doolittle's lawyer said that the Justice Department had overstepped its authority in demanding the documents, noting that the Constitution forbids the executive branch [...]
The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) Thursday handed down judgments on war crimes suspects Mile Mrksic, Miroslav Radic and Veselin Sljivancanin , who were accused of killing some 200 Croatian POWs at a pig farm near Vukovar in 1991. The court found Mrksic guilty on three counts of war crimes and sentenced [...]
The US Senate approved an amendment to the 2008 Senate Defense Reauthorization Bill by unanimous voice vote Thursday that would expand federal hate crimes legislation. Among its provisions, the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2007 broadens the definition of a hate crime to include violent attacks against people based on their gender [...]
