UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour Thursday denounced the poor conditions of prisons in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) during a visit there, deploring in particular overcrowding and inadequate access to justice. Three thousand people are imprisoned at the CPRK (Centre Penitentiare et de Réeducation de Kinshasa), the largest prison in DRC's [...]
Senator Arlen Specter (R-PA) , the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, predicted Thursday that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales will resign from his post at the conclusion of current investigations into the allegedly-political firings of federal prosecutors . Specter's comments followed others made by Senator Chuck Hagel (R-NE) Wednesday, who suggested that by remaining [...]
Ivan Dombrovsky, chairperson of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine , resigned without elaboration Thursday as the 18-judge court continued to deliberate the constitutionality of Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko's April 2 decree dissolving parliament and calling for new elections. The Constitutional Court has appointed Deputy Chair Valery Pshenichny to be the new chief justice. Pshenichny was [...]
The UK Court of Appeal Thursday restored a control order on a terrorist suspect identified only as "E". The court held that a prior ruling wrongly required Home Secretary John Reid to consider the judgments of a Belgian court when determining whether there was sufficient evidence to support a criminal indictment against E. The court [...]
The African Commission on Human and People's Rights will review alleged human rights violations committed by Zimbabwe after African non-governmental organizations placed the issue on the agenda of ACHPR's 41st session, which began Wednesday. In an interview with VOA News, Wilbert Mandinde, legal advisor to the Zimbabwe Chapter of the Media Institute of Southern Africa [...]
The British House of Commons Culture, Media and Sport Committee released a report Wednesday recommending that the government "bring forward proposals" to the European Commission "for an extension of copyright term for sound recordings to at least 70-years." The current British audio recordings copyright limit is limited to 50 years from the time of the [...]
The Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area (LCCR) filed a lawsuit against the US Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC) Wednesday requesting the public disclosure of a terrorist watch list containing more than 6,000 names. LCCR requested the document in 2005, and maintains that there is no legal [...]
The Supreme Court of Pakistan Thursday extended the suspension of the Supreme Judicial Council's (SJC) inquiry into the alleged misconduct of ousted Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry , denying a government request to resume proceedings and dismiss petitions filed by Chaudhry. Chaudhry has challenged the legality of Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf's March 9 order suspending [...]
Police in Harare, the capital city of Zimbabwe , were seen assaulting and arresting protesters who had taken to the streets Wednesday to express dissatisfaction with newly proposed constitutional amendments. Witnesses reported that at least 20 protesters were arrested and three were severely beaten by police. At least one protester had to be taken to [...]
The US Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report Wednesday criticizing the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Customs and Border Protection Agency's Automated Targeting System , which the GAO says violates federal privacy laws by allowing personal information "to be used in multiple prescreening procedures and transferred among various CPB prescreening systems in [...]
