North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said Saturday that NATO will investigate allegations of human rights violations committed by Afghan prison officials. Scheffer's comments follow allegations made by Canadian human rights groups that Canada, a NATO member and prime contributor to ISAF , NATO's security assistance force in Afghanistan, is [...]
The American Bar Association (ABA) Friday criticized a US Department of Justice proposal that lawyers for Guantanamo Bay detainees should be subject to tightened restrictions , including limited access to their client and evidence. ABA President Karen J. Mathis said in a statement : The ability of lawyers to confer with their clients and advocate [...]
A parliamentary vote on the only candidate running to be the next president of Turkey ran into a legal challenge Friday after Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul , a member of the ruling Islamist-rooted Justice and Development Party (AKP) fell 10 votes short of a requisite majority in the first round of balloting. Turkey's constitution [...]
A spokesman for the Cambodian Bar Association (BAKC) said Saturday that the group would dramatically reduce the fees it proposed to levy on foreign lawyers taking part in the upcoming Khmer Rouge genocide trials before the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia . Foreign lawyers will now to be required to pay a one-time [...]
Death Penalty Statistics 2006, Amnesty International, April 27, 2007 . Read the full statistical report. Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.
The US Department of Defense (DOD) announced Friday that a top al Qaeda operative has been tranferred to Guantanamo Bay by the CIA. Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi , an Iraqi citizen who is suspected of coordinating cross-border attacks on US forces in Afghanistan from Pakistan and plotting to assassinate Pakistan president Gen. Pervez Musharraf , was [...]
New York Governor Eliot Spitzer (D) introduced a bill Friday to legalize gay marriage in New York. In a press release, Spitzer said : Under current law, partners unable to enter into a civil marriage – and their children – lack legal protections taken for granted by married couples. In such areas as property ownership, [...]
Former Canadian advertising executive Jean LaFleur plead guilty Friday to 28 counts of fraud for his alleged role in the federal sponsorship scandal . Lafleur is accused of billing the Canadian federal government for work which was never done, and ultimately bilking the government of almost $1.6 million in contracts his advertising firm obtained through [...]
US Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) Thursday introduced a bill to restrict gun sales to terror suspects. S. 1237 would give the US attorney general the power and discretion to block gun sales to people listed as suspected terrorists. Under the bill, potential buyers who were denied firearms could appeal that decision to the attorney general. [...]
The office of the German Federal Prosecutor Friday declined to investigate a war crimes claim against former US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and other high-ranking US officials filed by human rights groups seeking accountability for acts of torture allegedly committed at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, and in Afghanistan . The Center for Constitutional Rights, [...]
