An appeals court in Egypt has affirmed the four-year prison sentence imposed on Egyptian blogger Abdel Kareem Nabil at a hearing Monday, according to court officials speaking to AP on condition of anonymity. A lower court in Alexandria initially imposed the sentence against Nabil in February on charges of inciting sedition, insulting Islam and Egyptian [...]

Only one in five US federal agencies actually complies with the Electronic Freedom of Information Act Amendments (E-FOIA) , according to a report released Monday by the National Security Archive . The E-FOIA amendments, which took effect in 1997, require federal agencies to post key records online, provide citizens with detailed guidance on making information [...]

Several high-ranking Democratic senators have called for the resignation of US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales in the wake of revelations in an official audit that the FBI broke and misused laws in the process of obtaining personal information from telephone companies, Internet service providers, banks, and credit bureaus under the terms of the Patriot Act. [...]

Lawyers in Uganda began a three-day strike Monday in response to the March 1 siege of the Ugandan High Court . The 830 members of the Uganda Law Society (ULA) voted last week to protest the incident, in which state security agents surrounded the courthouse, rearrested six defendants who had previously been granted bail, and [...]

Twenty Pakistani lawyers were injured by riot police Monday as protests against last week's suspension of Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry continued. More than 3,000 lawyers gathered outside the Lahore High Court building and attempted a sit-in on the main street passing by the courthouse. Police used batons to break up the crowd and caused [...]

JURIST Guest Columnist Aziz Huq, Director of the Liberty and National Security Project at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law, says that the El-Masri v. Tenet ruling represents a dangerous trend in "state secrets" cases towards immunity from litigation at the discretion of the executive… The U.S. Court of Appeals for [...]

JURIST Contributing Editor David Crane of Syracuse University College of Law, former Chief Prosecutor for the UN Special Court for Sierra Leone and a former senior inspector general in the US Department of Defense, says that in the wake of revealed misuse of authority by the FBI under the Patriot Act – compounding other missteps [...]

A UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) investigative team released a report Monday saying the citizens of Darfur need immediate protection against war crimes, blaming the government of Sudan for many of the atrocities taking place there. Nobel peace prize laureate Jody Williams led the group that tried to enter Sudan over a 20-day period last [...]

China plans to gradually lessen the number of executions it carries out while still keeping the death penalty , according to a statement released Sunday by China's Supreme People's Court, Ministry of Justice, Ministry of Public Security , and China's lead prosecutor. The statement indicated that China cannot entirely abolish the death penalty, but noted [...]

Zimbabwe police arrested at least 100 people – including opposition presidential hopeful Morgan Tsvangirai – in advance of a prayer meeting in the nation's capital Sunday. One activist was reportedly shot dead. Armed police had been deployed in Harare since Friday after the meeting was prospectively declared illegal. As citizens approached the sports field where [...]