Colombian prosecutors have indicted prominent political boss Alvaro Araujo Noguera, accusing him of complicity in the 2002 kidnapping of a member of a rival political clan. Some say the kidnapping is part of a campaign by illegal paramilitary groups to elect sympathetic politicians. Members of the political elite in Colombia have been repeatedly accused of [...]
White House and US Justice Department officials have confirmed that seven US federal prosecutors were fired because they had not adequately carried out President George W. Bush's policies on immigration and firearms issues, according to a report in the Washington Post Saturday. The seven US Attorneys , who had been probing corruption among Republicans, subsequently [...]
Egyptian judge and president of the judges' syndicate Yahia Ragheb Daqruri said according to a report published Saturday that women cannot serve as judges because it would be against Sharia law . Daqruri's statements, appearing in the Saturday edition of independent daily Al-Masri Al-Yom , question the appropriateness of women judges deliberating "alone in a [...]
A Moroccan appeals court convicted 12 Islamic militants on terrorism charges Friday, handing down prison sentences ranging from two to 15 years. Eight of the defendants allegedly had ties to al-Qaeda and had volunteered to fight in Iraq . The main defendant, Tunisian Mohamed Ben El Hadi Messahel, allegedly made contact with seven of the [...]
A Kuwaiti court Saturday acquitted former Guantanamo Bay detainees Omar Rajab Amin and Abdullah Kamel al-Kundari of charges of fighting against US forces in Afghanistan because of insufficient evidence. The two were repatriated on September 15, 2006, after having been detained at Guantanamo Bay since January 2002. The verdict is not final, however, as the [...]
The jury in the perjury trial of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby asked US District Judge Reggie B. Walton for a "clarification of the term 'reasonable doubt'" Friday, concluding the eighth day of deliberations in the high profile CIA leak case . The jurors' written question specifically asked "is it necessary for the government to present [...]
El-Masri v. United States, US Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, March 2, 2007 . Read the full text of the ruling . Reported in JURIST"s Paper Chase here.
The US Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals Friday upheld the dismissal of a rendition-related lawsuit by German citizen Khaled El-Masri against the CIA , deciding that the case could not be heard in a US court because of the government's state secrets privilege . The lawsuit , argued by ACLU lawyers, charged former CIA director [...]
A team of Swiss forensic pathologists from Institute of Legal Medicine at Lausanne University Friday announced the results of an autopsy on deceased Guantanamo Bay detainee Ahmed Ali Abdullah , concluding that while available evidence supported the US government claim that Abdullah committed suicide by hanging last June, it was impossible to be completely sure [...]
A three judge panel of the US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit threw out a lawsuit challenging Ohio's death penalty procedure Friday on the grounds that the claim was filed too late. In the 2-1 opinion , judges Richard Fred Suhrheinrich and Edward Eugene Siler decided that the statute of limitations on the [...]
