German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier on Thursday denied any knowledge of the alleged CIA kidnapping of German national Khaled el-Masri until after the man was released. Steinmeier, who has previously denied that Germany aided the CIA in kidnapping el-Masri, reiterated that sentiment Thursday, saying that "Germany provided no assistance to the kidnapping of a German [...]
The Dutch Parliament voted Thursday to strip Immigration Minister Rita Verdonk of responsibility for setting immigration policy and to temporarily halt the deportation of failed asylum seekers. Verdonk, known domestically as the "Iron Lady" for her tough anti-immigration initiatives, will now be responsible for integration and child protection. Verdonk was stripped of her immigration portfolio [...]
US Justice Department lawyers have asked a federal appeals court to overturn an October district court ruling ordering the Secret Service to release visitor logs for the personal residence and office of Vice-President Dick Cheney . US District Judge Ricardo Urbina issued the order in a lawsuit brought by the Washington Post. The paper requested [...]
The New Jersey Legislature passed a bill Thursday allowing same-sex civil unions in response to a New Jersey Supreme Court ruling in October that said the state legislature had 180 days to decide whether the state would recognize same-sex marriage or another form of civil partnership. The measure was approved by the state Assembly 56-19 [...]
Lawyers for Saddam Hussein accused Iraqi officials of interfering with judicial independence Thursday, after a number of public statements from officials that Iraq's Cassation Court, currently considering Hussein's appeal , would ultimately affirm the former Iraqi president's death sentence . Hussein's lawyers also criticized comments from prosecutors that the life sentence of former Iraqi Vice [...]
The Public Committee against Torture in Israel et al. v. The Government of Israel et al., The Supreme Court of Israel Sitting as the High Court of Justice, December 14, 2006 . Read the full text of the ruling. Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.
One day after Florida death row inmate Angel Diaz endured a 34-minute-long – and apparently painful – execution, death penalty critics filed papers with the Florida Supreme Court seeking to once again halt the death penalty in the state. Petitioners, including numerous people currently on Florida’s death row roster , filed an emergency petition Thursday [...]
The Serbian Supreme Court ordered a retrial Thursday in the case of 14 former members of Serb militias who were convicted of war crimes for killing some 200 Croatian POWs at a pig farm near Vukovar in 1991 at the end of a three-month siege there. The 14 defendants were sentenced to a total of [...]
The US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit has upheld a lower court ruling that defendants of slaves have no standing to sue companies that allegedly profited from slavery before the practice was abolished. In an opinion by Judge Richard Posner Wednesday, the court ruled: we think that the district court was correct, with [...]
The UK High Court on Thursday rejected an appeal brought by the family of a Brazilian man who was shot and killed by London police two weeks after the July 2005 London transit bombings when police mistook him for alleged terrorist Hussain Osman . The appeal was brought against a July decision by prosecutors not [...]
