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 [...]
The UN General Assembly held a ceremony Thursday to administer the oath of office to new UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon . Ban, appointed to the position in October, will succeed Kofi Annan when the two-term secretary-general steps down on December 31. The General Assembly also paid tribute to Annan's 10 years of service. In remarks [...]
The Argentinean Senate has unanimously approved a bill that refers to the mass killings of Armenians in Turkey around the time of World War I as genocide and establishes a day of annual commemoration on April 24. The bill has already passed in the lower house of parliament and must still be signed by the [...]
The US Defense Department Thursday announced the release of 16 Saudi Arabian detainees from Guantanamo Bay . Saudi Arabian Interior Minister Prince Nayef bin Abdul said that the detainees would now be "subject to the Saudi system." Over 40 Saudi detainees have now been released from the US detention facility since May. A total of [...]
Chinese human rights attorney Gao Zhisheng has been convicted by a court in Beijing of inciting subversion of state power , his lawyers said Thursday. Gao was convicted after entering a guilty plea, but his lawyers – who were not permitted to attend court proceedings – said they doubted the credibility of his "spontaneous" admission [...]
A federal jury in New Orleans returned a verdict in favor of pharmaceutical giant Merck Wednesday, concluding that the company did not fail to adequately warn a Tennessee man's doctors about risks associated with the painkiller Vioxx . Anthony Dedrick suffered a heart attack after taking Vioxx, and his lawyers argued that Merck failed to [...]
The Israeli Supreme Court ruled Thursday that not all targeted killings of Palestinian militants are prohibited by international law. Two Israeli human rights groups filed a petition in 2002 seeking a ban on the Israeli policy, which government officials defend as the most effective method of stopping Palestinian terrorists from bombing Israel targets. The high [...]
Jordan Paust : "The Constitution expressly mandates that "he privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Case of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it." U.S. Const., art. I, s. 9, cl. 2. During the formation of the Constitution, there had been a proposal by Charles [...]
