The South African Department of Justice and Constitutional Development said Thursday that it is currently considering 1,107 applications for relief from prisoners claiming their incarceration is politically motivated. According to Minister Brigitte Mabandla, the South African constitution gives the president power to pardon the prisoners, many of whom have requested relief through the Inkatha Freedom [...]
A British Army major has testified that a military legal adviser approved techniques for preparing Iraqi detainees for interrogation with techniques that allegedly violated the Geneva Conventions . Maj. Antony Royce told a court-martial of several other soldiers charged with abusing Iraqi detainees that his superiors ordered him to "condition" the detainees for questioning by [...]
US Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT) introduced legislation Thursday that would restore habeas corpus rights to military detainees and make other amendments to the Military Commissions Act of 2006 (MCA) . A key provision in the MCA, which President Bush signed into law last month, strips US courts of jurisdiction to consider writs of habeas corpus [...]
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has ruled that President Bush "exceeded his constitutional authority by intruding into the independent powers of the judiciary" with an "unprecedented" directive ordering state court rehearings for 51 Mexican nationals convicted in US courts. The president's February 2005 memorandum instructed the Texas courts to follow a March 2004 decision [...]
Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf has overturned a ruling by a Sharia court for the first time by commuting the sentence of a man whom the court assigned the death penalty. Mirza Tahir Hussain , a British national, was convicted under Sharia Islamic law after killing a taxi driver in 1989, which he claims was in [...]
US President George W. Bush assured Australian Prime Minister John Howard Friday that Australian Guantanamo Bay detainee David Hicks would be brought to trial, but refused to give a timetable for the trial. Referring to Hicks' legal team's promise to challenge the Military Commissions Act of 2006 (MCA) , Bush noted that Hicks is "having [...]
US District Judge John Houston Thursday temporarily stayed enforcement of an ordinance passed by the city of Escondido, California which would punish landlords for renting to illegal immigrants . The ordinance requires landlords to provide evidence of their tenants' immigration status to city officials, who would verify the data with federal government records. Under the [...]
US Marine Lance Cpl. Tyler A. Jackson was sentenced to 21 months in military custody Thursday for his participation in the kidnapping and murder of an Iraqi man in Hamdania last April. Jackson admitted to assisting eight other servicemen in kidnapping Hashim Ibrahim Awad from his home, shooting him, then staging his body to appear [...]
US Army Spc. James P. Barker, who pleaded guilty Wednesday for the rape and murder of a 14-year-old Iraqi girl and the murder of her family in the Mahmudiya (also "Mahmoudiya") area in March, was sentenced Thursday to no more than 90 years in prison. Barker's effective life sentence, which has the possibility of parole, [...]
John Altenburg , appointed in 2003 by US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to oversee the military commissions trying terror detainees at Guantanamo Bay , has resigned his post as Appointing Authority and returned to full-time civilian legal practice, law firm Greenberg Traurig announced Thursday. The move comes just weeks after Altenburg submitted a draft manual [...]
