A military court in the Democratic Republic of Congo has recommended that three ex-employees of Anvil Mining , an Australian company, be tried for complicity in war crimes committed by Congolese government soldiers in 2004. The crimes alleged to have been facilitated by the ex-employees, a Canadian and two South Africans, include summary executions, rape, [...]
US Marine Sgt. Lawrence Hutchins III appeared in military court Monday to contest charges of kidnapping and murdering an Iraqi civilian in April. Hutchins was the leader of an eight-man squad in Hamdania that allegedly took Hashim Ibrahim Awad from his home and shot him without provocation. A total of eight US military personnel were [...]
Dr. Lester Crawford , a veterinarian who served briefly as commissioner of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) last year, will plead guilty to failure to disclose his financial interest in companies regulated by the agency, his lawyer said Monday. Crawford is scheduled to appear in federal court Tuesday to enter guilty pleas to [...]
US Army prosecutors argued in a hearing Monday that an officer overseeing interrogations at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison should face a court-martial for his willful blindness toward prisoner abuse, while a defense attorney countered that most of the military police officers who abused prisoners were not under his client's command. Lt. Col. Steven L. Jordan [...]
The Supreme Court of Missouri on Monday affirmed a trial court decision striking down a state law requiring voters to show Missouri-issued photo identification at the polls . In a per curiam opinion , a 6-1 majority held that requiring voters to present ID cards violates the equal protection and voting-rights clauses of the Missouri [...]
The European Union on Monday formally signed an interim agreement giving the United States access to passenger name record data from European airlines conducting transatlantic flights. The US is expected to formally sign the deal later Monday while the EU will still need to submit the deal for all 25 EU member states to ratify [...]
Convicted civil rights lawyer Lynne Stewart received a sentence of 28 months Monday. Stewart was convicted of conspiracy and providing material support to terrorists for helping imprisoned Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman communicate with his terrorist followers. Stewart was also convicted of defrauding the government for violating rules that had been put in place to prevent Abdel-Rahman [...]
David Miner : "A growing number of soldiers question whether they can honorably serve in support of the war in Iraq. My client Ricky Clousing confronted this question after a five month deployment to Iraq ending in April 2005. In June of 2005, Ricky left his Fort Bragg unit after experiencing a 'crisis of conscience' [...]
A national of Bahrain, two Pakistani nationals and one Iranian were transferred from US custody at Guantanamo Bay into the hands of their home governments over the weekend, the US Defense Department confirmed Monday. As expected , in addition to the Pakistanis released from Guantanamo, US forces freed six other Pakistanis from the US-controlled Bagram [...]
US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales on Monday announced the launch of the Initiative for Safer Communities, responding to growing concern about the increase of violent crime in American cities. In the first increase since 2001, violent crime rose 2.2 percent in 2005 , according to the FBI's 2005 Uniform Crime Program , and under Gonzales' [...]
