A court in Japan has dismissed an appeal by 81 plaintiffs who argued that the visits of former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi to a war shrine honoring Japanese dead as well as war criminals from World War II violated the constitutional separation of state and religion. The Fukuoka High Court in Okinawa found it unnecessary [...]

Members of Britain's House of Lords Thursday voiced their support for an amendment to the Armed Forces Bill that would pardon 306 World War I soldiers who were executed for various offenses including cowardice, sleeping while on duty, striking a superior officer, disobedience and desertion. The bill, with the pardons amendment, passed through committee Thursday [...]

The Santiago Court of Appeals voted 16-2 Thursday to strip the immunity of former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet , in a case involving the kidnapping and murder of a chemist who worked for the secret police. Eugenio Berrios was kidnapped and taken to Uruguay to prevent him from being questioned in the assassination of Pinochet's [...]

JURIST Guest Columnist Chibli Mallat, visiting professor at Princeton University and the EU Jean Monnet Professor in Law at St. Joseph's University in Beirut, Lebanon, says that Iraq's constitutional response to pluralism may yet make it an example to the world… Criticism of post-invasion Iraq has become a cottage industry; at latest count there are [...]

The US State Department has rejected Britain's latest call for the closure of the Guantanamo Bay detention center, saying the prison would remain open as long as necessary and was needed to house "some very dangerous people." UK Foreign Minister Margaret Beckett on Thursday called for Guantanamo's closure because of its record on human rights [...]

The US Department of Defense (DOD) labeled anti-war activities as "potential terrorist activity" and monitored students, Quakers and other anti-war groups while collecting information for a domestic terror threats database, according to documents released Thursday by the American Civil Liberties Union . The documents, obtained from the DOD under a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit [...]

2006 Report on Human Rights, UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office, October 12, 2006 . Read the full text of the report . Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.

Reconnaissance du genocide armenien de 1915, French National Assembly, October 12, 2006 . Read the full text of the bill. Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.

Three Canadian citizens supported by Amnesty International Canada demanded an official inquiry into their cases Thursday along the lines of that undertaken for Maher Arar to determine what role Canadian security forces played in their arrest and alleged torture in Syria between 2001 and 2004. Kuwaiti-born Ahmad El Maati, Syrian-born Abdullah Almalki and Iraqi-born Muayyed [...]

Sixteen Afghan men were reunited with their families Thursday after being released by the US military from four years of detention in Guantanamo Bay . The men denied links to Islamic terror groups and alleged abuse at the hands of their captors as they spoke at the offices of the National Peace and Reconciliation Commission [...]