Fifteen allies of French President Jacques Chirac went on trial Monday for allegedly rigging a Paris election during Chirac's tenure as the mayor of Paris. Prosecutors allege that the 15 politicians and officials planted 327 fake voters in the electoral register for a 1989 municipal election where Chirac's conservative party won the majority of all [...]
The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights for Nepal (OHCHR-Nepal) urged the Nepali Maoist party Monday to keep its promises to stop its human rights violations. OHCHR-Nepal alleges that Maoist troops are still conducting kidnappings, torture, and murder of political as well as civilian targets. OHCHR-Nepal said it has undertaken probes into [...]
A large percentage of US Central Intelligence Agency counterterrorism officers have bought government-reimbursed private insurance plans that cover potential civil judgments and legal expenses associated with charges of criminal wrongdoing, according to Monday's Washington Post. Some current and former intelligence officers revealed the growing trend to the Post, highlighting fears that officers are vulnerable to [...]
The trial of Saddam Hussein and six co-defendants on genocide and crimes against humanity charges related to the so-called "Anfal" operation , which led to the killings of as many as 180,000 Kurds in northern Iraq in the 1980s, resumed in Baghdad Monday with the testimony of a former Kurdish guerrilla who described the aftermath [...]
Ali Khan : "Five years later, the 9/11 tragedy is writ large. Unnecessary deaths litter the day, every day. Gratuitous barbarism shocks the conscience. The rhetoric of destruction intensifies. Individuals and nations committed to violence threaten international peace and security. The United Nations fails. The Security Council lingers, limps, and acts with half-hearted authority as [...]
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has proposed three major changes to the rules regulating when companies' oil process facilities must integrate new pollution control equipment. Environmental advocates say the rule changes, put forward Friday, allow companies to ignore the total pollution produced by a facility, instead focusing on emissions produced by individual pieces of machinery, [...]
Chinese prosecutors have charged a police officer with negligent conduct in connection with the death of a suspect that occurred after a 21-hour interrogation, according to state media reports published Monday. The suspect, Tan Gangshan, was arrested on unknown charges after police saw him "looking suspicious" while riding a motorcycle. The autopsy report concluded in [...]
JURIST Guest Columnist Susan Herman of Brooklyn Law School says that the lingering fog of the 9/11 attacks has clouded our perceptions, blurred our legal categories, and perhaps also compromised our judgment… For a month after September 11, 2001, I walked out of my house in Brooklyn and smelled the smoke. Even while the air [...]
JURIST Contributing Editor Mary Ellen O'Connell of Notre Dame Law School says that five years after 9/11 – five years that have witnessed Guantanamo Bay, Iraq, Abu Ghraib and CIA "black sites" – there are hopeful signs that America is returning to the rule of law that a handful of powerbrokers urged be cast aside [...]
Detainees at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison , recently transferred from US to Iraqi control , are allegedly being tortured by prison officials, according to an independent observer who told the UK's Telegraph that screaming was heard coming from the inmate cell blocks, that health conditions there are unacceptable, and that inmates are given inadequate food [...]
