Three independent UN experts in the areas of judicial independence and freedom of expression expressed "grave concern" for "recent attacks against the judiciary of Egypt," and for detaining protesters who rallied in support of several reform-oriented judges. Specifically, the experts condemned a disciplinary panel decision to reprimand pro-reform judge Hisham Bastawisi for "exercising his right [...]
The Serbian Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld 40-year prison sentences for four former members of a special police unit that took orders from then-Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic to kill ex-Serb President Ivan Stambolic in August 2000. Belgrade's special court convicted eight men of the assassination last year , sentencing them each to 4 to 40 [...]
The American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit Wednesday seeking to force the US Department of Defense to reveal information collected for a domestic terrorist threats database that was allegedly used to spy on peaceful anti-war protesters across the United States. In February, the ACLU submitted a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for information [...]
The US Immigration and Customs Enforcement Service (ICE) has arrested over 2,000 illegal immigrants since May 26 in an effort to crackdown on deported gang members, pedophiles and violent felons who snuck back into the US, officials said Wednesday. Under the nationwide "Operation Return to Sender," half of the illegal immigrants arrested had criminal records [...]
France's Court of Cassation , the highest court in the country, on Wednesday upheld the conviction of American financier George Soros on insider trading charges. Soros said he plans to appeal the ruling to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) . An appeals court ruled in 2005 that Soros' 1988 purchase of French bank [...]
UK Attorney General Lord Goldsmith and Home Secretary John Reid have agreed to meet to consult on procedures to govern the appeal of sentences for sex offenses after Reid objected to a judge's sentence as "too lenient" and demanded that Goldsmith's office take it to the Court of Appeal. Craig Sweeney was sentenced to life [...]
Lawyers for the three Guantanamo Bay detainees who committed suicide have questioned why it took the US military Wednesday three days to notify them of their clients' deaths, saying the delay caused unnecessary distress for the detainees' families. The lawyers also said the failure to notify counsel of the suicides suggests that the military has [...]
Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi is calling for a renewed effort to pass the European constitution after next year's French elections. Prodi spoke in Vienna on Tuesday during a meeting with Austrian Chancellor Wolfgang Schussel to kick off a tour of EU capitals. The constitution is on hold indefinitely after France and the Netherlands rejected [...]
A lawyer for a Guantanamo Bay detainee who was formally cleared of terror charges said Wednesday that the US State Department is speaking with the Canadian government to secure his client's release to that country. Canada would have to issue a minister's permit under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act to either allow the detainee [...]
The UK law lords ruled Wednesday that three British men and one Canadian man who claim to have been tortured in Saudi Arabian jails after confessing to participating in a series of terrorist bombings in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, in 2000 and 2001 cannot sue Saudi officials responsible for their imprisonment in British courts because the [...]
