Belarus opposition politician and former foreign economic relations minister Mikhail Marinich was released from prison Friday, after having served nearly two years of a two and a half year sentence. Arrested in April 2004 and convicted of theft of equipment the US government provided to his NGO "Business Initiative," Marinich's case has been widely criticized [...]
Eight thousand pro-democracy protesters assembled in Nepal's capital city of Kathmandu Saturday in the largest demonstration against the rule of King Gyanendra since the current round of protests began over a week ago. An alliance of seven opposition political parties, including the Communist Party of Nepal , has been waging a general strike against Gyanendra's [...]
Pointing to a letter written by lawyers representing Zacarias Moussaoui and a motion filed with the court by federal public defenders who represented Richard Reid , the so-called "shoe bomber," US District Court Judge Leonie Brinkema on Friday vacated a previous order requiring Reid to testify on behalf of Moussaoui's defense at his sentencing trial. [...]
US District Judge Sarah Evans Barker of the Southern District of Indiana issued an opinion Friday upholding a 2005 law enacted by the Indiana General Assembly that requires most voters to present a valid, government-issued photo identification card when they head to the polls. The Indiana Democratic Party led the constitutional challenge to the law [...]
The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in a 2-1 decision Friday ruled that a Los Angeles ordinance that subjects the homeless to arrest if they are caught "sitting, lying or sleeping on public sidewalks" violates the prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment found in the Eighth Amendment of the US Constitution . [...]
Lawyers familiar with the case of former University of South Florida computer science professor Sami al-Arian said Friday that the Kuwait-born Palestinian activist had agreed to a deal with federal prosecutors in which he would plead guilty to a lesser terrorism-related charge of conspiring to provide material support to a terrorist organization and be deported [...]
US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld kept tabs on the 2002 interrogations of Mohamed al-Qahtani , the so-called "20th hijacker" from the Sept. 11 attacks, every week at Guantanamo Bay , according to a report from Salon.com. The online magazine used a Freedom of Information Act request to obtain portions of a December 2005 Army inspector [...]
Indiana Democratic Party v. Rokita, United States District Court for the Southern District of Indiana, April 14, 2006 . Read the full text of the opinion . Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.
Eduard Rebgun, who was appointed by a Moscow court hearing a bankruptcy case for crippled Russian oil company Yukos to manage the company, petitioned a federal court in New York City under Chapter 15 of the US bankruptcy code to halt Yukos' London-based management team from selling Mazeikiu Nafta , the company's largest refinery in [...]
A Central African Republic court referred former president Ange Felix Patasse and Congo's Vice-President Jean Pierre Bemba to the International Criminal Court (ICC) Friday on war crimes charges stemming from accusations that Patasse's security forces, backed by Bemba's then rebel movement fighters and mercenaries from Chad, executed and raped civilians as they defeated a coup [...]
