US Justice Department Inspector General Glenn Fine has forwarded a request to investigate President Bush’s authorization of National Security Agency (NSA) eavesdropping on US residents to the Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility, citing a lack of jurisdiction to begin his own inquiry into the controversial program. On Tuesday the Pentagon’s inspector general also declined to [...]
Brown v. Sanders, Supreme Court of the United States, January 11, 2006 . Read the Court's opinion per Justice Scalia, along with a dissent from Justice Stevens, joined by Justice Souter, and a second dissent from Justice Breyer, joined by Justice Ginsburg. Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.
Abdul Aziz Hakim , leader of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq and the country’s most powerful Shiite politician, said Wednesday that a new Iraqi government dominated by religious Shiites elected in the December 15 parliamentary vote would not “change the essence” of the new Iraqi constitution despite a compromise with Sunni Arabs [...]
The US Supreme Court heard oral arguments Wednesday in House v. Bell , where it will decide whether appellant Paul Gregory House, who was convicted and sentenced to death for the abduction, attempted rape and murder of Carolyn Muncey in July 1985, presented enough exculpatory evidence to merit another look at his case. The justices [...]
The UN Wednesday officially named Serge Brammertz , Deputy Prosecutor with the International Criminal Court (ICC) and a former Belgian federal prosecutor, as the new Commissioner of the ongoing UN investigation into the February 2005 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri . The announcement followed speculation that he would be appointed as German [...]
A Yemeni man alleged to have been an al Qaeda propagandist and security officer for Osama bin Laden told a US military commission at Guantanamo Bay Wednesday that he was boycotting the just-reconvened proceedings . At a pre-trial hearing, Ali Hamza al-Bahlul held up a sign that said "boycott" printed in Arabic and then smiled [...]
A man from the Georgian Republic who lobbed a grenade toward US President George W. Bush while he was on a visit there in May last year was sentenced to life imprisonment on Wednesday by a Georgian court. Vladimir Arutunyan , who originally confessed but later recanted, landed the grenade within 50 meters of Bush [...]
Argentine judge Jorge Urso has decided to send accused Bosnian Serb war criminal Milan Lukic, arrested in Buenos Aires in August, to the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague for trial, according to AFP sources. Lukic, one of the 10 most-wanted Bosnian Serbs, had been on the run for more than [...]
The families of fifteen Cubans deported when they failed to reach US soil have filed suit in US District Court, claiming that the US government's so-called "wet-foot, dry-foot" policy is inconsistent with US and international law. The fifteen Cubans fled their homeland in a small homemade boat, but only managed to reach an abandoned bridge [...]
The 23-member Santiago Appeals Court Wednesday upheld a lower court ruling granting former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet bail, but at the same time stripped him of immunity an additional human rights case, opening the way for prosecutors to charge him with crimes associated with the so-called Caravan of Death . The "Caravan" was a military [...]
