US Assistant Attorney General William E. Moschella defended the use of National Security Letters in a 10-page letter sent to the Chairmen of the US House and Senate Judiciary Committees Tuesday, rebutting claims raised by a Washington Post article that NSLs have been used to spy on law-abiding citizens. NSLs allow the FBI to obtain [...]
AP is reporting that Virginia Governor Mark Warner has granted clemency to Robin Lovitt , a convicted killer who would have become the 1,000th person executed in the US since the US Supreme Court reauthorized capital punishment in 1976. Lovitt was convicted of fatally stabbing a man with scissors during a pool hall robbery in [...]
The first federal Vioxx trial, in which Evelyn Irvin Plunkett is suing pharmaceutical giant Merck for the death of husband Richard “Dicky” Irvin of a heart attack in May 2001, began Tuesday with an opening statement from Plunkett’s lawyer, who told jurors that Irvin died as a direct result of taking the painkiller Vioxx for [...]
Observers of the trial of Saddam Hussein warned Tuesday that mounting political pressure threatens the independence and fairness of the Iraqi High Criminal Court trying the ousted Iraqi leader. A Human Rights Watch spokesman noted that although Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari has not directly intervened in the proceeding, his public complaints that the court [...]
A federal court in Maryland has ruled that US law enforcement agents must obtain a warrant before obtaining information from a cell phone service on the location of a cell phone user. In an opinion written by Judge James J. Bredar and issued Monday, the court noted that although the Fourth Amendment does not protect [...]
French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin announced Tuesday that he would introduce stricter immigration controls as part of the French government's response to the riots started by immigrant youth that broke out across the country in late October and lasted almost three weeks. Under the new controls, France will no longer automatically issue French identity [...]
The Egyptian government does not plan to allow the Muslim Brotherhood to become a legal political party even though it has so far won 76 of 444 seats by running candidates as independents in the three-phase Egyptian parliamentary elections, according to President Hosni Mubarak’s adviser Osama el-Baz on Tuesday. On Monday the government arrested about [...]
Louis Joinet, a UN official assigned to oversee the human rights conditions in Haiti , on Tuesday sharply criticized the Haitian justice system for detaining hundreds of people without charge, including Reverend Gerard Jean-Juste , a political leader and member of the political party of ousted president Jean-Bertrand Aristide . Joinet characterized Jean-Juste as a [...]
US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Director Porter Goss Tuesday denied allegations that the CIA engages in torture when interrogating detainees. In an ABC-TV interview , Goss said that the agency's interrogation tactics did "not come close" torture in the sense of inflicting "physical pain or causing disability." He further asserted that torture does not produce [...]
Syria's Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Tuesday called for evidence implicating Syrians in the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri to be scrutinized in the wake of an admission by Syrian witness, Hosam Taher Hosam, that he testified falsely to the UN committee investigating the murder . Hosam accused Lebanese officials of conspiring [...]
