The Polish government on Friday processed payments to two terror suspects currently held by the US at Guantanamo Bay. The European Court of Human Rights had imposed a Saturday deadline on Poland to make the reparations. Last July Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri were awarded USD $147,000 and $113,000, respectively, in a lawsuit against [...]
Burundi authorities arrested several military generals Friday after an unsuccessful coup attempt and said the suspects will face a military court for mutiny charges. Maj. Gen. Godefroid Niyombare announced the coup on Wednesday. President Pierre Nkurunziza was in Tanzania at the time the coup was announced but is believed to be back in his country. [...]
The US House of Representatives on Wednesday approves the USA Freedom Act , which would end the National Security Agency’s (NSA) mass collection of Americans’ phone data. The measure, approved by a vote of 338 to 88, largely extends the USA Patriot Act that was set to expire on June 3. Under the measure the [...]
A Serbian court on Thursday politically rehabilitated a World War II royalist executed nearly 70 years ago on convictions of collaborating with Nazis. Serbian nationalist Dragoljub “Draza” Mihailovic was an officer of the royal army when the Nazis invaded. Mihailovic allegedly began collaborating with the invaders and joined with them against their common enemy, communist [...]
The Supreme Court of Canada on Thursday rejected the Canadian government’s bid to have former Guantanamo detainee Omar Khadr declared an adult offender. The case concerned whether the eight-year war crimes sentence Khadr received from a US military commission in 2010 should be interpreted as a youth or adult sentence. Nine Supreme Court justices rejected [...]
The Republican led Missouri General Assembly on Wednesday approved a “right to work” bill that would stop workers from being required to be part of a union or pay dues, but the bill did not garner enough votes to overcome a likely veto by Governor Jay Nixon . After a more than eight-hour filibuster by [...]
The US House of Representatives approved a bill on Wednesday that would ban most abortion after 20 weeks, despite strong opposition from the White House. The Republican-led House approved the bill by a margin of 242-184. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte called the vote “a victory for the most innocent and defenseless among us, [...]
JURIST guest columnist Roy S. Gutterman of the Syracuse University College of Law discusses recent changes to Malaysian sedition law… Sedition, laws criminalizing criticism of a monarchy or government, is not as anachronistic as knights in shining armor or a moat around the castle. In fact, in many countries around the world, sedition laws are [...]
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Tuesday released a set of proposed guidelines outlining a plan to end the national lifetime ban on blood donations from homosexual individuals. The ban, which many activists and medical groups say after 32 years in no longer justified, was enacted to prevent donations from donors at an increased [...]
A Dutch court on Wednesday cleared a man of all criminal charges for assisting his 99-year-old mother to commit suicide. An important goal of the case was to set further precedents for assisted suicide in the Netherlands , a country where the act is already legal in certain situations. In 2008 Albert Heringa had been [...]
