Mentally disabled prisoners experience “unnecessary, excessive, and even malicious force” at the hands of prison staff across the US, said a report released Tuesday by Human Rights Watch (HRW) . The report found excessive force used in many instances when prisoners exhibit behaviors that are characteristic of their mental illness and even when this behavior [...]
A judge for the Lueneburg state court in Germany said the trial against a 93-year-old former Auschwitz guard can resume, finding him fit to stand trial. Oskar Gröening was charged with 300,000 counts of accessory to murder and faces a maximum of 15 years in prison for processing the belongings of the victims and supporting [...]
US President Barack Obama on Tuesday called for a rewrite of the Patriot Act , including elimination of the National Security Agency (NSA) phone data collection program. Obama’s call follows a decision by the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit , which found that the Act does not authorize the NSA to collect [...]
The Ukranian Parliament on Tuesday approved controversial martial law regulations that will purportedly allow for extrajudicial detention and relocation of foreign citizens “who threaten or undertake aggression towards Ukraine.” If enacted, the new law will also allow Ukrainian authorities to condemn private property and proscribe conduct and political parties that clash with the country’s accepted [...]
Refugees and migrants crossing through Libya face human rights abuses including torture and rape, Amnesty International (AI) reported Sunday. The report asserts that foreign nationals in Libya are subject to alarming rates of rape, torture and abduction, causing many to risk their lives crossing the Mediterranean Sea trying to escape. AI also noted that a [...]
The Swedish Supreme Court on Monday rejected an appeal by WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange seeking to overturn a 2010 arrest warrant for alleged sexual assault that was reissued by a lower court late last year. The warrant requires Assange to leave the Ecuadorian embassy in London where he has found asylum and travel to Sweden [...]
Mohamed Fahmy, an Al Jazeera journalist and Canadian national, announced plans on Monday to sue the network for negligence and seek USD $100 million in damages. Formerly a CNN journalist, Fahmy and two other Al Jazeera English journalists were convicted and sentenced by an Egyptian judge last year on charges of aiding terrorists and endangering [...]
Former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officer Jeffrey Sterling was sentenced Monday to 42 months in prison after being convicted of telling New York Times journalist James Risen about classified plans to thwart Iran’s nuclear ambitions. In 2006 Risen published his book “State of War,” in which he related details of a classified CIA plan to [...]
A group of UN human rights experts said Monday that the Government of Paraguy “failed in its responsibility to act with due diligence” towards a 10-year-old girl who was raped and became pregnant. According to the experts, the girl has not been given treatments that could “save her life and preserve her health, including safe [...]
JURIST guest columnist Allen Rostron of the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law discusses Vermont’s recent gun law in light of America’s contentious gun politics… Vermont and Kansas are among the states where new laws relating to firearms will go into effect this summer. Vermont is taking limited steps to increase legal controls on [...]
