The US Supreme Court granted certiorari in four cases on Tuesday. In City and County of San Francisco v. Sheehan the court has been asked to decide whether Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act requires law enforcement to accommodate a mentally ill, violent and armed suspect when taken into custody. The court will [...]
The UN Special Rapporteur on the Independence of Judges and Lawyers Gabriela Knaul on Tuesday urged the government of East Timor to reconsider the dismissing of international judges and prosecutors. Knaul believes that the audit and dismissal of judicial personnel puts the independence of the judiciary within the country in question. Since October the East [...]
A grand jury in Ferguson, Missouri, decided Monday not to indict police officer Darren Wilson for the shooting death of teenager Michael Brown in August. St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Robert McCulloch released documents and evidence that were presented to the grand jury, including jury transcripts, witness interviews, forensic reports and photographs. As protesters take [...]
The Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) announced Monday that the trial of two Cambodian leaders accused of committing genocide will be postponed to January 2015. Lawyers for Khieu Samphan have refused to participate in trial proceedings before the appeal from the decision at the first trial is filed. Khieu Samphan and Nuon [...]
An official for the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCR) on Tuesday stated that human rights activists in Burundi have been the subjects of threats and defamation for their current role within the state. According to Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders Michel Forst, they are treated as [...]
Four UN human rights experts on Tuesday stressed a need for greater international and national efforts to eliminate violence against displaced women. Noting substantial levels of violence perpetrated against the world’s roughly 17 million conflict-displaced women, the UN’s release came during the worldwide International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women . The experts, [...]
The Israeli government’s use of house demolition as a punitive measure in response to alleged acts of violence by Palestinians must end immediately, two UN human rights experts urged Tuesday , adding that the practice, which targets Palestinian homes in both Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory, is a violation of human rights law. The [...]
JURIST Guest Columnist Nathaniel R. Helms, author of No Time for Truth: The Marines, Justice, and the Haditha Incident, discusses the Haditha Incident and the military justice system … Kenneth Englade recently offered his interpretation of the so-called Haditha Massacre, an unfortunate label applied to a far more reprehensible event that ultimately left eight US [...]
Amnesty International (AI) revealed new evidence Monday indicating a Belgian mining company, Groupe Forest International, lied about bulldozing homes in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) . The homes were destroyed during a 2009 police operation to clear the area of small-scale miners who were allegedly stealing from the company’s Luiswishi mine in the Kawama [...]
Amnesty International (AI) on Monday urged the Irish government to petition the European Court of Human Rights to reopen the 1978 UK v. Ireland case following claims that the UK sanctioned torture. These allegations follow the airing of the RTE documentary “The Torture Files” , which asserts that the UK government withheld evidence that could [...]
