Amnesty International (AI) on Monday launched a global anti-torture campaign, as it released a report summarizing the results of a global survey analyzing attitudes towards torture in 141 countries. The report found that 44 percent of the 21,000 people surveyed would not feel safe from torture if arrested in their home country. Brazil and Mexico [...]
The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on Wednesday affirmed without comment a US International Trade Commission (ITC) decision finding that Apple did not infringe upon Samsung Electronics patents. The ITC had previously found in June that Apple infringed on a separate Samsung patent, and issued a ban on the importation of AT&T [...]
In a briefing to the UN Security Council on Tuesday, International Criminal Court (ICC) Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda said that Libya faces a deep political crisis and serious security challenges , inhibiting its ability to rebuild itself as a modern democratic state. Bensouda expressed concern with criminal impunity in Libya, particularly the Libyan government’s failure to [...]
A judge for the US District Court for the District of Idaho on Tuesday struck down Idaho’s laws banning same-sex marriage . Four same-sex couples filed the lawsuit in November, challenging Idaho’s prohibition on same-sex marriage and refusal to recognize same-sex marriages performed out of state. Citing the US Supreme Court’s recent decision in US [...]
An Egyptian court on Wednesday ruled that a former leader of the Muslim Brotherhood was not guilty of insulting the judiciary in comments he made to the press. Egypt’s government charged Muslim Brotherhood leader Mahdi Akef with insulting the judiciary after he accused the judicial branch of corruption in an interview with a Kuwaiti newspaper. [...]
Police in the Pakistani province of Punjab on Tuesday filed charges of blasphemy against 68 lawyers for protesting police actions. Last week several dozen lawyers, mostly from Pakistan’s Shiite minority, staged a protest against a high-ranking police official for detaining and beating a lawyer following a disagreement. The blasphemy charges underscore more widespread tensions between [...]
The prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) , Fatou Bensouda , announced Tuesday that she will reopen a preliminary investigation into alleged mistreatment and killings of Iraqi detainees in Iraq by UK military forces from 2003 through 2008. Bensouda stated that her office received new information in January from two human rights organizations implicating [...]
Human Rights Watch (HRW) said on Tuesday that it has strong evidence the Syrian government used chemical weapons on three rebel-held towns in Northern Syria last month. The announcement reveals results of a two-week investigation by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) into the alleged chemical warfare. HRW asserts that evidence strongly [...]
The Court of Justice of the European Union ruled on Tuesday that people can request that search engines remove links to certain websites containing their personal information. In an advisory judgment, the court held that search engines such as Google, Yahoo! and Bing must sometimes comply with individuals’ requests to web pages or newspapers with [...]
An Israeli trial court on Tuesday sentenced former prime minister Ehud Olmert to six years in prison for his role in a bribery scandal while serving as mayor of Jerusalem. The Tel Aviv District Court ruled that Olmert was guilty of participating in a corrupt real estate deal in the 1990s involving the Holyland Towers [...]
