[JURIST] The ailing former senior Iraqi intelligence officer who in late October became the first witness to testify [JURIST report] in the trial of ousted Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein has died, the chief prosecutor of the case before the Iraqi High Criminal Court (formerly the Iraqi Special Tribunal [official website]) said Friday. Waddah al-Sheikh had been suffering from cancer but had agreed to give recorded testimony to three judges; defense lawyers who were then boycotting the trial after the kidnapping and murder of a colleague did not attend the proceeding. Al-Sheikh served the Saddam regime at the time of the Dujail massacre for which Hussein is currently charged and gave evidence that prosecutor Jafaar al-Mousawi described as being "on the side of the victims" before dying on October 27, four days afterwards. Additional witnesses are expected to testify against Hussein when his trial resumes [JURIST report] on November 28. AP has more.

[JURIST] Russian President Valdimir Putin has said he will consider amendments [Kremlin press statement] to a bill overwhelmingly approved [JURIST report] by the lower house of the Russian parliament Wednesday that would greatly increase state control over non-governmental organizations (NGOs) by requiring them to register with a state commission and imposing financial oversight on their operations. He told an NGO representative at the Kremlin Thursday that "civil society organizations should not be made to suffer from the bill." Foreign rights groups like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch say that the bill is onerous and would force them to close their Russian offices. In a meeting Friday with Duma Speaker Boris Gryzlov Putin said that "The bill should not undermine relations between Russian NGOs and their counterparts abroad." He added, however, that he agreed "with those who find it impermissible that certain public organizations are funded from abroad and actually engage in politics...Whether these organizations want it or not, willingly or unwillingly they become tools of foreign states trying to reach their own political objectives in Russia." AP has more. Interfax provides local coverage.

[JURIST] Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos [Euroresidentes] said Thursday that media reports that US CIA planes had made secret illegal stops in Spain while carrying terror suspects were unjustified as the US stopovers were legal, but promised to check aircraft more closely in the future. Spain has already been investigating allegations of the secret landings [JURIST report] in connection with newspaper stories accusing the US of operating secret CIA jails in Europe, an allegation the US has not confirmed or denied. Spain is currently seeking an explanation from the US, including questions regarding alleged landings in Majorca and the Canary Islands. The European Union will formally ask the US Tuesday to respond to reports that the CIA runs secret prisons [JURIST news archive] in eastern Europe. The questioning stems from the CIA's controversial "extraordinary rendition" [New Yorker report] program in which it removes suspects without approval of the US courts to third-party countries for interrogation. BBC News has more.

[JURIST] Former Chilean dictator Gen. Augusto Pinochet [JURIST news archive] was formally charged with human rights violations Thursday and placed under house arrest on the heels of an unrelated indictment on corruption charges [JURIST report] filed Wednesday on which he was granted bail. This time Pinochet has been charged in connection with the kidnapping and disappearance of six dissidents in 1974 after they were arrested by his security officers. The six disappeared in a case known as Operation Colombo [Wikipedia backgrounder] in which 119 people disappeared, some of whose bodies were later found in Argentina. The government claimed at the time that they had been killed by rival groups opposed to Pinochet. Pinochet, 90, was denied bail on this charge after neing declared fit to stand trial [JURIST report] on it earlier this month. According to the government that succeeded Pinochet in 1990, 3,190 people were killed during his regime for political dissent. Over 1,000 others remain unaccounted for after being arrested by his government. AP has more.

[JURIST] A Senegal appeals court ruled Friday that it was "not competent" to extradite former Chad president Hissene Habre [Wikipedia profile] to Belgium to face charges of crimes against humanity - including some alleged 40,000 executions and the torture of over 200,000 people - committed during his 1982-90 rule of the African country. Habre has been living is Senegal since he was deposed in 1990; he was arrested last week [JURIST report] under an international arrest warrant [JURIST report] issued after Belgian prosecutors initiated proceedings under the country's univeral jurisdiction [Wikiepdia backgrounder] law. With the Senegal court refusing to consider extradition Belgium's legal options are as yet unclear. AP has more.

3:25 PM ET - Reports from Senegal say that Habre has now been released from detention, although prosecution lawyers and human rights monitors insist they will continue to press the case againt him. BBC News has more.

[JURIST] Next Wednesday Robin Lovitt [Virginians United Against Crime profile], 41, is slated to become the 1,000th person to be executed since the 10 year moratorium on capital punishment [Wikipedia backgrounder] in the United States was lifted in 1977. He is convicted of fatally stabbing a man with scissors during a pool hall robbery in Virginia in 1998. Convicted killer Gary Gilmore [Crime Library profile] was the first to be executed after the series of 1976 Supreme Court decisions that upheld state laws reforming the capital punishment system. More than 3,400 prisoners have been on death row in the US since 1977, with an average execution of one person every ten days. Nationwide death sentences have, however, dropped by 50% since the late 1990s and executions carried out have dropped by 40%, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. A 2005 Gallup poll [deathpenaltyinfo.org] put American support of the the death penalty at 64%, the lowest in 27 years. Both houses of Congress are currently considering legislation [JURIST report] that would make it more difficult for defendants in capital cases to appeal to federal courts, thus shortening the execution waiting periods, but some say could lead to innocent people being put to death. AP has more.

[JURIST] French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy [official profile], widely seen as a leading candidate to replace President Jacques Chirac in 2007, is calling for new crime prevention legislation and affirmative action policies in the wake of widespread rioting [JURIST report] by immigrant youths earlier this months that prompted the French government to declare a state of emergency [JURIST report]. The new legislation, based on a report commissioned by the Ministry and expected to go before the French cabinet by year's end, would try to root out juvenile delinquency by depriving "negligent" parents of some state support, deploying video cameras in schools and stadiums, policing school absenteeism, sponsoring new community arts and job-hunting centers, and setting up a new ministerial-level national office on crime prevention. On Friday Sarkozy, the leader of the French conservative UMP party [party website], went further in an editorial [in French] in Paris' Le Figaro newspaper, calling for legal equality among French citizens to be matched by real equality, and extolling the virtues of remedial "discrimination positif" - affirmative action - which has to this point been firmly resisted by the French government and advisory groups such as the High Council on Integration [official backgrounder]. AP has more.

[JURIST] Jose Padilla [JURIST news archive], a US citizen charged with planning to detonate a radioactive "dirty bomb" in the US, will not face those charges because US officials obtained evidence against him using torture on two al-Qaida members, according to a New York Times report. The Times Thursday quoted unnamed current and former government officials as saying that the main evidence of Padilla's involvement in bombing plots came from two captured al-Qaida leaders, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed [Wikipedia], and Abu Zubaydah [BBC profile], but neither could be used as witnesses because each has been subjected to harsh questioning and possibly torture to extract evidence (including in Mohammed's case, "excessive use of a technique involving near drowning" in the first months after his capture). US officials fear that the men's testimony could expose CIA methods of investigation which have become contentious during the US "war on terror". The Bush administration has used Padilla as an example of the continued threat al-Qaida poses to the US [White house discussion]. Prior to his indictment [JURIST report] earlier this week, Padilla has been in custody for over three years at a military prison in North Carolina as an uncharged "enemy combatant". The Guardian has more.

[JURIST] Ugandan opposition leader Kizza Besigye [BBC profile], charged [JURIST report] last week with treason by civilian prosecutors, was taken before a Ugandan military court Thursday to answer additional charges of terrorism and illegal firearms possession. Besignye, who had been scheduled to attend a bail hearing in the civilian High Court, refused to recognize the jurisdiction of the military tribunal which had earlier called him before it to answer to the civilian charges [JURIST report], and the head of court entered a not guilty plea on his behalf. Uganda military courts are empowered to adjudicate weapons cases and other offenses by members of the Uganda military; Besigye is a former Uganda Army colonel. Western diplomatic observers were barred from the military proceedings by troops, according to the resident Danish ambassador, and human rights monitors said that "riding roughshod over the rights of political opponents and the courts" had "seriously damaged" Uganda's reputation. Besigye was scheduled to attend the military court again Friday, as well as a second High Court bail hearing. His arrest early last week prompted two days of rioting; the US State department has urged [statement text] the Uganda authorities to "examine the basis for the charges against Dr. Besigye and his co-defendants carefully." AP has more.

2:45 PM ET - The Kampala military court denied Besignye bail Friday and set a court-martial trial date of December 19. Besigye's lawyers have asked the country's Constitutional Court to intervene on the gounds that he should not face two trial processes for the same alleged offenses. BBC News has more.

[JURIST] Leading Friday's international brief, Kenyan legal experts have raised concerns that Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki [official profile] acted illegally and unconstitutionally when he sacked all 29 ministers and their deputies within 24 hours of his draft constitution being rejected by Kenyan voters [JURIST report]. Kenyan Attorney General Amos Wako defended Kibaki's actions as valid under the current Kenyan constitution, but others have argued that the Constitution requires that there always be a Cabinet of ministers and that a wholesale replacement of all ministers is outside the power of the president. Critics are also calling on Kibaki to dissolve the parliament and hold snap elections, as the majority of the parliament ignored the initial reports of public dissatisfaction with the draft constitution and insisted on a referendum. JURIST's Paper Chase has continuing coverage of Kenya [JURIST news archive]. The East African Standard has local coverage. The South African Mail and Guardian Online has more.

In other international legal news ...

• Wawan Purwanto, a senior lecturer at the Indonesian Intelligence School, has urged Indonesian law-makers to speed up the process of creating and passing an Indonesian intelligence law comparable to laws already in place in the US, Australia, and Britain. Purwanto said taht under the current timetable Indonesia would not have a functioning intelligence law until 2009 at the earliest and warned that terrorist events are on the rise in Indonesia [government website in Bahasa Indonesian], hightling the need for a stronger, tougher intelligence service. Purwanto said that under other anti-terrorism laws, police forces could detain suspects for significant lengths of time, but the Indonesian State Intelligence Agency (BIN) does not even have the power to arrest a supsect under current Indonesian law. JURIST's Paper Chase has continuing coverage of Indonesia [JURIST news archive]. The Jakarta Post has local coverage.
  
  
• Nepalese government spokesperson and Minister for Information and Communications Tanka Dhakal issued a statement Thursday saying that calls by the seven-party alliance and the Maoist rebels for a democratic system of government were possible under the current constitutional structure of Nepal with King Gyanendra [official profile] as head of the goverment. Gyanendra has ordered the Nepal Election Commission to hold primary elections in February of 2006 and national parliamentary elections by April 2007. In a joint statement, the seven-party alliance and Maoist leaders announced earlier this week that they had reached an understanding that would end the violence in the country and would lead to both groups focussing on "restor[ing] democracy in the country by ending autocratic monarchy." Both parties have called Gyanendra's rule unconstitutional and have argued that the elections he proposes are merely being used to divert international pressure away from his declaration of a state of emergency [JURIST report] in February. JURIST's Paper Chase has continiung coverage of Nepal [JURIST news archive]. Kantipur Online has local coverage.
  
  
• Eritrean officials have rejected the UN Security Council resolution demanding that they withdraw restrictions [JURIST report] placed upon UN peacekeepers from the UN Mission in Ethiopia and Eritrea [official website]. A spokesman for Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki said that Eritrea was not concerned by the threat of UN sanctions and was more worried about the Security Council's failure to require Ethiopia to abide by the 2002 UN Border Demarcation finding that the Addis Ababa government has so far refused to accept. Both sides of the conflict have threatened to renew military action unless the other side concedes the disputed territory. The Sudan Tribune has local coverage.