[JURIST] The NAACP [advocacy website] Saturday urged the US Department of Justice [official website] to block a Louisiana state election plan for New Orleans [JURIST report] that will make it very difficult for displaced black voters to participate in the election. Though the election plan [LA Secretary of State backgrounder] allows for changes in parish voting locations as well as the use of election personnel from outside the parish, the NAACP and the Louisiana Legislative Black Caucus [official website] believe Louisiana should do more to accommodate black voters displaced by Hurricane Katrina [JURIST news archive]. The election plan, drawn up by Louisiana Secretary of State Al Ater, will also distribute absentee ballots to residents displaced by Hurricane Katrina. The DOJ is required to review and approve the plan under the terms of the 1965 Voting Rights Act [DOJ backgrounder].

Recently, the Advancement Project [advocacy website], a Washington, DC-based advocacy group, filed a federal lawsuit [complaint, PDF; press release] against top Louisiana state officials challenging the election plan on the grounds that it places too much emphasis on absentee voting and would keep blacks out of office. The NAACP will consider filing a lawsuit itself, or joining an existing lawsuit, but favors the emphasis on absentee ballots in an effort to make sure blacks get to vote in the April 22 election. Read the NAACP press release.

[JURIST] The Democratic Republic of Congo [JURIST news archive] officially adopted a new constitution [text in French; AP summary] on Saturday when President Joseph Kabila signed into law the charter that voters approved [JURIST report] in a referendum [JURIST report] late last year. The Constitution is designed to bring peace to the country after five years of war, and provides for national elections to be held by June 30. It also provides for a decentralized political system with provincial administrations responsible for local decisions and the control of 40 percent of public funds. Kabila said:

Democratic Republic of Congo has crossed a determining phase towards the normalisation and the resolution of the eternal problem of the legitimacy of governors. From this moment on, nothing will delay the organisation of elections.

[JURIST] Google, Inc. [corporate website] formally rejected a subpoena [PDF text; JURIST report] from the US Department of Justice [official website] for search data on Friday, arguing [Google response, PDF] that the subpoena violated the privacy of Google customers and its own trade secrets. Google also asserted that the government’s demand to disclose Google’s web searches was impractical, as the searches change on a daily basis and it would require at least a week for Google’s engineers to design a script to comply with the demand. The Bush administration seeks to force Google and other internet search engines to turn over web search data in an effort to support its defense of the Child Online Protection Act [text]. Rival companies Microsoft Corp. [corporate website] and Yahoo! Inc. [corporate website] have already complied with the government’s demands. The hearing on the DOJ’s motion to force Google to hand over its search data is scheduled to begin March 13 in San Jose.

Google’s resistance contrasts with a deal Google and other internet companies made with the Chinese government to censor some searches on a new site in China that contain certain political and religious content that the Chinese government views as harmful. The move has drawn sharp criticism [JURIST report] from members of US Congress, who condemned it as “enabling dictatorship” for the “sake of profits.” Though the censorship remains, China continues to broaden the scope of its censorship laws [AP report]. Reuters has more.

[JURIST] US District Judge Leonie Brinkema Friday added a former member of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) [advocacy website] to the pool of potential jurors who will decide between the death penalty or life in prison for 9/11 suspect Zacarias Moussaoui [JURIST news archive]. Prosecutor Rob Spencer sought to strike the former ACLU member as biased against the death penalty, but Brinkema rebuffed Spencer by noting that the potential juror had indicated that the death penalty is “necessary,” and that he neither supported nor opposed it on his jury questionnaire [PDF text]. After three days of jury selection for Moussaoui's sentencing trial [case docket] in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Brinkema has accepted 32 potential jurors and rejected 24 in an effort to create a pool of 85 potential jurors. Of the 32 potential jurors, nine have been approved over objections by the defense and five over objections by the prosecution. Brinkema expects to reach the pool of 85 jurors by the end of next week, and then the potential jurors will return March 6 for the final jury selection of 12 jurors and six alternates.

Moussaoui pleaded guilty [JURIST report] last April to six charges of conspiracy [indictment] with al-Qaida to fly planes into US buildings, but denies any involvement in the September 11 terrorist attacks [JURIST news archive] on the World Trade Center. Brinkema barred [JURIST report] Moussaoui from the courtroom Tuesday after several disruptive outbursts, and unexpectedly allowed back [JURIST report] into the courtroom Wednesday. He remained calm, however, throughout Friday’s proceedings. AP has more.

[JURIST] The UN chief administrator of Cambodia's Khmer Rouge genocide tribunal [official task force website] said Saturday that the trials of former Khmer Rouge members must begin as soon as possible if they are to happen while the former members of the regime are still alive. Michelle Lee [AP backgrounder] made her comments after former Khmer Rouge foreign minister Ieng Sary [Wikipedia profile] was reportedly admitted to a Thai hospital [ABC Pacific report] for treatment of a heart condition on Tuesday.

The genocide trials are currently scheduled to begin in 2007 [JURIST report], but the UN-assisted court has yet to secure all of its $56.3 million budget [JURIST report]. AFP has more.

[JURIST] US Army Special Forces Sgt. Layne Morris [Wikipedia profile] and the family of Sgt. Christopher Speer [Wikipedia profile] were awarded $102.6 million in triple damages in a civil default judgment against Egyptian-Canadian Ahmed Said Khadr [Wikipedia profile; CBC family backgrounder] Friday based on a July 27, 2002 attack in Afghanistan [JURIST news archive] that killed Speer and wounded Morris. Khadr, an alleged al-Qaida financier, is the father of then-15-year-old Omar Khadr [JURIST news archive] who admitted to killing Speer [JURIST report] with a grenade and allegedly wounded Morris in the 2002 skirmish after being taught to attack American targets by his father. Omar Khadr was arrested immediately following the incident and has since been detained in Guantanamo Bay [JURIST news archive].

Utah US District Judge Paul Cassell [official profile] said in his ruling Friday that the lawsuit may mark the first filed by a US soldier under the Patriot Act [JURIST news archive; text] extending civil liability for terrorist acts. The Salt Lake Tribune has more.

[JURIST] US Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) [official website] said Friday that he would not allow any further floor debate on the controversial asbestos compensation bill [PDF text; bill summary; JURIST news archive] unless 60 senators pledged their support for the legislation in order to head off a possible filibuster. On Tuesday Sen. John Ensign (R-NV) [official website] raised an objection to the proposed law, arguing that it violated Senate budgetary rules. The Senate effectively agreed to close debate on the matter [Senate roll call] by failing to agree to exempt the bill from the objection.

If enacted, the asbestos bill would remove all asbestos injury claims from the courts, and would instead pay plaintiffs from a $140 billion private fund financed by defendant asbestos companies and their insurers. Earlier this week bill co-sponsor Sen. Arlen Specter said that despite the earlier vote on the objection, the bill was "very much alive" [Reuters report]. Reuters has more.

[JURIST] The Provisional Electoral Council (CEP) [official website] in Haiti [JURIST news archive] acknowledged for the first time Friday that the country's February 7 presidential election [JURIST report; BBC backgrounder] was tainted by fraud, just one day after awarding the presidency [JURIST report] to leading candidate Rene Preval [Wikipedia profile] after negotiations that ended early Thursday. Specifically the CEP said that between 85,000 and 90,000 out of 2.2 million votes cast were blank ballots, and there were inconsistencies in the number of ballots left over at polling stations.

Suspicions were raised last week by the discovery of thousands of half-burned ballots [AP report] at a garbage dump in Port-au-Prince. The finding of fraud contradicts previous statements by international monitors who concluded the election was asuccess [IMMHE statement]. Reuters has more.

[JURIST] US Sen. Pat Roberts (R-KS) [official website], chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee [official website], said in an interview with the New York Times reported Saturday that he wants to bring the Bush administration's domestic surveillance program [JURIST news archive] within the authority of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) [FJC backgrounder]. Roberts acknowledged that he was unclear on the mechanics of the FISC, and he voiced some concern over the speed with which a FISC court could produce surveillance warrants, but his statement breaks with administration policy and departs from his previous position that Congress should not interpose itself in the President's surveillance program. Last week Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA) [official website] announced [JURIST report] last week that he was working on a bill that would bring explicitly bring the surveillance program within the purview of the FISC. The New York Times has more.

[JURIST] The Russian Prosecutor General's Office [MosNews backgrounder; official website in Russian] announced Friday that it has begun an investigation of newspaper editor Anna Smirnova whose newspaper Nash Region reprinted controversial caricatures of Muhammad [JURIST news archive] this week as the first Russian media outlet to do so. Russian President Vladimir Putin [official website] denounced the publications of the cartoons that have sparked protest worldwide since their initial publication in a Danish newspaper in September. Also in Russia Friday, the mayor of the city of Volgograd ordered the closure of the City News (Gorodskiye Vesti) following its publication of a cartoon illustrating Muhammad, Jesus, Moses, and Buddha watching television and accompanying a story entitled "Racists Can't Be in the Government." The Russian Muslim authority, Council of Muftis [backgrounder], criticized the publication of the cartoons as Islamic tradition prohibits the circulation of any image of Muhammad. AP has more. MosNews has local coverage.

Meanwhile protests against the Muhammad cartoons have continued across the globe. Ten people died Friday during a protest in Libya [JURIST news archive] after citizens there set fire to the Italian consulate in apparent retaliation for an Italian cabinet minister's declaration that he would wear a T-shit with the cartoons. Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has since asked for the minister's resignation. AP has more. Another four people were wounded in a shooting at a cartoons demonstration in Pakistan [JURIST news archive], where five people died during protests last week [JURIST report]. Reuters has more. An estimated 10,000 protesters assembled in London's Trafalgar Square Saturday at a rally organized by the Muslim Action Committee (MAC). The event followed a demonstration [JURIST report] by about 5,000 moderate Muslims in London last Saturday. Reuters has more.

1:20 PM ET - Libya's parliamentary secretariat announced Saturday that the country's interior minister had been suspended in connection with Friday's deadly protests. In a statement, the secretariat said "We condemn the excessive use of force and the inappropriate way that went beyond the limits of carrying out the duties of the police." Those who caused the deaths and "the officials responsible for them" have been threatened with investigations and court action. Sunday has been declared a day of mourning. AP has more.

[JURIST] In comments after a speech [text] at the Council on Foreign Relations [policy center website] Friday, US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld flatly rejected the United Nation's call [JURIST report] for the US to shut down its military detention facility at Guantanamo Bay [JURIST news archive], asserting that the facility currently holds several hundred terrorists who would pose a substantial security risk to US citizens if released. Rumsfeld's statements echoed Thursday comments by White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan dismissing [JURIST report] the UN study containing the recommendation. The UN's call came after special rapporteurs working for the UN Commission on Human Rights [official website] issued a scathing report [PDF text] alleging that American authorities working at the facility engaged in practices that "amount to torture." Rumsfeld also chided UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan for supporting the UN report, arguing that Annan had no first-hand knowledge of Guantanamo, and had based his criticism of the facility on stories by detainees who are "trained to lie." AP has more.

Worldwide calls to close the prison have nonetheless continued. The British press Saturday reported comments by UK governmental and religious leaders roundly criticizing US detention practices at the Cuba camp. English Attorney General Lord Goldsmith [official profile] told the BBC that the military tribunals under which suspected terrorists at Guantanamo Bay are to be tried would not amount to a fair trial "by standards we would regard as acceptable." The number-two cleric in the Church of England, Archbishop of York John Sentamum, meanwhile told the Independent newspaper that "The American Government is breaking international law" and called on the UN Human Rights Commission to take legal action against the US either in the United States or through the Hague-based International Court of Justice if it takes no actions following the report. The Independent has more.