[JURIST] Thousands of opposition supporters rallied in Minsk Sunday to protest what they claimed were the rigged results of the Belarus [JURIST news archive] presidential election, defying threats of a government crackdown. Current president Alexander Lukashenko [official website; BBC profile], who has ruled for 12 years, is expected to win his third five-year term by a landslide, and early exit polls suggest he has won more than 80% of the vote. Opposition candidates say, however, that they have been denied access to the media during, that their supporters have been jailed [JURIST report], and that some foreign observers have been barred. Late Sunday local time opposition leader Aleksandr Milinkevich [Wikipedia profile; campaign website] called on the demonstrators to disperse, but to return again Monday [BELAPAN report] after the official results of the poll are released. Belarus news agency BELAPAN has extended coverage of the Belarus presidential election in English.

The Belarus Central Election Commission [official website] has thusfar denied receiving any official complaints over the conduct of the poll, although commission head Lidiya Yermoshina said Sunday she expected OSCE election observers [backgrounder] to have a "very bad opinion" of the vote [BELAPAN report]. Opposition leaders have hopes of ousting Lukashenko in a bloodless popular revolt along the lines of the recent "Orange Revolution" in Ukraine and the "Rose Revolution" is Georgia, both of which saw authoritarian regimes replaced by more ostensibly-democratic leaders. AFP has more.

7:45 PM ET - AP is reporting that President Lukashenko has won a third term with 82.6 percent of the vote, according to top Belarus election officials.

[JURIST] The French government again defended its recently passed First Employment Contract (CPE) [FAQ, in French] labor law Sunday, a day after mass protests against the legislation were held in Paris and other major French cities. The law allows French employers to hire workers under the age of 26 for a conditional two-year period during which they can be fired without cause. French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin [official website] proposed the controversial CPE in an effort to provide jobs for young workers who suffer from staggering unemployment rates, as much as 20% for young people compared to 9.6% nationwide. Students, union members and left-wing politicians nonetheless contend that the law erodes job stability and threatens France's traditionally strong workers' rights. Responding to a threat of a possible general strike on Monday, a French government spokesman said the government was open to dialogue and the possibility of improving the law, but did not say that the law would be withdrawn or suspended.

Some 500,000 protesters gathered Saturday [JURIST report] in more than 150 demonstrations across the country to denounce the labor law and while protests were mostly peaceful, at least 167 people were arrested in Paris after protests there turned violent. Demonstrations earlier in the week [JURIST report] also ended in street fights and clouds of tear gas in Paris. Strikes against the law over the last two weeks have grown larger and larger, and have impacted 60 of France's 84 universities [JURIST report]. Many believe that increasing voter disapproval of the CPE and Villepin's firm stance [JURIST report] will create political problems for his anticipated candidacy to replace President Jacques Chirac. Reuters has more.

[JURIST] The latest effort to put former Liberian President Charles Taylor [PBS profile; JURIST news archive] on trial for crimes against humanity at the Special Court for Sierra Leone [official website] should be seen as a warning to the "world's warlords that they cannot escape justice," said Special Court Chief Prosecutor Desmond de Silva [official profile] in an interview with Reuters Sunday. De Silva said Taylor's case was on a par with that against the late Slobodan Milosevic [JURIST news archive] in key respects: "With the departure of Milosevic, if Taylor's trial is taken to a conclusion he will be the very first head of state in history to have been indicted whilst he was in office and against whom a trial has been completed." While Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo [official profile] consults with leaders from the African Union [official website] and the Economic Community of West African States [official website] on precisely how to respond to Liberia's request [JURIST report] last week to transfer Taylor to the court, De Silva believes the negotiations will end favorably. If they do, Taylor would join nine other defendants currently on trial for war crimes by the Special Court. Some critics of prosecution say Taylor's removal will disrupt the fragile stability in Sierra Leone and Liberia, established with the help of UN peacekeepers, but De Silva maintains that Taylor is "a much bigger threat where he is."

Taylor has been living in exile [JURIST report] in Nigeria since 2003 as part of an international agreement ending Liberia's civil war. He was later indicted [text; SC-SL case materials] by the war crimes court on charges of crimes against humanity and violations of the Geneva Conventions [ICRC materials] and other international humanitarian laws for supporting the insurgency of rebels in Sierra Leone. The court has ruled [PDF decision] that Taylor is not immune from prosecution [JURIST report] as a former head of state. Reuters has more.

[JURIST] The US Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee [official website] says it will approve legislation by mid-May to open Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) [official website, JURIST news archive] to oil drilling [pro-drilling backgrounder]. The statement comes in response to a budget bill [text] passed last week in the Senate which requires the committee to come up with legislation that will raise $6 billion over 10 years in leasing fees from oil companies permitted to drill in ANWR. Republicans are advancing their drilling plan through the budget bill because that cannot be filibustered under Senate rules. Senate Democrats did not have enough votes to amend the bill to stop the drilling proposal. The House of Representatives has yet to vote on its budget legislation.

In December, Senators rejected an ANWR drilling provision [JURIST report] added to the 2006 military spending bill, with leading Democrats saying the provisions violated Senate rules because they were not germane to the spending bill. Reuters has more.

[JURIST] The International Criminal Court (ICC) [official website] at The Hague will begin proceedings at an arraignment Monday against its first defendant, Thomas Lubanga [Trial Watch backgrounder], founder of Congolese rebel group the Union of Patriotic Congolese [Global Security backgrounder]. Lubanga was flown to the Netherlands and received into the custody of the court [JURIST report] on Friday after being removed from a prison in Kinhasa in what DRC Justice Minister Honorius Kisimba Ngoy Ndalewe disapprovingly called a "commando" act [Xinhua report]. ICC chief prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo [official profile] said Saturday that Lubanga's arrest warrant [PDF, French] covers crimes committed after July 1, 2002, when the ICC came into existence, and one charge in the indictment will relate to the enforced recruitment of child soldiers. Lubanga will be charged under Article 8, the war crimes provision of the ICC's governing Rome Statute [PDF, English].

Moreno-Ocampo also said that prosecutors are ready to go to trial and that the proceedings will be shorter than those at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia [official website], which recently suffered a setback with the death of Slobodan Milosevic in the fifth year of his trial for genocide and war crimes. AP has more.