[JURIST] European foreign ministers meeting in Austria [EU press release] Saturday held out little hope of substantial progress on ratifying the European Constitution [JURIST news archive] next year during Germany's six-month presidency of the European Council, notwithstanding German pledges to move the regional charter forward [JURIST report] if opportunity arises. Danish Foreign Minister Per Stig Moeller [official profile] said the constitution could not be considered a dead document as 15 nations had so far ratified it, but that progress would have to await French and Dutch elections next spring. That would leave Germany very little time to do much before giving up its presidency to Portugal in June. Even at that, Dutch Foreign Bernard Bot [official profile] said that the Dutch would not change their minds after rejecting the current draft [JURIST report] last June.

At next month's European Council summit, EU leaders are expected to extend the ongoing "period of reflection" on the constitution through mid-2007. Earlier this week, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso suggested that the constitution should not be reconsidered until 2008 [AFP report]. Reuters has more.

[JURIST] The military government of Myanmar [official website] - formerly Burma - Saturday extended the house arrest of pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi [advocacy website; BBC profile] for another year, according to a government source speaking to Reuters on the condition of anonymity. Suu Kyi met with a senior United Nations [official website] official last week regarding her detention, and members of her political party, the National League for Democracy (NLD) [party website], were optimistic that she would be released after UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan [official website] appealed directly [press release] to the senior military leader Than Shwe [Wikipedia profile]. But the anonymous source said a meeting between Suu Kyi and a government official to discuss the terms of her release broke down Friday morning and led the military government to impose another year of detention.

Suu Kyi is a 1991 Nobel Peace Prize laureate [1991 award website] who has been held either in jail or under house arrest [JURIST report] for more than ten of the past 16 years under a broad anti-subversion law [text], which provides for one-year extensions of detentions. She is prohibited from contact with any outside visitors or telephone conversations, other than with her housemaid or doctor. The decision to continue her detention has been denounced by the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) [advocacy website], a regional political bloc which itself has been criticized by the US and Europe for not putting enough pressure on the military government to move toward more democratic reform. Reuters has more.

[JURIST] The parliament of Afghanistan [JURIST news archive] on Saturday voted against reappointing Chief Justice Fazel Hadi Shinwari to continue his lead post on the Afghanistan Supreme Court [Wikipedia backgrounder]. Afghan President Hamid Karzai [BBC profile] had recommended Shinwari to remain as chief justice on the high court, but the parliament voted against the proposal by a margin of 117-77. Shinwari has held the chief justice position since shortly after the Taliban was removed from power in 2001, but critics have expressed concern over decisions they say ignore human rights and hinder freedom of speech in the country.

The decision against Shinwari's reappointment is expected to help the reputation of the Afghan Supreme Court which has been accused of being corrupt and ineffective. The Asia division of Human Rights Watch [advocacy website] has spoken out against the high court's failure to promote legal reforms and women's rights in the country. Saturday's vote on Shinwari is the fourth of Karzai's nominations that parliament has rejected. Lawmakers have approved two court nominees and still must vote on three others, in a large overhaul of the court's membership. AP has more.

[JURIST] A federal judge in Indianapolis sentenced an Indiana truck driver to 160 months in prison Friday for acting as an unregistered foreign agent and violating sanctions against Iraq. Shaaban Hafiz Ahmad Ali Shaaban, a Soviet-educated Palestinian Ph.D. who speaks three languages and became a naturalized US citizen but couldn't find work in his field of petroleum-mining, was convicted [JURIST report; DOJ press release, PDF] in January on charges [JURIST report; DOJ press release] laid in March 2005. Government prosecutors said he had traveled to Iraq in 2002 and agreed to sell names of US intelligence agents to the Iraqi government for $3 million. It was never established that he actually had names to sell. They also alleged he attempted to rebroadcast pro-Iraqi propaganda in the US, and offered to pay Iraqis to act as human shields against coalition forces. Shaaban claimed that the had been mistaken for a dead brother who worked for the CIA.

During his trial Shaaban defended himself pro se with the help of two standby public defenders, and at sentencing insisted he was not a bad man and wanted to help his country. Under his sentence Shaaban will also lose his naturalization status and is subject to eventual deportation, probably to Jordan where the US says he is from, although Shaaban claims he is actually Lebanese and holds Russian citizenship. AP has more. The Indianapolis Star has local coverage.

[JURIST] A California appeals court ruled [opinion, PDF] Friday that Apple Computer [corporate website] is not permitted to subpoena an Internet service for e-mail records in order to uncover the names of online reporters who leaked information about unreleased product code owned by the company. The California Sixth District Court of Appeal [official website] overturned a decision [PDF] by a lower court which ruled in Apple's favor last year.

The appeals court determined that the online journalists are entitled to the same protection as regular journalists under California's shield law, saying:

We decline the implicit invitation to embroil ourselves in questions of what constitutes "legitimate journalism." The shield law is intended to protect the gathering and dissemination of news, and that is what petitions did here. We can think of no workable test or principle that would distinguish "legitimate" from "illegitimate" news. Any attempt by courts to draw such a distinction would imperil a fundamental purpose of the First Amendment, which is to identify the best, most important, and most valuable ideas not by any sociological or economic formula, rule of law, or process of government, but through the rough and tumble competition of the memetic marketplace.

[JURIST] Two Egyptian protesters were allegedly tortured and sexually assaulted by Egyptian police [Kifaya statement] after a peaceful demonstration in favor of two judicial reformists who exposed alleged fraud in the country's election last year, according to one of the men's lawyers Friday and opposition group Kifaya [party website, in Arabic; Wikipedia backgrounder]. Mohammed el-Sharkawi participated in a protest outside the Journalists' Syndicate in Cairo at the same time that 300 judges staged a silent protest [JURIST report] outside the Egyptian Supreme Court to call for greater judicial independence from the government and to support two judges who were put before a disciplinary panel [JURIST report] for revealing that some of their colleagues allowed fraud [JURIST report] in the parliamentary elections last November. El-Sharkawi was arrested after allegedly being beaten by Egyptian police and was later sexually assaulted at the Cairo police station.

El-Sharkawi is a member of the Youth for Change [BBC backgrounder], which is affiliated with the Kifaya opposition group. Both el-Sharkawi and another protester allegedly tortured by police, Kareem el-Sha'er, have been ordered by state prosecutors to serve 15 days in prison for insulting Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak [official profile] and for charges of illegal assembly and incitement. Earlier this week, three Egyptian journalists and a lawyer were charged [JURIST report] with slandering a local election commission chief by alleging fraud in the elections and publishing the names of the two judges accused of rigging election results. AP has more.

[JURIST] US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty, and FBI Director Robert Mueller [official profiles] were among a host of other government officials and prosecutors at the US Department of Justice [official website] who said they would resign if the White House forced them to hand over information gathered during the FBI office search [JURIST report] of US Rep. William Jefferson (D-LA) [official website] last week, the New York Times reported Saturday. Gonzales met with President Bush earlier this week and the resignation threats seem to have cooled after Bush ordered the documents to be sealed for 45 days [JURIST report]. The search of Jefferson's office was prompted by his alleged involvement in a bribery scheme involving a Kentucky telecommunications firm which was granted contracts in Nigeria. Former Jefferson aide Brett Pfeffer pleaded guilty [Times-Picayune report] in January to bribery charges for brokering deals for Jefferson.

The raid on Jefferson's congressional office in Washington caused waves of protest [JURIST report] by leaders in the US House of Representatives [official websites] from both political parties who began a constitutional separation of powers debate [JURIST report] over whether the FBI's executive powers can extend to the seizure of legislative documents. The legislators also contend that the Bush administration and Congress have not agreed to guidelines on legitimate searches of members of Congress, including how it should be done, the type of notice required, or the interaction between Congress and law enforcement. The 45-day cooling off period is expected to give the Justice Department and members of Congress time to work out an agreement on what is to be done with the evidence collected during the search of Jefferson's office. The New York Times has more.