[JURIST] US Department of Defense documents released Friday chronicle multiple mistreatments of Iraqi prisoners by US personnel in 2003 and 2004 but stop short of labeling the instances of mistreatment illegal, describing them instead as "wrong." Over 1000 pages of US military documents handed over to the ACLU pursuant to a Freedom of Information Act request [ACLU materials] include two internal military reports which had previously been known but the contents of which had been classified: that of Gen. Richard Formica on the operation of special forces in Iraq [Boston Globe editorial], submitted in November 2004 and later released to members of Congress, and a report by Brig. Gen. Charles Jacoby [Washington Post backgrounder] on detainees in Afghanistan, undertaken in May 2004. The released copies of the reports were heavily redacted, but show concern over practices such as stripping detainees, depriving them of sleep, assailing them with loud music, withholding food other than bread and water in some cases for up to 17 days, and altering their environmental conditions, suggesting they were kept too hot or too cold. The Formica report expressly concluded that some Iraqi detainees were not being treated in accordance "with the spirit of the principles set forth in the Geneva Conventions." No US personnel were specifically punished for misconduct in the wake of that investigation.

Both reports said insufficient training and unclear policy standards made abuses possible, and recommended appropriate changes in procedures for detainee handling. A Defense Department source told AP that the Formica report recommendations had all been implemented. AP has more.

[JURIST] The UN Security Council [official website] on Friday unanimously agreed to a resolution [summary and text] authorizing the pending war crimes trial of ex-Liberian president Charles Taylor [BBC profile; JURIST news archive] to be shifted from the facilities of the Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL} in Freetown, Sierra Leone, to the facilities of the International Criminal Court at The Hague in the Netherlands. The Council invoked Chapter VII of the Charter to allow a chamber of the SCSL to sit outside its jurisdiction. The trial will still be conducted by SCSL prosecutors and judges, and Taylor will remain under SCSL control. In March the SCSL said it wanted to move Taylor's trial to The Hague [JURIST report] for security reasons, but the Netherlands said that it would only agree to host the trial on its territory if the tribunal found a country willing to imprison Taylor if he is found guilty [JURIST report] and a country that will grant him asylum if he is acquitted. The former process proved problematic until UK Foreign Minister Margaret Beckett said Thursday that Britain would take custody of Taylor if he is convicted [JURIST report], as long as legislation authorizing the UK to recognize convictions by the SCSL is passed by Parliament.

Taylor has been indicted [PDF text] for crimes against humanity and violations of international humanitarian law, including murder, rape and the recruitment and use of child soldiers during the war in Sierra Leone. The SCSL said on Friday that it welcomed the new Security Council resolution [press release, PDF], and that Taylor could be transferred to The Hague to stand trial within weeks [Reuters report]. BBC News has more.

[JURIST] Nepal's government and the Maoist rebels on Friday agreed to draft an interim constitution within 15 days and dissolve the parliament reinstated by the popular people's uprising [JURIST news archive] in April this year. Surprisingly, the Maoists [BBC backgrounder], who have been waging a people's war over a decade, also agreed to go for a competitive multiparty democracy and respect universal fundamental rights, including press freedom and rule of law. An eight-point agreement [text] was hammered out at the end of a day-long high-level peace summit between the seven-party alliance government and the Maoists Friday in capital Kathmandu. Earlier in the morning, the rebel leaders arrived in the capital in a helicopter for the talks.

A six-member team led by former Supreme Court Justice Laxman Prasad Aryal has been formed to draft the proposed interim constitution [current text]. Analysts said the agreement has paved the way to ending the decade-old Maoist insurgency that has already claimed over 13,000 lives. The Maoists began the "war" in February 1996 to establish a communist republic in the Himalayan Kingdom.

The government and the Maoists also agreed to extend the current ceasefire into a permanent peace so as to end the ongoing insurgency. In addition, the government and the rebels also agreed to invite the United Nations to monitor and manage the arms of the government army and the rebels in an effort to ensure free and fair elections of the proposed constituent assembly [JURIST report]. The elections are expected to be held before April 2007.

The rebels and the seven-party alliance joined hands in November last year to fight together against King Gyanendra's direct rule. King Gyanendra [official profile; BBC profile] ruled the country directly for nearly 15 months after he seized power [JURIST report] in a bloodless coup on February 1, 2005. They jointly launched the popular April uprising, forcing the king to give up his powers and reinstate the parliament dissolved in 2002. The parliament and post-uprising government have already stripped Gyanendra of his wide-ranging political powers [JURIST report]. The 58-year old monarch now only has a ceremonial role.

Kiran Chapagain is a special correspondent for JURIST writing from Nepal. He is an Assistant Senior Reporter for the Kathmandu Post.

[JURIST] Romania has concluded an investigation into alleged secret CIA prisons [COE materials] located near Romanian airports in Europe's "spider's web" [COE graphic] of CIA rendition flights [JURIST news archive], finding no evidence that the country hosted secret prisons or cooperated in rendition flights. A committee of the Romanian Senate [official website] undertook the investigation in response to allegations leveled in a Council of Europe [official website] draft report [PDF text; JURIST report] released earlier this month by Swiss legislator Dick Marty accusing 14 European nations of cooperating with alleged CIA rendition flights on some level, and specifically accusing Romania and Poland of hosting secret prisons near airports for the CIA to use for detainee torture. Romanian Senator Norica Nicolai said that the committee investigated every flight through Romania's five airports between 2001 and 2006, finding no irregularities or suspicious flights.

Romania and Poland have both denied the allegations [JURIST report] since they surfaced last year, and earlier this week some members of the European parliament said they will move to have specific references to the two countries hosting secret detention centers removed [Polskie Radio report] from the final COE report, saying that there is not even enough circumstantial evidence to include them. Reuters has more.

[JURIST] During a two-day European Union summit in Brussels [Financial Times report], German Chancellor Angela Merkel [official website in German; BBC profile] told reporters Friday that attempts to revive the European Constitution will be delayed until 2008 and won't occur during Germany's six-month presidency of the European Council as Germany had hoped. The proposed European Constitution [official website, text; JURIST news archive], which requires unanimity for passage, was rejected by French and Dutch referendums [JURIST reports] in 2005. Speaking Thursday after chairing the day's summit, Austrian Chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel said [EITB report] there is little consensus among member nations [EITB report] on how to proceed with the treaty. European foreign ministers in May said there was little hope [JURIST report] that Germany would be able to achieve substantial progress on ratifying the document during its presidency in the first half of 2007.

If enacted, the European constitution would streamline voting procedure on EU laws, provide for an official EU foreign minister, grant new substantive oversight powers to the European Parliament [official website], create a bill of fundamental rights, and transfer new police and immigration powers to the European Union [official website]. Constitution author and former French President Valery Giscard d'Estaing said last month that France should vote again on ratification [JURIST report], but Dutch officials have said the constitution is "dead" as far as their voters are concerned [JURIST report]. Bloomberg has more.

[JURIST] The UK Foreign Office [official website] on Friday took control of the case of Australian David Hicks [JURIST news archive], an accused Taliban member who has been detained at the US detention center at Guantanamo Bay [JURIST news archive] for over four years. The UK High Court has ruled that Britain should grant citizenship [JURIST report] to Hicks because Hicks' mother is a British citizen, but this week denied an order mandating the UK Home Office [official website] to grant Hicks immediate citizenship. The same order nonetheless directed that jurisdiction over Hicks be transferred to the Foreign Office. Hicks wants to become a British citizen so that the UK Foreign Office can push the US to free him from Guantanamo Bay, as it has successfully done in the past with other British detainees. Hicks' lawyer Stephen Grosz believes that UK Foreign Secretary Jack Straw will have to push for Hicks' release because Hicks is one of ten Guantanamo detainees awaiting trial by a military commission [JURIST news archive], a process which the UK government has publicly condemned.

Meanwhile, an Australian opposition parliament on Friday accused the government of Australian Prime Minister John Howard [official profile] of abusing Hicks' human rights by defending the military commissions at Guantanamo Bay [JURIST report] and called for the closure of Guantanamo. From Australia, the Herald Sun has more.

[JURIST] The kickback fraud case against leading class action law firm Milberg Weiss Bershad & Schulman [firm website] has hit unexpected delays as five judges from the US District Court for the Central District of California [official website], which covers Los Angeles, have recused themselves from the case. The five recusals have been attributed to owning stock in a company sued by Milberg Weiss in the past, having approved attorneys fees in a suit brought by Milberg Weiss, and for having been supported by a former Milberg partner when appointed to the federal bench. Federal statute 28 USC 455 [text] requires federal judges to recuse themselves from any case where their impartiality may be reasonably questioned. The arraignments of two defendants who have agreed to plead guilty [Reuters report] have been postponed until Judge John F. Walter is ready to proceed.

The firm faces a 20-count indictment [PDF text; JURIST report] on charges that the firm and name partners David J. Bershad and Steven G. Schulman [statements] paid up to $11.3 million since 1984 to individuals to serve as lead plaintiffs in class-action and shareholder derivative lawsuits. Milberg Weiss allegedly concealed the payments as cash or transferred the payments through other law firms. One lawyer pleaded guilty to funneling money [JURIST report] to a lead plaintiff last month. The Los Angeles Times has more.

[JURIST] US Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (R-PA) [official website] has threatened to subpoena administration documents on its warrantless domestic spying program [JURIST news archive] if US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales does not respond to Specter's requests to answer questions on domestic spying and a host of other issues, including presidential signing statements and last month's FBI raid on Rep. William Jefferson's congressional office [JURIST news archive]. Specter said Thursday that he has not received an adequate response from the Justice Department on requests for Gonzales to appear before the committee, but a DOJ spokesperson said the department is working with Specter to set a date for Gonzales to appear before the committee. AP has more.

Specter also said Thursday that he wants to look into the Bush administration's use of signing statements [1993 US DOJ backgrounder] which are issued when a president signs new laws. Bush has used the signing statements to effectively declare any portion of legislation he signs invalid if it differs from his interpretation of presidential and executive powers under Article II [text] of the US constitution. Bush has attached such statements to 750 bills [Boston Globe report] since assuming office, most controversially when he reserved the right to bypass a ban on torture [JURIST report] when signing the 2006 defense spending bill. Bush has never vetoed a bill from Congress, so Congress has never had an opportunity to override an administration decision on what part of a law the administration will in fact follow. Critics of the procedure, including Specter and fellow committee member Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) [official website] have said that Bush's signing statements impermissibly intrude upon Congress's power to write and enact laws under Article I [text], which says in part "[a]ll legislative powers herein granted shall be vested" to Congress. The American Bar Association earlier this month launched a bipartisan investigation into the legality of Bush's signing statements [JURIST report], which will report its findings in August. The Boston Globe has more.

[JURIST] The Colorado Court of Appeals [official website] ruled [text] Thursday that a 15-year-old girl can enter into a common-law marriage, remanding a case involving the common-law marriage between a 38-year Willis Rouse and a teenage girl for a lower court to determine the validity of their marriage. The appellate court overruled a decision by a lower court that the girl, who is now over 18-years old, was too young to marry at 15 without judicial approval.

Colorado law requires a person to be 18 to marry, or 16 to marry with parental or judicial approval, but Colorado is also one of ten states that recognizes English common-law marriages. The appellate court did not set a minimum age for common-law marriage in Colorado, but noted that English common-law appears to set the minimum marriage age at 14 for males and 12 for females. The court wrote:

Here, we conclude the trial court erroneously held that persons under the age of sixteen may not enter into a valid common law marriage without judicial approval. As mentioned above, common law marriages in Colorado and other jurisdictions are governed by the common law, not statutes, unless the statutes evince an express legislative intent to abrogate or modify the common law. ...

However, neither § 14-2-108, § 14-10-11 1(1)(c), nor any other provision of the UMA or UDMA makes any reference, either express or implied, to (1) common law marriages in general; (2) abrogation or modification of the common law regarding the age of consent for common law marriage; or (3) the need for any formalities, such as parental consent, to solemnize a common law marriage between an adult and a minor. Furthermore, the Uniform Marriage and Divorce Act (UMDA), upon which the UDMA is substantially based, does not address these issues. See generally In re Marriage of Wells, 850 P.2d 694 (Colo. 1993)(Colorado adopted UDMA in 1971, substantially based on UMDA).

Thus, in the absence of a statutory provision to the contrary, it appears that Colorado has adopted the common law age of consent for marriage as fourteen for a male and twelve for a female, which existed under English common law. Nevertheless, we need only hold here that a fifteen-year-old female may enter into a valid common law marriage.

[JURIST] An appeals court in Japan [JURIST news archive] on Friday dismissed the appeal of a lawsuit brought in 1997 by 42 Chinese plaintiffs against the Japanese government and ten Japanese corporations seeking compensation for forced labor, saying the statute of limitations has expired on claims arising out of events that happened during World War II. The Court acknowledged that the Japanese government and many corporations profited from forced labor during the war [law review note], but refused to allow the 847.5 million yen (US$7.25 million) claim to proceed. The plaintiffs said they planned to appeal the ruling to the Supreme Court of Japan [official website, in English].

The Tokyo High Court [official website, in English] has consistently ruled against forced labor compensation claims arising from World War II events. Last July, the Court dismissed [JURIST report] a suit brought by Chinese plaintiffs for a germ attack, and last June, the Court overturned a 2001 district court ruling [JURIST report] granting compensation to a Chinese citizen brought to Japan to work in the mines, saying that the Japanese government had no duty to rescue the Chinese plaintiff from the mines. The Court has also cited as a general precedent the 1972 normalization of diplomatic relations between the countries, saying the agreement settled all claims between citizens of the two countries. In March, a district court dismissed a similar suit [JURIST report]. AP has more.

[JURIST] The Maryland American Civil Liberties Union and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People [advocacy websites] filed a class action lawsuit [complaint, PDF] in Baltimore Circuit Court [official website] Thursday alleging that Baltimore police systematically arrest people and hold them for hours without charge [press release]. The lawsuit - which names Baltimore Mayor Martin O'Malley [official website], present and past police officials, state corrections officials and individual police officers as defendants - also alleges that officials at the Maryland Central Booking and Intake Center often perform strip searches and body cavity searches on people arrested for minor offenses such as loitering, impeding or obstructing pedestrian traffic and disturbing the peace, as well as detain them in dirty and overcrowded jail cells.

The suit claims that policed arrested more than 76,000 people last year, and that 30 percent of those cases were dismissed after a preliminary review. The ACLU-MD believes that the Baltimore police department rewards its officers for the quantity of arrests, and tends to make unreasonable and unconstitutional arrests as a result. City Solicitor Ralph Tyler called the allegations "truly wild," adding that the plaintiffs will not be able to prove them. ACLU attorney David Rocah said that the lawsuit aims to change police policy and offers a remedy proposal [PDF text], including creating an incentive program for police officers to make arrests that are likely to be prosecuted and expunging the record of arrestees when they are not prosecuted. AP has more. The Baltimore Sun has local coverage.

[JURIST] The Australian Senate [official website] on Thursday narrowly voted down [official record] a motion to disallow a regulation approved by Australia Governor-General Michael Jeffrey [official website] allowing the federal government to effectively veto the Civil Unions Bill 2006 [text], recently passed by the legislature in the of the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) [official website] federal district. The ACT bill would have placed civil unions on equal legal footing with marriage. Australian Attorney General Phillip Ruddock said [press release] Thursday that the ACT government passed the bill knowing that it would be invalidated, and that it was intended to attract media attention away from unpopular ACT budget cuts that were implemented at roughly the same time.

The federal government overrode the civil union law [JURIST report] earlier this week under a provision [text] in the ACT Self-Government Act of 1988 permitting federal government vetoes of ACT bills. Thursday's Senate vote means that the bill is permanently quashed. ACT Attorney General Simon Corbell condemned the federal government's override [press release] on Tuesday, saying that the ACT has the right to enact laws governing its people, and that the burden is now on the federal government to tell ACT how the law should be rewritten so that it may be re-introduced before the ACT parliament. The Sydney Morning Herald has more.

[JURIST] Australian Attorney-General Phillip Ruddock [official profile], responding Friday to a independent review of new security laws, defended the government's power to define which groups are terrorist organizations subject to criminal penalties. The Security Legislation Review Committee [materials], a public and independent body charged with reviewing the Security Acts dealing with terrorism, released a 262-page report [PDF text] Thursday recommending that the governmental process of black-listing terrorist groups be more transparent so that the groups may respond to the charges before condemnation, and that the definitional criteria be made public. Ruddock, however, who established the committee last October as required by Section 4 of the Security Amendment Legislation (Terrorism) Act of 2002 [text], said that the government could compromise information received from other nations or the safety of intelligence agents if forced to reveal why groups have been identified as terrorist organizations.

The report also criticized the new terror laws for not having sunset provisions, recommended that the current practice of imposing strict liability for several criminal actions carrying heavy penalties be eliminated, and said that the crime of "advocating the doing of a terrorist act" should be restricted in scope for clarity. AAP has more.

[JURIST] Pusho Ibrahim Ali Daza Yei, Iraq's deputy justice minister, has said that Shiite militias [CFR backgrounder] control Iraq's prison system and that Iraq "cannot control the prisons." Yei said that Shiite militiamen free other militia members that have been convicted of major crimes, while executing Sunni inmates. In a letter to US Army Maj. Gen. John Gardner, commander of US-run prisons in Iraq, Yei asked US authorities not to transfer US-run prisons and detainees into the hands of Iraqi security forces, saying that the Iraqi Justice Ministry is not yet prepared to run the facilities and expressing fear that Shiite militias would take control of the transferred prisons. The US has announced plans to turn over four American-run prisons to the Iraqi government, including Abu Ghraib [JURIST news archive], but the plans have stalled [JURIST report] until Gardner can make sure that the Iraqi-controlled prisons would match the standards of US-run facilities. Gardner has said that US authorities will transfer Abu Ghraib in the next few months in a gradual handover, but not until "the Iraqi Corrections system have demonstrated the ability to maintain the required standards, especially in the areas of care and custody."

Iraqi-run prisons came under scrutiny when the US Army found tortured detainees at a secret Interior Ministry facility in central Baghdad [JURIST report] last year. Yei said that Shiite militias control the prisons run by the Interior and Defense ministries, and that the militias infiltrate the Iraqi government. Shiite militias including the Badr Organization and the Mahdi Army [Wikipedia backgrounders] enjoy the support of members of the Iraqi parliament because political parties back the militias. Jonathan Finer and Ellen Knickmeyer of the Washington Post have more.

[JURIST] Defense lawyers for the US Marines accused of killing 24 unarmed civilians in Haditha [JURIST report] last November plan to scrutinize the authenticity of the videotape [AP report] described in the TIME magazine report [text] that first prompted an investigation into the deaths, should charges be filed against the Marines. Attorneys will also question the credibility of Hammurabi Human Rights, the two-person human rights group that provided the videotape to TIME. The videotape depicts the aftermath of the deaths at Haditha, where Marines originally reported that 15 civilians died from a roadside bomb. Questions remain why Hammurabi waited four months to release the videotape to the mainstream media. Defense attorneys say that the videotape offers no proof that the video was taken either in Haditha, or last November after the deaths occurred.

TIME initially reported, when it broke the story in March, that a "journalism student" shot the video and handed it over to Hammurabi, a group that TIME reported to be connected to the well-known group Human Rights Watch (HRW) [advocacy website]. TIME later retracted its statements, saying that Hammurabi had no connection to HRW, and that the "journalism student" was actually Thaer Thabit al-Hadithi, the 43-year old founder of Hammurabi. Attorneys representing the Marines are also suspicious of the fact that family members of both employees of Hammurabi have relatives that are suspected insurgents serving time in local prisons.

The US military and Iraqi officials [JURIST report] are conducting parallel probes into the deaths of 24 civilians last November in Haditha, where the US military initially reported that 15 civilians had been killed in an insurgent bombing. A preliminary US investigation [JURIST report] suggested the victims had been shot and had not provoked the Marines. The Washington Times has background [op-ed] on the Hammurabi video. Reuters has more.

ALSO ON JURIST  Op-ed: Haditha and My Lai: Lessons from the Law of War

[JURIST] The US military on Friday said that the Army's Criminal Investigation Command [official website] will conduct an investigation [CENTCOM press release] into the deaths of three detainees in US custody in the Salahaddin province of Iraq, located north of Baghdad. The investigation into deaths, which occurred on or around May 9, results from reported suspicions from soldiers.

The investigation comes amid several probes into Iraqi civilian deaths at the hands of US forces. A continuing investigation into the death of 24 unarmed civilians in Haditha [JURIST news archive] after a roadside bomb exploded has thus far determined that the deaths were unprovoked [JURIST report]. In a separate investigation, seven Marines and a Navy corpsman [JURIST report] are accused of murder and conspiracy in the death of an Iraqi in Hamandiya [JURIST report] in April. The Marines allegedly dragged the unarmed man out of his home, shot him, and placed a rifle and shovel near his body to make him look like an insurgent burying a bomb. In yet another investigation, US soldiers have been cleared of wrongdoing in the death of 11 civilians in Ishaqi [JURIST report]. Reuters has more.