[JURIST] Former US Army soldier Steven Green pleaded not guilty Thursday in US District Court to rape and murder charges [JURIST report; criminal complaint via FindLaw] in connection with the death of an Iraqi woman and three of her relatives in Mahmudiya [JURIST news archive] in March. Green also agreed that his case would be prosecuted in the federal Western District of Kentucky [official website] after waiving both a detention hearing and a preliminary hearing. The criminal complaint alleges that Green, who was honorably discharged from the Army because of a personality disorder before the allegations arose, was the ringleader of four other soldiers who took part in the violence while a fifth soldier remained in a humvee to stand guard. The complaint also alleges that the soldiers had been drinking alcohol beforehand and had changed into civilian clothes, indicating that the alleged acts were not spontaneous. The other four suspects have been confined to a US base in Iraq, but their names have not been released. Green was arrested in North Carolina last week and was transported Thursday to Louisville. Green served in the 101st Airborne Division, which is based at nearby Fort Campbell. An arraignment is scheduled for Aug. 8.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki [BBC profile] on Wednesday called for an independent Iraqi inquiry into the allegations. Al-Maliki said during a visit to Kuwait that he believes "immunity granted to international forces has emboldened them to commit such crimes" and called for a review of the UN Security Council [official website] mandate that grants coalition forces immunity from Iraqi law. Iraqi Justice Minister Hashim Abdul-Rahman al-Shebli has also demanded international supervision of the US probe [JURIST report]. AP has more. The Louisville Courier-Journal has local coverage.

[JURIST] Lawyers for Saddam Hussein [JURIST news archive] turned to the International Criminal Court (ICC) [official website] Thursday, asking it to investigate alleged violations of law regarding his treatment and that of defense witnesses by US personnel. A copy of the application obtained by AFP argued that the Iraqi trial of Saddam was illegal and that Saddam was "a prisoner of war within the meaning of the Geneva Convention and thus came under ICC jurisdiction as applied to cases of war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide and aggression." French Hussein lawyer Emmanuel Ludot [Le Monde interview] said that the "breaches and aberrations," including photos of the former Iraqi leader taken while he was undressed [JURIST report], violated parts of the Third Geneva Convention [text] and could be "considered war crimes." Another member of the defense team, former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark [JURIST news archive], has said that US forces must offer Hussein's lawyers more protection to ensure a fair trial.

Last month, defense lawyers accused US and Iraqi officials of illegally detaining four witnesses who testified that chief prosecutor Jaafar al-Musawi had tried to bribe them to testify against Hussein [JURIST report]. American Saddam lawyer Curtis Doebbler claimed [JURIST report] at a Washington press conference less than two weeks ago that there was "an intentional effort...by the United States government to intimidate us and to try to prevent us from even coming to the trial, much less in providing a defense." AFP has more.

[JURIST] Five special rapporteurs making up the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention [official website] in the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights [official website] on Thursday called on the US [press release] to set a date for closing its detention facility at Guantanamo Bay [JURIST news archive]. In a statement, the group urged the US "to develop a detailed plan of action, with timeframes, for the closure of Guantanamo Bay," while consulting the international community.

In February, the same group of UN human rights experts issued a report [PDF text; press release] calling on the US to close the facility immediately [JURIST report], which the White House dismissed as a "discredit to the UN." The group refused an invitation to observe conditions at Guantanamo Bay [JURIST report] last year because the Pentagon would not allow members to interview detainees [JURIST report]. Reuters has more.

[JURIST] Mexican ruling party candidate Felipe Calderon [campaign website, in Spanish; Wikipedia profile] narrowly won Sunday's presidential election [JURIST report] with some 220,000 votes more than leftist candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador [campaign website, in Spanish; Wikipedia profile], according to official results released Thursday by Mexico's Federal Electoral Institute (IFE) [official website, in Spanish]. Lopez Obrador said, however, that he would challenge the result in court, pledging to petition the Electoral Tribunal of the Federal Judiciary [official website] for a full manual recount of all ballots [JURIST report], even though the president of the IFE has already said that the sealed ballots could be reopened only in "exceptional cases" and that the preliminary count had been done in the presence of the parties. Mexican election laws [PDF text, in Spanish] permit a manual recount only if the ballot packages have been unsealed or if the initial tallies are faulty.

Lopez Obrador now has four days to file his challenge with the Electoral Tribunal and the court will have until September 6 to certify the winner. Reuters has more. BBC News has additional coverage.

[JURIST] The European Parliament adopted an interim report [press release] Thursday that agrees with earlier findings by the Council of Europe (COE) that European states were complicit in alleged incidents of CIA extraordinary rendition [JURIST news archive]. The report [EP materials] criticizes European nations for failing to act or complying with CIA efforts to illegally seize terror suspects on European territory, as well as the alleged rendition of European nationals. The European Parliament report also accuses the CIA of being directly responsible for the "illegal seizure, removal, abduction and detention of terrorist suspects on the territory of Member States, accession and candidate countries," violating fundamental rights protected by international law.

In June, the COE formally endorsed [JURIST report] the report of Swiss prosecutor Dick Marty concluding that 14 European countries collaborated with the CIA [JURIST report; PDF text report] by taking an active or passive role in a network of prisons and rendition flights. Both the COE and the European Parliament reports endorse the drafting of new laws governing how European nations should monitor airspace and flights for possible rendition activity. Reuters has more.

[JURIST] Iraqi officials and local leaders have stepped up pressure on the US military to take swift corrective action in the face of allegations that troops raped an Iraqi woman and murdered her and her family near the town of Mahmudiya in March. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said Thursday "We will talk to the officials in the multinational forces to set rules... Our people cannot tolerate that every day there is an ugly crime such as that in Mahmoudiya". He called again for an independent Iraqi investigation [JURIST report] into the incident, saying, according to AP, "we want an investigation in order to know the facts...In addition to the investigation, we will discuss this matter with concerned sides to stop such practices that we see every day - crimes that stink." Maliki suggested that part of the problem lay in inadequate US appreciation of local circumstances and sensitivities: "There needs to be a plan to educate and train soldiers, and those who are brought to serve in Iraq shouldn't bear prejudices nor be reckless towards people's honour." AP has more. Reuters has additional coverage.

Maliki has already drawn support across party and religious lines in Iraq for a proposal to lift the immunity from Iraqi criminal prosecution that US troops currently enjoy. US troops are currently protected by CPA Order 17 [PDF text], written by the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority [official website], which exempts coalition forces, diplomats, and US contractors from the "Iraqi legal process." Sources have suggested that Maliki wishes to amend Order 17 when the UN resolution authorizing the US troop presence in Iraq is up for a renewal vote before the UN Security Council at the end of this year. The Washington Post has more.

Meanwhile at the local level, a statement issued Wednesday by clan chiefs and tribal leaders obtained by the Voice of Iraq news agency threatened violence if the US did not hand over the Mahmudiya offenders, evoking the 1920 revolt [Wikipedia backgrounder] against British occupiers and saying the clans "will take a stand that resurrects the history of forefathers if the U.S. government does not hand over this criminal and his comrades." VOI has more.

[JURIST] Work on the new interim constitution of strife-torn Nepal [JURIST news archive] formally began Thursday, the six-person Interim Constitution Drafting Committee (ICDC) announced at a press conference. The ICDC, formed three weeks ago in a historic contract [text; JURIST report] between the interim government and Maoist rebels, expects to publish a final draft within fifteen days. Though informal work on the document began immediately after the deal [JURIST report], the formal start of work was delayed by committee membership squabbles [JURIST report] between the two sides. The interim constitution will delineate the procedure and substance of the upcoming constituent assembly elections. Once a new representative body is in place, the new representatives will draft a permanent constitution.

The landmark deal between Maoist rebels, who supported the pro-democracy rallies [JURIST news archive] of the spring, and the interim government also dissolved the parliament which was reinstated after the rallies against the direct rule of King Gyanendra [official profile] in April. Reuters has more. eKantipur has local coverage.

[JURIST] Iraqi President Jalal Talabani [official website, in Arabic; BBC profile] has criticized Iraq's recently-announced most-wanted list [JURIST report; AP translation], implicitly taking National Security Adviser Mowafaq al-Rubai'i to task for including two women, Saddam Hussein's eldest daughter Raghad and first wife Sajida [Wikipedia profiles]. On Thursday Talabani also expressed disappointment that the list demands the extradition of the 41 fugitives, saying that he would have preferred that the Iraqi courts issue arrest warrants for those connected to Hussein's former regime. Voice of Iraq news agency has more.

Iraqi authorities accuse Raghad and Sajiba Hussein of using secretly-looted money to fund Baathist insurgents. Raghad, now in Jordan, has led efforts to organize her father's legal defense [JURIST report], but is under royal protection in Jordan for "pure humanitarian reasons" [PETRA news agency report]. Former Qatari justice minister Najib al-Nuaimi said Tuesday that any attempt by the Iraqi government to extradite Sajida from her current presumed residence in Qatar would fail [JURIST report].

[JURIST] Hollinger Inc. [corporate website], the Canadian holding company with an interest in the newspaper publisher Hollinger International [corporate website], filed a lawsuit Thursday in an Ontario court against former CEO Conrad Black [CBC profile; JURIST news archive] and other former Hollinger associates requesting damages in excess of $700 million. The suit also names as defendants the Ravelston Corp. Ltd., the Black-controlled holding company that owns a majority of Hollinger, Inc. stock, as well as Black's wife. Hollinger said in a press release:

Hollinger is asking the Ontario Superior Court of Justice for 17 distinct forms of relief, including: $500 million in damages for breach of contract, conspiracy, negligence, breach of fiduciary duty, unjust enrichment and unlawful interference with the Hollinger Group's economic interest; additional damages totaling approximately $200 million; contribution and indemnity with respect to any judgment or order obtained against the Hollinger Group from certain legal proceedings; relief under the Canada Business Corporations Act, an order for compensation for oppressive conduct, and; a minimum of $5 million in punitive or exemplary damages.

[JURIST] The Florida Supreme Court [official website] on Thursday rejected [opinion, PDF] a record-setting jury verdict that had awarded $145 billion in punitive damages in a class action challenge brought by smokers [JURIST report] against tobacco companies. The Court vacated the punitive damages award, unanimously concluding it was "excessive as a matter of law."

Tobacco companies, including Philip Morris USA, a unit of Altria Group, and Reynolds American Inc.'s R.J. Reynolds Tobacco [corporate websites] appealed the trial court decision to a state appeals court, saying that the punitive damages award - the largest in US history - would bankrupt the companies. The Florida Third District Court of Appeal [official website] threw out the punitive damages award in 2003, ruling that the early certification of the case as a class action on behalf of 300,000 to 700,000 ill Floridians was a mistake. The Florida high court granted review [JURIST report] and heard oral arguments [transcript] in 2004. Lawyers for the ill smokers had asked the Florida Supreme Court to reinstate their class action verdict, but the high court upheld the Third Circuit's decertification as well. In the per curiam decision, the Court stated, "individual causation and apportionment of fault among the defendants[,] are highly individualized and do not led themselves to class action treatment," and remanded the case without prejudice for individual cases. AP has more.

[JURIST] An Israeli military tribunal Wednesday extended the detentions of five Palestinian Hamas lawmakers for an additional five days. The five - four MPs and one cabinet member - challenged the authority of the Israel Defense Forces [official website] court at the Ofer military base in the West Bank to hear their case, arguing that the tribunal has no authority over the officials because the tribunal was convened in disputed territory, and because the doctrine of sovereign immunity prevents Israel from bringing criminal charges against foreign representatives. The court responded [press release] by noting that the Hamas leaders live in the area over which the court claims jurisdiction, and that they are "active criminals." The court further held that the five are "members of an outlawed organization," and that they will be held until Sunday to permit the investigation to continue.

The five Hamas leaders were among a total of 64 Hamas members, including eight Palestinian cabinet ministers, detained by Israeli forces [JURIST report] last Thursday in retaliation for the seizure of an Israeli soldier [JURIST report]. The Jerusalem Post has more.

[JURIST] AP is reporting that the Georgia Supreme Court [official website] has upheld the state's ban on same-sex marriage [JURIST news archive] contained in a 2004 constitutional amendment [text]. In May, a lower court judge ruled the ban unconstitutional [order, PDF; JURIST report] because the amendment violated the single-subject rule, which prohibits voters from deciding more than one issue at a time. Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue appealed the ruling and the state high court agreed to hear expedited arguments [JURIST reports] in the case.

In a unanimous decision, the Georgia Supreme Court reversed the lower court, ruling that the amendment did not violate the single-subject rule, effectively reinstating Georgia's same-sex marriage ban. The state supreme court has recorded video of oral arguments and appellate briefs in the case. AP has more.

Earlier Thursday, the New York Court of Appeals upheld [ruling, PDF; JURIST report] that state's ban on same-sex marriage.

11:50 AM ET - In the Georgia opinion [PDF text], the court held "that the first sentence of subparagraph (b) of the amendment does not address a different objective than that of the amendment as a whole and does not render the amendment violative of the multiple-subject prohibition of Art. 10, Sec. 1, Par. 2, Ga. Const. 1983," and therefore reversed the trial court's ruling.

[JURIST] North Korea [JURIST news archive] on Thursday claimed it has a "legal right" to build and test missiles in an effort to strengthen self-defense, in a statement from the foreign ministry which also confirmed that the country test-launched seven missiles [VOA report] earlier this week. North Korea also promised to continue missile launches, and threatened to use force if the international community tries to stop the test-launches. North Korea pulled out of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty [PDF text; IAEA backgrounder] in 2003 and international law regarding nuclear weapons is therefore largely inapplicable to North Korea.

On Wednesday, the UN Security Council [official website] held an emergency meeting [JURIST report] to consider a draft resolution [text] to impose sanctions on North Korea following Tuesday's launches. The five permanent members agreed that the Council should respond to the missile launches, but disagreed on how severe that response should be. The draft resolution, circulated by Japan and joined by the United States, France, and Britain, would block UN member states from providing North Korea with money, materials or technology that contribute to a nuclear program. Russia, however, opposed sanctions, instead advocating a strongly worded condemnation of Tuesday's missile tests. AP has more. Reuters has additional coverage.

2:44 PM ET - US Ambassador to the UN John Bolton insisted Thursday that the draft Security Council resolution has "broad and deep support" though Russian diplomats continued to press for a non-binding statement instead of a resolution imposing sanctions. AP has more.

[JURIST] Google is prepared to file antitrust complaints against Internet broadband providers if Congress fails to pass effective net neutrality legislation, Google Vice President Vinton Cerf [official profile] has told a press conference in Bulgaria. Cerf suggested that the claims could be based on service providers exploiting their control over their infrastructure to interfere with services provided by competitors. After Google filed a grievance with the Department of Justice (DOJ) [antitrust materials], the DOJ would have to consider whether to file a complaint against offending broadband providers, likely under the Sherman Antitrust Act [text; DOJ antitrust statutes].

The push for net neutrality met a setback last week as the US Senate Commerce Committee [official website], in an 11-11 tie vote, failed to add a tough "net neutrality" amendment to a major telecommunications reform bill. As currently written, the Communications, Consumers' Choice, and Broadband Deployment Act of 2006 [text; S 2686 summary] has a net neutrality provision authorizing the Federal Communications Commission to investigate "developments in Internet traffic processing, routing, peering, transport, and interconnection" and "how such developments impact the free flow of information over the public Internet and the consumer experience using the public Internet," and report findings to Congress. The stronger, failed amendment was an express provision preventing cable and telephone companies from taking payments in exchange for assigning priority to Internet traffic through their broadband cables. The tie vote on the stronger net neutrality amendment was split down party lines, with amendment co-sponsor Olympia Snowe (R-ME) the sole Republican to support the measure.

The House Judiciary Committee has approved [JURIST report] the Internet Freedom and Nondiscrimination Act of 2006 [HR 5417 text], sponsored by committee chairman Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-WI), that would apply federal antitrust law to alleged neutrality violations. Several other net neutrality bills are also currently before the Commerce Committee. FCC Commissioner Michael Copps has previously said that the FCC is authorized under current law to regulate breaches of net neutrality [JURIST report]. Computer Business Review has more.

[JURIST] France has responded to reports [JURIST report] that its intelligence agents interviewed six former Guantanamo Bay [JURIST news archive] detainees now on trial [JURIST report] in Paris while they were detained at the US prison, saying that the agents visited the detainees for the administrative purposes of identifying the French citizens and generally assessing their situation. The French Foreign Ministry [official website] said in an official statement [text, in French] Wednesday that it never made a secret out of intelligence visits to Guantanamo between 2002 and 2004, adding that the agents were also gathering information for France to help prevent terrorism. A French diplomatic telegram published Wednesday in the Liberation daily referred to intelligence agents who conducted interviews with the suspects at least twice while at Guantanamo [Liberation report, in French]. The prosecution in the Paris trial failed to disclose the interviews, however, and defense lawyers claim the encounters violated their clients' rights because no lawyer was present when they took place.

The failure to disclose the interviews could render the case invalid, but Judge Jean-Claude Kross refused to halt the proceeding over the diplomatic document because its authenticity has not been established. The six terror defendants are accused of attending combat training at an al Qaeda camp in Afghanistan. France freed five of the suspects after their repatriation to France from Guantanamo in July 2004 and March 2005 [BBC reports]. Reuters has more.

[JURIST] Gunmen ambushed and killed a former Iraqi judge on Thursday in western Baghdad, also wounding his son and driver, according to Iraqi police. Saleh Hassan Yass al-Awsi, a Sunni, was among those removed from office by the Iraqi government's Debaathification Commission [official website, in Arabic] and was a strong voice in the push to petition Iraq's new parliament to reinstate judges who were purged. The Commission, set up with the approval of the US-run Coalition Provisional Authority [official website] after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein [JURIST news archive] in 2003, is charged with rooting out members of Hussein's Baath party [JURIST news archive] from positions of power in the Iraqi government.

Before the US occupation, Al-Awsi was a civil court judge under Hussein. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said last month that as part of a new national reconciliation plan [JURIST report] he would consider liberalizing debaathification procedures to satisfy Sunnis and former Baathists. Reuters has more.

[JURIST] The sudden death of former Enron CEO Kenneth Lay [JURIST report] on Wednesday presents the legal system, Lay's family and Lay's own legacy with major challenges, according to a University of Houston law professor who closely followed the trial that led to Lay's conviction this spring. In a Thursday op-ed on JURIST, Professor Nancy Rapoport [faculty profile] says that the criminal case against Lay is now void, and because federal agents had not yet seized Lay's assets under a forfeiture order [motion text, PDF] filed Friday [Washington Post report], the victims of fraud will have to seek compensation through civil remedies. In anticipation of plaintiff victories, she suggests that Lay's wife Linda consider filing Chapter 11 bankruptcy to "avoid any piecemeal attachment of assets." Under 2005 amendments to the Bankruptcy Code [text], Linda Lay could probably protect up to $125,000 of the value of her house from creditors if "reasonably necessary for the support of the debtor and any dependent of the debtor."

The greatest consequence of Lay's death, according to Rapoport, may nonetheless be the lost opportunity to redeem himself:

Lay never had a chance to progress through his appeal, and from there, either to vindication or to possible rehabilitation while serving his time. His death freezes his iconic image as corporate villain, even though other similarly vilified corporate miscreants have overcome (at least, to some degree) their sullied reputations.

[JURIST] The US House Committee on Government Reform [official website] is waiting for the US Defense Department and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to comply with a subpoena [press release] seeking to compel the Pentagon to turn over several documents, including all drafts of a key report in the Abu Ghraib [JURIST news archive] abuse investigation. In March, the Pentagon failed to respond to an initial request to turn over the documents, most importantly all drafts of the August 2004 Fay report [JURIST report; text, PDF] and all communications relating to information provided by Army Spc. Samuel Provance. Provance testified before a subcommittee [JURIST report] of the Government Reform Committee in February, claiming that top military officials were aware of the abuse taking place at Abu Ghraib, but that investigators ignored his information and later retaliated against him for providing unclassified information to the media.

In the hearing, Provance alleged that Maj. Gen. George Fay [Wikipedia profile] purposefully questioned him about the role of military police and avoided questioning him on intelligence units. Provance also claimed that US troops had captured and imprisoned the teenage son of a detained Iraqi general to coerce the general to cooperate with interrogators. Provance served at Abu Ghraib in late 2003 with the 302nd Military Intelligence Battalion and was one of the first intelligence specialists to alert the media to the abuse scandal [JURIST report]. The rare legislative subpoena against the Defense Department issued late last week gives the Pentagon until July 14 to deliver the unredacted statement that Provance gave to Fay, along with other requested materials. AFP has more.

[JURIST] The New York Court of Appeals [official website], the state's highest court, ruled Thursday morning that New York's ban on same-sex marriage [JURIST news archive] is not unconstitutional. The ruling [PDF] comes in four consolidated cases [JURIST report] where attorneys representing 48 gay and lesbian couples argued [recorded video] that a 97-year-old statute limiting marriage to a union between a man and a woman should be overturned.

In a 4-2 decision upholding relevant sections of the New York Domestic Relations Law [text], the court held:

We hold, in sum, that the Domestic Relations Law's limitation of marriage to opposite-sex couples is not unconstitutional. We emphasize once again that we are deciding only this constitutional question. It is not for us to say whether same-sex marriage is right or wrong. We have presented some (though not all) of the arguments against same-sex marriage because our duty to defer to the Legislature requires us to do so. We do not imply that there are no persuasive arguments on the other side -- and we know, of course, that there are very powerful emotions on both sides of the question.

The Court ultimately concludes that the issue of samesex marriage should be addressed by the Legislature. If the Legislature were to amend the statutory scheme by making it gender neutral, obviously the instant controversy would disappear. But this Court cannot avoid its obligation to remedy constitutional violations in the hope that the Legislature might some day render the question presented academic. After all, by the time the Court decided Loving in 1967, many states had already repealed their anti-miscegenation laws. Despite this trend, however, the Supreme Court did not refrain from fulfilling its constitutional obligation.

The fact remains that although a number of bills to authorize same-sex marriage have been introduced in the Legislature over the past several years, none has ever made it out of committee (see 2005 NY Senate-Assembly Bill S 5156, A 7463; 2005 NY Assembly Bill A 1823; 2003 NY Senate Bill S 3816; 2003 NY Assembly Bill A 7392; 2001 NY Senate Bill S 1205; see also 2005 NY Senate-Assembly Bill S 1887-A, A 3693-A [proposing establishment of domestic partnerships]; 2004 NY Senate-Assembly Bill S 3393-A, A 7304-A [same]).

It is uniquely the function of the Judicial Branch to safeguard individual liberties guaranteed by the New York State Constitution, and to order redress for their violation. The Court's duty to protect constitutional rights is an imperative of the separation of powers, not its enemy.

I am confident that future generations will look back on today's decision as an unfortunate misstep.

[JURIST] Georgia's latest attempt to implement photo identification cards for voters was challenged Wednesday by the ACLU and other voting rights advocates, who filed a motion [PDF text] in federal district court seeking a preliminary injunction, arguing that the bill [SB 84 materials] authorizing the cards violates the Equal Protection Clause of the US Constitution's Fourteenth Amendment [text] as well as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 [text], and that it constitutes a poll tax in violation of the Twenty-fourth Amendment [text]. Unlike the original law, which was blocked [JURIST report] last year by a federal judge, SB 84 would provide free voter ID cards, but the motion challenges the statute as imposing burdens on Georgia citizens without increasing protections against voter fraud. The motion reads, in part:

The 2006 Act imposes a severe burden on the poor, the elderly, the infirm, and the less literate who either cannot afford a car, or are no longer able to drive, and who are, therefore, the least mobile of our citizens and least able to make a special trip to the county registrar's office to obtain a "Georgia identification card" or to navigate the requirements of voting absentee.

[JURIST] Ugandan rebel leader Joseph Kony [BBC profile] must be arrested, a spokesman for the International Criminal Court (ICC) [official website] said Wednesday, a day after Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni [official website; BBC profile] promised Kony conditional amnesty [JURIST report]. The ICC spokesman told the Integrated Regional Information Networks (IRIN), the UN's editorially independent humanitarian news agency, that Uganda, Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo must "give effect" to the ICC warrants [PDF] issued for Kony and four of his lieutenants in the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) [BBC backgrounder] and that "we are confident that they will honor their joint commitment to do so." Article 59 of the ICC's Rome Statute [PDF text], which Uganda signed in 1997 and ratified in 2002, provides that "[a] State Party which has received a request for provisional arrest or for arrest and surrender shall immediately take steps to arrest the person in question in accordance with its laws and the provisions of Part 9."

Museveni stood by his promise of amnesty, conditioned upon Kony's cooperation in upcoming LRA negotiations with the southern Sudanese government and his renouncing terrorist activity. IRIN quoted Museveni as saying that the United Nations does not have the moral authority to demand Kony's arrest because the UN itself has failed to arrest him, even though he is known to be hiding in a jungle in Democratic Republic of Congo's Garamba National Park. Kony and the four others face charges consisting of 33 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity, including murder, rape, sexual enslavement and conscription of children. Last week, Kony said in a rare interview that he was "not guilty" of atrocities attributed to him [JURIST report], describing himself as a "freedom fighter" rather than a terrorist. IRIN News has more. Uganda's Daily Monitor has local coverage.

[JURIST] The Russian Duma [official website, in Russian], the lower house of parliament, overwhelmingly passed a draft law Wednesday that would give Russian President Vladimir Putin [official website, English version] the right to use Russia's armed forces and secret services abroad for counterterrorism measures. Putin asked parliament for greater counterterrorism powers last week after five Russian diplomats were abducted and murdered [BBC report] in Iraq, prompting him to order special forces to find those responsible [Itar-Tass report] and offer a $10 million reward for information leading to their capture.

The bill would forbid mass media from publishing information about the methods of counterterrorism operations, as well as information that threatens lives and health during those operations. It would also allow Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) [official website, in Russian; Wikipedia backgrounder] to carry out counterterrorism efforts outside Russia, giving it the authority to defend Russian laws anywhere, and would permit Russian law enforcement to confiscate property belonging to terrorists. The bill now goes to the upper house of parliament, the Federation Council [official website], and if passed will require Putin's signature to become law. RIA Novosti has more. BBC News has additional coverage.

[JURIST] US Army prosecutors charged [charge sheet, PDF; Army press release, PDF] 1st Lt. Ehren Watada [advocacy website; Wikipedia profile] late Wednesday in connection with his refusal to deploy to Iraq with the rest of his unit last week. Watada announced in early June that he would not deploy because he believes the Iraq war is unlawful [JURIST report], adding that he would go to Afghanistan if called to do so. The 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, arrived in Iraq last week without Watada [Seattle Times report; Army press release, PDF], though senior officials remained hopeful that Watada would join his unit on one of its flights.

The military charged Watada with missing his unit's movement on June 22, contempt toward officials because of statements made about President Bush and others, and conduct unbecoming an officer [IMCM backgrounders] because of statements referring to the war as "morally wrong" and a "breach of American law." An Army statement said that "officers are held to a high moral and legal standard," making his comments, including one that he would be "party to war crimes," subject to the conduct unbecoming an officer charge under Article 133 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice [text] because it brings dishonor to the armed services. The military will begin an Article 32 [Navy JAG backgrounder] hearing to determine if the charges against Watada will proceed to court-martial. If convicted, Watada could face several years in prison, a dishonorable discharge and forfeiture of pay. Watada's lawyer said he was surprised at the contempt and conduct unbecoming an officer charges, noting that Watada exercised his First Amendment free speech rights when he made public comments denouncing the war. Reuters has more. The Seattle Times has local coverage.