[JURIST] The US DC Circuit Court of Appeals [official website] Friday blocked the US Department of Justice from reviewing the contents of files seized from the congressional office of Rep. William Jefferson (D-LA) [official website] until Jefferson has an opportunity to review them himself [remand order] to determine which might fall under the legislative privilege defined in the US Constitution's so-called Speech or Debate Clause [text]. The court did not order the documents returned, but rather said Jefferson had the right to review copies. Jefferson is appealing a District Court ruling earlier this month finding the search constitutional [JURIST report; PDF opinion]; the appeals court ruled that action would be halted pending the documents review.

The files were seized in an 18-hour federal raid [JURIST report] in May. Jefferson has not been charged with any crime, and has denied accusations that he took bribes from a Kentucky telecommunications company in exchange for brokering a deal with the government of Nigeria. The search sparked bipartisan criticism from the House of Representatives, including an accusation from House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL) that the DOJ crossed the line of separation of powers [JURIST report]. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty, and FBI Director Robert Mueller were among a host of government officials who said they would resign [JURIST report] if forced to hand back information gathered during the search, causing President Bush to order the documents to be sealed for 45 days [JURIST report] until the matter could be resolved. AP has more.

[JURIST] A federal appeals court Friday affirmed [ruling, PDF] the securities fraud conviction and 25-year prison sentence [JURIST report] handed down for former WorldCom [MCI/WorldCom website] CEO Bernard Ebbers [JURIST news archive]. Ebbers appealed the 2005 district court determinations, saying the prosecution unfairly blocked three former WorldCom employees from testifying on Ebbers' behalf because, at the time, they were the subject of a criminal probe. Ebbers also argued on appeal before the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit [official website] that the 25-year sentence was unreasonably long for a non-violent conviction.

Ebbers was convicted of fraud and conspiracy [JURIST report] in March 2005 in connection with an $11 billion fraud scheme which drove WorldCom into bankruptcy. On Thursday, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) [official website] announced it had reached a settlement [JURIST report] with former WorldCom accountant Scott Sullivan and six others for their roles in fraudulent adjustments and entries in WorldCom's books and records. AP has more.

[JURIST] The Spanish government on Friday unveiled the anticipated [JURIST report] "Law for the Recovery of the Historical Memory," legislation aimed at healing the wounds of Gen. Francisco Franco's authoritarian regime [BBC backgrounder; LOC backgrounder] that ruled Spain from 1939 to 1975 following a bitter three-year civil war. The bill appropriates $25 million to compensate victims of the Franco era for land seizure and personal harm, and the victims or the relatives of those killed, exiled, or imprisoned by Franco have a year to make claims. The bill also bans public recognition of the Franco era, calls on localities to assist relatives of victims to exhume corpses from mass graves to family plots, and orders Spanish archives to be consolidated and reorganized so that families can access information from the Franco era.

The controversial bill breaks the informal agreement among Spanish politicians to avoid speaking of Franco's regime, an attempt to move beyond the atrocities of the past. Many leftist politicians feel the bill does not go far enough, as it does not officially condemn the actions of the Franco regime. The bill may go to parliament before the end of the year, and is expected to enjoy majority support required for approval. AP has more. El Pais has local coverage, in Spanish.

[JURIST] Russian Prosecutor General Yury Chaika announced Friday that a criminal investigation has been opened into the June abduction and murder of four Russian embassy employees [BBC report] in Iraq. In a statement, the Prosecutor General's office [official website] said the perpetrators will be charged with "murder involving hostage-taking by a group of people acting in concert" and "hostage-taking for the purposes of forcing a state to take certain steps as a condition for the hostage's release, committed by a group of people acting in concert using weapons in relation to two or more people."

Earlier this month, both houses of the Russian parliament quickly passed a bill [JURIST report] at the urging of President Vladimir Putin that authorizes Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) [official website, in Russian] to carry out counterterrorism efforts outside Russia, including finding, capturing or killing terrorists abroad. The prosecutorial probe announced Friday theoretically opens the possibility of bringing captured suspects back to Russia for trial. Interfax has more.

[JURIST] A Turkish court on Friday dismissed a lawsuit seeking compensation from novelist Orhan Pamuk [TIME profile; JURIST news archive], who was sued by six nationalists after he made allegedly unfavorable remarks to a Swiss magazine about Turkey's stance on the mass killing of Armenians during World War II. The lawsuit demanded 6,000 Turkish Lira (US $4,500) from Pamuk to compensate each defendant for "insulting, humiliating and making false accusations."

In January, a Turkish court dropped criminal charges against Pamuk [JURIST report] arising from the same statement. Pamuk was on trial for "public denigration of the Turkish identity," and the case was dropped after the Justice Ministry declared that it was legally not competent to judge whether the case should proceed under the controversial revised penal code [JURIST report]. Criminal charges now stand against journalists Hrant Dink and Murat Belge [JURIST reports] for "insulting Turkishness" by referencing the alleged Armenian genocide. Pravda has more.

[JURIST] A US Army soldier has said that the deaths of three Iraqi detainees in Samarra on May 9 were deliberate murders covered-up by his squad of the Third Brigade Combat Team of the 101st Airborne Division [GlobalSecurity backgrounder], according to Friday's New York Times. The Times obtained a sworn statement by Sgt. Lemuel Lemus given June 15, in which he admitted failing to stop his comrades from killing the detainees because he feared his fellow soldiers would label him a coward. Four men - Sergeant Raymond Girouard, Specialist William Hunsaker, Pfc. Corey Clagett and Specialist Juston Graber - have now been charged with premeditated murder [JURIST report] in relation to the May 9 deaths, and await an Article 32 [JAG backgrounder; USMJ text] hearing next week.

The soldiers originally agreed that the captured detainees had broken free during a morning raid, and were shot while trying to escape and attack the squad. Lemus' account, however, depicts purposeful murder and even alleges that Squad Leader Girouard cut Hunsaker to enhance the legitimacy of their account. Lemus, who has not been charged, says he remained outside during the incident and that he reported several statements from other squad members describing the incident, despite death threats from Girouard. Lawyers for Clagett and Hunsaker dispute Lemus' account, and claim that Colonel Michael Steele, the well-known brigade commander that led a botched 1993 mission in Somalia depicted in the book and movie Black Hawk Down [Wikipedia backgrounder], ordered the soldiers to kill all military-age men prior to the raid. Steele has indicated that he will refuse to testify at Tuesday's Article 32 hearing, which one military justice scholar said was unusual at any court-martial stage. The New York Times has more.

[JURIST] Some leftist Italian lawmakers belonging to the Union Coalition [Wikipedia backgrounder] of Italian prime minister Romano Prodi [official profile] have expressed dissatisfaction with a controversial sentence-reduction bill that has been extended to include prisoners convicted of fraud and other white-collar crimes. The measure that would effectively pardon 12,000 prisoners three years before the end of their sentences passed the Chamber of Deputies [official website], the lower house of the Italian parliament, on Friday, excluding only those who were convicted of the most serious crimes, such as rape, pedophilia, and terrorism. It was extended to include white-collar offenders to earn the support of opposition lawmakers, given the narrow margin of legislative support the Prodi government enjoys. The Italian Senate [official website] is expected to pass the expanded bill on Saturday.

The discontented coalition members argue that white-collar offenders should remain in jail, considering Italy's recent history of corruption allegations. Prodi barely won disputed April elections [JURIST report], when he ran against former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi [BBC profile; JURIST news archive] who is scheduled to stand trial [JURIST report] in November on embezzlement, false accounting, tax fraud and money laundering charges. Berlusconi was previously acquitted of false accounting and bribery charges [JURIST reports], but is also under investigation for antitrust and bribery allegations [JURIST reports]. Reuters has more.

[JURIST] Lawyers for the three men sentenced to death for the 2002 Bali nightclub bombings [BBC report] Friday threatened to sue the Indonesia attorney general's office if their clients' executions, currently scheduled for mid-August [JURIST report], are carried out before they file for judicial review. A lawyer for the men speaking at a news conference moreover said the appeal will not be filed until the government promises to hold the trial somewhere other than Bali, the site of the 2002 bombing. The lawyer did not say what new evidence would be presented for judicial review.

On Tuesday, the attorney general's office announced that the Justice and Human Rights Ministry [ministry website] has signed off on a plan to move the execution from Bali to Nusakambangan, the jurisdiction where the three men have been detained since their conviction two years ago. Indonesia usually executes inmates in the jurisdiction where they committed the criminal act, but safety precautions have prompted the district attorney's office to seek an alternate location. The family of one of the three men, Imam Samudra [BBC profile], announced in April that they would not pursue clemency on his behalf [JURIST report]. Last October, all three declined to seek presidential pardons [JURIST report], saying they are prepared to be executed as martyrs. Reuters has more.

[JURIST] A Belgian ethnic Lebanese couple is preparing a legal complaint against Israel for alleged war crimes during the ongoing Mideast conflict [JURIST news archive] after Ali Abdul-Sater and his wife had to flee Lebanon via Syria with their three children when Israel launched airstrikes against Hezbollah [US State Dept. backgrounder] earlier this month. An apartment where they were staying on holiday was destroyed in the strikes. Belgian daily Le Soir reported the action Thursday, saying it was going to be filed that day, but a lawyer for the couple later said case preparation was ongoing. If the couple files the complaint, "war crimes" will be defined according to the terms of the Belgian criminal code, embracing purposeful murder, severe violations of the physical integrity of health, deportation of civilians and the destruction and misappropriation of goods.

The complaint would be based on Belgian application of the principle of universal jurisdiction [HRW backgrounder], which allows war crimes complaints from other countries in Belgian courts as long as there is some link to Belgium, and would target Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert [official website], Defense Minister Amir Peretz [ministry website] and army Chief of Staff Dan Halutz. EJP has more.

[JURIST] US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales [official profile] pressed Republican lawmakers last week for a bill that would "shield" US soldiers from potential prosecution in US federal courts over violations of the 1996 War Crimes Act [text], according to a report in Friday's Washington Post. The War Crimes Act authorizes life sentences for US soldiers who breach the war crimes provisions of Common Article 3 [text] or Protocol II [text] of the Geneva Conventions [ICRC materials] or any other international treaty, and authorizes the death penalty if a detainee dies while held in such detention.

Gonzales wants a bill that would prevent detainees held by the US from bringing lawsuits under the 1996 statute, leaving the prosecution of alleged crimes to federal prosecutors, and that would clarify that the US government's interpretation of what the Geneva Conventions require trumps any other interpretation. According to Department of Justice lawyers, the proposed legislation would protect US soldiers who acted under the authority of a 2002 presidential order [text] that declared the Geneva Conventions inapplicable to terrorist detainees, an order that was revoked after the Supreme Court's decision in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld [text] declared that the Conventions applied [JURIST report]. The Washington Post has more.

[JURIST] A judge in Ontario Thursday upheld a publication ban [State Dept. backgrounder] on the bail hearings for 17 men accused of a terror plot in Canada [JURIST report]. The Associated Press, the New York Times, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the Toronto Star, and one defense lawyer appealed [JURIST report] an earlier ruling [Bloomberg report] barring the media from the courtroom in a bid to protect the accused's right to a fair trial and isolate eventual jurors from outside news sources. Justice Bruce Durno of the Superior Court of Ontario [official website] said the publication ban on bail hearings will stand because of the often unproven information provided during the hearings, which could eventually prejudice a fair trial. David Kolinksy, the lawyer for suspect Zakaria Amara, supported the ruling, saying that "the right of an accused person to a fair trial is a higher right than freedom of the press."

On Monday, authorities released a third teenage suspect in the plot on bail [JURIST report]. AP has more. The Toronto Star has local coverage.

[JURIST] The UN Human Rights Committee [official website] slammed current US rights practices in a report [PDF text] released Friday, saying among other things that the US needs to close all alleged secret detention facilities and allow the International Committee of the Red Cross [advocacy website] access to all detainees held at the alleged prisons. The committee noted that it has information that the secret detention centers have existed for a long time, and added that it would not accept the United States' argument that the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) [text] does not apply to people outside the US borders. The Covenant addresses basic individual rights, including equality before the law, protection against torture and arbitrary arrest. The Committee wrote it was:

...concerned by credible and uncontested information that the State party has seen fit to engage in the practice of detaining people secretly and in secret places for months and years on end, without even keeping the International Committee of the Red Cross informed. In such cases, the rights of the families of the detained persons have also been violated. It is further concerned that, even when such persons may have their detention acknowledged, they and others have been held for months or years in prolonged incommunicado detention...The State party should immediately abolish all secret detention and secret detention facilities. It should also grant prompt access by the International Committee of the Red Cross to any person detained in connection with armed conflict. It should only detain persons in places in which they can enjoy the full protection of the law.

[JURIST] Legal experts inside and outside government are criticizing provisions of a draft bill [PDF text] circulated by the White House [JURIST report] Wednesday that, among other things, would allow US military commissions [JURIST news archive] to proceed against an accused "enemy combatant" without the defendant being present, if necessary to protect national security. In absentia proceedings would only be allowed, however, if a defendant's lawyer were present throughout the trial, and if evidence used against the defendant was classified, the defense would be given an unclassified summary of that evidence, if available. The draft bill states: "no evidence shall be admitted to which the accused has been denied access if its admission would result in the denial of a..." [blacked out - likely, "fair trial"]. The suggested scheme would be unique among Western war crimes tribunals and is not consistent with the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) [text]. The draft defines "enemy combantants" broadly as those "engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners who has committed an act that violates the law of war and this statute", potentially including US citizens.

The Enemy Combatants Military Commissions Act of 2006 [draft text, PDF] purportedly expands those rights enjoyed by terrorist detainees under the former tribunal scheme, but the draft bill expressly rejects the procedural framework of the UCMJ/Manual for Courts Martial, which provides court-martial defendants with considerably more protection than the military tribunal scheme struck down by Hamdan v. Rumsfeld [text]. The draft bill expressly rejects the use of evidence obtained through torture, with torture defined by 18 USC 2340 [text], and but would grant judges discretion to reject - or, theoretically, allow - other evidence obtained through coercion. The draft also permits a military commission judge to admit hearsay evidence if it is deeemed relevant and reliable. The text indicates that the US Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia would have appellate review over the final decisions of the military commissions, and that the Supreme Court would be able to grant certiorari to review.

When asked about the draft bill during a press briefing [transcript] on Wednesday, Press Secretary Tony Snow suggested that the administration is open to negotiations over controversial aspects of the draft bill, and that he is not sure when the draft bill will become a final proposal. The New York Times has more.

[JURIST] The UN Security Council adopted a Presidential Statement [text] Thursday saying it was "deeply shocked and distressed" at an Israeli attack on a UNIFIL [official website] military observer post in Lebanon Tuesday that killed four observers [UNIFIL press release, PDF] from Austria, Canada, China and Finland, and stressed that "Israel and all concerned parties must comply fully with their obligations under the rules and principles of international humanitarian law related to the protection of the United Nations and its associated personnel." The statement, which also called for a full inquiry into the deaths, nonetheless fell short of a condemnation, prompting China to blame the US for having "watered down" the statement [recorded video]. Chinese UN Ambassador Wang Guangya [official profile] said that China's frustration at the situation would affect the "working relations" within the Council, beginning with ongoing talks among Council members on the Iranian nuclear situation.

Following a "growing number of deaths and injuries resulting from deliberate attacks against United Nations and associated personnel," international protections for UN personnel were recently codified in the 1994 Convention on the Safety of United Nations and Associated Personnel [text]. In January of this year the UN Staff Union reported [press release], however, that attacks against UN personnel "continued unabated" in 2005. UN News has more. CanWest has additional coverage.

[JURIST] Haitian authorities freed former Prime Minister Yvon Neptune from prison Thursday on a provisional release, though Neptune still faces charges that he calls "imaginary." Neptune has been detained for two years [JURIST report] since former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide [BBC profile] was ousted in 2004 [JURIST report] on accusations that he orchestrated a February 2004 massacre in La Scierie, though UN investigators have classified the incident as an armed conflict where both sides suffered casualties.

Neptune is one of hundreds of Aristide supporters jailed [JURIST report] in recent years by the US-backed interim government. Last year, head of the UN stabilization mission in Haiti [MINUSTAH website] Thierry Fagart called Neptune's detention illegal [JURIST report] under the Haitian constitution [text] because Neptune had not appeared before a judge. Reuters has more.

[JURIST] The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) [advocacy website] has released a list of secret government surveillance operations [PDF text] focusing on war protestors and other political activists in northern and central California from September 2001 through July 2006 [timeline, PDF]. The ACLU described [press release] the surveillance operations as "disturbing trend" fueled by "greater funding of federal, state and local intelligence agencies [and] a national climate of fear" in the years following the 9/11 terrorist attacks [JURIST news archive]. Specifically referring to weak oversight of such activities by law enforcement and intelligence agencies, the ACLU suggested that California create a new agency to monitor surveillance activities and called on state Attorney General Bill Lockyer [official website] to create guidelines for local law enforcement relating to the legal limits of their surveillance activities.

The ACLU also recommended the state implement requirements that local law enforcement report all of their surveillance activities to the state legislature. AP has more. From San Francisco, Insidebayarea.com has local coverage.

[JURIST] The Washington Supreme Court official website] ruled [opinion text] 7-2 Thursday that the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) [official website] must release files documenting sexual abuse allegations compiled over decades for use in an upcoming lawsuit brought by three Washington men claiming abuse by their scoutmaster in the 1970s and 1980s. The files include court records, news reports, documentation of rumors and tips from parents about abuse. The names of the Boy Scouts, accused perpetrators and the parents of the Boy Scouts have been redacted. The accused scoutmaster settled his part of the lawsuit earlier this year, but the suit continues against the national organization and local branches.

A trial court judge ordered BSA to produce the files for the trial in September 2004, prompting the BSA to appeal the order because the trial court judge had not used a legal test to balance the BSA's First Amendment rights against the lawsuit's demand for information. The three plaintiffs allege [complaint, PDF] that the BSA negligently retained and supervised the scoutmaster, failed to protect the Boy Scouts, and covered up incidents of abuse when they arose. A dissent [opinion text] argued that the trial court should have weighed the lawsuit's demand for information against the right to privacy in the state constitution. AP has more. The Tacoma News Tribune has local coverage.

[JURIST] A new US federal regulation announced by the Department of Homeland Security Thursday and published [text] in the Federal Register would for the first time require biometric fingerprinting and photographing of lawful permanent US residents - so called "green card" holders whose numbers are estimated at between 8 and 12 million - reentering the United States after trips abroad. Lawful permanent residents (LPRs) are among several new classes of persons to be included in the US-VISIT [official website] border security program, which is being phased in over several years. In a statement, DHS said:

Expanding the population processed through US-VISIT is the next step in a comprehensive plan to further improve public safety and national security, as well as ensure the integrity of the immigration process. It is consistent with a number of initiatives that strengthen the integrity of travel documents issued to foreign visitors seeking entry into the United States, as it verifies the travel documents’ holder by their biometrics.