[JURIST] An Iranian court has sentenced the managing editor of the monthly Aftab, Isa Saharkhiz [Iran Press profile], to four years in jail and barred him from working in the press for five years after he was convicted of publishing articles against the constitution and offending the state media, according to ISNA [media website], the Iranian student news agency. Saharkhiz, a well-known press activist whose publications have been closed down in the past, said he had only heard about his sentence from news reports, but he would not appeal because Iran's judiciary was not independent. Reuters has more.

The Iranian government began a crackdown on independent media [JURIST report] earlier this year, prompting the Committee to Protect Journalists [advocacy website], to which Saharkhiz belongs, to condemn Iran's record [JURIST report] in its annual report [text] on media repression. Last week, a spokesman for the government of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad [official website; BBC profile] urged Iranian prosecutors to pursue charges [JURIST report] against several Iranian newspapers who have published articles accusing Ahmadinejad of financial wrongdoing.

[JURIST] Prosecutors at the International Criminal Court (ICC) [official website; JURIST news archive] on Monday formally charged [ICC press release; indictment, PDF] Thomas Lubanga [Trial Watch backgrounder], founder of the militant Union of Patriotic Congolese [Global Security backgrounder], accusing him of enlisting child soldiers [BBC report] in the violence-plagued Ituri district [HRW backgrounder]. Lubanga is the first war crimes suspect to be charged at the ICC since it opened in 2002. Though Human Rights Watch [advocacy website] has criticized the court for not charging Lubanga with murder, torture and rape, ICC deputy prosecutor Fatou Bensouda said the ICC began with the conscripting child soldier charges [ICC press release; ICC materials] only because the evidence was already available.

Pressure to arrest warlords in the mineral-rich Ituri district increased with the February 2005 murder of nine UN peacekeepers [PBS report]; a month authorities arrested Lubanga for human rights violations [JURIST report]. Congolese officials sent Lubanga to The Hague [JURIST report] in March, making him the first prisoner of the tribunal. Lubanga confirmed his identity but refused to hear the charges against him when he first appeared before the court in March [JURIST report]. BBC News has more.

[JURIST] Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert [official website] said Monday that he will establish two inquiry committees [speech transcript] to investigate Israel's conduct during the latest crisis in the Middle East [JURIST news archive], one to examine "the functioning of the Government, its proceedings and decision making, and anything else it sees fit to examine," and an internal military investigation to "conduct a thorough examination in order to implement the necessary changes in the preparedness of the IDF, its combat doctrine and force structuring." The government committee of inquiry will be chaired by a former head of Israel's spy agency and will include legal and military experts.

Neither of the investigations will have the power to force witness testimony, disappointing critics who have called for an independent state inquiry. Olmert dismissed those calls Monday, saying "this will not repair the defects or prevent incidents." Olmert called an independent judicial investigation a "tempting" political solution, but said that it "is not what the country needs," favoring instead "an effective, professional inquiry, to examine the issues in depth, draw conclusions, and learn lessons." AP has more. Haaretz has local coverage.

[JURIST] US District Judge Patricia Seitz of the Southern District of Florida [official website] on Monday threw out Florida's Third-Party Registration Law [text], which had imposed steeply scaled fines on organizations and volunteers who failed to submit voter applications within specified time periods. Seitz ruled [opinion text, PDF] that the law "unconstitutionally discriminates in favor of political parties by excluding them from the definition of 'third party voter registration organization'" and that the law's stiff fines are unconstitutional because they "chill...First Amendment speech and association rights."

Several labor unions had criticized the law [complaint, PDF], saying that it blocked voter registration drives because of a high financial risk, which imposed a $250 fine on organizations and volunteers that failed to submit voter applications within ten days of application, $500 if organizations and volunteers failed to submit applications by the registration deadline, and $5,000 if organizations and volunteers failed to submit the application altogether. Florida state officials said they would appeal the decision to the Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. The plaintiffs, which included the League of Women Voters of Florida, the Florida AFL-CIO, the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees [advocacy websites] and other smaller groups, called Monday's ruling a "win for democracy." AP has more. The South Florida Sun-Sentinel has local coverage.

[JURIST] Mexico's Federal Electoral Tribunal [official website, in Spanish] on Monday rejected most challenges to last month's disputed presidential election [JURIST report], dismissing the bulk of fraud allegations brought by leftist challenger Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador [campaign website, in Spanish]. Lopez Obrador filed over 200 separate complaints challenging the preliminary vote count [JURIST report] which conservative candidate Felipe Calderon [campaign website, in Spanish] won by just 0.6 percent of the vote. Lopez Obrador argued that fraudulent election practices [JURIST report] allowed Calderon to win the election, but the Mexican electoral court refused to order a full manual recount [JURIST report], instead ordering a recount of ballots at just nine percent of the nation's polling places.

Announcing the rulings Monday, Judge Jose Luna said that some results were overturned due to fraud, but that "all the parties lost a considerable amount of votes" and that the results were not affected by the changes. The court must still officially declare a winner and has until September 6 to do so. Lopez Obrador's party, the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) [party website, in Spanish], has already indicated they expected the court to rule against Lopez Obrador [JURIST report]. Party officials, however, plan to continue nonviolent protests [JURIST report] in Mexico City. Reuters has more.

[JURIST] An Australian court on Monday ordered terror suspect Joseph Terrence "Jihad Jack" Thomas [advocacy website] to stay within the city of Melbourne and imposed an evening curfew in the first use of controversial "control orders" authorized under anti-terror legislation [ANS backgrounder] enacted late last year. Police requested the measures Sunday as the government still believes Thomas to be a security threat even though his terror conviction was overturned [JURIST report] earlier this month. Monday's interim control order will stay in place until a court hearing currently scheduled to take place on September 1.

Thomas was the first Australian incarcerated under the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism Act 2002 [text]. A jury convicted [BBC report] Thomas in February of receiving $3,500 from a senior Al Qaeda member and of carrying a fake passport, but the conviction was overturned because authorities were found to have interviewed Thomas against his will and without access to a lawyer when he was arrested in Pakistan in 2003. Control orders have also been controversial in the UK, where an appeals judge earlier this month upheld a lower court ruling [JURIST report] that using them to restrict uncharged terror suspects violates the European Convention on Human Rights [PDF text]. AP has more.

[JURIST] An increase in Sudanese troops in the war-torn Darfur region [JURIST news archive] of Sudan could lead to a new human rights crisis there, Amnesty International [advocacy website] warned [press release] Monday as the UN Security Council prepared to consider a proposal to deploy 20,000 UN troops to the area. Sudan denies any wrongdoing in Darfur and has proposed to the Council an alternative plan of its own that would authorize a Sudanese domestic peacekeeping force of 10,500.

Sudan's government opposed UN-led peacekeeping forces [JURIST report] before the May 5 Darfur peace agreement [US Sudan Embassy briefing], but has since indicated that it may agree to the UN presence. The International Criminal Court [official website] chief prosecutor's investigation into the Darfur situation [ICC materials] documented thousands of killings of civilians, large scale massacres, and hundreds of rapes that he already anticipates will result in multiple cases rather than a single proceeding [UN News report]. Sudanese officials have strongly opposed sending Sudanese citizens to a foreign court for trial. Reuters has more.

[JURIST] The US Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit [official website] has refused [opinion text, PDF] to grant an injunction to halt a new Oklahoma law [text, PDF] that requires parental notification at least 48 hours in advance of an abortion for a minor while Nova Health Systems [corporate website], the parent group of Tulsa's Reproductive Services clinic [clinic website], challenges the law in court. Nova Health brought the lawsuit against the state of Oklahoma shortly after Oklahoma Governor Brad Henry [official website] signed the bill in May, arguing that the new law presents problems because it fails to establish deadlines on how quickly a court must approve a judicial bypass request, which is reserved for cases of abuse but is often used to avoid the parental notification requirement. The three-judge appeals panel affirmed a district court decision to reject the injunction, ruling that the law "satisfies the Supreme Court's requirement for an expeditious decision on a judicial bypass petition" and that "Nova has not shown a 'substantial likelihood of success on the merits' sufficient to obtain a preliminary injunction."

The bill also requires that women considering an abortion be told that the fetus will likely suffer intense pain after twenty weeks. AP has more. LifeNews.com has additional coverage.

[JURIST] Two relatives of Hamid Hayat [JURIST news archive], who was convicted earlier this year of attending a terrorist training camp, have been prevented from re-entering the United States after a trip to Pakistan unless they submit to questioning by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation [official website], according to a report by the San Francisco Chronicle. Hayat was convicted [JURIST report] in April for providing material support to terrorists by attending a terrorist camp in Pakistan. Both Muhammad Ismail and Jaber Ismail are US citizens and have not been charged with a crime, but appear on the government's "no-fly" list. The government said that the men have declined the opportunity to meet with FBI in Pakistan. An attorney for the men told the Chronicle that "they can't be compelled to waive their constitutional rights under threat of banishment."

Hamid Hayat and his father, Umer Hayat, were indicted [indictment, PDF] last year after Umer admitted that he paid for Hamid to attend the terror training camp. Umer pleaded guilty [JURIST report] in June to a charge of attempting to smuggle $28,000 in cash into Pakistan three years ago. Reuters has more.

[JURIST] Plaintiffs in the 10-year-old Indian Trust case [Cobell v. Norton litigation website] on Monday petitioned [PDF text; press release] the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia to reconsider a decision to pull an outspoken judge [JURIST report] from the case. In July, the appeals court ruled that Judge Royce Lamberth's July 12, 2005 ruling [PDF text; JURIST report] and other orders against the Interior Department demonstrated that Lamberth had compromised his status as an "impartial arbiter." The plaintiffs will argue on appeal that the court improperly dismissed Lamberth for comments made in the July 2005 ruling that plaintiffs say "accurately restate record evidence and describe the deplorable conduct of the government as trustee."

The class-action Indian trust litigation involves the alleged mismanagement of American Indian money [DOI Indian Trust Fund website] by the US Department of the Interior [official website] over the last 120 years. In July, the plaintiffs said they were considering an $8 billion settlement [JURIST report], much lower than the $27.5 billion figure [JURIST report] that the plaintiffs demanded for settlement last year. In August, the US Senate Indian Affairs Committee postponed consideration [JURIST report] of the Indian Trust Reform Act [HR 4322 summary], legislation supported by the plaintiffs and sponsored by committee chairman Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and vice chairman Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-ND), that would settle the case. AP has more.

[JURIST] Jordan's National Assembly [official website] on Sunday approved anti-terror legislation that opponents predict will unnecessarily curtail individual liberties. The bill, which will become law when signed by King Abdullah II [official website], is Jordan's first attempt to address terrorism [JURIST report] since the deadly Amman hotel bomb [CTV report] that killed 57 people in 2005. In May, the political arm of the Muslim Brotherhood [party website; FAS backgrounder] criticized the bill [JURIST report] as a US-influenced bid to stifle Jordan's government reform movement and encourage the establishment of a police state in the country.

The law criminalizes a wide range of behavior as acts of terror, including financing, interacting with or recruiting for any terrorist group, and possessing, making, or transporting any material that can be used to produce chemical weapons. The law gives military courts sole jurisdiction over terrorism claims, and permits officials to conduct surveillance of terrorism suspects and bar suspects from leaving the country. A provision allowing the police to detain suspects for 30 days, at which point suspects must be either charged or released, has also prompted criticism from human rights groups. AP has more.

[JURIST] Sunni Iraqi legislator Tayseer al-Mashhadani, kidnapped on July 1 by as-yet-identified captors, has been released on the eve of the launch of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's national reconciliation project [JURIST report] announced earlier this summer. Al-Maliki described Saturday's release as a "gift". Al-Mashhadani's captors had previously demanded the release of all Shiite prisoners [JURIST report], an end to airstrikes against Iraqi mosques, and a timetable for the withdrawal of all foreign troops.

Another lawmaker said al-Mashhadani's release may have been timed to coincide with the General Conference of Iraqi Clans, which on Sunday released 21 recommendations for reinforcing national unity [VOI report]. AP has more. VOI has local coverage.