[JURIST] The head of the justice committee that reviews draft legislation in Turkey's parliament [official website] warned in an interview published in a Turkish newspaper Saturday that if France attempts to make it a crime to deny that the Ottoman Empire's treatment of the Armenians in 1915-18 [ANI backgrounder] was genocide, Turkey [CIA factbook; JURIST news archive] could pass a law penalizing anyone who denies that the French treatment of Algerians under colonial rule [JURIST report] was similarly genocide. Koksal Toptan said three Turkish lawmakers had already put forward retaliatory proposals. A spokesman for the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs meanwhile declared [Sabah report] that French passage of an Armenian genocide bill "will be difficult to compensate for. You could lose Turkey."

In May 2006, French lawmakers attempted to pass the same law [JURIST report] but parliamentary debate did not conclude before the legislative session ended. The issue had been dormant until just last week when French President Jacques Chirac said while visiting the Armenian capital that Turkey should admit the genocide [TurkishPress.com report] before joining the EU [JURIST news archive]. AFP has more.

[JURIST] Former US Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor [OYEZ profile; JURIST news archive] will be one of three justices on a panel hearing cases next week for the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit [official website]. Under federal law [28 US Code § 294], current or former federal judges can decide cases for any equal or lower federal court by special appointment. O'Connor is scheduled to hear five cases while serving on the appeals court.

The appointment comes as no great surprise. O'Connor has thusfar been very active in her retirement, which was effective in January. She has spoken out several times against judicial intimidation [JURIST report] in the course of championing judicial independence in speeches and op-eds. She is also following in the footsteps of other retired Supreme Court justices who later sat on other courts for a time after leaving the national bench; Thurgood Marshall sat on the Second Circuit for a week in 1992, and after his retirement in 1957 Stanley F. Reed [OYEZ profile] - the last Supreme Court justice not to have a formal law degree - often sat on the US Court of Claims. AP has more.

[JURIST] Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper [official website] told US President George W. Bush in a telephone conversation Friday that Canada was filing an official protest regarding the US treatment of Maher Arar [JURIST news archive], a Canadian citizen detained by US authorities on a 2002 stopover at JFK airport in New York and sent to Syria, where he was imprisoned and tortured. The letter of protest was transmitted from Canadian Foreign Minister Peter MacKay [official profile] to US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. CBC News has more.

The formal complaint follows the September 18 release of the Arar Commission Report [text, PDF], the Canadian judicial inquiry which found that although the US decision to deport Arar was "very likely" based on inaccurate, unfair and overstated information [JURIST report] about him passed on by the RCMP [official website], Canada's federal police force, US officials treated him badly and were not candid with the RCMP or with Canadian consular staff who were trying to get information about his situation.

[JURIST] New Orleans Parish Criminal District Court [official website] Judge Arthur Hunter on Friday released four inmates from jail who he claims were being held in violation of their constitutional right to adequate legal representation after the Hurricane Katrina disaster [JURIST news archive]. Hunter postponed the trials until effective counsel can be provided to the inmates, charged with three misdemeanor drug charges and one minor felony. Hunter first threatened in July to start releasing inmates [JURIST report], but later postponed [JURIST report] his review of their cases.

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina [JURIST news archive], which hit the city in late August last year, the New Orleans public defender’s office has become backlogged with thousands of cases which it is unable to process quickly due to budget and employee shortfalls. Before the hurricane, the office had 70 lawyers and an annual budget of $2.2 million, with 75% of its funding coming from traffic fines. More than a year after the hurricane, much of the staff has yet to return and a sharp drop in traffic in the city has caused a severe lack of funding. In an attempt to account for the shortfalls, Hunter subpoenaed state legislators and Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco [official website], but all alleged that the subpoena violated constitutional separation of power doctrine and refused to appear [NACDL report]. AP has more.

[JURIST] Defense attorneys for Jose Padilla [JURIST news archive], now formally accused of being an al Qaeda agent, moved this week to dismiss the charges against him based on allegedly illegal actions by the prosecution. Padilla's attorneys accuse the US government of subjecting him to severe physical abuse and threats, including sleep deprivation and stress positions, during his 3-and-a-half years in military custody in a South Carolina navy brig. The US Department of Justice [official website] has already said that it will not use any evidence procured during his detention by the military. In addition, Padilla's lawyers argue that the delay between his 2002 arrest and his charging have compromised the defense.

Padilla, a US citizen initially suspected of planning to set off a "dirty bomb" in the United States and classified as an "enemy combatant" [JURIST news archive] subject to indefinite detention, was finally charged [JURIST report] last year on unrelated terrorism charges. He was transferred to civilian custody [JURIST report] in January of this year, when he pleaded not guilty [JURIST report] to the charges. His trial is scheduled to begin [JURIST report] January 22. MCT has more.

[JURIST] Sudan Ambassador to the UN Abdalmahmood Abdalhaleem on Friday disputed [recorded video] the latest report from UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan [JURIST news archive] to the UN Security Council [official website] on ongoing violations of human rights in country's Darfur [JURIST news archive] region, claiming that many of the alleged violations were "fabricated" by partial non-governmental organizations. Annan’s report, submitted Thursday, blamed the violence and abuses on the armed forces and on rebel factions and militias. Oliver Ulich, head of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs [official website] in Sudan, acknowledged that the UN used information from non-government groups, but insisted that the sources were reliable and that all information had been verified before sending reports to the Security Council.

The fighting between the government and rebel factions in Darfur, which continues to surge even after a May peace deal, has killed or displaced millions of people since it began three years ago. The peace deal [JURIST report], which has yet to take effect, would allow UN peacekeeping troops to enter Sudan and take over the peacekeeping mission currently led by the African Union (AU) [official website]. So far, Sudan has not allowed UN troops to come in, though Sudan President Omar al-Bashir reiterated on Thursday that he would allow UN support for the AU mission. AP has more.

[JURIST] Ex-Enron [JURIST news archive] vice-president Paula Rieker was sentenced Friday to 2 years probation for insider trading, avoiding up to ten years' imprisonment. Judge Melinda Harmon [official website] of the US District Court for the Southern District of Texas [official website] reduced Rieker's sentence in exchange for her cooperation with investigators in the prosecutions of Enron founder Kenneth Lay and CEO Jeffrey Skilling [Houston Chronicle profiles] and for her community service. The former executive was also ordered to pay $50,000 in fines in addition to the $800,000 she has already repaid to Enron's defrauded investors. Rieker, whose culpable actions include fraudulently claiming that she did not trade stock illegally and using bonuses to persuade employees to remain with the company, testified that Lay and Skilling intentionally misrepresented company earnings.

Last month, former Enron CFO Andrew Fastow [Houston Chronicle profile] received a reduced sentence [JURIST report] as part of his plea agreement [text, PDF] based on his cooperation [JURIST report] in the prosecutions of Lay and Skilling. Enron, once the seveneth largest company in the US, collapsed in December 2001 due to allegations of serious accounting fraud amounting to $60 billion in market value. AP has more.

[JURIST] The US Government Accountability Office [official website] says that erroneous terror watch lists [FBI FAQ; JURIST news archive] are delaying thousands of travelers moving in and through the United States. A GAO report [PDF] on the lists published last Friday noted:

Although the total number of misidentifications that have occurred as a result of watch-list-related screening conducted by all frontline-screening agencies and airlines is unknown, Terrorist Screening Center data indicate that about half of the tens of thousands of potential matches sent to the center between December 2003 and January 2006 for further research turned out to be misidentifications... [This] total number of misidentified persons may be substantial in absolute terms, [but] it likely represents a small fraction of the hundreds of millions of individuals screened each year.