[JURIST] The UN Security Council [official website] Saturday voted to impose sanctions [UN news report; recorded video] on North Korea (DPRK) [JURIST news archive] in response to the country's reported underground nuclear test [JURIST report] on October 9. The resolution [text and explanatory statements] passed unanimously in a 15-0 vote and imposed enforcement measures in accord with Chapter VII of the UN Charter [text]. It adopts many of the measures proposed by US officials [JURIST report] earlier this week, most notably condemning the nuclear test, imposing economic sanctions, and calling on North Korea to destroy its nuclear weapons. At the insistence of Russian and Chinese officials, however, the resolution rejects the possibility of military action against the DPRK.

North Korea's UN ambassador Pak Gil Yon sharply criticized passage of the resolution Saturday and said North Korea would reject it [recorded video]. AP has more.

[JURIST] French state rail network SNCF [official website] announced Friday that since June 2006 it has received about 1200 claims [JURIST report] related to its role in helping the Nazis [JURIST news archive] to transport people, mostly Jews, to concentration and death camps during Germany's occupation of France in World War II. The complaints follow a successful case [JURIST report] brought against SNCF by European Parliament MEP Alain Lipietz [official website] and his family, who last year were awarded $77,600 from the rail company by a French court acting on behalf of their father and other relatives who were taken by an SNCF train to the Drancy transit camp [JVL backgrounder] in 1944.

SNCF is appealing the Lipietz case and also contesting the more recent suits, arguing that it was acting on orders from the occupation government and French authorities, a position supported by the French railway workers union [FO press release, in French] and several French historians [Le Figaro report, in French]. AP has more.

[JURIST] Switzerland's top Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner [official website] Hanspeter Thür said Friday that Swiss banks violated national secrecy laws when they failed to inform customers using the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) [official website] international banking cooperative service that their personal data could be disclosed to third parties, including the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) [official website]. Thür's comments contradict the position adopted by Swiss Finance Minister Hans-Rudolph Merz [official profile] last month when he concluded that such banking disclosures to the CIA in terrorism investigations complied with Swiss law. Thür stressed a need for standardization of US and European information-protection laws, specifically citing the concern that SWIFT may provide data to one country whose laws are less strict than those in which the customer is based. The New York Times has more.

Many independent groups have expressed opposition to the SWIFT disclosures. Last month, the Belgian Data Privacy Commission [official website] released a report [JURIST report] which claimed that SWIFT had provided the US Department of Treasury [official website] with "massive amounts of personal data for surveillance without effective and clear legal basis and independent controls in line with Belgian and European law." The European Commission's Article 29 Data Protection Working Party [official website] is still expected to adopt a formal position [JURIST report] on the SWIFT data transfer issue upon completion of its investigation in November, although its chairman has already criticized [JURIST report] SWIFT's data transfers to the US.

[JURIST] Members of the Australian Lawyers Alliance [official website] have voted unanimously to condemn the Australian government's handling of the case of Australian national David Hicks [JURIST news archive], held by American authorities at Guantanamo Bay [JURIST news archive] after being captured in Afghanistan [JURIST news archive] in 2001. Hicks stands accused of fighting against the United States and its allies as an "enemy combatant", but is yet to face trial by military commission, although new charges are expected to be filed against him in the wake of the US Congress' passage of a new military commissions bill last month. Hicks' lawyer David McLeod has been pushing [JURIST report] for his client to be returned to Australia [JURIST new archive]. McLeod's pleas come amidst concerns in the United States and Australia about torture allegations [JURIST report] and Hicks' overall health [JURIST report].

Supporters of the ALA statement say it was made to pressure the national government to either bring Hicks home or see to it that he gets a trial. To this point the administration of John Howard, a staunch US ally in the "war on terror", has been content to leave Hicks where he is, has supported the US military commission process, and has not attempted to intervene on Hicks' behalf. ABC News has more.

[JURIST] The European Union (EU) [official website] Friday condemned passage of a French bill [text, in French] making it a crime punishable by imprisonment to deny that the mass killing of Armenians in Turkey [ANI backgrounder] during World War I was genocide. The bill passed France’s lower house [JURIST report] on Thursday but still needs approval by the French Senate and President Jacques Chirac [official profile, in French; BBC profile] to become national law. European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso [official profile] said the bill came at a bad time for EU relations with Turkey when the two were engaged in enlargement talks.

French lawmakers attempted to pass the bill [JURIST report] in May 2006, but the legislative session ended before parliament could agree on its terms. When the debate came up again earlier this month, Turkish parliament [official website, in Turkish] threatened retaliation [JURIST report], if French legislation passed the bill, by its passage of a similar bill [JURIST report] labeling as genocide the colonial killings of Algerians [JURIST report] by the French, and making it illegal to deny the French as culpable. France is home to thousands of Armenians and has already recognized the 1915-1919 killings as genocide. Turkish author Orhan Pamuk [JURIST news archive], who won the Nobel Prize for Literature [JURIST report] Thursday, slammed the bill [AFP report] in an interview Friday as going against the French principle of free speech. AP has more.

[JURIST] A Russian court has shut down the Russian-Chechen Friendship Society (ORCD) [advocacy website], a Chechen human rights group that has been exposing abuses against civilians in Chechnya and providing assistance to victims of violence. The decision follows the February conviction of group co-founder Stanislav Dmitriyevsky [JURIST report], who was charged with “inciting racial hatred.” Dmitriyevsky was convicted after articles that he authored were published in the organization’s newspaper, using anti-war statements from Chechen separatists. A new and controversial Russian NGO law passed [JURIST report] earlier this year makes it illegal for NGOs to be headed by persons with criminal records. Prosecutors used this law to persuade the court to shut down the group for its failure to distance itself from Dmitriyevsky, adding several administrative violations to its case. MosNews has more.

The shutdown came just three days after thousands attended the funeral of Anna Politkovskaya [BBC obituary], a Russian journalist who was a vocal critic of the Chechen conflict and wrote investigative pieces for Novaya Gazeta [media website, in Russian]. Politkovskaya was shot on October 7 in what most believe to have been a contract killing. She was in the process of publishing an expose, titled “We declare you a terrorist”, which was published posthumously [JURIST news report] in Novaya Gazeta on October 12. The piece alleged that torture is a tactic frequently used to obtain false confessions to capture innocent people and pass them off as terrorists, creating an appearance of positive news from the war. The international Committee to Protect Journalists [advocacy website] said in a statement [text] Friday that "The closure of Pravo-Zashchita [the online newpaper published by ORCD] w[ill] further limit independent information from Chechnya. The Russian people need this information more than ever, now that Anna Politkovskaya’s voice has been silenced by her terrible murder.”

[JURIST] President George W. Bush signed two bills into law Friday separately imposing sanctions on North Korea and Sudan in light of the former's nuclear test [JURIST report] earlier this week and reports of continued atrocities in Sudan's Darfur region [JURIST news archive]. The North Korea Nonproliferation Act of 2006 [text, PDF] is designed to restrict the transfer of weapons of mass destruction materials into North Korea (DPRK) [JURIST news archive] and amends existing legislation similarly restricting Syria and Iran. It threatens sanctions such as the loss of government contracts and US export licenses to any foreign national who transports materials related to nuclear weapons or other WMD technology to the restricted countries. Persons receiving such materials from these countries can also be punished under the act.

Also Friday, President Bush signed [White House statement] the Darfur Peace and Accountability Act [text, PDF], imposing sanctions on persons responsible for genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity in Darfur. Such persons will have their assets frozen and will be barred from entering the US. The legislation, passed [VOA report] in September with bipartisan congressional support, also raises the prospect of denying the Sudanese government access to oil revenues. Along with the bill, the President issued an executive order [text] to stop Americans from doing oil-related business in Sudan, as well as loosening certain restrictions to ease humanitarian aid to the region. Other existing US sanctions on Sudan continue. Reuters has more.

[JURIST] A judge in Florida refused Friday to block the sale of the controversial video game Bully [game website], ruling that it does not qualify as a "public nuisance" under state law. The suit, brought by long-time video games foe Jack Thompson [Wikipedia profile], named Wal-Mart andGamestop, two video game retailers, and Take-Two Interactive, parent company of publisher Rockstar Games, as defendants. Thompson wanted the court to issue an injunction against the October 17 release date for the game.

The suit was filed last month and was unusual for several reasons. First, the Florida public nuisance laws are most often used to target polluters [BBC News report]. Second, the game itself is actually far less controversial than many activists originally assumed. While Rockstar Games has published the popular Grand Theft Auto series, all rated "M" (for ages 17 and up) by the ESRB [official website], Bully is rated "T" (for ages 13 and up) and unlike GTA, has no guns, no blood, and no deaths. As the truth about the game was revealed, the "Columbine simulator" tag that many activists, including Thompson himself, attached to the game seemed less and less appropriate [AP report].

Judge Ronald Friedman did order Take Two to produce a copy of the as-yet-unreleased game for review [Washington Post report], a partial victory itself for Thompson. An employee from Take Two played the game for the judge in chambers on Thursday afternoon. While not issuing a formal opinion, he said in court [Miami Herald report]: "There’s a lot of violence. A whole lot. Less than we see on television every night. Does that mean I would want my children to view it? No. But does it rise to a point that its a nuisance? The answer is no from what I saw." Thompson then objected, claiming that Friedman didn't see enough of the game, and filed a writ of mandamus [.DOC full text] to the Florida Court of Appeal, along with a motion to compel Take Two to turn over a copy of the game to him. The writ was denied, and the motion to compel production was granted, but only upon the retail release of the game (Thompson sought a copy immediately). Finally, Thompson released a caustic open letter to Judge Friedman [DOC], writing that "The Republicans in the Congress of the United States apparently can’t protect pages, and the Miami-Dade judicial system can’t even protect children, let alone its own reputation. . . You, through judicial arrogance, have hung countless kids out to dry in school that will now be meaner and more dangerous."

The ruling in favor of the video game industry came just a day after a federal judge in Oklahoma granted a preliminary injunction [PDF] against the state's violent video game law, which would have gone into effect November 1. The decision is the latest in the long line of victories for the industry [JURIST news archive] in its battle against such laws. GamePolitics.com has more.

[JURIST] Peruvian rebel leader Abimael Guzman [MIPT profile] was found guilty of aggravated terrorism Friday and sentenced to life in prison by a Peruvian civil tribunal in Callao. Guzman founded the Shining Path [BBC backgrounder] guerilla movement in 1980 and was blamed for tens of thousands of deaths over the group's twelve years of activity. Guzman's lover and second-in-command Elena Iparraguirre [MIPT profile] was also sentenced to life in prison. AP has more. Guzman's lawyer stated that the court's decision was based "not on law but on politics" and plans to appeal [Aljazeera report].

In 1992 a Peruvian military tribunal convicted Guzman of inciting and leading a Maoist insurgency under strict anti-terror laws imposed by former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori [BBC profile; JURIST news archive]. Following the collapse of Fujimori's government in 2000 those laws were repealed, however, and in 2003 a high court ruled Guzman's trial unconstitutional, ordering a retrial [JURIST archive]. At the outset of the latest proceeding, Guzman declared that he is not a terrorist but a "revolutionary combatant" [JURIST report].

[JURIST] The US Department of Justice (DOJ) [official website] filed suit against the city of Philadelphia Friday for violating the rights of its Spanish-speaking voters in breach of the Voting Rights Act [text; DOJ backgrounder] of 1965. The complaint was filed in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania [official website] and said that the city had violated Section 203 [text] of the act, which states:

[w]henever any State . . . provides any . . . materials or information relating to the electoral process, including ballots, it shall provide them in the language of the applicable minority group.

[JURIST] A Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas [official website] jury issued a $78.47 million verdict against retailer Wal-Mart [corporate website; JURIST news archive] Friday, awarding damages to plaintiffs on behalf of current and former Pennsylvania employees for work during rest breaks and off-the-clock labor. Wal-Mart prevailed on a third count which alleged that the company had denied meal breaks to the plaintiffs. Wal-Mart attorney Neal Manne [profile] said Wal-Mart will appeal the verdict, but has not provided any details regarding the grounds for appeal.

Observers have suggested that Wal-Mart may have to reconsider its defense strategy in similar future actions in the wake of this judgment as well as last year's $172 million damage award against the company [Jenner & Block client advisory] in a California employment suit. Wal-Mart's current strategy is to answer such complaints with denials that it engages in the alleged wrongful practice. Reuters has more.