[JURIST] Talks between representatives of the Nepal government and Maoist rebels have failed to result in an agreement on the terms of an interim constitution for the country but will continue later this week, according to a Maoist spokesman speaking to reporters Wednesday. Several target deadlines associated with a recently-agreed peace plan [JURIST report] have already been missed, including a November 28 target date for Maoists to serve in the country's interim parliament and December 1 target date for them to join an interim government. AFP has more.

A Nepali government minister indicated ten days ago that the interim constitution, drafted [JURIST report] in August, would be signed into law within a few days [JURIST report]. The interim draft encompassing 173 articles is designed to replace the current constitution [text] until a new representative body is elected and drafts a permanent constitution. The draft must be approved by each of Nepal's eight major political parties before the House of Representatives will vote to promulgate it.

[JURIST] Israel's High Court [official website] ruled on Wednesday that construction of a 1.5-mile sector of the country's security fence [JURIST news archive] in northeast Jerusalem could continue, denying an appeal by residents of a Palestinian neighborhood left outside. After the court ruled in November that construction of the section was legal [JURIST report], work was put on hold while a study was conducted into the effects of the fence. According to the study, 55,000 Palestinians who hold Israeli identification cards will be beyond the parameter of the fence. Nevertheless, Chief Justice Aharon Barak [official profile] said in the opinion that Israel had properly balanced the interests at stake, concluding, "The rights of al-Ram's residents are not absolute; they can be obstructed if there is justification for it."

In 2004 the International Court of Justice [official website] issued a advisory opinion [text; JURIST report] ruling that the wall project violated international law. The Association for Civil Rights in Israel [advocacy website], which filed a petition in the appeal decided Wednesday, expressed disappointment [Jerusalem Post report] at the High Court ruling on the north Jerusalem section, saying that the imprisonment of thousands of people behind the wall is a violation of human rights. UPI has more.

[JURIST] A federal judge Wednesday dismissed [ruling, PDF] a habeas corpus petition brought by Guantanamo detainee Salim Hamdan [Trial Watch profile], finding it was clearly barred under the controversial habeas-stripping language [JURIST report] of the new Military Commissions Act (MCA) [text, PDF] even though it was pending at the time the Act was passed. Agreeing with a position [JURIST report] on pending habeas petitions taken earlier this fall by the US Department of Justice, US District Judge James Robertson wrote in the first ruling to construe the MCA:

Hamdan's lengthy detention beyond American borders but within the jurisdictional authority of the United States is historically unique. Nevertheless, as the government argues in its reply brief, his connection to the United States lacks the geographical and volitional predicates necessary to claim a constitutional right to habeas corpus. Petitioner has never entered the United States and accordingly does not enjoy the “implied protection” that accompanies presence on American soil. Guantanamo Bay, although under the control of the United States military, remains under “the ultimate sovereignty of the Republic of Cuba.” Presence within the exclusive jurisdiction and control of the United States was enough for the Court to conclude in Rasul that the broad scope of the habeas statute covered Guantanamo Bay detainees, but the detention facility lies outside the sovereign realm, and only U.S. citizens in such locations may claim entitlement to a constitutionally guaranteed writ...

Congress’s removal of jurisdiction from the federal courts was not a suspension of habeas corpus within the meaning of the Suspension Clause (or, to the extent that it was, it was plainly unconstitutional, in the absence of rebellion or invasion), but Hamdan's statutory access to the writ is blocked by the jurisdiction-stripping language of the Military Commissions Act, and he has no constitutional entitlement to habeas corpus.

[JURIST] Outgoing Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney [official website] signed an agreement [press release] Wednesday allowing Massachusetts state troopers to detain illegal immigrants found or located while the troopers are performing their general duties. The agreement, co-signed by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Assistant Secretary Julie Myers, provides for 30 state troopers to receive federal immigration law enforcement training under the provisions of s. 287(g) [ICE backgrounder] of the federal Immigration and Nationality Act. That section, added in 1996, allows a trained and certified trooper conducting state criminal investigations who encounters an immigration violator, to question and detain the individual, charge them with a violation of immigration law if appropriate, and place them in removal proceedings.

Similar section 287(g) agreements have been made with state authorities in Florida and Alabama, as well as with several California and North Carolina counties. It is unclear, however, whether the Massachusetts program will ultimately become effective, as Massachusetts Governor-elect Deval Patrick [campaign website], a Democrat who takes office in January, has already spoken out against state enforcement of federal immigration law as imposing an additional burden on state law enforcement personnel and resources. AP has more.

[JURIST] In a special session Wednesday the UN Human Rights Council [official website] approved a resolution [PDF] to send a mission to Sudan to investigate human rights abuses in Darfur [JURIST news archive]. Council President Luis Alfonso de Alba announced his intent to appoint five "highly qualified persons" to undertake the mission. The rights body, established [JURIST report] earlier this year to replace the beleaguered Human Rights Commission, has so far focused mostly on the situation in the Middle East, holding two special sessions on aspects of the Arab-Israeli conflict. UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour [official profile] originally called for a probe of the situation in Darfur in October, and UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan recently urged the Rights Council to pay more attention [JURIST report] to atrocities in that region. The UN estimates that in the past three years, 200,000 people have died in Darfur and 2 million have been displaced due to fighting between government forces and rebel groups.

The Council resolution praised the Sudanese government's willingness to cooperate with the mission, and de Alba stated that no resistance is expected from Khartoum. Amnesty International [advocacy website] nonetheless criticized [AI press release] the Council's move as "timid" for its failure to condemn what it termed the Sudanese government's complicity with human rights abuses. Sudan's representative at the session assured the Council that the mission would have consequences for Sudan and called for it to be "accurate, balanced and objective." Reuters has more. UN News Service has additional coverage.

[JURIST] The UN General Assembly Wednesday adopted by acclamation a new international treaty on the rights of persons with disabilities [official website; BBC summary] hailed [press statement] by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan as "the first human rights treaty to be adopted in the twenty-first century; the most rapidly negotiated human rights treaty in the history of international law; and the first to emerge from lobbying conducted extensively through the Internet." The draft of the treaty was approved [JURIST report] in August by a special UN ad hoc committee in August after running a gauntlet of over 150 proposed amendments [texts] and disagreements about the scope of enshrined sexual and reproductive freedoms for disabled persons. The new treaty, which will be opened for signatures in March, is expected to take effect in 2008 or 2009 after the necessary minimal number of 20 ratifications has been reached. BBC News has more.

Only 45 countries in the world currently have disability legislation, including the United States, which adopted the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) official website] in 1990. The US has indicated, however, that it will not sign [New Standard report] the new international accord, insisting that US domestic measures on the federal, state and local levels are already adequate for the purpose. Critics say the US position is a slight to the principle of international regulation and monitoring.

[JURIST] The High Court of Botswana [BBC profile] has ruled that the government's eviction of Bushmen inhabiting the Kalahari desert is "unlawful and unconstitutional." The suit was brought by 239 members of the San tribe with the aid of the First People of the Kalahari [backgrounder] and Survival International [advocacy website, case background materials]. The so-called Bushmen [SI backgrounder], whose ancestors have lived in the Kalahari desert for 20,000 years, claim that twelve percent of their fellow plaintiffs have died since 2002 in the settlement camps to which the government forced the Bushmen in 1997 and 2002. While the plaintiffs contend the government wanted to make room for increased diamond mining operations, the government cited the Bushmen's negative effect on conservation efforts as the motivation behind the relocation.

The case, originally filed in 2002 and dismissed on procedural grounds before the High Court agreed to hear it in 2004, marks the longest and most expensive in Botswana's history. The High Court held that the government was not required to provide water or other basic services to those returning to the reserve. No support for the claims that diamond mining was behind the expulsions was found, although advocacy groups have launched a campaign [advocacy website] to boycott the diamond company De Beers [corporate website]. The Guardian has more.

[JURIST] Senator Patrick Leahy [official website] (D-VT) Wednesday laid out an ambitious agenda for the reshuffled Senate Judiciary Committee he will chair when the Democratic-controlled US Congress begins its new session in January. Speaking [prepared remarks] at Georgetown University Law Center in Washington, Leahy, who will take over from current Republican chairman Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA), promised what he called "an agenda of restoration, repair and renewal: Restoration of constitutional values and the rights of ordinary Americans. Repair of a broken oversight process and the return of accountability. And renewal of the public’s right to know."

The veteran senator from Vermont said that oversight of the FBI and the Department of Justice would be among his top priorities in an effort to restore checks and balances to a government dominated by executive "unilaterialism." In the process, he said he wanted to give more effective protection to American's privacy rights in the face of security-driven government data collection and data-mining, to support the independence of the judiciary, and restore fundamental protections for human rights that had been most recently eroded in the Military Commissions Act [JURIST news archive], which he labeled a "sweeping, ill-conceived law" that in its elimination of habeas corpus protections for alien "enemy combatants" had "eliminated basic legal and human rights for 12 million lawful permanent residents who live and work among us, to say nothing of the millions of other legal immigrants and visitors whom we welcome to our shores each year." AP has more.

[JURIST] Senator Patrick Leahy [official website] (D-VT) Wednesday laid out an ambitious oversight agenda for the reshuffled Senate Judiciary Committee he will chair when the Democratic-controlled US Congress begins its new session in January. Speaking [prepared remarks] at Georgetown University Law Center in Washington, Leahy, who will take over from current Republican chairman Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA), promised what he called "an agenda of restoration, repair and renewal: Restoration of constitutional values and the rights of ordinary Americans. Repair of a broken oversight process and the return of accountability. And renewal of the public’s right to know."

The veteran senator from Vermont said that oversight of the FBI and the Department of Justice would be among his top priorities in an effort to restore checks and balances to a government dominated by executive "unilaterialism." In the process, he said he wanted to give more effective protection to American's privacy rights in the face of security-driven government data collection and data-mining, to support the independence of the judiciary, and restore fundamental protections for human rights that had been most recently eroded in the Military Commissions Act [JURIST news archive], which he labeled a "sweeping, ill-conceived law" that in its elimination of habeas corpus protections for alien "enemy combatants" had "eliminated basic legal and human rights for 12 million lawful permanent residents who live and work among us, to say nothing of the millions of other legal immigrants and visitors whom we welcome to our shores each year." AP has more.

[JURIST] A Zimbabwe government spokesman said Wednesday that there are no plans to hand Mengistu Haile Mariam [BBC profile] over to Ethiopian authorities after the former Ethiopian dictator was convicted of genocide [JURIST report] Tuesday by Ethiopia's Federal Court at the conclusion of a 12-year in absentia trial. Mengistu and 72 other former officials were charged with genocide, imprisonment, homicide, and illegal confiscation of property for crimes committed during the "Red Terror" [US LOC backgrounder], during which thousands of Mengistu's political opponents were executed.

Mengistu, who helped depose longtime Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie [BBC profile] in 1974 and then ruled Ethiopia himself from 1977 to 1991, fled to Zimbabwe after rebels eventually forced him from power. Referring to support given by Mengistu to now-Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe in his fight for independence from white Rhodesian rule before Zimbabwe's full independence from Britain in 1980, spokesman William Nhara said "As a comrade of our struggle, Comrade Mengistu and his government played a key and commendable role during our struggle for independence and no one can dispute that.... Comrade Mengistu asked for asylum and he was granted that asylum. That position will not change". Nhara also pointed out there was no extradition treaty between Ethiopia and Zimbabwe. AFP has more.

[JURIST] A court in Yemen Wednesday prohibited the editor of Yemen's al-Hurriya newspaper and one of its reporters from writing for one month and also imposed a four-month suspended sentence on them for demeaning Islam by reprinting cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad [JURIST news archive]. The journalists, who say they will appeal, claimed they had published the cartoons to show readers how insulting they were to Muslims. The paper was initially shut down in March over the publication but was allowed to reopen [RWB report] in May.

Earlier this month the editor of the English-language Yemen Observer was fined 500,000 rials ($2,541) [JURIST report] for reprinting the cartoons, and in November the editor-in-chief of the al-Rai al-Aam newspaper was convicted and sentenced to one year in jail for the same offense. The cartoons depicting Muhammad originally appeared in a Danish newspaper in September 2005. They initially went unnoticed but violent protests erupted around the world [JURIST report] in February 2006 when they were republished in other papers in Europe, Asia, and the United States. Reuters has more.

[JURIST] A Human Rights Watch study [text] of the five-year trial of late Yugoslav ex-president Slobodan Milosevic [JURIST news archive] released Wednesday has proposed [press release; HRW recorded audio] making changes in future national and international war crimes trial procedures that would increase their likelihood of success. Milosevic died of a heart attack in March 2006 while still in detention, without a verdict having been reached in his case. Critics of his prosecution before the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia [official website] have argued that it was far too long and detailed, while defenders of the court have countered that thoroughness was necessary to document the extent of Milosevic's crimes and that the ill-health of the defendant, who was allowed to defend himself, forced the process to spin out in its later stages because the court could only meet three times a week.

The HRW study recommended that future war crimes courts should:

• Ensure an adequate pretrial period for an expeditious trial in order to narrow the issues and allow all parties to fully prepare;
  
• Limit charges against the accused to the most serious crimes alleged, and avoid duplication;
  
• Limit the number of crime scenes in the trial of a high-level official;
  
• Require that the right to represent oneself be subject to the defendant’s ability to fulfill the role of counsel and attend court sessions regularly.

[JURIST] A panel of the UK Law Lords [official website], the legal members of the House of Lords who constitute the UK's highest court, ruled [judgment] unanimously Wednesday that British police infringed the rights of anti-war protestors traveling to a demonstration [Fairford Coach Action website] outside a Royal Air Force base near Fairford, Gloucestershire, in March 2003 by stopping their buses, searching them, and then forcing them to return to London under heavy escort. The Court of Appeal had previously held [judgment] that the police had acted unlawfully in making the stop, but had not breached the protestors' rights. Police lawyers argued that the stop was justified by concern for the lives and safety of the protestors, which might have been put at risk had they broken into the airbase.

Lord Carswell wrote:

The police were obviously justified in regarding the coaches and their occupants with a considerable degree of suspicion, in view of the identity of some at least of the passengers, the items found on the coach and the refusal of many of the passengers to reveal their names and addresses. The problem which faced them was that the actuality did not match up to the intelligence received. If the coaches had been packed with hard-line anarchists, the police might have been fully justified in ensuring that they did not get any nearer to Fairford, even if there had been a few more peaceable passengers on board. When it became apparent at 12.45 pm or thereabouts that there was a very mixed bunch of people on the coaches, many of whom did not present any potential threat to the peace, and the identified Wombles members were a small minority, it was incumbent on the police to review their strategy in relation to these coaches. I have to agree with your Lordships that they should at this stage have given consideration to whether the coaches could have been allowed to proceed to Fairford and any necessary further action taken there in the light of events which were taking place and the conduct of the passengers from the coaches. Before doing so they might have reduced the risk of breach of the peace by removing the known Wombles members and all the suspect items from the coaches at Lechlade.

[JURIST] The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda [official website; JURIST news archive] Wednesday convicted [press release] a Roman Catholic priest for committing genocide and extermination during the mass killings [HRW backgrounder] of Tutsis and moderate Hutus that swept the central African nation in 1994. Father Athanase Seromba [case materials] was acquitted of less charges of complicity and incitement, but was nonetheless sentenced to 15 years in prison. Seromba, a Hutu, was in charge of a parish church where some 2000 Tutsis sought refuge from rampaging Hutus; the prosecution claimed that he ordered the bulldozing of the church and the shooting of all those who tried to escape. His lawyers argued in his defense that he was powerless to stop the carnage, in which all the sanctuary-seekers died.

Seromba is the first priest convicted by the ICTR, which sits in Arusha in neighboring Tanzania. Last month, a Rwandan military court convicted another Catholic priest [JURIST report], Father Wenceslas Munyeshyaka, to life in prison. Munyeshyaka has lived in exile in France since 1995. Before the genocide some 60% of Rwandans were Catholic, but many have since converted to Islam [BBC report]. South Africa's Mail and Guardian has more.

[JURIST] Members of the Ohio Senate [official website] voted 21-12 Tuesday to override outgoing Ohio Governor Robert Taft's veto of a revised concealed-carry gun law [Substitute House Bill 347 text] that Taft claimed would preempt local gun-related legislation in some 80 Ohio communities. The House approved an override last week, making this the first time since 1977 that the Ohio legislature has successfully overcome a veto by the state's chief executive.

In his veto message [PDF] last week, Taft noted that the new legislation would effectively replace several stricter local legal regimes, including assault weapons bans in Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus, Dayton and Toledo, and emphasized the importance of allowing local communities to make laws appropriate to their own challenges and circumstances. Supporters of the new legislation have emphasized the importance of statewide legal uniformity. AP has more.

[JURIST] Israel's Supreme Court [official website, in Hebrew] Tuesday unanimously overturned a law barring Palestinians from claiming compensation from the Israeli state in respect of damages suffered in "conflict zones" in Gaza and the West Bank. The so-called Intifada law [text, PDF] had been challenged [petition, PDF] by a coalition of nine human rights groups led by the Israeli-Arab rights organization Adalah [advocacy website]. The court nonetheless tempered its ruling [PDF] by saying that compensation still could not be claimed by those injured in "combat operations" against "an activist or member of a terrorist organization."

Adalah General Director Hassan Jabareen welcomed the ruling [press release] but noted its fundamental limitation, saying:

The Supreme Court’s decision nullified one of the most racist laws legislated by the Knesset in the last five years. After this decision, Palestinians who have been injured or killed, or who have sustained property damage, outside the context of a so-called combat situation, can again submit tort cases for compensation in Israeli courts against the security forces. However, we foresee in the future another legal battle on the question of what is the scope of combat operations.

[JURIST] Former Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling [Houston Chronicle profile; JURIST news archive] is expected to report to a minimum security federal prison in Waseca, Minnesota [BOP website] to begin a 24-year sentence for fraud, conspiracy and insider trading after a three-judge panel of the US Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled [order, PDF] late Tuesday against his application for bail [JURIST report] pending appeal of his sentence. Skilling had earlier been allowed to postpone his prison date while the bail application was considered.

Judge Patrick Higginbotham wrote for the court:

Our review has disclosed serious frailties in Skilling's conviction..., difficulties brought by a decision of this court handed down after the jury's verdict, as well as less formidable questions regarding the giving of jury instruction on deliberate ignorance. Yet Skilling raises no substantial question that is likely to result in the reversal of his convictions on all the charged counts. We are not then persuaded that any resulting sentence will likely exceed the expected duration of his appeal.

[JURIST] The US Department of Justice filed an appeal Tuesday against a November 28 ruling [JURIST report] by US District Judge James Robertson declaring that "the Treasury Department’s failure to design and issue paper currency that is readily distinguishable to blind and visually impaired individuals violates section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act." Section 504 [US DOL materials] provides that no disabled person shall be "subjected to discrimination . . . under any program or activity conducted by any Executive agency." Government lawyers argued in court papers that printing readily distinguishable bill denominations at the urging of the American Council of the Blind [advocacy website] would put undue burdens on the vending machine industry and would impose significant costs on the US Bureau of Engraving and Printing [official website], which produces American paper money. The government also argued that blind persons could already use personal readers to distinguish bills or opt to make payments by credit card instead.

The United States is the only nation of some 180 using paper currency that produces undifferentiated same-size same-color bills in all denominations. Approximately 1.3 million Americans are legally blind. AP has more.