[JURIST] UK Prime Minister Tony Blair [JURIST news archive], a staunch supporter of President Bush's Iraq policy, broke a week-long silence on the circumstances of the hanging of Saddam Hussein [JURIST news archive] Sunday, saying through a spokesperson that the filmed execution which showed Hussein taunted on the gallows was "completely wrong." He plans to speak personally on the hanging sometime this week. Blair's comment came soon after UK Chancellor Gordon Brown [official profile] denounced the circumstances surrounding Saddam's death as "deplorable" in a televised interview [BBC report] broadcast Sunday morning local time. UK Deputy Prime Minister John Precott similarly derided the manner of Hussein's execution [JURIST report] in a BBC radio interview last week.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has defended the Saddam execution as a domestic affair and said Saturday that the Iraqi government may have to review its relationships [JURIST report] with countries critical of the hanging. BBC News has more. The Daily Mail has local coverage.

[JURIST] The Nepal Supreme Court [official website] decided Sunday to ask that the country's government revisit twelve separate portions of the temporary constitution [eKantipur highlights; JURIST news archive] on the country's judicial branch. The court's concern stems from the document's posture on judicial independence, especially the clause that gives the Prime Minister sole discretion in appointing the Chief Justice. The constitution had been scheduled for finalization [JURIST report] in mid-January following approval by Nepal's House of Representatives.

Last month, Nepalese government negotiators and Maoist rebels reached an agreement [JURIST report] on the 168 articles of the interim constitution to replace Nepal's current constitution [text] following the agreed end of the decade-long Maoist guerilla insurgency against the Nepalese government that left over 13,000 people dead. DPA has more.

[JURIST] An Iraqi government spokesman said Sunday that the execution orders for two of Saddam Hussein's co-defendants, former chief judge of Iraq's Hussein-era Revolutionary Court Awad Hamed al-Bandar [Wikipedia profile] and former Iraqi intelligence chief Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti [GlobalSecurity profile; BBC profile], have been signed and will be carried out "this week" after final "technical preparations" are made. Ali al-Dabbagh said there was no option even in the face of a last appeal Saturday by new UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who released a statement [text] "strongly [urging] the Government of Iraq to grant a stay of execution to those whose death sentences may be carried out in the near future." A letter from UN Under-Secretary-General Vijay Nambiar [official profile] to Iraq's UN ambassador reiterated Ban's endorsement of earlier calls for restraint [text] made by UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour [official profile]. Earlier this month Ban raised eyebrows when he appeared to diverge from official UN policy by saying in response to a query on the Saddam Hussein hanging that "the issue of capital punishment is for each and every member state to decide." Ban's spokesperson later described the statement as "his own nuance" on the death penalty and indicated that there was no change in the UN official policy. AFP has more. UN News Centre has additional coverage.

Bandar and Tikriti were convicted of crimes against humanity committed in the Iraqi town of Dujail [JURIST news archive; BBC trial timeline] in 1982 and were given death sentences [JURIST report] upheld December 26 in a ruling [JURIST report] by the appeals chamber of the Iraqi High Tribunal [official website]. The governing statute of the tribunal says that executions are to be carried out within 30 days of final appeal. Issam Ghazawi, the lawyer for the co-defendants, told AP Sunday that the two were initially told that they were to be executed on the day of Hussein's execution, and that they were to write out their wills. Ghazawi claims that the co-defendants were returned to their cells after nearly nine hours of waiting, and said that the defendants' executions "should be commuted under such circumstances because of the psychological pain they endured as they waited to hang." AP has more.

[JURIST] A proposed German constitutional amendment supported by Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble [official profile] that would grant the military the legal authority to shoot down a hijacked aircraft drew opposition Sunday from Justice Minister Brigitte Zypries [official profile, in German]. Zypries told Bild that the Social Democratic Party (SPD) [party website] is against involving the military to bolster domestic security. The SPD is the junior partner of Christian Democratic Union (CDU) [party website], Chancellor Angela Merkel's grand coalition government, which would require the SPD's support as a constitutional amendment requires a two-thirds majority in both the Bundesrat and Bundestag, the two houses of the German parliament. Bild has local coverage.

A law permitting the German air force to shoot down hijacked planes [JURIST report] was overturned as being unconstitutional [JURIST report] last February on grounds that the government lacks the right to take the lives of passengers in an attempt to save lives on the ground. Deutsche Presse-Agentur has more.

[JURIST] US and Iraqi officials disagreed strongly over legal procedures and interpretations in the run-up to the December 30 hanging of Saddam Hussein [JURIST news archive], the New York Times reported Sunday. Disagreements [JURIST report] were reported very soon after the hanging, but the latest revelations provide new insight into their extent and severity. In the face of Iraqi insistence on their right to execute the former Iraqi president in the wake of the rejection of his final appeal [JURIST report] several days previous, American officials repeatedly counseled caution and the importance of adhering to demonstrated process, citing a requirement under the Iraqi constitution [JURIST report] for the three-person Iraqi presidency to sign off on the execution and problems potentially associated carrying out the execution on Eid, contrary to Iraqi law. A US official told the Times that local American military and civilian leaders were also concerned about the message a rushed execution would send to the international community, essentially telling the Iraqis, "You have to do it by international law, you have to do it in accordance with international standards of decorum, you have to establish yourselves as a nation under law."

Iraqi officials responded by saying that the US-drafted governing statute [2005 revision, PDF] of the Iraqi High Tribunal [official website] did not require any sign-off, and that the Iraqi law banning Eid executions had been suspended by the US under the Coalition Provisional Authority [official website] in 2003 not restored when the Iraqi parliament revived the death penalty afterwards. Discussions became heated before US Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad asked Iraq Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki one last time late Friday night to stop the execution. He refused, and Midhat al-Mahmoud, the chief judge of Iraq's Supreme Judicial Council, also declined to provide a written ruling authorizing the hanging as sought by the US. American suggestions that foreign journalists and UN observers witness the execution in the hopes of preventing its downward spiral into the revenge killing that was eventually captured in a grainy unofficial cell phone video [JURIST report] were similarly rejected.

The Times quoted an unnamed American official as saying "It literally came down to the Iraqis interpreting their law, and our looking at their law and interpreting it differently...Finally, it was decided we are not the court of last appeal for Iraqi law here. The president of their country says it meets their procedures. We are not going to be their legal nannies.” The New York Times has more.

[JURIST] The Cambodian People's Party (CPP) [party website, in English], the ruling party of Cambodian Prime Minister Samdech Hun Sen [official profile; BBC profile], urged critics of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) [official website] Sunday to adopt "more balanced views on their stands and activities" and to refrain from "trying to blackmail [Cambodia's] judiciary system, sovereignty and nation honor and distort [its] history to serve [their] own political agendas." The speech [text, in English] delivered by Samdech Chea Sim, president of the CPP and the Cambodian Senate, on the 28th anniversary celebrating the overthrow of the Khmer Rouge, the communist party whose leaders are accused of conducting the genocide of the "killing fields" in the 1970s, also reiterated the CPP's support for the tribunal process.

In early December, Human Rights Watch [advocacy website] accused the Cambodian government of delaying the genocide tribunals and interfering with the tribunal's judicial independence [JURIST report]. The ECCC was established by a 2001 law [text as amended 2005, PDF] to investigate and try those responsible for the 1975-79 Cambodian genocide that led to the deaths of at least 1.5 million Cambodians. To date, no top Khmer Rogue officials have faced trial and questions have been raised concerning exactly how many of the Khmer Rouge's top officials will face the tribunal, as several of those responsible for the genocide have died [JURIST report] in recent months and others are in failing health. AFP has more.