[JURIST] The Center for Constitutional Rights [advocacy website] asked a federal judge Thursday to strike down the Protect America Act 2007 [S 1927 materials; JURIST report] as unconstitutional. The new law, signed by US President George W. Bush Sunday, gives the executive branch expanded surveillance authority for a period of six months while Congress works on long-term legislation to "modernize" the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act [text; JURIST news archive], but CCR argues that the law violates the Fourth Amendment [press release]:

The law effectively removes oversight for spying from the FISA court and leaves it up to the Executive Branch to monitor itself, with Attorney General Gonzales having the primary responsibility for oversight. For that reason, CCR attorneys will argue in court today that the new law violates the Fourth Amendment's requirement that judges approve warrants for surveillance and do so only on evidence of probable cause.

[JURIST] Canadian intelligence officials suspected that the United States would deport detained Canadian citizen Maher Arar [advocacy website; CBC timeline] to a country where he could have been subject to torture, according to previously censored information released Thursday by Canada's official Arar Commission [official website]. A Canadian judge last month ordered [JURIST report] the commission to publish the information in a ruling based in part on the commission's arguments that the public should have access to the information contained in the report. Pursuant to the ruling, the commission issued an addendum [PDF text - new content in bold] to its factual findings [commission materials; JURIST report]. Included in the new information is a note that a Canadian Security Intelligence Service [official website] liaison officer in Washington, DC submitted a report to his superiors which:

spoke of a trend they had noted lately that when the CIA or FBI cannot legally hold a terrorist subject, or wish a target questioned in a firm manner, they have them rendered to countries willing to fulfill that role. He said Mr. Arar was a case in point.

On October 10, 2002, Mr. Hooper stated in a memorandum: "I think the U.S. would like to get Arar to Jordan where they can have their way with him."

[JURIST] Seif al-Islam Gaddafi, son of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, said Thursday that five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor were tortured during their eight years in Libyan custody on suspicion of deliberately infecting hundreds of Libyan children with the HIV virus [JURIST news archive]. In an interview with Al Jazeera, Gaddafi acknowledged that the medics had been subjected to electrical shocks and threats of retaliation against their family members, but said that other torture allegations were lies. Al Jazeera has more. AP has additional coverage.

Initially sentenced to death, the medics had their sentences commuted to life in prison [JURIST reports]. They were released by Libyan authorities in late July under the pretense that they would serve their sentences in Bulgaria. Bulgarian President Georgi Parvanov immediately pardoned the six medics, including the Palestinian doctor who has been granted Bulgarian citizenship. The medics, who have consistently maintained their innocence and accused Libyan authorities of eliciting confessions through torture [HRW report], have indicated they will testify against 11 Libyan police officers facing torture charges [JURIST report] in Bulgaria. Earlier this week, a lawyer for the doctor, Ashraf Alhajouj, said that he planned to file a complaint with the UN Human Rights Committee [JURIST report] against Libya for the abuse Alhajouj says he suffered while in detention. It has been reported that the medics were only permitted to leave Libya because they signed documents releasing their right to sue Tripoli for torture [EU Observer report].

[JURIST] Six more detainees have been transferred from Guantanamo Bay [press release], the US Defense Department said Thursday. According to the DOD announcement [press release], five detainees were transferred to Afghanistan and one was transferred to Bahrain [Reuters report; BNA report]. Bahraini Minister of Foreign Affairs Sheikh Khaled bin Ahmed al-Khalifa said that Issa al-Murbati's release means that all Bahraini Guantanamo Bay [JURIST news archive] detainees have now been repatriated. AFP has more.

The Bush Administration has been facing growing pressure [JURIST report] to close detention facilities at Guantanamo. Approximately 80 of the 360 remaining detainees have been deemed eligible for release or transfer. US President George W. Bush said Thursday that he still wants to shut down the detention facility, but that other countries have shown reluctance to accept detainees. In a press conference [transcript], Bush said:

I did say it should be a goal of the nation to shut down Guantanamo. I also made it clear that part of the delay was the reluctance of some nations to take back some of the people being held there. In other words, in order to make it work, we've got to have a place for these people to go. ... I don't know if you noticed a resolution of the Senate the other day, where all but three senators said we don't want these prisoners in the country.... In other words, part of the issue, Peter, is the practical issue of, what do we do with the people. And you say nothing has taken place. I strongly disagree with that. First of all, we are working with other nations to send folks back. Again, it's a fairly steep order. A lot of people don't want killers in their midst, and a lot of these people are killers.

Secondly, of course, we want to make sure that when we do send them back, they're treated as humanely as possible. The other issue was whether or not we can get people to be tried. One of the things I'm anxious about, want to see happen, is that there to be trials. Courts have been involved with deciding how to do this, and Defense is trying to work out mechanisms to get the trials up and running. And the sooner we can get that up and running, the better it is, as far as I'm concerned. I don't want to make any predictions about whether Guantanamo will be available or not. I'm just telling you it's a very complicated subject.

And I laid out an aspiration. Whether or not we can achieve that or not, we'll try to. But it is not as easy a subject as some may think on the surface.

[JURIST] The US Department of Defense (DOD) [official website] said Thursday that 14 "high-value" detainees have been designated as enemy combatants [press release] based on the recommendations of Combatant Status Review Tribunals (CSRT) [DOD materials]. The detainees, including the alleged masterminds of the September 11 terrorist attacks, the 2000 attack on the USS Cole, and the 1998 US embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, were all previously formerly held in secret prisons [JURIST report] operated by the Central Intelligence Agency and are currently held in detention facilities at Guantanamo Bay [JURIST news archive]. Detainees held as "enemy combatants" will be held indefinitely until they are charged before military commissions under the Military Commission Act of 2006 (MCA) [PDF text] or are transferred to another location.

Military prosecutors are currently appealing the dismissal of charges against Guantanamo detainees Omar Ahmed Khadr and Salim Ahmed Hamdan [JURIST reports]. The judges in both cases found that the detainees could not be tried as "unlawful enemy combatants" under the MCA because both had been simply designated as "enemy combatants" by the CSRTs. AP has more.

[JURIST] US Marine Corps Lt. Gen. James Mattis [official profile] has dismissed all charges against Lance Cpl. Justine I. Sharratt and Capt. Randy W. Stone for their alleged roles in the killing and suspected cover-up of the death of 24 Iraqi civilians [JURIST report] at Haditha [USMC timeline; JURIST news archive] in November 2005. Mattis dismissed all charges against Sharratt [press release] Wednesday, agreeing with the investigating officer's recommendations [JURIST report; IO report, PDF] that the evidence does not support a court-martial against Sharratt because witness testimony was unreliable and the forensic evidence tended to support Sharratt's version of the events. On Thursday, Mattis dismissed all charges against Stone [press release], a Marine lawyer accused of failing to launch a probe into the killings, finding that "any error of omission or commission" did not warrant action under the Uniform Code of Military Justice [text].

In June, a military investigator recommended that Stone not face court-martial [JURIST report], saying that the matter should be handled administratively. Five Marines are still facing allegations [list of charges] of wrongdoing, including the commander of the 3rd Battalion, 1st Marines, Lt. Col Jeffrey R. Chessani [JURIST news archive]. An investigating officer has recommended Chessani face a court-martial [JURIST report] for dereliction of duty and violation of a lawful order. AP has more.

[JURIST] A North Carolina judge ruled Thursday that the North Carolina Council of State, comprised of Gov. Mike Easley [official website] and nine elected state officials, improperly approved new execution protocols in February as a part of their effort to resume executions. Senior Administrative Law Judge Fred Morrison ordered the council to revisit the protocols. Morrison said that because the state panel approved the protocols without hearing from lawyers for death row inmates, due process was violated.

The ruling is the latest setback for North Carolina state officials' efforts to resume executions. In January, a state judge issued an injunction [JURIST report] blocking executions until Easley issued new protocols for capital punishment [JURIST news archive]. The protocols became necessary after the North Carolina Medical Board (NCMB) [official website] altered their capital punishment policy [text] and threatened to sanction doctors who participate in the procedure. In June, a Republican-sponsored amendment to a bill [HB 818 materials] aimed at allowing executions to resume failed [JURIST report] after state Democrats struck down language that would have prohibited the NCMB from disciplining doctors for participating in executions. AP has more.

[JURIST] The War Crimes Chamber of the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina [official website; JURIST news archive] entered a plea of not guilty for Bosnian Serb Milrod Trbic [ICTY case backgrounder, PDF] Thursday because Trbic failed to appear in court [press release] after starting a hunger strike on Monday. Trbic has been charged with genocide [press release; indictment, PDF] for allegedly "knowingly participated in the forcible transfer of the Bosniak population from the Srebrenica enclave, as well as in the summary executions and burial of able-bodied Bosniak men from Srebrenica." Trbic is also accused of shooting up to 20 Bosnian Muslims outside of a school.

The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia transferred [press release] Trbic in June to the Bosnian court, which was established [JURIST report] in March 2005 to ease the backlog of the ICTY. The ICTY is currently trying to complete all its work by 2010. Approximately 8,000 Bosnian Muslims were killed in the 1995 Srebrenica massacre [BBC timeline; JURIST news archive]. Reuters has more.

[JURIST] An Indonesian court on Thursday ordered lawyers for the government and former Indonesian President Haji Mohammad Suharto [CNN profile] to attempt mediation for 30 days to settle the government's civil lawsuit [JURIST report] against Suharto for allegedly embezzling $440 million between 1974 and 1998 from the Yayasan Supersemar, a state-funded academic scholar fund. Indonesian law requires that parties try mediation to resolve civil disputes before courts may proceed with a case. The lawsuit, which seeks to recover the $440 million and an additional $1.1 billion in damages, represents the latest effort by the Indonesian government to hold Suharto accountable for his 32-year reign, which ended in 1998 after public discontent amid the Asian financial crisis erupted into violent protests.

In January, Indonesian Attorney General Abdul Rahman Saleh announced plans to bring the civil action [JURIST report] against Suharto after dropping criminal charges of corruption [JURIST report] because Suharto has been rendered unable to speak or write [JURIST report] as a result of several strokes. AFP has more. Xinhua has additional coverage.

[JURIST] The Mauritanian National Assembly formally criminalized slave ownership Wednesday, unanimously adopting legislation that makes slavery punishable by a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison. The law also criminalizes the promotion or defense of slavery, which will be punishable by up to two years in prison. Slavery, which was officially banned by presidential decree in 1981, persists in certain regions of Mauritania and has never been criminalized.

An anti-slavery organization attributed the law to reforms under President Sidi Mohamed Ould Cheikh Abdallahi [BBC profile]. Abdallahi took office in April [Al Jazeera report] after winning the first democratic elections since a military coup [JURIST report] in 2005 that ended former President Maaouya Ould Sid'Ahmed Taya's 21-year rule. AP has more. BBC News has additional coverage.

[JURIST] Human rights violations in Zimbabwe have steadily increased with more than 5,300 recorded cases of human rights abuses during the first six months of 2007, according to the Zimbabwe Human Rights Forum [official website]. In a report [text] published last week, the group documented 328 instances of torture, 481 assaults, 802 cases of illegal arrests and detention, and 935 cases of politically related abuses by government authorities or militants supporting Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe [BBC profile]. The group, which also recorded 13 abductions, four death threats, and 1,937 recorded violations against freedoms of expression and movement, said that it "deplores the use of torture by the State to punish opposition and also to solicit confessions," adding that the practice is "contrary to international human rights instruments to which Zimbabwe is a party."

The group urged authorities to "respect and protect the rights and freedoms of its citizenry regardless of political persuasion or affiliation." AP has more. ZimOnline has local coverage.

[JURIST] The Office of the Massachusetts Attorney General [official website] announced the indictment [press release] Wednesday of anchoring and fastening product manufacturer Power Fasteners [corporate website] on one count of involuntary manslaughter for the July 10, 2006, ceiling panel collapse in Boston's Big Dig [official website; Wikipedia backgrounder] tunnel project that killed one person. Massachusetts authorities allege that Powers was aware that the wrong kind of its epoxy product was being used to anchor three-ton cement ceiling tiles, "and when provided with the opportunity, failed to differentiate to project managers between its Fast Set and Standard Set products." Powers is also accused of failing to disclose the information "in either its marketing material, or when it was specifically asked." If convicted, Powers faces a maximum fine of $1,000. Officials say that Massachusetts has also filed civil suits against Powers and construction contractors.

In July, the National Transportation Safety Board [official website] concluded that ceiling collapse was most likely caused by the "inappropriate use of an epoxy anchor adhesive" [press release; report, PDF] by construction contractors Gannett Fleming, Inc and Bechtel/Parsons Brinckerhoff [corporate websites]. The "Big Dig" project, which began construction in 1991, is the most expensive highway project in the United States and has cost approximately $15 billion. The charge against Power Fasteners is the first criminal action taken in connection with the collapse. The Massachusetts attorney general said that the criminal investigation is ongoing. Reuters has more.

[JURIST] The Chinese Municipal Intermediate People's Court in Kunming, Yunnan sentenced the former deputy director of the province's transportation department to life in prison Wednesday for accepting more than $5.3 million in bribes in exchange for his influence in securing construction and development contracts. The court said that Hu Xing's sentence was lenient because Hu voluntarily cooperated with authorities after his capture and has demonstrated remorse. The court indicated that Hu's wrongdoing, which included fleeing to Singapore after the commencement of an investigation, otherwise warranted the death penalty. According to China's state news agency, there are currently 84 officials from Yunnan province facing corruption charges who have fled China [Xinhua report].

The Chinese government is currently engaged in a publicized campaign against corrupt public officials [JURIST news archive]. In July, the Chinese Supreme People's Court and Supreme People's Procuratorate [official websites] jointly publicized new rules [text, in Chinese; JURIST report] broadening the definition of bribery to include arrangements where officials do not personally receive money, gifts, or favors. Last Thursday, the Chinese Communist Party discipline commission spokesperson defended China's use of capital punishment [JURIST report] in political and economic corruption cases, saying it was "endorsed by the Chinese people and also recognized by the international community." In July, China executed the former State Food and Drug Administration commissioner [JURIST report] for accepting $850,000 in bribes. AP has more. Xinhua has local coverage, in Chinese.