[JURIST] China's cabinet, the State Council [official website], is considering a regulation to ban non-medical sex-selective abortions in the country, according to a senior official quoted by state media sources Saturday. Wang Yongqing, deputy head of the Office of Legislative Affairs of the State Council, said that the measure was one of several laws and regulations on family planning on the Council's 2007 legislative agenda. Sex-selective abortion, generally undertaken on female foetuses, is already illegal in China under the Population and Family Planning Law [text; official backgrounder] and the Law on Maternal and Infant Health [text], but no punishments are provided under those statutes.

Earlier this year a committee of the National People's Congress (NPC) [official website, in Chinese] decided not to approve the criminalization of sex-selective abortions [JURIST report], rejecting a proposed amendment to the criminal law that would have punished anyone convicted of involvement in sex-selective abortions with a three-year prison sentence. Supporters of that measure were concerned about the disproportionate number of baby boys born in China – 119 per 100 girls. China's male population currently exceeds its female population by some 37 million. China Daily has more.

[JURIST] US Judge Advocates General told a group of Republican senators last month that CIA prisoner interrogation methods authorized under a July executive order [text; JURIST report] issued by President Bush could contravene the Geneva Conventions, according to the Boston Globe. The military lawyers were talking to John Warner, Lindsay Graham, and a top aide to John McCain, all of whom have pressed for changes to various aspects of US interrogation policy. The JAGs expressed particular concern about wording in the order that could allow detainees to be subjected to humiliating or degrading interrogation techniques banned under the Conventions as long as those were directed to protecting national security interests rather than the sadistic purposes of the interrogator. A subsequent memo from US Army JAG Major General Scott C. Black obtained by the Globe was issued to "make clear that [the Geneva Conventions are] the minimum humane treatment standard" for prisoners and that "This Executive Order does not change the standard for the Army...As a Corps, we must be diligent to ensure that all interrogation and detention operations comply with the Army standard." The Boston Globe has more.

Executive Order 13440 specifically prohibits

willful and outrageous acts of personal abuse done for the purpose of humiliating or degrading the individual in a manner so serious that any reasonable person, considering the circumstances, would deem the acts to be beyond the bounds of human decency, such as sexual or sexually indecent acts undertaken for the purpose of humiliation, forcing the individual to perform sexual acts or to pose sexually, threatening the individual with sexual mutilation, or using the individual as a human shield...

[JURIST] A court in the central Asian republic of Georgia [official backgrounder], formerly part of the old Soviet Union, has sentenced 12 opposition activists to prison terms of up to eight-and-a-half years for participating in an alleged coup plot to overthrow the government of President Mikheil Saakashvili [official website]. Lawyers for the activists immediately condemned the ruling of the Tbilisi city court as political and an affront to the rule of law. Most of the defendants were associates of a former Georgian state security head who fled to neighboring Russia after he was charged with attempting to assassinate Georgian ex-president Eduard Shevardnadze in 1995.

Saakashvili has allied himself closely with the US and NATO since taking office in 2004 and Georgian authorities alleged that the convicted opposition activists had been supported by the Russian security services. Georgian-Russian relations have deteriorated markedly [JURIST report] in the last year. An American lawyer acting for one of the activists has already promised to appeal her case all the way to the European Court of Human Rights if necessary. AFP has more.

[JURIST] The Alabama Attorney General's office [official report] said Friday that Attorney General Troy King would try to prevent the early release [JURIST report] from a Maryland state prison of Arthur Bremer [PBS profile], the man who shot ex-Alabama Governor George Wallace [ADAH profile] in 1972 during his independent presidential campaign, leaving him paralyzed for life. Bremer has served 35 years of a 53-year sentence and under Maryland state law is entitled to early release no later than mid-December because he has earned sufficient credits for good behavior. Maryland officials say an Alabama effort to halt the release is unlikely to succeed in the face of Maryland rules.

Bremer has never expressed any remorse for the shooting, calling Wallace a "segregationist dinosaur." In his diary, Bremer wrote that his primary motivation for the shooting was not opposition to Wallace's pro-segregation politics, but a desire to become notorious. AP has more.

[JURIST] The Liberian Supreme Court ruled Friday that former interim Liberian President Gyude Bryant [BBC profile] can stand trial on embezzlement charges. Bryant was charged [JURIST report] in February with embezzling $1.3 million during his tenure from October 2003 until January 2006. The indictment was based on an audit conducted by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) [official website], which monitored the interim government after former Liberian President Charles Taylor [JURIST news archive] stepped down in August 2003.

Bryant's defense lawyers had urged the court to block his prosecution, arguing that Bryant was entitled to presidential immunity under the Liberian constitution [text]. Government lawyers, however, successfully argued that Bryant should not be entitled to immunity [Inquirer report] because he served as a caretaker and not a democratically elected president. Bryant was appointed by regional peace brokers to head Liberia as the country emerged from 14 years of civil war. AFP has more.

[JURIST] US Bankruptcy Judge Louise DeCarl Adler ordered 42 clergy sex abuse cases against the Catholic Diocese of San Diego [diocesan website] to go to trial Friday, accepting arguments by plaintiffs lawyers that the move could push pressure on the diocese to settle the claims. The trials were suspended in February - the night before they were scheduled to begin - after the diocese sought Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection [JURIST report]. The diocese so far has sought to settle with victims for some $94 million, considerably short of the $200 million claimed by plaintiffs attorneys. No trial schedule has yet been set, but the first of the cases could proceed within 60 days.

In January 2007, the Catholic Diocese of Spokane [diocesan website] agreed to settle molestation claims [JURIST report] against its priests for $48 million as part of its Chapter 11 reorganization plan. The Archdiocese of Portland filed for Chapter 11 [JURIST report] in 2004, and the dioceses of Tuscon, Spokane, and Davenport soon followed suit in the wake of hundreds of sexual abuse lawsuits [JURIST news archive] against clergy. AP has more.