[JURIST] Lebanon slid into constitutional crisis Friday as pro-Syrian President Emile Lahoud [official website] purported to declare a "state of emergency" and hand security responsibility to the army in a vaguely worded statement issued just before leaving office midnight at the end of his term without an elected successor in [read more]

[JURIST] Former Lord Chief Justice Lord Woolf [BBC profile] Friday denounced the UK government's latest proposal to extend beyond 28 days the time that terror suspects can be held without charge, supporting positions taken by other current and former top legal officials earlier in the week. On Wednesday current Director [read more]

[JURIST] An International Criminal Court [official website] prosecutor said Thursday that the court would not withdraw controversial indictments against leaders of Uganda's Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) [MIPT backgrounder; JURIST news archive]. Alluding to a call for a review of the charges [JURIST report] by the Ugandan government, ICC Deputy Prosecutor [read more]

[JURIST] UN Special Rapporteur on torture Manfred Nowak [official website] Friday called on the government of Indonesia [JURIST news archive] to step up efforts at stopping ill-treatment and torture of individuals under police detention. Nowak concluded a two-week visit to the country where he toured various correctional facilities, meeting with [read more]

[JURIST] Courthouses in the northern Indian cities of Lucknow, Varanasi, and Faizabad [official websites] were hit Friday with bombings that killed at least 13 lawyers and injured over 50 other people. The blasts occurred in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh [official website], where lawyers decided earlier this year not [read more]

[JURIST] The Supreme Court of Pakistan [official website] Friday upheld [judgment text] President Pervez Musharraf's November 3 Provisional Constitutional Order (PCO) [text] and accompanying proclamation of emergency. The seven member bench of the court ruling on the issue - made up entirely of judges named to their posts after the [read more]

[JURIST] UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour [official website] Thursday urged Pakistan to reinstate all of the judges dismissed under President Pervez Musharraf's November 3 declaration of emergency rule before parliamentary elections slated for January. In Dublin to attend a human rights conference, Arbour told reporters that it [read more]