[JURIST] The UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women [official website] Friday called for Saudi Arabia [JURIST news archive] to abolish laws that give men complete guardianship over women. Under current Saudi law, women have few or no rights as regards marriage, divorce, child custody, and property ownership. The committee also urged Saudi Arabia to outlaw polygamy, which it said is by its very nature counter to gender equality. The committee's experts said that Sharia law [CFR backgrounder], on which Saudi Arabia's legal system is based, should not supersede the 1979 Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women [text], which Saudi Arabia signed in 2000. Saudi officials have denied that Saudi laws discriminate against women.

The committee's statement follows a November case in which a 20-year old gang-rape victim was sentenced to 90 lashes and six months in prison [NY Times report] for having been in the presence of a man who was not a relative when the attack occurred. King Abdullah pardoned the woman in December, but the incident sparked worldwide outrage over Saudi laws and demands for reform. Reuters has more.

[JURIST] Suspended South Africa police commissioner and former INTERPOL president Jackie Selebi [BBC profile; INTERPOL profile] was provisionally charged [charge sheet, PDF] Friday in a South African regional court with three counts of corruption and one count of defeating the ends of justice. A spokesperson for South Africa's National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) [official website] told BBC News that the charges did not amount to a formal indictment. Selebi was not asked to enter a plea, but he has maintained his innocence and said that he will plead not guilty. The court has postponed the case until June 26 to allow prosecutors time to complete investigations.

Selebi was suspended from his police post and forced to resign as INTERPOL president [JURIST report] after the NPA announced the allegations last month. The charges against Selebi relate to his alleged relationship with Glenn Agliotti [Mail and Guardian report], a convicted drug smuggler suspected of involvement in the murder of South African mining head Brett Keeble. Selebi is accused of receiving $170,000 in bribes from Agliotti. The NPA has also said that Selebi had turned a blind eye to Agliotti's drug trafficking, and that he had warned Agliotti that he was had been identified in the Keeble murder investigation. BBC News has more. The Times has local coverage.

[JURIST] The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit said Friday that it will not reconsider [order, PDF] its July 2007 decision [PDF text; JURIST report] that federal appeals courts reviewing the "enemy combatant" [JURIST news archive] designation of Guantanamo Bay detainees must review all evidence regarding that detainee. In the July decision, the appeals court rejected the government's argument that the Pentagon should be able to select which evidence is presented to the court and may choose to leave out evidence that could clear a detainee of guilt.

The court was split 5-5 on whether to reconsider the earlier decision en banc, falling short of the majority required to reconsider a ruling as a full court. In an unusual move when rejecting a case, the judges issued opinions explaining their reasoning. Judge Merrick B. Garland wrote that the court should not rehear the case while the Supreme Court is considering another case challenging the constitutionality of the military tribunal system [JURIST report], but Judge A. Raymond Randolph said that the court's review could have been helpful to the Supreme Court. AP has more. SCOTUSblog has additional coverage.

[JURIST] The Constitutional Court of Romania [official website] Thursday ruled [PDF text, in Romanian; press release, in Romanian] that parts of the law creating the National Council for the Study of Securitate Archives (CNSAS) are unconstitutional. Head of the Supreme Council of Magistrates Linda Barbulescu said that the court's ruling effectively strikes down all previous findings by the CNSAS, the agency charged with investigating the archives of Communist Romania's Securitate [backgrounder] secret police force. Former Conservative Party leader Dan Voiculescu [personal website] brought the challenge against CNSAS after it accused him in 2006 of having worked as a Securitate informer. Voiculescu's lawyer said the investigation was politically motivated.

According to the Romanian constitution, parliament must now draft a new law in accordance with the court's ruling. Under the old law, citizens had the right to read their own file; it is unclear what a new law will allow. Under the Communist regime, the Securitate compiled files on hundreds of thousands of Romanian citizens with information obtained through a vast network of informers. Since it was formed in 1999, CNSAS has exposed dozens of public figures for collaborating with the Securitate. BBC News has more.

[JURIST] The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) [official website] ruled Thursday that Turkey violated the human rights of two men when police subjected them to inhuman and degrading treatment and then failed to properly investigate their allegations of abuse. In Donmus and Kaplan v. Turkey [DOC text in French, press release], two plaintiffs said they were physically tortured while in police custody in the city of Silvan. One of the men alleged that he had suffered electrical shocks on various parts of his body for about three hours, while the other said that he had been blindfolded and beaten by police. The ECHR found that Turkish authorities violated Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights [PDF text], which prohibits inhuman or degrading treatment, and determined that subsequent investigations into the men's mistreatment claims had been inadequate.

The court also found that Turkey violated Article 3 in a second case handed down Thursday. In Erkan v. Turkey [DOC text, press release], Suleyman Erkan said he was beaten after he was arrested by Turkish security forces under the suspicion that he was a member of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) [BBC backgrounder], which is deemed to be a terrorist group by Turkey. AFP has more.

[JURIST] Pakistani Supreme Court Bar Association President Aitzaz Ahsan [PILDAT profile] Friday called for the resignation of Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf [official website] after being freed from house arrest late Thursday. Ahsan was detained in a security sweep [JURIST report] after Musharraf's November 3 declaration of emergency rule [text; JURIST report]; he was held for a time in Rawalpindi’s Adiala Jail before being sent back to Lahore in late November.

Thousands of lawyers have held anti-Musharraf rallies across Pakistan [JURIST report] in recent days, calling for the reinstatement of ousted Supreme Court Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry [JURIST news archive] and other superior court justices deposed last November under the emergency rule. Reuters has more.

[JURIST] The US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit on Thursday upheld [PDF text] a district court's dismissal [order, PDF; JURIST report] of a lawsuit against a Massachusetts town that allows its public school system to teach children about same-sex marriage [JURIST news archive]. The appeals court held that "Public schools are not obliged to shield individual students from ideas which potentially are religiously offensive," pointing out that the students were not required to agree with those ideas or participate in discussions about them.

Two families of elementary school students filed the lawsuit [plaintiffs' materials] in 2006 to stop the school from reading homosexual-themed books to their children without first notifying parents, arguing that the school's actions violated their right to free exercise of religion. The district court granted a motion to dismiss the case for failure to state a federal constitutional claim upon which relief could be granted. Currently, Massachusetts is the only state to allow full same-sex marriage, which was legalized when the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts ruled [JURIST report] in 2003 that a ban on such marriages was unconstitutional. AP has more.

[JURIST] The UK military is investigating allegations surrounding the 2004 deaths of 22 Iraqi detainees who may have been in UK custody and the alleged torture of nine other detainees, officials said Thursday after a court-imposed gag order on the probe was lifted. The investigation concerns a 2004 clash between insurgents and a British convoy in Majar al Kabir [Guardian report], north of Basra, in which approximately 22 Iraqis were said to have been killed and an additional nine taken into custody. Iraqi petitioners, however, allege that the deaths actually occurred while the Iraqis were detained in British custody rather than in battle, and that there is evidence that they were tortured. The nine survivors have also said that they were tortured while in British custody. The military opened the investigation in December, but did not publicize it because of the gag order, lifted [BBC report] by the UK High Court on Thursday.

The UK Royal Military Police [official website] first conducted an investigation [Guardian report] into the incident in 2004, clearing the UK soldiers of wrongdoing when an independent pathologist determined the Iraqis' deaths resulted from combat injuries. AP has more.

[JURIST] Canadian-born financier and former media mogul Conrad Black [CBC profile; JURIST news archive] lost his bid Thursday to remain free on bail pending the appeal of his July conviction [JURIST report] on mail fraud and obstruction of justice charges. In December, Black was sentenced to 78 months in prison [JURIST report] and ordered to pay $125,000 and forfeit another $1 million for his conviction. US District Judge Amy St. Eve [official profile] of the Northern District of Illinois [official website] Thursday said that Black was not a flight risk nor a danger to the community, but ruled that Black's lawyers had not convinced her that his appeal would reverse his conviction or initiate a new trial. Black must report to prison by March 3. CBC News has more.

The US government originally accused [indictment, PDF] Black of diverting more than $80 million from Hollinger International and its shareholders [JURIST report] during the company's $2.1 billion sale of several hundred Canadian newspapers, but in July 2007 he was found not guilty on separate charges of racketeering, wire fraud, and tax evasion. In August 2007, Black and former Hollinger executives John Boultbee, Peter Atkinson and Mark Kipnis filed concurrent motions [JURIST report] requesting either new trials or acquittals after their July convictions. St. Eve largely rejected the motions [ruling, PDF; JURIST report], overturning one of Kipnis' mail fraud convictions while affirming all of the other convictions against the four.

[JURIST] Hundreds of judges and lawyers in El Salvador [JURIST news archive] marched to the Supreme Court of Justice [official website] on Thursday to protest challenges that the Attorney General has made to the rulings of four judges. Last week, Attorney General Felix Safie asked the Supreme Court to investigate judges' decisions, which freed prisoners convicted of acts of murder, robbery and rape prior to the expiration of their sentence. Safie termed these as arbitrary exercises of power and accused the judges of corruption; the judges claim that they have acted according to the law and that the government is seeking to encroach on their independence.

The judges also complained that recent reforms to the Criminal Code have increased prosecutors' power at the expense of the judiciary. Several judges carried copies of the Constitution [text, in Spanish], which they urged the Court to respect. BBC News has more. El Porvenir has additional coverage [in Spanish].

[JURIST] Chinese human rights activist Hu Jia has been formally arrested and charged with inciting subversion of state power, his lawyer said Friday. His lawyer said that Hu's father had been allowed to visit Hu in jail recently, marking the first contact Hu has had with his family since he was taken from his home [JURIST report] in December in connection with what Chinese Human Rights Defenders called [press release] "his peaceful activities in promoting human rights, including reporting abuses and posting articles to raise public awareness." Hu's lawyer also noted that the government had not provided any evidence or reasons for the charge of subversion.

Last year, Hu made public [JURIST report] letters and recordings from Chinese lawyer Gao Zhisheng alleging that Gao was tortured into confessing to subversion charges. Reporters Without Borders has called for Hu's release [press release], saying that "the political police have taken advantage of the international community's focus on Pakistan to arrest one of the foremost representatives of the peaceful struggle for free expression in China." In November, rights group Dui Hua reported that the number of political arrests in China more than doubled in 2006 [JURIST report]. China has been criticized in recent months for cracking down on human rights activists and political dissidents [JURIST report] ahead of the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. AP has more.

[JURIST] The US military has charged [press release] a Guantanamo Bay detainee with attempted murder [charge sheet, PDF] and intentionally causing serious bodily harm, the Defense Department said Thursday. Mohammed Jawad [DOD materials], an Afghan national, allegedly threw a grenade at two US soldiers and an interpreter in their vehicle on December 17, 2002 in Kabul. Jawad is the fourth Guantanamo detainee to be formally charged with war crimes under the 2006 Military Commissions Act [PDF text]. David Hicks [JURIST news archive] pleaded guilty to a charge of supporting terrorism [JURIST reports] before a US military commission last March after spending more than five years in US custody since his capture in Afghanistan. Salim Hamdan and Omar Khadr [JURIST news archives] are awaiting trials. Both Jawad and Khadr allegedly committed war crimes while they were still minors. AFP has more. Reuters has additional coverage.

In 2006, Hamdan successfully challenged the military commission system when the US Supreme Court ruled [JURIST report] that the commissions as initially constituted violated US and international law. Congress subsequently passed the Military Commissions Act of 2006, and Hamdan again challenged the system, arguing that it still violates his rights, but the Supreme Court refused to hear his appeal [JURIST report] in October. He had hoped the Supreme Court would consider his case along with those of other detainees challenging their detention at Guantanamo Bay [JURIST report].

[JURIST] The US Senate Judiciary Committee [official website] approved a 29 percent pay raise for all federal judges Thursday by a margin of 10-7. If passed by Congress, the Federal Judicial Salary Restoration Act of 2007 [S 1638 materials] would mark the first significant raise federal judges have received since 1991. The bill stops judicial pay from being set at the same level as members of Congress and would raise salaries for district judges to $218,000 per year; federal appeals judges would earn $231,000 per year and associate Supreme Court justices would earn $267,900. The Chief Justice would earn $279,900. The House Judiciary Committee approved [JURIST report] HR 3753 [bill materials], the House version of the bill, in December.

US Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts has called for a federal judiciary pay raise since he began his tenure on the court, arguing that experienced district court judges receive salaries comparable first year associates at many law firms. Last month, Roberts used his 2007 year-end report [PDF text] on the federal judiciary to urge Congress to increase the salaries of federal judges and to increase communications between all branches of government. AP has more.

[JURIST] US District Judge Paul Huck ruled Thursday that former Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega [BBC backgrounder; JURIST news archive] will remain in the US until all appeals relating to an extradition request by France have been exhausted. Earlier this month, Huck denied Noriega's request [JURIST report] to block his extradition to France, but on Thursday granted the defense's motion to stay Noriega's extradition to allow him time to pursue all legal options.

Noriega is wanted in France on charges of money laundering through French banks. Noriega and his wife were sentenced in absentia [AP report] to 10 years in jail in 1999, but France has agreed to hold a new trial if he is extradited. Noriega has made multiple attempts to block his extradition; in addition to Huck's January 2008 ruling, another federal judge in September 2007 rejected [JURIST report] Noriega's arguments that the extradition would violate his prisoner of war status. Noriega's lawyers argue that France's request was superseded by his status as a US prisoner of war and that under the Geneva Conventions the US must return him home to Panama upon his release. The US State Department has indicated that it is satisfied that France will treat Noriega as a POW [JURIST report] if Noriega is extradited to that country. AP has more.