[JURIST] US House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers (D-MI) [official website] Monday threatened to seek subpoenas [materials] to compel three current and former administration officials, including former Attorney General John Ashcroft [official profile], to testify about a recently released Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel memorandum [text; JURIST report] that advised the US Department of Defense that military interrogators could employ a wide range of interrogation methods when questioning foreign detainees outside the United States without fear of criminal liability or constitutional sanction. In letters sent to Ashcroft, former Assistant Deputy Attorney General John Yoo [academic profile], and Vice President Chief of Staff David Addington [US News profile], Conyers said he would seek subpoenas if he does not receive a response by Friday. Yoo and Ashcroft have both previously declined invitations to testify at the upcoming May 6 hearing, while a lawyer for the office of the Vice President said that Addington would not appear. The memo in question has since been repudiated by the DOJ. AP has more.

This would not be the first time that the House Judiciary Committee has issued subpoenas against administration officials. Last month, the committee filed a lawsuit [complaint, PDF; press release] to enforce subpoenas seeking information from former White House legal counsel Harriet Miers and White House Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten [official profiles] regarding the US Attorneys firing scandal [JURIST news archive]. In February, US Speaker of the House Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) sent a letter to Attorney General Michael Mukasey urging him to begin a grand jury investigation [JURIST report] into the conduct of the two White House aides and saying that the House would initiate a civil lawsuit if she did not receive a response within one week. Mukasey refused to present the contempt citations to a grand jury [JURIST report] in a response the following day.

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[JURIST] Top members of Pakistan's government coalition have met to continue their discussion of proposals for restoring judges ousted by President Pervez Musharraf last year after he declared emergency rule [PDF text; JURIST report], according to Monday media reports. The two leading coalition parties, the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz and the Pakistan People's Party [party websites], reportedly disagree [JURIST report] on the amount of power that the restored judges should wield, whether judges should be subject to term limits, and whether ousted Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry [JURIST news archive] should be among the judges reinstated. BBC News has more.

The coalition government, sworn in last month after parliamentary elections earlier this year, has vowed to establish a fully independent judiciary [JURIST reports]. One of Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani's first actions upon taking office was seeking Chaudhry's and other ousted judges' immediate release from house arrest [JURIST report]. Pakistan's attorney general has said that reinstating the ousted judges would require a constitutional amendment [JURIST report] with a two-thirds majority vote in parliament. The coalition government has pledged to restore the judges by the end of the month; Amnesty International Monday urged the government to meet that deadline [AI statement].

[JURIST] US pharmaceutical giant Pfizer [corporate website] resumed settlement negotiations with the Nigerian state of Kano for allegedly illegal clinical trials conducted by the drug company, Kano state Justice Commissioner Aliyu Umar said Monday. Pfizer is accused of administering 200 Nigerian children with meningitis medication - including 100 with the then-experimental anti-biotic Trovan [FDA backgrounder] - without the authorization of the Nigerian government or the consent of the patients' guardians. Umar said that the government has made a counter-offer to settle the lawsuit after the state rejected Pfizer's initial offer, and now awaits a response from the drug company.

Pfizer faces 31 criminal charges and civil lawsuits [BBC backgrounder] totaling $8.5 billion for its alleged wrongdoing during a 1996 meningitis outbreak in Kano. Pfizer claims that it obtained parental consent orally and reduced the dosage of the comparison drug used in the clinical trial to reduce the level of pain for the patients. Last year, a Nigerian court rejected a request by Pfizer [JURIST report] to dismiss the civil lawsuit on technical grounds. Also last year, criminal court proceedings against Pfizer were suspended [JURIST report] at the request of prosecutors who needed more time to prepare for trial. AFP has more.

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[JURIST] Yemeni Guantanamo Bay detainee Salim Ahmed Hamdan [DOD materials; JURIST news archive] said Monday that he will join fellow detainees in a boycott of his upcoming military commission trial. Hamdan, a former driver for Osama bin Laden who has been in US custody since 2001, said at a pre-trial hearing that he will not participate in the trial and will refuse any aid from lawyers.

Hamdan is now the fourth Guantanamo detainee to announce plans to boycott their military commissions. In mid-April, Sudanese Guantanamo Bay detainee Ibrahim al-Qosi [DOD materials] said at a pre-trial hearing that he also planned to boycott his upcoming trial. Prior to that, Saudi Arabian detainee Ahmed Mohammed Ahmed Haza al-Darbi [DOD materials; JURIST report] and Afghan detainee Mohammed Jawad [DOD materials; JURIST report] stated that they would boycott their trials as well. AP has more.

Hamdan has been in US custody since 2001 when he was captured in Afghanistan and accused of working as Osama Bin Laden's driver. In 2006 he successfully challenged US President George W. Bush's military commission system when the Supreme Court ruled [opinion, PDF; JURIST report] that the commission system as initially constituted violated US and international law.

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[JURIST] The UN Security Council should push the US [press release] to address human rights concerns over policies governing detainees held by US-led coalition forces in Iraq, Human Rights Watch (HRW) [advocacy website] said in a Monday letter [text] to Council representatives. HRW accused the Multi-National Force-Iraq of holding thousands of detainees without proper judicial review, and said that MNF-I is improperly relying on Council Resolutions to justify holding them indefinitely:

[The United Nations Assistance Mission in Iraq] cited [in its most recent human rights report] correspondence with the US embassy in Baghdad to the effect that internationally recognized standards of due process are inapplicable to MNF security detentions in Iraq. Letters attached to Security Council resolutions 1546, 1637 and 1723 allow for "internment where this is necessary for imperative reasons of security." The United States has maintained that this language, which mimics language in the Fourth Geneva Convention, is the basis for the MNF applying the Fourth Geneva Convention more generally to the treatment of detainees in Iraq.

This expansive reading of resolution 1546 is contrary to the requirement under international law to interpret Security Council resolutions as being consistent with existing international norms. The Fourth Geneva Convention has not been applicable to Iraq since the declared end of the belligerent occupation. The detention of individuals pursuant to resolution 1546 and successive resolutions must be read in light of the currently applicable international law in Iraq.

[JURIST] Spain's National Court on Monday ruled that former Argentinean President Isabel Peron [BBC profile] would not be extradited to face charges in Argentina related to her alleged role in "Dirty War" disappearances before she left office in 1976. The court found that the charges against Peron did not amount to crimes against humanity and that therefore the statute of limitations had expired. In January 2007, Argentinean judges issued two separate warrants for Peron, and in February 2007 Argentina made a formal request that Spain extradite Peron [JURIST reports]. The Canadian Press has more. El Mundo has local coverage, in Spanish.

After a 2005 Supreme Court ruling that struck down amnesty laws adopted in the 1980s, the Argentinean government has reopened hundreds of human rights cases, including one against former president Reynaldo Bignone [JURIST report] for his alleged role in disappearances and human rights abuses during Argentina's 1976-1983 "Dirty War" [GlobalSecurity backgrounder; JURIST news archive].

[JURIST] Kenyan military forces tortured over 4,000 suspected rebels in a recent crackdown against the Sabaot Land Defence Force (SLDF), according to a report released Monday by human rights group Independent Medico-Legal Unit (IMLU) [advocacy website]. The group accused soldiers of crimes against humanity in a campaign against the SLDF, a guerrilla militia along the Uganda-Kenya border, and accused top state officials, including Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki [official profile] and Prime Minister Raila Odinga [BBC profile], of being complacent in allowing torture of civilians to occur.

The SLDF is an armed resistance movement that has operated since 2005 in response to government resettlement plans that moved the Sabaot tribes from their ancestral land. Earlier this month, Human Rights Watch also accused the Kenyan military of human rights abuses [HRW report] in its campaign against the group. AFP has more.

[JURIST] Zimbabwean lawyers Monday appealed for the release of several hundred opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) [party website] members detained after police raids [JURIST report] on Friday, saying that the the MDC members were being held in defiance of a court order. Witnesses say that police were searching for vote counting materials that might show that MDC candidate Morgan Tsvangirai [BBC profile] won the contested March 29 presidential election [JURIST report].

Official results of the presidential race have still not been released, but Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) [official website] officials said Monday that a partial recount had been completed [Reuters report] and that the ZEC would begin scheduling meetings with the candidates to "verify figures" on Tuesday. The ZEC released the results of the parliamentary elections over the weekend. The Zimbabwe African National Union - Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) [party website], party of current Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe [BBC profile; JURIST news archive], lost its majority in parliament for the first time since the country gained independence from Great Britain in 1980. On Sunday, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour condemned political violence [statement] in the country and urged all sides to practice restraint. AFP has more.

[JURIST] The US Supreme Court [official website; JURIST news archive] on Monday let stand Indiana's controversial voter identification statute [Indiana SOS backgrounder, PDF], which requires voters to present photo identification as a prerequisite to voting. The decision comes in Crawford v. Marion County Election Board [LII case backgrounder; JURIST report], where the US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit upheld [JURIST report] the law in 2007, ruling that it does not put an undue burden on the right to vote and therefore does not violate the US Constitution. Supporters of the law have said that voter identification can be used to deter voter fraud, but its critics have argued that the legislation makes it difficult for minorities, the elderly and the impoverished to participate in elections.

In affirming the federal appeals court ruling, Justice Stevens wrote:

We are, however, persuaded that the District Court and the Court of Appeals correctly concluded that the evidence in the record is not sufficient to support a facial attack on the validity of the entire statute, and thus affirm.

The lead opinion assumes petitioners' premise that the voter-identification law "may have imposed a special burden on" some voters, ... but holds that petitioners have not assembled evidence to show that the special burden is severe enough to warrant strict scrutiny.... That is true enough, but for the sake of clarity and finality (as well as adherence to precedent), I prefer to decide these cases on the grounds that petitioners' premise is irrelevant and that the burden at issue is minimal and justified.

The universally applicable requirements of Indiana's voter-identification law are eminently reasonable. The burden of acquiring, possessing, and showing a free photo identification is simply not severe, because it does not "even represent a significant increase over the usual burdens of voting." ... And the State's interests ... are sufficient to sustain that minimal burden. That should end the matter. That the State accommodates some voters by permitting (not requiring) the casting of absentee or provisional ballots, is an indulgence - not a constitutional imperative that falls short of what is required.