[JURIST] International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) [official website; JURIST news archive] Chief Prosecutor Serge Brammertz filed an appeal Friday against the court's acquittal of former Kosovo Prime Minister and Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) commander Ramush Haradinaj [TrialWatch profile; ICTY case backgrounder, PDF]. Brammertz asked that the case be retried before a different chamber of the tribunal, arguing that prosecution was not allowed the to present enough witnesses during trial. Haradinaj was charged [JURIST report] last year with 37 counts of war crimes, including murder, persecution, and rape [amended indictment, PDF], but the ICTY last month acquitted him of all charges [JURIST report], citing a lack of evidence. DPA has more.

Haradinaj was a senior commander of the KLA, the ethnic Albanian guerrilla force that opposed Slobodan Milosevic [JURIST news archive] during the 1998-1999 Kosovo war [BBC backgrounder]. Since the acquittal, Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica and other top officials have expressed concern [JURIST report] that the decision could heighten tensions in Kosovo and decrease the likelihood that fugitive war crimes suspects Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic [BBC profiles] would be caught.

[JURIST] Ousted Pakistani Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry [JURIST news archive] and all other judges removed by President Pervez Musharraf last November after his declaration of emergency rule [PDF text; JURIST report] will be reinstated on May 12, former Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif [JURIST news archive] said Friday. Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) and the Pakistan People's Party (PPP) [party websites] reached an agreement on reinstating the ousted judges on Thursday after extensive talks [JURIST reports] between the two parties in April and May. Sharif also said that Pakistan's national assembly would pass a resolution endorsing the reinstatements the same day. BBC News has more. JURIST's Pakistan correspondent notes that Sharif was surprisingly silent on the exact terms of the reinstatement despite local media reports Thursday suggesting that judges appointed under Musharraf's Provisional Constitution Order would be retained and Chaudhry would in practice be forced to retire "early" after finishing his formal five-year tenure in 2010 instead of continuing to age 68, the current judicial retirement age.

The coalition government, sworn in in March 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].

[JURIST] Italian dairy giant Parmalat SpA [corporate website; JURIST news archive] Friday reached a settlement [press release, PDF] with shareholders, agreeing to issue 10.5 million shares of stock, valued at almost 24 million euros, to satisfy a securities fraud class action filed against the company. The suit was filed by investors in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York following Parmalat's collapse in 2003 and alleged former company executives committed fraud which resulted in the diary giant's bankruptcy. The settlement is subject to approval by the court.

Parmalat filed for insolvency in December 2003 after discovering accounting discrepancies totaling nearly $5 billion in debt. In July 2007, an Italian judge indicted approximately 20 former Parmalat executives [JURIST report], including founder Calisto Tanzi and former CFO Fausto Tonna, on charges of fraudulent bankruptcy and criminal association for their role in the collapse. In June 2007, an Italian judge indicted four banks [JURIST report] for not revealing to the market that Parmalat was not financially healthy. Investors may have lost as much as $8 billion in the collapse. Bloomberg has more.

[JURIST] Opposition Movement for Democratic Change [party website] candidate Morgan Tsvangirai [BBC profile] won a slim majority in Zimbabwe's contested March presidential election [JURIST report] but not enough to avoid a run-off vote against current Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe [BBC profile; JURIST news archive], election officials said Friday. The Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) [official website] had long delayed releasing the official results because of claimed "errors and miscalculations" in its compilation, despite an attempt [JURIST report] by the MDC to force it to release election results. The ZEC reported Friday that Tsvangirai won 47.9 percent of the vote, while Mugabe won 43.2 percent. The MDC has said that it is willing to form a coalition government with Mugabe's Zimbabwe African National Union – Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) [party website], but will not work with Mugabe himself. AP has more.

An MDC spokesman earlier rejected the need for a runoff [AP report], saying that only a rigged election would produce the results that would necessitate one. Violence has wracked the country since the March election, with frequent clashes between opposition forces and government supporters. Human Rights Watch [advocacy website] Wednesday accused the Zimbabwean army of working with the ruling party [HRW report] to detain, torture, and murder political opponents, and urged the African Union and the UN Security Council to push for an end to the violence.

[JURIST] Three Indonesian Islamic militants sentenced to death for their roles in the 2002 Bali nightclub bombings [BBC backgrounder] will file for a third appeal, according to their lawyer. The three men - Mukhlas, Amrozi, and Imam Samudra [BBC profiles] - Wednesday gave separate review requests to the head Java prison where they are held and asked that these be submitted to the Cilacap District Court. All three men face execution by firing squad if their appeal is not successful.

A first appeal was rejected by the Supreme Court of Indonesia late last year, prompting an unusual second appeal, which was later withdrawn [JURIST reports]. A new appeal [JURIST report] was filed in late March. Reuters has more.

[JURIST] The UK High Court has agreed to consider whether the UK government must put the ratification of the new EU reform treaty [JURIST news archive], properly known as the Treaty of Lisbon [official website; PDF text], to a public vote. Influential UK Conservative Party donor Stuart Wheeler [BBC profile] launched a legal bid to force a referendum [JURIST report] in January, arguing that Prime Minister Gordon Brown [official website] had broken a pledge to hold a referendum on the pact warranting judicial review. Brown has said that a referendum is unnecessary because the treaty does not affect the UK constitution or impinge on British sovereignty.

Last year, UK Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs David Miliband [official profile] similarly rejected calls for a general referendum on the treaty, instead insisting [transcript] that it was sufficiently "different...in absolute essence" from the earlier draft European Constitution [JURIST news archive] that would have been put to a popular vote [JURIST report] had in stayed in play beyond political reversals in France and the Netherlands. Former Prime Minister Tony Blair rejected the referendum option [JURIST report] earlier last year before leaving office. BBC News has more.

[JURIST] Former Liberian President Charles Taylor [SCSL case materials; JURIST news archive] controlled about five billion dollars held at two US banks during his presidency, Special Court for Sierra Leone [official website] head prosecutor Stephen Rapp told the BBC Friday. It is unclear what funds Taylor still holds, but a June 2007 UN report concluded that Taylor may control millions of dollars [JURIST report] held in bank accounts worldwide. Rapp said he was now attempting to trace the funds, which may be subject to a UN freeze if recovered.

Taylor faces charges [indictment, PDF] of murder, rape, and the recruitment and use of child soldiers during a bloody civil war in Sierra Leone. The trial has been moved to The Hague [JURIST report] for security reasons. BBC News has more.

[JURIST] An Al Jazeera [media website] cameraman from Sudan who had been detained at Guantanamo Bay [JURIST news archive] since 2002 was released from the prison [press release] on Thursday and flown back to Sudan early Friday morning. Sami al Haj [advocacy website] was among nine prisoners who were transferred from Guantanamo; three were sent to Sudan, five to Afghanistan and one to Morocco. The US Defense Department said Friday that approximately 65 other detainees currently held at Guantanamo Bay are eligible for release, and that those detainees are the subject of ongoing discussions between the US and other nations. Approximately 270 detainees still remain at the prison.

Al-Haj was arrested [CPJ report] by Pakistani authorities while he was attempting to cross the border into Afghanistan in 2001 and was turned over to the US. He was accused of being a courier for a terrorist organization and taken to Guantanamo in January 2002. Al-Haj had been on a hunger strike since January 2007 to protest the conditions and the indefiniteness of his confinement. AP has more. Al Jazeera has additional coverage.

[JURIST] A former US Marine sergeant, charged [JURIST report] with two counts of voluntary manslaughter for allegedly killing two Iraqi insurgents during the Multinational National Force-Iraq's November 2004 offensive in Fallujah [GlobalSecurity backgrounder], can stand trial in federal court, according to a ruling from US District Court Judge Stephen Larson. Jose Nazario's lawyers had argued that a civilian court does not have jurisdiction to hear a case concerning the combat activities of a member of the armed forces, but the judge denied the motion to dismiss in court documents made available on Wednesday. Nazario has pleaded not guilty to the charges.

In July 2007, the Naval Criminal Investigation Service (NCIS) [official website] announced investigations of at least 10 Marines [JURIST report] in connection with the Fallujah offensive after former Marine Corporal Ryan Weemer admitted during a polygraphed job interview with the US Secret Service that he had witnessed indiscriminate killings in Fallujah. Military journalist Nathaniel Helms later corroborated that account, reporting that he witnessed Marines execute subdued Iraqi prisoners, whose bodies were later buried under rubble from an air strike. Three Marines have been accused in connection with the shootings. Weemer was charged with murder and dereliction of duty in March and Marine Sgt. Jermaine A. Nelson was charged with murder in December [JURIST reports]; Nazario was charged in August of last year. The Fresno Bee has more.

[JURIST] The US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence [official website] voted Thursday to approve a ban prohibiting the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) [official website] from allowing private contractors to interrogate detainees. The ban is part of a bill authorizing intelligence expenditures for the 2009 fiscal year which would also require intelligence agencies to give the International Committee of the Red Cross [official website] access to all intelligence prisoners. The measure is intended to prevent the agencies from holding "ghost detainees" [JURIST news archive], prisoners who are held in secret without record or communication.

The bill also contains a provision, added earlier this week, that restricts CIA interrogators [JURIST report] to techniques included in the 2006 Army Field Manual on Human Intelligence Collector Operations [PDF text; press release]. That measure would effectively prevent the CIA from using waterboarding [JURIST news archive] during interrogations. If passed, the bill would also create an inspector general for each of the 16 US intelligence agencies. In March, President George W. Bush vetoed [JURIST report] the Intelligence Authorization Act of 2008 [HR 2082 materials], which included a similar provision limiting CIA interrogators to interrogation techniques explicitly authorized by the 2006 Army Field Manual, and an attempt to override the veto failed [JURIST report]. AP has more.