[JURIST] US Department of Defense [official website] prosecutors announced Monday they had filed charges [press release] related to the 2000 al Qaeda attack [US DOD inquiry report; JURIST news archive] on the USS Cole [official website] against Guantanamo Bay detainee Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri [Globalsecurity backgrounder]. Al-Nashiri, a Saudi national, is charged with terrorism, attempted murder, and providing material support to terrorism, among other offenses. The charges fall under the Military Commissions Act of 2006 [PDF text; JURIST news archive] and must now be approved by Convening Authority Susan J. Crawford, who will decide whether to refer the charges to military commission. AP has more.

Last year, al-Nashiri said that his confession to planning the USS Cole attack was coerced through torture [JURIST report] at Guantanamo. In 2004, a Yemeni security court charged [JURIST report] al-Nashiri in absentia in connection with the attack, saying he belonged to the al Qaeda terrorist network. In 2005, a Yemeni appeals court upheld a death sentence [JURIST reports] against al-Nashiri.

[JURIST] The United States should set a concrete deadline for closure of the military prison at Guantanamo Bay [JURIST news archive], according to a Monday report [PDF text] by an investigator from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe Parliamentary Assembly (OSCEPA) [official website]. OSCEPA's special Guantanamo envoy Anne-Marie Lizin [personal website, in French] said that the major problems blocking closure include questions over the repatriation of detainees who are either likely to reengage in terrorist activities or face inhumane punishments if returned to their countries of origin. She also reported that living conditions for the detainees have not changed significantly since her report last year [JURIST report]. Her report indicated doubt about the value of the prison, saying:

We expressed our skepticism in previous reports as to the added value of information gathered after years of detention, as well as the degree to which certain detainees are dangerous. As regards the latter point, we must bear in mind the fact that a large number of detainees who were released and transferred clearly shows many of them wound up in Guantanamo almost by chance, because they kept suspect company or because they were at the wrong place at the wrong time. Conversely, it cannot be doubted that individuals transferred to Guantanamo after spending several years in CIA secret prisons outside the territory of the United States, are highly dangerous. It remains to be seen whether the evidence compiled against them will be sufficient and whether the information they have provided was not extracted under constraint and even torture, as their defenders and human rights organisations assert.

[JURIST] Colombian President Alvaro Uribe [official profile, in Spanish; BBC profile] Monday moved forward with plans for a national referendum on the country's 2006 presidential election. Last week, the Colombian High Court [official backgrounder] ruled [AP report] that a legal inquiry should be held into the election after it found that a legislator had been bribed to help push constitutional amendments allowing Uribe to seek a second term in office. Uribe accused the court of bias and instead announced plans to hold a referendum on the election's outcome. It is not clear if a referendum can be held before the court determines whether the election was legally valid. Critics accused Uribe of overstepping his authority in ignoring the judiciary, and of using the referendum as a stepping-stone to push additional amendments to allow him to run for a third term. Reuters has more.

Uribe has frequently clashed with the courts in recent months, particularly in matters concerning the country's long feud with right-wing anti-government paramilitaries. In May, the Constitutional Court [official backgrounder] threw out a part of the controversial 2005 Justice and Peace Law [JURIST reports] approved by Uribe, which gave lesser punishments to paramilitary leaders who voluntarily disarm. Paramilitary leaders argued that the decision would disrupt the peace process.

[JURIST] The Pakistani constitution must be amended in order to reinstate the judges who were ousted last year by Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf [official profile; JURIST news archive], Pakistani Law and Justice Minister Farooq H. Naik said Sunday. He said that while the constitution provides for the appointment of judges, it does not speak to the reinstatement of ousted judges. Under current law, parliament can request the reinstatement but the federal government is not required to follow parliament's suggestion. In April, Naik prepared a constitutional package [JURIST report] to restore the ousted judges, calling for a parliamentary committee to limit the tenure of the chief justice to three years. Those proposed constitutional amendments also called for restoration of the 1973 Constitution and the abolition of Article 58(2)b [texts], which empowers the president to dissolve the government and the parliament. Daily Times has more.

Pakistan's new coalition government, formed by the Pakistan People's Party and the Pakistan Muslim League [party websites], has vowed to establish a fully independent judiciary and work together to reinstate judges [JURIST reports] ousted by Musharraf's declaration of emergency rule [proclamation, PDF; JURIST report] last November. Pakistani Attorney General Malik Qayyum has also said that reinstating the judges would require a constitutional amendment [JURIST report] with a two-thirds majority vote in parliament. In May, Musharraf insisted that a constitutional amendment was necessary [JURIST report] to restore the judges.

[JURIST] Unknown bombers made unsuccessful assassination attempts on the lives of five Iraqi appeals court judges Monday. The five judges - Ali al-Alaq, Suleiman Abdullah, Ghanim Janab, Alaa al-Timimi, and Hassan Fouad - are all members of the al-Rasafa Court of Appeal in eastern Baghdad. While all five were unharmed in the separate attacks, the wife of Ali al-Alaq and family members of Suleiman Abdullah were wounded by the bombs, and the judges' vehicles and property sustained damages in the blasts. An Iraqi judge told Voices of Iraq that the attacks involved roadside bombs targeting the judges as they commuted to work [Voices of Iraq report]. Last Thursday, Kamel al-Shewaili, the president of the al-Rasafah court, was shot and killed [JURIST report] by unidentified assailants while travelling on a Baghdad highway. Reuters has more.

In January, Iraqi federal court of appeal judge and Supreme Judicial Council member Amir Jawdat al-Naeib was also assassinated [JURIST report] by gunmen in the capital. The Judicial Council said in August 2007 that 31 Iraqi judges have been assassinated since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein's regime. The Iraqi Lawyers Association reported in April last year that at least 210 lawyers and judges have been killed [IRIN report] since the US-led invasion, with dozens more injured in attacks which have prompted hundreds to leave the country. Many key Iraqi judges and their families now live in the fortified Green Zone in Baghdad or in the so-called Rule of Law complex [NYT report], a secure compound in the northern Baghdad neighborhood of Rusafa where they are supposedly safe from outside threats.

[JURIST] A German man's right to a fair trial was not violated by police torture threats, the European Court of Human Rights [official website] ruled [text; press release] Monday. In 2003, Magnus Gaefgen was convicted of kidnapping and killing a six-year-old child after German police threatened Gaefgen with torture to get him to reveal the location of the body. Gaefgen argued that the threats violated the Article 3 prohibitions against torture and the Article 6 right to a fair trial enshrined in the European Convention on Human Rights [text]. Although the ECHR ruled that torture was "inhuman," it found that the German trial court had already excluded the coerced confession from evidence:

The Regional Court decided at the outset of the trial hearing that, on account of the threats against him, all confessions and statements made by the applicant in the entire investigation proceedings could not be used as evidence at trial. The court argued that the applicant had not been previously instructed by the prosecution authorities that the use as evidence of the statements he had made as a result of the threats against him was excluded (see paragraphs 24-26 above). The Court considers that this exclusion of statements made under threat or in view of incriminating statements extracted previously is an effective method of redressing disadvantages the defendant suffered on that account in the criminal proceedings against him. By restoring him to the status quo ante in this respect, it serves to discourage the extraction of statements by methods prohibited by Article 3.

[JURIST] Thana Tansiri, a lawyer for former Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra [BBC backgrounder; JURIST news archive], began serving a six-month prison sentence Monday for his role in an attempt to bribe officials [Nation report] overseeing a corruption case against Thaksin. Thana is one of three lawyers sentenced [Nation report] last week for delivering a paper bag containing $60,000 to a court official. The two other lawyers involved are already in prison, but Thana's sentence had been delayed while he was hospitalized for "stress." All three lawyers say the bag was delivered by mistake, and Thaksin has denied that he was part of any bribery plan [Nation report]. The Nation has more. Reuters has additional coverage.

Also Monday, Thailand's Constitutional Court [official website, in Thai] ruled that the Assets Examination Committee, a panel formed to investigate corruption charges against Thaksin, was not rendered invalid after voters approved a new constitution [JURIST report] last year. Last week, the Committee recommend that two new charges be brought [AP report] against Thaksin, one for using his position to secure a $127 million loan to benefit a company owned by his family, and another for corruption related to the purchase of approximately $43 million worth of rubber trees. In March, Thaksin pleaded not guilty [JURIST report] to separate corruption charges stemming from a 2003 land purchase by his wife Pojamarn from a government-directed institution despite a ban on officials making business deals with government agencies. In February, Thaksin returned to Thailand from self-imposed exile to face corruption charges laid against him after he was ousted in a military coup [JURIST reports] in September 2006. AFP has more.

[JURIST] Iran's Revolutionary Court sentenced an Iranian electronics salesman to death Monday after convicting him of espionage, according to a state media report [FNA report]. Ali Ashtari, who was arrested last year, was charged with using his sales connections in the military to pass information on Iran's Atomic Energy Organization [official website, in Persian] to Israeli intelligence agents. Israeli officials denied knowledge of Ashtari's case. Ashtari has 20 days to appeal the ruling. AP has more. Reuters has additional coverage.

Last year, Iranian police arrested twenty people [JURIST report] near the Iraqi border on suspicion of participating in an international spy ring. The arrests came several months after the Iranian government first accused four Iranian-Americans [JURIST news archive] of belonging to a US-organized spy network. In May 2007, Iran formally charged [JURIST report] Iranian-American scholar Dr. Haleh Esfandiari [WWC profile] with allegedly plotting "against the sovereignty of the country," and charged Dr. Kian Tajbakhsh [OSI press release] and Radio Farda [media website] correspondent Parnaz Azima with allegedly engaging in an espionage conspiracy [JURIST report]. In June last year, an Iranian judge said that Esfandiari and Tajbakhsh admitted to carrying out some "activities" [JURIST report], although it was unclear if their statements were tantamount to an admission of spying.

[JURIST] The Dutch Public Prosecution Service (OM) [official website, English version] will not prosecute politician Geert Wilders [personal website, in Dutch] for his video and printed statements against the Quran and Islam because the statements are not punishable under anti-discrimination laws [OM statement]. Wilders, who is an official with the right-wing People's Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD) [party website, in Dutch], released written statements in 2006 and 2007 that elicited more than 40 criminal complaints against him. A film released by Wilders on the Internet last March led to dozens more criminal complaints. In its statement, the OM said:

The fact that statements are hurtful and offensive to a large number of Muslims does not necessarily mean that such statements are punishable. It is true that some statements insult Muslims, but these were made in the context of public debate, which means that the statements are no longer of a punishable nature.

[JURIST] Malaysian opposition politician Anwar Ibrahim [BBC profile; JURIST news archive] filed a lawsuit [The Star report] on Monday against a former aide who had accused him of sodomy [JURIST report] on Saturday.  In the lawsuit, Anwar said that the aide's allegations against him were baseless and politically motivated. Also on Monday, Anwar left the Turkish Embassy in Kuala Lumpur, where he had taken refuge [Anwar blog post], fearing for his personal safety in the wake of the sodomy allegations. On Sunday, Anwar had indicated through Datin Seri Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ismail, the president of Anwar's Parti Keadilan Rakyat [party website, in Malay] that he would not leave the Turkish Embassy unless Malaysian Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi [official profile] guaranteed Anwar's safety [New Straits Times report]. BBC has more. AFP has additional coverage.

Under Malaysian law, sodomy is punishable by 20 years in prison regardless of whether or not it was consensual. Anwar was Malaysia's Deputy Prime Minister under former Prime Minister Mahathir bin Mohamad until he was fired in 1998 as the result of earlier sodomy charges of which he was initially convicted but later cleared. He only recently reentered Malaysian politics following the expiration of a ten-year ban [JURIST report] against him for unrelated corruption charges. Earlier this month the Federal Court of Malaysia ruled he could challenge the constitutionality [JURIST report] of his original dismissal from office.

[JURIST] The US House Judiciary Committee [official website] has issued a subpoena [text, PDF; press release] to Attorney General Michael Mukasey for documents relating to the Valerie Plame leak scandal [JURIST news archive] and other Committee investigations. The Committee specifically requested transcripts of interviews with US President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and five White House aides, all of whom were questioned during the criminal investigation into the leak. In addition, the Committee is seeking all unclassified documents relating to legal counsel the Administration received on detainee interrogation methods and the legal ramifications of domestic counter-terrorism efforts [JURIST news archives]. The Committee also asked for documents relating to the firing of a US attorney, voters' rights investigations, and selective prosecution allegations. Concluding that a subpoena was the only way for the Committee to obtain the requested documents, chariman John Conyers (D-Mich) [official website] Friday wrote:

Although the Committee seeks to obtain information necessary for its oversight responsibilities cooperatively whenever possible, utilizing subpoenas as a last resort, we have concluded that a subpoena is warranted in this instance in light of our many prior requests for these documents. We trust that this subpoena will now facilitate the prompt production of the requested documents.

[JURIST] International leaders and human rights groups have criticized last Friday's presidential run-off election in Zimbabwe [Harare Tribune election results], calling the elections unfair and characterizing the government of newly sworn-in president Robert Mugabe [BBC profile; JURIST news archive] as illegitimate. A committee of the Pan-African Parliament (PAP) [official website], the legislative branch of the African Union, reported Monday that killings, intimidation and violence were common [report text] in the lead-up to the elections, and that the election itself had a low voter turnout and was neither transparent nor impartial. Through a spokesperson, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon [official profile] indicated in a press statement [text] that the voting results "did not reflect the true and genuine will of the Zimbabwean people or produce a legitimate result." Meeting in Kyoto, Japan for the 2008 G8 Kyoto Foreign Ministers' Meeting [summit website], foreign ministers from the G8 countries issued a joint statement [text] on Zimbabwe, saying:

We deplore the actions of the Zimbabwean authorities - systematic violence, obstruction and intimidation - which have made a free and fair Presidential run-off election impossible. We strongly urge the Zimbabwean authorities to work with the opposition to achieve a prompt, peaceful resolution of the crisis in accordance with the democratic wishes of the Zimbabwean people and, for that purpose, to cooperate fully with the international efforts.