[JURIST] The Iraqi Parliament [official website] has failed to agree on a draft election bill prior to adjourning for the summer on Wednesday. Kurdish legislators have strongly opposed the bill's proposal to establish a provincial council in Kirkuk [GlobalSecurity backgrounder] made up of equal numbers of Kurdish, Arab, and Turkmeni representatives. Kurds constitute the majority in the area, and have argued that this arrangement does not reflect the region's true population. Some have said that the delay in passing the draft law could postpone provincial elections until next year, although deputy parliamentary speaker Khalid al-Attiyah said that elections can proceed on schedule if the draft law is passed by September. Earlier this month, Iraqi law makers reached an agreement to temporarily divide control of Kirkuk [JURIST report] among the city's ethnic groups, as part of a compromise bill providing for provincial elections in the city. AP has more.

Last month, Kurdish parliamentarians staged a walkout [JURIST report], delaying a vote on the proposed provincial election bill that they said was unconstitutional. The bill passed despite the boycott, but Iraqi President Jalal Talabani [official website, in Arabic; BBC profile] and the two other members of the Iraqi Presidency Council later refused to sign it [JURIST report] because it had been passed by an incomplete parliament. In February, Iraq's Presidency Council rejected an earlier draft provincial elections law [JURIST report] that detailed the relationship between Iraq's central and local governments, sending the legislation back to parliament. The draft law was part of a package of legislation approved [JURIST report] by the parliament earlier that month that also included the 2008 budget and an amnesty bill [JURIST report] that will lead to the release of roughly 5,000 prisoners.

[JURIST] The Constitutional Court of Thailand [official website, in Thai] ruled Tuesday that the law establishing the National Counter Corruption Commission (NCCC) [official website] is appropriate under the country's current constitution [PDF text]. Ousted Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra [BBC backgrounder; JURIST news archive] and his wife Pojamarn Shinawatra [JURIST news archive] had filed a constitutional challenge to the NCCC statue, arguing that the law was an unreasonable violation of their rights to individual liberty. Thaksin had also alleged that the body's authorizing statute violated Thailand's 1997 constitution and the 2006 interim charter [texts], but the court declined to consider those arguments, finding the challenges moot because those charters are no longer in effect. The Bangkok Post has more.

Thai prosecutors have brought multiple corruption charges against Thaksin and his wife since Thaksin's ouster in a September 2006 bloodless coup [JURIST report]. Last month, the Thai Attorney General's Office filed charges [JURIST report] against Thaksin relating to a 2003 resolution that reduced fees paid by mobile phone companies to state telecommunications agencies. Thaksin has also been charged in relation to an alleged corruption scheme [JURIST report] concerning the country's lottery system. Thaksin is currently the subject of 24 legal actions. Also last month, a Thai court convicted Pojamarn Shinawatra of tax evasion [JURIST report] for transferring $16.3 million worth of stock to her step-brother and secretary, who were also convicted.

[JURIST] The Venezuelan Supreme Court [official website, in Spanish] Tuesday upheld [press release, in Spanish] a list blocking 272 political candidates from running for office because of suspected corruption. Critics had argued that the list [Venezuela Information Centre analysis] was unconstitutional because many of those included had not been convicted of any crime. Some also alleged that the list focused on opponents of current Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez [official profile, in Spanish; BBC profile], but the court held:

[T]he court concludes that the restriction of human rights is acceptable in accordance with the laws that are given for reasons of general interest, for the safety of other members of society and for the common good, in accordance with the provisions of Articles 30 and 32.2 of the American Convention on Human Rights.

This requirement is fully compatible with the provisions of Articles 19 and 156, 32 cardinal of the National Constitution.

[JURIST] Iran has commuted the sentences of four people scheduled to be executed by stoning and has suspended the use of the punishment, local media reported Wednesday. Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi-Shahroudi, the head of the country's judiciary, had originally placed a moratorium on the punishment in 2002, but nine people were given the sentence [BBC report] in July for adultery and sexual offenses. International rights advocates have increased pressure [AI release] on Iran to ban the punishment, and the country announced an investigation into the judge [JURIST report] who ordered the stoning execution of a man convicted of adultery in July 2007. Others who had faced the punishment will now receive either life in prison or other forms of corporal punishment. AFP has more. BBC News has additional coverage.

In July, Iran hanged 29 people [JURIST report] in Tehran in a move that human rights groups suggested was intended to challenge international criticism [JURIST report] of its death penalty policies. Last April, an Amnesty International report [text; JURIST report] named Iran as having one of the three highest execution rates in the world, along with China and Pakistan. Most executions in the country are carried out by hanging and are related to such crimes as murder and rape, although an Iranian airport customs officer was executed for corruption [JURIST report] in January.

[JURIST] Serbia's Office of the War Crimes Prosecutor [official website] indicted [press release, MHT] two war crimes suspects Tuesday in connection with the 1992 killing of 700 Muslim civilians in the town of Zvornik. Former Zvornik mayor Branko Grujic and former local defense chief Branko Popovic are accused of using their positions to detain and kill civilians. In 2005, prosecutors charged [indictment, MHT; BBC report] Grujic, Popovic and five others with murdering at least 19 Bosnian Muslim civilians. Theirs was the first war crimes case to be transfered from the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) [official website] to Serbian courts. AP has more. Beta has additional coverage.

On Sunday, Serbian President Boris Tadic [official website] said that the country will fully cooperate with the ICTY to find and arrest Ratko Mladic [ICTY materials, PDF; amended indictment, PDF] and Goran Hadzic [ICTY materials, PDF; indictment, PDF], two war crimes suspects still wanted by the court after the arrest [JURIST report] of Radovan Karadzic [ICTY materials; JURIST news archive] in July. Both men were Serbian leaders during Yugoslavia's ethnic conflicts of the 1990s. Mladic faces charges of genocide and crimes against humanity for overseeing the Srebrenica [JURIST news archive] prison massacre and other killings of Bosnian Muslims and Croats, while Hadzic faces crimes against humanity charges for killings of non-Serbs and for abuses in Croatian prison camps. Tadic's pledge to cooperate with the court comes despite widespread protests [JURIST report] against the prosecution of Karadic by Serbian nationalist groups.

[JURIST] Sudan Justice Minister Abdel-Basit Sabdarat said Wednesday that he had named one primary prosecutor and three assistants to investigate and try war crimes suspects from the country's Darfur region [JURIST news archive]. The International Criminal Court (ICC) [official website] in the Netherlands currently handles such proceedings, but if Sudanese domestic courts are created with appropriate human rights and accountability safeguards, the ICC is required to hand over jurisdiction under Article 16 of the Rome Statute [PDF text]. The announcement is seen largely as a reaction to the controversial effort [JURIST report] to seek an arrest warrant [application, PDF; ICC press release] for Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir [BBC profile, JURIST news archive]. Both the League of Arab States (LAS) and the African Union (AU) [official websites] have criticized [JURIST report] the warrant and underlying indictment, saying they threaten peace in the unstable country and that Sudan will create its own internationally-monitored courts [JURIST report]. The newly appointed prosecutor will report to the Justice Ministry every month, and if the prosecutor gathers enough evidence against a suspect, he may present the case to a state court. AFP has more. The Sudan Tribune has local coverage.

The LAS released its proposal [press release, in Arabic; JURIST report] for creating the courts in July, following an emergency meeting [JURIST report] to mediate the dispute over the ICC's warrant for al-Bashir. The AU also released a resolution [PDF text] the same month, requesting that the ICC defer to Sudanese courts once they are legitimized. The UN Security Council has repeatedly asked Sudan to comply with the investigation of al-Bashir [JURIST report], but Sudan has refused to do so, calling Chief Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo [official profile] a "terrorist" [JURIST report] and suggesting that he should be removed from office. Before al-Bashir's indictment the Sudanese government had already rejected the ICC's jurisdiction and refused to surrender two previously-named war crimes suspects [JURIST report].

[JURIST] A military group staged a coup in Mauritania [CIA factbook profile] early Wednesday, detaining President Sidi Ould Cheikh Abdallahi [BBC profile] and Prime Minister Yahya Ould Ahmed Waqef [IBT report]. The coup's apparent leader, Gen. Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz, also backed a 2005 coup [JURIST report] that removed then-President Maaoya Sid'Ahmed Taya [BBC report]. Aziz had previously supported Abdallahi, but the two split after Abdallahi made political concessions to conservative Muslim groups. Aziz will now head a new state council, according to a statement broadcast by a state-run television station. The coup overturns the first democratically elected government in the country in more than 20 years. AP has more.

This is the second coup in the country since 2005. That year, a junta led by Aziz took temporary control of the country while then-president Taya, who had allied with the US in the war on terror and increased law enforcement efforts against extremists [AP report], was out of the country. Taya came to power in a coup two decades prior and survived numerous other attempts [JURIST report] to overthrow his administration.

[JURIST] Judge Royce Lamberth [official profile] of the US District Court for the District of Columbia [official website] on Wednesday ordered the unsealing of hundreds of documents [court materials] related to the FBI's probe into the 2001 anthrax attacks [GWU backgrounder]. Among other papers, the released documents include 14 search warrants issued against government scientist and biodefense researcher Bruce Ivins [NPR report], who had recently emerged as a suspect in the mailings. Last week, Ivins apparently committed suicide [Los Angeles Times report] after learning that the Department of Justice (DOJ) planned to prosecute him in connection with the attacks. Officials close to the investigation said that the documents were first released in briefings made to victims' families and that the investigation into the crime has all but ended. AP has more. BBC News has additional coverage.

Earlier this month, the US Department of Justice (DOJ) [official website] announced that it will pay former US Army germ-warfare researcher Dr. Steven Hatfill [WP profile] $2.8 million to settle his claim that the DOJ violated the US Privacy Act [text] by providing information about him to journalists during its investigation of the 2001 anthrax attacks, in which he was at one point named a "person of interest." The DOJ initially agreed to seek a settlement in late June after Hatfill filed his lawsuit [JURIST reports]. The settlement may moot a contempt case against former USA Today reporter and past JURIST student staff member Toni Locy [JURIST news archive], who is now awaiting a ruling by the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit. Locy had refused to disclose her related sources in discovery, and Hatfill lawyer Christopher Wright later stated [letter, PDF] that Locy's evidence was no longer needed by his client.

[JURIST] The jury in the military commission trial of Salim Ahmed Hamdan [DOD materials; JURIST news archive] found Hamdan guilty on Wednesday of providing material support for terrorism, marking the first verdict rendered by a military commission trial at Guantanamo Bay. The jury [Miami Herald report], made up of six military officers, was selected on July 21, and the trial lasted for two weeks before deliberations [JURIST report] began Monday. They found Hamdan guilty on the charge [charge sheet, PDF] of providing material support for terrorism but innocent on the charge of conspiracy. He now faces a sentence of up to life in prison. BBC News has more. The Guardian has additional coverage.

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. Congress subsequently passed the Military Commissions Act of 2006 [DOD materials], which established the current military commissions system. In April, Hamdan announced that he planned to boycott his military commission trial, and in May a military judge delayed the trial [JURIST reports] until July. A judge in the US District Court for the District of Columbia subsequently rejected [JURIST report] a bid by Hamdan's lawyers to stay his trial, ruling that a civilian court should refrain from reviewing the case until the military commission issues a final judgment. In July, the military court denied [JURIST report] Hamdan's motion to dismiss the charges against him, holding that the military commission assigned to his trial had jurisdiction to hear the case.

[JURIST] US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) [official website] launched a new program [fact sheet; press release] Tuesday that allows certain illegal immigrants to coordinate their removal from the US with ICE without the risk of home raids, arrest or detention. The Scheduled Departure Program, a pilot program that will run through August 22 in five major cities [program overview], is designed for illegal immigrants without criminal records who have ignored official removal orders. According to the ICE press release:

The agency recognizes there are those less inclined to accept the intentions of such a compassionately conceived enforcement initiative, but remains committed to providing sensible alternatives that balance the welfare of the individuals and families in question with its clear obligation to uphold the law.

The Scheduled Departure Program will not alter a participant's immigration status or provide any immigration benefit. The program is not a form of voluntary departure or voluntary return. Participants will continue to have a final order of removal, deportation or exclusion.

[JURIST] The state of Texas executed Mexican national Jose Ernesto Medellin [ASIL backgrounder; JURIST news archive] late Tuesday evening after the US Supreme Court narrowly refused [decision, PDF] to stay his sentence [information sheet]. Medellin's appeal was based on a July order [order and press release, PDF; JURIST report] by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) [official website], which had attempted to halt his execution and mandated a review to determine whether Medellin and four other Mexican nationals on death row in Texas were inappropriately denied the chance to speak with Mexican counselor officers in violation of the 1963 Vienna Convention on Consular Relations [PDF text]. Medellin had argued that his execution should be stayed because either state or federal bodies could decide to recognize the order in the future, but the Supreme Court majority disagreed, saying the possibility was too remote to warrant a stay:

The beginning premise for any stay, and indeed for the assumption that Congress or the legislature might seek to intervene in this suit, must be that petitioner’s confession was obtained unlawfully. This is highly unlikely as a matter of domestic or international law. Other arguments seeking to establish that a violation of the Convention constitutes grounds for showing the invalidity of the state court judgment, for instance because counsel was inadequate, are also insubstantial... The Department of Justice of the United States is well aware of these proceedings and has not chosen to seek our intervention. Its silence is no surprise: The United States has not wavered in its position that petitioner was not prejudiced by his lack of consular access.

[JURIST] The US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit [official website] ruled [opinion, PDF] Tuesday that a radio talk-show host's inflammatory remarks about a company which conducted interrogations for the US military at Abu Ghraib prison [JURIST news archive] were protected under the First Amendment. In 2005, CACI International [corporate website] filed a defamation suit in federal district court against Randi Rhodes and her radio station, Air America Radio [official websites], for comments that Rhodes made on the air accusing CACI of "among other things, torture, rape, murder, and misrepresenting its authority. . . at Abu Ghraib" and likening CACI and other independent contractors operating in Iraq to those "that operated in apartheid South Africa." In affirming the lower court's grant of summary judgment to Rhodes and Air America, the Fourth Circuit court explained that:

The conduct of the military and its designated civilian surrogates during wartime is a matter of the highest public concern, and speech critical of those responsible for military operations is well within the constitutionally protected area of free discussion. ...Such a commentator must simply maintain a standard of care such as to avoid knowing falsehood or reckless disregard of the truth.

[JURIST] Spain's National Court [official website, in Spanish] agreed Tuesday to hear a suit filed by pro-Tibet advocacy groups alleging that seven Chinese officials committed acts of genocide in connection with China's attempts to suppress protests against Chinese rule in Tibet [BBC backgrounder] in March. The suit, filed July 7 by the Tibet House Foundation, Support Tibet Committee [advocacy websites, in Spanish], and Tubten Wanghen Sherpa Sherpa, accuses Chinese officials, including Defence Minister Liang Guanglie, of organizing a violent response to the demonstrations that resulted in the deaths of at least 200 protesters and the arrest of about 6,000. Following the court's decision to hear the case, the director of the Support Tibet Committee told an AFP reporter [AFP report] that he was "stunned with joy for the victims and the Tibetan people." Reuters has more. The Epoch Times has local coverage.

Under Spanish law, the country's courts can exercise universal jurisdiction [HRW backgrounder] to try those suspected of genocide and other serious human rights offenses even if they occur abroad. Chinese officials have blamed the exiled Dalai Lama [personal website] for organizing the protests by Buddhist monks in the Tibetan capital of Lhasa in March. China says that 19 people died after skirmishes between pro-Tibet protesters and Chinese authorities during the demonstrations, but the Tibetan government-in-exile [official website] said that 130 had died [JURIST report]. The Dalai Lama has denied accusations that he was behind the riots and has said that he supports true autonomy for Tibet, not outright independence.