[JURIST] Officials for Iraq's Human Rights Ministry have said that they plan to prosecute those suspected of torturing inmates of the country's prison system, according to a Wednesday report [AFP report]. The country signed on to the UN's Convention Against Torture [text] on Sunday, but has not yet explicitly prohibited the practice. Prosecutors say they will find a way to use existing laws to charge offenders. The officials say the have documented dozens of cases of torture in Iraqi-run detention facilities, and that United Nations Special Investigator on Torture Manfred Nowak [UN materials], who has voiced grave concern over conditions in the country [BBC report], plans to visit Iraq in October. In 2005 Human Rights Watch [advocacy website] issued a report [HRW materials, press release] citing numerous incidents of torture and prisoner abuse in the country since the 2003 US invasion.

[JURIST] Indonesian Attorney General Hendarman Supandji announced [Jakarta Post report] Wednesday that the men convicted of the 2002 Bali nightclub bombings [BBC backgrounder] will not be executed until after the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, during which the death penalty is not implemented. Supandji said that he could not approve the executions because he has not yet received certification from the country's Constitutional Court that the men, Mukhlas, Imam Samudra and Amrozi Nurhasyim [BBC profiles] have exhausted all of their appeals. Earlier this month, the court accepted the men's challenge [JURIST report] to the country's use of firing squad executions, a punishment they argue amounts to "torture" and is contrary to Islamic law [VOA report]. That challenge alone would not be sufficient reason to postpone the executions. AFP has more.

All three men are members of the Southeast Asian terror group Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) [CFR backgrounder; JURIST news archive] and their lawyer had promised to bring their constitutional challenge against the penalty after the Indonesian Supreme Court rejected their third appeal [JURIST reports] of the charges in July. Their first appeal had been rejected late last year, prompting an unusual second appeal, which was later withdrawn [JURIST reports]. In May, Indonesian police arrested [JURIST report] another JI member, Faiz Fauzan, in connection with the another set of Bali bombings [BBC report] in 2005. In March, an Indonesian judge handed down 15-year sentences [JURIST report] to two JI leaders, Zarkasih and Abu Dujana [BBC profiles] after convicting them of other terrorism charges.

[JURIST] Iran has executed a man for a stabbing he committed while still a minor, according Wednesday reports from local media. The execution is said to violate the terms of the UN Convention on the Rights of a Child [text], to which Iran is a signatory, but officials for the country argue that it and similar executions are allowed because the offenders reached the age of majority before being executed. Human Rights Watch (HRW) [advocacy website] has said [press release] that Iran leads the world in executing the most people for crimes committed as children and advocacy campaign Stop Child Executions keeps a list [advocacy materials] of those facing execution. 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. AFP has more.

Earlier this month, Iran commuted the sentences [JURIST report] of four people scheduled to be executed by stoning and suspended the use of the punishment, after nine people were given the sentence [BBC report] in July for adultery and sexual offenses despite a moratorium on the practice [JURIST report]. 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. 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] The City of New York agreed to pay approximately $2 million to settle a lawsuit [complaint, PDF; CCR backgrounder] brought by protesters who had claimed they had been illegally arrested, according to Tuesday statements made by the city's Law Department. In April 2003, city police arrested anti-war protesters while they were holding a demonstration outside the offices of military investment firm Carlyle Group [corporate website], asserting that they were obstructing a sidewalk and engaging in disorderly conduct, but the protesters were later either released or acquitted of the charges. The group argued that the city violated their rights to free speech and assembly, maliciously prosecuted and falsely imprisoned them, and failed to reprimand officers who had assaulted and battered them. In agreeing to the settlement, the city admitted no wrongdoing, but in a statement [CCR release] from the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) [advocacy website], which helped to file the claims, one protester was quoted as having said that she hoped the settlement would change city and national policy:

We hope our victory helps convince the City to stop violating people's rights as a matter of policy and stop wasting taxpayers' money doing so... It should also serve as a reminder that Washington's illegal war in Afghanistan and Iraq is also being fought at home – against its own citizens and in the name of war profiteers like Carlyle and Halliburton. We intend to continue our resistance until this stops.

[JURIST] The US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit [official website] ruled [opinion, PDF] on Tuesday that existing US Food and Drug Association (FDA) [official website] regulations do not preempt a New Jersey woman's state claim that she was poisoned by the mercury in canned tuna. The suit alleges that Tri-Union, producers of Chicken-of-the-Sea [company website] brand tuna, failed to warn consumers about the potential danger of mercury poisoning that resulted from the consumption of its products. The Third Circuit rejected Tri-Union's argument that her claim was preempted by the FDA's regulatory scheme regarding the presence of mercury in fish:

This is a situation in which the FDA has promulgated no regulation concerning the risk posed by mercury in fish or warnings for that risk, has adopted no rule precluding states from imposing a duty to warn, and has taken no action establishing mercury warnings as misbranding under federal law or as contrary to federal law in any other respect. [The] lawsuit does not conflict with the FDA’s “regulatory scheme” for the risks posed by mercury in fish or the warnings appropriate for that risk because the FDA simply has not regulated the matter.

The FDA has only issued a consumer advisory regarding the risks posed by mercury in fish and established a guideline regarding mercury concentrations to guide its enforcement decisions. Neither of these agency acts constitutes a federal legal standard or binding regulatory action on the subject which could give rise to a conflict, and indeed neither expresses a policy or viewpoint or approach inherently inconsistent with [the] lawsuit. In the final analysis, this case involves an agency effort to preempt an area of law traditionally within the states’ police powers

[JURIST] Jury selection began Tuesday in the the trial of a former US Marine who faces voluntary manslaughter charges [JURIST report] for alleged involvement in the deaths of four Iraqi civilians in 2004. Sergeant Jose Nazario cannot face trial by court-martial because he is no longer in the military, and is therefore being tried under the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act of 2000 [text], which gives federal courts jurisdiction over civilians who allegedly committed crimes abroad while still associated with the US military. Some have criticized the government's use of the law against Nazario, arguing that it was designed to prosecute government contractors, but others cite specific language in the Act as evidence that it was also intended to include retired military personnel:

An Act...to establish Federal jurisdiction over offenses committed outside the United States by persons employed by or accompanying the Armed Forces, or by members of the Armed Forces who are released or separated from active duty prior to being identified and prosecuted for the commission of such offenses, and for other purposes.

[JURIST] The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit [official website] on Tuesday vacated [decision, PDF] a 2006 Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) [official website] rule [Federal Register notice] prohibiting state and local governments from monitoring air pollution below acceptable levels set by the EPA for "stationary" sources such as power plants and factories. The court wrote that the rule violated Title V of the Clean Air Act [text] because the EPA's monitoring protocols themselves violated the Act, and because the rule prevented state and local governments from making up for its shortcomings. In the decision, the court posed the question facing local governments obligated to issue permits to the facilities:

... how should a permitting authority respond to an emission standard that has a periodic monitoring requirement inadequate to the task of assuring compliance? For example, suppose there is a standard that limits emission from a given stationary source to X units of pollutant per day. Suppose also that the standard requires annual monitoring. Where annual testing cannot assure compliance with a daily emission limit, may the permitting authority supplement the monitoring requirement “to assure compliance with the permit terms and conditions,” as the Act commands?

Title V is a complex statute with a clear objective: it enlists EPA and state and local environmental authorities in a common effort to create a permit program for most stationary sources of air pollution. Fundamental to this scheme is the mandate that “[e]ach permit . . . shall set forth . . . monitoring . . . requirements to assure compliance with the permit terms and conditions.” By its terms, this mandate means that a monitoring requirement insufficient “to assure compliance” with emission limits has no place in a permit unless and until it is supplemented by more rigorous standards. [citations omitted]

[JURIST] The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit [official website] on Tuesday upheld [opinion; PDF] a California public school district's policy that parents may only observe their disabled children in the classroom for twenty minutes in order to evaluate the school's proposed education plan. The parents of a student (L.M.) with autism [advocacy site] filed suit after the psychologist they hired to evaluate the proposed plan was allowed only twenty minutes in the classroom, even though the district's own experts viewed L.M. in his home for three hours. The court rejected the parents' allegations that the district's policy violated the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) [text] by denying their child access to a free and appropriate public education. The court also ruled against the parents' argument that the policy infringed upon their right to due process by interfering with their ability to participate in a placement hearing. The court explained:

The District’s policy...was harmless because Parents nevertheless had a full opportunity to participate in the process to fashion an appropriate educational plan for L.M. with help from an informed and knowledgeable expert. There is no evidence to support a finding that Parents’ right to participate was significantly affected.