[JURIST] Members of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have killed Palestinian terror suspects in defiance of a 2006 Israeli Supreme Court [official website] ruling [JURIST report; MJIL analysis] on targeted killings, according to Haaretz Wednesday. The 2006 ruling set up guidelines for targeted killings [BBC backgrounder] which include a direction that if possible, suspects should be arrested, and that "every effort must be made to minimize harm to innocent civilians." Haaretz said IDF documents it obtained [Haaretz report] indicate that since 2006 Israeli Defense Forces have generally made little effort to arrest suspects before killing them. In June 2007, for example, the IDF made no attempt to arrest Jenin Islamic Jihad head Ziad Malaisha before killing him [IDF press release]. Israeli Chief Military Advocate Brigadier General Avichai Mendelblit [IDF backgrounder] rejected the newspaper's report [Haaretz report], saying all IDF actions, including targeted killings, are in compliance with the law.

In 2006 the Israeli Supreme Court ruled that although some targeted killings were not legal, not all are prohibited by international law [JURIST report]. It outlined four factors that would determine whether a particular targeted killing was justified. Two Israeli human rights groups filed a petition in 2002 seeking a ban on the Israeli policy, which Israeli government officials have defended as the most effective method of stopping Palestinian terrorists from bombing Israel targets. The court's consideration of the case had been put on hold after Israeli security officials said in January 2005 that targeted killings of Palestinian militants would be suspended [JURIST report], but the court resumed deliberations later that year after the IDF resumed the practice.

[JURIST] Russia's Federation Council [official website, in Russian], the upper house of parliament, voted 144-1 on Wednesday to approve amendments to the Russian Constitution [materials] that would extend presidential terms [Article 81(1) text] from four to six years and terms for members of the Duma [Article 96(1) text], or lower house, from four to five years. The Duma passed [JURIST report] the amendments last week, after expediting their consideration [JURIST report]. The amendments must now be supported by two-thirds of regional parliaments before they take effect. RIA Novosti has local coverage.

Critics fear that the term extensions are designed to orchestrate a longer third term for former president and current prime minister Vladimir Putin [official website, in Russian; BBC News report] should current president Dmitri Medvedev [official website; JURIST news archive] step aside. Medvedev proposed the changes in his first state of the nation address [text; JURIST report] to the Federal Council earlier this month. These would be the first amendments to the Russian constitution since it replaced its Soviet-era predecessor [text, in Russian] in 1993.

[JURIST] The Czech Constitutional Court [official website] on Wednesday ruled unanimously [judgment text] that the European Union (EU) reform pact formally known as the Treaty of Lisbon [official website; text] is consistent with the Czech Constitution [text]. Members of the Civic Democratic Party [official website] of Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek [personal website] had asked the court to review the constitutional compatibility of the Treaty prior to its consideration by parliament. The court rejected arguments [BBC report] advanced by Topolanek and Czech President Vaclav Klaus [official website], among others, that adoption of the treaty would undermine Czech sovereignty, holding:

[T]oday sovereignty can no longer be understood absolutely; sovereignty is more a practical matter. In this sense, the transfer of certain competences of the state, which arises from the free will of the sovereign and will continue to be exercised with the sovereign’s participation, in a manner that is agreed on in advance and is reviewable, is not a conceptual weakening of the sovereignty of a state, but, on the contrary, can lead to strengthening it within the joint actions of an integrated whole.

[JURIST] Greenlanders have voted [government press release; Politiken report] for increased autonomy from Denmark in a national referendum, according to results released Wednesday. The referendum's "Self Rule" plan gives Greenland [government website] natives control over the country's courts [government backgrounder], police, and coast guard, and recognizes Greenlandic as the island's official language. The plan also gives the country more control over its oil reserves and a larger share of their proceeds. The referendum was non-binding, but was supported by the Danish Parliament [official website], which has said it will implement the changes on June 21, 2009. More than 75 percent of voters favored increased autonomy and 72 percent of the country's eligible voters participated in the referendum.

Polling before the vote predicted [survey report, DOC, in Danish] the referendum's passage, but by a smaller margin. Many Greenlanders are pushing for control of the country's oil resources to be the first issue addressed after the changes take effect, but others have called for the country to first seek official recognition [Sermitsaik reports] from the UN.

[JURIST] The Jamaican parliament on Tuesday voted 34-15 [JIS release; Jamaica Gleaner report], with 10 abstentions, to resume the use of the death penalty. Advocates for the measure cited the country's extremely high murder rate [BBC backgrounder] as justification for resuming executions. Opponents of the practice, including Jamaicans for Justice [advocacy website] executive director Carolyn Gomes, have argued that the country should increase efforts [Jamaica Gleaner report] to arrest and charge criminals rather than reinstate capital punishment. Before executions, which are carried out by hanging, can resume, the Jamaican senate must also approve the measure.

Jamaica's Offenses Against the Person Act [PDF text] already provides for the death penalty, but the country has had an effective moratorium on the punishment since 1988. In 1993 the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council [official website], still the former British colony's highest court of appeal, ruled [judgment text; JG backgrounder] that holding a person awaiting execution for more than five years constitutes "cruel and unusual" punishment in violation of the Jamaican constitution [text], but did not outlaw the penalty itself.

[JURIST] A Florida trial court judge on Tuesday ruled [opinion, PDF; ACLU press release] that a Florida statute [text] preventing same-sex couples from adopting children is unconstitutional, allowing a Florida petitioner and his partner [ACLU profiles, PDF] to adopt two children previously in his foster care. Judge Cindy Lederman of the Eleventh Judicial Circuit of Florida [official website] found that the 1977 statute violated the equal protection clause of the Florida Constitution [text], citing a recent nonbinding Florida case [JURIST report] in which the trial court judge found that the same statute acted as a bill of attainder intended "to repress gay Floridians as a group" and violated the separation of powers doctrine by precluding judicial discretion. In a 53-page opinion, Lederman wrote that the Florida statute:

violates the children’s rights by burdening liberty interests by unduly restraining them in State custody on one hand and simultaneously operating to deny them a permanent adoptive placement that is in their best interests on the other.

[JURIST] The Moscow City Court on Tuesday affirmed a lower court's decision not to legally rehabilitate captured Polish officers executed in 1940 during the Katyn massacre [Polish government backgrounder], in which more than 20,000 Polish Army reservists, academics and politicians were killed in the Katyn Forest in present-day Belarus, as well as other locations. Lawyers for the victims plan to appeal [Itar-Tass report] to the European Court of Human Rights [official website]. RIA Novosti has local coverage.

Russia had previously blamed the Nazis for the incident. The government of Mikhail Gorbachev [Guardian profile] admitted in 1990 that Josef Stalin had personally ordered [documents, in Russian] the NKVD, the predecessor to the later Soviet KGB, to carry out the killings. The Polish Institute of National Remembrance [official website] has long sought to convince the Russian government to apply its 1991 law "On the rehabilitation of victims of political repression" [backgrounder] to the Katyn victims, but suits have so far been unsuccessful. Russia's own 10-year investigation of the massacre ended in 2005 when the government closed its classified files and said the crime's statute of limitations had expired. In July, the Moscow City Court blocked [JURIST report] an attempt by family members of the victims to renew investigations into the killings. In 2006, the families filed a complaint [JURIST report] with the Court of Human Rights, asking it to classify the incident as genocide and compel the Russian government to disclose its information. In October the Court of Human rights agreed to hear [RIA Novosti report] a plea from family members asking that the victims of the Katyn massacre be classified as war crimes victims.

[JURIST] Human Rights Watch (HRW) [advocacy website] warned of possible war crimes being committed in the Democratic Republic of Congo [JURIST news archive] in a new report [report, PDF] released [press release] Tuesday. The rights group claims that since disputed 2006 elections [JURIST report], approximately 500 people have been killed by Congolese security forces, and about 1,000 more have been detained and possibly tortured. The 96-page report, titled "We Will Crush You," observed:

The 2006 presidential elections in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the first in over 40 years, raised hopes for stability and improved governance in this vast, war-torn nation. Yet in the two years following elections, there have been disturbing signs that Congo’s democratic transition is not only fragile, but that the newly elected government is brutally restricting democratic space. The government of President Joseph Kabila has used violence and intimidation to eliminate its political opponents beginning in the immediate aftermath of the election’s inconclusive July-August 2006 first round.