[JURIST] US President-elect Barack Obama [transition website; JURIST news archive] said during an interview [ABC transcript] broadcast Sunday that he has not ruled out prosecuting officials for rights abuses committed under the Bush administration. Asked whether he would appoint a special prosecutor to independently investigate the greatest crimes of the Bush administration, including torture and warrantless wiretapping, Obama said the matter is under consideration: “We're still evaluating how we're going to approach the whole issue of interrogations, detentions, and so forth. And obviously we're going to be looking at past practices and I don't believe that anybody is above the law.” Obama also criticized Vice President Dick Cheney [official profile] for his public defense of "extraordinary" interrogation methods [ABC video] used against terrorism suspects, including the controversial simulated drowning technique known as waterboarding [JURIST news archive]. “[F]rom my view, waterboarding is torture. I have said that under my administration we will not torture,” Obama stated.

Human rights groups, including Amnesty International [advocacy website], have called [Amnesty report] for the prosecution of senior Bush administration officials for a series of abuses, ranging from the mishandling of the Iraqi war to the illegal detention of terrorist suspects in Guantanamo and secret prisons. Such calls gained traction in late December, when the Senate Armed Services Committee [official website] alleged [report] that top Bush officials, including former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld [official profile], “bore major responsibility” for the abuses committed by U.S. interrogators in military detention centers. Their bipartisan report explicitly rejected Bush administration claims that tough interrogation methods have helped keep the country and its troops safe and stated that the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib [JURIST news archive], “was not simply the result of a few soldiers acting on their own” but grew out of interrogation policies approved by Rumsfeld and other top officials.

[JURIST] Turkish police on Sunday arrested 12 more people and detained an additional 33 in an investigation of an alleged plot to overthrow the government of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) [party website]. The arrests on Sunday follow the detention [JURIST report] last week of the former head of the police anti-terror unit and three retired generals, one of whom was later released [AP report]. There are now over 100 suspects in custody for the alleged plot, including journalists, academics, and Turkish Workers' Party [party website, in Turkish] leader Dogu Perincek [JURIST report]. All were outspoken opponents of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan [BBC profile], whose AKP party narrowly escaped a ban [JURIST report] last year for allegedly undermining the country's secular principles.

In October, the High Criminal Court in Istanbul began the trial [JURIST report] of 86 defendants in the coup investigation. The accused are said to belong to the secular Ergenekon group, believed responsible for bombing the headquarters of the newspaper Cumhuriyet [media website, in Turkish], assassinating Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink [BBC obituary], and planning other attacks to provoke a military coup to topple the AKP. Critics allege that the AKP has improperly investigated secular groups as part of a drive to impose Islamic principles [Haaretz report] on the country in violation of the its secular constitution [text].

[JURIST] Japanese Foreign Minister Hirofumi Nakasone [official profile] pledged an additional $21 million in aid for the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) [official website; JURIST news archive] on Sunday during a visit to the country. This pledge [IHT report] doubles the amount of aid provided by Japan to the tribunal. In spite of the pledge, the ECCC still faces a budgetary shortfall of more than $22 million [ECCC finances website].

Japan has contributed much more aid to the UN-sponsored tribunal than any other member nation, and the latest contribution doubles its financial support. France, the UK and Germany are the next-largest donors. The US does not currently contribute to the tribunal's budget. The promise of additional Japanese aid comes in the wake of recent allegations of corruption at the ECCC. Late last week, ECCC judges denied corruption allegations made against them [press release] after a court in Phnom Penh agreed to hear a case [AFP report] against two of the judges alleged to have offered a portion of their salaries to the government as kickbacks in exchange for receiving their appointment to sit on the Khmer Rouge war crimes tribunal [JURIST report]. The court has previously been cleared of charges of financial mismanagement by an independent audit [PDF summary; JURIST report] but the audit did not address the previously raised issue of kickbacks [Phnom Penh Post report].