[JURIST] Israeli rights group Yesh Din [advocacy website, in Hebrew] filed a petition [text, PDF; press release] in the Supreme Court of Israel [official website] Monday, accusing the State of Israel of violating international law based on the mining operations it conducts within the West Bank. According to the complaint, the mining removes 12 million tons of stone and gravel each year from the West Bank, 9 million tons of which are used for the economic benefit of the State of Israel [AP report] and private Israeli companies. The group referred to many different international treaties, including provisions of the Geneva Conventions [ICRC materials], and general principles of international law in setting out its assertion of illegality:

The rules of occupation constitute a regime of temporary trust which necessitates that, among other things, any long-term alteration made in the occupied territory, inasmuch as it is permissible, shall benefit the local population (which is the population of protected civilians). Another, negative aspect of the trustee's duty are rules that ban the occupying power from exploiting the territories under its domain for its own needs, except for (with certain restrictions) its security needs.

Unlike in the case of the permissibility of mining for natural resources in an occupied territory as a rule, in this matter -- quarrying for natural resources for the benefit of the occupying power -- the scholars are not disputed at all. It is agreed by all of them that not only is this a violation of the international laws of occupation, but many of them even believe that under certain circumstances, this constitutes the war crime of pillage...the occupant does not have the right to use property or to other rights he manages in the occupied territories for purposes other than maintaining public order and safety in the occupied territory.

[JURIST] Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga [official profile, BBC profile] announced Monday that US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) [official website] agents from the US Embassy in Nairobi [official website] will assist in investigating [press release] the killing of two human rights activists last week. Odinga requested US assistance [Capital News report], recognizing that there would be a serious issue of credibility because the police themselves are among the list of suspects and stating that "the government [is] committed to uphold all fundamental rights and freedoms bestowed in the constitution of the country." On Friday, the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights (KNCHR) charged that the killing of human rights activists Oscar Kamau Kingara and John Paul Oulu was part of a trend [AP report] to silence those who have denounced police human rights abuses and extrajudicial executions. The two men were officers for the Oscar Foundation [advocacy website], a group critical of the Kenyan government for its use of extra-judicial killings, and were killed in Nairobi [BBC report] Thursday following student protests against police.

On Friday UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions [official website] Philip Alston called for an independent investigation [JURIST report] into the killings. Alston also called for the resignation [Daily Nation report] of Police Commissioner Hussein Ali and Attorney General Amos Wako in light of the killings, but Ali rebuked Alston's call and said that the police were capable of investigating the murders without a special investigation. In February, Alston issued a report [text] on extra-judicial killings in Kenya in which he said that killings by the police in the country were "systematic, widespread and carefully planned," and that they were committed with "utter impunity." During his trip to the country, Alston met with Kingara, and the Oscar Foundation in 2007 issued its own report [text, JURIST report] claiming that police had killed more than 8,000 for their alleged connections to the Mungiki group.

[JURIST] US President Barack Obama [official website] signed [press release] an executive order [text; fact sheet] Monday which removed the previous administration's restrictions on federal funding for human embryonic stem cell [JURIST news archive] research. The order fulfills Obama's campaign promise to reverse the limitations that were put in place eight years ago by the Bush administration. Obama stated his reasoning [prepared remarks] for removing the barriers in the order:

Research involving human embryonic stem cells and human non-embryonic stem cells has the potential to lead to better understanding and treatment of many disabling diseases and conditions. Advances over the past decade in this promising scientific field have been encouraging, leading to broad agreement in the scientific community that the research should be supported by Federal funds.

For the past 8 years, the authority of the Department of Health and Human Services, including the National Institutes of Health (NIH), to fund and conduct human embryonic stem cell research has been limited by Presidential actions. The purpose of this order is to remove these limitations on scientific inquiry, to expand NIH support for the exploration of human stem cell research, and in so doing to enhance the contribution of America's scientists to important new discoveries and new therapies for the benefit of humankind.

[JURIST] The Chinese government has not accounted for hundreds of Tibetan protesters arrested in connection with the March 2008 demonstrations in Tibet [BBC backgrounder], according to a Monday statement [press release] from Human Rights Watch (HRW) [advocacy website], which revealed a thorough review regarding the numbers of arrests, detentions, and trials of the protesters. The press release revealed discrepancies in the numbers of demonstrators detained and released as reported by state media sources and government officials. HRW also called on the Chinese government to provide an extensive account of all who were detained, released, tried, and sentenced in relation to the protests; to allow neutral international organizations full access to detention facilities; and to observe and respect the human rights of all the demonstrators in their custody. The Chinese government has insisted that the claims of human rights abuses have been perpetuated by ethnic Tibetan factions dissatisfied by the Communist Party. Asia advocacy director at HRW Sophie Richardson said that the Chinese government has been using these excuses and has not been cooperative with any international human rights organizations at revealing the numbers of alleged arbitrary arrests, detentions, and sentencing hearings, adding that:

The government's national security concerns do not exempt it from its obligation to respect fundamental rights and freedoms and offer equal status before the law to all its citizens, whatever their ethnicity ... Yet Beijing's own official accounts reflect judicial defects so severe that it is not possible to deliver a fair trial to any one accused of having taken part in the protests last year.

[JURIST] The US Supreme Court [official website; JURIST news archive] decided four cases Monday. The Court ruled [opinion, PDF] 5-4 in Bartlett v. Strickland [Cornell LII backgrounder; JURIST report] that a racial minority group that comprises less than 50 percent of a district's population cannot succeed on a vote dilution claim. In a plurality opinion, Justice Anthony Kennedy ruled that Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act [text] does not require a redrawing of the district:

Crossover districts are, by definition, the result of white voters joining forces with minority voters to elect their preferred candidate. The Voting Rights Act was passed to foster this cooperation. We decline now to expand the reaches of §2 to require, by force of law, the voluntary cooperation our society has achieved.

We agree with the Fourth Circuit in part. A federal court may "look through" a §4 petition and order arbitration if, "save for [the arbitration] agreement," the court would have jurisdiction over "the [substantive] controversy between the parties." We hold, however, that the Court of Appeals misidentified the dimensions of "the controversy between the parties." ... Given that entirely state-based plea and the established rule that federal-court jurisdiction cannot be invoked on the basis of a defense or counterclaim, the whole "controversy between the parties" does not qualify for federal-court adjudication.

Assigned counsel, just as retained counsel, act on behalf of their clients, and delays sought by counsel are ordinarily attributable to the defendants they represent. For a total of some six months of the time that elapsed between Brillon's arrest and his trial, Brillon lacked an attorney. The State may be charged with those months if the gaps resulted from the trial court's failure to appoint replacement counsel with dispatch. Similarly, the State may bear responsibility if there is "a breakdown in the public defender system." But, as the Vermont Supreme Court acknowledged, the record does not establish any such institutional breakdown. [citations omitted]

[W]e conclude that the best approach is to have a uniform rule that applies in all federal cases.

We therefore hold that the expert witness attendance fees that are available in cases brought under our original jurisdiction shall be the same as the expert witness attendance fees that would be available in a district court under §1821(b).

[JURIST] The US Supreme Court [official website; JURIST news archive] granted certiorari [order list, PDF] Monday in Jones v. Harris Associates [docket; cert. petition, PDF], in which the Court will consider whether a shareholder must show that the fund's investment adviser misled the fund's directors in order to have a cognizable claim of an excessive fee under section 36(b) of the Investment Company Act of 1940 [text]. The US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit held [opinion, PDF] that the claim is not cognizable unless the shareholder can show that the adviser misled the fund's directors who approved the fee. The case was brought by several plaintiffs who own shares in funds advised by Harris Associates [corporate website]. The plaintiffs claim that the fees are too high and are in violation of section 36(b).

[JURIST] Former Israeli president Moshe Katsav [BBC profile; JURIST news archive] will be indicted on rape charges for allegedly assaulting several female employees in the 1990s, according to an announcement by Attorney General Menachem Mazuz on Sunday. Katsav will face charges [Haaretz report] of raping one woman while he served as minister of tourism and sexually assaulting two others during his presidency. Katsav's brother denounced the charges as false [Haaretz report], claiming Mazuz was unduly influenced. Women's rights organizations welcomed the decision [Haaretz report] to bring charges.

Katsav was originally accused of rape [JURIST report] and sexual assault in 2006. In April, Katsav rejected a controversial plea agreement [JURIST reports], under which he would have been permitted to plead guilty to lesser sex charges of indecent assault, sexual harassment, and obstruction of justice, in exchange for a suspended sentence and the dropping of the rape charges. The deal was heavily criticized [JURIST report] by women's and civil rights activists when it was first made public in 2007. A victim and several rights organizations filed five separate petitions [Haaretz report] to overturn the agreement, arguing that it was contrary to public interest, had no legal reason, and injured the principal of equality before the law. Despite the criticism, Mazuz defended the agreement as necessary to protect the office of the presidency from further injury and spare the country from embarrassment. Katsav resigned the presidency in 2007.

[JURIST] Twelve of the 92 videotapes destroyed by the CIA [JURIST report] contained evidence of "enhanced interrogation techniques," according to redacted documents [text, PDF] filed Friday in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York [official website]. The US Department of Justice (DOJ) [official website] had acknowledged last week that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) [official website] destroyed [letter, PDF] 92 videotapes of high value terrorism suspect interrogations [JURIST news archive], in response to an August 2008 judicial order [text, PDF] that the CIA turn over information regarding the tapes or provide specific justifications on why it could not release the information. The August 2008 order came in response to a December 2007 American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) [advocacy website] motion [text, PDF] that the CIA be held in contempt of court for not providing information on the tapes during a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) [text] lawsuit [ACLU materials] brought by the organization in an effort to access government materials on the interrogations.

A stay on the ACLU suit was filed by the DOJ in December 2007 while a criminal probe [JURIST report] was conducted on the videotapes' destruction. That order expired last week, and in a letter to the court, US Attorney Peter Skinner wrote that the DOJ now intends to provide as much of the information as possible. The ACLU intends to proceed [interview audio] on the lawsuit. The lawsuit was brought [CCR backgrounder] after the October 2003 request filed by the ACLU under FOIA for information pertaining to US held detainees in overseas facilities received in answer only a set of media talking points used by the Department of State.