[JURIST] A UK judge sentenced two of the three men acquitted [JURIST report] of conspiracy charges relating to the July 7, 2005 London Transit Bombings [BBC backgrounder] to seven years in prison Wednesday on lesser charges. Mohammed Shakil and Waheed Ali were sentenced [Reuters report] for having allegedly planned to attend a terrorist training camp in Pakistan. Shakil, Ali, and Sadeer Saleem were found not guilty [BBC report] of being privy to the conspiracy during a retrial after a mistrial was declared last fall when the jury could not reach a verdict. The three men were the only ones on trial for the attacks, despite evidence that pointed to the involvement of a larger group than just those who carried out the attacks. All three took a trip to London in December 2004 with two of the suicide bombers to visit a relative of Ali, where they visited tourist spots. The trip was seen as a likely scouting trip for the eventual attacks. Shakil and Ali were found guilty of attending a terrorist-training camp [MPS press release] in Malakand, Pakistan, where both knew Mohammad Siddique Khan, the orchestrator of the attacks. Attending a terrorist camp was made illegal under the Terrorist Act of 2006. Shakil and Ali will be sentenced Wednesday.

The three men were arrested in May 2007 and pleaded not guilty [JURIST reports] that August. The attacks of July 7, 2005, caused the deaths of 52 people when suicide bombers unleashed themselves on the public transit system in London at the height of the morning rush hour. The attacks were traced back to a tight-knit group who attended a mosque in Leeds, where Shakil, Ali, and Saleem also worshiped. Al Qaeda claimed responsibility [JURIST report] for the attacks two months later.

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[JURIST] The five men convicted of plotting to kill US soldiers at Fort Dix [official website] have been giving sentences ranging from 33 years to life in prison. Mohamad Ibrahim Shnewer was given a life sentence [UPI report] by a federal judge at the US District Court for the District of New Jersey [official website] Wednesday, and Serdar Tatar was sentenced to 33 years. On Tuesday, brothers Dritan Duka, Eljvir Duka, and Shain Duka were each sentenced to life in prison. The five men were convicted [DOJ press release; JURIST report] in December 2008 of conspiracy to commit murder and weapons offenses, but were acquitted of attempted murder. Their guilty verdicts [text, PDF] were upheld [JURIST report] last month.

Federal prosecutors maintained that although the men had no ties to any terrorist organization, they were inspired by al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden and were planning an attack. The five suspects were arrested [JURIST report] in May 2007 for allegedly plotting to sneak onto the New Jersey military base and kill soldiers. They pleaded not guilty [JURIST report] in January 2008. Their trial began [JURIST report] in October. In March 2008, an accomplice, Agron Abdullahu, was sentenced [JURIST report] to 20 months in prison after pleading guilty [JURIST report] to charges of conspiring to provide firearms and ammunitions to the other five men.

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[JURIST] The New Hampshire Senate [official website] voted 13-11 Wednesday to approve a bill [HB 436 text] that would permit same-sex marriage [JURIST news archive] in the state. The New Hampshire House of Representatives [official website] approved the bill [JURIST report] last month by a vote of 186-179. The bill was amended on the Senate floor to distinguish between civil and religious marriage [Union Leader report]. The bill must now be reconciled between differing House and Senate versions before going before Governor John Lynch (D) [official website], who has not indicated whether he will veto it [Reuters report]. Lynch has expressed opposition to the bill, saying that the New Hampshire civil union law [JURIST report] passed in 2007 provides the same legal protections for same-sex couples.

The New Hampshire attorney general was one of 10 state attorneys general to petition the Supreme Court of California to postpone implementation of its decision [JURIST reports] to allow same-sex marriages in that state. The New Hampshire same-sex civil union law, which took effect in 2008 [JURIST report], allows same-sex couples to enter into civil unions with the "same rights, responsibilities, and obligations as married couples." In 2005, a New Hampshire Senate commission on same-sex marriages voted to recommend [JURIST report] that the state not allow same-sex couples to marry, not recognize out-of-state same-sex marriages, and not establish a domestic partner registry.

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[JURIST] The US Supreme Court [official website; JURIST news archive] heard its final oral arguments [day call, PDF; briefs] for the 2008 term Wednesday. In Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District Number One v. Holder [oral arguments transcript, PDF; JURIST report], the Court will consider whether the Voting Rights Act (VRA) [text] permits the appellant municipality to "bail out" from the pre-clearance requirement of Section 5 [DOJ backgrounder] if it can establish a history of compliance with the VRA, and whether Congress was justified by current voting discrimination when it extended the requirement in 2006 for another 25 years. Section 5 requires prior review before changes in voting laws can be enacted in certain states. The plaintiff was a municipal utility district in Texas that wanted to be exempted from the requirement. The US District Court for the District of Columbia found [opinion, PDF] in favor of the federal government. Counsel for the municipality argued:

After more than 20 years of steadfast compliance with the Voting Rights Act, Northwest Austin MUD Number One is entitled to be free from the intrusive burdens of preclearance. ... This natural parallelism between bailout and preclearance allows bailout to serve its ameliorative purposes of encouraging, recognizing, and rewarding long-term compliance and progress.

Congress's reauthorization in 2006 was the paradigmatic attempt of what to do in Congress. It didn't redefine a rate, nor did it cast aspersions at Supreme Court doctrine. Rather, it took that doctrine seriously, both this Court's teachings with respect to the Voting Rights Act specifically, as well as the - as the scope of the Congress's Reconstruction enforcement powers, and arrived at a considered judgment. After 16,000 pages of testimony, 21 different hearings over 10 months, Congress looked at the evidence and determined that their work was not done.

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[JURIST] A judge for the UN Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) [official website] ordered the release of four generals [UN News Centre report] who had been held on suspicion of their involvement in the February 2005 suicide bombing that killed former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri [JURIST news archive] and 22 others. The court's pre-trial decision came after prosecutor Daniel Bellemare announced Monday that he was declining to seek a continuation of the generals' nearly four-year detention because of a lack of evidence and due to the legal principle of presumed innocence. The generals' release was celebrated with cheers and fireworks throughout Beirut. General Jamil El-Sayed delivered the following speech [in Arabic] upon his release:



Earlier this month, STL Pre-trial Judge Daniel Fransen ordered [UN News Centre report] Bellemare to submit either a reasoned request for the continued detention of the four generals or a declination thereof. A Lebanese judge ordered the transfer of documents [JURIST report] relating to Hariri’s assassination to the STL early this month, thereby granting sole jurisdiction over the case against the four accused generals to the tribunal. In March 2008, lead prosecutor Daniel Bellemare [Ya Libnan profile] said he believed a criminal network was behind the assassination [JURIST report]. The investigation into the assassination has been extended past its original anticipated end date and expanded [JURIST reports] to cover other assassinations in the country. Several reports from the International Independent Investigation Commission (IIIC) [authorizing resolution; UN materials], also headed by Bellemare, have implicated Syrian officials [JURIST report] in Hariri's death.

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[JURIST] US Attorney General Eric Holder [official profile] said Wednesday that the US has cleared 30 Guantanamo Bay [JURIST news archive] detainees for release and will begin formally requesting that European countries accept them within weeks. During a European tour, Holder told reporters in Germany that no formal requests have been made [AFP report], but that he has been encouraged by the generally positive responses he has received thus far. Holder met with several European officials [AP report] Tuesday for preliminary talks on accepting detainees. European leaders reiterated their request for full background information [JURIST report] on any detainee they were asked to accept.

Earlier this week, Holder met with UK Justice Minister Jack Straw [official profile], who said that his country would still be willing to consider a US request to take in Guantanamo Bay detainees if doing so would aid in the closure of the facility. Earlier this month, France agreed [JURIST report] to accept one Guantanamo detainee. Last month, top officials from the Obama administration met with leaders from the European Union (EU) [official website] to discuss preliminary plans to transfer [JURIST report] Guantanamo Bay detainees to European countries. Individual member states have also indicated their openness to accepting detainees, including Lithuania, Ireland, Germany, and Portugal [JURIST reports]. Other states have expressed reservations about accepting detainees, including Poland and Spain, while Italy [JURIST reports] and the Netherlands [AFP report] have said they will not accept detainees.

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[JURIST] A US Army soldier who fled to Canada to avoid serving in the Iraq war pleaded guilty Tuesday to charges of desertion. Spc. Cliff Cornell [advocacy profile] was sentenced to one year in prison [AP report] at a court-martial proceeding and was also given a bad conduct discharge. Cornell spent four years in Canada, but was denied asylum by the Canadian government in February. Canadian advocacy group War Resisters Support Campaign [advocacy website] decried Cornell's sentence, calling the Iraq War "illegal and immoral." Cornell had reportedly become actively involved [Montreal Gazette report] with the group.

Several other US soldiers have sought asylum in Canada. In 2005, US Army Pvt. Brandon Hughey [advocacy website], who fled to Canada after refusing a deployment order to Iraq and deserting his unit at Fort Hood, formally asked [JURIST report] the Canadian Immigration and Refugee Board [official website] for asylum. Hughey's application was denied, and he is currently waiting to find out whether he will be allowed to remain in Canada. Several others are also appealing denials of asylum.

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[JURIST] Officials from the US Department of Justice (DOJ) [official website] said Tuesday that the DOJ has begun looking into whether a settlement agreement [text, PDF; JURIST report] involving Internet search company Google, Inc. [corporate website] over two copyright infringement lawsuits stemming from its book-scanning initiative [Google Book Search website] violates antitrust laws. The two lawsuits were brought against Google by the Authors Guild [advocacy website], an advocacy group seeking to preserve copyright protection for authors, and by other plaintiffs including the Association of American Publishers (AAP) [organization website], the McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc., Penguin Group (USA), Inc., and Simon & Schuster, Inc. [corporate websites]. Under the terms of the settlement agreement, which was reached in October, Google would pay $125 million to authors and publishers of copyrighted works. In return, Google would be allowed to display online up to 20 percent of the total pages of a copyrighted book, and would offer users an opportunity to purchase the remainder of any viewed book. DOJ lawyers have notified the parties to the settlement [NYT report] about the inquiry and have spoken with groups opposed to the settlement. The DOJ will not necessarily oppose the settlement, which still awaits court approval. Also Tuesday, the federal judge overseeing the case extended the deadline from May 5 to September 4 for authors to decide whether to join in the settlement.

The two lawsuits were originally brought against Google in 2005. In September 2005, The Authors Guild alleged [JURIST report] "massive copyright infringement at the expense of the rights of individual writers." The lawsuit accused Google of engaging in unauthorized scanning and copying of books through its Google Print Library Project [Google backgrounder; advocacy copyright analysis, PDF]. The AAP lawsuit, filed in October 2005 [JURIST report], alleged that Google infringed copyrights held by a number of publishing companies when it scanned the entire book collections of several universities to make them searchable online.

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[JURIST] The US Supreme Court [official website; JURIST news archive] on Tuesday ruled [opinion, PDF] 7-2 in Kansas v. Ventris [Cornell LII backgrounder; JURIST report] that a defendant's statement made without a knowing and voluntary waiver of his Sixth Amendment right to counsel may be used for impeachment purposes. The defendant made statements to a jailhouse informant that were later used to impeach his credibility. The Kansas Supreme Court ruled [opinion text] that such statements may not be used for any purposes, including impeachment purposes. In overturning the decision below, Justice Antonin Scalia wrote, "We have held in every other context that tainted evidence — evidence whose very introduction does not constitute the constitutional violation, but whose obtaining was constitutionally invalid — is admissible for impeachment. We see no distinction that would alter the balance here." Justice John Paul Stevens filed a dissenting opinion, joined by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

The Court ruled [opinion, PDF] 7-2 in Dean v. United States [Cornell LII backgrounder; JURIST report] that the accidental discharge of a firearm during the commission of a felony crime subjects a defendant to a 10-year minimum sentence for the crime. Under 18 USC § 924(c)(1)(A)(iii) [text], the increased sentence attaches when a firearm is discharged, but the defendant argued that there must also be some showing that the discharge was intentional. The US Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit held [opinion, PDF] that the defendant should be subjected to the 10-year minimum sentence requirement. In an opinion by Chief Justice John Roberts, the Court affirmed the decision below: "Section 924(c)(1)(A)(iii) requires no separate proof of intent. The 10-year mandatory minimum applies if a gun is discharged in the course of a violent or drug trafficking crime, whether on purpose or by accident." and Justice Stephen Breyer filed dissenting opinions.

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[JURIST] Members of the US House Judiciary Committee [official website] on Tuesday sent a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder [official profile] urging him to appoint a special counsel to investigate allegations of torture [press release and letter text] against Bush administration officials. The letter, which was signed by committee chairman John Conyers (D-MI), Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) [official websites], and 14 other Democratic members of the committee, called on Holder to prosecute responsible officials where appropriate:

As you are aware, Justice Department regulations provide for the Attorney General to appoint an outside special counsel when: 1) a "criminal investigation of a person or matter is warranted," (2) the "investigation or prosecution of that person or matter by a United States Attorney's Office or litigating Division of the Department of Justice would present a conflict of interest for the Department," and 3) "it would be in the public interest to appoint an outside Special Counsel to assume responsibility for the matter." Such counsel is to be appointed from outside the government and should have the authority to secure resources for the investigation and prosecution and have full investigatory and prosecutorial powers.

We believe that these three criteria have been met and warrant the appointment of a special counsel to investigate whether federal criminal laws were violated by individuals who authorized or participated in the interrogation of detainees.

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[JURIST] The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit [official website] ruled [opinion, PDF] Tuesday that the state secrets privilege [JURIST news archive] does not bar a lawsuit against a company that allegedly provided logistical support for CIA rendition [JURIST news archive] flights. Plaintiffs Binyam Mohamed [Reprieve profile; JURIST news archive], Abou Elkassim Britel, Ahmed Agiza, Mohamed Farag Ahmad Bashmilah, and Bisher al-Rawi allege that Jeppesen Dataplan [corporate website], a wholly owned subsidiary of Boeing [corporate website], knowingly supported direct flights to secret CIA prisons, facilitating the torture and mistreatment of US detainees. The US Department of Justice (DOJ) [official website] intervened [JURIST report] in 2007 before the defendant filed an answer, arguing that the lawsuit posed a risk to national security. In overturning the lower court's dismissal of the case [JURIST report], the Ninth Circuit ruled that the state secret privilege must be based on actual evidence in the case, not on what evidence might be involved in the case:

Concluding that the subject matter of this lawsuit is not a state secret because it is not predicated on the existence of a secret agreement between plaintiffs and the Executive, and recognizing that our limited inquiry under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6) precludes prospective consideration of hypothetical evidence, we reverse and remand.

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[JURIST] A court-martial in Nigeria [JURIST news archive] sentenced 27 UN peacekeeping troops to life imprisonment Tuesday. The soldiers of the 14th Nigerian Battalion were convicted of mutiny [Vanguard report] under the Armed Forces Act 2004 [text] for staging street demonstrations in protest of a shortfall in their UN allowances for a Nigerian peacekeeping mission. The protesting soldiers alleged finance officers in the Nigerian Army [official website] stole their extra UN pay. Five of the officers convicted and sentenced were finance officers held vicariously liable for the protests. The sentences are must be confirmed by Nigerian authorities. The soldiers' lawyer anticipates appealing the judgment [AP report].

UN Peacekeeping [official website] missions have increasingly come under international criticism [CBC report] for being underfunded, understaffed, and underprepared. Although many larger nations continue to fund peacekeeping missions, fewer and fewer nations are willing to send troops. Currently there are 16 UN peacekeeping missions worldwide, including several in Africa.

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