[JURIST] The Spanish National Court [CJA backgrounder] on Tuesday dismissed charges against three US soldiers who were accused of being involved in the death of Spanish cameraman Jose Couso [advocacy website, in Spanish]. The soldiers allegedly opened fire on a Baghdad hotel frequented by Western journalists in 2003 without provocation, killing two cameramen. The court recommended that the case be closed [La Opinion Coruna report, in Spanish] because Judge Santiago Pedraz Gomez [JURIST news archive], who reinstated the charges [JURIST report] in May, had produced no new evidence against the soldiers. Homicide charges filed against Sgt. Shawn Gibson, Capt. Philip Wolford and Lt. Col. Philip DeCamp [Trial Watch profiles] were initially dropped in 2007 due to a lack of evidence. US authorities have claimed that the attack was in response to hostile fire and was consistent with the rules of combat.

Gomez ordered [text, in Spanish; JURIST report] the soldiers' arrest in October 2005 after initiating investigations [JURIST report] into the incident in June of that year. The order was reversed by a panel of judges for the National Court in 2006. This reversal was then overturned by Spain's Supreme Court, resulting in arrest warrants being reissued [JURIST report] in January 2007. The soldiers were indicted [JURIST report] in April of that year.

[JURIST] The US House Judiciary Committee [official website] on Tuesday examined [committee materials] the effects of mandatory minimum sentences in advance of consideration of three proposed bills intended to provide more discretion to judges during sentencing. Representatives of the Families Against Mandatory Minimums (FAMM), the US Judicial Conference and Americans for Tax Reform [advocacy websites] urged the Subcommittee on Crime Terrorism, and Homeland Security Membership [official website] to discard mandatory minimums and reassess the sentencing factors that judges are required to consider. Julie Stewart, President of FAMM, called [testimony, PDF] sentencing mandates "un-American," saying that:

mandatory minimums challenge basic structures on which our government is founded. Federal mandatory minimum laws upset federalism by turning many heretofore state drug offenses into federal crimes. In addition, state and federal mandatory sentencing laws distort traditional roles by transferring judicial discretion to legislatures as well as prosecutors, who, by choice of charge, exercise undue and unreviewable influence over sentencing.

[JURIST] US Supreme Court [official website] nominee Sonia Sotomayor [WH profile; JURIST news archive] on Tuesday defended her judicial record and emphasized her reliance on precedent when deciding cases in response to confirmation questioning [materials] by the US Senate [official website]. Sotomayor defended a now overturned [JURIST report] decision in Ricci v. DeStefano [Cornell LII backgrounder] that she joined while serving on the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. She said that the decision was supported by relevant precedent at the time, and that the Supreme Court had generated a new standard when it reversed the decision. She went on to minimize the significance of earlier statements [materials] she had made about the influence of her background on her decision-making, saying that she does "not believe that any ethnic, racial, or gender group has an advantage in sound judgment." She also responded to questions on abortion and gun rights by saying that current precedent recognizes a right to privacy derived from the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments, but that it does not yet recognize Second Amendment [Cornell LII backgrounders] gun rights as also protecting against state restrictions on gun ownership. Also Tuesday, US President Barack Obama [official website] emailed media outlets reaffirming his support for Sotomayor, saying that her "brilliant legal mind is complemented by the practical lessons that can only be learned by applying the law to real world situations." Her confirmation hearings will continue on Wednesday with the testimony of numerous witnesses on Sotomayor's fitness for the Court. A vote on her confirmation is scheduled for August 6.

The hearings on Sotomayor's confirmation began Monday with her saying that she would bring a "fidelity to the law" to the Court in her opening statement [materials; JURIST report], and Senators offering contrasting interpretations of her record in their opening statements [JURIST report]. Last week, the American Bar Association Standing Committee on the Federal Judiciary [official website] gave Sotomayor a unanimous "well-qualified" rating [letter, PDF; JURIST report]. In May, Obama praised [JURIST report] Sotomayor's experience and wisdom, rebuking Republicans who would oppose her confirmation. Obama warned against partisanship in the confirmation process, saying that he hoped Congress would "avoid the political posturing and ideological brinksmanship" that marked past confirmation hearings. Obama nominated Sotomayor in May to replace retiring [JURIST reports] Justice David Souter [official profile, PDF; JURIST news archive].

[JURIST] A federal judge on Monday granted class-action status to approximately 400,000 immigrants from Central America who allege that a separate service fee for immigration applicants violates a federal law [8 USC § 1254a text]. Judge Thelton Henderson of the US District Court for the Northern District of California [official website] ruled that the complaints could be brought as a class-action suit [San Francisco Chronicle report] since the immigrants make the same legal arguments. Hailing from Honduras, Nicaragua, and El Salvador, the plaintiffs legally entered the US due to natural disasters in their homelands pursuant to a federal law that grants temporary residence to foreigners in such situations. The 1990 law allowing entry into the US limits registration fees to $50, which was exceeded by an additional fee implemented in 1998 to take fingerprints, photographs, and electronic signatures. The government argues that the $50 limit only applies to the initial application fee and not to additional charges. The plaintiffs seek $100 million in refunds and a declaration that the excess fee is illegal.

Judge Henderson's decision to grant the plaintiffs class-action status comes during a series of Obama administration immigration reforms. On Friday, the US Department of Homeland Security [official website] announced changes to immigration policies [press release; JURIST report] for state and local agencies. The new policies create uniform standards for local agencies that will require them to pursue all criminal charges leading to an immigrant's arrest prior to initiating removal proceedings. Earlier this month, Immigration and Customs Enforcement [official website] issued inspection notices [JURIST report] to 652 businesses as part of an increased effort to target employers using illegal immigrants. Last month, Attorney General Eric Holder [official profile] vacated [order, PDF; JURIST report] an order [text, PDF] by former attorney general Michael Mukasey [JURIST news archive] that denied potential deportees the right to challenge immigration decisions based on ineffective assistance of counsel claims.

[JURIST] The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) [official website] on Tuesday sentenced former Rwandan Armed Forces Colonel Tharcisse Renzaho [case materials] to life imprisonment [press release; judgment summary, PDF] after convicting him of crimes in connection with the 1994 Rwandan genocide [BBC backgrounder]. Renzaho was found guilty of genocide, crimes against humanity, and violations of the Geneva Conventions [materials]. The court found that he supported killings by ordering the distribution of weapons to persons who killed Tutsis at roadblocks set up by him. The court additionally found that Renzaho supervised a selection process at a refugee site where about 40 Tutsis were abducted and killed, participated in an attack resulting in more than 100 Tutsi deaths, and encouraged the sexual abuse of women, which led to rape. The court acquitted Renzaho of complicity to commit genocide.

Renzaho's trial commenced [JURIST report] in January 2007 after the court heard testimony from 53 witnesses. He was originally arrested in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2002. The 1994 Rwandan genocide resulted in the deaths of over 800,000 people.

[JURIST] A former CIA counter-terrorism agent alleges that top al Qaeda suspect Abu Zubaydah [BBC profile; JURIST news archive] was waterboarded [JURIST news archive] prior to the issuance of legal memos [JURIST report] justifying the practice, the BBC reported [text] Monday. John Kiriakou, who was part of the CIA team that captured Zubaydah in Pakistan, said that the detainee was subject to the controversial interrogation technique prior to the August 2002 issuance of legal guidance from the Office of Legal Counsel [official website]. Kiriakou claims that former US President George W. Bush [official profile] had approved the technique in writing before the memos were authored. Kiriakou transferred out of the counter-terrorism section in July 2002.

The use of "enhanced interrogation techniques" became a contentious issue following allegations of mistreatment [JURIST report] made by Kiriakou and others. Last week, it was reported that US Attorney General Eric Holder [official profile] is still considering appointing a special prosecutor [JURIST report] to investigate allegations of torture during the Bush administration. In April, members of the US House Judiciary Committee [official website] urged Holder to appoint [JURIST report] a special counsel to investigate allegations of torture against Bush administration officials. Earlier in April, Senate Judiciary Committee [official website] Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) [official profile] reiterated his calls for a non-partisan truth commission [JURIST report] to investigate authorization of enhanced interrogation techniques. Calls for an independent investigation of Bush administration interrogation policies intensified after the Obama administration released four top secret memos [JURIST report] outlining the legal rationale behind controversial techniques. In January, outgoing Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) [official website] director Michael Hayden [JURIST news archive] defended [JURIST report] the use of controversial interrogation techniques.

[JURIST] Former Liberian president Charles Taylor [case materials; JURIST news archive] on Tuesday denied war crimes allegations [recorded video] while testifying for the first time at his trial in the Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL) [official website]. Taylor faces 11 counts [indictment, PDF] of crimes against humanity, violations of the Geneva Conventions [materials], and other violations of international humanitarian law stemming from a "campaign to terrorize the civilian population" of Sierra Leone. Taylor addressed allegations that he was "everything from a terrorist to a rapist," saying:

It is very, very, very unfortunate that the prosecution, because of disinformation, misinformation, lies, rumors, would associate me with such titles or descriptions. I am none of those, have never been, and will never be, whether they think so or not. [I] have fought all my life to do what I thought was right in the interest of justice and fair play. I resent that characterization of me, it is false, it is malicious.

[JURIST] The UK House of Lords [official website] on Monday approved a measure to create an independent commissioner for terrorism suspects, which must now go before the House of Commons. The Lords voted 145-103 on an amendment to the Coroners and Justice Bill [text, PDF; legislative materials] offered by Lord Lloyd, over the objections of members of the Labour Party [party website] of Prime Minister Gordon Brown [official website]. The commissioner would assist judges when the government seeks to extend the pre-charge detention of terrorism suspects beyond the current 28-day limit, with the aid of classified information not available to the defendant and his lawyer. Opponents argued [BBC report] that the posts would be costly to operate and would create unnecessary impediments to prosecution.

The use of secret evidence in terrorism cases has created conflict in the UK. In June, a panel of nine UK Law Lords [official website] decided [JURIST report] that the use of secret evidence to impose controversial control orders to detain terrorism suspects violates the European Convention on Human Rights [text], ordering the cases of three suspects to be reheard. In February, a UK counter-terrorism official said that some suspects living under control orders have managed to maintain contact [JURIST report] with terrorist organizations. The UK Law Lords ruled [JURIST report] in a series of decisions in October that the government can continue to impose control orders on terror suspects in lieu of detention, but said that some elements of the orders issued under the Prevention of Terrorism Act 2005 violate human rights.

[JURIST] Members of Congress on Monday called for an investigation into a secret Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) program designed to kill al Qaeda members. The call follows the recently publicized information that former vice-president Dick Cheney directly ordered [JURIST report] the CIA to withhold information about the program from Congress and kept it secret for eight years. The intelligence committees of the House of Representatives and the Senate [official websites] were informed of the program by CIA director Leon Panetta [official profile] after he terminated it on June 23. Representative Anna Eshoo (D-CA), a member of the House Intelligence Committee [official websites], said that the committee should look into the origin of the program's funding [The Hill report] and who kept it secret from Congress. Eshoo called for a full investigation and for the hiring of a prosecutor who is specialized in such areas of law. An executive order [text] issued by President Gerald Ford in 1976 banned assassinations but officials have maintained that the ban does not apply [NYT report] to the killing of enemies during war. Additionally, the National Security Act [text] requires the CIA to inform Congress of programs such as the one at issue. According to reports, the program had not yet become fully operational [WSJ report] but was only in the planning and possibly training stages.

Bush-era intelligence policy has been highly contested since the change in administration earlier this year. On Friday, five federal agencies released a report [text; JURIST report] on the prior administration's warrantless wiretapping program that reviewed both the flawed legal origins of the program and questioned the effectiveness of information produced by wiretapping international communications of American citizens. In May, Cheney defended the national security policies [speech transcript; JURIST report] of the Bush administration speaking at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) [organization website], while criticizing many of the security policies of President Barack Obama [official profile].

[JURIST] Former US Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel [official website] lawyer John Yoo [academic profile; JURIST news archive] Monday declared his intent to appeal a lower court ruling [JURIST report] allowing a lawsuit against him alleging complicity in torture to proceed. Yoo is appealing a June decision by District Judge Jeffrey White not to dismiss [San Francisco Chronicle report] a lawsuit brought by convicted terrorist Jose Padilla [JURIST news archive] that claims Yoo's legal opinions endorsing enhanced interrogation techniques [JURIST news archive] led to Padilla being tortured. Padilla, a US citizen currently serving a 17-year sentence [JURIST report] on terrorism-related charges, says that he was tortured while held as an "enemy combatant" [JURIST news archive] in military custody in a Navy military brig in Charleston, South Carolina. The US Department of Justice (DOJ) [official website] said that it would pay for private counsel [Bloomberg report] to handle Yoo's appeal, because the government's defense had been based solely on qualified immunity and Yoo deserves counsel who will make all available arguments. A DOJ spokesperson said that paying for outside counsel is standard practice in cases where there is a potential legal disagreement between the DOJ and a defendant sued in an official capacity.

Yoo, a professor at the Berkeley School of Law [academic website] has faced sharp criticism for his role in drafting interrogation memos [JURIST report]. Last week, it was reported that US Attorney General Eric Holder [official profile] is still considering appointing a special prosecutor [JURIST report] to investigate allegations of torture during the Bush administration. In May, a number of organizations called for the drafters of the memos to be disbarred [JURIST report]. Also in May, former JFK speechwriter Ted Sorensen told [JURIST report] an audience at the University of Nebraska College of Law [academic website] that the DOJ lawyers who had authorized the use of enhanced interrogation techniques had "disgraced not only their country but their profession." In April, Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) [official website], Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee [official website] renewed his call [JURIST report] for the formation of a non-partisan "truth commission" to investigate torture allegations. Also in April, UN special rapporteur on torture Manfred Nowak [official profile, DOC] insisted that under international law the US must prosecute [JURIST report] DOJ lawyers who drafted the memos. US President Barack Obama has said that he would not rule out the possibility of prosecuting [transcript; JURIST report] lawyers who authored the memos.

[JURIST] The corruption trial of former Peruvian president Alberto Fujimori [BBC profile; JURIST news archive] opened Monday with Fujimori confessing to having paid former Peruvian Intelligence Director Vladimiro Montesino [BBC profile] $15 million to resign in 2000, but denying any criminal liability. Fujimori's confession was limited [La Republica report, in Spanish] only to the facts in the case against him. He did not admit any wrongdoing or accept criminal responsibility because he repaid the $15 million to the government. Fujimori is accused of paying Montesino to resign in 2000 in the midst of the scandal that ultimately resulted in his arrest [JURIST report] in 2005. It is believed the Fujimori's decision to admit the facts is to limit the potential distraction that the trial would cause his daughter as she campaigns for president.

Fujimori was convicted [JURIST report] in April of committing human rights abuses for approving multiple killings during his 1990-2000 presidency. The conviction and subsequent sentencing, which puts Fujimori in prison for 25 years, was met with widespread approval [JURIST report] from the current government and human rights organization, despite Fujimori's planned appeal. In 2007, Fujimori was convicted [JURIST report] of ordering a warrantless search in 2000 on the apartment of Montesino's wife. Prosecutors alleged that the search was intended to uncover and confiscate documents that might incriminate Fujimori. Similar to the present charges, Fujimori admitted to the facts, but denied any wrongdoing.