[JURIST] Pakistan's Awami National Party (ANP) [party website] will support Article 6 [text] treason charges against former president Pervez Musharraf [official profile; JURIST news archive], according to a Thursday Daily Times report. Although it is part of the ruling coalition government of President Asif Ali Zardari [official website], ANP Vice President Haji Adeel said that the decision to propose charges against the former military ruler should be made by more prominent political parties. Members of Zardari's Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) [party website] also announced Thursday that they support [Xinhua report] pursuing treason charges, saying that the party has never supported dictators, and that such a prosecution would deter future impositions of martial law. Sir Mark Lyall Grant [official profile], former High Commissioner to Pakistan from the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office [official website], reportedly met with former prime minister and Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) [party website] leader Nawaz Sharif [BBC profile; JURIST news archive] to urge him not to pursue legal action [Telegraph report] against Musharraf, although Sharif remains supportive of the measure.

On Wednesday, Pakistani police filed charges [JURIST report] against Musharraf alleging that he illegally detained members of the judiciary after declaring emergency rule [proclamation, PDF] in November 2007. Earlier this week, a district court in Islamabad directed [JURIST report] police to open an investigation into the allegations. Last month, the Supreme Court of Pakistan [official website] declared [judgment, PDF] that Musharraf's declaration of emergency rule violated the Constitution of Pakistan [text]. Musharraf resigned from office [JURIST report] last August in order to avoid impeachment proceedings by the country's parliament. Earlier that month, the country's coalition government said that it would push to impeach Musharraf because he had given a "clear commitment" to step down from office after his party was defeated in parliamentary elections [JURIST reports]. In June 2008, former Pakistani prime minister Nawaz Sharif [JURIST news archive] called for Musharraf to be tried for treason [JURIST report], labeling him a traitor disloyal to Pakistan and saying he should be punished for the "damage" that he had done to the country in the years since he led a military coup [BBC backgrounder] and unseated Sharif in 1999.

[JURIST] UN and Cambodian officials on Wednesday announced the establishment [press release] of an independent counselor to oversee anti-corruption efforts at the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) [official website; JURIST news archive]. The parties mutually agreed to appoint Cambodian Auditor General Uth Chhorn to the position. According to a joint statement by Deputy Prime Minister and Chairman of the Royal Government Task Force on the Khmer Rouge Trials Sok An and UN Assistant Secretary-General for Legal Affairs Peter Taksoe-Jensen:

The designation of an Independent Counsellor builds on the existing structure of national and international Ethics Monitors and the Joint Sessions established by the Joint Statements of 10 December 2008 and 23 February 2009. It represents a further step to help strengthen the human resources management in the entire ECCC administration, including anti-corruption measures, to ensure the requirements of due process of law, including full protection of staff on both sides of the ECCC against any possible retaliation for good faith reporting of wrongdoing. In this context, the Independent Counsellor will be available to all staff to bring forward any concerns confidentially, and will be empowered to address such concerns.

[JURIST] The Supreme Court of the Republic of Kazakhstan [official website] on Thursday affirmed the conviction of publisher Ramazan Esergepov, sentenced to three years in jail for revealing state secrets in his newspaper. Esergepov was convicted on Saturday [AP report] for publishing communications purporting to show a connection between the Kazakh business community and the country's intelligence bureau, the National Security Bureau (KNB) [official website]. Miklos Haraszti, Representative on Freedom of the Media at the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) [official websites] said that revealing public corruption [press release] is "the main duty of the journalists acting in the public interest," and that "[c]riminal sanctions for 'breach of secrecy' should only apply to the officials whose job descriptions stipulate the duty to protect sensitive information, but not to citizens." Haraszti had pushed Kazakh authorities to release Esergepov, and said he hoped the country could "provide a safe working environment for journalists covering social and political issues" in advance of their 2010 chairmanship of OSCE [decision, PDF]. Reporters Without Borders (RSF) [advocacy website] called the decision disgraceful [press release], plagued by "irregularities at trial," and that Esergepov was convicted for "criticising leading figures who illegally abuse their authority" in an effort to stifle the freedom of the press. RSF called on OSCE and other international organizations to pressure the Kazakh government to free Esergepov.

In February, US State Department [official website] criticized Kazakhstan's restrictions on freedom of the press in its 2008 Country Report on Human Rights Practices [JURIST report]. In December, Human Rights Watch [advocacy website] said that the former Soviet nation is falling short [JURIST report] on reforms promised in advance of their assumption of the OSCE chairmanship, including those designed to ensure media freedom and fair elections. Criticism of Kazakhstan's electoral practices has stemmed from the December 2005 election in which President Nursultan Nazarbaev [official website; BBC profile], in office since 1991, was re-elected with 91 percent of the vote. International observers raised concerns of fraud after that poll, which opposition parties unsuccessfully challenged [JURIST reports] afterward.

[JURIST] Former Argentine general Santiago Omar Riveros was convicted of human rights abuses Wednesday and sentenced to life in prison for the killing of 15-year-old Floreal Avellaneda and the detention of his mother during the country's military dictatorship. From 1976 to 1983, a period known as the "Dirty War" [GlobalSecurity backgrounder; JURIST news archive], an estimated 20,000-30,000 people were forcibly kidnapped or "disappeared" in a campaign against suspected dissidents. Riveros, who commanded the Campo de Mayo military base near Buenos Aires, was found guilty [Pagina 12 report, in Spanish] of involvement in the 1976 abduction and torture of Avellaneda and his mother in order to find out the whereabouts of his father. Avellaneda's body eventually washed up on the Uruguayan shore, and his mother was detained for three years. Four others were sentenced [La Nacion report, in Spanish] to terms of 8-25 years in connection with the abductions, torture, and killing.

Earlier this week, the Supreme Court of Argentina [official website, in Spanish] ruled that individuals cannot be required to submit blood samples [JURIST report] to test whether they were abducted as children during the Dirty War. Spanish police announced last month that they had arrested [JURIST report] Jorge Alberto Soza, wanted in Argentina on torture charges stemming from his service in the police force during the dictatorship. In February, Argentine defense officials announced the implementation of a new law [JURIST report] aimed at increasing civilian control over the military and its justice system. The law was seen by many as a response to the return of democracy and the rise of independent political institutions following the widespread human rights violations of the Dirty War era. Last August, a court convicted former general Luciano Benjamin Mendendez and another former general [JURIST reports] and sentenced them to life terms for kidnapping, torturing, and murdering Peronist politician Guillermo Vargas Aignasse in 1976 during the coup. In July 2008, an Argentine court sentenced Menendez [JURIST report] and four others to life in prison for the 1977 kidnapping, torture, and killing of four political dissidents during the Dirty War. In March 2008, Argentine politician and former police chief Luis Abelardo Patti was arrested [JURIST report] for crimes allegedly committed during the period. In 2005, Argentina's Supreme Court struck down amnesty laws [JURIST report] adopted in the 1980s to protect potential defendants, prompting the government to reopen hundreds of human rights cases.

[JURIST] The Mexican Supreme Court of Justice [official website, in Spanish] on Wednesday ordered the release [press release, in Spanish] of 20 men and the retrial of 6 others convicted in connection with the 1997 massacre in Acteal, Chiapas [AI backgrounder] of 45 rebel sympathizers at a Catholic prayer meeting. The court found that the 2002-2007 convictions on charges of assault, aggravated homicide, and carrying military firearms were based on evidence obtained illegally, in violation of the defendants' constitutional rights. Among the violations were the failure to provide translators [AP report] for Tzotzil-speaking defendants, and showing pictures of the defendants to potential witnesses prior to asking them to identify participants in the killings. Javier Angulo Cruz, a professor at the Center for Economic Research and Teaching (CIDE) [academic website, in Spanish] who represented the men before the Supreme Court, said that the decision marked a turning point [La Jornada report, in Spanish] in constitutional guarantees for native criminal defendants. The Fray Bartolome de las Casas Human Rights Center [advocacy website, in Spanish], a Chiapas-based human rights group, said that the decision focused too much on administrative mistakes [press release, PDF, in Spanish], ignoring the larger issue of whether the Mexican government was involved in the killings.

Tensions have long existed between the Mexican federal government and the largely Maya-descended people of Chiapas [official website, in Spanish] over the widespread poverty and ethnic inequality in the state. In January 1994, the Zapatista Army of National Liberation [advocacy website, in Spanish] began a violent uprising [NSA backgrounder] against the central government, eventually capturing and controlling dozens of "autonomous regions" in Chiapas. The violence began on the day the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) [official website] became operational, as a show of the Zapatista's disapproval of liberalized international trade, including free trade agreements, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank [official websites], which are seen as favoring corporate interests over that of the population at large.

[JURIST] A judge for the US District Court for the Eastern District of Texas [official website] on Wednesday held [order, PDF] that Microsoft has infringed on a patent of Canadian company i4i [corporate websites] with portions of its Word 2007 and 2003 word-processing software. Judge Leonard Davis enjoined the company from selling the infringing programs and upheld a jury award [i4i press releas, PDF] against the company of more than $200 million for the infringement. Davis held that Microsoft had infringed on a patent [materials] i4i held for the use of certain XML encoding, ordering the company to eliminate the software's ability to display the code. The judge gave Microsoft 60 days to comply with the injunction, but Microsoft has said it plans to appeal [PC Magazine report] the ruling.

Aside from the patent issues, Microsoft has faced numerous legal challenges based on antitrust and unfair competition allegations. In July, the company announced [materials; JURIST report] that it would offer European consumers an option to select from a list of several Web browsers "in an effort to address competition law issues related to Internet Explorer and interoperability." In June, a South Korean court ruled [JURIST report] that the corporation violated antitrust laws by packaging software with the Windows operating system, but dismissed requests for damages from two Korean software firms on the grounds that the damages were not sufficiently linked to Microsoft's conduct. In February, Google [corporate website] sought to join a European Commission lawsuit [JURIST reports] against Microsoft, alleging that the bundling of software violated an EC Treaty provision [Article 82 text] that prohibits the abuse of a dominant market position.

[JURIST] Right-wing nativist and so-called "patriot" anti-government militias are again on the rise in the US, according to a Wednesday report [text, PDF; press release] by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) [advocacy website]. The SPLC said that such groups, which had declined severely since the 1990s, are generally anti-tax, anti-immigration, and increasingly racially motivated since the election of the country's first African-American president, Barack Obama [official website]. SPLC said that the groups are advancing theories that the administration seeks to lead a socialist "world order," and that immigrants from Mexico have plans to "reconquer" parts of the country. The Center said that so far the groups have primarily used non-violent means of protest, like filing for fraudulent liens against property owned by public officials and holding mock "trials" of Obama and others. It warned, however, that the groups could soon post a security risk to the country, quoting one official as saying “[t]his is the most significant growth we've seen in 10 to 12 years... All it's lacking is a spark. I think it's only a matter of time before you see threats and violence."

One issue that the groups have focused on is whether Obama is actually a US citizen, though a federal judge dismissed [JURIST report] a lawsuit making such a claim in October 2008. Another is the taxation policy of the administration, which gave rise to numerous protests [advocacy website], called "tea parties," in the country earlier this year.

[JURIST] The US District Court for the Northern District of California [official website] on Tuesday enjoined [opinion, PDF] the technology company RealNetworks [corporate website] from selling its DVD copying software, RealDVD. Judge Marilyn Patel held that the RealDVD software violated the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) [text] and rejected RealNetwork's fair use defense. Patel did not not entirely dismiss the notion that a fair use defense may prevail in other scenarios, notably individuals making backup copies of DVDs for personal use:

So while it may well be fair use for an individual consumer to store a backup copy of a personally-owned DVD on that individual's computer, a federal law has nonetheless made it illegal to manufacture or traffic in a device or tool that permits a consumer to make such copies. Importantly, such tools are unable to distinguish between personal use copies of personally-owned DVDs and other sorts of copies for other purposes—commercial, personal, or otherwise.