[JURIST] The 2008 Crime in the US (CIUS) report [materials; report summary] released Monday by the FBI indicates that the level of violent crime in the US dropped by 1.9 percent between 2007 and 2008. Specifically, between 2006 and 2007, the estimated number of forcible rapes dropped by 1.6 percent to 89,000, the lowest figure in the past 20 years. Murders and non-negligent manslaughters dropped by 3.9 percent, aggravated assaults by 2.5 percent, and robberies by 0.7 percent. Additionally, the rate of property crime, which has decreased each year over the past five years, decreased again by about 0.8 percent. The western region of the US showed the largest decrease in violent crimes.

The drop follows a 0.7 percent drop [JURIST report] for 2007. That came after two years of increasing rates of similar crimes, including a 2006 increase of 1.3 percent and a 2005 increase of 2.3 percent [JURIST reports].

[JURIST] The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) [official website] on Monday began the trial [press release] of former high ranking Bosnian Serb officials Mico Stanisic and Stojan Zupljanin [ICTY materials]. Stanisic, former Bosnian Serb interior minister, and Zupljanin, a former regional police chief, are charged [indictment, PDF] with persecution, extermination, murder, deportation, and torture of non-Serb civilians in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1992. The two are accused of taking part in a criminal enterprise that also included Momcilo Krajisnik, Radovan Karadzic, Biljana Plavsic, and Ratko Mladic [JURIST news archives]. Stanisic and Zupljanin allegedly had direct control over the Serbian forces that carried out the plan to eliminate Bosnian Muslims, Bosnian Croats, and other non-Serbs from the territory of the planned Serbian state.

A prosecution motion to have the cases of Stanisic and Zupljanin joined was granted in September 2008, and both men pleaded not guilty in November. Zupljanin was arrested in June 2008 by Serbian authorities and transferred [JURIST report] to the ICTY for trial. Stanisic surrendered to the ICTY in March 2005. Stanisic was originally indicted by the ICTY in 2005, and Zupljanin was indicted in 1999.

[JURIST] A judge in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York [official website] on Monday rejected [order, PDF] a $33 million settlement agreement [press release] between the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) [official website] and Bank of America (BOA) [corporate website]. The SEC had charged BOA with misleading investors [complaint, PDF; JURIST report] regarding billions of dollars paid to Merrill Lynch [corporate website] executives during the acquisition of the firm. Judge Jed Rakoff rejected the settlement agreement and ordered a trial on the SEC's allegations, finding that it was unfair to shareholders:

It is not fair, first and foremost, because it does not comport with the most elementary notions of justice and morality, in that it proposes that the shareholders who were the victims of the Bank's alleged misconduct now pay the penalty for that misconduct. The SEC admits that the corporate penalties it here proposes will be "indirectly borne by [the] shareholders." But the SEC argues that this is justified because "[a] corporate penalty ... sends a strong signal to shareholders that unsatisfactory corporate conduct has occurred and allows shareholders to better assess the quality and performance of management." This hypothesis, however, makes no sense when applied to the facts here: for the notion that Bank of America shareholders, having been lied to blatantly in connection with the multi-billion-dollar purchase of a huge, nearly-bankrupt company, need to lose another $33 million of their money in order to "better assess the quality and performance of management" is absurd.

[JURIST] US President Barack Obama [official website] stressed the need for stronger financial industry regulations [press release] Monday in a speech [transcript] marking the one-year anniversary of the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings. Obama warned that signs the economy is beginning to turn around should not cause Wall Street to forget the lessons of the past year, saying "[n]ormalcy cannot lead to complacency." Obama went on to lay out his plans for "the most ambitious overhaul of the financial regulatory system since the Great Depression":

First, we're proposing new rules to protect consumers and a new Consumer Financial Protection Agency to enforce those rules. This crisis was not just the result of decisions made by the mightiest of financial firms. It was also the result of decisions made by ordinary Americans to open credit cards and take on mortgages. And while there were many who took out loans they knew they couldn't afford, there were also millions of Americans who signed contracts they didn't fully understand offered by lenders who didn't always tell the truth. ...

Second, we've got to close the loopholes that were at the heart of the crisis. Where there were gaps in the rules, regulators lacked the authority to take action. Where there were overlaps, regulators often lacked accountability for inaction. These weaknesses in oversight engendered systematic, and systemic, abuse. ...

Finally, we need to close the gaps that exist not just within this country but among countries. The United States is leading a coordinated response to promote recovery and to restore prosperity among both the world's largest economies and the world's fastest growing economies. At a summit in London in April, leaders agreed to work together in an unprecedented way to spur global demand but also to address the underlying problems that caused such a deep and lasting global recession. And this work will continue next week in Pittsburgh when I convene the G20, which has proven to be an effective forum for coordinating policies among key developed and emerging economies and one that I see taking on an important role in the future.

[JURIST] The International Court of Justice (ICJ) [official website] began hearings [press release, PDF] Monday in a treaty dispute [case materials] between Argentina and Uruguay. Argentina argues [Buenos Aires Herald report] that a pulp mill built on the Uruguay side of the Uruguay river, which divides the two countries, violates the 1975 Statute of the River Uruguay [text, PDF], a treaty calling for consultation and agreement between the two countries regarding activities that affect the river. Argentina claims that pollutants from the plant are causing extreme harm [El Pais report, in Spanish] to the river and surrounding environment and that Uruguay failed to obtain Argentina's approval before starting the project. Transcripts of oral arguments, which conclude October 2, will be posted to the ICJ website daily. The ICJ is not expected to issue a ruling until 2010.

In 2007, the ICJ refused [JURIST report] to order Argentina to prevent demonstrators protesting the plant from blocking traffic on roads and bridges into the country from Uruguay. In 2006, the ICJ denied [JURIST report] Argentina's request that Uruguay be ordered to stop construction on the plants.

[JURIST] Three men convicted [JURIST report] of attempting to smuggle liquid explosives onto airplanes to blow them up were sentenced [Metropolitan Police press release] to life in prison Monday by the Woolwich Crown Court in London. Abdulla Ahmed Ali [GlobalSecurity profile], the ring leader, was sentenced [Guardian report] to a minimum of 40 years in prison, while Assad Sarwar and Tanvir Hussain [GlobalSecurity profiles] were sentenced to a minimum of 36 and 32 years, respectively, for the airline plot and conspiracy to murder. A fourth man, Umar Islam [Global Security profile], had been previously found guilty of conspiracy to murder and was also sentenced Monday to life in prison with a minimum sentence of 22 years.

The Crown initially charged eight men with conspiracy to blow up the airlines and conspiracy to murder. Three of them, Ibrahim Savant, Arafat Waheed Khan, Waheed Zahman [GlobalSecurity profiles] were found not guilty [AP report] of the conspiracy to murder charges, and had been previously been found not guilty of the conspiracy to blow up airlines, which the Crown has vowed to appeal. The eighth man, Mohammad Galzar [GlobalSecurity profile], was found not guilty of all charges. Both Savant and Islam had previously pleaded guilty [JURIST report] to "conspiring to create a public nuisance" by releasing videos about planned attacks.

[JURIST] Bangladesh's Supreme Court [official website] recommended against military trials for Bangladesh Rifles (BDR) members who took part in February's border guard mutiny [BBC backgrounder], Law Minister Shafiq Ahmed [official profile] announced Monday. President Zillur Rahman [official profile] asked for the court's opinion to determine whether the accused should be tried under the Army Act of 1952 [text] or whether they should face civilian trials. The court took into account the advice of 10 top lawyers and legal experts, seven of whom opposed [People's Daily report] the use of military trials. An inter-ministerial meeting had been scheduled for Monday to decide the type of trials to be used, but that meeting has been delayed [Daily Star report] until Tuesday.

Soon after the mutiny, Bangladesh banned a number of websites [JURIST report], including YouTube [website], that featured recordings or could be used to distribute recordings of army officials criticizing Prime Minister Sheikha Hasina's handling of the mutiny, although the ban on YouTube was lifted [JURIST report] quickly. Bangladeshi officials announced in March that the government was considering trying by court-martial [JURIST report] the more than 1,000 border guards accused of participating in the BDR mutiny, which killed dozens of top BDR officials, including the force's commander. More than 40 suspects have been arrested, and Bangladeshi investigators said in March that interviews of the suspects have raised concerns [BBC report] of a possible link to the Islamic group Jamaat-ul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) [SATP backgrounder], an organization previously tied to bombing plots across the country [JURIST report]. A US FBI team sent to Bangladesh to assist in the investigation arrived in March, and Scotland Yard investigators also joined the investigation.

[JURIST] A specially appointed chamber of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) [official website] on Monday found former spokesperson Florence Hartmann [BBC profile; ICTY materials, PDF] guilty of contempt [judgment summary, PDF; press release] for revealing confidential judicial decisions. She was also fined €7,000 to be paid in installments ending in November. Hartmann had been charged [press release, JURIST report] with two counts of contempt for allegedly disclosing protected information of appellate chamber decisions from the trial of former Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic [JURIST news archive] in a book and an article she wrote in 2007 and 2008. The presiding judge said:

This ... impacts upon the Tribunal's ability to exercise its jurisdiction to prosecute and punish serious violations of humanitarian law as prescribed by its mandate. Public confidence in the effectiveness of protective measures, orders and decisions is vital to the success of the work of the Tribunal.

[JURIST] The Seoul Central District Court on Monday found Microsoft [corporate website] in violation of South Korea's antitrust laws for bundling software programs with its Windows operating system. The court found the company's bundling practice to be in violation of fair competition rules and disruptive to the market. The court also dismissed a demand by South Korean software company Dideonet [corporate website] for almost $81 million dollars for damages allegedly suffered as a direct result of the bundling, noting a lack of evidence. This is the second suit within a few months in which Microsoft has been found liable for breach of South Korean antitrust laws. In June, the same court ruled that Microsoft violated antitrust laws [JURIST report] by packaging software with its Windows operating system, also dismissing requests for damages from two Korean software firms on the grounds that the damages were not sufficiently linked to Microsoft's conduct.

Microsoft has frequently faced antitrust and unfair competition claims. 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 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 by bundling its Internet Explorer web browser with the Windows operating system.