[JURIST] Pakistan Interior Minister Rehman Malik announced Saturday that his government would indict seven suspects in the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks [JURIST news archive]. He also requested further evidence [AP report] from India that the head of the erstwhile-Islamic charity and fundamentalist terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba [CFR backgrounder], Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, was involved in planning the attacks. Recent reports on Saeed's involvement filed by Pakistan have been met with skepticism [Pakistan Daily Times report] by India National Security Advisor M.K. Narayanan.

In August, India sentenced three terrorists to death for their part in similar attacks in 2003 [JURIST report]. Mumbai has suffered a number of terrorist attacks allegedly linked to the LeT in recent years, leading the government to consider controversial terrorism laws and to institute special courts [JURIST reports] to try suspects. In July, India announced that it would continue the trial [JURIST report] of a man suspected in a 2008 hotel attack [BBC backgrounder; JURIST news archive] that killed more than 100 people, despite his mid-trial confession [JURIST report]. Pakistan has postponed the trial of five others [JURIST report] allegedly connected with the 2008 attack.

[JURIST] Two more Uighur detainees currently held at Guantanamo Bay [JURIST news archive] have agreed to be transferred [AP report] to Palau, their lawyer told the Associated Press Saturday. Six of the remaining 13 Uighurs in Guantanamo Bay are now set to be transferred to the Pacific island. The detainees have been cleared for transfer since District Judge Ricardo Urbina ordered their release [JURIST report] from Guantanamo last October, but difficulties in finding an appropriate place to relocate them have impeded their release. The US Congress must approve the transfer, a process which will take approximately two weeks.

Four Uighurs agreed earlier this month to move to Palau [JURIST report]. At the close of its 2008 session, the US Supreme Court still had not ruled on an appeal [JURIST report] by the remaining detained Uighurs to gain their release. The appeal followed a decision by the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to stay the release [JURIST report] ordered by Urbina last October. Amid the legal wrangling over the Uighurs in the US, the Chinese government has repeatedly called for the detainees to be repatriated to China [JURIST report], a request the US has been reluctant to accommodate. Palau President Johnson Toribong offered to accept the Uighurs in June while four Uighurs were transferred to Bermuda [JURIST reports] that month.

[JURIST] The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) [official website] issued a plan [text, PDF; press release] Friday to reduce prison overcrowding as ordered [opinion, PDF; JURIST report] by a special panel of federal judges in August, but the plan falls short of the order's requirements. According to the CDCR, the plan could reduce the overcrowding rate from 190 percent to 155 percent in the next three years. This falls short of the federal court order requiring a reduction to 137.5 percent, or a release of nearly 43,000 inmates from the state's 33 prison facilities, in the next two years. The plan provides various ways of reducing the overcrowding rate including transferring more prisoners to out-of-state prisons, GPS monitoring of inmates who violate parole, commuting sentences of inmates who are eligible for deportation, and building new facilities or converting unused space. It is not clear what action the court will take against the CDCR for failing to meet its mandate, but options include [WSJ report] holding Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger [official website] in contempt of court or instituting its own plan. With its filing of the plan, the CDCR also said that is was not abandoning its appeal of the special panel's ruling to the US Supreme Court [official website].

Last week, the Supreme Court denied [JURIST report] California's request to stay the court order temporarily. The special panel's ruling was the result of a lawsuit [court materials] brought by two inmates against the state's prison system, alleging that the overcrowding had resulted in a failure to provide [Los Angeles Times report] adequate physical and mental health care, depriving them of their constitutional rights. The prison system in the state was originally built [San Francisco Chronicle report] to handle around 80,000 prisoners, and it is estimated that there are currently 168,000 inmates being held in those facilities.

[JURIST] The US Department of Justice (DOJ) [official website] filed a statement of interest [text, PDF; press release] Friday urging the US District Court for the Southern District of New York [official website] to reject a class action settlement [Authors Guild backgrounder] in a copyright suit [case materials] against Google. In its statement, which comes after an investigation [JURIST report] into the agreement, the DOJ told Judge Denny Chin that the proposed settlement raises concerns over class action, copyright, and antitrust law. The DOJ called the agreement discussions productive and proposed modifications to the agreement that included placing limits on provisions for future licensing, providing more protection for unknown rights holders, addressing foreign authors' concerns, and providing a way for Google's competitors to gain comparable access. The DOJ's actions were lauded [press release] by the Open Book Alliance [advocacy website], a group composed of some of Google's main competitors and a number of writers' associations, which is opposed to the settlement in its current form. The settlement is expected to be reviewed by the court on October 7.

The case originated when two lawsuits were brought against Google by the Authors Guild, an advocacy group seeking to preserve copyright protection for authors, and by other plaintiffs including the Association of American Publishers (AAP) [organization website], McGraw-Hill, Penguin Group, and Simon & Schuster [corporate websites] over Google's book-scanning initiative [Google Book Search website]. Under the terms of the settlement agreement, which was reached [JURIST report] last 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.