[JURIST] The US Supreme Court [official website; JURIST news archive] heard oral arguments [day call, PDF; merit briefs] Wednesday in two cases. In Carr v. United States [oral arguments transcript, PDF; JURIST report], the court heard arguments on whether the failure to register provision [18 USC § 2250] of the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act (SORNA) can be applied retroactively to underlying offenses occurring before SORNA's enactment. The US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit held that, since the violation of failing to register was not complete when SORNA became applicable to the defendant, his rights under the ex post facto clause were not violated [opinion, PDF]. Counsel for the petitioner argued that statutory interpretation principles require that the provision not be applied retroactively:

When Congress uses ordinary words in the statute, those words should get their ordinary meaning. In SORNA, the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act, Congress did use ordinary words, and it used them in an ordinary way. But the government proposes that those words be given a most extraordinary reading.

[JURIST] Four Guantanamo Bay [JURIST news archive] detainees have been transferred to Albania and Spain, the US Department of Justice (DOJ) [official website] announced Wednesday. Three detainees, Tunisia native Aleh Bin Hadi Asasi, Egypt native Sharif Fati Ali al Mishad, and Libya native Abdul Rauf Omar Mohammad Abu al Qusin, were transferred to Albania [press release] and the fourth, an unidentified detainee from the Palestinian territories, was transferred to Spain [press release]. The transfers, approved with unanimous consent by the Guantanamo Bay Task Force, add to the more than 580 Guantanamo detainees transferred to other nations since 2002. There are still 188 remaining at the Guantanamo facility in Cuba.

Earlier this month, Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos announced that Spain would accept five Guantanamo detainees [JURIST report]. The country had previously agreed [JURIST report] to accept only two detainees, one Yemeni and one Palestinian, in response to a June request by the Obama administration, which continues its push to close the Guantanamo Bay facility, despite missing its self-imposed one-year deadline in January. The administration has run into several hurdles in closing the prison, including opposition from members of Congress and the suspension of detainee transfers to Yemen [JURIST report]. Spain and Albania join the growing list of countries that have recently accepted transfers, including Latvia, Switzerland, Slovakia, Afghanistan, Palau , Bermuda, Algeria and Somaliland [JURIST reports].

[JURIST] Twelve high-ranking Turkish military officers were formally charged on Wednesday for their role in an alleged plot to overthrow Turkey's government. Among those charged [Hurriyet report] were four admirals, two retired colonels, and a retired brigadier general. More than 50 officers were arrested [Reuters report] on Monday, including former Navy Commander Adm. Ozden Ornek and former Air Force Commander Gen. Ibrahim Firtina. Turkey's Chief of General Staff Gen. Ilker Basbug [official profile] is scheduled to meet [AFP report] with President Abdullah Gul [official website, in Turkish] and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Thursday to discuss the detentions. The officers are accused of participating in the 2003 Balyoz Security Operation Plan [Taraf report, in Turkish], or "Sledgehammer plot," revealed last month by the newspaper Taraf [official website, in Turkish], which included detailed plans to bomb Istanbul mosques and provoke Greece into shooting down a Turkish plane.

Turkey's secular nationalist establishment, including the Turkish Armed Forces (TAF) [official website, in Turkish], has long conflicted with the ruling Justice Development Party (AKP) [party website, in Turkish]. In July 2009, Gul approved [JURIST report] a law that would allow the prosecution of military personnel in civilian courts and would prevent military prosecution of civilians during peacetime. Gul said that the law was necessary for accession [JURIST report] to the European Union (EU) [official website]. The Sledgehammer plot is similar to the Ergenekon [BBC backgrounder; JURIST news archive] conspiracy, in which the secular group is suspected of planning to overthrow [JURIST report] the AKP. The Ergenekon group is also alleged to be involved in bombings, political assassination plots, and the death of journalist Hrant Dink [BBC obituary]. The probe into the Ergenekon conspiracy has been criticized as an attempt by the AKP to silence opposition and further its imposition of Islamic principles [JURIST report] in violation of Turkey's secular constitution [text]. Trials against the Ergenekon group [JURIST report] opened two years ago with more than 200 suspects in custody.

[JURIST] The US Supreme Court [official website; JURIST news archive] on Wednesday ruled [opinion, PDF] 9-0 in Maryland v. Shatzer [Cornell LII backgrounder; JURIST report] that the Edwards v. Arizona [opinion text] prohibition against interrogation of a suspect who has invoked the Fifth Amendment right to counsel does not require suppression of statements if, after the suspect asks for counsel, there is a break of more than two years before resuming interrogation. The Court of Appeals of Maryland had ruled [opinion, PDF] that there was no break in custody and that the Edwards prohibition against interrogation still applied. Delivering the opinion of the Court, Justice Antonin Scalia explained:

It is easy to believe that a suspect may be coerced or badgered into abandoning his earlier refusal to be questioned without counsel in the paradigm Edwards case...in which the suspect has been arrested for a particular crime and is held in uninterrupted pretrial custody while that crime is being actively investigated. After the initial interrogation, and up to and including the second one, he remains cut off from his normal life and companions...[If] a suspect has been released from his pretrial custody and has returned to his normal life for some time before the later attempted interrogation, there is little reason to think that his change of heart regarding interrogation without counsel has been coerced....In these circumstances, it is far fetched to think that a police officer’s asking the suspect whether he would like to waive his Miranda rights will any more "wear down the accused," than did the first such request at the original attempted interrogation — which is of course not deemed coercive. [citations omitted]

[JURIST] The Hungarian Parliament [official website, in Hungarian] passed a bill on Monday that prohibits denials of the Holocaust [JURIST news archive]. The law, which passed 197-1 [Politics.hu report] with 142 members abstaining, makes denying the Holocaust a criminal offense punishable by up to 3 years in prison. The bill was proposed by Attila Mesterházy [official profile, in Hungarian], the Hungarian Socialist Party [official website, in Hungarian] candidate for prime minister, and was the final item considered before the parliament breaks for April elections. The bill now moves to Hungarian President László Sólyom [official website, in Hungarian] for approval. A measure put forward by the opposition Fidesz [party website, in Hungarian] party to similarly criminalize the denial of human rights violations committed by the country's former Communist regime was defeated 178-146 [Haaretz report]. Two previous proposals to criminalize hate speech were struck down by the Constitutional Court of Hungary [official website, in Hungarian] in 2008 on the grounds that they were unconstitutional infringements [JURIST report] on the freedom of expression, and that the targeted speech was already marginalized. Hungary is home to more than 50,000 Jews, giving it the largest Jewish population among the eastern members of the EU.

Hungary is not alone in attempting to criminalize denial of early 20th-century atrocities. In November, the German Federal Constitutional Court [official website, in German] upheld [JURIST report] legislation prohibiting public support and justification of the Nazi regime. In 2007, the European Union approved [JURIST report] a framework aimed at criminalizing denial of the Holocaust and other genocides after six years of contentious debate. In 2006, British politicians, writers and comedians urged members of the UK House of Commons [official website] to accept freedom of speech revisions in the controversial Racial and Religious Hatred Bill [text; BBC Q & A], which had been amended] by the British House of Lords [official website] to restrict punishable actions to "threatening words or behavior" rather than including words which may be insulting or abusive.

[JURIST] An Italian court on Wednesday found three Google [corporate website] executives guilty of privacy violations for allowing a video depicting bullying to be posted on its website. The court in Milan found that the three men, David Carl Drummond, George De Los Reyes, and Peter Fleitcher, violated the privacy rights [ANSA report] of a young man with Down's Syndrome when they allowed a video showing his classmates bullying him to remain on the Google Italy website from September to November 2006. All three men were given a suspended sentence, though prosecutors had asked for a one-year imprisonment. A fourth defendant, Arvind Desikan, was found not guilty of privacy invasion, and a defamation claim against all four defendants was dismissed. Google's Deputy General Counsel reacted to the news quickly, with a strongly-worded statement [Google Blog post] calling the decision an attack on "the very principles of freedom on which the Internet is built," and promising to appeal the ruling.

Wednesday's ruling is the latest in a string of privacy-related legal troubles for Google. Last week, an internet privacy group filed a complaint [JURIST report] with the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to investigate whether Google's new Buzz service violates privacy laws and Google's own terms of service. Canada's Privacy Commissioner also raised concerns [press release] about the privacy protections present in the new social networking service. In January, Google threatened to withdraw [JURIST report] its services from China after hackers based in that country accessed e-mail addresses and other information from the accounts of human rights activists in December 2009.

[JURIST] The Irish Special Criminal Court [official website] on Wednesday dismissed the case against the only man criminally convicted for a role in the 1998 Omagh bombing [BBC archive; JURIST news archive], finding [RTE News report] that the evidence against Colm Murphy was not strong enough to support the conviction. In 2002, The Special Criminal Court originally sentenced Murphy to 14 years in prison for providing cell phones to those who planted the bomb. Murphy was granted a retrial [JURIST report] in 2005 when the appeals court found that the evidence against him had been mishandled by the police. During the retrial, the court found that the tainted evidence, which included false statements and illegal references to Murphy's previous convictions, could not support the case.

Despite the lack of criminal convictions related to the bombing, which killed twenty-nine people and injured hundreds more, a civil lawsuit was successfully brought against those involved. In June, the Belfast High Court found [judgment text; JURIST report] four men, including Murphy, responsible for the bombing and awarded £1.64 million to 12 plaintiffs. In December 2007, a Belfast judge found Sean Gerard Hoey not guilty of murder [JURIST report] in relation to the bombing, ruling that there was insufficient DNA evidence linking Hoey to the bomb to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he made the device. In 2005, the Irish Public Prosecution Service dropped charges [JURIST report] against another suspect, Anthony Joseph Donegan.

[JURIST] A Haitian judge on Tuesday announced the forthcoming release of the last two US missionaries out of a group of 10 who were arrested on kidnapping charges [JURIST report] following the January 12 earthquake [JURIST news archive]. Eight members of the missionary group affiliated with the Central Valley Baptist Church [official website] of Idaho and the New Life Children's Refuge Charity [BBC profile] were released [JURIST report] last week. Laura Silsby, who is the leader of the group, and her assistant Charisa Coulter met with Judge Bernard Sainvil, who told [Reuters report] reporters that the women would be freed because there was no evidence of a crime. Silsby and Coulter had consistently denied any wrongdoing and said they only sought to help children who were suffering after the quake.

The Americans were charged [JURIST report] in connection with their attempt to take 33 children across the Haitian border into the Dominican Republic, where the group stated they hoped to start an orphanage. Haitian authorities asserted, however, that many of the children were not orphans, but had been given up by their parents when the missionaries promised a better life for the children. The 10 were each charged with one count of kidnapping and one count of criminal association. Even as American and Haitian lawyers worked toward their release last week, it was reported that the eight released missionaries accused [NYT report] Silsby and Coulter of misleading them. The 7.0 magnitude earthquake caused massive damage to property and infrastructure in Haiti, and the death toll has now been estimated at 230,000.

[JURIST] US Army Chief of Staff Gen. George Casey Jr. [official profile, PDF] said Tuesday that he would not support a moratorium on discharging individuals from the military pursuant to the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy while Congress conducted a review of the practice. Casey, the highest-ranking officer in the US Army, made the statement while testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee [official website] regarding the 2011 Defense Authorization Request. When asked by Committee Chairperson Carl Levin (D-MI) if he would oppose such a moratorium, Casey expressed concern [committee webcast] that a moratorium would complicate the process of reviewing the policy, adding, "we would be put in the position of implementing [a repeal] while we were studying it." Secretary of the Army John McHugh [official profile] also testified, saying that the Department of the Army would not object to such a moratorium if passed by Congress, despite potential legal issues regarding ongoing discharges, but that his personal preference would be to not have a moratorium. Leaders from the Department of the Navy is scheduled to testify [hearing calendar] before the Armed Services Committee on Thursday, and they will likely face similar questions.

Earlier this month, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates [official profile] announced the creation of a panel [JURIST report] to study the effects of repealing "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" and to provide a plan for implementing such a repeal. That same day, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Michael Mullen announced his support [NYT report] for repealing the policy. The possible change in policy has been an important issue for President Barack Obama, highlighted by its inclusion in the State of the Union address in January. Last month, Admiral Mullen's legal advisers suggested [JURIST report] that he delay any internal efforts to repeal the policy until 2011. In October, Obama pledged [JURIST report] to end the controversial policy.

[JURIST] The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) [official website] announced [press release, PDF] Tuesday that another round of formal climate talks will be held April 9-11 in Bonn, Germany to follow up on the recent UN Climate Change Conference (COP15) in Copenhagen, Denmark [official website; JURIST report]. The decision to hold another session was made by the Bureau of the Conference of the Parties [UNFCCC backgrounder] during its first meeting this year in Bonn. UNFCCC Executive Secretary Yvo de Boer [UN profile] gave the reasoning for the new session:

Following the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, this constitutes a quick return to the negotiations. The decision to intensify the negotiating schedule underlines the commitment by governments to move the negotiations forward towards success in Cancun. This is further strengthened by the number of countries that have written to the secretariat with their country communications since Copenhagen.