In July, Judge Edwin Kosik accepted [JURIST report] a plea agreement [text, PDF] with former Pennsylvania judge Michael Conahan for his involvement in the juvenile sentencing scandal. Conahan now faces a 20-year prison sentence, a fine of up to $250,000 and disbarment. Kosik had previously rejected [JURIST report] joint plea agreements [text, PDF] from Conahan and Ciavarella, finding that plea bargaining to honest services fraud and tax evasion charges demonstrated that the men did not accept responsibility and that the disbarment and 87-month prison sentences were too lenient [JURIST op-ed]. In October 2009, the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania [official website] overturned about 6,500 convictions [JURIST report] handed down by Ciavarella between 2003 and 2008, but gave prosecutors permission to seek retrial of more than 100 youths who were still under court supervision. Conahan and Ciavarella were indicted in September of 2009, following a withdrawal of the guilty pleas they entered [JURIST reports] in February 2009.

Although it is likely that the Scottish Government was aware of this desire, there is no record that it was communicated or that UK interests played a part in Mr. Megrahi's release by the Scottish government on compassionate grounds. When the matter came to the then Prime Minister ... he did not seek to exercise any influence on the First Minister or the Scottish Government. Mr. Megrahi's release on cmpassionate grounds was a decision that Scottish Ministers alone could - and did - make.

Last August, the Obama administration urged Libyan authorities to return Megrahi to a Scottish prison [JURIST report] to serve the remainder of his sentence. Also in August, the opposition Scottish Labour Party [party website] called for the publication of all medical evidence [JURIST report] related to Megrahi's release. In July, US lawmakers called for an investigation [JURIST report] into the role that BP may have played in Megrahi's release. Megrahi's release was controversial, with both US officials and the Scottish Parliament [JURIST reports] condemning it. Megrahi was convicted in 2001 of the Pan Am bombing and sentenced to 27 years in prison, which he subsequently appealed. Libya made its final compensation payment [JURIST report] to a US fund for victims' families in November 2008 after agreeing to accept responsibility for the 1988 airline bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland that killed all 259 on board [memorial website] including 180 Americans.

All girls deserve to grow up free from harmful practices that endanger their health and well-being. ... Governments, non-governmental organizations, religious leaders and community groups are making real progress. Three years into the programme, more than 6,000 communities in Ethiopia, Egypt, Kenya, Senegal, Burkina Faso, the Gambia, Guinea and Somalia have already abandoned the practice. Social norms and cultural practices are changing, and communities are uniting to protect the rights of girls.

As many as 140 million women and girls worldwide have undergone some form of FGM, which is defined by the World Health Organization (WHO) [official website] as "all procedures involving partial or total removal of the external female genitalia or injury to the female genital organs for nonmedical reasons." Efforts in several countries, however, have sought to eliminate or reduce the practice. In 2009, Uganda unanimously outlawed FGM [JURIST report] and imposed harsh penalties anyone who conducts the procedure to face imprisonment. Last year, Human Rights Watch (HRW) [advocacy website] called on the government of Iraqi Kurdistan [JURIST report] to outlaw female genital mutilation and to develop a comprehensive legislative plan to reduce FGM in the region.

In September, a human rights expert told the UN that Sudan was not prepared [JURIST report] for the referendum. Mohamed Chande Othman, a Tanzanian judge and independent expert on the Sudan human rights situation, presented a report [text, PDF] to the UN Human Rights Council [official website] in Geneva warning that Sudan did not have the necessary infrastructure in place and cited major setbacks, including the suppression of free speech and of the press, restrictions on other civil and political rights, and inadequate protection of society due to a lack of well-trained police officers, prosecutors and judges. The report also stated that there are unresolved issues, including border demarcation, residency and voter eligibility, as well as the lack of a referendum commission in the contentious region of Abyei in southern Sudan. According to the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) [UN report], the 10 states of Southern Sudan may form a new nation if voter turnout for the referendum exceeds 60 percent and 50 percent of voters approve of independence.

Prior to their dismissal, the panel members heard the prosecution's case, which culminated in a request that Wilders be acquitted on all charges [JURIST report]. The prosecutors based their request on determinations that the politician's statements were directed at Islam and not Muslims themselves and additionally, that the evidence failed to establish that he intended to incite violence. The presentment of the prosecution's case followed an order from a panel of Dutch judges to resume the trial after rejecting claims of judicial bias [JURIST report]. The trial had previously been suspended [JURIST report] after a lawyer representing Wilders accused one of the judges of making a statement which cast him in an unfavorable light to the jury. Prior to the start of his trial, Wilders announced [JURIST report] that the Dutch government would attempt to ban the burqa [JURIST news archive] and other full Islamic veils to secure the support of Wilders' Freedom Party [party website, in Dutch] in forming a coalition government.

The ECHR and the UK have also clashed over the issue of extradition of terror suspects. Last month, the UK government's independent reviewer of terror laws published a report [JURIST report] saying that rulings from the ECHR made it difficult to remove foreign terror suspects from Britain. The ECHR refused to grant the government's request that a terror suspect be required to show that it is more likely than not that he would be subject to ill-treatment. The ruling lowered the suspect's burden of proving that he would be faced with ill-treatment upon returning to his home country. Last July, the ECHR stayed the extradition of four terrorism suspects [JURIST report] from the UK to the US, holding that potential punishment could violate Convention's provisions on the prohibition of torture and inhumane or degrading treatment.

While the US has thus far failed to comply with its obligations under the Convention Against Torture to prosecute and punish those who commit torture, all other signatories, too, are obligated to prosecute or extradite for prosecution anyone present in their territory they have a reasonable basis for believing has committed torture. If the evidence warrants, as the Bush Torture Indictment contends it does, and the US fails to request the extradition of Bush and others to face charges of torture there, CAT signatories must, under law, prosecute them for torture.

Other calls to investigate the criminal culpability of Bush and officials in his administration have been rejected consistently by US officials [JURIST report]. In November, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) [advocacy website] urged US Attorney General Eric Holder to investigate Bush for violation of the federal statute prohibiting torture [18 USC § 2340A]. Also citing his memoir, the ACLU argued that the use of waterboarding has historically been prosecuted as a crime in the US. The letter also argued that failure to investigate Bush would harm the US's ability to advocate for human rights in other countries. Bush's secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld [JURIST news archive] has also faced possible criminal charges in Europe, when, in 2007, a war crimes complaint was filed against him [JURIST report] in Germany for his involvement in detainee treatment. The case was later dismissed [JURIST report].

Last month, STL Prosecutor Daniel Bellemare filed [JURIST report] a sealed indictment [statement, PDF; press release] with the tribunal's pretrial judge charging an unknown number of people for their roles in Hariri's assassination. The names of those indicted will be kept confidential [Lebanon Daily Star report] until the pretrial judge reviews and approves the indictment, but many believe that the indictment names members of Hezbollah [CFR backgrounder]. In August, Hezbollah submitted evidence to the STL [JURIST report] linking Israel with the bombing. The STL asked for the evidence [JURIST report] a week earlier after Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah [BBC profile] claimed to have proof that Israel was behind the bombing. Last February, the head of the STL reassured [JURIST report] the Lebanese public that the investigation is on track. When asked about the progress of the investigation into the death of Hariri, the head of the STL "underlined the fact that the Tribunal already has in place all the legal and administrative instruments necessary for its work, and is fully operational so that justice may be dispensed with complete independence and impartiality in accordance with the highest international standards." The STL was established in 2005 at the request of the Lebanese government to try those alleged to be connected to the bombing in which Hariri was killed by explosions detonated near his motorcade in Beirut.