The emergency meeting was held in response to a plea [JURIST report] from Pillay last week to refer Syria to the International Criminal Court (ICC) [official website] for an investigation into the violent suppression of anti-government protests. Many steps have been taken to try and halt the violence in Syria this year. Last week, the Los Angeles Times reported that an unknown Western country is funding an investigation [JURIST report] into Syria's recent human rights abuses. In July, two UN rights officials expressed concern over reports of violence [JURIST report] used by Syrian authorities against the country's own people. Special Adviser to the Secretary-General on the Prevention of Genocide Francis Deng and Special Adviser on the Responsibility to Protect Edward Luck said that reports of Syrian forces killing or arbitrarily arresting peaceful protesters indicate potentially grievous violations of international human rights laws, and urged officials to adhere to the government's 2005 pledge to protect its citizens. In June, the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) [official websites] published a preliminary report [JURIST report] describing human rights violations in Syria and calling for an investigation into government-authorized abuses related to pro-democracy protests that began earlier this year. In April, Pillay urged Syria to immediately halt the killings [JURIST report] and violence against civilian protesters in response to the fatal shootings of peaceful anti-government protesters. The Fact-finding Mission was established [JURIST report] by the UNHRC in April, but was not permitted to enter the country.

Maritime piracy [JURIST news archive] off the coast of African continues to be a global concern. Last week, a Dutch court sentenced [JURIST report] five Somali men to prison terms ranging from four to seven years for acts of maritime piracy. In May, courts in both Spain and South Korea [JURIST reports] sentenced Somali pirates to life imprisonment. In April, a Somali pirate was sentenced [JURIST report] by the US District Court for the District of Columbia [official website] to 25 years in prison for attacking a Danish ship off the coast of Somalia in 2008, for which he and other pirates received a $1.7 million ransom.

4:32 PM ET ~ A second Somali, Burhan Abdirahman Yusuf, was also sentenced to life in prison Monday.

In June, Anwar failed a third time to remove the judge [JURIST report] in his sodomy case. He was arrested in July 2008 after he filed a lawsuit against his accuser [JURIST reports] in late June. Last year, the Federal Court of Malaysia [official website], the country's highest court, rejected Anwar's 2006 defamation suit against against former prime minister Mahathir Mohamad [BBC profile] for allegedly suggesting at a human rights conference that Anwar was unfit for office because of his supposed homosexuality. Anwar was Malaysia's deputy prime minister under Mahathir until he was fired in 1998 following earlier sodomy charges of which he was initially convicted but later acquitted. He reentered Malaysian politics following the expiration of a ten-year ban [JURIST report] against him for unrelated corruption charges.

Finland is not the only country to try suspects accused of crimes related to the genocide. In January, a German court began the trial [JURIST report] of a former Rwandan mayor on genocide charges. Onesphore Rwabukombe [Trial Watch profile], a 54-year-old ethnic Hutu, allegedly coordinated three massacres in which more than 3,700 Tutsis, who had sought refuge in a church, were killed. Canadian prosecutors announced in 2009 that a second suspect had been charged [JURIST report] under Canada's Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Act [text, PDF]. The first man charged under the act was Desire Munyaneza [Trial Watch profile]. In October 2009, he was sentenced to life imprisonment [JURIST report] for war crimes committed during the Rwandan genocide. Munyaneza was convicted [JURIST report] of seven counts of genocide, crimes against humanit, and war crimes under the act.

The Libya conflict [JURIST backgrounder] has been ongoing since February. On Saturday, Libyan Prime Minister Al Baghdad Ali Al-Mahmoudi requested that the UN create a "high-level commission" to investigate alleged human rights abuses [JURIST report] by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) [official website]. Though NATO was mandated by the UN to use force in order to stop Muammar from fomenting violence upon Libyan citizens, the campaign has allegedly gone beyond the scope of protecting civilians and recently led to the death of 85 civilians in one night after NATO forces bombed a residential area supposedly housing a rebel command center. In June, the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) [official website] decided to extend a mandate to an investigative panel instructing it to continue its investigation of human rights abuses in Libya, after it published a 92-page report [JURIST reports]. The report claims Libyan authorities have committed crimes against humanity such as acts constituting murder, imprisonment and other severe deprivations of physical liberties, torture, forced disappearances and rape "as part of a widespread or systematic attack against a civilian population with knowledge of the attack."

8/23/11 ~ A free Saif al-Islam Gaddafi appeared before foreign media Tuesday, and an ICC spokesperson said that the court had never received official confirmation of his capture [Reuters report].