International Criminal Court (ICC) Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda on Monday announced a “preliminary investigation” into allegations that the Burundi government, headed by President Pierre Nkurunziza, committed various human rights violations over the past year. In a statement to the media, Bensouda said that “more than 430 persons were reportedly killed, at least 3,400 people have been [...]

UN Special Rapporteur on the right to housing Leilani Farha warned on Friday that homelessness is India is a major problem. Farha called on the government of India to take immediate action to ensure adequate housing for the disadvantaged within the country. She stated, “I am extremely concerned for the millions of people who experience [...]

Bangladeshi workers gathered Sunday on the third anniversary of the Rana Plaza garment factory disaster to demand justice for the incident that took the lives of more than 1,000 people. A court in Dhaka ruled that 41 defendants can be tried for murder for the April 2013 garment factory collapse. Initially charged with culpable homicide, [...]

Egypt’s Court of Cassation on Sunday overturned the five-year prison sentences of 35 Al-Azhar students, ordering a retrial. The students were charged with rioting, illegal protesting, resisting authorities and blocking roads. The rioting charges came as a result of 2014 riots on the Al-Azhar University campus, which became violent. The University, located in Cairo, was [...]

The Florida Supreme Court on Friday granted a motion to suspend the state’s mandatory 24-hour waiting period for abortions. The ban shall remain suspended until the court determines whether it will accept jurisdiction over the case. The law implementing the waiting period, which was signed by Governor Rick Scott last year, was allowed to go [...]

The US Department of Justice (DOJ) on Friday dropped a request to force Apple to unlock an iPhone linked to a New York drug case, stating that an individual has provided investigators with the passcode to unlock the phone. Federal prosecutors stated in a letter to US District Judge Margo Brodie of the US District [...]

JURIST Guest Colomnist Jordan J. Paust, the Mike & Teresa Baker Professor at the Law Center at the University of Houston, discusses how waterboarding is a form of torture… Professor Jeffrey Addicott has made false statements about Bush/Cheney interrogation tactics in a recent commentary piece . Among them are the manifestly erroneous assertions that “the [...]

A federal judge on Friday ruled that a lawsuit against two former military psychologists who developed the CIA’s interrogation program under George W. Bush may proceed. US District Court Judge Justin Quackenbush of the US District Court of the Eastern District of Washington decided that the three plaintiffs, who claim that they were tortured in [...]

A divided Kansas Supreme Court ruled Friday that a lifetime registration as a sex offender does not constitute cruel and unusual punishment. The court heard the case of Henry Petersen-Beard who was convicted as a 19-year-old of raping a 13-year-old girl. The court analyzed whether Petersen-Beard’s lifetime registry as a sex offender violated section 9 [...]

Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe on Friday restored the voting rights of individuals who have completed the terms of incarceration and have been released from supervised probation or parole for any and all felony convictions. Under the Constitution of Virginia , the governor has the power to “remove political disabilities consequent upon conviction for offenses.” The [...]