An Egyptian court on Wednesday ordered that the former chief-of-staff for deposed Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak , Zakaria Azmi, be released from prison after he was granted a retrial in a corruption case. Azmi was brought to court on charges of illegally acquiring and concealing real estate gains and was sentenced in May 2011 to [...]

JURIST Guest Columnist Victoria Neilson of Immigration Equality argues that although important steps have been taken in support of the LGBT immigrants, there are still many questions unanswered and issues unsettled that demand a continued battle on behalf of this population…

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay expressed concern Wednesday over reports that three Palestinians being held in Israeli custody are in poor health. Tarek Qa’adan and Jafar Azzidine have been on hunger strike for 78 days and Samer Al-Issawi has been on partial hunger strike for 200 days to protest Israel’s use of [...]

A judge for the US District Court for the Southern District of New York on Monday granted class action status to a lawsuit brought to stop the New York Police Department (NYPD) from continuing its “stop-and-frisk” practice outside of apartment buildings in the Bronx. In the first part of her legal analysis, Judge Shira Scheindlin [...]

Military lawyers from the US Navy on Tuesday said that surveillance equipment deployed throughout the Guantanamo Bay detention center was not used to breach attorney-client privilege. The officials indicated that devices used to record audio and video were routinely placed throughout the detention center, but they were only used for security purposes. The surveillance devices [...]

Former Ukrainian prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko was fined $2,000 on Wednesday for contempt of court after a hearing in Kiev. The judge assessed the fine after the hearing, which was being held in connection with an investigation of the murder of Ukrainian parliamentarian Yevhen Scherban, in which Tymoshenko is a suspect. Prosecutors allege that Tymoshenko [...]

The US Senate voted 78-22 on Tuesday to renew the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) which expired in 2011. Last year the Republican-led House of Representatives and the Democratic-controlled Senate both passed renewal bills, but they were unable to reach a compromise over a provision concerning whether tribal courts could prosecute non-Indians accused of assaulting [...]

Human Rights Watch (HRW) said Tuesday that Israel violated of the laws of war with at least 18 airstrikes launched during the November 2012 fighting in Gaza . HRW stated that the airstrikes killed at least 43 Palestinian civilians, including 12 children. The laws of war provide that only military objectives, those which make an [...]

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay unveiled a report Wednesday criticizing Sri Lanka for failing to investigate widespread reports of killings and other atrocities during the latter days of the nation’s 26-year civil war it fought with the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) . The report claims that the government has [...]

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said Tuesday that the death toll resulting from two years of armed conflict in Syria is approaching 70,000. The conflict and subsequent deaths arose out of a revolt against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad , which began with peaceful protests that quickly turned into violence between Assad’s forces [...]