Amnesty International (AI) on Friday urged the Bahraini government to release Abdulhadi al-Khawaja, who was arrested and sentenced to life imprisonment last year by a military court, so that he does not die as a result of his 50 day hunger strike. Al-Khawaja, a Danish citizen, former protection coordinator with Front Line Defenders and leading [...]

An Egyptian court on Thursday found former housing minister Mohamed Ibrahim Soliman guilty of corruption and sentenced him to a total of eight years in prison. He was charged with violating laws regulating tenders and auctions including profiteering, illegal seizure of state land and squandering public funds. During his term from 1993 to 2005, Soliman [...]

Human Rights Watch (HRW) on Wednesday called on the Afghan government to release women and girls imprisoned in Afghanistan for “moral crimes” , many of which involve flight from unlawful forced marriage or domestic violence and “zina,” which is sex outside of marriage due to rape or forced prostitution. In particular, HRW called for the [...]

The Kansas House of Representatives approved a bill Wednesday that prohibits a governing body from passing a law that would infringe on an individual’s right to religion, which some suggest is a guise to discriminate against same-sex couples. The bill is commonly known as Kansas Preservation of Religious Freedom Act and passed the house by [...]

A federal judge on Wednesday awarded $44.6 million from Iran to two US marines and their families as a result of injuries sustained in the 1983 suicide-truck bombing on American barracks in Beirut, Lebanon . Relying on the findings of fact from Peterson v. Islamic Republic of Iran (Peterson II) , Judge Royce Lamberth, Chief [...]

WE STILL NEED YOUR HELP. Our spring fund drive ends tomorrow! Our annual goal is $30,000, and as of this posting we have just about hit the 25% mark. Your response has been phenomenal, but another $1,500 means we’ll be 30% funded for the coming year. . .another $2,500 and we’ll be 33% funded. . [...]

JURIST Guest Columnist Brendan Fischer, a law fellow for the Center for Media and Democracy, says that the Wisconsin voter ID law violates the state constitution and that voter ID laws in other states are facing challenges because of their impact on minorities and the elderly…

The Supreme Court of Canada on Thursday denied the government leave to appeal a decision requiring them to turn over redacted documents providing information about Afghan prisoner treatment. The complaint was filed by University of Ottawa law professor Amir Attaran , whose previous research uncovered a pattern of suspicious injuries on three detainees captured in [...]

JURIST Columnist Charles C. Jalloh of the University of Pittsburgh School of Law says that the date set for the verdict in the Charles Taylor case by the Special Court for Sierra Leone is inappropriate given the fact that it coincides with an important date in Sierra Leone… On February 23, 2012, I wrote an [...]

The New Hampshire Senate on Wednesday approved a bill to legalize medical marijuana . The proposed law would allow the state to issue cards to patients with illnesses such as cancer, glaucoma, HIV/AIDS, MS and others. A prospective recipient of a card would be required to get consent from a doctor and undergo a full [...]