The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) Tuesday rejected an appeal by a Dutch businessman convicted of selling chemicals used by former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein to create chemical weapons. Frans Van Anraat was convicted of war crimes in 2005 for selling 1,100 tons of thiodiglycol (TDG) to the Iraqi government in the 1980s, which [...]

The US Senate Judiciary Committee Tuesday voted 13-6 to send the Supreme Court nomination of Elena Kagan to the full Senate. The vote divided largely along party lines, with Democrats voting unanimously in favor of sending the nomination forward, joined by one Republican vote. Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) explained his ‘no’ vote by arguing that [...]

The US Department of Defense (DOD) announced Monday that two more detainees have been released from the Guantanamo Bay detention facility. Abd-al-Nisr Mohammed Khantumani was released to Cape Verde, while Abdul Aziz Naji was repatriated to his native Algeria. Naji had appealed to the US Supreme Court , asking that it review his pending transfer [...]

A Chinese government official announced Tuesday that Google has agreed to abide by the country’s censorship laws and stop automatically redirecting users to its uncensored Hong Kong-based site. Ministry of Industry and Information Technology spokesperson Zhang Feng, speaking at a press conference, said that the agreement allowed the Chinese government to renew Google’s Internet Content [...]

The UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) on Monday voted 23-13 to accredit the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC) as a consultative non-governmental organization (NGO). IGLHRC, an human rights organization for those discriminated against based on sexual orientation and gender identity, has been working towards accreditation since 2007. According to the organization [...]

Zimbabwean Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa said Sunday that Zimbabwe is not bound by the rulings of the Tribunal of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) . The statement comes two days after the Tribunal ruled that farmers who lost their land under Zimbabwe’s land reform program may take their case to the SADC summit meeting [...]

A Turkish criminal court Monday accepted the indictment of 196 defendants, including four retired military officers, over an alleged coup plot. The 2003 Balyoz Security Operation Plan , or “Sledgehammer” plot, which included plans to bomb Istanbul mosques and provoke Greece into shooting down a Turkish plane in order to undermine the government, was revealed [...]

The Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina Monday convicted Marko Boskic of committing crimes against humanity in the 1995 Srebrenica massacre . The conviction comes after Boskic confessed to his role in the massacre, where 1,200 unarmed prisoners of war were killed, accepting a plea agreement with the BiH Prosecutor’s Office . Under the plea deal, [...]

The US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit on Monday granted a request for bail by Canadian-born media mogul Conrad Black . The court granted bail following last month’s ruling by the US Supreme Court in Black v. United States which vacated the conviction of the former chairman and CEO of Hollinger International Inc. [...]

Judge Martin Feldman of the US District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana on Friday refused to recuse himself from a case in which he has already overturned a six-month moratorium on deepwater drilling issued last month by the Obama administration in response to the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill . Earlier this month, [...]