The prosecutor at the International Criminal Court (ICC) on Friday appealed an order to release accused Congolese militia leader Thomas Lubanga Dyilo . The order was issued on Thursday after the court determined that Lubanga could not be detained for an indeterminate period of time pending resumption of his trial. The court had previously ordered [...]

A UK High Court of Justice on Friday allowed a lawsuit to proceed that seeks to force the UK government to hold a public inquiry into torture allegations made following the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The suit was brought by 102 Iraqi men who claim they were subjected torture, including hooding, electrical shocks and sexual [...]

New York Governor David Paterson (D) signed a bill Friday prohibiting the retention of personal information of individuals detained New York City police during a “stop and frisk” but ultimately not charged with a crime. The law was approved by the New York Assembly last month and will end the practice of police obtaining and [...]

A UK crown court on Friday ordered five companies to pay £9.5 million in damages relating to the 2005 Buncefield oil storage depot explosion , which has been described as the most costly industrial accident in the UK. Total UK, a subsidiary of French oil company Total , was ordered to pay £3.6 million, the [...]

The Tribunal of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) ruled Friday that the farmers who lost their land under Zimbabwe’s land reform program may take their case to the SADC summit meeting next month. The ruling, which also reaffirms a previous ruling finding the land reform program to be racially motivated , discriminatory and contrary [...]

The lawyer for US geologist Xue Feng announced Friday that Xue has appealed his conviction for selling state secrets, arguing that the information to which he had access did not include protected information. Xue was convicted earlier this month by Beijing’s No.1 Intermediate People’s Court and sentenced to eight years in prison for collecting intelligence [...]

Human Rights Watch (HRW) on Friday criticized the human rights record of Syrian President Bashar al-Asad , claiming he has made virtually no progress on rights despite repeated promises for reform. In a report, “A Wasted Decade” , released a day in advance of the 10-year anniversary of al-Asad’s rise to power, HRW sharply criticized [...]

The Russian State Duma on Friday voted 354 to 96 to approve legislation that would allow the country’s secret police, the Federal Security Service (FSB) , to question citizens about their actions related to crimes that have not yet occurred. The KGB , predecessor to the FSB, had the authority to conduct similar preemptive questioning, [...]

The Kimberley Process (KP) on Thursday approved the limited sale of diamonds from the controversial Marange mines after reaching an agreement with the Zimbabwean government. The agreement, reached in a meeting of the international diamond monitoring body, comes after the KP was unable to reach a consensus on Zimbabwe in its June meeting in Tel [...]

Former head of the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) and federal judge Jay Bybee denied approving a number of interrogation techniques used by the CIA, according to testimony released Thursday by the US House Judiciary Committee . Bybee was questioned by the committee in May in a closed-door hearing about controversial memos written by the [...]