Guatemalan authorities have arrested two high-ranking police officials leading the country's war on drugs on charges of corruption and drug trafficking, Guatemalan Attorney General Amilcar Velasquez announced Tuesday. Police Chief Baltazar Gonzalez and anti-narcotics official Nelly Bonilla were arrested Tuesday in connection with a drug-related shoot-out last year between drug traffickers and a gang of [...]

JURIST Contributing Editor Michael Kelly of Creighton University School of Law says that while democracy in Iraq may look one way in second Iraqi general election on Sunday, it may evolve to look very different when the next election cycle rolls around and the American troops are gone… American Ambassador Christopher Hill said this coming [...]

Women's rights and opportunities have increased in nearly all Middle Eastern and North African countries over the last five years, but women in those countries still face many obstacles in achieving equality, according to a Freedom House report released Wednesday. The report found that in general, women in those countries had more opportunities for employment, [...]

Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa announced Wednesday that the dissolved Sri Lankan Parliament will reconvene to ratify a one-month extension to the current state of emergency. Rajapaksa dissolved parliament last month to prepare for April elections, but, under the Sri Lankan Constitution , the president's emergency powers can be extended for only one month at [...]

Richard Dieter : "The United States is often rightly seen as a world leader in human rights. But we have become increasingly isolated from the international community in one respect – our persistent use of the death penalty. The worldwide trend is clearly away from capital punishment. The United Nations, a recent World Congress in [...]

The US Supreme Court heard oral arguments Wednesday in Samantar v. Yousuf on whether a foreign state's immunity under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act extends to an individual acting in an official capacity on behalf of the foreign state. The plaintiffs allege that former Somali defense minister and prime minister Mohamed Ali Samantar committed acts [...]

International Criminal Court (ICC) chief prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo on Wednesday submitted to ICC judges the names of 20 senior political and business leaders who “bear the gravest responsibility” for the deadly violence perpetrated after Kenya’s 2007 presidential election . According to Moreno-Ocampo, the 20 officials, whose names are confidential, organized and financed the post-election attacks [...]

An Iranian appeals court on Wednesday upheld the death sentence for a 20-year-old student who took part in anti-government protests in December. Mohammad Amin Valian was convicted of Moharebeh, which means waging war against God and is punishable by death under Iranian law. At trial, Vilian testified that he threw stones at the security officers [...]

Former Russian oil executive Mikhail Khodorkovsky on Wednesday criticized Russia's justice system as an "assembly line" that inevitably finds the government's political enemies to be guilty. In an article published in the newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta , Khodorkovsky warned that the current system must be reformed before change occurs "in Russia's traditional way," with violence. The [...]

The Spanish National Court on Tuesday sentenced a former Basque separatist party leader to two years in prison for promoting terrorism. The court found that comments made during a 2005 speech by Arnaldo Otegi, a former leader of Batasuna , the political wing of ETA , praised the terrorist acts committed by other ETA members. [...]