Israeli soldiers killed 11 white flag-waving Palestinian civilians in Gaza during Operation Cast Lead , which left more than 1,000 civilians and combatants dead in December 2008 and January 2009, according to a Human Rights Watch (HRW) report released Thursday. According to the report, the unarmed victims were waving white flags to indicate they were [...]

JURIST Special Guest Columnist Archbishop Agostino Marchetto of the Vatican's Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerant People says in light of recent Italian legislation on immigrants that while states have the right to control their borders, they must also consider justice and the universal common good…. The Italian Parliament recently passed [...]

Federal and state officials toured a prison in rural Michigan Thursday in anticipation that it could eventually hold inmates currently detained at Guantanamo Bay . Officials have not yet decided whether the Standish Maximum Correctional Facility (SMF) will one day house some of the 229 Guantanamo detainees. Michigan officials are also considering using the SMF [...]

Awzar Thi : "The verdict handed down against Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and her co-accused in Burma this week surprised no one. The trial was throughout political, not legal in character. The only real question has been what, if anything, anyone else will do about it. A chorus of angry statements from across the [...]

Pakistan's Awami National Party (ANP) will support Article 6 treason charges against former president Pervez Musharraf , according to a Thursday Daily Times report. Although it is part of the ruling coalition government of President Asif Ali Zardari , ANP Vice President Haji Adeel said that the decision to propose charges against the former military [...]

UN and Cambodian officials on Wednesday announced the establishment of an independent counselor to oversee anti-corruption efforts at the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) . The parties mutually agreed to appoint Cambodian Auditor General Uth Chhorn to the position. According to a joint statement by Deputy Prime Minister and Chairman of the [...]

The Supreme Court of the Republic of Kazakhstan on Thursday affirmed the conviction of publisher Ramazan Esergepov, sentenced to three years in jail for revealing state secrets in his newspaper. Esergepov was convicted on Saturday for publishing communications purporting to show a connection between the Kazakh business community and the country's intelligence bureau, the National [...]

Former Argentine general Santiago Omar Riveros was convicted of human rights abuses Wednesday and sentenced to life in prison for the killing of 15-year-old Floreal Avellaneda and the detention of his mother during the country's military dictatorship. From 1976 to 1983, a period known as the "Dirty War" , an estimated 20,000-30,000 people were forcibly [...]

The Mexican Supreme Court of Justice on Wednesday ordered the release of 20 men and the retrial of 6 others convicted in connection with the 1997 massacre in Acteal, Chiapas of 45 rebel sympathizers at a Catholic prayer meeting. The court found that the 2002-2007 convictions on charges of assault, aggravated homicide, and carrying military [...]

David Satter : "The proposed law allowing Russian troops to intervene beyond Russia's borders is meant merely to provide legal cover for possible future Russian aggression. The law, which presumably will be adopted, declares as "legal" what was already done in the case of the Russian invasion of Georgia last August. The principal point of [...]