US Attorney General Eric Holder told federal prosecutors in a letter released Monday that the US government will not seek the death penalty for a former Guantanamo detainee now facing a civilian trial. Tanzanian national Ahmed Ghailani is accused of involvement in the 1998 bombing attacks against US embassies in Tanzania and Kenya that left [...]

Ohio Governor Ted Strickland on Monday issued a temporary reprieve of two scheduled executions in order to give officials an opportunity to review the lethal injection procedures employed by the state. The reprieve comes after an unsuccessful lethal injection attempt last month resulted in corrections officials trying for two hours to find a vein in [...]

An Israeli cabinet minister canceled a trip to the UK out of concern that he would be arrested for war crimes allegedly committed during his tenure as the Israeli military's chief of staff, a foreign affairs spokesperson said Monday. Vice Prime Minister Moshe Yaalon decided to call off the scheduled trip to attend a fundraising [...]

JURIST Guest Columnist Witold ("Vic") Walczak, Legal Director for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Pennsylvania, says that the First Amendment took a serious beating at the recent G-20 summit in Pittsburgh when police and National Guard troops silenced demonstrators using tactics reminiscent of repression methods used in martial law-era Poland in the early [...]

The UK Supreme Court held its first session Monday, hearing an appeal by a group of four terrorism suspects whose assets were frozen by the government. The new Supreme Court, created by the Constitutional Reform Act 2005 , replaces the judicial panel of the House of Lords as Britain's highest tribunal, with 12 Law Lords [...]

The US Supreme Court on Monday declined to review the conviction of former Qwest Communications CEO Joseph Nacchio on charges of insider trading. The Court denied Nacchio's petition for certiorari without comment, ending his appeals process. Nacchio's conviction was overturned by a panel of the US Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit in March [...]

Former INTERPOL president and South African police chief Jackie Selebi pleaded not guilty to corruption charges Monday at the start of his trial in the Johannesburg High Court. Selebi is charged with receiving $170,000 in bribes from convicted drug smuggler Glenn Agliotti , who was suspected of killing South African mining magnate Brett Kebble. Selebi [...]

Situation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo: The Prosecutor v. Germain Katanga, et al., International Criminal Court, September 25, 2009 . Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here. Latest commentary available here. JURIST has more on Germain Katanga.

A Canadian court on Friday sentenced a member of the "Toronto 18" to seven years in prison for his role in the plot to carry out terrorist attacks in Toronto. Ali Mohamed Dirie pleaded guilty last month to charges of participating in the activities of a terrorist group. Dirie was given credit for five years [...]

The US Supreme Court officially opened its 2009 term Monday, hearing oral arguments in two cases. In Maryland v. Shatzer , the Court heard arguments on whether the Edwards v. Arizona prohibition against interrogation of a suspect who has invoked the Fifth Amendment right to counsel is inapplicable if, after the suspect asks for counsel, [...]