A three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit upheld Tuesday a district court decision finding former El Salvador chief military commander Nicolas Carranza liable for murder and torture committed during the El Salvador civil war in the 1980s. In 2005, a Tennessee federal jury found Carranza liable for acts of [...]

Gabor Rona : "Last Friday, the Obama administration for the first time articulated in court its vision of authority to detain persons who are now being held at Guantanamo. The government's brief in the In Re: Guantanamo Bay Detainee Litigation case in the District Court of the District of Columbia notes that this is only [...]

A Russian court Tuesday refused a request by defense lawyers to drop new embezzlement and money laundering charges against former Russian oil executive Mikhail Khodorkovsky and his former business partner Platon Lebedev . The court also rejected a request by defense lawyers to have the case returned to state prosecutors for further investigation. The lawyers [...]

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) on Tuesday hailed a decision by the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit not to revisit an earlier decision requiring the Department of Defense (DOD) to disclose photographs of alleged detainee abuse. The Bush administration filed a request for rehearing either by panel or en banc in [...]

The appellate chamber of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) on Tuesday partially reversed the conviction and reduced the sentence of former Bosnian Serb parliamentary leader Momcilo Krajisnik from 27 to 20 years. Krajisnik was initially convicted in 2006 on charges of persecution, extermination, murder, deportation, and forced transfer of non-Serb civilians [...]

The Vermont State Legislature on Monday began a series of week-long hearings on a bill that would allow same-sex marriage in the state. The bill, "An Act to Protect Religious Freedom and Promote Equality in Civil Marriage," sponsored by Vermont State Senate President Pro Tempore Peter Shumlin and State Senators John Campbell and Claire Ayer [...]

Chief judge for the US District Court for the District of Columbia  Royce Lamberth criticized the US Senate on Monday for politicizing the federal judicial confirmation process. Lamberth accused both political parties of causing harm to the federal judiciary by delaying the confirmation of federal appointees based on the clients they have previously represented. Lamberth [...]

UN Special Rapporteur on human rights in North Korea  Vitit Muntarbhorn said Monday that he found there to be a "broad range of egregious human rights violations" in the country. In a report to the UN Human Rights Council , he criticized the country for using access to food as a method of controlling its population and for using torture in [...]

Top officials from the Obama administration met with leaders from the European Union (EU) Monday to discuss plans to transfer detainees from Guantanamo Bay to European countries. US Attorney General Eric Holder met with the delegation headed by European Justice and Security Commissioner Jacques Barrot and Czech Interior Minister Ivan Langer to encourage the EU's [...]

The Greek government announced Monday that it will seek to overhaul its police force in the wake of the December riots and last week's vandalism . The Greek Interior Ministry has enlisted the help of British police in order to streamline the Greek police force and make it more effective. Both Scotland Yard and the [...]