A judge for the Moscow District Military Court on Wednesday ordered that the trial of three men accused in the murder of journalist Anna Politkovskaya be closed to the public. This essentially reversed his Monday decision to allow an open trial. Also on Wednesday, all of the accused pleaded not guilty to the charges. The [...]

Amnesty International (AI) called Tuesday for an international investigation into the deaths of civilians during the August 2008 conflict between Russia and Georgia over the breakaway region of South Ossetia . A new AI report entitled "Civilians in the Line of Fire: the Georgia-Russia Conflict" faulted both Russia and Georgia, as well as South Ossetian [...]

The Supreme Court of Nepal has directed the country's government to end sexual orientation-based discrimination and to extend equal rights to gender minorities, including same-sex marriage . The order, made Monday, came in a lawsuit brought by several gay rights groups and follows a December 2007 ruling recognizing homosexuals as citizens under the classification "third [...]

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) on Tuesday ruled that it has jurisdiction to hear a case brought by Croatia accusing Serbia of genocide during the Croatian War from 1991-1995. Croatia claimed in its application that Serbia had engaged in "a form of genocide which resulted in large numbers of Croatian citizens being displaced, killed, [...]

A three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit on Tuesday upheld a New Hampshire law that prohibits the gathering of data from prescription drug records to target pharmaceutical sales to doctors. The Prescription Information Law was enacted in June 2006 and was aimed at limiting health care costs by reducing [...]

Council of Europe Secretary General Terry Davis on Tuesday called on officials to end discrimination against Europe's Roma minority . Davis' comments came in response to a Monday confrontation between Czech police and far-right protesters attempting to attack a Roma suburb near the town of Litvinov. The head of the European human rights organization said: [...]

JURIST Guest Columnist Amos Guiora of the University of Utah College of Law says that creation of a special US domestic court to try terrorism suspects need not be an exercise in "rights denial" but can in fact be a practical, rights-based solution to a problem requiring an immediate legal answer… Although I very much [...]

Eric Holder , Deputy US Attorney General during the Clinton administration, has been asked and has agreed to serve as US Attorney General for the incoming administration of now President-elect Barack Obama, according to media reports citing unnamed sources late Tuesday. If officially nominated and if confirmed by the Senate, Holder would be the first [...]

Dr. Almerindo Ojeda : "The UC Davis Center for the Study of Human Rights in the Americas (CSHRA) recently posted an analysis of miltary and diplomatic testimonies showing that the State Department had underreported, to the United Nations, the number of children seized and taken to Guantanamo by a 50 percent margin. In response to [...]

Two alleged Bosnian war criminals were arrested Tuesday on orders from the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina . Radivoje Lalovic and Soniboj Skiljevic are charged with war crimes allegedly committed during the 1992-1995 siege of Sarajevo , when both men worked in the Kula prison. They are accused of committing multiple ethnically-motivated crimes, including unlawful [...]