An Italian draft law published Friday proposing prison sentences for race-based hate crimes but not making Holocaust denial an explicit crime in itself may complicate a German-initiated move to criminalize such Holocaust denial throughout the European Union. The Italian law, written by Justice Minister Clemente Mastella , would punish inciting racial hatred with up to [...]

Civil rights groups have been pushing Democratic lawmakers to reconsider a bill banning racial profiling by any government entity since an airline's decision to remove a group of imams from a flight in November. Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), chairman of the US House Judiciary Committee, and Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI), who first championed the bill [...]

An Israeli parliamentary subcommittee approved day an amendment Saturday that would require Knesset members to cast open rather than secret ballots in presidential elections. The "Peres law," so called because it would greatly favor presidential candidate Deputy Prime Minister Shimon Peres' chances of winning, was passed by a 7-5 margin. It now must receive a [...]

The White House plans to tell Congress on Monday that Israel's use of US-made cluster munitions in southern Lebanon last year may have violated several decades-old agreements requiring that the weapons only be used against clearly defined military targets or the Arms Export Control Act , which authorizes use of the weapons only for self-defense, [...]

The US Army confirmed Saturday to AP that it has up to 50 criminal investigations underway into alleged frauds involving private contractors running operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and Kuwait. The Pentagon currently outsources many military tasks from laundry to weapons system repair work, but the military's inability to monitor most contractors has cost the US [...]

A federal judge held late last week that overcrowded Philadelphia jails violate inmates' constitutional rights and therefore require court monitoring. The ruling from US District Judge R. Barclay Surrick came in response to a lawsuit filed last year by University of Pennsylvania law professor David Rudovsky on behalf of 11 inmates. In his opinion, Judge [...]

Woullard v. State Farm, US District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi, January 27, 2006 . Read the full text of the ruling . Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.

The Netherlands Justice Ministry has extradited Dutch citizen Wasem al Delaema to the US for his role in attempted killings of US soldiers in Iraq during October 2003, according to the Ministry on Saturday. The extradition follows a ruling by the Appeals Court in The Hague that al Delaema could be extradited for the terror [...]

Argentine President Nestor Kirchner Friday authorized officials to reveal state secrets concerning human rights violations that occurred during the infamous "Dirty War" crackdown on dissidents between 1976 and 1983 that resulted in an official "missing" count of 13,000 people. A previous ban on past and present military, police, and other government officials had served as [...]

The Committee to Protect Journalists , an international press freedom group, lashed out Friday at new media rules imposed in Bangladesh Thursday in the wake of the government's declaration of a state of emergency earlier this month. The Emergency Powers Rules of 2007 restrict reporting of political activities in the country and provide for up [...]