The US Senate Wednesday voted 69-28 to approve a bill amending the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to grant retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies participating in the NSA warrantless surveillance program . Earlier in the day, the Senate had rejected three proposed amendments to the bill that would have limited immunity. The Dodd-Feingold-Leahy amendment , [...]

Israeli rights group Yesh Din published an update Tuesday to its 2006 report detailing the lack of investigations and prosecutions of Israeli settlers who commit crimes against Palestinians . According to the report, Israeli police have issued indictments in less than 10 percent of complaints filed by Palestinians monitored by the group, and most of [...]

Attorney General Michael Mukasey denied Wednesday that proposed Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) guidelines would allow agents to open terror investigations based solely on a person's race, religion, or ethnicity. Testifying at a meeting of the Senate Judiciary Committee , Mukasey said that travel to foreign terror "hot spots" would be one of many factors [...]

The chief judge for the US District Court for the District of Columbia said Tuesday that the US government should make detention appeals by Guantanamo detainees a top priority, and devote all necessary resources to ensuring that the appeals reach trial in a timely manner. Judge Thomas F. Hogan  made the comments at the first hearing concerning [...]

Judges at the Extraordinary Chambers in the Court of Cambodia (ECCC) Wednesday denied the bail request of former Khmer Rouge minister for social affairs Ieng Thirith , finding that she could be criminally culpable for her actions and that she is still dangerous to society. The ECCC ordered Ieng Thirith into provisional detention in November [...]

A UK intelligence official said Tuesday that there are "very strong indications" that the Russian government was behind the murder of former KGB agent and British citizen Alexander Litvinenko . The official made the comments anonymously during a television interview with the BBC, and asserted that the type of poison used proves Russia's involvement in [...]

The US government is preventing the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) from paying lawyers defending Guantanamo Bay terrorism suspects on trial before US military commissions , ACLU director Anthony Romero said Tuesday. Lawyers for the group's John Adams Project are defending detainees included on the US Treasury Office of Foreign Asset Control list of sanctioned [...]

A former British intelligence bureau chief told the House of Lords Tuesday that a proposed anti-terror bill allowing authorities to detain terror suspects without charge for up to 42 days is impractical and unprincipled. Elizabeth Manningham-Buller , who resigned as the head of MI5 last year, said that the bill was unworkable and would not [...]

The Group of States against Corruption (GRECO) expressed "great concern" Tuesday over Italy's decision to dissolve the office of High Commissioner against corruption , effective August 25, 2008. In a letter to High Commissioner Vincenzo Grimaldi, the president of GRECO, a coalition of European states dedicated to monitoring compliance with the Council of Europe's anti-corruption [...]

JURIST Contributing Editor Haider Ala Hamoudi of the University of Pittsburgh School of Law says the Iraqi government needs to secure independent counsel over and above whatever guidance it has received from US government advisers before entering into key oil contracts with major US oil companies… Much has been written recently of the oil contracts [...]