The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) Thursday blasted a proposed plan that would allow Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents to consider a person's race, religion, or ethnicity in deciding whether to open a terrorism investigation. CAIR decried the plan as "unconstitutional and un-American," saying that it could allow security agents to target Muslims and [...]

Yemeni officials met with a visiting US delegation Thursday to discuss the possible transfer of Yemeni detainees still held at Guantanamo Bay . A major impediment to the negotiated release and repatriation of Yemeni detainees – who make up the largest single group of nationals at the prison – has been concern that they might [...]

The US District Court for the District of Columbia Wednesday chose Judge Thomas Hogan to preside over the habeas corpus appeals of Guantanamo Bay detainees seeking to challenge their detention in federal court under the Supreme Court's recent ruling in Boumediene v. Bush. Hogan will rule on procedural issues common to all cases. Also on [...]

Pakistani Supreme Court Bar Association President Aitzaz Ahsan strongly criticized the Bush administration's Pakistan policy during a visit to the US this past week, arguing that its refusal to condemn President Pervez Musharraf's November 2007 declaration of emergency law and his concomitant ouster of superior court judges is harming relations between the countries. On Tuesday, [...]

The Italian government Thursday began carrying out a controversial plan to fingerprint the country's Roma minority , despite fierce criticism from the international human rights community and Roma advocates . The fingerprinting scheme, announced last Thursday by Interior Minister Roberto Maroni , involves recording the fingerprints of thousands of Roma, including children, ostensibly to reduce [...]

Human Rights Watch Wednesday accused Sri Lanka of creating a de facto internment camp to arbitrarily detain more than 400 refugees fleeing areas of the country controlled by separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) . HRW rejected government claims that the detentions are meant for the refugees' own protection and called on the government [...]

A judge for the US District Court for the Southern District of New York Tuesday ordered Google to turn over databases containing logs of every time any IP address has accessed any YouTube video. Viacom had requested access to the databases in a lawsuit brought for copyright infringement, arguing that Google and YouTube knowingly made [...]

Strict French anti-terrorism laws violate European and international human rights standards, according to a report released by Human Rights Watch (HRW) Wednesday. In particular, the report criticized a French law criminalizing "association in relation to a terrorist undertaking," which HRW says allows prosecutors and law enforcement officials to detain terrorism suspects without cause and undermine [...]

Disagreements between the United States and Iraq are still blocking a permanent Status of Forces Agreement regarding the role of American troops in Iraq and could delay a deal past the expiration of the UN mandate for coalition forces in Iraq at the end of the year, Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari indicated Wednesday. Last [...]

A judge for the US District Court for the Northern District of California Wednesday dismissed a lawsuit brought by an Islamic charity that alleged it was the subject of an illegal wiretap by the National Security Agency (NSA) . The government argued that the NSA did not need to obtain a court order before eavesdropping [...]