Kosovo (Serbia): The challenge to fix a failed UN justice mission, Amnesty International, January 30, 2008 . Read the full text of the report . Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.

The extortion trial of former Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wajed resumed Wednesday in Dhaka, after the Bangladesh Supreme Court last week rejected Hasina's appeal of the proceedings . Hasina had argued that she could not be tried under the current state of emergency rules because the alleged crimes occurred before the state of emergency [...]

Jailed Russian oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky said Wednesday that he would begin a hunger strike to protest denial of medical treatment to Vasily Aleksanian , an imprisoned former executive and lawyer at the now-defunct Yukos oil company, who has AIDS. Khodorkovsky said officials were denying medical treatment to Aleksanian, whose health is deteriorating, to coerce [...]

Iran's chief judge issued a ban Wednesday against all public executions not specially permitted by the head of the judiciary. Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi also banned the publication of pictures and videos of executions and ordered state prosecutors to enforce the bans. Commentators said that Shahroudi probably wants to remove executions from the public eye [...]

The International Judges and Prosecutors Programme of the UN Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) has failed to meet international standards to ensure fair trials, according to a report released Wednesday by Amnesty International . The report blamed "flaws in the concept, limited resources and the low priority that international justice has been given" for [...]

The US Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit on Tuesday reversed a controversial trial court judgment in favor of a plaintiff class of cattle ranchers claiming that defendant meat-packing companies underpaid them based on erroneous price data provided by the US Dept. of Agriculture (USDA) . The class action plaintiffs filed suit under the [...]

Jakob Kellenberger, president of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) , Wednesday expressed optimism after completing a two-day visit to Washington DC to speak with top US officials, including Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Attorney General Michael Mukasey, and National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley, about ICRC concerns regarding the status and treatment of [...]

Australian Federal Police Commissioner Mick Keelty Tuesday called for restrictions on media coverage of terrorism cases, saying that media disclosure should be delayed until judicial proceedings have been completed. In a speech entitled "Terrorism: Policing's New Paradigm" delivered to the Sydney Institute , Keelty said: In the United Kingdom, to provide a contrast with Australia, [...]

Former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi was acquitted of false accounting by a Milan court on Wednesday. The charges were related to Berlusconi's membership in a group trying to buy the SME state food conglomerate in the 1980s, but the court found that the allegations against Berlusconi did not amount to a crime under amendments [...]

Kenyan opposition candidate Raila Odinga has condemned as illegal the latest "shoot to kill" order given to Kenyan police in response to continued violence across the country after last month's disputed presidential election , according to Wednesday media reports. Former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, in the country to help mediate the conflict between supporters of [...]