A US military court in Iraq Sunday convicted  Alaa "Alex" Mohammad Ali , an Iraqi-Canadian translator working in the country, in connection with the February stabbing death of a fellow military contractor. The case is the first in which a civilian has been charged  and convicted by the military since a 2006 amendment  to the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) [...]

JURIST Guest Columnist David Kaye of UCLA School of Law says that instead of the Supreme Court's habeas solution to the detentions problem in Boumediene v. Bush, Congress and President might better have engaged in a good faith legislative process to sketch out an appropriate and legally supportable detention system balancing the protections necessary for [...]

JURIST Contributing Editor Jordan Paust of the University of Houston Law Center says that so long as the United States is an occupying power or exercises effective control in any part of Iraq it must ensure that it is meeting its obligations to detainees under international law and the laws of war. Both presumptive presidential [...]

Beth Van Schaack : "The central question facing the Supreme Court in Boumediene was: to what extent does the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus extend to foreign nationals detained within the unique jurisdictional circumstances of Guantánamo? One key factor underlying the Court's ruling in Boumediene that petitioners are entitled to enjoy the privilege [...]

A spokesman for Iraq's Supreme Judicial Council has said that the country's recently-enacted amnesty law has resulted in charges being dropped against over 75,000 people with some 20,000 others being ordered freed from detention, according to Reuters Sunday. It was not clear how many prisoners have actually been freed. Abdulsatar al-Bayrkdar indicated that approximately 44,900 [...]

Israeli soldiers regularly beat and abuse Palestinian detainees even after they have been arrested and no longer pose a threat, the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI) alleged in a report published Sunday. The group based its finding on testimony it obtained from some 90 detainees covering the period June 2006 and October 2007:Abuse [...]

The Italian judge presiding over the corruption trial of Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and his former lawyer David Mills said Friday accord to Reuters that hearings in the case will continue despite a request for her removal by Berlusconi's lawyers. Berlusconi's legal team claimed judge Nicoletta Gandus was biased after she commented on laws [...]

Serbian officials transferred former Bosnian Serb police commander Stojan Zupljanin to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) Saturday after the War Crimes Chamber of the Belgrade District Court refused his appeal against extradition. Serbian Minister of Justice Dusan Petrovic approved the transfer Friday. Zupljanin was arrested earlier this month. He was indicted [...]

The trial of British national Simon Mann , charged with participating in an alleged coup attempt against Equatorial Guinea President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo in 2004, concluded on Friday with his defense lawyer seeking leniency. Mann, who has claimed that Sir Mark Thatcher was involved in the plot , testified that he was “only a [...]

The Kansas Supreme Court ruled 6-1 Friday that juvenile defendants in the state have a constitutional right to a jury trial. The Court found that recent changes to the Kansas Juvenile Justice Code made juvenile proceedings "more akin to an adult prosecution" in which jury trials are constitutionally provided under Section 10 of the Kansas [...]