JURIST Guest Columnist Jordan Paust of the University of Houston Law Center says despite a recent conclusion of the US DC Circuit Court of Appeals that former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other top US officials are immune from torture-related litigation launched by former US detainees because they were performing acts "within the scope of [...]

Four professors at the University of Dhaka in Bangladesh were acquitted Monday of inciting students during campus protests which caused the interim government to impose a curfew in August 2007. Eleven students were also acquitted for their part in the protests. Four other youths were sentenced in absentia to two years imprisonment. Lack of evidence [...]

Lawyers for the east African state of Djibouti Monday asked the International Court of Justice to allow the country to take over a French murder probe into the death of French judge Bernard Borrel as public hearings in Djibouti v. France began at The Hague. The case was brought by Djibouti in 2006 in a [...]

The most popular independent television network in Pakistan, Geo-TV , resumed on-air broadcasting Monday after the government lifted a ban imposed during the declaration of emergency rule issued by President Pervez Musharraf in November. The network was allowed to start broadcasting again only after it signed a government code of conduct which included guidelines on [...]

Farzana Hassan and Zeynep Baysal : "The recent victory of the newly elected Islamic party in secular Turkey has spawned a reversal to traditional Islamic precept and practice in the country. This contention is confirmed by the newly elected Turkish Prime Minister's move to lift the ban on headscarves in public places nearly a century [...]

The Iraqi parliament gave first reading Monday to a draft bill forwarded by the Iraqi cabinet which could allow for the pardon and release of around 5,000 detainees currently held in Iraqi prisons. The bill, approved by the cabinet in December 2007, would exclude prisoners held in US custody and others who are imprisoned for [...]

The Malaysian lawyer whose 2001 video of a deal over a judicial appointment has sparked accusations and investigations into judicial corruption, claimed Monday he must have been intoxicated when he appeared to be arranging for the appointment of "friendly" senior judges. V.K. Lingam told an official inquiry that he "must have had one too many [...]

Human Rights Watch Sunday condemned the appointment of a suspected Janjaweed militia leader as an advisor to Sudan's Ministry of Federal Affairs and special advisor to President Omar El Bashir . Musa Hilal is a tribal leader from northern Darfur and is suspected of running one of the 16 known Janjaweed bases. The Janjaweed are [...]

Alex Neve : "Over the past week there has been reason to both commend and chastise Canada for the approach it takes to assessing where torture is likely to occur. In the midst of court action launched by Amnesty International Canada and the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association, challenging Canada's practice of transferring battlefield detainees [...]

Faisal Naseem Chaudhry : "All was not well on the morning of December 27, yet it was not so unwell either. Elections were to take place on 8th of January. Benazir Bhutto, Nawaz Sharif and other politicians were on a move round-the-clock as part of their election campaign. The lawyers' boycott of judges who had [...]