Myanmar opposition group 88 Generation Students urged Burmese voters Friday to reject the country's new draft constitution in an upcoming national referendum . The group said in a public statement that the new constitution would only further legitimize military rule and that the procedures set in place to govern the referendum are a "sham". The [...]

US Chief Justice John Roberts and Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas told a House Appropriations subcommittee Thursday that Congress should pass a bill to raise the pay of federal judges in an attempt to close the pay gap between the federal judiciary and their colleagues in private practice. If passed, the Federal Judicial Salary [...]

Sahr MuhammedAlly : "On March 12, 2008, Mohammed Jawad , a twenty-three year old Afghan prisoner, announced to the military commission judge that he has "been brought here illegally." Jawad is accused of attempted murder for allegedly throwing a grenade at a military vehicle, and injuring two U.S. soldiers and their interpreter in Afghanistan in [...]

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon Thursday condemned Israeli air strikes on the Gaza Strip and called on Israel to end its use of "disproportionate and excessive force" against Palestinians. Speaking at a summit of the Organization of the Islamic Conference in Senegal, Ban said : Let me use this opportunity to once again urge Israel and [...]

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a lawsuit Thursday seeking to compel the US government to release unredacted transcripts of military hearings conducted at Guantanamo Bay in early 2007 for 14 "high-value" prisoners , during which the prisoners allegedly described torture and abuse sustained during detention in CIA secret prisons . The complaint argues [...]

Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki has established a panel to investigate the December 2007 disputed presidential election that sparked mass violence in the country, according to a Thursday statement from his office. The panel is expected to probe the election's outcome, as well as the independence of the Electoral Commission of Kenya . Tensions have settled [...]

The FBI has continued to improperly use so-called national security letters (NSLs) , with the number of violations increasing in 2006 over previous years, according to a US Department of Justice follow-up review released Thursday. Last March, the DOJ found in its initial review on NSL abuse that NSL violations similarly rose between 2003 through [...]

The trial chamber of the International Criminal Court (ICC) on Thursday postponed the trial date of former Union of Patriotic Congolese militia leader Thomas Lubanga until June 23, 2008. Lubanga's trial was originally scheduled to begin March 31 . Lubanga is charged with enlisting child soldiers in the violence-plagued Ituri district . He has denied [...]

A US military judge ruled Thursday that some correspondence between the US and Canadian government officials regarding Guantanamo detainee Omar Khadr must be turned over to Khadr's defense team. Prosecutors argued that they had found no such correspondence in US State Department records, but military judge Army Colonel Peter Brownback ordered that they conduct another [...]

A Review of the FBI's Use of National Security Letters: Assessment of Corrective Actions and Examination of NSL Usage in 2006, US Department of Justice, March 13, 2008 . Read the full text of the report . Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.