US Army Col. Lawrence Morris, chief prosecutor for the Guantanamo Bay military commissions, has said that the trials of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and other Sept. 11 suspects will be broadcast live via closed-circuit television to several military bases so that victims' families can watch, according to Friday media reports. Some family members applauded the decision, [...]
Former Supreme Court of Pakistan justice Rana Bhagwandas Thursday told the Lahore High Court Bar Association that the Supreme Court as currently constituted is unconstitutional, and that its ruling supporting Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf's November 3 declaration of emergency rule is invalid. Bhagwandas said only a two-thirds majority by both houses of parliament would validate [...]
A judge in Zimbabwe on Friday dismissed an attempt by opposition candidate Morgan Tsvangirai and his Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) to block a partial recount of Zimbabwe's March 29 elections . Official election results have not yet been released, but independent tallies suggest that Tsvangirai won the presidential election and that the parliamentary vote [...]
The US Senate voted 64-28 Thursday to direct the US Department of Justice (DOJ) to open an investigation into discrepancies between the 2005 Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation Equity Act (SAFETEA-LU) as approved in Congress and the version that was sent to the president for signature. The 2005 highway spending bill contained more than 6,000 [...]
The Bush administration has asked the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit to set aside a decision by a federal judge sitting in Vermont that allowed Vermont to regulate automotive greenhouse gas emissions. In Green Mountain Plymouth Dodge Jeep v. Crombie, the US District Court for the District of Vermont held that the [...]
The UN-backed International Criminal Court (ICC) swore in Silvana Arbia as new registrar in a ceremony at The Hague on Thursday, during which Arbia said that she intends to make protecting witnesses a priority as the ICC prepares for its first trial this year. Arbia was elected by the judges of the ICC in February, [...]
Canada requested in 2002 that the United States not send detainee Omar Khadr to Guantanamo Bay after his capture in Afghanistan, according to a letter submitted with court documents filed by Khadr's lawyers Thursday. Khadr's lawyers have argued that Guantanamo was an inappropriate place to detain Khadr because he was 15 years old at the [...]
The US Department of Justice has opened an internal probe into whether DOJ lawyers acted improperly when advising the US Department of Defense in a 2003 memorandum that military interrogators could employ a wide range of interrogation methods when questioning foreign detainees outside the United States without fear of criminal liability or constitutional sanction, Sen. [...]
An Egyptian military court has yet to release details of the charges on which 25 members of the banned Muslim Brotherhood were convicted and sentenced Tuesday, a lawyer for the Brotherhood told Reuters Thursday. In a unusual move, the court had blocked the Brotherhood's lawyers, the media, and defendants' families from the courtroom while the [...]
A Chilean court Thursday sentenced a retired general to 15 years in prison for his role in the 1974 disappearance of a political dissident. General Manuel Contreras , the secret police chief under former dictator Augusto Pinochet , is already serving a cumulative prison sentence of 57 years for several other convictions. AP has more. [...]