US District Judge John Walter of the Central District of California on Monday sentenced former Milberg Weiss partner William Lerach to two years in prison for his part in the firm's illegal kickback scheme . Lerach pleaded guilty last year to conspiracy to obstruct justice after reaching an agreement with prosecutors in September. In January, [...]

An Egyptian appeals court Monday overturned the jail sentence of an Al Jazeera television reporter convicted for her role in producing a film on police torture. Howayda Taha was tried in May 2007; she was sentenced in absentia to six months in prison and fined 20,000 Egyptian pounds for her work on a film that [...]

Jailed Russian oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky ended a nearly two-week long hunger strike Monday as former Yukos executive and lawyer Vasily Aleksanian was confirmed to have been transferred to a Moscow hospital for treatment. Khodorkovsky began his hunger strike after Aleksanian was denied medical treatment for AIDS, accusing officials of attempting to coerce Aleksanian into [...]

Estonia has signed an enforcement of sentences agreement with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) to allow ICTY convicts to be held in Estonian prisons, the ICTY announced Monday. Under the agreement, ICTY suspects who are held at a detention unit in The Hague during trial may be moved to Estonian jails [...]

Former Congolese Nationalist and Integrationist Front leader Mathieu Ngudjolo Chui on Monday appeared before the International Criminal Court (ICC) at The Hague for the first time. The public hearing allowed judges to verify Ngudjolo Chui's identity and to read his arrest warrant for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity. Ngudjolo Chui's lawyer asked that [...]

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation of Rwanda Monday urged the international community and Interpol to ignore arrest warrants issued last week for 40 Rwandan military officers by Spanish National Court Judge Fernando Andreu, saying the warrants were based on "falsehoods" from "well-known detractors of Rwanda." Last Wednesday, Andreu indicted the officers on genocide [...]

Two opposition groups in Myanmar, the 88 Generation Students and the National League for Democracy (NLD) , on Monday urged citizens to reject a proposed constitutional referendum put forth by Myanmar's military government. In a statement to Reuters, the 88 Generation Students called the proposal a "sham" to legalize military rule. Last Saturday, the military [...]

Thomas Nash : "By the end of 2008 a new rule will be enshrined in an international legally binding treaty prohibiting the use of cluster munitions. This prohibition is the only way to prevent further humanitarian and developmental harm from cluster munitions and more and more international legal experts are coming around to this view, [...]

The Pakistan Bar Council (PBC) on Monday launched a new nationwide boycott of the courts to protest President Pervez Musharraf's November ouster of Pakistani Supreme Court Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry and to demand his reinstatement and that of other ousted superior court judges. Chaudhry and the other judges were effectively dismissed on November 3 [...]

A multi-party coalition of Japanese parliamentarians said Monday that they have drafted a bill proposing a four-year moratorium on the death penalty and giving convicts already on death row life sentences without the possibility of parole. The bill is likely to face opposition from Japanese Minister of Justice Kunio Hatoyama, who is a supporter of [...]