The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has launched a criminal probe of Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR) Stuart Bowen on allegations that he misappropriated taxpayer money to pay for his legal defense during a 2006 administrative probe and that he improperly accessed employees' emails, according to a Thursday report in CongressDaily. The [...]

UN special envoy for human rights defenders and co-founder of the independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan Hina Jilani told US lawmakers in Washington Thursday that Pakistan's parliamentary elections scheduled for January 8 have already been rigged and that there was no point in sending election monitors or observers to them. Jilani, an outspoken Lahore [...]

Counter-Terrorism Policy and Human Rights: 42 days, Joint Committee on Human Rights, December 14, 2007 . Read the full text of the report . Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.

US District Judge Joan A. Lenard Thursday ordered a mistrial in a terrorism case against six men charged with allegedly conspiring to bomb the Sears Tower in Chicago and the FBI headquarters in Miami, after the jury was unable to reach a verdict after nine days of deliberations. A seventh man, Lyglenson Lemorin, was acquitted [...]

The Spanish National Court Thursday dismissed a complaint against Cuban President Fidel Castro and former Cuban tourism minister Osmani Cienfuegos, alleging that the two had committed crimes against humanity. The complaint alleged that Castro and Cienfuegos were responsible for the death of nine prisoners during the 1961 anti-Castro Bay of Pigs Invasion . The court [...]

UN Special Rapporteur on human rights and counterterrorism Martin Scheinin said Thursday that the destruction of CIA videotapes suggests that US interrogators may have violated international prohibitions against torture. Scheinin told reporters after the presentation of his latest report to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva that he believes the CIA continues to use [...]

The Supreme Court of South Korea Thursday upheld the sentence of Michael Jang, a Korean American convicted of spying for North Korea In April, the Seoul District Court in South Korea sentenced five people to jail for espionage. Group ringleader Jang initiated contact with North Korean agents in 1998 and first established a spy ring [...]

The US House of Representatives voted 222-199 Thursday to pass an intelligence funding bill that would restrict CIA interrogators to using only those interrogation techniques explicitly authorized by the 2006 Army Field Manual. Army interrogation guide Field Manual 2-22.3 explicitly prohibits the use of waterboarding, electrocution, sensory deprivation, inducing hypothermia, or depriving the subject of [...]

A Philippine judge Thursday dismissed rebellion charges against former Vice President Teofisto Guingona , ruling that police had failed to establish his role in an aborted coup attempt against Philippine President Gloria Arroyo last month. The judge also rejected charges against 17 other people detained in relation to the botched coup, but ordered that an [...]

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) Thursday upheld a 1928 treaty between Nicaragua and Columbia that granted several small islands off the Atlantic coast of Nicaragua to Colombia. Nicaragua had brought suit in 2001 claiming sovereignty over the islands of San Andres, Providencia and Santa Catalina, arguing that the treaty was invalid because it was [...]