The US Supreme Court heard oral arguments Monday in Baze v. Rees (07-5439) on whether the three-drug lethal injection cocktail now used in over 30 states violates the Eighth Amendment prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. The petitioner, Ralph Baze, who was sentenced to death by lethal injection for admittedly killing two Kentucky police officers, [...]

Three Indonesian Islamic militants sentenced to death for their roles in the 2002 Bali nightclub bombings will seek a religious opinion on the legality of execution by firing squad from the Indonesian Council of Ulema, their lawyer said Monday. The three militants – Mukhlas, Amrozi, and Imam Samudra – are seeking an execution by beheading [...]

The Special Court for Sierra Leone on Monday resumed the trial of former Liberian President Charles Taylor with testimony from the prosecution's first witness, a Canadian expert on so-called "blood diamonds" who told the court that the diamond trade prompted Liberia's role in Sierra Leone's civil war. Proceedings had been delayed since August in order [...]

The military court system administered by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) often fails to provide full due process rights to Palestinian defendants, according to a report released Sunday by an Israeli human rights group, Yesh Din. An IDF spokesperson dismissed the report, saying that its methodology, in which researchers attended 800 hearings and interviewed court [...]

Malaysian police fired a water cannon at protesters in Kuala Lumpur Saturday and chased them with batons as some 300 demonstrated against the country's controversial Internal Security Act (ISA) , a preventive detention law that allows the Malaysian government to detain suspects for two years without trial and to renew the detention indefinitely. The demonstrators [...]

An Egyptian court has convicted three police officers for torturing and publicly humiliating a suspected thief, according to "judicial sources" cited by Reuters Saturday. The higher-ranking police officer was sentenced to five years in jail, while the two lower-ranking officers were sent to jail for one year each. According to the court, the three officers [...]

Asif Ali Zardari , the husband of slain former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto , called again Saturday for a UN-led international investigation into the circumstances surrounding his wife's assassination . This is the second time Zardari has called for a UN-led inquiry similar to the ongoing probe into the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese [...]

UN rights investigators with the United Nations Human Rights Office in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (UNHRO) have documented serious human rights violations committed in the DRC following post-electoral violence in the capital Kinshasa in March 2007, including summary execution of civilians and excessive force leading to at least 300 deaths. The findings were [...]

Retired Bosnian Serb general Novack Djukic was indicted Friday by the War Crimes Chamber of the Court of Bosnia & Herzegovina for allegedly ordering a 1995 attack on the town of Tuzla in which 71 people were killed. Djukic, who commanded the Bosnian Serb army in the Tuzla region during the Bosnian war , was [...]

Italian prosecutor Franco Ionta said Friday that he would "almost certainly" appeal a Rome court's October 2007 dismissal of a criminal case against US Army Spc. Mario Lozano for the murder of Italian intelligence agent Nicola Calipari and the attempted murders of agent Andrea Carpani and Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena . The comment came after [...]