The Simon Wiesenthal Center announced Tuesday that it will extend its campaign to capture and prosecute suspected Nazi war criminals to four South American countries. In a press conference in Buenos Aires, director Efraim Zuroff outlined the details of Operation Last Chance , which will offer rewards to anyone providing information that leads to the [...]

Sawsaan Tabbaa et al. v. Michael Chertoff et al., United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, November 26, 2007 . Read the full text of the opinion . Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.

Aguilar et al. v. United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement Division of the Department of Homeland Security et al., US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, November 27, 2007 . Read the full text of the opinion. Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.

Blackwater security contractors who were involved in the September 16 shooting of Iraqi civilians ignored a direct order from Blackwater and US State Department personnel prior to the shooting incident, according to an amended complaint filed in US federal court Monday on behalf of several of the victims. The lawsuit was brought by the New [...]

Only 37 of over 5700 lawyers, rights activists, opposition figures and others arrested after Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf issued a declaration of emergency rule earlier this month still remain in custody, Pakistani Interior Ministry spokesman Brig Javed Iqbal Cheema said Tuesday. Of those 37, 32 were arrested for violent or lawless activities and are facing [...]

A Vietnamese court on Tuesday reduced the prison terms of two human rights lawyers sentenced for spreading propaganda against the state. The lawyers, Nguyen Van Dai, 38, and Le Thi Cong Nhan, 28, were not released from custody, but the court lowered Dai's term from five years to four and Nhan's from four years to [...]

Texas oil tycoon Oscar Wyatt Jr. was sentenced Tuesday to one year in prison and ordered to pay over $11 million dollars in restitution for his role in the Iraq Oil-for-Food scandal . Originally accused of paying millions of dollars in illegal kickbacks to members of Saddam Hussein's regime in order to secure oil contracts [...]

Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf has indicated that he may accept most of the demands put forth by opposition parties in the face of his November 3 declaration of emergency rule but that he will not reinstate ousted Supreme Court justices, Pakistan's News daily reported Tuesday. Attorney General Malik Muhammad Qayyum and former railways minister Sheikh [...]

Peter Weiss and Jeanne Sulzer : "On October 26, while Donald Rumsfeld was attending a conference in Paris, a war crimes complaint based on his authorization for and encouragement of torture was filed against him by FIDH (Paris), the Center for Constitutional Rights (New York), the European Center for Human and Constitutional Rights (Berlin) and [...]

US State Department Legal Adviser John Bellinger III Tuesday called for the international community to "clarify" Geneva Convention rules pertaining to treatment of detained terror suspects. Speaking to reporters at an International Committee of the Red Cross meeting, Bellinger said: Critics have suggested that the United States is backing away from the Geneva Conventions or [...]