Seven countries on Friday committed to new efforts to protect journalists and their crews in armed conflicts following the conclusion of a meeting in Switzerland of the 194 signatories of the Geneva Conventions. The 30th International Conference of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement focused in part on the role of international humanitarian law [...]

US District Judge James Cacheris of the Eastern District of Virginia Friday dismissed a lawsuit challenging measures adopted by the Prince William County Board of Supervisors that required local police to check the immigration status of anyone suspected of breaking the law and removed access to many public services for illegal immigrants. The lawsuit , [...]

Canadian Council for Refugees et al. v. The Queen, Federal Court of Canada, November 29, 2007 . Read the full text of the judgment . Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.

US v. Thomas Kriesel Jr., United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit . Read the full text of the opinion . Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.

Senator Patrick Leahy : "The protest by Pakistan's lawyers was an iconic moment about the importance of the rule of law, and the whole world was watching. As chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee I see every day the importance of an independent judiciary in our own country and in our system of government. We [...]

US Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) Friday praised Pakistan's lawyers for standing up for the rule of law and emphasized the county's need for an independent judiciary as a guard against overreaching executive power. In a statement to JURIST, Leahy said: The protest by Pakistan's lawyers was an iconic moment about the importance [...]

Joshua Rosenzweig : "The recently-published statistics for 2006 on political arrests in China are especially troubling, as they indicate the reversal of a three-year trend from 2003 to 2005 in which such arrests declined substantially. It is not entirely obvious why political arrests doubled in 2006 compared to the previous year, but it fits with [...]

Spanish police Friday arrested at least 40 of 56 defendants accused of supporting Basque separatist group ETA in 2005, according to a court official cited by AP. Forty-six found guilty of belonging to various organizations are believed to have provided financial, political, media, and international support to ETA. Those arrested have been out on bail [...]

Danish Minister of Foreign Affairs Per Stig Moeller said Friday that Denmark has rejected a US request to accept the transfer of several detainees from Guantanamo Bay . Moeller said that the detainees could be potential security risks. Approximately 70 detainees have been cleared for release , but the US has not yet found nations [...]

A Rwandan court has ordered that a defense investigator for the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) be provisionally released from police custody, according to Friday media reports. Leonidas Nshogoza was arrested in June 2007 for allegedly bribing witnesses and "minimizing" the 1994 Rwandan genocide . Prosecution spokesman Jean Bosco Mutangana said Nshogoza will remain [...]