US military forces in Iraq released 60 detainees Wednesday as part of Operation Lion's Paw , an ongoing effort to increase the number of Iraqi detainees released daily to at least 50 during the month of Ramadan, which ends Saturday. Organized by the Iraqi government and the Multi-National Force – Iraq (MNF-I) , the program [...]

The US House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee Wednesday approved a resolution labeling the World War I-era killings of over one million Armenians by Turkish soldiers as genocide. The resolution now goes to the House floor, where a vote is expected in mid-November. US President George W. Bush expressed disappointment over the committee decision, worrying [...]

Senate confirmation hearings for US Attorney General nominee Michael B. Mukasey will begin October 17 , Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) said Wednesday. Leahy has already outlined for Mukasey several issues of "concern" , including: how you would ensure the independence of federal law enforcement from political pressure, what steps you would take [...]

Former US President Jimmy Carter said Wednesday that under the Bush administration the United States "for the first time in my lifetime has abandoned the basic principles of human rights". He told CNN's Wolf Blitzer in an interview : "We've said that the Geneva Conventions do not apply to these people in Abu Ghraib prison [...]

The US District Court for the District of Columbia Wednesday conducted an evidentiary hearing in the decade-old Indian Trust case . The class-action suit involves the alleged mismanagement by the US Department of the Interior of American Indian money , including lease and sales revenues, permit fees and interest, received and held for Native Americans [...]

France Wednesday formally agreed to abolish the death penalty in all circumstances when it ratified a provision of the European Convention on Human Rights . Since its 2003 inception, Protocol 13 , designed to allow signatories to "take the final step in order to abolish the death penalty in all circumstances," has been adopted by [...]

The US Department of Justice filed notice Tuesday that it will appeal last month's district court decision that found provisions of the USA Patriot Act to be unconstitutional . The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) used the Patriot Act to search the home and office of Brandon Mayfield , the Oregon lawyer who was arrested [...]

The US Supreme Court heard oral arguments Wednesday in Medellin v. Texas , 06-984, where the court considered whether the Bush administration has the authority to direct a state court to comply with a ruling from the International Court of Justice (ICJ). Jose Ernesto Medellin , a Mexican national sentenced to death in Texas for [...]

Many female human rights activists in Zimbabwe have been repeatedly arrested, unlawfully detained, and subjected to beatings at the hands of police, according to the preliminary results of surveys conducted by the advocacy group Women of Zimbabwe Arise (WOZA) . The WOZA report released Tuesday showed that from an initial sample of 397 WOZA members, [...]

American Federation of Labor, et al., v. Michael Chertoff, et al., US District Court for the Northern District of California, October 10, 2007 . Read the full text of the order . Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.