British politicians, writers and comedians are urging members of the UK House of Commons to accept freedom of speech revisions in the controversial Racial and Religious Hatred Bill , which returns to the Commons for a vote Tuesday. The bill was amended in the British House of Lords last year when peers voted to restrict [...]

The Egyptian government has said that it will not deport hundreds of Sudanese detainees who lack status as refugees or asylum seekers. The detainees were arrested after a three-month sit-in protest in front of UN offices in Cairo resulted in a violent clash with Egyptian police on December 30, resulting in 27 deaths . The [...]

Cambodian President Hun Sen has said that a court has refused to allow him to drop criminal defamation charges against a group of human rights activists, as he had promised last week. In a speech on Monday, Hun Sen said that the court ruled out dropping the charges because investigative proceedings had already begun. The [...]

Jury selection is set to begin Monday in the criminal trial of former Enron founder Kenneth Lay and former CEO Jeffrey Skilling on conspiracy and fraud charges . Defense lawyers for Lay and Skilling had asked that the trial be moved out of Houston, arguing that they will not get a fair trial due to [...]

JURIST Guest Columnist Brian J. Foley of Florida Coastal School of Law says that the greatest threat posed by President Bush's domestic surveillance program is not to the privacy of ordinary Americans but rather to the independence of potential political rivals, journalists, and activists who would balance, constrain or oppose executive power… Most of the [...]

Finnish leaders hinted over the weekend that they would like to put the European Constitution back on the table for discussion at the October summit of European Union leaders scheduled during Finland's six-month presidency of the regional group. Although the document seemed to be dead after the French and the Dutch voted against it last [...]

Senator Chuck Hagel (R-NE) , a Republican member of the US Senate Intelligence Committee , Sunday questioned the legitimacy of the Bush administration's domestic surveillance program , casting doubt on its legality in the absence of judicial or Congressional authority. Notwithstanding legal defenses of the intercepts by President Bush , Vice President Cheney , and [...]

The UK plan for national identification cards received another setback Sunday when Lord Carlile , the Liberal Democrat peer appointed by the British government as an independent reviewer of its anti-terror laws, said that the ID cards would be of "limited value" against terrorism and would not have prevented the London bombings in July. Carlile, [...]

Several detainees involved in the continuing Guantanamo Bay hunger strikes are close to death, according to lawyers acting for the detainees. Despite force-feedings by the US military, there is concern for two emaciated Yemenis and a hospitalized Saudi prisoner. Reprieve , an international prisoners' rights group, is set to release a report Monday on the [...]

The Saddam Hussein trial resumed briefly Sunday under new Kurdish chief judge Ra'uf Rasheed Abdel-Rahman but was adjourned again after Hussein, defense lawyers, and two co-defendants left the courtroom protesting the earlier removal of Saddam's half brother and co-defendant Barzan al-Tikriti. Abdel-Rahman, who replaced Chief Judge Rizgar Mohammed Amin earlier this month, opened the proceedings [...]