Former Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser said Monday that the treatment and trial of Australian detainee David Hicks at Guantanamo Bay demonstrate that the US and Australian governments are "prepared to throw every legal principle out the window and establish a process that we would expect of tyrannical regimes." In an op-ed published on JURIST, [...]

The US Supreme Court Monday declined to hear a lawsuit brought by two Guantanamo Bay detainees challenging the legality of their military commissions. In Hamdan v. Gates and Khadr v. Bush , 06-1169, Yemeni Salim Ahmed Hamdan and Canadian Omar Khadr sought to challenge the constitutionality of Congress' decision to deny habeas challenges by suspected [...]

Israeli nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu was convicted Monday of violating the terms of his 2004 release from prison by granting interviews to foreign news media. Vanunu completed an 18-year prison sentence in 2004 for leaking Israel's atomic weapons secrets to the Sunday Times newspaper. Following his release, Vanunu was subject to strict restrictions, including a [...]

A judge sitting at London's Old Bailey criminal court sentenced five British men of Pakistani descent to life imprisonment Monday at the end of a year-long terrorism trial – the largest UK terrorism trial since al Qaeda's September 11 attacks on the United States – that culminated in the longest deliberation by a jury in [...]

Australian Attorney-General Philip Ruddock said Monday that the government would amend an existing federal law preventing convicted criminals from profiting from their offenses if it became apparent that it allowed Guantanamo detainee David Hicks to sell his story. Hicks is currently set to be returned to Australia to serve out an additional prison term after [...]

The number of executions worldwide dropped in 2006 from 2,148 the year previous to 1,591, according to new statistics issued by Amnesty International. Over 90 percent of the year's executions were conducted in six countries: Iran, Iraq, Sudan, Pakistan, the USA and China. At 177, Iran's execution rate nearly doubled in 2006. Iraq and Pakistan [...]

The US Supreme Court handed down decisions in five cases Monday, including Microsoft v. AT&T , where the Court held that Microsoft was not liable for patent infringement under 35 USC 271(f) for foreign installations of Windows. AT&T filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Microsoft because Microsoft provides foreign manufacturers copies of its Windows operating [...]

International judges appointed to the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) said Monday that the Khmer Rouge genocide trials can move forward after the Cambodian Bar Association (BAKC) agreed to dramatically reduce the fees it proposed to levy on foreign lawyers involved in the trials. The UN-nominated judges boycotted a procedural session of [...]

Former CIA director George Tenet repeatedly denied that torture has been used during interrogations of terror suspects in an interview with CBS' 60 Minutes that aired Sunday. Tenet said that no one has ever died as a result of interrogation sessions and responded that he does not "talk about techniques" when asked if waterboarding was [...]

JURIST Special Guest Columnist and former Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser says that the trial of Australian Guantanamo detainee David Hicks before a US military commission has demonstrated the disturbing willingness of two allegedly democratic governments to abandon the rule of law for an expedient and evil purpose… President Bush established Guantanamo Bay to enable [...]