Human Rights Watch (HRW) has accused the Saudi government of violating international law when it beheaded four Sri Lankan robbers and placed their bodies on public display in the country's capital, Riyadh, on Monday. According to HRW, the four migrants, who were badly beaten , had been imprisoned for years without access to legal representation. [...]

Forty-six of 49 countries participating in the the two-day Oslo Conference on Cluster Munitions on Friday agreed to an action plan to develop a new international treaty to ban the use of cluster munitions by 2008. Hosted by the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the 46 nations vowed in the Oslo Declaration to conclude a [...]

The Supreme Court of Canada ruled Friday that the government's use of security certificates to indefinitely detain and deport foreigners with suspected ties to terrorism violates the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms . Three Arab Muslim men – Adil Charkaoui, Hassan Almrei and Mohamed Harkat – argued before the high court last year that [...]

The UK High Court has rejected the legal bid of Algerian-born pilot Lotfi Raissi for compensation for his wrongful detention. Raissi was held under a US extradition warrant after being indicted by a federal grand jury in Arizona shortly following the September 11 attacks . US prosecutors alleged Raissi offered pilot training to the hijackers, [...]

Lynne Kates : "In their decision in Al Odah/Boumediene on Tuesday, the Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit produced a heavily formalist decision upholding the Military Commissions Act of 2006 and declaring the Guantanamo detainees' petitions for habeas corpus outside the jurisdiction of the court. For the two judges in the majority (Judges Randolph [...]

A federal jury in California awarded Alcatel-Lucent $1.52 billion dollars in damages Thursday for violations of two of Alcatel-Lucent's digital music patents committed by Microsoft . The patents govern technology that converts audio input into MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3, more commonly known as MP3, which Microsoft has incorporated into several variants of its Windows Media [...]

US Army Sgt. Paul E. Cortez received a 100-year prison sentence Thursday for his role in the rape and murder of a 14-year-old Iraqi girl and the murder of her family in the Mahmudiya (also "Mahmoudiya") area last March. Cortez pleaded guilty earlier this week to felony murder, rape and conspiracy to rape. He will [...]

JURIST Guest Columnist Kent Roach of the University Toronto Faculty of Law says the Supreme Court of Canada's ruling that security certificates for the indefinite detention of foreign terror suspects are unconstitutional may help propel new Canadian anti-terror legislation, although the travails of that for Canada's minority Conservative government may be greater than those encountered [...]

A group that advocates the therapeutic use of marijuana is suing the US Food and Drug Administration and the Department of Health and Human Services for their statements that the drug has no medical value. According to a complaint filed Wednesday in US District Court in San Francisco, Americans for Safe Access (ASA) alleges that [...]

Caroline Fredrickson : "When the 109th Congress passed the Military Commissions Act in September of last year there was a fear in the legal and human rights communities that this meant that detainees held in Guantanamo Bay and other facilities would be stripped of their due process rights. The Military Commissions Act gave the president [...]