GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) has agreed to pay $3.4 billion to settle Internal Revenue Service claims in what the IRS calls "the largest tax dispute in the history of the Internal Revenue Service." According to the IRS: The agreement between GSK and the IRS brings to a conclusion a dispute dating back to the 1980s and involves [...]

JURIST Guest Columnist Jordan Paust of the University of Houston Law Center says that minimum due process guarantees under customary international law must not be denied when Congress attempts to articulate forms of procedure for new US military commissions… When considering legislation for military commissions, members of Congress should be careful not to open themselves [...]

Crime Victimization, 2005, US Department of Justice, September 11, 2006 . Read the full text of the report. Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.

The President of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe , the region's official human rights watchdog organization, said Monday that US practices of allegedly subjecting terror suspects to torture do nothing to make the country safer in its prosecution of the war on terror. Marking the five-year anniversary of the September 11 attacks [...]

Lawyers for the US Department of Justice told a panel of the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit Monday that the court lacked the power to prevent the case of an American held in Iraq from being transferred to the Iraqi courts. The American, Shawqi Omar , has dual US and [...]

Fifteen allies of French President Jacques Chirac went on trial Monday for allegedly rigging a Paris election during Chirac's tenure as the mayor of Paris. Prosecutors allege that the 15 politicians and officials planted 327 fake voters in the electoral register for a 1989 municipal election where Chirac's conservative party won the majority of all [...]

The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights for Nepal (OHCHR-Nepal) urged the Nepali Maoist party Monday to keep its promises to stop its human rights violations. OHCHR-Nepal alleges that Maoist troops are still conducting kidnappings, torture, and murder of political as well as civilian targets. OHCHR-Nepal said it has undertaken probes into [...]

A large percentage of US Central Intelligence Agency counterterrorism officers have bought government-reimbursed private insurance plans that cover potential civil judgments and legal expenses associated with charges of criminal wrongdoing, according to Monday's Washington Post. Some current and former intelligence officers revealed the growing trend to the Post, highlighting fears that officers are vulnerable to [...]

The trial of Saddam Hussein and six co-defendants on genocide and crimes against humanity charges related to the so-called "Anfal" operation , which led to the killings of as many as 180,000 Kurds in northern Iraq in the 1980s, resumed in Baghdad Monday with the testimony of a former Kurdish guerrilla who described the aftermath [...]

Ali Khan : "Five years later, the 9/11 tragedy is writ large. Unnecessary deaths litter the day, every day. Gratuitous barbarism shocks the conscience. The rhetoric of destruction intensifies. Individuals and nations committed to violence threaten international peace and security. The United Nations fails. The Security Council lingers, limps, and acts with half-hearted authority as [...]