Lawyers for Saddam Hussein accused Iraqi officials of interfering with judicial independence Thursday, after a number of public statements from officials that Iraq's Cassation Court, currently considering Hussein's appeal , would ultimately affirm the former Iraqi president's death sentence . Hussein's lawyers also criticized comments from prosecutors that the life sentence of former Iraqi Vice [...]

The Public Committee against Torture in Israel et al. v. The Government of Israel et al., The Supreme Court of Israel Sitting as the High Court of Justice, December 14, 2006 . Read the full text of the ruling. Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.

One day after Florida death row inmate Angel Diaz endured a 34-minute-long – and apparently painful – execution, death penalty critics filed papers with the Florida Supreme Court seeking to once again halt the death penalty in the state. Petitioners, including numerous people currently on Florida’s death row roster , filed an emergency petition Thursday [...]

The Serbian Supreme Court ordered a retrial Thursday in the case of 14 former members of Serb militias who were convicted of war crimes for killing some 200 Croatian POWs at a pig farm near Vukovar in 1991 at the end of a three-month siege there. The 14 defendants were sentenced to a total of [...]

The US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit has upheld a lower court ruling that defendants of slaves have no standing to sue companies that allegedly profited from slavery before the practice was abolished. In an opinion by Judge Richard Posner Wednesday, the court ruled: we think that the district court was correct, with [...]

The UK High Court on Thursday rejected an appeal brought by the family of a Brazilian man who was shot and killed by London police two weeks after the July 2005 London transit bombings when police mistook him for alleged terrorist Hussain Osman . The appeal was brought against a July decision by prosecutors not [...]

The UN General Assembly held a ceremony Thursday to administer the oath of office to new UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon . Ban, appointed to the position in October, will succeed Kofi Annan when the two-term secretary-general steps down on December 31. The General Assembly also paid tribute to Annan's 10 years of service. In remarks [...]

The Argentinean Senate has unanimously approved a bill that refers to the mass killings of Armenians in Turkey around the time of World War I as genocide and establishes a day of annual commemoration on April 24. The bill has already passed in the lower house of parliament and must still be signed by the [...]

The US Defense Department Thursday announced the release of 16 Saudi Arabian detainees from Guantanamo Bay . Saudi Arabian Interior Minister Prince Nayef bin Abdul said that the detainees would now be "subject to the Saudi system." Over 40 Saudi detainees have now been released from the US detention facility since May. A total of [...]

Chinese human rights attorney Gao Zhisheng has been convicted by a court in Beijing of inciting subversion of state power , his lawyers said Thursday. Gao was convicted after entering a guilty plea, but his lawyers – who were not permitted to attend court proceedings – said they doubted the credibility of his "spontaneous" admission [...]