Lebanese President Emile Lahoud Wednesday rejected his cabinet's approval of a UN draft proposal for an international judicial tribunal to try suspects in the February 2005 assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri . Lahoud said the measure was invalid because in the midst of other domestic political turmoil all five Shiite ministers had [...]
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The Labour Party government of British Prime Minister Tony Blair pledged Wednesday to "put victims at the heart of the criminal justice system support the police and all those responsible for the public's safety" in its new legislative agenda for the 2006-2007 session of Parliament. In the Queen's Speech , read by Queen Elizabeth II [...]
The US decision to build a 700-mile fence along the US-Mexican border is "inhumane," a senior Vatican official said Tuesday while delivering Pope Benedict XVI's yearly message on migrants . Cardinal Renato Martino, head of the Vatican's Council on Migrant and Itinerant People , compared the proposal in the Secure Fence Act of 2006 to [...]
The US Central Intelligence Agency has acknowledged the existence of a memorandum, signed by President Bush, that authorizes the detention and interrogation of terror suspects overseas in a letter sent to the American Civil Liberties Union. The ACLU requested the memo in a FOIA request , sent to the CIA in 2004 , that specifically [...]
A Nepal newspaper reported Tuesday that a blue-ribbon panel investigating possible human rights violations in the police response to anti-democracy protests last spring that left 22 dead and more than 5,000 wounded will blame King Gyanendra for the crackdown. The report may undergo revisions before it is presented to the government Friday, but the current [...]
US Vice President Dick Cheney and his former chief of staff I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby asked a federal court Tuesday to dismiss the civil lawsuit brought against them and other current and former administration officials by Valerie Plame, the undercover operative whose revealed identity precipitated the CIA leak case . Cheney argued that his office [...]
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) asked a federal appeals court Tuesday to uphold a lower court ruling that the NSA domestic surveillance program is unconstitutional, arguing that the program is an unconstitutional intrusion on privacy and free speech and oversteps the limits of executive power. In August, US District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor ruled [...]
Lobbyist Jack Abramoff on Wednesday began serving his six-year prison sentence on fraud and conspiracy charges. Abramoff will serve his sentence at a minimum-security facility in Cumberland, MD, a location close to the Washington, DC prosecutors who are using Abramoff's testimony to bring a corruption case against members of Congress and others. Abramoff was sentenced [...]
Philip Rosenthal : "Today, 14 November 2006, the National Assembly debated and voted to pass the Civil Union Bill. The Bill is an insult to marriage and a trashing of democracy. It will open the door for more attacks on morality, religious freedom and children's rights. This is a day of shame for South Africa. [...]
US v. Libby, United States District Court for the District of Columbia, November 14, 2006 . Read the full text of the ruling . Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.
