The US Supreme Court heard oral arguments Wednesday in House v. Bell , where it will decide whether appellant Paul Gregory House, who was convicted and sentenced to death for the abduction, attempted rape and murder of Carolyn Muncey in July 1985, presented enough exculpatory evidence to merit another look at his case. The justices [...]

The UN Wednesday officially named Serge Brammertz , Deputy Prosecutor with the International Criminal Court (ICC) and a former Belgian federal prosecutor, as the new Commissioner of the ongoing UN investigation into the February 2005 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri . The announcement followed speculation that he would be appointed as German [...]

A Yemeni man alleged to have been an al Qaeda propagandist and security officer for Osama bin Laden told a US military commission at Guantanamo Bay Wednesday that he was boycotting the just-reconvened proceedings . At a pre-trial hearing, Ali Hamza al-Bahlul held up a sign that said "boycott" printed in Arabic and then smiled [...]

A man from the Georgian Republic who lobbed a grenade toward US President George W. Bush while he was on a visit there in May last year was sentenced to life imprisonment on Wednesday by a Georgian court. Vladimir Arutunyan , who originally confessed but later recanted, landed the grenade within 50 meters of Bush [...]

Argentine judge Jorge Urso has decided to send accused Bosnian Serb war criminal Milan Lukic, arrested in Buenos Aires in August, to the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague for trial, according to AFP sources. Lukic, one of the 10 most-wanted Bosnian Serbs, had been on the run for more than [...]

The families of fifteen Cubans deported when they failed to reach US soil have filed suit in US District Court, claiming that the US government's so-called "wet-foot, dry-foot" policy is inconsistent with US and international law. The fifteen Cubans fled their homeland in a small homemade boat, but only managed to reach an abandoned bridge [...]

The 23-member Santiago Appeals Court Wednesday upheld a lower court ruling granting former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet bail, but at the same time stripped him of immunity an additional human rights case, opening the way for prosecutors to charge him with crimes associated with the so-called Caravan of Death . The "Caravan" was a military [...]

Democratic senators on the US Senate Judiciary Committee Wednesday pressed apparent inconsistencies in answers to questions by Supreme Court nominee Judge Samuel Alito during his third day of his confirmation hearings. Senator Richard Durbin (D-IL) contrasted Alito's Tuesday testimony that he would keep an "open mind" on any future abortion cases before the Supreme Court [...]

Spanish authorities have charged former Argentine naval officer Ricardo Miguel Cavallo with genocide for his involvement in the disappearance of hundreds of people during a 1976 Argentine military coup. Papers published Wednesday allege that between 20,000 and 30,000 people were forcibly kidnapped or "disappeared" following the takeover, including approximately 600 Spanish citizens. Just under 9,000 [...]

Dutch Foreign Minister Bernard Bot said Wednesday that the EU constitution is "dead" as far as the Netherlands is concerned, rejecting promised efforts earlier this week by Austrian Foreign Minister Ursula Plassnik to attempt to revive the charter. Bot spoke after meeting with Plassnik, whose country currently holds the EU presidency , and reiterated that [...]