In an open letter in the British medical journal Lancet , more than 250 doctors from seven countries have urged the US government to ensure that detainees at Guantanamo Bay are examined by independent physicians and that methods such as force-feeding through the use of restraint chairs are not continued. Amnesty International has also urged [...]

An official of Iraq's Supreme Judicial Council has confirmed that Iraqi authorities executed 13 insurgents by hanging Thursday in Baghdad, the first official executions of insurgents carried out in the country since the restoration of the death penalty in 2004. The insurgents were said to have been convicted in separate trials earlier this year. Three [...]

President Bush has signed legislation to renew the USA PATRIOT Act , making permanent several sunsetting provisions in the anti-terror law, extending two provisions until 2009, and incorporating a number of new rights protections. Bush approved two separate but related bills: the USA PATRIOT Improvement and Reauthorization Act of 2005 , the actual renewal that [...]

Recently released documents reveal that former Associate Deputy Attorney General David S. Kris expressed reservations about the Bush administration's legal rationale for its warrantless domestic surveillance program . In an e-mail to an aide to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales made public Wednesday, Kris said that the Department of Justice's statutory arguments "had a slightly after-the-fact [...]

CNN is reporting that US Sen. John Warner (R-VA) has said that Dubai Ports World has decided to transfer operation of six major US ports to a US entity. DP World, a government-owned company from the United Arab Emirates, was set to take over operations after acquiring British shipping company P&O . The prospect of [...]

Human Rights Record of the US in 2004, China State Council, March 8, 2006. Read the full report as reprinted in the Chinese government's People's Daily. Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.

The ACLU of Northern California has filed a lawsuit in the US District Court of Northern California on behalf of Pacific News Service, seeking a permanent injunction to prevent the California Department of Corrections and San Quentin Prison from using the paralytic drug pancuronium bromide (also known as Pavulon) during executions, arguing that it violates [...]

Reuters is reporting that the US military will close Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison and transfer approximately 4,500 prisoners to other facilities in Iraq, according to a military spokesman. The prison, a torture center under the regime of Saddam Hussein that again became notorious for abuses during the US occupation, is expected to close within the [...]

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has uncovered over 100 violations of wiretapping and intelligence gathering rules in the past two years, including using wiretaps that exceeded the scope authorized by court warrant and obtaining communications with an expired warrant, according to a report released Wednesday by the US Department of Justice Office of the Inspector [...]

Google has agreed to pay up to $90M to settle a class action lawsuit filed last year in Arkansas state court, alleging that Google and other online search engine companies overcharged for pay-per-click advertising, in which advertisers pay a fee every time an internet user clicks on their ads. "Click fraud" occurs when fraudulent users [...]