Some 85 prisoners were released from US detention facilities in Afghanistan Sunday after being brought to the Afghan Supreme Court in Kabul, where they swore allegiance to the government in a short ceremony. The prisoners from the south of the country had been held at Bagram airbase and another US facility near the former Taliban [...]
The New York Times reported Sunday that a new military investigation of interrogation tactics used on terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, has found several instances of abuse and humiliation of prisoners. The report by Air Force Lt. Gen. Randall M. Schmidt , submitted March 31 but still unreleased pending full review cites various instances [...]
Some ten thousand protestors took to the streets of Kathmandu Sunday in two separate demonstrations just a day after King Gyanendra lifted the state of emergency in the country which he had declared on February 1 . The marches coincided with the May 1st holiday, but marchers carried signs calling on the king to also [...]
In the wake of a joint statement Friday indicating that the US and Italy had failed to agree on circumstances surrounding the shooting of an Italian agent by US soldiers in Iraq, details of the divergent national reports have emerged. US Central Command released the full text of its 42-page report Saturday with an accompanying [...]
Talks directed towards the framing of a new constitution for the war-torn country of Sudan began Saturday in Khartoum with the official opening of the National Commission for the Reform of the Constitution, formed last week . The Commission, created pursuant to a January peace deal between the Sudanese government and southern rebels belonging to [...]
The lawyer for Pfc. Lynndie England said Friday that the 22-year old reservist made infamous by photographs that showed her posing with with humiliated Iraqi detainees in Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison has agreed to plead guilty to seven charges of conspiracy, maltreatment and indecent acts when she appears Monday before a military court in Fort [...]
US District Judge Leonie M. Brinkema Friday denied a US Department of Justice request to release a report on FBI missteps leading up to 9/11. The report chronicles three episodes considered to be missed opportunities to detect the 9/11 plot, including the 2001 arrest of Zacarias Moussaoui . Officials said that the majority of the [...]
2004 Wiretap Report , Administrative Office of the United States Courts, April 28, 2005 . Excerpt: A total of 1,710 intercepts authorized by federal and state courts were completed in 2004, an increase of 19 percent compared to the number terminated in 2003. The number of applications for orders by federal authorities rose 26 percent [...]
An Alabama Circuit Court refused Friday to dismiss the first wrongful-death suit brought against Merck for their painkiller Vioxx. Merck pulled Vioxx from the market when a study found it to double the chances of heart attacks and strokes in patients who took the drug more than 18 months. The suit is brought by Cheryl [...]
An Act Reinstating Capital Punishment in the Commonwealth, filed with the Massachusetts Senate and House of Representatives, April 29, 2005 . Read the full text of the bill and accompanying letter of transmission. Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.