The lower house of the Russian parliament, the State Duma , Wednesday gave critical second-reading approval to an expansive anti-terror bill which would grant a broad range of new counter-terrorism powers to law enforcement and the military. The Duma vote on the draft law was 408-1, with five abstentions. If passed, the law will allow [...]

A federal judge has granted a request by defense attorneys that sentencing for Ahmed Omar Abu Ali , convicted in November of last year for joining al Qaeda and conspiring to assassinate President Bush, be delayed until March 9 so that prosecutors have time to file a sworn declaration revealing whether or not evidence used [...]

A French court has ordered the three acquitted photographers who pursued Princess Diana and Dodi al Fayed's car the night of their fatal crash in 1997 to pay one euro in damages for invasion of privacy. In a decision made public Wednesday, the court ordered the symbolic fine to be split three ways and paid [...]

Former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic on Wednesday again asked the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) to answer his request for provisional release to travel to Russia for medical care. Milosevic suffers from high blood pressure and a heart condition and was granted a limited adjournment in December before the trial again resumed [...]

Nearly 100 detainees have died in US custody in Iraq and Afghanistan since August 2002, according to findings of the US rights group Human Rights First initially reported Tuesday evening on BBC television's Newsnight program . The program claimed that at least 98 prisoners have died as a result of detainment or interrogation with 34 [...]

Carla del Ponte , chief prosecutor at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia , said Wednesday that Serbian government officials had told her that war crimes fugitive Ratko Mladic has not been arrested. Serbian media reported Tuesday that the former general had been arrested , but the Serbian government quickly denied the reports [...]

Leading Tuesday's international brief, Israeli attorney Eran Shahar, representing Civil Coalition (CC), a civil rights group, has filed a lawsuit against Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the German Constitutional Court on charges of incitement and denying the existence of the World War II Holocaust . Shahar told reporters that Germany was the best place for [...]

US Rep. Jane Harman (D-CA) , the ranking Democrat on the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence , said Tuesday that a top intelligence official had been prepared to brief the committee in December on the Bush administration's domestic surveillance program , but had been stopped by a top Bush administration aide. Harman said that General [...]

JURIST Contributing Editor Geoffrey S. Corn, Lt. Col. US Army (Ret.) and former Special Assistant to the Judge Advocate General for Law of War Matters, now a professor at South Texas College of Law, says that the disclosure of former US Navy General Counsel Alberto Mora's lost battle within the US Defense Department against what [...]

Chilean judge Orlando Alvarez on Tuesday refused to release former Peruvian president Alberto Fujimori from custody while the judge considers an extradition request for Fujimori . The decision means Fujimori, who is being held at an school for corrections officers, will remain in that secure location rather than walk free or move to house arrest [...]