US President George W. Bush said Sunday that closing the US detention facility at Guantanamo Bay is a possibility in the future depending on the US Supreme Court's decision in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld , which will determine the legality of military trials for Guantanamo detainees. The Court's decision on whether military commissions for foreign terror [...]

Israeli police on Sunday evicted a group of Jewish settlers squatting in a Palestinian house in the West Bank city of Hebron, a region where Jewish settlement is no longer allowed. Three settler families left peacefully, but police scuffled with two dozen teenagers who initially refused to leave the house. 19 settlers were arrested. This [...]

Opposition lawmakers in Thailand are planning lawsuits against the Thai Election Commission (EC) over last months troubled parliamentary election . Suthep Thuagsuban, secretary general of the Democrat Party , has said that he will file a criminal lawsuit against four EC members, alleging they violated election laws by helping members of certain political parties. The [...]

Iranian lawmakers have sent a letter to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan threatening to withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty , which it signed in 1968, if "the U.N. Secretary General and other members of the U.N. Security Council fail in their crucial responsibility to resolve differences peacefully." The letter was read aloud on state-run radio [...]

Smelt et al. v. Orange County California et al., United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, May 5, 2006 . Read the full text of the opinion . Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.

Russian prosecutors said Saturday that they will appeal the acquittal of two Chechens accused of murdering American journalist Paul Klebnikov . Klebnikov, the editor of Forbes magazine's Russian edition, was in the process of investigating corruption in Russian business before his death in 2004 in Moscow. Prosecutor Dmitry Shokhin announced that he would appeal to [...]

Zimbabwe security officials have increased the use of torture in dealing with opponents of the government of Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe , according to a report released Saturday by the Zimbabwe Human Rights Forum . The rights group says that 19 incidents of torture were reported during March, up from three reported in January and [...]

State lawmakers have expressed concern about possible problems expected to accompany the implementation of the REAL ID Act , fearing that they will not be able to comply with the law's requirements before a May 2008 deadline. The legislation, drafted after the Sept 11 attacks and designed to discourage illegal immigration, attempts to make it [...]

Lawyers for Australian terror suspect David Hicks said Saturday that Britain's Court of Appeals will not allow further appeals from the British government in Hicks' attempt to obtain UK citizenship. Hicks, currently detained at Guantanamo Bay and facing military commission proceedings, is seeking British citizenship in hopes that the UK government will then secure his [...]

Five Chinese Uighur men who had been detained at Guantanamo Bay despite a determination that they are not enemy combatants have been flown to Albania , where government officials are reviewing their applications for asylum. According to a statement from the US State Department late Friday: the government of Albania accepted for resettlement as refugees [...]