A US Department of Defense official Wednesday defended the government's decision in October to refuse access by UN investigators to detainees being held at the US prison base in Guantanamo Bay , and reiterated that the operation of the facility is critical to information gathering in the war on terror. Brian Del Monte, deputy director [...]

The US Senate has voted to accept changes to legislation that would renew the USA PATRIOT Act , setting the stage for a final vote Thursday to authorize the renewal legislation. In one of several votes Wednesday, the Senate voted 95-4 to approve a series of amendments to the USA PATRIOT and Terrorism Prevention Reauthorization [...]

JURIST Special Guest Columnist H.A. Hellyer of the Centre for Research in Ethnic Relations, University of Warwick, UK, says that the worldwide controversy over the publication of caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad is symptomatic of a new type of tribalism in both East and West … Every so often, a word that we all took [...]

The 25-member European Union (EU) has issued a statement of support for a draft resolution proposing a new UN Human Rights Council to replace the generally-discredited Human Rights Commission , which has been severely criticized for not preventing rights violators from using their membership to protect one another from censure. The US is opposed to [...]

The US State Department has asked Congress for $100 million for building prisons in Iraq, its only remaining large-scale reconstruction project in the country. State Department Iraq Coordinator James Jeffrey describes the exercise as creating “additional bed capacity of the Iraqi legal system.” Iraqis will eventually take custody of thousands of detainees currently held by [...]

UK Prime Minister Tony Blair told the British House of Commons Wednesday that he hopes the US will close its much-criticized detention camp at Guantanamo Bay , but measured his words by adding that the US had justifiably opened it in response to the September 11 attacks. He referred to what he called a "judicial [...]

The former head of the Human Rights Office at the UN Assistance Mission in Iraq has told the BBC that extra-judicial killings and torture have become "endemic" in Iraq, and that up to 75% of bodies in the Baghdad morgue show signs of torture or execution. John Pace, a diplomat from Malta, said that most [...]

China's new Law on Public Security Administrative Penalties took effect Wednesday, creating 165 new offenses and setting maximum penalties ranging from 200 yuan ($25 US) to 15 days detention for Chinese citizens all the way to deportation for foreigners. The new offenses include repeatedly sending pornographic cellphone messages and disturbing public order at public events. [...]

For the first time since the Guantanamo Bay war crimes tribunals convened in August 2004, a presiding military judge has said that he will examine potential evidence to determine if it was obtained through torture before ruling on admissibility. Presiding judge Col. Peter Brownback discussed the issue at a pre-trial hearing for detainee Ali Hamza [...]

The six men convicted in October 2004 of committing sexual abuse against women and underage girls on the British possession of Pitcairn Island over a period of 30 years have lost their latest appeals. Appearing before a specially-constituted Pitcairn Court of Appeal in Auckland, New Zealand, the men had asserted that English law did not [...]