Louis Joinet, a UN official assigned to oversee the human rights conditions in Haiti , on Tuesday sharply criticized the Haitian justice system for detaining hundreds of people without charge, including Reverend Gerard Jean-Juste , a political leader and member of the political party of ousted president Jean-Bertrand Aristide . Joinet characterized Jean-Juste as a [...]

US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Director Porter Goss Tuesday denied allegations that the CIA engages in torture when interrogating detainees. In an ABC-TV interview , Goss said that the agency's interrogation tactics did "not come close" torture in the sense of inflicting "physical pain or causing disability." He further asserted that torture does not produce [...]

Syria's Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Tuesday called for evidence implicating Syrians in the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri to be scrutinized in the wake of an admission by Syrian witness, Hosam Taher Hosam, that he testified falsely to the UN committee investigating the murder . Hosam accused Lebanese officials of conspiring [...]

One of Canada's top law firms has agreed to pay a $30 million settlement to former client Hollinger International for its role in failing to act in Hollinger's best interest during a series of now infamous transactions which enabled Conrad Black to pocket tens of millions of dollars. According to reports, Torys LLP – a [...]

France's National Assembly on Tuesday voted 373-27 in favor of a new anti-terrorism bill that will increase the use of video surveillance and allow police more time to question terror suspects. The proposal, which still needs to clear a Senate vote in January before becoming law, will also lengthen the duration of prison sentences for [...]

War crimes prosecutors and former Yugoslavian president Slobodan Milosevic were in rare agreement Tuesday in their opposition to a proposal by judges of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) to split Milosevic's war crimes trial. Last week, ICTY judges suggested separating the charges related to the 1998-1999 war in Kosovo from the [...]

The US Supreme Court on Tuesday handed down a unanimous decision in Lincoln Property v. Roche , reversing the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, holding that a lawsuit filed in state court may be removed to federal court if all parties actually named are diverse. The case involved Virginia renters who sued [...]

The Australian House of Representatives passed the federal government's anti-terrorism bill Monday night, without amendments requested by a coalition Senate committee and by members of the Labor Party. The committee recommended Monday that a controversial sedition section be removed from the final draft and the sunset clause reduced to five years. Lawyers and academics have [...]

Arab news channel Aljazeera is considering taking legal action against President George W. Bush, after disclosures that the US president allegedly suggested bombing the broadcaster's headquarters in Doha, Qatar, in the spring of 2004. Last week, two British civil servants were charged with leaking a memo , in which British Prime Minister Tony Blair supposedly [...]

Lawyers for victims of Hurricane Katrina Monday asked for an extension of a program which houses displaced New Orleans residents in hotels at government expense, at an estimated $3 million per day, totaling $300 million since August 29. The request to keep the hotel program going is the latest filing in the class action lawsuit [...]