Leading Wednesday's international brief, the International Commission of Jurists has issued a report urging the Nepal government to revoke the recently approved media ordinance as contrary to the Nepalese Constitution and Nepal's international human rights obligations. The report questions the intent of the legislation, alleging that its true purpose is to suppress critical journalism rather [...]

The Prosecutor v. Slobodan Milsoevic, Decision in Relation to Severance, Extension of Time, and Rest, International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, December 12, 2005 (released December 13, 2005) . Read the full text of the judgment. Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.

Hicks v. Secretary of State for the Home Department, High Court of Justice of England and Wales, Queen's Bench Division, Administrative Court, Mr. Justice Collins, December 13, 2005 . Read the full text of the judgment. Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.

Polish prosecutors said Tuesday that they are preparing charges against General Wojciech Jaruzelski , the last Communist leader of Poland, in connection with his December 13, 1981 declaration of martial law in the country. Prosecutors associated with the National Institute of Remembrance argue that the declaration was unconstitutonal, and say that charges related to harassment, [...]

Pope Benedict XVI on Tuesday said that countries have a duty to respect international humanitarian law "even in the midst of war." In the Pope's peace message , released in advance of the Catholic church's World Day of Peace, he also called for international humanitarian standards to be considered universally binding and suggested that standards [...]

Swiss senator Dick Marty submitted a report to the Council of Europe (CoE) Tuesday, concluding that allegations that the CIA operated secret prisons in Europe and abducted and illegally transported terror suspects across Europe are credible. The CoE report comes after US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's trip to Europe to smooth relations following the [...]

Judges at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia said Tuesday that they will not sever proceedings in the Slobodan Milosevic trial . The court had been considering whether it should deal separately with Milosevic's indictment on charges stemming from the 1999 Kosovo conflict so that it could conclude that part of the trial [...]

US District Judge James Robertson said Monday that he will consider allowing two Chinese Uighur Guantanamo Bay detainees to appear in federal court to challenge their ongoing confinement. The two men have been determined not to be enemy combatants, but have not yet been released from US custody because US officials are unwilling to return [...]

An Italian court has ordered the freezing of an Iranian government account at a Rome bank at the instance of US plaintiffs claiming compensation for terrorist acts supposedly supported by Iran. Steven Flatow, a New Jersey lawyer whose daughter Alisa was killed by a Palestinian suicide bomber on a bus in Gaza in 1995, said [...]

The trial of Milan Martic , former leader of the erstwhile Serb republic in Croatia who has been charged with exterminating hundreds of Croat, Muslim and other non-Serb civilians between 1991 and 1995, began Tuesday at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) . Martic is also charged with persecution, imprisonment, torture, inhumane [...]