US senators debated Monday evening the possibility of extending the USA Patriot Act only temporarily, from as little as three months to as long as four years, in response to President Bush's statement earlier in the day urging the Senate to reauthorize the Patriot Act. Last week, the US House approved the reauthorization legislation , [...]

Five members of the elite US Army 75th Ranger Regiment have been sentenced for up to six months for abusing detainees in Iraq. The five soldiers were charged last month in connection with a September 2005 incident where three detainees were allegedly punched and kicked while awaiting transfer to a detention facility. All five pleaded [...]

Defense lawyers for Saddam Hussein said Tuesday that the former Iraqi ruler will be in court when his trial resumes Wednesday. During proceedings earlier this month, Hussein boycotted a trial session in protest over the conditions of his detention. The Iraqi High Criminal Court (formerly the Iraqi Special Tribunal ) continued without Hussein in the [...]

Sunni Arabs on Tuesday said that partial results released earlier this week in Iraq's parliamentary elections were a "falsification of the will of the people" and said that there was abundant evidence of fraud. Preliminary results from Baghdad province were released Monday, showing that with 89 percent of ballot boxes counted, the Shiite United Iraqi [...]

Top Senate Democrats have said that they never approved or were fully briefed on the National Security Agency's post-September 11th domestic surveillance program . President Bush has vigorously defended the program, which monitors international communications of people in the US with known links to al Qaeda or other terrorist organizations, and in a press conference [...]

JURIST Guest Columnist Michael Scharf, Director of the Frederick K. Cox International Law Center at Case Western Reserve University School of Law, says White House support of the McCain Amendment signals to the world that the US will no longer condone the use of torture in the "global war on terror", but it is only [...]

Case Concerning Armed Activities on the Territory of the Congo (Democratic Republic of the Congo v. Uganda), International Court of Justice, December 19, 2005 . Read the full text of the judgment . Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.

Second report of the International Independent Investigation Commission established pursuant to Security Council resolutions 1595 (2005) and 1636 (2005), December 12, 2005 . Read the full text of the report . Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.

Manfred Nowak, the UN's Special Rapporteur on Torture , has called for Germany to prosecute the Uzbek Minister of Internal Affairs, Zokirjon Almatov, for his handling of the May 2005 Andijan uprising . A group of survivors and the New York-based Human Rights Watch have filed a lawsuit in Germany under that country's universal jurisdiction [...]

Kizza Besigye , Uganda's jailed opposition leader, and 22 co-defendants pleaded not guilty Monday to treason charges for which they face the death penalty. Besigye has also been accused of rape and he pleaded not guilty to that charge as well. Also Monday, proceedings were suspended indefinitely by a military court which is considering a [...]