A federal judge has ruled that a decision by the Arizona License Plate Commission to reject "choose life" license plates supported by pro-life groups in the state did not violate the constitutional rights of the groups. District Judge Paul G. Rosenblatt held that the Commission's decision did not violate the free speech and equal protection [...]

Dutch prosecutors have begun to try 250 of the almost 50,000 people fined for failure to produce valid identification since the country's ID law came into effect on January 1, 2005. The law, intended to stop terrorism and passed in the wake of the murder of outspoken filmmaker Theo Van Gogh by an Islamic extremist, [...]

Over seventy percent of Iranian MPs Wednesday supported a draft bill to suspend International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspections of the country's nuclear facilities until the UN watchdog acknowledges Iran's right to pursue nuclear technology. The move is in response to a recent IAEA resolution declaring Iran in "non-compliance" with safeguards required by the nuclear [...]

AP is reporting that a Texas grand jury has issued an indictment for US House Majority Leader Tom DeLay . Earlier this month, an indictment was issued against a political action committee formed by DeLay and a Texas business group on charges relating to campaign contributions for DeLay's 2002 congressional campaign. Subsequently, two campaign group [...]

In the wake of increased international pressure, a military court in Nepal has sentenced an army colonel and two captains to six months in jail for their involvement in the 2004 death of a 15-year old teenage girl accused of being a Maoist rebel. The court noted that Colonel Bobby Khatri and his men failed [...]

Torture, absence of the rule of law, violence against women and political persecution are among the laundry list of "egregious" human rights violations occurring in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea , according to a new report from the United Nations. Vitit Muntarbhorn was appointed to the position of Special Rapporteur last year and tapped [...]

US Army Sgt. Joshua R. Claus is expected to plead guilty to charges that he abused detainees in Afghanistan, at his military trial Wednesday. Last month, Claus, a military intelligence interrogator, was charged with dereliction of duty and assault of two Afghan detainees in his custody at the Bagram Control Point in Afghanistan in 2002. [...]

US Army Capt. Ian Fishback , who served as an anonymous source for a recent Human Rights Watch report on the alleged abuse of Iraqi detainees, said Tuesday that Army investigators tried to track down young soldiers reporting misconduct rather than following up accusations of abuse. Human Rights Watch (HRW) issued a report last week [...]

Advocacy group Mental Disability Rights International (MDRI) , Wednesday released a report of human rights abuses revealing a high prevalence of torture and starvation in Turkey's psychiatric institutions. The results of MDRI's two-year investigation could further hinder Turkey's attempts to join the European Union . The report shows findings of routine abuse of electroconvulsive therapy [...]

JURIST Contributing Editor Jeffrey Addicott of St. Mary's University School of Law, formerly a Lieutenant Colonel in the US Army Judge Advocate General’s Corps, says that the convictions of nine US soldiers for Abu Ghraib abuses and the various official investigations of the scandal testify to the strength of the military justice system, and should [...]