Documents from investigations of alleged Iraqi prisoner abuses released by the US Army last week pursuant to an ACLU FOIA suit and made public Monday include a report on a army sergeant who after reporting abuses of Iraqi prisoners by US personnel was ordered to undergo a psychiatric examination and later sent out of Iraq [...]

AP is reporting that Kosovo prime minister Ramush Haradinaj has resigned after being indicted for war crimes by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia at The Hague. The indictment, anticipated yesterday but still not formally announced by the court, is in connection with Haradinaj's activities as a senior Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) guerilla [...]

Updating a JURIST report from earlier today, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan Monday urged the Security Council in a closed-door emergency session to pass a resolution to end what he called "appalling" crimes in Sudan's Darfur region and called for sanctions against those preventing peace in the troubled area. He praised existing humanitarian and security measures, [...]

The US Department of Defense Monday confirmed the release and transfer to France of three French detainees in Guantanamo Bay to France "for prosecution". Mustaq Ali Patel, Ridouane Khalid and Khaled Ben Mustafa were the last three French detainees held at Gitmo following the release of four other French suspects last July. The former detainees [...]

A military judge in Foot Hood, Texas, has refused to dismiss any remaining charges against US Army Spc. Sabrina Harman in connection with 2003 abuses of Iraqi prisoners at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison , setting the stage for a full court-martial trial scheduled for May 12. Harman will be the second Abu Ghraib soldier to [...]

In an interview with three news agencies Monday, US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales denied renewed allegations that pursuant to an executive order issued after the September 11 attacks the CIA had flown as many as 150 terror suspects to foreign jurisdictions where they would be tortured. The New York Times published a story containing the [...]

The Special Court for Sierra Leone opened its final scheduled trial in Freetown Monday as outgoing chief prosecutor David Crane outlined his case against three former members of the the country's military junta – Alex Tamba Brima, Brima Bazzy Kamara and Santigie Borbor Kanu. The leaders of the of the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council who [...]

The House of Lords, the upper chamber of the UK Parliament, Monday turned back by 249-119 a controversial anti-terror bill that would have permitted government ministers to issue so-called "control orders" limiting the movement or freedoms of certain terror suspects without charge or trial. Former Labour Party Lord Chancellor Lord Irvine is said to have [...]

Shepard v. US, Supreme Court of the United States, Justice Souter, March 7, 2005 . Excerpt: Title 18 U.S.C. § 924(e) (2000 ed. and Supp. II), popularly known as the Armed Career Criminal Act (ACCA), mandates a minimum 15-year prison sentence for anyone possessing a firearm after three prior convictions for serious drug offenses or [...]

Wilkinson v. Dotson, Supreme Court of the United States, March 7, 2005 . Excerpt: Throughout the legal journey from Preiser to Balisok, the Court has focused on the need to ensure that state prisoners use only habeas corpus (or similar state) remedies when they seek to invalidate the duration of their confinement—either directly through an [...]