In a gesture of goodwill to the new Palestinian leadership, Israel Monday released 159 Palestinian prisoners. Interim Palestinian leader and presidential frontrunner Mahmoud Abbas (official website here; BBC profile here) has campaigned on the prisoner release issue and has called for more of the 7,000 Palestinians in Israeli jails to be set free, especially those [...]

The Washington Post reported Sunday that claims of abuse and torture made by 10 former Guantanamo detainees and described in documents filed in federal court now appear to be substantiated by FBI documents recently obtained by the ACLU under the Freedom of Information Act. Both the detainee complaints and the FBI papers (the release of [...]

Ukraine's Supreme Court has voided as unconstitutional part of the electoral reform package approved earlier this month by the Ukrainian parliament, just one day before the country re-runs its presidential election, the results of which were voided by the high court on grounds of fraud. This time the court struck down a provision limiting voting [...]

In a major course-reversal, New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer (official website here), now a candidate for state governor in 2006, has said that he is ready to turn high-profile investigations of wrongdoing by investment banks, mutual funds and insurance companies over to federal regulators, suggesting that state-led crusades balkanize corporate regulation, and that federal [...]

The French newspaper Liberation said Friday that an unpublished UN report it has obtained catalogues a plethora of major rights abuses in the conflict-wracked African state of Cote d'Ivoire over the past two years, including mass execution, torture and rape of women and children. The report says that many offenses were filmed by French and [...]

NATO troops Friday arrested former Bosnian Serb policeman Dusan Tesic for allegedly assisting suspected war crimes fugitives. NATO believes Tesic has information on a network that helps fugitives evade the law. NATO did not release the names of those Tesic is believed to have aided; he was previously detained for questioning regarding Bosnian-Serb leaders Radovan [...]

Puerto Rican election authorities have announced Anibal Acevedo Vila, the Popular Democratic Party's candidate, as the country's new governor following a recount of the November 2nd election. The election results are expected to be officially certified on Tuesday. Acevedo Villa won by 3,228 votes from the nation's 4 million residents. As reported previously in JURIST's [...]

Republicans in Washington state Friday asked county auditors to reconsider ballots that were rejected on election day in the state's tight race for governor, a quick move in the wake of Thursday's final recount tally that awarded the race to Democrat Christine Gregoire by 130 votes. Republican candidate Dino Rossi said Thursday that Washingtonians deserve [...]

Signed into law by President Bush December 23, 2004 . Read the full text of the Act here . Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.

Tariq Aziz, Saddam Hussein's former deputy prime minister and foreign minister, has denied that Iraq used the UN oil-for-food program to extort billions of dollars according to lawyer Badih Aref, speaking Friday for Aziz after having been allowed to meet him for the first time Thursday in Baghdad. Aref quoted Aziz as saying: We used [...]