[JURIST] In a move to gain support for a draft UN reform resolution introduced last month [JURIST report], Germany, Japan, Brazil and India - the so-called G4 group - have dropped their proposal to give veto power to any new permanent Council members. Their plan would still expand the current Council, which consists of 5 permanent members and 10 rotating members, from 15 to 25. Under the proposal, 6 new permanent seats would be added, and 4 rotating seats. The resolution requires a two-thirds vote from the General Assembly for approval. The pullback on the veto power comes a month after UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said publicly that expecting any of the 5 permanent Security Council states to endorse reforms that would give other nations the same veto powers they already enjoyed would be "utopian" [JURIST report]. Reuters has more.

[JURIST] When asked about the fate of the US prison camp in Guantanamo Bay during a Fox News interview [transcript] Wednesday, President Bush insisted that all prisoners there are being treated in accordance with international standards, but did say that the government was "exploring all alternatives" regarding its future. The administration has come under increasing pressure from human rights groups, including Amnesty International, to shut down the facility, which a recent Amnesty report [JURIST report] called a "gulag" in reference to the notorious forced labor camps of the Soviet era. Earlier this week, former President Jimmy Carter and Senator Joseph Biden [JURIST report] called on President Bush to close Guantanamo, and US House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi has since joined the chorus. Reuters has more.

[JURIST] In a 56-43 vote [Senate roll call] Wednesday, the Senate confirmed the nomination of California Supreme Court Justice Janice Rogers Brown [Independent Judiciary profile] to the US Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia [official website]. Brown’s nomination process began in 2003 and quickly encountered opposition from Democrats, who blocked a confirmation vote. Critics accused Brown of exhibiting hostility to government regulation and minority rights [People for the American Way report]. President Bush has called Brown "a brilliant and fair-minded jurist who is committed to the rule of law". A promise of a vote on Brown’s nomination was part of the May 23 bipartisan agreement [JURIST report] to end the showdown over judicial nominees, and reserve the filibuster for "extraordinary circumstances." The Senate has also scheduled [Senate calendar] a vote on the nomination of William Pryor [official profile] to the Eleventh Circuit for Thursday. AP has more.

[JURIST] Leading Wednesday's international brief, the leading opposition party in Zimbabwe [government website], the Movement for Democratic Change [official website] has announced its intention to boycott the opening of the Zimbabwean Parliament [government website] Thursday morning by Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe [Wikipedia profile]. The MDC, which challenged the recent national elections as unfair and fraudulent [JURIST report], has 41 members in the Parliament, leaving Mugabe's ruling Zanu PF party [official website] greater than two-thirds representation, which gives it the power to approve legislation and make amendments to the national constitution without worrying about opposition interference. Zanu PF officials and Mugabe have already announced their intent to amend the constitution and hold votes on several key issues, including restoring a national Senate, the heavily contested NGO bill [JURIST report], and a constitutional amendment to liquidate all private land ownership and convert all productive farmland to government control [JURIST report]. JURIST's Paper Chase has continuing coverage of Zimbabwe [JURIST news archive]. ZimOnline has local coverage.

In other international legal news ...

• Around 50 journalists were arrested Wednesday in Nepal [government website] as the protested press restrictions [JURIST report] put in place by King Gyanendra [official profile]. Since the 1 February declaration of a state of emergency [JURIST report] and the subsequent dissolution of the democratic government, the monarchy has continually tightened the limitations on press freedoms, sometimes even completely severing media agencies access to telephone and internet services. The journalists arrested Wednesday, acting under the auspices of the Federation of Nepalese Journalists [advocacy website] were protesting the continued ban on FM news broadcasts, despite a recent Nepalese Supreme Court [official website] ruling which held that the government order closing down the radio stations was illegal. JURIST's Paper Chase has continuing coverage of Nepal. Nepalnews.com has local coverage.
  
  
• Sudanese Justice Minister Ali Karti gave Sudan's first cabinet level response Wednesday to the announcement on Monday [JURIST report] that the International Criminal Court [official website] has opened a formal investigation into alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes committed in the Darfur region of Sudan. Karti affirmed the position that had been taken by non-cabinet government officials [JURIST report], reiterating that the Sudanese government would not hand over any citizens to be tried outside the country. Karti also added that the Sudanese government had yet to receive any official word from the ICC concerning the investigation. Previous statements by junior government officias had indicated that Sudan was searching for a way to work with the ICC while mainaining its opposition to the extradition of any of its citizens. JURIST's Paper Chase has continuing coverage of Sudan. The Sudan Tribune has local coverage.
  
  
• Indonesian Minister of Justice and Human Rights Hamid Awaluddin was questioned Wednesday by anti-corruption investigators currently examining allegations of bribery and kickbacks in the General Elections Commission [official website in Bahasa Indonesian] (KPU) of Indonesia [government website in Bahasa Indonesian], where Hamid served as a member. Hamid said he was being quesitoned as a witness, and would not confirm or deny reports that he had been part of the group that had accepted kickbacks while serving on the national electoral body. The chairman of the KPU and three other members have already been charged with accepting bribes and arranging kickbacks to ensure that contracts for voting supplies such as ballots, ballot boxes, ink, and paper went to certain companies. No date has been set for trials at this time. JURIST's Paper Chase has continuing coverage of Indonesia [JURIST news archive]. The Jakarta Post has local coverage.

[JURIST] South African businessman Schabir Shaik [Wikipedia profile] was sentenced Wednesday to 15 years in jail after being found guilty [JURIST report] of two counts of corruption and one count of fraud, ending a high-profile case that many in South Africa had followed over its seven-month duration. Shaik has close ties to Zulu leader and South African Deputy President Jacob Zuma [profile], earlier thought to be a frontrunner to replace current President Thabo Mbeki [BBC profile], who some analysts claim will be unable to distance himself from this scandal to win the presidency. AFP has more.

[JURIST] An 80-year-old man reputed to be a member of the Ku Klux Klan will stand trial [JURIST report] starting Monday for the 1964 murder [UMKC backgrounder] of three civil rights workers. Edgar Ray Killen [UMKC profile] is charged with murdering three men who came to Mississippi to help blacks register to vote. The killings were the focus of the 1988 movie Mississippi Burning [Internet Movie Database entry]. A federal trial in 1967 resulted in a hung jury. Seven others involved in the murders were convicted of civil rights violations; none of the seven served more than six years in prison. AP has more.

[JURIST] The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia [JURIST news archive; official website] in The Hague Wednesday dismissed two charges [official press release] against former Bosnian commander Naser Oric [Wikipedia profile]. The court ruled that charges that Oric's soldiers took weapons and food from Serbs were necessities of war or insignificant to the court. Oric still faces charges of murder and cruel treatment of civilians. VOA has more.

[JURIST] A leading Sunni Muslim group in Iraq announced Wednesday that it would not participate in writing the new Iraqi constitution unless Sunnis were given a fair number of seats on the drafting committee. The parliamentary committee in charge [JURIST report] and the US government [JURIST report] both want increased Sunni involvement, but the Shiite majority is unsettled [JURIST report] by calls for greater Sunni representation, especially given that few Sunnis voted in the January National Asembly elections. Currently, Sunnis hold only two of the 55 seats on the drafting committee. The Gathering of the Sunni People is demanding that 25 Sunnis be named to the committee. A draft of the constitution is due in little more than two months (August 15). Reuters has more.

[JURIST] The US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals [official website] in San Francisco has upheld [opinion, PDF] the drug conviction of a passenger found with cocaine during an airport security check. Sergio Ramon Marquez was randomly selected from a line of passengers in October 2002 to be searched with a hand-held scanner. An object that security gurads thought could have been explosives turned out to be cocaine. The court ruled Tuesday that the search was constitutional since it was designed to detect weapons instead of drugs, was not overly extensive, and was avoidable if one chose not to fly. The San Francisco Chronicle has more.

[JURIST] The British government Wednesday announced proposals to stop the manufacture, import, and sale of the majority of replica guns [Home Office press release] available in the UK. The plan is part of the new Violent Crime Reduction Bill [PDF text], legislation that also seeks to raise the age at which a person can purchase a knife from 16 to 18 and reduce alcohol sales to minors. The proposals are in response to an increase in the number of alcohol and weapons related offences and a 66% increase in crimes involving replica guns. Violators will be subject to higher sentences and replica gun manufacturers will be required to produce replicas that cannot be made to shoot live rounds. Gun crime rates are much lower in the UK than in the US but have been rising [Home Office backgrounder] in recent years. BBC News has more.

[JURIST] Palestinian detainees at Israel's Megiddo prison [Jerusalem Post report] began a hunger strike on Wednesday as Israeli officials denied reports that prison guards there had abused the Koran, echoing similar stories from Guantanamo Bay [JURIST report]. Prisoners complained that the book was desecrated by guards [Aljazeera report] during a search. The Israel Prisons Service [official website] says the books were only routinely flipped through [Jerusalem Post report]; Prisons Service Commissioner Yaakov Ganot said that the abuse "never happened" and that reports were simply "a provocation". Reuters has more.

[JURIST] The British government announced Wednesday that it has agreed to extradite Algerian Rachid Ramda [advocacy profile], held on a French arrest warrant for the past eight years in connection with a Paris bomb attack in 1995 that took the lives of eight people. UK Home Secretary Charles Clarke [official profile] agreed to the extradition in April but the decision was withheld from the public until now. Ramda is expected to seek judicial review of the decision before London's High Court prior to extradition. Reuters has more.

[JURIST] EU External Relations Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner [official profile] has called Tuesday's acquittal of 10 Libyan police officers [JURIST report] charged with torturing six foreign medics - five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor - into confessions in an AIDS tainted blood scandal [JURIST report], "a matter for serious concern." Ferrero-Waldner noted that human rights lawyers had been denied visas to represent their clients and she had previously been assured that international legal standards would be respected in both the torture trial and the trial of the medics. The medics have maintained they are innocent and their confessions were forcibly extracted. Aljazeera has more.

[JURIST] Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari [BBC profile] Wednesday promised to continue fighting corruption in Iraq's new government. He said "administrative corruption" was one of many challenges Iraq must face, and that the government has "rolled up its sleeves and taken measures" to prevent it, including establishing a telephone hotline for reports. Judge Radhi Hamza al-Radhi, the head of Iraq's Commission for Public Integrity [US State Dept. backgrounder], said that two former Iraqi ministers have been subpoenaed [AFP report; JURIST report on earlier arrest warrants] and former employment minister Leyla Abdel Hamid Latif has already been questioned in connection with financial corruption. No charges have been filed yet.

[JURIST] A British court Wednesday began a retrial of suspected Afghan warlord Faryadi Sarwar Zardad [Wikipedia profile] in what may be the first instance of a country prosecuting an alleged torturer for crimes committed abroad. Zardad is believed to have controlled key road checkpoints in the mid-1990s on the main route from Pakistan to Kabul where the alleged tortures took place. Zardad, whose first trial [JURIST report] ended in a hung jury, maintains he did not kidnap or torture any travelers. He was first arrested in London in 2002. Reuters has more.

[JURIST] The US House Appropriations Committee [official site] Tuesday continued to press the FBI to adopt recommended reforms in hearings on the the FBI's new budget [committee press release]. On Monday, members of the 9/11 Commission also expressed concern [CBS News report] that the Bureau hasn't made enough progress [official FBI response] in restructuring and reorganizing since the 9/11 attacks. The battle over reforming the FBI will heat up in the coming weeks as the full House gets the budget to vote on, and the Justice Department and White House finalize their own recommendations for change. The Los Angeles Times has more.

[JURIST] After rejecting [JURIST report] the proposed European Constitution [JURIST news archive], a poll of French citizens released Wednesday says 61 percent want the constitution renegotiated, while 35 percent say it should not be changed. 74 percent believed France could get "significant and positive" changes to the proposal. The proposed constitution's defeat in France and the Netherlands has European leaders scrambling to keep the process alive [JURIST report]. A European summit [official website] is scheduled for June 16-17 to discuss the next steps in the process. AFX has more.

[JURIST] Lawyers for the US Department of Justice Tuesday asked for less than one-tenth of the expected penalty in a civil racketeering case against major tocacco companies. At the conclusion of closing arguments [JURIST report; US DOJ press statement], government lawyer Stephen D. Brody asked for just $10 billion of the original $130 billion dollar penalty calculated for what the US contends was a half-century long conspiracy aimed at addicting and defrauding smokers. A lawyer for defendant Philip Morris USA [corporate website] expressed surprise at the move and said it was "clear the government hasn't thought through what it's doing." Anti-smoking advocates also denounced the move as "a self-inflicted blow" that would decrease the chances of helping smokers in need. A ruling is expected in the next few months. The Department of Justice has documents and background material on the tobacco litigation. The Washington Post has more.

[JURIST] Fifteen Guantanamo [JURIST news archives] detainees who have been cleared of wrongdoing in March by Combatant Status Review Tribunals [DOD factsheet, PDF] that concluded they were not properly classed as "enemy combatants" are still being held at the facility more than two months later, according to a Reuters report Wednesday. The Pentagon says it has delayed their release because of concerns with possible abuses the men may face when they return to their home country; US law prohibits returning suspects to countries where they will likely be tortured. The US government has not provide names or nationalities of the 15 men, and has not said which country concerns them. Other prisoners cleared in March have since been returned to Afghanistan and Turkey. The 15 remaining men are segregated from the rest of the detainees and are now housed in a lower-security environment while arrangements are made for them to return home. Reuters has more.

[JURIST] US Marines detained 19 employees of North Carolina-based Zapata Engineering [company website] for 3 days, after reportedly witnessing the contractors open fire on troops and civilians in Iraq, the US military announced Tuesday. The employees, including 16 Americans, most of whom were security personnel, and 3 Iraqi translators, have resigned their positions and have returned to the United States. Several have accused the Marines of "roughing them up," hazing them, and treating them like insurgents, even though they say the incident was one of mistaken identity and "friendly fire". The military has denied any mistreatment. Zapata Engineering is employed by the Army Corps of Engineers to dispose of explosives [Charlotte Carolina News 14 report] and the company operates from southern Fallujah. The Los Angeles Times [article] and CorpWatch.org [article] have more.

[JURIST] A father and son have been arrested and charged [AP report] with lying to federal agents after the son admitted to attending an al-Qaida training camp in Pakistan, the FBI said on Tuesday. Hamid Hayat, 22, is charged with lying about attending the camp. Hamid's father, Umer Hayat, 47, is charged with lying about his son's activities and about giving him $100 a month while attending the camp. Two others, Muhammed Adil Khan and Shabbir Ahmed, are being held on immigration violations [CNN report] discovered during the investigation. The probe is ongoing and officials suggest more arrests will be made. AP has more.

[JURIST] Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights Alvaro Gil-Robles [official profile] Wednesday criticized the UK for its methods of detaining terror suspects [press release]. In a report [DOC text] to the Council Gil-Robles specifically targeted "control orders", a form of house arrest instituted by the British government earlier this year [JURIST reports] after indefinite detention was deemed a human rights violation. Under the control orders system, the UK Home Secretary can force an individual to stay home and adhere to a curfew if the individual is believed to be supporting terrorism, a system Gil-Robles called "inherently one-sided" and a decision he feels should be made only by a judge. Control orders were introduced with the Prevention of Terrorism Act [PDF text], a controversial law approved by Parliament only after an agreement to review the act in one year [JURIST report]. Currently ten people are being held in Britain under control orders. BBC News has more.

[JURIST] Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen [Wikipedia profile], a former Khmer Rouge soldier, responded to an opposition proposal Wednesday by saying that the families of the 1.7 million victims of the hardline communist Khmer Rouge [Wikipedia backgrounder] regime that ruled Cambodia from 1975 to 1979 should not be paying for genocide trials [JURIST news archives]. Members of the Sam Rainsy Party [party website] had proposed using private donations [JURIST report] to help offset the more than $10 million deficit in the projected $56.3 million budget required to try surviving Khmer Rouge leaders. The UN has pledged $38 million for the court, while the impoverished nation of Cambodia can only afford to pay just over $1 million. Critics suggest that Hun Sen does not want to trials to go ahead, although it's clear that he himself had no role in any Khmer Rouge atrocities. Reuters has more.

[JURIST] Theodor Meron [profile], president of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia [official website] said Tuesday that the tribunal will miss a 2008 trial completion date set by the UN Security Council, extending at least into 2009. Meron said the tribunal can't cut corners at the expense of "due process and human rights norms in order to move faster." In a report to the Security Council, the tribunal criticized Serbian, Bosnian and Croatian leaders for failing to turn over key fugitives, including Bosnian Serb wartime leader Radovan Karadzic[BBC profile] and his top general, Ratko Mladic [BBC profile]. The tribunal also blamed the delay on additional indictees [list of indictments] being brought before the court. Read the full text of the ICTY report [PDF]. Reuters has more.

[JURIST] The US will end its lone opposition to Mohamed ElBaradei [Wikipedia profile], Director-General of the International Atomic Energy Agency [IAEA official website] Wednesday in exchange for concessions involving Iran and the fight against nuclear arms proliferation. ElBaradei is arriving in Washington to meet with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and new Undersecretary of State for Arms Control Robert Joseph [State Dept. profile], who is replacing John Bolton, likely to be confirmed soon [JURIST report] as US UN ambassador. The Bush administration had opposed a third term for the Egyptian diplomat, arguing that UN officials should serve only 2 terms, but UN officials and others believe US opposition stemmed from ElBaradei's refusal to accept suggestions that Saddam Hussein's Iraq was operating a nuclear weapons program and his disinclination to report Iran to the UN Security Council [JURIST report] for alleged nuclear proliferation violations. The IAEA's 35-nation board of governors begins its quarterly meeting Monday, at which time ElBaradei's re-appointment is expected to be confirmed. Reuters has more.