[JURIST] In a letter to US President George W. Bush, the chief Iraqi defense counsel for Saddam Hussein [JURIST news archive] has urged Hussein's immediate release in order to restore peace in Iraq, and has condemned the ousted president's current trial [JURIST news archive] as a farce riddled with false witnesses and lies. In a copy of the letter obtained by Reuters, Khalil Dulaimi [JURIST news archive] wrote that by freeing Hussein, who he claimed was completely innocent and "beloved by millions of Iraqis", "you [i.e. Bush] will win the favor of the Arabs and Muslims and the entire world" and would avoid a civil war in Iraq. Saddam and seven co-defendants are on trial for retaliatory torture and killings of more than 140 people in Dujail in 1982. Reuters has more.

[JURIST] US military authorities at the Guantanamo [JURIST news archive] detention facility announced [statement, PDF] Thursday that the number of participants in the ongoing hunger strike at the prison has surged, reaching an acknowledged total of 84, including 48 who have joined the action since last Sunday. The Pentagon defines a hunger striker as someone who has refused food for nine days or more. The number of Guantanamo hunger strikers has varied since the latest action began in August in protest at camp treatmant and a lack of hearings. The US Southern Command statement says that "This technique (hunger striking) is consistent with al-Qaida training and reflects detainee attempts to elicit media attention and bring pressure on the United States Government to release them."

The US has force-fed some of the hunger strikers to prevent them from dying, but after some detainees alleged harsh treatment - such as inserting feeding tubes without anesthesia and reusing tubes without sanitization - their lawyers won a court order [JURIST report] in October mandating that they be notified by the Defense Department before their clients could be force-fed, and directing the government to provide detainee medical records from before the hunger strike so that their conditions could be better assessed. Thursday's Southern Command statement insists that "Enemy combatants on voluntary fast are closely monitored by medical professionals, receive excellent medical care, and when required, the appropriate amount of daily nutrition and hydration through enteral feeding." Reuters has more.

Previously in JURIST's Paper Chase:

• Guantanamo prisoner on hunger strike wants US court to let him starve to death
• Gitmo doctor denies using feeding tubes to punish striking detainees
• Detainee lawyer notes detail 'brutal treatment' at Guantanamo
• Lawyer for Gitmo hunger-strikers asks judge to allow more legal, medical visits
• British PM asked to intervene as Gitmo hunger strike continues
• Lawyers request federal judge to oversee Gitmo hunger strike
• Gitmo hunger strike unsettling senior US commanders
• Three more detainees hospitalized as Gitmo hunger strike continues
• Gitmo hunger strike gains momentum
• Hunger strike at Gitmo enters second month
• Gitmo detainees begin new hunger strike

[JURIST] Prosecutors are once again investigating Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi [JURIST news archive], this time on charges that he bribed his former lawyer to give false testimony in two criminal cases, according to a report [in Italian] Thursday in Milan's Corriere della Sera newspaper. Berlusconi is said to have paid British lawyer David Mills, who worked for the media mogul's holding company Fininvest [corporate website], nearly $600,000 to give false testimony in a 1997 Fininvest kickbacks trial and again in the 1998 case involving allegations that Berlusconi paid kickbacks to the late Socialist premier Bettino Craxi [JURIST report]. Berlusconi was later cleared of all charges. Italian news agency ANSA has more.

[JURIST] Prosecutors in Turkey [JURIST news archive] have dropped one of the two state slander charges against Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk [TIME profile], eliminating the allegation that he insulted Turkey's armed forces. Pamuk, whose work often examines the clashes between society and the role of Islam, is on trial for "public denigration of the Turkish identity" after he made supposedly-unfavorable remarks to a Swiss magazine about Turkey's stance on the mass killing of Armenians during WWI. Pamuk still faces the general charge that he insulted "Turkishness". Pamuk's trial was postponed last week after a dispute arose over whether he should be tried under Turkey's old penal code, or under the newly reformed civil and penal code [JURIST report]. Under the old code, individual rights and freedoms were greatly restricted to preserve the integrity of the state, an issue that has complicated the nation's pending entry into the European Union. BBC News has more.

Previously on JURIST's Paper Chase:

• Turkish Foreign Minister says state slander laws could be changed
• Turkish prosecutors may charge EU lawmaker with state slander
• Turkish freedom of expression trial adjourned until February
• Turkish Foreign Minister speaks out against state slander prosecutions

[JURIST] A Croatian court in Zagreb Thursday sentenced former "Scorpions" paramilitary member Slobodan Davidovic to 15 years in prison Thursday for his involvement in the summer 1995 Srebrenica massacre [backgrounder; BBC timeline]. Davidovic and five other paramilitary members were arrested in June [JURIST report] after they were identified in a video [JURIST video] first shown at the war crimes trial of former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic [JURIST news archive] depicting the torture and murder of a number of unarmed young men. The other five were arraigned on murder charges in a Serbian courtroom earlier this month; Davidovic, an ethnic Serb but a Croatian citizen, was tried in Zagreb. Davidovic's lawyer has said he will appeal the conviction. Reuters has more.

[JURIST] An inquiry [AP report] by the Pentagon's Inspector General [official website] has concluded that websites operated by the US military that pay journalists to write articles and commentary supporting military activities are legal and do not infringe and laws or government policies. The IG investigation determined that two websites aimed at audiences in the Balkans and the Maghreb region of northern Africa are not covert propaganda and are properly identified as US government products, although the identifications are not prominent. The Balkans website, Southeast European Times, was created in 1999 under a secret directive signed by President Clinton, and was designed to counter Serbian propaganda during the Kosovo war. The African website, Magharebia, attempts to strengthen US interests in an area sympathetic to Islamic fundamentalism. Both sites contain links to a disclaimer [Magharebia text] that they are "sponsored by the US Department of Defense," and in addition to sponsored submissions include articles pulled from independent news services including the Associated Press, UPI and Reuters. Opinion in the Pentagon on the advisability of maintaining these sites and creating others like them seems to be split, with Pentagon chief spokesman Lawrence DiRita recently expressing concern that they could backfire and have a negative effect on public opinion overseas: "We have a lot of skilled people, a lot of energy, and a lot of money... but I question whether the DoD is the best place to be doing these things." The Los Angeles Times has more. Earlier this month, press reports circulated that the US military has paid Iraqi newspapers [AP report] to carry favorable news about US operations there under the guise of independent journalism.

[JURIST] Less than two weeks after arguing in a brief that the US Supreme Court should stay out of the Jose Padilla [JURIST news archive] "enemy combatant" case because criminal charges against Padilla [JURIST report] in late November rendered his appeal moot, the US Department of Justice Wednesday asked the Court to intervene in matter of his custody, claiming that the US Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals [official website] usurped the President's authority to direct the war on terror when it denied the Bush Administration's request [JURIST report; decision, PDF] to transfer Padilla from military to civilian detention for purposes of his prosecution. US Solicitor General Paul Clement's application [PDF] to the Supreme Court called the Fourth Circuit decision "an unwarranted attack on the exercise of Executive discretion." The filing also denied the Court of Appeal's suggestion that the Bush administration attempted to circumvent the Supreme Court by charging Padilla, writing, "There is nothing remotely sinister about the government's effort to pursue criminal charges that minimize evidentiary complications...there is no basis for questioning the good faith of the government in moving forward with the indictment." The Washington Post has more.

[JURIST] ProtectMarriage.com, one of two groups attempting to present a same-sex marriage ban [CA Secretary of State summary] to California voters in 2006, has halted its efforts [press release] for failure to gather the required 598,105 signatures needed to put the measure on the ballot. The deadline for submission of the signatures was Tuesday. The group cited current political climate and timing as the reason the bid was dropped, but will reconsider the issue in 2008. The other group seeking a constitutional amendment, VoteYesMarriage.com has postponed its own petition drive, but is raising money to hire professional signature gatherers and is pressing on with its general campaign [press release, PDF]. Last year, California's legislature became the first state to pass a bill legalizing same-sex marriage [JURIST report; AB 849 text, PDF], but Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed it [JURIST report]. The New York Times has more.

[JURIST] The Supreme Court [official backgrounder] of Uzbekistan [JURIST news archive] Wednesday sentenced 11 policemen, soldiers, and prison doctors [JURIST report] to jail terms ranging from 1.5 to 11 years for their complicity in the May uprising in Andijan [JURIST news archive; HRW backgrounder] when thousands of protesters gathered after rebels stormed a prison [JURIST report] and freed a group of businessmen on trial for alleged Islamic extremism. Government troops open fire on the protestors, killing as many as 500 according to human rights group reports. The policemen and soldiers sentenced Wednesday were convicted of neglecting their duties by allowing rebels to access government buildings and weapons during the uprising. The doctors were convicted of complicity for passing communications through the prison. The court issued a statement saying, "As a result of their negligence, terrorists seized a military unit, prison and government buildings, and released hundreds of criminals." The UN and rights groups have criticized Uzbekistan [JURIST report] and the government of President Islam Karimov [BBC profile] for conducting closed-door trials, in which 151 people have been convicted [JURIST report], some with evidence believed to have been gathered by torture. AP has more.

[JURIST] US Chief Immigration Judge Michael Creppy [official profile] ruled Wednesday that John Demjanjuk [Wikipedia profile], a retired auto worker living in Cleveland who is accused of having been a Nazi prison camp guard, should be deported to his native Ukraine, Germany or Poland, rejecting arguments that he could be tortured if returned. Demjanjuk is suspected of being "Ivan the Terrible", an infamously brutal guard at Poland's Treblinka [PBS backgrounder] death camp during World War II. Demjanjuk has claimed that the accusation is based on mistaken identity. The case dates back to 1977 [Cleveland Plain Dealer report], when the Justice Department originally asked for Demjanjuk's citizenship to be revoked. He was extradited to Israel and sentenced to death for war crimes, but the Israeli Supreme Court overturned the conviction in 1993 and he returned to the US. In 2002, Demjanjuk again lost his US citizenship [JURIST report] after a judge found that World War II evidence showed he worked in the Nazi concentration camps. In June, Creppy initially ruled that Demjanjuk could be deported [US DOJ press release] but was required to rule on the matter of possible harm to him before that decision could be properly appealed. Demjanjuk has 30 days to appeal the latest decision to the Board of Immigration Appeals [court backgrounder] and his lawyers have vowed to appeal both the deportation order and the initial ruling against him. AP has more.

[JURIST] The trial of former Enron [JURIST news archive] executives Kenneth Lay [BBC profile; defense website] and Jeffrey Skilling [BBC profile] has been delayed two weeks until January 30, following a decision by former co-defendant Richard Causey [profile] to testify against his former bosses [JURIST report] under a plea agreement [PDF] made public Wednesday. Causey, Enron's former Chief Accounting Officer, became the sixteenth person connected to Enron to plead guilty, agreeing to cooperate with prosecutors in exchange for a reduced sentence on a single charge of securities fraud. Prior to his plea agreement, Causey had planned to present a unified defense with Lay and Skiling. Causey's testimony is expected to be extremely damaging to the other two because his intricate knowledge of Enron's financial dealings allows prosecutors to present the jury with a less complex case. Causey's close working relationship with Lay and Skilling also allows makes it difficult for them to deny knowledge of many fraudulent transactions or blame subordinates for the fraud. The Houston Chronicle has more.

[JURIST] Federal authorities have now indicted a total of 49 people for involvement in a scheme to fraudulently collect more than $200,000 from American Red Cross [organization website; press release] funds designed to assist Hurricane Katrina [JURIST news archive] victims. The Red Cross discovered the fraud after an internal audit revealed unusually high payouts from the Bakersfield, California Red Cross call center, where at least 14 of the suspects were employed by a call center contractor. The employees are believed to have helped family and friends file false claims for aid money, collecting an average payout of $1,000 per claim. Following indictments made in October [US DOJ press release], six people have pleaded guilty to wire fraud charges. AP has more.

Previously on JURIST's Paper Chase:

• First corruption arrest made in connection with Katrina cleanup
• Charges filed in first federal case involving alleged Katrina aid scam
• First arrest made in Katrina online fundraising fraud
• Gonzales setting up special Katrina fraud task force