[JURIST] Former Yukos [corporate website] CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky [MosNews profile; JURIST news archive] has been hospitalized in Russia after being stabbed in the face by another prisoner while he slept, Khodorkovsky's lawyer Yury Schmidt said Saturday. The injury to Khodorkovsky's left nostril required stitches, but the Federal Prison Service dismissed the injury claims as a result of an argument with another inmate. A second lawyer for Khodorkovsky [defense website], Natalya Terekhova, said on Gazeta.ru that Khodorkovsky's assailant was a young cellmate called Kuchma, who now waits in solitary confinement, but that Khodorkovsky did not submit a complaint against Kuchma because Kuchma was not aware of his actions. Khodorkovsky has complained that the Siberian prison denies him access to his lawyers, and successfully appealed to a Russian court for more access to his lawyers [JURIST report].

Khodorkovsky was convicted in May 2005 of tax evasion [JURIST report], and the government nationalized Khodorkovsky's oil empire to pay off $33 billion in back taxes. The remaining Yukos assets will likely be sold this year. Bankruptcy proceedings [JURIST report] began in late March for Yukos, while Yukos vice president Vasily Aleksanyan was charged [JURIST report] with embezzlement and money laundering in early April. AP has more. MosNews has local coverage.

[JURIST] The Spanish Supreme Court [official website] has overturned the convictions of three men found guilty [JURIST report; verdict, PDF] last year of collaborating with or belonging to al Qaeda in connection with the Sept. 11 terror attacks [JURIST news archive]. The three men, Driss Chebli, Sadik Merizak, and Abdelaziz Benyaich, were convicted along with 15 other men in what was Europe's largest trial of those suspected of involvement in Sept. 11. Prosecutors from the case actually requested that the high court throw out their convictions because there was not sufficient evidence to jail the three men, and also encouraged the court to throw out a murder conspiracy conviction for the leading suspect in the case, Syrian-born Spaniard Imad Yarkas. The high court has not made a decision yet in Yarkas' appeal. He was convicted [JURIST report] last September of conspiracy with Mohamed Atta and other members of the Hamburg, Germany-based al Qaeda cell widely suspected of orchestrating the Sept. 11 attacks. Prosecutors believe that the convictions of the remaining 14 men should stand.

The 2005 trial in Spain drew widespread criticism, with many accusations that the 18 convicts were simply Islamic fanatics with no real connection to the terrorist attacks [CSM report; BBC report]. Yarkas denied [JURIST report] any connection to Atta throughout the trial. AP has more.

[JURIST] Belarus [JURIST news archive] opposition politician and former foreign economic relations minister Mikhail Marinich [Wikipedia profile] was released from prison Friday, after having served nearly two years of a two and a half year sentence. Arrested in April 2004 and convicted of theft of equipment the US government provided to his NGO "Business Initiative," Marinich's case has been widely criticized as fabricated [US DOS summary]. A court approved an early release for Marinich because a stroke in prison rendered him an invalid.

The same court that freed Marinich rejected a request to free another opposition politician, Alexander Kozulin [CFR profile and interview], who led protests [JURIST report] last month over the controversial re-election [JURIST report] of President Alexander Lukashenko [official website; BBC profile]. The European Union on Monday approved travel bans [PDF press release; JURIST report] on Lukashenko and 30 other top government officials in response to the government's crackdown on political protestors [JURIST report]. The government has charged more than 600 election protesters [JURIST report]. AP has more.

[JURIST] Eight thousand pro-democracy protesters [JURIST news archive] assembled in Nepal's capital city of Kathmandu Saturday in the largest demonstration against the rule of King Gyanendra [official profile; BBC profile] since the current round of protests began over a week ago. An alliance of seven opposition political parties, including the Communist Party of Nepal [party website], has been waging a general strike against Gyanendra's rule and protests continue despite Gyanendra's promise to hold general elections [JURIST report] by April 2007. Gyanendra has made similar promises in the past and the opposition is demanding that he step down immediately. Reuters has more.

Also in Kathmandu Saturday, police used batons to attack a rally staged by about 200 local journalists, including members of the Federation of Nepalese Journalists [advocacy website], as they gathered to protest government curbs on press freedom. Nepalese police reportedly wounded seven journalists and detained at least twice that many. Reuters has more. AP has additional coverage. eKantipur.com has local coverage.

[JURIST] Pointing to a letter written by lawyers representing Zacarias Moussaoui and a motion filed with the court by federal public defenders who represented Richard Reid [BBC profile], the so-called "shoe bomber," US District Court Judge Leonie Brinkema on Friday vacated a previous order [order, PDF] requiring Reid to testify on behalf of Moussaoui's defense at his sentencing trial. After years of maintaining that he had no specific role in the Sept. 11 attacks [JURIST news archive], in March Moussaoui reversed his story [JURIST report], telling the court that he and Reid were ordered to hijack a fifth plane and fly it into the White House. Earlier this month, jurors in Moussaoui's sentencing trial [case docket] found that Moussaoui was eligible for the death penalty [JURIST report] for his alleged role in Sept. 11. Although Moussaoui has previously said that he wanted to be executed, on Thursday he recanted his execution wish [JURIST report], telling the court that execution was contrary to Islamic teaching. He still made clear, however, that he had no regret for the Sept. 11 attacks.

In vacating her previous order on Friday, Judge Brinkema gave no explanation her decision, citing only the letter written by Moussaoui's defense and the motion filed by Reid's lawyers, neither of which were released to the public. Reid is currently serving a life sentence [CNN report] in Colorado for attempting to blow up an American Airlines flight in 2001. AP has more.

[JURIST] US District Judge Sarah Evans Barker [official profile] of the Southern District of Indiana issued an opinion [PDF text] Friday upholding a 2005 law [Public Law 109-2005, PDF text] enacted by the Indiana General Assembly [official website] that requires most voters to present a valid, government-issued photo identification card when they head to the polls. The Indiana Democratic Party [official website] led the constitutional challenge to the law [complaint, PDF], claiming it would disproportionately disadvantage those voters who many have trouble obtaining the proper identification, including the poor, elderly, minorities, and individuals who are handicapped. Challengers of the law will likely appeal Friday's ruling.

Five other states currently require photo ID to vote in elections and lawmakers in Georgia may soon also use such a requirement. Last month, civil rights, religious and community groups asked [JURIST report] the US Department of Justice [official website] to block a Georgia law that would require voters there to show photo identification before casting ballots. A previous version of the Georgia law was blocked by a federal judge [JURIST report] last year, but the revised version offers free photo IDs to voters who need them. AP has more.

[JURIST] The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit [official website] in a 2-1 decision [opinion, PDF; dissent, PDF] Friday ruled that a Los Angeles ordinance that subjects the homeless to arrest if they are caught "sitting, lying or sleeping on public sidewalks" violates the prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment found in the Eighth Amendment of the US Constitution [text]. Noting that there was "substantial and undisputed evidence" that the homeless population in the city far outnumbers the number of beds available in homeless shelters in the city, the court said the disputed ordinance violated homeless people's Eighth Amendment rights "by criminalizing the unavoidable act of sitting, lying or sleeping at night while being involuntarily homeless."

The City of Los Angeles has not stated how it plans to respond to Friday's ruling. The decision could have substantial implications for how the city will deal with its growing homeless population. The Ninth Circuit opinion particularly noted that Los Angeles' Skid Row neighborhood [USC walking tour] has the highest concentration of homeless people in the United States, with 11,000 to 12,000 homeless people living in the 50-block area. The LA Times has more.

[JURIST] Lawyers familiar with the case of former University of South Florida computer science professor Sami al-Arian [advocacy website; JURIST report] said Friday that the Kuwait-born Palestinian activist had agreed to a deal with federal prosecutors in which he would plead guilty to a lesser terrorism-related charge of conspiring to provide material support to a terrorist organization and be deported from the United States. The deal comes after federal jurors acquitted al-Arian [JURIST report] late last year of eight of the 17 terrorism-related charges with which he had been accused and could not reach a unanimous verdict on the rest. The deal is still subject to the approval of a federal judge.

Al-Arian stood trial [JURIST report] in 2005 for 17 charges [charge sheet; JURIST report] relating to his alleged financing of terrorist activities in Israel. The outcome was a substantial blow to the federal government [JURIST report], which had heralded the trial as a win for the Patriot Act. AP has more. The Tampa Tribune has local coverage.

[JURIST] US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld [official profile] kept tabs on the 2002 interrogations of Mohamed al-Qahtani [Wikipedia profile], the so-called "20th hijacker" from the Sept. 11 attacks, every week at Guantanamo Bay [JURIST news archive], according to a report [subscription required] from Salon.com. The online magazine used a Freedom of Information Act [text; summary] request to obtain portions of a December 2005 Army inspector general's report on its investigation of then-Guantanamo commander Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller [Wikipedia profile], which includes a sworn statement [PDF text] by Lt. Gen. Randall Schmidt and an interview [PDF text] with Gen. James Hill. Rumsfeld reportedly monitored the Army's interrogations of Al-Qahtani by speaking to Miller weekly, while the Saudi detainee was subjected to allegedly abusive treatment, including tactics resembling those employed in the Abu Ghraib [JURIST news archive] prison scandal. In his statement, Schmidt said that Rumsfeld did not specifically authorize the questionable interrogation techniques, but that the abuses were able to occur due to Rumsfeld's vague instructions. Schmidt also said that he found Miller's claims that he was unaware of the allegedly abusive interrogation methods employed at Guantanamo Bay "hard to believe."

Human Rights Watch [advocacy website] issued a statement Friday calling on the government to appoint a special prosecutor [press release] to investigate the allegations. Just last month, Al-Qahtani recanted information [JURIST report] he had provided implicating about 30 Guantanamo Bay detainees, claiming the his statements were coerced by torture. Saturday's Boston Globe has more.