[JURIST] Lawyers for telecommunications giant AT&T made what turned out to be an unsuccessful bid in federal court in San Francisco Wednesday for the return of documents collected by a former AT&T technician that supposedly detail co-operation between the company and the US National Security Agency [official website] in the Bush administration's domestic surveillance program [JURIST news archive], but suggested in the meantime that the co-operation may have been authorized and even required by federal law. Judge Vaughn Walker said the documents at issue could be used [EFF press release] in a lawsuit [EFF materials] brought against the company by the Electronic Frontier Foundation [advocacy website], but ruled that they had to remain sealed for the time being until it was determined whether releasing them would divulge trade secrets. Representing the company, former White House associate counsel Bradford Berenson nonetheless claimed that AT&T was an "innocent bystander" in the surveillance operation as its co-operation was legally authorized, a possible reference to a statutory obligation to co-operate with the government under the terms of 18 USC 2511 [text] so long as there is certification by the US Attorney General that "no warrant or court order is required by law."

Walker has yet to address an AT&T motion to dismiss the case for lack of jurisdiction and a US Department of Justice motion to dismiss on grounds that the case endangers military and governmental secrets [JURIST report]. The next hearing in the case is set for June 23. AP has more. CNET has additional coverage.

[JURIST] The US Senate Wednesday approved key amendments to an immigration reform bill that would create an additional 370 miles of fencing along the US-Mexico border and would deny the possibility of acquiring citizenship to illegal immigrants convicted of certain criminal offences. The border fencing amendment introduced by Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL) [official website] that passed 83-16 [roll call] would authorize triple-layer fencing along an unspecified route and the creation of an additional 500 miles of vehicle barriers to hinder unauthorized crossings. Referring to his proposal in light of the President's announcement of additional measures [JURIST report] Monday night, Sessions said:

A border fence, combined with National Guard forces, increased border patrol agents and more bed space for arrested illegal aliens, will help us reach a tipping point where the scales tip from illegality to legality. If we continue to send signals like this, that the open border days are over, people will know that it makes more sense to apply and come into our country legally, according to our laws, rather than trying to come in illegally.

[JURIST] Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue [official biography] said Wednesday that the state will appeal [press release] a judge's ruling [order, PDF; JURIST report] that a voter-approved amendment banning same-sex marriage [text] is unconstitutional. Georgia Attorney General Thurbert E. Baker [official website] said he would seek an expedited review. Baker noted that even though the constitutional amendment was struck down, a statute [text] banning same-sex marriage [JURIST news archive] is not affected by the court's Tuesday ruling.

Furthermore, if the Georgia Supreme Court [official website] does not rule on the ban by August 7 or doesn't overturn the decision, Perdue plans to call a special session of the General Assembly [official website] to write a new constitutional amendment that can be placed on the ballot in November. AP has more. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has local coverage.

[JURIST] The French National Assembly [official website] voted overwhelmingly Wednesday to tighten immigration requirements for unskilled workers. The Senate [official website] is expected to consider the bill [JURIST document; legislative information] next month. If adopted, the measure would allow only highly qualified immigrants from outside the EU to obtain a renewable "skills and talents" residency permit. Such immigrants would have to agree to learn French, and their families would wait longer to get their own residency cards.

Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy [BBC profile; official profile] said more selective immigration would align France with other countries. Opposition parties and human rights groups such as SOS Rascisme [advocacy website] have criticized the bill as discriminatory. Last weekend, more than 10,000 people marched through Paris [JURIST report] to protest the legislation. The issue of immigration has become especially sensitive [JURIST report] in France in the wake of rioting [JURIST report] started by immigrant youth that broke out in Paris and elsewhere in the country last October and lasted some three weeks. BBC News has more. Le Monde has local coverage.

[JURIST] Members of a European Parliament [official website] delegation just back from a visit to the US [JURIST report] told reporters in Strasbourg Wednesday that CIA [official website] officials had confirmed to them "that between 30 and 50 people have been transported by extraordinary rendition", but had indicated it was "not possible to organize extraordinary rendition such as this without the active complicity of European governments." Committee rapporteur Giovanni Claudio Fava [official profile] added that what he called a "first hand source" had acknowledged the existence of seven US secret prisons or "black sites" in "countries of Asia, Europe and Africa", all of which had now been closed down due to public pressure except for one "still operating in a North African country."

Overall, however, committee members said that US responses to their queries, made in connection with their own continuing investigation [official website] of alleged renditions, had been "patchy and inconsistent" [JURIST report]. On Tuesday, a UN human rights official said the CIA was generally stonewalling [JURIST report] probes into renditions. EUobserver has more. Reuters has additional coverage.

[JURIST] Microsoft [corporate website; JURIST news archive] must abide by the terms of its 2002 antitrust settlement [final judgment, PDF] with the US Justice Department [official website] through November 2009, a federal judge said Wednesday. US District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly [official profile] approved the DOJ's two-year extension request [JURIST report; joint status report], which Microsoft had agreed to, during a status conference in US District Court for the District of Columbia [official website].

The DOJ said the extension was necessary [press release] because Microsoft has been slow to improve the technical documentation it provides to licensees of communication protocols for the Windows operating system. As part of the extension, Microsoft has said that it plans to create an "interoperability lab" [press release] where licensees can test and de-bug their protocols with help from Microsoft engineers. CNET News has more.

[JURIST] Jury deliberations in the trial of former Enron [JURIST news archive] executives Ken Lay and Jeffrey Skilling [Houston Chronicle profiles] began Wednesday after government prosecutors and defense lawyers finished closing arguments. Lay and Skilling have been charged [indictment, PDF] with multiple counts of fraud and criminal conspiracy for providing investors with false and misleading financial information from 1999 up until Enron filed bankruptcy in late 2001. Skilling and Lay face prison sentences of at least 25 years if convicted on all charges.

During closing arguments, the prosecution addressed claims by the defense that the prosecution had pressured Enron executives [JURIST report] into pleading guilty to false criminal complaints so they would testify against Skilling and Lay, and that the prosecution had no hard evidence against the pair. The prosecution emphasized the credibility of its witnesses who testified that Lay, Skilling and former Enron CFO Andrew Fastow used off-the-books partnerships and secret side deals to inflate Enron stock, thereby creating a windfall for themselves by selling the stock before the price collapsed in 2001. The government also attacked the defense for what it said was an attempt to characterize the off-the-book partnerships to inflate stock prices as "business as usual." Defense lawyers, on the other had, accused the prosecution of forcing false testimony [Chronicle report] and relying on prejudice against Enron to win the case. Bloomberg has more.

[JURIST] Visitors to Japan [JURIST news archive] will be electronically fingerprinted and photographed under a bill approved Wednesday by the House of Councillors [official website], the upper house of Japan's parliament. Foreign visitors 16 and older will have their fingerprints and pictures taken upon entering the country beginning in November 2007. Permanent residents, state guests and diplomats will be exempt. The lower house approved the proposal [BBC report] in March. The government of Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi [official website] says the new procedures, similar to those in the United States, will prevent terrorism [JURIST news archive] and other crimes.

The Democratic Party of Japan [party website], the main opposition party, and the Japan Federation of Bar Associations [group website; opinion paper] warned that gathering the data and storing it in a database would violate foreigners' privacy. AFP has more. NHK has local coverage.

[JURIST] A disciplinary hearing for two Egyptian judges who complained of alleged fraud in last year's parliamentary elections [JURIST report] is set to resume amid renewed clashes between riot police and the judges' supporters [JURIST report]. The judges, Mahmoud Mekki and Hisham Bastawisi, are scheduled to appear in the Supreme Constitutional Court on Thursday, though the status of the proceedings was thrown into doubt early Wednesday when Bastawisi suffered a heart attack, leaving him in serious condition. Rights groups have called for a postponement and the head of the Judge's Club, an 8,000-member group that advocates grater judicial independence, said that Mekki would not attend the hearing alone.

Mekki and Bastawisi are among several judges stripped of judicial immunity [JURIST report] and charged with slander after criticizing the parliamentary elections. Egypt's judges have called for more independence from the government of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak [official profile], including the right to monitor elections. Protesters have been rallying in Cairo in support of the judges and also to protest the recent extension of emergency laws [JURIST report] that have been in effect since the 1981 assassination of President Anwar Sadat [CNN profile]. Reuters has more. The New York Sun has additional coverage.

[JURIST] The Supreme Court of Utah [official website] has ruled that the state's ban on polygamy is constitutional [opinion, PDF] in a decision upholding the bigamy conviction of a former police officer. The court was asked to decide whether Utah's bigamy statute was constitutional as applied to Holm, a former police officer whose "spiritual" wife left him, telling authorities that he married her when he was 32 and she was 16, and that at the time he was already married to her sister. The majority found that Holm's conduct fell squarely within Utah's bigamy statute, and that "the protections enshrined in the federal constitution, as well as our state constitution, guaranteeing the free exercise of religion and conscience, due process, and freedom of association do not shield Holm's polygamous practices from state prosecution." Chief Justice Christine Durham dissented on the grounds that Utah's bigamy laws [text] are an unconstitutional intrusion into the "free exercise of religion and the privacy of the intimate, personal relationships between consenting adults."

Since the 2003 US Supreme Court decision in Lawrence v. Texas [opinion; Duke Law case backgrounder], some critics have speculated [CNS report] that a constitutional challenge to polygamy laws will soon be brought before the Court. In 1878, the Court in Reynolds v. US [opinion text] upheld Utah's bigamy statute as constitutional. In a challenge to the polygamy ban in federal court last year, US District Court Judge Ted Stewart Wednesday refused to strike down the ban [JURIST report], saying that the state has an interest in protecting monogamous marriage and that the current law did not violate religious and privacy rights of individuals. AP has more. The Salt Lake Tribune has local coverage.

[JURIST] Mexican Foreign Secretary Luis Ernesto Derbez [official profile; Wikipedia profile] has said that if President Bush's decision to send [JURIST report] 6,000 National Guard troops to the US-Mexican border results in a militarization of the area, Mexico would file lawsuits in US courts through its consulates to protect the human rights of Mexican citizens. The Mexican government is concerned that the increased troop presence may lead to a "wave of rights abuses" and a higher death rate, similar to when a 1994 bid to increase surveillance in California and Texas increased the death rate as people began crossing at more dangerous locations in Arizona. An estimated 500 people died crossing the border in 2005.

A spokesman for Mexican President Vicente Fox [official website] said Tuesday that Mexico trusts the sincerity of President Bush's nationally televised address [transcript; press briefing] where he said that the extra troops will provide intelligence and surveillance support and will not detain illegal immigrants. Some migrant groups criticized Fox for not taking a tougher stand on the issue, and one group will ask Fox to send Grupo Beta [Washington Times report], a migrant protection force, to dangerous crossing locations. AP has more.

[JURIST] Chinese Internet journalist Yang Tianshui, a member of China's chapter of International PEN [advocacy website], was sentenced to twelve years in prison on Tuesday on charges that he attempted to "subvert state power" by posting essays on the Internet in favor of a movement entitled the "Velvet Action of China," according to his lawyer. Yang's trial [JURIST report] was closed and his lawyer claimed he could not discuss the evidence presented against him because it was deemed secret by the government. Yang's lawyer also expressed his belief that the harsh sentence is connected to Yang's previous ten-year prison term for subversion charges for speaking out against the suppression of the Tiananman Square protests [Wikipedia backgrounder] in 1989.

Yang's sentence comes as part of the Chinese government's continued practice of "Internet management" [Knight Ridder report] to crackdown on the Internet and press as a result of increasing social unrest throughout the nation. Last month, Li Jianping went on trial [JURIST report], facing charges of up to 15 years for "incitement to subvert state power" for allegedly posting pro-democracy articles on the Internet. In March, secondary school teacher Ren Zhiyuan was found guilty [JURIST report] of subversion and received a 10-year prison sentence for posting political essays on the Internet. AP has more.

[JURIST] An unidentified attacker on Wednesday shot five judges in the Council of State [official website], Turkey's highest administrative court located in Ankara. The wounded judges are all from the same court chamber, which deals with education issues and in February handed down a controversial ruling denying a promotion to a school teacher because she wore a religious headscarf [JURIST news archive]. The chamber is known for its secularist policies and adamant support of the ban on religious headscarves in schools and other public places. The gunman, reported to be a lawyer, is now in custody and reportedly attacked the judges in protest of the ruling.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan [official website], whose wife wears a headscarf and is banned from doing so at state-sponsored events, decried the ruling [JURIST report]; however, the increasingly secular military openly supports the ban. Reuters has more. The Times has additional coverage.

1:45 PM ET - One of the judges, Mustafa Yucel Ozbilgin, died on Wednesday after undergoing surgery to remove a bullet from his brain. Turkish President Ahmet Necdet Sezer [official website] said that Turkey's constitution [text] would not be undermined by the attack and that the country's justice system would not be intimidated. BBC News has more.

[JURIST] Judge Raouf Abdel-Rahman [BBC profile] ruled Wednesday that Saddam Hussein will be permitted to testify [AP report] on behalf of a co-defendant when his trial [JURIST news archive] before the Iraqi High Criminal Court resumes on Monday. Abdel-Rahman said that defense lawyers can ask Hussein questions about the involvement of Taha Yassin Ramadan [Trial Watch profile] in the deaths of nine villagers, torture of women and children, razing of farmlands, and arrests of nearly 400 Dujail residents in 1982. If Hussein takes the stand, the prosecution will be given an opportunity to cross-examine him, but their questions will be limited to Ramadan's involvement. Barzan Ibrahim [Trial Watch profile], Hussein's former intelligence chief, will also be allowed to take the stand in Ramadan's defense.

Abdel-Rahman also permitted Saddam Hussein and all seven co-defendants to remain in the courtroom on Wednesday while defense witnesses testified on behalf of two of the defendants. The judge had previously barred the defendants from the courtroom if the testimony did not apply to them, but reversed his decision in case any of the defendants are mentioned by the witnesses. The trial now stands adjourned until May 22. AP has more.

[JURIST] Judge Constance Russell of Fulton County Superior Court [official website] in Georgia has ruled [order, PDF] that the state's same-sex marriage [JURIST news archive] ban is unconstitutional because the state constitutional amendment violates the single-subject rule, which prohibits voters from deciding more than one issue at a time. The amendment [text] defines marriage as a union between one man and one woman, explicitly prohibits same-sex unions, and refuses to acknowledge same-sex unions licensed or recognized in other states. The measure was overwhelmingly passed in 2004 by 76 percent of voters but Russell ruled that because the amendment addressed both same-sex marriage and civil unions, it is unconstitutional:

This Court is well aware that Amendment One enjoyed great public support. However, the test of a law is not its popularity. Procedural safeguards such as the single subject rule rarely enjoy popular support. But, ultimately it is those safeguards that preserve our liberties, because they ensure that the actions of government are constrained by the rule of law. The issues for the people with respect same sex relationships are what status, if any, those relationships shall have in the eyes of the law. And if they are afforded legal recognition, how shall they be treated under other laws. Those questions are distinctly different from whether same sex marriages should be allowed or recognized in this state. If the larger questions about same sex relationships are to be considered and answered, they must be presented forthrightly - not as an incidental side note to an entirely different matter.

[JURIST] The Nigerian Senate [official website] on Tuesday defeated a bill [PDF text] to amend the Nigerian constitution that would have allowed current President Olusegun Obasanjo [official profile] to run for a third term in office. The bill, which failed to receive the necessary two-thirds vote for passage, was proposed by supporters [JURIST report] of Obasanjo who claimed that a third term was necessary to maintain stability in the country. The United States and other nations had urged rejection of the bill [JURIST report] on the grounds that set term limits were a necessary part of the democratic process.

Obasanjo, who has never made an official announcement about running for a third term, was on a state visit to France while lawmakers deliberated the bill. Pro-third term advocates expressed concerns that the measure was not given full consideration, especially in regards to its other provisions, which included the creation of new states and the rotation of the presidency amongst Nigeria's six regions. The term amendment had been strongly opposed by Nigerian Vice President Atiku Abubakar [official profile], who has hinted at seeking the presidency, and by people and politicians from the predominantly Muslim north of the country. Obasanjo, a Christian, is from the south. Barring future attempts to resurrect the bill, the upcoming 2007 elections will witness the first shift of power from one civilian government to another since the end of military rule in the populous west African state. The Nigerian Tribune has local coverage. AP news has more.

[JURIST] The intelligence committees of the US Senate and House of Representatives [committee websites] will receive a full briefing [Senate press release] on the Bush administration's domestic surveillance program [JURIST news archive], committee chairmen said Tuesday. In preparation for the confirmation hearings on the nomination [JURIST report] of Gen. Michael Hayden [official profile] as CIA chief, Senate Intelligence Committee chair Sen. Pat Roberts (R-KS) [official website], who has expressed strong support [JURIST report] for the domestic surveillance program in the past, pushed for the expansion of briefings from smaller subcommittees to the entire intelligence committees. Questions about the program are expected to dominate the confirmation hearing for Hayden, who served as head of the National Security Agency while the program was developed. Reuters has more.

Also on Tuesday, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) [official website] said that two Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) [FJC backgrounder] judges knew about the domestic surveillance program since its inception in 2001. Hatch did not say that the judges approved the program, only that they were aware of its existence. AP has more.

[JURIST] Verizon Communications [corporate website] said Tuesday that it did not turn over phone records to the National Security Agency (NSA) [official website], nor was it asked to do so, as was reported [USA Today report; JURIST report] last week. The denial from Verizon follows an announcement from BellSouth that it could not find evidence [AP report] that it was involved in the program. Of the three companies implicated in the report, Verizon, BellSouth, and AT&T [corporate websites], only AT&T has failed to deny involvement in the program, leading observers to speculate that the NSA only requested records from long-distance companies like AT&T. Verizon did not deny that MCI, its long-distance arm acquired earlier this year, allowed the NSA to access records, but made assurances that MCI would be brought into compliance with Verizon's privacy policies. AP has more.

Meanwhile, BellSouth and AT&T were joined as defendants in the lawsuit filed late last week against Verizon in federal court in New York for alleged participation in the NSA data-collecting program. The complaint seeks over $200 billion in damages for violations of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 [text] and the Stored Communications Act of 1986 [text]. AT&T already faces a class action lawsuit filed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation [advocacy website] because the company allegedly allowed the NSA to use its infrastructure [JURIST report] to wiretap US citizens. CNN has more.

[JURIST Europe] In a decision that some observers have hailed as a victory for "health tourism", the European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruled [judgment text] on Tuesday that domestic health service programs must pay for patients who go abroad to another EU state to have needed surgery. The major criterion is the patients must be facing "undue delay" that exceeds the medically-accepted waiting period.

The ruling was made in a suit brought by 75-year old British citizen Yvonne Watts, who was refused reimbursement for surgery she obtained in France in 2003. Watts had been informed by the British National Health Service (NHS) [official website] that she would have to wait a year for a double hip replacement despite being told otherwise by a medical consultant. The decision has already prompted fears of more financial strain being imposed on European health services already facing rising costs. The Court of Appeal in London, which originally referred the case to the ECJ, will now determine whether Watts is entitled to a refund in her particular case. BBC News has local coverage. The EUobserver has more.

Angela Onikepe is an Associate Editor for JURIST Europe, reporting European legal news from a European perspective. She is based in the UK.