[JURIST] The Israeli Supreme Court [official website] on Tuesday ruled that construction on a section of the West Bank separation barrier [official IDF website] is legal and may continue. Rejecting a petition by Palestinian settlers who will be unable to access Jerusalem once construction is complete, the court said the Israeli government properly balanced the effect of the barrier on Palestinians against the safety needs of Israelis in the area. The court previously found that Israel is legally entitled to erect the barrier [JURIST report] despite an International Court of Justice advisory opinion [text; JURIST report] that ruled parts of the barrier illegal. The barrier has been denounced by Palestinians as a land grab and an "apartheid wall" breaking up communities and families, but Israeli officials insist it is necessary to prevent terrorist attacks.

Earlier this week, the Israeli Supreme Court upheld the legality [JURIST report] of the Citizenship and Entry into Israel Law [text], which limits Palestinians' rights to live in Israel, although critics claim the law is racist. AFP has more.

[JURIST] US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) [official website] Chairman Kevin Martin [official profile] has written [press release] a letter [PDF] to US Rep. Edward Markey (D-MA) [official website] saying that the watchdog agency will not investigate the collection of millions of phone records [JURIST report] by the National Security Agency (NSA) [official website]. In the letter, dated Monday, Martin contends that the FCC cannot perform an effective investigation because it does not have access to classified government documents. Martin's comments responded to a letter [PDF] from Markey urging the agency to launch a probe into the alleged program. Last week, one of the four other FCC commissioners, Michael J. Copps [official profile], said the FCC should investigate [JURIST report].

Since the controversial report that several prominent US phone companies turned over domestic customers' call records, Verizon and BellSouth have denied involvement [JURIST report] in the program, although AT&T has neither confirmed nor denied its participation. Earlier this year, the US Justice Department dropped its probe [JURIST report] into the role its own lawyers played in the NSA domestic surveillance program [JURIST news archive] because the agency would not give the DOJ security clearances. Reuters has more.

[JURIST] The US Senate Intelligence Committee [official website] voted 12-3 Tuesday to approve the nomination [JURIST report] of US Air Force Gen. Michael Hayden [official profile] to be director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) [official website]. Despite the recent controversy over Hayden’s role in the collection and turnover of US citizens’ phone records [JURIST report] to the National Security Agency (NSA) [official website], Hayden easily won bipartisan support from the committee and is expected to be confirmed by the full Senate later this week.

During Intelligence Committee hearings last week, Hayden - a former NSA director - stressed [JURIST report] the legality and importance of the NSA's warrantless domestic surveillance program [JURIST news archive]. He refused, however, to answer questions about agency phone records collection. Reuters has more.

[JURIST] New Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki [BBC profile] has announced he will focus on fighting corruption, which Iraqi and US officials say is rampant in the government. The problem is a long-standing one, but documents obtained by the Los Angeles Times indicate that it has become pervasive, manifested in everything from government contracts to the purchase of grades by students. Judge Radhi Al-Radhi [US DOD OIG profile], chief of Iraq's independent Commission on Public Integrity [US State Dept. backgrounder], alleges that the government has squandered close to $1 billion on questionable weapons expenses and that the Interior Ministry pays $1.3 million a month to about 1,100 ghost employees.

US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld acknowledged in testimony [PDF] before the US Senate Armed Services Committee [official website] in February that corruption is a serious problem in Iraq [JURIST report]. In October 2005, Stuart Bowen, the Defense Department Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, said in a report to Congress that corruption was costing Iraq billions of dollars each year [JURIST report] and that it was it was crucial that the US support new anti-corruption agencies in the country. In June 2005, former Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari [BBC profile] declared that he would fight the "administrative corruption" [JURIST report] in Iraq's government. The Los Angeles Times has more.

[JURIST] A Los Angeles lawyer on Tuesday became the third person to plead guilty [US DOJ press release] in connection with alleged kickbacks at Milberg Weiss Bershad & Schulman [law firm website], the leading class action law firm that was indicted [text, PDF; JURIST report] last week. The US Attorney's Office for the Central District of California [official website] said Richard R. Purtich funneled $879,868 to a former client of the firm, Milberg Weiss Bershad & Schulman [law firm website], in exchange for serving as a plaintiff in a securities lawsuit. Milberg Weiss, which is among the largest US litigators of shareholder class action lawsuits, has denied wrongdoing [statement].

Steven Cooperman, who allegedly received the payments from Purtich, and Howard J. Vogel, another Milberg Weiss client, have also pleaded guilty in the case. Bloomberg has more.

[JURIST] The US detention center in Guantanamo Bay [JURIST news archive] is a legal black hole, an Australian High Court [official website] judge has said. Justice Michael Kirby [official profile] made the statement Monday in a speech to the Sydney Peace Foundation [advocacy website]. David Hicks [JURIST news archive], an Australian who is awaiting trial before a US military commission on charges of aiding al Qaeda and the Taliban, has been detained at Guantanamo for more than four years. "That couldn't happen under our Constitution," Kirby said. Australia's ABC News has more.

Kirby also said international human rights law should play a larger role in Australian jurisprudence because of the globalization of commerce and culture. Australia's constitution [text] contains neither a bill of rights nor a provision recognizing international law. ABC has additional coverage.

[JURIST] German police may not trawl databases to identify possible terrorists without a specific threat to national security, human life or freedom, the German Constitutional Court [official website] ruled Tuesday. "A general threat situation, of the kind that has existed continuously in regard to terrorist attacks since September 11, 2001, or external political tensions, is not sufficient," the high court said. Police had previously been able to use a wide range of electronic databases - including records from health insurance companies, real estate agents and utility companies - to profile and identify foreign Muslim men, who were then investigated. The lawsuit was brought by a 27-year-old Moroccan student whose identity was not disclosed.

The practice was an attempt to ferret out terrorist sleeper cells like the one based in Hamburg that led the 9/11 attacks on the United States. The ruling will require seven of Germany's 16 states to revise their police laws. Reuters has more. Deutsche Welle has local coverage.

[JURIST] Ethiopia's Federal High Court has postponed a verdict in the genocide trial of former dictator Mengistu Haile Miriam [Wikipedia profile] until next January. The announcement of the verdict had been scheduled for Tuesday. Even though the trial has lasted 12 years, the delay was necessary for the court to review new defense evidence, according to the head of the three-judge panel trying the case.

Mengistu, who has been in exile in Zimbabwe since rebels forced him from power in 1991, has been tried in absentia for the killings of thousands of people during his 17-year regime [USCIS backgrounder]. The Mail & Guardian has more.

[JURIST] Author Studs Terkel [CHS profile] and other Illinois residents are suing AT&T [corporate website] to bar the phone company from handing over customer records to the National Security Agency (NSA) [official website] without court oversight. The putative class action lawsuit [complaint, PDF], filed Monday in US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois [official website], seeks declaratory and injunctive relief but not monetary damages. "When government uses the telephone companies to create massive databases of all our phone calls it has gone too far," Terkel said [ACLU-IL press release]. The American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois [advocacy website] is representing the plaintiffs, who include a state politician, a rabbi, a law professor and a physician. They fear the NSA surveillance program [JURIST news archive] threatens the confidentiality of their work.

AT&T, unlike other phone companies, has not denied involvement in the program [JURIST report]. AT&T and the US Justice Department have argued that another lawsuit against the company seeking damages in respect of alleged violations of privacy rights should be dismissed [JURIST report]. AP has more.

[JURIST] Lee Boyd Malvo [BBC profile] testified Tuesday in a Maryland court against John Allen Muhammad [BBC profile] in Muhammad's second trial [JURIST report] involving the murder of six people in Maryland during a three-week shooting spree [BBC backgrounder] in the Washington, DC area in 2002. Malvo testified that Muhammad planned to "terrorize" the nation prior to the sniper attacks and had outlined a plan to shoot six people a day for 30 days before targeting schools, school buses and children's hospitals with a bombing campaign. Muhammad has said that he planned to kidnap his three children that he lost in a custody dispute, and Malvo testified that he tried to persuade Muhammad to just kidnap the children without any shootings.

Citing his right against self-incrimination, Malvo had refused to testify in Muhammad's first trial in Virginia, where Muhammad has already been sentenced to death [JURIST report] for one murder. Prosecutors are not seeking the death penalty [JURIST report] for Muhammad in this second trial, but want a second conviction in case an appeals court overturns the Virginia conviction, and to provide a sense of relief and justice in Maryland. Malvo is serving a life sentence for the Virginia murder, and informed the Maryland judge that he intends to plead guilty to the Maryland murder charges. AP has more.

[JURIST] At least 127 democracy activists held by the military junta in Myanmar have died from "torture or ill-treatment," according to a report [text, PDF] released Tuesday by the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP) [advocacy website]. The report by Paulo Sergio Pinheiro [UNHCHR profile], UN Special Rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar, calls for an independent inquiry into the deaths of political prisoners. "Such an investigation should seek the accountability of those responsible and compensation for the victim's families," Pinheiro wrote.

More than 1,100 political prisoners remain in custody, according to the report. Earlier this week, the government allowed a UN envoy to meet with opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi [Nobel profile], who has been under house arrest [JURIST report] for 10 of the past 17 years. The Southeastern Asian nation, also known as Burma [CIA backgrounder], has been controlled by the junta since 1988. Since then, several attempts to draft a new constitution have broken down [JURIST report]. AFP has more.

[JURIST] Orleans Parish Criminal District Court [official website] Chief Judge Calvin Johnson has said that the city will resume holding criminal trials next week as the New Orleans court system continues to recover from Hurricane Katrina [JURIST news archive]. As many as 6,000 suspects have been in jail for months awaiting trial; many of the suspects continue to wait for court appointed attorneys to represent them, even months after their arrest. According to a report [LA Times report] from the US Justice Department, the Orleans County Public Defender's Office [official backgrounder] needs 70 lawyers and more than $8 million in addition to the $2.8 million it is scheduled to receive from the federal government on May 31. Thirty-one of the office's 39 public defenders have been laid off since Hurricane Katrina.

Johnson's colleague, Judge Arthur Hunter, has said that believes that New Orleans will have to release some of the suspects if the over-burdened public defender's office does not receive adequate financing, calling the current financing system unconstitutional because it relies heavily on surcharges from traffic tickets, which have largely been abandoned since Hurricane Katrina, and forces poor people to pay for the system. Judge Hunter has suspended prosecutions [JURIST report] in most cases involving public defenders and has even granted a petition to free a prisoner facing serious charges because the suspect lacked counsel. Louisiana Attorney General Charles C. Foti, Jr. [official website] launched a probe [JURIST report] in February into the dire finances of the state's indigent defense system. USA Today has more. The New York Times has additional coverage.

[JURIST] The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) [official website; JURIST news archive] has brought its first enforcement action under the USA Patriot Act [DOJ materials; JURIST news archive] against Los Angeles brokerage firm Crowell, Weedon & Co. [corporate website], the largest independent investment firm in the western US. The SEC issued a cease-and-desist order [PDF text; press release] Monday against Crowell for failing to document its customer identification procedures for new accounts in accordance with the Patriot Act, but did not fine the company. Crowell settled the action without admitting or denying the charges.

The SEC claims that Crowell opened 2,900 new accounts from 2003-2004 by relying on brokers who simply vouched for the customer opening the account, contrary to the stated company policy requiring several different types of identity checks for each new customer - including searching public databases and reviewing official personal identification documents. Crowell said that it has now improved its procedures to accommodate Patriot Act requirements. The customer identification procedures are an important method to deterring money laundering that can be used by terrorist groups, according to Randall R. Lee, director of the SEC's Regional Pacific Office. AP has more. The Los Angeles Times has local coverage.

[JURIST] Amnesty International [advocacy website] Tuesday condemned what it termed the continuing "sacrifice" of rights to expediency in the war on terror, denounced the US and its allies for turning a blind-eye on human rights abuses or dodging responsibility for violations, called for governments to renounce torture and accused Russia and China [JURIST news archives] of using human rights abuses to pursue their own agenda in its 2006 report on human rights [summary; text; news release]. Amnesty said the "double standards" put forth by the world's most powerful countries substantially weakened their credibility as human rights champions, and that the "security agenda of the powerful and privileged [had] hijacked the energy and attention of the world from serious human rights crises."

Launching the report at a press conference in London, Amnesty chief Irene Khan said [remarks transcript]:

The..."war on terror" is failing and will continue to fail until human rights....are given precedence over narrow national security interests... Doublespeak and double standards by powerful governments are dangerous because they weaken the ability of the international community to address human rights problems.

[JURIST] UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan [official profile] said Monday that Sudanese trade embargoes in the volatile Darfur region [JURIST news archive] "have prevented the access of civilians to vital goods and constitute a violation of international humanitarian law." In a report Monday to the UN Security Council [official website], Annan said that government-imposed restrictions effectively prevent civilians in Darfur from receiving necessary fuel, food and relief aid. Annan's periodic report, not yet available publicly, was submitted to the Security Council pursuant to Resolution 1590 [text] and covers March and April, but Annan also indicated that a peace deal between Sudan's government and the rebel Sudanese Liberation Army signed on May 5 has not helped the citizens of Darfur, despite contrary claims [EastAfrican report] from Sudanese officials. Annan's report comes shortly after Jan Egeland, the UN's top humanitarian official, warned [Reuters report] that existing relief efforts may soon break down unless the May 5 peace deal begins to take hold because of a hundred million dollar shortfall in aid.

Annan also blamed the Sudanese government [official website] for the large scale human rights violations occurring in Darfur because the government has failed to punish [JURIST report] top state officials and armed leaders who attack civilians, despite Sudan's use of its own investigation system and domestic tribunal for Darfur. The International Criminal Court [official website] is investigating the Darfur situation [ICC materials], but Sudanese officials have strongly opposed sending its citizens to a foreign court for trial. AP has more.

[JURIST] US Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert (R-IL) [official website] on Monday warned the Federal Bureau of Investigation [official website] to act carefully in the wake of its search of the congressional office [JURIST report] of Rep. William Jefferson (D-LA) [official website] in connection to Jefferson's alleged involvement in a large fraud scam. FBI officials videotaped Jefferson last August accepting a $100,000 bribe from an informant for a Nigerian official and later found $90,000 in Jefferson's freezer in his home.

Hastert accused the Justice Department of crossing the separation of powers line [press release] by searching Jefferson's office:

The actions of the Justice Department in seeking and executing this warrant raise important Constitutional issues that go well beyond the specifics of this case. Insofar as I am aware, since the founding of our Republic 219 years ago, the Justice Department has never found it necessary to do what it did Saturday night, crossing this Separation of Powers line, in order to successfully prosecute corruption by Members of Congress. Nothing I have learned in the last 48 hours leads me to believe that there was any necessity to change the precedent established over those 219 years.

[JURIST] The US Senate on Monday approved an immigration bill amendment supporting President Bush's deployment of National Guard troops along the Mexican border [JURIST report] by a margin of 83-10 [roll call]. Although the Bush administration says it has the authority to work with state governors to send National Guard troops to the border without Senate approval, the amendment, introduced by Sen. John Ensign (R-NV) [official website], authorizes governors to make National Guard units from their states to perform annual duty training along the Mexican border, for no longer than 21 days. The National Guard troops would only support the Border Patrol already in place, and would be excluded from the Border Patrol's ability to search, seize or arrest illegal immigrants.

Also Monday, the Senate sidetracked an amendment proposed by Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) [official website] by a margin of 50-43 [roll call] that would have allowed immigrant farmworkers to earn a "prevailing wage" if it is higher than the minimum wage.

President Bush has urged the Senate to approve an immigration bill by the end of May [JURIST report] and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) [official website] proposed a test vote on Wednesday for the entire immigration bill [text] with hopes of passing it by the end of the week. The Senate will likely obtain the 60 votes necessary to pass the bill given the high level of support it has received in the Senate so far. Although Senate passage seems likely [Washington Post report], it is less clear whether the negotiators from the House and Senate will be able to reach a compromise on immigration reform later this summer. House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-IL) [official website] insists that major legislation, such as this immigration bill, must be backed by a "majority of the majority." Under the policy, Hastert has blocked debate on proposals that don't have the support of a majority of Republicans in the House. A number of other key amendments [JURIST report] have already been adopted in the Senate, including one that would create an additional 370 miles of fencing along the US-Mexico border and another that would deny the possibility of acquiring citizenship to illegal immigrants convicted of certain criminal offenses. AP has more.