[JURIST] A Mexican judge Saturday cleared ex-president Luis Echeverria [JURIST news archive] of genocide charges in connection with his role in repressing a 1968 student revolt [backgrounder] while he was the country's Interior Minister. According to Echeverria's lawyer, the judge ruled that the charges could not stand because of Mexico's statute of limitations. BBC News has more. From Mexico City, El Universal has local coverage [in Spanish].

Echeverria, who served as president of Mexico [JURIST news archive] between 1970 and 1976 and is now 84, was put under house arrest [JURIST report] last week after a Mexican appeals court ruled it had enough evidence to charge him for the deaths of as many as 300 protestors killed when government forces fired on the students. Incumbent Mexican President Vicente Fox, who ran in 2000 as the candidate of the opposition PANA party that beat Echeverria's PNI, had made the Echeverria prosecution a cause celebre of his presidency, now coming to an end after the apparent election of a successor [JURIST report] this week. In June 2005 the Mexican Supreme Court [official website] ruled 3-2 that Echeverria could be prosecuted [JURIST report], but individual judges refused to issue arrest warrants on two previous occasions, ruling [JURIST report] most recently in September 2005 that the statute of limitations for genocide had indeed run out, and that the 1968 killings did not qualify as genocide.

[JURIST] Two committees of the US Senate are set for hearings on draft legislation governing trial procedures for Guantanamo detainees after the US Supreme Court ruled June 29 in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld [text] that President Bush's military commissions as currently constituted lack proper legal authorization [JURIST report]. In the immediate aftermath of the ruling, Bush said he would work with Congressional leaders [JURIST report] on legislation that would allow military trials to go forward while addressing the concerns of the court.

The Senate Judiciary Committee [official website] is set to hold a hearing [notice] July 11 with witnesses that include senior US Justice Department and Defense Department legal counsel plus the military lawyer for Salim Hamdan, and chairman Senator Arlen Specter has already introduced legislation [draft bill, DOC] that would allow military commissions to work with greater procedural protections and guarantees for defendants. On July 13, the Senate Armed Services Committee [official website] will take up its own bill. Armed Services Committee chairman Senator John Warner, who has previously voiced some concern [JURIST report] about the challenges involved in the drafting process, issued a carefully worded statement [text] Friday saying:

Our committee will proceed with great care and deliberation in deciding the way forward legislatively on detainee trials in light of the Supreme Court’s decision. Our goal is to recommend to the Majority and Minority Leaders legislation that would survive future federal court challenges, and, as the Supreme Court has stated, will rely as much as possible on the basic framework of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. The whole world is watching how our country handles this issue, and our committee will proceed on any legislation very carefully, in a bipartisan way, to ensure America’s credibility.

[JURIST] A Spanish National Court judge has confirmed indictments against 29 suspects accused in connection with the March 2004 Madrid train bombings [JURIST news archive] that killed 191 people and injured or wounded almost 2000 others. Judge Juan del Olmo [Europa Press profile, in Spanish] initially handed down the massive charges [JURIST report; PDF text in Spanish, parts 1, 2, 3 and 4] in April subject to appeal. The way is now clear for a trial in the case before a three-judge panel, but no date has yet been set and pretrial motions could take months. BBC News has more.

The disciplinary committee of Spain's General Judicial Council said in June that it would investigate [JURIST report] why Del Olmo failed to apply for an extension of the detainment of one of the suspects, resulting in his release on parole. Del Olmo was said to have been suffering from bad health when he made the mistake not to apply for the extension, and was replaced by another High Court judge soon thereafter. He has said the mistake was due to a typing error.

[JURIST] Lt. Gen. Peter Chiarelli, chief of US ground forces in Iraq, has found several Marine commanders negligent in their handling of an investigation into the shooting deaths of 24 Iraqi civilians [JURIST report] at Haditha [JURIST news archive] in November, and has recommended disciplinary action for some, according to Defense Department officials quoted in the New York Times Saturday. US Central Command [official website] announced Friday that Chiarelli had completed his review [CENTCOM press release] of an as-yet-unreleased report by Maj. Gen. Eldon Bargewell [Wikipedia profile] completed [JURIST report] three weeks ago. Officials say the review and the report point to several failures by Marine commanders in the wake of the Haditha killings, including the absence of proper inquiry, inadequate follow-up of questions and inconsistencies, and no correction of a military press release that originally attributed the deaths to a roadside bomb. Chiarelli has forwarded his conclusions and recommendations to top US Iraq commander Gen. George W. Casey Jr., and has been tasked with disclosing the results of the investigation to the public as soon as possible. The New York Times has more.

On Thursday, the Marine Corps distributed a memo [Reuters report] directing its personnel to preserve all past and future documentation, including e-mail, relating to the incident in Haditha and another in Hamdania [JURIST report] in anticipation of Congressional hearings on the matters. A separate probe by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) [official website] is investigating whether Marines on the ground killed unarmed civilians without provocation. Expected to conclude later this summer, the Pentagon's preliminary investigation in February and March found evidence that the killings were not provoked [JURIST report]. The Marine commander of the platoon implicated in the Haditha deaths has said that his unit followed the rules of engagement [JURIST report] and did not purposefully attack civilians. Reuters has more.

[JURIST] Judge Melvin K. Westmoreland of Fulton County Superior Court [official website] issued a temporary restraining order Friday blocking the implementation of Georgia's photo identification cards for voters, holding that the authorizing bill [SB 84 materials] violates the state constitution [text] by placing an undue burden on the fundamental right to vote and that it would require a state constitutional amendment to legally take effect. Westmoreland blocked the Republican-backed voter ID law [JURIST news archive], which was approved by the US Department of Justice [JURIST report] in April, based on a legal challenge filed by former Democratic Gov. Roy E. Barnes that alleges the law makes voting more difficult for minorities, the elderly and the poor. Republican officials, who are expected to appeal the restraining order to the state supreme court, contend that the law is necessary to prevent voter fraud, but Democrats maintain that there is no problem with voter fraud in the state with no reported cases in over a decade. The voter ID cards are slated to be used for the first time in a state primary scheduled for July 18, but the restraining order effectively blocks their use until the matter is resolved in a civil trial or by a higher state court.

On Wednesday, the ACLU and other voting rights advocates filed a motion [text, PDF] in federal district court seeking a preliminary injunction, arguing that the bill authorizing the cards violates the Equal Protection Clause of the US Constitution's Fourteenth Amendment [text] as well as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 [text], and that it constitutes a poll tax in violation of the Twenty-fourth Amendment [text]. The state will submit briefs in support of the law on Monday, and on Wednesday the district court will hear oral arguments regarding the injunction. The New York Times has more.

[JURIST] President Bush suggested Friday in a Chicago news conference [transcript] that the US Supreme Court [JURIST news archive] had approved the decision to establish a military detention facility at Guantanamo Bay [JURIST news archive] by its silence on the issue. Bush also seemed to characterize the Court's ruling in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld [JURIST report] as a setting of boundaries for future military commissions, instead of an outright rejection of the option.

Bush asserted that he would work with Congress and the Court to determine guidelines for military tribunals, saying:

I am willing to abide by the ruling of the Supreme Court. And the Supreme Court said that in this particular case when it comes to dealing with illegal combatants, who were picked up off a battlefield and put in Guantanamo for the sake of our security, that we should work with the United States Congress to develop a way forward. They didn't [say] we couldn't have done -- made that decision, see. They were silent on whether or not Guantanamo -- whether or not we should have used Guantanamo. In other words, they accepted the use of Guantanamo, the decision I made. What they did say was, in terms of going forward, what should the court system look like? How can we use a military commission or tribunal?...

And we'll work with the United States Congress....I have been waiting for this decision in order to figure out how to go forward....I stand by the decision I made in removing these people from the battlefield....Some need to be tried, and the fundamental question is, how do we try them? And so, in working with the Supreme -- in listening to the Supreme Court, we'll work with Congress to achieve that objective...

But the idea of making the decision about creating Guantanamo in the first place was upheld by the courts. Or let's say, the courts were silent on it.

[JURIST] Spanish National Court Judge Santiago Pedraz on Friday charged several former Guatemalan military officers with genocide, torture, and other crimes against humanity, and issued international arrest warrants for their involvement in atrocities committed during Guatemala's brutal 36-year civil war [GlobalSecurity.org backgrounder] that formally ended in 1996, including the murder of eight Spanish priests and a 1980 military assault on the Spanish Embassy that killed 37 people. Pedraz charged six top officials including former heads of state Efrain Rios Montt and Oscar Humberto Mejia [Wikipedia profiles], citing their failure to cooperate during his trip to Guatemala to investigate [JURIST report] the murder and genocide case originally filed by Guatemalan Nobel Peace Prize winner Rigoberta Menchu [Nobel profile] in 1999. Lawyers for Montt and Mejia contend that Pedraz is biased and that Spain cannot extradite the ex-leaders because they were granted amnesty for any actions during Guatemala's civil war.

The Spanish National Court (Audiencia Nacional) [governing statute] took jurisdiction [JURIST report] of the case earlier this year, after Spain's Constitutional Court [official website] ruled [JURIST report] in 2005 that Spanish courts can exercise universal jurisdiction over war crimes committed during Guatemala's civil war [BBC timeline]. The Constitutional Court decided that universal jurisdiction outweighed national interests in cases of genocide. AP has more.