[JURIST] The UN Sub-Commission on the Protection and Promotion of Human Rights [official website] on Monday denounced [press release] the "massive denial of human rights" in the ongoing conflict in Lebanon and called on the UN Security Council [official website] to work toward a permanent solution in the volatile area. In the statement, the Sub-Commission expressed:

deep grief and outrage at the massive denial of human rights, extend[ed] its sympathies to the victims, and voice[d] the hope that the Security Council, acting in discharge of its primary responsibility, would bring about cessation of the war without further delay, and promote an urgent settlement of the conflict in conformity with the principles of justice and international law.

[JURIST] US Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia [OYEZ profile] denied a request [JURIST report] Monday from Texas Republican Party chair Tina Benkiser seeking to stay a federal appeals court ruling [text, PDF] that former US House Majority Leader Tom DeLay [JURIST news archive] must remain on the Texas ballot for the November election against Democratic candidate Nick Lampson. According to the decision handed down last week by the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit [official website], the state Republican party cannot remove DeLay from the ballot in Texas even though he currently resides in Virginia because he could still return to his home in Texas before election day. If DeLay were to simply withdraw from the election rather than be declared ineligible, Republicans would not be able to name a replacement candidate. Following Scalia's decision, a lawyer said that the Texas Republicans would abandon appeals [AP report] in the case.

In last Thursday's ruling, the Fifth Circuit affirmed a decision [opinion, PDF; JURIST report] by US District Court Judge Sam Sparks to keep DeLay's name on the ballot. DeLay resigned from Congress [JURIST report] earlier this year after winning a March primary for his congressional seat. He is awaiting a Texas trial on money laundering and conspiracy charges [JURIST report] for allegedly using corporate money to fund legislative campaigns. AP has more.

[JURIST] IBM [corporate website] did not discriminate against older workers by adopting a cash-balance pension plan, the US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit [official website] ruled Monday. A unanimous three-judge panel reversed a 2003 district court decision [PDF text], finding that the IBM plan did not violate subsections of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) [text] that prohibit age discrimination. In the court's opinion [PDF text], Judge Frank Easterbrook [official profile] wrote:

Like a defined-contribution plan, a cash-balance plan removes the backloading of the pension formula; older workers (accurately) perceive that they are worse off under a cash-balance approach than under a traditional years-of-service-times-final-salary plan. But removing a feature that gave extra benefits to the old differs from discriminating against them. Replacing a plan that discriminates against the young with one that is age-neutral does not discriminate against the old.

[JURIST] The sole surviving hostage-taker in the 2004 Beslan school siege [JURIST news archive; BBC backgrounder] will be given a new name to prevent retaliation by other inmates at the island penal colony where he will be imprisoned, a law enforcement source told the Interfax news agency Monday. Nurpashi Kulayev [Wikipedia profile], who was found guilty of terrorism [JURIST report] in May, will serve his life sentence at the Vologda Colony on Ognenny Island in Central Russia. Officials at Vologda Colony, one of only five Russian prisons for convicts sentenced to life, did not confirm or deny the report.

Some 1,300 people, most of them children, were taken hostage in a school building in Beslan, North Ossetia, in September 2004 by militants demanding that Russian soldiers leave Chechnya. Many hostages died when the school roof collapsed in flames during a rescue effort. All told, 330 people were killed and 783 were wounded. Kulayev is appealing the guilty verdict [JURIST report]. MosNews has more.

[JURIST] The Central Committee of the Communist Party of China [official website; Wikipedia backgrounder] has issued regulations that forbid party and government officials from appointing relatives as subordinates, limits officials to two consecutive five-year terms and requires those who have served for 10 years to transfer to different regions. The three regulations, issued Sunday, apply to officials at the county level and higher, including those on the Central Committee, the National People's Congress and the Supreme People's Court [official websites].

To promote stability, officials must serve their terms unless they retire, are in poor health or are dismissed, demoted or transferred for poor performance. Likewise, officials may refuse transfers only if they are in poor health or nearing retirement. Officials may not hold leading positions in the area where they were born or raised. China's official Xinhua News Agency has more.

[JURIST] One of the US soldiers charged with the rape and murders of Iraqi civilians in Mahmudiya [JURIST news archive] told a criminal investigator that the attack's alleged ringleader repeatedly spoke of wanting to kill Iraqis, according to testimony given Monday at a hearing in Baghdad. The investigator, Benjamin Bierce, testified at an Article 32 hearing [Navy JAG backgrounder] to determine whether the soldiers will stand trial that he took a sworn and signed statement from Spc. James P. Barker on June 30. Barker, who faces charges including rape and murder [JURIST report], told Bierce that Pfc. Steven D. Green raped and then shot Abeer Qassim al-Janabi, 14, after he had shot and killed her father, mother and sister in March. Green, who was discharged from the Army because of a personality disorder after the alleged attack but before the allegations arose, has pleaded not guilty [JURIST report] in a Kentucky federal court and is awaiting arraignment [JURIST report]. According to Bierce's testimony, Barker admitted that he had tried to rape the girl and had poured kerosene on her body, although he did not say who set the body on fire. Barker also implicated Sgt. Paul E. Cortez in the rape.

In addition to Green, Barker and Cortez, two other soldiers in the 101st Airborne Division [official website], Pfc. Jesse V. Spielman and Pfc. Bryan L. Howard, are charged with participating in the rape and murders. Another soldier, Anthony W. Yribe, is charged with dereliction of duty and false official statement for allegedly failing to report the attack. The hearing, which began Sunday [JURIST report], will determine whether there is enough evidence to hold a court-martial for the five soldiers still in Iraq. The military has banned the media and public from observing Iraqi witnesses' testimony [JURIST report] in the hearing. AP has more.

[JURIST] The federal trial of David Passaro [Raleigh News and Observer materials], a CIA contractor accused of abusing a detainee in Afghanistan [indictment; JURIST report], began Monday in Raleigh, North Carolina. Passaro was charged in 2004, and has maintained that the government is using him as a scapegoat in the wake of the Abu Ghraib abuse scandal [JURIST news archive]. Passaro is the first and only civilian to be charged in connection with detainee abuse in Iraq or Afghanistan. Last year, US District Judge Terrence Boyle [official profile] allowed prosecutors to bring a case against Passaro under the USA Patriot Act [JURIST news archive], saying that the US can charge nationals with crimes committed at facilities used by the US government. In February, Boyle ruled that Passaro can present evidence to show that he followed government orders [JURIST report] when he allegedly abused the detainee. In a separate ruling last week, Boyle ruled that until Passaro shows who approved his actions, Passaro cannot gain access to sealed documents [AP report], including a memo that Passaro says outlines interrogation tactics allowed by the Justice Department.

Much of the evidence that prosecutors and defense lawyers plan to use is classified by the government, including the names and titles of some witnesses, but the government has revealed that three paratroopers will testify that they saw Passaro beat Abdul Wali [Wikipedia profile], who later died in US custody. Though Passaro has not been charged in Wali's death, he does face two counts of assault with a dangerous weapon and two counts of assault resulting in a serious injury, and could face up to 40 years in prison and a $1 million fine. During closed proceedings Monday morning, attorneys for the government tried to prevent Passaro's lawyers from calling CIA employees as witnesses. Passaro's attorney complained that the government is trying to deny Passaro due process by claiming that much of the evidence is classified, even though at least one witness has appeared on national television to discuss the case. AP has more.

5:56 PM ET - Boyle ruled Monday that several CIA employees, including former CIA director George Tenet, would not be required to testify in Passaro's trial, though the judge did agree to allow the defense to subpoena at least six witnesses. In addition, Boyle deferred ruling on whether Passaro could subpoena four other witnesses. The list of witnesses who will be subpoenaed remains classified, and it is not clear whether Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, whose testimony Passaro's lawyers have said they will seek, is among those who will receive a subpoena. AP has more.

[JURIST] US Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy [Oyez profile] said that the US is failing to adequately spread the positive aspects of the "Western idea of democracy," in an address [recorded video] to the American Bar Association [profession website] at their annual meeting [ABA materials] in Hawaii on Saturday. Kennedy suggested that other parts of the world do not believe in democracy because the United States has done a poor job in showing other countries how the rule of law guarantees freedom by constraining government officials, requiring respect for equality and human rights, and instilling order without fear of retaliation. The high court justice also urged his audience to work to advance basic principles of the American justice system and the preservation of fundamental rights.

American Bar Association President Michael Greco [official website] also discussed the importance of freedom and human rights while introducing Kennedy, stating that legal professionals must make sure that the rule of law is used to "advance the basic principles of justice, fairness and equality." AP has more.

[JURIST] Martha Stewart [JURIST news archive] has reached a settlement agreement [press release] with the US Securities and Exchange Commission [official website] on insider trading civil charges [JURIST report], the SEC announced Monday. Stewart will pay $195,000, which is roughly equivalent to the losses Stewart avoided by selling nearly 4,000 shares of ImClone Systems [corporate website] stock one day before the Food and Drug Administration declined to review ImClone's application for its promising cancer drug Erbitux. Stewart will also be barred from serving as a director of a publicly traded company for five years, including Stewart's own Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, Inc. [corporate website]. Stewart's broker, Peter Bacanovic, also agreed to pay a penalty of $75,000. The settlement comes after Stewart initially opted to deny the SEC allegations [JURIST report] in May, claiming she acted in good faith when she sold the shares.

The SEC complaint [PDF text] was originally filed [SEC press release] in 2003 when Stewart was indicted in criminal court, but was stayed pending the criminal proceedings. Last September, Stewart recently completed [JURIST report] a five-month prison sentence followed by a five-month house arrest sentence under her 2004 criminal conviction [JURIST report] for lying to federal investigators in connection with her sale of ImClone stock. The US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit upheld her conviction in January [JURIST report]. If Stewart had not settled the SEC charges and lost the case at trial, she potentially faced penalties up to three times the amount she would have lost on the ImClone stock. AP has more.

[JURIST] A court in Argentina has convicted [HRW press release] a former police officer of human rights violations during the country's so-called "Dirty War" [GlobalSecurity backgrounder], handing down the first sentence since the Argentine Supreme Court [official website, in Spanish] threw out the country's amnesty laws [JURIST report] last year. After a trial which began in late June, Julio Simon was sentenced to 25 years in prison Friday for the disappearance of Jose Poblete and his wife in 1978, and the abduction of their baby daughter, Claudia. Authorities assume the couple was murdered after police took the couple into state custody at a secret torture center known as "El Olimpo." Poblete was a political opponent of the former Argentine military regime that saw the disappearance of at least 13,000 people between 1976 and 1983; some human rights groups estimate as many as 30,000 people disappeared.

Former police investigator Miguel Osvaldo Etchecolatz [Project Disappeared profile] went on trial earlier in June on murder, kidnapping and torture charges, making him the first former government official to stand trial [JURIST report] for crimes committed during the Dirty War in 20 years. Etchecolatz's trial is still ongoing. The amnesty laws, known as the Full Stop Law [text] and the Law of Due Obedience [text], were passed in the 1980s by the democratically elected government that replaced the junta and were meant to prevent rebellions among the military. BBC News has more. AP has additional coverage.

[JURIST] The Israel Defense Forces [official website] detained Fadl Hamdan, a member of the Palestinian parliament [official website, in Arabic], during an overnight raid early Monday morning in the West Bank. Israeli authorities did not explain their reason for the detention. Hamdan is one of about 30 Palestinian lawmakers detained in the last six weeks, along with nearly a third of the Palestinian cabinet. On Saturday, Israeli security forces detained the speaker of the Palestinian parliament [JURIST report], Aziz Dweik [official profile in Arabic; JMCC profile], after surrounding his home in Ramallah. An Israeli spokesman said that Dweik was a target for arrest because he is a high ranking member of Hamas, which Israel considers a terrorist organization.

Israel seized eight Palestinian government ministers and some 20 legislators [JURIST report] on June 29 following the abduction of IDF Cpl. Gilad Shalit [Wikipedia backgrounder] in Gaza. Last week, two of the men arrested - the Palestinian Minister for Prisoners' Affairs and a deputy speaker in the Palestinian Legislative Council who were released from Israeli custody earlier in the week - told reporters that they had been abused while detained [JURIST report]. Israeli officials said in June that the captured Palestinian lawmakers would be tried under standard criminal warrants [JURIST report] for membership in or leadership of a terrorist organization. BBC News has more. From Israel, Ynet has local coverage.

[JURIST] A Jordan military court Sunday convicted two lawmakers from the Islamic Action Front (IAF) [party website, in Arabic], the political arm of the Muslim Brotherhood [party website; FAS backgrounder], for expressing sympathy after the death of al Qaeda Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi [CTV report; JURIST report] when they visited Zarqawi's relatives in his native Jordan. The court sentenced Mohammed Abu Fares to two years in prison and Ali Abu Sukkar to 1.5 years in prison. The defendants pleaded not guilty to charges of "instigating sectarian strife and fueling national discord."

Jordan's general prosecutor had issued arrest warrants for four lawmakers - Abu Fares, Abu Sukkar, Jaafar al-Hourani, and Ibrahim al-Mashwakhi - after receiving several complaints from Jordanian citizens, mostly families of victims of last fall's al Qaeda-led attacks on three hotels in Amman [BBC report], which killed 60 people. The four were arrested [JURIST report] in June. Al-Hourani was acquitted at the trial, and al-Mashwakhi was released earlier this month. AP has more.