[JURIST] A US Navy spokesman said Monday that an Article 32 hearing scheduled for Tuesday in the case of Lt. Cmdr. Matthew M. Diaz, a staff attorney with the US Navy Judge Advocate General's Corps accused of leaking detainee names while stationed at Guantanamo Bay [JURIST news archive], has been postponed and has not yet been rescheduled. Diaz was charged [JURIST report; News4Jax.com report] in August with relaying secret national defense information to a person outside the government "with intent or reason to believe that the said information was to be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of a foreign nation." He allegedly printed and mailed to an outside party classified names and information related to Guantanamo detainees between December 2004 and March 2005, months before AP forced the Defense Department to release detainee lists [JURIST report] through Freedom of Information Act requests. If convicted, Diaz faces more than 30 years in prison. Diaz's case was cited [Senate RPC briefing paper, PDF] in the Congressional debate over new US military commissions [JURIST news archive] that followed the Supreme Court's June ruling in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld as a cautionary tale suggesting that classified information might not even be safe in the hands of cleared military defense counsel who could turn out to be "ideological attorneys."

Article 32 hearings [JAG backgrounder] are similar to civilian grand jury proceedings and determine whether a case will go forward to court-martial, whether administrative punishment is warranted, or whether charges against an accused should be dropped. The Navy Times has more.

[JURIST] Lebanese President Emile Lahoud [official website] voiced objections to a draft document governing the special tribunal [JURIST report] to be tasked with trying suspects in the February 2005 assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri [JURIST news archive] in a 32-page report released Monday. Lahoud balked at his exclusion from the organization of the tribunal under UN auspices since the Lebanese constitution [text] grants him the power to negotiate and approve international treaties [AP report]. Lahoud also called for changing the title of the tribunal from "special" to "a tribunal with international status" in order to avoid connotation with other special tribunals such as the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda [official website] and the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia [official website].

UN Legal Counsel Nicolas Michel [official profile] submitted the draft proposal [JURIST report] to the Lebanese government and the UN Security Council last week after lengthy negotiations. Previous reports by a special UN commission [UN materials] have implicated Syrian officials in the assassination [JURIST report], in which an explosion on the Beirut waterfront killed Hariri and 22 others. The UN was authorized to help Lebanon establish a tribunal under UN Security Council Resolution 1644 [text]. AFP has more. From Beirut, the Daily Star has local coverage.

[JURIST] US special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald [official website; JURIST news archive] argued in court papers filed Monday with the US District Court for the District of Columbia that he should not be required to explain to jurors in the case of former vice-presidential aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby [defense website] why no one has been indicted for actually leaking the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame [JURIST news archive]. Libby faces perjury and obstruction of justice charges [indictment text, PDF] in connection with the case, but no formal legal action has been taken against former State Department official Richard Armitage [JURIST news archive], who has admitted to being the source of the leak to columnist Robert Novak.

Fitzgerald said without naming Armitage that requiring him to address the subject of the leak charges would distract jurors from the specific issues in the case and in any event was irrelevant to the question of Libby's guilt or innocence on the charges laid. AP has more.

[JURIST] A Beijing court has denied an appeal hearing for Ching Cheong [advocacy website; SCMP Q/A], who was convicted in August on charges of spying for Taiwan. Ching, the chief China correspondent for Singapore's Straits Times [media website], was sentenced to five years in jail [JURIST report] by a Chinese court in August after being convicted of selling state secrets [BBC report]. While the decision not to hold an appeal hearing may be because Beijing's Supreme People's Court is satisfied with the prosecution's case and found the evidence sufficient, Ching's lawyers believe the denial was based on an absence of evidence [Asia News report] pointing to Ching's guilt as well as the government's strict classification of all politically relevant information as "state secret."

Ching's wife maintains her husband's innocence and suspects that he was accused [JURIST report] because he obtained politically sensitive unpublished interviews with late Communist Party chief Zhao Ziyang [BBC profile], who was purged for opposing the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre [BBC backgrounder]. Ching's lawyer expects the trial to conclude by the end of November. The South China Morning Post has more.

[JURIST] French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin [official website, in French; JURIST news archive] promised Monday to extend the scope of anti-vandalism laws following the burnings of some 200 vehicles over the weekend. After an emergency meeting on transportation security, de Villepin said the laws should be modified [press release, in French] to punish not only the perpetrators of such attacks, but also those who are "involved in and encourage" them.

The current violence, which left a 26-year-old bus passenger severely burned [Guardian report], broke out around the first anniversary of widespread riots among immigrant youths [JURIST news archive] in the Paris suburbs and elsewhere, which led to the burning of some 10,000 vehicles and the firebombing of about 300 buildings. BBC News has more. From Paris, Le Figaro has local coverage, in French.

[JURIST] The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) [official website] announced Monday that it will hear the appeal of a British woman trying to use frozen embryos despite objections from her former partner who fertilized the eggs. The ECHR ruled in March [JURIST report] that Natallie Evans could not use the embryos resulting from a 2001 IVF program with Howard Johnston after Johnston withdrew his consent. Evans originally appealed [JURIST report] to the ECHR last September after two adverse UK court rulings, including a loss in the Court of Appeal [JURIST report] in 2004 citing the terms of the UK Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act [text] under which consent must be given by both prospective parents for in vitro fertilization to be allowed. Evans' lawyers had argued that Evans was entitled to implantation even in the face of Johnston's objection under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights [text], declaring that "Everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life...".

The first ECHR ruling [text, in French; press release] was consistent with the law governing similar circumstances in other jurisdictions. In the United States, courts have thusfar ruled that each parent has the absolute right to prevent implantation of any frozen embryo under the constitutional right to privacy. The ECHR will hear Evans' appeal on November 22. AFP has more.

[JURIST] The US Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit [official website] on Monday upheld [opinion text, PDF] a preliminary injunction [JURIST report] preventing South Dakota from enforcing a 2005 abortion law [text] pending a lawsuit brought by Planned Parenthood of Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota [advocacy website]. The statute, which the governor signed along with three other bills restricting abortion [JURIST report], requires doctors who perform abortions to tell women that abortion ends the lives of "human beings." Violations carry 30 days of jail time and a $200 fine. South Dakota asserts that the legislation requires doctors to provide only medically accurate information and will not prevent access to abortion. Planned Parenthood argues that the law violates the free-speech rights of doctors. Writing for a split three-judge panel, Circuit Judge Diana Murphy [official profile] wrote:

Because the challenged disclosures could be found to violate both the First Amendment rights of physicians and the due process rights of women seeking abortion, we conclude that the district court did not abuse its discretion in holding at this preliminary stage that Planned Parenthood demonstrated a likelihood of success on the merits.

[JURIST] A federal judge in Chile [JURIST news archive] placed former dictator Augusto Pinochet [BBC profile; JURIST news archive] under house arrest Monday, marking the first time Pinochet has been detained on torture charges. Federal Judge Alejandro Solis ordered Pinochet's arrest [JURIST report] on Friday in connection with 36 cases of kidnapping, 23 cases of torture and a single case of homicide at the Villa Grimaldi prison [Wikipedia backgrounder], an infamous political detention center operated by Pinochet's secret police between 1974 and 1977. During an initial meeting with Solis earlier this month, Pinochet denied knowledge of crimes at Villa Grimaldi [JURIST report].

The Supreme Court of Chile [official website, in Spanish] stripped Pinochet of his sovereign immunity for the Villa Grimaldi charges in September, upholding a January 2006 decision [JURIST report] of an appeals court. Earlier this month, Pinochet lost immunity in another case [JURIST report] involving the 1976 assassination of rival politician Orlando Letelier [Wikipedia profile]. Pinochet, who is 90, also faces charges of tax evasion [JURIST report] stemming from an investigation into secret offshore back accounts set up under false names. Reuters has more. From Santiago, La Nacion has local coverage, in Spanish.

[JURIST] An Italian court on Monday ordered former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi [BBC profile; JURIST news archive] and British corporate lawyer David Mills [Guardian profile] to face trial on corruption charges. According to Italian media reports, Mills in 1997 and 1998 allegedly gave false testimony at trials involving a Berlusconi-owned broadcasting company in exchange for some $600,000 that Berlusconi funneled to Mills. Both deny the charges; if convicted, they would face sentences ranging from three to eight years. Prosecutors formally asked a judge to indict Berlusconi and Mills in March following an investigation [JURIST reports]. The trial is scheduled to begin in March 2007.

In July, an Italian judge ruled [JURIST report] that Berlusconi should stand trial in November on charges of embezzlement, false accounting, tax fraud and money laundering in connection with a TV rights deal involving Berlusconi's company, Mediaset [corporate website]. Preliminary hearings in the case occurred last October [JURIST report] following a four-year investigation. Prosecutors allege that in deals struck between 1994 and 1999, Mediaset falsely reported the broadcast royalties paid for US films to avoid taxes totaling 125 billion old lire. The tax fraud charge is the most serious for the former prime minister, carrying a possible six-year sentence. Prosecutors also allege that Berlusconi used Mediaset to create a slush fund for family use. Berlusconi denies all charges. He was cleared of false accounting charges [JURIST report] in September 2005 and acquitted on bribery charges [JURIST report] in June 2005. AP has more. ANSA has local coverage, in Italian.

[JURIST] Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak [official website, in English; BBC profile] said Sunday he was optimistic that a proposed amendment to the Egyptian constitution [text] to permit multi-candidate direct elections for the Egyptian presidency will pass when the Egyptian parliament [official website] begins its next session on November 8. The proposed amendment [draft text, in Arabic; Al-Ahram report] to Article 76, which was approved by referendum [JURIST report] in May 2005, allows an opposition candidate to run in the national elections if that candidate's sponsoring party controls five percent of parliament.

Mubarak has won three elections since assuming power in 1981 - the last [JURIST report] in September last year - and has kept Egypt [JURIST news archive] under emergency law [JURIST report] throughout his presidency, giving the government a type of quasi-military control over the population. AFP has more.

[JURIST] Public trust in the Chinese judiciary needs in be restored in the face of court corruption and systemic failures to implement court orders, according to a report by the China's chief justice submitted to the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress [official websites] Monday. The report says that 800,000 court orders remain unimplemented by the courts due to negligence or bribery, and other statistics disclosed by China's People's Daily show that over 461 judges were punished for graft-related offenses in 2004. Addressing the Standing Committee, Chief Justice Xiao Yang [official profile] announced [press release, in Chinese] a three-year reform plan focusing on implementing a strict code of conduct for local judges.

Last week, Chinese President Hu Jintao called for an end to judicial corruption [JURIST report] while four top Chinese judges face trial on charges of accepting bribes to fix the outcomes of cases in Anhui province. The People's Daily has more.

[JURIST] Muslim cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri [BBC profile] told a British appeals court Monday that his February conviction [JURIST report] on incitement to murder charges [BBC summary; BBC trial timeline] should be overturned on the grounds that he was denied a fair trial. Hamza was convicted on 11 of 15 counts of inciting murder for urging his followers to kill Jews and other non-Muslims and using "threatening, abusive or insulting words or behavior" to stir up racial hatred. His lawyers argued Monday that the delay in bringing charges, which stemmed from speeches given in the late 1990s, resulted in an unfair trial.

Hamza is also wanted in the United States, where he faces separate terrorism-related charges [PDF indictment; JURIST report], including funding and attempting to establish terrorist training camps in the US. The appeals court is expected to hear Hamza's case for at least two days. Reuters has more. The Independent has additional coverage.

[JURIST] Khalil al-Dulaimi, chief defense counsel for Saddam Hussein [JURIST news archive], appeared in court Monday, presented 12 demands to the judge to be satisfied to end the ongoing defense team boycott, and stormed out of court after the presiding judge told him that Arab and foreign lawyers may only appear as advisors to Hussein. Al-Dulaimi demanded an investigation into reports that one of Hussein's co-defendants was abused by prison guards, and one into the theft of defense counsel documents [JURIST reports]. Defense lawyers have been boycotting the trial [JURIST news archive] since September.

Hussein is on trial on genocide charges [JURIST news archive; BBC timeline] for allegedly killing 100,000 Kurds during the so-called "Anfal" campaigns [HRW backgrounder] in the late 1980s. In the first case against Hussein to go to trial, prosecutors sought the death penalty against Hussein [JURIST report] for allegedly killing, torturing and illegally detaining Dujail residents, including 148 Shiites [JURIST report]. The chief prosecutor in the Dujail case said Sunday that the Dujail verdict may be delayed [JURIST report] past the scheduled Nov. 5 date to give the court more time to review evidence and make findings. Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshiyar Zebari said Monday that he hopes the court will render its verdict soon [Reuters report], noting that the Dujail proceedings have continued for too long. Reuters has more.

[JURIST] A British advocacy group condemned the UK government for failing to properly regulate hired mercenaries operating in Iraq [BBC report] and Afghanistan in a report [PDF text] released Monday that proposes regulations to hold mercenaries accountable for alleged abuses. The report by the War on Want [advocacy website] charges that no prosecutions have been filed against paid mercenaries, despite several documented instances of abuse and potential war crimes. The report proposes several regulations, such as a reporting requirement for all defense contracts with the government and restrictions on government employees and representatives taking defense contracting jobs following public service.

The report release coincides with the opening day of the first annual conference of the British Association of Private Security Companies [SourceWatch.org backgrounder], a group that represents British mercenaries abroad. The association's director said his group supports regulation, but will lobby for an independent ombudsman rather than government control. AP has more.

[JURIST] Absentee Ohio voters must continue to show proof of ID when casting ballots after a federal appeals court on Sunday stayed [PDF text] a lower court order [JURIST report], handed down last week, that would have temporarily suspended Ohio's voter ID law [Ohio SOS backgrounder]. The US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit [court website] granted Ohio Attorney General Jim Petro's request for a stay the case, meaning that the temporary restraining order [PDF text] issued by the district court is effectively overruled.

Under the law, absentee voters must provide a driver's license number, the last four digits of their Social Security number or a copy of a current photo ID, military identification, utility bill or bank statement. Absentee balloting is now underway in Ohio, but votes will not be counted until election day so no ballots have yet been discarded. Lawyers for the plaintiffs, who challenged the law on the grounds that Ohio's 88 counties are applying the law unequally by having different ID requirements, have said they will appeal the appeals court ruling to the US Supreme Court. Moritz's Election Law Center has case documents for NEOCH v. Blackwell. AP has more. The Columbus Dispatch has local coverage.

[JURIST] The North Korean government is "actively committing crimes against humanity" by the starvation and political repression of North Korean citizens, according to a report [PDF text] released Sunday by a blue-ribbon panel comprised of Vaclav Havel [official website], former President of the Czech Republic; former Prime Minister of Norway Kjell Magne Bondevik [UN backgrounder]; and Holocaust survivor and Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel [profile]. The report accuses North Korean officials of complicity in crimes against humanity and points to the starvation deaths of 1 million North Korean citizens and the chronic malnourishment of 37 percent of children. The report also notes that 200,000 political prisoners are currently imprisoned under "brutal" conditions and without access to a legal system. The recent UN Security Council resolution to sanction North Korea [JURIST report] may cause further human rights damage, according to the report, and instead the Council should consider intervening on independent grounds. The report's authors urged the Security Council to take action under the doctrine recently adopted by the Council that each state has a "responsibility to protect" its citizens from the most "egregious" human rights violations.

The report was prepared [press release] by the international law firm DLA Piper along with the US Committee for Human Rights in China [advocacy website] and was commissioned by Havel, Bondevik and Wiesel. In an op-ed [text] in Monday's New York Times, the three wrote:

While the focus in recent weeks has been on North Korea's nuclear test, we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that the government there is also responsible for one of the most egregious human-rights and humanitarian disasters in the world today.

For more than a decade, many in the international community have argued that to focus on the suffering of the North Korean people would risk driving the country away from discussions over its nuclear program.

But with his recent actions, North Korea's leader, Kim Jong-il, has shown that this approach neither stopped the development of his nuclear program nor helped North Koreans. It is time, therefore, for a renewed international effort to ameliorate the crisis facing the country's citizens.