[JURIST] US Army Spc. James P. Barker, who pleaded guilty [JURIST report] Wednesday for the rape and murder of a 14-year-old Iraqi girl [JURIST news archive] and the murder of her family in the Mahmudiya (also "Mahmoudiya") area in March, was sentenced Thursday to no more than 90 years in prison. Barker's effective life sentence, which has the possibility of parole, was in exchange for his testimony against the other soldiers implicated [JURIST report] in the attack, who still face the death penalty.

Barker has claimed that he and other members of the 101st Airborne Division [official website] were involved with the rape of the girl, while former US soldier Pfc. Steven D. Green [JURIST news archive] raped then shot her, after shooting her father, mother, and sister. Green, who was discharged from the military because of a personality disorder before the allegations arose, has pleaded not guilty [JURIST report] in his civilian trial in federal court in Kentucky. AP has more.

[JURIST] John Altenburg [official profile, PDF], appointed [DOD press release, PDF] in 2003 by US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to oversee the military commissions [official website; JURIST news archive] trying terror detainees at Guantanamo Bay [JURIST news archive], has resigned his post as Appointing Authority [official materials] and returned to full-time civilian legal practice, law firm Greenberg Traurig announced [press release] Thursday. The move comes just weeks after Altenburg submitted a draft manual on the implementation of the new Military Commissions Act of 2006 (MCA) [PDF text; JURIST news archive] to top Pentagon and Department of Justice officials. The MCA set the commissions on a new and theoretically more solid legal footing after the US Supreme Court ruled in June that, as initially constituted by the President, they lacked proper legal authorization [JURIST report].

Under Military Commission Order No. 1 [text] of March 21, 2002, the Appointing Authority is responsible [DOD Directive 5105.70] for approving charges, appointing military commission members, approving plea agreements, deciding whether to open or close trials to media, and determining the possible applicability of the death penalty. Officially retired from the Army in 2002, Altenburg served as Appointing Authority in a civilian capacity. No replacement for him has yet been announced. The Wall Street Journal has more.

[JURIST] Iraqi Interior Minister Jawad al-Bolani [Wikipedia profile] announced on Al-Iraqiya state television [official website] Thursday that an arrest warrant has been issued for Harith al-Dhari [Aljazeera profile], the most prominent leader of Iraq's Sunni minority, and head of the powerful Association of Muslim Scholars [association website, in Arabic; GlobalSecurity backgrounder]. The Shiite-led Interior Ministry said that al-Dhari is wanted for incitement of terrorism and violence. Al-Dhari is a vocal critic of the majority Shiite government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, and recently rejected offers of reconciliation.

Sunni groups immediately spoke out against the arrest warrant, and although Al-Dhari is a hard-liner, it is possible that moderate Sunnis will retaliate by abandoning the government. Al-Dhari often travels throughout the Middle East, and was believed to be in Jordan when the warrant was issued. The Interior Ministry has said that it is considering asking for international assistance in apprehending him. AP has more.

[JURIST] Democratic Republic of Congo [JURIST news archive] Vice President Jean-Pierre Bemba [campaign website, in French; Wikipedia profile] said Thursday that he plans to use legal means to challenge the results from last month's run-off election [JURIST report] after officials announced Wednesday that he lost the presidency to Joseph Kabila [BBC profile; PPRD party website, in French] by 16 percentage points. Bemba's supporters [MLC party website] have alleged voting fraud [JURIST report], which has been an issue [JURIST report] throughout the election. UN troops patrolled the streets of the capital and surrounded Bemba's home Thursday to maintain order. Fighting among supporters of the two candidates broke out in July when results were announced after the first round of the election.

In April, a Congolese opposition group tried to ban Kabila from running [JURIST report] in the general elections, the first democratic elections in Congo since 1960, because of his ties to the military. Kabila was a major-general in the Congolese army before succeeding his father as president following the latter's assassination in 2001. AP has more.

[JURIST] UK independent anti-terror law reviewer Lord Carlile [party profile] warned British lawmakers Thursday against "rushing" to extend the country's 28-day limit [JURIST report] on police detentions of terror suspects without charge. London Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair [official profile] suggested an extension [JURIST report] of the limit in a speech Saturday. Carlile's warning comes as UK Prime Minister Tony Blair [official profile] is gearing up to push new anti-terror legislation through parliament. Government leaders want to consolidate all emergency anti-terror laws introduced since September 11 and possibly introduce new measures, such as allowing phone-tap evidence in terror trials and banning flag burning [JURIST report].

The detention limit became contentious late last year during debate on the Terrorism Act of 2006 [Home Office backgrounder], with the prime minister suffering his first parliamentary defeat in November when the House of Commons substituted the 28-day maximum term for the government's initially-proposed 90-day limit [JURIST report]. The House of Lords later rejected a proposed 60-day "compromise" [JURIST report]. The Guardian has more.

[JURIST] A Rwandan military court Thursday convicted a Roman Catholic Rwandan priest of genocide for rape and assisting the Hutu [Wikipedia backgrounder] massacre of Tutsis [Wikipedia backgrounder] during the 1994 Rwandan genocide [HRW backgrounder; BBC backgrounder]. Father Wenceslas Munyeshyaka, who was sentenced to life in prison, has lived in exile in France since 1995. While French authorities have repeatedly denied requests for extradition, prosecutors plan to petition France once again to bring Munyeshyaka back to Rwanda. Former Rwandan army general Laurent Munyakazi, who was in command of the military in the Nyarugenge district where Munyeshyaka's church was located, was also convicted and sentenced to life in prison. AFP has more.

Since many countries refuse to extradite suspects who could face the death penalty, a ban on capital punishment in Rwanda would encourage the return of suspects for trial on charges related to the 1994 genocide that claimed about 800,000 lives. Rwanda's ruling party said last month that it has directed its lawmakers to support a forthcoming bill to abolish the death penalty. The bill is expected to be presented in parliament [JURIST report] in December.

[JURIST] UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan [official profile] has submitted to the UN Security Council [official website] a proposal [JURIST report] on establishing an international tribunal to try suspects in the February 2005 assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri [JURIST news archive], a spokesman for Annan said Thursday. Annan submitted the proposal [press release] despite the rejection [JURIST report] of Lebanese President Emile Lahoud [official profile] of his cabinet's approval [JURIST reports] of the UN draft proposal. Lahoud said the cabinet endorsement was illegitimate and unconstitutional because he had not endorsed the vote [JURIST report]. In a letter to Annan, Lahoud refused to accept the vote as binding on the government of Lebanon. If the Security Council approves the proposal, Lebanon must still enter into a formal agreement authorizing the tribunal.

Although the UN's plan has not been made public, the tribunal is expected to be based outside Lebanon and will use a combination of Lebanese and international judges. Previous reports by the UN's Hariri investigatory commission [UN materials] implicated Syrian officials [JURIST report] in the assassination. Hariri and 22 others were killed in a massive explosion on the Beirut waterfront. The UN's authority to help Lebanon establish the tribunal stems from UN Security Council Resolution 1644 [text]. Reuters has more.

[JURIST] The US Department of Labor [official website] announced a settlement agreement [press release] Thursday with former Enron [corporate website; JURIST news archive] CEO Jeffrey Skilling [Houston Chronicle profile], concluding the DOL's civil suit against him. The agreement provides that Skilling "will drop his opposition to a previous $85 million settlement, waive his right to benefits from Enron's pension plans and be permanently barred from serving in a fiduciary capacity to any employee benefit plan governed by the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) in the future." According to the DOL:

The settlement acknowledges that Skilling is already subject to an order of forfeiture obtained by the U.S. Department of Justice's Enron Task Force. That order, entered Oct. 23, 2006 in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas, requires the establishment of a $45 million restitution fund for victims of Enron-related fraud, including plan participants and securities investors. The Labor Department's settlement provides that, if Skilling's convictions are overturned or vacated and the restitution fund is dissolved, Skilling will still pay $2.5 million to the participants and beneficiaries in the company's savings and employee stock ownership plans plus $500,000 in penalties to the department.

[JURIST] The High Court of Australia [official website] has held in two separate cases that a "holder of a temporary protection visa is not entitled to further protection in Australia if they are no longer in danger in the country from which they fled" and that the person may not remain a refugee. The cases - NBGM v. Minister for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs [text; press release, PDF] and Minister for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs v. Qaah [text; press release, PDF] - were brought by two Afghan men, both Shiite Muslims, who fled from Afghanistan in 1999 and were granted temporary protection visas (TPVs) by Australia. Their claim for permanent protection, based on their assertion that the Taliban would likely return to power, was denied by the Immigration Department [official website] and upheld by the Refugee Review Tribunal (RRT) [official website]. The Tribunal held that since the Taliban had been removed from power, it "no longer posed a threat to the civilian population" and "was unlikely to re-emerge as a viable political movement in the reasonably foreseeable future." The High Court held in a 4-1 decision that neither the Migration Act [text] nor the Refugees Convention [text] offer any "promise or obligation to continue to afford protection or grant residence, whether permanent or otherwise, in the event that circumstances change."

Minister for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs Amanda Vanstone [official profile] welcomed [press release] the High Court decision, saying:

The 4-1 majority decision confirms that a refugee under Australia's temporary protection will not be guaranteed continuing protection once conditions in their former country have improved. The High Court found that there is no presumption that once a person has been granted a TPV they continue to be a refugee until the Government proves otherwise. TPVs are a key plank of our border protection measures, and help ensure more of Australia's refugee places are taken by those assessed by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees as being in most desperate need of resettlement.

[JURIST] Senior Thai security officials suggested Thursday that Thailand's Council for National Security [official website, in Thai] may lift martial law [JURIST report] next month after investigators wrap up a corruption probe against former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra [JURIST news archive]. The announcement came two days after Thai Prime Minister Surayud Chulanont [official website; BBC profile] held off on plans to lift martial law this month, as had been anticipated [JURIST reports]. Thai Defense Minister Boonrawd Somtas said last week that Surayud was contemplating lifting martial law [JURIST report] before leaving for an international summit in Vietnam on Nov. 18. Surayud said Tuesday that he had been reassured by US diplomats that a continued state of martial law would not be discussed at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation [official website] summit and that lifting martial law was "not urgent."

Thailand [JURIST news archive] has been under martial law since the Thai military seized power from Thaksin in a bloodless coup [JURIST report] in September. The defense minister had indicated that Thailand was concerned that key allies, including the US and Japan, would be "more comfortable" if martial law was lifted before the summit. The US urged Thailand to lift martial law [JURIST report] last month, pulling almost $24 million in funding from the Thai government. AFP has more. The Bangkok Post has local coverage.

[JURIST] Microsoft [corporate website; JURIST news archive] has handed over only 90 percent of the necessary documentation to comply with a 2004 European Union antitrust ruling [PDF text; JURIST report] and may face added fines [EU press release] unless the company complies by November 23, European Union regulators said Wednesday. The 2004 order required Microsoft to provide technical information that competitors need to develop software compatible with the Windows operating system, and the European Commission [official website] already imposed a $357 million fine [JURIST report] on Microsoft in July for not complying with the ruling. The Commission warned in July that Microsoft may face fines of up to $2.5 million per day for not giving competitors the necessary information and added Wednesday that the daily fines may increase to $3.85 million per day if Microsoft continues to disobey the order, calculating the fines from the date of the July ruling.

The $357 million fine imposed in July was in addition to the initial $613 million penalty levied by the Commission in 2004. In October, Microsoft filed an appeal [JURIST report] with the European Court of First Instance [official website], challenging the July and 2004 rulings. Microsoft based its appeal on the magnitude of the fine, noting the "lack of clarity in the Commission's original decision" and Microsoft's "good-faith efforts" to comply with the order. AP has more.

[JURIST] Khalil al-Dulaimi, chief defense counsel for Saddam Hussein [JURIST news archive], said Wednesday that the Iraqi High Tribunal is obstructing his efforts to appeal Hussein's death sentence [JURIST report] for crimes against humanity committed in the Iraqi town of Dujail [BBC trial timeline; JURIST news archive]. Dulaimi reiterated complaints that the trial did not adhere to fair standards and accused the court of "pursuing its continued efforts to obstruct the efforts of the defense to submit a legal cassation appeal against the unjust verdicts." He also said the defense has not yet received copies of the verdict. Under the Iraqi Code of Criminal Procedure No. 23 of 1971 [text, PDF] appeals must be filed within 15 days of the trial decision, Dulaimi said he believes the court has "deliberately and intentionally wasted and exhausted" the efforts of the defense team by withholding an official copy of the verdicts for more than 10 days. Article 27 of the statute of the Iraqi High Tribunal [text, PDF] requires a sentence to be carried out within 30 days of an appellate judgment. AFP has more.

Hussein and two co-defendants were convicted and sentenced to death by hanging [AP recorded video; JURIST report] earlier this month for crimes against humanity [charging instrument, PDF] committed in Dujail. Hussein was charged [JURIST report] with killing, torturing and illegally detaining Dujail residents, including the execution of 148 Shiites [JURIST report], after an unsuccessful attempt on his life there in 1982. The genocide trial [JURIST news archive] of Saddam for allegedly killing 100,000 Kurds in the "Anfal" campaigns [HRW backgrounder] in the late 1980s was adjourned [JURIST report] last week for three weeks.

[JURIST] US Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA) [official website; JURIST news archive], outgoing chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee [official website], has introduced a new bill, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Oversight and Resource Enhancement Act of 2006 [PDF text], that would authorize domestic surveillance [JURIST news archive] of suspected terrorists. Specter's new proposal is a last-ditch attempt to push through legislation [JURIST report] during the current lame-duck session of Congress allowing a form of the Bush administration's terrorist surveillance program to continue. While the House of Representatives passed [JURIST report] the Electronic Surveillance Modernization Act [HR 5825 text, PDF] in late September, the Senate version, the National Security Surveillance Act of 2006 [S 3876 materials], the product of a compromise between the White House and Specter [JURIST report], stalled [JURIST report] in Congress.

Specter's new bill would make some changes in existing law but would not grant as much latitude to the government as the House version. Specter has proposed:

• Requiring the US Supreme Court to review all appeals of cases challenging the legality of the domestic surveillance program acknowledged by the president last December;
  
  
• Requiring the US Attorney General to provide semi-annual reports to the Senate and House of Representatives intelligence committees to "fully inform" them of any electronic surveillance undertaken without a court order. Only chairmen of each congressional intelligence committee would have access to the documentation;
  
  
• Allowing the government to conduct warrantless taps of communications between parties outside the US, even if Americans are involved in those exchanges;
  
  
• Extending the deadline from 72 hours to 168 hours for authorities to make after-the-fact applications for warrants in "emergency" situations; and
  
  
• Authorizing the addition of lawyers and judges to the various agencies charged with implementing and overseeing the surveillance program.

[JURIST] Former Hewlett-Packard [corporate website] chairwoman Patricia Dunn [Forbes profile] pleaded not guilty Wednesday to four felony charges [felony complaint, PDF; JURIST report] stemming from her role in the corporate spying scandal [JURIST news archive]. Dunn is one of five people charged in the case involving company investigators using "pretexting" by impersonating board members, employees and reporters in order to gain their phone records and potentially uncover who was leaking confidential information from board meetings. She resigned [JURIST report] in September before testifying at a hearing [JURIST report] held by a US House Energy and Commerce Committee [official website], during which she admitted that she was aware of the plan, but was also told the actions were legal by corporate attorneys.

Along with Dunn, the company's former ethics officer Kevin Hunsaker [BusinessWeek backgrounder] and three investigators were also charged with identity theft, unauthorized access to computer data, use of false or fraudulent pretenses to obtain confidential information from a public utility, and conspiracy to commit each of those crimes. If convicted, the defendants could each face a maximum of 12 years in prison and $40,000 in fines. Hunsaker, who surrendered to authorities [JURIST report] with Dunn last month, has also pleaded not guilty to the charges against him. AP has more.

ALSO ON JURIST  Op-ed: 'Piling On' at Hewlett-Packard? | Op-ed: Built to Last? Corporate Governance at Hewlett-Packard

[JURIST] The German Federal Court of Justice [official website, in German] Thursday found Moroccan-born Mounir al-Motassadeq [BBC profile; JURIST news archive] guilty of assisting the men who carried out the Sept. 11 attacks [JURIST news archive] on the US. The appeals court overturned a lower court decision acquitting Motassadeq, avoiding a third trial [JURIST report] against him. Motassadeq was originally convicted in 2003 on charges that he gave financial backing and other support to the hijackers, but Germany's Supreme Court overturned the verdict [JURIST report] and ordered a new trial. Last year, a German court determined that there was not enough evidence [JURIST report] showing Motassadeq actually knew of the Sept. 11 plot, but did find him guilty of being a member of a terrorist organization and sentenced him to seven years in prison. Thursday's ruling that Motassadeq is guilty of 246 counts of accessory to murder is in response to the prosecution's appeal of the not guilty ruling and sentence. Motassadeq had also appealed [JURIST report] the seven-year sentence, seeking a shorter term.

The appeals court sent its verdict back to a lower court to sentence the Moroccan, who is expected to receive up to 15 years in jail. Motassadeq has admitted to attending an al Qaida training camp in Afghanistan and being friends with some of the Sept. 11 hijackers, but claims he had no knowledge of their plans to carry out the attacks. Motassadeq's lawyer said he would wait to hear the lower court's sentence before determining whether to appeal to the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany [official website, English version], the country's highest court. BBC News has more; IOL has additional coverage.

[JURIST] US President George Bush on Wednesday renominated [WH list] six candidates for federal appeals court judgeships, at least four of whom Democrats have already rejected [JURIST report]. Senate rules [text] require nominations to be resubmitted after a recess longer than 30 days, and the judicial nominations [JURIST news archive] will expire if not approved during the current lame-duck session of Congress. When Congress reconvenes in January, new nominees will face a Senate Democratic majority.

Democratic senators see the President's actions as a reversal of his recent promise for bipartisanship in the wake of the mid-term elections. US Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) [official website], expected to take over as Judiciary Committee chairman, expressed his disappointment [press release] Wednesday:

With these renominations, the President is choosing partisanship over progress and division over unity, at the expense of a fair and independent judiciary. This is exactly the kind of political game-playing that prompted Americans to demand change and a new direction in Washington. The signal the President is sending by renominating these controversial candidates is regrettable. But I hope the President will work with us in charting a new direction in the next congressional session, by choosing consensus nominees who unite instead of divide America.