[JURIST] The defense team for Saddam Hussein Sunday formally appealed his death sentence [JURIST report; JURIST news archive] for crimes against humanity committed in the town of Dujail in 1982. The November 5 condemnation to death by hanging was automatically appealable to a nine-judge Appeals Chamber set up under the statute of the Iraqi High Tribunal [text, PDF]. Article 27 of the statute says that penalties are to be carried out within thirty days of sentence, in effect requiring before then a defense statement laying out the legal grounds for any challenge as well as new evidence of innocence and a possible plea of leniency. Saddam chief counsel Khalil al-Dulaimi reiterated past accusations [JURIST report] that the court had "deliberately and intentionally wasted and exhausted" the efforts of the defense team by withholding an official copy of the verdicts until November 23. Dulaimi, who also appealed the death sentences of co-defendants Awad Hamed al-Bandar and Barzan al-Tikriti, complained that the appeals had to be hastily prepared to avoid next Tuesday's deadline. AP has more.

International rights groups have also decried the trial proceedings as biased. Last week a group of five United Nations human rights experts cited the trial as flawed [JURIST report] and urged the Iraqi government to refrain from carrying out Saddam's execution, pointing in part to the lack of an independent and impartial tribunal and the lack of adequate time to prepare his defense. The group has suggested that the governments of Iraq and the US consider a retrial of the former dictator before an international panel. A November 20 Human Rights Watch [advocacy website] report [text; JURIST report] called the trial "fundamentally unfair." An appeals panel decision is expected by mid-January 2007 [JURIST report]; if upheld, Article 27 requires the verdict to be carried out within a further 30 days.

[JURIST] The government of Turkey has officially condemned an Argentinean bill that refers to the mass killings of Armenians [BBC Q/A] in Turkey around the time of World War I as genocide and establishes a day of annual commemoration on April 24. Turkey [CIA factbook, JURIST news archive] has asked the Argentine government to block the draft law which last week passed the Chamber of Deputies [official website, in Spanish], the lower house of the Argentine parliament, with 175 votes in favor and 2 abstentions. The Turkish government claims the draft not only disregards the historical facts, but is in violation of international law [Turkish Daily News report]. Turkey's Foreign Ministry said in a statement Friday that "The expulsion decision made in May 1915 by the Ottoman Empire was a legitimate precaution taken purely on security motives against certain Armenian groups who were in collaboration with invading forces." Turkish Daily News has more.

Argentina's proposed bill follows closely on the heels of controversial French legislation touching on the same issue. In October, the French National Assembly approved a bill [JURIST report] criminalizing any refusal to characterize the Armenian as genocide, but it still needs approval by the French Senate and President Jacques Chirac [official profile, in French] to become national law. Many believe that will never happen, however, as both President Chirac and the European Union have separately and publicly denounced the bill, and many French observers view it as a direct violation of the nation's tradition of free speech. President Chirac has already offered an apology [JURIST report] over the bill to Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan [official website; BBC profile].

[JURIST] The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) [official website] has postponed until further notice the war crimes trial of Serb nationalist Vojislav Seselj [BBC profile; ICTY case backgrounder], who has been on a hunger strike [JURIST report] since November 11, saying in a ruling Friday that he will likely be too weak to participate in his defense. ICTY spokesperson Refik Hodzic acknowledged [ICTY press conference summary] Wednesday that hospital staff would perform a "medical intervention" if there is a "medical necessity to save Seselj's life. Seselj, however, has forbidden staff of the ICTY [JURIST report] to force feed him, provide him medical treatment or resuscitate him should be become necessary, and has only agreed to be examined [JURIST report] by an "independent" team of doctors.

Seselj [JURIST news archive] was transferred to a Dutch prison hospital [JURIST report] adjoining the tribunal's detention center [ICTY backgrounder] at Scheveningen near the Hague Wednesday so that his medical condition could be more closely monitored. He went on hunger strike in early November, demanding [statement, DOC] the ICTY to dismiss his court-appointed lawyers and allow him to conduct his defense to nine war crimes charges [indictment, PDF]. The court later stripped Seselj of his right to defend himself [JURIST report] after he failed to appear in court. Seselj is accused of establishing rogue paramilitary units affiliated with the ultranationalist Serbian Radical Party (SRS) [party website, in Serbian), which are believed to have massacred and otherwise persecuted Croats and other non-Serbs in the Balkan Wars of the 1990s. Seselj has pleaded not guilty to the charges. AP has more.

[JURIST] Former Chilean leader Augusto Pinochet [BBC profile; JURIST news archive] suffered a heart attack Sunday, but is in stable yet serious condition after undergoing emergency surgery. The development represents another setback to recent attempts [BBC timeline] by Chilean authorities to bring the ex-dictator to justice for dozens of human rights violations he is accused of committing during his military rule from 1973 to 1990. Pinochet has previously suffered from mild dementia, strokes, arthritis and other ailments that have been made his fitness to stand trial questionable. AP has more. BBC has additional coverage. El Mercurio has local coverage.

Pinochet, who turned 91 last week, enjoys general immunity from prosecution under the 1980 Chilean Constitution, but has slowly been stripped of this immunity [BBC report] in light of charges brought against him. Last Monday, a judge ordered he be placed under house arrest in connection with the executions of two of former President Salvador Allende's bodyguards during the so-called Caravan of Death [BBC backgrounder] that followed the 1973 coup in which Pinochet seized power. Pinochet was originally charged in the case in 2000, but in 2002 the Supreme Court of Chile [official website] ruled that he was too unwell to stand trial. Earlier last month, he was stripped of his immunity [JURIST report] in a case involving the 1974 disappearance of a Spanish priest. In July, the Supreme Court upheld a lower court's ruling [JURIST report] stripping Pinochet of immunity in a homicide case relating to the killing of two bodyguards for former Chilean President Salvador Allende. Last month, Pinochet publicly assumed full political responsibility [JURIST report] for the actions of his former regime.

[JURIST] A spokesman for Iran's Guardian Council [official website, in Persian] said Saturday that it has approved a bill passed by Iran's Majlis [official website, in Persian] two weeks ago instituting mandatory fingerprinting [JURIST report] of all visiting US citizens. The bill is intended to "reciprocate behavior of American officials towards Iranian citizens," he told reporters. The US-VISIT program [official backgrounder], in place since 2002, requires the fingerprinting and photographing of all foreign visitors arriving in the US, with the exception of Canadians.

The fingerprinting legislation passed the Majlis 135 to 26 on November 19 despite objections from Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad [official profile; BBC profile], who spoke out against the bill [JURIST report] in October, emphasizing that US citizens are welcome in Iran as Iran only opposes US policy, not its people. The Guardian Council represents the will of the country's Supreme Leader and has the power to veto legislative actions on the grounds that it is unconstitutional or against Islam. AP has more. From Iran, IRNA has local coverage.

[JURIST] Rep. Jane Harman [official website], ranking Democrat on the US House Intelligence Committee [official website] and initially a supporter of the Patriot Act and President Bush's domestic surveillance program [JURIST news archive], told a gathering of the American Bar Association [official website] Friday that "the program continues in violation of the law." While in January she called the program "essential to US national security," Harman said in her latest speech "I want the intelligence community to intercept the communications of terrorists. But it is not exempt from following the law and the Constitution." She also said the current administration was skirting legal guidelines in its operation of the wiretapping program. The San Francisco Chronicle has more.

In April, Harman voted against the 2007 Intelligence Authorization Bill [text, PDF] that would have set the wiretaps on a sounder legal footing, declaring in a statement then:

I voted ‘no’ on an Intelligence Authorization bill to send the strong signal that I oppose the legal rationale offered by the Bush Administration for the NSA domestic surveillance program. I support the capability to track Al Qaeda terrorists and monitor their communications. But all electronic surveillance must comply with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and the Fourth Amendment.