[JURIST] Zimbabwe police arrested at least 100 people - including opposition presidential hopeful Morgan Tsvangirai [BBC profile] - in advance of a prayer meeting in the nation's capital Sunday. One activist was reportedly shot dead. Armed police had been deployed in Harare since Friday after the meeting was prospectively declared illegal. As citizens approached the sports field where the "Save Zimbabwe Campaign" meeting was to be held, riot police forcefully blocked entrance to the grounds and fired tear gas on the crowds.

Police imposed a three-month ban [JURIST report] on anti-government protests last month after a political rally by the opposition Movement for Democratic Change [party website] led to police and citizen confrontations around the country. Political tensions have run high in Zimbabwe [JURIST news archive] especially since Mugabe announced in December that he planned to extend his presidency from 2008 to 2010 to correspond with parliamentary elections. AP has more.

[JURIST] After initial expressions of concern and regret [JURIST report], several top Japanese politicians said over the weekend they would ignore a proposed US House of Representatives resolution [text; H Res 121 summary] calling for Japan to apologize to "comfort women" used by the Japanese army as sex slaves during World War II. Hidenao Nakagawa [official profile], secretary general of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party [official website], and Foreign Minister Taro Aso [official website] both shrugged off the resolution as a shrewd political move to strain political relations between Japan and the US. Aso said he believes either North Korea or China were the motivating force behind the resolution's creation.

The resolution urges Japan to apologize to women who were forced into sexual slavery during World War II. The "comfort women" [Amnesty International backgrounder] include almost 200,000 Chinese, Korean, Indonesian, Taiwanese and Philippine women the Japanese enslaved to serve their soldiers in army brothels. AFP has more.

[JURIST] The Iraqi judge responsible for sentencing Saddam Hussein [JURIST news archive] to death is not seeking political asylum in Great Britain, according to the Iraqi High Tribunal [official website] Sunday. Judge Rauf Rasheed Abdel-Rahman [BBC profile; JURIST news archive] has been in London since December but reportedly confirmed to the tribunal that he does not intend to apply for asylum for himself or his family, despite a Friday Aljazeera TV report to the contrary.

In November 2006 Abdel-Rahman, a Kurd, sentenced Hussein to death [JURIST report] for crimes against humanity committed in the town of Dujail in 1982. Hussein was executed [JURIST report] on December 30. AFP has more.

[JURIST] South Carolina US senators Lindsey Graham and Jim DeMint [official websites], both Republicans, have angrily criticized a Democrat-sponsored proposal to transfer current prisoners held at the US base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba to the state's penal system or facilities in any other US state. Graham claimed the suggestion was a dangerous and emotionally fueled one which ignored the ongoing need for the current offshore military prison to house top terror suspects.

Democrat James Moran (VA - D) [official website] has suggested that the move would be a step towards shutting down the controversial military prison, and would help show the world that America is still dedicated to protecting human rights, even those of suspected terrorists. Moran has proposed South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia and Maryland as possible destinations for the detainees because of the reputation of the US Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals [official website] as staunchly conservative. From South Carolina, The State has local coverage.

[JURIST] A Libyan court Sunday granted the defense team for six foreign medics [JURIST news archive] accused of slandering police agents an additional two weeks to prepare for trial. Five Bulgarian nurses and one Palestinian doctor were sentenced to death [JURIST report] in December for deliberately infecting 426 children with the HIV virus. The medics have maintained that they were tortured [Human Rights Watch report] by Libyan police officers into admitting guilt, and those claims prompted the slander charges. Earlier this month the Secretary of the Libyan Foreign Affairs Committee [official website, in Arabic] Suleiman Shahoumi indicated that the medics will not be executed [JURIST news report], but they still face up to three years in prison on the slander charges. The medics have so far refused to retract their accusations. The slander trial will reconvene on March 25. AFP has more.

The medics were imprisoned in Libya in 1999, but say they are innocent and are being scapegoated for unsanitary conditions in the Benghazi hospital where they worked. An independent report [text, PDF] by leading experts including Luc Montagnier, who co-discovered the HIV virus, supported their claim. International medical and human rights groups have vigorously criticized Libya's treatment of the prisoners.

[JURIST] A revised version of a controversial bill granting amnesty to groups that allegedly committed war crimes [JURIST news archive] was signed into law Saturday by Afghan President Hamid Karzai [BBC profile; JURIST news archive] after being approved [JURIST report] earlier in the day by the Afghan parliament, which includes many former militia leaders. The resolution bars the state from independently prosecuting individuals for war crimes absent accusation from an alleged victim. It also extends immunity to all groups involved in pre-2002 conflicts, as opposed to only leaders of various factions alleged to have committed war crimes during the 1980s resistance against Soviet forces and war crimes committed during the country's civil war [CNN backgrounder]. The Taliban and other human rights violators active before the establishment of the December 2001 Interim Administration in Afghanistan are protected under the bill. Critics say the law may violate Afghanistan's constitution [text] as well as certain international human rights treaties. MPs opposing the bill reportedly were threatened by former militiamen in the national assembly.

Both houses of the Afghan parliament initially approved a resolution calling for amnesty [JURIST report] for leaders in February. That resolution drew some popular support [JURIST report] but was criticized by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights [JURIST report] and other rights advocates. Afghanistan's highest body of Islamic clerics also opposed the issuance of a blanket amnesty, arguing that the perpetrators of war crimes can only gain forgiveness from the victims and not the parliament. IRIN has more.