[JURIST] US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales [official profile] and White House counsel Harriet Miers [official profile] were deeply involved in discussions about the firings of federal prosecutors [JURIST news archive], according to testimony [statement text] Thursday from former Gonzales chief of staff Kyle Sampson [official profile] before the Senate Judiciary Committee [official website]. Sampson, who resigned earlier this month [DOJ press release], said that staff made recommendations but Miers and Gonzales ultimately made the decisions about the firings. He also recalled that Gonzales had attended an important meeting to discuss the firings on November 27, 2006 - 10 days before they were carried out.

The administration has insisted that the US Attorneys were fired for poor performance [JURIST report], but Sampson Thursday characterized the difference between "political" and "performance-related" reasons for dismissal as "largely artificial." He denied the dismissals were intended to discourage US Attorneys from prosecuting corruption cases that might hurt the Bush administration, but said federal prosecutors serve at the president's pleasure and are judged in large part on how in sync they are with administration policy.

The Justice Department [official website] admitted Wednesday that it gave senators inaccurate information about the firings and presidential political adviser Karl Rove's role in trying to secure a US attorney's post in Arkansas for one of his former aides, Tim Griffin [Raw Story report]. Also Wednesday, Justice officials said a Feb. 23 letter sent to four Democratic senators wrongly stated that the department was not aware of Rove's involvement. AP has more.

[JURIST] British resident and Iraqi citizen Bisher al-Rawi [Wikipedia profile] is scheduled for release from the military prison at Guantanamo Bay [JURIST news archive], according to a statement by UK Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett [official profile] in Parliament Thursday. Held as an enemy combatant at Guantanamo since its opening nearly five years ago, al-Rawi will be returned to the UK as soon as security and transportation is finalized.

Al-Rawi and Jamil al-Banna [Wikipedia profile], also a UK resident, were originally suspected of ties to al-Qaida because of their alleged connection with radical Muslim cleric Abu Qatada [BBC profile]. The men were arrested returning to the UK from Gambia with a suspicious electronic device, which they claimed was a battery charger. They were taken into US custody, flown to Cairo on a rendition flight [JURIST news archive], and held incommunicado for 2 months in Afghanistan before they eventually ended up at Guantanamo. The British government agreed to help secure al Rawi's release [JURIST report] last year but al-Rawi was nonetheless involved in a lawsuit brought by a group of detainees who held British residency before being detained seeking to force the UK government to lobby for their release. That attempt was unsuccessful in the British courts [JURIST report]. AP has more.

[JURIST] Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe [official website, English version] denied Thursday that the Japanese government had pressured a Shinto shrine to honor war criminals after the National Diet Library [official website] released documents suggesting that the government was deeply involved in the decision. A document dated January 1969 shows the Yasukuni shrine [shrine website; JURIST news archive] consulted the government about listing the names of 14 top war criminals, including wartime premier Hideki Tojo [Wikipedia profile], without publicizing their inclusion. Another document dated April 1958 indicates the welfare ministry asked the shrine to list the names of hundreds of lower-ranking war criminals so that their inclusion would not be noticeable. Abe said the government only provided information and that the shrine, which is a private institution, made the final decision on which names to list.

The Yasukuni shrine honors over 2.5 million deceased Japanese soldiers, including leaders labeled by the allied powers as WWII war criminals. In February, eleven South Koreans filed a lawsuit [JURIST report] asking the Tokyo District Court to order the removal of their relatives' names from the shrine. Last year, a Tokyo judge dismissed [JURIST report] a lawsuit filed by South Korean families seeking damages for affronting the dignity of South Korean soldiers by recording their names in the shrine, but the judge said including the names on the shrine was a standard administrative procedure that did not harm the plaintiffs or violate their ethnic or religious dignity. Plaintiffs in several other lawsuits have argued [JURIST report] that visits to the war shrine by former Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi [official profile] violated the principle of separation of church and state contained in the Japanese constitution [text], but Japanese courts have largely ruled in the former prime minister's favor. AFP has more.

[JURIST] The Maryland Senate [General Assembly website] passed a bill Wednesday to ignore the US Electoral College [official website] in presidential elections, instead awarding the state's 10 electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote. Currently, the state's 10 votes go to the candidate who won the popular vote in Maryland [JURIST news archive]. The Senate approved SB 634 [text, PDF] by a 29-to-17 vote, and it now goes to the state House [HB 148 text, PDF]. The plan would only go into action if enough states representing a majority of the nation's 538 electoral votes adopt it, making it unlikely that it would be in effect by next year's presidential election.

Other states are also considering the plan as a way to avoid a situation where a candidate wins the popular vote but loses the election, as happened with Democrat Al Gore in 2000. The Arkansas House approved a similar idea [Harrison Daily Times report] last week. AP has more.

[JURIST] A Japanese court threw out a lawsuit by a group of Japanese abandoned in China as children [Kyoto Journal backgrounder] after Japan's defeat in World War II, officials said Thursday. Plaintiffs had alleged that the government was responsible for delaying their return to Japan [JURIST news archive] by decades and, upon their return, denying them adequate state support. They sought 5.54 billion yen in compensation, according to a court spokesman. Presiding Judge Nobuaki Watanabe held that attempts to bring Japanese children at the close of the war were indeed "insufficient," but that government policy toward the orphans could not be considered "extremely irrational."

In January, a Tokyo District court denied compensation to 40 war orphans, and a similar claim was rejected by an Osaka court in 2005 [JURIST reports]. In December 2006, a group of 61 former war orphans won a suit [JURIST report] demanding 468 million yen in compensation. Thousands of Japanese children were abandoned in China as their parents fled the country to escape the approach of former Soviet troops at the end of the war in 1945; many children were later adopted by Chinese citizens. In 1972, about 2,500 "war orphans" returned to Japan after after the country normalized relations with China. In 1994, the Japanese government passed legislation providing financial assistance to Japanese nationals who returned to Japan. The 168 plaintiffs were among 2,200 war orphans who have filed suits in 15 courts in Japan. The China Post has more.

[JURIST] Mexican Attorney General Eduardo Medina Mora [official profile] Wednesday called on US law enforcement to take action to stop the flow of guns and drug money from the United States into Mexico [JURIST news archive]. Mora told a gathering of business leaders that many of the arms used in the country's drug related killings were smuggled from the US and added that US drug sales provide a constant supply of cash to cartels. It is estimated that Mexican cartels earn between $10-30 billion on the sale of cocaine, heroin, marijuana and methamphetamine to US users.

Since taking office in December, Mexican President Felipe Calderon [official website; BBC profile] has made drug enforcement a priority. Earlier this month, US and Mexican drug enforcement agents made the world's largest drug-cash seizure, finding $205.6 million in dollar bills and $1.5 million worth of pesos hidden in the walls of a Mexico City home. AP has more.

[JURIST] Human Rights Watch (HRW) [advocacy website] issued a report [text; press release] Thursday detailing abuse and torture suffered by seven former Guantanamo Bay [JURIST news archive] detainees at the hands of Russian law enforcement agencies since their release from US custody in 2004. The seven men were released from Guantanamo Bay after it was determined they had no ties to the Taliban and were extradited to their home country of Russia. Three of the men claim they were tortured and beaten, and all seven say they were detained and harassed. Four have since gone into hiding to avoid further abuse.

A lawyer for former detainee Rasul Kudayev [Wikipedia profile] said his client was beaten to extract a confession. The report claims that two others, Ravil Gumarov and Timur Ishmuratov [Wikipedia profiles], who were sentenced last year to 13 and 11 years in prison after confessing to blowing up a natural gas pipeline, were also beaten until they confessed. The men had been acquitted in an earlier trial. HRW notes that the Convention against Torture [text] prohibits a nation from sending a detainee back to a country where he is at risk of torture and called on the US to abide by the treaty. Some 360 former detainees have been released from Guantanamo Bay since the facility opened in 2002. The United States maintains that it does not track detainees once they are released, but obtains assurances that they will be treated humanely once extradited. AP has more.

[JURIST] A Muslim woman filed a federal lawsuit Wednesday against a judge who asked her to remove her niqab [Wikipedia backgrounder; JURIST news archive] in court, claiming the request violated her First Amendment [text] right to practice her religion. In the lawsuit, Ginnnah Muhammad alleges that state small claims Judge Paul Paruk [31st District Court website] said he had to see her face to gauge her veracity and threatened to dismiss her case if she refused to remove her veil. Muhammad's claim against Paruk also cites the federal Civil Rights Act of 1964 [text] in alleging that she was denied access to the courts because of her religion.

The niqab has become a controversial topic recently, as lawmakers struggle to balance an individual's right to practice their religion with public policy concerns. In the UK, the High Court in February upheld [JURIST report] a school ban on students wearing niqabs in class, saying the veils could interfere with student-teacher interaction. A UK teacher's aide last October announced plans to appeal a lower UK court's decision [JURIST report] rejecting her discrimination claims against her school for refusing to let her wear a niqab in the classroom. Last month it was reported that a panel of senior UK judges had approved new courtroom rules that would ban full Islamic veils in the courts [JURIST report]. AP has more.

[JURIST] JURIST and the University of Pittsburgh School of Law are hosting a one-day conference in Pittsburgh on Thursday in celebration of JURIST's 10th anniversary. Law as a Seamless Web|site [conference website] features four panels [agenda] and 14 distinguished speakers [profiles] exploring a range of issues at the intersections of law, war, rights, social justice, technology, legal journalism, legal education and public service.

Speakers include:

• Jonathan Freiman - habeas counsel for Jose Padilla and Senior Schell Fellow, Yale Law School;
  
• Marjorie Cohn - President, National Lawyers Guild and Professor, Thomas Jefferson School of Law;
  
• David Crane - former Chief Prosecutor for the UN Special Court for Sierra Leone and Professor, Syracuse University College of Law;
  
• Geoffrey Corn - former Law of War Advisor to the US Army JAG and Professor, South Texas College of Law;
  
• Sherrilyn Ifill - Professor, University of Maryland School of Law;
  
• Tony Mauro - Supreme Court correspondent, American Lawyer Media;
  
• Tim Stanley - CEO, Justia and Co-founder and former CEO, FindLaw;
  
• Ed Adams - Editor and Publisher, ABA Journal;
  
• Jim Chen - Dean, Brandeis Law School, University of Louisville;
  
• Nancy Rapoport - Professor, University of Houston Law Center;
  
• John Palfrey - Executive Director, Berkman Center for Internet & Society, Harvard Law School; and
  
• Conrad Johnson - Professor and Co-founder, Lawyering in the Digital Age Clinic, Columbia Law School

• Ethan Katsh - Director, Center for Information Technology and Dispute Resolution, University of Massachusetts Amherst; and
  
• Charles Bierbauer - former CNN Supreme Court correspondent and Dean, College of Mass Communications and Information Studies at the University of South Carolina

[JURIST] A judge in Ecuador on Wednesday reinstated 57 members of the legislature who had been dismissed [JURIST report] earlier this month by the country's Supreme Electoral Tribunal [official website, in Spanish]. The reinstatements came one week after Ecuador swore in 21 replacement legislators [JURIST report] in order to establish a quorum for future legislative sessions. The controversy began when the unicameral Ecuadorean Congress [official website, in Spanish] and President Rafael Correa [official website, in Spanish; BBC profile] submitted to the tribunal differing versions of a referendum on amending the constitution [JURIST report]. The tribunal accepted Correa's version, which permitted the constitutional assembly to retroactively fire legislators. In turn, the 57 legislators voted to dismiss four of the tribunal members, prompting the tribunal to fire the 57 [JURIST report] for illegally interfering with their decision. Ecuador's Constitutional Tribunal [official website] then rejected the lawmaker's appeal [JURIST report], leading to violence between the fired lawmakers and police as the lawmakers attempted to enter Congress last Tuesday. Correa called Wednesday's ruling "illegitimate" as thousands of his supporters rallied outside the presidential palace. Reuters has more.

In January, Correa became the eighth president [JURIST report] of Ecuador [JURIST news archive] in ten years on a platform promising to overhaul the nation's economy to fight poverty. Correa has characterized the Congress as a "sewer of corruption" and has expressed admiration for the policies of Venezuela's Hugo Chavez [JURIST news archive].

[JURIST] The Russian Supreme Court [official website, in Russian] ruled Wednesday that the Russian Peace Party was too small to be considered a legitimate political party under a 2004 law and should be shut down. According to the Federal Registration Service [official website], Peace Party membership had fallen below a legal minimum that went into effect on January 1, meaning that it must either re-register as a different organization or cease operations. RIA-Novosti reported that the Peace Party had around 45,000 members and 35 regional branches.

Last week, the Russian high court ordered [JURIST report] the Republican Party [party website, in Russian] to be shut down for being too small under the same law. Republican Party co-Chairman Vladimir Ryzhkov [personal website, in Russian] said the decision was an attack orchestrated by the party's opposition and an example of the systematic persecution the party had encountered across the country. Ryzhkov said the party will appeal the decision to the Collegium of the Supreme Court, and, if unsuccessful, then to the European Court of Human Rights [official website] in Strasbourg. Last week, prosecutors asked the Moscow Municipal Court to ban the far-right National Bolshevik Party [official website] and suspend the party's activities pending a ruling. Critics say the membership minimums are intended to force opposition parties out of existence and thus consolidate President Vladimir Putin's grip on power. Russia holds parliamentary elections in December and a presidential vote next March. AP has more.