[JURIST] Iranian diplomat Jalal Sharafi has claimed that CIA operatives tortured him after he was kidnapped and detained in Iraq [BBC report] two months ago. According to Iranian state television Saturday, Sharafi, who was released last week, said CIA officials asked him about Iran's relationship with Iraq and various Iraqi groups and then tortured him when he said Iran [JURIST news archive] had only an official relationship with Iraq [JURIST news archive].

US officials say the CIA did not play a role in Sharafi's disappearance or detention. AP has more.

[JURIST] A US judge ruled Friday that an anti-Castro militant allegedly behind the 1976 bombing of a Cuban airliner [Wikipedia backgrounder; additional materials] should be released on bail, which was set at $350,000. Luis Posada Carriles [Wikipedia profile; additional materials; JURIST news archive], 78, a former CIA operative trained by the US for the failed anti-Castro Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961, snuck into the Miami area in 2005 and was subsequently arrested [JURIST report] for immigration violations.

US District Judge Kathleen Cardone said Carriles was not a flight risk given his age and ties to the community. Nevertheless, he remains in prison while federal prosecutors consider an appeal. Carriles was due to be deported for entering the US illegally, but a US immigration judge delayed [JURIST report] his deportation in 2005, determining that he could not be sent to Venezuela, where he is a naturalized citizen, or to Cuba, the country of his birth, for fears that he would be tortured. Carriles is wanted in both countries on terrorism charges, and Venezuela was particularly incensed [JURIST report] at the denial of its extradition requests. Reuters has more.

[JURIST] Agence France-Presse (AFP) [corporate website] and Google [corporate website] Friday settled a landmark copyright infringement lawsuit [JURIST report] which the French news agency filed two years ago against the Internet giant for automatically pulling and displaying photos, headlines and leads of news stories from the websites of AFP subscribers. The agreement will allow Google to post AFP content on its popular news service. Further details are not available to the public.

Yahoo! also uses AFP material in its Yahoo News! [website] news aggregator service, but pays AFP a fee. Last year, Google signed a licensing agreement with American news agency Associated Press [corporate website] in which Google agreed to pay for AP content. The Financial Times has more.

[JURIST] The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit [official website] issued an emergency stay of an federal injunction Friday, hours after US District Judge Claude M. Hilton of the Eastern District of Virgina issued the partial order prohibiting leading Internet phone service Vonage [corporate website] from subscribing new customers. On March 8, a federal jury returned a verdict finding that Vonage had violated [Verizon press release; Vonage press release] three voice-over-Internet Protocol [FCC backgrounder] patents held by Verizon Communications, Inc. [corporate website], awarding Verizon $58 million dollars in compensation plus future royalties amounting to 5.5 percent of Vonage's revenues if Vonage continues to use the patented technology. Hilton issued the partial injunction early Friday, saying it was appropriate to prevent Vonage from using the patented technology to attract more customers away from Verizon. Hilton, stating that he did not wish to irreparably harm Vonage's business, issued the partial injunction as a less severe punishment than one he initially proposed, which would would have disrupted phone service for Vonage's 2.2 million existing customers. Vonage lawyers argued in response that the ruling would "slowly strangle" Vonage because it would be unable to compensate for customers that routinely switch services in the highly competitive industry. Vonage lawyers projected that the phone service would lose approximately 650,000 subscribers over the course of next year.

Verizon has a week to respond to the emergency stay, and the appellate court will decide whether to allow Vonage to continue subscribing new customers. The Washington Post has more. AP has additional coverage.

[JURIST] Chinese Foreign Ministry [official website] spokesperson Qin Gang blasted [statement, in Chinese] a new human rights report released by the US Department of State [official website] as being inconsistent with "basic facts" Saturday, characterizing it as unsubstantiated and slanderous to the human rights conditions in China [JURIST news archive]. The annual report [text, PDF] on US efforts to support human rights and democracy abroad was delivered to Congress Thursday in compliance with the FY 03 Foreign Relations Authorization Act [backgrounder]. The report criticized the Chinese Communist Party (CPC) for suppressing the human rights of those "perceived to threaten the legitimacy or authority" of the party; Qin responded that China has received international acclaim for its protection of human rights, freedom of expression and fundamental liberties of all of its various ethnic groups. Qin noted that there is a consensus amongst the international community that the "United States is not in the position to depict itself as a human rights watchdog," and that the United States should examine its own human rights practices, and refrain from applying double or multiple standards as a pretext to intervene in the domestic affairs of states. Qin stated that doing so would remove the barriers between serious interstate dialogue concerning human rights.

The report, the fifth annual submission, is intended to complement the annual Country Reports on Human Rights Practices [text, 2006 reports], which highlight and publicize foreign rights abuses. Since 1998, the People's Republic of China (PRC) has published a responsive annual report titled the Human Rights Record of the United States [text, 2006 report]. AP has more. Xinhua has local coverage.

[JURIST] Monica M. Goodling [JURIST news archive], one of the key aides who took part in planning the firings of eight US Attorneys [JURIST news archive] who was formerly on voluntary leave from her post as special counsel to the US Attorney General, submitted her resignation without cause Friday. Goodling's resignation, effective Saturday, is the third by a Department of Justice official involved in the controversy. On Tuesday, Goodling told the House Judiciary Committee [official website] that she would not speak to the committee about her role in the firings [JURIST report], and stated through her lawyer, John Dowd, that she would seek protection under the Fifth Amendment if the committee issued her a subpoena. Documents and records released by the DOJ [JURIST report] in late March show that Goodling participated in multiple meetings planning the firings over a period of 12 months. Goodling was also involved in a April 6, 2006 telephone conversation with Sen. Pete Domenici (R-NM) [official profile]. Domenici had complained to the Bush administration concerning the speed of former Albuquerque US Attorney David Iglesias' investigation of local Democrats before the November 2006 elections. Dowd characterized any questioning of his client a "perjury trap" while citing the recent conviction of Lewis Libby [JURIST report] in the CIA leak case [JURIST news archive].

On Monday, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) [official website], chair of the US Senate Judiciary Committee [official website], rejected attempts [JURIST report] by the Bush administration to move up the date that US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales [official profile] is scheduled to testify. In March, Kyle Sampson [official profile], former chief of staff to Gonzales, who had resigned [DOJ press release], told the Senate Judiciary Committee that the prosecutors were fired for political reasons [JURIST report] rather than for poor performance as the Justice Department has claimed [JURIST report]. AP has more.