[JURIST] The American Bar Association (ABA) [profession website] Friday criticized a US Department of Justice proposal [motion, PDF; brief, PDF] that lawyers for Guantanamo Bay detainees should be subject to tightened restrictions [proposed protective order, PDF], including limited access to their client and evidence. ABA President Karen J. Mathis said in a statement [text]:

The ability of lawyers to confer with their clients and advocate for justice for those clients is a deeply imbedded [sic] principle of American democracy. Arbitrary restrictions concerning the number of times and the ways that lawyers may confer with their clients in Guantanamo, or in any court, would threaten competent representation without at all advancing national security. The principles of freedom, due process and justice are too critical to our national character to be abandoned in any manner.

[JURIST] A parliamentary vote on the only candidate running to be the next president of Turkey ran into a legal challenge Friday after Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul [official website; Wikipedia profile; JURIST news archive], a member of the ruling Islamist-rooted Justice and Development Party (AKP) [party website, in Turkish; Wikipedia backgrounder] fell 10 votes short of a requisite majority in the first round of balloting. Turkey's constitution [text] authorizes three rounds of presidential voting: a first round where a two-thirds majority of 367 out of 550 seats is needed; a second round, which is scheduled for next Wednesday, where the same two-thirds majority is needed; and a third round, scheduled for May 9, where a simple majority of 276 seats is needed. The opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) [Wikipedia backgrounder] boycotted Friday's vote, as they feel Turkey's president should be entirely secular, and immediately challenged [AFP report] the results in Turkey's Constitutional Court [official website], arguing that the constitutional provision required a quorum for Friday's vote to be official and lead to a second round. The AKP will argue that the usual quorum of 184 legislators was enough to begin the session.

Meanwhile the secularist Turkish army [official website] released a statement Friday threatening to use force if Gul is elected [Times report]. The EU, human rights groups, and the US [Reuters reports] condemned the coup threat and called on Turkey to solve the dispute over Gul's candidacy by constitutional means. The Turkish Daily News has local coverage.

[JURIST] A spokesman for the Cambodian Bar Association (BAKC) said Saturday that the group would dramatically reduce the fees it proposed to levy on foreign lawyers taking part in the upcoming Khmer Rouge genocide trials [JURIST news archive] before the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia [official website]. Foreign lawyers will now to be required to pay a one-time flat fee of $500, down from an earlier combined rate of over $2700 comprised of a membership fee, a fee of $2000 payable on case assignment, and a monthly fee of $200. The initial fee structure had prompted concerns from rights NGOs [JURIST report] and foreign judges on the court that it would discourage volunteer lawyers from offering their services and would prompt complaints that defendants had not been given a free choice of counsel; some observers had feared that it would stymie the tribunal [JURIST report], which has already faced criticism for process delays. Bar Association representative Nou Tharith told a news conference that "The decision to lower the fees reflects the true willingness of the Cambodian Bar Association to allow the process of the tribunal to move forward as quickly as possible." A tribunal spokesman quoted by AP said that the decision of the bar association was a "very positive development." AP has more.

Cambodia's 1975-79 Khmer Rouge [MIPT backgrounder] regime was responsible for the deaths of over 1.7 million people from genocide, disease and malnutrition. The ECCC was created to investigate and prosecute instances of human rights violations by a 2001 agreement between Cambodia and the UN. Prosecutors are expected to indict about 10 defendants; trials which were initially expected to begin in mid-2007 have already been delayed for several months [JURIST report] due to disagreements over procedural rules.