[JURIST] A lawyer for the Palestinian doctor jailed and allegedly tortured with five Bulgarian nurses for allegedly purposely infecting children with HIV in Libya said Tuesday that he intends to file a complaint with the UN Human Rights Committee [official website] against Libya for the abuse Ashraf Alhajouj says he suffered while in detention. Alhajouj's lawyer told Reuters that the complaint will be filed "in September over his torture, delayed proceedings and abuse of evidence among other things." The UN complaint will be filed despite a recent report that the medics were only permitted to leave Libya because they signed documents releasing their right to sue Tripoli for torture [EUObserver report].

The medics - five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor given Bulgarian citizenship - were released by Libyan authorities in late July under the pretense that they would serve their life sentences [JURIST reports] in Bulgaria. Bulgarian President Georgi Parvanov immediately pardoned the six medics, a move that brought criticism [JURIST report] from both Libya and the Libyan Association for the Families of HIV-Infected Children. The medics, who have consistently maintained their innocence and accused Libyan authorities of eliciting confessions through torture [HRW report], have indicated they will testify against 11 Libyan police officers facing torture charges [JURIST report] in Bulgaria. Reuters has more.

[JURIST] The defense in the Jose Padilla [JURIST news archive] terror trial rested its case Tuesday without Padilla's lawyers calling any witnesses. Padilla did not testify in the trial, nor did co-defendants Adham Amin Hassoun and Kifah Wael Jayyousi [GlobalSecurity profiles]. Jurors heard testimony from six witnesses called by lawyers representing Padilla's co-defendants, but Padilla's lawyers said last week that they did not plan on calling any witnesses [JURIST report].

Padilla, Hassoun, and Jayyousi are accused [JURIST report] of being a part of an Islamic fundamentalist terrorist support network and conspiring to murder US nationals. Padilla, a US citizen, was arrested in 2002 at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport and subsequently detained as an "enemy combatant" [JURIST news archive] at a Navy military brig in Charleston, South Carolina. Initially accused of planning to set off a "dirty bomb" in the United States, Padilla went from enemy combatant to criminal defendant when he was finally charged with other offenses in November 2005. Padilla was transferred to civilian custody [JURIST report] in January 2006 and has pleaded not guilty [JURIST report] to the charges. Reuters has more.

[JURIST] China has not kept its promises to improve human rights and press freedom in preparation for the 2008 Olympics [official website] slated to open next August in Beijing, according to a new report [text; press release] released Tuesday by Amnesty International [advocacy website]. Amnesty said that the Chinese government had recently committed an increasing number of rights abuses against political and religious opponents:

While positive steps have been made in some limited areas, namely reform of the death penalty system and greater reporting freedom for foreign journalists in China, Amnesty International remains concerned that these are overshadowed by other negative developments – in particular the growing crackdown on Chinese human rights activists and journalists as well as the continued use of 'Re-education through Labour' (RTL) and other forms of detention without trial. Official statements suggest that the Olympics are being used to justify such repression in the name of 'harmony' or 'social stability' rather than acting as a catalyst for reform. Global experience shows that the best way to ensure social stability is to ensure the protection of fundamental human rights based on the rule of law.

[JURIST] The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled [opinion, PDF] Monday that the state of California acted unconstitutionally by threatening criminal prosecution and shutting down websites that incorporated vote-swapping mechanisms prior to the 2000 US presidential election, holding that the "websites' vote-swapping mechanisms as well as the communication and vote swaps they enabled were constitutional protected" speech under the First Amendment. The court rejected the state's argument that its anti-corruption and anti-fraud interest justified the threats, saying that vote-swapping did not entail "illicit financial transactions such as the buying of votes" and that the state "failed to demonstrate that the burden imposed on constitutional protected activity by the disabling" of the vote-swapping was not "greater than was essential" to the furtherance of California's anti-fraud interests. According to the court, the websites "repeatedly warned users that fraud was possible and advised them to take steps to reassure themselves that they could trust their matched counterparts."

The websites encouraged voters to address the "peculiarities of the American electoral system" by pairing "third-party supporters in a swing state such as Florida or Ohio to agree to be paired with major-party supporters in a 'safe state' such as Massachusetts or Texas," to vote for the other's preferred candidate. The goal was to allow a major-party candidate to perform better in the electoral college without hurting the third-party candidate's national popular vote. AP has more.

[JURIST] The Hanoi People's Court on Tuesday convicted nine defendants, including three former Vietnamese government officials, of gambling and bribery charges [JURIST report]. Bui Tien Deng, a former project management head in the Ministry of Transportation [official website], was sentenced to 13 years in prison for placing bets totaling $760,000 on European soccer matches and subsequently attempting to cover up the bets the by paying a bribe of $68,000. Seven other defendants were issued sentences ranging from three to seven years for bribery and gambling, while a single defendant received a two-year suspended sentence for bribery.

Dung, who headed the Project Manage Unit (PMU) 18, had faced a maximum punishment of death for bribery and up to 20 years in prison for gambling. The PMU 18 is responsible for the construction of roads and bridges across Vietnam. The gambling-bribery scandal has resulted in the resignation [VOA report] of Transportation Minister Dao Hinh Binh and the arrest of his deputy Nguyen Viet Tien. BBC News has more.

[JURIST] Ukraine [JURIST news archive] became the first Eastern European country to offer its jails to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) [official website; JURIST news archive] on Tuesday, as the two bodies signed an enforcement of sentences agreement [press release] under which Ukraine agreed to imprison convicted criminals in the country. Until Tuesday, only the Western European countries of Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Norway, Spain, Sweden, and the UK had agreed to do so.

ICTY suspects are held at a detention unit [ICTY backgrounder] in The Hague during trial, and are then moved to one of the 12 offering countries after conviction. AP has more.

[JURIST] The Basmanny District Court in Moscow issued a new arrest warrant Tuesday for exiled business tycoon Boris Berezovsky [BBC profile; JURIST news archive] on charges that he allegedly embezzled an additional $13 million in credit funds from SBS-Agro Bank [EBRD profile], which he then owned, to purchase real estate in southern France. The UK has already denied repeated requests from Russia for the Berezovsky's extradition, as diplomatic tensions between the two countries rise. The new charges [JURIST report] were brought last week, with the Moscow City Court ordering the seizure of Berezovsky's French manor.

These are the latest in a series of charges brought against the Russian billionaire and alleged coup plotter. Earlier this month, a Moscow court began trying Berezovsky in absentia [JURIST report] for allegedly embezzling millions from Russian national airline Aeroflot [corporate website]. Berezovsky left Russia in 2001 after falling out of favor with Russian President Vladimir Putin [official website] for vocally opposing the war in Chechnya [Wikipedia backgrounder] and was granted asylum in Great Britain. Russian authorities have demanded that the UK extradite Berezovsky, who is also facing charges of allegedly plotting a coup [JURIST reports] against Putin. AP has more.

[JURIST] A Trinidad court Monday ordered the extradition of three terrorist suspects to the United States for their alleged role in a terrorist bomb plot targeting John F. Kennedy International Airport [official website]. The three suspects - Trinidad national Kareem Ibrahim, and Guyana nationals Abdul Kadir and Abdel Nur - have been charged [criminal complaint, PDF; JURIST report] by US federal prosecutors.

Another suspect, US-naturalized Guyana native Russel Defreitas, is currently in US custody [press release[. The plot is believed to have threatened parts of New York's Queens borough that are situated above an underground fuel pipeline serving the airport. VOA News has more.

[JURIST] The US District Court for the Southern District of New York on Monday ordered [PDF text; NYCLU press release] the Intelligence Division of the New York Police Department (NYPD) [official website] to redact and turn over hundreds of field intelligence reports containing information the NYPD gathered through covert surveillance of organizations planning demonstrations at the 2004 Republican National Convention. Magistrate Judge James C. Francis, IV found that it is "feasible to redact the field intelligence reports as to permit the plaintiffs to review them without revealing the identities of undercover officers or disclosing confidential NYPD tactics and strategies," rejecting the NYPD's blanket assertion that the any release of its field reports would hurt the NYPD's ability to conduct law enforcement in the future. Francis ordered the city to produce the redacted documents and designated the documents as "attorneys'-eyes-only."

The litigation [JURIST report] stems from the New York Civil Liberties Union's efforts to review the NYPD's tactics during the convention, where protesters were fingerprinted and many held in custody until being arraigned instead of the being issued summonses as is customarily done. The NYPD justified its tactics based on information gathered through pre-convention surveillance, but has previously refused to disclose the documents relating to the surveillance. In April 2005, New York City agreed to pay $150 each plus legal fees [JURIST report], totaling approximately $215,000, to 108 protesters who were held after a judge ordered their release. The NYCLU has also forced the NYPD to destroy hundreds of fingerprint records [JURIST report] obtained from peaceful protesters arrested en mass. The New York Times has more.

[JURIST] US District Court Judge Ronald Whyte issued a permanent injunction Monday against a 2005 California law [PDF text] restricting the sale or rental of violent video games to minors, agreeing with the Video Software Dealers Association and the Entertainment Software Association [trade websites] that the law was an unconstitutional infringement on the industry's First Amendment free speech rights. Whyte indicated that while the court was sympathetic to the state's agenda, the restriction cannot stand absent evidence that violent video games are "more harmful than violent television, moves, Internet sites or other speech-related exposures." California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said Monday that his government will appeal the ruling [press release].

The bill, signed into law by Schwarzenegger in October 2005, prohibited the sale or rental of violent video games to minors under the age of 17, and required retailers to label violent games. In December 2005, Whyte issued a temporary injunction [JURIST report] against the enforcement of the law after industry groups filed a lawsuit [JURIST report; EMA backgrounder]. Judges have struck down similar laws as unconstitutional in Michigan, Illinois, Minnesota, and Louisiana [JURIST reports]. Reuters has more.

[JURIST] The UK Foreign & Commonwealth Office [official website] said Tuesday that it has asked the United States to release five Guantanamo Bay detainees [press release] who were legal residents in the UK prior to their detention. The Foreign Office said that the five detainees - Saudi Arabian Shaker Aamer, Jordanian Jamil el Banna, Libyan Omar Deghayes, Ethiopian Binyam Mohamed and Algerian Abdennour Sameur - had been either granted refugee status, indefinite leave or exceptional leave to remain in the UK prior to being detained. The UK government also "welcomed recent steps taken by the US Government to reduce the numbers of those detained at Guantanamo Bay and to move towards the closure of the detention facility."

British officials under the government of former Prime Minister Tony Blair had refused to seek the release of British resident aliens held at Guantanamo Bay [JURIST news archive], and el Banna and Deghayes were among a group of detainees who lost a court bid [JURIST report] to force the UK government to lobby the US for their release. Britain, however, made an exception [JURIST report] for Iraqi citizen Bisher al-Rawi [Wikipedia profile] in 2006 after learning that al-Rawi had previously aided Britain's domestic intelligence agency. Al-Rawi was released [JURIST report] in April after nearly five years in US custody as an enemy combatant. The UK government has said that all UK nationals detained at Guantanamo were returned to the UK by January 2005. AP has more.

[JURIST] The US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit [official website] heard arguments Monday from defense lawyers representing three former Enron Broadband Services [JURIST news archive] executives who are seeking the dismissal of remaining charges after a jury failed to reach a verdict on all counts in their 2005 fraud trial. The three defendants - former VP Scott Yeager, former senior VP Rex Shelby, and former CEO Joseph Hirko [Houston Chronicle profiles] - were initially indicted [PDF text] by federal prosecutors on 164 criminal counts for allegedly overstating the value of the broadband division's software and network to inflate the value of Enron's stock. They were acquitted [JURIST report] on various charges in 2005, but the jury failed to reach a verdict on all counts, and prosecutors later re-indicted [JURIST report] the defendants. Defense lawyers argued Monday that there is no basis for the remaining charges.

Yeager was acquitted of conspiracy, wire fraud, and security fraud, while Shelby and Hirko were acquitted of a few insider trading and money laundering charges. Federal prosecutors are hoping to pursue the remaining insider trading and money laundering charges against Yeager, and the conspiracy, wire fraud, and security fraud charges against Shelby and Hirko. The Houston Chronicle has more.