[JURIST] UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour [official website] Thursday called on [press release] state members of the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) [official website; JURIST news archive] to open their records and allow the Council to adhere to its mandate to serve as an effective watchdog. The organization has been bogged down in debate since its inception over how to effectively conduct the country reviews.

Members of the UNHRC reached an agreement [JURIST report; press release] in June to adopt final, internal rules governing the body. The UNHRC was established in 2006 to replace [JURIST report] the UN Human Rights Commission [official website], which was often criticized for allowing states with poor human rights records to become members. AP has more.

[JURIST] The UN General Assembly Thursday adopted [press release] the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples [text], a non-binding treaty outlining the global human rights [JURIST news archive] of approximately 370 million indigenous people and bans discrimination against them. The General Assembly [official website] passed the measure with the support of an overwhelming majority of member states [list]. Enactment of the treaty has been debated for over two decades.

One hundred forty-three member states voted to adopt the treaty and 11 abstained. Four member states - Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United States - notably voted against adopting the treaty, citing concerns that its text conflicted with their countries' own laws, among other contentions. Canadian UN ambassador John McNee [official website] expressed "significant concerns" [statement text] that the treaty contradicted provisions of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms [text] and did not provide adequate guidance on issues such as implementation. BBC News has more. CBC News has additional coverage.

[JURIST] Canadian chief electoral officer Marc Mayrand [official profile] Thursday resisted calls by Canadian lawmakers to invoke his discretionary powers, reserved for exceptional circumstances, to require women to remove traditional Muslim niqabs or burqas [JURIST news archives] when they vote in by-elections in the province of Quebec on Monday. Mayrand said in testimony [recorded video] before the House of Commons Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs [official website] that his position allowing them to vote accords with the recently passed Bill C-31 [text] on voting procedures, cited by many MPs as an effort to require voters to show their faces. Elections Canada [official website], an independent body that oversees national elections, announced September 6 that Muslim women will be allowed to wear [press release] veils and burqas and will not be required to show their faces [JURIST report] to vote so long as they are able to sufficiently prove their identity with photo IDs or other documentation. During his testimony Thursday, Mayrand sparred with MPs who claimed he was going against the will of the legislature, insisting that a bar "would be a request for me to amend the Act, not uphold the law" and maintaining that it is not his prerogative to "juggle" fundamental constitutional rights.

Earlier this week, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper [official profile] voiced his disapproval [JURIST report] of the administrative decision allowing women to wear traditional Muslim face-covering garb while voting. CBC News has more. The Globe & Mail has additional coverage.

[JURIST] The US Department of Defense released censored audio recordings [MP3 file] of the March 9 Combatant Status Review Tribunal (CSRT) [DOD backgrounder] hearing of accused 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed [BBC profile] Thursday after months of controversy. The recording eliminated 10 of about 40 minutes of Mohammed's testimony [transcript, PDF] in which he said he masterminded the 9/11 attacks [JURIST report] and claimed responsibility for 29 other planned terror attacks. The edited portions reportedly contained Mohammed's rationale for why Islamic extremists have attacked the United States. US government officials said their decision to censor the tape was based on national security concerns, specifically fears that the eliminated portions could be used in terrorist propaganda. The Defense Department had previously refused to release [JURIST report] the audio recordings of Mohammed's testimony in their entirety.

Mohammed and 13 other top terror suspects [DNI profile, PDF] were given closed [JURIST report] CSRT hearings earlier this year at Guantanamo Bay [JURIST news archive] to determine if they qualified as "enemy combatants" [JURIST news archive] subject to indefinite US military detention. The Pentagon has also made audio recordings of the other hearings available online. Mohammed was confirmed as an enemy combatant following his March 9 CSRT hearing [JURIST report; DOD unclassified summary]. He was transferred last September from a secret CIA prison overseas [JURIST report] into military custody at Guantanamo Bay. AP has more.

[JURIST] Kenyan lawmakers have approved a bill limiting the Kenya Anti-Corruption Commission (KACC) [official website] to investigating crimes committed after 2003. The amendment, deleting portions of the 2003 Anti-Corruption and Economic Crimes Act [text], will make it impossible for the commission to continue investigations into some of the country's most notorious corruption cases [JURIST report], involving millions of dollars in a state where most citizens live on less than a dollar a day. One investigation which will be forced to end is the probe of the $1 billion scam known as the Goldenberg Affair [BBC report; Wikipedia backgrounder]. Four senior Kenyan officials and a top businessman were charged for their roles in the case [JURIST report] last year.

Kenyan Justice Minister Martha Karua [Wikipedia profile], who argued against the amendment, called the move a "deadly blow" to the KACC, pointing out that many past economic crimes remained to be investigated. Karua also noted that the lawmaker who proposed the amendment, Paul Muite, was allegedly connected to the Goldenberg scandal. She described Muite's interest in the KACC as "obvious", and his amendment "mischievous". BBC News has more.

[JURIST] A Russian court Thursday upheld a ruling that a new investigation into former Russian oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky [advocacy website; JURIST news archive] and his partner Platon Lebedev [advocacy website] was illegal. The Moscow City Court supported Moscow's Basmanny Court ban on an investigation in Chita into new charges [JURIST report] against the former Yukos Oil [corporate website] executives, which included stealing government shares, expropriating oil, and laundering over $25 billion. Lawyers for the men repeated previous calls that the men should be transferred from the Siberian penal colony in Chita Oblast [Wikipedia backgrounder] to Moscow, a call which Russian prosecutors have ignored [JURIST report], despite a March court order [JURIST report] that was upheld [JURIST report] in April.

Khodorkovsky was convicted of tax evasion [JURIST report] in May 2005, and is currently serving an eight-year prison term. The additional charges, filed against him in February 2007, are based on allegations that Khodorkovsky used his Open Russia Foundation [SourceWatch backgrounder] to divert oil revenues away from Yukos. If convicted on the new charges, Khodorkovsky faces an additional 15 years in prison. Both the United States and Khodorkovsky [JURIST reports] believe the new charges to be politically motivated, a claim which Russia has denied [JURIST report]. RIA Novosti has more.

[JURIST] Authorities in the United Kingdom are endangering the privacy of law-abiding Britons by increasingly using mass surveillance to profile people rather than targeting individual criminal suspects using intelligence-led policing, UK rights group Liberty [advocacy website] concluded in a report [press release] published Thursday. Liberty warned that data-mining in the National Identity Cards Database [enabling legislation] now allows the British government to retain and share unprecedented amounts of individual personal information while the National DNA Database (NDNAD) [Home Office backgrounder] has recently been expanded by taking DNA samples on arrest, rather than on conviction, and moreover shows evidence of racial bias [JURIST report], with 40 percent of the 3.9 million sample database being from black males, compared with only 9 percent being from white males.

Liberty recommended simplifying the procedure for innocent DNA to be removed from the NDNAD, and limiting police ability to expand the database. Liberty is also urging legislation to regulate the UK's use of public CCTV security cameras - which now include 'talking' versions [Daily Mail repprt] - and ensure protection of citizens' personal details. The group additionally insists that authorisations for access to personal communications such as email, mobile and phone calls be subject to judicial review and oversight. Earlier this month a UK judge advocated expanding the NDNAD database [JURIST report] to include all citizens and any visitor to the UK. The Daily Mail has more.

[JURIST] Human Rights Watch [advocacy website] concluded in a report [text] released [press release] Thursday that is unclear whether sex offender laws "do more harm or good," noting that they prevent further harm to children but that they also encourage the harassment and ostracism of sex offenders. The report criticized registration laws as unsuitable for offenders who pose no safety risk, and said that community notification laws often lead to harassment of former sex offenders without increasing neighborhood safety. In other circumstances, residency restrictions, such as protective covenants on housing units and distance restrictions from schools and hospital campuses, "have the effect of banishing registrants from entire urban areas and forcing them to live far from their homes and families."

HRW interviewed victims, offenders, law enforcement and governmental officials, and others over a two-year period leading up to the report. The report cites studies indicating that three-quarters of sex offenders do not repeat their crimes, and that, in some case, even serious sex offenders can be receptive to treatment. Reuters has more.

[JURIST] US Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) [official website] told reporters Wednesday he would lead opposition to the nomination of former US Solicitor General Theodore Olson [firm profile; DOJ profile] to the post of US attorney general. Olson was mentioned as a potential candidate [JURIST report] on a short list floated by the White House earlier this week, but Senate Democrats consider Olson to be overly partisan. Reid threatened to invoke a procedural barrier that would require 60 votes to overcome if necessary to block Olson's confirmation. Reuters has more.

US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales [official profile; JURIST news archive] announced his resignation [letter, PDF; JURIST report] on August 27, saying that it will take effect on September 17 [JURIST report]. His resignation followed months of controversy over the Justice Department's handling of the firings of eight US Attorneys [JURIST news archive] and subsequent allegations that he may have perjured himself [JURIST report] in testimony before Congress. Current Solicitor General Paul Clement [official profile] will serve as acting attorney general until the Senate confirms a new permanent official.

[JURIST] Negotiations have collapsed in Iraq over a controversial oil bill [JURIST news archive] that would govern the distribution and refinement process and give the national government control over oil revenue, the New York Times reported Thursday. The bill, which the Iraqi cabinet approved [JURIST report] in February, is now in jeopardy due to a conflict between the Iraqi oil minister and officials from the Kurdish north, where most Iraqi oil is located. In recent weeks, Kurdish officials have signed oil contracts with foreign companies even though the federal oil law is not in place, prompting others to doubt Kurdish commitment to following the federal law. Kurds have proceeded to sign contracts pursuant to their own regional oil law, which they say is constitutional under Article 112 of the Iraqi Constitution [constitution text]; according to that article, regional law preempts federal law when a conflict arises between the two. Kurdish officials also say their regional law is constitutional under Article 109, which decrees that "oil and gas is the property of all the Iraqi people in all the regions and governorates." The New York Times has more.

The oil law is one of 18 benchmarks established by the US Congress to measure US success in the Iraq mission. Several recent reports, including the White House's Initial Benchmark Assessment Report [text; JURIST report] and a report [text, PDF; summary] released in September by the US Government Accountability Office, conclude that the Iraqi Government has not met most of the legislative, security, and economic benchmarks. In March, associates of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki [BBC profile] said passage of the draft law is key to continued US support [JURIST report] of the current government.

[JURIST] Serbia will increase efforts to locate and arrest several war criminals to curry a favorable report from Carla Del Ponte, chief prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) [official website] when she advises EU officials on pending pre-membership deal with the country, a Serb liaison official said Wednesday. Del Ponte has heaped criticism on Serbia for failing to bring to justice several accused war criminals who are believed to be hiding in Serbia, including former Bosnian Serb commander Ratko Mladic [ICTY backgrounder; JURIST news archive], former Croatian Serb rebel leader Goran Hadzic [JURIST report], and Bosnian Serb police commander Stojan Zupljanin [ICTY indictment].

On Monday, the European Union said [JURIST report] it would sign a pre-membership aid and economic deal with Serbia only if Del Ponte's report indicates Serbia has cooperated with the ICTY. Previous negotiations were put on hold [JURIST report] for more than 13 months after Del Ponte determined Belgrade was not actively pursuing wanted fugitives. The EU and Serbia reopened membership talks after the Serbian government renewed efforts to capture Mladic. The renewed efforts led to the arrest of Mladic's former intelligence officer, Zdravko Tolimir [JURIST report]. Del Ponte's report is expected some time after September 24. AP has more.

[JURIST] A federal law allowing prison officials to indefinitely commit sex offenders to a mental hospital following their prison term is unconstitutional, a federal judge ruled Wednesday, effectively freeing five convicted sex offenders pending the government's filing of a motion to stay the order. Senior US District Court Judge Earl Britt [official profile] of the US Eastern District of North Carolina [official website] struck down the section of the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act of 2006 [text] allowing prosecutors to request that a sex offender be committed to a mental hospital upon "clear and convincing evidence" that the person is "sexually dangerous" and thus likely to commit the crime in the future. Britt ruled that Congress does not have the power to influence outcomes of criminal proceedings that fall under the exclusive jurisdiction of state courts.

In 1997, the Supreme Court in Kansas v. Hendricks [text] upheld a state civil commitment process as constitutional. The Kansas statute at issue allowed the state to confine, in a state mental hospital, sexually violent criminal offenders who are found to have a "mental abnormality" that poses a danger to others, even if their condition does not qualify as a "mental illness." The Court held, inter alia, that the Kansas statute did not violate the Double Jeopardy clause because the confinement was civil in nature and thus did not involve criminal punishment. As of 2006, at least 17 states and the District of Columbia had civil commitment statutes [press release]. AP has more. The News & Observer has local coverage.

[JURIST] A former US Marine sergeant pleaded not guilty in a California federal court Wednesday to two counts of voluntary manslaughter for killing two Iraqi insurgents during the Multinational National Force-Iraq's November 2004 offensive [GlobalSecurity backgrounder] in Fallujah [Wikipedia backgrounder; JURIST news archive]. The criminal complaint [PDF text] against Jose Nazario accuses the former sergeant and squad leader of ordering his squad to shoot several unarmed Iraqi men in a house they had just searched. Nazario denies all charges. His lawyers say it is highly unusual for civilian prosecutors to prosecute a decorated veteran for war crimes. AP has more.

Nazario was charged [JURIST report] in August after he was arrested and taken into custody by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) [official website]. In July, the NCIS announced investigations of at least 10 Marines [JURIST report] in connection with the Fallujah offensive. The latest allegations came after former Marine Corporal Ryan Weemer, during a polygraphed job interview with the US Secret Service, admitted he had witnessed indiscriminate killings in Fallujah. Military journalist Nathaniel Helms has allegedly corroborated the account, reporting that he witnessed Marines execute subdued Iraqi prisoners, whose bodies were later buried under rubble from an air strike.