[JURIST] A French court Monday froze bank accounts belonging to several Russian state organizations [BBC report; Kommersant report] including the Central Bank of Russia, [official website] the Russian Finance Ministry [official website], the presidential administration's foreign property arm, the Russian Energy Ministry [official website], state arms monopoly Rosoboronexport, [company website] and the government news service RIA Novosti [media website]. The accounts were held by a French division of the Russian bank VTB [official website]. The freezing follows pressure from a Swiss company, Compagnie Noga d'Imporatation et d'Exportation, SA (Noga), and stems from a food-for-oil contract between Noga and Russia in 1991-1992 just after the breakup of the Soviet Union. Russia said that it will appeal the ruling [AFP report]. Reuters has more. UPI has additional coverage.

Russia unilaterally terminated the food-for-oil contract with Noga in 1993. Noga has previously attempted to seize assets of the Russian state as payment for the debt, including attempting to seize a Russian sailing ship docked in a French port [BBC report], valuable paintings from the collection of Moscow's Pushkin Fine Arts Museum [NYT report] on loan to a Swiss gallery, and two Russian military jets participating in the Paris Air Show [CNN report].

[JURIST] The US Supreme Court [official website; JURIST news archive] on Monday denied [order list, PDF] without comment a petition for certiorari filed in Abigail Alliance for Better Access to Developmental Drugs v. von Eschenbach (07-444) [docket], a case challenging the constitutionality of the government's ability to deny terminally ill patients access to medications that have yet to receive full regulatory approval. The Abigail Alliance and the Washington Legal Foundation [advocacy websites] initially filed the lawsuit [complaint, PDF] in 2003 seeking to enjoin the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) [official website] from enforcing a policy which prohibits patients with no other treatment options from purchasing experimental drugs. In August 2007, the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit ruled [opinion, PDF] that terminally ill patients have no constitutional right to access to experimental drugs. Reuters has more.

The Supreme Court also denied petitions for certiorari Monday in the consolidated cases of National Petrochemical & Refiners Association v. South Coast Air Quality Management District (07-311) and Chamber of Greater Baton Rouge v. South Coast Air Quality Management District (07-333) [dockets], two cases challenging a refusal by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) [official website] to do away with certain ozone protection requirements after more stringent standards had been implemented. AP has more.

Finally, the Supreme Court Monday dismissed the case of Huber v. Wal-Mart (07-480) [docket; cert. petition, PDF] after having granted certiorari [JURIST report] in December to consider whether a disabled employee who requires transfer to an equivalent position can be required to compete with other employees for the new position. The dismissal was made under court Rule 46.1 [Rules text, PDF] governing cases subject to settlement agreements. AP has more.

[JURIST] A report [PDF text; press release] issued Monday by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) [advocacy website] criticized efforts by the Bush administration to prepare for a potential bird flu pandemic by relying on a law enforcement/national security approach rather than a public health approach. The report, authored by three professors, cautioned that the administration's current pandemic response plans could threaten civil liberties if enacted. The report recommended measures to ensure that vaccines are quickly and fairly distributed, that privacy rights are protected, and that public health officials remain subject to legal accountability. Officials with the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) [official website], which has devised its own Pandemic Influenza Plan [PDF text; fact sheet], said in response that the government's plans already incorporate a significant number of the ACLU report's recommendations. Reuters has more.

The US government has developed a website which provides avian and pandemic flu information to the public. In November 2005, US President George W. Bush asked Congress to devise a plan to provide liability protection [JURIST report] for vaccine manufacturers to prepare for a possible bird flu epidemic [White House fact sheet].

[JURIST] New International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) [official website] Chief Prosecutor Serge Brammertz [JURIST report; ICC profile] does not plan to amend his predecessor's tough stance on Serbian cooperation, Reuters reported an ICTY spokeswoman as saying Monday. Former chief prosecutor Carla Del Ponte [official profile] long criticized Serbia for its seeming reluctance to cooperate with the ICTY; last October, she said that Serbia must do more to apprehend fugitive war crimes suspects [JURIST report] before she could give a positive report on the country's work with the ICTY to the European Union. In her final address to the UN Security Council [Reuters report] as chief prosecutor in December 2007, she accused Serbia of deliberately failing to arrest fugitive former Bosnian Serb commander Ratko Mladic [BBC profile; JURIST news archive] and former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic [ICTY case backgrounder], among others. Brammertz, who took office at the beginning of the year, has no plans to reassess the situation unless "significant developments" so require and said that Del Ponte's report will still apply.

The EU had made Serbia's cooperation with the ICTY a key element of its membership negotiations [EU accession materials], but Slovenia, the new holder of the Presidency of the EU [official website], is apparently seeking to expedite Serbia's path to membership [BBC report] regardless of the ICTY report, with a full signing of a Stabilization and Association Agreement possibly occurring this month. Reuters has more.

[JURIST] French prosecutors Monday urged a criminal court in Creteil, a suburb of Paris, to convert the sentences of six French aid workers convicted and sentenced in Chad for their role in the attempted airlift [JURIST report] of 103 supposed Darfur [JURIST news archive] orphans to France from eight years of hard labor [JURIST report] to eight years in prison. The workers, affiliated with French charity Zoe's Ark, were sentenced in Chad [JURIST report] in December. The Chadian government returned the workers to France [JURIST report] in late December 2007 after a formal request from the French Foreign Ministry under the 1976 France-Chad Agreement on Judicial Matters [PDF text]. The court must now decide how the workers will serve their sentences since France has no hard-labor sanctions. The court said Monday it will render a decision regarding the sentencing on January 28.

The six aid workers have said that they were attempting to airlift orphaned children [JURIST news archive] from the war-torn Sudanese region of Darfur to safety in Europe, but investigations later revealed that most of the children were not actually orphans. Last week, an aid worker was charged [JURIST report] in French court with conspiring to allow illegal residents into the country in connection with the aborted airlift. AFP has more.

[JURIST] A former defense lawyer for German Holocaust-denier Ernst Zundel [ADL profile; JURIST news archive] was sentenced to three-and-a-half years in prison Monday after being convicted of incitement and insulting the court during Zundel's original trial in 2005. Throughout Zundel's trial, Sylvia Stolz [Tagespiegel profile, in German; JURIST report] repeatedly denied the Holocaust, described Jews as "enemy people," distributed a legal document that concluded with the words "Heil Hitler," and denounced the Mannheim State Court [official website] as a "tool of foreign domination." She told AP, "We are under foreign occupation, and this foreign occupation has portrayed Adolf Hitler as a devil for 60 years, but that is not true." Stolz was also disbarred for five years.

In 2005, Zundel's first trial was delayed when a judge removed Stolz from the defense team [JURIST report]. In February 2007, Zundel was convicted [JURIST report] of 14 counts of incitement, libel and disparaging the dead and sentenced to five years in prison. Holocaust denial constitutes a crime under Section 130 (3) [text] of the German Federal Criminal Code. AP has more.

[JURIST] The European Commission (EC) Monday announced [press release] formal investigations into two new allegations that Microsoft [corporate website; JURIST news archive] has abused its dominant market position regarding a range of Internet and operating system software. The EC will look into charges that Microsoft violated Article 82 [text] of the Treaty Establishing the European Community, which covers market sharing and antitrust law. The first complaint [press release], brought by the European Committee for Interoperable Systems (ECIS) [trade website], alleges that Microsoft has refused to share information that would allow its software to interoperate with competitors' products. The second charge stems from a complaint [press release] filed by the Norwegian Opera [corporate website] Internet browser company, alleging that Microsoft illegally tied Internet and email programs to its Windows operating system.

The investigation extends principles from the EC's 2004 landmark ruling [JURIST report] requiring the software giant to share technical information with competitors. Microsoft dropped its appeals in that case last October, one month after the European Court of First Instance upheld the 2004 ruling [JURIST reports] that Microsoft had abused its monopoly power in the computer market by trying to force consumers into buying Microsoft software, noting that selling media software with its Windows operating system damaged European competitors. Microsoft was fined €280.5 million in July 2006 for its antitrust violations, and had reportedly agreed to take the necessary steps [JURIST report] to comply with the ruling. Microsoft said Monday that it will cooperate fully with the new investigation. The Financial Times has more. Bloomberg has additional coverage.

[JURIST] The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) [organization website] and the US military have installed a video teleconferencing system at Bagram Airbase [GlobalSecurity backgrounder] in Afghanistan to allow detainees held at the base to speak with loved ones, the ICRC said [press release] Monday. The system is available to all detainees at the Bagram facility, some of whom have not seen or have had any verbal contact with family members in five or six years.

The US currently detains between 600 and 650 prisoners at Bagram. The ICRC is pushing the US to allow face-to-face visits between detainees and their family members, which are currently prohibited. In 2006, the Center for Constitutional Rights filed [JURIST report] a habeas corpus petition on behalf of 25 detainees at Bagram seeking to permit detainees to speak with legal counsel, a right not afforded to detainees under the Military Commissions Act of 2006 [PDF text]. AP has more.

[JURIST] Lawyers and activists from 38 Asian Pacific countries meeting Monday at the Asia-Pacific Regional Conference on Environmental Justice and Enforcement [press release] in Bangkok, Thailand, criticized lax enforcement of environmental laws throughout Asia, saying that governments have ignored enforcement in favor of promoting economic development. Attending environmental lawyers also blamed corruption and ignorance for hampering anti-pollution efforts, noting that many local courts are not even aware that environmental laws exist or do not understand the importance of enforcing them. AP has more.

Pollution is a growing concern in Asia, where many countries are beginning to see the environmental effects of unrestricted industrial growth. In 2006, the first Asia-Pacific Development and Climate Partnership Ministerial Meeting [backgrounder; JURIST report] convened in Sydney, Australia, bringing representatives from the US, Australia, Japan, China, South Korea and India together to set up projects to create emissions reduction technology and promote the transfer of that technology between the nations. The US and Australian governments said at the time that this partnership between the six nations would be better and more effective in reducing global air pollution than the Kyoto Protocol [text], which the US and Australia had not ratified and which does not obligate China or India to reduce emissions. In 2007, Asian and European countries agreed to set new international emissions standards [JURIST report] by 2009 after a two-day conference in Hamburg, Germany that included representatives from over 40 nations.

[JURIST] Two Russian offices of the British Council [official website] in St. Petersburg and Yekaterinburg resumed operations Monday, defying a shutdown order [JURIST report] from the Russian government. Russian authorities say that the Council has violated Russian tax laws; the Council, a non-departmental public body that promotes UK culture abroad, has insisted that it is an arm of the British Embassy and is entitled to immunity from taxation. The Russian Foreign Ministry summoned British ambassador Sir Tony Brenton regarding the reopenings, calling them an "intentional provocation". In a statement [text, in Russian], it said that it would be "forced to take a series of measures for administrative and legal pressure", including no longer issuing new visas to UK employees at the two offices.

Russia has clamped down on foreign associations operating within its territory since a controversial law imposing restrictions on nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) took effect [JURIST report] in April 2006. The law imposes strict financial oversight on NGOs and provides for dissolution if an organization's activities is deemed to "threaten Russia's independence or sovereignty" or if an organization participates in activities deemed to deviate from its mission statement. Russian President Vladimir Putin has defended the measure as being necessary to protect against "puppeteers abroad" [JURIST report]. AP has more. BBC News has additional coverage.

[JURIST] A judge on Iraq's federal court of appeal was assassinated by gunmen Monday morning on his way to work in the western Baghdad district of Mansour. Amir Jawdat al-Naeib was also a member of the Supreme Judicial Council, the body which administers judicial affairs in Iraq. AP has more. Voices of Iraq has local coverage.

The Judicial Council said in August that 31 Iraqi judges have been assassinated since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. The Iraqi Lawyers Association reported in April last year that at least 210 lawyers and judges have been killed [IRIN report] since the US-led invasion, with dozens more injured in attacks which have prompted hundreds to leave the country. Many key Iraqi judges and their families now live in the fortified Green Zone in Baghdad or in the so-called Rule of Law complex [NYT report], a secure compound in the northern Baghdad neighborhood of Rusafa where they are supposedly safe from outside threats.

[JURIST] Admiral Mike Mullen [official profile], the Chairman of the US military's Joint Chiefs of Staff [official website], said in an interview with reporters Sunday that the US facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba [JURIST news archive] should be closed. Mullen, who was confirmed by the Senate [Reuters report] as Chairman in August, said Guantanamo has damaged the international reputation of the United States, but admitted there could be legal difficulties in transferring the remaining prisoners to other facilities. AP has more.

On Friday, the commander of the Guantanamo Bay facility was reassigned [JURIST report] after only six months on the job. The total population at the prison has dropped to around 277, 100 less than this time a year ago.