[JURIST] A Spanish prosecutor on Tuesday filed an anticipated request [JURIST report] before the Supreme Court of Spain [official website, in Spanish] to ban two Basque political parties for alleged ties to ETA [BBC backgrounder; JURIST news archive], the armed Basque separatist movement. Spanish Deputy Prime Minister Maria Teresa Fernandez de la Vega [official profile, in Spanish] has said the government has evidence that both the Basque Nationalist Action Party (ANV) [party website] and the Communist Party of the Basque Lands (PCTV) [Wikipedia backgrounder] have close ties to Batasuna [BBC backgrounder], ETA's banned political arm. The government wants to prevent the parties from fielding candidates for a general election scheduled for March, and prosecutors are expected to file a formal demand to the court in the coming days.

The Supreme Court of Spain banned Batasuna in 2003 for its refusal to cut ties with ETA. ETA has been blamed for more than 800 deaths in bombings and attacks since the 1960s. AFP has more. Reuters has additional coverage.

[JURIST] US Attorney General Michael Mukasey [official profile] said in a Tuesday letter [PDF text] to the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee that he had completed his investigation into CIA interrogation methods used on terror suspects, finding the agency's current methods to be legal. In the letter to Senator Patrick Leahy [official website], Mukasey again refused to characterize waterboarding [JURIST news archive] as torture, saying that, since the technique was not currently in use by the CIA, it would be not be responsible for him to make a final decision on its legality. Mukasey is scheduled to testify [witness list] at an oversight hearing before the committee on Wednesday. AP has more.

Waterboarding was a major issue during Mukasey's confirmation hearings last year, when he refused to take a stance on whether the practice constituted torture [JURIST report]. In the midst of the hearings, he wrote in a letter [PDF text; JURIST report] to Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee that he did not know if waterboarding was illegal, and that it would be "irresponsible" of him to provide a legal opinion on any specific interrogation technique without an in-depth analysis of relevant laws and more information about its use.

[JURIST] The US House of Representatives Tuesday voted to extend the Protect America Act of 2007 [S 1927 materials; JURIST report] for an additional two weeks past its original February 1 expiration date. The extension was passed as a last-minute compromise between House Democrats and Republicans to give the Senate time to pass new surveillance legislation that Republicans hope will include a provision granting civil immunity to telecommunications companies [JURIST report] that cooperate with the government on surveillance. To date, more than 40 lawsuits have been filed against telecom companies that participated in the NSA warrantless surveillance program [JURIST news archive]. US President George W. Bush reiterated his threat [JURIST report] to veto any legislation that did not include an immunity provision in his State of the Union address [text; JURIST report] on Monday. AP has more. The Washington Post has additional coverage.

Currently, the temporary Protect America Act, which was enacted as a stopgap measure as Congress works on passing long-term legislation to "modernize" the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) [text; JURIST news archive, expands FISA to allow the US government to eavesdrop inside of the US without court approval as long as one end of a telephone or computer conversation is reasonably perceived to have been outside of the US. The Protect America Act had been set to sunset on February 1. Both Bush [press release] and Vice President Dick Cheney [JURIST report] have recently called for Congressional action to do away with the need for future renewals by making FISA permanent.

[JURIST] The Portuguese government helped in the rendition [JURIST news archive] of more than 700 prisoners to Guantanamo Bay by allowing the US to use Portuguese territory and airspace, a British prisoner rights group reported [PDF text] Tuesday. Reprieve [advocacy website] said that 728 out of the 774 prisoners processed at Guantanamo came through Portuguese jurisdiction and that a significant number were tortured before their arrivals in Guantanamo. The report relies on information from Portuguese flight logs, prison arrival data from the US Department of Defense, and declassified prisoner testimony. Reprieve legal director Clive Stafford Smith said that the prisoners could not have reached Guantanamo without Portuguese complicity [press release, PDF] and urged the Portuguese government to conduct a public inquiry into possible breaches of international law.

A 2006 report [DOC text] by a European Parliament committee [official website] investigating the US Central Intelligence Agency's alleged use of European countries for the transport and illegal detention of prisoners found that many European countries were aware that the CIA operated secret prisons [JURIST news archive] or used their territory for the transfer of terror suspects. The committee found that Portugal was among 16 EU countries that had cooperated with the CIA [JURIST report] "passively or actively" in the transport and illegal detention of prisoners. In 2007, the Portuguese government opened its own investigation [JURIST report] into secret CIA rendition flights. The government has denied Reprieve's charges. Reuters has more.

[JURIST] An influential UK Conservative Party donor has launched a legal effort to force the UK government to put the ratification of the new EU reform treaty [JURIST news archive] properly known as the Treaty of Lisbon [official website; PDF text] to a public vote, the BBC reported Tuesday. Stuart Wheeler [BBC profile] argues that Prime Minister Gordon Brown [official website] has broken a pledge to hold a referendum on the pact warranting judicial review; Brown has said that a referendum is unnecessary because the treaty does not affect the UK constitution or impinge on British sovereignty. MPs are currently scheduled to begin debate on whether to ratify the treaty, but Wheeler, who said he expects review to be granted, said the treaty could not be ratified while judicial review, if granted, is pending. The treaty must be ratified by all 27 EU member state signatories before it can take effect.

Last year, UK Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs David Miliband [official profile] similarly rejected calls for a general referendum on the treaty, instead insisting [transcript] that it was sufficiently "different...in absolute essence" from the earlier draft European Constitution [JURIST news archive] that would have been put to a popular vote [JURIST report]. Former Prime Minister Tony Blair rejected the referendum option [JURIST report] earlier last year before leaving office. BBC News has more.

[JURIST] Hate crimes [JURIST news archive] in Russia rose 13 percent in 2007 over 2006, but police have done little to stop attacks, according to a Tuesday report by the SOVA Center [advocacy website] rights group. Deputy Director Galina Kozhevnikova told reporters that race-related crime resulted in 67 deaths and 550 injuries in 2007, with African students, Asian visitors, and anti-Nazi activists the most frequent victims. He criticized Russian authorities for not adequately responding to the increase in violence, saying that many hate crimes were only prosecuted as incidents of hooliganism, which would carry a lighter sentence. Kozhevnikova added that while hate group leaders were prosecuted last year for distributing "xenophobic materials," many pro-government groups, including popular youth group Nashi [group website, in Russian], have adopted ethnocentric and racist slogans.

Last June, rights watchdog Human Rights First [advocacy website] reported that hate crimes are on the rise throughout Europe [JURIST report], after conducting a study examining recent hate crimes in France, Germany, Russia, Ukraine, and the United Kingdom. That study found a "proliferation of violent hate crimes directed against ethnic, religious and national minorities" in Russia especially. AP has more.

[JURIST] A bill to lift a ban on women wearing headscarves [JURIST report] in universities was submitted Tuesday to the Turkish Grand National Assembly [official website, in Turkish] amidst protests by secular groups. Last week, an agreement [JURIST report] between Turkey's ruling Justice and Development Party and key opponent Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) [party websites] propelled the bill forward after decades of strict enforcement of the ban. The proposal, made in response to recent calls [JURIST report] from Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan [IHT backgrounder] for the government to lift the ban immediately, would alter the constitution [text] and the Higher Education Law No. 2547 [HRW backgrounder] to allow scarves tied at the chin. Chadors, veils and burqas reportedly will still be banned. The alliance between the two parties is expected to produce the requisite two-thirds majority needed to amend the constitution in a parliamentary vote scheduled for next week.

Headscarves and other forms of Muslim traditional religious dress [JURIST news archive] are banned from many public places in modern Turkey, a majority Muslim country despite official secularism. Supporters of the ban, largely secularists, say the ban on headscarves is necessary to protect the separation of religion and state. Erdogan has repeatedly called for an end to the ban, saying it effectively denies some Muslim women access to higher education [JURIST report], but Turkish secularists believe that his insistence on ending the ban is a political statement against secular principles. Members of secular parties, including the Republican People's Party and the Democratic Left Party [party websites, in Turkish], have threatened to appeal to the judiciary if parliament approves the bill. AP has more.

[JURIST] An Iranian airport customs contractor convicted of corruption has been executed and three other customs workers are scheduled to face the death penalty [JURIST news archive], according to comments from the Iranian judiciary [official website] reported by Reuters Tuesday. The convicted individuals apparently accepted bribes totaling more than $1 million in connection with their positions at the Mehrabad airport in Tehran. Few other details were given about the offenses, described as "office corruption and other economic crimes" by Iranian judiciary spokesman Alireza Jamshidi. Jamshidi could not confirm whether the execution was Iran's first administered for an economic crime. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad [official profile; BBC profile] has taken a tough stance again corruption and bribery, but to date violators have reportedly been sentenced only to prison time and public lashings. An appeal is under review as the three workers seek to commute their death sentences to life in prison.

Last April, an Amnesty International report [text; JURIST report] named Iran as having one of the three highest execution rates in the world, along with China and Pakistan. Most executions in the country are carried out by hanging and are related to more traditional capital crimes including murder and rape. Reuters has more.

[JURIST] The European Court of Justice [official website] Tuesday ruled [judgment; press release, PDF] against Promusicae [trade website], a Spanish music industry coalition, finding that telecommunication companies have no duty to disclose the names and addresses of people suspected of engaging in illegal file sharing. A lower Spanish court had asked the European Court of Justice to issue an opinion on whether EU law required member states to impose such an obligation. The court held Tuesday that European Union directives contained no such obligation in the context of civil proceedings, but also found that EU law did not preclude member states from imposing such an obligation. Under Spanish law [PDF text, in Spanish], the obligatory disclosure of such personal information sought by the nonprofit group is permitted only in a criminal investigation, or if necessary for national security.

Last July, European Court of Justice Advocate General Juliane Kokott [official profile] told the European Court of Justice in an advisory opinion [text, in Spanish; JURIST report] that EU governments should resist disclosing Internet user information sought by copyright industry groups for civil lawsuits. Promusicae had filed a lawsuit against Spanish Internet service provider Telefonica (corporate website] to obtain customer information linked to IP addresses that Promusicae suspected were involved in illegal peer-to-peer music sharing. AP has more.

[JURIST] US Office of Special Counsel (OSC) [official website] head Scott J. Bloch [official profile] has accused the Department of Justice (DOJ) of impeding an investigation into the "politicization" of the DOJ under former US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales [official profile; JURIST news archive] during the 2006 US Attorney firings [JURIST news archive], the Los Angeles Times reported Tuesday. The Office of Special Counsel is the independent federal agency in charge of enforcing the Hatch Act [OSC materials], which prohibits the use of government resources for political purposes. According to Tuesday's report, Bloch wrote a letter to Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey last week asserting his department's independent authority to investigate "political intrusion into personnel decision making" at the DOJ, and accusing the DOJ of denying his request for evidence and documents relating to the dismissal of nine US Attorneys in 2006. The DOJ has said that Bloch may conduct his own investigation after the DOJ has completed its own probe, which Bloch says could take many more months.

The Los Angeles Times reported [JURIST report] last May that the DOJ Office of Professional Responsibility [official website] was expanding its internal investigation [JURIST report] into whether department aides illegally made hiring decisions based on consideration of applicants' political beliefs. In June, former DOJ aide Monica Goodling [JURIST news archive] testified [JURIST report] in front of the House Judiciary Committee, where she admitted making hiring decisions based on political party affiliation. The DOJ has also said that it found no evidence to support Goodling's claim that the practice was approved by officials in the department. The Los Angeles Times has more.

[JURIST] Moroccan authorities have arrested Abdelilah Hriz, an alleged participant in the 2004 Madrid train bombings [JURIST news archive], a Spanish judicial source said Monday. Hriz, whose DNA and fingerprints linked him to a house where explosives were prepared and an apartment where several suspects killed themselves after being pursued by police, will be tried in Morocco. According to Reuters' source, this is the first time a Moroccan court has agreed to try a Moroccan citizen for crimes committed outside of the country.

Spain's highest court of appeal said earlier this month that 25 appeals, both from defendants and from victims, have been filed against verdicts handed down in Spain against participants in the Madrid bombings. In November 2007, victims vowed to appeal [JURIST report] after a Spanish court acquitted seven of the 28 co-defendants accused of participating in the attacks, including alleged mastermind Rabei Osman Sayed Ahmed [CBC profile]. In all, 28 co-defendants [BBC backgrounder] were charged in Spain with 192 counts of murder and upwards of 1,800 counts of attempted murder related to the March 11, 2004 bombings. Three defendants were convicted of murder [JURIST report] and 18 others were found guilty of lesser charges. The three men convicted of murder - Jamel Zougam, Otman el Ghanoui, and Emilio Trashorras - each received sentences of up to 40,000 years imprisonment, but under Spanish law can only serve a maximum of 40 years each. The defendants have all protested their innocence and condemned the attacks. Reuters has more.

[JURIST] The Syrian government has detained former parliamentarian and dissident Riyad Sayf [MEIB profile], the National Organization for Human Rights in Syria (NOHR) said Tuesday. Sayf is a prominent member of the "Damascus Declaration" group, which in 2005 issued a declaration [text] urging Syria to embark on democratic transition and improve relations with Lebanon. In December, the Syrian government arrested nine members of the group [AP report] after it held a conference of opposition groups and activists in favor of democratic reform.

The Syrian government routinely issues travel bans against dissidents and last August, the US Department of State [official website] urged the Syrian government to lift a travel ban [press release] against Sayf, who is suffering from prostate cancer, so that he could seek medical treatment. Another pro-democracy activist, Kamal Labwani, was sentenced to 12 years in prison last year for "encouraging attacks against Syria" after contacting a foreign country. Labwani met with White House officials during a visit to the US in 2005, and was arrested [JURIST reports] at the airport when he returned to Syria. AP has more.

[JURIST] Ten activists who led anti-government protests against fuel prices [BBC Q&A; JURIST report] in Myanmar last August and September have been charged under Myanmar's Printing and Publishing Act with the crime of making illegal statements. Myanmar's ruling military junta has detained the ten activists pursuant to its emergency powers since their arrests in September. According to Amnesty International, 700 dissidents are still in custody [JURIST report] from the August protests, a claim the government denies. Three thousand protesters were initially arrested. BBC News has more. Reuters has additional coverage.

The UN General Assembly Third Committee approved [JURIST report] a resolution [press release] in November condemning the recent crackdown and calling on the junta to release all political prisoners. The US Senate passed a bill [JURIST report] in December imposing new sanctions and travel restrictions on junta leaders, but it was never signed into law. Myanmar has been governed without a constitution since the military regime took power in 1988. Talks on a new national charter [JURIST report] have been underway for 14 years. It is not yet clear who will draft the actual constitution or how that process will occur, but the Myanmar government has pledged to put the resulting document to a vote in a national referendum.

[JURIST] Three Indonesian Islamic militants sentenced to death for their roles in the 2002 Bali nightclub bombings [BBC backgrounder] have filed a second appeal with the Indonesian Supreme Court, a spokesperson for the Indonesian attorney general's office said Tuesday. The three militants - Mukhlas, Amrozi, and Imam Samudra [BBC profiles] - are not entitled under Indonesian law to a second review from the Indonesian Supreme Court, but their executions could now be delayed because authorities must wait until the appeal is formally rejected. The militants' lawyers say that Indonesia's anti-terrorism laws, enacted following the 2002 Bali bombings, should not have retroactive effect.

In December, the Indonesian Supreme Court rejected the militants' appeal [JURIST report], giving the defendants one month to seek clemency from the Indonesian president. They have said they will not seek clemency. In August 2007, the Indonesian government reduced the sentences [JURIST report] of 10 other Islamic militants convicted for their roles in the 2002 and 2005 Bali bombings [BBC report]. Originally serving between eight to 18 years, six of the militants received a sentence reduction of five months, while the other four received a reduction of two months. Terrorist group Jemaah Islamiyah [MIPT backgrounder; JURIST news archive] has been blamed for both Bali bombings. Reuters has more.

[JURIST] Former Malaysian Chief Justice Ahmad Fairuz Sheikh Abdul Halim [Wikipedia profile] told a Royal Commission inquiry panel Monday that a December 2001 video [YouTube video] that appears to show prominent Malaysian lawyer VK Lingam brokering Halim's appointment to become chief justice is a fabrication. Former Deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, who released the first part of the video [JURIST report] in September, asserts that Halim is the voice on the other end of the line with Lingam in the first part of the video. On Monday, Halim denied that claim, suggesting that Lingam might have been trying to impress his friends by pretending to know the high-ranking politicians involved in the now-scandal. On the tape [PDF transcript], Lingam says he is working hard to get Halim appointed to the second highest judiciary position in Malaysia, the presidency of the court of appeal; Halim received that post soon thereafter prior to becoming the chief justice of the Malaysian Supreme Court from 2003 to 2007.

The video's release prompted 2,000 lawyers and activists to protest judicial corruption [JURIST report; press release], calling for an official investigation. The Royal Commission began its sessions last week, when Lingam told the panel that he was intoxicated [JURIST report] when the video was filmed. Lingam also told the panel that Halim was not on the other end of the line [Bernama report] in the first video. On Monday, Anwar released the third part of the video [JURIST report], which allegedly shows Lingam admitting to having bribed former Chief Justice Dzaiddin Abdullah. AFP has more.

[JURIST] US President George W. Bush [JURIST news archive] signed an executive order Tuesday implementing promises on earmarks made in his final State of the Union address [text; JURIST report] delivered Monday. Executive Order 13457 [text; fact sheet] commands heads of federal agencies to take "all necessary steps" to ignore earmarks that are not explicitly written into law. The policy portion of the order reads:

To ensure the proper use of taxpayer funds that are appropriated for Government programs and purposes, it is necessary that the number and cost of earmarks be reduced, that their origin and purposes be transparent, and that they be included in the text of the bills voted upon by the Congress and presented to the President. For appropriations laws and other legislation enacted after the date of this order, executive agencies should not commit, obligate, or expend funds on the basis of earmarks included in any non-statutory source, including requests in reports of committees of the Congress or other congressional documents, or communications from or on behalf of Members of Congress, or any other non-statutory source, except when required by law or when an agency has itself determined a project, program, activity, grant, or other transaction to have merit under statutory criteria or other merit-based decisionmaking.

there's a practice here in Washington, and I'm not sure many of our citizens understand it takes place, where members just put in special spending projects into what's called report language. That means that these projects never were voted on, never really saw the light of day. And this executive order says that any such earmarks this year and into the future will be ignored by this administration and, hopefully, future administrations, unless those spending projects were voted on by the Congress.