[JURIST] Protests broke out in the Gaza Strip, Pakistan, and Denmark Friday over the reprinting of a cartoon depiction of the Muslim prophet Muhammad [JURIST report] by the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Poste [media website]. Thousands marched and chanted in the Jebaliya refugee camp in the Gaza strip, while hundreds protested in Pakistan by burning Danish flags and demanding the removal of the Danish ambassador. In Copenhagen, approximately 800 people marched in a peaceful protest organized by radical Islamic group Hizb ut-Tahrir [advocacy website; Global Security backgrounder]. Also Friday, a Danish Imam, Mostafa Chendid, called for calm and urged Muslim youths to stop clashing with police after five consecutive nights of violence in Copenhagen and other Danish cities.

The cartoon was reprinted by Jyllands-Poste on Wednesday, one day after Danish police arrested three people [JURIST reports] suspected in a plot to murder Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard for his characterization of Muhammad. Westergaard was one of 12 cartoonists who created the Muhammad cartoons [Le Monde slideshow; JURIST news archive] first published in 2005, sparking widespread protests across the Islamic world. Several other Danish newspapers also reprinted Westergaard's depiction Wednesday, accompanied by statements defending freedom of speech and the public's right to see the cause of the backlash. AP has more.

[JURIST] US President George W. Bush Friday chided the US House of Representatives for failing to pass [WH fact sheet] the FISA Amendments Act [S 2248 materials] before leaving for a 12-day recess, saying that the US would be in greater danger of an attack when the temporary Protect America Act [S 1927 materials; JURIST report] expires on Saturday. The US Senate voted 68-29 [JURIST report] Tuesday to pass the FISA Amendments Act, but the House failed to pass the bill this week. The version approved by the Senate provides immunity for telecommunications companies [JURIST report] from lawsuits related to their participation in the NSA warrantless surveillance program [JURIST news archive]. The House version [HR 3773 materials] of the legislation, approved [JURIST report] in November, does not include the immunity provisions. Speaker of the House Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) rejected Bush's comments [press release] Friday, saying:

The President is misrepresenting the facts on our nation's electronic surveillance capabilities. Last August, he insisted that Congress pass the Protect America Act; but this week, he refused to support an extension, which can only mean he knows our intelligence agencies will be able to do all the wiretapping they need to do to protect the nation. That surveillance can be undertaken under broad orders authorized under the PAA or under orders that can be obtained through the FISA court.

The President knows the facts; if he did not want the PAA to expire this weekend, he should have supported an extension of it, as the overwhelming majority of House Democrats did on Wednesday. Having guaranteed the lapse of the August law, the President should now work in a cooperative way with Congress to pass a strong FISA modernization bill that protects our nation's security and the Constitution.

[JURIST] Thousands of interrogations of suspected terrorists held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba have been videotaped, according to a report [PDF text; press release] released Thursday by professors and students at Seton Hall University School of Law [university website]. The report cites internal US military reports that say that more than 24,000 interrogations took place at Guantanamo over a three-year period and that all detainee interviews were videotaped. The report also noted that there is infrastructure in place to monitor every interrogation room from a remote location. A military spokesperson for JTF Guantanamo quoted by AFP denied that interrogations were routinely filmed.

The report was written under the direction of Mark Denbeaux [faculty profile], a Seton Hall law professor who represents several detainees currently held at Guantanamo. This is the seventh report produced by Seton Hall on Guantanamo Bay. In 2006, Denbeaux and his team released another report [PDF text; JURIST report] that said US military Combatant Status Review Tribunals do not offer detainees an adequate opportunity to contest the accusations against them or to object to their status as enemy combatants. AFP has more.

[JURIST] Australian Aborigine groups said Friday they are preparing lawsuits in response to an offical apology [text; AFP report] delivered Wednesday by Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd [official profile] in an address to Parliament, publicly accepting responsibility for the historical mistreatment of Aboriginal people under the "laws and policies of successive Parliaments and governments." Between 30 and 40 lawsuits will be filed against the Victorian state government seeking redress for a government program that forcibly removed Aboriginal children to be integrated into white society [ENIAR backgrounder], according to a spokesperson for Stolen Generations Victoria [advocacy website].

Aboriginal compensation claims against Australian governments have been mostly unsuccessful in the past, and legal experts do not expect that the official apology will increase the chances of success for future lawsuits. AP has more. Australian Broadcasting Corp. has additional coverage.

[JURIST] The Russian Supreme Court [official website, in Russian] Friday rejected for the second time an appeal by former Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov [personal website, in Russian; BBC profile] to reinstate his candidacy in the Russian presidential election to be held next month. The court previously rejected [JURIST report] an appeal by Kasyanov last week after a one-day hearing.

In January, the Russian Central Election Commission disqualified Kasyanov from running in the election [JURIST report], rejecting 13.36 percent of signatures he submitted in support of his candidacy as either forged [JURIST report] or incorrect. Under Russian law, no more than 5 percent of signatures in support of a candidate can be disqualified if that candidate is to run in the election. RIA Novosti has more.

[JURIST] US military judge Navy Capt. Keith Allred has ruled that lawyers for Guantanamo Bay detainee Salim Ahmed Hamdan [DOD materials; JURIST news archive] can send written questions to Khalid Sheik Mohammed [BBC profile] and other alleged high-level al Qaeda detainees. Hamdan's lawyers hope that the interviewed detainees will testify that Hamdan was not involved with the USS Cole or 9/11 attacks and thus should not be charged with conspiracy, but Department of Defense prosecutors say that the charges against Hamdan [PDF text; JURIST report] do not require him to have been directly involved with those attacks.

In a motion [PDF text] filed last month, Hamdan's lawyers requested face-to-face interviews, but in the ruling made public Thursday, Allred limited the discovery to written questions, which must be reviewed by an independent security officer. Any answers will be censored according to national security concerns. Earlier this month, Hamdan's lawyers urged Allred to drop the charges [JURIST report] against Hamdan. In December, Allred denied [JURIST report] a request by Hamdan's lawyers for immediate access to top terrorism suspects, citing security concerns. The Miami Herald has more.

[JURIST] East Timor's attorney general said Friday that 12 arrest warrants have been issued for suspects in this week's attacks against East Timorese President Jose Ramos Horta and Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao [BBC profiles], but did not release the names of the suspects. Attorney General Longuinhos Monteiro also said that five additional warrants will be issued. Horta was critically wounded and rebel leader Alfredo Reinado was killed in the attacks. The National Parliament of East Timor voted Wednesday to extend the state of emergency [JURIST report] imposed this week until February 23 in order to restore peace to the country following Monday's assassination attempts and to quell any future violence feared after the death of Reinado. Reinado has led previous revolts against the government and drew wide support from some members of the ruling coalition. Xinhua has more.

Gusmao was the first named president of East Timor [JURIST news archive] following a 1999 UN-sponsored referendum in which the country voted for independence from Indonesia. He was appointed Prime Minister by Horta in 2007. In 2006, East Timor descended into violence and a state of emergency rule when former Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri [BBC profile] dismissed 600 striking members of the armed forces, causing riots [BBC report] in April and continued violence throughout May [JURIST report] which left 37 dead. Alkatiri resigned in June 2006 and an independent United Nations commission later recommended criminal investigations [JURIST report] into Alkatiri and other government officials for their role in the violence.

[JURIST] Any unilateral declaration of independence by Kosovo [JURIST news archive] from Serbia will be "invalid and void," Serbian Deputy Prime Minister Bozidar Djelic said [press release, in Serbian] Thursday, hours before the UN Security Council [official website] was scheduled to discuss the possibility of Kosovar secession. Kosovo, the UN protectorate now dominated by ethnic Albanians which is still technically a part of Serbia, is widely expected to secede from Serbia in the next few days; local Kosovar authorities have been working with the European Union [official website] for months to move toward independence [JURIST report]. The independence option has run into considerable resistance from Russia, a traditional Serbian ally, prompting the UN Security Council to abandon a resolution [JURIST report] endorsing the independence plan last July. The US and European Union continue to support [JURIST report] an independent Kosovar state.

A decision [text] formally adopted by the Serbian government Thursday said that:

The acts and actions of the Provisional Institutions of Self-government of Kosovo and Metohija whereby unilateral independence is declared are hereby annulled as they violate the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Republic of Serbia guaranteed by the Constitution of the Republic of Serbia, the United Nations Charter, Security Council Resolution 1244 (1999), other relevant Security Council Resolutions as well as by international law in force. These acts represent a violent and unilateral secession of a part of the territory of the Republic of Serbia and this is why they are invalid and void. These acts do not produce any legal effect either in the Republic of Serbia or in the international legal order. Unilateral secession of a part of the territory of a sovereign state constitutes legal violence against the Republic of Serbia and violence against international law in force.

[JURIST] US President George W. Bush said in a BBC interview [transcript; recorded video] Thursday that he will veto an intelligence funding bill [HR 2082 materials] that would restrict CIA interrogators to using only interrogation techniques explicitly authorized by the 2006 Army Field Manual. Bush said that:

The reason I'm vetoing the bill - first of all, we have said that whatever we do... will be legal. Secondly, they are imposing a set of standards on our intelligence communities in terms of interrogating prisoners that our people will think will be ineffective. And, you know, to the critics, I ask them this: when we, within the law, interrogate and get information that protects ourselves and possibly others in other nations to prevent attacks, which attack would they have hoped that we wouldn't have prevented? And so, the United States will act within the law. We'll make sure professionals have the tools necessary to do their job within the law. Now, I recognize some say that these - terrorists - really aren't that big a threat to the United States anymore. I fully disagree. And I think the president must give his professionals within the law the necessary tools to protect us. So, we're not having a debate not only how you interrogate people. We're having a debate in America on whether or not we ought to be listening' to terrorists making' phone calls in the United States. And the answer is darn right we ought to be.

[JURIST] The European Commission [official website] plans to introduce a proposal to extend copyright protection [press release] for music performers from 50 to 95 years, Internal Market Commissioner Charlie McCreevy [official website] announced Thursday. The proposal will ensure greater protections for "session musicians" who recorded music in the late 1950s and will soon lose their royalty income from radio play of their songs as their copyrights expire. Under current EU law, music composers hold copyright of their work for their entire lives plus 70 years, while music performers only hold copyright of their performances for 50 years.

McCreevy also announced that the Commission will examine the levies [press release; EU backgrounder] applied by different EU countries to blank compact discs, cassettes, hard drives, and other equipment consumers often use to copy artists' work. EUObserver has more.

[JURIST] The Bush administration filed a petition for certiorari [PDF text] with the US Supreme Court [official website; JURIST news archive] Thursday in the case of Gates v. Bismullah, seeking to limit the information it must provide to courts in cases involving Guantanamo Bay [JURIST news archive] detainees classified as "enemy combatants." Last July, a three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit ruled [PDF text; JURIST report] that federal appeals courts reviewing enemy combatant designations must review all evidence regarding that detainee, rejecting the government's argument that it should only have to turn over the same evidence presented to the Combatant Status Review Tribunal that designated the detainee as an enemy combatant. The full appeals court earlier this month refused to reconsider [order, PDF; JURIST report] its decision. The administration has also requested a stay [PDF text] of the appeals court's judgment pending the Supreme Court ruling.

The Bush administration asked the Court to either accept the Bismullah case with expedited review [motion, PDF], or defer action until the Court rules on Boumediene v. Bush (06-1195) [docket; merit briefs], a case already pending [JURIST report] before the Court. In Boumediene, the Court heard arguments in December on whether Guantanamo detainees should be allowed to challenge their detentions in federal court. The Boumediene case is also on appeal from the DC Circuit, which last year upheld [PDF text; JURIST report] the habeas-stripping provision of the controversial Military Commissions Act of 2006 [PDF text; JURIST news archive] as applied to enemy combatants. The New York Times has more. Reuters has additional coverage.

[JURIST] A three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit on Thursday upheld [opinion, PDF] an earlier ruling [JURIST report] by a federal district court to vacate the conviction of former Enron [JURIST news archive] CFO Kevin Howard [Houston Chronicle profile]. District Judge Vanessa Gilmore had vacated Howard's conviction in light of an August 2006 opinion [JURIST report] by the Fifth Circuit that overturned separate Enron convictions "on the legal ground that the government's theory of fraud relating to the deprivation of honest services ... is flawed." Prosecutors in the Howard case relied on the "honest services" theory in four of the five counts on which Howard was convicted [JURIST report], despite the fact that Howard did not take money or property in negotiating a deal to sell future Enron profits in an alleged mark-to-market accounting fraud scandal, a required element of an "honest services" crime. The Fifth Circuit agreed with Gilmore, arguing that the honest services instruction "tainted" the falsifying records charge.

In 2006, former Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling [Houston Chronicle profile] also requested [JURIST report] that the judge presiding over his trial dismiss his conviction [JURIST report] on 19 counts of insider trading, securities fraud, and conspiracy in light of the Fifth Circuit decision. He appealed his conviction [JURIST report] to the Fifth Circuit last fall. AP has more. The Houston Chronicle has local coverage.