[JURIST] The human rights of inmates in Nigerian prisons are "systematically violated," Amnesty International [advocacy website] said in a Tuesday report [PDF text; press release] based on visits to 10 prisons across Nigeria over the last six months. According to the report:

Approximately 65 percent of the inmates are awaiting trial, most of whom have been waiting for their trial for years. Most of the people in Nigeria's prisons are too poor to pay lawyers and only one in seven of those awaiting trial have private legal representation. Although government legal aid exists, there are too few legal aid lawyers for all the cases that require representation.

Living conditions in the prisons are appalling. They are damaging to the physical and mental well-being of inmates and in many cases constitute clear threats to health. Conditions such as over-crowding, poor sanitation, lack of food and medicines, and denial of contact with families and friends fall short of UN standards for the treatment of prisoners. ...

[JURIST] Former Argentinian President Fernando de la Rua [BBC profile] Tuesday denied charges [BBC report] that he attempted to bribe lawmakers with millions of dollars to secure the approval of labor reforms during his presidency from 1999 to December 2001. Judge Daniel Rafecas formally charged de la Rua Monday. Nine other former officials are facing related bribery charges. De la Rua's lawyer said that he will appeal to have the charges dropped. De la Rua could be sentenced to as many as six years in prison if convicted. AP has more.

These are not the first charges brought against de la Rua. In December 2004, an Argentinian court charged [JURIST report] him with improperly allocating public funds for his own private use and for the use of his political party while serving in public office. In October 2007, he was charged with five counts of manslaughter [JURIST report] for failing to prevent the deaths of five demonstrators during 2001 confrontations with police in Buenos Aires. The deaths came during riots sparked by a national economic crisis [BBC report] that caused de la Rua to flee the presidential residence and eventually resign his office just two years into his term.

[JURIST] The military government of Myanmar [BBC backgrounder; JURIST news archive] Tuesday announced that it has enacted a law to govern the May referendum on a new constitution [JURIST reports] for the country. The government said the law sets procedures for voting, announcing results, and imposing penalties for the violation of its provisions. The government said it has also named the 45 members of the Referendum Convening Commission [JURIST report] set to oversee the process. AP has more.

The constitution-drafting process has come under fire [JURIST report] from critics urging citizens to reject the proposed referendum, calling the proposal a "sham" to legalize military rule. Other opponents, including supporters of detained Nobel Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi [advocacy profile], have stopped just short of calling for a boycott. The country has been governed without a constitution since the military regime took power in 1988 and talks on a new national charter [JURIST report] have been underway for 14 years.

[JURIST] A panel convened by the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW) [union website] said Tuesday that US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) [official website] is violating the constitutional rights of US workers by conducting illegal searches and seizures in workplace raids to find illegal immigrants. The UFCW's National Commission on ICE Misconduct and Violations of Fourth Amendment Rights [press release] said that ICE agents are using arrest warrants for specific workers at a given work site as an excuse to detain and search the whole workforce, sometimes including US citizens. The panel plans to release a report detailing its findings and making recommendations designed to protect the Fourth Amendment rights of UFCW members. The Washington Post has more.

The UFCW hearings are a response to ongoing ICE actions initiated under Operation Return to Sender [DHS backgrounder], a controversial program to find and deport illegal immigrants, and are not the first allegations of Fourth Amendment violations by ICE. In November 2007, the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund [advocacy website] filed a lawsuit [complaint, PDF; JURIST report] against ICE on behalf of several families who said that ICE agents violently raided their homes without first obtaining court warrants. The suit alleged that the raids were meant to target illegal immigrants but often focused on homes that do not house them and where ICE agents could not "reasonably expect" to find them. The suit further accused ICE of singling out Hispanics and said the raids violate constitutional protections against unreasonable searches.

[JURIST] Belarusian authorities Tuesday granted jailed opposition politician Alexander Kozulin [CFR profile and interview] a three-day release from prison to attend the funeral of his wife, who died on Saturday. Kozulin was sentenced to over five years in prison in July 2006 for leading unauthorized protests over the controversial re-election [JURIST reports] of Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko [official website; BBC profile] earlier that year. Kozulin, his daughters and other supporters had gone on hunger strike to protest authorities' initial refusal to let Kozulin attend the funeral; Kozulin's lawyer said that they ended the strike Tuesday. US and EU officials had also urged Belarus to release Kozulin [JURIST report].

The Supreme Court of Belarus last Friday ordered the release of a former newspaper editor who had been sentenced [JURIST reports] to three years in prison for reprinting cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad [JURIST news archive], a move interpreted as an attempt to improve relations with the West. Lukashenko has recently sought to improve his country's ties with western nations, but the US and the European Union have imposed sanctions on Belarus pending the release of all political prisoners. AP has more.

[JURIST] Agents with the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) [official website] urged EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson [official profile] to approve California's request for a waiver that would have allowed it to impose stricter greenhouse gas emissions standards on cars and light trucks, saying that a denial could compromise the agency's integrity, according to internal documents [press release and excerpts] released Tuesday by Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) [official website]. An October 2007 staff memo prepared for the head of the EPA's Office of Transportation and Air Quality to present to Johnson said that Johnson should either grant the waiver or find a compromise, saying that "it is obvious to me that there is no legal or technical justification for denying this." At a press conference [recorded video] Tuesday, Boxer said:

These documents paint a picture of an Environmental Protection Agency in crisis. They show the dedicated professional staff of the EPA working hard to do what they are paid to do by the American people - protect our health and our environment. At the same time, we see more and more evidence of Administrator Johnson ignoring the science and the facts, and discarding the advice of his professional staff.

I believe this decision will be reversed by the next President or by the courts, but the Administrator can save the taxpayers time and money, and can get us started cleaning up our air if he would simply follow the law, the facts, and the advice of his agency professionals.

[JURIST] Leaders of 34 international bar associations and law societies called for the "immediate closure" of the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay in a letter [PDF text] released Monday. The letter, addressed to US President George W. Bush and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, said:

Few governmental operations in democratic countries have shown such a profound disrespect for the rule of law. Guantanamo Bay has come to signify injustice for some at the hands of the powerful. The rule of law - that everyone, including governments, is subject to the law, and that the law itself is fair and free from the influence of arbitrary power - has become an inconvenient afterthought.

[JURIST] Nigeria's Presidential Election Petitions Tribunal on Tuesday upheld the results of last year's disputed presidential elections [JURIST report], saying that opposition groups failed to present sufficient evidence to support their fraud allegations [JURIST report]. European Union and NGO observers questioned the results of last April's poll, and fraud allegations included multiple voting, stuffing and missing ballot boxes. The election tribunal said that opposition leaders former Nigerian Vice President Atiku Abubakar [JURIST news archive] and former army general Muhammadu Buhari [campaign website] failed to show that the fraud was extensive enough to affect the outcome of the election. Abubakar and Buhari have indicated that they will appeal Tuesday's decision to the Nigerian Supreme Court.

In April 2007, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) [official website] declared the winner of the country's presidential elections to be the ruling People's Democratic Party candidate Umaru Yar'Adua [BBC profile], prompting petitions from Abubakar and Buhari. As part of the six-month-long challenge, the election tribunal ordered the INEC to turn over certified copies of the ballots [JURIST report] and provide information on all officials and staff employed for the elections. The presidential election was intended to mark the first civilian government transition in Africa's most populous country. AP has more.

[JURIST] The European Court of Justice [official website] on Tuesday ruled [text; press release, PDF] that an employee's "dismissal essentially based on the fact that a woman is at an advanced stage of in vitro fertilisation treatment is contrary to the principle of equal treatment for men and women." The ruling came in the case of an Austrian woman who claimed that she was entitled to full payment of her salary and protection against dismissal from the time in vitro fertilization of her egg took place, even though the egg had not yet been implanted in her uterus. The woman was fired after her egg had been fertilized but three days before the egg was implanted; she argued that she was pregnant from the time the egg was fertilized and therefore her firing was illegal under Austrian law.

According to the court's summary of its decision:

In its judgment of today's date, the Court holds that, for reasons connected with the principle of legal certainty, the protection against dismissal established by the Directive on the safety and health at work of pregnant workers cannot be extended to a pregnant worker where, on the date she is given notice of her dismissal, the in vitro fertilised ova have not yet been transferred into her uterus. If such a premiss [sic] were allowed, the benefit of the protection could be granted even where the transfer of the fertilised ova into the uterus is postponed, for whatever reason, for a number of years, or even where such a transfer is definitively abandoned.

However, a worker who is undergoing in vitro fertilisation treatment can rely on the protection against discrimination on grounds of sex granted by the Directive on equal treatment for men and women.

On that basis, the Court points out that treatment such as that which Ms Mayr has undergone directly affects only women. The dismissal of a worker essentially because she is undergoing a follicular puncture and a transfer of fertilised ova into her uterus therefore constitutes direct discrimination on grounds of sex. The dismissal of a worker, in a situation such as that of Ms Mayr, would, moreover, be contrary to the objective of protection pursued by the Directive on equal treatment for men and women.

[JURIST] Guatemala [JURIST news archive] on Monday announced plans to declassify documents describing human rights abuses committed by its military during the country's 1960-1996 civil war [GlobalSecurity backgrounder]. Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom [personal website; BBC profile] has created a panel to review the documents, which the military has thus far refused to release, with a view to selecting those that should be made public. The panel will initially focus on documents produced between 1979 and 1983, the harshest years of the conflict, while protecting any documents that compromise national security.

The Guatemalan civil war resulted in over 200,000 deaths, mostly among Guatemala's large indigenous population. According to a UN report released in 1999, the military was responsible for 95 percent of those deaths. Although courts in Spain [JURIST report; CJA case backgrounder] and the United States [CCR case backgrounder] have sought to hold Guatemalan military officials accountable for human rights violations, a 2001 report by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights [official website] concluded that the domestic judicial system was characterized by impunity [text]. AP has more. Prensa Libre has additional coverage [in Spanish].

[JURIST] The Israeli Supreme Court [official website] on Tuesday upheld a controversial plea agreement [JURIST report] for former Israeli President Moshe Katsav [official profile; BBC profile], in which Katsav was permitted to plead guilty to lesser sex charges in exchange for a suspended sentence and the dropping of rape charges [JURIST report] brought against him in 2006. Under a deal criticized by women's and civil rights activists [JURIST report], Katsav admitted to charges of indecent assault, sexual harassment, and obstruction of justice, and resigned from the presidency two weeks before the end of his term. A victim and several rights organizations filed five separate petitions [Haaretz report] to overturn the agreement, arguing that it was contrary to public interest, had no legal reason, and injured the principal of equality before the law. Under the original rape charges, Katsav would have faced up to 20 years in jail; under the plea agreement, he will receive a suspended sentence and no jail time.

In October 2006, Israeli police recommended [JURIST report] that the attorney general indict Katsav following a three-month investigation of at least 10 complaints against him brought by former employees. Despite the criticism, Israeli Attorney General Menahem Mazuz has defended the agreement as necessary to protect the office of the presidency from further injury and to spare the country from embarrassment. AP has more.

[JURIST] A Malaysian court Tuesday rejected a bid to free five prominent members of the Hindu Rights Action Force (Hindraf) [Wikipedia backgrounder], ruling that they were lawfully detained under Malaysia's controversial Internal Security Act (ISA) [HRW backgrounder], which permits the government to detain suspects for two years without trial and to renew the detention indefinitely. The five were arrested [JURIST report] in December for allegedly orchestrating a November street demonstration [TIME report] by thousands of the nation's ethnic Indians in Kuala Lumpur. The rally, which drew an estimated 20,000 protesters, was sparked by complaints that the predominantly Malay Muslim government economically discriminates against ethnic Indians and other minorities. The five plan to appeal the court's decision.

The International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) [advocacy website] last month urged Malaysia to lift the ISA [JURIST report], saying it is contrary to fundamental human rights [press release] and is being used to stifle peaceful dissent against the government. FIDH also said that the five Hindraf protesters would not receive a fair trial as long as the law is in effect. AP has more.

[JURIST] The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a lawsuit [complaint, PDF; press release] in federal court Monday challenging a Tennessee state law that requires convicted felons to pay "all outstanding legal financial obligations" before their voting rights are restored. The lawsuit, brought on behalf of three convicted felons who have completed their imprisonment terms, challenges Sections 40-29-202(b) and (c) [text] of the Tennessee Code, which require felons to pay outstanding restitution and child support fees before being eligible to apply for a voter registration card. The lawsuit, filed in the United States District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee [official website], alleges that such a financial burden violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment [LII text] by "discriminat[ing] among citizens on the basis of wealth."

Last July, the Washington Supreme Court overturned a lower court ruling [ACLU press release], and held that it is not a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment to require convicted felons to fulfill their payment of court-imposed fines before restoring their voting rights. The ACLU brought that lawsuit on behalf of three convicted felons against the state of Washington with similar voting rights restoration provisions. The ACLU filed another lawsuit [press release] last May, Coronado v. Napolitano [complaint, PDF], challenging Arizona's state law requiring convicted felons to fulfill outstanding legal financial obligations to the state before having their voting rights restored. That case is still pending in federal court. The Tennessean has more.

[JURIST] The US Supreme Court [official website; JURIST news archive] ruled Tuesday that testimony from workers who suffered job bias but were not parties to a federal age discrimination case "is neither per se admissible nor per se inadmissible" under the Federal Rules of Evidence. The decision came in Sprint/United Management Co. v. Mendelsohn [LII case backgrounder], where the US Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit ruled that Ellen Mendelsohn was deprived of a full opportunity [opinion, PDF] to present her Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) [text] case to the jury when the trial court excluded evidence from other former Sprint employees.

The Supreme Court vacated and remanded the appeals court decision, saying that the Tenth Circuit improperly concluded that the District Court applied a per se rule when deciding to exclude the evidence:

The question whether evidence of discrimination by other supervisors is relevant in an individual ADEA case is fact based and depends on many factors, including how closely related the evidence is to the plaintiff's circumstances and theory of the case. Applying Rule 403 to determine if evidence is prejudicial also requires a fact intensive, context-specific inquiry. Because Rules 401 and 403 do not make such evidence per se admissible or per se inadmissible, and because the inquiry required by those Rules is within the province of the District Court in the first instance, we vacate the judgment of the Court of Appeals and remand the case with instructions to have the District Court clarify the basis for its evidentiary ruling under the applicable Rules.

[JURIST] Russia is clamping down "on the freedoms of assembly and expression in the run-up to parliamentary and presidential elections," according to a report [text; press release] released by Amnesty International Tuesday. Amnesty expressed concern that authorities are harassing rights activists and journalists monitoring opposition demonstrations, and said that police have used violence in breaking up some opposition events while allowing pro-government events to proceed without incident. According to the report's introduction:

The organization concludes that all three fundamental rights have been curtailed in recent years. Human rights defenders, independent civil society organizations, political opponents, and ordinary citizens have all been victims of this roll-back on civil and political rights.

The right to freedom of expression, as well as the rights to freedom of assembly and association, which are ultimately specific forms of exercising the right to freedom of expression, are guaranteed in the Russian Constitution and are enshrined in international human rights law. The Russian Federation, as a party to human rights treaties including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (ECHR), is obliged to promote and protect these rights, to ensure that people can fully enjoy these rights.

However, there appear to be more and more limitations on these rights. Laws have been introduced whose overly broad provisions allow for arbitrary interpretation to the detriment of these rights, or which in other ways restrict these fundamental rights. The very existence of these laws has had a chilling effect on the right to freedom of expression. Moreover, Russian authorities have used laws to clamp down on dissent by human rights defenders and others expressing alternative viewpoints. The findings of this report give cause for concern that the rights to freedom of expression, association and assembly in Russia are not guaranteed for all. Failure to protect these rights has serious implications for the whole civil society in the Russian Federation. The right to freedom of expression is a cornerstone for a functioning civil society and in itself a safeguard for the protection of other basic human rights.

[JURIST] The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) [official website] on Tuesday ordered some 70 Internet service providers to restore access to video-sharing website YouTube [corporate website], lifting an order [JURIST report] issued last week blocking access over "blasphemous" posted on the site. The PTA issued a statement [text] Monday explaining the order, saying it was in response to a movie trailer [video] posted by Dutch politician Geert Wilders for his film "Forbidden," which depicts Islam in a highly negative light:

You Tube, a video sharing website has been found to be running highly provocative and blasphemous anti Quranic video with reference to the Dutch politician Mr. Geert Wilders.

PTA believes that the said footage absolutely stands against the values of religious tolerance and peaceful coexistence arousing deep anguish and distress across the Muslim world. Had not this highly profane and sacrilegious footage been banned, it has the potential to cause more unrest and possible loss of life and property across the country.

In view of the above, PTA as the sector's Regulator has directed country's ISPs to block the said website showing offensive visual footages. PTA will ensure blocking of the website keeping under consideration all the best practices and means so as to achieve the desired objectives without affecting the ones that are not concerned with the objectionable contents.

[JURIST] Former Khmer Rouge prison chief Kaing Guek Eav [TrialWatch profile], also known as Duch, visited the Choeung Ek "killing field" Tuesday as part of an on-site investigation [press release, PDF] by co-investigating judges of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) [official website; JURIST news archive]. The tribunal described the investigation as "a normal investigative action, the aim of which is to clarify the declarations by each of the participants by gathering photos, audio-visual recordings and creating material for use in 3D reconstructions." A similar on-site investigation will be held Wednesday at Tuol Sleng, the site of the former prison under Duch's command.

Duch, who was in charge of the notorious S-21 prison [Wikipedia backgrounder] in Phnom Penh, is one of five top leaders of the Khmer Rouge regime [JURIST news archive; BBC backgrounder] currently in ECCC custody. He was arrested in 1999 on genocide charges and was subsequently charged with war crimes by a military court in March and with crimes against humanity [JURIST reports] by the ECCC in July. Those charges were primarily brought to keep Duch in custody while the ECCC started operations. A panel of ECCC judges ruled late last year that Duch should not be granted bail [JURIST report] while preparations for his as-yet unscheduled trial continue. AP has more.

[JURIST] The chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) said Monday that the FCC is "ready, willing, and able to step in if necessary" to ensure a proper balance is struck between consumer proponents of "net neutrality" principles and the telecommunication industry's interest in controlling the flow and content of Internet traffic over its networks. The issue of net neutrality [JURIST news archive] arises from concerns that broadband providers are currently free to accept money from content providers in exchange for preferential bandwidth treatment, or to interfere with the content of competitors. Monday's en banc FCC hearing was held to discuss the Internet Freedom Preservation Act of 2008 [HR 5353 materials; Markey summary, PDF], a bill introduced [JURIST report] by US Rep. Edward Markey (D-MA) earlier this month aimed at guaranteeing net neutrality.

At Monday's hearing, FCC Chairman Kevin Martin [official profile] said [PDF text]:

Network operators claim they employ "reasonable network management" in the operation of their broadband networks. The question is: what are reasonable network practices? Networks may have legitimate network management practices. Obviously network operators can take reasonable steps to manage traffic, but they cannot arbitrarily block access. This raises several issues in my mind. First, its seems important that they do so in a reasonable, open, and transparent way. consumers need to know if and how network management practices distinguish between different applications, so that consumers can configure their own applications and systems properly. And it means providing transparency to broadband consumers - in the promises to deliver increased speeds, services, and pricing. Consumers have alleged that operators are blocking or degrading consumers' access to the Internet by distinguishing between certain peer to peer applications. Consumers have alleged that these operator practices have not been transparent.

So I say we start with the following question: Do we believe in a marketplace free of unreasonable discrimination? For me, and I believe for millions of consumers, innovators and entrepreneurs the answer is easy—absolutely yes, period, full stop. This is why I keep saying that the time has come for a specific enforceable principle of non-discrimination. This principle should allow for reasonable network management, but make crystal clear that broadband network operators cannot shackle the promise of the Internet. The principle of non-discrimination is in the Markey Bill, just as it is in Title II of the Communications Act, and it needs to be added, as quickly as we can add it, to the FCC's Internet Policy Statement.

[JURIST] British Columbia Supreme Court Justice Barry Davies has ruled [excerpts] that Section 184.4 of the Canadian Criminal Code [text], which allows law enforcement officers to electronically intercept private communications in "exceptional circumstances" without court authorization, is unconstitutional because it violates "the fundamental freedom to be free from unreasonable search and seizure" protected by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms [text]. Davies' ruling, made public Monday, can be appealed to the province's Court of Appeal. Section 184.4 allows police to intercept communications without a judge's approval in certain emergency situations, but Davies said that the provision violates the rights of people whose communications have been intercepted.

Section 184.4 is used across Canada, and Davies stayed his ruling for 18 months to allow the Canadian parliament time to amend the law. Canwest News Service has more.

[JURIST] A federal jury in Hartford, Connecticut on Monday found five former insurance executives guilty of charges of conspiracy, securities fraud, false statements to the SEC, and mail fraud in connection with a scheme to falsely inflate the financial health of American International Group (AIG) [corporate website], one of the world's largest insurance companies. Four of the defendants worked for the General Re (Gen Re) [corporate website] insurance group, a subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway [corporate website], at the time of the fraudulent scheme, while the fifth defendant is a former AIG executive. The Department of Justice press release [text] explained the theory of the case:

At trial, the government presented evidence that the defendants engaged in a scheme to falsely inflate AIG's reported loss reserves, a key indicator of financial health to insurance industry analysts and investors. This fraud was effectuated through the use of two sham reinsurance transactions between subsidiaries of AIG and Gen Re in response to analysts' criticism of a $59 million decrease in AIG's loss reserves for the third quarter of 2000. The two sham transactions increased AIG's loss reserves by $250 million in the fourth quarter of 2000 and $250 million in the first quarter of 2001, masking a declining trend in loss reserves in the face of premium growth. AIG restated the transactions at issue in filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission in May of 2005. Evidence presented at trial established that when the investigation was disclosed to investors by AIG and through various media outlets between Feb. 14 and March 14, 2005, shares of AIG stock dropped from $73.12 to $61.92.