[JURIST] The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has urged the Mongolian government [press release] to "exercise the utmost restraint" in dealing with protests of the country's recent parliamentary elections. President Nambar Enkhbayar [official website, in Mongolian] on Tuesday instituted a four-day state of emergency following protests in which at least five have been killed and more than 700 have been detained. The Office said Mongolia should "ensure that due process is followed in the case of any detentions, and that the incidents leading to deaths and injuries be properly investigated," as part of their obligations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights [text]. The UN News Centre has more.

In the elections held Sunday, the Mongolian People's Revolutionary Party [party website] won the majority of the vote, and supporters of the Democratic Party [party website, in Mongolian] and other opposition parties staged protests against the results on Tuesday. On Friday, the Democratic Party called for new elections [Reuters report] because of alleged fraud, but Enkhbayar has said that both parties have agreed to address the riots under established law [Xinhua report].

[JURIST] The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) [advocacy website] Thursday blasted [press release] a proposed plan that would allow Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) [official website] agents to consider a person's race, religion, or ethnicity in deciding whether to open a terrorism investigation. CAIR decried the plan as "unconstitutional and un-American," saying that it could allow security agents to target Muslims and Arab-Americans for harassment. A US Department of Justice spokesman responding to press reports on the plan - which has neither been finalized nor formally announced - denied that the new guidelines would allow profiling, noting that ethnicity is only one of many factors to be considered and that it is only when all those factors as a whole are deemed suspicious that an investigation can be opened. Under the proposed guidelines as explained to AP by unnamed sources, agents would be able to initiate investigations even in instances where there is no evidence of a crime, something required under current guidelines. AP has more. Fox News has additional coverage.

Rights complaints by Muslims in the US rose 25 percent in 2006, according to an annual report on civil rights [PDF text; press release] released by CAIR last year. The group attributed the jump to a rise in anti-Muslim bias. The majority of reported complaints came against government agencies, including the DOJ.

[JURIST] Yemeni officials met with a visiting US delegation Thursday to discuss the possible transfer of Yemeni detainees still held at Guantanamo Bay [JURIST news archive]. A major impediment to the negotiated release and repatriation of Yemeni detainees - who make up the largest single group of nationals at the prison - has been concern that they might be freed on their return to their home country, but AP quoted a senior official with Yemen's Ministry of Human Rights [official website] as saying that the US has been assured that any returned detainees suspected of terrorism will be prosecuted. There are currently close to 100 Yemeni detainees at Guantanamo, and talks concerning an agreement between the Yemeni and US governments on the return of the Yemeni prisoners have been ongoing. AP has more. Saba has local coverage.

In October 2007, US officials criticized [JURIST report] reports that the Yemeni government had released suspected USS Cole bomber Jamal al-Badawi [GlobalSecurity profile] after he turned himself in. In May 2007, a senior Yemeni official said that the country had agreed [JURIST report] to receive most Yemeni detainees being held at Guantanamo. In June 2006, Yemeni officials called for investigations into the Guantanamo suicides of three detainees [JURIST reports], including one Yemeni national, saying that the deaths exemplified the "inhumane conditions of detainees" at the US military prison.

[JURIST] The US District Court for the District of Columbia [official website] Wednesday chose [resolution, PDF; press release, PDF] Judge Thomas Hogan [official profile] to preside over the habeas corpus appeals of Guantanamo Bay detainees seeking to challenge their detention in federal court under the Supreme Court's recent ruling [opinion, PDF; JURIST report] in Boumediene v. Bush. Hogan will rule on procedural issues common to all cases.

Also on Wednesday, the court designated Judge James Robertson to consider the bid of Guantanamo detainee Salim Hamdan [DOD materials; JURIST news archive] to stay his military commission trial [AP report] until the civil court determines its legality. AFP has more.

[JURIST] Pakistani Supreme Court Bar Association President Aitzaz Ahsan [profile; JURIST news archive] strongly criticized the Bush administration's Pakistan policy during a visit to the US this past week, arguing that its refusal to condemn President Pervez Musharraf's November 2007 declaration of emergency law [text, PDF; JURIST report] and his concomitant ouster of superior court judges is harming relations between the countries. On Tuesday, Ahsan addressed [recorded video; press release] the New York City Bar Association [association website], recounting the events leading up to the judges' ouster and criticizing US officials for voicing "not a whimper of protest." On Thursday, Ahsan said in a Washington Times interview that Pakistani support for US anti-terror efforts were waning in light of US silence on Musharraf's actions. BBC News has more. The New York Law Journal has additional coverage.

Ahsan has long been one of the most visible faces in the Pakistani lawyers movement [JURIST news archive] pressing the government for a more independent judiciary. Last month, Ahsan and other lawyers held a "long march" in support of the ousted judges' reinstatement, beginning in Lahore and ending [JURIST reports] in Islamabad.

[JURIST] The Italian government Thursday began carrying out a controversial plan to fingerprint the country's Roma minority [JURIST news archive], despite fierce criticism [JURIST report] from the international human rights community [COE statement] and Roma advocates [ERRC materials]. The fingerprinting scheme, announced last Thursday by Interior Minister Roberto Maroni [OECD profile], involves recording the fingerprints of thousands of Roma, including children, ostensibly to reduce street crime and begging. According to some reports, the Italian Interior Ministry has said that fingerprints will not be taken from any Roma who has Italian or EU documentation. The plan has been condemned as constituting "ethnic cataloguing" [EUobserver.com report]. AP has more.

Vincenzo Spadafora, head of UNICEF in Italy [official website], said UNICEF was "deeply concerned" by the proposal, commenting that "[i]f this is being brought in to protect the rights of Roma children, Italian children should also be fingerprinted to protect them as well." On Monday, the Italian Court of Cassation released a ruling [JURIST report] overturning the convictions of six Italians, including Verona Mayor Flavio Tosi, for distributing anti-Roma literature in 2001 in a move some speculated was timed to bolster the fingerprinting plan. In November 2005, the European Monitoring Center on Racism and Xenophobia (EUMC) [advocacy website] reported that Roma minorities are the ethnic group most susceptible to racism in the European Union [JURIST report]. A spokesman for an Italian NGO opposed to fingerprinting said Thursday that life expectancy for Roma living in Italy is already under 60 [AKI report].

[JURIST] Human Rights Watch [advocacy website; JURIST news archive] Wednesday accused Sri Lanka [JURIST news archive] of creating a de facto internment camp [HRW press release] to arbitrarily detain more than 400 refugees fleeing areas of the country controlled by separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) [group website; CFR backgrounder]. HRW rejected government claims that the detentions are meant for the refugees' own protection and called on the government to give aid agencies access to detainees. Reuters has more.

The Sri Lankan government has been sporadically fighting with LTTE since 1972 and has been widely criticized for ignoring basic human rights in the process. In January, the country's Supreme Court [official website] ordered the government to stop [JURIST report] the practice of detaining and searching large groups of civilians in LTTE controlled areas. The same month, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour urged the government to continue to respect rights [JURIST report] in the region after the expiration of a 2002 ceasefire. In August 2007, HRW accused the Sri Lankan government of being responsible for a dramatic increase in unlawful killings and other human rights violations [JURIST report].

[JURIST] A judge for the US District Court for the Southern District of New York [official website] Tuesday ordered [PDF text] Google to turn over databases containing logs of every time any IP address has accessed any YouTube [corporate websites] video. Viacom [corporate website] had requested access to the databases in a lawsuit [case materials] brought for copyright infringement, arguing that Google and YouTube knowingly made copyrighted material available on their websites without permission. District Judge Louis Stanton rejected Google's claim that turning over user information would invade users' privacy in violation of the Video Privacy Protection Act [text], finding that an IP address or YouTube username alone was not enough to identify users. The court did, however, reject Viacom's bid to compel Google to turn over larger databases which include user-provided text summaries of hosted videos. Technology and privacy advocates sharply criticized [EFF blog post] the order, saying that it would set a dangerous precedent for internet privacy. Computerworld has more. BBC News has additional coverage.

Google has recently started to push for stronger online privacy protection after strong criticism by privacy groups. In September 2007, Google called for stronger privacy legislation [speech text; JURIST report] at a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) conference. In June 2007, Google announced that it would reduce retention of user search data to 18 months [JURIST report] in response to a European Commission investigation [JURIST report] into whether the company complied with EU privacy rules [EU Data Protection website].

[JURIST] Strict French anti-terrorism laws violate European and international human rights standards, according to a report [PDF text; HRW press release] released by Human Rights Watch (HRW) [advocacy website] Wednesday. In particular, the report criticized a French law [text, in French] criminalizing "association in relation to a terrorist undertaking," which HRW says allows prosecutors and law enforcement officials to detain terrorism suspects without cause and undermine suspects' right to a fair trial:

Central to this preemptive approach is the broadly defined offense of "criminal association in relation to a terrorist undertaking" (association de malfaiteurs en relation avec une entreprise terroriste, hereafter "association de malfaiteurs"). Established as a separate offense in 1996, it allows the authorities to intervene with the aim of preventing terrorism well before the commission of a crime. No specific terrorist act need be planned, much less executed, to give rise to the offense. Intended to criminalize all preparatory acts short of direct complicity in a terrorist plot, an association de malfaiteurs charge may be leveled for providing any kind of logistical or financial support to, or associating in a sustained fashion with, groups allegedly formed with the ultimate goal of engaging in terrorist activity....

In practice, French counterterrorism laws and procedures undermine the right of those facing charges of terrorism to a fair trial. The broad definition and expansive interpretation of association de malfaiteurs translate into a low standard of proof for decisions to arrest suspects or to place them under investigation by a judge. Indeed, casting a wide net to ensnare large numbers of people who might have some connection with an alleged terrorist network has been one of the characteristics of investigations into association de malfaiteurs.

[JURIST] Disagreements between the United States and Iraq are still blocking a permanent Status of Forces Agreement [CFR materials; JURIST op-ed] regarding the role of American troops in Iraq [JURIST news archive] and could delay a deal past the expiration of the UN mandate for coalition forces in Iraq at the end of the year, Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari [BBC profile] indicated Wednesday. Last week, the US agreed to eliminate legal immunity for US contractors [NYT report; JURIST report] from the proposed agreement, and suggested that it might concede US control of Iraqi airspace. The US is still pushing for immunity for US troops from prosecution in Iraqi courts and the right to hold detainees independent of Iraqi review. The two countries had set an informal deadline of July 31 to reach a permanent agreement, but have said they may have to adopt an interim deal to keep US troops in the country legally before the UN mandate authorizing the US troop presence expires in December [UN press release]. The New York Times has more. McClatchy has additional coverage. Voices of Iraq has local coverage.

Earlier this month, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki [BBC profile; JURIST news archive] said some of the provisions the US is seeking would violate Iraqi sovereignty [JURIST report], but US President George Bush downplayed the disagreement, saying he thought the two countries would reach a deal before the deadline. The US has SOFAs [GlobalSecurity backgrounder] with many other countries around the world, and legal immunity for US troops is one of their most sought-after provisions. Immunity is a particularly divisive issue in Iraq, which has previously asked the UN to nullify [JURIST report] the immunity granted to troops under the original mandate [Security Council Resolution 1546] due to past misconduct by US soldiers, including the Haditha killings of Iraqi civilians and the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal [JURIST news archives]. Iraq has also asked the UN to lift the current provision allowing the US to hold prisoners without Iraqi review [JURIST news report].

[JURIST] A judge for the US District Court for the Northern District of California [official website] Wednesday dismissed [opinion, PDF] a lawsuit brought by an Islamic charity that alleged it was the subject of an illegal wiretap by the National Security Agency (NSA) [official website]. The government argued that the NSA did not need to obtain a court order before eavesdropping on the al-Haramain Islamic Foundation [JURIST news archive] charity group because the state secrets privilege [JURIST news archive] trumped procedural requirements under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) [text; JURIST news archive], but US District Judge Vaughn Walker wrote:

Whatever power the executive may otherwise have had in this regard, FISA limits the power of the executive branch to conduct such activities and it limits the executive branch’s authority to assert the state secrets privilege in response to challenges to the legality of its foreign intelligence surveillance activities.

[JURIST] The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled [opinion, PDF] Wednesday that the First Amendment protected an anti-abortion group's right to display graphic pictures of early-term aborted fetuses outside of a California middle school. The Center for Bio-Ethical Reform (CBER) [advocacy website], a pro-life advocacy group, filed a lawsuit [complaint, PDF] in federal court in 2003 against the school and the Los Angeles County Sheriff Department after sheriff's deputies acting under California Penal Code § 626.8 [text] stopped two of its members for circling a Rancho Palos Verdes public school in a large truck plastered with the images. The court found that the deputies and the school were protected by the doctrine of qualified immunity [backgrounder] with respect to the CBER's First Amendment violation claim, but it distinguished between constitutionally problematic statutes which criminalized expressive behavior based on the disruptive content of the expressed message, and those that criminalize disruptive means of expression. Judge Harry Pregerson wrote:

As a whole, the language of § 626.8 does not evidence any intent to criminalize a person’s behavior based on a listener’s reaction to the content of his speech. We thus conclude that the California courts would construe § 626.8 to apply to speech only when the disruption caused by the speaker is caused by the manner of the speech. Controversial words and images that, because of their content, upset the listener and cause the listener to behave disruptively are not covered by the statute.

Under our narrow construction, § 626.8 does not apply to Plaintiffs’ conduct in driving their trucks around Dodson Middle School....Construing § 626.8 as we do, the statute provided no basis to prohibit Plaintiffs from continuing to drive their vehicles around the school before classes began.

Section 626.8 was the only authority cited by Defendants in asking Plaintiffs to leave, and thus provided the only possible source of a significant governmental interest necessary to restrict Plaintiffs’ speech in a public forum...Misapplying a statute is not a significant governmental interest. Defendants have suggested no other significant governmental interest to justify restricting Plaintiffs’ speech. We therefore hold that the Deputy Sheriffs violated Plaintiffs’ First Amendment right of free speech.

[JURIST] The Appeals Chamber of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) [official website] Thursday struck down [judgment summary, text; ICTY press release] the war crime conviction of former senior Bosnian Muslim military commander Naser Oric [ICTY case backgrounder; JURIST news archive]. In June 2006, Oric was convicted of war crimes [JURIST report] for failing to prevent the murder and inhumane treatment of Serb prisoners in Srebrenica [JURIST news archive] by military police under his command. The ICTY appeals court ruled that Oric did not have control over most of the accused police at the time of the alleged crimes. It found that one subordinate was effectively under Oric's control at the time, but that there was insufficient evidence to establish that Oric knew or had reason to know that person would commit any war crimes. AP has more. AFP has additional coverage.

The indictment [text] against Oric alleged that military police under his command beat Serb detainees with metal bars, baseball bats and rifle butts and extracted teeth with pliers. Oric was charged with failing to prevent abuses by military police under his command, and was also charged with responsibility for destruction of Serb villages around Srebrenica. He was sentenced to two years in prison, but was released immediately following his conviction as he had already been detained for two years. Former ICTY Chief Prosecutor Carla Del Ponte appealed the sentence [JURIST report] in July 2006, after having called for an 18-year prison term.

[JURIST] The Supreme Court of Panama [Panama judiciary official website, in Spanish] has declared unconstitutional 183 pardons issued in 2004 by then-outgoing president Mireya Moscoso [profile, in Spanish]. Among the pardoned had been four Cubans - including Luis Posada Carriles [JURIST news archive] - charged with a 2000 assassination attempt against then-Cuban leader Fidel Castro, and 87 journalists charged with libel or defamation. The high court judges said Monday that some of the pardons were given before the defendants had actually stood trial. Reuters has more. Prensa has local coverage, in Spanish.

Carriles and three other Cubans were originally sentenced by a Panamanian court to up to eight years in prison for endangering public safety, possession of explosives and conspiracy in connection with a plan to assassinate Castro. In response, the Cuban government severed ties [JURIST report] with Panama. After his pardon, Carriles was arrested in 2005 [JURIST report] for illegally entering the United States. He was released on bail [JURIST report] in April 2007. Cuba criticized Carriles' release, and accused the US of violating international anti-terrorism treaties by dismissing US charges [JURIST reports] against him. The US government has denied Cuban and Venezuelan requests [JURIST report] for Carriles' extradition, citing the UN Convention Against Torture [text] as it claims that Carriles may face torture in Cuba or Venezuela.

[JURIST] The US Department of Justice (DOJ) [official website] said Wednesday that it had mistakenly failed to brief the Supreme Court [official website] on the existence of a military law [PDF text] allowing capital punishment for child rape before the court decided the case of Kennedy v. Louisiana [Duke Law backgrounder; JURIST report]. In Kennedy, the court held 5-4 [JURIST report] that a death sentence constitutes cruel and unusual punishment when imposed for a crime in which the victim was not killed. The majority supported its reasoning by saying that very few states had such laws and that - incorrectly - there were no federal laws allowing the punishment for rape. In its admission, the DOJ noted that a 2006 amendment to the Uniform Code of Military Conduct [LII materials] does in fact allow the death penalty at court-martial for rape and child rape. Lousiana Governor Bobby Jindal [official website] has said lawyers for the state are considering whether or not to petition the court to reconsider the case. The oversight was first raised [CAAFlog post] Saturday by a civilian Air Force lawyer in his blog on military justice. The New York Times has more. The Washington Times has additional coverage.

The Supreme Court's holding reversed a 2007 decision [PDF text] by the Supreme Court of Louisiana. The high court ruling has already been criticized by a wide range of lawmakers.

[JURIST] The US Department of Defense (DOD) [official website] announced Wednesday that it will transfer two Guantanamo detainees [press release] to Algeria. The unnamed individuals are among the more than 65 Guantanamo detainees that government officials have declared eligible for transfer. About 265 detainees remain at the base.

Algerian Justice Minister Tayeb Belaiz indicated in March that officials from his country had visited Guantanamo to identify Algerian detainees [JURIST report], and said that although the country would accept repatriation of the 17 then still held there, some might face criminal charges upon their return. US officials have expressed concern that former detainees considered dangerous are not simply set free. Another Algerian, Sufyian Barhoumi [charge sheet, PDF] was among a group of three Guantanamo prisoners charged [JURIST report] in May with conspiracy and providing material support for terrorism based on alleged involvement with an al Qaeda bomb-making group in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

[JURIST] The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia [official website] on Wednesday reversed [opinion, PDF] a district court ruling and found that post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) [NIMH backgrounder] may qualify as a disability under the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 [text, DOC]. The plaintiff in the case, Martin Desmond, alleged that he was forced to resign from the FBI New Agent Training Unit [FBI backgrounder] in Quantico, VA when his superiors learned that he suffered from PTSD. Desmond argued that his dismissal from the program constituted discrimination based on disability, in violation of Section 501 of the Act. In its ruling, the court explained that under the Rehabilitation Act a plaintiff is disabled if "(1) he suffers from an impairment; (2) the impairment limits an activity that constitutes a major life activity under the Act; and (3) the limitation is substantial." Finding that PTSD qualified as a "mental impairment" and that sleep constituted a "major life activity," the court concluded that the condition was covered by the Act where evidence of significant sleeplessness exists. The case was remanded for further proceedings.

The Rehabilitation Act, administered by the Rehabilitation Services Administration [official website], was passed in 1973 to prevent discrimination based on disability in government agencies and federally funded programs, and foreshadowed broader legislation like the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act [official website] and other measures aimed at increasing protection for people with disabilities in the workplace. Last week, the US House of Representatives passed [JURIST report] the Americans with Disabilities Amendments Act of 2008 [HR 3195 materials], which will make it easier for employees with mental or physical handicaps to prove they are victims of employment discrimination. Supporters of the bill contend that the Supreme Court has interpreted the ADA in an overly restrictive manner, denying protection to a wide range of disabilities.