[JURIST] Zimabwean president Robert Mugabe [BBC profile; JURIST news archive] and opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai [BBC profile; JURIST news archive] on Monday signed a power-sharing agreement [Harare Tribune text] between their African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) and Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) [party websites] parties. Under the agreement, Mugabe would remain president, Tsvangirai would become prime minister and each would have two deputies. During the signing ceremony for the agreement Mugabe said [Nation report] it was important to reopen the country to outside aid, and Tsvangirai said that the agreement was the best way for the country to move forward despite the long rivalry between the two leaders. International reaction to the announcement was positive but hesitant, with the European Union saying that it would lift sanctions against the country if Zimabawe is now able to reinstate democracy and the rule of law [press release; AP report], and the US saying that it looked forward [AFP report] to seeing the details of the agreement. A Zimbabwean coalition of NGOs expressed doubt [Harare Tribune report] that the deal will effect real change in the country. AFP has more.

Mugabe and Tsvangirai had been disputing the results of the recent presidential elections [JURIST news archive], and the country has since faced enormous international criticism [JURIST report] for rights violations that occurred during the elections. Tsvangirai had taking refuge [JURIST report] at the Dutch embassy in Harare and the MDC had estimated that at least 65 of its members have been killed [BBC report] since the first election in March. Human rights groups suggested that state-sponsored violence would only increase as the second presidential vote drew closer, and in the past few weeks the amount of election-related violence has increased, including the beating [ABC News report], torture [National Post report], and killing [NYT report] of MDC supporters throughout Zimbabwe. In June, Mugabe's government expelled a UN human rights observer [JURIST news report]. Earlier that month, government forces stopped and detained US and UK diplomats [JURIST report], threatening them and beating one of their drivers.

[JURIST] The US has denied a Pakistani delegation's request to meet with Pakistani detainees held at the US military detention center at Guantanamo Bay [JURIST news archive], according to a Daily Times report [text] published Sunday. According to the report, the US said that it does not permit delegations to meet with specific detainees held at the center, but did agree to arrange a meeting for the group with female detainee Aafia Siddiqui [FBI materials], who is being held in a federal prison after being extradited to the US and appeared before a federal court [JURIST report] in New York last month. The delegation had planned to visit the detainees later this month in order to assess their condition, about which Pakistani authorities have long expressed concern [Xinhua report].

Last week, Pakistani Ambassador to the US Husain Haqqani [official profile] met with US officials to discuss the release [JURIST report] of six Pakistani citizens currently being held at Guantanamo, saying that any Pakistani prisoners facing terrorism charges upon their release would be tried by Pakistani courts. Haqqani's efforts to secure the release of the remaining Pakistani prisoners at Guantanamo came shortly after the unannounced release [AP report] of Pakistani detainee Qari Saad Madni from the detention center. 

[JURIST] An Australian jury on Monday convicted radical cleric Abdul Nacer Benbrika [BBC profile] and five other Muslims in that country's highest-profile terrorism trial to date. Benbrika, also known as Abu Bakr, was found guilty [charge list] in the Supreme Court of Victoria [official website] on charges of directing the activities of a terrorist organization, belonging to a terrorist organization and possessing a thing connected with preparation for a terrorist act. Four other defendants were acquitted, while verdicts had not been delivered for two more. The group was accused of plotting in 2005 to assassinate then-Prime Minister John Howard [official profile; JURIST news archive] and to bomb major sporting events. Australian Attorney General Robert McClelland [official profile] said at a press conference [transcript]:

It is my view that the successful prosecution in the Pendennis trials is the most successful terrorist prosecution that this country has seen. It involved obviously a number of individuals but it also evidenced a degree of organisation that our law enforcement agencies have been able to - able to prevent developing. And, as I say, we must be alive to the fact that not only would a terrorist event cause injury and death and destruction, it would be enormously damaging to our social fabric.

[JURIST] A US soldier and an Iraqi translator for the US military testified against Staff Sgt. Hal M. Warner [defense website; JURIST news archive] as an Article 32 preliminary hearing [JAG backgrounder] concluded Sunday in Iraq [JURIST news archive]. Military prosecutors are seeking to court-martial Warner, of the Army's 1st Battalion, 327th Infantry [unit website], in connection with the murder of an Iraqi detainee earlier this year. The translator testified that he had watched Warner detonate a grenade under the head of Ali Mansur Mohammed, who was being interrogated in connection with an attack on US troops. The soldier, Cpl. Cody Atkinson, testified that he had seen Warner carrying a grenade as he escorted Mohammed out of a vehicle and that Warner later instructed him to say that Mohammed had been released from custody. Warner is charged [press release; JURIST report] with premeditated murder, assault, making a false official statement, obstruction of justice and being an accessory after the fact. A preliminary hearing for 1st Lt. Michael Behenna [JURIST news archive], who is accused of shooting Mohammed before Warner allegedly set off the grenade, is scheduled for September 20. AFP has more.

In March, US Marine Sgt. Ryan Weemer was charged [press release] with one count of murder and one count of dereliction of duty for his involvement in the shooting death of a detained Iraqi insurgent during a Multi-National Force-Iraq (MNF-Iraq) [official website] November 2004 offensive [GlobalSecurity backgrounder] in Fallujah [USMC timeline; JURIST news archive]. The charges against Weemer followed December 2007 charges against Marine Sgt. Jermaine A. Nelson for murder and dereliction of duty, and August charges [JURIST reports] against former Marine Sgt. Jose Nazario for voluntary manslaughter in connection with the same incident. In March 2007, a US military court-martial found 101st Airborne Staff Sgt. Raymond Girouard guilty of three counts of negligent homicide [Article 32 hearing transcript, DOC], but not guilty of premeditated murder for the deaths of three Iraqi detainees [JURIST news archive] held after a May 2006 raid in Thar Thar, a town near Samarra in the northern Salahuddin province of Iraq. In January 2007 US Army Specialist William Hunsaker received an 18-year prison sentence after pleading guilty to murder, attempted murder and obstruction of justice charges [JURIST report] relating to the same incident.

[JURIST] The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) [official website; JURIST news archive] on Monday convicted [press release] former Bosnian army commander Rasim Delic [ICTY case backgrounder, PDF; Trial Watch profile] of cruel treatment and sentenced him to three years in prison. With one judge dissenting, a trial chamber found Delic responsible for actions of the El Mujahedin Detachment (EMD), which subjected 12 members of the Bosnian Serb Army (VRS) to severe beatings and electric shocks and forced them to kiss the severed heads of other detainees. He was acquitted of three other counts of murder and cruel treatment. According to a summary [text] of the judgment,

the Majority [of judges], inter alia, recalled the appallingly brutal nature of the acts of mistreatment against the 12 VRS soldiers, which had lasted more than one month, and the physical and mental suffering that the victims had endured while subjected to such abysmal treatment during their detention in Livade and the Kamenica Camp. The Majority also noted that the victims had been detained under strict guard of the EMD. This situation rendered the victims particularly vulnerable. The Majority was also mindful that it had found Rasim Delic to have had imputed knowledge of these crimes, as opposed to actual knowledge.

[JURIST] Officials from the US Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) on Friday announced plans [briefing transcript] to implement new guidelines extending the FBI's investigatory powers relating to terrorism. The plan calls for the merger of the Guidelines on General Crimes, the National Security Investigative Guidelines (NSIG) [texts, PDF], and the confidential Supplemental Foreign Intelligence Guidelines, and would allow FBI agents to use more investigatory tools such as undercover operations and anonymous tips while requiring less evidence to use them. One DOJ official said of the proposed merger:

We believed that certain restrictions in the NSIG, or the National Security Guidelines, were actively interfering in our ability to do what we believe Congress, the 9/11 Commission, WMD Commission, and the President and the American people want us to do, which is to become an intelligence-driven agency. ... We found some of the distinctions between what you could do if you were investigating a regular federal crime and what you could do if you were investigating a threat to the national security to be illogical and inconsistent with good public policy. So we didn’t see the public policy rationale for the differences and what could be done under one set of guidelines versus the other.

And finally, having these inconsistent sets of guidelines was extremely problematic from a compliance standpoint.

[JURIST] A judge in South Africa's Pietermaritzburg High Court ruled [text, PDF] Friday that an earlier decision to prosecute politician Jacob Zuma [BBC profile; JURIST news archive] on corruption charges was procedurally invalid because Zuma was not given the chance to respond to the allegations against him. In December 2007, South Africa's National Prosecuting Authority [official website] served an indictment [JURIST report] on Zuma, charging him with corruption, fraud, money laundering and racketeering. Zuma said that the charges were part of a politically motivated effort by outgoing President Thabo Mbeki [official profile] to upset his plans to run in the 2009 presidential election and that Zuma had both a constitutional [S. 179(5)(d) text, PDF] and statutory [NPA s. 22(2)(c) text, PDF] right to state his case before charges were brought. The judge wrote Friday:

[T]his application has nothing to do with the guilt or otherwise of the applicant. It deals only with a procedural point relating to his right to make representations before the respondent makes a decision on whether to charge him again. Once these matters are cured the State is at liberty to proceed again against the applicant, subject to any further proceedings he may bring. ...

It is declared that the decision taken by the National Prosecuting Authority during or about 28 December 2007 to prosecute the applicant . . . is invalid and is set aside.

[JURIST] The Virginia Supreme Court [official website] has struck down [opinion, PDF] as unconstitutional a state law [text] criminalizing the production of falsified, unsolicited bulk e-mail. The court on Friday vacated the conviction of prominent spammer Jeremy Jaynes, and held that the statute is substantially overbroad because it "prohibits the anonymous transmission of all unsolicited bulk e-mails including those containing political, religious or other speech," in addition to commercial messages. The court analyzed the anti-spam law using strict scrutiny after rejecting a lower court's characterization [JURIST report] of it as a trespass statute, to which First Amendment [text and ALA materials] protections would not apply:

As shown by the record, because e-mail transmission protocol requires entry of an IP address and domain name for the sender, the only way such a speaker can publish an anonymous e-mail is to enter a false IP address or domain name. Therefore, like the registration record on file in the mayor’s office identifying persons who chose to canvass private neighborhoods in Watchtower Bible & Tract Society v. Village of Stratton ... registered IP addresses and domain names discoverable through searchable data bases and registration documents “necessarily result[] in a surrender of [the speaker’s] anonymity." ... The right to engage in anonymous speech, particularly anonymous political or religious speech, is "an aspect of the freedom of speech protected by the First Amendment." ... By prohibiting false routing information in the dissemination of e-mails, Code § 18.2-152.3:1 infringes on that protected right. The [U.S.] Supreme Court has characterized regulations prohibiting such anonymous speech as "a direct regulation of the content of speech."