[JURIST] The Australian Federal Police (AFP) [official website] announced Thursday that they will lift restrictions [control order, PDF] on former Australian Guantanamo Bay [JURIST news archive] detainee David Hicks [JURIST news archive]. The announcement came after Hicks issued a plea by posting a video on the website of Australian advocacy group GetUp! [advocacy website], asking for members' help in lifting the restrictions so that he could "get on with [his] life." Hicks was placed under a control order [JURIST report] in December 2007 that restricted his movements by requiring him to check in with police three times a week,comply with a midnight to 6AM curfew and not leave the country. The control order is set to expire next month, and the AFP has indicated that it will not seek to renew it [AFP report].

Hicks pleaded guilty to a charge of supporting terrorism [JURIST reports] before a US military commission in March 2007 after spending more than five years in US custody following his capture in Afghanistan. He was transferred to Australia in May 2007 to serve the remainder of his nine-month prison sentence at a maximum security prison near his hometown of Adelaide, South Australia, and was released [JURIST reports] last December. The control order was relaxed [JURIST report] last February, permitting Hicks to live anywhere in the country, and requiring him to check in with police only twice a week.

[JURIST] Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) [official website] Luis Moreno-Ocampo [official profile] on Thursday formally asked ICC judges to issue arrest warrants [ICC press release] for the leaders of rebel groups in Sudan's Darfur region [JURIST news archive]. Ocampo had said last Friday at a meeting of states party to the ICC treaty [press release; JURIST report] that he would seek the warrants. The arrest warrants sought [AP report] relate to a deadly September 2007 attack [BBC report] by anti-government rebels in Darfur against African Union (AU) [official website] peacekeeping troops. Speaking of the rebels, Ocampo told the ICC judges:

They planned, led their troops and directed the attack which killed 12 peacekeepers, severely wounded 8 others, and completely destroyed AMIS facilities and property, directly affecting aid and security for millions of people of Darfur who are in need of protection.

[JURIST] A judge for the US District Court for the District of Columbia [official website] on Thursday ordered the release [order, PDF] of five Algerian Guantanamo Bay [JURIST news archive] detainees. In the first ruling on detainees' rights since the June Supreme Court decision in Boumediene v. Bush [opinion, PDF; JURIST report], Judge Richard Leon [official profile] decided [Washington Post report] that the government's evidence was insufficient to persuade him that the men were planning to travel to Afghanistan to join al Qaeda and therefore properly classed as "enemy combatants:"

[W]hile the information in the classified intelligence report, relating to the credibility and reliability of the source, was undoubtedly sufficient for the intelligence purposes for which it was prepared, it is not sufficient for the purposes for which a habeas court must now evaluate it. To allow enemy combatancy to rest on so thin a reed would be inconsistent with this Court's obligation under the Supreme Court's decision in Hamdi to protect petitioners from the risk of erroneous detention. [emphasis in original]

[JURIST] Former French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin [official profile, in French; JURIST news archive] has been ordered to stand trial for "complicity in slanderous denunciation" in connection with the a long-running political scandal know as the Clearstream Affair [BBC backgrounder]. De Villepin is accused [AFP report] of having orchestrated the release of a fabricated list of government officials and business people who profited from illegal arms sales, including current French President Nicolas Sarkozy [offical profile, in French]. The allegations, which de Villepin has previously denied [JURIST report], surfaced during de Villepin's unsuccessful bid for the 2007 presidential nomination by the Union for a Popular Movement [party website, in French], which eventually went to his rival Sarkozy.

In 2006, French authorities searched de Villepin's home and questioned [JURIST reports] him for 17 hours in connection with the scandal. De Villepin's political image was tainted by the allegations as well as by his advance of an unpopular youth labor law [JURIST archive] during his time as prime minister.

[JURIST] Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights Thomas Hammarberg [official profile] released a report [text] Thursday saying that "French detention and immigration policies risk reducing human rights protection." laying out the findings of his visit to France in May, Hammarberg expressed specific concern with overcrowding and poor conditions in detention facilities already noted in a February memo [text, PDF, in French], a high suicide rate [JURIST report], and the risk of arbitrary decisions in preventative detention. On overall immigration policy, Hammarberg said [press release] that a French quota on irregular migrant worker expulsion was improper and that a permanent solution needs to be reached regarding the situation of minority Roma [JURIST news archive]. In particular:

The Commissioner wishes to alert the French authorities to the dangers of predetermining the number of illegal migrants to be removed: the impact of such targets on the ways in which arrests are made and on administrative practices should be assessed. No further arrests should be made in schools or prefectures. The authorities are invited to allow those detained at the border or in holding centres enough time to complete asylum applications, in appropriate conditions.

[JURIST] Media reports that Clinton-era Deputy US Attorney General Eric Holder [professional profile; JURIST report] has been selected for nomination to the position of US Attorney General by President-elect Barack Obama prompted the the Republican National Committee (RNC) [party website] to circulate an e-mail [text] Wednesday criticizing Holder for his role in the 2001 pardon of fugitive financier Marc Rich [Time backgrounder]. The email, which draws on numerous press reports, asked readers "Why does Obama want to appoint an attorney general with a long history of controversial pardons?" In 2002, the Republican-led House Government Reform Committee [official website] concluded that Holder worked with former White House counsel Jack Quinn to ensure that Department of Justice officials, especially federal prosecutors in New York who handled the Rich case, "did not have the opportunity to express an opinion on the Rich pardon before it was granted." Congressman Dan Burton, the Chairman of the Committee at the time it investigated the Rich pardon, has said that Holder met with Quinn on several occasions in which Quinn made the White House’s intentions about the pardon known. The Committee’s evidence included an e-mail in which Holder told Quinn to "go straight" to the White House and that the "timing is good" for Rich's request for a pardon. Normally, pardon requests are reviewed by career prosecutors at the DOJ Office of the Pardon Attorney [official website] before a recommendation is forwarded to the White House.

Marc Rich fled to Switzerland just before he was indicted in New York in 1983 on charges of tax evasion, fraud, and participation in illegal oil deals with Iran. His ex-wife, Denise Rich [Mother Jones report], visited the White House on more than a dozen occasions during Clinton's presidency and contributed an estimated $450,000 to his library foundation, $1.1 million to the Democratic Party, and at least $109,000 to Hillary Rodham Clinton's first bid for the Senate. Rich was officially pardoned [JURIST materials] by President Bill Clinton in 2001 on Clinton’s last day in office.

[JURIST] The US Department of Justice (DOJ) [official website] on Tuesday filed a government motion [text, PDF] asking a federal judge to review the procedure for handling appeals by detainees being held at the US military prison in Guantanamo Bay [JURIST news archive]. The DOJ claims that the current rules, as established by US District Court for the District of Columbia [official website] Chief Judge Thomas Hogan [official profile] in a November 6 order [order, PDF], are "ambiguous in certain important respects and that it would, if excessively construed, create obligations that realistically cannot be met in the limited two-week time frame." According to the rules, the DOJ is required to file briefs justifying detention "within 14 days of the date of th[e] Order in cases in which the petitioner already filed a traverse," which account for the overwhelming majority of the some 200 men who have filed appeals contained in 113 separate cases. The government expressed further concern over the disclosure of confidential information, which would "unnecessarily burden government agencies charged with prosecuting the present war and would risk serious damage to national security." In support of its position, the Justice Department filed four additional documents: a set of proposed orders [text, PDF], a series of sworn statements [text, PDF] by US intelligence officials on the risks to national security, a sworn statement [text, PDF] on national security risks by FBI Director Robert S. Mueller, and secret statements from intelligence and military officials not disclosed to the public. AFP has more.

Hogan responded [order, RTF] to the government’s motion on Thursday by ordering the lawyers for the Guantanamo detainees to file responses to the Justice Department’s motion no later than Wednesday, November 26, 2008. The order followed a decision earlier that day by Judge Richard Leon [official profile] of the US District Court for the District of Columbia [official website] to release five Algerian detainees [JURIST report] now held at Guantanamo.

[JURIST] US Army prosecutors said Wednesday they would be filing new charges against Mohammad al-Qahtani [JURIST news archive], a Saudi Arabian citizen being held at the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay [JURIST news archive]. Al-Qahtani is known as the "20th hijacker" for his alleged role in the 9/11 attacks [JURIST news archive]. This will be the second time the Department of Defense (DOD) [official website] has filed charges against al-Qahtani. DOD originally filed charges for his alleged role in the 9/11 attacks in January 2008 only to drop the charges in May [JURIST report] . The DOD did not give a reason for the dismissal in May but it is suspected that the use of aggressive interrogation methods [Time report] to obtain information from al-Qahtani would have damaged the prosecution's case in a trial. Top prosecutor at Guantanamo, Colonel Lawrence J. Morris, said [NYT report] the charges were dropped so he could review the case files, and he concluded there was sufficient independent evidence that al-Qahtani was involved in the terrorist plot to move forward with prosecution in a military commission.

Al-Qahtani was refused entry into the US at Orlando, Florida in August 2001 and was later captured in Afghanistan. Since his capture, he has been held at Guantanamo Bay, where Pentagon officials say he admitted to being sent to the US to participate in the attacks. In documents the Associated Press obtained in September 2007, he denied his involvement in, and knowledge of, the attacks [JURIST report]. Al-Qahtani also alleged that his statements were coerced by US torture [JURIST report]. A military investigation in 2005 concluded that al-Qahtani had been subjected to harsh treatment, authorized [JURIST report] by former US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld because he would not crack under interrogation. The investigation revealed that al-Qahtani was forced to wear women's underwear [MSNBC report], was kept in solitary confinement for 160 days and was interrogated for 18-20 hours per day on 48 of 54 days [detainee log]. Lead investigator Air Force Lt. Gen. Randall M. Schmidt concluded, however, that he was not tortured since he was not denied food, water, or medical care, and interrogators did not inflict physical pain.

[JURIST] The UK House of Commons [official website] on Tuesday gave final approval [session transcript] to the Climate Change Bill [draft text; materials], which requires the country to cut its greenhouse gas emissions [AFP report] by 80 percent by the year 2050. The bill, heralded as the first binding legislation of its kind, also provides for the creation of a Committee on Climate Change to advise the government on how to cut emissions, and requires regular reporting by the government on how policies are impacting overall emissions. It also gives the government authority to enact secondary regulations designed to meet the bill's goals, including the creation of a domestic emissions trading plan. Parliament is currently considering an energy bill [materials] which includes provisions providing incentives for solar and other alternative energies designed to help the country meet its emissions goals. The Climate Change Bill must still be signed by the Queen before becoming law, but the step is a mere formality.

The Climate Change Bill was originally introduced [JURIST report] in March 2007 and initially proposed to cut the UK's carbon dioxide emissions by 60 percent by 2050. Parliament's Joint Committee on the Draft Climate Change Bill [official website] later successfully convinced the body to amend to bill [JURIST report] to cover all greenhouse gases and increase the reduction to 80 percent.

[JURIST] The Supreme Court of California [official website] on Wednesday agreed [order, PDF; press release] to hear challenges to Proposition 8 [text, materials], the ballot measure that amended the state constitution to ban same-sex marriage, while refusing a petition to stay [text, PDF] its enforcement. The court will begin hearing arguments in March to determine whether Proposition 8 violates the state constitution and, if not, its effect on existing same-sex marriages. Petitioners contend the initiative is a constitutional revision, not an amendment, and requires approval from two-thirds of the state legislature [official website]. AP has more. The Los Angeles Times has local coverage.

The ruling follows two weeks of protests [NYT report; JURIST report] and petitions [materials] challenging the amendment since its approval [JURIST reports] by voters on November 4. Since then, gay rights advocacy groups have especially targeted [advocacy website] the Mormon church [official website], arguing that it should lose its tax-exempt status as a religious organization for partisan activism. Yes on 8 [advocacy website] estimates that 40 percent [SF Chronicle report] of its more than $28 million [JURIST report] came from Mormons.

[JURIST] The US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit [official website] on Wednesday upheld [opinion, PDF] a grant of summary judgment for the plaintiff by the US District Court for the District of Rhode Island [official website] in an action seeking the return of a painting confiscated from a Jewish art gallery owner in Germany immediately prior to the Holocaust [JURIST news archive; USHMM backgrounder]. The case, Vineberg v. Bissonnette, centered around a work by 19th century painter Franz Xaver Winterhalter [Getty Museum backgrounder], which was confiscated from Dusseldorf art gallery owner Dr. Max Stern and auctioned off at below-market price in 1937. In 2005, Stern's estate filed a replevin action against Bissonnette for the painting, which was to be auctioned off again after having been in the private collection of Bissonnette's family since the father of German baroness Maria-Luise Bissonnette bought it in Cologne. In affirming the district court decision, Judge Bruce Selya [official profile] wrote:

A de facto confiscation of a work of art that arose out of a notorious exercise of man's inhumanity to man now ends with the righting of that wrong through the mundane application of common law principles. The mills of justice grind slowly, but they grind exceedingly fine. We need go no further. The short of it is that the district court acted well within the realm of its discretion in refusing the defendant's tardy request to reopen discovery. By like token, the court had an appropriate rationale for granting the plaintiffs' motion for brevis disposition.