[JURIST] Iraqi Interior Minister Jawad al-Bolani said Friday that 23 employees of the Iraqi Ministry of the Interior [JURIST news archive] who were arrested this week [JURIST report] for alleged attempts to rebuild Saddam Hussein's Baath party [BBC backgrounder; JURIST news archive] have been released. On Saturday, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki [BBC profile; JURIST news archive] said that the arrested individuals were not planning a coup [AFP report] against the government. Interior Ministry spokesperson Major-General Abdul Karim Khalaf said that the men will not face charges [Reuters report] and that they have been returned to their families.

The US-run Coalition Provisional Authority [official website] prioritized outlawing the Baath Party, and in 2003 Iraq established the De-Baathification Commission [official website] aimed at rooting out members of Hussein's party from positions of power in the Iraqi government. The Commission prompted the forced removal [JURIST report] of approximately 30,000 Baathists from public life. The Bush administration eventually urged the Iraqi government to shift the commission from outright prohibition to "accountability and reconciliation" in the interests of countering the growing insurgency in the country. De-Baathification reform legislation was praised [JURIST report] by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Earlier this year, Iraq adopted the controversial Accountability and Justice Law [JURIST report], which allows most former Baathists to be reinstated to public life.

[JURIST] The US Department of Defense (DOD) [official website] said Friday that charges have been referred to a military commission trial [press release] against Saudi Guantanamo Bay [JURIST news archive] detainee Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri [Globalsecurity backgrounder]. Al-Nashiri is accused of terrorism, attempted murder, and providing material support to terrorism for his alleged role in planning the 2000 al Qaeda attack [DOD report; JURIST news archive] on the USS Cole [official website]. He was charged in June [JURIST report] under the Military Commissions Act of 2006 [text, PDF; JURIST news archive] and faces the death penalty if found guilty at his military commission. Also on Friday, the DOD announced that charges were being dismissed against Afghan detainee Abdul Ghani, who had been charged [DOD charge sheet] with providing material support for terrorism. The charges were dismissed without prejudice, which means the US has the option of charging him again in the future.

Last year, al-Nashiri said that his confession to planning the USS Cole attack was coerced through torture [JURIST report] at Guantanamo. In 2004, a Yemeni security court charged [JURIST report] al-Nashiri in absentia in connection with the attack, saying he belonged to the al Qaeda terrorist network. In 2005, a Yemeni appeals court upheld a death sentence [JURIST reports] against al-Nashiri.

[JURIST] California Attorney General Edmund Brown Jr. [official website] on Friday urged the Supreme Court of California [official website] to declare Proposition 8 [text, materials] unconstitutional [press release]. In a brief [text, PDF] submitted to the court, Brown argued that Proposition 8, the ballot measure that amended the state constitution [text] to ban same-sex marriage [JURIST news archive], should be overturned for violating the article I, section 1 of state constitution. Brown concluded:

The use of the initiative power to take away a legal right deemed by this Court to be fundamental and from a group defined by a suspect classification is a matter of grave concern. Existing precedents of this Court do not support the invalidation of Proposition 8 either as a revision or as a violation of the separation of powers. However Proposition 8 should be invalidated as violating the inalienable right of liberty found in article I section 1 of our Constitution.

[JURIST] The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) [official website] said Friday it will discontinue its controversial policy of suing suspected file-sharers [JURIST news archive] and will instead seek cooperation with major Internet service providers (ISPs) to cut access to repeat file-sharers of copyrighted songs. The RIAA said it has worked out preliminary agreements with ISPs [Wall Street Journal report] where if the RIAA suspects a provider's customers are engaging in illegal file-sharing, they will notify the provider and after repeated warnings the ISPs will cut Internet service to the customer. The RIAA will reserve the right to sue particularly egregious offenders.

Record companies filed more than 26,000 lawsuits between 2003 and 2007 over file-sharing, resulting in small settlements for most cases, including 8,000 cases filed against 17 defendants [JURIST report] worldwide in October 2006. In September, a judge for the US District Court for the District of Minnesota [official website] ordered a new trial [decision, PDF] for a woman who had been ordered to pay [JURIST report] $222,000 to record companies for illegally posting copyrighted music on the file-sharing network Kazaa [corporate website]. Jammie Thomas had sought the new trial on the grounds that the court erred by instructing the jury [instructions, PDF] that making the music available on the network alone was enough to violate the Copyright Act [text], and that the damages imposed against her were excessive. In March, another woman being sued by the RIAA sought class action status [amended complaint, PDF; JURIST report] for a counterclaim [case materials] against the RIAA, several recording companies, and data investigation company MediaSentry [corporate website] for allegedly using unscrupulous tactics as part of an RIAA anti-piracy campaign.