Last month, a panel of the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled that detainees held at Bagram Air Base official website] cannot bring habeas corpus challenges in US courts [JURIST report]. Also in April, the Red Cross confirmed the existence of a secret detention facility [JURIST report] at Bagram. In January, the US Department of Defense released a list of names of 645 prisoners then detained at Bagram in response to a Freedom Of Information Act lawsuit filed [JURIST reports] by the ACLU last September.

Last month, a Pakistan high court briefly blocked Facebook [JURIST report] in response to a page created by a Facebook user which marked "Everybody Draw Mohammed Day" [website] The page encouraged users to submit religiously-prohibited images of the Prophet. A few weeks later the Lahore High Court (LHC) ordered the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) [official websites] to restore access to Facebook [JURIST report], holding that the government, and not the court, should be responsible for blocking offensive internet content and called on the PTA to create a centralized system [AFP report] to block blasphemous content. Depicting the Prophet Muhammad is considered blasphemous by Muslims, and has been a source of international controversy since 2005 when a Danish newspaper published caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad in a series of cartoons [JURIST news archive].

The court ruling adds additional strain to an already tenuous relationship between Egypt and Israel. In January Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu [official website; BBC profile] announced the construction of 70 miles of fence along Israel's border with Egypt [JURIST report] in order to combat terrorism and illegal immigration. As much as 60 percent of Israel's borders are now closed by physical barriers [Al Jazeera report], including its borders with neighboring Lebanon, Jordan, the Gaza Strip, and most of the West Bank.

Investigations into the finances of Pinochet and his associates have continued since his death in 2006 [JURIST report]. Last December Spanish National Court judge Baltasar Garzon [BBC profile; JURIST news archive] opened an embezzelment investigation [JURIST report] against four former Pinochet associates. Pinochet's youngest son, his former secretary, and his estate executor were previously indicted [JURIST report] for maliciously making false or incomplete tax declarations. In October 2007, 23 family members and former Pinochet associates were indicted [JURIST report] on corruption charges for aiding Pinochet in the "misuse of fiscal funds" during his regime. The following month, the Supreme Court of Chile upheld an appeals court decision to drop the charges [JURIST reports] because the accused were not government employees at the time and thus could not be charged with embezzling government funds.