Bahraini authorities should immediately investigate these allegations of torture and guarantee the physical and psychological well-being of the four men. The attorney general has a legal obligation to throw out any coerced confessions and any evidence obtained by ill-treatment, including information that led to the men's indictments.

In early 2010, HRW reported that the government of Bahrain had reverted to using torture [report text] to gain confessions from detainees, after a decade of reform banning such practices. HRW conducted interviews with 20 former detainees who claimed that they had suffered torture [JURIST report] and ill-treatment as early as 2007. The reversion appears to have coincided with the rising political tension between Shia Muslims and the Sunni-run government. The report also claimed that prosecutors have failed to respond appropriately by not launching formal investigations and administering medical examinations. The detainees' allegations were strengthened when a Bahraini court acquitted all defendants on all charges on the basis of medical reports that suggested the defendants had been physically coerced into confessing.

Under the ICC's new amendment, the UN Security Council [official website] will serve as the primary body in determining whether a crime of aggression has occurred. If the Security Council fails to make a determination, the ICC prosecutor is authorized to commence an investigation on his own initiative or upon a request from an ICC state party. The Security Council can halt an investigation of a crime of aggression at any time through a resolution, but this resolution must be reinstated every 12 months. Non-state parties do not fall under ICC jurisdiction when the prosecutor initiates the investigation, and state parties can exempt themselves from jurisdiction over the crime of aggression by submitting a declaration of non-acceptance to the court. These exemptions, however, do not apply when the Security Council has determined that a crime of aggression has occurred. ICC nations were initially unable to reach a consensus [JURIST report] on the adoption of the crime of aggression, but compromise was reached as the UN Review Conference of the Rome Statute [materials] came to a close in Kampala, Uganda.

The forthcoming report claims that troops from Rwanda [JURIST news archive] and allied rebels committed crimes in the DRC that could be classified as genocide if proven by the appropriate court. Documenting the extreme violence in the DRC from 1993-2003, the report alleges that tens of thousands of Hutus were killed by Rwandan troops [JURIST report] during the Congo civil war [GlobalSecurity backgrounder]. Following the 1994 Rwandan genocide, in which more than 800,000 primarily Tutsi people were killed in a span of 100 days, Hutu militias and civilians fled to neighboring Congo, then known as Zaire. According to the New York Times, the report documents systematic killings [NYT report] by the Tutsi-dominated Rwandan army with the assistance of the Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo (AFDL) rebel movement, which may legally amount to genocide. While Rwanda and the DRC have continually asserted that Hutu militias were attacked following the 1994 genocide, the report alleges that civilian Congolese Hutus were also the target of violence and killings. Rwandan Justice Minister Tharcisse Karagurama [official website] has rejected the report [BBC report], saying that it had no basis.

Thaksin, who is currently living in exile, has faced a variety of legal issues since the 2006 coup [JURIST report] that removed him from power. Last month, the Supreme Court of Thailand [GlobaLex backgrounder] denied his appeal [JURIST report] contesting the seizure of his assets. Thaksin filed the appeal in March after the Constitutional Court ordered that 46.4 billion baht (USD $1.4 billion) of his fortune be seized [JURIST reports] in February. In July, the criminal division of Supreme Court issued a new arrest warrant [JURIST report] against him. Also in July, Thai police recommended terrorism charges [DPA report] against Thaksin and 24 others for their alleged involvement in the recent political violence [JURIST news archive] in Bangkok. Thaksin is considered the figurehead of the pro-democracy protesters known as the "red shirts," who protested against Thailand's current government and called for elections. The protests ended in May after protesters surrendered to police [JURIST report].

Feldman refused to reinstate the moratorium [JURIST report] last month at the request of advocacy groups such as the Defenders of Wildlife [advocacy website], which also argued that the judge should be disqualified from the case because he owned stock in several oil and drilling companies. Feldman refused to recuse himself [JURIST report]. Earlier in July, the Obama administration asked a federal appeals court to reinstate the original six-month drilling moratorium [JURIST report], arguing that the ban should be upheld because the government would likely win its appeal of the lower court's ruling. The US Department of Justice (DOJ) [official website] originally asked the court of appeals to stay the preliminary injunction [JURIST report] in June, on the basis that another deepwater spill could overwhelm the ongoing efforts to clean up the spill with catastrophic results. Lawyers for the DOJ also claimed that that the district judge abused his discretion in issuing the injunction. The Deepwater Horizon oil spill was a result of an oil well blowout that caused an explosion 5,000 feet below the surface of the Gulf. More than 120 million gallons of oil leaked from the rig's broken pipe causing the spill to surpass the Exxon Valdez [JURIST news archive] as the worst oil spill in US history.