JURIST - Paper Chase: Monday, January 30, 2012

[JURIST] The Pakistan Supreme Court [official website] on Monday ordered that a travel ban imposed upon the former ambassador to the US is to be lifted. The ban was imposed upon Husain Haqqani after an anonymous memo that implied Pakistani politicians were collaborating with US politicians was sent to Washington, DC, in May, after Osama bin Laden was killed by US forces [JURIST report]. Haqqani resigned from his position as ambassador to the US after he came under suspicion for being the author of the memo. The Pakistan Supreme Court created a commission in order to investigate the origin of the memo [JURIST report], but Haqqani has not been charged with any crime. Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari [official website] had also fallen under suspicion until recently when the man accusing Haqqani and Zadari of being involved with the memo, Mansoor Ijaz, refused to travel to Pakistan to testify in the case. Ijaz, who is also believed to have delivered the note to Washington, offered to send his testimony by video [BBC report]. Since his refusal to testify in person, the case is perceived to have weakened drastically.

Pakistan's Supreme Court has recently been in the news over issues concerning the ongoing struggle between the government and the courts. Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani honored a summons issued by the Supreme Court of Pakistan [JURIST report] by appearing earlier this month to answer contempt charges brought by the court. Gilani was ordered to appear to explain why he did not comply with court's order to reopen a corruption case against Zardari. The conflict between the prime minister and the court stems from an order which struck down [JURIST report] the National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO) [text] in 2009, which granted immunity to Zardari and 8,000 other government officials from charges of corruption, embezzlement, money laundering, murder and terrorism between January 1986 and October 1999.

[JURIST] Human Rights Watch (HRW) [advocacy website] expressed concern [press release] Friday over aging men and women becoming the most rapidly growing group in US prisons and the ability of officials to provide appropriate housing and medical care to these individuals. The report [text, PDF], "Old Behind Bars: The Aging Prison Population in the United States," asserts that, depending on the state, the cost to effectively house and treat older prisoners is three to nine times higher than those for younger prisoners. The report found that 9.6 percent of prisoners are serving life sentences and an additional 11.2 percent have sentences longer than 20 years. Among other recommendations, HRW urged state and federal officials to:

Review sentencing and release policies to determine which could be modified to reduce the growing population of older prisoners without risking public safety;

Develop comprehensive plans for housing, medical care, and programs for the current and projected populations of older prisoners; and

Modify prison rules that impose unnecessary hardship on older inmates.

The number of US state and federal prisoners age 55 or older is currently 124,400 which grew 282 percent between 1995 and 2010, while the total number of prisoners grew by only 42 percent.

California's prison population has raised particular concerns. Earlier this month, a judge for the US District Court for the Northern District of California [official website] ruled that California prison officials have failed to protect disabled parolees [JURIST report] by not providing them wheelchairs and other mobility assistance devices. Last year, the US Supreme Court ruled [opinion, PDF] in Brown v. Plata [Cornell LII backgrounder] to uphold an order requiring California to release up to 46,000 prisoners [JURIST report] to remedy the state's overcrowded prisons [JURIST news archive]. California submitted a plan [JURIST report] to comply with the court's order, but the state's Legislative Analyst's Office [official website] has concluded that California is unlikely to meet [JURIST report] the Supreme Court's two-year deadline. According to the International Center for Prison Studies [official website], the US has the most prisoners per capita [text, PDF] in the world.

[JURIST] Senegal's highest court ruled Monday that President Abdoulaye Wade [official profile, in French] can run for a third term, rejecting an appeal by the opposition. The Senegalese Constitution [text, in French] had no term limits when Wade initially took office in 2000, but it was amended in 2001 to impose a two-term limit. The court found that Wade's "first term" under the 2001 constitution did not begin until he was reelected in 2007, concluding that he is eligible to run for another term. The court also rejected an appeal by popular musician Youssou Ndour, ruling that he will not be permitted to run for president because he failed to obtain the necessary signatures [AP report]. Critics have accused the court of bias, since all five judges were appointed by Wade. Elections are scheduled for February 26. In response to this decision, the opposition has called on the country to protest Wade's candidacy, with demonstrations expected to take place later this week.

After the court's preliminary ruling on Friday, a group of youth protesters were confronted by the police, resulting in the death of one officer. With legal means of stopping Wade's candidacy now exhausted, the country may face instability in the coming weeks. The governments of the US and France have both warned of instability that could result from election-related violence.

[JURIST] A Norwegian court on Monday convicted two men accused of planning an attack against the Danish newspaper that published a cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad. This is the first conviction under Norway's anti-terror laws [AP report]. Both defendants, Mikael Davud and Shawan Sadek Saeed Bujak, were found guilty in the Oslo district court, and sentenced to seven and three-and-a-half years, respectively. Although cleared of terror charges, David Jakobsen, will serve four months for helping the two defendants acquire explosives. The judge said that Davud orchestrated the attack with al Qaeda. 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 caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad have sparked controversy across the globe. In May 2010 the Pakistan Telecommunications Authority [official website] ordered [JURIST report] Internet service providers to block social networking site Facebook [website] in response to a competition created by a group of the website's members entitled "Draw Muhammad Day." Also in May, a Danish public prosecutor for the Utrecht District Court filed an appeal against an April ruling [JURIST reports] acquitting the Arab European League (AEL) of hate speech charges stemming from posting an inflammatory cartoon on their website insinuating that the Holocaust was fabricated. The court ruled that publishing the cartoon was not a criminal offense because it was intended to be a contribution to public debate regarding a perceived double standard in the distribution of the Danish Muhammad cartoons.