Egyptian opposition leader sentenced to five years for forgery News
Egyptian opposition leader sentenced to five years for forgery

[JURIST] Former Egyptian presidential challenger and Al-Ghad opposition party leader Ayman Nour [JURIST news archive; Wikipedia profile] was sentenced Saturday to five years in prison on charges that he forged signatures required for his name to be on presidential ballots. Nour's lawyer said "This is a political verdict that will be annulled by the appeal court." Nour, himself a lawyer, has been on a hunger strike for two weeks to protest the decision in his case, which he claims to be a politically motivated attempt to remove him from Egyptian politics. During the trial, one of the six co-defendants claimed that his confession implicating Nour was coerced by security officials. Nour intends to run again in the next presidential election six years from now, after being defeated, 88.6 percent to 7.5 percent, by Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak [official profile] in September elections [JURIST report]. Aljazeera has more.

THIS DAY @ LAW

UN General Assembly approves Palestine partition plan

The UN General Assembly approved UN Resolution Resolution 181 (II) on November 29, 1947, recommending that the British Mandate for Palestine be split into a Jewish state, an Arab state, and an international zone for Jerusalem. The vote in the assembly was 33 for to 13 against, with 10 abstentions. The resolution sparked a war between Palestinian Arabs and Jews in 1947 and a wider war after Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, and Lebanon invaded the new State of Israel in 1948. Read Resolution 181 (II).

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On November 29, 1947, the UN General Assembly voted to partition Palestine into Jewish and Arab territories, leading to the establishment of a Jewish state the following year. Read UN General Assembly Resolution 181.

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