Turkish court drops state slander case against novelist News
Turkish court drops state slander case against novelist

[JURIST] The case against Orhan Pamuk [TIME profile; JURIST news archive], Turkey's most prominent writer, was dropped by an Istanbul court Sunday following a statement from the Turkish Justice Ministry. Pamuk, whose work often examines the clashes between society and the role of Islam, was on trial for "public denigration of the Turkish identity" after he made allegedly unfavorable remarks to a Swiss magazine about Turkey's stance on the mass killing of Armenians during WWII. Once the Justice Ministry declared that it was legally not competent to judge whether the case should proceed under the revised penal code [JURIST report], the court decided to dismiss the charges against Pamuk. The high-profile case has been criticized [JURIST report; EU report] by the European Union [official website] and viewed as a test for Turkey's commitment to become an EU member state. CNN-Turk has local coverage in Turkish. AFP has more.

THIS DAY @ LAW

Ku Klux Klan founded

The US hate group known as the Ku Klux Klan was founded on December 24, 1865 in Pulaski, Tennessee as a reaction to reconstruction efforts following the Union victory in the American Civil War. The group would later become notorious for its attacks on Black Americans, being targeted by the Enforcement Act of 1871, which imposed civil and criminal liability for deprivation of constitutional rights. Read the Enforcement Act of 1871.  

Hamid Karzai born

On December 24, 1957, Hamid Karzai was born in Karz, Afghanistan. He would go on to become in 2004 his country's first elected president after the end of Taliban rule in 2001.