UN officials reported Friday that chairwoman of the independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan and UN Special Rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief Asma Jahangir has been released from her two-week house arrest in Pakistan. Jahangir has been detained at her home in Lahore since November 3, when Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf imposed emergency [...]

JURIST Guest Columnist Justice Jawwad S. Khawaja (Lahore High Court, ret.) and his colleagues at the Lahore University of Management Sciences Department of Law and Policy in Lahore, Pakistan, call on legal colleagues worldwide to raise their voices against the imposition of martial law in Pakistan… By imposing an unconstitutional state of emergency throughout Pakistan, [...]

Canadian opposition parliamentarians Dennis Coderre (Liberal) and Paul Dewar (NDP) Friday called for Canada's government to stop allowing detainees captured by Canadian forces in Afghanistan to be transferred to Afghan custody, alleging that once transferred, suspects are subjected to conditions that violate the Geneva Convention. Heavily redacted documents released by the government earlier this week [...]

Former Iraq Deputy Health Minister Hakim Zamili and another top ministry official will be put on trial for allegedly assisting Shi'ite militias, the Iraqi government said Saturday. A spokesman said that the trial shows that the government Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is serious about enforcing the rule of law. In February, US and Iraqi forces [...]

Lawyers in Karachi, Pakistan's largest city, went on strike Saturday in protest at President Pervez Musharraf's emergency rule. Members of the Karachi Bar Association and other local bar associations followed an earlier strike call from the Pakistan Bar Council (PBC) and the Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA). Over 350 prisoners from all around the city [...]

The Zimbabwean government has introduced a draft bill meant to reform the country's election procedures, the state owned Harare Herald reported Saturday. The Electoral Laws Amendment Bill 2007 would combine presidential and legislative elections and allow candidates to demand vote recounts. The bill would also prohibit the military, police, and prison officers, from interfering with [...]

The Federation Council of Russia voted unanimously on Friday in favor of a measure that would suspend the nation's responsibilities under the 1990 Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty . The Russian upper house's vote follows a unanimous vote in favor of suspending the CFE that occurred in the State Duma last week. The Russian government [...]

Over 10,000 protesters, most of them African-American, marched in front of the US Department of Justice building Friday to highlight what they claim are inadequate efforts to prosecute a spate of recent race-related crimes across the country. A focal point of the march was the prosecution of six black teenagers in Jena, Louisiana for beating [...]

Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation, Inc., et al., v. George W. Bush, President of the United States, et al., US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, November 16, 2007 . Read the full text of the opinion . Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.

A US Marine invoked his right to defer his plea at his Friday military arraignment on charges stemming from the killings of 24 Iraqi civilians in Haditha in November 2005. A lawyer for Lt. Col. Jeffrey R. Chessani did say that he planned to plead not guilty. Trial has been scheduled for April 28. Chessani [...]