Muslim women will be allowed to wear traditional Muslim niqabs or burqas and not be required to show their faces to vote in Quebec by-elections this month, an Elections Canada spokesperson announced Thursday. The official said that women would not have to show their faces if they were able to sufficiently prove their identity with [...]

Assistant US Attorney General Peter D. Keisler announced his resignation as head of the US Department of Justice's Civil Division Thursday, effective September 21. During his tenure at the Justice Department, Keisler was responsible for managing litigation over the habeas corpus rights of Guantanamo Bay detainees . He also played a hand in the government's [...]

The US government has begun setting up a "tent city" at the US detention center in Guantanamo Bay , Cuba, where the US military plans to hold military tribunals for Guantanamo detainees, officials said Thursday. The military believes tribunals could begin as early as March, and the new facility will allow several detainees to be [...]

US District Judge Harold Murphy of the Northern District of Georgia lifted a stay of the controversial Georgia voter ID law Thursday, enabling the law to go into effect during Special Elections on September 18. Murphy found that the voter ID law does not impose a significant burden on an individual's right to vote, and [...]

The US Department of State is satisfied that France will treat former Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega as a prisoner of war if extradited to France upon his release from prison Sunday, Assistant US Attorney Michael "Pat" Sullivan said in a court filing Thursday. The US has not formally asked France to declare Noriega a POW, [...]

The Iraqi government named Moussa Faraj as chair of the Commission on Public Integrity (CPI) Thursday. Farag will replace Radhi al-Radhi , who has retired in light of corruption accusations brought by the Iraqi parliament's anti-corruption committee. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has accepted al-Radhi's retirement and temporarily appointed Faraj to the post until Faraj [...]

Doctors from 16 countries have chided the US military for its medical care of detainees at the US detention center in Guantanamo Bay , Cuba in a letter Friday to the UK medical journal The Lancet . Referring to the US policy of force-feeding detainees on hunger strike, the more than 260 signatories to the [...]

Zimbabwe police charged opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai with disorderly conduct Thursday for allegedly causing a disturbance in early August by touring markets, according to a spokesperson for Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change . The charges, which the party said amounted to political intimidation, were brought only days after Tsvangirai returned from an overseas tour in [...]

A Pakistani lawyers group Thursday pressed its campaign to defeat an expected re-election bid by President Pervez Musharraf , holding planned protest rallies and boycotting courts nationwide. Speaking on behalf of the lawyers, Pakistani Supreme Court Bar Association president Munir Malik said that the group's goal is to secure the resignation of Musharraf and to [...]

UN special rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers Leandro Despouy has issued a new report criticizing the government of Iraq for its ongoing use of the death penalty . In the report, Despouy specifically condemned the government for executing Iraqi prisoner Awraz Abdel Aziz Mahmoud Sa'eed despite a UN request to spare him [...]