Lawyers for Yemeni Guantanamo Bay detainee Salim Ahmed Hamdan argued at a preliminary hearing Thursday that the charges against Hamdan should be dropped because his alleged crimes were not considered violations of the rules of war at the time they were committed and that the Military Commissions Act of 2006 was not intended to create [...]

US Attorney General Michael Mukasey Thursday rejected Democratic calls to launch a Department of Justice (DOJ) probe into the CIA's admitted use of waterboarding on three terror detainees. In testimony before the House Judiciary Committee, Mukasey said that because the CIA had relied on a DOJ opinion that found waterboarding to be legal, it would [...]

The Pakistani Interior Ministry has arrested two suspects for their alleged involvement in the assassination of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto , officials said Thursday. The two men, identified only as Hasnain and Rafaqat, are said by the Pakistani government to be "two very important alleged terrorists." AFP has more. AP has additional coverage. In [...]

Former Khmer Rouge official Nuon Chea asked the Pre-Trial Chamber of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Court of Cambodia (ECCC) to release him from provisional detention Thursday and argued that his prior contact with the court was illegal because he did not have a lawyer with him and had not waived his right to counsel. [...]

Chadian President Idriss Deby said Thursday that he is prepared to pardon six aid workers convicted in Chad in December of attempting to kidnap 103 African children. In an interview with Europe-1 radio, Deby said that he was willing to issue a pardon but could only do so if he received a request from France. [...]

Iranian judiciary chief Ayatollah Mahmoud Shahroudi has issued a decree barring judges from ordering the detention of suspects without the filing of formal charges, Iranian media reported Wednesday. Currently, the Iranian Constitution allows suspects to be held for up to 24 hours without charges. The decree also calls on judicial institutions to refrain from summoning [...]

Authorities in the Democratic Republic of Congo arrested former Nationalist and Integrationist Front (FNI) leader Mathieu Ngudjolo Chui on Wednesday on war crimes and crimes against humanity charges and transferred him to the International Criminal Court at The Hague. Ngudjolo is accused of planning and carrying out an attack against the village of Bogoro in [...]

The lower house of the Canadian parliament passed a new security certificates bill Wednesday by a margin of 196-71 . The House of Commons introduced the bill in October in response to last year's Supreme Court decision that gave it one year to re-write existing law or have it voided as unconstitutional. Security certificates allow [...]

The federal judge presiding over the trial of 9/11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui was seeking information about the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah around the time the CIA destroyed videotapes of the interrogations of terror suspects, including Zubaydah, according to court documents released in the Moussaoui case Wednesday. The court documents also say that the lead prosecutor [...]

JURIST Guest Columnist Benjamin Davis of the University of Toledo College of Law says that CIA chief Michael Hayden's recent admission to Congress that three "high value" terror detainees were waterboarded by US interrogators begs the question of whether American citizens will acquiesce in this state lawlessness because the torture was done by our government [...]