The US Department of Justice (DOJ) Friday rejected allegations made by a US Army officer previously involved in Combatant Status Review Tribunal (CSRT) proceedings at Guantanamo Bay that the CSRTs were pressured to declare detainees "enemy combatants" based on vague or incomplete evidence. The Department said in a court filing that a sworn statement made [...]

Investigators searched the offices of former French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin on Friday as part of a probe into an alleged smear campaign conducted against Villepin political rival and now French President Nicolas Sarkozy . In 2004, a magistrate received anonymous letters accusing Sarkozy of holding secret bank accounts linked to the corrupt sale [...]

The Duma , the lower house of the Russian parliament, Friday approved legislative amendments to change the prevailing definition of extremist crime in Russian law to include activities taken for "political or ideological hatred." Opponents of the legislation criticized the amendments as an attempt to curtail civil liberties and hamper democracy by putting restraints on [...]

Serbia will arrest wanted war crimes fugitive Bosnian Serb military commander Ratko Mladic and transfer him to the UN war crimes tribunal at The Hague within the year, President Boris Tadic said Friday. Tadic told reporters that he considered the capture of Mladic to be vital to pushing forward Serbia's stabilisation and association agreement (SAA) [...]

Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash) announced Friday he will ask the US Supreme Court to rule on whether he had a First Amendment right to turn over an illegally taped telephone call conversation to the media that involved House Republican leaders. In 1996, McDermott leaked a recorded telephone conversation in which several Republican lawmakers discussed ethics [...]

The Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL) has increased to approximately $100,000 a month the funds available for former Liberian president Charles Taylor to defend himself in his ongoing war crimes trial. The allocation includes money for a legal team and an investigator, as well as office space in The Hague, Sierra Leone, and Liberia. [...]

US military prosecutors have filed an appeal against a military judge's decision to dismiss charges against Guantanamo detainee Omar Ahmed Khadr , according to the Department of Defense (DOD) Friday. In late June, Judge Peter E. Brownback III reiterated his earlier ruling dismissing charges against Khadr on grounds that the Combatant Status Review Tribunal that [...]

A Bangladeshi court jailed UN human rights expert Sigma Huda Thursday, pending a trial over allegations connecting her to a government corruption case . Prosecutors allege Huda assisted her husband, former Bangladeshi communications minister Nazmul Huda, in extorting almost $300,000 USD from a construction company while in office. The Bangladesh Supreme Court overturned a lower [...]

Alien Detention Standards: Telephone Access Problems Were Pervasive at Detention Facilities; Other Deficiencies Did Not Show a Pattern of Noncompliance, Government Accountability Office, July 6, 2007 . Read the full text of the report . Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.

Russia expressed displeasure with the UK Friday over British refusal to prosecute exiled business tycoon Boris Berezovsky for his calls to overthrow Russian President Vladimir Putin . Berezovsky, who has been living in the UK since 2001 as a refugee, called for a regime change in an April interview with the Guardian . While Berezovsky [...]