The trial of former Liberian President Charles Taylor will continue as scheduled, despite Taylor's boycott of the trial's opening last week, according to Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL) chief prosecutor Stephen Rapp Monday. Taylor, who is being tried in front of the UN-backed court for crimes against humanity and violations of international humanitarian law, [...]

Google Monday announced a new data retention policy, saying that its servers will retain personally identifiable information for 18 months and not its previous policy of 18 to 24 months. Google's policy revision came in response to an announcement by the European Commission in May that the EU's independent advisory panel would investigate Google to [...]

The Prosecutor v. Milan Martic, International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, June 12, 2007 . Read the full text of the judgment . Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.

Iranian judiciary spokesperson Alireza Jamshidi said Tuesday that an Iranian judge will decide whether to proceed with indictments against three Iranian-Americans early next week, after the conclusion of preliminary investigations. Iran has formally charged Dr. Haleh Esfandiari for an alleged plot "against the sovereignty of the country," and charged Dr. Kian Tajbakhsh and Radio Farda [...]

The Supreme Court of Pakistan ruled Monday that it has jurisdiction over legal disputes involving the suspension of Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry and admitted Chaudhry's petition challenging the legality of his March 9 suspension by Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf. The ruling, considered a victory for Chaudhry, frustrates the efforts of government lawyers, who had [...]

Malta's Justice and Home Affairs Minister Tonio Borg urged his EU counterparts to help alleviate the influx of illegal immigrants to Malta Tuesday, as the EU's Justice and Home Affairs Council began a two-day meeting in Luxembourg to discuss EU policy on illegal immigration and other matters within the Council's portfolio. Borg's plea follows a [...]

Slobodan Radovanovic, Serbia's top special prosecutor for organized crime, said Monday that the widow and son of former Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic are to be charged with running a smuggling ring. Serbia will issue an international arrest warrant in the case and their assets are expected to be frozen. Mirjana Markovic and her son Marko [...]

An Ethiopian court convicted 39 opposition members Monday of treason and inciting violence for their roles in mass anti-government demonstrations in the wake of Ethiopia's 2005 elections . The opposition members, most of whom belong to the Coalition for Unity and Democracy (CUD) , will be sentenced on July 8 and face either life imprisonment [...]

Milan Martic was convicted Tuesday by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) of 16 counts of crimes against humanity and violations of laws and customs of war, for crimes including persecutions, murder, torture, deportation, attacks on civilians, and wanton destruction of civilian areas. The former leader of the self-proclaimed "Republic of Serbian [...]

Iranian-American scholar Dr. Haleh Esfandiari , currently detained by the Iranian government, is being denied access to counsel, according to her lawyer, 2003 Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi . Esfandiari, director of the Middle East Program at the DC-based Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars , was formally charged last month with plotting to [...]