A Pentagon spokesman said Friday that the it will seek a reconsideration of rulings by two US military judges earlier this week dismissing all charges against Canadian detainee Omar Khadr and Yemeni detainee Salim Ahmed Hamdan . Both judges found that the detainees could not be tried as "unlawful enemy combatants" under the Military Commission [...]

Iran confirmed for the first time that it is detaining Iranian-American peace activist Ali Shakeri , the Iranian Students News Agency reported Friday. Shakeri, a founding member of the University of California, Irvine, Center for Citizen Peacebuilding , is the fourth dual US citizen Iran has detained in recent months. Sources say he planned to [...]

Ali Khan : "The Pakistan Supreme Court has asked the government lawyers to disclose the procedure under which the President has sent the reference against the Chief Justice to the Supreme Judicial Council (SJC). The Court is particularly interested in determining the scope of "discretion" that the President may have in forming the "opinion" in [...]

The White House has increased the size of its legal team to deal with continued requests from Democratic congressmembers investigating the US attorney scandal , prewar intelligence, and other questions, according to Friday reports. White House counsel Fred Fielding , who replaced Harriet Miers in January, has created several new positions as well as filling [...]

The Supreme Court of Sri Lanka stopped the forced eviction of ethnic Tamils from the capital city of Colombo Friday, calling the government "misguided" in its latest attempt to reduce attacks by the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) , or "Tamil Tigers." Later in the day, Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapakse invited the [...]

The Attorney General of Afghanistan Abdul Jabbar Sabet Friday accused Army General Deen Mohammed Jurat and Jurat's numerous armed bodyguards of attacking him and his men. Sabet says his group, which included the mayor of Kabul and several members of parliament, were traveling north of Kabul when they stopped at a roadblock. Sabet said he [...]

US Senate Republicans Thursday threatened to shut down business in the Senate after Democrats postponed a Senate Judiciary Committee vote on the nomination of Mississippi Court of Appeals Justice Leslie H. Southwick to the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. The postponement came during the committee's weekly Executive Business Meeting , when Chairman [...]

A dozen prominent legal scholars submitted an amicus curiae brief on behalf of former vice-presidential aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby Thursday, arguing that Libby's conviction could be overturned on appeal because the appointment of Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald raises serious constitutional issues involving the separation of powers. The legal scholars, including Harvard law professor Alan [...]

Tennessee Governor Phil Bredesen Thursday signed legislation which starting on July 1 will allow those who were convicted for protesting laws designed to enforce racial segregation to receive a full pardon and to have their criminal records destroyed. The Rosa Parks Act , named after the late Alabama civil rights activist, also allows an estate [...]

Secret detentions and illegal transfer of detainees involving Council of Europe member states: second report, Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights – Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), June 8, 2007 . Read the full text of the report , Appendix 1 , Appendix 2 , Appendix 3 . Reported in JURIST's [...]