Six more detainees have been transferred from Guantanamo Bay , the US Defense Department said Thursday. According to the DOD announcement , five detainees were transferred to Afghanistan and one was transferred to Bahrain . Bahraini Minister of Foreign Affairs Sheikh Khaled bin Ahmed al-Khalifa said that Issa al-Murbati's release means that all Bahraini Guantanamo [...]

The US Department of Defense (DOD) said Thursday that 14 "high-value" detainees have been designated as enemy combatants based on the recommendations of Combatant Status Review Tribunals (CSRT) . The detainees, including the alleged masterminds of the September 11 terrorist attacks, the 2000 attack on the USS Cole, and the 1998 US embassy bombings in [...]

Report of the Events Relating to Maher Arar: Addendum, Commission of Inquiry into the Actions of Canadian Officials in Relation to Maher Arar, August 8, 2007 . Read the full text of the addendum . Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.

US Marine Corps Lt. Gen. James Mattis has dismissed all charges against Lance Cpl. Justine I. Sharratt and Capt. Randy W. Stone for their alleged roles in the killing and suspected cover-up of the death of 24 Iraqi civilians at Haditha in November 2005. Mattis dismissed all charges against Sharratt Wednesday, agreeing with the investigating [...]

A North Carolina judge ruled Thursday that the North Carolina Council of State, comprised of Gov. Mike Easley and nine elected state officials, improperly approved new execution protocols in February as a part of their effort to resume executions. Senior Administrative Law Judge Fred Morrison ordered the council to revisit the protocols. Morrison said that [...]

The War Crimes Chamber of the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina entered a plea of not guilty for Bosnian Serb Milrod Trbic Thursday because Trbic failed to appear in court after starting a hunger strike on Monday. Trbic has been charged with genocide for allegedly "knowingly participated in the forcible transfer of the Bosniak population [...]

An Indonesian court on Thursday ordered lawyers for the government and former Indonesian President Haji Mohammad Suharto to attempt mediation for 30 days to settle the government's civil lawsuit against Suharto for allegedly embezzling $440 million between 1974 and 1998 from the Yayasan Supersemar, a state-funded academic scholar fund. Indonesian law requires that parties try [...]

The Mauritanian National Assembly formally criminalized slave ownership Wednesday, unanimously adopting legislation that makes slavery punishable by a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison. The law also criminalizes the promotion or defense of slavery, which will be punishable by up to two years in prison. Slavery, which was officially banned by presidential decree in [...]

Human rights violations in Zimbabwe have steadily increased with more than 5,300 recorded cases of human rights abuses during the first six months of 2007, according to the Zimbabwe Human Rights Forum . In a report published last week, the group documented 328 instances of torture, 481 assaults, 802 cases of illegal arrests and detention, [...]

The Office of the Massachusetts Attorney General announced the indictment Wednesday of anchoring and fastening product manufacturer Power Fasteners on one count of involuntary manslaughter for the July 10, 2006, ceiling panel collapse in Boston's Big Dig tunnel project that killed one person. Massachusetts authorities allege that Powers was aware that the wrong kind of [...]