Muhammad Salah and Abdelhaleem Ashqar, two of three men indicted in 2004 by a US federal grand jury on charges of engaging in a 15-year conspiracy of providing funds to Hamas , were found not guilty of racketeering Thursday. While the men were exonerated of the most serious crime alleged, they were convicted of lesser [...]

The Eminent Jurist’s Panel (EJP) , an arm of the Geneva-based International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) , announced the results of an inquiry into Russian anti-terrorism efforts Thursday, concluding after two days of public hearings that many recently adopted anti-terrorism laws are curtailing civil rights and leading to state abuses. Of the eight panel members, [...]

Jennifer Gratz et al. v. Lee Bollinger et al., US District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan, January 31, 2007 . Read the full text of the order . Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.

Morocco will become the first Arab country to eliminate the death penalty , a state representative confirmed on Thursday. President of the Consultative Committee on Human Rights, Ben Dhikri, made the comments in the run-up to this week's 3rd World Congress Against the Death Penalty in Paris. Dhikri confirmed that Moroccan MPs and Morocco's King [...]

China is prepared to work with other countries to create an agreement that would prevent an arms race in space , Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said on Thursday. The statement comes amid international outcry after confirmations that China had successfully launched a missile that destroyed a weather satellite earlier this month. Many countries [...]

The UN Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL) has raised only half of the $33 million needed for the trial of former Liberian President Charles Taylor , according to prosecutor Steven Rapp. Rapp, who spoke in New York Tuesday while seeking additional funding for the trial, said that unlike other international criminal tribunals, the Special [...]

The French Parliament has put off debate on whether to allow class action lawsuits in the country's legal system after the French National Assembly struck proposed legislation from its February schedule in a push to get out other bills before the close of parliamentary sessions. The class action legislation was introduced at a cabinet meeting [...]

A UK jury Thursday convicted Abdul Saleem of inciting racial hatred for his role in leading protests outside the Danish embassy in London in February 2006 against the publication of cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad that first appeared in a Danish newspaper in September 2005. Saleem was charged with using threatening, abusive or insulting words [...]

US soldiers taunted detainees at Guantanamo Bay with pictures of Saddam Hussein's hanging in "an attempt to intimidate and compel submission under a threat of death and mentally torture," according to comments made Thursday by a defense lawyer for Australian Guantanamo detainee David Hicks . After visiting Hicks at at the detention facility, US defense [...]

A federal judge Wednesday reduced a $2.5 million punitive damage award to $1 million in a Hurricane Katrina insurance case, finding the award excessive at twelve times the amount of economic damages awarded. US District Judge L.T. Senter issued a direct verdict against State Farm in January holding the insurance company liable for the policy [...]