British Defense Minister John Reid on Tuesday called for changes to the international rules of war, including the Geneva Conventions , in order to allow countries to better confront terrorism and other threats. In a speech before the Royal United Services Institute , Reid said that traditional legal frameworks like the Geneva Conventions should be [...]

Former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori will be extradited from Chile to Peru to face corruption and human rights charges before this summer, Peru's Justice Minister Alejandro Tudela said Tuesday. Tudela said the extradition would be completed before Peru's current administration leaves office in July. Fujimori was arrested and jailed after appearing late last year in [...]

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan on Tuesday called on states to ratify the 1997 anti-personnel mine ban treaty and said that it should only take ten years to rid the world of all land mines will take ten years to complete, not 100 years as previously estimated. Annan's message was made to open the first International [...]

The US military commissions at Guantanamo Bay are scheduled to resume proceedings Tuesday, with pre-trial hearings scheduled for four prisoners facing terrorism-related charges. Among those scheduled to appear is Binyam Muhammad , an Ethiopian man who has been charged with conspiring with Jose Padilla as part of the dirty-bomb plot. Muhammad has argued that his [...]

The US Supreme Court on Monday agreed to settle a split among the circuits on whether immigrants convicted of state drug felonies can remain in the US if their crimes were misdemeanors under federal law. The Court granted certiorari and consolidated appeals brought by two Mexican citizens. Jose Lopez pleaded guilty to aiding and abetting [...]

A federal judge Monday denied a request by defense lawyers to review alleged National Security Agency (NSA) wiretaps in the government's case against a Pakistani-American father and son who are accused of terrorism-related activities. Hamid Hayat was charged with lying to US law enforcement agents about attending terrorist training camps in Pakistan, and his father [...]

JURIST Special Guest Columnist Jonathan Freiman, one of the attorneys representing Jose Padilla on his habeas petition, says that the concurrence in the US Supreme Court's rejection of Padilla's certiorari petition stands as a warning to the government that when it comes to imprisoning US citizens without charge or trial, its time may be running [...]

JURIST Guest Columnists Amy Ross of the University of Georgia Department of Geography and Chandra Lekha Sriram, Chair of Human Rights at the University of East London School of Law (UK), say that the debate over where to try ex-Liberian president Charles Taylor for crimes against humanity and war crimes raises critical questions of justice [...]

The Iraqi High Criminal Court announced Tuesday that new genocide and crimes against humanity charges have been filed against Saddam Hussein and six others in his former regime's crackdown against the Kurds during the 1980s. The new charges were filed with a different judge than the one handling his current trial for the 1982 massacre [...]

US District Court Judge George Steeh has struck down a Michigan law prohibiting the sale of certain violent video games to minors, ruling that the law is unconstitutionally vague . The law was signed by Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm last September but the Michigan Retailers Association, the Entertainment Software Association (ESA), and the Video Software [...]