The Spanish government on Friday unveiled the anticipated "Law for the Recovery of the Historical Memory," legislation aimed at healing the wounds of Gen. Francisco Franco's authoritarian regime that ruled Spain from 1939 to 1975 following a bitter three-year civil war. The bill appropriates $25 million to compensate victims of the Franco era for land [...]

Russian Prosecutor General Yury Chaika announced Friday that a criminal investigation has been opened into the June abduction and murder of four Russian embassy employees in Iraq. In a statement, the Prosecutor General's office said the perpetrators will be charged with "murder involving hostage-taking by a group of people acting in concert" and "hostage-taking for [...]

A Turkish court on Friday dismissed a lawsuit seeking compensation from novelist Orhan Pamuk , who was sued by six nationalists after he made allegedly unfavorable remarks to a Swiss magazine about Turkey's stance on the mass killing of Armenians during World War II. The lawsuit demanded 6,000 Turkish Lira (US $4,500) from Pamuk to [...]

A US Army soldier has said that the deaths of three Iraqi detainees in Samarra on May 9 were deliberate murders covered-up by his squad of the Third Brigade Combat Team of the 101st Airborne Division , according to Friday's New York Times. The Times obtained a sworn statement by Sgt. Lemuel Lemus given June [...]

Some leftist Italian lawmakers belonging to the Union Coalition of Italian prime minister Romano Prodi have expressed dissatisfaction with a controversial sentence-reduction bill that has been extended to include prisoners convicted of fraud and other white-collar crimes. The measure that would effectively pardon 12,000 prisoners three years before the end of their sentences passed the [...]

Lawyers for the three men sentenced to death for the 2002 Bali nightclub bombings Friday threatened to sue the Indonesia attorney general's office if their clients' executions, currently scheduled for mid-August , are carried out before they file for judicial review. A lawyer for the men speaking at a news conference moreover said the appeal [...]

A Belgian ethnic Lebanese couple is preparing a legal complaint against Israel for alleged war crimes during the ongoing Mideast conflict after Ali Abdul-Sater and his wife had to flee Lebanon via Syria with their three children when Israel launched airstrikes against Hezbollah earlier this month. An apartment where they were staying on holiday was [...]

US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales pressed Republican lawmakers last week for a bill that would "shield" US soldiers from potential prosecution in US federal courts over violations of the 1996 War Crimes Act , according to a report in Friday's Washington Post. The War Crimes Act authorizes life sentences for US soldiers who breach the [...]

A judge in Ontario Thursday upheld a publication ban on the bail hearings for 17 men accused of a terror plot in Canada . The Associated Press, the New York Times, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the Toronto Star, and one defense lawyer appealed an earlier ruling barring the media from the courtroom in a bid [...]

The UN Human Rights Committee slammed current US rights practices in a report released Friday, saying among other things that the US needs to close all alleged secret detention facilities and allow the International Committee of the Red Cross access to all detainees held at the alleged prisons. The committee noted that it has information [...]