US soldiers serving in Iraq relied on techniques they remembered from movies to interrogate prisoners, according to documents released Thursday by the American Civil Liberties Union as part of its ongoing Freedom of Information Act requests regarding treatment of US-held detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay. The newly-released documents , reports made during the [...]

Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood announced Thursday that his office had filed a civil suit against five national insurance companies – Mutual Insurance Co., State Farm Fire and Casualty Co., Allstate Property and Casualty Co., the United Services Automobile Association and Mississippi Farm Bureau Insurance – seeking a declaration that provisions in their insurance contracts [...]

Terrorism Bill, UK Home Office, September 13, 2005 . Review the full text of the draft legislation . Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.

US Congressman Curt Weldon (R-PA) said Thursday that an unnamed Pentagon employee was ordered to destroy documents that identified Mohammed Atta as a terrorist two years before the 9/11 attacks , and was prepared to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee next week and reveal the identity of who directed the documents' destruction. Mastermind Atta [...]

The US Department of Justice and the special counsel investigating the leak of the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame advised Congress earlier this week to block legislation that would force the adminstration to turn over documents related to the case. The DOJ said in a Wednesday letter to House Intelligence Committee Chairman Peter Hoekstra [...]

The US Department of Justice said Thursday it had dropped its voting rights lawsuit against Boston after city officials agreed to provide voting materials such as ballots and registration notices in Spanish, Chinese and Vietnamese. Boston also agreed to give more training on the Voting Rights Act to poll workers. The lawsuit was filed on [...]

A UN spokesperson in Iraq confirmed Thursday that the UN plans to distribute five million copies of Iraq's draft constitution to Iraqis before a national referendum on the charter on October 15, but indicated that printing would not go ahead "until the transitional National Assembly designates a final draft constitution", now expected Sunday. Farhan Haq's [...]

Nilo Jerez, a former political prisoner in Cuba , sued Fidel Castro and his government Thursday claiming he had been rendered sterile after having been repeatedly tortured with drugs and electric shocks in the early 1970s. Jerez stated that he still suffers from "distress, anxiety, fear and apprehension" as a result of the treatment, said [...]

Leading Thursday's environmental law news, a federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit brought by 8 states against four private energy companies and the federal Tennessee Valley Authority which claimed they contributed to global warming. US District Judge Loretta Preska ruled that the states wanted the judiciary to make environmental policies that would affect the economy, [...]

New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer and State Insurance Superintendent Howard Mills Thursday said that eight former senior executives of Marsh & McLennan had been indicted for bids given "under false pretenses." Spitzer said bid rigging carried out from November 1998 to September 2004 cost customers of the US's largest insurance brokarage company millions of [...]