Updating a JURIST report from earlier today, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan Monday urged the Security Council in a closed-door emergency session to pass a resolution to end what he called "appalling" crimes in Sudan's Darfur region and called for sanctions against those preventing peace in the troubled area. He praised existing humanitarian and security measures, [...]

The US Department of Defense Monday confirmed the release and transfer to France of three French detainees in Guantanamo Bay to France "for prosecution". Mustaq Ali Patel, Ridouane Khalid and Khaled Ben Mustafa were the last three French detainees held at Gitmo following the release of four other French suspects last July. The former detainees [...]

A military judge in Foot Hood, Texas, has refused to dismiss any remaining charges against US Army Spc. Sabrina Harman in connection with 2003 abuses of Iraqi prisoners at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison , setting the stage for a full court-martial trial scheduled for May 12. Harman will be the second Abu Ghraib soldier to [...]

In an interview with three news agencies Monday, US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales denied renewed allegations that pursuant to an executive order issued after the September 11 attacks the CIA had flown as many as 150 terror suspects to foreign jurisdictions where they would be tortured. The New York Times published a story containing the [...]

The Special Court for Sierra Leone opened its final scheduled trial in Freetown Monday as outgoing chief prosecutor David Crane outlined his case against three former members of the the country's military junta – Alex Tamba Brima, Brima Bazzy Kamara and Santigie Borbor Kanu. The leaders of the of the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council who [...]

The House of Lords, the upper chamber of the UK Parliament, Monday turned back by 249-119 a controversial anti-terror bill that would have permitted government ministers to issue so-called "control orders" limiting the movement or freedoms of certain terror suspects without charge or trial. Former Labour Party Lord Chancellor Lord Irvine is said to have [...]

Shepard v. US, Supreme Court of the United States, Justice Souter, March 7, 2005 . Excerpt: Title 18 U.S.C. § 924(e) (2000 ed. and Supp. II), popularly known as the Armed Career Criminal Act (ACCA), mandates a minimum 15-year prison sentence for anyone possessing a firearm after three prior convictions for serious drug offenses or [...]

Wilkinson v. Dotson, Supreme Court of the United States, March 7, 2005 . Excerpt: Throughout the legal journey from Preiser to Balisok, the Court has focused on the need to ensure that state prisoners use only habeas corpus (or similar state) remedies when they seek to invalidate the duration of their confinement—either directly through an [...]

Ballard v. Commissioner, Supreme Court of the United States, Justice Ginsburg, March 7, 2005 . Excerpt: The Tax Court's practice of not disclosing the special trial judge's original report, and of obscuring the Tax Court judge's mode of reviewing that report, impedes fully informed appellate review of the Tax Court's decision. In directing the Tax [...]

Plagued by allegations of football prospects recruited with sex and alcohol, legal action brought against the university by two women who claimed they were raped by CU football players, and a free speech controversy about Ward Churchill , a professor in the university's Ethnic Studies department who supposedly made disparaging remarks about the victims of [...]