England to plead guilty in Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse case News
England to plead guilty in Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse case

[JURIST] The lawyer for Pfc. Lynndie England [Wikipedia profile] said Friday that the 22-year old reservist made infamous by photographs that showed her posing with with humiliated Iraqi detainees in Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison has agreed to plead guilty to seven charges of conspiracy, maltreatment and indecent acts when she appears Monday before a military court in Fort Hood, Texas. With prosecutors agreeing to drop two other charges from the latest charge sheet against England (already reduced [JURIST report] to 9 counts down from 19), she now faces a maximum sentence of up 11 years in prison, down from a possible 16 1/2. At sentencing her counsel will argue that she had a history of mental health problems. England's lawyers has also long insisted that she, like other soldiers implicated in the Abu Ghraib scandal, was only a low-level player in an interrogation strategy set by others high up in the US military chain of command. Reuters has more.

THIS DAY @ LAW

UN General Assembly approves Palestine partition plan

The UN General Assembly approved UN Resolution Resolution 181 (II) on November 29, 1947, recommending that the British Mandate for Palestine be split into a Jewish state, an Arab state, and an international zone for Jerusalem. The vote in the assembly was 33 for to 13 against, with 10 abstentions. The resolution sparked a war between Palestinian Arabs and Jews in 1947 and a wider war after Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, and Lebanon invaded the new State of Israel in 1948. Read Resolution 181 (II).

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