In association with the International Commission of Jurists

December 2006

15 Dec

Although evidence that Bush and Blair lied about Saddam's WMD capabilities has been accumulating for the past couple of years, this latest revelation is still shocking:In the testimony revealed today Mr Ross, 40, who helped negotiate several UN security resolutions on Iraq, makes it clear that Mr Blair must have known Saddam Hussein possessed no weapons of mass destruction. He...

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15 Dec

The Iraqi government's assault on the independence and objectivity of the IHT continues. The trial court was its first target: not only did Iraqi President Jalal Talabani tell reporters on the eve of the Dujail trial that Saddam had signed a written confession and "deserve[d] to be executed 20 times a day for his crimes against humanity," high-ranking officials...

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15 Dec

Here is the text of the speech by new UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon. There are a few good lines from the speech, such as the following: Member States need a dynamic and courageous Secretariat, not one that is passive and risk-averse. The time has come for a new day in relations between the Secretariat and Member States. The...

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15 Dec

The D.C. District Court recently issued a very thoughtful opinion in the recent case of Agudas Chasidei Chabad of United States v. Russian Federation. The case concerns claims by the Jewish organization Chabad that Russia had expropriated an invaluable collection of Jewish religious books and manuscripts maintained since 1775 from the first Rebbe, Rabbi Schneur Zalman, (pictured at left)...

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14 Dec

Ethiopia's former dictator, Mengistu Haile Marian, has been convicted in absentia of genocide following a 12-year trial involving 72 defendants. All but one were found guilty; 34 defendants were present in court, while 25 were tried in absentia. Sentencing, which will almost certainly result in a death sentence for Mengistu, is set for December 28. Regardless, the exercise...

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14 Dec

I have just posted a short essay on SSRN critiquing the ICTR's recent decision in Prosecutor v. Karemera et al. Here is the abstract: The Appeals Chamber of the ICTR recently held in Prosecutor v. Karemera et al. that the existence of a nationwide campaign of genocide in Rwanda in 1994 is a “fact of common knowledge” of which Trial...

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13 Dec

Judge Robertson dismissed Hamdan's peititon for a writ of habeas corpus on the grounds that the Military Commissions Act strips the court of jurisdiction over his case. I can't yet find the order online, but here is a taste: "The Military Commissions Act and the briefs of the parties present three questions: (1) As a matter of statutory interpretation and construction,...

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13 Dec

The BBC has a good news clip on the scandalous Iranian Holocaust Conference. As reported, Iran is trying to break the Holocaust denial taboo and the video has blurbs from the likes of David Duke and Frederick Toben who are in Iran for the conference. Holocaust deniers are reported as saying that "President Ahmadinejad's government has given them...

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13 Dec

The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals has dismissed the lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of NAFTA Chapter 19 Panels on jurisdictional grounds. As we discussed earlier on this blog, the Coalition for Fair Lumber, a U.S. lumber trade group, had challenged NAFTA's system using "binational panels" to replace U.S. federal courts in the review of U.S. government anti-dumping and countervailing duty...

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