As our Boumediene instant symposium gets underway, I thought it might be interesting to note that the Israeli Supreme Court has just upheld the Incarceration of Unlawful Combatants Law, which permits the indefinite detention of a person who does not qualify for POW status and "who has participated either directly or indirectly in hostile acts against the State of Israel...
Very encouraging news out of Serbia -- Stojan Zupljanin, the commander of the Bosnian police during the war, has been arrested and will be handed over to the ICTY for prosecution:Bosnian Serb security chief Stojan Zupljanin, 56, was one of four suspects sought by the tribunal for war crimes in the territory of former Yugoslavia in the 1990s. Their arrest and...
First the judge who felt "badgered, beaten, and bruised" by prosecutors for trying to protect Khadr's rights was removed from the case "for personnel reasons." Now it turns out that Khadr's interrogators were "instructed" -- read: ordered -- to destroy their notes, lest anyone ever find out that Khadr had been tortured or mistreated:Navy Lieutenant Commander Bill Kuebler said...
In an important first, Roma gathered in Rome on Sunday to protest their continued harrassment and persecution at the hands of the Italian government:The first national demonstration of Gypsies brought hundreds of people to the capital Sunday to protest recent episodes of racism in Italy that have targeted Roma and Sinti people, as they prefer to be called. "We're being used...
The ICL community is abuzz with news that the ICC Prosecutor appears ready to issue new indictments that connect the "whole state apparatus" in Sudan to the crimes against humanity committed in Darfur. Here's Mark Leon Goldberg:This is a big deal. On the one hand, indicting top government officials could seriously disrupt current diplomatic efforts to coax and cajole...
Last month, I noted that the ICTR Prosecutor had "disowned" Human Rights Watch for daring to criticize his request to refer Yusuf Munyakazi to Rwanda for trial. I guess he'll now have to disown Trial Chamber III, as well, because on Monday it agreed with HRW and rejected the referral:Chances of genocide suspect and former Rwandan Interhamwe militia leader...
With so many failed terrorism prosecutions to cover — see, for example, here, here, and here — the media can be forgiven for overlooking one here or there. Still, it's a shame that the Bush administration's most recent failure, the baseless prosecution of Dr. Steven Kurtz on bioterror charges, has not received more attention. It's an ugly story. Kurtz,...
I know it's not international law, but this site is too cool not to mention: Just enter your address and it will calculate your "Walk Score" — how walkable your neighborhood is. It even maps all the interesting businesses that are nearby. I entered my old address in Athens, Georgia, and my walk score was 75, walkable enough not...
My colleagues have often discussed the dangers of globalization in these pages. Nevertheless, I fear they have overlooked one of the most pernicious: embarrassing car names. There are 2,261 different written languages in the world, essentially guaranteeing that at least some car names will mean something untoward in one of them. Witness the Ford Pinto, Portuguese...
Over at National Security Advisors, our colleague Dave Glazier has a superb post on whether the Gitmo defense attorneys are responsible for the ills of the military commissions, as the Wall Street Journal's far-right editorial page seems to believe. Here's the intro:The Wall Street Journal published a scathing editorial today blasting the military and civilian defense attorneys it portrays...
They number at least 12,000,000, though a precise count is impossible because many governments refuse to consider them a legitimate category for census purposes. They suffer serious and widespread employment discrimination, especially their women, leading to unemployment rates often 6-8 times greater than the countries in which they live. They are sequestered in dangerous, environmentally-degraded slums,...
The California Supreme Court's decision to legalize gay marriage wasn't the only good human-rights news yesterday. Also exciting is the Court of Arbitration for Sport's decision to allow Oscar Pistorius, a double-amputee sprinter, to compete for a place in the Beijing Olympics:The Court of Arbitration for Sport ruled that the 21-year-old South African is eligible to race against able-bodied...
