In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Author: Kevin Jon Heller

17 Mar

A human-rights NGO in South Africa, the Southern Africa Litigation Centre (SALC), has formally requested the National Prosecuting Authority's Priority Crimes Unit to investigate senior Zimbabwean officials suspected of committing crimes against humanity:Said SALC Director Nicole Fritz on Sunday: "The intention behind the initiative is both to ensure some form of accountability for the people of Zimbabwe at a time...

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14 Mar

Good God:During a videoconference with U.S. military and civilian personnel yesterday, President Bush praised the troops fighting in Afghanistan, claiming he was “a little envious” of their “romantic” fight: “I must say, I’m a little envious,” Bush said. “If I were slightly younger and not employed here, I think it would be a fantastic experience to be on the front lines...

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13 Mar

Not surprisingly, I strongly disagree with Julian's insistence that "the ICC really is now the obstacle to peace" in Uganda. To begin with, we need to give the ICC credit where credit is due: as Mark Leon Goldberg pointed out earlier today at the invaluable UN Dispatch, "[i]t was not until the ICC began its investigation and issued indictments...

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12 Mar

Democrat Andre Carson won a special congressional election in Indiana yesterday to replace his grandmother, Julia Carson, who died a few months ago. Carson is the second Muslim elected to Congress, following in the footsteps of fellow Democrat Keith Ellison of Minnesota. Interestingly, neither Carson nor Ellison was born Muslim. Ellison was raised Catholic; Carson grew up Baptist. ...

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11 Mar

Slate is publishing a set of dispatches this week about Israel's newest tourism innovation: the "Ultimate Counter-Terrorism Mission," which is "packed full of visits to military bases, security briefings from members of Mossad and Shin Bet, and stops for fine dining." The dispatches are fascinating and well worth reading in themselves, but I was particularly struck by an anecdote...

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11 Mar

Whatever will Fox News do now? Not even the Pentagon still believes that Saddam had operational ties to al Qaeda:An exhaustive review of more than 600,000 Iraqi documents that were captured after the 2003 U.S. invasion has found no evidence that Saddam Hussein's regime had any operational links with Osama bin Laden's al Qaida terrorist network. The Pentagon-sponsored study, scheduled...

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09 Mar

The so-called "doomsday" seed vault opened recently in Norway. It's a remarkable venture — and an even more remarkable piece of engineering:"This is a frozen Garden of Eden," European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said at the opening ceremony Tuesday, as guests carried the first seed deposits into the icy vault, deep within an Arctic mountain in the remote...

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05 Mar

I've always loved the Billboard Liberation Front's unique brand of civil disobedience, but this time they've outdone themselves: Here's a snippet from the accompanying "Press Release":February 27, 2008 San Francisco, CA The Billboard Liberation Front today announced a major new advertising improvement campaign executed on behalf of clients AT&T and the National Security Agency. Focusing on billboards in the San Francisco area, this...

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04 Mar

Readers who enjoyed our recent symposium on Eric Posner and Adrian Vermeule's book Terror in the Balance will definitely want to check out Alice Ristroph's review of the book in the new issue of the Green Bag. This is no ordinary review — serious, respectful, dispassionate. Indeed, Alice's bete noire is precisely the tendency, so prevalent in the...

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03 Mar

At Prawfsblawg today, my friend — and national-security law expert — Steve Vladeck discusses what the reversal of Mohammed Munaf's conviction means for his Supreme Court case. Here is a snippet:Munaf's habeas petition is one of two brought by U.S. citizens detained in Iraq set to be argued before the Supreme Court later this month (and in which I...

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02 Mar

At IntLawGrrls, our colleague Naomi Norberg notes that Cuba has signed the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights. Like Naomi, I believe that the decision is a step in the right direction. Nevertheless, I think that the International Herald Tribune article to which Naomi links is somewhat...

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02 Mar

Shocking legal news out of Iraq — the Court of Cassation has reversed the conviction of Mohammed Munaf, the US citizen sentenced to death for helping kidnap three Romanian journalists in Iraq in 2005:Munaf's lawyer, Joseph Margulies, said the Iraqi Court of Cassation reversed the conviction and sentence because it could not determine the role Munaf and other defendants played...

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