In a welcome move, Egypt has named its first female judges:Mukbil Shakir, the head of the Supreme Judicial Council, appointed 31 women to judge or chief judge positions in Egypt's courts, the official Middle East News Agency said, quoting Shakir's decree. The move is expected to give a boost to President Hosni Mubarak's political and social reforms that have been widely...
Last month, a British military judge dismissed charges against five of seven British soldiers accused of mistreating an Iraqi prisoner who died in their custody. At the time, the judge refused to explain the reasoning behind his decision to take the case away from the seven-officer jury, saying only that the prosecution had failed to introduce evidence of the...
Various news items to report:As expected, the Iraqi High Tribunal sentenced Saddam's Vice-President, Yassin Ramadan, to death last month. The IHT's re-sentencing hearing was as flawed as the trial itself; according to Human Rights Watch, "[t]he less than 30-minute hearing was held by a panel of five judges, three of whom had not previously participated in hearing evidence against...
It's not international law, strictly speaking, but I rarely get to defend Bush's executive power so I'm making an exception. A very prominent liberal blogger suggested today that Bush would violate the Rules Governing Petitions for Executive Clemency if he pardoned Scooter Libby anytime soon:[Y]esterday, when Tony Snow was asked about the possibility, he refused to rule a pardon...
Jean Baudrillard, the great postmodern philosopher who once described the U.S. as "the only remaining primitive society," died yesterday at age 77. Here is a snippet of his obituary in the New York Times:The author of more than 50 books and an accomplished photographer, Mr. Baudrillard ranged across different subjects, from race and gender to literature and art to...
A couple of days ago, I criticized Julian's claim that the ICC's involvement in Darfur makes the situation there worse. I still believe that, on balance, the ICC's involvement is positive. Nevertheless, articles like this give me pause:Aid workers fear war crimes accusations made by the International Criminal Court against two Sudanese suspects could hamper their work in...
Apparently, the Bush Administration forgot to tell the Pentagon that global warming is nothing more than a hoax perpetrated by the Left:Climate change over the next 20 years could result in a global catastrophe costing millions of lives in wars and natural disasters.. A secret report, suppressed by US defence chiefs and obtained by The Observer, warns that major European cities...
On Sunday, a Taliban ambush on a U.S. convoy in Afghanistan left approximately 10 civilians dead and dozens wounded. It is unclear who is responsible for many of the deaths — and not surprisingly, the U.S military and witnesses are giving very different accounts of the incident:A suicide attacker detonated an explosives-filled minivan as the American convoy approached, then...
I have written before about the Bush Administration's war on attorneys who defend individuals accused of terrorism. (See here and here.) A new front has now been opened in that war, with the chief U.S. military prosecutor accusing Major Michael Mori, who is representing David Hicks — the Australian scheduled to be the first GITMO detainee tried by...
Although it is still unclear whether cluster munitions violate Additional Protocol I's prohibition of attacks that "employ a method or means of combat which cannot be directed at a specific military objective," Belgium — so often on the cutting edge of international criminal law — isn't waiting to find out. On Thursday, the Belgian Senate passed a law that...
As someone who is interested in the crime of aggression, I was appalled to learn of Switzerland's recent invasion of Liechtenstein. I can only hope that the responsible individuals are punished appropriately:What began as a routine training exercise almost ended in an embarrassing diplomatic incident after a company of Swiss soldiers got lost at night and marched into neighboring...
Like Julian, I do not believe that the ICC's involvement in Darfur is in any way a panacea for the region's ills. And I am concerned that the Prosecutor has summonsed (at this point) only one high-ranking official in the Sudan's government, overlooking the complicity of Sudan's President, Omar El Bashir, and Vice-President, Ali Osman Taha, in the Darfur...
