It may not be the most important international dispute of our time, but a storm is brewing over which country — China or Scotland — invented golf. From the International Herald-Tribune: Did the Chinese invent golf and export it westward centuries before any Scottish shepherd ever thought of making a game out of his forlorn fate? Say something quickly in a...
According to a China Daily report, all death-penalty appeals in China will be held publicly as of July 1, 2006. The move, initiated by the Supreme People's Court, is designed to decrease the number of wrongful convictions by making the appeals process more transparent. Under Chinese law, city-level intermediate courts initially hear cases that could lead to the death penalty....
Hat-tip: Think Progress. ...
In the wake of the murder of al-Arabiya correspondent Atwar Bahjat and two of her colleagues, a journalist asked President Jalal Talabani to permit journalists working in Iraq to carry weapons in self-defense. "Send me an official request and I will approve it and inform concerned agencies to give you the right to carry arms," President Talabani replied.The exchange...
The following is a quick summary of the ICC's work to date, courtesy of the International Justice Tribune:Since its creation in July 2002, the International Criminal Court (ICC) has received 1,732 pieces of communication about crimes committed in 139 countries. According to the second summary published by the office of the prosecutor on February 10, 60% of the information came...
Following up on my earlier posts about Saddam and Serbia:Prosecutors at Saddam's trial introduced two important documents yesterday. The first is a memo from the Revolutionary Court, dated June 14, 1984, listing the names of 148 suspects that had been sentenced to death by hanging. The chief prosecutor, Jaafar al-Moussawi, said the signature on the memo was that of...
In what could turn out to be a very important ruling, a Nigerian court in Port Harcourt has ordered Royal Dutch Shell to pay $1.5 billion for the environmental damage its oil-refining activities have caused in the southern Niger delta region. CorpWatch:Local residents began to experience health problems soon after Shell Oil company injected a million litres of a...
A report prepared for Mexico's President, Vicente Fox, has concluded that the Mexican government and military committed numerous crimes against humanity during its "scorched earth" campaign against alleged left-wing rebels between 1964 and 1982: The draft report's authors write: "The authoritarian attitude with which the Mexican state wished to control social dissent created a spiral of violence which...
The United Nations has released the text of its draft compromise on replacing the existing Human Rights Commission with a new Human Rights Council. Here are the key paragraphs:OP7 ...
Spain's Public Prosecutor has urged the Spanish Supreme Court to quash the conviction of Imad Eddin Barakat Yarkas, sentenced last year by a lower court to 15 years in prison for "conspiracy to commit terrorist murder" in connection with the September 11. The lower court concluded that sufficient evidence exists to prove that Yarkas helped an al Qaida cell...
When I wrote last week about the EU’s threat to suspend membership talks with Serbia if it does not find General Ratko Mladic and turn him over to the ICTY -- which it looks like it is about to -- I noted that the EU had successfully pursued a similar strategy to prod Croatia to arrest General Ante Gotovina, accused...
