These people have no shame: Pentagon prosecutors are asking a military judge to reverse himself and reassemble the jury that convicted Osama bin Laden's driver at Guantánamo, seeking to overturn a sentence that could make the first war court convict eligible for release by New Year's Eve. At issue is a decision at the first U.S. war crimes tribunal since World War...
Thou shalt not incite public curiosity. It is perhaps the most curious of international obligations. But there it is, expressly required in the Geneva Conventions: prisoners of war "shall be protected ...
The following post was written by Chimène Keitner, an Associate Professor at Hastings. Our thanks to her for contributing it. The Ninth Circuit issued a panel opinion this week in Abagninin v. AMVAC Chemical Corp., a corporate Alien Tort Statute (ATS) case that had largely been flying under the radar screen of many of us who follow these cases, myself included....
This just gets more and more interesting. Lt. Col. Vandeveld has said he will testify for the defense -- but only if he is given immunity from prosecution: Defense attorneys asked the judge to give Vandeveld immunity. "The suggestion he may have something criminal to hide is intriguing and suggests there is something very, very important this commission needs to get...
I wish I could say I was surprised: Long before Mr. Hussein was hanged on Dec. 30, 2006, with supporters of Iraq’s new Shiite-led government taunting him as the noose was tightened around his neck, a pattern of intervention by powerful Iraqi officials had been established. The court’s first chief judge was dismissed under government pressure for giving Mr. Hussein too...
Shocking: An Army prosecutor has resigned from the Guantánamo war court in a crisis of conscience over plans to try a young Afghan accused of throwing a grenade rather than settle the case out of court, according to an affidavit filed with the court Wednesday. Army Lt. Col. Darrel Vandeveld, a reservist from the Pittsburgh area, becomes the fourth known prosecutor to...
The New York Times and Washington Post (and lots of other places) report today (Saturday, September 20, 2008) that the two senior executives of the Human Rights Watch Americas Division, executive director Jose Miguel Vivanco and deputy director Daniel Wilkinson, were detained by Venezuelan security personnel in Caracas and placed on a plane to Brazil. From the NYT: Armed men in uniforms...
This past month I received an email sent to over 60 law professors inviting us to join an amicus brief. The case is before the D.C. Circuit and involves the important issue of corporate responsibility for human rights violations under international law. The email was sent at approximately midnight on a Monday night and invited a distinguished group...
Two months ago, I predicted that the Security Council would not have the votes necessary to defer the ICC's prosecution of Bashir. Nostradamus I'm not: In a last-ditch attempt to prevent ICC judges from issuing an arrest warrant for Bashir in the next few weeks, Bashir's supporters - the Arab League, the African Union, China and Russia - will use the...
I had the pleasure this past Friday to moderate a conference at Pepperdine on social entrepreneurship that featured Matt Flannery, co-founder of Kiva, one of the leading microfinance organizations on the Internet. There is so much I could say about Kiva and Flannery's remarks, but let me just highlight a few points that were raised by his discussion. First, the...
Opinio Juris is pleased to welcome Daniel Seidemann as a guest blogger this week to address the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the future of Jerusalem. Daniel is the founder and legal advisor for Ir Amim, a non-profit, non-partisan association dedicated to an equitable, stable and sustainable Jerusalem. Ir Amim (“City of Nations” or “City of Peoples”) was founded in...
In this final substantive post of my Warholian week as guest blogger I offer a necessarily telegraphic summary of my long chapter on the conflict. Being telegraphic it will not even have the virtue of the chapter, i.e. even if it is clearly wrong, it won’t be wrong clearly. For two reasons I devoted an entire chapter to a single neuralgic...
