MPs told UK government’s attempt to avoid handing over evidence to inquiry had been ‘misinterpreted’
The high court will decide “very soon” whether ministers should be forced to hand over all unredacted files demanded by the Covid inquiry, MPs have been told.
In an attempt to allay concerns of a cover-up, the Cabinet Office minister Jeremy Quin faced down fractious MPs on Monday and denied there was any political involvement in the scrutiny of such material.
Continue reading...Global outcry over Museveni’s assent to draconian new anti-gay law, condemned as a ‘permission slip for hate and dehumanisation’
Uganda’s president, Yoweri Museveni, has signed into law the world’s harshest anti-LGBTQ+ bill, which allows the death penalty for homosexual acts. The move immediately drew widespread international outrage as well as condemnation from many Ugandans.
Early on Monday, the speaker of the Ugandan parliament, Anita Annet Among, released a statement on social media confirming Museveni had assented to the law first passed by MPs in March. It imposes the death penalty or life imprisonment for certain same-sex acts, up to 20 years in prison for “recruitment, promotion and funding” of same-sex “activities”, and anyone convicted of “attempted aggravated homosexuality” faces a 14-year sentence.
Continue reading...Lawyers acting for pro-democracy activist argued that proceedings could be biased due to judge selection
Hong Kong’s high court has rejected an attempt by lawyers acting for the jailed pro-democracy activist Jimmy Lai to have his national security trial dismissed.
The court ruled on Monday that the argument the trial may appear to be biased had “no merits”, and gave the proceedings, which are scheduled to start in September, the green light.
Continue reading...Experts point to crackdown on national security and legal system that encourages guilty pleas
Chinese courts prosecuted 8.3 million people in the five years to 2022, a 12% increase on the previous period. There was also a nearly 20% increase in the number of protests against court rulings.
The figures released by the supreme people’s procuratorate (SPP) in March give a glimpse of how China’s notoriously opaque justice system has operated in recent years, amid a tightening domestic security environment.
Continue reading...Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri wants to bring case examining alleged role of MI5, MI6 and GCHQ in his mistreatment by CIA
A Guantánamo Bay prisoner tortured by the CIA has accused British intelligence agencies of complicity in his mistreatment in a new case before one of UK’s most secretive courts.
Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, who is alleged by the US to have plotted al-Qaida’s bombing of an American naval ship, is seeking to persuade the court to consider his complaint against MI5, MI6 and GCHQ.
Continue reading...Justice Joshua Wilson planned to tell an international conference that court positions are filled on the basis of politics rather than ability
A federal and family court justice who planned to deliver a speech at an international conference claiming that progressive governments appointed diverse judges regardless of merit has been forced to apologise to his colleagues and told he can no longer attend the conference.
The speech by Justice Joshua Wilson had been uploaded on the court’s website before Justice William Alstergren, the chief justice of the family court and chief judge of the federal circuit court, was alerted to its contents and ordered that it be removed this week.
Continue reading...Fulgence Kayishema, 62, charged with playing leading role in church killing of more than 2,000 people
One of the world’s most wanted genocide suspects, a Rwandan former police chief, Fulgence Kayishema, has been arrested in South Africa and charged with playing a leading role in the murder of more than 2,000 people in a church in April 1994.
Kayishema has spent more than two decades as a fugitive and was living under a false name at the time of his arrest on Wednesday afternoon in Paarl, 35 miles (60km) north-east of Cape Town. He was detained by the South African police and members of a tracking team from the Rwandan war crimes tribunal based in Arusha, Tanzania.
Continue reading...Nearly 1,000 students attempt group action against UCL, accusing it of breaking promises
Lawyers representing almost 1,000 current and former students whose studies were affected by Covid and strike action told the high court in London their clients felt “cheated” by their educational experience and should be entitled to seek compensation through the courts.
They are seeking to bring a claim against University College London (UCL), accusing it of breaking its “promises” after tuition was moved online and access to libraries and laboratories restricted during the pandemic, with no discount to their “eye-watering” tuition fees.
Continue reading...Schools told to honour court order as families seek compensation and training for pupils who missed education because of their hair
About 1,200 Rastafarian children in Malawi are expected to return to state schools over the next month after being banned for a decade because of their hair.
After a landmark decision at the high court in March, letters have now been sent out to about 7,000 schools telling headteachers that the exclusion of children with dreadlocks from the classroom has been ruled as unconstitutional.
Continue reading...Exclusive: IVF in UK ‘is the most successful and the safest it has ever been’, says Tim Child
A leading fertility expert has said the law should be overhauled so that rapid advancements in reproductive science do not stall.
Prof Tim Child of the University of Oxford said IVF in the UK was “the most successful and the safest that it has ever been”, and noted that the chance of having a baby from a single embryo was rising and the likelihood of having multiple births dropping.
Continue reading...Decision to allow medically assisted dying has divided the deeply Catholic country
After a long battle, Portugal passed a law on Friday legalising euthanasia for people in great suffering and with incurable diseases, joining just a handful of countries around the world.
The issue has divided the deeply Catholic country and was strongly opposed by conservative president Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, a devout churchgoer.
Continue reading...Exclusive: For 21 years, the detainee has been in US custody without charge, tortured and sexually humiliated, with no prospect for release
• Warning: the images and descriptions of torture in this article are extremely graphic
A detainee held in the US prison camp at Guantánamo Bay who was used as a human guinea pig in the CIA’s post-9/11 torture program has produced the most comprehensive and detailed account yet seen of the brutal techniques to which he was subjected.
Abu Zubaydah has created a series of 40 drawings that chronicle the torture he endured in a number of CIA dark sites between 2002 and 2006 and at Guantánamo Bay. In the absence of a full official accounting of the torture program, which the CIA and the FBI have labored for years to keep secret, the images give a unique and searing insight into a grisly period in US history.
Continue reading...Justin Welby to join peers condemning measures that seek to criminalise people seeking refuge in UK
The archbishop of Canterbury will make a rare intervention in the House of Lords to join dozens of peers condemning the government’s flagship asylum bill.
Justin Welby will argue against measures championed by Rishi Sunak and Suella Braverman that seek to criminalise people seeking refuge in the UK if they arrive on small boats.
Continue reading...Lord Hain is seeking amendments to economic crime bill requiring ministers to back establishment of new court
The UK government should back the establishment of an international anti-corruption court to prosecute corrupt leaders of countries unwilling or unable to enforce their own anti-kleptocracy laws, according to Lord Hain, the former Foreign Office minister.
With cross-party support, Hain will propose that the time has come for Britain to throw its weight behind the growing global momentum for an international court, analogous to the international criminal court in The Hague.
Continue reading...Under proposed ‘chat controls’ regulation, any encrypted service provider could be forced to screen for ‘identifiers’
An EU plan under which all WhatsApp, iMessage and Snapchat accounts could be screened for child abuse content has hit a significant obstacle after internal legal advice said it would probably be annulled by the courts for breaching users’ rights.
Under the proposed “chat controls” regulation, any encrypted service provider could be forced to survey billions of messages, videos and photos for “identifiers” of certain types of content where it was suspected a service was being used to disseminate harmful material.
Continue reading...Deaths take number of prisoners executed to at least 203 since start of this year, says human rights group
Iran has hanged two men convicted of blasphemy, according to authorities, carrying out rare death sentences for the crime as the number of executions soars across the Islamic Republic after months of unrest.
The country remains one of the world’s top executioners, having put to death at least 203 prisoners so far this year, according to the Oslo-based group Iran Human Rights. But executions for blasphemy remain rare, as in previous cases the sentences have been reduced by authorities.
Continue reading...Graham Smith said Met officers should hang their heads in shame after 52 detained in central London
Police who arrested anti-monarchy protesters before King Charles III’s coronation have “destroyed whatever trust might have existed between peaceful protesters and the Metropolitan police,” the chief executive of the campaign group Republic has said.
After six members of the group were arrested at about 7.30am on Saturday – before their protest had begun – and had their placards seized, Graham Smith said officers “should hang their heads in shame” and that police had shown “no judgment, no common sense and no basic decency”.
Continue reading...World’s biggest grain trader accused of ‘shoddy due diligence’ on deforestation and alleged rights violations
The world’s largest grain trader, Cargill, is facing a first-ever legal challenge in the United States over its failure to remove deforestation and human rights abuses from its soya supply chain in Brazil.
ClientEarth, an environmental law organisation, filed the formal complaint on Thursday, accusing Cargill of inadequate monitoring and a laggard response to the decline of the Amazon rainforest and other globally important biomes, such as the Cerrado savannah and the Atlantic Forest.
Soya beans bought from third-party traders, which make up 42% of all Brazilian soya Cargill purchases.
Soya beans owned by other companies that passes through Cargill ports.
Indirect land use change.
Soya sourced from the Cerrado savannah.
Soya sourced from the Brazilian Atlantic Forest.
Continue reading...UN’s arbitrary detention group calls for immediate release of Palestinian Abu Zubaydah, saying detention has no basis in law
A UN body has declared that the detention of a long-term Guantánamo inmate, Abu Zubaydah, has no lawful basis and called for his immediate release, warning that the systemic deprivation of liberty at the camp may “constitute crimes against humanity”.
The UN working group on arbitrary detention (UNWGAD), also declared the UK, among other countries, was “jointly responsible for the torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment of Mr Zubaydah” over his more than 20 years in detention.
Continue reading...David Tebbutt’s widow ‘delighted’ as court rules conviction of Ali Kololo for robbery with violence was unsafe
A man found guilty of being part of a gang of pirates who murdered a British tourist 12 years ago has had his conviction quashed by Kenya’s high court.
Ali Kololo, from Lamu County, was convicted of robbery with violence in connection with the 2011 attack that left David Tebbutt dead and his wife, Judith, held captive in Somalia for six months.
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