Category Archives: Law

‘Tragic’: Justice Elena Kagan’s scorching dissent on US voter suppression

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The supreme court’s conservative wing considerably weakened section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, and Kagan didn’t hold back

There may have been no supreme court decision this year more important this year than the one in Brnovich v Democratic National Committee.

In a 6-3 ruling that broke down along ideological lines, the court’s conservative justices upheld two Arizona voting restrictions and considerably weakened section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, the landmark 1965 civil rights law.

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David Lammy says Labour would reform ‘injustice’ of joint enterprise law

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Campaigners say ‘shoddy’ and ‘outdated’ law has led to bystanders being wrongfully convicted

A Labour government would reform the law of joint enterprise that has led to hundreds of mostly young men unjustly serving life sentences for murder, David Lammy, the shadow justice secretary, has told a protest rally at Westminster.

Organised by the campaign group Joint Enterprise Not Guilty By Association (JENGbA), which is threatening a legal challenge against the justice secretary, Robert Buckland, the rally was attended by about 200 family members and supporters of young people serving long sentences after joint enterprise convictions.

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EU urged to suspend funds to Hungary over ‘grave breaches of the rule of law’

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Action follows Viktor Orbán passing law banning LGBT content in schools and mishandling of EU funds

Ursula von der Leyen is being urged to suspend EU funds to Hungary to force Viktor Orbán to address concerns over politicised courts and corruption.

MEPs who work on the European parliament’s budgetary control committee are calling on the European Commission president to use a newly created EU law to freeze payments to Hungary for “grave breaches of the rule of law”.

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Madrid court rules far-right anti-migrant poster is legitimate

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Political rivals and human rights campaigners criticise use of inflammatory campaign material by Vox party

Human rights groups and politicians in Spain have spoken out after a court ruled that a controversial and false election poster for the far-right Vox party should not be withdrawn because it is legitimate political expression, and because the unaccompanied foreign minors it depicts in a relentlessly negative light are “an obvious social and political problem”.

The poster, which Vox used as part of its campaign in May’s bitterly contested Madrid regional election, was put up in a busy rail station in the capital and shows a hooded and masked dark-skinned youth alongside a white Spanish grandmother. It incorrectly suggests that refugee and migrant children in state care receive 10 times more in benefits each month than the average Spanish grandmother does in pension payments.

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Priti Patel to reveal proposals for offshore centres for asylum seekers

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Borders bill will allow for charges against migrants ‘knowingly’ arriving in UK without permission

Ministers are to reveal proposals for a suite of new laws paving the way for offshore centres for asylum seekers and criminal charges for migrants “knowingly” arriving in the UK without permission.

The nationality and borders bill, formerly known as the sovereign borders bill, has been described by the Home Office as containing “the most radical changes to the broken asylum system in decades” making it harder for those who enter illegally to stay in the UK.

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Troubles trials: why did they collapse, and what happens next?

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Decision to halt prosecution for murder of two British veterans is likely to affect other cases

Why have prosecutors dropped Troubles-era murder charges against former soldiers who served in Northern Ireland?

A technicality, and a whole lot of history, lie behind Friday’s decision to halt the prosecution of two veterans. Soldier F had been charged with two murders and five attempted murders during Bloody Sunday in Derry in January 1972. Soldier B was charged with killing a teenager in the city in July 1972.

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Italian prisons under fire as video footage shows guards beating inmates

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Italy’s justice minister orders an investigation after images from the 2020 incident are published

Italy’s justice minister, Marta Cartabia, has ordered a report into conditions in the country’s prisons after the release of video footage showing guards brutally beating inmates at a jail near Naples who had demanded better coronavirus protections.

The shocking scenes of prisoners being kicked, slapped and beaten with truncheons at Santa Maria Capua Vetere prison in Caserta were caught by surveillance cameras on 6 April 2020, the day after a riot erupted in the prison as inmates demanded face masks and Covid-19 tests in reaction to an outbreak of the virus. The footage was published this week by the newspaper Domani.

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‘History’s on our side’: Turkish women fighting femicide

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As Turkey quits the Istanbul convention, Gülsüm Kav’s group We Will Stop Femicide is helping keep women alive amid a rise in gender-based violence

“History is on our side,” says Gülsüm Kav. She leans in and speaks intensely. She has a lot to say: Kav helped create Turkey’s We Will Stop Femicide (WWSF) group, and has become one of the country’s leading feminist activists even as the political environment has grown more hostile.

Amid protests, Turkey withdrew from the Istanbul convention, the landmark international treaty to prevent violence against women and promote equality, on Thursday. The Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has long attacked women’s rights and gender equality, suggesting that feminists “reject the concept of motherhood”, speaking out against abortion and even caesarean sections, and claiming that gender equality is “against nature”.

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Uproar in Zimbabwe as teenager who ‘fought off sexual assault’ charged with murder

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Activists believe the case, in which the accused says she acted in self-defence, shows the law fails women

A teenager has been charged with murder in Zimbabwe despite claims she was defending herself against a sexual predator. The action has triggered protests from lawyers and activists, who have raised concerns about how victims of sexual violence are treated in the country.

Tariro Matutsa, 19, said she acted in self-defence when she picked up a piece of firewood and hit 40-year-old Sure Tsuro several times last month. She said he had cornered her as she cooked over a fire at her home in Mudzi, a rural area east of the capital, Harare, exposed himself and aggressively demanded sex.

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Pauline Latham MP picks up bill to end child marriage in England and Wales

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MP to take over private member’s bill proposed by Sajid Javid to raise legal age to 18, after his promotion to health secretary

The MP Pauline Latham will step in to adopt Sajid Javid’s private member’s bill to end child marriage after his promotion to health secretary.

Javid presented a bill raising the minimum legal age of marriage to 18 in England and Wales to parliament earlier this month, but is not able to take it forward because he is no longer a backbencher.

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Honduran state responsible for trans woman’s murder – court

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Landmark ruling orders state to pay reparations, protect trans people and legalise gender change

In a landmark ruling for transgender rights, the Honduras government has been found responsible for the 2009 murder of the trans woman and activist Vicky Hernández. The ruling, at the inter-American court of human rights, was published on the 12th anniversary of Hernández’s death, and marks the first time the highest regional human rights court has held a state accountable for failing to prevent, investigate and prosecute the death of a trans person.

The court has ordered Honduras, which has the world’s highest rate of murders of trans people, to pay reparations to Hernández’s family and implement a sweeping range of measures designed to protect trans people, including anti-discrimination training for security forces and state collection of data on violence against LGBTQ+ people.

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Spain backs bill allowing teenagers to change official gender without medical checks

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Equality minister says draft law marks ‘giant step forward for LGBTI rights, particularly trans people’

Spain’s government has approved a draft law that would allow anyone aged 14 and over to change their gender on official documents without the need for hormone treatment or a medical report, and which would also ban conversion practices and strengthen the rights of LGBTI people.

The proposed measures – which follow months of wrangling between the Spanish Socialist Worker’s party (PSOE) and its junior coalition partners in the far-left, anti-austerity Podemos party – would abolish existing legislation that requires people wishing to change their gender to obtain a diagnosis of gender dysphoria and undergo hormone treatment.

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Melissa Caddick convinced 72 investors to hand over $23m to ‘sham’ business, court told

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Federal court hears Sydney woman, whose decomposing foot washed up on remote NSW beach, had 37 bank accounts

Sydney businesswoman Melissa Caddick faked many documents in the “quite elaborate fraud” she used to swindle trusting investors out of more than $23m, a judge has been told.

She operated 37 bank accounts, sent investors fictitious portfolio evaluations and kept “meticulous” records, Farid Assad SC said in the federal court on Tuesday.

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Greece accused of refugee ‘pushback’ after family avoid being forced off island

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Story of Palestinians who hid on Samos to escape deportation to Turkey appears to be ‘proof’ that pushbacks continue, claim rights groups

On 26 April Dimitris Choulis, an immigration lawyer based on the Greek island of Samos, opened his office door to find a family of four on his doorstep. Aisha*, 31, and her three children, all from Palestine.

“She said ‘pushback,’” said Choulis, “and I understood what had happened.” These were the only people left on the island out of a group of asylum seekers who had arrived from Turkey a few days before.

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Obama says Trump violated ‘core tenet’ of democracy with election ‘hooey’ – as it happened

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– Maanvi Singh and Vivian Ho

As the United States has become more diverse, it has also become more racially segregated, according to a new nationwide analysis from researchers at the University of California, Berkeley.

More than 80% of America’s large metropolitan areas were more racially segregated in 2019 than they were in 1990, the researchers found, even though explicit racial discrimination in housing has been outlawed for half a century. The levels of residential segregation appeared highest not in the American south, but in parts of the north-east and midwest: the most segregated metropolitan area in the US according to the study is New York City, followed by Chicago, Milwaukee and Detroit.

Related: ‘Where you live determines everything’: why segregation is growing in the US

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UN calls for end of ‘impunity’ for police violence against black people

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Report launched in aftermath of George Floyd murder cites example of 2018 death of Kevin Clarke in UK

A UN report that analysed racial justice in the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd has called on member states including the UK to end the “impunity” enjoyed by police officers who violate the human rights of black people.

The UN human rights office analysis of 190 deaths across the world led to the report’s damning conclusion that law enforcement officers are rarely held accountable for killing black people due in part to deficient investigations and an unwillingness to acknowledge the impact of structural racism.

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Covid news: UK removes quarantine requirement for arrivals from Balearics, Malta and some Caribbean islands

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Latest updates: territories are added to UK’s green list or green watchlist, while more countries added to red list

Rory Boland, travel editor for consumer group Which?, said travellers still needed to be “extremely cautious” about booking trips abroad.
He said: “Countries can be downgraded quickly and with little warning, as we saw with Portugal, while several European countries have introduced quarantine requirements for UK residents. “Restrictions around international travel are changing regularly and when they do, the cost to holidaymakers is significant. “Most providers will not pay refunds if a country is moved from green to amber, and ‘free’ amendments are often anything but, with many companies requiring significant notice of any changes and bookings for new dates usually costing hundreds of pounds. Travel insurance is also unlikely to pay out in these circumstances. “It is only advisable to book if you are able to do 14 days’ quarantine, can be flexible about destination and dates, and book with a provider that guarantees refunds in the event of traffic light changes or quarantine requirements.”

Eluned Morgan MS, minister for health and social services in Wales, said: “International travel is resuming but the pandemic is not over and protecting people’s health remains our main priority.

“Our strong advice continues to be not to travel overseas unless it is essential because of the risk of contracting coronavirus, especially new and emerging variants of concern.

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Greek police arrest Dutch journalist for helping Afghan asylum seeker

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Ingeborg Beugel was detained for ‘facilitating the illegal stay of a foreigner’ and faces up to a year in jail

A Dutch journalist based in Greece has been arrested on the Greek island of Hydra for hosting an Afghan asylum seeker in her home and could face up to a year in prison if charged and convicted.

Ingeborg Beugel, 61, a freelance correspondent for Dutch media who has lived on Hydra for almost 40 years, was arrested on 13 June accused of “facilitating the illegal stay of a foreigner in Greece”. The charge carries a 12-month prison sentence and a fine of €5,000 (£4,300).

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Swiss court convicts Liberian rebel of rape, killings and cannibalism

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Alieu Kosiah gets maximum 20-year sentence in Switzerland’s first war crimes trial in a civilian court

A Liberian rebel commander has been sentenced in Switzerland to 20 years in jail for rape, killings and an act of cannibalism, in one of the first convictions over the west African country’s civil war.

The case was also Switzerland’s first war crimes trial in a civilian court. It involved 46-year-old Alieu Kosiah, who went by the nom de guerre “bluff boy” in the rebel faction Ulimo that fought former President Charles Taylor’s army in the 1990s.

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Linen condoms and bed curtains: tour exposes history of sex in Scotland

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National Trust for Scotland presents exploration of intimacy from 17th to 20th century

The chafing doesn’t bear thinking about. A replica linen condom secured with a dainty blue ribbon is one of the more wince-inducing props for a new exploration of the history of sex and intimate lives in Scotland.

The other material used to fashion prophylactics in the 17th century was animal gut, which was dried then rehydrated at the crucial moment. The Edinburgh-born diarist James Boswell writes about dipping one in a river before intercourse. He was adamant about their use to ward off venereal disease, but still recorded numerous painful bouts of infection in his journals.

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