On February 12, 2016, the Appeals Chamber of the International Criminal Court reversed an earlier decision in the Ruto and Sang cases that had granted admission of prior recorded testimony pursuant to amended rule 68 of the Rules of Procedure and Evidence (RPE). According to the press release, the rule was adopted by the state parties to the Rome Statute in November 2013, while the trial of Ruto and Sang started on September 10, 2013. Noting that the rule had therefore been applied retroactively, the Appeals Chamber found “that the application of the amended rule resulted in (i)...
International Law in Brief
International Law in Brief (ILIB) is a forum that provides updates on current developments in international law from the editors of ASIL's International Legal Materials.
On February 15, 2016, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and Italy announced a joint task force of experts focusing on the conservation of cultural heritage in conflict zones. According to the press release, “UNESCO will be able to ask the Italian Government to make experts of the Task Force available for deployment for the conservation of cultural heritage affected by crises.” UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova said, “The agreement is a major and innovative step in our effort to gain recognition for the importance of cultural heritage in...
On February 15, 2016, the Court of Justice of the European Union (Court) ruled (judgment not available in English) that EU law allows an asylum seeker to be detained for national security or public order reasons. According to the press release, J.N. had first applied for asylum in the Netherlands in 1995, and had continued to submit applications after he had been denied asylum and received an entry ban following twenty-one convictions and several prison sentences. The Dutch court sought a preliminary ruling to determine whether “an asylum seeker may be detained when the protection of...
On February 10, 2016, the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC) reached a settlement with Barclays Bank for apparent violations of the Zimbabwe sanctions regulations. According to the enforcement notice, “Barclays processed 159 transactions totaling approximately $3,375,617 to or through financial institutions located in the United States . . . for or on behalf of corporate customers of Barclays Bank of Zimbabwe . . . that were owned . . . by a person identified on the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s . . . List of Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons.”...
On February 5, 2016, the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention found that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was arbitrarily detained by the governments of Sweden and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. According to a news report, Assange has been detained since December 2010, when Swedish authorities charged him with rape. In its statement, the Working Group noted that Assange had been “subjected to different forms of deprivation of liberty: initial detention in Wandsworth prison which was followed by house arrest and his confinement at the Ecuadorian...
On February 5, 2016, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York ruled that Dominican Republic United Nations envoy Francis Lorenzo cannot claim diplomatic immunity to avoid prosecution on bribery charges. A news article describes Lorenzo’s participation in the alleged bribery stating, “he was involved in paying off [former UN General Assembly President John Ashe] to introduce business before the U.N. that would further a businessman’s real estate project.” According to a second news report, the court found that Lorenzo’s status as a permanent resident of the U.S. and a...
On February 2, 2016, the European Court of Human Rights ruled (only available in French) that the judgment against a Turkish Member of Parliament in a defamation suit violated Article 10 (freedom of expression) of the European Convention on Human Rights (Convention). According to the press release, Yücel Erdener served as a member of the Turkish parliament in 2002, when she commented on the then Prime Minister’s widely discussed health issues. A Turkish court committed Erdener to stand trial after the prosecutor had refused to indict arguing that “the mere fact of reporting on rumours in...
On February 2, 2016, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that a self-regulatory body of Hungarian internet content providers and an internet news portal are not liable for offensive reader comments posted on their websites. According to the press release, the two companies used notice-and-take-down-systems, which allow users to indicate unlawful comments to the service providers who will remove them, as well as providing in their general terms and conditions that the writers themselves are accountable for their comments. In February 2010, the news portal posted a story about a real...
On January 28, 2016, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (Court) published its decision (only available in Spanish) in Kaliña y Lokono v. Surinam, recognizing two villages’ rights to juridical personality, right of collective ownership of their territory, and their right to environmental protection. The case arose from a claim by two villages, Kaliña and Lokono, arguing that the state had failed to recognize their juridical personality and their right of collective ownership over their traditional territory, to which they hold no legal title. The government had created nature...
On January 25, 2016, the internationally-recognized parliament of Libya voted to reject the unity government proposed by the UN to resolve the political and armed conflict in the country. According to a news report, Libya has two competing governments consisting of “the internationally-recognized authorities and parliament in Tobruk and the rebel-backed authority holding power in Tripoli.” The unity government was part of the Libyan Political Agreement signed in July and designed to create a bridge between the two rival factions. As another news article describes, critics of the unity...