Anything related to the court system, sentencing of offenders, or incarceration issues
Britain’s high court ruled today that its government’s plan to deport third-country asylum seekers to Rwanda is unsafe, but Prime Minister Rishi Sunak almost immediately promised legislation to address the issue. Blocked for yeaars by legal challenges, the concept is that persons arriving in Britain from “dangerous” countries would be denied asylum and sent to the East African state country with an abysmal human rights record. [node:read-more:link]
Twelve years after Syrian leaders began cracking down on protests, France has issued unprecedented international arrest warrants for President Bashar al-Assad and his brother Maher as well as two top military generals. UN experts say their tactics, including the use of chemical weapons, amount to war crimes. [node:read-more:link]
Lawyers representing Palestinian victims of israel’s war on Hamas in the Gaza Strip have complained to the International Criminal Court that Israel’s actions amount to genocide. The initiative could result in arrest warrants for Israeli leaders. “It is clear for me that there are all the criteria for the crime of genocide,” the French leader of the complainants said. “This is not my opinion, it’s the reality of law.” [node:read-more:link]
A New York-based civil liberties group is suing U.S. President Joe Biden and his secretaries of defence and security in federal court for their “failure to prevent and complicity in the Israeli government’s unfolding genocide” in Gaza. [node:read-more:link]
The presence of a group of protestors, one of whom was arrested for assault, prompted Vancouver to deploy 100 officers to a restaurant where Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was dining November 14. The protesters waved Palestinian flags, shouting slogans and jeering the PM. [node:read-more:link]
The federal government and the lawyers who worked on the $23-billion class-action suit over First Nations child welfare have agreed to a deal on legal fees. Rather than the $80 million they had sought, the five firms have agreed to $55 million plus $5 million for ongoing work to implement the settlement. [node:read-more:link]
Mary Moreau, the Alberta jurist recently confirmed as the Supreme Court of Canada’s newest member, says she does not believe judges should be “activists.” Asked for her opinion during a weekend interview, she did “not think that judges should be viewing themselves with that particular adjective”, that they have a primary role to be impartial. [node:read-more:link]
Cameron Otis, the former RCMP intelligence director on trial for allegedly leaking secret information, has said he was operating legally after being tipped that there were “moles” in Canadian law enforcement agencies. However, according to redacted transcripts from his closed-door jury trial, the prosecution as insisted Ortis was “enabling” the targets. [node:read-more:link]
Cameron Ortis, the former RCMP intelligence official accused of leaking secrets, has told a closed-door court hearing in Ottawa that his actions were “not wrong.” According to a redacted transcript of his testimony, his “mission was to meet the threats to the security of Canada” and that he had no regrets other than how the four-year legal proceedings had affected him professionally and personally. [node:read-more:link]
A 2022 Turkish law which mandates prison for persons deemed to have been spreading “disinformation” survived a legal challenge today. The country’s Constitutional Court dismissed the political opposition’s call for the law, which has been used punish journalists and other critics, to be struck down because it could be used by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to further silence critics by cracking down on social media and independent reporting. [node:read-more:link]
Crown prosecutors have spent the past five weeks laying out their case against Cameron Ortis, the former RCMP security chief charged with trying to sell secret information. However, his defence council contends that Ortis had acted with authority to protect Canada against “serious and imminent threats.” [node:read-more:link]
Correctional Investigator Ivan Zinger said today that indigenous persons are over-represented in Canada’s prison population. “The steady and unabated increase in the disproportionate representation […] is nothing short of a national travesty,” he said in a new report. Moreover, he said, it “remains one of Canada's most pressing human rights challenges.” [node:read-more:link]
The judge in the Ottawa criminal trial of Tamara Lich and Chris Barber, key organizers of the February 2022 “Freedom Convoy” trucker protests, has ordered the Crown to disclose police documents to the defence. Justice Heather Perkins-McVey said October 31 that it was “very unusual” for two officers who were expected to be witnesses to have lost potential evidence. [node:read-more:link]
The Federal Court has dismissed six applications for a judicial review of the federal government’s 2020 move to reclassify certain types of rifles as “assault” weapons. [node:read-more:link]
Lawyers who represented First Nations in their successful $23-billion lawsuit against the federal government over child welfare funding are requesting $80 million in fees. The Justice Department senior general counsel suggests that about half would be more appropriate. [node:read-more:link]
