Anything related to the court system, sentencing of offenders, or incarceration issues
More than two dozen domestic terrorism cases have been opened in the aftermath of the Jan. 6 protests and breach of Congress security by extremists supporting outgoing President Donald Trump. Six deaths have been attributed to the riot and firearms and various explosive devices have been recovered. [node:read-more:link]
A Pakistani high court in Lahore has revoked a guilty verdict and death sentence handed down last month to former President Pervez Musharraf. A government official explained 13 January that the special judicial tribunal which handed down the original sentence was unconstitutional. The tribunal head also said that the former military leader, who is undergoing medical treatment in Dubai, should die before he could be executed, his body should be hung in public. [node:read-more:link]
The International Court of Justice in The Hague has ordered measures to prevent the genocide of Rohingya Muslims in predominantly Buddhist Muslim Myanmar despite its military’s insistence that it was combating extremists. Thousands of Rohingya have died and more than 700,000 have fled to neighboring Bangladesh during an army crackdown that began in 2017. [node:read-more:link]
Cameron Ortis, the former director general of the RCMP’s national intelligence centre, faces three more charges under the Security of Information Act. Relating to unauthorized communication of special operational information, they are in addition to the original charge in September that he was preparing to share sensitive information with a foreign entity or terrorist organization. [node:read-more:link]
A U.S. soldier’s family who won a $134-million wrongful-death award in a Utah court against Omar Khadr, a Canadian imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay after being captured in Afghanistan, now want him to sign off on a statement of facts about the soldier’s death. Khadr has disavowed his confession, which he says was made under duress, but an Ontario Superior Court has ordered him to answer several questions from the family. [node:read-more:link]
The U.S. has identified four Chinese military officers it has charged with overseeing a massive 2017 cyber attack on Equifax which resulted in the theft of personal data on more than 147 Americans and some foreign nationals listed in the credit-rating agency’s files. The whereabouts of the four suspects is unknown and China denies the allegations. [node:read-more:link]
The U.S. Department of Defense has been blocked by a federal judge from going ahead with a $10-billion contract with Microsoft Corp. to provide cloud-based data storage. The injunction remains in effect until “further notice from the court” due to a legal challenge by Amazon, which argues that the DoD made numerous errors in awarding the contract. It also says President Donald Trump exerted undue influence through his frequent criticism of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. [node:read-more:link]
A Chinese citizen has pleaded guilty to taking photographs of a U.S. Navy base in Florida. His arrest is similar to the cases of three other Chinese nationals caught photographing the base in Key West. [node:read-more:link]
Pentagon officials are “quite likely” to have overlooked a material error in Microsoft’s bid on the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure multi-billion-dollar cloud data storage project, according a federal judge who has placed a hold on work in response to an Amazon injunction request. Judge Patricia Campbell-Smith issued the ruling Feb. 13 but her reasons have only now been released by the court. [node:read-more:link]
The federal government is considering criminal penalties for travelers who ignore COVID-19 self-isolation recommendations on their return to Canada. Health Minister Patty Hajdu says “every measure in our toolbox” is being considered, including “monetary penalties up to and including criminal penalties” provided for in the Quarantine Act. [node:read-more:link]
A member of the Canadian Armed Forces, identified only as an armed member of the Canadian Rangers, is in RCMP custody after a pickup truck registered in Manitoba was used to ram the gates at Rideau Hall early 02 July. after which the driver proceeded on foot toward the official residences of the Governor General and the Prime Minister, neither of whom was at home. The Department of National Defence confirmed the suspect’s military status but declined further comment “at this time” as it is an RCMP investigation. [node:read-more:link]
A four-year internal inquiry has found “credible evidence” that Australian special forces killed “prisoners, farmers or civilians” in Afghanistan between 2009 and 2013. Blaming an unchecked “warrior culture”, the inquiry has recommended that 19 current or former troops should be investigated further. Australia has had forces in Afghanistan since 2002 as part of a U.S.-led coalition. [node:read-more:link]
An Iranian Judiciary official said 14 January that “extensive investigations” into last week’s missile shoot-down of a Ukrainian jetliner has resulted in an undisclosed number of arrests. All 176 persons aboard the Boeing 737-800, including 57 Canadian citizens, died in the crash minutes after Flight PS752 had taken off from Tehran Imam Khomeini International Airport en route to Kyiv, Ukraine. [node:read-more:link]
Oracle Corp. has lost its latest legal challenge of how the U.S. Department of Defense awarded a multi-billion-dollar cloud-computing contract for its Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure. The contract originally was awarded to Microsoft after a competition with Amazon Web Services, but Oracle contended that the contract requirements had been tailored to the other companies’ advantage. [node:read-more:link]
Men and women sentenced to or serving time in a federal penitentiary should be given the opportunity to complete their sentences, or a portion of them, volunteering in the Canadian military. That, according to Jose Vivar, a federal inmate, in an op-ed piece in The Kingston Whig-Standard. [node:read-more:link]
