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Iran has filed a lawsuit against the United States alleging that Washington’s decision in May to impose sanctions after pulling out of a nuclear deal violates a 1955 treaty between the two countries, the International Court of Justice said on Tuesday. A State Department official said the application was without merit and the United States would fight it in the court. “While we cannot comment on the specifics, Iran’s application is baseless and we intend to vigorously defend the United States before the ICJ,” a State Department official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told Reuters. […] Iran said in...

The UN-backed Special Tribunal for Lebanon says its prosecutor has issued indictments for the 2005 murder of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. The names of the accused remain confidential for now, but are widely believed to include members of the armed Shia group Hezbollah. A pre-trial judge now decides whether to issue warrants. Last week, Hezbollah and its allies brought down Lebanon's government in a dispute over the tribunal. The group, which denies any role in the killing, has dismissed the tribunal as a US and Israeli plot that is designed to discredit it. It has demanded that Lebanon cease...

Last week's International Court of Justice decision on Kosovo could have a significant global effect. While there is less there than meets the eye in legal terms, how the ruling is read politically may be quite different.....

Six years after the state Supreme Court dismissed his $433 million lawsuit against the gun industry, Mayor Daley today called for a change of venue — to the World Court normally reserved for disputes between nations and crimes against humanity. Wrapping up the sixth annual Richard J. Daley Global Cities Forum, Daley convinced more than a dozen of his counterparts from around the world to approve a resolution urging "redress against the gun industry through the courts of the world" in The Hague. "This is coming from international mayors. They're saying, 'We’re tired of your guns, America. ... We don't...

KEVIN Rudd has promised to take Japan to the International Court of Justice if it doesn't agree before November to stop Antarctic whaling, but a behind-closed-doors deal with the Japanese could blow a big hole in the Prime Minister's case before then. A proposed compromise deal in the International Whaling Commission that would allow Japan to continue its so-called scientific whaling, though on a more limited basis, could wreck Australia's core claim that the practice is illegal under international law. A tough talking Mr Rudd yesterday demanded Japan reduce to zero its Southern Ocean scientific whaling quota. "If we don't...

MANAGUA (Reuters) - Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, angry because the United States is rethinking an aid program, pressed Washington on Monday for billions of dollars in war reparations dating back to a 1980s civil war. The International Court of Justice, based in the Hague, ordered the United States in 1986 to pay reparations to Nicaragua for training, arming and financing Contra rebels and mining Nicaraguan ports during a conflict that killed tens of thousands of people. "The United States has not honored the judge's order," Ortega said on national television. The World Court never set a figure for compensation but...

Long after the guns fall silent in the Georgia-Russia conflict, the two countries' legal artillery is still likely still be firing away in an attempt to have the each other publicly judged guilty of war crimes, even genocide. On September 8th, the International Court of Justice begins hearings in a case filed by Georgia.The case seeks to halt Russian military action in Georgia, and accuses the Kremlin of conducting a campaign of ethnic cleansing there.Mikheil Saakashvili, the Georgian president, has called the Russian forces in his country "21st century barbarians."Vladimir Putin, the Russian prime minister, has had even harsher words...

PARIS — Georgia has filed a lawsuit against Russia at the International Court of Justice in The Hague for its actions in and around the territory of Georgia from 1991 to 2008, the court said in a statement.

The execution of José Ernesto Medellín Rojas by the state of Texas is a violation of international law, said Amnesty International today. "It undermines the authority of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) which had ruled in favour of a stay of execution."

HOUSTON — In a case that has drawn international attention, Texas executed José E. Medellín on Tuesday night in defiance of an international court ruling and despite pleas from the Bush administration for a new hearing. The execution came just before 10 p.m. Central time, shortly after the United States Supreme Court denied a last request for a reprieve. Protesters for and against the death penalty clamored in the rain outside the Huntsville Unit, about 70 miles north of Houston, where Mr. Medellín was executed by lethal injection. “I’m sorry my actions caused you pain,” he said to the witnesses...

Medellin Execute For Rape, Murder of Houston Teens Link Only

WASHINGTON (AFP) - UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon issued a last-minute appeal to the United States Tuesday to halt the scheduled execution of a Mexican national sentenced to death for murder in defiance of an International Court of Justice (ICJ) order. Jose Ernesto Medellin, 33, was due to be executed by lethal injection at 2300 GMT in the state of Texas. He was convicted of the 1993 rape and murder of two teenagers and is one 51 Mexican nationals on death row in the United States. Less than 12 hours before Medellin's planned execution, Ban called on the US government...

The United States is fast approaching a showdown over its commitment to the rule of international law as Texas prepares to carry out the scheduled Aug. 5 execution of convicted killer and rapist Jose Medellin. On July 14, the International Court of Justice at The Hague ordered the US government to "take all measures necessary" to prevent the execution of Mr. Medellin and four other Mexican nationals awaiting execution dates on death row in Texas. . . Medellin admitted involvement in the gang rape and murder of two girls. The girls, ages 14 and 16, took a shortcut home through...

THE HAGUE (AFP) — Former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic stood before the UN war crimes court Thursday to face genocide charges, in his first public appearance since his arrest after nearly 13 years on the run. Shorn of the beard and long hair he had used as a disguise until his capture on July 21, Karadzic was again recognisable as the man who became one of the most reviled figures in the Bosnian conflict of the 1990s. Wearing a dark jacket and tie, Karazdic appeared before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) to hear the 11...

Serbia's interior minister says officials found copies of Bosnian Serb government documents in the Belgrade apartment where former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic lived prior to his arrest last week. Ivica Dacic said the documents included materials on Bosnian Serb military staff meetings during the conflict in Bosnia-Herzegovina in the 1990s. He said officials turned the materials over to Serbia's war crimes court. Meanwhile, court officials say the court has not yet received Karadzic's appeal against a judicial order authorizing his extradition to the United Nations war crimes tribunal in The Hague. Karadzic's lawyer, Svetozar Vujacic says he mailed out...

Loony academic leftist Francis Boyle (last seen at LGF trying to impeach President Bush) has offered to represent the mullahs of Iran if they sue the US in the International Court of Justice. TEHRAN, July 22 (UPI) — A University of Illinois law professor says he has offered to represent Iran if it decides to sue the United States over threatened nuclear program sanctions.Iran’s Press TV reported Tuesday that Francis Boyle, an international law expert, is urging Iranian leaders to sue Israel and the United States through the International Court of Justice in The Hague over their ultimatum that Iran...

Excerpt - Acting on a claim by Mexico’s government that the U.S. government has not done enough to assure the treaty rights of Mexican nationals facing execution for murders in the U.S., the World Court on Wednesday ordered the U.S. — by a 7-5 vote — to stop five imminent executions in Texas. Leaving it up to the U.S. to choose the way to carry out the order, the international tribunal — formally, the International Court of Justice that sits in The Hague, Netherlands — told the U.S. only to “take all measures necessary to ensure” that Texas does not...

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands (AP) -- Mexico appealed to the U.N.'s highest court Thursday to block the executions of Mexicans in the United States, arguing U.S. officials have failed to comply with a judgment ordering a review of their trials. The International Court of Justice said Mexico asked the court for an "interpretation" of an earlier ruling to clarify its meaning when it asked the U.S. to "review and reconsider" the cases of the condemned prisoners. Until that can be done, Mexico said the United States "must take any and all steps necessary" to ensure that none of its citizens is executed,...

THE Rudd Government is preparing a case to take Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to the International Court of Justice for "inciting genocide" and denying the Jewish Holocaust. Australia is the only nation pursuing Iran's despotic leader, who has threatened to "wipe Israel off the map", through international laws. The Australian revealed last October that Kevin Rudd, then the Opposition leader, promised the Jewish community before last year's election he would take legal proceedings in the ICJ against Mr Ahmadinejad. The Labor leader said it was "strongly arguable" that Mr Ahmadinejad's conduct - statements about wiping Israel off the map, questioning...

The Supreme Court Stands Alone by Thomas P. Kilgannon Dulles, Virginia -- The World Court got a whoopin last week when the Supreme Court handed down its decision in the case of Medellin v. Texas, which involves Jose Medellin, a death row inmate convicted of rape and murder of two teenage girls in 1993. Writing the 6-3 majority opinion, Chief Justice John Roberts informed the wig-wearing jurists at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) that Texas courts are under no obligation to obey the ICJ’s ruling to give Medellin a new hearing. Medellin is a gang member and a Mexican...