Originally posted at Breaking Legal News. Please visit http://www.breakinglegalnews.com/.

A Guantanamo Bay prisoner has been transferred to his homeland of Yemen, the U.S. Defense Department announced on Tuesday, after a U.S. district court ordered the longtime detainee's release.

The release of 26-year-old Mohammed Odaini after eight years at Guantanamo Bay was an exception to the Obama administration's freeze on prisoner transfers to the turbulent country after the failed attempt to blow up a Detroit-bound airliner on Christmas Day. Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula has claimed responsibility for the failed attempt.

"The suspension of Yemeni repatriations from Guantanamo remains in effect due to the security situation that exists there. However, the administration respects the decisions of U.S. federal courts," the Pentagon said in a statement.

Yemen, a poor country with a weak central government on the southern tip of the Arabian Peninsula, has struggled to confront a growing al-Qaida presence.

American worries about Yemen's ability to fight al-Qaida heightened last year after several Yemeni detainees who had been released from Guantanamo Bay in Cuba resurfaced as leaders of an al-Qaida offshoot. Those concerns deepened in the wake of the failed Christmas attack.

Originally posted at Breaking Legal News. Please visit http://www.breakinglegalnews.com/.

Germany condemned Wednesday the jailing of a 79-year-old prominent human rights lawyer by a Syrian court and demanded his immediate release.

The German government's human rights commissioner, Markus Loening, said he was "shocked" by the sentencing of Haytham al-Maleh to three years in prison Sunday on charges of "publishing false information".

"Mr Maleh is considered a leader of the Syrian human rights movement who has committed himself for decades at great personal risk for the protection of human rights in his country," Loening said.

"I call on the Syrian government to comply with its international commitments, in particular in implementing the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and, in light of Mr Maleh's advanced age and his precarious health, release him immediately."

Maleh was arrested in Damascus on October 14 last year, and investigated by the military court over articles he had written.

The lawyer had been imprisoned from 1980 to 1986, along with a large number of trade unionists, activists and political opponents, for demanding constitutional reforms.

He has worked with Amnesty International since 1989 and, in 2001, helped to establish the Syrian Human Rights Association, whose activities have been frozen for more than three years.

Originally posted at Breaking Legal News. Please visit http://www.breakinglegalnews.com/.

An American geologist detained and tortured by China's state security agents over an oil industry database was jailed for eight years Monday in a troubling example of China's rough justice system and the way the U.S. government handles cases against its citizens.

Beijing's No. 1 Intermediate People's Court convicted Xue Feng of collecting intelligence and illegally providing state secrets and immediately sentenced him.

Xue's lawyer Tong Wei described the sentence as "very heavy", just short of the maximum 10 years, and said he would confer with Xue over whether to appeal. Xue was also fined 200,000 yuan ($30,000).

The U.S. Ambassador to China, Jon Huntsman, witnessed the sentencing in a show of high-level U.S. government concern about the case. Afterward, the U.S. Embassy released a statement saying it was dismayed and urged China to grant Xue "humanitarian release and immediately deport him."

For Xue, the verdict comes more than six months since the last court hearing and two and a half years after he was detained — a protracted prosecution and pretrial detention that Chinese officials never explained.

Born in China and trained at the University of Chicago, Xue ran afoul of the authorities for arranging the sale of a detailed commercial database on China's oil industry to IHS Energy, the energy consulting firm he worked for that is now known as IHS Inc. and based in Colorado.

Originally posted at Breaking Legal News. Please visit http://www.breakinglegalnews.com/.

The Supreme Court is staying out of a dispute between Nigerian families and Pfizer, Inc., over the drug maker's use of a new antibiotic on children during a deadly outbreak of meningitis in the mid-1990s.

The justices on Tuesday rejected the pharmaceutical giant's appeal of a court ruling that allowed the lawsuits filed by the Nigerians in U.S. courts to go forward. The families allege that Pfizer violated international law against involuntary medical experimentation when it tested the drug, Trovan. The company failed to get the informed consent of the children or their parents, or to tell them that the drug had not been approved for use in children, the lawsuits say.

The lawsuits say the two-week experiment on 200 sick children led to 11 deaths and left many others blind, paralyzed or brain-damaged. Pfizer denies all the allegations and claims the survival rate for children who took Trovan exceeded the survival rate of those who did not take part in the study.

At issue was whether the Nigerians can sue under the Alien Tort Statute, an 18th century law that allows foreigners to sue in U.S. courts over international law violations. The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York said they can.

Originally posted at Breaking Legal News. Please visit http://www.breakinglegalnews.com/.

On Monday, the chief of a U.N. commission responsible for battling corruption and crime in Guatemala resigned and accused Reyes of having a history of ties to organized crime.

Reyes denies the allegations. But he promised Thursday night to comply with the court's ruling and cede office.

A commission will now repeat the process of compiling a list of candidates from which President Alvaro Colom will choose a new attorney general.

Originally posted at Breaking Legal News. Please visit http://www.breakinglegalnews.com/.

The British branches of Vodafone, Telefonica O2, T-Mobile and Orange had argued against the EU's imposing maximum price limits for "roaming" charges or extra fees for making or receiving calls outside the user's home nation.

The European Court of Justice dismissed their arguments, saying the EU's executive commission did not abuse its powers when it fixed limits for roaming fees across the 27-nation bloc in 2009.

Europeans have long complained about high roaming fees they were being charged.

"That high level of retail charges had been regarded as a persistent problem by public authorities and consumer protection associations," the court said in a statement.

It said the average level of roaming charges in the European Union was euro1.15 ($1.37) per minute, more than five times the actual cost that telecommunications companies paid to transfer the calls to each other.

The court also backed the maximum price set by EU regulators, saying they had carefully examined the economic impact.

Originally posted at Breaking Legal News. Please visit http://www.breakinglegalnews.com/.

Britain's regulator lost its first criminal case for insider dealing on Thursday as a jury acquitted a lawyer and a finance director of wrongdoing and a second lawyer had charges against him dropped.

The Financial Services Authority had charged Andrew King, a finance director, and lawyers Michael McFall and Andrew Rimmington with eight counts of insider dealing during the 305 million pound ($450 million) takeover of biotech firm NeuTec Pharma by Swiss drugmaker Novartis.

But in a blow to the regulator, the jury dismissed the charges against McFall -- a former partner at law firm McDermott Will & Emery -- and King, the former finance chief at NeuTec.

Rimmington, a former partner at law firm Dorsey & Whitney, was discharged by the judge half-way through the trial for personal reasons. His brother had been assaulted and killed and the FSA said it was not pursuing him separately.

Originally posted at Breaking Legal News. Please visit http://www.breakinglegalnews.com/.

A taxi driver described as quiet but friendly went on a shooting spree across a picturesque rural area of northwestern England on Wednesday, killing at least five people and wounding 25 before apparently turning the gun on himself.

Officers found a body believed to be that of 52-year-old suspect Derrick Bird in woodland near the Lake District village of Boot, Cumbria police said. A gun was found alongside the body.

"I regret to report that a number of people have been shot and that at least five people have died," Prime Minister David Cameron told lawmakers in the House of Commons. "I can confirm that a body of a gunman has been found by police."

Police said that as well as the deaths, 25 people were wounded in shootings in the small town of Whitehaven and nearby Seascale and Egremont, about 350 miles (560 kilometers) northwest of London.

The BBC reported there had been shootings in 11 locations, not all of them fatal. Witnesses described seeing the gunman driving around shooting out the window of his car.

Barrie Walker, a doctor in Seascale who certified one of the deaths, told the BBC that victims had been shot in the face, apparently with a shotgun.

Witness Alan Hannah told the Whitehaven News that he saw a man with a shotgun in a car near a taxi stand in Whitehaven. Photos showed a body, covered in a sheet, lying in a street in the town.

Originally posted at Breaking Legal News. Please visit http://www.breakinglegalnews.com/.

Japan said Tuesday it would staunchly defend its research hunt that kills hundreds of whales per year, a day after Australia filed an international lawsuit arguing that the cull does not qualify for a scientific exemption to a 1986 ban.

Australia — Japan's major trading partner — filed its lawsuit with the International Court of Justice in The Hague on Monday, officials in both countries confirmed, after Canberra announced its intention last week to file suit following years of fruitless diplomatic efforts to end the hunt.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirofumi Hirano — Japan's top government spokesman — called Australia's action "extremely regrettable." A Japanese Foreign Ministry official in charge of whaling said that Tokyo would defend itself before the international court.

"We cannot accept Australia's argument at all," ministry official Yutaka Aoki said. "We will firmly respond to the lawsuit."

Japan joins Norway and Iceland in hunting whales under exceptions to a 1986 moratorium by the International Whaling Commission. Japan says its hunt falls under an exemption that allows for scientific research, but opponents call Japan's scientific research whaling program a cover for commercial hunts.

Originally posted at Breaking Legal News. Please visit http://www.breakinglegalnews.com/.