The ICJ’s Centre for the Independence of Judges and Lawyers urged South African President Thabo Mbeki to fully investigate the arrest and detention of the Chief Magistrate of the Groblersdal Magistrates’ Court.
The ICJ demands the Russian authorities to immediately release a lawyer arrested on 24 October after police planted a firearm in his car.
Mikhail Ivanovich Trepashkin’s arrest and detention prevent him from representing relatives of one of the victims in the 1999 Moscow apartment bombings case.
“Planting evidence and arresting a person on that basis makes a mockery of the rule of law”, said Linda Besharaty-Movaed, ICJ Legal Advisor. “Trepashkin’s unlawful detention demonstrates that Russian lawyers can be arrested for discharging their professional duties”.
Mikhail Ivanovich Trepashkin was arrested on charges of “possession and transportation of an unlicensed firearm” after police officers openly threw a bag that contained a gun into his car.
In 2002, Mikhail Ivanovich Trepashkin worked as a consultant for a commission that investigated the 1999 bombings, which had been exclusively blamed on Chechen insurgents, and found that the Security Service had been complicit in the bombings.
Immediately after he presented his findings, the Military Prosecutor initiated proceedings against Mikhail Ivanovich Trepashkin for “disclosing classified information”. Even though he was indicted, his case laid dormant until September 2003, when a book reproduced some of his findings. Mikhail Ivanovich Trepashkin then won an indefinite postponement of the case from the Supreme Court.
Russia-lawyer arrest-press release-2003 (text, PDF)
The ICJ’s Centre for the Independence of Judges and Lawyers demands the Russian authorities to immediately release a lawyer arrested on 24 October after police planted a firearm in his car.
The ICJ urges the Tunisian Government to stop the persecution of a distinguished Tunisian human rights lawyer who is on a hunger strike to denounce repeated Government attacks.
A group of international Non-Governmental Organizations has launched a Joint Declaration calling on the United Nations to monitor the impact on human rights of the fight against terrorism.
Practices such as torture, detention without judicial review, unfair trial, criminalisation of acts in exercise of fundamental rights, and suppression of the right to association have been sharply on the rise as a result of measures taken in the fight against terrorism.
The Declaration calls on the UN Commission on Human Rights at its 60th session in March/April 2004 to establish as a matter of utmost priority an independent mechanism on the question of human rights and counter-terrorism.
Joint declaration on the need for an international mechanism to monitor human rights and counter-terrorism [full text, PDF]
Tunisia: Quash sham conviction and sentence of judges’ association President, Anas Hmedi
The UN Human Rights Council makes significant but limited progress in addressing human rights around the world, as atrocities multiply in the Middle East and elsewhere
ICJ hosts an African Regional Convening in Kenya on Transformative Equality Jurisprudence
Russian Federation: Arbitrarily detained human rights lawyer Maria Bontsler must be released