Word: courtelis
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...outcome of the French trial comes at a significant moment. On Monday, a U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco will hear a case brought by three plaintiffs charging they were tortured during extraordinary renditions the Bush administration approved as part of the war on terror. Previous legal challenges to such measures were thwarted by government refusal to provide courts with evidence or testimony requested, citing state secrecy. Many observers now hope the Obama administration will release previously withheld information as it deconstructs the extra-legal system for dealing with terror suspects and return them to courts that handled them...
Nearly five years after confessing to his role in the world's biggest nuclear-proliferation scandal, the disgraced nuclear scientist Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan has been set free after securing a surprise court triumph. Bowing to a six-week-old request that he be released from house arrest, the Islamabad High Court on Friday declared Khan "a free citizen," allowing him to walk out of his prolonged sentence. Moments after the decision, the man who in 2004 tumbled from grace after admitting to hawking nuclear secrets to Iran, Libya and North Korea stepped out onto the front porch...
...offered thanks to President Asif Ali Zardari for lifting the restrictions imposed on him by his predecessor, Pervez Musharraf. Zardari may have been averse to the international criticism likely to come from restoring Khan's freedom of movement, but it was a government clarification that was key to the court's decision. A government lawyer told the court some weeks ago that Khan was not under formal house arrest but merely kept under tight security for his own protection. Seizing on that admission, the court said that since there are no charges - and since Khan was pardoned by Musharraf soon...
...controversy after giving a slew of interviews in which he retracted his confession and claimed that he had been forced to read a statement handed to him. Khan also claimed that the army had colluded in at least one nuclear transaction - a charge Musharraf angrily denied. The Islamabad High Court swiftly muzzled him in July 2008, denying any future access to the media. But over recent months, he began writing a regular newspaper column, "Random Thoughts," a platform he has used to rail against Musharraf's campaign against militancy and to fondly recall decades past, when...
While many Pakistanis will cheer the court's decision, it has caused dismay in Washington. A U.S. State Department spokesman said the move was "extremely regrettable" and "unfortunate," adding that Washington believed Khan remains a "serious proliferation risk." Analysts believe that the court's decision could prove a source of embarrassment for the Pakistani government just days before Richard Holbrooke arrives in the region for his first visit as the Obama Administration's special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan. Last month, the U.S. State Department slapped sanctions on 13 individuals and three companies for their involvement with Khan's proliferation...