Another civilian subjected to military trial in Egypt

Daily News Egypt reports the case of another civilian being tried by a military court:

A civilian was transferred to military prosecution on Sunday morning after skirmishes with workers at a military-run gas station on the Suez road the night before.

Tamer Allam was travelling back to Cairo with his family on the Suez road on Saturday night when they had to stop at the military-run National Petroleum Company (NPCO) gas station to fill up gas, said his sister Perihane Allam.

Allam said her brother entered into a skirmish with the workers at the gas stations, military employees, who summoned the military police. She claimed that the military police physically attacked her brother before he exchanged curse words with one of them. The military police then allegedly arrested Tamer Allam from his car while breaking its windows.

Allam claimed they summoned the police to inspect the car yet the military personnel would not let them inside the gas station under the pretext that it is a military zone.

Lively debate in Brazil over civilians and military jurisdiction

Diario de Pernambuco has this useful summary of the complicated state of play on the contentious question of military court jurisdiction over civilians in peacetime. The matter is one of the issues being addressed by the Transitional Justice Working Group. One interesting statistic: civilians constitute 13.5% of defendants in military court cases in the period 2002-12. At present, the Supreme Military Tribunal consists of 10 military judges and five civilian judges. Would the concerns raised by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights be allayed if only civilian judges were permitted to act in cases where the accused is a civilian?

Dean of the Guantanamo press corps speaks at Columbia Journalism School

Carol Rosenberg

Carol Rosenberg, the distinguished Miami Herald reporter who has covered the Guantanamo military commissions from the beginning, spoke on May 20, 2014 at the Columbia Journalism School in New York City concerning that experience. You can read her Pringle Lecture here.

Remember that case from New Zealand?

The one where an officer assigned to the Malaysian high commission who was under New Zealand criminal charges was permitted to leave the country under diplomatic immunity, and was later said to be on his way back? Well, he's not back yet, and people in New Zealand are beginning to wonder what gives. Here's an editorial from The Herald on Sunday.

Lincoln assassins military commission site open house

With appreciation to military justice maven Dwight H. Sullivan, here are more photos of the building (Grant Hall) and room where the Lincoln assassins military commission case was tried in Washington, DC in 1865. The fifth photo depicts the erstwhile site of the gallows, while the sixth (from the web) shows the execution. For an earlier post on the subject courtesy of Global Military Justice Reform contributor Christina Cerna, click here.