NEWSINTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL JUSTICE

The image of Iraq Veteran Scott Olsen being carried by protestors during the Occupy Oakland protests after he was critically injured by Oakland Police Department is one that people all over the world have seen. For many, Scott became the face of the 99% and his injury an example of police brutality.

Now, Scott is asking the Department of Defense to allow UN Special Rapporteur on Torture Juan Mendez to have a private interview with Bradley Manning to discuss the conditions of his detainment.

Bradley Manning, is accused of stealing and leaking over a quarter million classified documents that were published online by Wikileaks while he was serving as an intelligence analyst in Iraq in 2009 and 2010.

Politicians, especially those with an “R” after their name, love to talk about their fidelity to the Constitution. Actually abiding by that ancient document, though? Nah, they're not so keen on that; just try finding “indefinite detention” in the Bill of Rights or permission for carrying out preemptive attacks on sovereign nations without so much as a declaration of war.

So while GOP congressmen and the likes of Glenn Beck might feverishly warn about impending Obama-fascism – the latter mere months after musing about declaring supporters of Texas Congressman Ron Paul enemies of the state – you won't find them raising much hell about the case of Gulet Mohamad, a 19-year-old American citizen who has been detained and tortured in Kuwait and placed by the Obama administration on the U.S. “no-fly” list, denying him his right to return home.

I'm sure it has nothing to do with his name.

Like the United States, Yemen has treaty obligations to follow when it comes to children and the criminal justice system. And like the U.S. -- and, to be fair, a whole lot of other countries -- it doesn't much seem to care.

Signatories to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights – like the U.S. and Yemen – are not supposed to (emphasis on supposed) to execute people who committed crimes as juveniles. Indeed, Article 6 of the treaty states as clear as day that the death penalty “shall not be imposed for crimes committed by persons below eighteen years of age.”

But as Amnesty International reports, the Yemeni government is poised to execute Muhammed Taher Thabet Samoum, using a firing squad, for a murder he allegedly committed as a minor in 1999. Amnesty says the government recently barred Samoum from receiving visitors, which is generally a sign a prisoner is about to be put to death.

"We urge President Ali Abdullah Saleh to show clemency in this case and prevent the state killing of Muhammed Taher Thabet Samoum," says Malcolm Smart, Amnesty's director for the Middle East and North Africa. "The death penalty is the ultimate cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment, and it must never be applied to juvenile offenders."

The Alternatives to Violence Project (AVP) was born in 1975 at Green Haven Prison in upstate New York. A group of prisoners concerned about increasing numbers of young offenders in the criminal justice system sought the support of local Quakers and began developing a program to teach youth about nonviolent conflict resolution. Together the volunteers and the prisoners created the first AVP workshop.

Since then, AVP has grown exponentially. Today, AVP workshops are held in prisons in 41 states, the District of Columbia and the U.S. Virgin Islands, as well as in more than 50 other nations around the world. Last year some 14,400 people participated in AVP workshops in correctional facilities, communities, and schools.

According to the AVP manual, AVP is a voluntary process of “seeking and sharing, and not of teaching.” Working to empower people to lead nonviolent lives through affirmation, respect, community building, cooperation and trust, AVP encourages every person's innate power to positively transform themselves and the world. This belief, termed “transforming power,” affirms that each of us can choose to respond to conflict in a positive, nonviolent way. This notion can be empowering to incarcerated people because it reminds them that they have the power to break the cycle of violence that landed them behind bars -- and reminds them that they deserve a life free from the pain of violence.

Yeah, sure, coal-fired power might be one of the leading contributors to climate change, but don't expect politicians to do anything about it. Even in Europe, where efforts to combat global warming are further along than in the U.S., rather than phase out carbon-intensive coal, lawmakers have chosen to continue subsidizing it with billions of dollars of their constituents' money.

Concerned inaction could ultimately destroy the planet, and with a load of scientific data to back them up, a group of British activists decided to do something about it. And no, I don't mean politely asking their elected officials to stop spending taxpayer dollars helping multinational corporations mine and burn evermore coal – they already tried that. I mean direct action: taking power into their own hands.

As Zachary Shahan reports on the Environment blog, climate activists in the U.K. decided to try to shut down the country's third largest coal plant, owned by German firm E.ON. But in Minority Report-esque move, British police in April 2009 pre-emptively arrested 114 activists on suspicion that they were planning to trespass on private property – property that, again, E.ON was able to secure with the help of lucrative state subsidies, to go along with its immunity from financial responsibility for the environmental cost of its product.

At trial, 20 of the activists were convicted of “conspiracy to commit aggravated trespass,” a charge that could have seen them subjected to significant prison time. But in a Wednesday ruling, Judge Jonathan Teare – describing the activists as “honest” and “conscientious” – spared them, instead sentencing the climate campaigners to probation and community service.

Jody McIntyre isn’t your typical activist -- and no, I’m not referring to the fact that he’s in a wheelchair, though that does make him different from some of the other activists with whom he has protested. I’m talking about his resolve, his unwavering dedication to what he feels is right, and his eloquence. All of these things have come into the international spotlight over the past few weeks as Jody has told and retold the story of how he was yanked from his wheelchair and literally drug across the street by one of London’s Metropolitan Police officers.

McIntyre was involved in the British student protests that we’ve all heard about by now, standing side by side with others who believe a college education should be affordable to all. While some of those protests turned a little raucous and even violent, much of the London activist community is crying foul on media coverage, maintaining the public is only seeing one side of the story and missing the accounts of police brutality. But one video from the activist side has gone viral, leading to coverage on the BBC and other major media sources -- the video of Jody being handled like a rag doll by police.

In the video you can see Jody in the street get approached by an officer. He is knocked to the ground and drug from his wheelchair, all while shocked bystanders shout in outrage at what they are witnessing. Though this was the second time Jody was pulled from his chair by police that day, even he states the first time was for his own safety. It’s not clear how the officer justified this seemingly unnecessary act, however. Towards the end of the video, you see the cop being pulled away from the scene by his colleagues, likely a smart move on their part.

Jonathan Pollak brazenly carried out his dastardly deed in broad daylight, right in the middle of the streets of Tel Aviv. And even after receiving a three month prison sentence, the radical Israeli activist shows no signs of remorse; he even told the judge in his case that he saw nothing wrong with his actions – and that his only regret was that he did not carry out all the offenses he stood accused of committing.

Pollak's crime, which justifies the Israeli state taking away his liberty and confining him to a prison cell? Riding a bike, along with about 30 others, to protest “Operation Cast Lead,” the Israeli government's macho name for its 2008-2009 assault on the Gaza Strip that killed more than 1,100 innocent men, women and children, an operation Amnesty International refers to as "22 days of death and destruction."

The politicians responsible for that war crime have yet to face any legal consequences. Instead, consequences are reserved for the powerless -- those who dared speak out against injustice being carried out in their name – with Pollak charged with the awful-strange-for-a-democracy "crime” of organizing and participating in an “illegal assembly” (that is, exercising his right to free speech).

Today is International Human Rights Day, and an empty chair on an Oslo stage served as a stark reminder of this day's importance.

The Nobel Peace Prize, awarded this year to Chinese human rights activist Liu Xiaobo, was laid on an empty chair at the ceremony this morning because Xiaobo couldn't attend, as he's being held in isolation in a Chinese prison. (Watch a video of the stark and moving ceremony after the jump.)

Liu has been a prominent voice for individual rights in China since his role in the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, and has been jailed several times in the two decades since for his outspoken advocacy. He was arrested most recently in apparent connection with a major reformist petition he helped to draft, and was sentenced to 11 years in prison for "inciting subversion of state power."

Chinese officials have responded angrily to the Peace Prize and today cut off foreign media before the ceremony began. Amnesty International has given Chinese Twitter users a voice to speak out in support of Liu through the twitter account @NobelPeace2010 and has a petition urging China to end the "repression of expression." Join more than 100,000 people around the world and sign here. See John Kennedy's post on Global Voices for more on the Twitter messages from inside and outside of China.

WikiLeaks founder and chief spokesman Julian Assange turned himself in to British authorities today on a warrant connected to an ongoing sex crimes investigation in Sweden.

While the mainstream media deemed his arrest as some sort of an end to an "international manhunt," the development has nothing to do with WikliLeaks' release of tens of thousands of classified military and U.S. State Department documents, nor was Assange "apprehended." His lawyers reportedly negotiated the terms under which the Australian-born Assange would turn himself in, and is likely to be released on bail after he appears before the City of Westminster magistrates court midday, London time.

Assange faces charges of rape, sexual coercion and molestation, though he has not been charged yet and the rape charge had been initially dropped after an earlier investigation back in August. The case stems from two reportedly consensual encounters he had with two different women in Sweden. (One of Assange's lawyers recently argued the case would make "make Sweden and its justice system the laughing stock of the world.")