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EU Anti-Torture Ruling Shows Need For UK Public Inquiry
In a significant anti-torture ruling, the European Court Of Human Rights has held that Lithuania and Romania violated the rights of Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri by allowing them to be detained at CIA 'black sites' on European soil.
Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri was subjected to "inhuman treatment" at the secret prison in Romania, which operated from 2003-2005. Abu Zubaydah was tortured at a black site in Lithuania that the CIA ran from 2005-6. The new CIA director, Gina Haspel, oversaw the torture of Mr al Nashiri at a CIA black site in Thailand in 2002.
WASHINGTON
In a significant anti-torture ruling, the European Court Of Human Rights has held that Lithuania and Romania violated the rights of Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri by allowing them to be detained at CIA 'black sites' on European soil.
Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri was subjected to "inhuman treatment" at the secret prison in Romania, which operated from 2003-2005. Abu Zubaydah was tortured at a black site in Lithuania that the CIA ran from 2005-6. The new CIA director, Gina Haspel, oversaw the torture of Mr al Nashiri at a CIA black site in Thailand in 2002.
Romania and Lithuania also allowed the CIA to transfer the men to other prisons, the judges found, exposing them to "a foreseeable serious risk of further ill-treatment".
This judgement comes shortly after the UK Government's unreserved apology to Abdul Hakim Belhaj and Fatima Boudchar, who were abducted by the CIA with British help and rendered to Libya, despite the near certainty they would be tortured by Muammar Gaddafi's secret service.
Speaking on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, Tony Blair, who was Prime Minister when Belhaj and Boudchar were abducted, hinted there is more to the story than he can publicly discuss. "There's a lot of things in this case, some of which have been out in the media, some of which have not," he said.
Reprieve is calling for a judge-led public inquiry to establish how Britain let these innocent people down so badly and uncover the extent of UK involvement in rendition and torture.
Commenting, Reprieve's Director Maya Foa said: "This judgement shows how important it is for the courts to hold torturers and their enablers to account. Sadly abuses like these are not just part of history. Donald Trump has just appointed Gina Haspel, who oversaw the US torture and rendition programme, to lead the CIA, so it is all the more important we know the truth about British involvement. The Prime Minister's apology to Mr Belhaj and Ms Boudchar is an important first step, the next must be a full public inquiry."
Reprieve is a UK-based human rights organization that uses the law to enforce the human rights of prisoners, from death row to Guantanamo Bay.
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Woman Files First Climate-Related Wrongful Death Suit Against Fossil Fuel Companies
"These fossil fuel actors should be held accountable to the victims of their lethal conduct, and this wrongful death suit provides a compelling new approach for climate victims moving forward."
May 29, 2025
Two years after legal scholars wrote in the Harvard Environmental Law Review that fossil fuel companies could feasibly be charged with homicide in cases of people who are killed by climate-fueled extreme weather events, one woman is taking a major step toward holding oil and gas giants accountable for a specific death—that of her mother, who died during an extreme heatwave in 2021.
Misti Leon filed a civil lawsuit against Exxon Mobil, Chevron, Shell, BP, ConocoPhillips, Phillips 66, and BP subsidiary Olympic Pipeline Company, arguing that their knowledge going back decades that extracting oil and gas would heat the planet makes them liable for the death of her mother, Juliana.
Juliana Leon, who was 65, was making a 100-mile drive home from a doctor's appointment in Seattle on June 28, 2021 when she pulled over and rolled down her car windows. Emergency workers found her hours later having died of hyperthermia, or overheating, with her body temperature having reached 110°F.
A heat dome had settled over the Pacific Northwest, with high pressure trapping hot air over the region, and the World Weather Attribution later found that the heat dome would have been "virtually impossible" without climate change resulting from fossil fuel emissions.
About 600 more people died in Oregon and Washington in late June 2021 than would have been typical for a one-week period, and Leon is arguing that the death of her mother from hyperthermia, or overheating, was the direct result of fossil fuel companies' actions.
Leon is arguing in the case that, as numerous investigations have found, fossil fuel companies have known for decades that extracting oil and gas would cause planet-heating emissions and could result in extreme, potentially deadly weather events like heatwaves, flooding, and wildfires.
"The purpose of criminal law enforcement is to deter future crimes, promote public safety, punish wrongdoers, and encourage the convicted to pursue less harmful practices. All of these public safety goals apply to Big Oil's continuing contributions to climate change."
"Why shouldn't we hold someone legally accountable for this kind of behavior?" David Arkush, director of Public Citizen's Climate Program and a co-author of the Harvard Environmental Law Review paper, toldThe New York Times. "There would be no question that we would hold them accountable if they caused other types of deaths. This is no different. They foresaw this, they did it anyway, and they hurt people."
Lee Wasserman of the Rockefeller Family Fund called the lawsuit an "important moment for climate accountability."
Although Leon's case is the first, according to legal experts, to attempt to hold fossil fuel giants accountable for a specific death, it is a significant step in a wider effort to bring the industry to justice for its role in causing weather disasters.
Vermont and New York both passed climate superfund laws last year that would allow the states to hold oil companies financially liable for extreme weather events and force them to pay for damages. U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi has announced lawsuits against the two states over the laws.
In the past decade, dozens of localities and states have also filed lawsuits against oil and gas companies for hiding their knowledge of the impact fossil fuel extraction would have on average global temperatures and the climate.
Aaron Regunberg, accountability project director for Public Citizen's Climate Program, said climate disasters like the one that allegedly killed Juliana Leon "are the foreseeable, and foreseen, consequences of specific actions by fossil fuel corporations, CEOs, and boards of directors."
"They caused the climate crisis and deceived the public about the dangerousness of their products in order to block and delay solutions that could prevent heat deaths like Juliana's," said Regunberg. "These fossil fuel actors should be held accountable to the victims of their lethal conduct, and this wrongful death suit provides a compelling new approach for climate victims moving forward."
"The purpose of criminal law enforcement is to deter future crimes, promote public safety, punish wrongdoers, and encourage the convicted to pursue less harmful practices," he added. "All of these public safety goals apply to Big Oil's continuing contributions to climate change, and prosecutors across the country should take note of this new wrongful death suit and carefully consider how the climate effects their constituents are experiencing fit the criminal laws they are charged with enforcing."
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'Devastating Loss for Our Wild Places': Supreme Court Attacks Bedrock Environmental Law
"The Trump administration will treat this decision as an invitation to ignore environmental concerns as it tries to promote fossil fuels, kill off renewable energy, and destroy sensible pollution regulations."
May 29, 2025
In a 8-0 ruling on Thursday, the U.S. Supreme Court not only reversed a block on a proposed oil train in Utah but also narrowed a landmark federal environmental law, sparking intense alarm about what the ruling will mean for communities and all living things across the country.
"Today's decision undermines decades of legal precedent that told federal agencies to look before they leap when approving projects that could harm communities and the environment," said Earthjustice senior vice president of program Sam Sankar in a statement. "The Trump administration will treat this decision as an invitation to ignore environmental concerns as it tries to promote fossil fuels, kill off renewable energy, and destroy sensible pollution regulations."
Since the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) was signed into law in 1970 by Republican then-President Richard Nixon, it has become a key target for GOP policymakers aligned with the planet-wrecking fossil fuel industry, including President Donald Trump, who swiftly took aim at the law after returning to office in January.
"We urgently need to strengthen laws like NEPA, not weaken or narrow them, so that we can prioritize the health of people over polluters and corporate greed."
NEPA requires federal agencies to prepare an environmental impact statement (EIS) for certain infrastructure projects. In 2023, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit tossed both an EIS for the proposed Uinta Basin Railway and the U. S. Surface Transportation Board's approval of the project, which would connect Utah's oil fields to the national rail network.
After hearing arguments for Seven County Infrastructure Coalition v. Eagle County in December, the nation's highest court reversed that decision on Thursday, continuing a trend of rulings slammed by environmentalists as gifts to corporate polluters.
Conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch recused himself without explanation. Politiconoted that "it followed a public pressure campaign from environmental groups and Democrats who argued his close connections to the owner of oil and gas producer Anschutz—which filed a brief in the case saying NEPA's scope was critical to developing oil and gas reserves—disqualified him."
Justice Brett Kavanagh delivered the opinion, joined by the other right-wingers who participated in the case. Justice Sonia Sotomayor filed a concurring opinion, joined by the other two liberals.
Kavanaugh wrote for the majority that "the D. C. Circuit failed to afford the board the substantial judicial deference required in NEPA cases and incorrectly interpreted NEPA to require the board to consider the environmental effects of upstream and downstream projects that are separate in time or place from the Uinta Basin Railway."
Sotomayor, joined by Kagan and Jackson, refuses to join Kavanaugh's majority opinion, saying it "unnecessarily" grounds its analysis "largely in matters of policy." (It's clear that Kavanaugh wants to weaken NEPA's restrictions on energy permitting.) www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24p...
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— Mark Joseph Stern (@mjsdc.bsky.social) May 29, 2025 at 10:09 AM
Environmental and public health advocates were quick to warn of the impacts of not only this 88-mile rail project, if completed, but also the decision more broadly.
"This decision is terrible news for the entire Colorado River Basin," said John Weisheit, conservation director at Living Rivers. "To avoid the pending collapse of the Colorado River, we have to immediately reduce water consumption by 25% and cut carbon emissions by 50% by the end of this decade. Our federal decision-makers must deny any project that counters these objectives. The Uinta Basin Railway unquestionably falls into that category and should never see the light of day."
Critics of the ruling are worried about increased oil extraction in Utah as well as additional refining in Gulf of Mexico communities.
"Regrettably, the Supreme Court has scored one for the oil companies who don't want you to look too closely at the harm their product will do to Black and Brown communities in Cancer Alley," said Sierra Club senior attorney Nathaniel Shoaff. "Our bedrock environmental laws, like NEPA, are meant to ensure people are protected from corporate polluters."
"Fossil fuel infrastructure projects do not exist in a vacuum and have far-reaching impacts on communities, especially those on the frontlines of climate change or those who face serious health harms from increased pollution," Shoaff stressed.
"The last thing we need is another climate bomb on wheels that the communities along its proposed route say they don't want."
Center for Biological Diversity senior attorney Wendy Park declared that "the last thing we need is another climate bomb on wheels that the communities along its proposed route say they don't want," and vowed to "keep fighting to make sure this railway is never built."
Park also looked beyond the train project, warning that "this disastrous decision to undermine our nation's bedrock environmental law means our air and water will be more polluted, the climate and extinction crises will intensify, and people will be less healthy."
WildEarth Guardians staff attorney Katherine Merlin similarly emphasized that "today's decision is a devastating loss for our wild places, our wild rivers, and for all of the human and nonhuman communities that depend on a clean environment and stable climate."
The ruling comes as the Trump administration and congressional Republicans are working to boost planet-heating fossil fuels, ignoring scientists' warnings about the worsening climate emergency.
"After the hottest year on record, when the U.S. should be improving environmental safeguards and empowering frontline communities, this decision is a giant step backwards," said Ashfaq Khalfan, Oxfam America's director of climate justice. "Everyone deserves to live and work in communities with clean air and safe drinking water. We urgently need to strengthen laws like NEPA, not weaken or narrow them, so that we can prioritize the health of people over polluters and corporate greed."
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Judge Extends Block on Trump DHS Effort to Prevent Harvard Enrollment of Foreign Students
"Too many international students to count have inquired about the possibility of transferring to another institution," said the school's director of immigration services in a recent court filing.
May 29, 2025
A federal judge on Thursday extended an order blocking the Trump administration's move to end Harvard University's ability to enroll international students, a small victory for the elite school.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced last week that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem ordered the agency to yank Harvard's Student Exchange and Visitor Program (SEVP) certification. "Harvard can no longer enroll foreign students and existing foreign students must transfer or lose their legal status," said DHS in a statement.
The following day, Harvard sued over the move. That same day, U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs handed down a temporary restraining order freezing the ban while the litigation proceeds. And on Thursday, Burroughs ordered that the temporary restraining order remain in place until a preliminary injunction is issued, according to the court docket.
Earlier Thursday, the Trump administration submitted a letter to the court that it had sent to Harvard the day before, letting the school know that it has 30 days to respond with "any sworn statements, documents, or other evidence on which the school relies to rebut the alleged grounds for withdrawal" of the university's SEVP certification. Failure to respond to the notice within that time period will result in a withdrawal of the certification, according to the letter.
Politico reported that despite this revelation that the Trump administration is no longer immediately imposing the cancellation, Burroughs said during the hearing that an order barring the Trump administration from taking action against Harvard is still needed.
In its lawsuit, Harvard wrote that its more than 7,000 F-1 and J-1 visa holders and their dependents have "become pawns in the government's escalating campaign of retaliation."
During the the 2023-2024 school year, international students accounted for 5.9% of the total U.S. higher education population, or over 1.1 million students.
In a Wednesday court filing, Maureen Martin, director of immigration services at the school, said that because of the Trump administration's revocation notice currently enrolled international students are "reconsidering their futures at Harvard."
"Too many international students to count have inquired about the possibility of transferring to another institution," Martin told the court.
Harvard also held its commencement on Thursday.
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