Free Republic

February 27, 2006: Former Taliban Foreign Envoy now a member of Yale freshman class The Yale Bulletin and Calendar for March 23, 2001, announced a debate between a young Afghan man, Sayed Rahmatullah Hashemi and Yale law professor Harold Hongju Koh. According to the Bulletin: Hashemi has represented Afghanistan in several European conferences and countries over the last two years. He has spoken on such topics as his country's three-year drought, the continuing 22-year civil war in Afghanistan and U.N. sanctions against the region, emanating from human rights grievances, drug trafficking and the decision of the Taliban government to offer...

Prompted by an international tribunal's decision last year ordering new hearings for 51 Mexicans on death rows in the United States, the State Department said yesterday that the United States had withdrawn from the protocol that gave the tribunal jurisdiction to hear such disputes. The withdrawal followed a Feb. 28 memorandum from President Bush to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales directing state courts to abide by the decision of the tribunal, the International Court of Justice in The Hague. The decision required American courts to grant "review and reconsideration" to claims that the inmates' cases had been hurt by the...