The IAPL Monitoring Committee on Attacks on Lawyers reported on July 10 on the continued detention of Erias Lukwago, a prominent lawyer, human rights defender, and opposition figure arrested on June 15 by armed security operatives while acting as legal counsel for opposition leader Kizza Besigye. Lukwago was charged with “misprision of treason,” an offense …
Marking the eleventh anniversary of the July 2015 “709 Crackdown” on rights lawyers, Chinese Human Rights Defenders reported this week on a draft amendment to China’s Lawyers Law, published by the National People’s Congress on June 26, that would require lawyers to “uphold the leadership of the Communist Party of China” and its “socialist rule …
The IAPL Monitoring Committee reported on July 10 that human rights defenders and lawyers Nazanin Salari, Mahmoud Taravat-Roy, and Massoud Ahmadian face imminent arrest and detention in Iran. On June 8, Branch 1 of the Revolutionary Court in Shiraz had sentenced the three to a combined three years’ imprisonment on charges of “assembly and collusion …
The Commonwealth Lawyers Association (CLA) has condemned the detention of Ugandan lawyer Erias Lukwago by the Uganda People’s Defence Forces (UPDF) on June 15, 2026. Lukwago is a lead defence counsel in the ongoing treason trial of Dr. Kizza Besigye and Hajji Obeid Lutale before Uganda’s High Court. The CLA also raised alarm that his …
A prominent Ugandan lawyer, Erias Lukwago, was charged on June 17, 2026 with “misprision of treason”—failing to report treason to authorities—days after security forces arrested him. Lukwago, a senior opposition figure and former mayor of Kampala, denied the charge in court and was remanded in custody. He represents detained opposition leader Kizza Besigye in a …
In Ecuador, prosecutor Gloria Alexandra Bravo Cedeño was shot and killed in the coastal city of Manta on June 14, 2026, in an attack that also killed her sister, Human Rights Watch reported on June 16. Bravo handled homicide, kidnapping, and organized-crime cases and had investigated recent drone strikes on fishing vessels; the Attorney General’s …
On May 14, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit heard oral arguments in the consolidated challenges brought by Perkins Coie, Jenner & Block, WilmerHale, and Susman Godfrey against executive orders that stripped their attorneys of security clearances, barred them from federal buildings, and directed reviews of their clients’ …
The Justice Department has filed a lawsuit against Washington, DC’s attorney disciplinary authorities over their recommendation to disbar Jeffrey Clark, a Trump ally and former assistant attorney general, for his efforts to challenge the 2020 election results. Clark had drafted a letter urging Georgia’s state legislature to investigate alleged election irregularities and potentially appoint electors …
Published May 8 in TIME, this essay surveys a global wave of state-sponsored attacks on lawyers, framing them as a deliberate authoritarian tactic to disable democratic checks. It highlights the April 2026 re-arrest of Iranian human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh — a Sakharov Prize laureate previously sentenced to 33 years and 148 lashes — and …
On April 30, 2026, an Istanbul court granted conditional release to 15 of the more than 400 defendants prosecuted alongside jailed Istanbul mayor and CHP opposition figure Ekrem İmamoğlu, who has now been detained for over a year and faces 142 charges with a potential cumulative sentence of up to 2,430 years. Several of the …