It is expert testimony for the prosecution, in the case of Earth v. Man.
This was an industry-agreed policy, created to improve the reporting process and enhance the chances of successful prosecution in the case of criminal damage".
But the prosecution in the case of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi and Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah, the two former Libyan airline officials who are accused of being intelligence agents and of blowing up the plane in an act of terrorism, did not start so intimately.
A court has ruled that it has no authority to pursue a murder prosecution in the case of a man who was killed two years ago in a clash between pro-reform students and hard-line vigilantes.
The Pakistani officials who discussed the general's meeting today with Ms. Chamberlin said they had little doubt that Mr. Sheikh would eventually be turned over to the American authorities for prosecution in the case of Mr. Pearl and in the kidnapping of four Westerners, including one American, in India in 1994.
It is compulsory to declare occupational accidents and disease cases, and inspection agents examine all accidents in order to establish the causes and consequences, and to initiate prosecution in the case of criminal negligence.
However, airline personnel are immune from prosecution (even in the case of fatality) as long as they are deemed to have used reasonable force in the situation.
(For instance, the Crown Prosecution Service's official guidelines counsel against prosecuting drug abusers found near needle-exchange services because "the need to prevent the spread of serious infections outweighs the normal requirement for prosecution").But in the case of assisted suicide, prosecutorial discretion will now be accepted as the norm rather than the exception.
In a note sent to the CIA workforce today ahead of the report's release, Panetta echoed another argument from the Bush administration officials, that the justice department had looked at Helgerson's report in 2004 and decided against prosecution, except in the case of one contractor.
"Despite positive case law, the government continues with its failed policies of restricting the right to peaceful protest, of arbitrary arrests, the unnecessary use of excessive police force and unfair prosecutions, such as in the case of the [Taksim Solidarity] trial," he said.
