A group called the Mothers of Srebrenica was seeking compensation for the failure of Dutch United Nations troops to prevent the slaughter by Serb forces of more than 8,000 Bosnian Muslim males in the U.N.-declared safe zone.

The Hague District Court said the U.N.'s immunity — which is written into its founding charter — means it cannot be held liable in any country's national court.

"The court's inquiry into a possible conflict between the absolute immunity valid in international law of the U.N. and other standards of international law does not lead to an exception to this immunity," the judges wrote in their ruling.

A ruling lifting the U.N.'s immunity could have had far-reaching implications for the way the world body carries out its peacekeeping operations around the world.

At a hearing last month, Dutch government lawyer Bert Jan Houtzagers said that if a Dutch court decided it had jurisdiction in the case, "any court in any country could do so and that would thwart the viability of the United Nations."

Axel Hagedorn, a lawyer for the victims, said he would appeal Thursday's decision. The case could go to the European Court of Human Rights.

Tuesday's hearing is the first hearing since the Supreme Court ruled last month that detainees can challenge their imprisonment in civilian courts. Officials are expecting hundreds of lawyers and spectators to attend.

Judges will eventually review the government's evidence and decide whether detainees are being lawfully imprisoned. The key issue Tuesday is when that review will begin.

The Justice Department proposes eight weeks to begin filing the evidence. Lawyers for the detainees say it should be faster.

The demonstrators, led by the People's Alliance for Democracy, accused police of protecting Thaksin and his loyalists against prosecution by stalling their investigations.

Thaksin was toppled in a bloodless military coup in 2006 following months of street protests led by the alliance. Critics accused the former leader of corruption and abuse of power.

Thaksin returned from exile earlier this year, vowing to clear his name in court.

More than 3,000 protesters gathered in front of the police headquarters in downtown Bangkok, near three of the country's most expensive shopping malls.

"I come to police headquarters to ask you why you have been sitting on the cases against Thaksin and his followers. These cases are moving nowhere," Sondhi Limthongkul, an alliance leader, shouted through a loudspeaker. "We are here to ask you to do your duty."

The Jewish human rights organization on Friday said the Baden-Baden state court judge in charge of the case had disallowed German police requests on several occasions for telephone taps of Heim's relatives and an old friend who had been in contact with the fugitive.

But Heinz Heister, presiding judge and spokesman for the court, said that in the case of the friend, there had been no appeal of the court's decision, and that the only time a decision disallowing "investigative measures" was challenged, the Baden-Baden court's ruling was upheld.

"Investigative measures — even in the case of a person urgently suspected of many counts of murder — are held to certain boundaries by the constitution and the laws," Heister said in a statement.

Heim, 94, was known for his sadism as a doctor at the Nazi's Mauthausen concentration camp. He was able to flee before authorities came to arrest him in the southern town of Baden-Baden in 1962, however, and his whereabouts today remain unknown.

A Tel Aviv-based banker with United Mizrahi Bank pleaded guilty to setting up secret bank accounts in Israel that, prosecutors say, helped charitable contributors to an orthodox Jewish group evade US taxes.

Joseph Roth, 66, pleaded guilty over the weekend to one count of conspiracy, US Attorney Thomas O'Brien in Los Angeles said in an official statement. A second defendant, Rabbi Moshe E. Zigelman, 60, of Brooklyn, New York, has agreed to plead guilty to his part in the scheme that defrauded the US out of millions of dollars in tax revenue, according to the statement.

Ross and Zigelman were among eight people indicted in December for tax fraud and money laundering. The group was accused of soliciting millions of dollars for the "Spinka'' charities and secretly refunding 95 percent of the donations.

The money was funneled back to the contributors through a network of businesses in the Los Angeles jewelry district and through Israeli bank accounts, prosecutors said. Eric Dobberteen, a lawyer representing Roth, and David Willingham, a lawyer for Zigelman, didn't immediately return calls to their office. The case is US v. Naftali Tzi Weisz et al, 06-775, US District Court, Central District of California

The Brussels-based rights organization, Equipo Nizkor, names the suspects as John Demjanjuk, a retired, 88-year-old auto worker in Ohio who is also being sought by Germany; Anton Tittjung; Josias Kumpf; and Johann Leprich.

All four face deportation from the United States but no country is willing to take them in, the group said.

The group said it is acting under Spain's principle of universal jurisdiction. This states that war crimes, crimes against humanity, terrorism, torture and other heinous offenses can be prosecuted in Spain even if they are alleged to have been committed abroad.

Spanish judges have used the principle to go after the late Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden and figures from Argentina's so-called "dirty war" of the 1970s and 80s, among other people.

Spc. Mario Lozano was accused in connection with the fatal shooting of Italian military intelligence agent Nicola Calipari, who had been driving to Baghdad airport after securing the release of kidnapped Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena. The journalist was wounded in the shooting at a checkpoint near Baghdad.

Lozano was being tried in absentia on charges of murder and attempted murder.

But the Court of Cassation in Rome on Thursday confirmed a lower court ruling last year that said Italy has no jurisdiction in the case, according to lawyers for the victim and for an Italian who was wounded in the shooting.

Sgrena lawyer Alessandro Gamberini did not rule out the possibility of taking the case to an international body, such as the International Court of Justice. But he said there probably "isn't much that can be done."

Calipari family lawyer Franco Coppi said the latest court ruling "leaves a bitter taste in the mouth" as it denied "the possibility of better understanding the dynamics of what happened, the how and the why of this death," according to the Italian news agency ANSA.