War Crimes Prosecution Watch

Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia for the Prosecution of Crimes Committed during the Period of Democratic Kampuchea

The Official Website of the Khmer Rouge Trial Task Force

Can Cambodia Get Justice
Bangkok Post
by Bronwyn Sloan
April 12, 2006

Former Khmer Rouge officer Him Huy says he has never heard of Serbia or Bosnia, much less Slobodan Milosevic. The 50-year-old Cambodian has no idea of the international consternation the death of Milosevic caused last month.

Former Serbian nationalist Milosevic, the first head of state to be tried as a war criminal, was just 64 when he died in prison in March - much younger than those blamed for the Khmer Rouge's deadly regime. Its infamous leader, Pol Pot, died in 1998.

After four years of legal wrangling in Milosevic's expensive war-crimes trial at The Hague, also delayed by his ill health, some claimed his death proved it had all been for nothing. Some even said Cambodia should see it as an omen for any trial of the mostly older and frailer former Khmer Rouge leaders.

But Cambodians such as Huy would disagree, even as the nation prepares to mourn the 31st anniversary of the ultra-Maoist regime's April 17, 1975 victory. By the time it was overthrown in 1979, as many as two million Cambodians were dead from starvation, disease, torture, executions and overwork.

Huy says he dreams of a trial of surviving former leaders.

He regularly makes the 70-kilometre journey from his small farm in Koh Thom district to Toul Sleng and the killing fields. He says they haunt him still, mainly because he has no answers for them yet.

"The smell of the blood and the death come back to me as strong as if it was yesterday," he says in an interview in his wooden house.

To dream of a trial may seem a strange dream for a man who once commanded 100 guards at the Toul Sleng torture centre and personally ferried prisoners between there and the Choeung Ek killing fields.

But Huy says that is precisely why a trial is vital: for people like himself to face former masters and let other victims hear the truth.

"I want people to understand why I had no choice. I myself want to understand better why I had no choice. I want justice," Huy says.

Huy says he was forcibly recruited by the Khmer Rouge as a 17-year-old boy in 1972. By 21, he was a guard at Toul Sleng, where thousands were tortured or starved to death. He says he begged the regime's leaders to let him leave S-21, but once inside Pol Pot's secret prison, the only way out was death.

"I asked to be transferred to the front. If I was going to die, I wanted to die for fighting, not just killing. They said I knew too much. In Toul Sleng, no one could help," he says. "The guards and the prisoners both lived in fear each day would be their last."

Both his and his wife's relatives were murdered by the regime, and Huy suffers health problems he blames on what he saw and says he was forced to do in those years.

"My head is broken," he says.

For men like Huy, as well as those who suffered at the hands of men like him, a verdict in a Khmer Rouge tribunal is not the issue. They say all they want from the proposed 56-million-dollar, joint U.N.-Cambodian government "Extraordinary Chambers" is the chance to tell their stories. They want to do so before it is too late.

Helen Jarvis, an advisor to the government ministry preparing the trials, says the process will go forward, and soon. She said that although there are concerns the accused may use the kind of legal delaying tactics employed by Milosevic, the pursuit of justice is paramount.

"The money is one thing. Putting the cases of the people is more important," she says.

There are doubters. Former Khmer Rouge intellectual Suong Sikoeun, once a senior policy maker at the regime's Foreign Affairs Ministry but who is not expected to stand trial, said in his last public interview in September that he doubted a trial would solve anything. He said the same factors which had once convinced people such as himself to support the Khmer Rouge still existed in Cambodia today.

"I support a trial," Sikoeun said at his home in Malai, a remote former Khmer Rouge stronghold on the Thai border.

"However, for myself, I think the trial should not be the first priority for Cambodia now. The first priority should be to solve the problems of the people not having enough food to eat, of droughts and floods, of land-grabbing, etcetera."

But many others support the dreams of people such as Huy.

"(A trial) is what most Cambodians would like to see happen. Bearing witness, and having the leaders in custody for the duration of the trial, is more important than actually putting the last few leaders in jail any longer," said David Chandler, an Australian history professor emeritus and author of the harrowing book "Voices from S-21."

Youk Chhang, director of the Documentation Center of Cambodia - which has collected thousands of testimonies and documents relating to the Khmer Rouge - is also adamant about the need for a trial of the former regime's leaders.

"Whether justice is achieved is difficult to predict," he said in an April 7 address in Canada. "But even the act of holding the trials will help Cambodians put what happened into perspective and let the world know of their suffering.

"We need to make sense of our history before we can move heal and on, and documenting and understanding our shared experiences is a small step in that direction," he said.

Recently, Huy visited the courtrooms at a military headquarters just outside Phnom Penh, along with hundreds of other potential witnesses. He asked authorities one question.

"I asked them if I could also see Duch," he said, referring to the former head of S-21, also known as Kang Khek leu. Duch was arrested in May 1999 and is one of the few former leaders in jail.

"I just wanted to ask him why he gave me the orders that made me do what I did," Huy said. "But they said I'd have to wait until the trial. I hope a trial comes soon. Do you think it will be soon? All I want is to see his face one more time and ask him why."

Last Chance to Try the Khmer Rouge
International Herald Tribune
by Floyd Abrams and Diane Orentlicher
April 13, 2006

Cambodia's killing fields

Thirty-one years ago next week, a peasant army clad in the black of the Khmer Rouge marched into Phnom Penh and quickly emptied Cambodia's capital of human life. "This is Year Zero," Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot declared as Cambodia began one of the darkest chapters in world history.

For most Cambodians, time did not so much begin as end in April 1975. Over the next three and a half years, as many as two million people - nearly a third of Cambodia's population - were either executed or died from starvation or disease resulting from Khmer Rouge policies.

In 1984, we visited the Khmer Rouge, by then a guerrilla force opposing the government installed by Vietnam in 1979 and operating from a base near the Thai border. Our main minder, who identified herself as the head of the Khmer Red Cross, giggled when she reminded us that when the last Westerners visited the Khmer Rouge (during its final weeks in power), one of them was murdered.

As night fell on the first day of our visit, a group of Khmer Rouge leaders suddenly materialized out of the jungle. They included Pol Pot's brother-in-law, Ieng Sary, and his wife, Ieng Thirith. Pol Pot did not come - he was busy, Sary explained, leading his forces in battle.

Thus began the most surreal evening of our lives. Our hosts served up imported shrimp, champagne and other delicacies under a bright lightbulb (the only sign of electricity we could see). Insects crowded into the glasses of champagne.

How do you broach the subject of mass murder when your hosts, responsible for crimes of mind- numbing magnitude, offer a sumptuous feast at the outer edges of the earth?

In response to our questions, Ieng Sary acknowledged that the Khmer Rouge "owe the world an accounting" for what he termed "the unfortunate events of the 1970s." "But as you know," he continued, "Pol Pot is very busy right now fighting a war." The accounting would have to wait.

More than three decades after the fall of Phnom Penh, Cambodians are still waiting. Pol Pot's death in April 1998 forever deprived Cambodians of the justice of seeing him tried, but it created new impetus to seek some measure of accountability for surviving leaders of the Khmer Rouge.

Negotiations between the Cambodian government and the United Nations to establish a special tribunal to prosecute Khmer Rouge atrocities, triggered by a Cambodian request in 1997, have been agonizingly slow. At last, however, the court is becoming a reality.

In February, the deputy director of the court's administrative office, a UN appointee, arrived in Phnom Penh. Later that month, hundreds of Cambodian witnesses visited the courtroom in which surviving leaders of Khmer Rouge atrocities will be tried. Confronted with the material reality of the Khmer Rouge tribunal, many visitors wept.

Last month, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan submitted a list of international judges to serve on the court - formally the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia for the Prosecution of Crimes Committed During the Period of Democratic Kampuchea.

Every Nuremberg-type tribunal is fraught with challenges and risks, and significant perils are woven into the very fabric of this one. Unlike international courts operating in The Hague, Arusha and Freetown, local judges will constitute a majority in the Cambodian court, which is established within Cambodia's national court system.

Given well-founded concerns about the susceptibility of Cambodian judges to political interference by Cambodia's longtime leader, Prime Minister Hun Sen, this has led some international organizations to condemn the Extraordinary Chambers before its work has begun.

While aware of the perils, supporters of the process, including the United Nations, argue that it is the last chance to deliver some measure of justice to survivors of Cambodia's killing fields. They say safeguards against abuse have been built into the tribunal's structure. For example, at least one foreign judge must agree with the Cambodian judges to reach a verdict.

The fact is that Khmer Rouge leaders are aging and dying. Pol Pot and another prime suspect, Kae Pok, are dead, while our dinner host, Ieng Sary, is said to suffer from a serious heart condition. For Cambodian victims, the principal lesson of the protracted trial of Slobodan Milosevic, which was terminated last month by his death, is clear: Justice further delayed may be justice forever denied.

The experiences of other recent war crimes courts offer other lessons as well.

They have shown that the way survivors perceive the proceedings is powerfully affected by their treatment as witnesses. Donors should ensure that adequate funds are devoted to supporting and protecting witnesses.

The judges, prosecutors and defense counsel should receive intensive training in both international and Cambodian law and procedure to ensure effective trial proceedings.

The Extraordinary Chambers should also ensure that the public is informed about their work, and should be aware of how Cambodians perceive the tribunal.

A significant failure of the Yugoslavia tribunal was its belated engagement with citizens in the Balkans. The void was readily filled by hostile nationalist propaganda.

While these concerns are common to all such tribunals, the Cambodia court presents especial risks of political interference. Hun Sen has repeatedly delayed the creation of the tribunal and tightly controls all political life in the country.

Foreign donors who support the tribunal must carefully monitor the proceedings and should establish an institutionalized process for doing so.

The donors should also provide significant support for empowering Cambodian civic organizations to monitor and engage with the Extraordinary Chambers.

Even if the process is flawed - unfortunately a virtual certainty - it can serve as a vehicle for further enhancing the skills and influence of Cambodia's vibrant and sophisticated civil society, which has faced particularly severe repression this past year.

This itself would be an invaluable legacy of trials that are long past due the aging survivors of Cambodia's killing fields.

(Floyd Abrams, author of "Speaking Freely: Trials of the First Amendment," and Diane Orentlicher, a director of the Open Society Justice Initiative, visited Cambodia on behalf of the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights (now Human Rights First) in 1984.)

Phnom Penh Stalls Nominations of the Judges
International Justice Tribune
by Anne-Laure Porée
April 10, 2006
Note: In order to view article, must purchase via website. Also available on LexisNexis.

The outcome of Slobodan Milosevic trial may recur in Cambodia, where the government is delaying setting up the extraordinary chambers to try ex-Khmer Rouge leaders, adopting a strategy that increases the likelihood of these leaders dying before they ever come to trial. The latest holdup - the nomination of judges. On March 7, the UN Secretary-General gave Phnom Penh a list of international judges. Since then, the Supreme Council of Magistracy, presided by King Norodom Sihanouk, has been putting off announcing their nomination and the nomination of the Cambodian judges. Helen Jarvis, head of public affairs at the special court for Cambodia, is invariably insisting that these announcements, which have been promised since the beginning of 2006, will be made "soon." According to her, "It's a matter of weeks."

"The nomination [of the judges] is a sign of political will," insists Kek Galabru, president of the Cambodian League for the Promotion and Defense of Human Rights. "But there is no political will in this case. Perhaps the government prefers to wait until the Khmer Rouge leaders all die off, since th...

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Darfur (ICC)

Official Website of the International Criminal Court

Security Council calls for smooth transition to UN operation in Darfur
UN News Centre
April 11, 2006

The Security Council today called on “all parties” to ensure a smooth and successful transfer to a United Nations operation in the violence-wracked Darfur region of Sudan, while also commending the African Union’s (AU) mission in the region and endorsing the group’s 30 April deadline for achieving peace in a conflict that has claimed almost 200,000 lives and displaced two million.

Expressing its “utmost concern over the dire consequences” of the violence, the 15-member Council also reiterated its full support for the inter-Sudanese peace talks being held in Abuja and the lead role taken by the AU, according to a statement read out today by April Council President, Chinese Ambassador Wang Guangya.

The statement noted that the Council “endorses the decision of the African Union Peace and Security Council that 30 April 2006 is the final deadline for reaching an agreement; demands that all parties make the necessary efforts to reach an agreement by this date; and reaffirms its determination to hold accountable those impeding the peace process and committing human rights violations.”

On 10 March, the AU Peace and Security Council decided to support in principle the transition of its African Mission in Sudan (AMIS) to a UN and to extend the mandate of AMIS until 30 September. Today the Council reiterated its support for that decision and called on all parties to take “all necessary measures to ensure a smooth and successful transfer to a United Nations operation.”

The statement went on to urge Member States and international and regional organizations to provide additional assistance to strengthen AMIS, while also repeating a request to the Secretary-General to speed up preparations for its “transition” to a UN operation and highlighting that such an operation would have “strong African participation and character.”

The Council also called for an assessment mission to visit Darfur by the end of this month, and again expressed regret over last week’s decision by the Government of National Unity to deny entry to the region by UN Emergency Relief Coordinator Jan Egeland. The Council expressed similar views over the Government’s decision not to renew the contract of the Norwegian Refugee Council, a non-governmental organization (NGO).

In related developments, Assistant Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations Hédi Annabi arrived in Ethiopia today for consultations with AU and other officials related to a UN force for Darfur, a UN spokesman told reporters, adding that the AU’s chief mediator on the peace talks was scheduled to brief the Security Council next Tuesday.

Also regarding Darfur, Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s latest monthly report was released today, in which he highlights further human rights violations, the persisting “high level of violence,” but also the need for the international community to remain committed to improving the situation.

“I am alarmed by the reports of widespread human rights violations committed in Gereida, Mershing and Shearia in Southern Darfur, among other locations, which have led to the displacement of tens of thousands of people,” he noted, while calling on all parties to stop attacks on civilian targets and reminding the Government of its “unconditional duty to protect its citizens.”

“The international community has a critical role to play during this make-or-break period,” Mr. Annan concluded, as he urged donors to continue to support humanitarian efforts despite the difficulties involved.

US, UK press for Darfur sanctions
Al-Jazeera
April 13, 2006

Britain and the United States announced that four Sudanese were named for United Nations sanctions over war crimes in Darfur, but Russia and China signalled disapproval.

The four, reduced from a longer British list, are one Sudanese government official, one pro-government militia member and two rebel leaders, UN diplomats said.

John Bolton, the US ambassador to the UN, told reporters on Wednesday that a 48-hour silence procedure kicked in to secure required unanimous approval by all 15 council members of the list of four deemed to be impeding the peace process and violating international human rights law.

The list was submitted more than a year after the council adopted Resolution 1591, which authorises measures against people committing atrocities or undermining peace efforts in Sudan's western region.

Bolton said the fact that only four people were named did not mean that others would not be considered. "The investigation and consideration of other individuals continue," he said.

Genocide

Britain 's UN envoy Emyr Jones Parry called Tuesday's move "the start of a process".

"I joined with the representative of a bigger country, the United States, in putting forward today four names representing a balanced package and it will be our intention to recommend to our colleagues that sanction measures should be taken against the four listed," Parry said.

The sanctions involve an assets freeze and travel restrictions on the four for their alleged role in the Darfur violence, which Washington calls genocide.

"The US strongly believes the time has come to designate individuals under UN Security Council Resolution 1591 for targeted sanctions," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said in Washington.

"The activation of targeted sanctions ... continues efforts to end impunity and is a down payment toward justice and accountability," he told the department's daily briefing.

"I would emphasise the fact that we are looking at individuals from all sectors, including from the government," McCormack said. "We think that this is important."

The council's sanctions committee has been working for weeks on a list of Sudanese to punish for the Darfur conflict, which has killed up to 300,000 people and displaced two million.

Darfur chaos spreads as Sudan rebels invade Chad
Daily Telegraph
by David Blair
April 14, 2006

The war in Sudan's anarchic region of Darfur spread across a swathe of Africa and engulfed neighbouring Chad yesterday when rebels attacked its capital, N'Djamena.

Gunfire echoed across the city and mortar rounds exploded in the streets as heavily-armed insurgents launched their dawn raid.

President Idriss Deby of Chad, holed up in his palace, ordered his tanks and helicopter gunships into action.

By early afternoon, when the fighting died down, he claimed in a broadcast that he was in "full control" of his capital. Mr Deby said the "rebel column" had been driven out and stability would soon return.

In fact, his position could scarcely be more precarious. Only last month he survived an attempted coup.

Now the rebels, who reached the centre of N'Djamena before being beaten back, have achieved a lightning advance across the vast desert country.

Their offensive began from bases inside Sudan's war-torn region of Darfur, which shares a frontier with Chad. Western diplomats and Mr Deby's regime accuse Sudan of arming these rebels and launching them against Chad.

The latest developments mark a sinister escalation of the conflict in Darfur, which has already claimed the lives of 300,000 people and turned two million into refugees.

In a matter of weeks the rebels have managed to leave Darfur and advance 600 miles across an arid landscape to reach N'Djamena and threaten Mr Deby.

As recently as Monday, the rebels, styling themselves the United Forces for Change, were reported to be 250 miles east of the capital.

By Wednesday they had managed another leap forward and were only 60 miles away. Yesterday they reached the heart of the city before Mr Deby drove them back.

Western diplomats believe Sudan is trying to oust Mr Deby in retaliation for his role in the Darfur war.

Khartoum has accused him of arming the rebels who began the fighting in Darfur three years ago.

Mr Deby comes from the black African Zaghawa tribe, also present in Darfur. The Zaghawas were among the tribes who rose up against Khartoum's control of Darfur.

Sudan believes Mr Deby sent arms to the main rebel group in Darfur, styling itself the Sudan Liberation Army.

Western diplomats have no doubt Sudan responded by arming Arab insurgents inside Chad and dispatching them to overthrow Mr Deby.

He is deeply unpopular in much of Chad, where Zaghawas make up only seven per cent of the population. The Arab tribes are his traditional opponents and they look to Khartoum's Arab-dominated regime for support.

This bitter rivalry between two neighbours stems from Darfur's crisis.

Mr Deby, who seized power in 1990, is a close ally of France, Chad's former colonial power. Some 1,200 French troops are deployed in his country and Paris reinforced them with another 150 soldiers yesterday.

According to the French foreign ministry, a Mirage fighter also fired "warning shots" at the rebels.

President threatens to expel 200,000 who escaped Darfur
The Times
by Jonathan Clayton
April 15, 2006

CHAD severed diplomatic ties with neighbouring Sudan yesterday and threatened to expel 200,000 Sudanese refugees, the day after government troops beat off a fierce rebel attack on its capital, Ndjamena.

President Déby accuses Sudan of arming rebels who had sped across the vast desert country from bases in Darfur in a fleet of pick-up trucks. “The international community has been totally deaf and dumb on the situation,” Mr Déby said after a cabinet meeting. “Enough is enough.”

Sudan helped Mr Déby to gain power in a 1990 coup, but he fell out with his neighbour over his handling of the Darfur crisis. Since then he has faced a coup attempt, several high-level defections from his armed forces, and a spate of increasingly bold rebel attacks.

With the two giant but impoverished African countries now on the brink of war, he told cheering crowds at a rally in Ndjamena that if no international solution were found to the Darfur crisis by the end of June, Chad would no longer shelter refugees from the area. Thousands of people fled into Chad after Sudanese government forces cracked down on a rebellion in Darfur in 2003, massacring local black African tribes they said were sympathetic to the insurgents. Many Chadians, including the President, belong to the same nomadic desert tribes that straddle the common border.

Sudan suspected Mr Déby of supporting the aims of Darfur rebels opposed to government-supported dominance by Arab tribes. Khartoum reacted by backing Chadian groups who were against the President and a move to change the constitution to allow him a third term.

For months, international observers have said that failure to settle the conflict in Darfur risked destabilising the entire region, especially Chad. Last month the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based think-tank, said that a state of “escalating proxy war between Sudan and Chad” existed and threatened a new humanitarian catastrophe on both sides of the border.

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Uganda (ICC)

Official Website of the International Criminal Court

UN to target 'neglected' Uganda crisis
The Toronto Star
by John Goddard
April 3, 2006

Top aid official calls for special envoy. Says terror has displaced 1.7 million.

The United Nations is to expand its humanitarian intervention in northern Uganda following a direct assessment over the weekend by the world body's emergency relief co-ordinator.

Jan Egeland also wants the UN to assign a special envoy to help raise the profile of what he called a "neglected" crisis.

But Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni rejected the special-envoy suggestion outright, said Welile Nhlapo, a senior UN official accompanying Egeland on a four-country swing through East Africa.

Instead, Museveni agreed to UN intervention in several new areas. These include advising the Ugandan army on how best to protect civilians from the rebel Lord's Resistance Army, bring LRA commanders to justice and help establish a civilian police and judicial system.

"There are few places on earth where terror has affected more people over such an extended period of time," Egeland said of Uganda's northern Acholiland region where fighting has continued almost unnoticed for 20 years, and where Lord's Resistance Army rebels target civilians and have abducted thousands of children as fighters.

"Altogether 1.7 million people have been displaced because of the terror," he told reporters Saturday in Kampala after his visit to the Pader district on the Sudanese border.

"In Pader people still fear for their lives when they leave (internally displaced people's) camps and they are not able yet to return to their homes."

Egeland's visit, which began with a meeting Friday with the president, comes at pivotal moment in relations between the Museveni government and the international aid community.

Throughout the 1990s, Western governments praised Museveni for bringing stability to most of Uganda, growing the economy and fighting the HIV/AIDS epidemic better than other African countries.

But lately he has fallen from international favour. Last year the president orchestrated a change to the constitution, allowing him to run for a third five-year term. The elections he won Feb. 23 are being contested in court by opposition leaders who alleged widespread vote-rigging.

The fear is that Museveni is turning into another "African big man," like Zimbabwe's dictatorial Robert Mugabe and Ugandan strongman Idi Amin of the 1970s.

Aid agencies and donor governments are viewing him far more critically than before.

Last week, a report by 50 international and local aid agencies in the region determined that the rate of violent death in northern Uganda is three times that of Iraq when taken as a proportion of total population.

Asked about the report, which the government has disputed, Egeland avoided hard numbers.

"In terms of violent deaths associated with the conflict, our statistics show they have actually gone down," Egeland said.

"But the number of deaths associated with the conflict is still on an intolerable high ... There are as many people dying in the camps of northern Uganda (from disease) as there were in the camps of Darfur in Sudan."

For weeks, the government-owned newspaper The New Vision has been quoting Museveni as saying the conflict is over.

But Egeland believes most of the north remains a terror zone.

Uganda: Army stops escorting aid workers in the north
IRIN Africa
April 14, 2006

The Ugandan army has stopped providing military escorts to convoys delivering non-food aid to war-ravaged northern Uganda but relief workers say the decision is premature because the security situation in the region is still fragile.

"There is no longer need to give escorts to whoever travels on the roads. We are moving from a bad situation to an improved security situation," army spokesman Lt Chris Magezi said by phone from Gulu, 380 km north of the capital, Kampala. "The situation is much better as most major roads are now motorable without any threat of ambushes."

Aid workers in the northern region said negotiations were going on with the army to reverse the decision. "We are asking them to reconsider," one aid worker said.

Magezi said the decision had been conveyed to all humanitarian agencies working in the region. The move would free up more troops to secure thousands of displaced civilians who are being relocated to smaller camps nearer their homes. It does not affect agencies that deliver food aid such as the United Nations World Food Programme, he added.

"Our advise to the traveling public is that they should travel between 9.00am and 5.00pm [0600 and 1500 GMT] as after that time the units that patrol the roads pull back from the roads to return to camps to undertake night assignments," Magezi said. "They are back on the roads at 7.00 am [0400 GMT] to secure the passages so that people can start to travel again at 9.00 am."

In October 2005, several agencies reduced activities in the region after two relief workers were killed in ambushes by the rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA). Three weeks ago, the rebels killed a government soldier in a raid to steal food on the outskirts of Patongo, Kitgum District. This week, sources said, two incidents happened in Pader district in which some people were abducted

However, Magezi said the security situation in the region, where a rebellion pitting the army against the LRA has been raging for nearly 20 years, had improved.

Tens of thousands of people have been killed and more than 1.7 million displaced from their homes in northern Uganda and forced to live in camps since the LRA rebellion started. Rebel leader Joseph Kony and his forces have been accused of massive abuses in the region including the abductions of at least 20,000 children who are used as porters, fighters and sex slaves for rebel commanders.

A joint report by 50 aid agencies working in northern Uganda, published on 30 February, said that some 146 people die each week in the region.

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Iraqi High Tribunal

Official Website of the Iraqi High Tribunal
Grotian Moment: The Saddam Hussein Trial Blog

Farce and gravity at Saddam trial
BBC News
by Mike Wooldridge
April 5, 2006

Saddam Hussein had just had the charge of genocide - over the death of tens of thousands of Kurds in the late 1980s - added to the charges he already faces.

Now, hours later, here he was arguing with a judge about being asked by the court to stand with his back to the bench facing the gallery.

"We are in heaven and those who ordered us to sit that way are in hell," the deposed president fulminated.

"Neither Arabs nor Kurds sit that way. Maybe Persians sit that way. This is an insult to the court."

As I watched from the press gallery while Saddam Hussain swivelled round several times to make his point, I wondered whether he was even aware that his present trial - on charges of killing 148 Shias in Dujail in 1982 - looks as if it will be overshadowed within weeks by the new trial.

Given to outbursts in court as he is, would he have chosen an issue of courtroom manners for his first tirade of the day if he had known about the genocide charge?

'Emotional' women

In the event, courtroom manners were challenged for much of the day.

But one of the most acrimonious exchanges of all went, literally, over Saddam Hussein's head.

He sat alone in the dock amid an argument that erupted between the lawyers after the prosecution played a video showing a considerably younger Saddam Hussein saying that people killed during interrogation were worthless to him.

The team of defence lawyers took turns at the microphone to protest.

But one of the lawyers, Bushra al-Khaleel, went further than her colleagues.

Clearly concerned that she was making no impression on either the prosecution or the judge, she pulled out from her papers three pictures of Iraqi prisoners being abused by US forces.

She was evicted from the court and threatened with legal action.

Later, after one of her male colleagues appealed to the judge to be lenient on the grounds that women are "emotional", she was allowed to return on condition that she agreed to respect the court.

She said outside the court that she had wanted to draw attention to what was happening in Iraq today.

Fundamental change

Saddam Hussein may have sat out that particular altercation but he also made an attempt of his own once again to bring contemporary politics into the trial with his allegation that the present day interior ministry has killed and tortured thousands of Iraqis.

When the judge tried to stop him, Saddam Hussein said: "You are scared of the interior minister. He doesn't scare my dog."

There is something of a theatrical dimension to many trials and they often feature exchanges that are very much at odds with the gravity of the evidence.

This was a day when the Saddam Hussein trial fitted that mould.

At one point the former president told the prosecutor: "You were a small soldier and I made you a lawyer."

The prosecutor insisted he had became a lawyer in his own right.

During one of the less tempestuous periods of the day Saddam Hussein addressed the judge as "Mr Raouf".

"You call me Judge!" came the reply.

There were smiles around a sombre court and the proceedings moved on.

But perhaps that very exchange illustrates one fundamental change in Iraq as it marks the third anniversary of the ousting of the man in the dock.

Hussein grins, reads poetry during cross-examination
CNN / Associated Press
April 5, 2006

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- A grinning and poetic Saddam Hussein was cross-examined for the first time in his trial Wednesday, saying he approved 1980s death sentences against Shiites because they were trying to assassinate him.

Hussein, standing alone as the sole defendant in the courtroom, dodged some questions from prosecutors over his role in a crackdown against Shiites in the 1980s, giving long speeches calling the court "illegitimate."

He accused the current Shiite-led Interior Ministry of killing and torturing thousands of Iraqis and bickered with chief judge Raouf Abdel-Rahman. (Watch as cross-examination of Hussein begins -- 1:58)

After a nearly six-hour session, Abdel-Rahman adjourned the session until Thursday.

The session came a day after prosecutors indicted Hussein on separate charges of genocide, accusing him of trying to exterminate Kurds in a 1980s campaign that killed an estimated 100,000 people. The charges will be dealt with in a separate trial. (Watch the former Iraqi leader's demeanor during his first cross-examination -- 3:20)

In the current trial, Hussein and seven former members of his regime are charged in a crackdown against Shiites launched after a 1982 assassination attempt against Hussein in the town of Dujail. In the sweep that followed, 148 Shiites were killed and hundreds were imprisoned, some of them undergoing torture.

Grinning defendant

Throughout Wednesday's questioning, Hussein -- dressed in a black suit and white shirt -- appeared relaxed, frequently shooting grins at chief prosecutor Jaafar al-Moussawi and even reciting a short bit of poetry to the judge.

Al-Moussawi asked Hussein about his approval for death sentences passed against the 148 by his Revolutionary Court, which prosecutors have argued gave the Shiites only a cursory trial.

"That is one of the duties of the president," Hussein replied. "I had the right to question the judgment. But I was convinced the evidence that was presented was sufficient" to show their guilt in the assassination attempt.

In a previous court session, Hussein acknowledged ordering the trial in which the 148 Shiites were sentenced to death but has maintained his actions were legal because they were in response to the attempt to kill him.

Al-Moussawi asked Hussein if he was aware that 28 of those sentenced to death were under 18 years old and presented identity cards for some of the killed minors. Prosecutors have earlier said an 11-year-old boy was among those killed.

Hussein replied that ID cards can easily be forged.

"There is a clear ulterior motive by those who have given you these documents. You can buy IDs like this in the market," he said. "Is it the responsibility of the head of the state to check the IDs of defendants and see how old he is?"

"I could get a hold of an ID saying Raouf is 25 years old," he added, waving toward the judge.

Al-Moussawi displayed a series of documents that he has previously shown the court -- including an approval of medals for intelligence agents involved in the crackdown and approvals for the razing of Dujail farmlands in retaliation for the assassination attempt. Al-Moussawi repeatedly asked if the signatures on the documents were Hussein's.

But Hussein avoided a direct reply, refusing to confirm the signatures but also stopping short of saying the signatures were forged.

"Any comment, matter or document signed by Saddam Hussein, and it has been proven that the handwriting and the signature are his, then I take the responsibility," he replied.

Video: 'I would chop off their heads'

The prosecutors also showed video they said was taken in the 1980s that showed Hussein talking in an apparent interview about "enemies of the revolution," saying, "I would chop off their heads without one hair of mine shaking ... As for the ranks of the enemies, if someone died during investigations, he has no value."

The video appeared to be taken from an anti-Hussein film, as the scene of Hussein talking was interspliced with scenes of people being beaten. Pressed by the judge, the prosecutor acknowledged the tape was not directly connected to the Dujail case but insisted it was relevant, asking Hussein what he thought about his comments.

Hussein said they were shown out of context and that he was talking about things "outside the borders" at a time Iraq was at war. He dismissed the video as "unrelated to this case."

When defense lawyer Bushra al-Khalil tried to comment on the video, Abdel-Rahman accused her of being out of order and after an argument ordered her out removed from the courtroom.

At the beginning of the session, Hussein launched into a speech in response to the prosecutor's first question, bringing repeated demands by Abdel-Rahman that he answer the question.

Hussein denounced the court as illegitimate, saying "a body whose base and formation is illegitimate and unjust can't pronounce justice. How could anyone imagine that it could issue a verdict on the Iraqi president, who stood as a sharp spear inside the eyes of those who planned and worked to poke Iraq's eyes?"

He also denounced the current, Shiite-controlled Interior Ministry, calling it a body "that kills thousands people on the streets and tortures them." Some Iraqis accuse the ministry of backing Shiite militias that have assassinated Sunni Arabs in a wave of violence since a February 22 bombing of a Shiite shrine in the city of Samarra.

"Don't venture into political matters," Abdel-Rahman replied.

"If you are scared of the interior minister, he doesn't scare my dog," Hussein retorted.

Hussein had been due to testify and be questioned in the last session of the trial, on March 15. But instead, he gave a rambling speech calling on Iraqis to stop sectarian violence and unite to fight American troops. After arguing with Hussein, Abdel-Rahman closed most of the session to the public to allow Hussein to finish his speech.

Hussein and the seven former members of his regime face possible execution by hanging if they are convicted in connection with the crackdown launched in Dujail following a July 8, 1982 shooting attack on Hussein's motorcade in the town.

Tuesday's indictment paves the way for a second trial of Hussein in which he would likely face execution if convicted, though prosecutors have not yet said what sentence they will seek.

He and six other former regime members will be tried for Operation Anfal, the 1988 military campaign launched in the final months of the war with Iran to crush independence-minded Kurdish militias and clear Kurds from the sensitive Iranian border area of northern Iraq.

A memo released by the tribunal Tuesday said the Anfal campaign included "savage military attacks on civilians," including "the use of mustard gas and nerve agents ... to kill and maim rural villagers and to drive them out of their homes."

Saddam Hussein's Confession
The Washington Post
April 7, 2006

Yes, he says, he ordered the killings he's charged with. But he's not sorry.

THE TRIAL of Saddam Hussein achieved a rare and important moment of accountability this week. The former Iraqi leader acknowledged that he ordered the deaths of 148 civilians from the town of Dujail after a 1982 assassination attempt against him there. "That is one of the duties of the president," he testified under cross-examination. "I was convinced the evidence that was presented was sufficient." He conceded that he took only a cursory look at the evidence against the men and boys he condemned, all of whom were represented by only one lawyer at their "trial." That, he said, "is the right of the head of state." He denied that any of the victims were underage; prosecutors say 28 were minors. But he admitted the broad facts of the case against him. He does not deny that he is a mass murderer; he sees that as a perquisite of leadership.

The trial of Saddam Hussein has been far from perfect. Members of the defense team have been assassinated. Inside the courtroom there has been disorder, grandstanding and frequent delays. More disturbing, the moral authority of the current Iraqi government to conduct such a trial erodes as its Shiite-dominated Interior Ministry conducts abuses of its own -- including operating death squads in the country's escalating sectarian struggle. Even as some rough justice may be achieved for the 148 people Saddam Hussein had killed in this one case, it's impossible not to think of the civilians dying every day in Iraq.

Still, it is no small thing when a former dictator in the dock looks the world in the face and does not pretend that his crimes did not happen, merely that he had the lawful power to commit them. It clarifies history against those who would later deny it. It assigns responsibility where it properly belongs. His admissions came a day after the special tribunal responsible for his prosecution handed up new and far broader charges against him: that he was responsible for the infamous Anfal campaign, the killing not of hundreds but of tens of thousands of ethnic Kurds, including by poison gas. One can only hope the coming Anfal trial -- the first that begins to address the scope and magnitude of Saddam Hussein's crimes -- can achieve such clarity.

Iraq keen to avoid Milosevic fate in Saddam trial
Reuters
by Terry Friel
April 7, 2006

Saddam Hussein's trials could last for years as new charges including genocide are laid, but Iraqi authorities are keen for closure after former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic died before he faced a verdict on war crimes.

"One of the lessons of the Milosevic trial is that war crimes trials need to be streamlined and efficient," said Michael Scharf of Case Western University of Law in the United States.

"The old adage 'justice delayed is justice denied' proved to be accurate in the case of Milosevic."

Saddam is on trial for the deaths of almost 150 men and boys after a failed assassination bid against him in the early 1980s in the town of Dujail.

The ousted leader is also expected to be tried for genocide against Kurds. He is accused of killing hundreds of thousands of Iraqis during his rule and other charges could follow.

The original case has dragged on for more than six months, with only 18 days of hearings in that time. It was originally due to last just two months.

Even if a verdict is handed down soon, U.S. officials said there is no legal clock on the appeals process, meaning Saddam could be in the dock for years in a series of trials.

The genocide case, involving the killing of thousands of Kurds, will take at least another year, lawyers said.

One problem is that Iraq's courts are learning how to work.

"The Dujail case is serving as a test cast, a judicial laboratory, for the judges to get used to the novel rules and procedures," said Scharf.

"Most importantly, they have learned how to balance the rights of the defendants and at the same time maintain control of the courtroom in the face of defense attempts to disrupt the proceedings."

A difference between the Milosevic and Saddam trials is that Saddam is being tried on individual and specific charges, rather than a broad case of crimes against humanity.

"Each case stands on its own," said Scharf. "At the end of each, there will be a judgment. The judgments of these min- trials constitute 'snapshots of evil' -- giving the flavor, if not telling the full story of the atrocities committed by the Saddam Hussein regime."

A U.S. official close to the trial said: "Saddam's trial is based on known events, whereas Milosevic was tried on allegations he committed crimes during a historical period."

Scharf helped train the five judges for the Saddam trial, and the Milosevic case was used as an example.

The former chief of the Iraqi Crimes Against Humanity Unit, Tom Parker, however, says it is more important for due process to be seen being done than for a speedy trial.

"I would argue that due process is ultimately more important than timeliness," he said.

Saddam Trial Session Lasts Just 5 Minutes
The Washington Post
by Mariam Fam
April 12, 2006

The trial of Saddam Hussein adjourned after only five minutes Wednesday when handwriting experts scheduled to testify failed to appear.

Chief judge Raouf Abdel-Rahman lectured prosecutors for not ensuring the experts were on hand and set a new session for Monday. Neither Saddam nor the seven other defendants were in court.

During the brief session, Abdel-Rahman said Saddam and co-defendant Barzan Ibrahim _ Saddam's half brother and the former head of Iraq's intelligence service _ had refused an order to provide writing samples.

But the judge appeared surprised when the experts did not show up, with prosecutors saying they needed more time to examine documents.

"They were supposed to come," Abdel-Rahman said. "You as the prosecution general are supposed to inform the experts to come. Legally, it's your duty to do so."

The handwriting experts are to testify about a number of documents presented during the six-month-old trial, including one said to have been signed by Saddam approving death sentences for 148 Shiite Muslims from the town of Dujail.

Saddam has refused to confirm or deny whether signatures are his. Some of his co-defendants insist their purported signatures on the documents are forgeries.

Saddam and the other defendants are on trial for their alleged role in a crackdown on Shiites in Dujail after a 1982 attempt on the former president's life there. The defendants could face the death penalty if convicted in the 148 deaths.

Hundreds of other Dujail residents were imprisoned, and some testified they were tortured while in custody.

Saddam has acknowledged ordering the 148 Shiites be tried by the Revolutionary Court that sentenced them to death. But he and his co-defendants say their actions were justified because they were responding to the assassination attempt.

Prosecutors maintain the crackdown went far beyond those behind the attack and punished the entire town. Whole families, including women and children, were among those imprisoned for years and children as young as 11 were among those sentenced to death, the prosecution says.

Dujail residents, including women, testified in court that they were tortured with electrical shocks and beatings during their interrogations.

Prosecutors have nearly finished presenting their case. The defense would then present its arguments, and Abdel-Rahman told defense lawyers Wednesday that they must present a list of witnesses they intend to call by Sunday.

U.S. officials observing the trial have said the five-member panel of judges could issue a verdict and sentence as soon as June.

The Iraqi High Tribunal is preparing to begin a second trial of Saddam, along with six other defendants, on genocide charges for the military's Anfal Campaign against Kurds in the 1980s that killed an estimated 100,000 people. The case will likely carry a possible death sentence.

Handwriting experts fail to appear at Saddam trial, court adjourned until Monday
Ohmy News International / Associated Press
by Mariam Fam
April 12, 2006

Saddam Hussein and one of his co-defendants have refused to give handwriting samples for experts to authenticate signatures said to be theirs on key documents in their trial, the chief judge said Wednesday.

Handwriting experts had been due to testify Tuesday in the trial, but they did not show up at court, forcing chief judge Raouf Abdel-Rahman to adjourn until Monday after a session that lasted only about five minutes.

Prosecutors told Abdel-Rahman that the analysts had not yet finished their work. Saddam and his seven co-defendants did not attend the session.

The documents, presented by the prosecution during the six-month-old trial, concern a crackdown on Shiites launched by Saddam's security forces after an assassination attempt on the former leader in the town of Dujail in 1982. Among them is a document said to be signed by Saddam approving death sentences for 148 Shiites, as well as numerous memos and letters from the Mukhabarat intelligence agency and Saddam's office.

Saddam and the former members of his regime face a possible death sentence if convicted over the deaths of the 148 Shiites, as well as the imprisonment of hundreds of others, some of whom say they were tortured in custody.

Saddam has refused to confirm or deny whether some of the signatures are his, while some of his co-defendants have outright said their alleged signatures on the documents are forgeries.

Abdel-Rahman said in Wednesdsay's session that Saddam and co-defendant Barzan Ibrahim _ Saddam's half-brother and the former head of the Mukhabarat _ had so far refused an order to provide writing samples.

Still, he appeared surprised when the experts did not appear.

''They were supposed to come,'' he said, telling the prosecutors, ''You as the prosecution general are supposed to inform the experts to come. Legally, it's your duty to do so.'' The prosecutor responded that the experts needed more time.

Abdel-Rahman adjourned the session until Monday.

Prosecutors have nearly finished presenting their case in the trial. The defense is due to present its arguments in upcoming sesssions. Abdel-Rahman told defense attorneys Wednesday that they must present a list of witnesses they intend to call by Sunday.

U.S. officials observing the trial have said the five-member panel of judges could issue a verdict and sentence as soon as June.

Saddam has acknowledged ordering the 148 Shiites put on trial before the Revolutionary Court that sentenced them to death. But he and his co-defendants have argued that their actions were justified because they were responding to the assassinationattempt against the former Iraqi leader.

The prosecution has sought to show that the crackdown went far beyond those behind the attack and sought to punish the entire town of Dujail. They have presented documents showing entire families _ including women and children _ were among those imprisoned for years and that children as young as 11 years old were among those sentenced to death. Dujail residents _ including women _ have testified in court that they were tortured with electrical shocks and beatings during their interrogations.

In the meantime, the tribunal is preparing to launch a second trial of Saddam _ along with six other co-defendants _ on genocide charges in connection with the military's Anfal Campaign against Kurds in the 1980s that killed an estimated 100,000 people. They would likely face a death sentence in that trial as well.

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International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY)

Official Website of the ICTY

Press Briefing of the ICTY
Alexandra Milenov, Liaison Officer for Registry and Chambers, made the following statement: (partially reproduced below):
April 6, 2006
April 12, 2006

Appeals Chamber Upholds Decision to Refer the Mejakic et al. Case to Bosnia and Herzegovina
Press Release of the ICTY
April 7, 2006

Today, April 7, 2006, the Appeals Chamber upheld the decision to refer the Mejakic et al. case, involving four accused, to Bosnia and Herzegovina for trial. The Appeals Chamber dismissed eight of the grounds in the Joint Defense Appeal, and allowed one in part.

Zeljko Mejakic, Momcilo Gruban, Dusan Fustar and Dusko Knezevic are charged with confining in inhumane conditions, murdering, beating, sexually assaulting, harassing, humiliating and psychologically abusing Bosnian Muslims, Bosnian Croats and other non-Serbs in the Omarska and Keraterm camps in Prijedor, Bosnia and Herzegovina, between May and August 1992. It is alleged that Zeljko Mejakic was the Commander of the Omarska Camp at that time, that Momcilo Gruban was a guard shift commander at the Omarska Camp and that Dusan Fustar performed the same duty at the Keraterm Camp. As for Dusko Knezevic, according to the indictment, he did not appear to hold an official position in either the Keraterm or the Omarska camp but had sufficient authority to be able to enter and leave the camps as he wished. The Referral Bench’s decision of July 20, 2005, orders the Registrar to make arrangements to transfer the accused to Bosnia and Herzegovina within 30 days. It also orders the Prosecution to hand over to the Prosecutor of Bosnia and Herzegovina, as soon as possible, the material supporting the indictment as well as all other relevant evidence.

A partnership with the judiciaries in the former Yugoslavia is a key component of the Tribunal’s Completion Strategy, as endorsed by the UN Security Council. While the most senior leaders are tried before the ICTY, intermediate and lower rank accused can be referred to competent national jurisdictions. The ICTY has previously transferred two accused to Bosnia and Herzegovina for trial and referred one case involving two accused to Croatia.

Vladimir Kovasevic Declared Unfit to Stand Trial
Press Release of the ICTY
April 12, 2006

The Trial Chamber in the case Prosecutor v. Vladimir Kovacevic has today issued a decision finding the accused unfit to stand trial. The Chamber found that "the accused does not have the capacity to enter a plea and stand trial, without prejudice to any future criminal proceedings against him should his mental health condition change." This means that, if it is determined at a future date that Vladimir Kovacevic is fit to stand trial, criminal proceedings against him could be reinstated.

Vladimir Kovacevic, former Commander of the Third Battalion of the Yugoslav National Army (JNA) 472 (Trebinje) Motorised Brigade is charged with his involvement in the attack against the historic city of Dubrovnik in Croatia in 1991. Specifically, Kovacevic is charged with murder, cruel treatment, attacks on civilians, devastation not justified by military necessity, unlawful attacks on civilian objects as well as destruction or willful damage done to institutions dedicated to religion, charity, and education, the arts and sciences, historic monuments and works of art and science committed in the attack on 6 December 1991. Vladimir Kovacevic was arrested on September 25, 2003 in Serbia, but his transfer to the Tribunal was delayed until October 23, 2003 due to his medical condition. Due to the same medical condition, the accused was unable to enter a plea on the charges against him. Upon the request of the defense, on June 2, 2004, the Trial Chamber ordered that Vladimir Kovacevic be provisionally released for six months to receive medical treatment in Serbia and Montenegro. On December 2, 2004, the Chamber extended the accused's provisional release until further notice. In the meantime, the Chamber ordered a number of medical reports and carefully considered all of them. In reaching its decision, the Chamber found that the accused does not have the capacity to plead, to understand the nature of the charges, to understand the course of proceedings, to understand the details of the evidence, to instruct counsel, to understand the consequences of proceedings, and to testify.

Decision Rendered on Referral of the Pasko Ljubicic Case under Rule 11 Bis
Press Release of the ICTY
April 12, 2006

The Tribunal’s Referral Bench today rendered the decision to refer the case of Pasko Ljubicic to Bosnia and Herzegovina in accordance with Rule 11bis of the Tribunal’s Rules of Procedure and Evidence. This decision can be appealed.

As part of the Tribunal’s completion strategy, endorsed by the UN Security Council, the Prosecutor has requested a small number of cases involving mid and lower-level accused to be referred to national courts pursuant to Rule 11bis of the Tribunal’s Rules of Procedure and Evidence. While the ICTY concentrates on trying the most senior perpetrators of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes, it will continue to fully support trials of mid and lower-level perpetrators in courts in the former Yugoslavia, including those transferred from the ICTY, pursuant to Rule 11bis. The Tribunal has also undertaken an intensive and wide-ranging effort to help strengthen the capacity of national institutions to process war crimes cases. For a case to be referred pursuant to Rule 11bis, the Referral Bench, comprised of three judges, has to order a referral of its own accord or following a request from the Prosecutor. A decision to refer a case is rendered only if the Bench is fully satisfied that the accused would be tried to the highest international standards and that neither the level of responsibility of the accused nor the gravity of the crimes alleged in the indictment were factors that would make a referral to the national authorities inappropriate. In addition to the four persons already transferred, currently a total of 11 other persons are or may be considered for transfer by the Referral Bench.

Bosnian Serb found guilty of war crimes
Reuters
April 7, 2006

A Bosnian Serb was sentenced on Friday to more than 13 years in prison for crimes committed during the 1992-95 war -- the first verdict and sentence by Bosnia's war crimes chamber after a year of operation.

"Nedjo Samardzic is found guilty of crimes against humanity committed in 1992 and 1993 during the large-scale and systematic attacks by the Bosnian Serb army and police ... he aided and abetted persecution, rape and torture," the judge said.

Samardzic, now 38, was serving a prison term for murder when he escaped and joined the Bosnian Serb army in 1992. His unit attacked Muslim villages near the eastern town of Foca, scene of some of the most gruesome atrocities in a war that claimed more than 100,000 lives.

The judge said he imprisoned and tortured civilians and repeatedly raped women, including three underage girls who were held for months.

Samardzic was sentenced to 12 years in jail for the wartime crimes and to another 16 months for escaping prison.

Bosnia 's war crimes chamber was established in 2005 to alleviate some of the workload from the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. It is supposed to increasingly take over low and mid-level cases as the Hague court winds down by 2010.

One of the main Bosnian rape victims' associations, Female Victims of the War, said the sentence was too lenient. State prosecutor Behaija Krnjic said he would appeal against it.

"I am in a shock," said the association's Bakira Hasecic.

"This is a repeat of the crime against the victims of rape ... but this time by the court which we had supported and trusted. We are forgetting that the victims of rape will remain invalids forever."

Samardzic was arrested in October 2004 in the southeastern town of Trebinje, where he lived with his wife and two children.

Report Mladic spoke to Del Ponte is "lunacy" -aide
Reuters
April 7, 2006

A report in a Bosnian weekly that top Bosnian Serb war crimes fugitive Ratko Mladic told U.N. chief prosecutor Carla del Ponte over the phone that he would surrender soon is "total lunacy", her spokesman said on Friday.

Slobodna Bosna quoted a source close to Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica as saying the premier called Mladic on March 29 when his guest Del Ponte asked how he could sure of delivering the former Bosnian Serb general to the Hague tribunal within weeks.

The report said Kostunica put Mladic on speakerphone so Del Ponte could hear him in person promising to surrender and asking for medical treatment. The five minute conversation also covered Mladic's preferences over arrangements of a surrender, it said.

"This is total lunacy. It is absolutely not true," said Del Ponte's spokesman Anton Nikiforov, adding that on legal grounds it was impossible for the prosecutor to discuss such matters with an accused.

Mladic is accused of genocide for the 1995 Srebrenica massacre of 8,000 Muslims and the 43-month siege of Sarajevo which claimed over 10,000 civilian lives. His handover is key to Serbia's bid to eventually join the European Union.

Del Ponte says he is hiding in Serbia, protected by hardliners. Belgrade denies knowing his whereabouts or being in contact with him, but Kostunica pledged repeatedly in recent weeks he will soon meet EU demands for Mladic to be handed over.

After a positive report from Del Ponte, the EU decided last week to go ahead with talks on closer ties rather than suspend them. Nikiforov said on Thursday Kostunica had persuaded Del Ponte that Mladic would be handed over to The Hague this month.

The prospect of a new deadline has sparked a new round of speculation in the Serbian press, which is periodically full of reports quoting anonymous sources that Mladic is either considering surrender, or ready to die to avoid arrest.

Serbia 's high-selling daily Blic on Friday quoted a source close to the Hague tribunal as saying that despite all attempts at negotiations, Mladic had not decided to hand himself in.

"Knowing his character, it was clear from the start that he would never agree to something like that," the source said.

But no matter whether there was a surrender or an arrest, the Serb government would be careful not to humiliate him by sending him to The Hague "secretly, at night, by helicopter, with a bag over his head", the source added.

Newspapers also gave extensive coverage to accusations by members of Mladic's family in Serbia, including his son and four male relatives, that they had been harassed by police.

The description of the events in different media ranged from "brutal beatings" to "overnight detention" and "friendly chat". Mladic's son Darko said that "regardless of what the police do, they will not get any results".

Serbia 's Interior Ministry has refused to comment on the reports.

Bosnian Serb police chief resigns amid speculation
Reuters
April 7, 2006

The police director of Bosnia's semi-autonomous Serb Republic resigned on Friday, following press speculation the U.N. war crimes court wanted him fired for not doing enough to hunt down war crimes fugitives.

"Republika Srpska Police Director Dragomir Andan filed a request on April 7, 2006 to the Prime Minister and Interior Minister to be dismissed from his duties as police director," an Interior Ministry spokesman said in a statement.

Sarajevo-based newspaper Dnevni Avaz and weekly Slobodna Bosna reported earlier this week that Andan was under pressure to resign.

Avaz quoted unofficial sources as saying United Nations Chief Prosecutor Carla del Ponte was unhappy with Andan's cooperation and requested his dismissal in a letter to Bosnia's international peace overseer Christian Schwarz-Shilling.

Andan, 55, became police director in March 2005. Newspapers in the Muslim-Croat Federation, the other half of Bosnia, have accused him of taking part in atrocities during the 1992-95 war.

They say he had a close relationship with Bosnian Serb military leader Ratko Mladic, twice indicted for genocide and the most wanted man on the Hague's list. Andan has denied all the reports, saying he was an ordinary soldier at the time.

Del Ponte says Mladic is sheltered by hardliners in Serbia or in the Serb Republic. Delivering him to the court is a key condition for both Serbia and Bosnia to make progress on the path to eventual European Union membership.

ICTY: Ljubicic can be tried in court of BiH
Balkan Investigating Reporting Network
April 12, 2006

Former Bosnian Croat commander, Pasko Ljubicic, can be tried in front of Sarajevo's war crimes chamber, the Hague Tribunal's referral bench decided on Wednesday.

In accordance with its completion strategy the Tribunal decided that all the criteria for a fair trial of Ljubicic in Bosnia and Herzegovina have been met by the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The accused has the right to lodge an appeal against the decision in the following two weeks.

Ljubicic, a former commander of the Croatian Defence Council (HVO) is accused of war crimes committed in central Bosnian towns of Vitez and Busovaca.

He is charged with crimes against humanity and violation of wartime laws and customs committed over Bosniak civilians in 1993.

The indictment holds him responsible for ten counts of attacks and murder of civilians and five counts of crimes against humanity.

The ICTY indictment states that Ljubicic was a top-ranking HVO Commander in central Bosnia 1993 and that his rank makes him responsible for crimes his troops committed in the area.

According to the charges sheet, hundreds of Bosnian Muslims kept in captivity by HVO forces were beaten, physically and psychologically abused.

Ljubicic has also been charged with crimes committed in the villages of Ahmici, Nadioci, Prici and Santici, where some 100 civilians were killed in April 1993.

Pasko Ljubicic surrendered on November 21, 2001 when he was taken to the The Hague Tribunal's detention unit in Scheveningen.

Defense Counsel Contempt Controversy
Balkan Investigating Reporting Network
by Nerma Jelacic
April 14, 2006

Milan Vujin, one of the defence counsels of Nedjo Samardzic who was last week found guilty of crimes against humanity, was himself previously found guilty of contempt of court by the Hague tribunal, BIRN's Justice Report has learned.

View entire article here.

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International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR)

Official Website of the ICTR

Rwanda: Lawyers ready for ICTR cases
AllAfrica.com - The New Times (Kigali)
by Felly Kimenyi
April 2, 2006

The Kigali Bar Association, an umbrella association of practicing lawyers, is ready for the transfer of cases from the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda come 2007, the Bar Chairman Jean Haguma, has said. \

Haguma made the disclosure Friday March 31 during a meeting to update stakeholders in the judiciary on the legal amendments carried out so far."The recent proposed amendments in law governing the Bar are actually timely because they are encouraging professionalism, which will ensure that we are competitive enough to get involved in the trials of suspects who will be transferred after the expiry of the ICTR mandate," Haguma said.

He added that the de-registering of paralegals in the Draft that was recently tabled before Parliament was aimed at enhancing professionalism among the legal practitioners.

"There were imbalances in the trials; you would find one person counselled by a qualified lawyer standing trial with another one with an unqualified lawyer. This was an imbalance and people would lose cases that they would otherwise have won simply because of having an unqualified attorney," Haguma observed.

Asked whether the changes would not cause a pitfall in the legal profession, Haguma answered: "Of recent, the number of lawyers has been increasing and the ban on the paralegals will not impinge on our activities."

The meeting which focused on the right to defense as a prerequisite to justice was attended by, among others, the Chief Justice Aloysia Cyanzayire (pictured)and the Registrar of ICTR Adama Dieng and several legal practitioners.

During the meeting, Cyanzayire observed that lawyers were very crucial in the delivery of justice adding that without them, there would be no justice.

"Despite the adage that ignorance of law is no defense, people don't know the assortment of laws that are in force and it is the role of an advocate to help these people know them," Cyanzayire later told The New Times.

Dieng urged the lawyers to act professionally in order to portray a good image of Rwandan unity and lauded the Kigali Bar Association for the achievements it had registered.

"Despite being in its infant stages, it (Bar) has achieved what has not been achieved in many countries especially in Africa; I have no doubt it will surpass many countries in the years to come," Dieng observed.

ICTR lawyer calls for Kagame's prosecution
Sunday News (Arusha)
April 9, 2006

A lawyer at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), Peter Erlinder, asserted on Friday that given the amount of evidence and testimony at the tribunal against President of Rwanda Paul Kagame, the latter should be indicted.

This vigorous challenge happens as Rwanda is commemorating the 12th anniversary of the 1994 genocide. The ICTR endeavours to judge and bring charges against the alleged authors of the genocide, but has laid no charges against those now in power for alleged war crimes. And yet this court, created a few months after the genocide, is entitled to do so. Its mandate comprises not only the authors of the genocide, but the perpetrators of crimes against humanity and war crimes committed in 1994 by all parties.

Erlinder is an American lawyer pleading for former Major Aloys Ntabakuze, who commanded the elite paratrooper battalion.

Erlinder used the announcement of an official visit of President of Rwanda Paul Kagame to Canada as an occasion to tell the Canadian government to beware.

According to him, the court has documentary proof, should the Canadians ask for them, that the Patriotic Front of Rwanda (RPF, former rebel movement now in power in Kigali) was the only military force capable of putting to an end the genocide, but did not lift a finger.

Several testimonies and documents of the United Nations that Erlinder has mentioned, state that the regular army in Rwanda did not have the means to stop the genocide because it had been struggling and losing ground for four years against the rebel invasion.

He has quoted both General RomÈo Dallaire, head of the United Nations armed forces in Rwanda at the time, and the former American ambassador in Kigali to further support his thesis.

Erlinder has also mentioned the testimony of a former RPF officer, Abdul Ruzibiza, who accused the RPF and its commandant Paul Kagame of having shot two missiles at the plane of President JuvÈnal Habyarimana, thus giving the signal for the start of the genocide.

Kagame, said the lawyer, gave his soldiers orders for the final assault before any retaliation acts in reaction to the attack against President Habyarimana’s plane.

Moreover, when the Rwandan army repeatedly asked for a ceasefire to interrupt the ongoing massacres, the RPF turned down their request.

Kagame is alleged to have been in person in the stadium of Byumba, a city in the northern part of the country under control of the RPF, during one of these slaughter scenes. Thousands of civilians were murdered there, he adds.

Tanzania to inherit ICTR
International Justice Tribune
April 10, 2006

"The Tribunal's leadership has asked the Tanzanian government to complete prosecuting genocide suspects after its mandate," announced Dr. Mary Nagu, Tanzanian Minister of Justice, on March 24, according to the Hirondelle News Agency. Dr. Nagu had met with the president, prosecutor and registrar of the UN tribunal the day before and a week earlier, these same officials met with Tanzanian president Jakaya Mrisho Kikwete at the ICTR's headquarters in Arusha. Given the impossibility of trying all the accused before the tribunal's mandate expires in 2008, Tanzania is now offering the ICTR a surprising exit plan. Rwanda is only country that has offered to try the suspects, but it is unable to offer sufficient guarantees for a fair trial.

Rwanda: Former Mayor Who Pleaded Guilty Sentenced to 15 Years
AllAfrica.com - Hirondelle News Agency (Lausanne)
April 13, 2006

A former mayor in Rwanda who had pleaded guilty was Thursday sentenced to 15 years in prison by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) for his role in the 1994 genocide.

Rwanda government estimates put the number of dead between April and July 1994 to over a million people, most of them members of the Tutsi ethnic group.

Paul Bisengimana, the former mayor of Gikoro (central Rwanda) had pleaded guilty to murder and extermination for massacres of Tutsi civilians after striking a plea bargain with the prosecutor.

According to the terms of the agreement, the accused would serve a sentence of between 12 and 14 years in jail.

According to Bisengimana's lawyer, Catherine Mabille, the heavy sentence "would discourage other accused from entering plea-bargaining ".

"A sentence higher than the limit agreed upon is justified by the crime of extermination", said Judge Arlette Ramaroson from Madagascar who presided the judgment and sentencing. She was assisted by Judge William Sekule of Tanzania and Judge Solomy Balungi Bossa from Uganda.

In meting out the sentence, the judges considered the gravity of the crime, the number of victims (over one thousand), the position held by the accused in the commune, and the fact that he was educated.

The tribunal sentenced Bisengimana on the crime of extermination and chose to drop the court of murder as a crime against humanity.

The former mayor becomes the 27th person to be tried by the ICTR and the fifth to plead guilty. 22 others chose to plead not guilty. He was arrested in Mali on December 4, 2001.

"They could have remained within the limit of 12 and 14 years, but handing down 15 years makes no sense unless the judges wanted to show their independence", stated the visibly angry Mabille.

"I was not surprised", said Charles Adeogun-Phillips who led the prosecution. "It looked like judges were very eager to assert their independence, but where does this lead us? The accused might be reluctant to make an agreement with the prosecution".

Adeogun-Phillips continued that by going beyond the agreed sentence limits, the tribunal puts the prosecution in a bind.

"That in effect reduces our ability to negotiate and propose to the accused the range of sentence which he might expect in the event of pleading guilty", he said.

While welcoming the sentence given to Bisengimana, Rwanda's special representative to the ICTR, Aloys Mutabingwa was not happy that the count of genocide was being dropped by the prosecutor in his guilty-plea arrangements.

"Given that the ICTR targets only a few accused who masterminded the Rwanda genocide, we are strongly of the view that agreeing to exclude genocide in the guilty plea is extremely prejudicial", he said, urging the ICTR to "ensure that the guilty plea bargaining does not vitiate the trial of a crime that constitutes the core of its own establishment".

The tribunal, which has the plan to wind up its cases by 2008, has been counting on guilty pleas to speed up the trials of the remaining 15 people to be tried. 28 others are currently on trial.

The Rwandan Genocide: How It Was Prepared
Human Rights Watch
Briefing Paper - April 2006 No. 1

On the twelfth anniversary of the Rwandan genocide, we must honor the memory of the victims and think again of the pain and horror caused by the 1994 killing campaign. We must recall the suffering that followed the refusal of others in the world to heed the cries of those targeted for extermination.

Honoring the victims requires us also to continue investigating, documenting, and analyzing how the genocide was prepared and executed, so as to be better prepared to avert similar horrors in the future. As part of our continuing effort to bring to light the fullest information possible about the genocide, we publish this briefing paper, drawing upon some materials not previously used by researchers to show the planning and execution of the genocide.

[back to contents]

Liberia Truth and Reconciliation Commission

Push on to move Taylor trial to Hague
CNN / Associated Press
April 4, 2006

The international community is determined to move former Liberian President Charles Taylor's war crimes trial to the Netherlands, and will even ensure that his witnesses will be able to appear there, a U.N. official said Tuesday.

At his first court appearance a day earlier before the U.N.-backed war crimes court, Taylor had asked through his lawyer that his case remain in Sierra Leone, where he is accused of backing notoriously brutal rebels during a 1991-2002 civil war. (Full story)

Taylor, who has pleaded not guilty, argued that defense witnesses would find it difficult to travel to Europe.

No date for the start of his trial has been set. It could take his defense months to prepare, and the question of where the trial will be held also must be resolved. In addition, Taylor has not yet named a legal team. Monday, he was represented by a court-appointed lawyer who said Taylor -- who has in the past been accused of stealing from the Liberian treasury and trafficking in blood diamonds -- may ask for financial help to mount a defense.

Court officials have asked that the trial be moved to The Hague, Netherlands, because of fears the 58-year-old Taylor, once among the most feared warlords in the region, could still spark unrest in West Africa.

The U.N. Security Council is considering a draft resolution Dutch officials had requested before agreeing to the transfer. The Dutch also want a third country to agree to imprison Taylor if he is convicted and the Hague-based International Criminal Court agrees to host the trial.

Dutch authorities said the U.N. Security Council resolution won't be put to a vote until firm agreements have been reached on their other two conditions. His transfer to the Netherlands could be next week if Dutch conditions are met, a Foreign Ministry spokesman said.

Negotiations were underway with "several countries" to accept Taylor, said Foreign Ministry spokesman Herman van Gelderen. The ICC had no comment other than that it was still considering the request.

Under Dutch law, Taylor's family will be allowed to visit if he were detained in The Hague, as long as they are not wanted for alleged crimes and agree not to apply for asylum.

The trial would remain under the auspices of the independent, international Special Court sitting in Sierra Leone, with the ICC providing only the courtroom.

J. Victor Angelo, the top U.N. official in Sierra Leone, said the draft resolution, which he said could be adopted in the next few days, includes a clause "which means the witnesses and experts and anybody else required for a fair trial will be given all the facilities to be able to appear before the trial court."

Angelo did not say who would pay for travel to the court or address whether those subject to U.N. travel bans would be accommodated. Several of Taylor's relatives and close associates are under a U.N. travel ban.

"The international community and the Security Council seem to be very clear as far the message is concerned that Mr. Charles Taylor should be tried in the Netherlands," Angelo said at a news conference. "The point here ... is what would be the impact on security and stability in the sub-region if Mr. Charles Taylor is kept in Freetown?"

Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf has expressed fear that Taylor's supporters could use a trial in the region as an excuse to mount another insurgency in her country, one that could, like the war Taylor launched in Liberia in 1989, spill across the region.

Taylor is accused of backing the Sierra Leonean rebels in exchange for a share of Sierra Leone's diamond wealth, which he used to finance his ambitions in Liberia.

He pleaded not guilty Monday to 11 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity, including cutting off of limbs and other body parts; rape, abduction and sexual slavery; pillaging; and conscription of boys and girls. (Watch the former Liberian president in court -- 2:38)

Taylor's appearance -- three years after he was indicted and a week after he tried to escape being handed over to the court -- forced him "to face the people of Sierra Leone, against whom he is accused of committing heinous atrocities," the court's chief prosecutor, Desmond de Silva, said in a statement Monday.

De Silva added a precedent had been set: "Those who commit atrocities and violate international humanitarian law will be held accountable, no matter how rich, powerful or feared people may be -- no one is above the law."

Charles Taylor Faces War Crimes Court
Voice of America
by Judith Latham
April 7, 2006

Former Liberian president Charles Taylor pleaded not guilty to 11 counts of war crimes this week in Freetown, Sierra Leone. The former warlord-turned-president is accused of supporting the Revolutionary United Front rebels during Sierra Leone’s decade-long civil war. The rebel group was notorious for training child solders who went on to torture, rape, and in thousands of cases amputate the hands and feet of their civilian victims.

Even before his arrest in Nigeria last week, there was confusion about where Taylor would end up. Nigeria had lifted his asylum status and handed him over to Liberian authorities on the request of the new Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf. From there, Taylor was sent to a U.N.-backed Special Court in Freetown. But officials in both Liberia and Sierra Leone question whether any government in the region can provide the security needed to hold Taylor. They note that he once successfully escaped from a prison in the United States, and just last week he fled his guarded government compound in Nigeria before being apprehended near the border with Cameroon. President Johnson-Sirleaf has requested his transfer to The Hague.

Liberian journalist Frank Sainworla of Radio Veritas in Monrovia says Liberians have mixed feelings about whether Mr. Taylor should ultimately face trial in Freetown or The Hague. Speaking with host Judith Latham of VOA News Now’s International Press Club, Mr. Sainworla noted that Liberia has a young democracy and a very fragile security situation. And he said most Liberians feel the environment is not conducive to a free and fair trial. He added that, although many people in Sierra Leone are skeptical about the “process” of the war crimes court in The Hague, they are most concerned that Mr. Taylor “pay the price for the crimes he committed,” which will serve as a deterrent to others.

Sierra Leonean journalist Andrew Kromah, who recently returned to Freetown after conducting an opinion poll outside the capital, said Mr. Taylor’s trial has the overwhelming support of the public. They are satisfied that he is being brought to justice but concerned over issues of security.

Nigerian journalist Sunday Dare also suggested that, based on reactions following Mr. Taylor’s brief disappearance from Nigerian custody and his subsequent arrest, most Nigerians think the wily former Liberian president should be made to account for his crimes. And most important, the trial should serve as a “lesson for other leaders.” Mr. Dare added that Charles Taylor’s critics want the accused to pay “some kind of restitution.” He contrasted the current situation with that during the war in Rwanda.

The U.N. Security Council is expected to put forward a resolution on a change of venue for the trial to The Hague.

Liberians Debate Need for War Crimes Court
The Guardian / Associated Press
by Jonathan Paye-Layleh
April 7, 2006

The sight of their former president standing before an international war crimes court in neighboring Sierra Leone has revived a debate among Liberians about how best to confront their own history of atrocities.

Former President Charles Taylor pleaded not guilty earlier this week to charges that included murder, sexual slavery and sending children into combat, stemming from his alleged backing of rebels during Sierra Leone's 1991-2002 civil war.

He was accused of being paid for his support in diamonds, which he used to finance a civil war he had launched in Liberia in 1989.

Liberia's parliament had charged a Truth and Reconciliation Commission with investigating crimes committed not just during the war that Taylor started, but in the decade before that. Liberia had been unstable since food riots in 1979 and a coup in 1980.

Taylor was toppled in 2003, ending the worst of the violence. After 2 years in exile in Nigeria, he was handed over to the independent, international war crimes court in Sierra Leone. The court was established to try those believed to bear the greatest responsibility for civil war atrocities in that country.

The Liberian truth commission, following a South African model, will not have the power to try cases. Its mandate is to expose past horrors, but also to promote reconciliation. Some Liberians have long said that is not enough in the country that sparked crises across West Africa.

``We need to have the war crimes court here so that people that have committed the worst atrocities here can face justice,'' said Joseph Cornomia, a member of parliament and longtime Taylor critic.

``The war crimes court in Sierra Leone is hauling people who committed crimes in different countries to go there,'' Cornomia said in an interview. ``We should have our own here.''

But Sekou Conneh, who led a rebellion against Taylor, said a Liberian war crimes court would create too many divisions.

``If there is a war crimes court, there won't be peace in the country, because nearly 90 percent of the population was involved in the war,'' Conneh said. ``We should be talking about peace and reconciliation. If we start to dig under those things that happened, we will go back'' to instability.

For now, the government of President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf was remaining neutral on the question of a war crimes court.

``People have the right to debate these issues. We are listening to the debate. But we as government do not have a position,'' Information Minister Johnny McClain said. But he reiterated his government's support for the truth commission.

The commission was established under the terms of a peace agreement that also saw Taylor leave the country.

James Dempster Brown, a prominent human rights activist, said criminal proceedings also were needed to uncover the truth in Liberia.

``There were many massacres that occurred in Liberia,'' he said. ``I believe that if the court is established, people will come forward and answer questions.''

The seven-member truth commission's mandate is to ``investigate gross human rights violations and violations of international laws, as well as abuses that occurred during the (1979-2003) war, including massacres, sexual violations, murders, extra-judicial killings and economic crimes,'' according to the act that created it. It was expected to start hearings in June.

At the ceremony last month to inaugurate the commission, Sirleaf said it was an opportunity ``to define the past on our behalf in terms that are seen and believed to be fair and balanced, and bring forth a unifying narrative on which our nation's rebuilding and renewal processes can be more securely anchored.''

In 1979, the government increased the price of rice - a staple food crop in a deeply impoverished nation - sparking riots in which dozens were killed by security forces.

The next year, President William Tolbert was ousted by Master Sgt. Samuel Doe, who ordered Liberia's Cabinet members tied to poles on a Monrovia beach and executed. Sirleaf, then finance minister, was jailed but escaped death.

The 1980 coup marked the start of nearly 25 years of instability from which the country founded by freed American slaves in 1847 is struggling to recover.

Rebels led by Taylor invaded in 1989, plunging the country into a civil war that led to the deaths of 200,000 people.

Taylor won a disputed election in 1997. Many former allies took up arms against him in 2000 and attacked Monrovia in 2003. His flight to Nigeria that year finally brought calm.

Keep the Peace or Seek Swift Justice?
Christian Science Monitor
by Ibrahim A. Gambari
April 12, 2006

A too quick trial for Charles Taylor could trigger more violence in Liberia.

The sight last week of former Liberian warlord Charles Taylor, handcuffed at a war-crimes court backed by the United Nations, has sent a powerful message around the world that tyrants and despots are not beyond the reach of law.

Mr. Taylor deserves to be tried and punished for the horrific cycles of violence he unleashed and fomented - not only in Liberia but around West Africa. His victims have every right to justice.

Yet in viewing this case through only this moral prism, observers may miss some of the more complex questions it represents. Not only for Liberia, but for war-scarred nations elsewhere who have struggled to come to grips with the violent legacy of their pasts while trying at the same time to build peaceful futures.

Leaders of many countries undergoing this difficult transition have questioned the wisdom of pushing too hard, too fast on the button of justice. They have raised legitimate concerns, in many cases, that trials or their prospect will risk reviving hatreds or driving warring parties away from the peace table.

For Liberia's courageous new president, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, seeking Taylor's extradition was an excruciating call. His exile in Nigeria was the basis of the peace deal that ended Liberia's civil war in 2003. His coming trial - whether in Sierra Leone or in The Hague - is raising jitters even as it elicits praise.

Some political observers have warned of a potential violent reaction from Taylor's supporters that might plunge Liberia and its neighborhood back into conflict. Only three years after the end of Liberia's civil war, it would be the last thing this poor and beleaguered nation needs.

So which should take precedent, peace or justice? And must one come at the expense of the other? Liberia is hardly alone around the world as a war-riven nation where the answers to these questions are playing out.

• The governments of East Timor and Indonesia, for example, have resisted a proposed international trial for the 1999 killings that marred the former's push for independence. Prosecutions would rekindle animosities, they've argued, threatening progress in forging reconciliation.

• In Colombia, a government peace offer to paramilitary fighters seeks to remove from that country's conflict one of its deadliest forces. But human rights officials have objected to the plan if it means granting impunity to the paramilitaries for their atrocities against civilians.

• In Afghanistan there have been calls for the warlords to be tried, but also warnings that this might undermine a fragile peace. Concerns were also expressed by some in Iraq, that the trial of Saddam Hussein would fuel sectarian tensions.

Though it has tried to help countries make the best choices in these circumstances, the international community has itself been conflicted. Those working in the diplomatic arena to bring warring parties into political agreements have clashed at times with human rights officials wary of any deals that would trade impunity for peace.

Helping to sharpen the apparent contradictions has been the recent emergence of new international institutions with mandates to bring war criminals to justice. These include the International Criminal Court and several special tribunals such as the one in Sierra Leone that indicted Charles Taylor and the UN court at The Hague where Slobodon Milosevic spent his final days.

Human rights organizations applauded when the ICC issued its first indictments last year against the Lord's Resistance Army, a brutal rebel group in northern Uganda. However, those working to bring the insurgents into peace talks cautioned that the warrants might scuttle their chances.

While the agendas of peace and justice have come into conflict in many cases, the choices may not be as stark as they seem.

Human rights advocates increasingly acknowledge that justice need not be applied bluntly, like a sledgehammer, when doing so might imperil a fragile transition to peace or democracy.

Under an evolving doctrine of "transitional justice," prosecutions can be legitimately sequenced in over time, as peace begins to set down its roots. In other words, justice may be delayed for a limited time - provided it is not denied. Trials, moreover, are not viewed as the only answer, but one very important item on a broader menu of measures to deal with the past. These include truth commissions, reparations programs, and official proclamations of responsibility and remorse for abuses.

As a longtime diplomat and current head of the UN's peacemaking department, I can attest that views are also evolving within the diplomatic community. There is a growing realization that impunity is not only morally and politically unacceptable, but also proves to be a shaky foundation on which to build peace and democracy. UN peace envoys, for example, now operate under instructions to oppose agreements that would establish amnesties for genocide, war crimes, or crimes against humanity.

Though nobody can guarantee that future warlords and dictators will not find a way to slip through the hands of justice, I believe the space for such arrangements - both locally and internationally - is slowly and surely beginning to close.

The next big test is now before us in Liberia, whose president deserves unwavering support in the days ahead, now that she has taken the first bold step.

• Ibrahim A. Gambari is the United Nations under-secretary-general for political affairs.

Liberia: Youths petition for war crimes court
Reuters
IRIN
April 11, 2006

With one-time rebel leader and former Liberian president Charles Taylor before a war crimes court in neighbouring Sierra Leone some Liberian youths have begun petitioning their government to set up their own tribunal.

Rebel fighters, many of them children and youths high on drugs and clad in women's wigs and underwear, killed, raped and maimed during 14 years of on-off civil war that ended when Taylor quit power and took exile in August 2003.

But Taylor's days in a seafront mansion courtesy of the Nigerian government abruptly came to an end last month after a rapid succession of developments that culminated with UN peacekeepers handing a cuffed Taylor over to the UN-backed Special Court in Sierra Leone.

Back in Liberia there is an elected government, security is guaranteed by a 15,000-strong UN peacekeeping force and donors are stumping up millions of dollars to rebuild the war-battered country.

And part of that rebuilding must include a war crimes court, say youth groups who want to see the perpetrators of crimes including summary executions, massacres, amputations and rape brought to justice.

"Justice for the people of Liberia can no longer be delayed or denied. The time has come to establish an international criminal tribunal for Liberia," said the Forum for the Establishment of a War Crimes court in Liberia (FEWCCIL) on its petition which they say has received 10,000 signatures of support.

The FEWCCIL last week took the matter to the 94-members of Liberia's newly installed elected government.

"In the interests of genuine lasting peace and reconciliation we call upon this august body to pass an act that establishes the legal framework for the creation of a Special War Crimes Tribunal for Liberia," the FEWCCIL told parliament.

A second group, the Confederation of Monrovia Youth (CMY) told legislatures such a court would end Liberia's culture of impunity.

"Bringing the perpetrators of gruesome atrocities to court would serve as a deterrent to others and end the culture of impunity that exists in this country," the CMY said.

A peace deal thrashed out in the run up to Taylor's 2003 departure called for the establishment of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission but Taylor's henchmen and rebel leaders who signed the deal fell short of agreeing to the establishment of a war crimes court.

Liberia's Truth and Reconciliation Commission was officially launched in late February and is mandated to "investigate gross human rights violations and war crimes, including massacres, sexual violence, murder, extra-judicial killings and economic crimes (such as the exploitation of national or public resources to perpetuate the armed conflict)," reads the June 2005 law ratifying the Commission.

The Commission, headed by Liberian human rights activist Jerome Verdier, will begin hearings in July to make a public record of atrocities committed as far back as 1979 – ten years prior to the start of the civil war. Based on their investigations, the Commission cannot try alleged offenders but has the power to recommend cases for prosecution.

Verdier dismissed the calls for a Liberian war crimes court, saying that the calls were being made by people "not well informed of the trend in the peace process."

Talk of a war crimes court has rung alarm bells for others. Sekou Conneh, leader of the largest rebel group – the Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD) – in the final years of the civil war, denounced the move telling IRIN that "digging up old wounds" would do more harm than good.

"Nearly everyone in this country is guilty of war crimes and we strongly believe that a [war crimes] court would not be in line with restoring peace in Liberia. Frankly, it is not necessary here," said Conneh who also ran unsuccessfully as a presidential candidate in the first round of presidential elections last year.

Pro-Taylor fighters agree with their former enemies that a war crimes court is not a good idea, said one former pro-government militia commander who still goes by his war name of "General Zig-Zag".

Most of the regular fighters that IRIN spoke with said that they had already asked for forgiveness from their fellow Liberians making a war crimes court redundant.

"After the war some of us went to our towns and villages and begged for pardon. Our people welcomed us and we are all living together in harmony – but a court would divide us and the people," said Andrew Sway, a former child soldier