War Crimes Prosecution Watch is a bi-weekly e-newsletter that compiles official documents and articles from major news sources detailing and analyzing salient issues pertaining to the investigation and prosecution of war crimes throughout the world. To subscribe, please email warcrimeswatch@pilpg.org and type "subscribe" in the subject line.
Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia for the Prosecution of Crimes Committed during the Period of Democratic Kampuchea (ECCC)
The Official Website of the Khmer Rouge Trial Task Force
Khmer Rouge tribunal prosecutors to start work next month
Findlaw
June 15, 2006
Cambodia-Judges for the long-awaited Khmer Rouge tribunal will be sworn in next month and prosecutors will start work for trials expected to start in 2007, a government official said Friday.
A swearing-in ceremony will be held July 3 and prosecutors will be able to start "the formal launching of judicial work" on July 10, Deputy Prime Minister Sok An, head of the government task force for the tribunal, said in a statement.
Cambodia and the United Nations agreed in 2003 to set up a U.N.-assisted tribunal to prosecute surviving Khmer Rouge leaders over the deaths of about 1.7 million people during the regime's 1975-79 rule.
Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot died in 1998. The ultra-communist movement collapsed a year later, but none of its top leaders has been brought to justice. Many still live and move freely in Cambodia.
Drawn-out negotiations and funding problems led some critics to suggest that Prime Minister Hun Sen's government was intentionally stalling to avoid embarrassing Khmer Rouge members who had become government backers.
Many fear that aging Khmer Rouge leaders may die before they can stand trial for crimes against humanity and genocide.
Trials are expected to start in 2007, though no date has been set.
A U.N.-Cambodia agreement set a US$56.3 million (€44.6 million) budget for the tribunal, with the world body covering US$43 million (€34 million).
Cambodia agreed to pay US$13.3 million (€54 million) of the cost, but has since asked foreign donors to finance US$9.6 million (€7.6 million) of its share.
Donors allocated US$6.3 million (€5 million) toward Cambodia's portion at a ceremony Thursday.
The U.N. development agency in Cambodia will manage the money, according to UNDP head Douglas Gardner.
Sok An said Cambodia still lacks US$4.9 million (€3.89 million) for the trial, and urged donors to help.
He said newly received funds will go toward upgrading the tribunal's facilities, installing air conditioning in the court building, and constructing a detention center and a safe house for witnesses
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Central African Republic (ICC)
Official Website of the International Criminal Court
ICC Public Documents - Situation in the Central African Republic
Central African Republic: World Court Probes Ex-Leader
AllAfrica.com - Institute for War and Peace Reporting
by Ayesha Kajee
June 9, 2006
After years of being overshadowed by its neighbours, the Central African Republic, ravaged by decades of civil strife, and among the world's poorest nations, looks set to win much-needed attention as the focus of a high-profile prosecution at the International Criminal Court, ICC.
With Chad on its northern border, Sudan's Darfur region as its north-eastern neighbour and the war-torn Democratic Republic of the Congo, DRC to the south, the Central African Republic, CAR, is caught between several regional conflicts. CAR has suffered spill-over from instability in these neighbours, not least because its own population shares blood ties and tribal loyalties with combatants in these conflicts.
The remote northern forests of this former French colony are seething with armed raiders and rebel groups in one of the world's least reported conflict situations. While some are just criminal looters, there are pro-government militias and also rebels opposed to CAR president Francois Bozize. Some may also have links to insurgents seeking to depose Chad's president Idriss Deby, a Bozize ally.
As always, the major losers are the civilian population who have been raided, maimed and killed in attacks, with many fleeing their homes and entering southern Chad as refugees. While the global spotlight is trained on internally displaced persons, IDPs, in Darfur, the humanitarian tragedy of thousands of refugees and IDPs in southern Chad and northern CAR is largely being ignored.
Charles Dei, regional representative of the United Nations' World Food Programme, said refugees are surviving on wild fruits and roots and many had not received a single kilogramme of food from the international community.
"In CAR we always struggle to have our voice heard amid all the other competing humanitarian needs, but these people are living in desperate conditions and for this reason we are trying to shout louder than ever on their behalf," said Dei.
Recent events could signal the beginning of hope for victims of CAR's continuing wars. Last January, the ICC in The Hague received a referral from the Bozize government to investigate crimes committed in CAR since 2002.
Although ICC officials held meetings with government and civil society representatives late last year, the case is still in the pre-investigative phase. But progress may be accelerated by an April 2006 ruling from CAR's highest court of appeal, which found that the national courts were not competent to pursue a successful prosecution of Bozize's predecessor as president, Ange-Felix Patasse and his followers.
The court therefore referred the matter to the ICC in April 2006, ruling that "recourse to international cooperation is the only means to prevent impunity in this case". The ICC, it said, "offers a possibility to find and punish the perpetrators of the most serious crimes... in the place of states which are incapable of carrying out effective investigations and prosecutions".
Soon after Bozize came to power in a March 2003 coup which ousted Patasse, his administration issued international arrest warrants against Patasse and four of his allies including Chadian militia leader Abdoulaye Miskine and Jean-Pierre Bemba, who at the time of the alleged crimes was a rebel leader in DRC, but has since become that country's vice-president. Both Bemba and Miskina brought their troops to Patasse's aid as he struggled to counter a rebellion which eventually resulted in the successful coup.
The other accused are a French policeman and a Patasse aide.
To date, the criminal prosecution system in CAR has been powerless to arrest any of the five as they are all outside the country.
"The Central African Republic finds itself unable to locate the accused and have them arrested," said David Gamou, a spokesman for the justice ministry. Patasse is in exile in Togo while Bemba is gearing up to contest the presidential election, to be held alongside a landmark parliamentary ballot in DRC on July 30.
"Bemba cannot be judged by our national courts; only the ICC with its reputation and resources can do that," said Gamou.
Bemba's presidential ambitions in the Congo may form part of the reason why the ICC has been slow to act. The fragile peace in the country would be shored up if multi-party elections go ahead in July. An attempt to arrest Bemba prior to the vote could seriously compromise the hard-won and still precarious stability both in the country and in the region as a whole.
Advocates of a trial for Patasse, Miskine and Bemba include human rights groups and diplomats who accuse them of individual and collective culpability for a series of war crimes and crimes against humanity, including widespread systematic rape and murder committed in 2002 and 2003.
The Paris-based International Federation for Human Rights, FIDH, says it has evidence of mass graves and witness testimony to atrocities. As early as February 2003, FIDH filed an ICC complaint against Bemba and Patasse, while the latter was still head of state.
Civilians in CAR are still dogged by fear. Participants in a September 2005 seminar convened to discuss reparations for the victims of atrocities were subjected to anonymous death threats and warned not to help FIDH or other non-government groups gather evidence for the ICC.
FIDH has been critical of the Bozize regime, as well, alleging grave human rights violations in the "transition period" that led to elections in 2005, as well as mismanagement and fraud in the elections themselves.
Earlier this year, the Union of Central African Journalists asked the ICC to investigate allegations that President Bozize committed genocide against the population in northern CAR who had supported the former regime.
The CAR case before the world court, and the allegations and counter-allegations against the Patasse and Bozize camps, accentuates a harsh reality \u2013 that the ICC could be vulnerable to political machinations in pursuit of international justice. If it fails to ward off this risk, the administration of justice could well prove a haphazard process that is skewed in favour of those in power.
But the CAR case also highlights a welcome trend, where sitting and past heads of state are no longer immune from the reach of the law.
Yugoslavia's Slobodan Milosevic and more recently Liberia's Charles Taylor were prosecuted at country-specific, impermanent courts. If the ICC decides to follow through on the CAR investigation, history may be made as the four-year-old world judicial body puts a former head of state in the dock for the first time.
Ayesha Kajee is a researcher at the South African Institute of International Affairs; her areas of expertise include the International Criminal Court.
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Democratic Republic of the Congo (ICC)
Official Website of the International Criminal Court
ICC Public Documents - Situation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo
A Global Web of Justice is Up and Running
International Herald Tribune
by
Luis Moreno-Ocampo
June 19, 2006
Luis Moreno-Ocampo, chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, describes the relative success of three recent ICC investigations: war crimes in the Congo, the Lord's Resistance Army killings in northern Uganda, and the genocidal events in Darfur, Sudan. The ICC, which carries no allegiance to any one country, intervenes in domestic criminal adjudication only when national resources are depleted and the government requests international aid. The court draws much support from its network of 100 nations and non-government groups dedicated to justice and fighting atrocities. The difficulties of maintaining such a global system without a global state are many, but through national cooperation, the ICC has managed to address some of the world's greater problems of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. – YaleGlobal
THE HAGUE Six children walked down a road in the region of Ituri, in Congo. They were on their way to school when a jeep packed with militiamen sped in front of them. Fighters bearing AK-47s ordered the terrified children into the jeep. They were transported to military training camps and forced to learn to fire machine guns. Three weeks later, the children were in the field, killing and being killed.
Thomas Lubanga, leader of one of Congo's most dangerous militias, allegedly orchestrated crimes like the one described above. In March, the judges of the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant charging Lubanga with conscripting children under 15 as soldiers. A few days later, Lubanga was transferred from Congo to a prison in The Hague.
Lubanga's transfer hints at the promise of a permanent international criminal court rooted in global cooperation. The Nuremberg war crimes trial and the ad hoc tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, paved the way, testing the viability of a criminal justice system without a state apparatus. But the ICC's predecessors were each limited in scope to a particular territory. The ICC's distinct challenge is to function within a worldwide criminal justice system without a world state.
The Rome Statute establishing the International Criminal Court created a remarkable innovation: an international justice network. The treaty has galvanized 100 countries, international organizations, nongovernmental organizations and other partners committed to ending impunity for genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes.
Countries have the primary responsibility to prevent and punish atrocities in their own territories and to cooperate with the ICC when it decides to take a case. Intervention by the ICC must be exceptional - it will only step in when states fail to genuinely act.
Supported by an evolving network of cooperation, the ICC is investigating three of the world's gravest situations. The Congo case is an early indication of the potential of the Rome system, while our other two pending cases, Uganda and Darfur, reveal emerging challenges.
Congo referred its own case to the ICC, demonstrating its commitment to cooperating with the court's activities. Lubanga's transfer was the direct result of coordination between the court, the Congolese government, international organizations and ICC member states.
Like Congo, the government of Uganda requested ICC intervention. With the cooperation of the people and government, our team investigated thousands of crimes in just nine months. We expect our evidence to show that Joseph Kony and four senior commanders of a militia, the Lord's Resistance Army, perpetrated horrific attacks against people of northern Uganda. For 20 years, the LRA has abducted children from their homes and schools, forcing boys to kill and compelling girls to kill and to serve as sex slaves.
The arrest warrants against the LRA leadership, which the ICC judges issued in July 2005, have already had an impact. Sudan, which had harbored the LRA in the past, has voluntarily agreed to execute the warrants. Because of escalating international and regional pressure, the LRA commanders have been forced to flee their safe havens. LRA attacks in northern Uganda have declined dramatically as a result.
But the LRA is now in northern Congo, endangering people in the region. Kony recently attempted to negotiate a political deal. In the past, he has used negotiations to buy time and regroup. To do justice and re-establish security in the region, the justice network has to arrest the LRA commanders.
Our third investigation, Darfur, was initiated as the direct result of the active support of international experts, NGOs and states. After the independent Commission of Inquiry submitted its report to the United Nations, the Security Council passed a resolution referring the Darfur situation to the ICC.
It is currently impossible to protect witnesses, so our investigators are compiling statements in almost a dozen countries other than Sudan. A network of cooperation enables this investigation to advance under the worst of operating conditions. But, ultimately, delivering justice in Darfur necessitates full cooperation by Sudan.
The global impact of the Rome Statute is becoming apparent. Already national armies are adjusting their procedures. Colombian paramilitaries have referred to the ICC as one reason to demobilize. Prosecutors in the Netherlands have indicted a Dutch businessman for fueling the conflict in Liberia, citing the ICC as the impetus. Lubanga's counterparts fear a fate similar to his.
Three years ago, 18 judges and I converged from the five continents and entered a nascent court in The Hague. Today the Rome system is in motion.
Luis Moreno-Ocampo is chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court.
DR Congo: Children suffer abuses while perpetrators largely enjoy impunity – Annan
Scoop (Independent News, New Zealand)
June 21, 2006
Grave rights abuses against children continue largely with impunity in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan says in a new report, calling for stepped-up measures to protect young Congolese at risk of being killed, maimed, recruited in armed forces and groups, abducted, and subject to sexual violence.
In a report to the Security Council, Mr. Annan documents these abuses in Katanga, Ituri and North Kivu Provinces, and says among those engaged in the violations are Mai-Mai groups, Rwandan elements with close links to the Forces démocratiques de libération du Rwanda (FDLR) but not under FDLR command, members of Congolese security forces and dissident or nonaligned groups that have refused to join the army integration process and disarmament, demobilization and reintegration including militia groups such as the coalition of the Mouvement révolutionnaire congolais (MRC).
The report does point to some progress thanks to joint national and international efforts that have resulted in “great strides in the fight against impunity for those who recruit and use children.” The report cites the case of Thomas Lubanga Dyilo, a former leader of the Union des patriotes congolais active in Ituri Province, who was handed over to the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, accused of the war crime of recruitment and use of children.
The report documents in detail grave rights abuses against children, including incidents when they were killed during clashes by armed groups. It also warns that upcoming polls could exacerbate the plight of these youngsters. “As elections approach, children are at risk of being utilized for political purposes and thus exposed to related violence,” the Secretary-General warns.
Attacks on schools and hospitals have compounded the already abysmal humanitarian conditions faced by children in the DRC, where around half are excluded from health services and millions out of school.
The Secretary-General strongly urges the release of all children present in the DRC armed forces and armed groups operating in the country. He calls on the Government to train and instruct security forces to prevent any excessive or illegal use of force that may result in arbitrary killings or other serious violations against children.
“I also call on the Government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and armed groups to fully respect applicable international law concerning the protection of schools. Attacks on schools and the occupation of school premises, with special attention to affected schools in Katanga Province, must cease without delay,” Mr. Annan writes.
He also encourages the Government and international donors to include child protection within security sector reform efforts.
Focus falls on The Hague court as it makes debut
Financial Times
by Ian Bickerton in Amsterdam and Nikki Tait
June 23,2006
A flurry of activity has surrounded the International Criminal Court, the world’s newest court, this week.
On Friday, Thomas Lubanga Dyilo, the Congolese militia leader and first person to go on trial at the ICC for war crimes, made a preliminary pre-trial appearance at its newly-built courtrooms in The Hague.
Meanwhile, on Tuesday, Charles Taylor, the former Liberian president, flew into Rotterdam airport aboard a United Nations-chartered aircraft. He was transferred to a detention centre at Scheveningen, a seaside resort just outside the Dutch seat of government.
Unlike Mr Lubanga, Mr Taylor is set to be tried by the UN-backed “ Special Court” for Sierra Leone – the ad hoc institution set up four years ago to prosecute human rights abuses committed during the country’s 1991-2002 armed conflict. But it is hiring the ICC’s new facilities - both courtroom and detention – because of concerns by Sierre Leone officials about “the stability in the region should Mr Taylor be tried in [the capital] Freetown”.
While neither trial is set to begin for months, the two cases are a reminder that the ICC, constituted four years ago, is becoming a functioning institution. The spotlight shone on its procedures is likely to intensify.
Already, there have been efforts to monitor and assess the new court’s operations. Two months ago, for example, the first of periodic reports by the International Bar Association suggested that there were “some issues with regard to equality of arms”, in terms of facilities and resources available to defence counsel, which needed to be addressed. More clarity about the respective roles taken by the different parts of the court, for instance the prosecutor’s office and the pre-trial chamber during ICC investigations might also be desirable, it added.
In particular, defence lawyers in the case of Mr Lubanga, charged over crimes allegedly committed in the north-east of the Democratic Republic of Congo, appeared to have difficulty accessing court buildings and finding secure facilities where they could leave documents, the IBA reported. They were also worried about dealing unassisted with a large volume of documentary work in the relatively tight timescales set for certain pre-trial filings.
Commenting on these problems, the IBA noted that “the court has only had to deal with a few defence counsel to date and is still establishing procedure”. Nevertheless, it urged speedy remedial action.
Another area under scrutiny is the detention facilities – probably of as much immediate concern to Mr Taylor as the court processes. In the months before his trial, while prosecutors prepare their case and defence lawyers wade through 32,000 pages of evidence and testimony, he is occupying a single cell, one of 12 in the self-contained wing of the detention centre under ICC charge.
Detainees are permitted to spend as much time as possible outside their cells, “to maximise the time they spend with other people, to keep their minds active”, according to Terry Jackson, ICC chief custody officer. Mr Taylor will have access to the centre’s small gym, or use of an outside yard for exercise.
A separate wing houses cells for defendants facing trial by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, another “ad hoc” UN-backed tribunal. It was there that Slobodan Milosevic, the former Serbian president, died in March, a week after the suicide of Milan Babic, another Serbian leader. In 1998, war crimes suspect Slavko Dokmanovic also hanged himself in his cell.
While an independent inquest concluded Mr Milosevic died of natural causes and ruled out any suggestion of criminal conduct, Mr Taylor’s supporters have been quick to voice concern about the detention centre.
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Darfur, Sudan (ICC)
Official Website of the International Criminal Court
ICC Public Documents - Situation in Darfur, Sudan
International court prosecutor tells UN of significant evidence on crimes in Darfur
UN News Centre
June 14, 2006
Given the scale of killings, rape, looting and destruction of villages in Darfur, Sudan, the Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) said today he anticipates the prosecution of a sequence of cases, rather than a single case, of possible war crimes in the conflict between the Khartoum Government, allied militia and rebels.
“Identifying those persons with the greatest responsibility for the most serious crimes in Darfur is a key challenge for the investigation,” Luis Moreno-Ocampo said as he presented his latest report to the Security Council this afternoon. “The complexity of the conflict in Darfur exacerbates this challenge, given that it involves multiple parties, varying over time throughout the different states and localities.”
The Council referred the matter, along with the names of 51 suspected perpetrators, to the ICC in March 2005, after a UN inquiry into whether genocide occurred in Darfur found the Government responsible for crimes under international law and strongly recommended referring the dossier to the ICC.
The probe also found credible evidence that rebel forces were responsible for possible war crimes, including murder of civilians and pillage.
So far, Mr. Moreno-Ocampo said, the Office of the Prosecutor (OTP) has been collecting evidence on the ground and from certain countries, but has been hampered by the security situation in Darfur itself.
According to the report, the office has been able to document, however, thousands of alleged direct killings of civilians, including “a significant number of large scale massacres, with hundreds of victims in each incident,” targeting specific ethnic groups.
“In most of the incidents where the OTP has collected evidence there are eye-witness accounts that the perpetrators made statements reinforcing the targeted nature of the attacks, such as ‘we will kill all the black’ and ‘we will drive you out of this land.’”
There was also significant substantiation of thousands of civilians dying as a result of displacement and other hardships due to the conflict, as well as registration of hundreds of alleged cases of rape.
Throughout his report, the prosecutor stressed the need for cooperation in order to ensure accountability not only for past crimes, but for present crimes within the Court’s jurisdiction that continued to affect the displaced populations in Darfur.
“Our justice efforts should contribute to their protection and to the prevention of further crimes. We need information on groups that continue to attack them or to impede their access to humanitarian assistance,” Mr. Moreno-Ocampo told the Security Council, calling on the UN body to help his Office with obtaining that and other types of information regarding the investigation of the situation in Darfur.
Sudan rejects 'colonial' troops
BBC
June 20, 2006
Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir has opposed the deployment of international troops in his country, saying Sudan would not be "re-colonised".
The UN is considering sending peacekeepers to Sudan's Darfur region to supplement African Union troops.
Conflict in Darfur between rebels and pro-government forces has killed about 300,000 people in three years.
A report by the International Crisis Group on Monday said a UN peace force was urgently needed in Darfur.
But Mr Bashir said there would be no such force in Sudan, according to reports in state media.
"I swear that there will not be any international military intervention in Darfur as long as I am in power," Mr Bashir was quoted as telling a meeting of his ruling National Congress late on Monday.
" Sudan, which was the first country south of the Sahara to gain independence, cannot now be the first country to be re-colonised," he said.
Peace plan 'flaws'
South African President Thabo Mbeki is currently in Sudan on a one-day visit, with peace moves in Darfur on the agenda.
The ICG warned that the current peace agreement over Darfur had little chance of bringing stability "unless the parties comply strictly and the international community acts decisively to support the peacekeeping mission".
The peace plan was signed by the government and one rebel faction in Nigeria in May.
"There is a very real danger that the international community, in its eagerness to get a deal, has brokered one that is structurally weak," the ICG report said.
"The document has serious flaws, and two of the three rebel delegations did not accept it," it added.
BBC world affairs correspondent Mark Doyle says Mr Mbeki will be told that the current peace agreement, which was pushed through by African and western mediators, may have made the situation worse rather than better.
The rebel movement which signed the peace agreement is from the minority Zaghawa group, while the movement representing Darfur's majority Fur group did not take part, our correspondent says.
The AU-brokered deal has failed to end the violence in Darfur, where more than 2m million people have fled their homes.
The 7,000-strong AU force in Darfur, which operates with th approval of the Sudanese government, has been hampered by a lack of funding and resources.
Darfur insecurity hampering relief work - UN
Sudan Tribune
June 20, 2006
Clashes among rebel groups and armed militias in the western Sudanese region of Darfur has severely limited humanitarian access to some 250,000 civilians affected by the conflict there, a senior United Nations official said on Monday.
"We are trying to deal with it by negotiation with the parties involved," Manuel Aranda da Silva, UN humanitarian coordinator and deputy special representative of the Secretary-General in Sudan, told reporters in Khartoum. "Most of the UN agencies and NGOs have been obliged to pull out from that region."
The UN had been unable to reach vulnerable people in West Darfur State due to the security problems, da Silva said. Since the signing of a 5 May peace agreement between the Sudan government and one faction of the rebel Sudan Liberation Army led by Minni Minnawi, the conflict had been characterised by small but violent clashes between Minnawi’s faction and another led by Abdelwahid Mohamed al-Nur.
Al-Nur, who refused to sign the agreement, has substantial popular support in the region, particularly among the Fur - the largest ethnic group. He has demanded better representation in the central government and more money than the US$30 million the Sudan government has earmarked for some three million people affected by the three-year conflict.
Da Silva observed that large-scale attacks on civilians by the Sudanese government have ceased since the signing of the agreement. "It is all quiet in Darfur in the last three weeks between the parties who signed the agreement," he said.
Meanwhile, UN staff have expressed concern about an apparent aid blockade in the troubled eastern region. In recent days, aid workers had been refused access to the area, despite formal agreements with the Sudanese government allowing them to work in the region, da Silva said.
"Since the beginning of last week, we have been denied access to visit refugee camps," he said. "This is a very strange development. If it is not solved very soon, we are going to have enormous problems in these refugee camps in the east."
It was not immediately possible to get a comment from Sudanese government officials.
Rebels in Sudan’s east have complained that the impoverished region remains underdeveloped due to neglect by the central government. A similar grievance sparked the Darfur rebellion, in which rebels, complaining about political and economic marginalisation, attacked government positions in the region.
The Sudan government has been accused of arming Arab militias to crush the rebellion in Darfur, leading to a scorched-earth campaign of rape and murder - a charge it denies. The UN has called Darfur the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, while the United States has defined it as genocide.
U.N., African Union Warn of Darfur Fights
The Washington Post
by Alfred de Montesquiou
June 22, 2006
The 7,000-strong African Union peacekeeping force in Darfur requires urgent and effective support from the United Nations to prevent a new round of fighting later this year, AU and U.N. officials said Thursday.
"There is a risk of major violence," the U.N. peacekeeping chief, Jean-Marie Guehenno, said at the end of a two-week assessment mission to Sudan's western Darfur region. "The risk of fragmentation, of a new cycle of violence, after the rainy season is quite real, very real."
Guehenno, and the African Union's peace commissioner, Said Djinnit, were mandated by the U.N. Security Council to study the prospects for replacing the AU peacekeeping mission in Darfur by a larger, better equipped UN force. They held hundreds of meetings in the western Sudan region.
The AU troops in Darfur have been unable to halt the killing and looting that has left about 200,000 people dead and displaced another 2 million since the conflict began 2003.
The AU force needs "a more robust mandate, but also more robust support from the United Nations," Djinnit said at a news conference with Guehenno.
The one rebel leader in Darfur who signed a May 5 peace accord, Minni Minnawi, warned last week that the agreement will collapse if U.N. peacekeepers are not deployed to implement it.
But Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir has ruled out any U.N. deployment in Darfur. He said Tuesday he would personally lead the "resistance" if U.N. troops came to Darfur, accusing them of being neo-colonialists.
"The U.N. is not in the business of colonizing any country," Guehenno said Thursday.
The Security Council has said it hopes to see the U.N. force take over from the AU by early 2007, but Guehenno stressed the peacekeepers would not come to Darfur without Khartoum's approval.
"As long as the government of Sudan does not accept a (U.N.) mission, there will not be one. It's as simple as that," he said.
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said Thursday he hoped al-Bashir would change his mind.
"The talks continue, and I hope ultimately we will be able to convince them to accept a U.N. force," Annan said in Geneva.
Guehenno said the immediate priority was to support the AU troops in Darfur.
"The idea of U.N. peacekeepers supporting an African Union mission would be something that has never been done before," he said.
The May 5 peace agreement had created "a window of opportunity for peace" in Darfur, but more needed to be done, Guehenno said.
While clashes between pro-government forces and rebels have largely ceased since the May 5 agreement, fighting among the rebel factions has increased, he said.
There have also been clashes between members of rival tribes, the Fur and Zaghawa, in North Darfur, the U.N. said in a statement Thursday.
Minnawi, the commander of the rebel Sudan Liberation Movement who signed the accord, comes from the Zaghawa. The leader of a breakaway faction of the SLM, Abdelwahid Elnur, comes from the Fur tribe and rejected the agreement.
Annan plans to see Sudan president on Darfur force
Reuters
by
Evelyn Leopold
June 23, 2006
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said on Friday he would try again to persuade Sudan's president to accept a U.N. peacekeeping force in Darfur when they meet at an African Union summit in Gambia next week.
President Omar Hassan al-Bashir said on Tuesday that U.N. troops were out of the question, suggested there was a "colonial" agenda behind such demands and accused Jewish organizations of pushing for their deployment.
Annan said he had spoken to Bashir by telephone and received the same negative response given to Jean-Marie Guehenno, the head of U.N. peacekeeping, on the need for a force in Sudan's arid western region where at least 200,000 people have died from fighting, hunger and disease and 2.3 million have been uprooted.
"For the moment he said 'no,'" Annan told reporters. "He did say it to Mr. Guehenno, and I got the same message, but we have agreed to continue the dialogue, and also to meet in Banjul," the capital of Gambia in West Africa where the AU is holding a July 1-2 summit.
"I hope we will be able to pursue the discussion, not only with me, but with other African leaders," Annan said. "I have tried to get across the message that we are coming in to help the Sudanese authorities and the people of Sudan, the people in Darfur, and quite honestly, if they had been protected, the question of U.N. deployment would not be necessary."
Some 7,000 African Union soldiers, short of money and troops, are trying to protect the homeless in Darfur and to monitor a faltering ceasefire between rebels, government forces and their Janjaweed militia allies, accused of plunder, murder, rape and ethnic cleansing against non-Arab villagers.
The African Union has agreed to a U.N. force, which would include African soldiers as well as Asian troops, presumably from India, Pakistan or Bangladesh. NATO nations have been asked to provide air support, communications and other logistics but not troops on the ground.
But no force can enter without the consent of the Khartoum government.
Guehenno spent two weeks in Darfur and Khartoum with U.N. and African Union military experts to plan for a U.N. takeover Annan hoped would happen by the end of the year.
In the interim, Annan said the African Union force had to be strengthened and financed and pressure maintained on anti-government rebels who did not sign the Darfur peace agreement last month.
In Khartoum, the AU's chief executive, Alpha Oumar Konare, said on Thursday after meeting Bashir that Sudan "is not rejecting the role of the U.N., but they want to clarify what will be the nature of this force."
(Additional reporting by Opheera McDoom in Khartoum and Richard Waddington in Geneva)
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Uganda (ICC)
Official Website of the International Criminal Court
ICC Public Documents - Situation in Uganda
Uganda-Sudan: New peace bid with LRA won't deter quest for justice - ICC
IRIN News
June 14, 2006
The International Criminal Court (ICC) has insisted that new efforts to engage Ugandan rebels of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) in peace talks will not impede the arrest and prosecution of the indicted rebel leaders
Francisca Sumay, a public information officer from the chief prosecutor's office at the ICC, told IRIN by phone from The Hague that the court expected the three countries affected by LRA activities to take up their obligation to implement the arrest warrants issued against five LRA leaders.
"The governments of Uganda, Sudan and Democratic Republic of Congo are obligated to give effect to the arrest warrants, and we are confident that they will honour their joint commitment to do so," Sumay said, citing Article 86 of the Rome Statute, which states that "State parties shall ... cooperate fully with the Court in its investigation and prosecution of crimes within the jurisdiction of the Court."
Although Sudan was not a party to the statute, it had reached an agreement with the ICC to collaborate with it and arrest Ugandan rebel leader Joseph Kony and four of his commanders wanted for crimes against humanity, she said.
According to Ugandan media, the ICC chief prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, dismissed recent attempts to negotiate a political deal, saying Kony was simply trying to "buy time" like he had done in the past. Ocampo insisted it was important to bring the rebel leaders to justice for the atrocities they had committed against innocent people during the 20-year conflict.
Just weeks ago, the International Criminal Police Organisation, Interpol, issued its first notices in 184 countries for the LRA leaders. Kony is wanted by the Hague-based court along with Raska Lukwiya, Vincent Otti, Okot Odhiambo and Dominic Ongwen to answer to charges of crimes against humanity.
The spokesman of the court, Ernest Sagaga, said the ICC did not know who would participate in the LRA peace talks the south Sudan leadership, the Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A), has been trying to broker. "We do not know who will attend the talks," Sagaga said when asked whether Kampala was free to send a delegation to the talks.
Church rout for talks
The Uganda Joint Christian Council (UJCC) - a multidenominational Christian faith organisation - and the New Sudan Council of Churches (NSCC) have urged Uganda to embrace the initiative by Salva Kiir, first vice-president of Sudan, to mediate in the northern Uganda conflict.
In a joint statement issued on Monday, the churches called upon the leadership of the LRA to take advantage of the forum offered by the government of southern Sudan to seek a negotiated solution to the conflict. The councils urged the African Union to offer diplomatic and other support to the southern government to enable it to successfully accomplish its mediation role. "We appeal to the international community to support the mediation effort by the government of southern Sudan," they said.
The joint statement - signed by UJCC executive secretary Canon Grace Kaiso and the NSCC acting executive secretary, the Rev Peter Tibi, in Kampala - said the conflict in northern Uganda was "one of the worst humanitarian crises in recent times … During the past 20 years, the people affected by the conflict have lived under a state of siege and have witnessed extreme violence, including killings, torture, rape and abductions, mainly as a result of the activities of the LRA rebels."
Almost two million people have been displaced by the conflict and currently live in squalid conditions in camps throughout the region. The conflict has also spilled into south Sudan and the DRC.
On Sunday evening, gunmen, identified by local residents as LRA fighters, killed nine people in an attack on the Gumba area on the east bank of the Nile and a few miles from the city centre of the south Sudanese capital, Juba. In a statement on Tuesday, however, the LRA high command "categorically denied" any involvement in the attack.
World Court Faces Biggest Challenge
Institute for War and Peace Reporting
by Janet Anderson
June 16, 2006
A few clicks on the website of the international police organisation Interpol, and you find three pictures of Ugandan rebel leader Joseph Kony, the latest one taken from a rare video only a few weeks old. His face has not changed a lot from the first black and white image to the most current one, in which Kony wears a green uniform with red epaulettes and a jaunty beret on his head.
A new agreement with Interpol to post images of Kony and four of his senior commanders on the web is the latest sign of the International Criminal Court, ICC, prosecutor’s resolve to see leaders of the Lord's Resistance Army, LRA, brought to The Hague to face justice.
The international arrest warrants issued last October against Kony and his four associates were the first the four-year-old court had brought.
According to the prosecution, the LRA leaders "established a pattern of brutalisation of civilians by acts including murder, abduction, sexual enslavement, mutilation, as well as mass burnings of houses and looting of camp settlements". They are alleged to have forcibly recruited civilians, including children, to serve as combatants, porters and sex slaves and "to take part in attacks against the Ugandan army (UPDF) and civilian communities".
LRA forces are believed to have abducted some 25,000 children to become fighters or sex slaves.
Kony faces 33 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
For human rights groups which have long tracked the misery caused by LRA activity in northern Uganda – where nearly two million people have been displaced from their homes and are reliant on food handouts – the more Kony is isolated, the better.
"They go from being individuals associated with evil acts to becoming indicted war criminals" said Richard Dicker, director of Human Rights Watch's International Justice Programme. "This isolates and undercuts their support."
Prominent rights groups including Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and others are fully supportive of ICC chief prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo's efforts to put Kony and the others on trial and help bring an end to the cycle of violence in northern Uganda which has claimed countless thousands of lives in the past 20 years.
But there are other voices calling for Kony to be given one last chance.
In the video footage filmed on May 2, the LRA chief - seen for the first time in many years - launched a bid to negotiate a peace deal. Also appearing on the tape shot near the border between southwestern Sudan and the north-east of the Democratic Republic of Congo, DRC, was Riek Machar, the vice-president of southern Sudan’s autonomous government, who offered to broker talks between the Ugandan government and the rebels.
In the video, Kony said, "The LRA is ready to talk peace and end the war in a good way, not by force. We are fighting for peace and I am not a terrorist."
The Kony case presents the ICC with one of its toughest challenges to date, as it must weigh the merits of seeking accountability for chronic human rights abuses against the broader, and somewhat different, goal of ending the conflict that has given rise to these abuses.
The dilemma goes to the heart of the court's own rules, which suggest that the chief prosecutor can decide not to initiate a prosecution "in the interest of justice".
How far, then, should the ICC proceed on the LRA case if justice is going to get in the way of peace?
American lawyer Jonathan Edelstein, an expert on transitional justice issues, recently wrote, "Prosecuting five [LRA] militia commanders, despite their atrocities, is trivial in comparison to ending a war that affects millions of people, and the ICC should follow the lead of the peacemakers rather than trying to override their efforts."
Northern Ugandan religious leaders and peace negotiator Betty Bigombe, a politician and former international diplomat, have been calling for the ICC to back off in order to give local peace initiatives, based on traditional reconciliation methods, a chance to end the war. The religious leaders, including local Roman Catholic Archbishop John Baptist Odama, allege that the ICC's decision to get involved in northern Uganda's tragedy has undermined their own efforts to build the rebels' confidence in peace talks.
What is new about the current effort to make peace in northern Uganda is the involvement of the government of southern Sudan. Diplomats in the region say that now that the southern Sudanese have their own government - part of the recent peace deal to end the 22-year long war in that country - there is a "completely new element in this process, which might successfully push [the Ugandan authorities] into peace talks".
Over the years, the LRA have been successfully pushed out of their camps in northern Uganda, although they continue to mount raids there, and now maintain bases in the vast wildernesses of southern Sudan.
Some of the rebel force has crossed over into the war-torn Ituri region in the north-east of DRC. In Ituri, and the Kivu and Katanga regions further south, the Congolese army backed by a United Nations peacekeeping mission, is harrying a variety of militia groups, including the LRA, in advance of elections in July. But with vast areas of rainforest to hide in, success has been limited so far.
From the outset, the ICC prosecution team has always known that it must rely on national authorities to execute the arrest warrants it issues. Under the 1998 Rome statute which governs the court’s rules, the ICC has no police force of its own.
"Arresting Kony and the LRA leaders is the biggest challenge for the Rome statute," said Moreno Ocampo.
Human Rights Watch's Dicker agreed, saying, "Cooperation by states with the ICC in everything from access to documents and evidence to ultimately the arrest of the accused is potentially the Achilles heel [of the Rome statute]."
In a statement to the United Nations Security Council in New York on June 14 on the situation in Sudan 's Darfur region - the site of another ICC war crimes investigation – Moreno Ocampo stressed that cooperation by the Sudanese state is "essential to complete the investigation".
The same applies to all ICC investigations. And, unlike the temporary UN-backed tribunals for Rwanda and Yugoslavia, which do not have police forces, either, and have faced problems in tracking and detaining indictees, the ICC has no Security Council backing to provide even the threat of sanctions against uncooperative states.
Moreno Ocampo acknowledged that "it's a complicated situation", in a recent briefing to journalists in The Hague at which he tried to explain why several national armies have failed to capture Kony and his colleagues.
"The political will is there, not the capacity," said Dicker.
Both Uganda and the DRC are fully signed-up members of the ICC. However, Sudan is not – and therefore does not have the same legal obligation to arrest the LRA leaders. However, the ICC prosecutor's office confirmed to IWPR that in October 2005, the authorities in Khartoum signed an agreement with the court to "proactively try to arrest Kony and the others".
Whether that memorandum of understanding constitutes "a real obligation that is in any way comparable to signing up to the Rome statute" is questionable, according to a senior diplomat based in Kampala, the Ugandan capital.
In a further convolution in this complicated region, he pointed out that the deal was signed by the national government in Khartoum, not by the newly-formed devolved government in the capital of southern Sudan, Juba, although the southern Sudanese are also part of the Khartoum government under a recent peace deal.
The key role being played by Juba authorities was illustrated by the presence of Machar on the May video, which showed the first images of Kony to have appeared for many years. Machar was seen handing over food aid and 20,000 US dollars in cash and warning Kony not to spend it on arms. The vice-president said the aid was part of an agreement the LRA had made with the government in Juba to halt attacks in southern Sudan.
Church groups say the southern Sudanese authorities are very concerned about the lack of security in their region, which has been exacerbated by LRA raids on villages for supplies. The problem is compounded by the presence of thousands of Ugandan troops who have been permitted to cross the border to try to track down the LRA leaders, under an earlier agreement signed between Kampala and Khartoum.
The ICC prosecutor has argued that since the time that the arrest warrants were issued, Kony and his supporters have come under "escalating international and regional pressure". In an article for the International Herald Tribune, Moreno Ocampo said, "The LRA commanders have been forced to flee their safe havens. LRA attacks in northern Uganda have declined dramatically as a result."
Dennis Ojwee, veteran bureau chief for the Uganda government-owned New Vision newspaper in the northern town of Gulu, agrees that the arrest warrant is one of the factors that may have kept the LRA quiet. Other LRA commanders who have not been indicted, he says, may be wary of "committing atrocities and havoc since they might fear being listed by the ICC".
In northern Uganda, religious leaders have complained about the timing of the Interpol notices, when local efforts to resolve the conflict peacefully are gaining momentum. Pax Christi Netherlands, a Christian group with many years’ experience working on the issue, told IWPR it had received formal requests from both the southern Sudanese government and from Kony to play a mediating role.
Egbert Wesselink of Pax Christi described it as a "very fragile process" where there is still a lot to be agreed.
"Imagine all the steps – a venue, safety, composition of delegations and making sure they have the appropriate mandates," said Wesselink. He noted that his organisation had "no golden formula, no blueprint" to impose, but that "an element of justice" will necessarily be part of any final package.
Wesselink confirmed that none of the senior LRA leaders facing arrest warrants would be acceptable as members of a negotiating delegation. "We could not be responsible for that," he said.
Pax Christi says it believes what is needed is "justice in the eyes of the victims", which may not entail "a strict legal approach".
However, Tim Allen, a London-based anthropologist who has written a new book called Trial Justice: The International Criminal Court and the Lord's Resistance Army, and who has met Kony recently, said the rebels "have been getting very good legal advice" because they know that realistically they will have to face a legal process.
Nevertheless, Wesselink, while describing the ICC as "the cornerstone of architecture for global peace and justice", was critical of the court’s response so far to the news of a potential locally-brokered peace deal.
He called on the prosecutor to acknowledge that the wider goal was to achieve peace, and to temper the ICC’s tactics accordingly. "The ICC has put itself in a corner," he said. "Their defensive narrow definition of justice will not strengthen their role."
In his latest comments the prosecutor does seem to have shifted position to some degree. He told journalists at UN headquarters in News York, "It is very important to have negotiations to finalise, to stop the situation."
But he reiterated, "The five guys who were identified in the warrants need to be arrested."
Other observers in northern Uganda have expressed scepticism that the peace deal offered by Kony is viable.
"I know Kony has not changed at all,” said Ojwee. “He is just, as usual, trying to buy time to possibly ferry in safely some ammunition he could have got from the DRC."
Moreno Ocampo has also pointed out that Kony has "used negotiations to buy time and regroup" in the past.
Even seasoned peace campaigners like Father Carlos Rodriguez, a Catholic priest based in Gulu, has said, "When you see the same thing for many times… you don't receive it with the excitement one would expect."
Pax Christi, however, insists there is now a real opportunity for peace through the local initiative. "Kony himself has said he has had a vision that 2006 is the year of peace," said Wesselink.
Diplomats in Kampala agree that the May video may show a different side to Kony. The footage has "demystified" him and proved that "the LRA can be a negotiating partner", said one diplomat. "Kony doesn't have many options and therefore he wants to talk."
Right from the start, back in December 2003, when Uganda's President Yoweri Museveni invited the ICC prosecutor to investigate the situation in northern Uganda – the first time any country had referred a case to the fledging institution – officials in The Hague have been conscious of the tightrope that they have had to walk. There has been a sustained barrage of comment and criticism from groups in northern Uganda who believe a local peace settlement, using the elaborate ceremonies of the local Acholi people, takes priority over the interests of international justice.
The prosecutor's office has engaged with many of these groups. Moreno Ocampo explained to journalists in The Hague that his investigators began their work in northern Uganda "making no noise" out of respect for local groups trying to negotiate a peace deal with Kony.
But after nine months of investigation, said the prosecutor, "we had lots of evidence: more than 20 insiders… and many intercepts with the voices of the commanders".
He added, "We have a very good legal case."
Some legal observers have since argued that the prosecutor could decide "in the interests of justice" – as outlined in the Rome statute – that the case against the LRA leaders could be withdrawn.
The relevant paragraph of Article 53 says, "The Prosecutor may, at any time, reconsider a decision whether to initiate an investigation or prosecution based on new facts or information."
But David Donat Cattin, an Italian expert in international law who was closely involved in writing the Rome statute, said the relevant article was “a narrow concept…full of checks and balances” which deliberately did not mention possible impunity or amnesties. He pointed out that the prosecutor has to argue his recommendations before the ICC judges, who make the final decisions.
That chimes with the prosecutor's official position that the process has already gone beyond the point at which he could drop the investigation, as arrest warrants have already been issued.
"The defendants could challenge the admissibility of the arrest warrants," Moreno Ocampo told journalists. "But the prosecutor can do nothing. The case is in the hands of the judges."
President Museveni responded to the Kony video by giving the LRA 60 days, until July this year, to "peacefully end terrorism".
He went on to say that, despite the ICC arrest warrants, "if he [Kony] got serious about a peaceful settlement, the government of Uganda would guarantee him safety".
But Dicker believes that to allow Museveni to assume such a role would be very damaging. "For the credibility and legitimacy of the ICC, it should be understood that the president of Uganda cannot turn the court on and off," he said.
Ojwee cast doubts on whether any indigenous peace deal, traditional or government-inspired, is really on the cards. He described all such efforts so far as "a real waste of time and resources at the expense of the people suffering in the [internal refugee] camps".
He added, "If the government continues to accept peace jokes from Kony, the war might drag on for 20 decades."
Janet Anderson is director of IWPR’s International Justice Programme in The Hague.
First sight of rebel leader in 20 years as he tries to broker deal to end bloodshed in Uganda
Daily Telegraph
by
Koert Lindijer and Michael Hirst
June 18, 2006
The tall, slim Ugandan glanced suspiciously at the delegates gathered around him, his general's uniform rustling as he shifted uneasily on a plastic chair.
While cold and authoritative - a single glance could send a gun-toting minion scurrying to obey an order - the jet-black eyes of Joseph Kony were also fearful: those of a man who knows he is Africa's most wanted fugitive.
After two decades of bloodshed and brutality, the self-styled prophet and leader of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), emerged last week from the tropical jungle that straddles southern Sudan's border with the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), and said he was ready for peace talks with the Kampala government.
About 100 of his troops stood silently and watched their leader with awe. Although dressed in uniforms and heavily armed with rifles, machine-guns and even rocket launchers, they were all young - some were little more than 12 years old. They hung on their leader's every word.
"We from the Lord's Resistance Army want peace," Kony said quietly, in heavily accented English. "But we first want protection. I want to be able to move freely."
Kony and his representatives briefly came out of hiding last week to meet Sudanese officials and discuss the possibility of peace talks between the LRA and President Yoweri Museveni's Ugandan government, to be held in the southern Sudanese town of Juba.
That Kony had also agreed to be interviewed by Western journalists, for the first time in 20 years, showed the seriousness with which he was contemplating an end to his killing campaign, which has plagued northern Uganda for a generation and more recently spread to southern Sudan and the DRC.
"Kony knows he is cornered," a source close to the talks told The Sunday Telegraph. "If the situation continues, he knows that within three or four years he will be finished."
The cult-like LRA has become notorious for massacring thousands of civilians, mutilating survivors, burning villages and kidnapping 10,000 children, who have been forced to serve as soldiers, slaves or concubines.
Their plundering of northern Uganda has prompted as many as two million people to flee their villages for sanctuary in government camps.
During the Sudanese civil war, which was officially brought to a close by the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement last year, the LRA was allowed to roam unhindered throughout southern Sudan.
Since the signing of the agreement, however, south Sudan's government has allowed Mr Museveni to send in 10,000 troops to hunt down, arrest or kill LRA fighters.
"If President Museveni really wants an end to the war, why is he arresting my followers who want to take part in my peace delegation?" asked Kony.
"Museveni's claim that he wants to meet us is a lie. The LRA wants peace, but Museveni still wants war. I am waiting for [the southern Sudan's government] initiative to start peace negotiations".
Despite having no clear political aims, the LRA has stated that it wants to rule Uganda by the Ten Commandments. The elusive Kony, aged around 40, was formerly a Roman Catholic altar boy.
He appears to believe that his role is to cleanse the Acholi people, the northern tribe which felt excluded from power after the 1986 overthrow of Milton Obote, himself an Acholi, by Mr Museveni.
Kony is said to insist that his followers read the Bible, and child soldiers who have escaped from the clutches of the LRA have claimed that Kony is possessed by spirits who speak in God's name.
To the International Criminal Court (ICC), however, the LRA is a terrorist group and last year the court issued its first arrest warrants for Kony and other LRA leaders.
Last week the British Government offered to lock up another notorious African leader, Charles Taylor, the former president of Liberia, if he is convicted of war crimes at his trial in The Hague.
Lord Triesman, the minister for African affairs, named Kony as another whose trial would send a clear signal to Africa that there is no escape from justice for war criminals.
Kony's critics argue that he is not serious about peace talks and is merely buying time to re-group his troops, said to number no more than 5,000, in neighbouring DRC.
"We want our troops, who are spread around northern Uganda and southern Sudan, to meet 10 hours' walk from here," said Vincent Otti, Kony's deputy, who is widely considered to be the LRA's strategic mastermind and has also been named in an ICC warrant.
But a request for south Sudan's government to guarantee safe passage for LRA troops travelling to the DRC was rejected by Riek Machar Teny, the vice-president of the semi-autonomous region.
Members of the UN Security Council warned Mr Riek last week that a possible amnesty for Kony could not be discussed, so the LRA leader will not be able to take part in negotiations himself.
At the close of their meeting, the LRA presented the Sudanese with a list of 14 delegation members. Although written on a grubby page ripped from an exercise book, the list was signed by Kony and Otti and gave delegates a mandate to negotiate on their behalf.
The paranoia among the LRA leaders was palpable, however, and as Kony slipped back into the jungle, the prospects for reaching a lasting peace agreement seemed as elusive as the man himself.
Interview-ICC should delay pursuing Uganda rebels-Machar
Reuters
by Matthew Green
June 20, 2006
A global war crimes court that wants to prosecute Uganda's notorious Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) rebels should wait for a peace deal before pursuing justice, south Sudan's vice-president said.
Riek Machar told Reuters on Tuesday the Hague-based International Criminal Court (ICC) should publicly endorse his government's peace initiative with the LRA.
Machar has led efforts by the south Sudanese government to mediate an end to the 19-year uprising in northern Uganda by the LRA, which has staged attacks from bases in neighbouring Sudan since the mid-1990s.
"If the ICC came out to say that they would give the peace process a chance before the legal process is done, then we would resolve the conflict in the region," Machar said, speaking in his office in the southern capital Juba.
"If they did that, they would give the peace process a big boost, it would assist the Ugandan government to boldly say 'we are going to negotiate'," he said.
The ICC unsealed arrest warrants for LRA leader Joseph Kony, who claims mystical inspiration for his rebellion, and his four top commanders in October, detailing various counts including murder, sexual enslavement and rape.
The warrants divided opinion in Kony's native northern Uganda, where civic and religious groups feared they would make it harder to convince LRA commanders to stop fighting.
Numerous attempts to broker an end to the conflict have failed, but Machar said Kony's willingness to meet him -- the first time the elusive rebel has met mediators for years -- showed he was serious.
"There was no initiative that has gone to this level," Machar said. "I think he wants to reach to a peaceful settlement to the conflict."
WARRANTS
Machar met Kony on May 3 and June 11 near Sudan's border with the Democratic Republic of Congo, where the rebels established positions last year, widening the threat posed to regional security by their insurgency.
The ICC has reiterated that governments in the region have a duty to arrest their suspects. Kony has evaded repeated attempts to capture him by Uganda's army.
Diplomats and regional security sources say the LRA killed eight Guatamalen troops from the U.N. mission in Congo who took part in an attempt in January to arrest Kony's deputy, Vincent Otti, also wanted by the ICC.
Machar stopped short of calling for the warrants to be withdrawn.
"We are a vehicle to mediate a peaceful settlement. With a peaceful settlement the environment would have been set for the ICC to trigger off the legal process," he said.
Machar said Switzerland had agreed to support his initiative, adding the Netherlands and Italy also appeared ready to assist.
Kony started one of several rebel groups formed in northern Uganda after President Yoweri Museveni seized power in 1986 by overthrowing army generals from the region.
The group has failed to articulate a clear political programme, but LRA delegates from northern Uganda's diaspora community in London and Nairobi arrived in Juba this month, hoping to negotiate with the Ugandan government.
Uganda 's envoy in Juba said after meeting Machar on Tuesday that he was confident Kampala would send representatives for talks, though it was not clear when.
[back to contents]
International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY)
Official Website of the ICTY
Press Briefing of the ICTY
Christian Chartier, Senior Information
Officer
June 21, 2006
Captain Dragan loses law challenge
The Australian
by Natasha Robinson
June 16, 2006
EXTRADITION proceedings against accused war criminal Dragan Vasiljkovic will go ahead after the Perth golf instructor lost a constitutional challenge in the High Court.
Mr Vasiljkovic's lawyers have refused to give up their fight to stop the former commando being extradited to Croatia to face allegations that he led a unit that killed civilians and tortured prisoners of war in Croatia during the early 1990s.
But as the High Court rejected his challenge to the validity of Australia's extradition arrangements with Croatia, prosecutors in the country's south are pressing ahead with their case against the man known as Captain Dragan.
In September last year, The Australian tracked down Mr Vasiljkovic living under the name of Dennis Snedden and working as a golf instructor in Perth.
Mr Vasiljkovic, a Serb with Australian citizenship, travelled to his homeland to lead a paramilitary unit in the self-proclaimed Serbian republic of Krajina, in Croatia, during the early 1990s.
He denies the allegations made against him by Croatian prosecutors that troops under his command tortured and killed Croatian soldiers and police who had been taken prisoner in Krajina in June and July 1991.
Croatian prosecutors have also accused Captain Dragan's troops of killing civilians during a military operation at Glina, in Croatia's south, in July 1991. Atrocities were also allegedly committed at Bruska, near Benkovac, in February 1993.
Mr Vasiljkovic was arrested by Australian Federal Police in Sydney on January 20.
Prosecutors attached to the County Court at Sibenik, on Croatia's Adriatic Coast, have reportedly secured the testimony of two men they believe will be key witnesses at a criminal trial.
One is Milan Atlija, a former police sheriff in Krajina.
Mr Atlija, wanted by police in Croatia, was arrested in April after returning from Belgrade, and has since been interviewed by Croatian police investigating Captain Dragan's alleged war crimes.
Another key witness, Davor Karajcic, described as a former assistant to Captain Dragan at the special forces training camp Alfa, in Krajina, has reportedly spoken to investigators.
The barrister who acted for Mr Vasiljkovic in Sydney's Central Local Court at an extradition hearing following his arrest said there were still a range of legal arguments available to his client.
One argument was that Croatia's request for extradition does not conform to the Geneva Conventions. Another is that the relevant international prosecuting body, the Hague Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, never requested Mr Vasiljkovic's extradition.
Depending on the High Court's reasons for its decision - to be published later - either case may be able to be made again before the High Court or, alternatively, before a magistrate, barrister Brad Slowgrove said.
"I think it's extraordinary you can just pluck an Australian citizen off the street and send them to a foreign country to face charges," Mr Slowgrove said. "This place in many ways will always be a penal colony, I'm afraid."
Attorney-General Philip Ruddock has the final say on any extradition of Mr Vasiljkovic, who is being held on remand in Sydney's Parklea prison and will appear by video link on July 12 at Sydney's Central Local Court for a mention.
Court Still Weighing Genocide Case From Milosevic Era
The New York Times
by Marlise Simons
June 18, 2006
Among the unfinished business left by the death of Slobodan Milosevic is the central question of whether he was guilty, as charged, of genocide in Bosnia.
But while his death brought a sudden end to his trial at the United Nations war crimes tribunal, the genocide issue may well be decided by another United Nations court based in The Hague: the International Court of Justice.
That court, also known as the World Court, has recently finished nine weeks of hearings on a case filed 13 years ago, in the middle of the Bosnian war. With Muslim villages under attack and civilians driven into detention camps, Bosnia's lawyers turned to the court, accusing Yugoslavia of violations "on all counts" of the United Nations Convention on Genocide.
The case was held back by a slow-paced institution and by repeated legal moves by Belgrade to block the lawsuit. In the meantime, Yugoslavia became Serbia and Montenegro in 2003, and in May simply Serbia.
Now, the hearings over, judges from 16 countries must give their interpretation of events from the 1992-1995 war. That is expected within the year.
The terror campaign to clear non-Serbs from large swathes of Bosnia has become commonly known as "ethnic cleansing," but the line, if any, between ethnic cleansing and genocide has divided legal experts examining events from Bosnia to Iraq and Darfur.
The World Court suit is unique in that it is not a criminal trial of individuals — like those at the tribunals for Yugoslavia, Rwanda or Sierra Leone — but rather a civil proceeding, in which for the first time one state is suing another charging genocide.
The suit may well be the most complex in the 60-year history of the World Court, the United Nations' highest, which usually deals with issues of sovereignty, diplomatic relations, and land or sea boundaries.
"This will give new relevance to a court that was sidelined by the new war crimes tribunals," said Antoine Garapon, director of the Institute for Advanced Legal Studies in Paris. "It may ultimately pass a historic judgment on Milosevic and his regime, even if that was not its function."
Should the court rule in Bosnia's favor, the Serbian state will suffer the stigma of having committed genocide, an outcome that would implicate the entire Milosevic government.
For Serbian citizens and their fledgling economy, that could mean also being saddled with hefty war reparations. Bosnia has asked the court to award damages for the loss of life and property. During the war, 100,000 people died, the majority of them Muslims, and entire Muslim towns and villages were destroyed, including their mosques and monuments. No figure was set.
Serbia has argued that there were local excesses of war but no genocidal campaign, that Belgrade did not control events in Bosnia and that a verdict favoring Bosnia will make reconciliation between the neighbors even more difficult.
Bosnia says the opposite, and argues it needs "recognition of Serb guilt" even more than reparations.
Even at this late stage, Serbia has raised new obstacles, challenging once more the jurisdiction of the court. It argued that during the relevant period, Yugoslavia was not a member of the United Nations and, by extension, not a party to the court. In the past, judges twice ruled the court had jurisdiction.
In the recent hearings, the opposing legal teams made ample use of documents, evidence and even witnesses from trials at the war crimes tribunal, which sits a few miles away. The tribunal found genocide at Srebrenica in 1995, when more than 7,000 Muslim men and boys were executed.
But at least one crucial cache of material has remained out of reach. The wartime records of the Supreme Defense Council, which included Yugoslavia's military and political leaders, were handed to the tribunal after much Western pressure.
But Belgrade secured the guarantee that they be accessible only to the court's judges and lawyers. Belgrade officials claimed national security, but some have made it no secret they wanted to keep the records out of the hands of the Bosnians suing them at the World Court.
Tribunal officials familiar with the secret archives said the minutes of the meetings revealed much about how Belgrade ran the war in Bosnia.
"Of course people may say things differently if they know they are recorded," one official said, requesting anonymity because he lacked permission to speak to reporters. "Milosevic was also known to convey important decisions in private." Parts of the minutes were missing, he said.
During Mr. Milosevic's trial, prosecutors said the archives provided the best records and insights into his real power and his state of mind.
Human rights lawyers have insisted that opening the archives is necessary for Serbia to be confronted with its wartime history.
For now, Bosnia must demonstrate that Serbia not only supplied but also controlled the troops that were involved in eradicating Muslim communities — including Bosnian Serb troops and Belgrade's own special forces and militias.
Gen. Ratko Mladic, the Bosnian Serb military commander wanted for genocide by the war crimes tribunal, traveled to Belgrade almost weekly during the war, according to testimony from NATO commanders.
Legally proving genocide requires showing intent to destroy a group, in whole or in part. Phon van den Biesen, of the Bosnian team, said that intent was evident in this case from the pattern of crimes on the ground, including the destruction of close to 1,000 mosques, so evidence from the archives would not be needed.
Lawyers following the case said defining genocide or proving it at this court might be different. "This is not a criminal trial and the levels of proof needed are not as high," said Richard Dicker, a director of Human Rights Watch. "In any case, it will be hugely important to see how this court interprets and rules on genocide."
Andrun Trial Begins
Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN)
BIRN Justice Report
June 22, 2006
The prosecution and defence presented their opening statements and announced the flow of presentation of evidence.
BIRN - JUSTICE REPORT - June 22, 2006 - After prosecutor Vesna Tancica read the indictment for Nikola Andrun, she presented her opening statement and announced that she will invite a total of 23 witnesses.
The Prosecution claims that in the second half of 1993, Nikola Andrun, a Croat from Herzegovina and a former member of the Croat Defence Council (HVO), was deputy warden of the detention camp Gabela in nearby Capljina.
During the disputes between the Bosnian army and the HVO, captured Bosniaks were detained in the HVO Gabela camp. According to the evidence collected by investigators from the Hague tribunal, around 1,200 people - mostly Bosniak civilians including boys younger than 16 - were detained in the camp in four storage sheds.
Andrun is charged that on multiple occasions in 1993 he participated in the torture and murder of detained Bosniaks in Gabela camp.
Among other charges, the prosecution alleges that, in August and September 1993, Andrun, and the Gabela camp warden transferred a certain number of inmates from Gabela to the detention camp at Silos, in order to prevent the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) from recording them and possibly mediating their exchange.
Andrun is also charged with brutal abuse of inmates in Gabela and infliction of heavy physical injuries, as well as murders.
In his opening statement, defence attorney Hamdo Kulenovic denied the counts of the indictment, and announced that the defence will base itself on proving that Andrun was not a commander within the camp, but a HVO soldier.
"The prosecution does not have sufficient evidence to prove that the indictee is guilty," Kulenovic said.
The defence counsel went on to announce that 17 defence witnesses would go on to prove indictee Nikola Andrun's innocence in their testimonies.
Andrun pleaded not guilty to all of the 13 counts of the indictment on May 9, 2006.
German spies after Mladić?
B92
June 23, 2006
Prime Minister Koštunica has asked German spies to help in the search for Ratko Mladić.
After the President of the National Council for Hague Cooperation Rasim Ljajić and Security Information Agency Director Rade Bulatović both released statements that there has been progress made in the search for Serbia’s prime Hague fugitive Ratko Mladić, German media outlets have published information labelled “urgent” that Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Koštunica has called on German special agents to help look for Mladić.
According to daily Vecernje Novosti, Koštunica has asked German Chancellor Angela Merkel for German agents from the Federal Information Agency to help catch Mladić and Radovan Karadžić.
German newspapers write that Serbian Foreign Minister Vuk Drašković also stated in an interview that Serbia will be asking German agents to help it continue its process of integrating into the European Union.
The German papers did not specify what form of help Koštunica is asking for, and whether it would involve the agents coming to Serbia or working abroad. The German media also stated that Radovan Karadžić is currently located outside of Serbia at an unknown location.
The German information agencies suffered heavy criticism for their lack of cooperation with the CIA in the kidnappings of terrorism suspects, and one German daily writes that one of the service’s special agents was responsible for leading one of the main groups responsible for the Kosovo riots of March 2004.
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International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR)
Official Website of the ICTR
UN Security Council Extends Mandate of ICTR Permanent Judges
Press Release of the ICTR
June 14, 2006
The United Nations Security Council yesterday unanimously extended the mandate of all eleven permanent judges of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda until 31 December 2008. This will facilitate the implementation of the ICTR Completion Strategy.
The resolution was in response to a letter of 21 March 2006 from the ICTR President, Judge Erik Møse, to the President of the Security Council, requesting the extension of the terms of office of all currently serving ICTR permanent judges.
Under Article 12 bis (3) of the ICTR Statute, the four-year term of the permanent judges had been due to expire on 25 May 2007. Elections were likely to have taken place at the end of 2006 or in early 2007. Given the closeness of this date to the end of 2008, which according to Security Council Resolution 1503 (2003) is the deadline for the completion of trials, extension of the judges’ terms of office was requested in order to ensure the continuity, stability and certainty necessary for the efficient and effective planning of trials. In the present situation, an extension of the mandates for nineteen months is clearly preferable to elections for another four years.
Given the current provisions of the Statute, the approval of the Security Council and the General Assembly was necessary in order to extend the judges’ terms of office. On 3 May 2006, the Secretary-General requested that the General Assembly and Security Council grant their approval.
The eleven judges whose mandate has been extended are Dennis C. M. Byron (St. Kitts and Nevis); Asoka J. N. de Silva (Sri Lanka); Sergei Alekseevich Egorov (Russian Federation); Mehmet Gühney (Turkey); Khalida Rachid Khan (Pakistan); Erik Møse (Norway); Arlette Ramaroson (Madagascar); Jai Ram Reddy (Fiji); William Hussein Sekule (United Republic of Tanzania); Andrésia Vaz (Senegal); and Inés Monica Weinberg de Roca (Argentina).
The Trial Chambers have completed cases involving 28 accused, whereas trials of 27 persons are in progress. Fourteen detainees are awaiting the commencement of their trials.
ICTR Appeals Chamber takes Judicial Notice of Genocide in Rwanda
Press Release of the ICTR
June 20, 2006
The Appeals Chamber of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda on 16 June 2006 ruled that the Trial Chambers must take judicial notice of the following facts:
i. The existence of Twa, Tutsi and Hutu as protected groups falling under the Genocide Convention;
ii. The following state of affairs existed in Rwanda between 6 April 1994 to 17 July 1994: there were throughout Rwanda widespread or systematic attacks against a civilian population based on Tutsi ethnic identification. During the attacks, some Rwandan citizens killed or caused serious bodily or mental harm to person[s] perceived to be Tutsi. As a result of the attacks, there were a large number of deaths of persons of Tutsi ethnic identity;
iii. Between 6 April 1994 and 17 July 1994 there was genocide in Rwanda against Tutsi ethnic group.
This land mark decision was delivered by the Appeals Chamber on Prosecutor's Appeal on Judicial Notice, dated 16 June 2006, in the trial of Prosecutor v. Karemera, Ngirumpatse and Nzirorera, ICTR-98-44-AR73 (C). The decision will have an immediate impact on the trial proceedings in the Karemera et al case, and will be felt in all of the current and pending trials before the Trial Chambers of the ICTR. Judicial notice of the above matters means that they are to be taken as established beyond any dispute and not requiring any proof.
This is one of the most significant rulings of the Tribunal, given the consequences in terms of putting the occurrence of the genocide beyond legal dispute. It can be recalled that until now the OTP has had to in each case lead evidence and prove the occurrence of the genocide. This will no longer be necessary.
In the view of the OTP the ruling should now silence the ‘rejectionist’ camp which has been disputing the occurrence of genocide. By relieving the OTP of a substantial burden of proof the ruling has the potential to shorten the cases as each will essentially focus on the personal involvement of the accused person in genocide.
Akazu Initially a Family Circle, Bagaragaza Explains
AllAfrica.com: Hirondelle News Agency (Lausanne)
June 14, 2006
The Akazu ('small house' in Kinyarwanda) - a group often suspected to have had a leading role in the organization of the Rwandan genocide - was actually a small family circle at the centre of which were the relatives of President Juvénal Habyarimana's wife, said Michel Bagaragaza, who was also a close relation, to the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) on Tuesday.
The Akazu, he explained was at the centre of the circles of power in Rwanda. Their mission was to see to the implementation of presidential policies. The core members were Agathe Habyarimana - the First Lady - along with three of her brothers, Protais Zigiranyirazo, Elie Sagatwa and Séraphin Rwabukumba, and Noel Mbanabaryi, the President's uncle.
"Every decision was made around the family table", Bagaragaza explained. A distant member of the family himself, appointed president of the tea trade, Bagaragaza has previously testified under a pseudonym. He has agreed to cooperate with the prosecutor - presenting his own admissions, explanations and denunciations - in the expectation of receiving a reduced sentence for his guilty plea.
"Not all them were competent though," he explained; hence "their need to find most capable people so that the latter would meet the needs [...] these persons were the overseers [...] their duty was to do the follow-up and satisfy the needs". "But some were not qualified," the witness continued, and this led to an "accumulation of discontent throughout the reign of Habyarimana".
"The war in 1990 and the resulting multiparty system of the period changed the political landscape of the country", Bagaragaza commented. "The members of the Akazu were no longer able to keep the upper hand on all officials. Their pawns remained but the situation had changed [...] each minister implemented the policies of his party," he added.
Three of the five members of this small circle are still alive. One, Protais Zigiranyirazo, who trial Bagaragaza is appearing at as a witness, is on trial at the ICTR. Zigiranyirazo's sister Agathe Habyarimana, the former First Lady, has found refuge in France and their brother or step-brother Séraphin Rwabukumba - treasurer of the family - is also somewhere in Europe. The names of both sister and step-brother may appear in the sealed indictments the ICTR has drawn up but is keeping secret.
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Iraqi High Tribunal
Official Website of the Iraqi High Tribunal
Grotian Moment: The Saddam Hussein Trial Blog
Saddam trial in last phase
CNN / Reuters
June 13, 2006
The chief judge in Saddam Hussein's trial on crimes against humanity said on Tuesday it would be the last day to hear defense witnesses, setting the stage for final arguments before the court reaches a verdict.
"This session will be the last for witnesses to be heard," chief Judge Raouf Abdul Rahman told the court, which opened the trial against Saddam and seven co-accused in October.
Once witnesses finish testifying, the prosecution and defense teams are expected to present their closing statements, after which the five-judge panel would adjourn to consider a verdict, an official close to the court said.
Defense lawyers, who have questioned the legality of the U.S.-backed Iraqi court and have accused the judge of rushing the case, called more witnesses on Tuesday, including Saddam's half brother Sabawi al-Tikriti.
Earlier, Rahman barred another half-brother of Saddam, co-accused Barzan Hassan, from attending the session one day after guards threw him out from the heavily fortified courtroom in Baghdad as he screamed: "This is a dictatorship."
"The court decided to continue keeping defendant Barzan away for his repeated violation of the order of the court," Rahman said.
If found guilty, Saddam and the seven others could face death by hanging for their roles in a crackdown that led to the killing of 148 Shiite men and boys after an assassination attempt against Saddam in the village of Dujail in 1982.
But any execution of Saddam could be delayed by appeals and possibly up to a dozen other trials for war crimes and genocide.
Among Tuesday's witnesses, which also included three of Saddam's former bodyguards, was Sabawi, a former intelligence chief who was number 36 on the U.S. military's list of the 55 most-wanted people in Iraq after the 2003 invasion.
Rahman, a stern Kurd who has tried to keep defendants from launching tirades, warned Sabawi to stick to the Dujail case.
"We don't want political speeches. Stick to your testimony," Rahman said wagging his finger at Sabawi.
"How come you know that I am going to give a political speech?" Sabawi asked sarcastically.
"I can tell by the way you are sitting," the judge replied.
Sabawi, who was captured in February 2005, denied that another defendant, former vice president Taha Yassin Ramadan, was head of a committee that ordered the razing of orchards in reprisal for the Dujail assassination attempt on Saddam.
Following a heated exchange with Ramadan's lawyer, Rahman accused the lawyer of provoking the witness to come up with answers which are "insulting to the Iraqi people" and ordered proceedings to briefly continue in closed session.
Prosecutors seek death penalty for Hussein
CNN / AP
June 19, 2006
The prosecutor in the Saddam Hussein trial demanded the death penalty Monday for the deposed leader and two of his top co-defendants.
Chief prosecutor Jaafar al-Moussawi said in closing arguments that the former Iraqi leader and his regime committed crimes against humanity in a "revenge" attack on Shiite civilians in the 1980s.
The arguments brought the eight-month-old trial into its final phase, and after Monday's session, the court adjourned until July 10, when the defense will begin making its final summation.
The five-judge panel will then recess the court to consider its verdicts.
Saddam, dressed in a black suit, sat silently, sometimes taking notes, as chief prosecutor al-Moussawi delivered his arguments, listing the evidence against each of the eight defendants.
Concluding his remarks, al-Moussawi asked for the death penalty against Saddam, his half-brother Barzan Ibrahim and Taha Yassin Ramadan, a former senior regime member. "They were spreading corruption on earth ... and even the trees was not save from their oppression," he said.
"Well done," Saddam muttered sarcastically.
Hussein and his co-defendants could face execution by hanging if convicted on charges of crimes against humanity for a crackdown against Shiites in the town of Dujail in the 1980s. They are accused of arresting hundreds of people, including women and children, torturing some to death and killing 148 who were sentenced to death for a 1982 assassination attempt against Saddam.
"We ask the court to impose the heaviest possible penalty against these defendants," one of the prosecutors said in his closing arguments.
The defendants "carried out a systematic, wide-scale attack" against the town of Dujail, said the lawyer, whose name has not been released to protect him from reprisals.
"They carried out broad imprisonments of men, women and children, who were exposed to physical and mental torture, including the use of electrical shocks," he said.
The prosecutor said Hussein ordered the crackdown and reviewed details of how it was carried out. "Everything was done under the direct supervision of (Ibrahim), who was head of the Mukhabarat intelligence agency and who participated personally in torturing those who were detained, as witnesses testified," the lawyer said.
He claimed the shooting attack on Hussein's motorcade that sparked the crackdown was "not real but was fabricated because there is no evidence that it took place. ... It had political aims at that time when the former regime was in war with Iran and he wanted to win international and regional sides."
The defense has argued that the actions of the regime were justified because it had to crack down after members of a pro-Iranian Shiite party tried to kill the then-president. Defense witnesses -- as well as some prosecution witnesses -- have described the assassination attempt.
The defense also has said that some of the 148 sentenced to death are still alive, suggesting that parts of the prosecution's case are wrong or fabricated.
Many of Iraq's Shiite majority and Kurdish minority are eager to see Hussein and his cohorts executed in revenge for his regime's oppression of their communities.
But the perceived fairness of the trial will be a key question. Many Sunni Arabs see the court as a case of "victors' justice" carried out by the Shiites and Kurds who dominate Iraq's government after the fall of Hussein in 2003.
Baghdad gunmen kill third Saddam defense lawyer
Reuters via Yahoo! News
by
Ibon Villelabeitia and Mussab Al-Khairalla
June 21, 2006
One of Saddam Hussein's main lawyers was shot dead on Wednesday after men in police uniforms took him from his home, police and relatives said, the third defense attorney to be killed since the trial opened in October.
Gunmen also abducted at least 80 Iraqi factory workers traveling in a fleet of buses just north of Baghdad, police and Interior Ministry sources said.
The killing of Khamis al-Obaidi was a new setback for the U.S.-backed court. It fueled complaints that sectarian violence, some by Shi'ite militias within the police, against Saddam's once-dominant Sunni Arab minority, is crippling a fair trial.
The lead defense lawyer called for the case to be suspended and the defendants taken abroad after the death of his deputy.
Al Qaeda's allies said in a Web posting they would kill four Russian embassy staff kidnapped in Baghdad 18 days ago because Moscow failed to meet a deadline to pull troops out of Chechnya. Russia urged the group to heed Muslim calls to free the men.
Five busloads of employees from a factory in Taji north of Baghdad were commandeered by dozens of gunmen, officials said. One source put the number of those kidnapped at least 100.
Obaidi's wife told another defense lawyer that men in police uniform took Obaidi from his Baghdad home around 7 a.m.
"They said 'We're from internal security and we need you for questioning'," Qatari attorney Najeeb al-Nuaimi told Al Jazeera television. Two hours later, Obaidi's body was dumped on a road beside a poster honoring a Shi'ite cleric killed under Saddam.
The attack appeared very similar to the killing of another lawyer the day after the televised trial began in October.
Saddam and seven Baath party allies are being tried for crimes against humanity over the deaths of Shi'ite villagers.
A police officer who identified himself as Captain Sabah said Obaidi had been shot eight times and there were signs of torture, both his arms were broken.
Chief prosecutor Jaafar al-Moussawi said the killing would "not affect or delay the trial and we will defy terrorism."
It came two days after Moussawi demanded the death penalty for Saddam and three of his former senior aides.
SUSPENSION CALL
Shopowners told Reuters three gunmen dumped the body of Obaidi at a roundabout under a poster of a senior Shi'ite cleric killed by Saddam's agents in 1999. The cleric is the father of Moqtada al-Sadr, a cleric and leader of the Mehdi Army militia.
"They fired into the air and said 'This is the fate of Baathists!'," said a vegetable seller whose shop is 10 meters (yards) from where the body was dumped.
The area is not far from the Sadr City slum, a stronghold of Sadr's militia. The body of Saadoun Janabi, the first lawyer to be killed, was also dumped nearby. Neighbors said then that he was seized by men saying they were from the Interior Ministry.
Unlike other defense lawyers, Obaidi still lived in Iraq.
Chief defense counsel Khalil al-Dulaimi said the trial should be suspended and the defendants taken abroad for safety: "We hold the U.S. and Iraqi governments, and particularly the militias, responsible for Obaidi's killing," he told Reuters.
A Western official close to the court said Obaidi was offered protection but had turned it down.
Nuaimi told Jazeera other defense lawyers had received written death threats from pro-government Shi'ite militias.
Obaidi told Reuters last year he preferred to stay in Iraq during court recesses: "Whatever will be will be," he said.
The trial, which started in October, has also been marred by the resignation of the previous judge, who complained the Shi'ite-led government was pressuring him over the case.
Defense lawyers are due to sum up on July 10.
(Additional reporting by Ross Colvin and Ahmed Rasheed in Baghdad)
Saddam Ends Hunger Strike After Missing One Meal
Reuters
June 23, 2006
Saddam Hussein ended a brief hunger strike after missing just one meal in his U.S.-run prison, a U.S. military spokesman said on Friday.
The former Iraqi leader had refused lunch on Thursday in protest at the killing of one of his lawyers by gunmen, but the spokesman said he ate his evening meal.
Former Saddam aides being held in the same prison had refused to eat three meals since Wednesday evening but ended their fast with the ex-president.
"They all took their dinner meal," the spokesman told Reuters.
Saddam is on trial for crimes against humanity for his role in the 1982 killing of 148 Shi'ites in Dujail. His lead counsel, Khalil al-Dulaimi, has blamed pro-government Shi'ite militias for the murder of his deputy Khamis al-Obaidi on Wednesday.
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Lebanon
Security Council Report: Lebanon
UN News Centre: Lebanon Commission
UN probe sees possible link between Hariri and other Lebanon murders
Agence France Presse via Yahoo! News UK and Ireland
June 14, 2006
He made the comments in his latest briefing to the Security Council on his six-month investigation of the Hariri slaying which concluded that "consideral progress" had been achieved in understanding the circumstances of the murder.
Hariri was killed in a massivebomb blast that also killed 22 others on the Beirut seafront in February 2005.
"In light of the potential linkages between the Hariri investigation and the 14 other cases, the (Brammertz) commission believes that a much more concerted and robust effort is needed to move these cases forward," Brammertz told the 15-member body.
The Belgian prosecutor said Lebanese authorities probing the 14 other bombings lacked "significant forward investigative momentum" because they lacked "forensic capacity to collect and analyze evidence effectively."
"Further coordinated work and additional capacities are required to elicit such evidentiary links," said the Brammertz report handed over to UN chief Kofi Annan Saturday.
Brammertz therefore urged the international community to provide technical and forensics expertise to Lebanese investigators.
The 14 cases include the murder of anti-Syrian newspaper boss and MP Gibran Tueni last December, which some Lebanese lawmakers have blamed on Damascus. Syria has denied any invovlement.
Tueni, 48, and three other people were killed when a car bomb exploded in a Beirut suburb, just hours after the Christian MP returned from France, where he had taken refuge fearing his life was in danger.
Syria , which has strenuously denied any role in the Hariri killing, has come under intense international pressure to cooperate with the UN probe.
"Cooperation with Syria has further developed," the UN report said, adding that: "Full and unconditional cooperation from Syria to the commission remains crucial."
It also welcomed Lebanon's call for extending his panel's mandate for up to one year, saying this would "provide a sense of continuity and stability, enable progressive operations and planning, and offer assurances to staff."
Brammertz, whose commission's mandate expires Thursday, took over as head of the UN probe last January from his German predecessor, Detlev Mehlis.
Security Council Extends Hariri Probe
Associated Press
June 15, 2006
The U.N. Security Council on Thursday prolonged a probe into the assassination of a former Lebanese prime minister and gave investigators more power to look into other bombings.
A council resolution granted officials' request for another 12 months to June 2007 to investigate the Feb. 14, 2005, bombing that killed Rafik Hariri and 22 others.
Chief investigator Serge Brammertz, earlier reported to the Security Council that progress was being made but he refused to repeat accusations that top Syrian officials with links to President Bashar Assad were responsible.
Hariri's killing provoked an international outcry that ultimately forced Syria to withdraw thousands of troops from Lebanon, ending nearly three decades of military dominance of the country. Syria has denied involvement in Hariri's death.
The resolution also gives Brammertz's team the power to give more assistance to Lebanese authorities for the investigation of other terrorist attacks in Lebanon since Oct. 1, 2004.
Brammertz had told the council that Lebanon has made little progress investigating those bombings, partly because it does not have the capacity to do so.
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Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL) &
Liberian Truth and Reconciliation Commission
Offical Website of the Special Court for Sierra Leone
The Sierra Leone Court Monitoring Programme
Special Court Registrar Welcomes United Nations Security Council Resolution
Press Release of the SCSL
June 16, 2006
The Registrar of the Special Court, Mr Lovemore Munlo SC, has welcomed today’s Chapter 7 Security Council Resolution, which clears the w
