War Crimes Prosecution Watch

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

US Cambodia envoy urges new court to try Khmer Rouge genocide suspects promptly
Jurist
by Joe Shaulis
July 25, 2006

The joint UN-Cambodian court that will try former leaders of the communist Khmer Rouge [JURIST news archive] regime that decimated Cambodia's population in the "killing fields" of the late 1970s must move quickly or risk the deaths of more of the aging genocide suspects, the US ambassador to Cambodia said Tuesday. Ambassador Joseph Mussomeli [official profile], speaking to more than 500 Cambodian commune chiefs at the US Embassy in Phnom Penh, urged the Extraordinary Chambers of Cambodia (EC) [trial task force materials; EC backgrounder] to satisfy a "hunger for justice." According to his prepared remarks [text], Mussomeli said:

The Cambodian genocide stands alone as having failed to bring any of the guilty to justice. From the Nuremberg Trials to the more recent international tribunals to try the mass murderers in Serbia and Rwanda, the victims, their families, and the international community have been given some semblance of justice, some degree of retribution. But not Cambodia.

So some argue that expending scarce funding for a 30-year old crime is absurd, but I hope most Cambodians would disagree. In Cambodia those who were responsible for the genocide for the most part live safe, free, even prosperous lives among the very people they terrorized.

The EC was technically established by a 2001 law [PDF text], but its senior personnel were only sworn in [JURIST report] in July and it is only just beginning its prosecutorial investigations [JURIST report]. Given start-up challenges and the difficulties of securing reliable evidence and witnesses 30 years on from the incidents it is investigating, it is not expected to issue its first indictments until early 2007, and prosecutors have already publicly cautioned [JURIST report] that the process will take months. After Ek Choeun, also known as Ta Mok [Trial Watch profile], went into a coma and died last week [JURIST report], only Kaing Khek Iev, aka Duch, remains in custody [JURIST report]. Other Khmer Rouge leaders survive but are not yet detained. DPA has more.

Cambodia Court Faces High Hurdles
International Herald Tribune
by Seth Mydans
August 4, 2006

More than 27 years after the mass killings ended and after a decade of wrangling between Cambodia and the United Nations, formal proceedings have begun against the surviving leaders of the Khmer Rouge regime.

On July 10, the prosecutor's office began its investigation of the men accused of masterminding a killing regime that took 1.7 million lives from 1975 to 1979 through torture, execution, overwork, starvation and disease.

The first shipment of 383,149 pages of documentary evidence, contained on 524 reels of microfilm, was delivered to the prosecutors on July 17.

But even if a loose timetable holds, it will be a year and a half before the first defendant is brought before a mixed Cambodian-foreign tribunal. Because of limits on time, space and funding, only a small handful are likely to face trial for complicity in the deaths of as much as one-fourth of the population.

The United Nations has given the tribunal a budget of $56.3 million for a three-year process that began with the investigation, which many experts say may have to be extended.

It is also racing against mortality as aging suspects die off and those who remain grow sicker and more frail. The Khmer Rouge leader, Pol Pot, died in 1998. Another leading figure, the military commander Ta Mok, died July 20.

Of the four most prominent names that remain, three are in their late 70s and report having medical problems. Only one, Kaing Khek Iev, also known as Duch, the commander of the torture chamber Tuol Sleng, is in custody. He has become an evangelical Christian. An earlier interview suggested that he may be as enthusiastic now about repentance as he was then about slaughter.

The decades-long gap between the crimes and the trial, arising from various political and geopolitical agendas, will probably dull the memories of defendants and witnesses alike, experts said.

The trial was delayed throughout the 1980s when the United States and other nations insisted on recognizing the jungle-based Khmer Rouge guerrillas rather than the Vietnamese-backed government that ousted them in 1979.

In recent years, Prime Minister Hun Sen has raised obstacles, apparently concerned that the unpredictable process could weaken his firm grip on power.

Whether true or not, courtroom testimony could implicate members of the current government, several of whom were ranking Khmer Rouge cadres themselves. One of these is Hun Sen, who was a middle-ranking field officer but who scholars say was not involved in serious abuses.

The tribunal was established by an agreement between Cambodia and the United Nations in 2003 that grew out of a Cambodian request in 1997 for assistance. It has been controversial from the beginning, with Cambodia insisting that its shaky legal system form the basis for the complex tribunal.

Critics doubt the quality and independence of the 17 Cambodian judges and prosecutors, who they say are poorly trained and subject to political manipulation. An analysis by the human rights organization Licadho asserted that seven of the appointees "are clearly unsuited to the task" because of their records in politically manipulated trials. Four other men named to be judges have never served as judges before, it said.

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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

DRC: Rape victims hope new leaders will halt violence
IRIN
August 2, 2006

Large numbers of women took part in Sunday’s elections in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s South Kivu Province in the hope that the new leaders would clamp down on the violence perpetrated by militants, say civil society organisations.

One of these voters was Naomie Kisenyi, 38. In 2003, three hooded armed men in civilian clothes raped and beat her in a forest near Bukavu, the provincial capital. "It is difficult to talk about my experience as it is so humiliating," she said on Sunday at a Bukavu polling station.

She was admitted to Bukavu's Panzi Hospital and has recovered after lengthy treatment. However, every six months she is tested for HIV. "So far, thank God, the tests have proved negative," she said.

She still does not know the identity of her attackers. She decided to vote because she believed new leaders would regain control of the entire country from armed elements, punish rapists and re-establish security.

The international community shares the sentiment that the elections could set the stage for lasting peace in the DRC.
"This election is not an end in itself," Sylvie van den Wildenberg, a spokeswoman for the United Nations Mission in Congo (MONUC), said. "It is the first day in a new chapter in Congo's history. Elections are important as a strategy to consolidate peace and security."

Clearly, she said, the continued presence of armed foreign groups and local militia in South Kivu and in the northeastern district of Ituri in Orientale Province presented major challenges to an elected government.

"Once the Congolese have chosen their leaders, they will need to begin regional negotiations to try to find a final solution to the endemic problem of insecurity," she said.

"This violence is not only the work of the foreign groups in Congo but also of Congolese civilians who try to discredit the country's security forces," Van den Wildenberg added.

However, representatives of civil society organisations in South Kivu said widespread rape became noticeable in the province in 1999 when foreign forces invaded the east of the country.

" South Kivu Province was the main gateway for those who brought war, which created insecurity and instability in the east," said Denis Buhendwa, a trainer with Groupe Jermie, an association for civic education and the protection of human rights.

MONUC says pockets of insecurity have always existed in South Kivu; particularly in the territories of Shabunda, Mwenga, north of Walungu and in the south of Kabaré.

In these areas, Mai-Mai militia and other rebel groups, which rejected integration into the armed forces or demobilisation, have continued to terrorise the community. Violence against women is widespread in these areas because a constantly shifting population has made people easy prey, according to human rights organisations.
In these territories, according to humanitarian bodies in South Kivu, there are 120,000 to 130,000 internally displaced people, of whom 4,000 women had been raped in South Kivu in the past four months.

"The violation of women's rights is an unhealthy reality that we live with in South Kivu," said Agnès Kamuanya-Ntumba, the Vice-President of the South Kivu Civil Society Organisation. "During and immediately after the war, even today, violence is a reality in South Kivu; and 99 percent of rape cases are the work of foreign forces."

This election, she said, was a way to solve this problem. "We should make it count," she added.

Consequences of violence against women

The number of rape victims is such that Panzi Hospital, which offers specialist care for such cases, can no longer cope. Many patients come from the provinces of Katanga and North Kivu, in addition to those from South Kivu.

"Each day we get on average 10 patients, of whom some have been raped repeatedly over the past six months," Dr Denis Mukwenge-Mukengere, the director of Panzi Hospital, said.

Although this number had stabilised since January, he said, the 320-bed hospital had admitted 520 patients, of whom 350 were victims of sexual violence. An international NGO is building wards for another 100 patients.

According to Mukwenge-Mukengere, 160 of the 180 outpatients are also rape victims, all of whom receive free care with support from the European Commission Humanitarian Aid agency, ECHO. This help has enabled raped women to be screened for HIV; 5 percent of the 360,000 women raped have been positive.

"We provide pregnant raped women with treatment to prevent mother to child transmission of HIV," he said.

Given this stark reality, South Kivu residents see the elections as one way to solve the problems of insecurity in the province and its accompanying consequence: rape.

DRC: Militia leader gets 20-year jail sentence
IRIN
August 3, 2006

BUNIA, 3 Aug 2006 (IRIN) - A military tribunal in the Democratic Republic of Congo's Ituri District has sentenced a militia leader to 20 years’ imprisonment for crimes against humanity.

Yves Panga Mandro Kahwa had been charged with creating the Parti pour l'Unité et la sauvegarde de l'Intégrité du Congo (PUSIC) insurrection movement in 2002 in Tchomia, 60 km southeast of Bunia, the main town in Ituri. The tribunal ruled on Tuesday that PUSIC was responsible for the destabilisation of the district.

"This sentencing shows a fight for the rule of law and an end to impunity," Mbitso Ngedza, the deputy police chief for administration in Ituri, said on Wednesday in Bunia.

The tribunal ruled that Kahwa's crimes against humanity date to 15 and 16 October 2002, when 10 people died after he set fire to a health-centre, schools and churches in the Zumbe and Bedu Ezekere localities, 10 km southeast of Bunia.

Ituri has remained volatile due to militia activity, despite various Congolese political parties and rebel groups signing an agreement in 2002 that ended the civil war in most parts of the country.

The tribunal also directed that Kahwa pay 14 victims of his crimes between US $2,500 and $75,000 in compensation.
Kahwa had also been charged for the abduction, over two weeks in 2002, of Prof Ntuba Luaba, then minister for human rights. Another militia leader, Thomas Lubanga of the Union des patriotes congolais (UPC), has also been charged with complicity in the abduction, which took place in the nation's capital, Kinshasa. Lubanga is in the custody of the International Criminal Court in The Hague, awaiting trial for crimes against humanity, allegedly committed in Ituri.

Kahwa is the common-law chief of the Bahema Banywagi community in Djugu, where he also served as a "major" in the UPC, one of the militia groups that had been active in Ituri since 2003.
The military tribunal has been hearing the case against Kahwa since 19 June, with proceedings in session, despite his refusal to appear before both the civil and military courts in Ituri, which he claimed were under the influence of the United Nations Mission in the DRC, MONUC.

In a letter to the military judge in Bunia, Maj John Penza, Kahwa forbade his lawyer, Modeste Magene, from representing him before any of the courts. Subsequently, the military tribunal assigned Joseph Lobi from Kisangani, capital of Orientale Province, to represent Kahwa. Karine Bapinga of the Belgian NGO, Lawyers Without Borders, represented the victims' families.

After the ruling, Kahwa said he would appeal against the sentence before the military court in Kisangani.

"Even though he has been charged, we will await the ruling in Kisangani before he can be replaced as head of the community," Mbitso said.

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Darfur, Sudan (ICC)

Official Website of the International Criminal Court
ICC Public Documents - Situation in Darfur, Sudan

Annan sees up to 24,000 UN peacekeepers for Darfur
The Washington Post
by Irwin Arieff
July 31, 2006

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan proposed on Monday a large and highly mobile peacekeeping force for Sudan's Darfur region, numbering up to 24,000 troops and international police officers.

The requirements for the force, which would surpass the 17,500-strong U.N. force in the Democratic Republic of Congo as the largest U.N. peacekeeping mission, were outlined in a report to the U.N. Security Council, a copy of which was obtained by Reuters.

Sudan's government has yet to approve deployment of a U.N. force to succeed a smaller and under-equipped African Union force of about 7,700 soldiers and civilian police.

The 15-member Security Council can approve the force without Sudan's approval but it is doubtful any country would contribute troops without Khartoum's consent.

"Securing the consent of the government of Sudan will require continued intensive discussions with Khartoum by council members, by key member states and regional organizations, as well as by the United Nations," Annan said, calling for a shift to a U.N. force "as soon as possible."

DARFUR VIOLENCE 'SHOCKED THE WORLD'

After more than three years of fighting among Sudanese factions in Darfur, "marked by abhorrent violence against innocent civilians that has shocked the world," the cost of rejecting an eventual transition to a U.N. peacekeeping mission "could be serious and lasting," Annan warned.

Tens of thousand of people have died in the violence that escalated in early 2003 when rebels rose up against the Khartoum government complaining of a lack of resources. Sudan then armed militia, known as Janjaweed, who began a campaign of rape, plunder and murder against non-Arab tribes.

More than 2.3 million villagers have been been uprooted and more recently, rebels are fighting each other, adding to the misery.

Annan said the U.N. mission would require an initial deployment of up to 3,300 police officers plus 16 trained units of riot police, typically of 125 officers each, for a total of as many as 5,300 officers.

With the officers to be deployed at over 100 sites, covering about 80 percent of Darfur's population, "this would be a minimum option," he said.

As for U.N. troops, the force would seek to protect refugee camps, humanitarian supply routes and nomadic migration routes via a "framework of mobile infantry battalions," Annan said, outlining three options ranging from 15,300 to 18,600 soldiers, depending on the number of aircraft to accompany them.

The best option, he said, would be to deploy 17,300 peacekeeping soldiers along with three fixed-wing reconnaissance aircraft and 26 helicopters.

"This force represents an optimal balance of key operational capabilities and likely offers the fastest route to a secure environment and eventual return to normality."

Should just 13 helicopters be made available, the force would require about 18,600 troops and would be less capable of responding to multiple security incidents by air, "possibly delaying the return to normality and peace."

Should the force be equipped with 35 helicopters, it could get along with about 15,300 troops by relying more heavily on rapid-reaction forces while "sacrificing some security presence," Annan said.

The smaller force would be more vulnerable to bad weather and would carry "a higher degree of risk on protection of civilians," he said.

Darfur rebels kill, rape to enforce deal: Amnesty
Reuters
August 1, 2006

KHARTOUM (Reuters) - Darfur rebels who signed a peace deal with the government killed and raped civilians to try to force them to support the unpopular accord, human rights group Amnesty International said on Tuesday.

The African Union-brokered deal was signed in May by only one of three rebel factions -- the Minni Arcua Minnawi group. Tens of thousands of Darfuris have protested against the deal, saying it does not meet their demands.

"Some 72 people were killed, 103 injured and 39 women raped in targeted attacks against civilians in the Korma region," said Amnesty in a statement.

The attacks were at the beginning of July in Korma, about 70 km (45 miles) north west of el-Fasher, Darfur's main town. Around 8,000 people fled their homes, emptying Korma.

"The attackers were members of the Minni Minnawi faction of the armed political group the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA), reportedly supported by the Sudan armed forces and the Janjaweed," London-based Amnesty said.

Since signing the deal, Minnawi's troops have repeatedly been accused of imprisoning and torturing Darfuris who oppose it. Minnawi denies the reports.

But a U.N. helicopter in June airlifted elderly SLA official Suleiman Adam Jamous out of Minnawi's stronghold in Darfur where he had been imprisoned for weeks. Jamous had opposed Minnawi's leadership and the deal.

Amnesty further said a 7,000-strong AU force had not protected civilians and had not investigated the violence.

Some other rebel groups accuse the AU of losing its neutrality by housing Minnawi in their headquarters in el- Fasher, flying him in AU helicopters on demand around Darfur and allowing his troops to drive AU vehicles in el-Fasher town.

Amnesty said civilians had reported the attacks to the AU force on July 5, but the SLA had opposed the AU going to Korma. Only an AU outpost in nearby Tawila had gone to Korma but it had not issued its findings.

SLA officials were not immediately reachable and an AU spokesman was unable to immediately comment on the report.

Tens of thousands have been killed and 2.5 million forced from their homes during more than three years of conflict in Darfur.

U.N. Chief Calls for Strengthened Darfur
Forbes
by Edith M. Lederer
August 1, 2006

Secretary-General Kofi Annan urged the Security Council to strengthen African Union forces in the Sudan's violence-wracked Darfur region and more than double it if a U.N. takeover of peacekeeping duties is approved.

In a 30-page report to the council circulated Tuesday, Annan laid out proposals for a much more muscular U.N. operation to protect civilians and support a peace agreement signed by the government and one rebel group in May.

The plans envision a U.N. force of between 15,300 and 17,300 troops, depending on the number of aircraft and rapid reaction troops. Annan also proposed more than tripling the 1,560-strong African Union police contingent to about 5,300 U.N. officers.

If approved by the council, the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Darfur would become the U.N.'s largest, surpassing the 17,500-strong U.N. force in Congo.

But Sudan's president, Omar al-Bashir, has vowed to never allow U.N. peacekeepers into Darfur and Annan said the U.N. can't take over without the government's consent and cooperation.

"Securing the consent of the government of Sudan will require continued intensive discussions with Khartoum," Annan said.

The conflict in Darfur began when members of ethnic African tribes rose in revolt against the Arab-led Khartoum government in early 2003. Over 200,000 civilians have died, more than two million have fled their homes, and millions more have had their livelihoods destroyed, Annan said.

More than 2.5 million people affected by the war are receiving food, health care, shelter and other essentials from over 13,000 humanitarian workers from over 80 organizations, the Red Cross and 13 U.N. agencies, he said.

Annan warned that "the window of opportunity" provided by the Darfur peace agreement to stabilize the region "could close if there is no extra effort to implement it effectively." If the ongoing violence isn't addressed, he said, the overall situation could deteriorate.

"Alternatively, there may be an attempt to implement the agreement through force, including the forced return of internally displaced persons," Annan warned. "If this should be allowed to happen, Darfur could descend into an even bloodier round of conflict that would be catastrophic for the people of the region."

With the Sudanese government blocking a U.N. force, the secretary-general called for the urgent strengthening of the African Union force.

In the short-term, he said, the United Nations could provide significant support and with other international help it could also add armored personnel carriers, heavy-duty vehicles, and additional aircraft to significantly enhance the AU's rapid response capability.

But the African Union has said it doesn't have the resources for a long-term peacekeeping mission and wants the United Nations to take over to help bring peace to Darfur.

The immediate strengthening of the AU force "and subsequent transition to a United Nations operation could reverse dangerous threats inherent to peace in Darfur and the region," Annan said.

Annan outlines Darfur peace plans
BBC News
August 2, 2006

UN chief Kofi Annan has urged the Security Council to reinforce Darfur's African Union (AU) peacekeepers, while pressuring Sudan to accept a UN force.

Mr Annan gave three options for the UN, with Sudan's approval, to bring peace.

One scheme would involve 18,600 African and Asian troops, making it the world's largest UN peace force.

But Sudanese President Omar el-Bashir has vowed to never allow a UN force into Darfur. The UN cannot assume a role without the government's consent.

"Securing the consent of the government of Sudan will require continued intensive discussions with Khartoum by council members, by key member states and regional organisations, as well as by the United Nations," Mr Annan said.

"No effort should be spared to send the simple, powerful message: International involvement will increase the chances of peace taking root in Darfur, will strengthen the credibility of the peace process and the protection of the suffering populations of Darfur," he said.

He warned that the window of opportunity created by the Darfur peace agreement signed in May would be lost if there was no extra effort to implement it on the ground.

The current AU peacekeeping force in Sudan's war-torn west is 7,000-strong.

Some 2m people have fled their homes in Darfur since conflict began in 2003, and tens of thousands of people are reported to have been killed in ongoing violence.

Darfur: Inadequate International Aid Threatened by Renewed Violence
Doctors Without Borders
August 3, 2006

The situation is worsening in Darfur, the western Sudan region where a conflict began in 2003. Renewed violence has led to reduced assistance to people in the area. Dr. Denis Lemasson, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) program director, has just returned from Sudan with a disturbing report.

What form has this new outbreak of violence taken in Sudan?

Several incidents over the last few months point to a worsening of the situation throughout Darfur. The number of armed groups has increased, related in part to internal divisions among government and back-up troops, dissident groups, rebel groups, and others who have clashed repeatedly. In recent weeks, we have also observed acts of organized crime and other criminal activity that has specifically affected international aid organizations.

At least five international aid workers have been killed over the last three weeks. MSF has experienced four major incidents. While I was visiting Mornay, a team arrived. They had been attacked and beaten on the road and their car struck by gunfire. The team was lucky to make it back.

How has this affected the population?

After that incident, we were forced to suspend traveling on the road to El Geneina. If a patient were to arrive in Mornay today and needed an operation, we would not be able to transfer that person. We have also had to suspend the work of our mobile clinics that serve the nomadic population. In other locations, we have had to evacuate entire teams. We can't expose them to the risk of being killed.

Displaced and isolated civilians are directly affected by any reduction of international aid. More than three years after the killings of 2003 and massive population displacements, what is striking is that the populations are still experiencing the state of emergency created by that conflict. The displaced people have the same needs and are completely dependent on international aid for access to food, water, health care, and shelter. When they go outside the camp, they run the daily risk of beatings, rape, and death. We noted several such incidents along the periphery of the camps, particularly in Zalingei and Niertiti. Driven to the camps by force, the displaced persons today have no chance–and no prospect–of returning to their home villages. Survival is difficult for the nomadic populations and the residents of isolated villages as the conflict has halted livestock migration and trade among the communities.

Has international aid been reduced?

International aid was already inadequate relative to the needs and is declining, particularly in the displaced persons' camps. Over the last year, we have observed reduced funding, a shrinking number of aid actors, and a refocusing of programs from emergency needs to development. In May alone, the World Food Program (WFP) cut its food distributions by half, which threatens to worsen an already dangerous food situation. Current water distribution is inadequate. Health care needs are also great, both in terms of consultations and hospital care for emergency cases. On top of that, if security problems result in the closure of programs and the departure of other actors, basic survival needs will not be met. That is why we are asking today that all armed actors in the field not interfere with the work of humanitarian aid organizations.

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Uganda (ICC)

Official Website of the International Criminal Court
ICC Public Documents - Situation in Uganda

Ituri: The Congo's Own Rwanda
Institute for War & Peace Reporting
by Francis Mwepu
July 27, 2006

A savage regional conflict in northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo has claimed more than 60,000 lives and displaced hundreds of thousands of people.

By Francis Mwepu in Lubumbashi (AR No. 71, 27-Jul-06)

As conflict continues throughout much of the Democratic Republic of the Congo in advance of the first elections in 46 years, the Ituri region in the northeast remains this vast country's bloodiest corner.

The scale of the inter-ethnic slaughter in the remote, mineral-rich region of the Democratic Republic of Congo, DRC, has been compared in intensity, if not in scale with that in nearby Rwanda in 1994.

Lendu agriculturalists in Ituri tend to regard themselves as kin to the Rwanda’s Hutus, while the cattle-herding Hema identify with the Tutsis. Just as the Hutus and the Tutsis fell into murderous conflict, so the Lendu and Hema have followed their example.

This regional civil conflict of massive savagery went almost totally ignored by the world – and by Africa-based foreign correspondents – until March this year, when an Ituri warlord was brought to The Hague to face charges brought by the fledgling International Criminal Court, ICC.

Suddenly Ituri was on the international map.

Thomas Lubanga Dyilo, leader of a Hema militia named the Union of Congolese Patriots, UPC, was arrested and placed in custody by the DRC authorities following the killing and mutilation in February 2005 of nine Bangladesh soldiers who were serving in United Nations peacekeeping force in Ituri.

ICC, which had been asked by the government to investigate the situation in eastern Congo, issued an arrest warrant for Lubanga in February 2006, and he was transferred to ICC custody and sent to The Hague the following month.

Lubanga is now incarcerated in the prison complex set up to house war crimes suspects tried by the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia.

ICC prosecutors are preparing charges of crimes against humanity and war crimes against the 45-year-old DRC rebel commander. These will include the accusation that his forces conscripted children under the age of 15 to fight in combat. The ICC's Argentinean chief prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, alleges that Lubanga has trained children as young as seven to become guerrilla soldiers.

Lubanga’s arrest and indictment by the ICC will need to be followed by others if justice is to be fully served, because many massacres have occurred in Ituri, some in areas so remote that they may never be reported. There have been mass rapes, assassinations, plunder, arson, mutilations, decapitations and cannibalism. Summary executions, even of hospital patients in their beds, and torture have been commonplace, according to the leading watchdog Human Rights Watch.

The Ituri region contains a bewilderingly complex web of conflict that developed from 1998 onwards between the Hema and Lendu. The fighting was exacerbated by the Ugandan army, which virtually annexed the area in 1999 and is alleged to have plundered its rich gold seams.

As well as gold, the province is rich in deposits of diamonds, timber, newly-discovered oil and coltan (short for columbite-tantalite), a rare ore that is an essential component in cell phones, laptop computers and other hi-tech devices.

A Canadian company, Heritage Oil, is drilling for oil in the Semliki Valley which straddles the Uganda-Ituri border. Canada’s Barrick Gold claims exploration rights to the world's biggest gold field, Kilo Moto.

Human Rights Watch estimates that Ugandan soldiers stole more than nine million US dollars worth of Ituri gold between 1999 and 2003.

" Uganda is the number one gold-exporting country in this area without having a single gold mine. Tell me how that happens?" said one military intelligence official from the United Nations, who added that Ituri's militias continue to feed the illegal trade.

Human Rights Watch said, "During its four years occupying the north-eastern DRC, the Ugandan army claimed to be a peacemaker in a region torn by ethnic strife. In reality, the Ugandan army provoked political confusion and created insecurity in areas under its control. From its initial involvement in a land dispute between the Hema and Lendu, the Ugandan army more often aggravated than calmed ethnic and political hostilities."

Human Rights Watch accuses Uganda of playing the role of “both arsonist and fireman”, and of meddling in political feuding among local Ituri leaders.

As the Ugandans looted the region, the Rwandan and DRC armies also got in on the act, each backing various militias. Lubanga's UPC was initially trained by the Ugandans, but, in a typical shift of loyalties, realigned itself from 2002 onwards with the Rwandan army, through a proxy Rwanda-backed militia in the nearby province of North Kivu.

The Ugandan army withdrew in 2003, to be replaced by Bangladeshi, Pakistani, Indian and Nepalese contingents from the 17,600-strong United Nations military peacekeeping force in the Congo called MONUC (UN Observer Mission in DRC).

"The [Ituri] players change all the time,” said one international aid official. "It's incredibly complicated and dangerous."

Although the Hema are pastoralists and the Lendu agriculturalists, historically they co-existed and intermarriage was common. However, Belgian colonial rule accentuated ethnic divisions between the two, by favouring the Hema over the Lendu, just as the Belgians favoured the Tutsis over the Hutus in Rwanda.

There were occasional conflicts, but at no point in the documented history of Ituri did violence attain the levels seen since 1999, when the occupying Ugandan army sided with the Hema. As warfare grew, other Ituri ethnic groups were forced to take sides.

Johan Pottier, professor of African Anthroplogy at London University and an expert on Rwanda and the eastern Congo, said that as conflict between the Hema and Lendu spread and became more bitter, so each group turned to propaganda and myths to justify its cause, fabricating stories to support their grievances.

The Hema compared the Lendu to the Hutu in Rwanda, whose leadership was responsible for the 1994 mass killings of Tutsis. Mutual Hema-Lendu massacres with bullets, spears and machetes multiplied - 37 hacked to death here, 140 there, 150 somewhere else, 966 somewhere else yet again, sometimes 1,200, sometimes 1,500. Women and children were not spared. The bodies were tossed into rivers or mass graves.

Against the background of this growing extremism, Lubanga's Hema UPC began pressing for autonomy for Ituri from the rest of the Congo.

Meanwhile, the violence continued.

In one UPC attack on Mongwabu, an important gold-mining town at the heart of a concession held by South Africa's AngloGold Ashanti, a witness told Human Watch Right, "They took Kasore, a Lendu man in his thirties, from his family and attacked him with knives and hammers. They killed him and his son with knives. They cut his son's throat and tore open his chest. They cut the tendons on his heels, smashed his head and took out his intestines. The father was slaughtered and burnt."

There have also been many reports of Lendu warriors cutting open the chests of victims to pluck out their hearts. Such brutality has become the signature of the Lendu fighters, who are also known for wearing women's wigs and dresses during battle in the belief that such apparel will protect them from harm.

A man in the small town of Nyakunde, where an estimated 200 Hemas were killed over a period of ten days, told Human Rights Watch what he had seen in the local missionary hospital, "They would cut their throats and take the hearts or bits from the throat. Sometimes they would cut the meat off the people's thighbones and put this into their bags.

“They asked people what group they were from, as they were looking for Hema, Bira and Gegere. That first day, I saw them kill 16 people."

In the complex ethnic mix of at least 18 tribes in Ituri, the Gegere and Bira have sided with the Hema. The Ngiti identify closely with the Lendu. Other groups have tried to stand clear of the warfare but have been sucked in in various ways and have all suffered attacks.

A witness to the killing of a Hema woman in one of thousands of such incidents told HRW: "They arrested a woman who was accused of being a witch. But she was Hema and that was the real reason. There were about 10 Lendu combatants with machetes and knives. They took her from her house, stripped her and then cut her all over. They cut off her arms and then cut her genitals. Then they killed her near the central market place and burned her body. About 15 of us witnessed this."

Human Rights Watch has recorded many acts of cannibalism in full grisly detail in reports such as "Ituri: Covered in Blood - Ethnically Targeted Violence in Northeastern DR Congo”. Yet the group laments that just about the only time the international press showed an interest in the continuous mayhem of Ituri was when reports of such acts filtered out.

All Ituri combatants have used rape and other forms of sexual violence as a weapon of warfare. These are among the crimes against humanity being researched in great detail by ICC investigators in the case against Lubanga. Mass rape of girls as young as 12 by all militias have been reported. Girls are frequently murdered afterwards or kidnapped as sex slaves.

Children as young as seven, including girls, have been forcibly recruited as child soldiers - and this again is one of the charges that Lubanga will have to answer. The 1949 Geneva conventions and the international Convention on the Rights of the Child prohibit all combatants in an internal armed conflict from recruiting children under the age of 15 or allowing them to take part in hostilities.

In an Ituri population of just over four million, the United Nations estimates that more than 60,000 people have been killed in the militia warfare since 1999, while more than half a million have been forced to flee their homes, encountering further violence in their flight.

As the July 30 presidential and parliamentary elections approach in DRC, fighting continues in Ituri between the militias, government forces and MONUC. Internal refugees continue to flee into the forest or congregate in Bunia, the regional capital where the MONUC force in Ituri has its headquarters.

Under such circumstances, there is little or no chance the conduct of this landmark election will be free and fair in Ituri.

Child soldiers wake up from a nightmare
The Washington Times
by Willis Witter
July 31, 2006

GULU, Uganda -- When he was 6, Sam was kidnapped.

He spent the next six years as a captive of a rebel army, where he was forced to kill other children, sometimes by biting the skin off a screaming victim who would slowly bleed to death.

For nearly two decades, northern Uganda has faced the terror of an army of child predators. The children live in a wilderness of towering elephant grass and attack at night. They have been known to attack villages -- killing all but the children between 6 and 15, whom they take away.

The abducted children either face a horrible death or end up like Sam, now 12, who was rescued in April by the Ugandan army.

Girls have the added burden of being assigned as "wives" to senior commanders of the rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA). Its leader Joseph Kony, is said to have about 50 wives.

Northern Uganda is like the Darfur crisis in slow motion -- a tragedy that is too tiny to attract the attention of movie stars and others with the ability to focus international outrage.

Sam's rescue has given him a fleeting chance to recover a tiny piece of a stolen childhood. But as he enters his teen years, and his dimpled soft features begin to harden, he faces a new hurdle: His parents fear him and were reluctant to take him back.

Like nearly 20,000 other children who have been rescued or managed to escape their captors, Sam has gone through a brief period of rehabilitation with trained counselors.

Yet the program is too short to deal with what often becomes a lifetime struggle with nightmares, flashbacks, fear and unexpected mood swings, known in the West as the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.

Kony, 46, a self-proclaimed prophet with a lurid interpretation of the Ten Commandments and a goal of "purifying" the Acholi ethnic group of northern Uganda, leads this army of children along with four top lieutenants.

All five recently were charged with crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court (ICC) at The Hague, an indictment backed by the Bush administration. It also backs "peace talks" between the LRA and the Ugandan government, which began in the southern Sudanese city of Juba earlier this month with the apparent aim of persuading Kony to retire, go into exile, or both.

"If Kony stays in the bush, he will finish off a whole generation of Acholis," said Paul Oryem Rwot, 68, a traditional Acholi chief in the northern village of Atiak.

A slow death

Founded in 1987, the LRA has forced nearly the entire Acholi population of about 1.5 million to seek protection in squalid refugee camps, far from villages and land that provided food for past generations of farmers.

An estimated 1,000 children die each month at the more than 200 refugee camps in northern Uganda, mainly from malaria, malnutrition and diseases spread through poor sanitation.

"One day recently, six children died. It's now 11 a.m. and already two children have died, so by the time the sun sets, you can imagine how many more will be gone," said Chief Rwot, whose village includes four camps with about 33,000 displaced people.

How could something like this go on for so long?

"The [Western] audience doesn't attach an economic value to the issue, probably because we don't have any diamonds or oil," said Nahaman Ojwe, the top federal official in Kitgum, a town 50 miles from Gulu.

"Look at all the attention paid to Sudan," he added.

The United States, Europe and the United Nations are heavily involved in attempting to end a civil war in Sudan's western province of Darfur, where an Islamist Arab government in Khartoum is fighting nomadic tribes. Before that, the West engaged in a major effort to broker a peace treaty in another civil war between Khartoum and the partly Christian south.

Though the two conflicts are usually depicted in terms of ethnicity and religion, oil drove the North-South war and Darfur is thought to contain large undeveloped oil reserves. It is hard to convince the West [that northern Uganda is important] because this is the way the audience has been brought up," Mr. Ojwe said. "Still, the international community is not so green about the issue. They've broken the ice."

Not on the agenda

"I was quite distressed because of the crimes [against children] when I met with the abductees -- and young kids. It is outrageous. It is inhuman. It is unacceptable," Assistant Secretary of State for Africa Jendayi E. Frazer told reporters after a recent visit to Gulu.

Mrs. Frazer toured a rehabilitation camp for escaped children, which is run by the international Christian charity World Vision. There, she listened to accounts of two escaped LRA fighters.

Nicholas, 12, and Ninety, 15, each described being forced to kill other children, with one being forced to join a group of five that was ordered to bite off the skin of a child until the victim bled to death.

Mrs. Frazer asked the children whether the United States could do anything to help. An uncomfortable silence followed as neither child had an answer. Since that visit in late June, President Bush has met separately at the White House with the presidents of both Sudan and the autonomous region of southern Sudan, which was created with a January 2005 peace agreement.

In a July 20 meeting at the White House between Mr. Bush and southern Sudanese President Salva Kiir, the LRA conflict came up briefly because Mr. Kiir is mediating peace talks between Kony and the Ugandan government.

However, Darfur dominated the discussions, as well as the questions and comments by both leaders at a subsequent press conference. The LRA-Uganda negotiations received only passing acknowledgment in Mr. Kiir's public appearances that followed.

Fixing things

World Vision has operated a rehabilitation center in Gulu since 1995. A separate facility, run by Save the Children Uganda and known by the acronym Gusco, opened a year earlier. The United States is the biggest source of funding for both facilities.

Together, both organizations have returned nearly 20,000 escaped LRA soldiers to their families.

The first stop for an escaped child is the Ugandan army's Child Protection Unit in Gulu. Each child receives a bar of soap, toothbrush, toothpaste and a set of clothes and then is sent to either Gusco or World Vision.

There, he or she receives a minimum of six weeks of individual and group counseling. Parents and family are contacted, and arrangements are made for the child's return. Child mothers spend three months or more at the centers, where they are trained to use sewing machines and make handicrafts or taught other means to support themselves.

In both centers, the atmosphere is relaxed, and the children are given plenty of time to relax with other escapees. They eat three times a day and sleep in beds, usually for the first time in their lives.

At the World Vision center, each day begins with a Christian worship service. "The Bible speaks a great deal about reconciliation and forgiveness," said David Orone, administrator of the World Vision center. "In dealing with a war, you are trying to cause a healing of a hurting heart and also to get someone to acknowledge what they have done.

"The hardest thing is for someone to forgive themselves. It's a gradual process. It is not one 'boom,' and everything falls into place. It is a healing process that can take a lifetime."

Children arrive at both centers expecting to be killed, which is what they have been told repeatedly by LRA overlords. They are instead greeted with a traditional Acholi song and dance that depicts centuries-old rituals used to reconcile feuding clans.

The fear quickly begins to dissipate as they meet other children, some of whom they've known from life in the bush.

Kony's shadow

Yet Kony casts a long shadow over the escapees, as if he is somehow watching every move. Whatever may have happened in the bush, few escapees are willing to speak ill of Kony.

"People say Kony is a devil or a wizard, but when you meet him it's different. He knows what will happen in the future," said Catherine, 20.

Catherine spent 10 years in the wilderness with the LRA. Now she is preparing to move, with her daughter, Harriet, 6, into a hut where her mother now lives.

"What happened is nobody's fault. He was abducted, too," Catherine said of Harriet's father, a senior LRA commander who was also abducted as a child.

"He was forced to do everything. Someday he'll go back to his home, I'll go to mine. I don't want to see him again. The only thing I want is for my daughter to go to school, to study, to become someone."

A reunion took place the next day, with three generations of women embracing.

After a short prayer service, joined by some neighbors, Catherine's mother, Mary, said, "God has a plan for [Catherine]. That plan is still there, and I'm just waiting for what will happen."

After years of silence, Kony surfaced in April on a video with leaders of the autonomous southern Sudan government, offering peace talks with the Ugandan government. The talks have begun and taken on a surreal quality, with Kony, a former altar boy, claiming that he never hurt anyone and that every atrocity ever blamed on the LRA was committed by Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni.

"Let me tell you clearly what happened in Uganda. Museveni went into the villages and cut off the ears of the people, telling the people that it was the work of the LRA. I cannot cut the ear of my brother; I cannot kill the eye of my brother," Kony told the British Broadcasting Corp. in a rare interview last month.

Not welcome

The feeling of comfort and safety in the World Vision and Gusco rehabilitation centers -- after horrors of life in the bush -- seems too perfect to last. For many, it ends all too quickly.

Sam, the 12-year-old rescued in April, was one of eight children being driven to new homes in a Toyota van. Each wore a set of new clothes. Bags of corn meal, high-protein flour, long-bladed hoes, packets of seeds and other supplies for each child were lashed tightly to a roof rack. Supplies include a few dollars in cash, so the children will not be looked on initially as a burden.

During the drive, someone commented that Jennifer, 15, had been lucky because she escaped after two days.

"Those two days will be 10 years in my life," Jennifer replied. "I was forced to beat someone to death, to bite off their skin. I'll never forget spitting out the flesh and blood."

She said she will never be able to eat meat again.

"I also participated in killing somebody," said Tony, 16. "That is the first thing they make you do [after being kidnapped], to remove the fear."

"I had to bite someone to death, too, and it was more than once," Sam added.

A few minutes later, Sam was dropped off.

There was no sign of his parents, or any relatives, even though Sam's father had told World Vision to drop his son off at the site with an older sister.

When reporters came back the next day to check on Sam, neither parent had arrived.

"I expected them to be here," Sam said, bursting into tears. Sam was later driven by reporters to his parent's new home and was taken in -- at least for now.

LRA leaders declare ceasefire
BBC News
August 4, 2006

The Ugandan Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) has announced a unilateral ceasefire, with immediate effect.

The rebel movement's deputy leader Vincent Otti told the BBC he had ordered all field commanders to cease all hostilities against Uganda's army.

Ugandan Interior Minister Ruhakana Rugunda said his government would wait to see what happened on the ground, in response to the announcement.

The peace talks are due to resume in the Sudanese town of Juba next week.

In a phone call to the BBC's Focus on Africa programme, Mr Otti announced: "I, Lt Gen Vincent Otti, second in command of the LRA, by the order of Gen Joseph Kony, chairman of the LRA High Command, do hereby declare a unilateral cessation of hostilities.

"I order all our field commanders to, with immediate effect, cease all form of hostilities against the Ugandan People's Defence Forces (UDPF) positions and others.

I do hope that the government of Uganda shall reciprocate this gesture of goodwill so that the warring parties may finally find a bilateral agreement to provide a peaceful atmosphere for our people," Mr Otti said.

Refusing talks

The LRA rebel movement has refused to send its most senior leaders to peace talks with the government.

Southern Sudanese vice-president and head mediator, Riek Machar had asked for the group's top leaders to take part after earlier peace talks failed.

On Thursday Mr Otti told the BBC that Juba was not safe because an International Criminal Court (ICC) warrant for the LRA leaders' arrest was still in force and Ugandan government forces were present in the town.

On Tuesday, Mr Kony held his first formal meeting with Mr Machar and a Ugandan official in a forest clearing on the border between Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

This was hailed as a significant move, since the failure of earlier talks had been attributed in part to the negotiators not being sufficiently high-ranking to strike a deal.

Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni has offered the rebels a full and guaranteed amnesty and protection as long as they renounce violence.

Thousands of civilians have died in the 20-year conflict and more than one million have been forced to flee their homes.

Uganda: ICC Willing to Lift Kony Indictment, Says Uganda
AllAfrica.com: The New Times (Kigali)
by Charles Kazooba & Jumah Senyonga
August 4, 2006

The International Criminal Court is not willing to indict Africa's most wanted rebel leader and four of his commanders, a senior Ugandan official has said.

The Permanent Secretary Ministry of Internal Affairs, Stephen Kagoda, on Wednesday Aug. 2 said the ICC would not prosecute the LRA's Joseph Kony and his top commanders Vincent Otti, Okot Odhiambo, Dominic Ogwen and Raska Lukwiya.

"The ICC is willing to lift the indictments. They (ICC) are willing to go with (watch) us through the peace talks provided the final agreement does not condone impunity," Kagoda said while appearing before the parliamentary committee on Defence and Internal Affairs.

The ICC, established in 2002 by the Treaty of Rome to try war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide, has firmly insisted it would prosecute the Lord's Resistance Army rebel chiefs.

"Finally, the judges will have to decide what to do with the case. The court is the only arbiter of its mandate, the judges will decide. We believe the best way to stop crimes and restore security to the region is to arrest the top leaders of the LRA. We trust the arrest warrant will be executed," chief prosecutor, Luis Moreno Ocampo told the press early July.

But Kagoda said: "We approached an international peace keeping force to arrest Kony and his commanders but they said it was not their concern and did not have the mandate. We had no partner to effect the arrests and yet Uganda was not authorized to go to DR Congo. That is why we decided to opt for peace talks with the LRA."

On March 17, 1997, Uganda signed the Rome Statute and ratified it on June 14, 2002

Article 59 of the Statute, which governs the ICC, reads; "A State Party which has received a request for provisional arrest or for arrest and surrender shall immediately take steps to arrest the person in question in accordance with its laws and the provisions of Part 9."

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International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY)

Official Website of the ICTY

ICTY: Tribunal Sets Valuable Precedent
Human Rights Watch
July 27, 2006

New Book Organizes Yugoslav Tribunal’s Decisions by Subject

The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia has made precedent-setting decisions on genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity, Human Rights Watch said today as it released a comprehensive book that organizes the decisions of that tribunal by topic.

“The case law organized in this volume is a legacy that will provide guidance for future generations,” said Jennifer Trahan, of counsel to Human Rights Watch’s International Justice Program. “The tribunal’s work has been immensely important in holding perpetrators of heinous crimes accountable and sending the message that serious crimes will not go unpunished.”

The Yugoslav tribunal has played a critical role in determining responsibility for the horrific crimes that occurred in the Balkan conflicts during the 1990s, Human Rights Watch said. The tribunal suffered a setback with the death of Slobodan Milosevic and the abrupt end of his four-year trial. Just recently, however, the Yugoslav tribunal has begun important trials involving senior officials accused of crimes including genocide committed at Srebrenica, and war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Kosovo.

The 861-page book from Human Rights Watch organizes the tribunal’s decisions by topic, including war crimes, genocide, crimes against humanity, command responsibility, sentences, fair trial rights and guilty pleas.

“This book makes the important decisions of the tribunal uniquely accessible because it organizes the law by subject in one volume,” said Trahan.

The book applies the law to the facts of selected cases covering atrocities such as the Srebrenica massacre (where approximately 7,000 unarmed men and boys were executed by Bosnian-Serb forces), the siege of Sarajevo, and brutalities perpetrated in camps such as the infamous “Omarska camp” in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

The volume, which is available online and in print (see links below), is oriented to practitioners and staff at institutions established to try such crimes – such as the International Criminal Court and the Sierra Leone Special Court. The book will also serve as a tool for academics, nongovernmental organizations working in the field, and students interested in international criminal justice, Human Rights Watch said.

Human Rights Watch’s original version of the book, which covered both Yugoslav and Rwandan tribunal law, was well-received by officials of international and “hybrid” criminal tribunals.

Prijedor Four Enter Pleas
Balkan Investigative Reporting Network Justice Report
July 28, 2006

Indictees Zeljko Mejakic, Momcilo Gruban, Dusan Fustar and Dusko Knezevic - charged in connection with crimes against humanity committed against civilians in Omarska, Keraterm and Trnopolje - have pleaded not guilty.

In the indictment it is stated that from April 30 to the end of 1992 "as part of an extensive and systematic attack", more than 7,000 civilians from the municipality Prijedor were systematically detained in Omarska, Keraterm and Trnopolje camps "where they were kept in inhumane conditions and subjected to heavy physical, psychological and sexual abuse, and where many were killed".

The prosecution alleges that all four indictees took part in the tortures, murders and expulsions. According to the indictment, Mejakic was the warden of Omarska camp; Gruban and Fustar guard commanders, while Knezevic, without any official position, often came to the camps and treated the inmates inhumanely.

On May 9 this year, the defendants were transferred from The Hague, via Banja Luka, to the Bosnian court's detention unit in Sarajevo, in accordance with the final strategy of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. The court confirmed the adapted indictment against the four on July 17.

Visegrad Indictee Kept in Detention
Balkan Investigative Reporting Network Justice Report
July 28, 2006

The Bosnian court has prolonged Zeljko Lelek's detention for three months, by which time the prosecution should have completed its investigation and composed an indictment.

As was stated in the courtroom, the prosecution suspects that Zeljko Lelek committed crimes against humanity, and believes that his release could endanger its investigation.

The prosecution explained that indictee Lelek lived and worked as a policeman in Visegrad - where most of the potential witnesses live - and they believe that there is the possibility of Lelek influencing these witnesses so that they could potentially change their testimonies.

However, the defence argued that there was no need to prolong the detention, and that the indictee had no intention of pressuring the witnesses.

Lelek was arrested on May 4 in Visegrad, at the request of the War Crimes Chamber.

It is suspected that he was a member of the notorious unit Beli orlovi ('White eagles'), commanded by the Hague indictee Milan Lukic. Members of Beli orlovi participated in mass expulsions and crimes committed in Visegrad and throughout Eastern Bosnia in 1992.

According to Bosnian law, a suspect under investigation for war crimes can be detained for a maximum of six months.

Serbia finally has will to arrest Mladic-del Ponte
Reuters
July 29, 2006

BELGRADE, July 29 (Reuters) - Serbia is finally showing the political will to arrest Bosnian Serb fugitive Ratko Mladic after years of delays and false starts, the chief prosecutor of the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague said on Saturday.

Carla del Ponte has been calling for Mladic's handover since her court indicted him in 1995 on two counts of genocide for his role in the 1992-95 Bosnia war. She told the Serbian daily Vecernje Novosti that Belgrade had been dithering for years.

"I personally think that Serbian authorities were not searching for Mladic to arrest him but to have him surrender," del Ponte told Novosti in an interview. "They were trying to disable his helpers and send him the message he should surrender."

The Serbian government shies away from talk of arresting Mladic, using instead the term "cooperation with The Hague". It is an open secret in Belgrade that officials long hoped to persuade him to surrender to avoid public ire at the humiliation of a man many Serbs see as a hero.

But there are signs that attitude is giving way to more pragmatic political calculations.

In May, the European Union took del Ponte's advice and froze talks on a Stabilisation and Association Agreement, a first step towards EU membership, citing Serbia's failure to hand over the former general.

Facing pariah status, Serbia presented EU officials with an "action plan" for Mladic's arrest earlier this month, hoping that a serious show of effort would placate del Ponte and persuade the EU to restart talks.

"Since the action plan was adopted, I think the political will to arrest Mladic exists for the first time," del Ponte said. "I would like to see the operational plan and be involved."

She said she was still "grateful" to Brussels for putting pressure on Serbia by freezing the talks. "I hope the EU will keep that condition -- no resuming talks without full cooperation with us, which means Mladic in The Hague."

The plan has not been made public but it is said to include a media campaign to convince Serbs that it is necessary to arrest Mladic, who is accused of orchestrating the siege of Sarajevo and the Srebrenica massacre of 8,000 Bosnian Muslims.

A government survey published on Thursday showed 51 percent of those polled opposed Mladic's extradition, 34 percent supported it and 15 percent were undecided.

Del Ponte appeals Hague sentence for Bosnian Muslim
Reuters
July 30, 2006

AMSTERDAM, July 30 (Reuters) - U.N. chief prosecutor Carla del Ponte has appealed against the two-year sentence the U.N. war crimes tribunal gave a Bosnian Muslim wartime commander of Srebrenica, saying it was too short, her spokesman said on Sunday.

Last month, the tribunal in The Hague found Naser Oric guilty of failing to prevent the murder of Serbs near the Bosnian Muslim enclave of Srebrenica early in the 1992-95 conflict. He was released for time already served.

Ponte's spokesman Anton Nikiforov said her office was disappointed with the verdict as they had demanded 18 years in prison for Oric.

"She signed a notice of appeal with the court's appeal chamber on Friday ... We don't agree with the sentence," Nikiforov said.

Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica and the Serbian media have denounced the sentence as a mockery of justice and proof that the Hague tribunal is biased against Serbia.

Bosnian Serb forces overran the eastern town of Srebrenica in July 1995 and killed some 8,000 Muslim men and boys in Europe's worst atrocity since World War Two.

But Serbs say 3,263 of their own people had earlier been killed by forces under Oric's command.

Serbia is under Western pressure to arrest and hand over wartime Bosnian Serb commander Ratko Mladic, accused of genocide in Srebrenica. In May, the European Union froze membership talks with Belgrade because of its failure to deliver him.

Oric, considered a hero by many Bosnian Muslims for leading Srebrenica's defence, returned to Bosnia earlier this month. The U.N. court cleared him of four of the six charges at his war crimes trial.

Dragan Death Case Reopened
News.com.au
by Natasha Robinson
July 31, 2006

The arrest of accused war criminal Dragan Vasiljkovic has prompted Munich prosecutors to reopen the case of a German journalist they believe was murdered by the former golf instructor's paramilitary troops.

Egon Scotland, 42, bled to death after being shot by a sniper's bullet while travelling in a car with other reporters near the town of Glina, Croatia, during an ambush by Mr Vasiljkovic's army in July 1991.

The alleged atrocity is documented in an arrest warrant drawn up by Croatian prosecutors and sent to the Australian Government immediately before Mr Vasiljkovic's arrest in Sydney in January.

The warrant, Mr Vasiljkovic's pending extradition from Australia and the looming indictment of the former commando by a Croatian court have given Munich police hope that they will finally lay charges over Scotland's murder, according to a report in the Munich daily Suddeutsche Zeitung.

Mr Scotland's widow, Christiane Schlotzer, told The Australian of her enormous relief that the dual Serb-Australian citizen was in a Sydney jail awaiting extradition to Croatia for trial.

"It is not a feeling of revenge. It is a feeling of justice," said Ms Schlotzer. "In this area (Glina), they had so many crimes, and if these crimes are not prosecuted, if these guys are not found, there is no justice."

Scotland was an experienced journalist and a prominent personality in Germany, working as a political reporter and later as a dedicated and respected foreign correspondent.

In Croatia's arrest warrant, Mr Vasiljkovic is alleged to have given an order to his troops to fire indiscriminately at civilians' homes in order to intimidate the population and force them to flee.

Although German prosecutors arranged for Mr Vasiljkovic - better known in Croatia as Captain Dragan - to be interviewed in Belgrade over the murder in the late 1990s, he denied giving a command to his troops to fire and loot at will.

But in the wake of his arrest, federal prosecutors in Munich, together with homicide investigators in the Munich police department, have reopened the murder investigation.

In Croatia, Sibenik prosecutors have reportedly secured the testimony of more than 40 people who have agreed to act as witnesses against Mr Vasiljkovic. The prosecutors are preparing to go to court next month to issue an indictment against him.

he former paramilitary leader was discovered by The Australian working as a golf instructor in Perth and using the name Daniel Sneddon. He has been refused bail as he fights extradition. He has been accused of personally torturing prisoners of war and ordering his troops to kill civilians, Croatian soldiers and policemen. He denies the allegations.

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International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR)

Official Website of the ICTR

ICTR upbeat over transfer of genocide suspects
Angola Press
July 27, 2006

A top official of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) in Arusha, Tanzania has expressed optimism over the transfer of the cases of suspected genocide perpetrators to Rwandan courts and the arrest of some 18 fugitives.

Prosecutor Hassan Boubacar Jallow declared here Monday that he had had "fruitful discussions" with Rwandan authorities, who agreed that Rwandan courts would meet all conditions by December 2006 prior to the transfer of the cases of alleged genocide perpetrators.

Jallow, who has been in Rwanda for about a week as part of a working visit, said: "We have concluded that the transfer of the first part, made up of twenty of so cases, will start in January 2007".

He added that several factors, including the abolition of the death penalty in Rwanda and the capacity of Rwandan courts to guarantee a fair and equitable trial in line with international standards, were addressed during the meeting.

Jallow noted that Norway and Rwanda were the only countries to have expressed willingness before the UN court to receive and try cases of suspected genocide perpetrators in Rwanda with the completion of the mandate of the tribunal in December 2008.

"We will never be able to refuse the transfer of cases to Rwanda, the country where the crime (of genocide) was perpetrated," said Jallow, who urged Rwandan authorities to honour their commitments to upholding the international justice system.

Slow Progress at Rwandan Tribunal
Institute for War & Peace Reporting
by Stephanie Nieuwoudt
July 27, 2006

At a cost of over a billion dollars, some say the tribunal to try ringleaders of the Rwandan genocide is too expensive and has dragged on for too long.

This town in northern Tanzania has always been a bustling place thanks to its proximity to the Kenyan border and tourist attractions such as the 15,000-foot Mount Meru and the Ngorongoro Crater, often called the eighth wonder of the world for its spectacular landscapes and wildlife.

But Arusha has become even busier in the last decade courtesy of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, ICTR. This one-time small town now has a population of just over a quarter of a million and has grown so fast that it was recently awarded city status.

The United Nations Security Council set up the tribunal after the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, in which some 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were slaughtered. With its goal of trying and sentencing those most for these crimes against humanity, the ICTR is widely seen as one of the most important international justice bodies since Nuremberg.

Yet the court has also drawn a lot of criticism, in particular from Rwandan President Paul Kagame, who said the ICTR was established "to do as little as possible".

During a visit to Canada earlier this year, he accused the West of allowing western actors allegedly complicit in the genocide to get off scot-free. Kagame specifically mentioned "French leaders" who he said "directly took part in the genocide by aiding the Hutu militias". French soldiers intervened briefly on the side of fleeing Hutus, as the army of the Tutsi-dominated Rwanda Patriotic Front, RPF, streamed across the border from Uganda and gradually established control of the country.

Rwandan leaders have also said that time and money could have been saved had the perpetrators been tried at home.

In an interview earlier this year, Alloys Mutabingwa, special representative of the Rwandan government at the ICTR, claimed his country would have used the money more productively – not only by prosecuting perpetrators and helping victims, but also by pouring funds into social development projects.

The ICTR focuses solely on the high-level figures alleged to have instigated the genocide.

Meanwhile, thousands of cases have already been tried in Rwanda, either in regular national courts or in a special traditional system of justice known as "gacaca" designed to relieve the burden on prisons and courts.

Gacaca hearings are held outdoors - the word loosely translates as "justice on the grass" - with household heads serving as judges in the resolution of community disputes. The system is based on voluntary confessions, apologies and pleas for forgiveness by wrongdoers.

At an estimated cost of 1.03 billion dollars by the end of 2007, there have also been complaints that the ICTR is too expensive.

Responding to such claims, ICTR spokesperson Tim Gallimore said: "The cost of the tribunal is within the range of what it costs for comparable international criminal legal proceedings."

Many also feel that far too few suspected perpetrators of crimes have been dealt with and that the process has dragged on for far too long. Only 72 suspects have so far been arrested. Of those, 28 have been tried, 24 convicted, and three acquitted.

"It is not physically possible, given the number of judges and courtrooms that we have, to hear any more cases," said Gallimore. "The process is carefully supervised by elected judges from a wide variety of legal systems and countries. They do their best to ensure that the accused get fair trial rights and that the interests of justice are served for the grave crimes against humanity that were committed in Rwanda in 1994. To do all that, it takes a certain amount of time.”

The ICTR has four courtrooms and 18 judges, robed in scarlet with black cravats. They hold hearings from 8 am to 6 pm Monday through Friday for 11 months each year.

Gallimore said casual observers of the tribunal may not fully appreciate the complexity of each case and trial and the enormous amount of work that has been involved in completing 27 trials since the tribunal began work in 1997.

The Rwandan government has also been blamed for dragging out the process.

The trial of the former commerce minister Justin Mugenzi - facing at least ten specific genocide charges as well as a charge of murder - could not proceed in May this year because the government failed to honour its undertaking to transfer Agnes Ntamabyariro, another former minister who is to be a defence witness for Mugenzi, to Arusha. Ntamabyariro is in custody in Rwanda for genocide crimes.

"The Rwandan government is bullying us [the ICTR] and we are being too timid. It looks like we are making excuses for the Rwandan government," Jonathan Kirk, co-counsel for Mugenzi, told the Hirondelle News Agency, a media organisation which reports on Rwandan affairs.

A lawyer who has been with the ICTR for three years told IWPR that Rwanda's lack of cooperation in the Mugenzi case is indicative of the country's distrust and resentment of the tribunal.

"The critics are right in condemning the process as too drawn out and costing too much," she said. "But this tribunal is unquestionably laying the groundwork for future criminal cases – not only with regard to war criminals but also other criminal cases."

Meanwhile, a senior official at the ICTR, who also asked not to be named, said that international justice does not come cheap, "especially if you want to avoid the trap of victor's justice".

But some accuse the ICTR of doing just that - mirroring the Nuremberg tribunal. So far only defeated Hutus have been tried. There are those who want to see closer scrutiny and the indictment of some members of President Kagame's RPF, which now rules the country with an iron fist.

When the then rebel RPF movement invaded Rwanda from its exiled bases in Uganda and ousted the Hutu government from power, some of its members are alleged to have committed atrocious crimes in the process of putting an end to the genocide. There have been calls for these alleged perpetrators, some of whom are in government, to be brought to justice.

Gallimore denied the claim the ICTR is favouring one side over the other.
"The tribunal does not indict and try individuals based on their ethnicity or any other personal criteria," he said. "Our mandate is to bring to justice those most responsible for the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. Where there is credible evidence that individuals committed crimes within the jurisdiction of the tribunal, the prosecutor makes a determination about indictment and trial of such individuals, regardless of their ethnicity."

Independent observers as well as those working within the ICTR are concerned that cases currently on trial will not be finished before the tribunal is due to be wound up at the end of 2008. In an effort to lighten the load, the ICTR has asked several countries - including Norway, South Africa, Botswana and Senegal - if they would accept some cases.

However, there are real problems with transferring cases.

Norway indicated that it was willing to try Michael Bagaragaza, the former director general of the state-run tea industry regulator who is alleged to have ordered tea agency workers to kill hundreds of Tutsis
who were seeking refuge in a church and a factory. But the tribunal ruled that Norway does not have genocide laws, and therefore could not try a person accused of genocide.

Another stumbling block is that most African countries seem to be reluctant to take cases, because it might jeopardise their diplomatic relations with Rwanda.

Despite the already crowded docket and formidable time constraints, there are many more individuals who could face either the tribunal or national courts.

The Rwandan government in May published a list of 171 people being sought in connection with the killings, many of whom have left the country. Two wanted former Rwandan mayors, Celestin Ugirashebuga and Charles Munyaneza, are said to be living quite openly in suburban Britain. In newspaper interviews, Munyaneza has denied the allegations against him.

On both the Rwandan and ICTR wanted lists is wealthy Hutu businessman Félicien Kabuga, who is rumoured to be in Kenya. Kabuga's privately Radio Television Libre des Mille Collines called for the mass murder of Tutsis and others ahead of the genocide. Mille Collines achieved notoriety for its calls to Hutus to "stamp out the [Tutsi] cockroaches".

Kabuga is charged with supplying machetes, hoes and other tools for use as weapons by Hutu mobs. He is alleged to have been the main financial backer of the extremist militias which carried out the massacres along with the Hutu-dominated government and military.

"We depend on the co-operation of UN member states to aid us in arresting suspects," Gallimore said. The Kenyan government has denied that it is in any way aiding Kabuga.

There has also been criticism that people are being tried in groups by the ICTR.

Fatou Bensouda, a deputy prosecutor at the International Criminal Court in The Hague, who worked at the ICTR first as legal adviser and trial attorney and eventually as head of the legal advisory unit, condemned the practice of trying groups of people instead of prosecuting individuals.

The most drawn-out case has been the so called Butare case in which two former governors in Rwanda's Butare district, Sylvain Nsabimana and Alphonse Nteziryayo, and two former mayors, Joseph Kanyabashi and Elie Ndayambaje, are on trial. The only woman on trial, Pauline Nyiramasuhuko, former Minister of Family and Women's Affairs, is also grouped with these men - accused of instigating rape and murder.

The trial of Nyiramasuhuko’s son Shalom Arsene Ntahobali, an alleged militia leader in Butare, opened in June 2001 and has no end in sight. The prosecution took three-and-a-half years to argue its case, and there are indications that the defence attorneys will need the same amount of time.

The Butare case has been marked by internal splits among the accused: Kanyabashi and Nsabimana claim that Nyiramasuhuko and Ntahobali masterminded the violence in Butare. Mother and son in turn blame other senior government officials.

The ICTR is racing against time, but it is undeniably promoting future international jurisprudence. Its very existence makes a strong statement about putting an end to impunity. Long before Charles Taylor, the former ruler of Liberia, was arrested and put on trial before the Special Court for Sierra Leone, the ICTR laid a solid foundation for bringing to justice the perpetrators of crimes against humanity.

Stephanie Nieuwoudt is a South African journalist based in Nairobi who reports from Arusha on the ICTR trials.

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Iraqi High Tribunal

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

Saddam trial adjourns 'til October verdict
Associated Press via Yahoo! News
by Bushra Juhi
July 27, 2006

BAGHDAD , Iraq - After nine months of testimony, the troubled trial of Saddam Hussein adjourned Thursday until mid-October, when the five judges are expected to render a verdict that could send the ousted president to the gallows. The final hearing ended without Saddam in court but with two of his seven co-defendants proclaiming their innocence and slamming the tribunal for alleged bias. Chief Judge Raouf Abdel-Rahman adjourned the trial until Oct. 16, when the verdicts are expected.

Saddam and the seven others have been on trial since Oct. 19 for their alleged roles in the killings of more than 148 Shiite Muslims in the town of Dujail as punishment for an assassination attempt against Saddam there in 1982.

The prosecution has asked for the death penalty for Saddam and two other defendants. Executions in Iraq are carried out by hanging, but Saddam has asked to die like a soldier before a firing squad and not by the gallows "like a common criminal."

Saddam is due to stand trial Aug. 21 in the bloody suppression of Iraqi Kurds in the 1980s.

On Thursday, court-appointed attorneys read final summations on behalf of former Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan and Awad al-Bandar, the revolutionary court judge who sentenced the Dujail Shiites to death.

The attorneys argued the evidence failed to establish the defendants ordered the deaths and torture suffered by the people of Dujail in the crackdown — the same argument put forward by Saddam's court-appointed lawyer in his summation Wednesday.

Nevertheless, both Ramadan and al-Bandar lashed out at their substitute counsels, claiming they had been chosen by foreign advisers.

"I refuse these procedures and I will not present my own defense," Ramadan, once a top figure in Saddam's regime, told the chief judge. "The defense lawyer, with all due respect, may be 100 times better than my own lawyer. But I don't know his name."

Al-Bandar argued with the chief judge, who accused him of preventing his original lawyer from submitting his closing statement. Al-Bandar then announced he was leaving the courtroom, but Abdel-Rahman ordered two guards to restrain him.

"You were a judge yourself," Abdel-Rahman, a Kurd, said. "How can you behave like that? It's not a game, it's a court."

When al-Bandar objected to his court-appointed lawyer, Abdel-Rahman asked, "What kind of a judge were you?"

Al-Bandar snapped back: "I was the best."

The court-appointed counsel then presented a brief statement urging the court to take into consideration al-Bandar's age — he is in his 70s — saying "he served the country, achieving justice."

The original members of the defense team had boycotted the trial following last month's kidnap-slaying of a colleague, the third defense attorney killed.

The trial was also tarnished by the resignation of the original chief judge, who allowed Saddam and the others to deliver political speeches before television cameras in the court.

Shiite politicians complained of delays and argued Saddam and others should have been executed soon after the collapse of the regime in 2003. But many Sunnis believed Saddam was being punished by vengeful Americans and their Shiite and Kurdish allies.

All that raised concern among some human rights groups whether a fair trial was possible in the politically charged atmosphere of a country racked by an armed insurgency and terrorism.

Saddam and three other defendants began a hunger strike July 7 to protest the conduct of the trial and the lack of security for their lawyers. They ceased their protest after Saddam was hospitalized Sunday and fed through a tube.

Following his court-appointed lawyer's summation, Ramadan said he could produce "1,000 people from Dujail" to testify that "they never saw me there." He also complained the government had done little to find the killers of the defense lawyers, adding that "if I left prison now, I could find the killers in five minutes."

The judge accused the boycotting attorneys of taking money from their clients and not defending them.

"They're sitting abroad now, generating fame by issuing political statements on television stations as if this case is a political one. This behavior will harm you, the defendants. This is a criminal case, not a political one," Abdel-Rahman said.

Along with Saddam, the prosecution has asked for the death penalty for Ramadan and Barzan Ibrahim, Saddam's half brother and the former intelligence chief.

Ramadan was the commander of the Popular Army, the militia of Saddam's Baath Party. His court-appointed lawyer said that even if the Popular Army were involved in the Dujail events, no evidence was presented to show Ramadan issued any orders.

Ramadan criticized the attorney for mentioning the Popular Army, insisting his role was primarily training and he had no direct control over the units

UN reparations panel pays out nearly $396.5 million for Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait
UN News Service
July 27, 2006

27 July 2006 – The United Nations Compensation Commission, which settles the damage claims of those who suffered losses due to Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait, today announced the disbursement of about $396.5 million, bringing the total paid out to date to nearly $21 billion.

With this payment, the Commission said, all claims of individuals have been paid in full for death or personal injury, for departures from Kuwait or Iraq and for property damages. Forty-nine other claims, including environmental claims, remain to be paid.

The vast majority of funds for compensation payments has come from the sale of Iraqi petroleum under the "Oil-for-Food" programme, which came to an end in 2003, and later within the scope of arrangements made under Security Council resolutions.

War crimes trial for Hussein, 7 others adjourns until Oct: 2 co-defendants declare innocence, lash out at court
Baltimore Sun / AP
July 28, 2006

BAGHDAD, Iraq // After nine months of testimony, the troubled trial of Saddam Hussein adjourned yesterday until mid-October, when the five judges are expected to render a verdict that could send the ousted president to the gallows.

The final hearing ended without Hussein in court but with two of his seven co-defendants proclaiming their innocence and slamming the tribunal, alleging bias. Chief Judge Raouf Abdel-Rahman adjourned the trial until Oct. 16, when the verdicts are expected.

Hussein and seven others have been on trial since Oct. 19 for their alleged roles in the killings of more than 148 Shiite Muslims in the town of Dujail as punishment for an assassination attempt against Hussein there in 1982.

The prosecution seeks the death penalty for Hussein and two other defendants. Executions in Iraq are carried out by hanging, but Hussein has asked to die like a soldier before a firing squad and not by the gallows "like a common criminal."

Hussein is to stand trial Aug. 21 in the bloody suppression of Iraqi Kurds in the 1980s.

Yesterday, court-appointed attorneys read final summations on behalf of former Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan and Awad al-Bandar, the revolutionary court judge who sentenced the Dujail Shiites to death.

The attorneys argued that the evidence failed to establish that the defendants ordered the deaths and torture suffered by the people of Dujail - the same argument put forward by Hussein's court-appointed lawyer in his summation Wednesday.

Nevertheless, Ramadan and al-Bandar lashed out at their substitute counsels, saying that they had been chosen by foreign advisers.

"I refuse these procedures, and I will not present my own defense," Ramadan told the chief judge. "The defense lawyer, with all due respect, may be 100 times better than my own lawyer, but I don't know his name."

Al-Bandar argued with the chief judge, who accused him of preventing his original lawyer from submitting his closing statement. Al-Bandar then announced that he was leaving the courtroom, but the judge ordered guards to restrain him.

"You were a judge yourself," said Abdel-Rahman. "How can you behave like that? It's not a game, it's a court."

When al-Bandar objected to his court-appointed lawyer, Abdel-Rahman asked, "What kind of a judge were you?"

"I was the best," al-Bandar retorted.

From the Saddam trial, vital lessons
International Herald Tribune
by Mark S. Ellis
August 4, 2006

As the world awaits a verdict in the Saddam Hussein trial, the Iraqi High Court is itself under scrutiny for lessons learned in the conduct of a high-profile war-crimes trial.

Given the limited jurisdiction of the new International Criminal Court, domestic war-crimes courts will continue to play a key role in administering justice under international law. These courts must possess a basic capacity to undertake trials consistent with international standards of independence, fairness and impartiality. To meet this standard, the following lessons should apply:

First, there should be a presumption against undertaking domestic war-crimes trials in countries languishing in a conflict environment. In the best of circumstances, managing international criminal trials is arduous. In a country plagued by sectarian violence and devoid of reliable security mechanisms, the undertaking of such a trial is reckless and potentially futile. In Iraq, it resulted in the killing of three Iraqi defense attorneys and one investigative judge. A more responsible and viable option would be to utilize a neutral jurisdiction, as when the trial of former Liberian president Charles Taylor was moved to The Hague.

Second, post-conflict countries that do undertake domestic war-crimes trials need unbiased international assistance. It is a misnomer to refer to the Iraqi High Court as a domestic court. Behind the scenes, the United States played a crucial role in drafting the court's statute, collecting evidence to be used by the prosecution, and providing both security and financing. Although the United States, as an occupying force, should not have been the one to play this role, international assistance for these courts is indispensable.

Third, the international community should provide substantial training in international criminal law to jurists, including defense attorneys, serving on domestic trials. An international perspective on substantive and procedural law concerning crimes of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity is essential. The experience of the Iraqi court shows, however, that even the best and brightest jurists may lack sufficient knowledge in these areas. The result is a natural struggle to comprehend the complex issues involved with these challenging court proceedings.

Fourth, domestic war-crimes courts should be careful in deciding the charges brought against a defendant, particularly a head of state. The Iraqi court was correct in selecting, as its first case against Saddam, a relatively straightforward incident of criminality. The Dujail case was manageable and the documentary evidence was remarkably strong. This enabled the court to focus its case more directly.

Fifth, domestic war-crimes courts should create a media outreach office to provide regular briefings on trial developments. Not only would this enhance public knowledge about court proceedings, it would also impede the constant speculation, misinformation and rumors that so often overwhelm high-profile trials. The Iraqi court failed to create an effective media office. Consequently, Iraqi citizens and the international community were essentially left to use their imaginations when judging the court's proceedings.

Sixth, the Saddam trial was a lesson in how not to deal with trial motions. Consistent with Iraqi and international law, Saddam's defense counsel filed a series of motions addressing issues such as the impartiality of the judges and access to witnesses and documents. One of the most glaring shortcomings of the court was its failure to articulate a response to these motions. The court's silence significantly weakened its transparency and undermined the credibility of the judicial process.

Finally, an independent and impartial court is a fundamental prerequisite for meeting international standards of fairness in a trial. Any appearance of government influence is a damning indictment of a court's independence. During the Saddam trial, there were several instances in which the government made inappropriate comments and attempted to interfere with the proceedings. If history judges the trial to be unfair, the government's indiscretion will be central to that determination.

The trial of Saddam Hussein offers a unique glimpse into the challenges and imperfections of administering international justice on a domestic stage. Whatever the final verdict, history's judgment of the trial itself will echo for years to come.

Mark S. Ellis is the executive director of the International Bar Association

“Lessons from the Saddam Trial”
Case Western Reserve University School of Law
Frederick K. Cox International Law Center War Crimes Research Symposium
Friday, October 6, 2006

For more information, including how to register or watch the symposium live online, click here to download the symposium brochure.

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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

Prosecution Concludes Case in RUF Trial
Press Release of the SCSL
August 2, 2006

The Prosecution today concluded its case in the trial of three former members of the Revolutionary United Front, Issa Hassan Sesay, Morris Kallon and Augustine Gbao. The three accused each face an 18-count indictment for war crimes, crimes against humanity, and other serious violations of international humanitarian law.

Since the beginning of the trial on 5 July 2004, the Court has heard from 86 Prosecution witnesses over 183 trial days.

Following a discussion on the admissibility of certain documents, Senior Trial Attorney Peter Harrison told the Court that “the Prosecution has no further witnesses to call and the Prosecution closes its case”.

Issa Sesay and Morris Kallon were indicted in March 2003 and Augustine Gbao was indicted the following month. Indictments against two other accused former RUF leaders, Foday Sankoh and Sam Bockarie, were withdrawn by the Prosecutor in December 2003 due to the deaths of the two men.

Oral arguments on Motions for Judgment of Acquittal are scheduled to take place on 16 October.

This is the third of the ongoing trials in which the Prosecution has closed its case. The other two trials are currently hearing witnesses for the Defence. The case of the Prosecutor vs. Charles Taylor is currently in the pre-trial phase.

Liberia: key challenge is ensuring sustainability of IDP return
Reuters / Norwegian Refugee Council
August 3, 2006

In April 2006 the IDP return process in Liberia was officially declared over. More than 314,000 IDPs had been returned to their areas of origin in 18 months and a total of 35 camps were closed, formally marking the end of a 17-year era during which much of Liberia's 3 million population had at some time been internally displaced. At the same time considerable political progress was made by the government of President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, which impressed international donors with its efforts to stamp out corruption and achieve financial accountability. The transfer of former president Charles Taylor to The Hague in July to face charges of war crimes committed during the conflict in neighbouring Sierra Leone, as well as the start of Liberia's Truth and Reconciliation Commission in June, further contributed to restoring Liberia's credibility internationally.

Yet Liberia remains fragile, and much must still be done to consolidate the gains made so far. Years of conflict, compounded by acute mismanagement and poor governance, have devastated Liberia's infrastructure and economy, leaving it one of the poorest countries in the world. IDPs have returned to areas without basic social services or livelihood opportunities, in some cases causing them to drift back to urban areas. Some 28,000 people continue to occupy the former camps - about half of that number officially recognised as IDPs - and unknown numbers of unregistered IDPs are living in public buildings in the capital Monrovia in often grim conditions. Protection concerns persist in areas of return, particularly sexual and gender-based violence as well as violence resulting from disputes over land and property ownership. Crucially, the reintegration and rehabilitation of ex-combatants is incomplete, largely due to funding constraints, which poses a risk to sustained peace and stability. The volatile political situation in the region, particularly in neighbouring Côte d'Ivoire, could also threaten the progress made so far. Long-term international engagement is crucial to support the Liberian government in its daunting task of achieving sustainable reintegration and reconstruction, and to build solidly on the considerable progress made so far.tuation in the region, particularly in neighbouring Côte d'Ivoire, could also threaten the progress made so far. Long-term international engagement is crucial to support the Liberian government in its daunting task of achieving sustainable reintegration and reconstruction, and to build solidly on the considerable progress made so far.

Special Court Prosecution Ends RUF Trial
AllAfrica.com - Concord Times (Freetown)
by Michael Bockarie
August 4, 2006

Special Court's prosecution counsels Wednesday ended their case in the trial of the former members of the former Revolutionary United Front (RUF) rebels.

The three Special Court indictees are Issa Sesay, Morris Kallon and Augustine Gbao. The trio were indicted by the court for committing war crimes and crimes against humanity. The accused are facing an 18-count indictment each.

A total of 86 prosecution witnesses have so far testified before the court since the court started its trial.

Issa Seasay and Moriris Kallon were indicted in March 2003 while Augustine Gbao was indicted the following month.

The prosecution in December 2003 after the death of Foday Sankoh and Sam Bockarie withdrew indictments against the two former RUF leaders.

This is the third of the ongoing trials in which the prosecution has closed its case.

Liberia: Post-War Justice Stirs Division
AllAfrica.com - IRIN
August 4, 2006

The impending trial of former rebel leader and ex-Liberian president Charles Taylor for war crimes committed in neighbouring Sierra Leone has divided his countrymen on how best to pursue justice after 14 years of brutal civil war.

The March arrest of the charismatic strongman, who still has many supporters in Liberia, was internationally hailed as a major step towards ending the culture of impunity in Africa.

" Taylor's trial should send a strong message around the continent and around the world that warlords in other parts of Africa cannot assume they will get away with their crimes and that impunity will not be allowed to stand," said UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan on a recent visit to Sierra Leone.

But in Liberia, many feel that the search for justice has only just begun with the launch of a new Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) in June. The commission, opened by President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, is to investigate 24 years of instability and seek out the root causes of the civil conflict.

The nine-member commission has begun seeking information on gross human rights abuses ranging from murder to sexual violence on the basis of voluntary statements.

Like the TRC in neighbouring Sierra Leone, which wrapped up hearings from that country's decade-long civil war in 2004, Liberia's TRC cannot submit actions for prosecution.

However unlike its Sierra Leonean counter part, the Liberian commission can summon people to testify.

Fighting in Liberia left hundreds of thousands dead and forced 300,000 more men, women and children to run for their lives, sheltering in refugee camps across West Africa. Many have yet to return home nearly three years after Taylor stepped down as president under international pressure led by the US.

Liberia now has its first elected government since the war ended. Sirleaf, Liberia and Africa's first elected woman president, recently told IRIN that Liberia's TRC is not just about justice but reconciling the war-battered country.

Breaking the silence

To encourage Liberians to come forward and tell their stories, a sign at the creaking metal entrance gate to the commission's temporary offices explains: 'The TRC is not a court, and cannot send you to jail'.

Inside, Chairman Jerome Verdier said the commission would seek access to Taylor if considered necessary to the fulfilment of its duties, but he warned it was "myopic" to reduce all of Liberia's problems to one man.

"We Liberians understand that the conflict didn't start with Charles Taylor," Verdier told IRIN. "It has deep historical roots and in finding a durable solution we have to review the past and we have to have all the Liberians on board."

"What is essential now is a process that gives Liberians the opportunity to search their hearts, revisit the past and correct those historical wrongs that have impacted the current situation as a way for laying the building blocks for the future," he said.

The commission was created under a peace deal signed in August 2003 by Liberian warring parties and civilians. Delegates initially rejected establishment of a Sierra Leone-style war crimes tribunal, under whose jurisdiction Taylor now must stand trial.

Opening old wounds?

At the end of two years, the TRC is expected to make recommendations for reparations to victims and proposals on how to proceed with the justice process. A further tribunal based on the TRC findings has not been ruled out.

But some believe the 24-month mandate of the TRC is too short to achieve its goals, even if the government exercises its right to extend the TRC mandate by three months. They warn that airing Liberia's past atrocities without redress will only open old wounds.

"Will the true victims come forward, and will what they reveal lead to justice or to more bitterness, feelings of betrayal and unfulfilment?" an editorialist of the daily Analyst newspaper wondered at the official launching of the TRC last month.

Others say there is no use in documenting human rights violations in the past as long as the abusers remain at large. They say that perpetrators could easily seek revenge on