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

A survivor documents Cambodia's nightmare
International Herald Tribune
by Seth Mydans
September 4, 2006

PREK KEO, Cambodia Youk Chhang knelt among the coconut palms behind an isolated Buddhist temple and began asking, very gently, how a man named Sous Thy had become part of the killing machine of the Khmer Rouge.

Sous Thy squatted beside him in this quiet, private place, a weathered farmer of 45, revealing bit by bit the secrets he had kept for the past quarter of a century.

Yes, he said, he had been a record keeper at Tuol Sleng prison, the torture chamber where at least 14,000 people died during Khmer Rouge rule, from 1975 to 1979, when 1.7 million Cambodians lost their lives.

He had been recruited as a teenager, knowing nothing but the rice fields around him, he said, and had spent his years at the prison, hearing the screams of the tortured prisoners, terrified for his own life.

"Every day, I worried that I myself could be arrested like the others," he said, "and if you were arrested, you were sure to be killed."

Youk Chhang listened quietly, taking notes, passing no judgment. He was just a few years younger than Sous Thy and had been one of the victims of the Khmer Rouge - a half-starved boy who lost more family members than he wants to remember.

Now, in both a public and a personal mission, Youk Chhang was trying to fit the pieces of those years together, to document - even if it was beyond understanding - how a nation could devour itself with such ferocity.

Youk Chhang, who is now 45, heads the Documentation Center of Cambodia, a private organization that over the past decade has collected a trove of 600,000 pages of documents, 6,000 photographs and 200 documentary films recording the Khmer Rouge rule.

With funding mostly from the U.S. government and from Sweden, he and a staff that has now grown to 50 people have mapped some 20,000 mass grave sites, 189 prisons and 80 memorials, and have transcribed 4,000 interviews with former Khmer Rouge cadre.

Since his meeting 10 years ago with Sous Thy in a village not far from Phnom Penh, Youk Chhang has studied the stories of more former Khmer Rouge cadre than perhaps anybody else.

And he has concluded that people like Sous Thy and people like himself could quite easily have changed places.

"They are us, and we are them," he said in an interview in his small office in Phnom Penh where photographs of both victims and killers hang on the walls.

"They are the evil side of us. Crimes are committed by human beings, by people just like me."

In July, after years of delay, a special prosecutor's office opened a formal investigation into the Khmer Rouge crimes, the first step in a process funded by the United Nations to bring top leaders to trial.

Youk Chhang has handed over hundreds of thousands of documents and other material that will form the core of the evidence to be presented in court, probably next year.

He has little sympathy for the self- satisfied, self-justifying leaders of the Khmer Rouge regime, now living freely in Cambodia, who are the targets of the investigation. Fewer than a dozen are likely to face trial.

But after so many encounters with lower-ranking Khmer Rouge, he has found a sense of kinship with people whose actions he abhors.

"The fascinating thing to me is talking to the perpetrators," he said. "I want to imagine what I would have done. What would I have said to myself 28 years ago? There were all those people my age, just little kids, naïve, innocent."

Youk Chhang was 14 when the Khmer Rouge seized power, and like many teenagers, he was forced into hard labor in the fields, with food and death his twin obsessions.

His father, an architect, died before the Khmer Rouge time. His mother, an illiterate farmer, survived and lives today in Phnom Penh.

Decades later, the sound of the early morning bell from his work brigade still disturbs his thoughts.

"You can hear it deep inside your soul: bang, bang, bang, bang, bang," he said. "It's like the sound of death. It's three in the morning and you've got to go to work, and you know you will see people dying that day in the fields around you."

One of his sisters was accused of eating stolen rice and died when her stomach was cut open, he said. He never learned whether this was a botched primitive medical procedure or some savage means of testing her guilt.

His experiences have left him with a horror of physical brutality of even the most minor sort.

"When I see people hit their children, I cannot take this," he said. Once, he said, he canceled an official meeting at a school when he saw a teacher strike a student. "I couldn't talk to him. I had to leave. I feel it's unacceptable to do harm to humans."

At the end of the Khmer Rouge years, Youk Chhang joined a flood of hundreds of thousands of refugees and found a new home in Dallas. But although he had health, safety and a new life, he said, he remained broken inside, like almost all survivors of those traumatic years, whatever role they had played.

"The physical pain is gone," he said. "But your heart, it is so hard to put back together. It is like a stained glass window in a church, all the colors smashed on the floor. I thought, 'How do they put it back together?'"

Vietnam asks for update on Khmer Rouge tribunal progress
Monsters and Critics
September 6, 2006

Phnom Penh - Cambodian officials and a visiting high-level delegation from Vietnam have discussed the upcoming trial of former Khmer Rouge leaders, with Vietnam urging speedy progress, a government spokesman said Wednesday.

A delegation of the Viet Nam Sub-committee to the Francophone Parliamentary Assembly (APF) led by Nguyen Ngoc Tran met with Deputy Prime Minister Sok An at the Council of Ministers to discuss a number of matters, including the Extraordinary Chambers to try former Khmer Rouge leaders, for which Sok An has been the minister in charge.

Sok An's spokesman, Sum Mab, told reporters after the meeting that Cambodia had assured the Vietnamese delegates that the tribunal process was on track and that the government viewed it as a vital process, both for victims and survivors of the Khmer Rouge, but also in order for the country as a whole to move on from its dark past.

Mab said Cambodia hoped the joint UN-Cambodian government tribunal, budgeted to cost 56.3 million dollars and take three years to complete its work, would serve as a model for other international courts, a valuable education for Cambodia as it begins to implement judicial reform, and a way of cementing national unity as the country looks to the future.

'We hope it will also ... prevent Cambodia's next generations from perpetrating such crimes,' he said.

Tran, who is also vice chairman of the Vietnamese National Assembly's Committee for External Relations and vice president of the APF, also met opposition Sam Rainsy Party parliamentarian Son Chhay Wednesday to discuss Cambodia's yet to be debated anti-corruption law.

He is also scheduled to pay a courtesy visit to President of the Senate Chea Sim during his three-day stay, which began Tuesday and is scheduled to end Thursday.

A meeting of the APF Asia-Pacific Committee is to be held in Cambodia in March 2007.

Up to 2 million Cambodians died during the Khmer Rouge's brutal 1975 to 1979 Democratic Kampuchea regime. The Khmer Rouge was finally toppled by Vietnamese-backed troops in January 1979.

'I Knew Nothing'
Newsweek International
by Stéphanie Giry
September 18, 2006

After a decade of stop-and-start negotiations, a United Nations-sponsored tribunal has finally begun to investigate the handful of Khmer Rouge leaders who are still alive in Cambodia. Prosecutors hope to bring them to trial for crimes against humanity, among other charges, next year. But many Cambodians are skeptical that justice will be done before the elderly former guerrillas die off. Most of the Khmer Rouge leaders continue to deny any knowledge of or responsibility for the estimated 1.5 million deaths that occurred between 1975 and 1979, when their forces emptied out Phnom Penh and radically reorganized the countryside. Khieu Samphan, Cambodia's president during the Khmer Rouge reign, recently spoke about his role with Stéphanie Giry. Excerpts:

Giry: How did you become affiliated with the Khmer Rouge?
Khieu: In the 1960s, after editing a progressive paper, I became a congressman and, briefly, junior minister of Commerce. I supported Prince [Norodom] Sihanouk, who advocated Cambodia's neutrality between the United States and Vietnam. But in 1967, after I was accused of instigating a large peasant riot, I was forced to go into hiding in the countryside. The Khmer Rouge were already active there, mobilizing and organizing the peasantry. The movement seemed like the only path toward social progress.

Your Ph.D. thesis, written in 1959, advocated the democratic collectivization of the Cambodian countryside. What was its relationship to the policies of the Khmer Rouge?
No relationship. It was a very academic, unrealizable thesis. [Khmer Rouge leader] Pol Pot thought of me as a patriotic intellectual. A patriot, but intellectual—in other words, incapable of heading the revolution. When I told him in 1975 that evacuating Phnom Penh would alienate the people from the party, he compared me to Gorky, who, distressed by the famine in the Soviet Union in the 1920s, kept questioning Lenin.

What did you think of the many people who were dying of starvation in the countryside?
Isolated as I was at headquarters in Phnom Penh, I knew nothing of what was happening in the countryside. I knew that people who had been evacuated from Phnom Penh were suffering, but I didn't know they were reduced to starvation.

What did you know about the 17,000 or so people [mostly Khmer Rouge officials accused of treason] who were tortured and executed at the S-21 complex in Phnom Penh?
I did not know of S-21.

How could you have known so little, given your rank?
My title was purely honorific; I had no power to make or execute decisions. My main task was to maintain relations between the party and the prince. [Also,] the Khmer Rouge was the most secretive of communist movements—absolute partitioning, no horizontal communication. The few times I did go to the countryside, I was escorting the prince on tours of new infrastructure projects and I saw only what he was shown.

When did you finally realize all those people had died?
In late 1998, after Pol Pot's death and the collapse of the movement, when I finally had a chance to talk to former Khmer Rouge fighters and cadres.

What did you think?
I was overwhelmed. And then I read and thought a lot. Between 1975 and 1979, the population died mostly of starvation and disease, which existed even before the Khmer Rouge came to power. The countryside had been ravaged by U.S. bombings. Famine was threatening Phnom Penh, which overflowed with refugees. Even a report from the U.S. Agency for International Development predicted a food crisis. Such frightfully difficult conditions must have convinced Pol Pot to go beyond communist orthodoxy by evacuating Phnom Penh and abolishing money.

Do you have any regrets?
I regret that so many lives were lost for nothing. Had we at least advanced economically, the unhappiness would have been good for something.

If today Cambodia were more like China, the experience would have been worth it?
Frankly, yes.

What do you think of the tribunal that will judge crimes committed during the Khmer Rouge regime?
I did everything I could to remain honest toward my country and contribute to its development and independence, and now I'm accused of genocide. I don't understand. And I'm sure most Cambodians don't understand either.

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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

Congo army fights LRA
AllAfrica.com - New Vision (Kampala)
by Emmy Allio
September 7, 2006

The Congolese army (FARDC) fought with the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) rebels last weekend in Aba and Aru zones in northeastern Congo, Congolese and Ugandan security sources said yesterday.

In a village east of Aba, south of Garamba National Park, FARDC ambushed the rebels who were walking southwards to join their colleagues in Aru zone.

Security sources said one rebel died in the fighting and the rebels retreated backwards to safe havens in Garamba.

Security sources said FARDC fought the rebels again on Monday in Katanga in Aru zone in Ituri. One LRA fighter was killed and the main group fled to the Katanga forests, three kilometres from Jalasiga, where FARDC are amassing to advance to fight them.

Last week, the Kinshasa government gave LRA a three-week ultimatum to quit Congo.

Congolese sources said pressure from the Congolese army has forced the LRA to flee to Katanga from Ameri, Kusu and Amee areas.

"They raided nearby villages for food and abducted three children in another village north of Katanga," a Congolese militia commander in the nearby Mahagi zone said yesterday.

Initial Ugandan security sources said the rebels were moving to Zeu forests in Nebbi district in Uganda.

The Katanga forest, where the rebels are hiding, joins the great Equatoria forest belt which stretches westwards to Kisangani and northwards to Garamba national Park.

In a related move, the UPDF has posted another officer, Lt. Col. Karyanga, to take charge of the 409th brigade, which has deployed along the border with Congo.

Karyanga takes over from Col. Sam Kavuma, who is the acting 4th division commander.

The activities of the LRA in Congo contravene the cessation of hostilities agreement signed in Juba recently between the rebels and Uganda because the Garamba group is expected to move northwards to assemble in Ri-Kwangba in Western Equatoria state in Sudan.

UN panel targets Congo militia over child soldiers
Reuters via MONUC (UN mission to DRC)
September 8, 2006

A United Nations task force set up to prevent abuse of children in war zones on Thursday recommended sanctions against a Congolese militia accused of forcibly recruiting youths as soldiers.

The move is the first enforcement step by a new Security Council Working Group on Children in Armed Conflict, set up late last year to prevent children 17 and under from being abducted, raped or forced into combat.

The working group's first target is the Congolese Revolutionary Movement (MRC), a militia operating in the Democratic Republic of Congo's northeastern Ituri district, where ethnic violence and clashes have killed tens of thousands of civilians.

The step was an "important landmark in the fight against impunity for those who commit grave violations against children during armed conflict," said Radhika Coomaraswamy, the U.N. special representative for children and armed conflict.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan reported to the working group in June that the MRC was forcing children into its fighting ranks.

The group's leader, Mathieu Ngudjolo, accepted a government offer of amnesty a month later in return for his men joining the national army.
Ngudjolo has boasted of having some 10,000 fighters deployed across the troubled district, but experts doubt that claim and it was unclear in any case whether they would ever show up at demobilization camps, as required by the truce.

A decision to actually impose sanctions will be up to a separate Security Council committee on Congo. U.N. sanctions on individuals typically include travel bans and asset freezes.

The vast central African country's government is seeking to integrate former rebel fighters into its security forces as it tries to put behind it a 1998-2003 civil war that pulled in armies from six neighboring countries and killed 4 million people, most of whom died from hunger and disease.

U.N. peacekeepers have been in Congo since 1999 and the mission is currently the world body's largest and most costly.

Congo held its first free multi-party elections in 40 years in late July, and a presidential runoff is due on Oct. 29.

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Darfur, Sudan (ICC)

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

Darfur: Indiscriminate Bombing Warrants U.N. Sanctions
Human Rights Watch
September 6, 2006

Khartoum Drops Bombs in Ongoing Offensive, Stymies Peacekeeping Efforts

(New York, September 6, 2006) – Sources on the ground indicate that the government of Sudan is indiscriminately bombing civilian-occupied villages in rebel-held North Darfur, Human Rights Watch said today. The bombing campaign comes as Khartoum is threatening to eject African Union peacekeepers and stymieing efforts to deploy a U.N. force to the region, and should trigger sanctions against senior Sudanese government officials.

“Government forces are bombing villages with blatant disregard for civilian lives,” said Peter Takirambudde, Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “A penalty for indiscriminate bombing in Darfur is U.N. Security Council sanctions, which should be imposed now.”

Firsthand sources report flight crews rolling bombs out the back ramps of Antonovs, a means of targeting that was often practiced by government forces in their 21-year civil war with rebels in southern Sudan. This method is so inaccurate that it cannot strike at military targets without a substantial risk of harm to civilians. International humanitarian law prohibits such attacks, which can constitute war crimes. Deliberately attacking civilians is in all circumstances prohibited and a war crime.

Human Rights Watch specifically urged the Security Council to:

Impose targeted sanctions on Sudanese government officials responsible for violations of international humanitarian law, as provided for by U.N. Security Council Resolution 1591; and
Expand the limited arms embargo provided for by U.N. Security Council Resolution 1591 to cover all of Sudan, not just Darfur.

Offensive military overflights and breaches of international humanitarian law in Darfur are in direct violation of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1591 and are grounds for sanctions, which should include banning government officials from travel and freezing assets of those responsible. The government’s bombing campaign is part of an ongoing military offensive in North Darfur and follows mass deployment of government forces to the region, itself a violation of the resolution.

Reports on the recent bombardment in North Darfur indicate that it is wholly indiscriminate and deliberately fails to distinguish between rebels and civilians. Witnesses in combat zones in North Darfur say that Sudanese military aircraft only target a general area, which often includes people’s homes.

According to international observers in North Darfur, a woman was killed and seven children were wounded last week in Hassan, 5 kilometers southeast of Kulkul, when a bomb was dropped on her house. Another bomb nearly missed a school, leaving a crater 15 meters away. Evidence of indiscriminate bombing was also reported in the nearby villages of Abu Sakin and Telbo, where one bomb went through the wall of a house and came out the other side. Although the villages of Hassan, Abu Sakin and Telbo were considered to be under rebel control until they were seized by government forces in the recent fighting, one international observer said that the rebels did not have a permanent presence in the villages, but rather on their outskirts.

On Friday, September 1, Sam Ibok, the director of the AU Peace and Security Council, said that more than 20 civilians had been killed and more than 1,000 displaced as a result. International observers in North Darfur reported that civilians attempting to flee the Kulkul area in the direction of Fashir, the provincial capital, were turned back by Sudanese government troops.

“ Khartoum clearly believes that it can defy U.N. Security Council resolutions and continue to kill civilians indiscriminately, in violation of international law,” said Takirambudde. “Now Khartoum appears determined to rid itself of international peacekeepers, so that there will be no protection for civilians.”

On September 3, the government’s Council of Ministers decided to ask the AU peacekeeping force to withdraw its 7,000-plus troops from Darfur at the end of September. The under-resourced AU force has been unable to prevent widespread abuses against civilians, but is the only international peacekeeping force in Darfur pending a proposed deployment of U.N. troops. On Monday, the AU announced that it would allow its mandate to expire and leave the region by the end of September, though it left open the possibility of an extension.

Khartoum, meanwhile, has blocked efforts to implement U.N. Security Council Resolution 1706, passed on August 31, which calls for the AU force to be turned into a more robust U.N. protection force. The resolution, however, is conditional on Khartoum’s consent. The government has not only refused to give that consent; it has also warned the AU not to join forces with the U.N.

“ Khartoum must not be allowed to kick out the African Union peacekeepers and block the deployment of U.N. troops,” said Takirambudde. “Given the ongoing offensive and the government’s track record of crimes against humanity, the Security Council must take all necessary measures to ensure there is no gap in protection for civilians in Darfur.”

Darfur beset by another round of violent clashes and banditry, says UN mission
UN News Service
September 14, 2006

A gunman fired shots at African Union (AU) soldiers attempting to bring peace to Darfur, the United Nations Mission in Sudan (UNMIS) said today as it reported on a fresh round of violent clashes and acts of banditry across the war-wracked region.

UNMIS said that an unknown man fired two shots yesterday at a vehicle carrying AU soldiers near Kutum airstrip in North Darfur state. One soldier was struck in the leg while driving, and the gunman escaped.

On Tuesday, 10 armed men forced their way into a camp for internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Tawilla, also in North Darfur, and stole animals. AU soldiers later killed one of the gunmen in an exchange of fire.

In South Darfur, the area around Buram remains inaccessible to humanitarian workers because of continued fighting, UN spokesman Yves Sorokobi told reporters at the daily press briefing in New York.

There have also been continuing clashes between Government forces, allied militias and rebel groups in West Darfur and North Darfur, according to UNMIS, although the number of casualties in either state is unconfirmed.

The clashes and banditry were reported one day after Secretary-General Kofi Annan warned that Darfur is headed for a catastrophe unless the Sudanese Government changes its mind and allows UN peacekeepers to take over from the existing AU operation.

Mr. Annan told a press conference at UN Headquarters that the world faced a “big challenge” to ensure there was not a repeat of the Rwandan genocide of 1994.

“If the African Union forces were to leave, and we are not able to put in a UN follow-on force, we are heading for a disaster, and I don’t think we can allow that to happen, particularly since we only recently passed the ‘Responsibility to Protect’ resolution,” he said.

Last month the Security Council voted to deploy more than 17,000 blue helmets in Darfur, saying it “invites the consent” of the Sudanese Government. But Khartoum has said repeatedly that it is opposed to such a force.

Sudan Leader Slams UN Over Darfur
Reuters
September 14, 2006

BANJUL (Reuters) - Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir on Thursday reaffirmed his refusal to accept United Nations peacekeeping troops for Darfur, saying they had a hidden agenda to "recolonize" his country.

Bashir, speaking at the end of a brief visit to Gambia, said the existing 7,000-strong African Union (AU) peacekeeping force in the conflict-torn western Sudanese region had been successful and should continue its mission there.

The AU mission expires on September 30 and the U.N. Security Council last month passed a resolution to deploy more than 20,000 U.N. peacekeeping troops in Darfur. The Sudanese government has rejected the resolution.

"The U.N. forces have a hidden agenda in Sudan because they are not coming for peace in Darfur. They want to recolonize Sudan," Bashir told a news conference. He spoke in Arabic through an interpreter.

" Sudan was the first African country south of the Sahara to get independence. We are not ready to be the first to be recolonized," he added.

Bashir rejected arguments that the AU did not have enough resources to extend its mission in Darfur, where tens of thousands of people have been killed and more than 2 million displaced by political and ethnic conflict since 2003.

"The AU experience is a very successful one, a positive, a constructive one. The AU troops should continue their mission in Darfur," Bashir said.

Experts say violence in Darfur has escalated since an AU-brokered peace deal was signed with one rebel faction in May.

Western leaders and relief agencies have warned of a humanitarian catastrophe unless a strong U.N. force is allowed in to secure the region and protect civilians from attacks by government troops, rebels and militias.

European Union's special envoy Pekka Haavisto said on Tuesday after a three-day visit to the region that Sudanese government forces were bombing civilians in Darfur in an operation reminiscent of the early stages of the conflict.

Rebels say they may abandon Darfur pact
The Washington Post
by Craig Timberg
September 14, 2006

Commanders from the only rebel group that signed a peace accord in May for Sudan's Darfur region are prepared to resume fighting if African Union peacekeeping troops leave as scheduled at month's end and are not replaced by a United Nations force, according to more than a dozen senior rebel officials interviewed Wednesday.

Rebel commanders predicted that such a resumption of combat would spell the end of Darfur's tattered peace agreement and quickly escalate fighting to an intensity not seen since the early days of the conflict in 2003 and 2004.

Their comments came as the African Union force of 7,000 is preparing to depart and as Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir is vigorously resisting pressure to allow a U.N. peacekeeping force of up to 22,500 to enter the country, threatening to attack them if they try. At a meeting scheduled for Sept. 18, officials of the 53-country African Union are to reconsider their decision to withdraw their soldiers.

Abdulrahaman Abdallah, a commander of the rebel group's military police, said that without a strong international force here, "the government will go back to its strategy, which is genocide, and inevitably we will go back to the bush."

Since the fighting began in 2003, war and disease have killed as many as 450,000 people in Darfur and driven more than 2 million from their homes. Sudan's impoverished western flank has become a patchwork of military positions and ragged camps for families displaced by war.

Fragile peace deal
The peace deal, brokered in part by U.S. officials in the Nigerian capital, Abuja, was supposed to end the fighting between the Sudanese government and the three rebel groups active here. But only one group, led by Minni Minnawi, signed. Those that did not complained that the government provided insufficient restitution and that the agreement did not provide a reliable means to enforce its terms.

The government vowed to end the conflict through the use of nearly 30,000 soldiers and police officers, who are gradually augmenting the government-backed militias known as the Janjaweed that have been terrorizing civilians in Darfur.

Since the peace accord was signed, rebel forces allied with Minnawi have been assisting in some government military operations, often providing crucial on-the-ground intelligence, but his commanders are increasingly reluctant to help.

The commanders interviewed Wednesday said they were so angry about recent attacks on civilians, including the bombing of villages by Antonov planes and rocket attacks by Mi-24 helicopter gunships, that they were prepared to abandon the peace deal. They said they would not be swayed even if Minnawi decided to keep his senior job with the government in the Sudanese capital, Khartoum.

His group, while having less political support than the most popular rebel group in Darfur, was widely regarded as the most potent fighting force among the rebels. It remains strong in Darfur's southern and western areas.

"It's not our desire to go back to the bush, but if there is no choice, we will go," said rebel Gen. Ali Marmar, speaking in Graida, a rebel stronghold in South Darfur. Marmar said Minnawi would be replaced if he broke with the will of his commanders: "We have thousands like Minni."

The conflict began with attacks on police and military outposts by mostly non-Arab rebels who claimed discrimination by the Arab-dominated government. At issue are ancient disputes over grazing rights and land claims but, more broadly, the political and economic dispossession of a poor and nearly roadless region the size of Texas.

The ferocity of the government response provoked an international outcry. The U.S. government and many other observers have labeled it genocide.

Combat has escalated sharply in recent days, with heavy bombing and clashes near the North Darfur town of Kutum and in an area north of El Fasher where, according to African Union reports, government forces sustained heavy losses this week.

'African Union is too weak to act'
The African Union mission has been widely criticized by rebels, civilians and analysts as lethargic. The Janjaweed and government forces have repeatedly broken the cease-fire with impunity, even waving their guns at A.U. troops.

This week, the government seized a tanker full of African Union jet fuel in El Fasher and used it to fill its own military aircraft, African Union sources said, speaking on condition their names not be published.

Investigations of major breaches of the cease-fire, meanwhile, have been stymied. That includes an incident Saturday in which villagers who had been attacked by Janjaweed militiamen two weeks earlier gathered near the ruins of their homes in South Darfur to speak to A.U. investigators set to arrive by helicopter.

But the helicopter turned back because of severe rain, and the Janjaweed attacked again, killing 18 of the survivors of the earlier assault and dispersing as many as 25,000 into a remote southern region far from humanitarian assistance or military protection, rebel leaders here said.

Minnawi complained to top African Union officials about the incident, and the group's cease-fire commission twice scheduled investigative trips to the site of the atrocities, only to cancel them as commission members quarreled over the importance of the journey.

"The African Union is too weak to act," Abdallah said.

Adoma Ahmed Haggar, a rebel field commander based here, said, "There are no signs of peace on the ground. The A.U. is not able. Our only hope is pinned on the United Nations."

The U.N. Security Council approved the peacekeeping force for Darfur on Aug. 31, and intensive diplomatic pressure continues from the United States and other governments to persuade the Sudanese government to allow the force to enter the region.

Sudanese officials have called the U.N. proposal a violation of national sovereignty and an impediment to peace. Many outside analysts contend that the government wants to remove all outside observers from Darfur so it can pursue a military solution, including stepped-up attacks on civilians in areas where the rebels have popular support.

The government has also issued new restrictions against aid groups and journalists. Many humanitarian organizations have curbed their operations in the face of rising violence that has led to the deaths of 12 aid workers since the peace deal was signed. The U.N. World Food Program has reported that 355,000 residents of Darfur are going without food because it is not safe to reach them.

Rebel commanders say they will not tolerate such attacks and deprivations much longer. Minnawi's group has about 50 senior commanders. Asked how many would resume fighting if an effective international force did not arrive soon, Marmar said, "All of them."

Darfur Dead Much Higher Than Commonly Reported
Scientific American
September 15, 2006

In February 2003 a Sudanese militia began targeting tribes in Darfur, a region in western Sudan. The militia killed and displaced vast numbers of people in what would later be called genocide. Early surveys by the World Health Organization (WHO) found a two-month death rate of 10,000 a month, and later estimates simply extended the death toll based on that rate, up to 180,000 after 18 months. In the spring of 2005, however, the U.S. Department of State reported its own figure, including a lower estimate of 63,000 to 146,000. Some news organizations still cite the lower number, stating that tens of thousands have died.

In an attempt to form a more accurate assessment, sociologists calculated death rates and total deaths during a 19-month period using what they consider the seven best primary surveys from camps in the state of West Darfur. Together the surveys, conducted by the WHO and the humanitarian group Médecins Sans Frontières, document pre-camp violence in five camps and in-camp mortality throughout the state. Projecting their data to 31 months, or about three quarters of the conflict's duration, they estimated that between 58,000 and 85,000 died in West Darfur alone. Assuming the same ratios of death and displacement in adjoining North and South Darfur, they arrive at a conservative estimate of 170,000 to 255,000 deaths.

The death toll is likely much higher, notes John Hagan, co-author of the report published in the September 15 Science. Their reported upper limit "likely increases to the 400,000 range if the further year of the conflict is estimated and if missing and presumed dead persons are included," he says. Other experts agree that the new tally is a low estimate. This study should "not in any way bill itself, or be billed as, a global mortality study of the Darfur genocide," says Sudan researcher Eric Reeves of Smith College. A major survey of violent mortality counted a death toll of 397,000 as of April 2005, he observes. Better counting of the dead will not be possible until investigators can safely enter the region.

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Uganda (ICC)

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

Uganda: Balancing forgiveness with justice
IRIN via Reuters
September 6, 2006

Consolata Auma talks with difficulty because of her mutilated mouth and fights back tears when she recounts her ordeal at the hands of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) rebels.

With her nine-month-old baby tightly strapped to her back, Auma insists that the only rebels who should be pardoned are those who were abducted and forced to fight, and "not the ringleaders".

"If [LRA leader Joseph] Kony comes back, he should be killed," she said, adding that it was the 'ringleaders' who ordered her lips, nose and ears to be cut off.

Auma was captured by the rebels in April 2005 while walking from Paicho village, 30 km northeast of Gulu town, to Awach. That evening, her captors mutilated her, accusing her of committing a crime by walking on the road. "They said they did not want anybody to move on the road," she said.

Now living in Unyama village, near Gulu, Auma says her life is miserable, but her views on the rebels are firm. "No amount of convincing will make me change my mind. Kony should face a firing squad," she added.

Auma's views are echoed by many of those who suffered physical atrocities during the 21-year-old LRA war.

Christine Acora, 50, who was set on fire by the rebels, said Kony should be held accountable for crimes committed by the LRA in northern Uganda.

Suspected rebels attacked Acora's house near Gulu in 1993, asking for money. When she pleaded that she did not have any, they poured paraffin over her and set her on fire. Like Auma, she is bitter that nobody has come to their help, saying that instead, ex-rebels "have been given a lot of money and we have been left to suffer".

Both said they were looking for good Samaritans to help them set up small businesses.

Minority views

Auma and Acora are angry with Kony, but their views are a minority position in northern Uganda. Tired of war, most people want the rebels forgiven. According to them, maintaining a tough stance on the rebels and fighting them has only prolonged their suffering.

"We are in a mood of forgiveness. Let the ICC [International Criminal Court, which has indicted LRA leaders on war crimes] not spoil our party preparations," Herron Okello, 30, a leader at Unyama camp for internally displaced people (IDPs) told IRIN.

The ICC has insisted that Kony and four other LRA leaders must face justice, but the Ugandan government says it will convince the Hague-based court to lift the indictment.

Okello insists that despite the LRA's brutality, they should come home. "The community here supports the peace process. We urge both sides not to let the war go on," Okello said, standing outside the grass-thatched hut that has been home for 15 years.

The mood in the camp is euphoric, as IDPs expect the ongoing peace talks in the southern Sudanese town of Juba to finally end the war. "I have heard about the talks and it is my hope they succeed," Harriet Ajok, 13, said. "I want all rebels, including Kony, to be forgiven because if he is not forgiven, then the war will not end," the primary-school pupil added.

For 11-year-old Kenneth Kidega, an end to the war would mean a better life than in the camp, where he was born. "I would like Kony to be forgiven so that the war ends because we need more food, clothes and better education facilities," he said. "We have been told that these could only be possible if we have peace and return to our homes."

Peace at last?

The signing of a truce last week between the Ugandan government and the LRA at the Juba talks has sparked off a movement by rebel groups towards designated assembly points.

Over the past week, callers to local radio stations in northern Uganda have bombarded the airwaves with messages urging the fighters to come out of the bush. Kony has also spoken out, asking his fighters to abide by the agreement.

"I felt happy about what Kony was telling the people and it showed that he was now willing to talk," Okello said. "Before that, we were pessimistic but now we are encouraged."

Reconciliation

The Gulu District commissioner, Walter Ochora, said the victims' bitterness was understandable, but hoped that would ease with the traditional rituals of reconciliation.

"The cultural justice system prescribes admission of a crime, reparations and then reconciliation," he told IRIN in Gulu town, the capital of northern Uganda, which has borne the brunt of the conflict. "That has yet to be [put into practice]. When it does and the victims go through it, everything will be okay."

Ochora was referring to 'Mato Oput', an elaborate Acholi ceremony. It means to drink a bitter brew made from the leaves of the Oput tree. "The offenders receive forgiveness after saying sorry and are welcomed back into their communities," he added.

During the ceremony, conducted by a council of elders, the guilty party crushes a raw egg to symbolise a new beginning and then steps over an 'opobo' (bamboo stick) to represent the leap from the past to the present. Then both the guilty and wronged parties drink the brew to show that they accept the bitterness of the past and promise never to taste such bitterness again.

For Auma and Acora, the ceremony may engender reconciliation, but it neither repairs their mutilated bodies nor removes the memories of the atrocities they suffered. "Others can be forgiven, but Kony should at least be jailed for what he has inflicted on us," Acora said, displaying scars from the fire that cover almost her entire body.

Uganda: We will sign peace deal but hide until indictments lifted: Rebel Leader
IRIN via Reuters
September 14, 2006

KAMPALA, 14 September (IRIN) - The Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), the Ugandan rebel group, has promised to sign a final agreement to end fighting in the north once peace talks with the government are concluded, but said its leaders would remain in hiding until arrest warrants are lifted.

"Our delegation will sign an agreement, but we shall stay where we are until the warrants are withdrawn," said Vincent Otti, LRA deputy commander, in a phone-in radio programme on Wednesday by satellite telephone from southern Sudan.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) has indicted Otti, LRA leader Joseph Kony and three other commanders on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity for atrocities allegedly committed by the group against civilians in northern Uganda over the past 20 years.

Otti also said he was willing to personally lead the LRA delegation in the peace talks if the ICC dropped the charges against him and his co-accused. Alternatively, Otti would participate in the talks if the government delegation and mediators met him in one of the assembly sites in southern Sudan where LRA fighters are gathering under a cessation of hostilities pact reached last month. The leader of the southern Sudanese government, Riek Machar, is mediating the talks in the city of Juba.

"If the delegates of Uganda come to where I am, I will lead my delegates to the peace talks myself. I fear kidnapping, but if I'm with my people I will defend myself if someone came to kidnap me," Otti said on KFM radio.

He said that an amnesty offer from Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni meant little as long as the ICC indictment remained in force. "I would be with the president in Kampala, but the pressure would not allow the president to protect me. Even if the African Union agreed with the Ugandan government, the external pressure would be too much for them," he said.

Government spokesman Robert Kabushenga, however, told IRIN that it was not realistic to expect the ICC to lift the indictments before a peace deal is reached and the LRA leadership comes out of the bush.

"We can't go to the ICC to start negotiations until these people sign an agreement and come home. The ICC will not entertain any discussion with us until we assure them that there will be accountability as far as the people who committed atrocities in the LRA are concerned," said Kabushenga.

The LRA stands accused of serious crimes against civilians, including abduction of children, mass murder and mutilations. The conflict has displaced an estimated two million people, who have been forced to live in squalid, disease-prone camps under military protection.

Otti Insists On Lifting of ICC Indictments
AllAfrica.com - The Monitor (Kampala)
September 15, 2006

On Wednesday, the second in command of the Lord's Resistance Army, Vincent Otti appeared on the Kfm Hot Seat show with four panelists; Angelo Izama, Charles Mwanguhya, Chris Obore and Allan Ssekamate together with the Director of the Media Centre, Mr Robert Kabushenga to discuss the ongoing peace talks in Juba. Grace Natabaalo listened in and brings you excerpts from the show.

Click here to view broadcast transcript.

War crime indictments against Ugandan rebels serve vital purpose, says UN aid official
UN News Service
September 15, 2006

The concern shared by some locals in Uganda that International Criminal Court (ICC) indictments against leaders of the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) could jeopardize the peace process in the country’s north do not outweigh the need to ensure there is no impunity for mass murder, the top United Nations humanitarian official said today.

Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Jan Egeland told the Security Council that during his recent visit to Uganda, where the LRA and Government forces have signed a ceasefire after 20 years of conflict, that the indictments dominated his discussions with internally displaced persons (IDPs), refugees and civil society groups.

Many IDPs told Mr. Egeland, who is also the UN Emergency Relief Coordinator, that if the indictments were not lifted, they could threaten the outcome of peace talks to permanently end the conflict.

“I said I believed the indictments had been a factor in pushing the LRA into negotiations, that the indictments should not disrupt the talks, and that there could be no impunity for mass murder and crimes against humanity,” he told Council members in his briefing.

Mr. Egeland called on the parties to “look now at the different ways to develop a solution that meets local needs for reconciliation and universal standards of justice and accountability. I believe this can be done, and that peace and justice can work together.”

Last October the ICC issued its first-ever arrest warrants against Joseph Kony, the LRA leader, and four of the group’s commanders, on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Those commanders are Vincent Otti, Okot Odhiambo, Dominic Ongwen and Raska Lukwiya.

During the brutal civil war, the LRA became notorious for abducting children and then using them as soldiers and porters, while subjecting some to extreme violence and allocating many girls to senior officers in a form of institutional rape.

In his briefing Mr. Egeland described the situation in northern Uganda as “more promising than it has been in years,” with improvements on almost every key indicator.

The number of “night commuters” – children who leave their homes every day after dusk to avoid being abducted by the LRA – has fallen from last year’s high of 40,000 to an estimated 10,000. Security has also increased so drastically in some areas that humanitarian workers have won access to camps they had not been able to reach for years.

Mr. Egeland urged the Council to consolidate those promising signs by demonstrating strong support for the peace talks between the Government and the LRA and by prodding the two sides to strike a final agreement as soon as possible.

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International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY)

Official Website of the ICTY

Prosecutor at OSCE Permanent Council Urging End to War Crime Impunity Gap
Press Release of the ICTY
September 7, 2006

The Tribunal's Prosecutor, Carla Del Ponte, today addressed the Permanent Council of the OSCE, using the opportunity to stress the importance of the continuing cooperation between the trans-Atlantic body and the ICTY.

Chief among the issues raised was her proposal for further efforts to deal with the impunity gap that refers to war crimes which can neither be prosecuted at the ICTY due to the completion strategy nor by the judiciaries in the states of former Yugoslavia due to legislative obstacles such as the ban on the extradition of nationals.

The Prosecutor suggested that, in order to close the impunity gap, it is necessary to have the political will to change relevant pieces of legislation so as to allow for the extradition of nationals and, or, the transfer of all proceedings without limitations. In this regard she referred to the recently introduced European Arrest Warrants which enable EU member-states to extradite their nationals to other EU States if they have committed crimes there. Del Ponte further proposed additional steps which may be taken by the OSCE and the countries concerned together with the European Commission and the Council of Europe to raise awareness of the concrete problems associated with the impunity gap.

Finally, having informed the members of the Permanent Council of the OSCE of the current status of ICTY cases and trials, the Prosecutor highlighted the invaluable assistance of the OSCE in fighting impunity through training, monitoring local trials and fostering inter-State cooperation in the Western Balkans.

The full text of the Prosecutor's address can be found at: http://www.un.org/icty/pressreal/2006/p1106e-CDPspeech.htm.

Rasevic and Todovic Case Referred to Bosnia and Herzegovina
Press Release of the ICTY
September 7, 2006

The Tribunal yesterday rendered its decision to refer the case against Mitar Rašević and Savo Todović to the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The accused are to be transferred within the next 30 days.

The Tribunal's Referral Bench Decision ruled on 8 July 2005 that the case be referred to Bosnia and Herzegovina under the terms of Rule 11bis of the Tribunal's Rules of Procedure and Evidence. Following an appeal from Todović, the Appeals Chamber remitted the case to the Referral Bench on 23 February 2006. On 31 May 2006, the Referral Bench Decision re-ordered referral to BiH, and Todović again appealed. In yesterday's ruling, the Appeals Chamber dismissed all of Todović grounds of appeal and affirmed the decision to refer the case to the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Rašević and Todović are charged with persecutions, murder, torture, imprisonment, and enslavement committed against Bosnian Muslims and other non-Serbs imprisoned in the "KP Dom" detention facility in Foča between April 1992 and October 1994. According to the indictment, Rašević was the commander of the "KP Dom" guards and Todović was part of "KP Dom's" senior management, including as its Deputy Commander from April 1992 to August 1993.

A partnership with the judiciaries in the former Yugoslavia is a key component of the Tribunal's Completion Strategy. While the most senior leaders are tried before the ICTY, intermediate and lower rank accused may be referred to competent national jurisdictions. The ICTY has to date referred five cases involving nine accused to Bosnia and Herzegovina, and one case involving two accused to Croatia.

The entire text of the decision can be found at:
http://www.un.org/icty/rasevic/appeal/decision-e/tod-acdec060904e.pdf

Witness Details Kosovo Expulsions
Institute for War and Peace Reporting
by Caroline Tosh
September 11, 2006

Muslim cleric says Prilepnica villagers were twice forced out by Serbs.

A Muslim cleric from a village in Kosovo last week told judges in The Hague that Serbian forces twice expelled villagers from their homes in early 1999.

Adylhaqim Shaqiri, an imam or prayer leader from the mosque in Prilepnica, said that he and “at least 3,000 inhabitants” were forced out twice in the same month – first on April 6 and then again on April 13.

Shaqiri was appearing for the prosecution in the trial of six senior military and civilian officials accused of responsibility for the ethnic cleansing of hundreds of thousands of ethnic Albanians from their homes in Kosovo seven years ago. They are former Serbian president Milan Milutinovic, former deputy Yugoslav prime minister Nikola Sainovic, former Yugoslav army chief of staff Dragoljub Ojdanic, and three police and army officers: Sreten Lukic, Nebojsa Pavkovic and Vladimir Lazarevic.

Prosecutors are trying to prove that the forcible expulsions and massacres committed against ethnic Albanians by forces allegedly under the control of the accused were a “widespread and systematic attack”.

The indictment says that on April 13, 1999, Prilepnica residents in the Gnjilane municipality “were expelled and forced to leave in a convoy” and “made to travel under police escort to Macedonia”. It goes on to say that at the border, “forces of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and Serbia confiscated their identification papers”.

Shaqiri claims that the villagers were first ordered by Serbian officers to leave Prilepnica on April 6, because soldiers “were going to lay mines in the village and they were going to mine the dam as well”.

The convoy of villagers headed towards the town of Gnjilane, passing through checkpoints manned by Serbian military and police. At one post, they were told by police to go back home, where “no harm” would come to them.

They returned to find their houses had been looted and raided.

Shaqiri went on to say that a week later, on April 13, the army surrounded the village and ordered residents to leave. When they demanded to know why, the soldiers said that on April 6 they had been expelled by “paramilitaries”, while this time the operation was being conducted by “regular soldiers who just obey orders and don’t ask questions”.

One soldier said these orders had come from the “supreme staff in Belgrade”, Shaqiri testified.

He said the convoy was joined by people from other villages as it passed through a number of checkpoints, and that at one he was beaten by a soldier. “He hit me in the stomach with his weapon, and I lost consciousness,” he said.

A scene of devastation met the villagers when they returned home on June 25, said Shaqiri. “We found our village burnt to the ground, destroyed and looted. The mosque was burnt as well,” he said.

Questioning Shaqiri about his version of events, Pavkovic’s lawyer John Ackerman highlighted discrepancies between this testimony and previous statements to the Hague prosecutor in April 1999 and June 2001. Specifically, he said the evidence concerning an officer who said his orders came from Belgrade was not present in the statement Shaqiri gave in April 1999.

Shaqiri replied that the Hague prosecution interviewer had failed to ask him about it.

In a separate development, the trial chamber upheld an objection from defense lawyers who opposed the admission of two reports into evidence.

“Kosovo/Kosova: As Seen, As Told” and “Under Orders, War Crimes in Kosovo” were produced by the OSCE and Human Rights Watch, respectively. The two reports contain statements from about 3,000 Albanian refugees from camps in Albania, Macedonia and Montenegro in 1999, following their alleged expulsion from Kosovo.

However, the statements in these reports are largely anonymous, and the chamber pointed out it is unclear who took them. According to the tribunal’s rules, witness statements must “possess the necessary indicia [signs] of reliability”.

Witnesses Have Little to Say on Srebrenica Massacre
Institute for War and Peace Reporting
by Denis Dzidic in Sarajevo
September 11, 2006

Former members of the Bosnian Serb security forces shed little new light on the killings.

Witnesses at the trial of 11 Bosnian Serbs accused of killing Muslim men and boys during the Srebrenica massacre offered the Bosnian war crimes court only limited first-hand recollections of the events of July 1995 when they appeared in court last week.

The case, which began on May 9 and is still in the prosecution phase, is the first and only genocide trial being heard by the Bosnian national war crimes court in Sarajevo.

The indictment alleges that principal defendant Milos Stupar, a commander in the Sekovici Special Police at the time, along with 10 accomplices - Milenko Trifunovic, Milovan Matic, Brane Dzinic, Aleksandar Radovanovic, Slobodan Jakovljevic, Miladin Stevanovic, Velibor Maksimovic, Dragisa Zivanovic, Petar Mitrovic and Branislav Medan – took part in killing more than 1,000 Muslims in a warehouse at Kravice, near Srebrenica, on July 13.

The defendants are also accused of being part of a joint criminal enterprise aimed at forcibly evicting women and children from the Srebrenica enclave after it was overrun by Serb forces in summer 1995. In February this year, they pleaded not guilty to all the charges against them.

The three Bosnian Serbs brought as prosecution witnesses last week were there because they had been served with subpoenas. They were serving in Serb police and army units and were in the vicinity of Srebrenica when the killings took place.

In court, two denied they knew what was going on, while a third said he heard gunshots and was told prisoners had been killed. As has often been the case during this trial, the witnesses’ evidence in court differed considerably from statements they gave to Bosnian investigators.

One, Stanislav Vukajlovic, told the judges that the discrepancies were the result of pressure put on him when he was first questioned by investigators. He said one had been “very rude” and had threatened him with prison if he did not cooperate.

Vukajlovic was a soldier in the Bosnian Serb army, VRS, at the time of the events in question. He told the court that in March 1995, he deserted the army and fled to Serbia but was arrested there and deported back to Republika Srpska shortly before the massacre. He testified that his unit was deployed in the Bratunac area around July 12, but that he “didn’t see anything suspicious” over the next couple of days.

Witness Milos Vukovic, a former member of the Sekovici Special Police, was a truck driver stationed in Bratunac at the time of the massacre. He too said he had “no knowledge about the events in Srebrenica and Kravice”. He confirmed only that he saw a large number of buses and trucks carrying women and children from Srebrenica to the Bosnian Muslim-held town of Tuzla.

Milenko Pepic, an ex-member of the same police unit, said that on the day of the massacre he was in the vicinity of Kravice and heard “gunfire and detonations” coming from the direction of the warehouse. Later that day, he passed by the warehouse and saw bullet holes all over the building.

Her said a superior officer told him that “it wasn’t a good thing to shoot all those prisoners”.

The trial continues next week.

Williamson: Cooperation With Hague Must End Successfully
BETA News Agency
September 13, 2006

BELGRADE, Sept. 13 (BETA) - The U.S. ambassador for war crimes, John Clint Williamson, said in Belgrade on Sept. 13 that he expected the Serbian government's Action Plan for cooperation with the Hague tribunal to be fully implemented and for cooperation with the tribunal to be successfully completed as soon as possible.

Williamson and Serbian President Boris Tadic talked about the need for a prompt completion of cooperation with the Hague tribunal and for the extradition of war crime suspects to the tribunal, the office of the Serbian president stated.

The two officials agreed that it was very important for the Serbian government to implement the Action Plan fully, in order for fugitive general Ratko Mladic and other suspects to be extradited as soon as possible.

Tadic and Williamson said this would fully open Serbia's European prospects.

Tadic pointed out that the completion of cooperation with the Hague tribunal was not only Serbia's international obligation, but also a very important issue for Serbian society, without which there could be no progress and integration with Euro-Atlantic structures.

During his meeting with Williamson, Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica pointed out that the Serbian government has expressed several times its full political resolve to successfully complete cooperation with the Hague tribunal, the Serbian Government Media Office stated.

Kostunica also pointed out that the adoption of the Action Plan and the forming of the action team had made the issue of cooperation with the tribunal "one that is exclusively a matter of implementing the laws."

In his words, the Action Plan has "only one goal - to locate, apprehend and bring before the tribunal Ratko Mladic and other suspects."

During the meeting, the Serbian prime minister drew special attention to the failure to punish war crimes against the Serbs, saying that it was "unacceptable that, even after days of broadcasts of images of brutal crimes against the Serbs, all these war criminals are still at large."

The U.S. ambassador for war crimes also discussed the Action Plan with the Serbian war crimes prosecutor, Vladimir Vukcevic.

Williamson visited the war crimes chamber of the Belgrade District Court, where he met with the president of the District Court, Sinisa Vazic, and the president of the war crimes chamber, Tatjana Vukovic.

The District Court stated that, during this meeting, Williamson said he was satisfied with the court's results so far, and expressed support for its work in the future.

Ellison acted illegally: Captain Dragan
The Australian
by Natasha Robinson and Nico Hines
September 13, 2006

ACCUSED war criminal Dragan Vasiljkovic has launched another court action challenging his impending extradition.

Mr Vasiljkovic is accusing Justice Minister Chris Ellison of acting illegally in accepting an arrest warrant from Croatia and wants the Federal Court to order his immediate release from Sydney's Parklea prison.

The former paramilitary commander known as Captain Dragan wants the court to review the Justice Minister's role in co-operating with Croatia's request for extradition, and has also accused Senator Ellison of failing to consider his objections to the extradition.

The Federal Court case comes after the one-time Australian army reservist sacked his lawyer George Draca and instructed a new solicitor, Sydney-based Bruce Dennis.

Mr Dennis is this week planning to lodge another application for leave to appeal to the High Court.

Despite the High Court having ruled against Mr Vasiljkovic in June, Mr Dennis said the extradition should be dealt with in line with international treaties rather than through the extradition provisions agreed between Australia and Croatia.

Mr Vasiljkovic lost his last High Court action after the court rejected his claim that the extradition treaty with Croatia was unconstitutional.

Mr Vasiljkovic, a dual Australian-Serbian citizen who was tracked down by The Australian working as a golf instructor in Perth, was arrested in Sydney after an international arrest warrant was issued.

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International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR)

Official Website of the ICTR

Tanzania releases UN Rwanda Tribunal defence counsel without giving reason for arrest
UN News Service
September 6, 2006

Tanzanian authorities have released a defence lawyer serving before the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), but they have provided the tribunal with no explanation for why they took the man into custody, the court said today.

Yesterday the Tribunal expressed concern about arrest of Calixte Gakwaya, the leading defence counsel in the trial of Yusuf Munyakasi, last Friday in Arusha, where the ICTR is based.

Mr. Gakwaya was released yesterday morning but only after “undertakings were made by private persons to the Tanzanian police,” the ICTR said in a news release.

Yesterday the ICTR’s registrar, Adama Deng, expressed to Tanzanian authorities his strong concern about the arrest, noting that the UN and Tanzania have agreed on certain immunities for lawyers representing those brought before the Tribunal.

Mr. Deng also stressed that Mr. Gakwaya had travelled to Arusha in his official capacity as Counsel for the accused.

Rwandan singer on genocide charge
The Independent
by Steve Bloomfield
September 11, 2006

A Rwandan musician who sang anti-Tutsi songs during the 1994 genocide is to go on trial charged with inciting his fellow Hutus to commit mass murder.

In the landmark trial that starts today at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), Simon Bikindi, a renowned traditional composer and musician, will face six counts, including genocide. Prosecutors claim hislyrics encouraged Hutus to slaughter the minority Tutsis and moderate Hutus.

Mr Bikindi, who denies the charges, founded the Irindiro Ballet, a singing and dancing ensemble which was popular in Rwanda in the 1980s and early 1990s. He was the most famous musician in the small, central African country at the time of the genocide.

Prosecutors at the UN-backed court set up to try the major instigators of the genocide claim Mr. Bikindi's music was used to incite hatred of Tutsis and those Hutus who did not agree with the genocide.

"Between 1990 and 1994, Simon Bikindi composed, sang, recorded or distributed musical works extolling Hutu solidarity and accusing Tutsis of enslaving Hutus," the indictment says. "These songs were then used to incite Hutus to identify and kill Tutsis."

Mr. Bikindi was one of the founders of RTLM, a radio station which pumped out propaganda encouraging Hutus to kill Tutsis. One of his songs played on RTLM was "Nanga Abahutu", Kinyarwandan for "I hate the Hutus". Prosecutors claim this song targeted Hutus who joined the Tutsi rebellion against the extremists. "I hate these Hutus, these un-Hutus who gave up their identities, dear comrades," the lyrics say.

His lawyer, Wilfred Nderitu, said: "Bikindi's songs are innocent. To accuse him is to deny him his right of expression."

Mr. Bikindi is also accused of taking part in the planning of the genocide - militarizing the Hutu militias who carried out much of the killing and indoctrinating them with anti-Tutsi sentiments. At a meeting of the Hutu political party, the MRND, Mr. Bikindi allegedly told his audience: "Hutus should hunt and search for the Tutsis and kill them."

More than 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were massacred in three months in 1994. The UN court in the Tanzanian town of Arusha has convicted just 25 people of genocide since it was established in 1994.

Former Rwandan Military Commander Found Guilty of Genocide By UN Tribunal
AllAfrica.com - UN News Service
September 12, 2006

The United Nations war crimes tribunal for Rwanda today sentenced a former military commander to 25 years' jail after finding him guilty of genocide and crimes against humanity for his role in a series of massacres in 1994 that included the killing of orphans who had sought shelter at a school.

Tharcisse Muvunyi, 53, was convicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) after the three-member panel of judges found the former lieutenant-colonel had done nothing to prevent massacres carried out by soldiers under his command, nor punish them afterwards.

Judges Asoka de Silva of Sri Lanka (presiding), Flavia Lattanzi of Italy and Florence Rita Arrey of Cameroon also found Mr. Muvunyi not guilty of a charge of crimes against humanity (rape) and dismissed the alternative charge of complicity in genocide.

In sentencing Mr. Muvunyi, the judges said they considered several aggravating factors, including the separation and subsequent massacre of orphan children at the school by soldiers under his command.

They further noted that he chastised a local mayor for hiding a Tutsi man who was later produced and killed by an armed Hutu mob at his instructions.

Mr. Muvunyi also attended a public meeting of mostly Hutus in which he called for the killing of Tutsis, referred to them as snakes, and urged the destruction of Tutsi property.

In mitigation, the judges noted that Mr. Muvunyi was considered to have had a good character until 1994, had spent much of his life working for his country, and was a husband and father of three children.

The ICTR was established by the Security Council to try individuals responsible for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide in Rwanda in 1994, when more than 800,000 people were massacred, mostly by machete, for being ethnic Tutsis or Hutu moderates.

In a separate ruling today, the Tribunal acquitted a former mayor in eastern Rwanda of three charges of complicity in genocide and crimes against humanity after finding significant credibility issues in witness testimony.

Jean Mpambara, the ex-mayor of Rukara commune in Kibungo prefecture, was not alleged to have killed anyone himself, but to have instigated and supported attacks by other people that led to the deaths of 2,500 people.

Judges Jai Ram Reddy of Fiji (presiding), Sergei Alekseevich Egorov of Russia and Ms. Lattanzi ruled that the testimony of all but one witness was either uncorroborated or lacked credibility.

The judges also heard from several defence witnesses, including some Tutsis, that Mr. Mpambara had publicly opposed the violence and did all he could with limited resources to deter the attacks. Evidence was also brought that Mr. Mpambara issued identity cards marked Hutu to fleeing Tutsis so they could pass through roadblocks safely.

Govt Could Cut Links With ICTR
AllAfrica.com - The New Times (Kigali)
by James Munyaneza
September 12, 2006

The week-long ultimatum the Rwandan government gave to the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) to terminate a contract for Callixte Gakwaya runs out today with the tribunal still tightlipped.

The government is now pondering the next move should the remaining one day bear no fruit, senior officials said yesterday. "We are waiting for a week to elapse, that is the day after tomorrow, and we shall then take a serious measure. Among the alternative decisions is stopping our cooperation with them," said the State Minister for Cooperation, Rosemary Museminali.

She said the Rwandan government was terribly hurt by the continued existence of genocide suspects within the Tribunal, adding that a total of 18 genocide suspects were working in various capacities at the Tanzania-based UN genocide tribunal.

"Our position has not changed. It's something we take as a great concern," she said. Justice Minister Tharsise Karugarama said the government would take what he called "appropriate measures" should the Tribunal fail to cooperate immediately. "We are terribly concerned with ICTR conduct in these genocide charges; it's very unfortunate and we are reviewing the issue. We will take appropriate measures," he said yesterday.

Prosecutor General Martin Ngoga said the Tribunal can only cooperate if it "immediately" terminated Gakwaya's contract to facilitate legal proceedings against him.

"The contract has to be terminated. No compromise on things involving genocidaires," he emphasised.

Gakwaya is protected by a standing agreement between the UN and Dar es Salaam which provides him immunity. The controversy emerged last Tuesday after ICTR secured the release of Gakwaya from Tanzanian police custody, four days after his arrest over his alleged role in the 1994 Rwanda genocide.

Gakwaya is a defence counsel of one Yusuf Munyakazi, a genocide suspect at the Tribunal, and he was intercepted by police in the Tanzanian northern town of Arusha on an official trip to ICTR from his residence in Mozambique.

In particular, Kigali is incensed with ICTR Registrar Adama Dieng, who made a private visit to the country last week. Dieng is reported to have personally pressured the Tanzanian government to release Gakwaya, who is suspected to have committed genocide crimes in Kigali City.

Ngoga said the government would be able to announce its decision on the dispute before the week runs out. And the issue is likely to be discussed in the weekly Cabinet meeting on Wednesday, from which a decision could be reached. Experts say that if the government cuts its links with ICTR, it could affect the tribunal's preparations to phase out, because it is faced with a 2008 deadline (for trials) and 2010 for appeals.

UN Prosecutor Says Most-Wanted Rwandan is in Kenya
AllAfrica.com - IRIN
September 15, 2006

The most-wanted Rwandan genocide suspect, Felician Kabuga, is hiding in Kenya and efforts are under way to arrest him, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), Hassan Jallow, said on Friday.

"All intelligence details point to Kabuga being in Kenya," Jallow told reporters during a briefing in Arusha, Tanzania, where the United Nations tribunal is located.

Kabuga allegedly helped finance the 1994 genocide, which claimed the lives of 937,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus, according to Rwandan government estimates. The United States government has offered a reward of up to US $5 million for information leading to his arrest.

Kenyan police spokesman Gideon Kibunja said on Friday that if the police knew where Kabuga was then they would arrest him. "Rather than make public statements it would be more useful if the prosecutor could present us with information," he said.

Jallow said he would head a delegation from the tribunal to meet Kenyan authorities later in September "to pursue the issue vigorously".

In the past, the government denied that Kabuga was in Kenya; the tribunal, on the other hand, says it has evidence that he moves between three Kenyan cities, Eldoret, Nairobi and Mombasa.

He allegedly uses various names and holds several passports.

Jallow said Kabuga owned businesses in Kenya and was in close contact with former leaders of the pro-Hutu government of the late Rwandan president Juvenal Habyarimana.

In 2005, investigators at the tribunal tracked him down in Nairobi but Jallow said he disappeared "mysteriously" after a tip-off.

With the tribunal set to complete its trials by 2008, Jallow said the court was negotiating with six countries to hold future trials elsewhere.

"We are on track with our exit strategy," he said.

Meanwhile, on Friday, the tribunal swore in a new ad Litem judge, Robert Fremr of the Czech Republic. He replaces Flavia Lattanzi of Italy.

The tribunal has made 29 judgments since it was established in 1994, with one more verdict expected before month-end. Trials are still under way for 27 other suspects.

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Iraqi High Tribunal

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

“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.

Former Kurdish guerrilla testifies in Saddam trial
Agence France Presse via Channel News Asia
September 11, 2006

BAGHDAD: A former female Kurdish guerrilla has told the court trying ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, on charges of genocide, how she witnessed first-hand the horror of gas attacks against her people in the late 1980s.

Saddam and six co-defendants were back in the dock after a three-week recess in their trial over the brutal 1987-88 Anfal campaign against Kurds in northern Iraq which prosecutors say left 182,000 people dead.

Katherine Elias Mikhail, once a peshmerga Kurdish guerrilla, described how she was present when first her unit and then a year later her village were gassed by Saddam's air force.

"I saw hundreds of people - not dozens but hundreds - and they were vomiting and teary-eyed," she said describing a 1987 attack on a peshmerga base. "People with me collapsed because they had lost their sight."

In late 1988, the planes struck her village.

"We had been frequently attacked by aircraft, but this time the sound of the explosions was not as loud as before and after the explosion there was white smoke," said the woman who now works as a writer in the United States.

Saddam and six co-defendants stand accused of slaughtering 182,000 Kurds by gassing them and bombing their villages to quell an insurgency that coincided with the last years of the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war.

Most prominent among his co-accused is Ali Hassan al-Majid, dubbed "Chemical Ali" over his alleged role in gas attacks.

Mikhail, who has long since shed her guerrilla fatigues for a business suit, said she lost most of her family to the old regime and her complaint was against Saddam and Chemical Ali and "the international companies who supplied the Iraqi regimes with these weapons".

The trial resumed on the same day the United States was marking the fifth anniversary of the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington that left close to 3,000 people dead.

On Friday a US Senate report concluded that Saddam had no links with Al-Qaeda prior to the September 11 attacks, as US President George W. Bush's administration had repeatedly charged.

Saddam, who is also awaiting a verdict in a trial over the killing of Shiite villagers after an attempt on his life in 1982, is charged with genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity over the Anfal campaign.

The genocide trial began on August 21, and the first three days saw Kurdish villagers testify that their villages had been gassed, their fields destroyed and their families exterminated in brutal death camps run by Saddam's forces.

The court is expected to meet in three sessions this week, with at least six more witnesses testifying against the accused.

Monday's session began with a Tunisian lawyer for Saddam quitting the defence team after the judge said that foreigners could only work as lgal advisors rather than attorneys.

In the previous trial, in which Saddam was charged with the mass murder of 148 Shiites from the village of Dujail, witnesses were concealed behind screens, fearing reprisals from Sunni insurgents loyal to the former leader.

Saddam remained largely quiet during the first three days of the trial, except when a prosecutor accused his forces of raping Kurdish women.

Threatening prosecutor Munqith al-Faroon, Saddam thundered: "If he says that an Iraqi woman was raped in my era and if he does not prove it, I will hunt him for the rest of my life."

The US government was reluctant to criticise Saddam during the Anfal campaign, preferring the Iraqi dictator to his clerical foes in neighbouring Iran as the lesser of two evils.

Washington's tone hardened after the September 11 attacks on the United States, and he was accused of links to the Al-Qaeda plane hijackers. For many Americans, this strengthened the case for the US-led invasion of Iraq.

- AFP/ms

Calls for Hussein judge to resign
Associated Press via CNN.com
September 15, 2006

BAGHDAD , Iraq (AP) -- The chief judge in Saddam Hussein's genocide trial told the ex-president that "you were not a dictator," sparking Kurdish demands he be replaced. The judge already had rejected prosecution demands he step down for allegedly favoring the defense.

Judge Abdullah al-Amiri, a Shiite Arab, made the comment Thursday after Saddam, a Sunni, challenged testimony by a Kurdish farmer who said the ousted president ordered him to "shut up" when he begged for the release of nine missing relatives.

"Why did he try to see Saddam Hussein (if) Saddam Hussein was a dictator and was against the Kurdish people?" the former president asked.

The judge replied: "You are not a dictator. You were not a dictator. However, the people or the individuals and officials surrounding you created a dictator (out of you). It was not you in particular. It happens all over the world."

"Thank you," Saddam responded, bowing his head in respect. (Watch the exchange in the courtroom -- 1:16)

Saddam and six co-defendants are being tried on charges of committing atrocities against Kurds during the Operation Anfal crackdown in northern Iraq nearly two decades ago. The prosecution alleges some 180,000 people died in the campaign, many of them killed by poison gas.

Two hours after the comment about Saddam, al-Amiri abruptly recessed the session until Monday for what he called "technical reasons."

Al-Amiri's comments are likely to stoke anger among Kurds who had already complained he was too lenient with Saddam. On Wednesday, the veteran judge rejected prosecution demands that he step aside after allowing Saddam to lash out at Kurdish witnesses the day before.

"The judge is weak and isn't doing his duty," Kurdish elder statesman Mahmoud Othman told The Associated Press. "We as Kurdish politicians ask for a change in judges, and he must be replaced. ... There are 182,000 victims of Anfal, and this judge's manner could affect the verdict."

But al-Amiri's fellow Shiites in the Iraqi High Tribunal rallied to his defense, saying the comment was unlikely to influence the verdict. A five-judge panel, including al-Amiri, is hearing the case, and the verdict will be determined by a majority vote among the members.

"The word 'dictator' was a slip of the tongue by the judge," court spokesman Raid Juhi said. "The court can't characterize defendants and should stick to legal terms. The man has been a judge for 25 years, but he got the expression wrong."

Senior prosecutor Jaafar al-Moussawi agreed the comments were inappropriate, but said that "in my view the Kurdish street and the Iraqi people understand what's going on in this court and that it will implement justice."

Al-Amiri's style in the Anfal trial has been markedly different from that of the chief judge in the other case against Saddam -- the killing of 148 Shiites following a 1982 assassination attempt against the leader in the town of Dujail.

The Kurdish judge in the Dujail case, Raouf Abdul-Rahman, threw out defendants and defense lawyers when he ruled they were out of order, prompting defense demands that he step down.

Abdul-Rahman took over the Dujail case about halfway through when his predecessor as chief judge, also a Kurd, stepped down, complaining about Shiite criticism that he was too soft on Saddam.

A verdict in that case is expected October 16. The charges in both trials carry a maximum sentence of death.

Al-Amiri, in his mid-50s, has served as a judge for 25 years. But unlike many judges during Saddam's rule, he was not a member of the ruling Baath Party, a fellow judge on the Saddam tribunal said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the press.

Al-Amiri worked as an investigative judge, then a prosecuting judge in a Baghdad criminal court, the colleague said. Some members of such nonpolitical courts were not required to be Baath members.

During the testimony leading up to the dictator comment, farmer Abdullah Mohammed Hussein said he had been allowed to meet with Saddam after appealing to local authorities in his village.

"I told Saddam, 'Sir, my family members were arrested,"' Hussein recalled, speaking in Kurdish through an Arabic translator. "Saddam asked me where, and I told him, 'In my village.' Saddam said: 'Shut up. Your family is gone in the Anfal."'

Hussein, who is not related to the former president, said he saluted Saddam and left.

He said that only two years ago, local authorities in his village told him they found the remains of three of his relatives in a mass grave. He said the whereabouts of the rest of them is unknown.

One of Saddam's lawyers asked the court to strike the testimony from the record, arguing it was "inaccurate." He accused the witness of telling investigators earlier that he was part of a Kurdish militia but then testifying before the court he was not.

Saddam has insisted the crackdown was directed at Kurdish guerrillas who rebelled against the government during Iraq's 1980-88 war with Iran. He has accused Kurdish witnesses of trying to sow ethnic division by alleging chemical attacks and mass arrests during the offensive.

Another witness, Ali Mahmoud, 51, identified himself as having been a Kurdish guerrilla fighter, eliciting a "thank you" from Saddam.

Mahmoud said he lost his sister and her daughter in the Anfal offensive and their bodies were found only three years ago. He said he was wounded in the hip while fighting Iraqi troops.

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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

Sierra Leone ’s PMDC challenges truth of Norman letter
Awareness Times (Freetown)
by John Mansaray
September 4, 2006

Barely a week following the public reading in Bo Town, southern Sierra Leone of a letter said to have been written by Special Court detainee, Chief Sam Hinga Norman and read on his behalf by his Lawyer Dr. Bu-Buakei Jabbie, in which a call was made by Chief Norman to the Kamajors not to abandon ship of the SLPP for any other political party, youth representatives of the Young Generation Wing of the Peoples Movement for Democratic Change (PMDC) have challenged the authenticity of the said letter saying that "it is a machination which does not truly reflect the heart and mind of Chief Norman".

The youths, represented by the Interim Young Generation Leader, Mohamed Sowa Turay, Alex Kandeh-Treasurer, Alhaji Fofanah and Tommy Kargbo of the Outreach Section, were at the offices of Awareness Times past Saturday to make their case with regards the Norman-Bu-Buakei letter.

The letter from Chief Norman states among other things that neither the party (SLPP-Palm Tree) nor the members of the Kamajor outfit are responsible for what is happening to him and his two colleagues at the Special Court. The letter notes, "…The party as a party has not done anything to hurt me. And so I will never take any action against the party or anyone who has hurt me…" The letter went on to urge the Kamajors, "Until then, please, in the name of God and the dear lives that were lost in the defence of our country and our party, I repeat, please do not join any other political party (new or old) for the purposes of the next general elections."

According to Michael Fortune, the Public Relations Officer of the PMDC Youth Wing, who was also Spokesman of the team, the letter "is fictitious and aimed at swaying the already fixed loyalty of those former Kamajors from the PMDC", he said.

Mr. Fortune went on to disclose that a very senior former member of the Kamajors, who is also a very close confidante of Chief Norman, whose name was given as Mr. Tarawalie has intimated them at the party’s head office on Hanna Benka-Coker street in Freetown that he is in town to receive a disclaimer of Dr. Jabbie’s letter said to be from Chief Norman.

"Only God knows what Dr. Jabbie is up to. Only God knows what his ultimate objective is as manifested by this action", Mr. Fortune stated.

Efforts to contact lawyer Bu-Buakei Jabbie over the weekend for his comments proved futile.

TRC Begins Hearing in Dec.
AllAfrica.com - The Inquirer (Monrovia)
by Patrick K. Wrokpoh
September 4, 2006

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), says it would likely commence the hearing of cases probably in December this year or in January of next year.

This is the second schedule announced by the Commission to begin hearing cases. Earlier this year, the Commission announced that it would begin hearing cases in June.

Speaking Friday at the Commission's 9th Street offices, when he made the disclosure, TRC Chairman, Cllr. Jerome Verdier said that hearing of cases beginning this December or January of next year would greatly depend on the availability of logistical and financial support to deploy 192 statement takers by this month.

He said the statement takers will be screened and deployed by the Commission across the country but said they were being screened and that following the completion of the process, the Commission would publish the names of those selected so that the public can know these individuals and assist the Commission when it comes to the kind of human rights records that they have in the society.

Addressing himself to concerns that the Commission may not complete its mandate within the two years operational period, Commissioner Verdier, who was flanked by fellow Comissioners, Massa Washington and Oumu Syllah, said the Commission is concerned about fulfilling its mandate within the two years period but said if support to the Commission is slow it would undoubtedly delay the work of the Commission.

Commissioner Verider said that currently, the Commission is functioning below 50% of the required funding needed for its work, stressing that the Commission does not have the needed funding for the implementation stage of its work as of now.

Addressing himself to the funding situation facing the commission, Cllr. Verdier said that since the preparation stage of the Commission's work, beginning from March 1st, to May 30th, 2006, the Commission received US$300,000 from the government of Liberia during this period while institutions such as the UNDP, EU also made contributions in financial and logistical assistance.

He said that at the moment, the Commission has completed its work plan and operation budget for the entire two years period which was set up to function beginning, from June 2006, to September 2008, in the tune of US$14 million.

Commissioner Verdier said out of this amount, the Government of Liberia, has contributed US$1.4 million for the first year, a move which he lauded.

Commenting on the GOL's contribution, Commissioner Massa Washington said the Liberian government is the largest contributor as of now to the work of the TRC.

She said predicated upon remarks by international donors that the government should jump-start by demonstrating its commitment to finance the work of the commission, it has glaringly demonstrated that commitment.

Commissioner Washington stated that it is timely for the international community to play its part and take a clue from the government's assistance package to the TRC.

For her part, Commissioner Syllah, who has the oversight responsibility for children issue at the commission, urged all Liberians to support the work of the TRC.

In a related development, the Chairman of the Commission, Cllr. Jerome Verdier, has assured the public that the procedure and processes of the TRC will be transparent, accountable, participatory, educative and accessible to all without discrimination, fear or favor.

‘No Turning Back’
AllAfrica.com - The Analyst (Monrovia)
September 4, 2006

The Chairman of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), Cllr. Jerome Verdier, said the commission was determined to accomplish its mandate on time having ended the first critical quarter of its activities.

"With the support of all well-meaning Liberians and our international partners," Cllr. Verdier said in a statement delivered last Friday at the Commission's 9th Street Office, "we will continue to move ahead and the mandate of the Commission will be successfully accomplished and on time." He said with minimum financial support, the TRC was able to vet, recruit, and train 192 statement-takers and 15 county coordinators who will be deployed early this month to, in his words, "comb the entire 64 political districts of Liberia over a 5-month period" and collect data to begin the hearings.

Depending on the availability of funding and logistics, he said, hearing would commence for survivals of war excesses between December 2006 and January 2007.

By the time stipulated, according to the TRC boss, sufficient number of statements would have been investigated and tested for accuracy and veracity.

He did not say how many statements would be sufficient to kick off the process that many Liberians are expecting with bated breath, but noted that what mattered most under the process was the appropriate categorization and hearing of the cases they would received.

"The outcome, rather than the number of cases heard is crucial to the process," noted the human rights advocate turned arbitrator of war excesses.

He conceded suggestions that the mandate of the commission may be limited by its 2-year lifespan but noted that with funding remitted on time, the vast operation expertise of the commission would be unleashed to conclude the task on schedule.

Blaming the low level of the commission's community outreach on the lack of funding and the lack of resources to continue the massive scale as the TRC envisages, "TRC Update" available to The Analyst said as soon as the county coordinators were deployed, community level awareness and mobilization would be further intensified.

By then, according to the update, local partners, civic and community groups, traditional, cultural, political, and religious leaders would be identified and engaged to further the work of the commission in each county from bottom to top.

By what means that is expected to be accomplished, the TRC Update did not say, but in his statement, Chairman Verdier noted: "We use this opportunity to call on all civil society institutions to get involved and engaged with the process as both participants and watchdogs; to monitor and evaluate the TRC regularly and advance proposals that will enhance the delivery capacity of the TRC to satisfactorily fulfill its mandate." He said the commission welcomed the critical assessments of the TRC from all sectors of the Liberian society as the only way forward to establishing ownership and thereby ensuring that the process succeeded and remained truly transparent, accountable and credible.

"We assure all our people that with our support the mandate of the TRC to investigate wrongs and abuses, including economic crimes, committed against the Liberian people covering the period of 1979 to 2003 will be fulfilled and he Liberian people will live again in peace and security without fear and threat," Cllr. Verdier said.

Emphasizing the complex nature of the Liberian conflict, Chairman Verdier said it was such that there was general participation with no distinct parties that affected the generality of the population.

He noted however that support to the commission was coming in trickles thereby leading to delays in vital areas of activities.

The commission has budgeted US $14m and out of this amount, the government of Liberia committed itself to paying US $1.4m while UNDP pledged US $449,682, EU Euros 31,046.70, and Open Society Initiative for West Africa (OSIWA) US $278,000.

"But for the recent allotment of the Government of Liberia in its 2006/2007 budget of US $1.4 million, the financial position of the TRC would have been precarious," the "TRC Update" sheet noted.

It said the government of Liberia committed US $300,000 to the preparatory process of the TRC and disbursed the total pledge to the commission, making it the highest contributor to the TRC on a cash-expenditure basis.

Next to the government, according to the TRC Update sheet, was OSIWA which made an initial contribution of US $158,000 out of the US $278,000 pledged.

"A little more than half of the UNDP US $600,000 grant is still on hand with the UNDP managed under its 'DEX Program," he update noted further.

Currently the 9-man commission has only eight vehicles which have been assigned to facilitate the work of the commissioners, leaving a wide logistical gap.

"The TRC is still very logistically challenged. At the moment, there are no vehicles for staff or utility purposes. Electricity remains a serious resource impediment as is communication, security, and office equipment, etc.," the update said.

Meanwhile, Cllr. Verdier has extended the commission's gratitude to the government of Liberia for the continued support to the work of the TRC even in the face of highly competitive needs.

"We also recognize and appreciate the support of UNMIL, EU, the Danish Government, and UNDP for the direct program support to the work of TRC. Gratitude is also reserved for OSIWA for its initial support to the commission," Cllr. Verdier concluded.

Taylor’s Legal Defense Criticizes ‘Abuse of His Rights’
AllAfrica.com - The Analyst (Monrovia)
September 6, 2006

In the wake of reported maltreatment being meted at former President Charles Taylor in The Hague, his defense counsel has expressed concern and called for government's attention to the plight of the Liberian citizen.

The Association for the Legal Defense of Charles Taylor said was appalled by what it termed "continued abuse and disregard for the inalienable rights" of former President Taylor." The abuse, they said was manifested in the conditions under which he is being held by the Special Court for Sierra Leone now convening in The Hague.

The United Nations Security Council Resolution that facilitated the transfer of Mr. Taylor from Freetown states that the rights of the accused would be protected as far as international laws allowed, but seems not the case.

Under the resolution, he has the right to receive visitors, and the right to consult with his lawyers through access to communication, that is the right to make and receive phone calls.

But on the contrary, the opposite is said to be happening, thus claiming the attention of the Association for the Legal Defense of Charles Taylor.

The association said since the transfer of the former Liberian President from Freetown to The Hague on 20 June 2006, the only person allowed to-date to see him has been the lawyer appointed by the Court, and added that whenever the former president has a pressing need to place a telephone call, is pressed to purchase a three-minute call at the ten Euros.

"Even more perplexing is the fact that he is not allowed to receive calls." According to the legal team, this situation creates an "insurmountable difficulty" in the efforts of the accused to identify and hire lawyers and to make contacts to facilitate the sourcing of funds for his defense.

"Family members and relatives of the former Liberian President who have applied over the past several months have been requested by the Court to provide notarized statements, marriage certificates as well as bank accounts, tax clearances and insurance policies," they said.

The association said it was of the conviction that this long list of requirements set by the Court as a prerequisite to the protection of a person held in its custody is "a travesty of justice and a blatant disregard for the rights of the accused".

According to the group, the former president has not been tried or sentenced for the commission of a crime, but the court has already begun to treat him as a convict.

"The systematic refusal of the court to allow former President Taylor to receive visitors or freely communicate with his family and lawyers is a calculated design to subject him to mental torture and the worst forms of dehumanization," the statement quoted the Association for the Legal Defense of Charles Taylor, Inc said.

They also noted the court, in violation of the terms of the Security Council resolution, is posting on its website photos of the former President's arrest, which according to them should have been maintained as court records.

The legal team also alleged that the Court has spent millions of dollars in a public relations ploy to prove the guilt of the accused even before he is brought to trial.

"These and other injustices being meted out against the former Liberian President, coupled by political statements made against him in several quarters linked to Special Court point to the dreaded possibility that the Court is prejudiced against the accused and may not grant him a fair trial," the statement said.

Meanwhile, the association said it is bewildered by the "deafening silence" of the government of the Republic of Liberia in the wake of media reports of the ill-health and inappropriate conditions under which former President Taylor is being held.

"Even in the face of the charges being levied against the former Liberian leader, he remains a citizen of Liberia who is entitled to the protection of the government of Liberia," it said and added "The government reserves the privilege of dispatching diplomatic envoys to verify the substance of the reports concerning the wellbeing of a citizen of a citizen of the Republic of Liberia, but has refused to employ this medium".

The team claimed it has on a number of occasions made representations to the government of Liberia to encourage the government to seek information on the state of the former president. But no official response has been received.

"We call on the government of the Republic of Liberia to engage the Special Court for Sierra Leone now convening in The Hague to remove the thicket of bureaucratic hurdles being created around the former Liberian president so as to uphold his rights to receive visitors and have access to communication as is required by both national and international jurisprudence," the statement concluded.

Truth and Reconciliation Commission Begins Process Leading to Hearings
AllAfrica.com - The Inquirer (Monrovia)
September 7, 2006

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) says it has commenced the process leading to the holding of hearings and investigations into the massive rights abuses committed during the period