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Cambodian Extraordinary Chambers (ECCC)
Official Website of the Extraordinary Chambers
Official Website of the Khmer Rouge Trial Task Force
Official Website of the United Nations Assistance to the Khmer Rouge Trials (UNAKRT)
Cambodia to Pursue Khmer Rouge trials
Bangkok Post
January 8, 2007
Phnom Penh (dpa) - The Cambodian government reiterated its pledge to prosecute former leaders of the Khmer Rouge, a senior official said Sunday.
Chea Sim, president of the ruling Cambodian People's Party (CPP), marking the anniversary of the 1979 defeat of the Khmer Rouge, lashed out criticism of the slow pace of the promised trials.
"We wish that those entities who constantly look at the process in a negative way would take a more balanced approach to their stance and activities and stop trying to blackmail the Cambodian judicial system, sovereignty, national honour and distort history to suit their own political agendas," Chea Sim said.
"The CPP undertook the struggle to save the people and has constantly searched for justice for the victims of the genocidal regime," he said.
The 56-million-dollar joint UN-Cambodian trial process finally began its prosecution phase in July, but has stalled again amidst fierce wrangling over internal rules needed to proceed.
Critics including New York-based Human Rights Watch have accused the government of meddling in the process and of lacking the political will to move swiftly ahead with the trial, budgeted to take just three years.
Some critics have expressed doubts that the resolve of the government, which still contains a number of former Khmer Rouge cadre who defected and fled to Vietnam to form the nucleus of the movement which would return to defeat Pol Pot's regime.
Pol Pot died in 1998, while another prime candidate for trial, Ta Mok, died in hospital last year. Other candidates are elderly and complaining of ill health, and advocates of a trial have warned it must proceed with haste or risk never taking place at all.
Microsoft Becomes First Private Donor For Khmer Rouge Trials
Playfuls
January 11, 2007
Public affairs officer for the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts (ECCC) in Cambodia, Peter Foster, said Microsoft Singapore has contributed a donation of 100,000 dollars to the UN side of the ECCC budget to be used in the tribunal's general operations budget.
The donation by the Singapore division of Microsoft is the first, but hopefully not the last, from a private source, Foster said by telephone.
"The 100,000 dollars from Microsoft Singapore was made towards the general operating budget and came with no strings or restrictions," he said.
The 56-million dollar joint UN-Cambodian tribunal still faces a near 8 million dollar shortfall, mainly on the Cambodian side, and Foster said that although more help from donor states was still hoped for, contributions from the private sector were also very welcome and much appreciated.
"We are always happy for more money to fill the shortfall," Foster said.
The initial prosecution stage for the tribunal, budgeted to take three years to complete, began in July. However the process has currently stalled, bogged down in bitter debate over the internal rules needed to proceed further.
Ex-Khmer Rouge leader denies genocide
Associated Press via The Mercury News
January 12, 2007
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia - A former Khmer Rouge leader denied in an interview published Friday that the regime whose extremist policies wiped out much of Cambodia's population in the 1970s committed mass murder.
Nuon Chea, 80, who was second only to Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot, is expected to go on trial before a joint Cambodia-United Nations tribunal later this year on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity.
"Why should we have killed our own people? I do not see a reason," the English-language Phnom Penh Post quoted him as saying. "We wanted a clean, illuminating and peaceful regime."
An estimated 1.7 million people died as a result of the 1975-79 communist regime. Some were executed, while others died of starvation, disease and overwork.
None of the leaders have been held accountable for the atrocities. Pol Pot died in 1998, but Nuon Chea and several other top deputies still live freely in Cambodia.
Nuon Chea also said any documents linking him to the regime's crimes "were manipulated," including photographs of human skulls.
"Those photographs with skulls now being presented do not mean a thing. Modern technology can do this," he told the Post, a biweekly published every other Friday.
The comments outraged Youk Chhang, a Khmer Rouge survivor and leading genocide researcher, who called Nuon Chea "disrespectful and arrogant."
"The Khmer Rouge did not regard us as humans. They took away our love, our family, soul, belief. We were not humans in their eyes. We were their enemies," Youk Chhang said.
Khmers rely on British defence
The Sunday Times
by
Michael Sheridan
January 14, 2007
BRITISH lawyers appointed to defend the leaders of the Khmer Rouge are to challenge the legal foundations of the international tribunal set up to try them for crimes against humanity.
They have drawn a bitter response from Cambodians who have campaigned for three decades to bring the Khmer Rouge to justice for the murder of an estimated 1.7m people between 1975 and 1979.
“This is all very philosophical,” said Youk Chhang, head of the Cambodia Documentation Centre, which has recorded the bloody excesses of the regime’s killing fields, “but what about the victims?”
At least four surviving leaders of the extreme communist movement are expected to be indicted within months. They include “Duch”, the regime’s head of internal security, who oversaw the torture and murder of 10,499 “spies and traitors” and 2,000 children at the notorious Tuol Sleng detention centre.
Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge leader, died in 1998. But Nuon Chea, his deputy, Ieng Sary, the foreign minister, and Khieu Samphan, the nominal “head of state”, all now in their late seventies, are liable to face trial.
“This is probably the most shaky tribunal in terms of its legal basis,” said Rupert Skilbeck, a war crimes barrister named by the United Nations as principal defender. Skilbeck, 35, and his deputy, Richard Rogers, 37, are controversial figures in Phnom Penh as Cambodia’s rulers and foreign powers wrestle for influence over the verdict of history.
“There has to be a strong defence for a fair trial and there has to be a fair trial for the court to be legitimate,” said Rogers. “That’s important for the victims and for Cambodia.”
The British lawyers argue that there is a fundamental flaw in the tribunal because most of the judges are Cambodians appointed by the present regime.
This condition so worried Kofi Annan, the former United Nations secretary-general, that the UN negotiated a clause allowing it to withdraw if the process was not free and fair.
“Both sides have pledged to establish a tribunal that meets international standards and will deliver justice to the Cambodian people,” said Helen Jarvis, the tribunal’s chief of public affairs.
She said the rules ensure that verdicts can only be reached unanimously or by a majority including both the Cambodian and foreign judges.
Skilbeck is also to challenge a plan to conduct part of the trial in secret.
On that, at least, the British team is in accord with investigators at the documentation centre, who have built up a massive archive on Khmer Rouge crimes.
“Look at this,” said Youk Chhang, reaching into a box to extract a sheaf of yellowing, handwritten documents. “Statements by villagers naming the Khmer Rouge for killing their husband or wife, 1.6m of them, each one signed and with a thumbprint. They have waited for this day. We have to have this court. For us, it is a classroom.”
The two defenders have yet to meet their clients, but Nuon Chea gave a hint of his defence strategy in an interview: “It was not us who killed our people. Our enemies killed them.”
DED donates 300,000 dollars toward Khmer Rouge trials
Monsters and Critics
January 18, 2007
Phnom Penh - The German Development Service has donated 300,000 dollars toward community programmes supporting the upcoming trial of former Khmer Rouge leaders, country director Wolfgang Mollers said Thursday.
The funds from the German government-controlled non-profit group, known by its German acronym DED, are to be disbursed over three years and are to be used for a range of programmes, including forums to be held across the country and organized through DED's local partner, the Centre for Social Development.
'DED will support the process of reconciliation through a whole set of other activities related to the Khmer Rouge Tribunal as well,' the service said in a press release.
They are to include awareness activities, care and protection of witnesses, journalist training and production of media programmes to inform the public about the work of the tribunal hearing cases against former Khmer Rouge leaders, the DED said.
The funds are not to be directly contributed to bridging the estimated 8-million-dollar budgetary shortfall for the UN-Cambodian trials, which are to cost 56 million dollars.
Reach Sambath, press officer for the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, said the tribunal welcomed both direct and indirect funding as the nation prepares for the trials, three decades after the Khmer Rouge's 1975-1979 rule.
He said the DED programmes filled a strong community need.
The court was expected to try a handful of the ailing and ageing remaining leaders of the regime, which left up to 2 million Cambodians dead. Indictments have yet to be issued.
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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 general 'agrees to peace'
BBC News
January 18, 2007
The Democratic Republic of Congo's military has announced a peace deal with dissident army general Laurent Nkunda, wanted for war crimes.
He confirmed his militia will be integrated into the national army but denied he was seeking asylum elsewhere.
Gen Nkunda, who has been leading a rebellion in the east, said he wanted his arrest warrant be repealed.
The agreement comes three months after Joseph Kabila was elected as DR Congo's first president in 40 years.
About 17,000 United Nations peacekeepers operate in the country, overseeing the peace process after the end of a bloody five-year war in 2002.
'Asylum'
The Congolese military told the BBC that, under the deal, Gen Nkunda will be given asylum in another country, despite outstanding war crimes charges against him.
But Gen Nkunda denied this, saying he would remain in DR Congo.
"I'm going to serve in the army... We must repeal this arrest warrant," he told Reuters news agency.
Rwanda has recently been hosting talks between representatives of the Congolese government and Gen Nkunda.
Rwanda was accused of backing the general, who left the army and launched his own low-level rebellion after the war ended, saying that the country's transition to democracy was flawed and had excluded the minority Tutsi community.
Congolese army officer Col Delphin Kiyimbi told the BBC that he had been put in charge of integrating Nkunda's fighters - estimated to be between 1,500 to 2,000 - into the army.
He said the operation would take place in Mweso in North Kivu region by 21 January, and he was planning to create four brigades.
The BBC's Emery Makumeno in the capital, Kinshasa, says the removal of the fighters could bring much-needed stability to the war-torn region.
Mr Kabila said on taking office that peace and stability in the east was his immediate priority.
UN Official Welcomes Deal With Dissident General
AllAfrica.com - IRIN
January 18, 2007
An agreement between the army and a dissident general to end his rebellion in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) would allow thousands of refugees and displaced people to return home, said a United Nations official.
"This agreement is good for the return of the population who had been displaced within the country or outside in neighbouring countries," Eusebe Hounsokou, the representative of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to the DRC, said on Thursday in the capital, Kinshasa.
He said if implemented, the deal would also allow humanitarian operators to monitor the movement of civilians in areas where fighting between Laurent Nkunda's men and the regular army had occurred.
He added that if the region's security situation improved, UN humanitarian and other aid agencies would conduct a joint mission with the Congolese authorities to determine the conditions of the displaced civilians.
The deputy army commander of the North Kivu Military Region, Col Delphin Kahindi, said Nkunda, who has been leading a rebellion in North Kivu against the government, had agreed to end his rebellion and go into exile in exchange for withdrawal of an arrest warrant against him.
"The government has dropped all charges against Laurent Nkunda, and he has accepted to end attacks against the regular army, hand over his fighters and leave North Kivu Province," Kahindi said.
He said the agreement, which came into force on Wednesday, was a result of several meetings mediated by the Rwandan government between Nkunda and the Congolese chief of staff, Gen John Numbi.
A military official, who requested anonymity, told IRIN that the agreement would allow Nkunda to go into exile in South Africa through Rwanda.
During the fighting in Sake, 60km north of the Goma, capital of North Kivu, and nearby villages in November and early December 2006, tens of thousands of civilians were displaced, including 20,000 people who crossed the border into Uganda.
Some people had been crossing the border at night into neighbouring countries and returning to their villages during the day. "Others stay in Congo with families in neighbouring villages but return when a little calm is restored before setting out again when new fighting breaks out so it is difficult to know their exact number," Hounsokou said.
In December 2006, DRC President Joseph Kabila agreed to a deal with Nkunda during a tour of Sake. Kabila's trip took place just after Nkunda's forces had launched attacks in the area.
Meanwhile, two army brigades arrived on Wednesday in Mweso, previously controlled by Nkunda, while some of Nkunda's men entered camps for reintegration into the national army.
[ This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations ]
The mandate of the MONUC takes end next February 15
Digital Congo
January 20, 2007
The chief of the MONUC/Katanga office revealed to the press that the mandate of the MONUC arrives to its term next February 15 but the new UN General Secretary himself works to make extend this mandate of three years.
The mandate of the MONUC (United Nation Mission for the peace keeping in DR-Congo) takes end on February 15, 2007 and the new General Secretary of this organisation studies the possibility to prolong this mission for a length of three years. This announcement has been done by Slobodan Kotevski Didi, chief of the MONUC office newly affected in the Katanga Province, during a meeting of contact organised with responsible of the local press to the seat of the MONUC to Lubumbashi. The chief of the MONUC office in Katanga seized this opportunity to congratulate the Congolese people in general and Katangese population in particular for their massive involvement to all stages of the electoral process thanks to which the new democratic institutions is being so much at the level setting up national that to the one of provinces and soon the basis entities.
He expressed the satisfaction of the MONUC for the success of the general election organisation in DRC, a very vast country with a road network in dilapidated state and the economic cloths started by wars to repeated during a decade.
By this attitude, the Congolese people proved to the face of the world his advanced degree of patriotism, said Mr. Slobodan while specifying that the new mandate that will be confided to the MONUC will have for priorities the accompaniment of the democratic institution setting up, the funding of the peace that always remains fragile, the professional of the Independent Electoral Commission that will become Independent National Electoral Commission.
The MONUC will also be in charge for the Katanga, to help to the backing of the security in zones where operated Lords of war by the elimination of pockets of resistance of the phenomenon Maï Maï (armed militias) and the struggle against the exploitation of children in mines. He solicited the help of the Congolese press for a better spreading of information on the electoral process and on the action of the MONUC. His collaborators in charge respectively of the electoral Division, human rights and medias completed him each in his domain.
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Darfur, Sudan (ICC)
Official Website of the International Criminal Court
ICC Public Documents - Situation in Darfur, Sudan
Chad/Sudan: End Government Support to Militias
Human Rights Watch
January 9, 2007
Hundreds of Villagers Killed in Raids and Communal Violence
(New York, January 9, 2007) – Chadian and Sudanese militias and other armed groups are committing serious human rights abuses against civilians in eastern Chad, and the Chadian government must do more to protect civilians from such abuses, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. The UN Security Council will meet on January 10 to discuss deployment of an international security force to eastern Chad and the northern Central African Republic.
The 70-page report, “They Came Here to Kill Us: Militia Attacks and Ethnic Targeting of Civilians in Eastern Chad,” documents a drastic deterioration in the human rights situation in eastern Chad, where more than 300 civilians were killed and at least 17,000 people displaced in militia violence in November alone. In most instances, civilians were targeted on the basis of ethnic identity. The Chadian government, preoccupied with quashing rebel insurgents, has not only failed to protect civilians, but is contributing to the cycle of violence by supporting certain abusive armed groups.
Human Rights Watch called on the Security Council to authorize a deployment of international military personnel and human rights monitors to eastern Chad to: protect and deter further attacks on civilians; monitor the Chad/Sudan border; and publicly report on cross-border attacks on civilians and the movement of armed groups in the border zone, including Sudanese government-backed “Janjaweed” militias.
“ Chad and Sudan are supporting rebel insurgencies on both sides of their border while militias rampage through eastern Chad and civilians are left to fend for themselves,” said Peter Takirambudde, Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “ Chad is too busy fighting rebels to protect its own citizens, and may be making matters worse by supporting select militias.”
The Chadian government, which redeployed troops in response to threats from Chadian rebels based in Darfur and backed by the Sudanese government, has left a security vacuum along the border. This allows Janjaweed militias and other armed groups to carry out cross-border attacks against Chadian civilians. Subsequent government efforts to fill this security vacuum by supporting Sudanese rebels and other armed groups have exacerbated latent intercommunal tensions, but have failed to protect civilians.
In October and November 2006, more than 80 villages in eastern Chad were attacked and looted by Sudanese and Chadian militias. By 2007, more than 100,000 Chadians were internally displaced by a combination of cross-border raids and an increasing spiral of ethnic-targeting and militia attacks in Chadian communities. The majority of victims belonged to non-Arab ethnic groups, though there are significant exceptions, including a mid-October attack against a village in the Kerfi area, 45 kilometers south of Goz Beida, in which 17 Arab civilians were killed by a non-Arab self-defense militia based nearby.
“Militia attacks have polarized communities in eastern Chad, straining underlying ethnic tensions to the breaking point,” said Takirambudde. “Until some semblance of law and order is imposed along the Chad-Sudan border, there’s a real danger of widespread sectarian violence.”
Unable or unwilling to effectively protect civilians along the Chad-Sudan border, the Chadian government has permitted Sudanese rebels to operate freely from base camps in the region. They are carrying out recruitment in the local community and displaced persons camps, raising taxes and organizing village-based self-defense groups. One consequence of this security arrangement is that Chadian civilians have come to be associated with these Sudanese rebel groups by Arab militias active in the border zone, and were often accused of being rebels themselves during the recent attacks.
The Sudanese government continues to recruit and arm the Janjaweed militias as part of its counter-insurgency strategy in Darfur. Khartoum has yet to disarm these militias and prosecute them for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Darfur, despite a commitment to do so under UN resolutions. At least 200,000 people have died, and at least 2 million Sudanese civilians have been displaced by Sudanese government and Janjaweed attacks since early 2003.
“The United Nations has yet to deploy in Darfur, but at a minimum it can send a force to protect civilians in Chad and secure the border,” said Takirambudde. “Militia attacks in eastern Chad aren’t over; they’re part of a deteriorating pattern of violence.”
In a December 22, 2006 report on Chad and the Central African Republic, former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan expressed reservations about deploying a UN protection force in view of the ongoing hostilities between Chadian rebels and the government of Chad. However, since that report was written, one of the main Chadian rebel groups signed a peace accord with the government of Chad, and other Chadian rebel groups are reportedly engaged in peace discussions with Chadian government officials.
200 Die in Darfur During Week of Intertribal Battles
Associated Press via The Washington Post
by
Mohamed Osman
January 14, 2007
Sudanese Government Sends In Mission to Reconcile Differences
KHARTOUM , Sudan, Jan. 13 -- More than 200 people have died in clashes between ethnic African farmers and nomadic Arabs in South Darfur in the past week, leading the Sudanese government to send emissaries to try to reconcile the tribes involved, officials said Saturday.
The fighting was the latest outburst in a nearly four-year-long conflict that has caused as many as 450,000 deaths and chased 2.5 million people from their homes in Sudan's vast Darfur region, where nomadic tribes and farming communities have long wrangled over access to scarce water.
The war began when ethnic African rebels took up arms against the Arab-dominated government in February 2003, charging it with neglect. The government is accused of responding by unleashing an Arab militia known as the Janjaweed that has been blamed for the worst atrocities in the conflict. The Sudanese government rejects the allegations.
The latest fighting involved Habania Arab nomads and Falata ethnic African farmers, Justice Minister Mohammed Ali al-Mardhi told the independent newspaper Al-Rai Al-Aam. He said that more than 200 people had been killed over the past week, mainly nomads, and that the government had sent reconciliation missions to try to end the fighting.
"The situation between the two sides remains flammable," he said.
Witnesses who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals said the clashes began a week ago in an area south of Nyala when Habania nomads killed nine Falata tribesmen they accused of stealing cows. Habania fighters later attacked a Falata settlement but suffered heavy casualties, the witnesses said.
Sudanese Interior Minister Zubair Bashir Taha appealed to tribal leaders to stop the killing and "resort to the voice of wisdom," the state-run SUNA news agency said.
The government's casualty estimate could not be independently verified because the government has barred foreign journalists from Darfur for months.
The African Union peacekeeping mission deployed in Darfur said it had not investigated the violence. "But we encourage reconciliation missions to avoid this kind of fighting over resources," A.U. spokesman Noureddine Mezni said.
He said the African Union was also aware of separate clashes between other tribes of nomads and farmers that killed 42 people elsewhere in Darfur earlier in the week, according to Sudanese media.
About 7,000 A.U. peacekeepers have struggled to maintain a cease-fire in Darfur since the government and one of the rebel groups signed a peace agreement in May. Khartoum has opposed a U.N. Security Council effort to take over command of the peacekeeping force and bring in 20,000 U.N. soldiers and police officers.
UN envoy concludes visit to Darfur with plea for end to violence
UN News Service
January 15, 2007
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s Special Envoy for Darfur has wrapped up his mission to Sudan with a visit to the war-torn region, where he urged the parties to stop the violence in order to pave the way for a political settlement.
Jan Eliasson met Sudanese Government representatives on Friday in El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur state, along with members of two rebel groups that did not sign the Darfur Peace Agreement (DPA) last May – the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) and one wing of the Sudan Liberation Movement/Army (SLM/A).
This was the last leg of a week-long trip that has included talks with Sudanese President Omar el-Bashir, other senior Government figures and former rebels – including Minni Minawi of the SLM/A – in Khartoum, and with African Union (AU) officials in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
Mr. Eliasson said he stressed to the non-signatories that a reduction in violence is essential to creating the kind of atmosphere that is conducive to reaching a durable political settlement in Darfur, where more than 200,000 people have been killed and at least 2 million others displaced.
Fighting erupted in 2003 between Government forces, allied militias and rebel groups seeking greater autonomy, and about 4 million people now depend on outside aid. UN officials have said frequently that Darfur is the scene of the world’s gravest humanitarian crisis, and Mr. Ban said earlier this month that resolving the conflict would be one of the priorities of his time in office.
A former General Assembly president and Swedish foreign minister, Mr. Eliasson was appointed last month to re-energize diplomatic efforts towards achieving a non-military solution based on the DPA, which was signed by the Government and only some of Darfur’s rebel groups.
In November the Sudanese Government agreed in principle to a three-phase plan culminating in the deployment of a hybrid UN-AU peacekeeping force in Darfur to replace the existing and under-staffed AU monitoring mission known as AMIS. The new hybrid force is expected to comprise about 17,000 troops and 3,000 police officers.
Darfur: worsening security could irreversibly damage aid efforts for millions – UN warns
UN News Service
January 17, 2007
Mounting violence in Sudan's war-torn Darfur region, repeated military attacks, arbitrary bombing of villages and the targeting of aid workers threaten to permanently disrupt the fragile lifeline ensuring the survival of millions of people, the United Nations warned today, noting that relief access in December was the worst in nearly three years.
"If this situation continues, the humanitarian operation and welfare of the population it aims to support will be irreversibly jeopardized," 13 UN bodies involved in the relief efforts said in a joint statement, calling for protection for civilians and humanitarian workers and an end to impunity for perpetrators of human rights abuses.
"If not, the UN humanitarian agencies and NGOs (non-governmental organizations) will not be able to hold the fragile line that to date has provided relief and a measure of protection to some 4 million people in Darfur affected by this tragic conflict."
The agencies, joined by the International Organization for Migration (IOM), noted that over the last two years humanitarian agencies saved the lives of hundreds of thousands of civilians caught up in the conflict, in which nearly four years of fighting between Government forces, allied militias and rebel groups seeking greater autonomy have killed at least 200,000 people and displaced more than 2 million others.
Mortality rates have been brought below emergency levels, malnutrition halved from the height of the crisis in mid-2004 and nearly three-quarters of all Darfurians now have access to safe drinking water and in 2006 alone, 400,000 metric tons of food were delivered.
"In the face of growing insecurity and danger to communities and aid workers, the UN and its humanitarian partners have effectively been holding the line for the survival and protection of millions," the statement said. "That line cannot be held much longer.
It stressed that access to those in need in December was the worst since April 2004, citing repeated military attacks, shifting frontlines, and fragmentation of armed groups that compromised safe humanitarian access. In the last six months alone, more than 250,000 people have been displaced by fighting, many fleeing for the second or third time.
"Villages have been burnt, looted and arbitrarily bombed and crops and livestock destroyed. Sexual violence against women is occurring at alarming rates. This situation is unacceptable. Nor can we accept the violence increasingly directed against humanitarian workers," the agencies said, noting that 12 relief workers have been killed in the past six months, more than in the previous two years combined.
More than 400 humanitarian workers have been forced to relocate 31 times. The reduction in services is leading to deteriorating hygiene in displaced persons' camps, reflected by a cholera outbreak that struck 2,768 people and killed 147 in 2006.
Malnutrition rates are edging perilously close to the emergency threshold, while 60 per cent of households in need of food aid cite insecurity as the main barrier to cultivating their lands.
"The humanitarian community cannot indefinitely assure the survival of the population in Darfur if insecurity continues," the agencies said. "Solid guarantees for the safety of civilians and humanitarian workers is urgently needed. At the same time, those who have committed attacks, harassment, abduction, intimidation, robbery and injury to civilians, including IDPs, humanitarian workers and other non-combatants, must be held accountable."
Lebanon donor conference, Darfur conflict to feature in Ban Ki-moon’s first overseas trip
UN News Service
January 18, 2007
The reconstruction of Lebanon, the conflict in Darfur and the situation in Somalia will be on the agenda when Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon heads to Europe and Africa next week for his first overseas visit since taking the reins at the United Nations on 1 January.
Mr. Ban’s first stop will be Brussels, where he will meet European Commission officials and Hans-Gert Pöttering, the President of the European Parliament, as well as Belgium’s King Albert II and its Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt.
The Secretary-General’s spokesperson Michele Montas told journalists today that Mr. Ban will then head to Paris to participate in a conference, to be hosted by French President Jacques Chirac, on the reconstruction and redevelopment of Lebanon following last year’s war between Hizbollah and the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF).
The Lebanese Government is expected to present an economic reform plan to the conference that will include measures to tackle the country’s debt sustainability problem and restore its foundations for achieving sustained financial growth.
Mr. Ban then travels to the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), home of the largest UN peacekeeping operation in the world, where he hopes to hold talks with President Joseph Kabila on continuing the process of democratization after decades of war, dictatorship and misrule in the vast African country. He also plans to meet peacekeepers to express his personal gratitude for their efforts.
Ms. Montas said Mr. Ban will travel next to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, for the African Union (AU) summit, where the conflict in Darfur and the situation in Somalia are expected to dominate the agenda.
The final stop on the trip will be in Nairobi, where the Secretary-General is scheduled to meet staff at the UN regional office.
Ms. Montas also confirmed that Mr. Ban will attend a meeting of the Middle East diplomatic Quartet – which comprises the UN, the European Union, the United States and Russia – that is slated to be held in Washington, D.C., on 2 February.
Suffering binds Iraq and Darfur
Los Angeles Times
by David Bosco,
a contributing writer at Foreign Policy magazine
January 18, 2007
POLLS TELL US that Americans want to be less involved in Iraq and more involved in Darfur. It's not hard to understand why. For the American public, and many of its leaders, Iraq is a tainted war without good guys. Darfur, by contrast, is a chance to save the helpless. In our minds, Iraq and Darfur seem to fit into neat categories: One is a botched war, the other is a humanitarian crisis.
But the ghastly facts on the ground support no such clear distinction. The United Nations reported Tuesday that more than 34,000 Iraqis died violent deaths in 2006 alone. The day the report came out, a bomb attack at a Baghdad university killed at least 70 people, many of them students. Tens of thousands more Iraqis are displaced. Bodies bearing marks of torture are found nearly daily. All told, the civilian toll in Iraq may have already surpassed that of the Bosnian war, and sectarian violence might soon place it in the awful category of Darfur, where 200,000 to 400,000 civilians are thought to have died.
Still, persuading Americans to see Iraq as a humanitarian crisis in which we still have a moral obligation is a struggle. We now know the Iraqis almost too well. It was easy to see the Kurds and the Shiites as the brave opponents of a brutal dictator when our warplanes were protecting them from 30,000 feet. It's much harder when U.S. troops have to grapple with their unsavory leaders and their thirst for revenge. Remember the solidarity we felt when Iraqis voted? Those feelings of kinship have given way to a sense of betrayal.
The victims in Darfur, by contrast, remain comfortable abstractions.
The advocacy campaign to "Save Darfur" tells us of a ceaseless campaign of ethnic cleansing by armed marauders — the notorious janjaweed — against peaceful and defenseless villagers. As it must, this narrative glosses over a few details. The region's rebels, who have committed some abuses of their own, rarely get a mention.
It's no wonder that Darfur's advocates have chosen to present that conflict as starkly as possible. Recent humanitarian interventions have had identifiable and sympathetic victim groups (think of the besieged Bosnian Muslims and the oppressed Kosovars). For all its suffering, Iraq lacks an identifiable victim group. Neither the Sunnis nor the Shiites have much claim on the American conscience at this point. The Sunnis are erstwhile oppressors, while the Shiites appear to be extremist fellow travelers with Iran. The Kurds have been victimized many times before but, mercifully, they have largely skirted the current bloodshed.
Distaste for the major Iraqi factions is only one reason we don't often think of that conflict in humanitarian terms. Another is the more than 3,000 U.S. troops killed in Iraq and the tens of thousands wounded, many grievously. In the context of that loss, we have little compassion left for the Iraqis. It's a phenomenon we've seen before.
Americans who supported saving Somalis from famine in the early 1990s recoiled when it became clear that there was no escaping that country's confused factional battles. The deaths of 18 American soldiers in Mogadishu in 1993 wiped out our commitment to the people we so boldly went to save.
The national exhaustion with Iraq is evident in today's Los Angeles Times poll. Although 30% of those surveyed wanted to keep U.S. troops in Iraq for as long as it takes to win the war, 19% want troops out right now, and 46% want to begin bringing them home within the next year. There are plenty of reasons why Americans are throwing up their hands. The war will forever be tainted by the faulty intelligence that launched it. The Bush administration botched the initial occupation badly. And some sensible people argue that by acting as a magnet for jihadists, American forces are actually perpetuating rather than staving off ethnic conflict.
But if there is a decent prospect that U.S. forces are restraining the violence — however imperfectly — the moral case for staying is compelling. We set in motion the chain of events Iraqis are now living, and we have encouraged thousands of Iraqis to bet their lives on a fragile new government. And the United States offers the only force that can help stop the country's descent into all-out warfare.
It's natural that Americans would yearn for a simpler and clearer conflict than Iraq to showcase their humanitarian impulses. But our concern for Darfur must not become a moral salve that allows us to abandon Iraq to its spasm of violence. There may be no blameless factions in Iraq, but there are thousands of ordinary victims. Unless it is clear that we are doing no good, we owe them more.
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Uganda (ICC)
Official Website of the International Criminal Court
ICC Public Documents - Situation in Uganda
Advocacy, the International Criminal Court and the conflict in Northern Uganda
HPN via Reuters
by Tim Raby
January 11, 2007
The role of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the conflict in Northern Uganda has been controversial from the moment the Chief Prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, announced the start of its investigations in January 2004, alongside President Yoweri Museveni. At the time of writing, it remains controversial, as the ICC continues to demand that the five indicted leaders of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) face trial, despite ongoing negotiations towards a peace deal.
As the ICC's investigation has progressed, agencies that had lobbied for its establishment and its involvement in Northern Uganda have become increasingly uneasy. There have been concerns that the investigation is perceived as biased because it was undertaken at the behest of the Ugandan government, whose army has also been accused of mass human rights abuses; that it has not been conducted openly; and that it endangers vulnerable groups, specifically those interviewees who could be called as witnesses in any trial. More fundamentally, the investigation could set back the prospects for peace, and hence the chances of an improvement in the desperate humanitarian situation in the north.
Humanitarian advocacy and the ICC
Advocacy in favour of the ICC's involvement in Northern Uganda began to increase in 2003, in response to an expansion of the fighting and a tripling in the displaced population, to around 1.6 million. Later in 2003, following a visit to Northern Uganda, Jan Egeland, the UN Under-Secretary for Humanitarian Affairs, attracted further international attention to the conflict when he stated that 'I cannot find any other part of the world that is having an emergency on the scale of Uganda that is getting so little international attention'. The failure of a Ugandan army offensive – Operation Iron Fist – against LRA bases in southern Sudan to remove the threat of the LRA, and heightened scrutiny of Museveni's domestic policies, including his ultimately successful attempt to remove the limits on presidential terms, increased international concern, and probably contributed to Museveni's decision to refer the situation in Northern Uganda to the ICC.
In December 2004, the Church Mission Society, Christian Aid, Conciliation Resources, Quaker Peace and Social Witness, Tearfund and World Vision UK formed the Northern Uganda Advocacy Partnership for Peace (NUAPP). Because the announcement of arrest warrants was expected in the near future, and because this was expected to have a negative impact on the tentative moves towards peace that were being made at the end of 2004 and the beginning of 2005, it quickly became clear that its main target had to be the ICC. Less clear was what any advocacy efforts towards the ICC should look like. Because the ICC is an independent body, and because the situation in Uganda had been referred to it by the Ugandan government, rather than the UN Security Council – as was the situation in Darfur – it was difficult for UK-based agencies to know how and to whom to voice their concerns. Clearly, the independence of the ICC is vital, so lobbying the British government to influence the Court would not only be ineffective, but also contrary to the desire of these agencies to ensure the ICC's impartiality.
Direct advocacy with the ICC was difficult because of its understandable reluctance, for reasons of confidentiality and to protect witnesses, to speak about its investigations. A series of meetings took place between religious and traditional leaders from Northern Uganda and officials from the ICC, but it seemed to take the ICC a long time to understand international agencies' concerns. Following the issuing of the arrest warrants, the ICC seemed to expect agencies to lobby the international community to play a more active role in the execution of the warrants. French Foreign Minister Phillipe Douste-Blazy, during a UN Security Council visit to Uganda, made the remarkable suggestion that NGOs should be asked to 'cooperate with neighbouring countries to arrest the LRA chiefs'.
Who should act?
The question of who would arrest the five LRA commanders wanted for trial has never adequately been answered, and international agencies have also found it difficult to come up with a solution. This has also made advocacy problematic. Of course, it is not the role of the ICC to arrest those it wants to try. This was not, however, obvious to many in Northern Uganda. In research conducted by the International Center for Transitional Justice and the Human Rights Center, published in July 2005, only 27% of those questioned had heard of the ICC, and of these only 17% knew that it did not have a mandate to arrest individuals it indicted. Therefore, fewer than 5% of those questioned correctly understood the role and capacity of the ICC.
The Ugandan army (the UPDF) was regarded as the most likely to execute the warrants, but this ignored a number of problems. The UPDF had tried and failed for 20 years to arrest these commanders, its increasingly heavy-handed methods (including the use of helicopter gunships, Museveni's favourite piece of military equipment) had led to the deaths of many civilians and children, and its participation would increase perceptions that the investigation was biased. The armies of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and southern Sudan were also proposed, but lacked the necessary capacity and, in Sudan's case, the necessary motivation. Scepticism greeted the announcement in December 2005 that the ICC had signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Sudanese government, under which Khartoum agreed to cooperate in the arrest of LRA commanders based in southern Sudan. The final candidates were the UN peacekeeping forces in DRC (MONUC) and southern Sudan (UNMIS), but the former was preoccupied with ensuring peaceful elections in the DRC in June 2006, and the latter was taken up with the implementation of the peace agreement in southern Sudan.
International advocacy efforts culminated in the adoption of UN Security Council Resolutions 1653 and 1663, and a report in July 2006 recommended ways in which the UN 'could more effectively address the problem of the LRA'. While international agencies should be congratulated for their efforts in getting these resolutions passed, they were unable to propose any more comprehensive solutions to the problem of how to arrest the LRA commanders than those already suggested.
Questions of justice
Another area in which alternative solutions proved difficult concerned whether the ICC was acting 'in the interests of justice' – a phrase repeated frequently in the ICC's statutes. International agencies have often found themselves in dispute (including amongst themselves) about whether the Acholi possess a special form of justice, based more on reconciliation and healing, and whether this is being ignored by the ICC in favour of a more punitive model, based on 'Western' concepts. The difficulties of conducting research into this, the impossibility of knowing whether traditional forms of justice can be applicable to the crimes committed during the conflict, and the vested interests on both sides of the debate mean that there is no easy solution to this question.
An integrated approach?
There is greater consensus that the ICC investigation should be seen as merely one element in securing a just, peaceful and sustainable solution to the conflict, and should, therefore, be integrated more closely with other mechanisms that have this aim. Such mechanisms include amnesties (particularly for those rebel fighters who were abducted by the LRA), a 'truth and healing' process (which would examine the conflict in its political and historical context) and negotiations towards a ceasefire, an end to the displacement that has devastated Northern Uganda and, eventually, peace talks.
Some analysts have dismissed this argument; Tim Allen, in his book Trial Justice: The International Criminal Court and the Lord's Resistance Army, states that 'in setting up the ICC there was never the intention to bring justice in a broad sense', and that 'international criminal law [should not] have to engage with [local justice] in a serious way'. However, whilst this may be true for the ICC as an entity, surely it should see itself as one of several elements of the solution. In June 2005, the ICC stated that its investigation in Darfur 'will form part of a collective effort, complementing African Union and other initiatives to end the violence in Darfur and promote justice'. Notwithstanding the enormous difficulties in achieving this in Darfur (and for that matter in the DRC), this statement gives some hope that the ICC investigations in these cases may avoid some of the controversies and uncertainties of the investigation in Uganda.
Advocacy concerning the ICC will remain difficult, but its aim should be that these investigations will not just seek to ensure the prosecution of those most responsible for the crimes committed in these conflicts, but should also contribute to a just, peaceful and sustainable end to the conflicts themselves. Those suffering in the displacement camps and villages of Northern Uganda, Darfur and eastern DRC deserve nothing less.
Tim Raby works for Tearfund. Between May 2004 and June 2006 he worked as Tearfund's Disaster Management Officer for Northern Uganda. Between December 2004 and June 2006, he was also the Chair of the Northern Uganda Advocacy Partnership for Peace. He writes in a personal capacity.
Sudan-Uganda: Rebel delegation quits talks, seeks "neutral" venue
IRIN News
January 12, 2007
The Lord's Resistance Army has 'disengaged' from peace negotiations with the Ugandan government and will not continue the process until a neutral host country is found, a spokesman for the rebel group said on Friday.
"In the circumstances and due to security considerations, [the] LRA delegation are not going back to Juba but would prefer that the talks resume in a neutral venue, preferably Kenya, South Africa or other neutral country," Obonyo Olweny, the LRA spokesman, told a news conference in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi.
The talks have been going on in the southern Sudan capital of Juba since July 2006. Olweny said the rebels' decision followed recent comments by Sudanese President Omar El Bashir and South Sudan President Salva Kiir Mayardit that the LRA was no longer welcome in southern Sudan.
The Ugandan government said the rebels had misunderstood the Sudanese position. "I am very disappointed with the announcement by the LRA," Okello Oryem, minister of state for international relations and deputy leader of the Ugandan delegation to the talks, told IRIN in Kampala.
"The statement made by the Sudanese authorities should have been taken in the right context. They said: if there is no peace agreement signed, then the government will kick out the LRA. This shouldn't have been a basis of argument because we are in talks," Oryem added.
The head of a northern Uganda peace forum, Acholi Religious Leaders' Peace Initiative, Archbishop John Baptist Odama, said: "The LRA should reconsider their demands because the people in northern Uganda are over-anxious to see that the peace process succeeds."
Urging the rebels to return to the talks, Odama added: "They should talk over the disagreement instead of pulling out. This is not going to go down well with the IDPs [internally displaced persons] who have borne the brunt of the conflict and were over-expectant."
An estimated 230,000 IDPs returned to their villages in 2006 as prospects for peace improved with the Juba talks. However, up to 1.2 million others are still in camps across northern Uganda.
The Nairobi news conference was called by the rebels and Africa Peace Point, a Kenyan peace mediation NGO.
The rebels urged the chairman of the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki, to convene an IGAD conference "to salvage the talks by agreeing to an alternative venue".
"The LRA welcomes regional and international support that can help to resolve this horrendous conflict that has stubbornly refused to go away . for the last 20 years, which resulted in tremendous suffering to the people of Uganda," Olweny said, reading a statement signed by Martin Ojul, leader of the rebel delegation.
Olweny said the LRA would continue to respect the cessation of hostilities agreement signed in August 2006 and subsequent protocols. Under the deal, LRA combatants were to gather at two assembly points in Sudan. However, the fighters have stayed away, accusing the Uganda People's Defence Forces (UPDF) of surrounding them.
He said the LRA was still committed to a "mediated and negotiated" peace settlement between it and the Ugandan government "as the best way of bringing total peace to the people of northern and eastern Uganda in particular and for the rest of the Uganda in general".
Regarding indictments by the International Criminal Court (ICC) against four senior LRA officials, including leader Joseph Kony, Ojul said the indictments remained an obstacle to peace. He added that ICC investigations in northern Uganda were one-sided as they ignored atrocities committed by the UPDF.
The LRA leadership could not sign a peace agreement as long as ICC arrest warrants hung over their heads, Ojul said.
"We don't deny that the LRA has committed atrocities," he said. "The Ugandan army has also committed many atrocities in the north."
Ojul also said he had met the United Nations Secretary-General's special representative to northern Uganda, the former Mozambican president, Joachim Chissano, and had presented him with a memorandum detailing the LRA's concerns and decision to pull out of the talks in Juba.
Olweny maintained that the LRA was a well-structured political organisation whose leadership was working towards a just society in Uganda where northern Ugandans, whom he termed "second-class citizens", were not marginalised and where all Ugandans were united and living in peace.
"The LRA has over time been cast in a bad light as a terrorist organisation and not a liberation movement by the Ugandan government; we strongly object to this," he said.
LRA team combs Teso for evidence of UPDF killings
The Monitor
by Chris Obore
January 17, 2007
A RESEARCH team of the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army has been combing parts of Teso and Lira districts for evidence of killings and human rights violations by the UPDF.
Daily Monitor has learnt that during the Christmas break, the LRA team visited Mukura in Kumi district and interviewed survivors of the 1989 massacre.
In 1989, at least 69 people under military detention died in a train wagon at Okunguro Railway Station in Mukura sub- county. According to Mr Charles Elaku, the LRA team visited Mukura on the peak of Christmas festivities and filmed testimonies from the survivors and eyewitnesses.
Mr Elaku, who is also the sub-county councillor said, “ The film must have already reached [Joseph] Kony. They came here and said they wanted to use the information during the peace talks.” Sources say similar information was collected in Lira, Soroti and Katakwi districts.
But the spokesman of the government delegation to the Juba talks, Capt. Paddy Ankunda said the LRA research mission and its findings would not have any impact on peace negotiations. “I didn’t know about that. That is serious but I don’t think it has any impact,” he said.
Mr Ankunda said the UPDF has an established justice system unlike the LRA.
“Whenever individuals commit crimes, they are punished and to use the word atrocities against UPDF is far fetched,” he said.
Despite the evidence the LRA is looking for, Mr Ankunda said the peace process would continue. However, UPDF spokesman, Maj. Felix Kulayigye said he was aware that some people were interviewing alleged victims of UPDF atrocities.
“I am aware that political groups especially FDC are doing that. It is not LRA. It is FDC,” Maj. Kulayigye said yesterday. Asked why he is tagging the issue to FDC, Maj. Kulayigye FDC hopes to use such information to disrupt Chogm.
Sudan ready to surrender mediation role in Juba talks
The Monitor
by Grace Matsiko & Paul Harera Sebikali
January 19, 2007
THE Government of South Sudan has said it is ready to step down as a mediator between the government of Uganda and the rebel Lords Resistance Army (LRA) in the Juba-based peace talks.
"If they (LRA) are not coming we can't force them. Our intention was to help the suffering people of northern Uganda. If our mediation is not needed, we can't insist. They can go to another country," South Sudan Spokesman Samson Kwaje told Daily monitor yesterday.
"The beneficiaries of the peace process are the people who have been suffering and not the government of South Sudan," he said.
The LRA announced at the weekend they were withdrawing from the talks following a fall out with the Khartoum government and the mediators in Juba.
The rebels said they would not continue with the talks, which have been going on since July, unless another country (Kenya/South Africa) was found to host them.
LRA's second in command Vicent Otti said they were concerned about their security after Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir vowed to "get rid of the LRA from Sudan."
Speaking to Daily Monitor via phone, Mr Otti said, "I hear some people are saying we have accepted to resume the negotiations, which is wrong. I have asked my delegation not to engage in any negotiations in Juba again until they are shifted to another place."
He said while the peace talks are on hold, he has instructed his forces to be on alert and defend themselves against any intruder. He urged the northern community to be patient even as the negotiations are on hold.
The rebels in September 2006, boycotted the talks with the government alleging they were being surrounded by the UPDF.
They had settled at Rikwangba at the time. They later returned for negotiations but broke off for the Christmas holiday.
However, Dr Kwaje said the LRA had not written to his government about not wanting Juba as the venue for the talks.
"They (LRA) have not written to us officially. our position is that the talks are on course. We know that they went for consultations and they will be coming back," Dr Kwaje said. "Instead of talking to the press, they should talk to us."
Dr Kwaje said Dr Riek Machar on Wednesday wrote to the LRA side led by Martin Ojul and the government delegation headed by Dr Ruhakana Rugunda inviting them to resume negotiations on Monday.
He said although the communication was made late, they were hopeful the two parties would respond positively.
Govt ready
Dr Rugunda said the government was yet to receive Dr Machar's invitation. "We are ready to come over, not to sit in Juba but to conclude the peace talks," Dr Rugunda said.
He said the government is in full support of Juba as the venue, Dr Machar as the mediator and was greatful to all the mechanisms that have been put in place by the South Sudan government to bring peace to northern Uganda.
The LRA's side could not be reached for comment as their satellite telephone contacts were off.
Efforts by Dr Machar to convince the LRA Chief Joseph Kony or Otti to meet the UN special envoy for northern Uganda, Joachim Chissano this week failed. Mr Chissano left Juba on Wednesday after the rebel chiefs claimed they were very far from Rikwangba, the assembly point, having relocated following Gen. Bashir and Kiir's statement that they were not wanted in Sudan.
Meanwhile, two vehicles were yesterday morning burnt to ashes in an ambush by unknown gunmen along the Nimule - Juba road in South Sudan.
Travelers along the road told Daily Monitor that the trucks were attacked near the Torit Road junction, just a few kilometers from Juba.
Lakwena dead
The Monitor
by Hussein Bogere & Paul Harera Sebikali
January 19, 2007
ALICE Lakwena, 51, the founder of the rebel Holy Spirit Movement, which fought the Movement government from 1986 to 1987, died yesterday in exile in Kenya.
Lakwena, a self-declared prophetess passed away at around 1am yesterday at Ifo Refugee Camp in northeastern Kenya.
"I can confirm that she died at night at the refugee camp where she has lived for many years. We regret her death. The cause of her death is not yet clear and is subject to investigation," Mr Emmanuel Nyabera, the spokesman for the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) said.
Lakwena led the Holy Spirit Movement, which fought President Yoweri Museveni's government during its first two years, before fleeing to Kenya.
She armed her followers with sticks and stones and managed to convince them that the army's bullets would bounce off their bodies after she had anointed them with shea butter oil and that the stones would explode like grenades if thrown at government troops.
After Lakwena's departure to Kenya, her nephew Joseph Kony took over her struggle, calling it the Holy Spirit Movement Part Two. He later re-named it the Lord's Resistance Army, which has fought a vicious 20-year war against Mr Museveni's government. The LRA is currently engaged in peace talks with the government.
Daily Monitor yesterday established that Ms Lakwena's body was moved by road from the refugee camp near Dadaab town to Garissa Provincial General Hospital mortuary by UNHCR.
The camp has, of recent, been flooded following heavy rains in north eastern Kenya. UNHCR officials said the body would remain at the mortuary as they wait for communication from the Uganda Government. "It will be the responsibility of the Kenyan Government to preserve her remains at the Garissa Provincial General Hospital mortuary until the Ugandan government decides if they can be returned to her country of birth," Mr Nyabera said.
No role, says govt
The government, however, yesterday said it would not take any part in Lakwena's burial.
The Minister of Information Hajj Kirunda Kivejinja told Daily Monitor by telephone yesterday that Lakwena died like any other ordinary Ugandan and "therefore warrants no special treatment.”
"There are no arrangements by the government. Yes, we wanted her to return to Uganda but she was like any other person. Many people die in the country but the government never comes out to help. Unless there is a problem, her family should arrange for her return," Mr Kivejinja said. However, her father Sabino Lukoya yesterday appealed to government to help return her remains since “she died while still serving God.”
Officials of the UN's refugee agency reported Lakwena's death at Dadaab Police Station. Police said Lakwena's death was being treated as natural.
Lakwena, Police said, fell sick on January 11. Her condition deteriorated fast after she refused to be hospitalised or to take any conventional medicine. She instead opted for traditional medicine.
She was a self-proclaimed traditional healer. She often said her real power was in prophecy and healing, both spiritual and herbal.
Ms Lakwena claimed that she could cure the dreaded HIV/Aids and had expressed her desire to return home and help save Ugandans from the epidemic. According to a report filed by UNHCR officials at the Dadaab Police Station, the self-claimed prophetess said she was suffering from common cold and chest pains.
Kenyan Police said she died in her bed at Block 24 in the refugee camp. Her mud hut was set in the neatest compound in the camp. Lakwena fled to Kenya in late 1987 after her rebel army was crushed at Magamaga in Jinja district as it marched to Kampala.
She was first housed at a refugee camp near Thika town. She was later moved to Ifo in 1996 after Thika camp was closed down. Her father yesterday asked the government to construct a church at Bungatira where Lakwena started her HSM campaign against the government for remembrance.
After spending 17 years in exile, Lakwena desired to return to Uganda in 2004 under the Amnesty Act but on condition that government paid her $50 000 and gave her a posh house in Kampala. She claimed she would end the LRA rebellion. She also asked for compensation of the war-ravaged northern Uganda.
Legislators from northern Uganda pushed for her return but government was reluctant to grant her wish. A high-powered government delegation met her in Kenya but the Uganda government later backed out.
Otti shocked
LRA's deputy Commander Vincent Otti yesterday told Daily Monitor that he was shocked by the death of Alice Lakwena whom he knew as a courageous fighter.
"Personally, I have never met her ever since I joined LRA, but all I know is that she is from Gulu and on behalf of the LRA, I would like to pass over my sincere condolences to the family of the deceased," he said.
Lakwena's father
"I am shocked to hear of her death. I don't feel bad because everything comes to an end and we should accept it. The world should accept the good Lakwena has done. She has been serving God and even Moses who saved his people died," he said.
Mr Lukoya, together with his followers yesterday held prayers at his New Jerusalem Melta church in Kony Paco, Gulu municipality.
"Alice Lakwena had been serving God and her death should not mean that it's the end of life. I sent her to do my work," he said. "The death of Alice will be a total shock to her mother (Ayaa) because the mother loved her so much and believed in her."
Lakwena was born on June 3, 1956 at Pongdwo village at the home of Mzee Yakobo. She is the second born out of 15 children of Mzee Lukoya and Doreen Ayaa (mother). Ten of them have since died.
" Alice grew up well and was an obedient lady. I last spoke to her in 2004 when the overnment wanted her to come back home but the arrest of her sister Doreen Adokorach in 2004 by the government frightened her. I have lost my daughter without hearing from her," the grief-stricken Lukoya said. Lakwena went to Bwungatira P7 (Protestant) School in Aswa County where she studied up to Primary Seven.
"Lakwena started her Holy Spirit movement on May 13, 1985 after the Holy Spirit came upon her," Mr Lukoya said. "On that day, the Holy Spirit came on her, then she started fasting. Her movement spirit was to help and save people. God sent it. Now she has passed away," he said.
Lukoya said his daughter has died childless although she had adopted several whom she was taking care of.
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International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY)
Official Website of the ICTY
Sarajevo siege general on trial
BBC News
January 11, 2007
A wartime commander of the Bosnian Serb forces that besieged Sarajevo in the early 1990s has gone on trial at the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague.
Gen Dragomir Milosevic has pleaded not guilty to charges of leading attacks on civilians in the city.
He is accused of seven counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
More than 11,000 people were killed in the 44-month siege of Sarajevo. Gen Milosevic is not related to the late Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic.
Gen Milosevic's predecessor in command of the Bosnian Serb forces that besieged Sarajevo, Gen Stanislav Galic, is the only defendant so far to have received the maximum penalty - life imprisonment - from the appeals chamber of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.
The appeals verdict, which came in November, ruled that the original sentence of 20 years' imprisonment was "unreasonable and plainly unjust in that it underestimated the gravity of Galic's criminal conduct".
Brutal siege
After serving as Gen Galic's deputy, Gen Milosevic took over command of the Bosnian Serb army's Sarajevo Romanija corps in August 1994 - a little over a year before the siege ended.
Despite the overwhelming superiority of the besieging forces and the huge scale of destruction, much of Sarajevo remained in the hands of the mainly-Muslim Bosnian government.
According to the prosecution, Gen Milosevic continued to implement his predecessor's strategy of using shelling and sniping to kill, injure and spread terror among Sarajevo's civilian population.
The prosecution argues that many of the attacks were entirely unrelated to military objectives.
Gen Milosevic's defence will probably seek to persuade the judges that most of the attacks were aimed at legitimate targets, the BBC's South-East Europe analyst Gabriel Partos says.
Another line of defence might suggest that the defendant was not fully aware of the war crimes that were being committed by forces under his command.
The Bosnian Serbs' overall military commander, Gen Ratko Mladic, remains in hiding nearly 12 years after he was first indicted for war crimes. So does the Bosnian Serbs' wartime leader, Radovan Karadzic.
At UN war crimes tribunal, Bosnian Serb soldier pleads guilty to rape and torture
UN News Service
January 17, 2007
A former Bosnian Serb soldier and de facto military policeman today pleaded guilty before a United Nations war crimes tribunal to charges that he raped and tortured Bosnian Muslim women and girls during the Balkan wars of the 1990s.
Under a plea agreement reached with prosecutors at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), Dragan Zelenovic admitted being involved in an attack on the eastern Bosnian town of Foca and surrounding villages in July 1992.
The ICTY, sitting in The Hague, found Mr. Zelenovic guilty of seven counts of crimes against humanity and agreed to a prosecution request as part of the plea agreement to withdraw seven other counts of torture and rape.
On 3 July 1992, Mr. Zelenovic and other Bosnian Serb soldiers arrested at least 60 women, children and elderly men from the villages of Trošanj and Mješaji and took them to Buk Bijela, site of a temporary detention and interrogation facility. Once there, Mr. Zelenovic raped and tortured a 15-year-old girl and aided in the rape and torture of another victim.
Mr. Zelenovic participated later the same month in the gang-rape and torture of a number of women and girls being held at a high school in Foca. Anyone who resisted the sexual assaults there was beaten or threatened with death.
The 15-year-old girl from Buk Bijela was repeatedly raped again – including a gang-rape by Mr. Zelenovic and three other men – between mid-July and mid-August while being held with more than 70 other detainees at a sports hall in Foca in conditions marked by inhumane treatment, starvation, overcrowding and a lack of hygiene.
In a separate attack in October 1992, Mr. Zelenovic and two others raped four women being held in a house just outside Foca.
Prosecutors have asked for a sentence of 10 to 15 years’ imprisonment for Mr. Zelenovic, while his defence lawyers have recommended a sentence of between seven and 10 years’ jail.
Bosnia Unwilling to Try Trbic Case
IWPR
by Caroline Tosh
January 19, 2007
Sarajevo officials say they’re concerned about the mental health of the defendant.
A former Bosnian Serb army officer charged in connection with the Srebrenica massacre has supported an application to transfer his case back to Bosnia.
But the Sarajevo authorities have opposed the move, saying he might pose a risk to himself or others.
Milorad Trbic, a security officer with the Bosnian Serb Army, VRS, Zvornik brigade, was due to stand trial with six other Bosnian Serb military and police officers on charges related to the 1995 massacre of some 8,000 Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica. But his indictment was severed the month before the trial began in July last year.
In the decision to split his case, judges raised questions about his health and suggested there may be a conflict of interest between him and his co-accused.
Trbic, who is charged with complicity in the Srebrenica genocide, said at a hearing on January 15 that he is in good health.
But a psychiatric examination ordered by chambers last year has revealed that his competence to stand trial was "questionable".
Milana Popadic, a Bosnian justice ministry representative, said the country lacked facilities to accommodate detainees who pose a danger to themselves and others due to their mental state.
Popadic also said that it would be inappropriate for the tribunal to refer cases involving genocide-related charges back to the national court.
Prosecutor Susan Somers said that Bosnian authorities would have to explain to its people that it was not ready to try genocide cases.
Trbic's defense counsel said a transfer of the case to the Bosnian court might endanger his client, who had received threats, he said.
The defendant was formerly indicted with Ljubisa Beara, Vujadin Popovic, Ljubomir Borovcanin, Vinko Pandurevic and Drago Nikolic - who face genocide and war crimes charges - as well as Radivoj Miletic and Milan Gvero, who are accused of blocking aid and supplies to Srebrenica.
Another accused, Zdravko Tolimir, remains on the run.
Bosnia’s ability to try grave war crimes cases has been much debated in recent months, as the tribunal’s deadline to complete trials draws ever nearer with six key suspects still at large.
Caroline Tosh is an IWPR reporter in The Hague.
Operation Storm trial to begin in May
B92
January 19, 2007
THE HAGUE -- The trial of three Croatian generals charged with crimes committed during Operation Storm will begin on May 7, 2007.
The pre-trial judge did not considered "convincing” the reasons presented by the defense for the postponement of the trial.
The trial of three Croatian generals – Ante Gotovina, Ivan Čermak and Mladen Markač – is scheduled to begin on May 7, 2007. The pre-trial chamber made this decision regarding the defense’s motion to schedule the start of the trial "at the earliest in September 2007".
Explaining the decision, the pre-trial judge Bakone Moloto stated that the arguments presented by the defense counsel representing the three generals were "not found convincing".
In early December 2006, the accused generals pleaded not guilty to the four counts in the joint indictment charging them with crimes against Serb civilians in the course of and after Operation Storm in the summer of 1995.
The indictment alleges that more than 150 civilians, ethnic Serbs, were killed in the Krajina region while tens of thousands of them were expelled to Serbia and Bosnia Herzegovina.
Among the charges levied at Gotovina, Čermak and Markač is the participation – together with the late Croatian president Tudjman and other Croatian officials - in the "joint criminal undertaking" aimed at forcible and permanent removal of the Serb population from the Krajina region.
According to an earlier estimate by Alan Tieger, the prosecutor in the case, the Storm trial could take between twelve and fourteen months to complete.
Kosovo Six trial discusses Rugova’s role
B92
January 19, 2007
THE HAGUE -- The defense for the Kosovo Six says Rugova attended the meetings with Serbian officials in April 1999 "voluntarily".
While the defense of the six former Serbian officials standing trial at the Hague for alleged war crimes in Kosovo claims that late Kosovo president and president of the Kosovo Democratic
League (DSK) Ibrahim Rugova at the time had the army and the police as “protection", a witness maintains Rugova was acting out of fear for his own safety and that of his family.
As the cross-examination of Adnan Merovci, Rugova's personal assistant at that timeproceeded, the defense counsel for the six Serb officials indicted for crimes in Kosovo tried to prove that Ibrahim Rugova had attended the meetings with the Serb officials "of his own free will" and that he had made the press releases "voluntary", and had not been "coerced" as the witness claimed.
Merovci said that from March 31 until May 4, 1999, the army and the police held him, Rugova and Rugova's family under house arrest in Priština.
Rugova, the president of the Kosovo Democratic League (DSK) was taken from his home to meetings with Serbian officials. After the meetings, he made statements under duress. He did so only to protect himself and his family, Merovci claimed.
To refute Merovci's argument, Toma Fila, representing Nikola Šainović, noted that at that time the witness was "walking freely around Priština". When he went out it was hardly "voluntary", the witness noted, because he was under police escort at all times and that Rugova himself was denied any such "luxury", the witness replied.
The defense counsel for police general Sreten Lukić actually took this idea one step further, suggesting that the police escort was there to ensure the witness's safety in the same way as the police surrounded Rugova's house in order to protect him and his family. This argument was further supported by a story of an armed Albanian shot to death by the police on April 3, 1999 when he tried to enter Ibrahim Rugova's house.
The witness insisted Rugova had been kept under house arrest and had been allowed to leave only to attend the meetings with the Serb officials under police escort. He issued press releases only because his family was also under house arrest. As regards the man who attempted an attack on Rugova on 3 April, as the defense alleges, the witness said the man was Rugova's driver coming to help him and not to do him any harm.
Jadranko Palija Denies Guilt
BIRN Justice Report
January 19, 2007
Indictee pleads not guilty to war crimes against Sanski Most civilians.
Former Republika Srpska military police official Jadranko Palija today pleaded not guilty to charges of war crimes at the State Court of BiH.
The indictment against Palija, confirmed on January 5, 2007, accuses him of committing crimes against humanity and war crimes against civilians in the Sanski Most municipality.
The state prosecution believes that Palija participated in attacks on the settlements of Muhici, Mahala, Otoka, Hrustovo, Vrhpolje, Kljevci and other areas mostly populated by Muslims and Croats.
During the attacks, which began in mid-April 1992 and continued until the end of May the same year, the local civilan population was expelled from their homes, which were then looted and burned down. They were then taken away, separated and detained in various facilities in the Sanski Most municipality. Of the male prisoners, many were physically abused in the Manjaca prison camp or expelled.
In three counts, Palija is charged with personally killing three civilians detained in Begici, and participating in the murder of a group of civilians from the same small village. He is also charged with the rape of a woman in Sanski Most on an undetermined date in the summer of 1992.
Furthermore, the prosecution holds Palija responsible for the abuse, intimidation and beating of civilians, as well as illegal arrests.
The BiH Court ruled that Palija may remain at liberty during trial, while his lawyers announced he would defend himself by silence.
Palija is mentioned in the indictment against Radoslav Brdjanin, who was sentenced by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, ICTY, to 32 years imprisonment for crimes committed in thirteen Bosanska Krajina municipalities, including Sanski Most.
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International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR)
Official Website of the ICTR
France's shame?
The Guardian
by Chris McGreal
January 11, 2007
Rwanda 's civil war saw 800,000 Tutsis slaughtered by the Hutus - armed and supported by France. Now, 13 years later, is Paris once again meddling in the country's affairs?
If France ever doubted that the new Rwanda was a lost cause then the news that the tiny African state had established a cricket board was final confirmation that it had gone over to the other side. Rwanda's current president decided long ago that he could not be bothered to learn French. His government asked to join the Commonwealth even though the country was never a British colony. And then there are the billboards screaming mobile-phone adverts in English outside the padlocked French cultural centre.
Yet little more than a decade ago, France claimed Rwanda as a solid member of the Francophone bloc viewed from Paris as a great family, with itself as a generous and indulgent parent, particularly to its former African possessions. In Rwanda, only about one in eight of the population actually spoke French, but it was the official language, and the people who mattered - the country's political elite in a one-party state - embraced Paris as a source of cultural identity and protection.
Today, not only is English flourishing in Rwanda but France is widely talked of as the enemy. In some quarters, French is thought of as the language of death; of those who killed and those who stayed to be murdered in the genocide of 1994. The young elite posing in the bustling cafes and night clubs of Rwanda's capital, Kigali, flaunt English as the language of the strong, of those who resisted the genocide, of the anti-French.
To understand this remarkable transformation you only have to talk to Venuste Kayimahe. By April 1994, he had worked for the French government for 25 years but it still, he says, left him to die when Hutu extremists unleashed the slaughter that took 800,000 Tutsi lives in 100 days. He was employed as an audio-visual editor at the French cultural centre in Kigali and happened to be watching a football match on television there with his wife and two of his seven children on the evening two missiles shot down President Juvenal Habyarimana's plane and kick-started the genocide. Kayimahe is a Tutsi.
"Five of my children were in one place and I was in the cultural centre and the killing had started and I couldn't get to them. I was wondering how I would protect them," he says. "It was quite impossible to escape Kigali because they were killing people all over." Kayimahe hid in the cultural centre and called its French director, Anne Cros, to beg for help to get his family to safety. Cros said there was nothing she could do until French troops landed in Rwanda. Two days later, she arrived with the soldiers.
"I thought they were there to save us but she said they were there to collect some official files. I begged for help. I pleaded with her. I showed her my children. She said 'No' and left," says Kayimahe. He later learned that the same day one of his other children, 13-year-old Aimee, was murdered by the notorious machete-wielding Hutu militia, the Interahamwe, meaning "we who work together".
The French army turned its back on many others, including the French embassy's Tutsi staff, who were mostly abandoned to their deaths despite desperate pleas to diplomats they had worked with for years. The French soldiers did rescue some Rwandans. They took the assassinated president's wife (a notorious anti-Tutsi extremist in her own right), and various Hutu politicians who helped organise the genocide. They also remembered the French embassy dog, which was carefully loaded on to an army lorry while a Tutsi man who ran up to beg for help was turned away.
Now, almost 13 years later, the French ambassador's chair in Rwanda is again empty, its occupant having been forced to leave hurriedly. But this time he was thrown out by the Tutsi-led government as bitterness between these English-speaking rulers and France came to a head six weeks ago over the 1994 slaughter. At the heart of the dispute is a battle for history as each side attempts to pin the other with moral responsibility for the last genocide of the 20th century.
Article continues here.
UN Genocide Tribunal Upholds Life Sentence for Ex-Finance Minister
UN News Service
January 16, 2007
The United Nations war crimes tribunal for Rwanda today confirmed the sentence of life imprisonment given to a former government finance minister for his role in the genocide that engulfed the country in 1994.
The appeals chamber of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), sitting in Arusha, Tanzania, upheld the trial chamber's convictions against Emmanuel Ndindabahizi for both genocide and extermination as a crime against humanity.
Those convictions relate to events at Gitwa Hill in western Rwanda's Kibuye prefecture, where thousands of Tutsis were murdered in late April 1994 after taking refuge in the area. The original trial heard how Mr. Ndindabahizi, who served as finance minister in Rwanda's interim government during the genocide period, urged bands of Hutus to attack and kill Tutsis, and also distributed weapons and helped transport the killers.
During the trial, the Tribunal said Mr. Ndindabahizi "was well aware that his remarks and actions were part of a wider context of ethnic violence, killing and massacres in Rwanda during this period."
But the five appeal judges - Wolfgang Schomburg (presiding), Mohamed Shahabuddeen, Mehmet Güney, Liu Daqun and Theodor Meron - overturned convictions for genocide and murder as a crime against humanity, both relating to a separate killing at the Gaseke roadblock.
They added, however, that this did not materially diminish from the gravity of the ex-minister's overall criminal conduct, and therefore the sentence of life imprisonment should stand.
Mr. Ndindabahizi, who had pleaded not guilty to the charges, was arrested in Belgium in 2001 and transferred to the UN detention centre in Arusha later that year.
Estimates vary but at least 800,000 Tutsis and politically moderate Hutus are thought to have been murdered in Rwanda during a 100-day orgy of killings starting in early April 1994.
ICTR Appeals Chamber Concludes Hearing in the Media Case
UN Observer & International Report
January 19, 2007
The Appeals Chamber of the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, on 18 January concluded hearings in the case of three media executives who were convicted for genocide in 2003.
Ferdinand Nahimana, founder of the Radio Télévision des Mille Collines (RTLM), Jean-Bosco Barayagwiza, high ranking board member of the Comité d’initiative of the RTLM and founding member of the Coalition for the Defence of Republic (CDR), and Hassan Ngeze, also a founding member of CDR and editor of Kangura newspaper, were convicted for genocide, incitement to genocide, conspiracy, and extermination and persecution as crimes against humanity. On 3 December 2003 Nahimana, and Ngeze were sentenced to life imprisonment and Barayagwiza was sentenced to 35 years imprisonment. All three appealed their conviction.
The Appeals Chamber, composed of Judges Fausto Pocar, presiding, Mohamed Shahabuddeen, Mehmet Güney, Andrésia Vaz, and Theodor Meron held three days of hearings in Arusha to hear evidence from a witness and oral arguments from counsel for the convicts and from the Prosecutor.
All the Defence teams requested that the convictions be annulled. In the case of Nahimana the Defence argued that the Prosecutor’s contention of conspiracy is not founded, that the definition of incitement has been expanded beyond the existing international law applicable in 1994 and that the conviction entered by the trial of the trial chamber was based on a single element brought forward by a contested expert witness.
Ngeze’s defence challenged all five convictions against him arguing one of the main witnesses recanted his statement, and that he was convicted of incitement to commit genocide based on material published outside the temporal jurisdiction of the Tribunal.
As for Barayagwiza, the Defence called for the annulment of the judgment on the grounds that the tribunal lacked independence and impartiality, his trial was held in absentia which is prohibited by international law and that Barayagwiza was represented by incompetent and negligent counsel.
Furthermore, Counsel argued that the Prosecutor failed to fulfill the test for superior responsibility.
The Prosecution, on its part, addressed the comments brought forth by defence counsel. Firstly, it addressed the issue of trial in absentia regarding the Barayagwiza case, stating that the appellant could not have been forcibly brought to court, as that would have violated his rights. The Prosecution also argued that incitement was synonymous with instigation, and that for the crime of incitement to commit genocide, there is no actual need for the crime to occur. Following this line, it was argued that hate speech can per se constitute persecution because such speech denies a fundamental right- the right to equality.
Rwanda: Cabinet approves draft law on abolition of death penalty
BBC Worldwide Monitoring
January 19, 2007
Text of report by Robert Mukombozi entitled "Cabinet endorses abolition of capital punishment" published in English by Rwandan newspaper The New Times website on 19 January
After prolonged consultations with different stakeholders in the country, the cabinet has finally adopted the draft law for the abolition of the death penalty. The decision was adopted during a cabinet meeting chaired by President Paul Kagame at Village Urugwiro on 17 January.
Under minute five of the resolutions, the cabinet supported the abolition of capital punishment to allow for trial and subsequent application of alternative penalties for capital offenders.
"We (cabinet) have adopted the draft law scrapping the death penalty," the information minister, Prof Laurent Nkusi, said in a statement. Many countries don't extradite criminal suspects to states which still uphold the death penalty.
Contacted over the development the justice minister, Tharcisse Karugarama said the initiative is a milestone in the country's judicial system. "This is a significant stride made in the government's efforts to scrap the death penalty," he said in a telephone yesterday, and added that the draft law is to be presented to parliament for approval. On when it would be forwarded to parliament, Karugarama said the date will be decided by the prime minister.
In an earlier interview the Prosecutor General Martin Ngoga had said that the scrapping of death penalty would encourage the extradition and transfer of genocide suspects from the ICTR [International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda] to face justice in Rwanda. The tribunal, which is set to complete its mandate next year, has so far secured only twenty five convictions and three acquittals, yet there are about 100 fugitives who have so far eluded the law.
eanwhile, the Wednesday meeting also endorsed the conditional release of prisoners under the President's Prerogative of Mercy of 1 January, 2003. According to the cabinet statement, some of those to be released are civilians and soldiers who were not jailed for capital offences like murder, aggravated robbery, rape and embezzlement.
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Iraqi High Tribunal
Official Website of the Iraqi High Tribunal
Grotian Moment: The Saddam Hussein Trial Blog
Iraq: Execution of Saddam Hussein aides is a further slide into errors of the past
Amnesty International
January 15, 2007
Amnesty International today condemned the executions of Saddam Hussein's half-brother and the former head of Iraq's revolutionary court as a brutal violation of the right to life and a further lost opportunity for Iraqis to properly hold to account those responsible for the crimes committed under Saddam Hussein's rule.
Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti, Saddam Hussein’s half-brother and former head of the Iraqi Mukhabarat (Intelligence Service), and ‘Awad Hamad al-Bandar al-Sa’dun, former head of the Revolutionary Court, were hanged earlier today. Along with former president Saddam Hussein, they had been sentenced to death on 5 November 2006 after an unfair trial before the Supreme Iraqi Criminal Tribunal (SICT). This verdict was confirmed by the Iraqi Appeals court on 26 December.
"Saddam Hussein and his aides should certainly have been held to account for the horrific human rights crimes committed by his government but this should have been through a fair trial process and without recourse to the death penalty. Reports that Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti had his head severed during the hanging only emphasis the brutality of this already cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment," said Malcolm Smart, Director of Amnesty International's Middle East and North Africa Programme.
Amnesty International is also concerned that another former government official is at risk of execution. Taha Yassin Ramadhan, the former vice-president, was sentenced to life imprisonment on 5 November 2006. However, on 26 December the Appeals Chamber of the Supreme Iraqi Criminal Tribunal referred his case back to the same tribunal requesting a higher sentence, suggesting that he is at risk of being sentenced to death and executed.
The trial before the SICT failed to satisfy international fair trial standards. Political interference undermined the independence and impartiality of the court, causing the first presiding judge to resign and blocking the appointment of another, and the court failed to take adequate measures to ensure the protection of witnesses and defence lawyers, three of whom were assassinated during the course of the trial. Saddam Hussain was also denied access to legal counsel for the first year after his arrest, and complaints by his lawyers throughout the trial relating to the proceedings do not appear to have been adequately answered by the tribunal. The appeal process was obviously conducted in haste and failed to rectify any of the flaws of the first trial.
Amnesty International opposes the death penalty in all cases on the grounds that it is a violation of the right to life and the ultimate form of cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment. There has been a sharp rise in the use of the death penalty since its reintroduction in August 2004 in Iraq. In 2006 at least 65 people were executed, many of them after unfair trials.
Iraq executes two Saddam aides
Agence France Presse via Yahoo! News
January 16, 2007
Saddam Hussein's half-brother and the chief of his defunct Revolutionary Court trembled with fear as they were hanged, more than two weeks after the deposed dictator's bungled execution triggered worldwide condemnation.
The head of Saddam's half-brother Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti was ripped from his body during the pre-dawn execution, but an Iraqi government official insisted that "no violations" had occurred.
Former secret police chief Barzan and Awad Ahmed al-Bandar, the ex-chief of Iraq's Revolutionary Court, were executed at 3:00 am (0000 GMT), Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh told a news conference.
Dabbagh said Barzan had been decapitated during his hanging, while Basem Ridha, an advisor to Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and a witness to the execution, termed the event an "act of God".
"There was an incident that happened, that is the separation between the body of Barzan and the head. This happens seldom but it did happen and there was act of God and it was a normal process. It's happened before," said Ridha.
Describing the executions, Ridha said the two men were "trembling with fear when they were taken to the gallows", in contrast to what many considered Saddam's dignity in his final moments.
Wearing red prison jumpsuits the two men stood on the gallows as a group of masked men put black hoods on them, said Ridha.
"Both the men went down through the metal trapdoor at the same time but Barzan's head was severed from his body as he fell, while Bandar's body dangled from the rope," Ridha told AFP.
"Barzan's body fell through the rope while his head flew off a few feet away."
An official video of the execution shows Barzan's headless body beneath the gallows and his head lying a few feet (one meter) away, Ridha said.
The hanging video was shown to reporters just once "to show that there was no violation and to show what happened with Barzan", Ridha said.
The two condemned men had been convicted of crimes against humanity for the killing of 148 Shiite civilians following an assassination attempt against the then president in 1982.
They were sentenced to death on November 5 along with Saddam, whose execution on December 30 was widely condemned for the way it was handled by the Iraqi authorities.
Speaking in Egypt, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said that while the execution was an Iraqi process, "we were disappointed there was not greater dignity given to the accused under these circumstances".
In Amman, Barzan's Jordanian lawyer Issam al-Ghazzawi expressed disbelief over the decapitation of his client.
"This is impossible. During executions, the weaker bone in the spinal column is broken," he told AFP.
Iraqi authorities had faced sharp and widespread criticism after the bungled hanging of Saddam himself.
A grisly video of Saddam's hanging shot with a mobile telephone and posted on the Internet showed the relatively calm former Sunni leader being taunted just minutes before he was put to death.
Saddam's two aides were formally buried late Monday close to his own grave in the former dictator's home village of Awja, 180 kilometres (110 miles) north of Baghdad in Salaheddin province.
"The two were buried in the garden of the hall where Saddam was buried," Abdullah Hussein Jabara, the deputy governor of Salaheddin, told AFP.
Their bodies were transported to the province by US military helicopters, a relative of Barzan said.
Iraqi Shiites, who were repressed under Saddam's Sunni Arab-dominated regime, beat drums and sang in the holy city of Najaf after hearing of the latest hangings.
They marched in the streets, some holding Iraqi flags, Islamic banners and pictures of top Shiite clerics.
Ghazzawi told AFP the hangings had come as a surprise.
"No one informed us of the execution date despite our request to have a representative of our committee present when the sentence was carried out," he said.
UN human rights chief Louise Arbour sharply criticised the executions.
"In this particular case, not only is the penalty irremediable, it may also make it more difficult to have a complete judicial accounting of other, equally horrendous, crimes committed in Iraq," the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights said in a statement.
But White House spokesman Scott Stanzel told AFP that the Iraqi government was bringing "justice" to those guilty of crimes against the Iraqi people.
Britain restated its opposition to the death penalty, but a Foreign Office spokesman added that the two condemned men "were found guilty of crimes against humanity and the Iraqi judicial system has taken its course".
In Rome, European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso and Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi condemned the hangings.
Human rights group Amnesty International slammed the hangings, saying the men "should have had a fair trial".
"Reports that Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti had his head severed during the hanging only emphasize the brutality of this already cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment," Amnesty spokesman Malcolm Smart added. — AFP
Iraqi court to sentence Saddam's deputy to death next week
Press Trust of India via Hindustan Times
January 17, 2007
Another deputy of former leader Saddam Hussein will be given the death penalty later this month after the appeals court ruled that his previous sentence of life in prison was too lenient, a spokesman has said.
Raid Juhi, a spokesman for the Iraqi High Tribunal, said a session will be held on January 25 in which a judge will read the new verdict against former Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan.
On November 5, Ramadan was convicted of premeditated murder and sentenced to life in prison. A month later, the appeals court said the sentence was too lenient, and returned his case to the High Tribunal, demanding he be sentenced to death. The court agreed to turn it to a death sentence.
The same day Ramadan was convicted, the court sentenced Saddam, his half brother and former intelligence chief Barzan Ibrahim, and Awad Hamed al-Bandar, former head of Iraq's Revolutionary Court, to death. Three other defendants were sentenced to 15 years in jail while one was acquitted.
Saddam was hanged on December 30, while Ibrahim and al-Bandar were executed Monday, provoking anger among their fellow Sunnis, who are the main driving force of the insurgency that began after the US-led invasion that ousted Saddam in 2003.
If the death sentence is upheld on appeal, Ramadan will have to be executed within 30 days of that decision, in accordance with Iraqi law.
100 Saddam regime officials to be tried
Associated Press via Yahoo! News
by Bassem Mroue
January 18, 2007
BAGHDAD, Iraq - More than 100 former members of Saddam Hussein's regime will stand trial this year in connection with the deaths of tens of thousands of Shiite Muslims during an uprising after the 1991 Gulf War, prosecutor Jaafar al-Moussawi said Thursday.
It will be the third trial of former regime officials after the Dujail case, in which Saddam was sentenced to death and hanged last month, and the ongoing trial of those accused of killing of more than 100,000 Kurds during the so-called Anfal campaign of the 1980s.
Al-Moussawi told The Associated Press that 102 officials have been charged by the prosecution in the third case, including Saddam and former Prime Minister Mohammed Hamza al-Zubaidi, who died of heart failure in 2005 while in U.S. custody. The charges against Saddam and al-Zubaidi were expected to be dropped when the trial begins.
Among those expected to stand trial are Saddam's half brothers Watban, Ibrahim and Sabawi, as well the former president's secretary, Abed Hmoud, and former Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz, al-Moussawi said.
Some will be tried in absentia, including Saddam's former deputy Izzat Ibrahim and former senior Baath party official Mohammed Younis al-Ahmed. They have been on the run since the fall of Saddam's regime in April 2003.
Former Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan and Saddam's cousin and former Defense Minister Ali Hassan al-Majid are also included in this case, he said.
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