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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)
Four Most Likely to be Tried for Genocide
The Philadelphia Inquirer
By Adam Fifield
February 19, 2007
The four most likely defendants of Cambodia's genocide tribunal are men who set and carried out the policies that devastated the country.
Known as Brother No. 3, Ieng Sary was the Khmer Rouge foreign minister. He was a confidant of enigmatic leader Pol Pot, Brother No. 1. According to scholars and legal experts, significant evidence suggests that he promoted arrests and executions. He has denied it.
Brother No. 2, Nuon Chea, the highest-ranking Khmer Rouge leader alive, allegedly devised and carried out execution policies. He has admitted he made "mistakes" but denied he was guilty of genocide.
Former Khmer Rouge President Khieu Samphan, who lives freely in the former stronghold of Pailin, was the public face of the regime. Experts say evidence shows he knew about the atrocities and failed to stop them. In 2004, he published a memoir contending he knew nothing about them.
"These are the people who gave the orders. They didn't take the orders," Cambodia scholar David Chandler said. Chandler wrote a biography of Pol Pot, who died in 1998.
Another likely defendant is in jail awaiting trial in Phnom Penh. Kang Kek Ieu, known as Duch, ran the notorious torture center Tuol Sleng, and the evidence against him is overwhelming. He has admitted overseeing executions and torture. One document lists 17 adults and children; at the bottom, Duch signed his name and wrote: "Kill them all."
Although Duch's tenure as the head of Tuol Sleng is well-documented, his attorney, Ka Savuth, insists Duch was only a deputy. Savuth said Duch "is happy to stand trial and tell everything to the court."
Corruption Allegations in Cambodia's Khmer Rouge Tribunal Prompt UN Audit
Associated Press via International Herald Tribune
Feb 21, 2007
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia: A U.N. agency said it has audited the finances of Cambodia's Khmer Rouge genocide tribunal, as local and foreign officials involved in the judicial process were divided Wednesday over recent corruption allegations against it.
The announcement by the United Nations Development Program, which is managing some of the tribunal's funds, added weight to allegations of corruption made last week by a New York-based legal monitoring organization. The findings of the audit have not yet been announced.
The Open Society Justice Initiative alleged in a statement that Cambodian judges and other court personnel had kicked back some of their wages to Cambodian government officials in exchange for their positions on the court.
The UNDP said in a statement that its decision to conduct an internal audit action had been prompted by "various reports" late last year that "raised concerns about transparency of hiring procedures" of the tribunal.
"UNDP takes such matters very seriously," it said, adding that findings of the audit — conducted from Jan. 29 to Feb. 2 — are being prepared. It did not say if or when they would be released.
"Appropriate action will be taken to respond to the internal audit recommendations," it said.
Corruption permeates the society and administration of Cambodia, one of Asia's poorest countries.
The tribunal was created by a 2003 agreement between Cambodia and the U.N. after years of difficult negotiations to bring those behind the genocidal Khmer Rouge regime to justice.
The radical policies of the now-defunct communist group, which held power in 1975-79, led to the deaths of about 1.7 million people from execution, overwork, disease and malnutrition.
Cambodian officials at the tribunal's administrative office have strongly denied the OSJI's accusations. The tribunal is being jointly run by Cambodian and U.N.-appointed foreign staff.
Sean Visoth, the office's Cambodian director, has decided to sever all dealings with the OSJI, the tribunal's Cambodian spokesman, Reach Sambath, said Wednesday.
The OSJI has helped organize legal training for the tribunal's Cambodian staff in the past, Reach Sambath said.
He said Sean Visoth has also sent a letter to OSJI Executive Director James A. Goldston accusing the group of being irresponsible in making the allegations.
"They released the statement without responsibility. Cooperation with an organization that shows such bad faith and bias is impossible," Reach Sambath said.
Peter Foster, a U.N.-appointed tribunal spokesman, said Sean Visoth's decision was unilateral and does not keep the OSJI from having full access to the tribunal's premises and to other officials involved in the tribunal.
The U.N.-appointed deputy director of administration, Michelle Lee, has not issued any ban on OSJI, he said, adding that "We still consider them a valuable partner in the process."
If the OSJI's allegations turn out to have merit, "we believe they should be fully investigated," Foster said.
The corruption accusations could deal another blow to the already troubled tribunal, which is set to convene later this year after long delays.
However, there are concerns that further delays could result from continuing disagreements between Cambodian and foreign judges on draft rules for the proceedings.
The tribunal has been set up to operate under Cambodia's judicial system, which is widely regarded as corrupt and susceptible to political influence.
Foster said meetings scheduled to resume early next month will be an opportunity for Cambodian and foreign judges to tackle their differences over the tribunal draft rules.
He said foreign judges could "pull out" of the whole process, as allowed by a clause in the tribunal agreement, "should the U.N. feel that international standards are not being maintained."
The Khmer Rouge Remains May be Key in Trial
Associated Press via The Washington Post
By Sooheng Cheang
February 26, 2007
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia -- The bones of victims from the Khmer Rouge's notorious "killing fields" should be preserved because they could serve as critical evidence in upcoming genocide trials, Cambodia's prime minister said Monday.
Human remains, particularly skulls, serve as the centerpieces of several memorials to the victims of the Khmer Rouge, who were responsible for the deaths of an estimated 1.7 million Cambodians from starvation, overwork, medical neglect and execution when the communist group held power from 1975-79. No Khmer Rouge leader has ever been tried for the atrocities. Last year, Cambodia and the United Nations jointly created a tribunal expected to try them for genocide and crimes against humanity, but it is not clear yet when the trials will be convened.
The top Khmer Rouge leader, Pol Pot, died in 1998, and Ta Mok, the Khmer Rouge army chief, died last July while in detention pending trial by a joint Cambodia-United Nations special tribunal.
Only one top member of the defunct communist movement is in jail awaiting trial: Kaing Khek Iev, also known as Duch, who headed the notorious S-21 torture center in the capital, Phnom Penh.
Likely targets for prosecution, all old and suffering poor health, include the regime's figurehead president, Khieu Samphan; its foreign minister, Ieng Sary, and its chief ideologue, Nuon Chea. All live freely in Cambodia.
"The remains are the evidence of the crime of genocide. If they disappear, it would be difficult to try former Khmer Rouge leaders," said Prime Minister Hun Sen.
He also renewed his objection to suggestions by the country's former king, who lost many family members to the Khmer Rouge killings, that the remains be cremated according to the country's Buddhist traditions.
Hun Sen spoke Monday at a ceremony marking the start of repairs to the road linking the capital Phnom Penh to Choeung Ek, a former Khmer Rouge mass grave site about seven miles to the south.
Choeung Ek, now a grim tourist attraction, was where most of the prisoners tortured at the Khmer Rouge's S-21 prison were taken to be killed. The prison is now the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum.
Nuon Chea last month alleged that photographs showing the skulls of people killed by the group were fakes, doctored using modern, high-tech retouching techniques.
The comments, made in an interview with the biweekly English-language Phnom Penh Post newspaper, were the latest in a long series of denials by former Khmer Rouge leaders that they were involved in any atrocities.
Hun Sen challenged the comments. "How could those skulls be artificial when they (Khmer Rouge) killed so many people?" he asked. "Those skulls at Choeung Ek and other places across Cambodia are not artificial."
Rocky road to Khmer Rouge trial
BBC News
By Guy De Launey
February 26, 2007
The buildings that make up the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, as the Khmer Rouge tribunal is officially known, are situated in something of a suburban desert.
Staff and visitors have to drive way out past the airport to a district that was not even part of Phnom Penh until the city boundaries were specially re-drawn a couple of months ago.
As a result, lunchtime options are few and far between, and the staff canteen is an important amenity.
It has also become an emblem of the problems which have plagued the courts, caused divisions between local and international staff, and threatened to derail the entire process.
At first the concession to operate the canteen was held by a cafe in central Phnom Penh popular with wealthy expatriates.
While options like goat cheese salad went down well with the international court officials, reports soon appeared that the local staff were complaining they would "die in two days" if they were not given something more to their taste.
Then a local caterer took over, and offerings such as snail curry replaced the Western menu.
The international staff complained of food poisoning, and one told the BBC that his stomach troubles only stopped when he started bringing a packed lunch to work.
Disagreements
So now the Cambodian officials and their international counterparts lunch apart. They also do much of their work separately, and have very different views about how the trials should be conducted.
That much became clear at the end of November, when a plenary session of judges that was called to approve the internal rules of the tribunal descended into farce.
The participants could not even agree on who was eligible to vote, let alone the issues they were supposed to be deciding.
Hopes of swift prosecutions promptly evaporated, replaced by fears for the future of the tribunal.
There were many points of dispute, but the cause of the most rancour was the role of foreign defence lawyers.
International officials have insisted that as foreign prosecutors and judges will be taking part, defendants must have the right to retain an overseas lawyer if they wish.
The Cambodian Bar Association has, equally forcefully, made it clear that under local law only their members are allowed to represent clients in court.
At the centre of the controversy is the British barrister who is the principal defender at the tribunal, Rupert Skilbeck.
At 35, he is already a veteran of tribunals in Bosnia and Sierra Leone, and he accepts the recent turmoil as part of the job.
"All the tribunals have had a difficult birth process. The tribunal in Sierra Leone I think took 12 months to agree their internal rules, and that was all with foreign judges.
"In Bosnia, where there was a hybrid tribunal, probably the process closest to this one, the process of agreeing the legal process for the court took about two or three years," Mr Skilbeck said.
"The balance between the foreigners and the locals has always been a problem in these tribunals."
Government 'interference'
Mr Skilbeck seems an affable character, but critics within the courts claim that he has antagonised the very people with whom he needed to build bridges.
There have also been suggestions that some of the other international officials have failed to understand that a less direct approach to working relationships is required in South East Asia.
The split is so marked that referring to the "Cambodian side" and "the international side", as people both within and outside the tribunal do, seems entirely appropriate.
Walking down the corridors of the tribunal's administration building, a visitor cannot help but notice the separate offices to the left and right for local and international staff.
All the talk of sides makes it sound more like a football match than a judicial process, but such a comparison just raises a smile from Cambodian judge Mong Monichariya.
He insists that relations are cordial, and that differences of opinion are inevitable when the aim is to produce an international-standard tribunal within the Cambodian judicial system.
"The media publish information that the problems are caused by the Cambodian judges, but that is not true. We have many issues to resolve between the Cambodian judges and the international judges," he said.
"Cambodian judges need time to understand the international legal system, and the international judges take time to understand the Cambodian legal system."
Some observers, however, see the hand of the government behind the delays.
They point out that several senior members of the current administration were themselves once in the Khmer Rouge.
While there is little chance of ministers being charged, they could be implicated by defendants or even called as witnesses.
The Center For Social Development, a non-governmental organisation specialising in legal issues, has been monitoring events at the tribunal.
Its executive director, Theary Seng, believes "there is no doubt that the government is pulling strings".
"The trials will go ahead, but it may just be a minimum to appease the international side. They have to delay so that all the senior Khmer Rouge people who could name names will die out," she said.
Conciliatory noises
For the millions of Cambodians waiting to see justice, that is a genuine concern.
Last year Ta Mok, the only senior member of the Khmer Rouge in custody, died without delivering any kind of testimony.
The other likely candidates for prosecution are also elderly, and some of them have been in ill health.
Time is also running short for the tribunal itself. The three-year mandate began last July, and further delays would have a serious impact on the ability of the legal officials to complete their work.
Perhaps with that in mind, both sides are making conciliatory noises.
They agree that significant progress has been made on resolving differences, and say that meetings in March should iron out the remaining concerns.
After all the setbacks, optimism will always be accompanied by a dose of scepticism.
There is, however, one concrete sign that international relations at the tribunal may be warming up: The catering service is, once again, up for tender.
Khmer Rouge War Crime Trials May Not Continue
National Public Radio, All Things Considered
By Michael Sullivan
February 28, 2007
After a decade of negotiations, uncertainty still surrounds joint U.N.-Cambodian tribunals for leaders of the Maoist Khmer Rouge, which ruled the country from 1975 to 1979.
The Khmer Rouge is responsible for the deaths of nearly 2 million Cambodians, through execution, torture, starvation or disease.
The major sticking points appear to be the scope of the indictments and what role foreign lawyers will play in defending the accused.
If these issues aren't resolved in the next few weeks, some court officials say there is a 50-50 chance the U.N. could pack up and leave.
Some observers say the impasse is a result of the Cambodian government's desire to control ? or limit ? the scope of the investigation and the number of indictments, in a country where political interference in the courts is common.
During the four years of the Khmer Rouge regime, Cambodia's cities were emptied and their residents were forced to labor in the fields as part of the group's effort to create an agrarian utopia.
Click here to listen to this article.
Khmer Rouge Trials Turn to Farce: Thirty years on, the Khmer Rouge trials risk collapse
Newsweek International
By Erika Kinetz
February 27, 2007
Nearly 10 years after the Cambodian government first asked for help setting up a court to try leaders of the murderous Khmer Rouge regime, it has yet to hold a single hearing. Washington refuses to fund the court on the ground that it's not up to international standards, and its ambassador, Joseph Mussomeli, says, "no trial would be better than a trial that will be a farce." The court's foreign and Cambodian judges are deadlocked over procedure, and the foreign judges have threatened to walk out rather than participate in what they fear could become an exercise in politics over justice.
It wasn't supposed to be this way. Since the Nuremberg tribunal after World War II, trials of brutal leaders have slowly become more common and established a moderately positive record. U.N. courts have convicted numerous individuals for the wars in the former Yugoslavia and the Rwandan genocide. A hybrid court under local and international auspices is slowly getting off the ground in Sierra Leone. But the Cambodia tribunal, also an experimental local-international hybrid, has gone nowhere—denying justice to the almost 2 million victims of one of the 20th century's worst acts of mass slaughter. Court insiders, who asked not to be identified for fear of retribution, now give the tribunal a 50-50 chance of collapsing.
Part of the problem is that, unlike the U.N. courts, Cambodia's tribunal is, at the government's insistence, mainly a national affair staffed mostly with Cambodian judges (though they are supposed to be guided by international principles). Hans Corell, who led the U.N.'s effort to help establish the court, says that he is "not at all convinced that this represents a good solution" to the problem of achieving justice in a local context. There's a certain emotional logic to prosecuting Cambodian crimes in Cambodia, and optimists hope a televised exercise in real justice will help break the cycle of violence and impunity that haunts the nation.
But that outcome looks unlikely. Hun Sen's government seems interested in the trial only to the extent it will vindicate its own anti-Khmer Rouge credentials—without dredging up awkward facts, such as current officials' own Khmer Rouge ties or the support that China, now a close ally, gave to the genocidal regime. The are other worrisome signs: one of the court's Cambodian judges has admitted taking bribes, and another once sent an opposition politician to prison after a one-day trial. An American watchdog group, the Open Society Justice Initiative, recently alleged that employees of the court were being forced to pay kickbacks to government officials (a charge Phnom Penh denies), and the U.N. is auditing the court's hiring of local staff. Sara Colm of Human Rights Watch says the Cambodian government "got cold feet" when it realized that working with foreign partners meant "it might not be able to control" the judicial process.
The government does look willing to let the trial proceed, albeit in a limited fashion. Part of Hun Sen's legitimacy comes from the fact that his Vietnam-backed government held the Khmer Rouge at bay during the 1980s even as the West backed remnants of the murderous regime. "Twenty years ago we fought the Khmer Rouge, and no one supported us except a few friends," says Prak Sokhon, the cabinet secretary. "Now the tribunal will show that [we were] right."
Even if it does move forward, however, it's unclear which kind of justice the court can deliver. The key suspects are old and, like Pol Pot, rapidly dying off. And though surveys show most Cambodians support the tribunal, what they really want to know is what happened to their spouses and children. Moreover, traditional Cambodian justice usually involves simple retribution, using lynch mobs or cash compensation. The court's Canadian co-prosecutor, Robert Petit, maintains that no court can hope to deliver justice equal to the suffering of victims in such cases. But if Cambodia's court is transparent, he says, it could establish an "incontrovertible record about what happened."
Ideal or not, most agree that Cambodia's hybrid court is the country's last chance to exorcise its demons—and that time is fast running out. French judge Marcel Lemonde says that if procedures aren't adopted by this spring, it may, regrettably, be time to call it quits. International staffers are nearing their wits' end: "Nobody came here to move paper around," says Petit. But that's as close to justice as Cambodia is getting these days.
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Democratic Republic of the Congo (ICC)
Official Website of the International Criminal Court
ICC Public Documents - Situation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo
DRC troops jailed for war crimes
BBC News
February 20, 2007
Thirteen soldiers have been jailed for life after the discovery of mass graves in the north-eastern Ituri region of the Democratic Republic of Congo.
A military court found them guilty of killing about 30 civilians found buried in the graves in November last year.
This is one of the few times armed men have been punished for atrocities since the DR Congo conflict began in 1997.
Renewed fighting between government and rebels in the north-east is reported to have left more than 20 people dead.
The operational commander for North Kivu, Colonel Delphin Kayimbe, said 20 rebels and three government soldiers were killed in a remote part of the Virunga national park, near the border with Uganda.
The UN says more than 8,000 people were displaced by the fighting, which broke out when the army moved into an area previously occupied by rebels from the Mai Mai and Rwandan Hutu FDLR movements.
Abducted
Of the 13 men sentenced over war crimes at the village of Bavi, four were tried in their absence. A captain was given a suspended sentence and a lieutenant was acquitted.
Those found guilty were also ordered to pay large fines to the victims' families.
They have five days to appeal.
The victims were believed to have disappeared in army operations against local militias early in 2006.
The three mass graves at Bavi - about 40kms (25 miles) from Bunia - were found in November last year after a tip-off from a soldier.
Witnesses said the military men "abducted the civilians and then forced them to work in local gold mines, to harvest food products and to transport goods", according to the AFP news agency.
The head of a local NGO Justice Plus told AFP the civilians were probably killed to cover up any traces of the abduction.
The soldiers who were tried came from the army's First Brigade - one of several made up of fighters from factions who fought in DR Congo's 1998-2003 war.
In a separate trial in Bunia, four members of the same unit were jailed for life for the murder of two UN military observers in 2003.
Two others were given jail terms of 10 and 20 years.
The murders took place in the mining community of Mongwalu, 70 kilometres north of Bunia on 12 May 2003 when the soldiers - then fighting with an Ituri militia - surrounded and "savagely killed" the two men, the UN said.
Following last year's landmark elections, DR Congo is supposed to be returning to normality after decades of conflict and mismanagement.
Congo soldiers get life for war crimes
Reuters
February 20, 2007
Kinshasa - Thirteen Congolese army soldiers and four former militia fighters have been sentenced to life imprisonment in separate war crimes convictions by local military authorities, the United Nations said on Tuesday.
The sentences were handed down on Monday by military tribunals at Bunia, the capital of Democratic Republic of Congo's northeast Ituri district where government forces, backed by United Nations peacekeepers, have fought for several years to subdue rebels and renegade militias.
Ituri's military court jailed the 13 soldiers, members of the First Integrated Brigade, for life after finding them guilty of the massacre of about 30 civilians whose bodies were found late last year buried in mass graves at Bavi, south of Bunia.
The victims, including women and children, had disappeared during army operations against local militia in late August or early September, during the run-up to Congo's October 29 presidential election run-off.
The elections, won by incumbent President Joseph Kabila, were the first free polls in Congo in more than 40 years and were meant to draw a line under a 1998-2003 war.
The other Ituri life sentences were imposed on four former eastern militia fighters convicted of the 2003 killings of two United Nations military observers, one Jordanian, the other from Malawi.
"These sentences send a strong signal that impunity will not be tolerated," said Kemal Saiki, spokesperson for the United Nations peacekeeping mission in Congo.
The men sentenced have five days in which to appeal.
The Congolese soldiers jailed were members of one of several national army units made up of a mix of former government loyalists and rebels who fought during the 1998-2003 war.
This conflict and its resulting humanitarian crisis have killed an estimated four million people.
Human rights groups say the fledgling Congolese army is still the country's biggest human rights offender and accuse it of killings, rapes and lootings, particularly during operations to pacify Congo's violent east.
Monuc Welcomes the Military Court Verdict in Bunia
AllAfrica.com - United Nations Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (Kinshasa)
By Nina Yacoubian
February 22, 2007
The garrison military court in Bunia has sentenced to life imprisonment for "war crimes" 13 people out of the 15 accused of a massacre of 31 civilians, including 9 women and 2 children, between August and November 2006 in Bavi, 40 km South of Bunia, in Ituri.
Among the thirteen sentenced persons who are members of the 1st integrated Brigade of the DRC Armed forces (FARDC) is the Commander of the FARDC's intervention battalion in Bavi. As to his deputy, he has been sentenced to 180 days in prison.
"Out of the 15 and among those sentenced to life imprisonment, four were tried in absentia. The Court issued a warrant for their arrest to serve the sentence," said Fernando Casta-?n, Director of MONUC's Human Rights Division.
As a compensation to victims' families, the tribunal ordered to pay the total amount of $315,000, i.e. $10,000 and $15 000 per victim. "The Court hasn't provided the written text of the sentence yet so we can't tell the exact distribution," he said.
The State has been condemned as well "in solidum", as to Mr. Casta-?n "if the defendants don't pay the compensation, it will have to pay the amount," he explained.
MONUC's Human Rights Division provided logistical support for the investigation protected the key witnesses in collaboration with its office in Bunia and monitored the trial.
MONUC welcome this verdict that is "considered a step further towards the fight against impunity in the DR Congo and constitute a reinforcement of the Statute of Rome and the International Penal Court".
MONUC hopes that the new Congolese authorities will carry out the necessary reform in the security sector, one of the prerequisites to fight against impunity in the DRC.
Child Soldier Recruitment Continues
AllAfrica.com - UN Integrated Regional Information Networks NEWS
February 19, 2007
The recruitment of child soldiers has continued in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), despite the government's efforts to integrate former militia into the army, a local human rights official has said.
"Armed groups have even forcibly enlisted demobilised former child soldiers," Murhabazi Namegabe, head of a local non-governmental organisation, the Bureau pour le Volontariat au service de l'Enfance et de la Santé, said in the capital, Kinshasa.
According to a coalition of NGOs in South Kivu Province, of which Namegabe's is a member, the recruitment of child soldiers is also continuing in the northeastern district of Ituri and the eastern provinces of North and South Kivu.
This finding has been confirmed by the United Nations Mission in the Congo, known as MONUC, the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) and some international NGOs concerned with child welfare. They have discovered that the armed groups have been trying to pass off the children into the army reintegration process by falsifying ages, MONUC military spokesman Lt-Col Didier Rancher, said.
Some have made their way into the army's newly integrated brigades, after the integration of two of dissident army General Laurent Nkunda's loyalist brigades with three national army brigades since January. MONUC estimates that 4,500 to 5,000 of Nkunda's troops, according to his figures, are due to be combined with a similar number of national army troops.
Andrew Zadel, information officer of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), said: "The integrated brigades contain 257 children, namely 85 with Alpha Brigade, 95 with the Bravo Brigade and 77 with the Charlie Brigade. These figures are based on estimates by inspectors at the time the records were taken and not from official documents. Moreover, the figure for the Bravo Brigade included 35 children and an estimate of 60 for a battalion that they could not check."
The UNICEF communications officer in Goma, Justin Morel, said: "These are just estimates. It is a military secret. No one, other than the military brass, knows the true figure."
He said the children were discovered by child protection agents who had actually seen them because they had no identification when they turned up for the army brigade integration process.
"Armed groups asked their underage soldiers who have been in their ranks to increase their ages so that they could be recruited as soldiers in the integrated regular army brigades," Namegabe said.
According to MONUC, an understanding was reached with the authorities of these brigades for correct identification that would not be based on documents of children but on their real ages.
Besides these children found in the ranks of the newly integrated brigades, child protection agents have also denounced the recruitment of children in villages by other armed groups hostile to the army integration process. Among these groups are the 'Rasta', 'Mundundu 40' and various branches of the Mai-Mai militia.
An OCHA mission last week visited the village of Gungu, in North Kivu Province, gathering testimonies from villagers who said armed groups had continued to seize their children. "The case of a young person who shot at his friend because he refused to join the troops of Nkunda was confirmed by several people," Zadel said.
According to UNICEF, there were 33,000 child soldiers in 2002. Of these, at least 29,000 are no longer child soldiers, Morel said.
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Darfur, Sudan (ICC)
Official Website of the International Criminal Court
ICC Public Documents - Situation in Darfur, Sudan
Red Cross Chief Says No to Darfur Testimony
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
By Bradley S. Klapper
February 23, 2007
GENEVA -- The international Red Cross would never testify in a Darfur war crimes trial because of the group's long-standing pledge of neutrality, its president said Friday.
The International Committee of the Red Cross has the largest presence of any aid group in Darfur, but Jakob Kellenberger said he would never make public the observations of its nearly 2,000 Sudanese and international staff working in the country.
The issue is a sensitive one for the ICRC, which is frequently criticized for refusing to go public with its denunciations of atrocities, most notably during the Holocaust. In 1997, the ICRC admitted a "moral failure" in keeping silent about the Nazi genocide of Jews during World War II, even though it had documented mass deportations and killings.
Since fighting in Darfur broke out four years ago, the ICRC has pleaded with both the Sudan's government and Darfur rebel groups to stop what Kellenberger called "very gross violations of international humanitarian law."
Still, Kellenberger said the ICRC, guardian of the Geneva Conventions on the conduct of war, was bound by its principles of confidentiality and wouldn't discuss the conversations it has held with officials and rebels.
"That's not for the public. That's for the authorities concerned," Kellenberger told journalists at the ICRC's Geneva headquarters. "The ICRC will never be a witness in court proceedings."
Kellenberger, speaking upon his return from a five-day mission to Sudan, said the Red Cross has made countless "interventions" with rebel groups and Sudanese officials at all levels of government. "Where there are violations ... we request that that is not being repeated," he said.
More than 200,000 people have been killed and 2.5 million forced from their homes in the Darfur conflict, which began when ethnic African tribesmen took up arms, complaining of decades of neglect and discrimination by the Sudanese government.
Khartoum is accused of responding by unleashing the tribal militia known as janjaweed. Khartoum denies the charge, but members of the janjaweed have told the media that they were armed by government forces.
The White House has labeled the attacks genocide.
The office of the international court's prosecutor said Thursday he would disclose names next week of suspects in Darfur atrocities and present judges with evidence linking them to war crimes. The judges will have the power to issue warrants, but it remains to be seen if they can be executed. Sudanese authorities have not signed the international treaty that created the court, and claim it has no jurisdiction in the country.
ICC Prosecutor Identifies Suspects in First Darfur Case
Human Rights Watch
February 27, 2007
First ICC Case on Darfur Brings Justice Closer for Victims
(New York, February 27, 2007) – The International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor’s case against two Sudanese leaders for atrocities in Darfur is a first step in ending the impunity associated with horrific crimes there, Human Rights Watch said today. Earlier today, the ICC prosecutor asked Pre-Trial Chamber I to issue summonses for two suspects to appear before the court.
“The ICC prosecutor’s request sends a signal to Khartoum and ‘Janjaweed’ militia leaders that ultimately they are not going to get away with the unspeakable atrocities,” said Richard Dicker, director of Human Rights Watch’s International Justice program. “We urge the prosecutor to explain the significance of his action today to the communities devastated by crimes in Darfur.”
The prosecutor is seeking summonses for State Minister for Humanitarian Affairs Ahmed Haroun and “Janjaweed” militia leader “Ali Kosheib,” (a pseudonym for Ali Mohammed Ali). According to information previously collected by Human Rights Watch, Haroun is believed to have participated in official meetings in Darfur where he allegedly incited “Janjaweed” militia and army forces to attack specific ethnic groups. “Ali Kosheib,” according to research carried out by Human Rights Watch, was one of the key leaders responsible for attacks on villages around Mukjar, Bindisi, and Garsila in 2003-2004 in West Darfur. As a result of the government-militia coordinated campaign in Darfur, civilians have suffered direct attacks from land and air, including summary execution, rape, torture, forced displacement on a massive scale, and the pillaging of their property.
In a December 2005 report entitled "Entrenching Impunity: Government responsibility for international crimes in Darfur" Human Rights Watch identified Haroun and “Ali Kosheib” as two of at least 22 individuals bearing responsibility for international crimes committed in Darfur.
The prosecutor’s request comes nearly two years after the Security Council passed a resolution referring the Darfur situation to the ICC for investigation. In June 2005, the prosecutor formally opened an investigation into crimes committed in Darfur.
The ICC’s Pre-Trial Chamber must now review the information submitted by the prosecutor to determine whether to grant the request. If the Pre-Trial Chamber judges are satisfied that there are “reasonable grounds to believe” that the persons have committed the crimes alleged and that summonses are “sufficient to ensure” that they appear before the court, they will issue the summonses.
“So far we haven’t seen any willingness from Sudanese officials and Janjaweed leaders to appear before this court and we are hard pressed to believe a summons will bring these two men to The Hague,” said Richard Dicker. “We will have to look carefully at the prosecutor’s explanation for seeking summonses rather than arrest warrants.”
Human Rights Watch also urged the ICC prosecutor to continue his investigation and investigate others responsible for the most serious atrocities in Darfur, including those in the military and highest echelons of power in Sudan.
“Officials at the highest levels of the Sudanese government are responsible for widespread and systematic abuses in Darfur,” said Dicker. “While the individuals identified today are important, the ICC prosecutor should move up the chain of command to target those senior Sudanese government and military officials responsible for the most serious crimes in Darfur.”
Full cooperation by the Sudanese authorities will be essential for the continuation of the ICC’s investigations in Darfur, Human Rights Watch said. Cooperation includes granting ICC officials entry into Darfur and facilitating ICC access to documents, physical evidence and witnesses. It also includes protecting victims and witnesses who provide information to the ICC from any harassment, threats, and acts of intimidation or ill-treatment based on their cooperation with the ICC.
Since early 2004, Human Rights Watch has comprehensively documented the Sudanese government’s responsibility for crimes against humanity and war crimes in Darfur. Human Rights Watch researchers interviewed hundreds of victims and other eyewitnesses of the crimes there over the past three years, including government officials and former members of the armed forces. In "Entrenching Impunity," Human Rights Watch describes in detail the Sudanese government’s strategy of using civilian officials and the armed forces to recruit, support, and coordinate the “Janjaweed” militias. The report also highlights the role of senior Sudanese government policymakers in initiating and implementing the campaign.
Background on Sudan and the ICC
Since early 2003, Sudanese government forces and militia forces known as “Janjaweed” have committed crimes against humanity and war crimes on a massive scale in the context of counterinsurgency operations against rebel movements in Darfur, Sudan’s western region bordering Chad.
More than 2 million of Darfur’s estimated population of 6 million people have been forcibly displaced from their homes since February 2003 as a result of a government-supported campaign of “ethnic cleansing” carried out in the context of an internal armed conflict. Despite overwhelming evidence of the Sudanese government’s role in committing atrocities alongside ethnic militia allies known as “Janjaweed,” the government continues to deny its role in the abuses and minimize the scale of the crisis.
Currently almost 2 million displaced people remain in camps and towns, entirely dependent on humanitarian aid, and cannot return to their homes and farms due to ongoing attacks, rape, looting, and assault by the government-backed militias as well as other armed actors. An additional 1 million people require food and other assistance as a result of the collapsed economy and pervasive insecurity.
Since Sudan is not a party to the Rome Statute of the ICC, the ICC could only investigate and prosecute crimes in Darfur following a referral by the UN Security Council. The Security Council referred the situation in Darfur to the ICC in March 2005. After having determined that the crimes in Darfur fell under ICC jurisdiction, the prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo opened his investigations in June 2005. Since then, the prosecutor has reported semiannually to the Security Council on the progress of his investigation.
To read Human Rights Watch's Questions and Answers on these developments involving Darfur and the International Criminal Court, please visit: http://hrw.org/english/docs/2007/02/25/darfur15404.htm
To read the December 2005 Human Rights Watch report “Entrenching Impunity: Government Responsibility for International Crimes in Darfur,” on individual responsibility for the widespread abuses by government and rebel forces in Sudan, please visit: http://hrw.org/reports/2005/darfur1205/
For more on the patterns of abuses in Darfur, please visit: http://hrw.org/doc?t=africa&c=darfur
Sudanese ministers charged with orchestrating slaughter in Darfur
The Times (London)
by Rob Crilly and David Charter
February 28, 2007
World court puts out arrest warrants
* 51 counts of war crimes to be made
It started with a rallying call to the Janjawid militias and government soldiers: "Kill the Fur."
The fighters, drawn largely from the Arab tribes of Darfur, needed no further encouragement from Ahmed Haroun, then an interior minister, who had flown from Khartoum to the town of Mukjar on a dry August day to deliver his message. Witness statements told how he urged the nomadic militias to take on the Fur tribe as part of a campaign against Darfur rebels.
By the time that they had finished, the Janjawid had done much more than seek to exterminate one of the settled farming peoples of the region. They raped, murdered and tortured their way through the civilian population of West Darfur as part of a scorched-earth policy, according to the indictment delivered to the International Criminal Court (ICC).
Mr Haroun, now the Sudanese Minister for Humanitarian Affairs and a rising star in the Khartoum Government, and Ali Muhammad Ali Abd-al-Rahman, also known as Ali Kushayb, yesterday became the first suspects accused of crimes against humanity in the Darfur region by the ICC.
Mr Haroun and Mr Kushayb were accused of criminal responsibility in relation to 51 counts of crimes against humanity and war crimes in 2003 and 2004.
Mr Haroun was accused of overseeing and facilitating atrocities including rape, murder and torture by ferrying arms and ammunition to the Janjawid and paying them from an "unlimited and not publicly audited" budget. Prosecutors quoted the minister as saying at a public meeting that he had been given "all the power...to kill or forgive whoever in Darfur".
Luis Moreno-Ocampo, the court's chief prosecutor, asked its judges to issue arrest warrants and said that more high-profile names could follow as he continued to investigate the bloody conflict that the UN says has left 200,000 dead and 2.5 million driven from their homes.
"Those who commit atrocities cannot do so with impunity," Mr Moreno-Ocampo said, after publishing a 94-page summary of allegations. His team took 100 witness statements in 17 countries.
The naming of suspects will add to international pressure on Sudan to fall into line with demands to restore order in the vast desert province of Darfur. It also shows that, despite its denials, there is evidence of government collusion with the Janjawid at the highest levels. The Janjawid swept through the region of Wadi Saleh, one of the most fertile parts of the Fur's traditional heartland. Tens of thousands of people were moved forcibly in a policy allegedly managed by Mr Haroun and executed by Mr Kushayb, the "Aqid al-Oqada", or colonel of colonels, in charge of thousands of Janjawid fighters. With little more than a satellite phone and a 4x4 supplied by the Government, Mr Haroun is believed to have organised the clearance of dozens of Fur villages.His fighters are accused of driving scores of prisoners out of Mukjar into the desert, in March 2004, where they were made to lie down, then were shot and buried in mass graves.
Leslie Lefkow, of Human Rights Watch, said that the killings in West Darfur happened during one of the most brutal episodes of the Darfur conflict. "It's significant that the ICC is going after the people who were part of the picture of those responsible for some very, very serious abuses," she said.
Sally Chin, Sudan analyst with the International Crisis Group, said: "It's noteworthy that one of the people named is a senior minister in the Khartoum Government and this is the first time that the ICC has tried to prosecute any government official in any investigation." She added that the international community would have to bring all its influence to bear on Sudan if the Government was to comply with the ICC.
Any trial may take years to come to court, given Khartoum's immediate rejection of the court's jurisdiction.
Ali al-Mardi, the Sudanese Justice Minister, said: "The Sudanese judiciary has the capacity and the will to prosecute those who have committed crimes in Darfur."
Mr Kushayb is being held by the Sudanese Government but Mr al-Mardi rejected the allegation that his fellow minister was a key militia leader.
For breaking news from Africa timesonline.co.uk/africa
A CATALOGUE OF ATROCITIES
* Conflict began in 2003 when rebels bombed government targets in protest against claimed neglect of the region
* Two main rebel groups are fighting against the Khartoum Government, the Sudan Liberation Army and the Justice and Equality Movement
* An estimated 200,000 people have died in the conflict, including those killed by starvation and disease
* Two million people are living in camps after fleeing fighting
* 200,000 refugees have sought safety in neighbouring Chad. Many are camped along the border and are vulnerable to attacks from Sudan
* 7,000 African Union troops have been deployed in Darfur on a very limited mandate
* 50 key suspects have been named. The UN backed attempts to have them tried at the ICC in The Hague
Darfur aid workers fear war crimes allegations
The Financial Times
By Matthew Green
February 28, 2007
Aid workers fear war crimes accusations made by the International Criminal Court against two Sudanese suspects could hamper their work in Darfur and raise an added hurdle to a proposed deployment of United Nations troops.
Khartoum has a long history of retaliating against international measures. These have often strengthened the hand of hardliners in the regime.
The ICC filed evidence on Tuesday against a Sudanese minister and militia leader for alleged war crimes in the Darfur region, where tens of thousands of people have been killed since a rebellion began in early 2003.
The two suspects named were Ahmad Muhammad Harun, minister for humanitarian affairs and Ali Mohammed Ali Abd-al-Rahman, a prominent militia leader.
Human rights activists were quick to welcome the charges as a small but first step towards establishing justice for Darfur.
But analysts and relief workers believed the move could complicate efforts to bring both Khartoum and the many rebel organisations in Darfur to the negotiating table. Relief workers with non-governmental organisations (NGOs) helping some of the 2m people displaced by the conflict are also concerned that pro-government Janjaweed militia may target their staff in protest at the ICC move.
"There's a big fear that some of the Janjaweed groups or perhaps people who have operated under him [Kushayb] might take it out on NGOs and also the UN," said an aid worker in Khartoum.
UN staff in the town of El-Fasher in Darfur said yesterday they were on heightened alert in the wake of the ICC decision.
Although the United Nations and relief agencies are separate entities from the ICC, aid workers fear the government may seek to punish them as representatives of the wider international community.
Aid workers are also concerned that Mr Harun may use his position as a senior humanitarian official to make the onerous task of obtaining permission to work in Darfur even more difficult. Relief workers face big problems gaining permission to reach war-affected populations.
The ICC's action raises questions over how UN humanitarian staff should liaise with Mr Harun, now that he has been named as a war crimes suspect. A UN spokeswoman in Khartoum said the world body was taking legal advice on the matter. Mr Harun was previously minister of state for the interior.
The prosecutor claims that, as head of the "Darfur security desk" in 2003, he was responsible for recruiting, funding and arming Janjaweed militia forces and, on several occasions, incited them to carry out attacks.
Sudan's justice minister has dismissed the allegations the first potential indictments to surface since Darfur was referred to the ICC prosecutor by the United Nations Security Council in March 2005.
Some relief officials fear the ICC's decision may complicate UN efforts to persuade Khartoum to accept proposals to deploy UN troops to support an undermanned and ineffective African Union force in Darfur.
ICC Names First War Crimes Suspect in Darfur
UN News Center
February 27, 2007
International Criminal Court names first war crimes suspects in Darfur
27 February 2007 – The International Criminal Court’s (ICC) chief prosecutor today named a Sudanese minister and a militia commander as the first suspects he wants tried for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Sudan’s conflict-wracked Darfur region.
The Security Council referred the Darfur issue, along with the names of 51 suspected perpetrators, to the ICC in March 2005, after a UN inquiry into whether genocide occurred in Darfur found the Government responsible for crimes under international law and strongly recommended referring the dossier to the Court.
ICC Chief Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo presented evidence showing that Ahmad Muhammad Harun, former Sudanese Minister of State for the Interior, and Janjaweed militia leader Ali Kushayb, “jointly committed crimes against the civilian population in Darfur,” according to an ICC press release.
“Based on evidence collected during the last 20 months, the Prosecution has concluded there are reasonable grounds to believe that Ahmad Harun and Ali Kushayb, (also known as Ali Muhammad Ali Abd-Al-Rahman) bear criminal responsibility in relation to 51 counts of alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes,” it stated.
The crimes were allegedly committed during attacks on the villages and towns of Kodoom, Bindisi, Mukjar and Arawala in west Darfur between August 2003 and March 2004.
In early 2003, Mr. Harun was appointed head of the “Darfur Security desk,” where his main task was to manage and personally recruit, fund and arm the Janjaweed militia – forces that would ultimately number in the tens of thousands. He is currently Sudan's state humanitarian affairs minister.
According to the ICC, Mr. Harun said during a public meeting that as the head of the “Darfur Security desk,” he had been given “all the power and authority to kill or forgive whoever in Darfur for the sake of peace and security.”
Mr. Kushayb, an “Aqid al Oqada” (“colonel of colonels”) in west Darfur, was commanding thousands of Janjaweed militia by mid-2003 and the prosecution’s evidence shows that he issued orders to the militia and armed forces to victimize the civilian populations through mass rape and other sexual offences, killings, torture, inhumane acts, pillaging and looting of residences and marketplaces, the displacement of the resident community and other alleged criminal acts.
ICC judges will now review the evidence and decide whether the two individuals committed the alleged crimes and, if so, how best to ensure their appearance in court.
Today’s announcement comes amid increasing international efforts to stop the daily bloodshed in Darfur, where more than 200,000 people have been killed and at least 2 million others forced to flee their homes since 2003. In total, some 4 million civilians need assistance to survive in the region, which is roughly the size of France and situated in the west of Sudan.
On Sunday, the UN’s top emergency official in Sudan visited several sites in north Darfur, along with representatives from the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the World Food Programme (WFP) and the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
The Deputy Special Representative of the Secretary-General and the UN Resident Humanitarian Coordinator, Manuel Aranda da Silva, found in particular that water and health were the most pressing needs as he went to Deribat and Rowatta, where he also highlighted the increasing insecurity faced by humanitarian workers in the region.
The group also met field commanders of rebel groups, who said they were committed to securing the safety of humanitarian operations.
Separately, the UN Mission in Sudan (UNMIS) said today that over 100 people have been killed since 10 February in Kass in southern Darfur, because of fighting between tribal groups, which has also forced over 900 families of mainly women and children to flee for safety. Last month alone violence throughout Darfur forced around 46,000 more people to flee their homes, OCHA.
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Uganda (ICC)
Official Website of the International Criminal Court
ICC Public Documents - Situation in Uganda
Kony heads to Central African Republic
New Vision
By Emmy Allio
February 19, 2007
At least 40 LRA rebels have crossed into the Central African Republic, where they have joined a rebel group that is fighting the Government in Bangui, according to security sources. They also looted food and drugs from Yangiri dispensary.
Another group of about 400 LRA has left their hide-out in the Congolese jungles of Garamba and is heading in the same direction.
This main group, led by Joseph Kony himself, reportedly quit Garamba on February 14 and is camping in a forest 35km of Tambura in South Sudan. On their way, the rebels looted food from villages in western Equatoria and abducted several Sudanese youth to carry the loot.
Security sources fear that the rebels will attack the SPLA forces around Tambura and Efo in a bid to force their way into the Central African Republic.
Reliable sources have indicated that the LRA advance party has already linked up with the rebels of APRD (Popular Army for the Restoration of Democracy), who are fighting the Government of the Central African Republic.
President Francois Bozize accuses the Khartoum authorities of backing the APRD. France, which supports the Government of Bozize, is actively involved in fighting the rebels.
“It is true that they (LRA) are leaving Garamba,” army spokesman Maj. Felix Kulayigye confirmed yesterday. “But why should the LRA kill, loot and abduct citizens of Sudan, Congo and the Central African Republic who have nothing to do with their war?”
The new developments come one week before the deadline for the LRA fighters to assemble in Owiny Kibul and Ri-Kwangba expires.
The new move also comes as the LRA was urged by the Congolese authorities to quit Garamba.
MONUC and other states reportedly put pressure on Kinshasa to expel the rebels, following their lack of commitment to the peace talks and increased harassment of the civilian population.
According to UN-run Radio Okapi, the Ugandan rebels last week attacked Congolese villages between Faradje and Aba, killing at least four Congolese civilians.
As a result, the Congolese army has increased its deployment in Nagero, Kurukwata and Aba, towns in the southern environs of Garamba National Park
8,000 LRA rebels granted amnesty
New Vision
By Herbert Ssempogo
February 20, 2007
CooABOUT 8,000 former Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) rebels have been granted amnesty in the last six years.
The Amnesty commissioner in-charge of West Nile, Hajji Ganyana Miiro, yesterday said the fighters had lost interest in the rebellion.
“We have been talking to the rebels. We have been putting pressure on them to stop fighting and engage in developmental activities.”
Miiro made the revelation yesterday at the launch of “Peace in Uganda”, a book by Always Be Tolerant (ABETO), a local peace organisation at Hotel Africana, Kampala.
According to Miiro, those who denounced rebellion were reintegrated into the communities.
“We receive them with their arms and take them for counselling. They are also sensitised about the communities in which they are to be resettled.”
Miiro said various stakeholders should unite to ensure peace in the country.
“The fight for peace should not be left to one organisation. We cannot do this alone. We need partners in this business. This is the reason why I hail ABETO for publishing this book.”
He added that the commission requires financial backing as resettling former rebels is expensive.
The Austrian Embassy head of mission, Franz Breitwieser, said it was important to have peace.
He explained that peace was not just the absence of war but a condition where people can enjoy their rights.
Breitwieser said civil society organisations like ABETO had a positive role to play in the promotion of peace.
ABETO boss Moses Musana said the book was in line with their philosophy of a conflict free society.rdinator for Uganda, Telephone: +256-77-2261879, Email:
Charles.Jjuuko@icc-cpi.int
'Amnesty can’t help Kony’
New Vision
February 25, 2007
AMNESTY granted to people indicted by the international Criminal Court (ICC) for crimes against humanity is null and void, human rights activists have said.
Members of the Uganda Coalition for the Criminal Court said according to the International Human Rights Law, recognising the amnesty would equal abuse of the law.
Joseph Lamony, the group’s coordinator, asserted: “Amnesty doesn’t apply to serious breaches of crimes against humanity. Granting amnesty to a person whose warrant of arrest has been issued by the ICC cannot work.”
Reacting to whether Kony and his top commanders could have the arrest warrants dropped once they applied for amnesty, John Onyango, another official said: “They can’t be forgiven because they committed crimes against the entire humanity.” He also observed that even if the Juba talks succeeded, it was only the prosecutor who could have the investigations stopped and only after the international judges have also been convinced.
The two noted that national consultations should be carried out to ascertain if the cultural justice of Mato Oput conducted in Acholi could work. They said the primary responsibility of prosecuting indicted persons lay with home states.
Lamony said: “The ICC only investigates or prosecute people when the state is unwilling or unable to.”
LRA-Government Truce Expires
The Monitor
By Frank Nyakairu
February 28, 2007
LAST night, a crucial cease fire agreement expired. The landmark truce signed in the south Sudan capital of Juba on August 26 last year, has yielded the longest lull in the 20-year war that has ravaged northern Uganda, claiming thousands of lives.
According to the truce renewed last December, Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) rebel leader Joseph Kony and his colleagues were required to meet a February 28 deadline to assemble troops in the Eastern and Western Equatoria, Owiny-Ki-Bul , Ri-Kwangba.
However, a day after the truce expired, there is no negotiator in Juba, there are no rebels in any of the assembly points and there is little chance that the two parties will meet in the near future.
LRA second in command Vincent Otti has described the agreement as "useless and hopeless.” For now, at least, it seems the only clause the LRA and the UPDF have observed is not to shoot at each other.
Both parties seem convinced that a shooting war would be detrimental to the gains made in the last months of the fragile truce. However, Six months down the road an audit shows that; the squalid camps dotting northern Uganda for the last two decades have been decongested as families return home.
The north is now relatively peaceful than ever in the last two decades. There has been a sharp drop in attacks, lootings, rape, abductions and killings. The exorbitant war budget has also been cut.
Both parties to the conflict can't agree more about the gains. "…We stopped the fighting and people are going back to their homes which we do not want to reverse," International Affairs Minister Okello Oryem said on the government's winnings from the temporary truce.
Similarly, the LRA negotiators who have been used to putting a political face to what has traditionally been a military organisation, say they have gained in "stopping the suffering of the Acholi people in northern Uganda".
However , the talks had little chance of immediate success since one of the major conditions for the rebels was the withdrawal of arrest warrants for their top commanders, including the group's founder and leader Joseph Kony.
The rebels also made tall orders like the disbanding of the UPDF in favour of an ethnically representative national army as well as a share of jobs in public offices.
None of these demands were accepted by the government side. Kampala's offer of amnesty was also brushed aside by the rebels. While the truce held, the LRA complained that its forces were being surrounded by the UPDF in the assembly areas, a claim the government rejected.
At the end, the LRA and several of its minders accused the South Sudan mediator of bias and abandoned the talks. One of their concerns was that Juba itself was still involved in a confrontation with the Islamic government of Omar El Bashir in Khartoum.
Observers note that the impact of the resumption of hostilities between SPLA and the Khartoum government will threaten any peace talks aimed at ending the northern Uganda conflict, if only because it would strengthen the Uganda Government of South Sudan military alliance against Khartoum.
"What also works against Southern Sudan," says Chairman of Gulu District Norbert Mao, "Is the fact that it's so weak that it is not in position to order the UPDF out of its lands and that is where the major problem lies."
The Leader of the Opposition Ogenga Latigo, who for some time participated in the Juba peace talks, blames the current impasse on what he calls a "selfish clique of LRA negotiators."
"People spearheaded by Godfrey Ayoo (rebel publicist) are twisting the peace process to their selfish ends, heartless and regardless of the suffering people in northern Uganda," he said.
Mr Ayoo who is in the Kenyan capital Nairobi together with the rest of the LRA negotiators, denies this charge. However, many observers say LRA's mainly diaspora sourced negotiators are detached from the realities of the situation.
Moving forward, the challenge will be to find acceptable middle ground in the demands from both sides, agree on a venue and re-create conditions to allow the rebel army feel secure enough to reassemble.
The problem
The "sole problem lies in UPDF's presence in South Sudan, and the LRA negotiators are feeling insecure because of that,” Mr Mao said. Pressure from Acholi leaders and other stakeholders is already being applied on the rebels to return to the talks. One of the hallmarks of the Juba peace talks has been the involvement of several third parties and international attention.
It remains to be seen if these parties can cause a continuation of dialogue as a sustainable option in resolving the two- decade conflict. A member of the mediation team who declined to be named attributed the stalemate on "lost hope".
"The motivations of the two parties are clear, the Government wants to end the war before the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in November while the LRA hoped that they could use the peace process to pressurise the International Criminal Court to drop charges against LRA rebels," he said.
"Where are we heading?" Although the LRA and the Uganda government have publicly expressed disinterest in resuming hostilities, there is fear that their failure to meet face-to-face might leave them with no option.
Uganda’s Peace Falters for Want of a Mediator
Washington Times
By Jason Moylagh
March 1, 2007
The most-promising peace talks yet, to end more than two decades of brutal civil war in northern Uganda, are near total collapse for lack of a mediator. For the past six months, Sudan has hosted negotiations between the rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) and the Ugandan government in the southern Sudan city of Juba to bring Africa's longest-running war to a close. The conflict has claimed tens of thousands of lives since 1987 and displaced 1.7 million Ugandans.
But rebel leaders recently withdrew from the talks, citing security concerns after Sudanese President Omar Bashir vowed to "rid Sudan of the LRA." The rebels now insist on a new host country and mediator.
Kenya and South Africa have been designated by LRA officials as acceptable third parties to mediate talks, but neither has shown any intention to get involved.
As chief mediator, Vice President Riek Machar of southern Sudan was largely responsible for getting both sides to sign an Aug. 26 cease-fire. He has reached out to rebel chief Joseph Kony, currently hiding in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and other parties to return to the negotiating table in Sudan, but the LRA leaders refuse.
"We will never go back to Juba, no matter how long they give us. Even if they apologize, nothing they can do can make us go back there," chief LRA negotiator Martin Ojul said in January. "We are still committed to peace talks, and we're going to find another venue."
Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni insists Juba will remain the venue for peace talks, regardless of rebel demands. His northern regional army spokesman told the Daily Monitor newspaper that if LRA rebels return to Uganda as second-in-command Vincent Otti has suggested, "we will welcome them with a baptism of fire."
Mr. Otti told the Reuters news agency on Feb. 6 by telephone from his hide-out on the Sudan-Congo border: "If they cannot find another venue, then I will go back to my country and start war." Some observers say this may be calculated brinkmanship.
Deadline missed
Under the August cease-fire the LRA signed with Gen. Museveni's government, rebel fighters had until the end of last month to assemble at two camps in southern Sudan. Uganda says the rebels are not cooperating, while the rebels say they fear for their safety and do not want to go to the camps.
Complicating matters are outstanding indictments on war-crimes charges by the International Criminal Court (ICC) at The Hague against LRA leaders, including Kony and Mr. Otti.
The LRA earned a reputation for cruelty toward civilians, slicing off body parts of victims and drugging abducted children to fight in their ranks. Child soldiers are said to account for some 90 percent of LRA forces, and fear of being kidnapped has turned thousands of children in rural Uganda into "night walkers" who travel miles on foot to camps to avoid abduction.
Top rebels charged
The ICC issued arrest warrants for five senior rebel commanders in October 2005 on 33 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity, including murder, rape, enslavement and forced enlistment of children.
Kony, a former altar boy and self-anointed spiritual guru of the LRA, claims to have taken up arms to defend the northern Acholi people against purported oppression from the Museveni regime when it came to power in 1986. He rejects charges that he killed or enslaved children, saying: "We don't have any children. We have only combatants."
However, the LRA has for more than 20 years failed to present any clear political agenda to end the suffering of people in the region, thousands of whom live in squalid refugee camps.
The threat of criminal warrants and military pressure were vital in compelling LRA leaders to emerge from the bush for peace talks. But "balancing the need for accountability with the requirement to offer an inducement to the indicted leaders to make peace is not easy," observed a recent report of the International Crisis Group.
LRA leaders demand that all charges against them be dropped as a precondition to resume negotiations. Even Gen. Museveni has voiced his disapproval of the ICC indictments, pledging full amnesty to Kony and his commanders if they agree to peace.
But unrelenting officials at The Hague say Uganda must arrest the five defendants to avoid violating the Rome Statute, the founding proviso of the ICC, which Uganda ratified more than four years ago.
Deputy prosecutor Fatou Bensouda insisted in August: "Countries that have an obligation to execute the arrest warrants will do so."
However, the International Crisis Group said in September that an agreement to suspend the indictments may be the only way to bring lasting peace to northern Uganda. Asylum for indicted commanders in a country not party to the Rome Statute could be a viable option, the group suggested.
Others support asylum
Despite a botched U.N. operation in the Democratic Republic of Congo in January 2006 to seize Kony that claimed the lives of eight peacekeepers, some U.N. officials have also endorsed the asylum proposal. Jan Egeland of Norway, departing U.N. undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs, has called the warrants "a stumbling block to peace."
Aid organizations note that since the truce took effect, more than 230,000 people have returned to their homes to resume normal lives. "These talks are the best chance for peace in 20 years," according to Oxfam, originally a British development, advocacy and relief agency seeking to end to poverty worldwide. "It is crucial both parties do everything within their power to end the [Uganda] insurgency."
It added that 1.4 million people remain in Uganda refugee camps, and a new humanitarian crisis could reverse months of progress unless international pressure were brought to bear on LRA leaders.
Other groups say the United States has not done enough to move peace talks forward and could inspire confidence on both sides if it took a more active role.
State Department spokesman Sean McCormick said Feb. 1 that the LRA's demands to change the mediator and venue of talks "will only delay peace in the region and further the suffering of displaced northern Ugandans."
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International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY)
Official Website of the ICTY
Judgment: Application of the Convetion on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (Bosnia and Herzegovina v. Serbia and Montenegro)
International Court of Justice
February 26, 2007
The Court finds that Serbia has violated its obligation under the Genocide Convention to prevent genocide in Srebrenica and that it has also violated its obligations under the Convention by having failed fully to co-operate with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY)
Press Release available here.
Summary of the Judgment of 26 February 2007 here.
Full Judgment of 26 February 2007 here.
ICTY Weekly Press Briefing
ICTY
February 28, 2007
Registry and Chambers:
Refik Hodžic, Spokesman for Registry and Chambers, made the following statement:
SCHEDULE:
A pre-trial conference in the case against Ramush Haradinaj, Idriz Balaj and Lahi Brahimaj, former commanders of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), will be held tomorrow at 9:00 a.m. in courtroom II. The trial will begin on Monday, March 5 at 2:15 p.m. in courtroom I.
Ramush Haradinaj, Idriz Balaj and Lahi Brahimaj are charged with participating in a joint criminal enterprise, the purpose of which was the consolidation of total control of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) over the KLA operational zone of Dukagjin, by the unlawful removal and mistreatment of Serb civilians and by the mistreatment of Kosovar Albanians, Kosovar Roma and other civilians, who were, or were perceived to have been, collaborating with Serbian forces or have not supported the KLA. Haradinaj, Balaj and Brahimaj are charged with persecutions as crimes against humanity and cruel treatment, torture, murders, rape as violations of the laws or customs of war.
The Trial Chamber filed a decision yesterday finding Miroslav Šeparovi?, defence counsel for Mladen Marka?, in conflict of interest by failing to withdraw earlier from the proceedings, neglecting previous notices from Chambers. In its decision, the Trial Chamber pointed out that Šeparovi? had a personal interest in the case and could possibly be called as a witness. Specifically, the chamber warned Šeparovi? that he had jeopardized his client’s interest and, therefore he "had failed to meet the standard of professional ethics required in his performance of duties before the Tribunal." Šeparovi? will be given an opportunity to explain himself at a motion hearing this afternoon. The hearing will be held today in the Gotovina et al. case at 2:15 p.m. in courtroom I.
All ongoing trials in the Milutinovi? et al., Popovi? et al., Prli? et al. and the Miloševi? cases will continue this and next week. Please check the schedule daily for any changes.
TODAY’S FILINGS:
As ordered by the Trial Chamber, the Prosecution filed today a submission on the site visit regarding the Milan Marti? case. In the submission, the Prosecution pointed out that the observations were consistent with the charges against the accused and the observations supported the evidence in the case.
Questions:
Asked what was, according to the Rules, the responsibility of the Registry if the Chambers disagree with an appointment of defence counsel, Hodži? said that in the past, defence counsel had withdrawn for various reasons. A new defence counsel would then be appointed.
Asked if it was the job of the Registry to determine whether or not there was a conflict of interest when appointing defence counsel, Hodzic answered that in the case of Šeparovi?, the Registry had accepted him on the merits of qualifications as provided by the Rules of the Tribunal. In this case, details have emerged in the course of the pre-trial proceedings where it has became obvious that this person had a personal interestin the case. Registry could not investigate every defence counsel to such detail before the case starts, added Hodžic.
Asked if the Prosecution was ready, as far as witnesses are concerned, for the Haradinaj et al. case, Kavran stated that the prosecution was ready for the case and there was no new information. A journalist pointed out that in the prosecution’s latest motion in the case it was mentioned witnesses were afraid to testify. Asked if these witnesses were afraid because they had been threatened or was it a general fear due to the fact that Haradinaj holds a position of power and has a close relation with UNMIK, Kavran said she could not discuss such details. Kavran added that concerns of witnesses are discussed, as in every case, with the Prosecution team and were taken very seriously, but going into the details would not be appropriate. Asked if witnesses have pulled out and if so how many, Kavran said that there was no information that the witness list has changed for the moment. Kavran confirmed that the number of witnesses was 98 as it had been filed. This would be case until such a time when the prosecution filed a revised list which has not happened.
Separovic Denies “Conflict of Interest”
SENSE Tribunal
February 28, 2007
Mladen Markac's defense counsel denies any "personal interest" in the Operation Storm case and refuses to withdraw from the case. Today's hearing dealt with the motions filed by General Gotovina's defense. Legal arguments were exchanged on the motion challenging the jurisdiction of the Tribunal and alleging defects in the form of the indictments in the case against the three Croatian generals.
Zagreb attorney Miroslav Separovic, representing General Mladen Markac, denied today he had any "personal interest" in the Operation Storm case, that he "threatened the interests of his client" or "behaved improperly" in any way. In other words, he has done nothing that would call for proceedings to be instituted against him for the violation of defense counsel legal ethics.
The Trial Chamber invited Separovic to explain this after its formal conclusion yesterday that he was "in a conflict of interest", because it was highly likely that he would be called to testify at the trial of Ante Gotovina, Mladen Markac and Ivan Cermak about his personal knowledge of the events at the time of Operation Storm. He was the Croatian Justice Minister at the time.
In mid-2006, Ante Gotovina's defense announced it intended to call Separovic to take the stand. Today Gotovina’s lawyers asked the Trial Chamber whether it would "change the decision made yesterday if we decided not to call” the former Justice Minister who is now representing Markac. Pre-trial judge Moloto decided this offer "came too late", two months before the beginning of the trial and after both the Trial and Appeals Chamber issued three warnings regarding the potential conflict of interest and the necessity to eliminate it on time.
After hearing Separovic, the Trial Chamber brought today's hearing to a close without indicating what decision it would reach and when.
Before Markac’s defense counsel made his statement, the motions filed by General Gotovina's defense challenging the jurisdiction of the Tribunal and alleging defects in the form of the indictment in the Operation Storm case were argued for one hour. Both the prosecution and the defense had 10 minutes each to orally present their legal arguments in favor and against the motion claiming that the Tribunal lacked jurisdiction in this case. “After Operation Storm was brought to a successful conclusion, there was no armed conflict" and after "the exodus of the political and military leadership of the self-proclaimed Republika Srpska" there were no "organized and intensive activities" of the forces opposing the Croatian authorities, the defense argues in support of its motion. Goran Mikulicic, General Markac's co-counsel did not deny that killings, looting, burning down of Serb houses and other crimes had been committed. However, he pointed to the fact that those crimes had not been committed in the context of an armed conflict and thus they were in "the jurisdiction of the Croatian judiciary, and not that of the Tribunal".
As the beginning of the trial is scheduled for 7 May 2007, the Trial Chamber is expected to rule on this motion soon.
Croatia Shelves Demand for War Damages from Montenegro
Balkan Insight
By Goran Jungvirth in Zagreb
March 1, 2007
Pragmatism prevails in Zagreb and Podgorica, as shares look set to replace war reparations.
Croatia is quietly abandoning demands for financial compensation from Montenegro, tempted by new business opportunities in the neighbouring Adriatic republic.
On February 27, Ranko Krivokapic, speaker of Montenegro’s parliament, said the newly independent country would not need to pay full reparations to Croatia for the damage caused by military attacks launched from its territory in 1991.
Instead, he said the two states would reach a bilateral agreement on Montenegro’s “political and moral responsibility” for the attacks, which inflicted enormous damage on the nearby Croatian city of Dubrovnik.
Krivokapic spoke shortly after his Croatian counterpart, Vladimir Seks, had paid an official visit to Podgorica during which the issue of compensation to Croatia was high on the agenda.
Officials in Zagreb have yet to confirm terms of a possible compensation deal. But speculation is widespread that the claim for cash reparations will be dropped in favour of receiving shares in Montenegrin state companies.
Krivokapic’s claim that under international law Montenegro bears no responsibility for the attacks, because the tiny republic “wasn’t the decision maker” in the former Yugoslavia at the time, has gained ground across the spectrum in recent years.
For years now, Montenegro has been at pains to distance itself from Serbia and from the Belgrade government’s wartime aggression.
After Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Macedonia seceded in the early 1990s, Montenegro and Serbia were all that remained of the Yugoslav federation.
No one seriously questions the complicity of Montenegro’s Yugoslav-era leaders in the attacks on Dubrovnik, which caused several hundred civilian deaths and destroyed countless homes.
Some estimates place the value of the damage at around 35 million euro. So far, Montenegro has paid up only 375,000 euro - about one per cent of the former figure - as compensation for looting the area’s cattle.
But the quest for full compensation is faltering. In contrast to Croatia’s suit against Serbia at the International Court of Justice, ICJ, which Zagreb initiated in 1999, Zagreb looks ready to accept less exact terms from Podgorica.
A more cooperative approach has been facilitated by the apologetic tone of Montenegro’s pro-independence parties, which have run the republic for the last decade.
Croatia sympathised with their wish to split from Serbia, becoming the first country to extend diplomatic recognition to Montenegro after a referendum on independence on May 21, 2006.
Relations have since gone from strength to strength. Apart from Seks, Croatia’s president, Stjepan Mesic, and the prime minister, Ivo Sanader, have both visited Podgorica recently.
The fact that a number of Croatian businessmen accompanied Seks’ and Sanader’s visits fuelled speculation about a compensation deal.
While the presence of these high-profile business leaders indicates the level of Croatian interest in its economic relationship with Montenegro, the feeling is mutual.
Montenegro’s economy minister, Branimir Gvozdenovic, and representatives of 35 Montenegrin companies visited Zagreb on February 23 at the invitation of the Croatian Chamber of Commerce.
Following meetings with some of Croatia’s most powerful business leaders, representatives of both delegations told Balkan Insight they had quickly found a common language.
They spoke of business opportunities abounding in neighbouring countries that spoke a common language and have similar tourist industries and consumer preferences.
Trade advantages have also arisen from a recent regional free trade deal, CEFTA, which cut tariffs and other import-export barriers.
Trade is rising continually between the two states, doubling to 28.5 million euro in the first half of 2006 compared to the same period the previous year.
Croatia has a large trade surplus with its neighbour. Whereas Croatian exports to Montenegro grew more than 100 per cent during first six months of 2006, imports to Croatia of Montenegrin products rose by 37 per cent.
Dunja Konjevod of the Croatian Chamber of Commerce said both countries stood to benefit from this trend. “Montenegro is now developing quickly and they want our help and cooperation in tourism,” she said.
Much to the surprise of some analysts, Montenegro’s once stagnant economy is picking up, according to macroeconomic statistics.
Inflation is falling, foreign investment is growing and exports are also increasing. Montenegrin exports to Croatia include steel, alcohol, tobacco, fruit and boats.
Average salaries are also growing, from 195 euro in 2004 to 213 euro in 2005. Unemployment, meanwhile, is going down, from 22,2 to 18.9 per cent over the same period.
While this means the climate for investment is improving, economic analysts caution that Montenegro is still in no position to repay the damage caused to Croatia’s southern region, even if it wanted to.
This week’s ICJ judgment in the genocide suit that Bosnia and Herzegovina brought against Serbia is seen as a warning that the judicial route to compensation is unlikely to produce results.
On February 26, the court largely exonerated Serbia of responsibility for wartime genocidal acts in Bosnia and Herzegovina, ruining Sarajevo’s hopes of securing reparations from Belgrade.
Luka Brkic, a professor of international economic relations at Zagreb University, told Balkan Insight that the verdict had important implications for Croatia’s international lawsuits.
“Croatia won’t get a judgment [against Serbia at the ICJ], which would be the grounds for getting reparations out of Serbia,” he predicted.
The professor said business and economic deals provided better grounds for the region’s future peace and prosperity than international judgments.
This, however, is difficult for the victims of wartime attacks to accept.
Marija Liksic, president of the Dubrovnik association of Croatian civilian victims of the Homeland War, lost her 16-year-old son in the shelling of the city.
The attacks left her daughter disabled as a result of shrapnel, while her husband endured a spell in a Montenegrin prison camp in Morinj, where Croats were killed and tortured, according to survivors.
“I’m astonished at the gall of the politicians who want to build economic relations [with Montenegro],” Liksic told Balkan Insight, recalling the role of a number of current Montenegrin officials in the attacks on Croatian Dalmatia.
Ivo Josipovic, an international law professor who has represented Croatia in its case against Serbia at the ICJ, said the story would not be over, even if Croatia entirely abandoned demands for financial compensation.
Montenegro’s courts would still be obliged to prosecute individuals responsible for war crimes, noted the professor.
Otherwise, the way in which the reparations issue was handled was essentially a political matter, Josipovic went on. “If Serbia showed the same readiness to settle matters as Montenegro, Croatia wouldn’t sue,” he maintained.
Haradinaj pleads not guilty
FoNet
March 1, 2007
THE HAGUE -- Former Kosovo PM and KLA commander Ramush Haradinaj pleaded not guilty at a pre-trial hearing at The Hague.
Haradinaj entered his plea today on the new and amended indictment pleading not guilty on all 37 counts.
“I plead not guilty, Your Honor, and I find the accusations offensive”, Haradinaj said even though he was warned by presiding judge Alphons Orie not to make any comments.
Co-defendants Idriz Balaj and Lahi Brahimaj also pleaded not guilty.
The court filed charges against the former Kosovo Liberation Army Commander on December 22, 2004.
Haradinaj surrendered to The Hague on March 9, 2005 and was released from custody on June 9 of the same year. He was recently summoned to return to the Hague detention unit and join Balaj and Brahimaj.
The trial is set to begin on March 5.
According to the Hague Tribunal’s spokeswoman Olga Kavran, the prosecution enlisted 98 witnesses.
"Taking Care" of Corpses
B92, SENSE
March 2, 2007
THE HAGUE -- The Srebrenica Seven trial continued at The Hague with the testimony of a former Zvornik municipal official.
Ahead of the beginning of his evidence at the trial of seven Bosnian Serb military and police officers accused of Srebrenica and Žepa crimes, the protected witness 104 was reminded that he had the right not to answer questions that might result in self-incrimination.
The presiding judge explained that the judges might order him to answer such questions, but in that case what he said could not be used as evidence against him if he was ever prosecuted, the court explained.
The witness was a Zvornik municipality official in 1995 and had contacts with the Bosnian Serb Army (VRS) Zvornik Brigade officers. In his brief examination-in-chief he said that the meetings were held in his office or at the brigade headquarters.
He described how in mid July 1995 he had been summoned to Zvornik Brigade headquarters, a few days after the fall of Srebrenica. When he arrived there, he asked for the brigade commander, Colonel Pandurevi?, but was instead received by Colonel Ljubiša Beara, security chief in the VRS Main Staff.
Beara proceeded to “present a brief monologue”, the witness told the Hague court.
There was "a large number of prisoners" in the Zvornik area, Beara allegedly said, "that are hard to control and they had to be got rid off".
According to the witness, he then solicited the local authorities’ help to "take care of them".
The witness was reluctant to answer the prosecutor’s question to clarify what Beara had meant by "getting rid off the prisoners” and what kind of assistance in "taking care" he had asked for.
The presiding judge then intervened, insisting that the witness answer the question. After a long pause, the witness said “through gritted teeth” that they had been asked to help "take care of the prisoners' corpses, to bury them", SENSE reports.
In the cross-examination, Ljubiša Beara's defense counsel noted that this might have been a “translation error", asking the witness to explain once more what "taking care of" meant. He reluctantly repeated that it meant "burying the corpses".
In his statement to the OTP, the Zvornik "insider" stated that he had seen Beara on TV on his way to The Hague in October 2004 and that he “did not look like the person” he had met in the Zvornik Brigade headquarters in July 1995. When Beara's defense counsel asked him whether he still mintained that, the witness said that he did.
Croatian PM: Charges against Serbia still stand
RTV B92 News (Belgrade)
March 2, 2007
ZAGREB, BELGRADE -- Croatian PM denies speculations that Croatia and Serbia discussed dropping charges against Serbia in the ICJ.
Following the opening meeting of The Committee of Political directors of the South East European Co-operation Process in Zagreb, Croatian Prime Minister Ivo Sanader told the press that Croatia and Serbia had never discussed the issue of Croatia’s lawsuit against Serbia filed before the International Court of Justice in The Hague accusing it of genocide and aggression.
Sanader said that Croatia planned to study in detail the ICJ’s judgment in the lawsuit filed by Bosnia and Herzegovina adding he was interested in Croatian legal experts' opinion, including that of Ivan Šimonovi?, Croatia’s chief representative before the International Court of Justice in The Hague.
"Croatia should soon drop charges”
Croatia and Serbia should soon decide to drop genocide charges against Serbia, Serbia’s legal team Chief Radoslav Stojanovi? says.
“We’ve come close to reaching and implementing an agreement regarding Croatia’s lawsuit against Serbia”, a Zagreb daily quoted Stojanovi? as saying.
“Serbia and Croatia have been discussing the issue of dropping the charges for more than a year now and held meetings on various levels of authority. I’ve suggested the idea not only to Croatia, but to Bosnia as well. However, Bosnia rejected the concept”, Stojanovi? said adding that he and the official Croatia’s representatives talked about the subject only a few days ago.
Serbian legal expert said other Serbian officials talked to Croatia’s authorities on the same matter, but refused to disclose their names.
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International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR)
Official Website of the ICTR
8,000 Genocide Suspects Released
Allafrica.com - The New Times (Kigali)
by James Munyaneza
February 20, 2007
Thousands of inmates could not contain their excitement yesterday as their names were loudly read out by prison officials at various detention facilities, announcing what could be the ultimate end of their prison lives.It was a moment of a lifetime. Prisoners could not hide their joy and anxiety as officials started to effect a January Cabinet decision to release an estimated 8,000 suspects of the 1994 Rwanda Genocide and close to 1,000 inmates convicted of ordinary crimes as part of fostering reconciliation among Rwandans and decongesting prisons.
Relatives, sympathisers and onlookers woke up to a different morning to witness the exercise which took place across the country under the heavy guard of police personnel and prison warders.
It is the third time the government has freed Genocide suspects under the January 1, 2003 Presidential Decree, which provides for conditional liberty for the sick, the elderly, as well as those who have confessed their role in the Genocide or served a stint in jail that is equivalent or more than the jail terms they would otherwise have been sentenced to.
When The New Times visited Remera Prison in Kimironko, prison authorities were double-screening each listed prisoner to avoid erroneous releases. "So far the process is going on smoothly. We already have lists of 685 prisoners from Gasabo District and another of 150 (prisoners) hailing from Rwamagana District. We are, however, still waiting for other lists from the Prosecution (departments) of Nyarugenge, Rulindo and Kicukiro districts," the prison director, Misingo Karara, disclosed at around 10:00 a.m.
One of the released Genocide suspects, Augustine Mutabaruka, 75, could not easily describe his happiness.
"I am just overwhelmed. I had never thought of this miracle for all the thirteen years I have been in prison. It is just a God-sent liberation," he enthused.
Mutabaruka, who said he is accused of killing a person during the 100-day Genocide, said he is a reformed citizen.
"Having confessed to my crime, my message to the people in the community where I am going is that I am a new person who has undergone total reform," said the man, who will go back to Fumbwe Sector, Rwamagana District, after undergoing a month-long rehabilitation in a solidarity camp at Kinyinya in Gasabo District.
For 73-year-old Celestin Rwibasira, who was also freed from Remera Prison, his role in the Genocide is the worst experience that only came to shatter him during his adulthood.
"I really don't know what befell me (during the Genocide). I just don't know how I was lured into such inhuman acts. I confessed; thanks to the authorities that have forgiven us," a seemingly frail Rwibasira told The New Times as he walked out of the coolers. He hails from Ndiba Sector, Gasabo District.
One by one, those whose names were read out took off their bright pink prison uniforms, wore civilian clothes and emerged out of the inner wall of the prison, some with walking sticks.
Prosecutor-General Martin Ngoga said reports he had received indicated that the exercise was successful.
"All the reports I have received are positive, except for minor changes in figures in some prisons," he said, attributing the slight changes in figures to the fact that some inmates on the lists had either already been released or sentenced.
According to statistics obtained from the Prosecutor-General's Office, a total of 9,192 Genocide suspects and convicts of other crimes were released yesterday.
Gasabo District has the highest number of released prisoners with 1,753, followed by Ngoma (1,621), Muhanga (1,437), Huye District (1,110), Nyamagabe (1,070) and Karongi 613. Other districts followed thus: Gicumbi (545), Rusizi (473), Nyarugenge (232), Rubavu (218), Musanze (121), and Nyagatare with 49.
Thirty-four other prisoners were also released from the military prisons.
Given the fact that prosecution structures are different from the administrative ones, some inmates found their names appearing under districts different from where they hail from.
The Ministry of Defence provided trucks that ferried the released inmates to their respective solidarity camps. The camps are Kinihiria in the Southern Province, Mutobo in the Northern Province, Iduha in the Eastern Province, Muhari in the Western Province, and Kinyinya in Kigali City.
Meanwhile, Ibuka, the umbrella association of Genocide survivors, has greeted the release with mixed feelings.
"It is not a new thing because this process has been going on since 2003. It's not our wish that people die in prison, but we are certainly concerned with their (released suspects') relations with survivors and Gacaca witnesses once they are integrated into their communities," Ibuka's new President, Theodore Simburudali, told The New Times yesterday.
Saying nevertheless that the law should be left to take its course, Simburudali cautioned that the authorities should exercise maximum caution in the process to avoid situations of releasing "people who are in Category One of Genocide suspects".
"Recently, we had cases of some released Genocide suspects in the districs of Ngoma and Nyamasheke, among others, killing and harassing survivors. This should be squarely addressed," he said.
Previously, about 60,000 Genocide suspects were freed but some were later re-arrested after commiting similar crimes.
Non-Genocide convicts were freed under the provision for right to parole prescribed in the Criminal Procedure Code. They also had to satisfy an additional condition set by Cabinet, which bars convicts of murder, rape, corruption and armed robbery from benefitting from the right to parole
Rwanda: UN Saboteurs Should Be Named, Says Govt
Allafrica.com - The New Times (Kigali)
February 21, 2007
The government has asked for the disclosure of individuals in the United Nations (UN) that allegedly sabotaged investigations into the shooting down of former dictator Juvenal Habyarimana's plane
A former UN investigator, Michael Hourigan, announced recently that his inquiries into the 1994 downing of Habyarimana's plane were abruptly stopped against his wishes. According to Justice Minister Tharcisse Karugarama, the government would be comfortable having all names of people who issued the directive exposed for the international community to take appropriate action.
At this time when the world is seizing on each and every detail regarding the crash, the minister observed, it is imperative that such a development be made complete with the naming of individuals that blocked the process for further scrutiny by all parties. "This is not a matter of confidentiality. It is the UN that stopped the investigations into the former president (Habyarimana's) plane crash and therefore officials that abruptly ordered the halt of the process must be revealed," Karugarama told The New Times Monday, 19 February. Karugarama made it clear that the Government of Rwanda had no problem with the investigations. Asked whether the excuse serves to stop the international body from producing its own version of the crash as one of the parties that were in charge of security at the scene of the shooting, the minister said he was not in a position to force them to act accordingly. "I will not speak for the UN because it has its own systems and mandate and therefore I cannot order them to produce the report now, but I am sure they know what they should be doing," he said, noting that at this critical point such reports are supposed to be used as legal precedents by international justice.
Karugarama's remarks come at a time when an Australian former UN war crimes investigator has revealed documents exposing a UN cover-up of its inquiry into the events that triggered the 1994 Rwandan Genocide, which claimed over a million innocent people. Adelaide-based lawyer Hourigan, who reportedly worked on several aspects of the genocide in 1996 and 1997, told BBC that his probe was stopped in 1997 and he was speaking now as he felt justice had not been served. Although senior UN officials say the inquiry into the plane crash was stopped because it was not within the mandate of the genocide tribunal, Hourigan remains strongly opposed to this argument. In fact, at the time, he says, he had heard allegations that the then-RPF [Rwandan patriotic Front] leader and now president of Rwanda, Paul Kagame, was involved - a statemen
