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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)
Human rights groups call for Khmer Rouge Trial to Follow International Standards
Associated Press via International Herald Tribune
March 5, 2007
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia: The planned genocide trial of former Khmer Rouge leaders must meet international standards of justice, Cambodian and foreign human rights groups said Monday.
The call came as Cambodian and foreign judges appointed to the tribunal prepared for a crucial meeting this week to thrash out differences over rules for the proceedings.
The failure so far to agree on procedures for what is formally known as Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, or ECCC, has delayed the trials and could derail them altogether.
The radical policies of the Khmer Rouge led to the deaths of some 1.7 million people from execution, overwork, disease and malnutrition during the group's 1975-79 rule.
"We view the ECCC as a last chance to provide justice to the Cambodian people for atrocities suffered during the period of 1975-79," said a joint statement by the Phnom Penh-based Cambodian Human Rights Action Committee, the New York-based Open Society Justice Initiative, and three other groups.
Prosecutors are expected to indict about 10 people, including the few surviving top Khmer Rouge leaders.
The draft rules at issue cover every phase of the proceedings — preliminary investigations, judicial investigations, the trial and appeals — and also the roles of prosecutors, defense attorneys and defendants.
The tribunal was created by a 2003 agreement between Cambodia and the United Nations, and after long delays had been expected to convene later this year. It has been set up to operate under the Cambodian judicial system, which is widely regarded as corrupt and susceptible to political influence.
The human rights groups urged the tribunal to adopt procedural rules "that satisfy international standards for the holding of fair and legitimate trials to try the senior leaders and those most responsible for crimes."
"National and international judges and other officials of the ECCC must perform their duties with integrity, independence, and objectivity," the statement said.
In late January, the tribunal announced that Cambodian judges and their foreign counterparts had made "solid progress" in "significantly narrowing the number of outstanding issues."
However, several major issues remained unresolved, including how to integrate Cambodian and international law to ensure transparency and fairness, especially for defendants.
In February, the tribunal suffered a public relations blow when allegations were made 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 charges were taken seriously enough to trigger an internal audit by the United Nations, although its findings have not been made public.
Crunch time for Khmer Rouge trial
Reuters via The China Post
By Ek Madra
March 5, 2007
Cambodian and international judges sitting on the Khmer Rouge tribunal hold crunch talks this week to salvage the trial of Pol Pot's top surviving henchmen for the atrocities of the "Killing Fields".
At the heart of the problem is a disagreement between local and U.N.-backed officials over legalities of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, as the joint tribunal into the deaths of Khmer Rouge's estimated 1.7 million victims is called.
A week-long meeting in November to hammer out rules covering everything from the admissibility of evidence to the protection of witnesses to the height of the judges' chairs came to nothing.
Since then a separate sub-committee has discussing many of the issues but with the clock ticking on the US$53 million three-year trial, which officially started in July, there can be no more delays.
The meeting, which will run from March 7 to 16, "must resolve all fundamental differences," a court statement said. "The judges are also acutely aware that time is of the essence," it added.
Diplomats say the U.N. side of the court will walk away if they feel their local counterparts are dragging their feet or acting on the orders of Prime Minister Hun Sen, an ex-Khmer Rouge soldier who lost an eye in the battle for Phnom Penh in 1975.
Even though there is no evidence linking Hun Sen to any atrocities, his government is riddled with former cadres from the ultra-Maoist regime, many of whom will not want prosecutors raking through their pasts.
The Khmer Rouge's main ally, China, has also been lobbying Hun Sen hard to stall the proceedings to prevent the full extent of Beijing's involvement coming to light, diplomats say.
In public at least, Hun Sen has been making it clear he wants the trial to go ahead, announcing at a recent road-opening ceremony near a mass execution site on the outskirts of the capital that victims' remains must be preserved.
"This is the evidence of genocide," Hun Sen said in a speech broadcast on national radio. "There have been demands to burn the remains so their spirits will be reborn, but if we lose this, the trial of the Khmer Rouge cannot be conducted."
On Saturday Hun Sen's ruling Cambodian People's Party said it "supports the process of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia to try the crimes which were carried out during the period of the democratic Kampuchea regime."
Helen Jarvis, an Australian expert working with the Cambodian side, said despite the procedural disagreements, prosecutors had been hard at work compiling evidence, and would be ready to lodge cases against some suspects as soon as the green light came.
"We remain optimistic that the outstanding issues will be resolved," she said. "We hope it will open later this year. We are not sure, but we're hoping."
Pol Pot, the architect of the Khmer Rouge's "Year Zero" peasant revolution, died in 1998.
Cambodian Khmer Rouge Trial Judges Protest Graft Allegations
Monsters and Critics.com
By DPA
March 9, 2007
Phnom Penh - Cambodian judges appointed to the Khmer Rouge tribunal sent an open letter Friday requesting the withdrawal of allegations made by a respected international human-rights organization that they paid kickbacks to obtain and keep their positions.
The letter - signed by Kong Srim, president of the Supreme Court Chamber of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), and issued through the tribunal's press department on behalf of all Cambodian judges involved in the upcoming trial - said the February 14 claims of corruption by the George Soros-funded Open Society Justice Initiative were untrue and deserved an apology.
'This unsubstantiated allegation, which has been published by a number of national and international media, creates public confusion and seriously undermines the reputation and integrity of all national judges appointed to the ECCC,' the letter said.
It added: 'All national judges of the ECCC hereby affirm to you and the public at large that our decisions to work for the ECCC were made without being subject to any pressure or promise as mentioned in your statement.
'We all clearly understand that bringing justice to the people of Cambodia, especially victims of the Khmer Rouge regime, is a mission that requires the highest level of professional responsibility. Therefore, we request you correct by appropriate means this unsubstantiated allegation.'
On Wednesday, local media published an open letter from Open Society Justice Initiative executive director James Goldston urging the tribunal to mount a thorough and transparent investigation into the allegations for the sake of the credibility of the hearings both at home and abroad.
Goldston acknowledged that his New York-based organization had not provided concrete proof to back the allegations but said it was the group's job to bring the matter to public attention.
He said it was the job of the tribunal to investigate and to show the public and donors to the 56-million dollar trial set up to bring a handful of former top leaders of the ultra-Maoist Khmer Rouge to justice that it was capable of handling such allegations and stamping out corruption if it existed rather than ignoring it.
Days after the organization made the allegations, the tribunal announced it would not deal with the group any further. Sources close to the court said there was suspicion among some government officials in the former Communist nation that the timing of the allegations was political with nationwide commune elections scheduled for April 1.
Friday's letter was issued as the tribunal's local and international judges continued to try to thrash out differences between a number of different legal systems and come to agreement on internal rules for the court, without which proceedings cannot move forward.
The Khmer Rouge ruled Cambodia between 1975 and 1979, during which time up to 2 million Cambodians perished under one of the most brutal regimes of the past century.
Several prominent members of the current Cambodian government were Khmer Rouge cadre before defecting and overthrowing that regime, and some groups have expressed doubt that Cambodia, with its endemic corruption and complex political past, is capable of holding a trial of former Khmer Rouge leaders to international standards and on budget.
Major barrier to Khmer Rouge trials is removed
Reuters/ San Diego Union Tribune
March 12, 2007
PHNOM PENH – The Cambodian Bar Association said on Monday it had lifted its ban on foreign lawyers at planned trials of surviving Khmer Rouge leaders, lifting a significant barrier to getting them started.
'We are making a lot of compromises, and that means foreign lawyers can join us in the defence section of the Khmer Rouge,' association president Ky Tech told Reuters after the first day of talks with the London-based International Bar Association.
'We are working on how to assign volunteer lawyers to represent the victims of the Khmer Rouge and defend the regime's leaders,' he said.
The association's ban on the participation of foreign lawyers in United Nations-supported trials expected to last three years and cost $56.3 million had cast doubts on whether they would go ahead.
Some diplomats had seen the ban as a way of delaying trials of senior Khmer Rouge figures now in their 70s and 80s and amplified doubts about whether the government, despite its public proclamations of support, really wanted them to happen.
But Ky Tech said only details had to be worked out now.
'We are meeting and working together because we do not want to obstruct Khmer Rouge trials. I am optimistic we can work together,' he said.
The agreement, however, does not clear the way to opening the trials of figures such as 'Brother Number Two' Nuon Chea, deputy to the late Pol Pot, the architect of the Khmer Rouge's 'Year Zero' revolution in which an estimated 1.7 million people died.
Foreign and Cambodian judges, who will have to work together under a complex formula designed to ensure judgments have the support of both, are half way through two weeks of talks on agreeing on the nuts and bolts of how the trials will be run.
Tribunal spokesman Reach Sambath said they had made substantial progress in their third attempt to agree, but refused to provide any details.
'Discussions are still going on and we cannot provide details,' he said. 'But what we can tell you is that a lot of progress has been made over the past few days.'
Disagreements ranged from the admissibility of evidence to witness protection, even to the height of the judges' chairs, and the trials cannot begin until they are ironed out.
Other aged leaders due to face trial are former head of state Khieu Samphan and ex-foreign minister Ieng Sary.
They are living free. The most senior Khmer Rouge in detention is Duch, head of the notorious Tuol Sleng interrogation centre in Phnom Penh where at least 14,000 people are thought to have been tortured and executed.
During the four years the Khmer Rouge were in power, about a quarter of the country's population was executed or died of hunger or disease.
Fee dispute may delay start of Khmer Rouge trials at UN-aided Cambodian court
UN News Centre
March 16, 2007
The United Nations-assisted Cambodian court may not be able to proceed with the long-awaited trials of former Khmer Rouge leaders, accused of mass killings and other horrific crimes during the late 1970s, until a dispute is resolved over proposed registration fees for foreign lawyers, the court’s review committee said today.
In a statement issued after a 10-day session in the capital Phnom Penh, the review committee of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), which is comprised of national and international judges, said all remaining disagreements over the internal court rules had been hammered out.
But the decision of Cambodia’s Bar Association (BAKC) to impose fees on the participation of foreign lawyers “is unacceptable to the international judges, who consider that it severely limits the rights of accused and victims to select counsel of their choice,” according to today’s statement.
The international judges consider this dispute “places an obstacle to adopting” the rules, which are necessary for the trials to proceed, although the national judges regard the issue as outside the scope of the internal rules and therefore no obstacle to their adoption.
The review committee called on the BAKC to re-consider its decision as soon as possible so that a planned plenary session of judges can take place on 30 April to adopt the internal rules.
The statement called on the ECCC Defence Support Section to work closely with the BAKC in this process.
“All members of the Committee remain dedicated to completing this complex effort of successfully harmonizing international and national law so that the ECCC can discharge its historic responsibility to find justice for the Cambodian people,” the statement added.
Judges and prosecutors for the ECCC trials were sworn in last July. Under an agreement signed by the UN and Cambodia, the trial court and a Supreme Court within the Cambodian legal system will investigate those most responsible for crimes and serious violations of Cambodian and international law between 17 April 1975 and 6 January 1979.
The UN will pay $43 million of the $56.3 million budget for the trials, with the Cambodian Government providing the remaining $13.3 million.
Chief defense lawyer vows to prevent collapse of Khmer Rouge tribunal
Associated Press via International Herald Tribune
March 16, 2007
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia: The chief defense lawyer for the long-delayed Khmer Rouge genocide tribunal in Cambodia said Saturday he will try to resolve a key sticking point over fees for foreign lawyers that threatens to derail the trials.
Rupert Skilbeck, the head of the defense support section for the U.N.-backed tribunal, said he wants to meet with the Cambodian Bar Association in the coming days to "see if we can find the way to resolve the problem." He said he was confident an agreement could be reached.
The impasse involves the Cambodian Bar Association's recent decision to charge foreign lawyers hundreds of dollars (euros) to represent defendants or victims in the long-awaited tribunal, which was scheduled to begin later this year.
The issue became public Friday after Cambodian and international judges finished a 10-day meeting to thrash out differences over draft internal rules for the genocide trials, but said the legal fee dispute had prevented their adoption.
Ky Tech, president of the Cambodian Bar Association, declined to comment or discuss details of the legal fees.
The Cambodia Daily newspaper reported Saturday that the bar has decided that foreign lawyers wishing to participate in the tribunal must pay the bar a US$500 (€375) membership application fee.
If chosen to work with a client, they must pay an additional US$2,000 (€1,500) and a US$200 (€150) monthly fee, the newspaper said.
Skilbeck indicated that foreign lawyers were willing to compromise, saying that "a reasonable administrative fee might be possible."
The international judges may boycott a plenary meeting next month if the fee issue is not resolved, the tribunal office said in a statement Friday.
It said the judges discussed, during their meetings, "in exhaustive detail many points and resolved all remaining disagreements, although some fine tuning remains to be done."
But it indicated that the international judges believed that the proposed fee was an obstacle to adopting the agreed rules, while the Cambodia judges believed the fee was irrelevant to the package of rules.
The fee "is unacceptable to the international judges, who consider that it severely limits the rights of accused and victims to select counsel of their choice," the statement said.
The radical policies of the now-defunct Khmer Rouge, who held power in 1975-79, led to the deaths of about 1.7 million people from execution, overwork, disease and malnutrition. But none of the communist group's leaders has been brought to trial.
Squabbling over details about the rules to govern the trials has eaten up nearly a third of the tribunal's three-year planned life span. Further delay could mean that former Khmer Rouge leaders — now elderly and ailing — will never be brought to trial.
Prosecutors are expected to indict about 10 defendants, including the few surviving top Khmer Rouge leaders.
The tribunal was created by a 2003 agreement between Cambodia and the United Nations after years of difficult negotiations.
Khmer Rouge trial rules agreed at last
Reuters
by Ek Madra
March 16, 2007
PHNOM PENH, March 16 (Reuters) - The trials of surviving Khmer Rouge leaders moved a big step closer on Friday as international and Cambodian judges said they had finally agreed on the rules of the tribunal.
"The review committee discussed in exhaustive detail many points and resolved all remaining disagreements, although some fine tuning remains to be done," they said in a statement at the end of 10 days of talks.
Disagreements which had held up the start of the tribunal, set up last year by Cambodia and the United Nations, ranged from admissibility of evidence and witness protection to the height of the judges' chairs.
The statement gave few details of what the agreement entailed, but it appeared to have ended what diplomats said was the threat of the U.N. side to walk away from trials expected to take three years and cost $53 million.
But it said one remaining point at issue was the fee demanded by the Bar Association of the Kingdom of Cambodia (BAKC) for international lawyers to join it so they can appear.
"The latest decision of the BAKC imposes a fee that is unacceptable to the international judges, who consider that it severely limits the rights of accused and victims to select counsel of their choice," the statement said.
It did not say what fee the Bar Association was demanding, but said the international judges believed it should not be an obstacle and the two sides had promised to thrash out their differences by the end of April.
START DATE AWAITED
It remained unclear when the trials would begin of 10 surviving leaders of the Khmer Rouge, who emptied the cities and embarked on four years of radical agrarian revolution in which an estimated 1.7 million people were executed or died of hunger or disease.
But tribunal spokeswoman Helen Jarvis said the agreement meant they could start soon.
"It means step a big forward and we hope soon we will be able to move to the judicial process," she said without elaborating.
Pol Pot, the "Brother Number One" of the government which spawned the "Killing Fields", died in 1998.
But "Brother Number Two" Nuon Chea, former head of state Khieu Samphan and ex-Foreign Minister Ieng Sary are all living free in Cambodia and are due to face trial.
The only senior Khmer Rouge figure in detention is Duch, head of the notorious Tuol Sleng interrogation centre, a former school in Phnom Penh where at least 14,000 people were tortured and executed before a Vietnamese invasion ended their rule in 1979.
The path to their trials has been strewn with difficulties and there have been constant suspicions that the Cambodian government, despite its public protestations to the contrary, did not want them to go ahead.
The government has many officials with Khmer Rouge backgrounds who would not want their backgrounds investigated too closely and China worries details of its support of the back to the soil "Year Zero" government will come out, diplomats say.
The issue was raised at a meeting between the European Union and Southeast Asian foreign ministers this week in Nuremberg, scene of post-World War Two trials of German Nazi leaders.
Time has passed, but not all the things have been forgotten," EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana said as he urged a swift start to the trials.
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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
Selective Prosecutions Could Undermine Justice
Institute for War & Peace Reporting (London)
By Stephanie Wolters
March 7, 2007
The International Criminal Court's prosecution of Thomas Lubanga is too simplistic a solution to the vast array of war crimes committed in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Anyone who has been following recent events in the remote region of Ituri, and indeed in the wider Democratic Republic of Congo as a whole, could be forgiven for feeling as though they had accidentally called up an old press release from 2005, 2004, or even 2003. That is how long the United Nations and the Congolese army have been trying to stabilise the northeast of the country.
In late February, the United Nations mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo DRC, announced triumphantly - not for the first time - that the last remaining militia group in the Ituri district was finally coming to the party, its combatants disarming by the dozen every day.
The latest push to put a definitive end to the violence and looting in Ituri began last November, when the UN mission, known by the acronym MONUC, and the government managed to get the last three straggling militia leaders to agree to a plan which would see their fighters disarm and either demobilised or retrained to join the DRC army.
The men in question are Mathew Ngudjolo of the Revolutionary Movement of Congo, MRC, Cobra Matata of the Ituri Patriotic Resistance Front, FRPI, and Peter Karim of the Nationalist and Integrationist Front, FNI. They are second-and third-generation leaders of spin-offs from once-powerful militia movements that sprang up in 1999 and have been mutating ever since. Karim and Ngudjolo are opportunistic hangers-on who have ignored previous ceasefires and demobilisation campaigns because they simply had no interest and no motivation for taking part.
Their defiance has not cost them much. Although they have kept alive an ethnic conflict between Lendu agriculturalists and Hema pastoralists that has killed more than 50,000 people, devastated the economy of the mineral-rich region, and defied the best efforts of both the UN and the DRC's transitional government, they were nominated in November to senior positions in the Congolese military as an incentive to finally lay down their weapons.
The only leader not yet to have surrendered is Karim, who is now demanding amnesty in exchange for his surrender, and it looks like he might just get it.
Cut from Ituri in the far northeast to the crowded prison cells of "Pavillion 1", the increasingly dense VIP area in the central jail in the capital Kiprison nearly 2,000 kilometres to the west in Kinshasa, capital of the vast Congo, which is greater in size than western Europe. Some of the DRC's most high-profile civilian and military leaders now reside here.
The jail's population includes the leaders of the five main Ituri militia groups, who were thrown in prison in 2005 after the assassination of nine UN peacekeepers.
Prior to their incarceration, these leaders had lived in Kinshasa for almost two years at the behest of the transitional government, which led them to believe that they would be rewarded with senior state positions in return for cooperating with a peace process in Ituri.
When the UN peacekeepers were killed in Ituri, MONUC cracked down, issuing an ultimatum to the militia groups to disarm within months, or face pursuit and arrest by the UN. In an attempt to show it was taking the matter seriously, the transitional government arrested the leaders of all the groups, with little regard for whether or not they might have been involved in the incident. They remain in prison in Kinshasa to this day.
Only one Ituri militia leader- Chief Kahwa Mandro of the Hema-dominated Party for Unity and Safeguarding of the Integrity of Congo, or PUSIC, has been tried by a court in DRC. Apprehended in Ituri, he was tried on simple murder charges and given a lengthy prison sentence in Bunia, the regional capital. He is now appealing against his conviction.
Much more publicity surrounded the transfer of Thomas Lubanga, leader of the Hema-led Union of Congolese Patriots, UPC, to the International Criminal Court, ICC, at The Hague.
In February, the ICC ruled that the trial of Lubanga on the charge of recruiting child soldiers would go ahead, making him the first person ever to be tried by the fledgling war crimes court.
Lubanga and the UPC are widely held responsible for some of the worst massacres of the seven-year conflict in Ituri, and the fact that he is being tried has been greeted with much enthusiasm at home and abroad. However, the limited scope of the charge came as a disappointment for many who had hoped that the ICC would charge Lubanga with a wider range of crimes.
The ICC was set up to act where national legal systems cannot cope. But in Ituri the problem is not primarily that local legal systems are too rickety to be effective; it is that they are politicised and thus unwilling to move against people with powerful connections, whatever human rights abuses they may be accused of.
In the DRC, the transitional government led by President Joseph Kabila chose to feed Lubanga - who really counts as small fry in Congo's complex ladder of power - to the highly visible ICC, not because it believes in justice but precisely because it does not want to see it done across the board.
Lubanga is expendable: his initial arrest and incarceration in Kinshasa and now his trial have not cost Kabila or any of those sharing power with him in the transitional government a cent of their political currency, and never will.
It will certainly be a positive development if more Ituri militia leaders are eventually transferred to The Hague for trial. But for the Kabila government, the high-profile Lubanga trial far away in Europe will be a welcome sideshow that will distract public attention from the many cases in which justice has demonstrably not been served in the DRC's most recent conflict.
If the ICC chooses to accept this state of affairs by accepting the recommendations made by national governments and not widening its scope, then it will become a political vehicle for the leaders of those countries in which it is supposed to be helping to find justice.
The fact that the transitional government reacted so swiftly back by arresting Ituri militia leaders back in 2005 was not an indication of a real commitment either to help the UN or to accelerate the return of peace and stability to Ituri. Rather, it demonstrated the gulf between the situation in Ituri and the national peace process - and the expendability of its people, militia leaders or not.
One has to go back some way to trace the process by which Ituri has been sidelined.
None of the Ituri militia leaders participated in any of the national peace talks that ended the catastrophic and bewildering nationwide conflict - widely described as Africa's own First World War - that took some four million lives, and they did not sign the all-inclusive peace accords in Pretoria in December 2002.
This is in part because while the conflict in Ituri is linked to the broader war, the link is tangential and the local dynamics very different.
National rebel groups such as Mbusa Nyamwisi's RCD-K/ML (short for Rally for Congolese Democracy - Kisangani Movement for Liberation), and the Movement for the Liberation of the Congo, MLC, led by Jean-Pierre Bemba, did at various times control parts of the Ituri district. However, real power here lay with overlords from Ituri's immediate neighbour, Uganda, who deliberately stoked the smouldering conflict between the local Hema and Lendu ethnic communities, creating and backing one group after another.
The Ugandan army virtually annexed the region in 1999 and is alleged to have plundered its rich gold seams. As well as gold, the province has diamonds, timber and recently-discovered oil.
According to Human Rights Watch, official Ugandan export figures indicate that gold exports from that country are significant, accounting for 84 per cent of total mineral exports in 2001 even though domestic gold extraction is negligible. According to the same report, Uganda's gold exports reached 60 million US dollars in 2003 and 46 million dollars in 2004. Human Rights Watch said most of this gold originated in Ituri.
"Uganda is the number one gold-exporting country in this area without having a single gold mine. Tell me how that happens?" said a military intelligence official from the United Nations.
The Human Rights Watch report contained a damning assessment of Uganda's role in Ituri. "During its four years occupying the north-eastern DRC, the Ugandan army claimed to be a peacemaker in a region torn by ethnic strife. In reality, the Ugandan army provoked political confusion and created insecurity in areas under its control. From its initial involvement in a land dispute between the Hema and Lendu, the Ugandan army more often aggravated than calmed ethnic and political hostilities," it said.
The New York-based organisation further accused Uganda of playing the role of "both arsonist and fireman" and of meddling in political feuding among local Ituri leaders.
In 2002, when peace talks between Kabila's government, the main national rebel groups, the political opposition, and civil society groups kicked off in Sun City, South Africa, the exact nature and extent of the conflict in Ituri had not yet really caught the eye of the international community. Ituri's inter-ethnic conflict, stoked by Ugandan and also Rwandan interference, went almost totally ignored by the world and by Africa-based foreign correspondents. It was assumed that the MLC, RCD-K/ML and the RCD-N (Rally for Congolese Democracy-National) of Roger Lumbala amply reflected the situation there, even though they exercised minimal control over what was actually happening in the district.
Ultimately, the situation in Ituri was addressed by a MONUC-led peace effort that focused on the many local groups, and their exclusion from the national talks was not seen as necessarily detrimental. Adding the very specific Ituri conflict to the agenda of overall peace negotiations would likely have muddled both issues.
This exclusion nonetheless set the tone for recent developments in which Ituri has taken centre stage as the scene of the war's most horrific crimes, when, sadly, it is only one of many places in the DRC that have seen terrible atrocities and widespread war crimes.
The reality is that to date, Thomas Lubanga is the only Congolese rebel leader who has been formally charged with war crimes. Yet as the ICC continues to investigate other Ituri warlords, there are many other figures who are accused of committing or aiding and abetting abuses elsewhere across the vast expanses of the DRC, but are still free to go about their business.
There is, for example, Laurent Nkunda, a dissident commander in the Rwandan-backed RCD whose forces have been active in Kivu province, south of Ituri, since he rejected the offer of the post of general in the Congolese army in 2003. Nkunda has been accused of responsibility for grave human rights violations by the likes of Human Rights Watch and others, but has been seeking a blanket amnesty from the new government in exchange for laying down his arms.
Then there is Jean-Pierre Bemba, who was Kabila's main opponent in last year's presidential election, and whose MLC militia fighters were accused of horrific crimes against civilians in northwestern DRC in late 2002. Although the leaders of this action were put on trial and found guilty by the MLC itself, questions remain as to Bemba's command responsibility. The neighbouring Central African Republic has also referred a case to the ICC relating to crimes allegedly committed by Bemba's troops during an intervention in that country.
The list of those accused of human rights abuses in the DRC is very long, and includes members of all the rebel groups; the anarchic Mai Mai militias which publicly tortured victims before killing them; the government of Joseph Kabila and its predecessor led by his father, the late Laurent Kabila; the DRC military; and the Ugandan and Rwandan armies.
Local organisations such as the Voice of the Voiceless (Voix des sans Voix) and the African Human Rights Association, as well as international groups like Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, have documented these violations over the years in immense and horrific detail, and continue to advocate for justice.
The ICC says it too is investigating a number of other actors outside Ituri. But as the Lubanga trial demonstrates, building a case takes time and resources, neither of which the ICC has in abundance. There is also, as the case of Karim shows, the issue of whether amnesties as a carrot to end conflict should take precedence over justice.
These are not easy questions to resolve, but if justice is to be served at all in the DRC, the investigations must come to something - and sooner rather than later. It would be far too easy and convenient for the DRC authorities and the international community to be allowed to argue that the only atrocities worthy of investigation took place in Ituri.
Stephanie Wolters was the Congo correspondent of the BBC and Reuters from 1998 to 2001 and the chief news editor of the Congo's Radio Okapi in 2002-2003. She is currently Africa editor and deputy news editor of South Africa's award-winning Mail and Guardian newspaper.
Stressing need to end suffering in Northern Uganda, Ban Ki-moon hails talks
UN News Centre
March 12, 2007
Stressing the need to end the suffering in conflict-torn Northern Uganda, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today welcomed the latest pledges by the parties to hold their fire and voiced hope that formal peace negotiations will soon resume.
The Secretary-General’s Envoy for areas affected by the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), Joaquim Chissano, yesterday chaired a meeting in Ri-Kwangba, Southern Sudan, with the main parties and participants to the “Juba Peace Initiative,” a process named for the southern Sudanese town which has played host to talks on the issue.
Reacting to the latest diplomatic moves, a spokesman for Mr. Ban said he is “is pleased that all parties in attendance, including LRA leader Joseph Kony, reiterated their commitment to peace and stated their readiness to extend the Cessation of Hostilities Agreement to which they are currently bound.”
Pointing out that those who have taken part in this conflict bear a responsibility to end the suffering in Northern Uganda, the Secretary-General voiced hope that the discussions begun yesterday “can lead in the near future to a resumption of the Juba peace talks,” spokesperson Michele Montas said.
“The Secretary-General looks forward to further discussions on the situation of the LRA-affected areas when his Special Envoy visits New York later this month to brief the Security Council,” she added.
Mr. Chissano has been in the region since February carrying on consultations with the rebel group’s leadership and northern Ugandan parties, as well as with concerned regional countries.
Thousands of civilians have been killed or abducted since the LRA began its rebellion in 1986, and more than 1.5 million people have become internally displaced in Uganda. Humanitarian operations in southern Sudan, which the rebel group has often used as a base, have been severely disrupted.
Mr. Chissano was named in December, 2006 as the Secretary-General’s envoy to help with efforts to speed up negotiations towards a durable peace deal. As part of his mandate, Mr. Chissano, a former President of Mozambique, will liaise with the International Criminal Court (ICC), which has indicted Mr. Kony and four other senior LRA figures for war crimes.
UN Calls for DRC to Prioritise Child Protection
BuaNews (Tshwane)
By Nozipho Dlamini
March 13, 2007
The United Nations (UN) has called for the new government in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to make child protection a priority and ensure enough resources are allocated to reintegrate former child soldiers into their communities.
"Child protection must become a priority for the new Congolese Government," said UN Secretary-General's Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict, Radhika Coomaraswamy.
Ms Coomaraswamy made her remarks during a press conference in Goma, at the end of her six-day visit to the DRC.
During the visit she met with government officials, representatives from civil society, children affected by conflict and other relevant parties.
She noted that during her talks with the authorities they made commitments to tackle the issues of child recruitment and demobilisation of children associated with armed groups as well as on sexual violence.
"It is therefore very important to have long-term development strategies and to allocate appropriate funds to support the efforts of the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) and to child protection partners on the ground," she said.
This according to her will properly reintegrate former child soldiers into their communities to avoid re-recruitment by armed groups.
Ms Coomaraswamy stressed the importance of demobilising all the children who were still in the ranks of the non integrated armed groups as well as in the Congolese Armed Forces (FARDC).
In addition, she urged the authorities to take appropriate action against violators of children's rights who have committed war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Ms Coomaraswamy is now expected to report on her visit to Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon as well as to the Security Council Working Group on Children in Armed Conflict in May this year.
The issue of children and armed conflict is a major UN concern.
Last month, UNICEF and the French Government co-hosted a conference in Paris in which 59 countries, including the DRC, committed themselves to putting an end to unlawful recruitment and use of children in conflicts wherever they occur.
The conference's main objective was to come up with recommendations on how to free children from war and its consequences.
At that conference, Social Development Minister Zola Skweyiya said the total eradication of conflicts in the continent and the world would provide a lasting solution to the scourge of children in armed conflicts.
He said special attention should be given to girl children who were exploited by armed forces and groups.
"Some of these children go through the horror of rape and many other forms of sexual violence," he said.
"In our country we are informed in our approach towards child protection by a principle that says "Any Child is my Child", and another which says "It takes a village to raise a child".
"These philosophies drive us in making our contributions towards making our country, and the world, a better place for children," said Dr Skweyiya.
The UN mission in the DRC (MONUC) has overseen the DRC's transition from a six-year civil war that cost 4 million lives in fighting and attendant hunger and disease, widely considered the most lethal conflict in the world since World War II, to gradual stabilisation.
This culminated in the first democratic elections in over four decades last year, the largest and most complex polls the UN has ever helped to organise.
Tension is high in DR Congo with a deadline for troops loyal to former presidential candidate Jean-Pierre Bemba to disarm set to expire.
BBC News
March 16, 2007
Last week, the army gave Mr Bemba's guards an ultimatum to stand down.
But dozens of armed men are still at his residential compound in the centre of the capital, Kinshasa.
Mr Bemba, a former rebel leader, was defeated by Joseph Kabila in landmark presidential elections in October last year.
Mr Kabila now wants him to downscale his private security force, but Mr Bemba refuses to be left without armed guards.
Police replacements
Congolese Defence Minister Tshikez Diemu told the BBC that violence would not be used to disarm the guards of Mr Bemba and another former rebel leader and defeated election candidate, Azarias Ruberwa.
"We have suffered so much," he said.
He appealed to both men to disband their armed guards for the sake of the country's stability.
The BBC's Arnaud Zajtman in Kinshasa says Mr Bemba's guards have been patrolling the streets around his residential compound day and night.
They now wear the combat gear they were seen in during several violent clashes last year.
Most have tied red handkerchiefs around their heads. They have been carrying their usual AK rifles, but unconfirmed reports in the local press say some have also been seen with bows and arrows.
Last year, the UN mission in DR Congo (Monuc) estimated that Mr Bemba's armed guard comprised some 200 men.
Soldiers from DR Congo's armed forces, meanwhile, have taken up positions around the compound and UN peacekeepers in armoured vehicles have increased patrols.
Foreign nationals have received text messages from their embassies advising them to avoid the area, while schools in central Kinshasa are closed, our correspondent adds.
The army set the deadline for Mr Bemba and Mr Ruberwa to disband their armed guards last week.
They have been told to send the guards to an army reintegration programme and to accept a detachment of police guards instead.
But they have both rejected the army deadline and are asking for further negotiations.
Training for Congolese Officials in the Fight Against Impunity
United Nations Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (Kinshasa)
By Eoin Young
March 16, 2007
Diplomas were handed out to the 21 participants at the Kimbanguiste centre in Kinshasa on Friday March 16, 2007, which was the culmination of a two week training programme for Congolese police, military and judicial authorities, aimed at strengthening their investigative capacities in cases of human rights violations.
MONUC's Human Rights division, in conjunction with the International Institute for Criminal Investigation (IICI), were the organizers of the two week training session aimed at strengthening the local authorities' capacities in the fight against impunity in the DRC.
The training programme, which was funded by the Swedish government, was undertaken by auditors, procurers, judges, inspectors and judicial police, and was coordinated by the ICII.
Traolach Sweeney, training instructor for ICII, explained that the idea behind the programme was to develop and enhance local investigative capacity for human rights violations in a Congolese context.
"The programme both academic and practical based, and we hope that the training has left them with a better knowledge and capacity to investigate crimes against humanity," he said.
A spokesperson for the Auditor General of the FARDC, who was unable to be present at the ceremony, said that their work 'has an impact on society, so they must therefore act as a team.'
"I think this extra training will have an impact on our country, as magistrates and others will be better able to fight against impunity," he said.
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Darfur, Sudan (ICC)
Official Website of the International Criminal Court
ICC Public Documents - Situation in Darfur, Sudan
Sudan: Allow International Monitoring of Darfur Trials
Human Rights Watch
March 7, 2007
(New York, March 7, 2007) – Sudan should immediately open its special court trials to independent international monitors who can report publicly on proceedings, Human Rights Watch said today. On March 6, Sudan announced it will start trial proceedings today in a special criminal court in Geneina against three people on charges relating to attacks in West Darfur. One of the accused, “Ali Kosheib” (a pseudonym for Ali Mohammed Ali), was named as a suspect by the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in court filings last week.
Under the Rome Statute, the ICC will find a case inadmissible if it determines that the national authorities are genuinely willing and able to investigate or prosecute the case in the national justice system. The national proceedings must encompass both the person and the conduct which is the subject of the case before the ICC in order for a case to be inadmissible.
"The decision to try Ali Kosheib immediately following the ICC prosecutor's announcement is obviously an attempt to pre-empt the international court case," said Sara Darehshori, senior counsel in Human Rights Watch's International Justice program. "Sudan should let independent international monitors into the country to observe the trial in if it wants to show that it's anything other than window dressing."
In June 2005, one day after the ICC prosecutor publicly announced he would be starting an investigation into the events in Darfur, Sudan's chief justice announced the establishment of Special Criminal Courts on the Events in Darfur , which he said was "considered a substitute to the International Criminal Court."
In the nearly two years since the Special Criminal Courts were established, the few cases that have been brought before them have only involved low-ranking individuals for relatively minor offenses. No one has been charged with command responsibility.
A number of legal shortcomings in Sudan present obstacles to prosecutions. These include a lack of clarity in the law on which to prosecute crimes against humanity and war crimes, and provisions granting immunity to members of the armed forces, national security agencies and police. In addition, a high standard of proof and ill-treatment of rape victims by the police have made it difficult for rape victims to pursue their charges.
"The government has so far fallen well short of the mark in bringing to trial those accused of horrific crimes in Darfur," said Darehshori. "Given Sudan's poor track record, it is essential that independent international observers be invited to Sudan to be able to view the proceedings in Geneina."
Court acts, but killing in Darfur goes on
Newspaper Enterprise Association
By Nat Hentoff
March 14, 2007
On Feb. 17, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Luis Moreno Ocampo, accused a leading member of the Sudanese government — Ahmed Haroun, deputy minister of what Sudan calls humanitarian affairs — of “criminal responsibility” for mass murders, mass rapes and other “inhuman acts” against black Muslims in Darfur. President Bush accurately calls these horrors acts of genocide.
Also charged was Ali Kushayb, primary leader of the Khartoum government’s hired Arab militia, the Janjaweed, which has been the frontline perpetrator of the mass murders and rapes, some of which have included black African children. Haroun has been the chief supplier and paymaster of the Janjaweed.
Issuance of warrants and summonses for these two heavily documented suspects of genocide will not end the accelerating pace of what the impotent United Nations has called the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.
‘NO JURISDICTION’
Sudan’s Minister of Justice (as defined by this infamous government), Mohamed Ali al-Mardi, has indignantly declared: “The International Criminal Court has no jurisdiction to try any Sudanese, and the Sudanese government will not allow any Sudanese to be tried and punished outside of Sudan.” (The court is in the Hague, Netherlands.)
Moreover, on Feb. 22, Sudan’s monster-in-chief, President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, was enthusiastically welcomed in Detroit at the national conference of The Nation of Islam, best known for its indisposed leader, Louis Farrakhan. Bashir charged his critics with “lies and imposing solutions that don’t respect the dignity of our nation.” Some 450,000 black Muslims in Darfur have thus far been killed or have otherwise died as a result of the genocide.
DANGEROUS FOR INTERVIEWERS
Sudan’s epidemic of official violence is such that ICC investigators gathered evidence by interviewing survivors of the genocide in other countries because it was too dangerous for them to go into Bashir’s blood-soaked nation.
So now, who will bring troops into Sudan to deliver the criminal court’s summonses to the humanitarian minister and the head of the Janjaweed, which has forced 2.5 million black Muslims into becoming refugees who are still attacked by the Janjaweed?
The court, which was given authority to conduct its investigation by the United Nations Security Council, has no police or army. For a single life to be saved or a single rape to be prevented, the United Nations must, by its rules, persuade Bashir to allow U.N. troops into his sovereign nation to serve the warrants. It’s like trying to cajole Hitler into allowing Doctors Without Borders into Auschwitz.
In January, the general, who by all logic should also be served with a summons, pledged to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Kim Moon that he would cooperate with the U.N. proposal to at least send a human-rights team into his nation. As is his custom, the general has reneged on his pledge.
The secretary-general’s reaction is “disappointment.” He did not show a determination for the United Nations to, at long last, actually do something to restore some credibility to that body after all the Security Council’s resolutions and postures of concern about these atrocities that will soon amass many more corpses than Rwanda’s genocide, which the United Nations also did nothing to stop.
Dr. Susan Rice of the Brookings Institution, the State Department’s assistant secretary of state for African Affairs during the Clinton administration, told National Public Radio on Feb. 27 that since we have failed to “physically protect those that are being killed ... it’s not sufficient to negotiate. We need to protect the people who are dying every day even as we speak.”
WHO WILL STEP IN?
I see no other end to this daily genocide than military force. But by whom? If there is no such coalition of willing nations, what does that tell us of the world in which we live — and what has become of us as Americans? We, too have abandoned the remaining black men, women and children of Darfur. Has a single presidential candidate made their survival a “priority” or even mentioned them?
Nat Hentoff is a nationally renowned authority on the First Amendment and the Bill of Rights.
Secretary-General says Sudan’s reply on Darfur ‘not satisfactory,’ frustration grows
UN News Service
March 15, 2007
15 March 2007 – Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today said he had told Sudan’s President that his reply to UN calls for speedy deployment of a United Nations-African Union (AU) hybrid force for Darfur was “not satisfactory,” while dissatisfaction is growing among Member States and intensive diplomacy continues in a bid to end the conflict in the strife-torn region.
The Secretary-General spoke with Sudanese President Omar Hassan Al Bashir last Saturday by phone, when Sudan’s leader also invited him to visit the country, Mr. Ban told reporters at UN Headquarters today, adding that he had not yet made a decision on this.
“I told him that while I accept his invitation in principle the details…should be discussed through diplomatic channels. I expressed my regret [about his reply]…that he made a number of reservations on ideas that were jointly proposed by the United Nations and African Union,” Mr. Ban said, adding that he had urged Mr. Bashir to accept the proposals for the hybrid force.
“There is growing frustration among the members of the United Nations, particularly the Security Council,” the Secretary-General said in response to questions. “What is important at this time, even though we are frustrated, the political process has been going on. My Special Representative and the AU Special Representative are going to visit Sudan next week again.”
“My own hope is that as we have been going through this political dialogue with the Sudanese Government and even though the response letter of President Bashir was not a satisfactory one, now I’m in the process of making all diplomatic efforts, including AU leaders.”
Mr. Ban received the President’s letter, responding to correspondence he’d sent in January, last week. The reply also contained a 14-page annex in Arabic.
The hybrid force represents the final phase of a three-phase plan agreed to by the UN, AU and Sudanese Government in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, last year to help end the fighting between the Sudanese Government, allied militias and rebels seeking greater autonomy. So far the brutal conflict, which started in 2003, has killed over 200,000 people and uprooted 2.5 million more.
Chilling abuses chronicled as UN human rights mission to Darfur presents report
UN News Service
March 16, 2007
16 March 2007 – Sudanese Government forces, allied Janjaweed militias and rebel groups are guilty of serious human rights abuses and violations of international law in Darfur, where murders, rapes, acts of torture and arbitrary arrest occur with chilling frequency, the head of the United Nations High-Level Mission said today as she presented her report to the Human Rights Council.
Jody Williams, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate, told the Council that ineffective justice mechanisms, the free flow of weapons and a climate of impunity meant Darfur had become a stranger to the rule of law.
She said civilians had become the main target in the conflict, which has also exacerbated the underlying social and economic deprivation in Darfur.
More than 200,000 people have been killed and at least 2 million others forced from their homes since 2003 when rebel forces first took up arms against the Sudanese Government. The conflict is threatening to spill over into neighbouring Chad and the Central African Republic (CAR).
The High-Level Mission’s report, published on Monday, calls on the Sudanese Government to cooperate with the deployment of the proposed hybrid UN-African Union (AU) force without delay and to give its full cooperation with the International Criminal Court (ICC), which may hold war crimes trials.
It also urges the international community to step up pressure, as individual Member States and through mechanisms such as the UN Human Rights Council, to ensure that the conflict ends, civilians are protected and the victims receive justice.
An independent national human rights commission should be created and the Sudanese Government should also immediately remove all obstacles to humanitarian assistance from the UN and non-governmental organizations (NGOs), Ms. Williams said today.
The five-member mission was unable to get into Darfur because of visa restrictions, but still met hundreds of people and reviewed countless documents relating to the issue during its month of work that finished on 5 March. The mission visited Geneva, Addis Ababa and several cities and refugee camps in Chad.
Speaking after Ms. Williams presented the report to the Council in Geneva, Sudan’s representative Mohamed Ali Emardi said the report lacked impartiality and was part of a conspiracy against his country.
He said the international community had remained silent against those rebel groups which did not sign last year’s peace agreement that was supposed to end the fighting in Darfur, a vast region roughly the size of France.
Speaking to reporters later today, Ms. Williams said the mission’s members had known that their work would be challenged, and that the team had therefore been very careful to ensure that it operated entirely legally under its mandate, as well as in good faith, “always keeping in mind the needs of the people of Darfur.”
She added that the “responsibility to protect” principle had emerged because of the international community’s shame about its failure to act during the 1994 genocide in Rwanda.
“Many of the people that we met with in Chad, in the refugee camps, are giving up hope in the belief that the responsibility to protect doesn’t seem to have any meaning or relevance in their lives and in addressing the situation in Darfur.
“Responsibility to protect is supposed to be [about] protecting the people, not protecting the Government to retain its power to continue abusing those people.”
ICC judges sack defence counsel in Darfur case
Sudan Tribune
By Wasil Ali
March 17, 2007
March 16, 2007 (THE HAGUE) — The International Criminal Court (ICC) sacked the Libyan counsel of defence in Darfur case from his duties. The judges said he presented baseless requests and motions. Furthermore they described the filings made to challenge the jurisdiction of the ICC in Darfur as “frivolous and vexatious”.
The judges of the International Criminal Court (ICC) today issued a strongly worded decision ordering the world court’s registry to relieve Hadi Shalluf from his responsibilities as the counsel for defence in Darfur case. The judges also dismissed Shalluf’s request to be compensated for his legal services in the period from December 2006 to February 2007.
The Libyan born counsel was appointed by the court on August 2006 to represent and protect the general interests of the defence in the Darfur case before the ICC.
The judges of the Pre-Trial Chamber I of the ICC who were assigned the Darfur case, invited the observations of Antonio Cassese the head of UN commission of inquiry on Darfur and by Louise Arbour the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights concerning the protection of victims and the preservation of evidence in Darfur.
The judges also asked the defence counsel to specifically address the issues raised by Cassese and Arbor in their observations. However, he ignored the observations and filed a long series of motions to challenge the jurisdiction of the Court and the admissibility of the Darfur case at the ICC that were eventually rejected by the judges.
Shalluf sent a letter to the head of the Division of Victims and Counsel, who handles the issues relating to counsel fees, at the ICC requesting that payments be made to him on services rendered for the periods of 1st to 31st December 2006 and 1st to 31st January.
He was informed on February 13 that no payment would be made to him for that time period on the grounds that he exceeded the scope of his mandate. The defence counsel filed a motion earlier this week challenging this decision saying it is “unlawful, flawed, void and unfair” and asking the judges to order the court’s registry to pay him for the work he performed during the last three months. Shalluf also requested in his filing the intervention of the chief prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo to give his opinion on the matter.
The judges said in their decision that Shalluf’s mandate was strictly to respond to the observations of Cassese and Arbor within ten days of their submission and the defence counsel failed to file a timely response as requested by the court.
The defence counsel was reprimanded by the judges for filing “an inordinate number of baseless requests and motions; that he has completely disregarded the precise and clear scope of his mandate by adopting his own interpretation of the mandate”. Furthermore the judges described the filings made by Shalluf to challenge the admissibility and the jurisdiction of the ICC in Darfur as “frivolous and vexatious” and that the defence counsel “is in no position to demand payment of fees for that time period”.
The decision is not likely to have any impact on the Darfur case proceedings. Shalluf has previously accused the court in an interview published this week of “racial bias” because of his Middle Eastern background. He also criticized the Sudanese government for “not taking the ICC seriously” and offered to fully cooperate with Khartoum to handle the Darfur case. However the head of Sudan’s bar association Fathi Khalil was quoted as saying that Khartoum is not interested in any dealings with the ICC or Shalluf as such.
The Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court Luis Moreno Ocampo announced on February 27 that he filed charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity against Ahmed Muhammed Harun the Sudanese minister for Humanitarian Affairs and Janjaweed militia leader Ali Kosheib.
Sudan has not ratified the Rome Statue, but the UN Security Council triggered the provisions under the Statue that enables it to refer situations in non-State parties to the world court if it deems that it is a threat to international peace and security.
Sudan cuts world-court ties
News24
March 19, 2007
Cairo - Sudan has decided to suspend all co-operation with the International Criminal Court in response to its accusations that Sudanese officials were involved in war crimes in Darfur, said the justice minister and a pro-government newspaper on Sunday.
Sudan has refused to hand over suspects to the international court for trial on Darfur war crimes.
Still, Khartoum has co-operated with the court on some levels, in particular by allowing its investigators to visit Sudan several times in recent years.
The government did not specify whether it would no longer grant them entry.
"We had extended our co-operation with the ICC for some time, but now the situation is completely different," justice minister Mohammed Ali al-Mardi said from Geneva, where he was attending a United Nations human rights council meeting.
Minister accused
"It's not even a question of co-operation anymore, it's a question that they (the ICC) want to try Sudanese citizens, which is absolutely nonsensical," said the justice minister.
Last month, The Hague-based court accused a Sudanese minister of state and a militia leader of orchestrating massacres, mass rapes and the forcible transfer of thousands of civilians from their homes in the remote Darfur region of western Sudan.
The court's top prosecutor said Ahmed Muhammed Harun - formerly a junior interior minister responsible for Darfur and now minister of state for humanitarian affairs - and Ali Mohammed Ali Abd-al-Rahman - also known as Ali Kushayb, a suspected leader of the pro-government janjaweed militia -were suspected of a total of 51 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
The janjaweed are blamed for widescale atrocities against ethnic African civilians in Darfur amid a government campaign to put down rebels in the large territory of western Sudan.
Turned down delegation idea
More than 200 000 people have died and more than 2.5 million people have been displaced in four years of fighting.
Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir chaired a meeting of cabinet ministers and high-ranking judicial officials that decided to cancel co-operation with the court, reported the Al-Ray Al-Aam daily newspaper, deemed close to government circles, on Sunday.
The presidential meeting turned down a suggestion from some government officials to send a delegation to The Hague to contest the case with the ICC, said the paper.
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Uganda (ICC)
Official Website of the International Criminal Court
ICC Public Documents - Situation in Uganda
Stressing need to end suffering in Northern Uganda, Ban Ki-moon hails talks
United Nations
March 12, 2007
Stressing the need to end the suffering in conflict-torn Northern Uganda, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today welcomed the latest pledges by the parties to hold their fire and voiced hope that formal peace negotiations will soon resume.
The Secretary-General’s Envoy for areas affected by the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), Joaquim Chissano, yesterday chaired a meeting in Ri-Kwangba, Southern Sudan, with the main parties and participants to the “Juba Peace Initiative,” a process named for the southern Sudanese town which has played host to talks on the issue.
Reacting to the latest diplomatic moves, a spokesman for Mr. Ban said he is “is pleased that all parties in attendance, including LRA leader Joseph Kony, reiterated their commitment to peace and stated their readiness to extend the Cessation of Hostilities Agreement to which they are currently bound.”
Pointing out that those who have taken part in this conflict bear a responsibility to end the suffering in Northern Uganda, the Secretary-General voiced hope that the discussions begun yesterday “can lead in the near future to a resumption of the Juba peace talks,” spokesperson Michele Montas said.
“The Secretary-General looks forward to further discussions on the situation of the LRA-affected areas when his Special Envoy visits New York later this month to brief the Security Council,” she added.
Mr. Chissano has been in the region since February carrying on consultations with the rebel group’s leadership and northern Ugandan parties, as well as with concerned regional countries.
Thousands of civilians have been killed or abducted since the LRA began its rebellion in 1986, and more than 1.5 million people have become internally displaced in Uganda. Humanitarian operations in southern Sudan, which the rebel group has often used as a base, have been severely disrupted.
Mr. Chissano was named in December, 2006 as the Secretary-General’s envoy to help with efforts to speed up negotiations towards a durable peace deal. As part of his mandate, Mr. Chissano, a former President of Mozambique, will liaise with the International Criminal Court (ICC), which has indicted Mr. Kony and four other senior LRA figures for war crimes.
U.N. envoy meets Uganda rebel Kony in Congo
Reuters / Washington Post
By Tim Cocks
March 12, 2007
KAMPALA (Reuters) - The new U.N. envoy for Uganda's conflict met the fugitive Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) rebel leader Joseph Kony at his jungle hideout in a bid to restart stalled peace talks, Kony's deputy said on Monday.
Former Mozambique President Joaquim Chissano flew with Ugandan government officials for the talks in northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo on Sunday, Vincent Otti, the LRA's second-in-command, told Reuters by satellite telephone.
"They came yesterday," Otti said, adding that Chissano was accompanied by south Sudan's Vice President Riek Machar, the head of the Ugandan government's peace team, Internal Affairs Minister Ruhakana Rugunda, and Ugandan members of parliament.
Machar is the chief mediator at stop-start peace talks between the internationally wanted rebels and Uganda's government that began in July in southern Sudan's capital Juba.
One group of LRA guerrillas is in south Sudan, but the main force led by Kony -- who is wanted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court (ICC) -- has stayed hidden in DRC.
Otti gave no details of Chissano's meeting with Kony.
"It was positive. ... We told them what we wanted, and we are waiting for a response," he said, without elaborating.
CHISSANO "CIRCUMSPECT"
A U.N. official said Chissano was unlikely to comment.
"Kony met Chissano in the bush," the spokesman said. "Chissano's delegation want to remain circumspect. I don't believe they will be making public statements."
A truce in August raised hopes of ending 20 years of war that have killed tens of thousands of people and uprooted 1.7 million more in northern Uganda. But it expired in February.
A month earlier, LRA delegates walked out of the Juba talks saying they feared for their safety after Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir threatened to "get rid" of the rebels from Sudan.
They demanded a new venue be found in another country.
Analysts say the LRA negotiators -- most of them rebel sympathizers from the Ugandan Diaspora -- are pushing a political agenda in which the commanders have little interest.
By meeting the LRA bosses directly, Chissano -- who began his posting as U.N. envoy for the war in January -- could be trying to cut out the middlemen to spur the talks, they say.
But some fear the top LRA leaders will never make peace with the government until the ICC drops its indictments against them.
In January, Chissano said the matter of the arrest warrants was between The Hague-based court and Uganda's government.
Uganda's war victims live on hope
BBC News, northern Uganda
By Karen Allen
March 15, 2007
It is a scene of utter devastation: a camp for people who have fled Uganda's most feared rebel movement - the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) -is ablaze just a few kilometres away from the town of Kitgum.
Round mud huts with straw thatched roofs have been reduced to ashes, and people are frantically trying to salvage a few possessions.
Groundnuts blackened with smoke are strewn across the ground and lose pages of a child's science text book have been singed by flames.
People are gingerly returning back to ancestral lands, returning to the safety of the camp at night
For at least 50 households in this camp, they have lost everything they own.
This after 20 years living under the shadow of the LRA, forced to flee their homes.
In the past the LRA rebels were blamed for torching entire settlements. This time round the fire at the camp is an accident.
A child has knocked over a cooking stove and with strong winds, the flames have quickly spread.
Camp leaders are urging people not to despair, reminding them that in the past two decades they have lost so much more.
Choice
Each and every one of them has seen a loved one snatched or killed by the rebels, infamous for their brutality. All have been made homeless.
The tens of thousands of people packed into camps like these face a difficult choice: either risk the cramped and dangerous living conditions like these, or return to their villages and face the lingering threat of the LRA.
Yet many are certain that peace is the closest it has ever been.
Some are gingerly returning back to their ancestral lands commuting daily and returning to the safety of the camp at night.
It is impossible to judge just how many of the 1.7m people who have been displaced are making this journey, but it is an upward trend.
United Nations envoy Joachim Chissano, Mozambique's former leader, has just made a second visit to rebel leaders across the border hiding deep in the jungles of the Democratic Republic of Congo.
His mission was to persuade them to resume peace talks in Juba, stalled by disputes over power-sharing and accusations of bias.
Abduction
Meanwhile, a few hundred kilometres away in northern Uganda, John Otuu and his son Bosco spent the day tilling the 10 acres of land they abandoned 12 years ago.
“We are all tired of war everybody is tired of it and we just want to be able to move on and return home”
John Otuu, camp resident
The hope is that in the coming months, they will move back to the land full time - despite the horrors of Mr Otuu seeing his 13-year-old daughter abducted by the rebels.
"I strongly believe that through negotiations we can get genuine peace... we are all tired of war everybody is tired of it and we just want to be able to move on and return to our ancestral home," he says.
Like a considerable number in the Acholi community, Mr Otuu's family believes reconciliation with the LRA is the only option.
Achievable, they argue, using traditional means of justice called mato oput rather than criminal prosecutions.
Games
The International Criminal Court has indicted Joseph Kony, the head of the LRA, and his top lieutenants for war crimes.
Yet the overwhelming sense on the ground is that this could prove counterproductive and alternatives need to be considered.
So increasingly Acholi leaders have acted as mediators to try and get the LRA and Ugandan government to return to the negotiating table and reach some kind of deal.
There have been games played by both sides which have brought into question the desire of each to achieve genuine peace.
The Ugandan authorities accuse the LRA of being behind recent attacks on Ugandan transport vehicles heading across the border from Sudan, even though there are strong suspicions that Sudanese rebels or bandits may have been to blame.
In January, meanwhile, the LRA stormed out of negotiations demanding fresh location for the talks, accusing Sudanese mediators of bias.
Yet despite all this there is an overwhelming sense of optimism amongst the people who have endured this 20-year civil war.
Progress
Norbert Mao the elected representative for the district of Gulu, has been instrumental in trying to bridge the gap between the rebels and the Ugandan government which is politically unpopular in this part of the country.
“This is the only time the LRA has put its signature on any document - namely the cessation of hostilities agreement and we want that truce revived”
Norbert Mao
Gulu's peace representative
He points to the falling numbers of youngsters attending rehabilitation centres for ex-LRA child soldiers, as evidence that the rebels are running out of steam.
He insists that pressure from the people of northern Uganda will ultimately result in peace.
High hopes, despite failed attempts at resolution to this conflict in the past.
"This is the furthest we've ever gone in this peace process," he says.
"This is the only time the LRA has put its signature on any document - namely the cessation of hostilities agreement and we want that truce revived."
It is hard to say whether the genuine desire for peace amongst ordinary Ugandans will be matched by the actions of the LRA and the Ugandan government.
There may be positive signs of a resumption of talks, but the level of mistrust that persists cannot be underestimated.
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International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY)
Official Website of the ICTY
Srebrenica Muslims want town to get special status
Reuters
By Daria Sito-Sucic
March 5, 2007
SARAJEVO, March 5 (Reuters) - Muslim survivors of the 1995 Srebrenica massacre are threatening a mass exodus unless their town is granted special administrative status, shedding the authority of the Bosnian Serbs, their former tormentors.
The brutal 1992-95 war between Bosnia's Serbs, Croats and Muslims ended with the Dayton peace deal that split the country into two autonomous regions, the Muslim-Croat federation and the Serb Republic.
Srebrenica, 90 percent Muslim before the war, comes under the jurisdiction of the Serb Republic along with most of eastern Bosnia.
Now local politicians say this must change because of an International Court of Justice ruling last week that the 1995 massacre of 8,000 Muslim men and boys near the town by Bosnian Serb forces constituted genocide.
"If there is any morality in the international community, it will not allow the victims of genocide to be ruled by those who committed genocide on them," said Sadik Ahmetovic, a Srebrenica politician and MP.
"Either Srebrenica will be outside the jurisdiction of the Serb Republic or we shall all move out of Srebrenica."
Several thousand Muslims have returned to the now Serb-majority town, mostly women duty bound to tend the graves of relatives in the vast Srebrenica memorial cemetery.
Bosnian Muslim leaders have circulated a declaration that was signed by many prominent Srebrenica citizens, and have proposed a status similar to that of the northern river port city of Brcko, a "neutral district" running its own affairs.
They have now given the authorities until mid-March to come up with a proposal on Srebrenica's future status.
Serb Republic Prime Minister Milorad Dodik has expressed regret and apologised to the victims for what he said was "a heinous crime" but has denied that genocide took place.
On Monday, Dodik appealed to Srebrenica's Muslim residents to ignore what he called manipulation by politicians and stay put. He also promised to allocate extra funds to revitalise the neglected town.
Muslims said it was too late.
"You can't put a price on the denial of genocide," Ahmetovic told Reuters. "We wouldn't budge even if the Serb Republic allocated its entire budget to Srebrenica.
Lawyer Dismissed from Operation Storm Trial
Institute for War and Peace Reporting
By Caroline Tosh
March 9, 2007
Judges hearing the case of three Croatian army generals have ordered a former justice minister to withdraw due to a conflict of interest.
Hague tribunal judges this week removed former Croatian justice minister Miroslav Separovic from his role as defence lawyer for the indicted Croatian general Mladen Markac.
The judges noted in their March 6 decision that Separovic had a “personal interest” in the case and was likely to be called as a witness.
Markac will go on trial on May 7 with two other Croatian generals, Ante Gotovina and Ivan Cermak. The three men are charged with the murder, persecution and deportation of ethnic Serbs during Operation Storm – a Croatian military operation launched in the summer of 1995 with the objective of retaking the Serb-held Krajina region.
Separovic, a Zagreb attorney, was Croatia’s justice minister during the time period relevant to the indictment
Judges ordered Markac to find a new lawyer, and told Separovic to assist his replacement who will have until March 30 to tell the trial chamber how much time he or she needs to take over the case.
There is no indication whether or not the trial will be put back to give the new defence counsel time to prepare.
In the ruling, judges dismissed Separovic’s protests – made at a hearing on February 28 – in which he denied having any personal interest in the trial and refused to withdraw.
They noted that one possible defence for the three men – who are charged with criminal responsibility for the acts of their subordinates – would be to shift responsibility from the Ministry of Defence to the Ministry of Justice. They noted that Separovic had ruled out using this defence, and found that if he continued to represent Markac it would “foreclose” a potential defence to his client.
Judges added that Separovic’s personal knowledge meant that it was “probable” that he would be called as a witness - a development that would place him “in a situation of having his professional judgment adversely affected by divided loyalties”.
They also dismissed his claim that Markac would suffer “hardship” if Separovic stopped defending him.
Instead, they found that “the harm caused to Markac and to the integrity of proceedings by Separovic’s continued representation would outweigh any hardship suffered by Markac” as a result of his lawyer withdrawing.
The code of conduct for defence lawyers at the tribunal outlaws counsel representing a client where there is a conflict of interest.
Article 14 of the code states that a counsel “shall not represent a client in connection with a matter in which counsel participated personally and substantially as an official or staff member of the tribunal or in any other capacity”. Further, article 26 says, “Counsel shall not act as an advocate in a proceeding in which counsel is likely to be a necessary witness except where… substantial hardship would be caused to the client if that counsel does not so act.”
Any lawyer in breach of the code can face disciplinary procedures.
Michael Karnavas, defence counsel at the tribunal and president of the Association of Defence Counsel Practising Before the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, ADC-ICTY, outlined possible scenarios in which a conflict of interest might arise for a defence lawyer.
“In a conflict-of-interest situation, you have to consider – do you have information that might assist your client but may be adverse to you?” he said. “Another clear example is where you have to choose between clients, or if information emerges that you are privy to because of your position,” he added.
In this case, Gotovina’s defence team first pointed out the potential conflicts of interest in April 2006, when opposing the prosecution’s proposal to join their client’s case with that of the other two former generals.
Lawyers indicated that they intended to call Separovic as a witness for Gotovina’s defence and said his testimony could help prove their client had no authority to investigate or punish criminal behaviour by military subordinates.
They flagged up a second potential conflict of interest in the same trial – as Cermak’s lawyers Jadranka Slokovic and Cedo Prodanovic were also representing Croatian general Rahim Ademi in a forthcoming war crimes trial in Croatia.
Gotovina claimed that Ademi was his chief of staff and second in command during Operation Storm and therefore would be a “crucial” witness for his defence.
When the decision to join the cases was confirmed on appeal on October 25, the appeals chamber said that unless Separovic could demonstrate his withdrawal would cause “substantial hardship” to Markac, he should withdraw.
The appeals judges said it wasn’t yet certain whether Prodanovic and Slokovic would face a conflict of loyalties in representing both Cermak and Ademi, but said that the lawyers must inform their clients of the potential conflict of interest relating to their dual representation.
An advisory opinion from the ADC-ICTY’s disciplinary council from January 17 also found that Separovic had a conflict of interest and called for him to withdraw.
Separovic’s persistence in defending his client in spite of these warnings to withdraw has led some trial observers to question why his appointment was allowed in the first place.
Court spokesman Refik Hodzic said at a press conference on February 28 that the registry had accepted Separovic on the merits of his qualifications - but added that details emerged during pre-trial proceedings where it “became obvious” that he had personal interest in the case.
It is not possible for the registry to investigate every defence counsel in detail before a case starts, Hodzic added
Karnavas told IWPR that Separovic’s representation went against the tribunal’s rules and that it was the trial chamber’s responsibility to take action against any potential conflict of interest in order to protect the rights of the accused.
He said ADC-ICTY had received no complaints in relation to the case, and would not be taking disciplinary action against Separovic.
“In order for the ADC to start disciplinary proceedings against a defence counsel, a party has to file a complaint. That can be the trial chamber, the prosecution or another lawyer,” he explained.
Goran Sluiter, a professor of international criminal law at the University of Amsterdam, is not surprised by judges’ decision to throw Separovic off the case.
“This seems to be a very clear case of a conflict of interest,” he said.
He points out a further potential conflict of interest which could arise at the tribunal, with some lawyers who start working at the tribunal as prosecutors crossing over to work for the defence.
One example is Gotovina’s defence attorney Gregory Kehoe, who previously worked as a prosecutor in the trial of former Bosnian Croat general Tihomir Blaskic, who was sentenced on appeal to nine years in prison.
But Sluiter added that judges allow former prosecutors to act as defence counsel only where they have not previously worked as prosecutors on the same case.
Kehoe told IWPR that as he never worked on the current case during his time with the prosecution, “there’s no conflict”.
He feels that the decision to take Separovic off the case was “a bit premature” and said he had proposed a different solution to the trial chamber.
“I asked the court to give us time to discuss it with the [prosecution] to see if we could agree on his testimony. If so, there would have been no need to take him off the case,” he said. “But the court refused to explore that resolution.”
"The issue hadn't been explored and I don't think it would have prejudiced anything to explore it further."
War crimes prosecutor slams 'muted' European response to Srebrenica genocide ruling
International Herald Tribune
March 14, 2006
The chief prosecutor of the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal slammed Europe's "muted" response to a landmark ruling that found Serbia failed to prevent genocide at Srebrenica, saying Wednesday it could undermine the fight for international justice.
Carla Del Ponte cited the ruling last month by the International Court of Justice finding Serbia could have prevented the massacre of Bosnian Muslims in Srebrenica and that it should have punished its perpetrators. The court also faulted Serbia for failing to turn over one of the alleged architects of the massacre, Gen. Ratko Mladic. But the ruling absolved Serbia of direct responsibility for genocide.
"The response of the international community, and especially the presidency of the European Union, to this ruling appears to be quite muted," Del Ponte said in statement.
Del Ponte said that EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana issued a statement after the Feb. 26 ruling which "made no mention whatsoever of the fact that Serbia was found in violation of the Genocide Convention. Instead, he applauded the fact that there is no collective punishment and that the highest tribunal in the world has closed that page."
Del Ponte added that Germany — current holder of the EU's rotating presidency — made a similar statement. Mladic and former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic have been indicted for genocide for masterminding the 1995 slaughter of more than 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men at the U.N.-protected Srebrenica safe haven in Bosnia.
Both men remain on the run. Del Ponte repeatedly has accused Belgrade authorities of not doing enough to arrest Mladic, who is thought to be hiding out somewhere in Serbia. Karadzic's whereabouts are unknown.
Del Ponte said she was concerned that neither fugitive would be arrested and brought to justice before the court is scheduled to be dismantled in 2010.
"This is truly a potentially devastating development given the tribunal's completion strategy," Del Ponte said, adding that she was "worried that we will never see Mladic and Karadzic in our custody. That would have a devastating impact on international justice and on our battle against impunity."
The Yugoslav tribunal was created in 1993 by the Security Council to try individual war crimes suspects. The International Court of Justice, the U.N.'s highest judicial body, was founded in 1946 to adjudicate disputes among U.N. members. Last month's ruling was the result of a suit brought by Bosnia against Serbia, the first time a country was accused of committing genocide.
Both the EU and NATO are reaching out to Serbia in an attempt to support moderates in its government, but both also have said that full Serb membership of the groups is contingent on Belgrade's cooperation with the Hague tribunal.
The ruling by the ICJ, also known as the World Court, has prompted furious debate among international jurists
and was denounced by Bosnian survivors and relatives of victims.
Final Rebuttal of Prosecution Case
Sense Tribunal
March 15, 2007
After the prosecution called for a life imprisonment for the Vukovar Three, the defense counsel of Mile Mrksic and Miroslav Radic presented their closing arguments, denying all allegations made by the prosecution and calling for the acquittal of the former JNA officers charged with the Ovcara massacre.
In their closing arguments, the defense counsel of Mile Mrksic and Miroslav Radic called for the acquittal of the two former JNA officers on the charges of the murder of 264 persons at Ovcara on 20 November 1991.
Miroslav Vasic representing Colonel Mrksic said that the former commander of the JNA operation in Vukovar had had "nothing to do with the transport and selection of prisoners in the Vukovar hospital". In his view, this task was carried out by a team of security officers who arrived in Vukovar from the Belgrade Security Administration.
The prosecution argued that Mrksic had given the order to take the prisoners from the hospital to the JNA barracks and then to the Ovcara farm. In the evening, Mrksic ordered the military police company to withdraw from the hangar at Ovcara. The prisoners were thus left at the mercy of the local Territorial Defense members, who executed them that night. The defense challenges this allegation, arguing that Mrksic "did not give orders for the prisoners to be handed over to the Territorial Defense and for the military police to withdraw”. At that time, Mrksic was not in the brigade headquarters in Negoslavci at all. He was on his way to Belgrade where he was to meet the federal defense secretary Veljko Kadijevic the next day.
Vasic noted that "a number of witnesses who testified against Mrksic should have been in the indictment themselves". Among them were the officers of the 80th Motorized Brigade because Ovcara was in their area of responsibility. They were thus guarding the prisoners of war who were later executed, the defense counsel said.
Miroslav Radic's defense counsel started and ended his closing argument with a quotation from the epic poem Mountain Wreath, saying that "Life’s honor may be stain’d through fear of death". Radic opted for this philosophical approach and this led him to decide to tell the truth in his testimony about the events in Vukovar, his defense counsel Borovic noted. He added that Radic "condemns the Ovcara massacre as a heinous and cowardly crime".
All witnesses against Radic except Juraj Njavro, a Vukovar Hospital doctor, testified under protective measures, Borovic noted. This means that "the public in Serbia and Croatia will never know what the evidence against the accused was". He denied that Radic "participated in the adoption of a plan to persecute the inhabitants of Vukovar, in the selection of the prisoners in the hospital and in their transfer to buses". Radic came to the hospital at a later stage on 20 November 1991 and was not in the JNA barracks when the prisoners arrived. He was not at Ovcara either. He was not aware of the threats the prisoners were exposed to or the events that followed, his defense counsel claimed. He went on to say that Radic controlled neither the Vukovar Territorial Defense nor Seselj's men from the Leva Supoderica detachment. Those units have been identified as the direct perpetrators of the crime. It was not up to him to punish them for the crime they committed. On the morning of 21 November 1991 those units were resubordinated to the 80th Motorized Brigade.
Veselin Sljivancanin's defense counsel will deliver his closing argument tomorrow afternoon.
Croatia Issues International Arrest Warrant for Ex-JNA General
HINA Croatian News Agency
March 16, 2007
VUKOVAR, March 16 (Hina) - Vukovar County Court investigating judge Nikola Besenski ordered the Vukovar Police Department on Friday to issue an international warrant for the arrest of former Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) general Veljko Kadijevic.
Kadijevic is one of the nine persons who were indicted by the Vukovar court in March 2004 for war crimes against civilians committed during the 1991-1995 conflict, Besenski told Hina, adding that the Osijek County Court had issued a domestic arrest warrant for the JNA general in 2000.
"Since that warrant has produced no results, and given recent media reports on Kadijevic's whereabouts abroad, I have decided to issue an international warrant," Besenski said.
Prosecution witness: I shot women and children
B92, SENSE
March 16, 2007
THE HAGUE -- The Kosovo Six trial continued at the Hague with the testimony of a former Yugoslav army (VJ) soldier.
The protected prosecution witness, identified as K-58, testified Thursday via video link.
He told the court his unit “took part in the cleansing” of the Trnje village near Prizren in late March 1999.
As he said, "the cleansing" meant that the Albanian civilians were expelled and killed and their houses set on fire.
The company the belonged to was a part of the 549th VJ Motorized Brigade. The troops allegedly started setting the hay stacks and houses on fire immediately after entering the Trnje village.
The witness said that about 15 women and children were taken out to a yard soon after. A sergeant ordered the him and four other soldiers to shoot them, he said. They "executed the order" and shot all of them.
He did not mention the sergeant's name today, but in his evidence at the Slobodan Miloševi? trial in September 2002 he identified him as "Sergeant Kozlin".
According to witness K- 58, this was not the only crime his unit participated in. In February 1999, they were tasked with the "cleansing" of the Jeskovo village. When they were done, the witness saw the bodies of ten dead civilians.
He later heard his comrades talking about 25 to 30 dead. He claimed that the operation was ordered by the commander of the VJ 549th Motorized Brigade, Colonel Božidar Deli?.
Deli? has been promoted to the rank of general in the meantime. According to the witness, Deli? summoned his unit and said that they were ordered "to go and cleanse Jeskovo the next day".
A little earlier, in December 1999, Deli?'s deputy, Lt. Col. Konjikovac, ordered "the cleansing" of Albanian civilians from the Ljubidža village near Albanian border.
Explaining his decision to testify about the Kosovo crimes the witness said "the screams of a one-year-old baby and other victims still haunted him in his dreams.”
The defense counsel for General Lazarevi?, former Priština Corps commander, argued that the witness's motive was different: a desire to pull himself out of a robbery charge filed against him by the national judiciary in 2002.
Those issues were discussed in a closed session so the link that the defense counsel suggested existed between the testimony in The Hague and the dropping of the robbery charge against the witness remained unclear.
The trial of six Serbian political, military and police officials continues today with the evidence of protected witness K-87.
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International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR)
Official Website of the ICTR
Another Priest Charged for Role in Genocide
Allafrica.com - Catholic Information Service for Africa (Nairobi)
March 6, 2007
Acts of extremism by Father Emmanuel Rukundo, a Catholic priest being tried for genocide before the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) in Arusha Tanzania, fuelled the 1994 Rwanda genocide.
According to the prosecution witness who is a Tutsi priest, Father Rukundo, a Hutu, organized a demonstration to celebrate the death of the Rwandan rebel chief Fred Rwigema.
Rwigema was the Commander in Chief of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) which attacked Rwanda in October 1990 from neighbouring Uganda. He was killed in the first few days of the attack.
According to the Hirondelle News Agency, Rukundo's lawyer, Ms. Aicha Conde (France) disputed the claims, adding that, "this march was organized in support of the army throughout the country,"
As with his predecessors, the protected witness described a seminary faced with ethnic tensions which were inflamed by the war.
Rukundo was also accused of organizing a fundraiser, designed for the "war effort".
Rukundo, who was ordained a priest in July 1991, is the second priest tried by the ICTR, after Athanase Seromba, former vicar of the parish of Nyange (west), who was sentenced to fifteen years in prison last December.
A third priest, Father Hormisdas Nsengimana, the rector of the prestigious College of Christ the King in Nyanza (south) is still awaiting trial.
Press Statement by Ambassador Williamson
UN Observer
March 8, 2007
United States Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes Issues Clint Williamson, visited the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) from 7 to 8 March 2007. Ambassador Williamson met with multiple ICTR officials including President Eric Møse, Prosecutor Hassan Jallow, and Registrar Adama Dieng.
The discussions held were extremely fruitful and Ambassador Williamson is encouraged by the current progress of the Tribunal, particularly its efforts to complete trials in a timely fashion.
He reiterated the U.S. Government’s position that ICTR fugitives must face trial. It is crucial that Félicien Kabuga, Protais Mpiranya, and other fugitives understand they cannot simply outlast the Tribunal and escape justice.
Ambassador Williamson pledged continued U.S. support for the Tribunal and the willingness of the US Government to do all it can to apprehend ICTR fugitives and help the Tribunal to complete its work successfully.
ICTR Suspects Could Be Transferred Next Month
AllAfrica.com- The New Times (Kigali)
by Felly Kimenyi
March 15, 2007
The first batch of Genocide suspects detained at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda ( ICTR ) in Arusha, Tanzania, could arrive in the country next month, the tribunal spokesperson has said. Addressing journalists yesterday at the ICTR liaison offices in Remera, Kigali, Dr. Timothy Gallimore, said that the tribunal's prosecution has moved the motion to the ICTR leadership for endorsement.
He said the move was motivated by reports that Rwanda was in the final stages of enacting a law exonerating the would-be-transferred Genocide suspects from facing death penalty.
"After the establishment of the law which we heard that it has been passed by all authorities and only awaiting publication in the (Rwandan) National Gazette, the (ICTR) prosecution decided to file a transfer motion to the tribunal suggesting that the transfer process starts in the month of April," Gallimore, who has been on an official visit in the country, said.
He said that following talks between the tribunal Prosecutor, Bubakar Jallow and Rwanda's Prosecutor General, Martin Ngoga, it appeared that Kigali was ready for the cases. Gallimore disclosed that at least five suspects currently at the ICTR detention facility have hitherto been identified for the initial transfer phase. He did not reveal their identities of the suspects.
"This is part of the (court's) completion strategy and as you know Rwanda is one of the countries that accepted to inherit the cases when the Tribunal's mandate ends," he said.
Rwanda is the only African country that volunteered to take over the cases after the court comes to its closure in December, 2008. Gallimore said about four European countries also accepted to try the suspects. The tribunal will also close all appeal cases in 2010.
Ngoga also heads the national taskforce charged with overseeing that the transfer process on behalf of the government. The government has also among other things, built a modern prison facility in Mpanga, Southern Province, in order to suit international standards.
Meanwhile, the visiting ICTR publicity official said that efforts to apprehend Felicien Kabuga, the top most wanted Genocide fugitive, have been more robust ever since the tribunal started to closely cooperating with Kenya, where the tycoon is suspected to be hiding.
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