War Crimes Prosecution Watch

Democratic Republic of the Congo (ICC)

Official Website of the International Criminal Court
ICC Public Documents - Situation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo

Ex-Congo Warlord Says He Won’t Surrender
Associated Press
by Eddy Isango
March 23, 2007

KINSHASA, Congo (AP) - Congo's chief prosecutor issued an arrest warrant Friday for a former warlord and senator who took refuge inside a foreign embassy while his personal army and government troops fought in the capital.

Former warlord Jean-Pierre Bemba said he would not surrender, but had ordered his troops to stop fighting.

Prosecutor Tsaimanga Mukenda said that neither Bemba's immunity as a senator nor the fact that he had sought refuge in the South African Embassy would stop the government from seeking his arrest on charges of high treason.

"He has caused serious infractions by organizing a militia and by ordering looting ... his actions amount to high treason and we will pursue him wherever he is," Mukenda said, adding he would ask parliament to strip Bemba of immunity.

Bemba accused the government of starting the violence and said its goal appeared to be "to kill me." He added in an interview with the British Broadcasting Corp. that he had heard he was being sought for arrest and that he would not surrender.

"For what reason? I have been attacked, and if someone has to complain, it's me," he told the BBC from the South African Embassy. He said he had called on his supporters to stop fighting, and wanted a political solution. He said he had not decided whether to request asylum from South Africa.

Bemba, whose personal army began clashing with security forces Thursday, arrived at the South African Embassy Thursday night with his wife, said the embassy's charge d'affaires, Kenneth Pedro.

"This is a temporary measure, until a cease-fire is declared. He has not sought asylum," Pedro said.

Gunfire rang out and thick black smoke rose from an oil refinery in the capital. Radio Okapi, a United Nations-backed radio station, reported that the state-run refinery had been hit during the clashes, possibly by a mortar shell. Many restaurants were looted overnight, as well as the Embassy of Zimbabwe, said government spokesman Toussaint Tshilombo.

The army has seized control of two of Bemba's three residences in the capital, the governor of Kinshasa, Andre Kimbuta, said. He said the military was slowly gaining control over the city and that some of Bemba's fighters had fled.

Mortar shells landed as far as two miles away in Brazzaville, the capital of Republic of Congo, which sits across the Congo River from Kinshasa. Shells damaged the defense minister's home there, a government spokesman said.

South African Deputy Foreign Minister Aziz Pahad said Friday that his country would send an envoy to the Congo to try to help negotiate a cease-fire.

Pahad told journalists in Pretoria that the South African government was "deeply concerned" about the heavy fighting. Pahad said it could open a "Pandora's box" if the fighting was allowed to continue, saying it would encourage others to also use violence to achieve what they think they did not get through the peace process.

The European Union called on the factions in Kinshasa to settle their differences through dialogue - and to ensure civilians were not caught up in the violence.

"The international community, and the European Union in particular, will not allow democracy in the Democratic Republic of Congo, a major success for the entire African continent, to be compromised," EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana added in the statement issued in Brussels.

This week's fighting is the first in the capital since Congo installed Joseph Kabila as president on Dec. 6, making him the nation's first freely elected president since 1960.

Bemba, who came in second in the presidential run-off, initially rejected the election results and his militia took to the streets, clashing with Kabila's security forces. At least two dozen civilians were killed. Bemba gave up his challenge after the Supreme Court rejected his claims and was recently elected to the Senate, but he has so far refused to disband his personal army, which is thought to number in the thousands.

Replace War Spirit With Reconciliation, Urges EU
AllAfrica.com - IRIN
March 28, 2007

The recent violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) was irresponsible and should be replaced with a spirit of reconciliation and inclusiveness to ensure stability in the fragile country, said European Union envoys.

Addressing a news conference in the capital, Kinshasa, on Tuesday, they expressed indignation at the violence that rocked the city on 22-25 March, and condemned the loss of life, especially of civilians.

"There remains a war spirit in the country, which is a bit like malaria," the UK ambassador, Andy Sparkes, said. "We thought we had healed the country with a big dose of quinine, with the holding of free and transparent elections last year, but this war spirit has returned."

The violence erupted when armed forces clashed with the private guards of opposition leader, Jean-Pierre Bemba. The army had sought to disarm Bemba's troops.

Greek ambassador Ioannis Christofilis said attacks on foreign missions broke the Vienna convention on diplomatic relations, while the Italian ambassador Leonardo Baroncelli said uniformed men broke into his residence on 23 March and stole property.

"There needs to be a new spirit of reconciliation with a real engagement of the authorities for democratic opposition, where the liberty of expression is reaffirmed," said Sparkes. "Violence needs to be denounced so that dialogue can continue."

The EU estimates that more than 500 people could have died in the violence. DRC authorities later issued an arrest warrant for Bemba who sought shelter in the South African embassy.

"All those who are responsible for insecurity will be tracked down," President Joseph Kabila said. "It was not a political problem; [it] was military. We needed to act quickly. And that is what we did."

Medical workers said hospitals were overwhelmed by hundreds of injured civilians. A surgeon in Kinshasa's general hospital, Katamba Mbewbe, said the facility received "a lot of injured people".

A few hundred people fled across the river to nearby Congo Brazzaville. The NGO Caritas said it was distributing medical supplies within the city.

"We started on Saturday [24 March] because the hospitals and morgues were overloaded," said a spokesman, Guy-Marin Kamandji, adding that the general hospital had received 150 bodies. "This is why we brought formalin and disinfecting products. We want the bodies, which have started putrefying, to be stabilised before burial."

It was not a political problem; [it] was military. We needed to act quickly. And that is what we did.

The International Committee of the Red Cross deplored the situation. "There were dozens of dead bodies left lying at the roadside, many of them civilians. It was a distressing sight," said Max Hadorn, head of the ICRC delegation in Kinshasa.

Ever since Bemba disputed the results of the 29 October run-off presidential election, which gave Kabila 58.05 percent of the vote, leaving him 41.95 percent, Kinshasa has been living in fear that clashes could recur between his guards and government forces. This month, tension rose after he refused to disarm his men and accept police guards.

The elections, the first in 40 years, were seen as the best opportunity to return peace to the war-ravaged country and to encourage the return of an estimated 1.2 million displaced Congolese and 410,000 refugees in neighbouring countries.

In New York, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged the government and opposition "to shoulder their responsibilities to democracy" to ensure a full transition to peace.

"I strongly urge the political leaders in the Democratic Republic of the Congo to respect the principles of transparency, inclusiveness and tolerance of dissent," he said in a report that called for an extension till 31 December of the UN Mission in DRC (MONUC).

MONUC, which has a military and police strength of almost 18,000, supplied food, water and medicine to 1,300 people caught up in last week's fighting and evacuated about 1,100, including the Nigerian ambassador, who was wounded in the legs.

"Opposition parties should adhere to those same democratic norms, voicing their views responsibly and without resort to violence," Ban added. "Failure to adhere to these democratic principles would seriously undermine the credibility and ultimate legitimacy of the country's political leaders and institutions."

Specialized UN Police Units Helped Civilians During Recent Unrest - Official
UN News Service
March 30, 2007

Specialized United Nations police units from Bangladesh and India were instrumental in saving civilian lives amidst heavy fighting during last week's violence in Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

The specialized armoured police units - known as Formed Police Units (FPUs) - from Bangladesh and India "operated at considerable risk to extricate people who had been pinned down by gunfire who were actually inside homes where mortar rounds and other munitions were being deployed," said UN Police (UNPOL) Adviser Mark Kroeker told the UN News Service.

The UN mission in the DRC, known as MONUC, estimates that hundreds were killed and many more wounded in the violence which broke out on 22 March between Government forces and guards of former Vice-President Jean-Pierre Bemba, who was defeated last year by current President Joseph Kabila in the run-off round of landmark presidential elections.

The FPUs rescued not only "the high-level people such as ambassadors, but also just ordinary people who are trapped and who needed to be evacuated from the line of fire," Mr. Kroeker added, voicing his gratitude to the police officers, none of whom have been reported injured. "They were in what turned out to be almost a military environment, but they operated as a rescue unit helping people."

FPUs were first used as part of the UN Mission in Liberia (UNMIL), but their success there and in other operations has led to calls for increasing deployment, and to date, there are 35 units dispersed among six missions worldwide.

Each of these units, comprising over 100 police officers from a single country, is highly mobile and tactically ready to respond to various situations, including crowd control, riots or natural disasters, in which local agencies are overwhelmed or lack capacity due to conflict.

FPUs, known for their competence and efficiency, have demonstrated "compassion and caring" not only last week in the DRC, but in other instances as well, Mr. Kroeker said.

For example, a Jordanian FPU with UNMIL in Liberia recently visited an orphanage housing approximately 350 children who lost their parents in the civil war that ravaged the country, bringing with them food from their own storage to feed the orphans. An Indian FPU stationed in Kisangani in the DRC is aiding in the re-equipment of schools and also assisting community members with a range of tasks, including helping people start their cars.

Mr. Kroeker noted that such efforts help to hasten communities' acceptance of the UNPOL officers and also show that "they're more than just police officers, but police officers who care" with a "beating humanitarian heart under that big façade of the tough cop."

SADC Leaders Concerned DRC Could Regress
AllAfrica.com - BuaNews (Tshwane)
March 30, 2007

Leaders of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) are concerned that current violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo could cause the nation to fall back into conflict.

This emanated from the leaders' two-day extraordinary summit which ended in the Tanzanian coastal city of Dar-Es-Salaam Thursday.

The SADC leaders felt that the current hostilities were retrogressive and should be brought to an end sooner rather than later.

In a joint communique, which was adopted by all the ten heads of state, it was agreed that since the DRC was a sovereign state, it should have only one national army.

Tanzania, represented by President Jakaya Kikwete, is the current chair of the community's organ on politics, defense and security cooperation and is concurrently chairing the SADC diplomatic Troika that also includes Lesotho and Namibia.

The SADC leaders, who recommended that all the small armies in the DRC be integrated into the national army or be demobilised, were concerned that the proliferation of armies in the DRC was a sure recipe for continued violence and loss of lives.

President Thabo Mbeki was supported at the summit by Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Aziz Pahad.

Briefing reporters in Parliament Tuesday, Mr Pahad had indicated the leaders' concerns that the DRC may slide back to its previous state due to the clashes between government forces and the personal bodyguard of senator Jean-Pierre Bemba.

" South Africa continues to be seized with the matter," Mr Pahad said.

"Many countries are expressing deep concern that the gains made in the DRC will be undermined."

Unsuccessful presidential candidate Jean-Pierre Bemba, who is also leader of the opposition Movement for the Liberation of Congo, has been sheltering at the South African embassy in the DRC's capital Kinshasa, since last week.

The opposition leader has since called the attacks an attempt on his life.

Mr Pahad said reports indicated at least 120 people had died in the recent upsurge of violence there.

South Africa, the deputy minister said, would continue to provide sanctuary for Mr Bemba "on South African property" until such time as the opposition leader saw fit.

"In terms of international conventions he has taken asylum. He'll remain there until he sees fit."

Mr Bemba, said the deputy minister, has been charged with high treason, while his party has called for a truce.

South Africa is a vital roleplayer in the vast central African nation's move from over 40 years of unrest towards becoming a democracy in last year's elections where former vice President Bemba faced off with incumbent President Joseph Kabila.

Mandated by the African Union, South Africa facilitated talks between various factions and government representatives and went on to provide intensive logistical and technical support for the elections.

This included printing and distributing ballot papers and providing vital IT infrastructure to count votes.

South African troops are also part of the security forces of MONUC, the United Nations mission in the DRC, which is incidentally the largest UN military presence deployed anywhere in the world.

Mr Kabila was reinstated as the president of the resource rich African country after run-off elections on 29 October 2006, where neither he nor Mr Bemba garnered a majority of the votes cast at initial polls in July.

President Kabila won 44.81 percent of the votes while Mr Bemba captured 20.03 percent.

It is provided for by the DRC's constitution, that in cases where a presidential candidate fails to garner a minimum of 51 percent of the votes, a run off election must be convened between the two strongest candidates.

President Kabila won the run off elections, but these results were challenged by Mr Bemba who alleged "systematic cheating and falsified results."

The results subsequently went before the DRC's Supreme Court on 16 November amid violence, including the torching of the court's premises.

The Supreme Court on 27 November confirmed President Kabila as the winner of the run-off elections, a decision South Africa urged Mr Bemba and his party to accept.

- BuaNews-NNN

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Darfur, Sudan (ICC)

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

Sudan 's President Denies Involvement in Darfur Violence
Voice of America
by Sean Maroney
March 20, 2007

DATELINE: Washington

Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir denied in an interview with NBC news Monday that his government had any involvement in the violence in Darfur. VOA's Sean Maroney reports from Washington.

Sudan 's President Omar al-Bashir is rejecting reports that government-backed Arab militias called janjaweed have burned thousands of villages in Darfur.

Mr. Bashir tells NBC news that, while some villages have been burned, women have been raped and people have died, reports of violence from the region are either exaggerated or false.

"Yes, there have been villages burned, but not to the extent you are talking about,"said al-Bashir. "People have been killed because there is war. It is not the Sudanese culture or people of Darfur to rape. It doesn't exist. We don't have it."

Mr. Bashir also says the former junior interior minister, Ahmed Muhammed Harun, who was charged with war crimes by International Criminal Court prosecutors, is innocent and will not appear before the court.

"I'm sure that he did not participate in any war crimes," he said.

He said any Sudanese accused of war crimes would be tried by the country's judicial system.

Mr. Bashir also accuses the United States of trying to gain control of Darfur's rich oil and gas reserves.

The United States and several human rights groups has called the atrocities in Darfur genocide.

Fighting between rebel groups, the government and militias has claimed some 200,000 lives and driven two million others from their homes.

Sudan Govt Suspends Agreement on Kony
AllAfrica.com - The Monitor
by Frank Nyakairu
March 20, 2007

THE Sudanese government will suspend all cooperation with the International Criminal Court (ICC) in response to accusations that Sudanese officials have committed war crimes in Darfur.

The action will also affect Khartoum's commitment to cooperate in the arrest of rebel leader Joseph Kony and his commanders in the Lord's Resistance Army who are under indictment by the Hague-based court.

"We had extended our cooperation with the ICC for some time, but now the situation is completely different," Justice Minister Mohammed Ali al-Mardi told journalists yesterday in Geneva where he was attending a UN Human Rights Council meeting.

"It's not even a question of cooperation anymore, it's a question that they (the ICC) want to try Sudanese citizens, which is absolutely nonsensical," he said.

On October 3, 2005, the ICC, Uganda, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Sudan signed a memorandum of understanding to cooperate in the arrest of Kony and four LRA commanders. The rebel group had been operating from South Sudan for years and had also moved into northeastern Congo.

Daily Monitor has seen the document signed by Abdul Kassim, Sudan 's ambassador in The Hague, that commits the signatories to arrest Kony, his deputy Vincent Otti and commanders Dominic Ongwen, Okot Odhiambo and Raska Lukwiya, who has since died.

The other four are wanted in connection with war crimes and crimes against humanity allegedly committed during their 20-year insurgency in northern Uganda.

Uganda's Justice Minister Khiddu Makubuya said he couldn't comment on possible implications of the decision to suspend the agreement until receiving an official note from Khartoum.

Regional Cooperation Minister Isaac Musumba acknowledged that the suspension of cooperation between Sudan and the ICC "has huge implications for the dynamics of the Kony case."

The government of South Sudan is mediating peace talks between Uganda and the LRA, which are currently in suspension.

Khartoum has rejected ICC allegations made late last month against two Sudanese officials of committing war crimes in Sudan 's western Darfur province.

ICC chief prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo said there was evidence that Sudan 's Minister of State for Humanitarian Affairs Ahmad Muhamad Haroun recruited people for the Janjaweed, an armed group allegedly backed by Khartoum. Khartoum denies the claims, but there is increasing evidence backing them.

Mr Moreno-Ocampo said Mr Haroun and a Janjaweed leader known as "Ali Kusheib" were suspected of committing 51 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The Sudanese justice minister said Khartoum did not accept the indictments and would not hand over the suspects.

The ICC, the world's first permanent war crimes court, has authority to prosecute when national courts are unwilling or unable to act. Its mandate does not cover crimes committed before 2002.

Khartoum maintains that the ICC has no right to try Sudanese citizens because Sudan did not ratify the convention creating the international court.

The Sudanese government says it is investigating the two suspects named by the ICC.

An estimated 200,000 people have been killed in Darfur and more than two million displaced since the conflict between local rebels and the Janjaweed erupted in 2003.

Probe of Darfur 'slavery' starts
BBC News
by Joseph Winter
March 21, 2007

Lawyers in Sudan's Darfur region are investigating reports of slavery during the conflict, the BBC has learned.

"There are many cases of abductions," a Sudanese lawyer told the BBC.

They are too afraid of possible reprisals from either militias or state security agents to give their names but say there is strong evidence.

"It is happening but on a smaller scale than in the south," one Sudanese human rights worker said. Some 11,000 people were enslaved in the north-south war.

Arab pro-government "Murahaleen" militias rode their horses into southern villages, killing men, raping women, looting anything they found and burning the huts.

The Darfur conflict broke out just as the war in the south was coming to an end and eyewitness reports bear a striking similarity of atrocities committed by the militias, known in Darfur as the Janjaweed.

One of the worst affected parts of south Sudan was Bahr al-Ghazal - just south of the border with the largely Arab north and not far from South Darfur.

Training

Sudanese human rights workers say some members of the Arab Rezeigat community have been in both the Janjaweed and the Murahaleen but most of the Janjaweed are from different Arab tribes.

Sudan 's veteran anti-slave campaigner James Aguer, however, says they are exactly the same groups, just with a different name.

Sudan 's government has strongly denied claims it mobilised first the Murahaleen and then the Janjaweed to terrorise civilian populations seen as rebel sympathisers.

It also denies there are slaves in Sudan, instead using the euphemism "abductees".

But some analysts say the similar methods used could be because they have undergone the same training.

One aid worker said that in both cases, after local groups took up arms against the government, Arab tribal leaders were told that black Africans were trying to take their land and needed to be resisted.

The Arabs were given weapons with horrific results, he said.

Until now, a key difference between the two conflicts is that despite all the other atrocities committed, there have been no reports of people in Darfur being abducted and held for more than a few weeks.

Arrest warrant

A court in Khartoum has heard evidence that some 40 women and girls were abducted two years ago from the village of Wadi Saleh by a group of Janjaweed.

One of the militiamen sought a court order to let him legally marry one of the women but after he admitted how they had met, the judge refused his request.

Both the woman and the man said the 40 had been divided up between the raiders as a form of booty.

But the woman has since disappeared.

There is no independent confirmation of the claims but the testimony closely resembles that of some of the southerners who were abducted during raids on their villages and spent years in slavery in the north before returning home following the north-south peace deal.

One of the lawyers now investigating the reports says he has personally met two people who were forced to work for a prominent Janjaweed leader for six months, before another member of the militia helped them escape.

One reason why there seems to be less slavery in Darfur could be religion.

Both Darfur and south Sudan are mostly inhabited by black Africans but southerners are mostly Christian and animist, while Darfuris are generally Muslim, like the Arabs who have traditionally dominated Sudan.

Forced conversion seemed to be one motivation behind the abduction of southerners - they were mostly given Islamic names and told they were now Muslim.

One group of abductors was known as the Muhajadeen [Islamic holy warriors].

But this justification cannot be used in Darfur.

"Muslims are strictly forbidden to enslave fellow Muslims," the lawyer said.

While they proceed with their investigations, the lawyers are extremely concerned for their safety.

The Hague-based International Criminal Court has already issued an arrest warrant for a top Sudanese official over the conflict in Darfur - and says it is investigating others.

As a result, anyone seen asking questions about possible war crimes such as enslavement would be seen as a potential ICC spy, the lawyers fear.

Darfur: UN, Sudan and regional groups commit to hybrid peacekeeping force
UN News Service
March 29, 2007

The United Nations, the Sudanese Government, the African Union (AU) and the League of Arab States (LAS) have agreed to re-double their efforts to resolve the conflict engulfing Darfur and to press ahead quickly with plans to deploy a hybrid UN-AU peacekeeping force to the war-torn region to stop the bloodshed and protect civilians.

During a meeting in Riyadh last night chaired by Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah, the participants agreed to play their part to try to accelerate political reconciliation inside Darfur, where rebel groups have been fighting Government forces and allied Janjaweed militias since 2003.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who attended the meeting with Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, AU Chairperson Alpha Oumar Konaré and LAS Secretary-General Amr Moussa, later told reporters that, “I think we made progress where there had been an impasse.”

A statement issued after the meeting committed the UN, AU, LAS and Sudan “to work together to seek an early and comprehensive settlement to the conflict and humanitarian suffering,” and commended yesterday’s separate agreement between the UN and Sudan to improve humanitarian access to Darfur.

“In parallel with the political process, they also agreed on the shared need to move expeditiously ahead with the AU-UN peacekeeping operation,” the statement added, referring to the planned hybrid force – known also as the “heavy support package” – which the Sudanese Government had backed initially but then indicated it may not support.

“Reaffirming the commitment of the Government of Sudan to the Abuja and Addis [Ababa] agreements, they agreed to hold a technical consultative briefing at the earliest possible date, to finalize the agreement on the heavy support package.”

The agreement comes amid mounting international concern at the humanitarian situation in Darfur, where more than 200,000 people have been killed and at least 2 million others forced to leave their homes. The unrest and large-scale displacement has now spilled over into neighbouring Chad and the Central African Republic (CAR).

Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs John Holmes wrapped up his visit today to Chad, the second leg of his two-week tour of the region to see first hand the conditions on the ground.

Mr. Holmes, who is also Emergency Relief Coordinator, held talks in the capital, N’Djamena, with Chadian Prime Minister Nouradine Deluce Kassiré Coumakoye in which he stressed the need for the country’s Government to increase its protection of both internally displaced persons (IDPs) and the estimated 280,000 refugees from Darfur and the CAR.

Mr. Holmes voiced concern about the situation in eastern Chad in particular, noting the need for increased security in the camps for IDPs and refugees. Citing carjackings as an example, he said impunity prevails for the perpetrators of many crimes.

The Emergency Relief Coordinator then headed to Paoua in northern CAR, the scene of massive internal displacement in the past six months as armed rebels have launched attacks against villages and towns.

He visited the destroyed village of Polau, where the 360 inhabitants fled after an attack on a Sunday three months ago when the entire village was at church.

Human Rights Council sets up independent monitoring group on Darfur
UN News Service
March 30, 2007

The United Nations Human Rights Council today agreed to set up a group of independent rights experts to work with the Sudanese Government and the African Union (AU) to monitor the situation on the ground in the war-torn Darfur region.

In a resolution adopted by consensus, the 47-member Council voiced “deep concern regarding the seriousness of the ongoing violations of human rights and international humanitarian law in Darfur,” citing armed attacks on civilians and humanitarian workers, the widespread destruction of villages and the lack of accountability for the perpetrators of gender-based violence against women and girls.

Calling on all sides to the conflict to end the violence, especially against civilians and humanitarian workers, the Council voiced regret that its recent five-member High-Level Mission led by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Jody Williams could not visit Darfur.

The resolution backs the establishment of a new group to be presided over by the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Sudan, Sima Samar. The group will work with Sudan and the AU to ensure that all resolutions and recommendations on Darfur by UN human rights institutions – including the Council – are implemented and followed up.

The other members of the group are: the Secretary-General’s Special Representative for children and armed conflict, Radhika Coomaraswamy; the Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, Philip Alston; the Secretary-General’s Special Representative on the situation of human rights defenders, Hina Jilani; the Secretary-General’s Representative on human rights of internally displaced persons (IDPs), Walter Kälin; the Special Rapporteur on the question of torture, Manfred Nowak; and the Special Rapporteur on violence against women, its causes and consequences, Yakin Ertürk.

The resolution was adopted amid mounting international concern at the situation inside Darfur, where at least 200,000 have been killed and 2 million others forced from their homes since rebel groups took up arms against Government forces and allied Janjaweed militias in 2003.

The Darfur resolution was one of seven adopted, as well as two decisions, on the last day of the Council’s fourth session, held at its headquarters in Geneva.

In its other resolutions, the Council agreed to:

work towards raising the right to development to the same level with other human rights enshrined in key international instruments;
emphasize that development should be at the centre of the international economic agenda;
strengthen the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Louise Arbour, so that the promotion and protection of the right to development is reaffirmed;
rectify the legal status of the Committee on Economic, Social and Economic Rights so that it is on a par with all other treaty-monitoring bodies;
urge States to take resolute action to ban the dissemination of racist or xenophobic ideas and material aimed at any religion or its followers that constituted incitement to racial or religious hatred or violence;
ask the Special Rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief, Asma Jahangir, to report on the elimination of all forms of intolerance and discrimination.

The Council, which replaced the discredited Commission on Human Rights last year, also decided to request Ms. Arbour to consult States, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and others on ways to enhance international cooperation in the UN human rights machinery, and to ask Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to seek the views of all States on the issue of human rights and unilateral coercive measures. The Council’s next session will be held from 11 to 18 June.

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Uganda (ICC)

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

Chissano seeks to rescue flagging LRA peace talks
The East African
by Barbara Among
March 26, 2007

Representatives of the Uganda government and the Lord’s Resistance Army rebels will this week meet the UN Secretary General’s special envoy to northern Uganda, Joaqim Chissano, in a bid to restart the faltering peace talks.

Mr Chissano a former president of Mozambique.

The meeting comes in the wake of Khartoum’s decision to pull out of an agreement to co-operate with the International Criminal Court after the ICC indicted two Sudanese officials over war crimes in the western region of Darfur.

Although it is widely believed that Sudan’s earlier decision to co-operate with the ICC helped force the LRA rebel leaders to the negotiating table, officials on all sides say Khartoum’s recent decision will not derail the peace talks in the Southern Sudanese town of Juba.

LRA leader Joseph Kony, his deputy Vincent Otti and three of his commanders were indicted by the ICC over war crimes in northern Uganda following an application by the Ugandan government in 2005.

The leader of the Uganda government’s negotiating team, Dr Ruhakana Rugunda, who is also Internal Affairs Minister, said the indictments over Darfur were “a bilateral matter” between the government of Sudan and the ICC.

“I do not expect it to have a significant impact on the ongoing peace process,” he said.

LRA spokesman Godfrey Ayo said in a telephone interview last week that the rebels were not bothered by the development.

“That is Sudan’s business with the ICC,” Mr Ayo said. “It has nothing to add or subtract from our position that the ICC drops the indictment of our leaders; that is our biggest concern.”

However, the talks between Kampala and the LRA, which have been on-and-off since July last year, are unlikely to restart in early April as earlier envisaged by the negotiators.

The ICC indictments hanging over the rebel leaders continue to cast a shadow over the Juba peace talks, as the LRA has threatened to pull out of the talks unless the warrants of arrest are withdrawn.

“The ICC warrant of arrest is a big issue for us, we call it a major obstacle to the peace talks. Without removing the arrest warrant, it will not be possible to get our leaders into the open. We shall talk but we won’t be able to sign the comprehensive peace agreement,” Mr Ayo said.

After the rebels showed a willingness to talk peace, the government said it would consider asking the ICC to suspend the indictments, but only if the rebels signed a peace deal, handed over their arms and underwent traditional reconciliation processes. The ICC has however, refused to withdraw the indictments.

This week’s meeting is expected to discuss the presence of the Ugandan army in Southern Sudan, where an agreement with Khartoum allowed them to flush out the rebels from their bases there.

The meeting is also expected to consider a rebel demand to shift the talks away from Juba, allegedly because the government of Southern Sudan and its Vice President Riek Machar, who is the mediator of the talks, are biased against the rebels.

The rebels also want their delegates to the talks given more money in allowances. Dr Rugunda met Kony at the latter’s hideout in Garamba, in the jungles of northeastern Congo but the meeting failed to resolve the issue of the venue of the talks.

“We did meet at the request of Mr Chissano and other stakeholders and discussed a number of issues,” said Mr Ayo. “The meeting was called to address specific reasons that led to the stalemate of the peace talks, but it was not conclusive. So we are meeting soon to discuss the way forward.”

This week’s meeting is expected to take place either in Juba or in Nairobi and will be attended by representatives of the Kenyan and Tanzanian governments.

In January, LRA delegates quit talks that had restarted in Juba, saying they feared for their safety after Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir vowed to “get rid” of them.

They called for the talks to be moved to Kenya, the appointment of a new mediator, and the withdrawal of Ugandan troops from Southern Sudan – demands that the Ugandan government has rejected.

High on the LRA agenda is the question of security of its fighters at the two assembly points of Owiny-Ki Bul and Ri-Kwamgba in Southern Sudan. The LRA accuses Ugandan troops of ambushing them at the two points.

A truce signed in August and renewed in December 2006 expired last month. Many in northern Uganda are apprehensive about what could happen if it is not extended, though the army has ruled out launching attacks on the rebels.

The talks are meant to end two decades of civil war in northern Uganda, which have claimed thousands of lives and displaced some 1.6 million from their homes.

Ugandan army 'kills 66 children'
BBC News
March 30, 2007

Sixty-six children were killed in eastern Uganda during an army operation against suspected cattle rustlers, UK charity Save the Children says.

They were shot by soldiers, run over by armoured vehicles or crushed by stampeding animals last month.

The aid group said it had not found physical evidence of the alleged deaths in Karamoja, but had consistent reports after interviewing some 200 people.

The army denied the allegations, saying only adults were killed in the raids.

The BBC's Sarah Grainger in Uganda says there has been an increase in violence in Karamoja since the army began its disarmament programme in May last year.

'Crushed'

"I saw many children killed, including my own son," one woman in Kaputh village near Kothido town told the BBC.

I ran away like many people and when I came back both of my young sons were missing.

"He was with the livestock, trying to untie them so they could escape the firing. But he got crushed by the animals as they tried to run away."

Other villagers said the raid began at 0800 on 12 February.

A village elder greeted the army forces thinking they were carrying out a disarmament exercise, but was shot dead.

"I ran away like many people and when I came back both of my young sons were missing. Up till now I cannot find them so I think they were killed," another man said.

Army spokesman in Karamoja Lieutenant Henry Obbo said a five-day disarmament exercise had begun in the area on 10 February.

But when some warriors resisted the operation they opened fire on the army.

He said 52 warriors and four soldiers were killed in the incident, but no children were involved.

Save the Children has called for an independent investigation into the events at Kaputh.

"Reports of children being killed in indiscriminate, illegal and inhumane ways is absolutely devastating. Such allegations must be fully investigated and those involved brought to account," Save the Children's Valter Tinderholt said, Reuters news agency reports.

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International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY)

Official Website of the ICTY

Defence Lawyer Appeals Dismissal
Institute for War and Peace Reporting
By Caroline Tosh
March 23, 2007

Former Croatian justice minister Miroslav Separovic has appealed against his dismissal as lawyer for Croatian general Mladen Markac.

Separovic’s appeal, filed on March 20, is also against the trial chamber finding of misconduct in his representation of Markac, who is set to go on trial with former Croatian army generals Ante Gotovina and Ivan Cermak, on May 7.

The three Croatians are charged with the murder, persecution and deportation of ethnic Serbs during a Croatian military operation to retake the Serb-held Krajina region in the summer of 1995.

Judges dismissed Separovic from the case on March 6, stating that he had a “personal interest” in the case and was likely to be called to testify.

Separovic, a Zagreb attorney, was Croatia’s justice minister during the period relevant to the indictment.

The trial chamber also ordered Markac to find a new lawyer, and told Separovic to assist his replacement until he or she is ready to fully take over the case.

The code of ethics for the defence at the tribunal prevents lawyers representing a client where there is a conflict of interest, or where “counsel is likely to be a necessary witness” in a trial.

In his appeal this week, Separovic argued that in their decision to dismiss him, judges “did not appropriately take into account the legal arguments and jurisprudence” on conflict of interest at the tribunal.

He also argued that the judges’ finding “jeopardises and endangers” Markac’s right to a fair trial “due to substantial hardship he would suffer” if he were not allowed to choose his own counsel.

Attached to the appeal was a statement signed by Markac on March 7, 2006, in which the former general said he was “entirely informed” of the conflict of interest of his counsel and had “full faith” in Separovic.

Markac also said he thought the judges’ decision “unjust and unlawful” as it deprived him of his right to choose his own counsel.

Peace at expense of law leaves us with neither
B92
March 23, 2007

WASHINGTON -- The Cato Institute’s Stanley Kober says Europe and the UN could be facing a defining moment.

“Even though the [1999] war had been fought to protect the people of Kosovo, [Resolution] 1244 decreed that Kosovo would not be granted independence."

"The sovereignty and territorial integrity’ of Yugoslavia (now Serbia) were to be protected, while Kosovo was to be granted ‘substantial autonomy and meaningful self-administration,’” Kober, a research fellow in foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute writes in an op-ed published by the International Herald Tribune.

“Now, it appears, these assurances will be repudiated,” Kober notes.

He reminds that the Serbian government and Russia have reacted negatively to the recently disclosed Kosovo status proposal, prepared by the UN special envoy Martti Ahtisaari, as have the Kosovo Serbs, even with “assurances of protection, while Serbia is being shown the carrot (and stick) of inclusion (or exclusion) in a broader Europe.”

“These inducements, however, do not seem to be having much effect. The Serbs in Kosovo would ‘resist as any occupied people would do,’ the head of the Serbian Orthodox church, Bishop Artemije, told an audience in Washington on February 8,” Kober writes.

“Then there is the problem of international law,” he continues, reminding that the 1999 NATO campaign was not endorsed by the UN.

“But the rule of law works by precedent, so what applies to one must apply to others. If NATO, as an international security organization, can act this way, why cannot other such organizations act similarly in the future,” Kober argues.

“That is why adherence to Resolution 1244 is so important. If 1244 is ignored, it is unreasonable to expect that our actions would not be treated as a precedent to ignore other UN resolutions in the future. Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov have both made this point.”

“Indeed, if we attempt to buy peace at the expense of law, we might find out we end up with neither,” Kober concludes.

He describes the conflicting points of Kosovo’s independence, Serbia's territorial integrity, legitimacy and law as Europe’s trains “hurtling toward each other,” adding that should Russians and the Chinese opt to oppose the revision of 1244, and the U.S. decide to ignore that and formally approve the Ahtisaari plan, “the reverberations will be felt well beyond the Balkans."

Tale of two worlds for Kosovo politician
International Herald Tribune
Nicholas Wood
March 26, 2007

PRISTINA, Kosovo: Depending on whom you talk to here, Ramush Haradinaj, a stocky ethnic Albanian, former guerrilla commander and, briefly, Kosovo's prime minister, is either one of most impressive leaders to emerge in the Balkans in recent years, or a gruesome war criminal. Some say he is both.

Haradinaj began to stand trial at the UN tribunal in The Hague this month charged with the killing of 40 people in 1998, during the conflict between the Kosovo Liberation Army guerrilla group and the Serb-dominated security forces. Two other former members of the army are on trial with him.

The prosecution's leading witness, Tahir Zemaj, his son and nephew were shot and killed during the investigation. Another witness, Kjutim Berisha, died two weeks before the trial opened when he was hit by a car in the Montenegrin capital.

More than a third of those giving evidence on behalf of the prosecution are allowed to conceal their identities, more than any other case in the tribunal's history, according to the prosecution team.

But the most unusual controversy does not stem from the security measures, or the prosecution's gory allegations, but from the divisions the case has created between prosecutors at the tribunal and in Kosovo on the one side, and on the other, UN diplomats in Kosovo and Western governments that are among the court's biggest supporters.

For Western diplomats, Haradinaj was a key partner in their efforts to bring peace to the province, so much so that they tried to prevent the case from going to trial, according to a former head of the UN mission in Kosovo and the court's chief prosecutor. Once he was indicted, the UN mission supported Haradinaj's provisional release so he could continue to play a role in politics. He was given that release, lasting almost two years, the only indicted person to have been released by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in order to play an active role in politics.

Starting when he was first indicted, many diplomats and UN officials feared that their efforts at reconciliation between Serbs and Albanians would be set back.

"He moved this process forward in a way that nobody else has done," said Soren Jessen-Petersen, who was the head of the UN mission in Kosovo at the time of Haradinaj's indictment, in March 2005, just four months after Haradinaj became prime minister.

Prosecutors both in Kosovo and The Hague argue that the United Nations and Western governments bent over backwards to stop the trial of someone charged with war crimes.

The tribunal's chief prosecutor, Carla Del Ponte, has referred to the case as "a prosecution that some did not want to see brought, and that few supported by their cooperation at both the international and local level."

In Kosovo, the former guerrilla commander is seen as one of the most charismatic leaders to emerge from the 1997-99 fighting. While the Serbian government vilified him as a terrorist, senior UN officials say he was instrumental in promoting reconciliation.

"He clearly understood that Serbs could and should be part of the society," said Jessen-Petersen. "And he had the credentials. Because of his background nobody could accuse him of betraying Kosovo."

Both before and after his indictment, Haradinaj proved helpful, Jessen-Petersen and other diplomats say.

In March 2004, during rioting across Kosovo, he was credited by Serbian Orthodox monks for preventing hundreds of rioters from attacking Kosovo's best known monastery. UN officials say Haradinaj also helped ensure that a visit to Kosovo by Serbia's president, Boris Tadic, in January 2005 passed without incident.

All along, international officials have tried to balance the need for political stability with the demands for justice. The UN administration in Kosovo repeatedly blocked the prosecution of Haradinaj in a case in which he was accused of attacking a rival family group of former fighters of the Kosovo Liberation Army.

The effect, according to the prosecution, was to create a sense of impunity around Haradinaj and to scare away witnesses.

"There was a general atmosphere of intimidation; they did nothing to change this atmosphere," said Jean-Daniel Ruche, political advisor to the chief prosecutor in The Hague. He said that senior UN officials had met with Haradinaj before his departure to the Netherlands at the time of his indictment in 2005 and when he returned there to stand trial. "This has had a chilling impact on our witnesses," he said in an interview by telephone.

The UN mission denies that its conduct had a detrimental impact on the tribunal and referred to three decisions by the tribunal supporting Haradinaj's provisional release. In each case the tribunal rejected motions from the prosecution arguing that his release would intimidate witnesses.

"In decision after decision, the ICTY Chamber has made it clear that the United Nations Mission in Kosovo is in the best position to determine what is in the interest of promoting peace and reconciliation in Kosovo," wrote Myriam Dessables, a UN spokeswoman in an e-mail.

The indictment contains details that are among the most gruesome brought before the tribunal: of prisoners being seized by men under Haradinaj's command, bound in barbed wire and dragged behind vehicles, and of women taken from their homes and raped repeatedly.

Haradinaj's supporters profess his innocence, saying there is no evidence to link him directly to the crimes, and suggest the court charged him simply to appear even handed in its prosecution of senior ethnic Albanians and Serbs.

As Haradinaj's indictment loomed in early 2005, Jessen-Petersen said he was aware that Western diplomats were trying to prevent the case from going ahead. He emphasized though that the UN mission in Kosovo had made no such approaches to the court.

But the UN mission stopped at least one prosecution of Haradinaj within Kosovo, according to two former members of Kosovo's justice department.

On July 7, 2000, Haradinaj led a group of men to a rival family's house in the village of Strelc in western Kosovo. A gun fight ensued, according to police investigators, in which Haradinaj was injured by a grenade. He was evacuated by U.S. personnel operating out of the main U.S. Army base in Kosovo, who also removed evidence of the shootout from the walls, according to Frederick Pascoe, a former U.S. police officer who investigated the shooting. Pascoe served with the United Nations in Kosovo.

When UN prosecutors tried to bring charges against Haradinaj, senior UN officials within the mission lobbied to prevent that, according to two former members of the UN mission's Department of Justice.

Kamudoni Nyasulu, an international prosecutor in Pec, in northwestern Kosovo, said that between 2001 and 2004 he repeatedly tried to bring the case to court.

"What I had was sufficient for a case," Nyasulu said, but he added that he was rebuffed by senior UN officials because the case was "politically sensitive."

In early 2005 another justice official at the United Nations tried again to bring the case to court but says he was directed in an e-mail by the head of the justice department not to.

"I was told we do not do the Haradinaj case," said the former UN official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Mesic: There Was No Joint Criminal Enterprise
Hina News Agency
March 28, 2007

ZAGREB, March 28 (Hina) - Croatian President Stjepan Mesic said on Wednesday he disagreed with the allegation by prosecutors at the Hague war crimes tribunal that crimes committed during and in the wake of Croatian military operation "Storm" were the result of a joint criminal enterprise.

"I do not agree that there was a criminal enterprise, because I myself was a member of the Croatian leadership until 1994. If there had been a criminal enterprise I would have known something about it. The court will have its say, but it will have to consider all the arguments and realise that it cannot draw far-reaching conclusions from a meeting that may have taken place in a special atmosphere," Mesic told reporters.

When asked to comment on the fact that the prosecution based the indictment in the case of three Croatian generals on transcripts from his office, Mesic said he did not know on what basis the indictment was put together.

"I was not elected to this office to hide evidence (...) but to abide by the Croatian Constitution. I am obligated under the Constitutional Law on Cooperation with the Hague tribunal to assist in establishing facts, and it is up to the tribunal to find if someone is guilty or not," the president said.

In a pre-trial brief filed ahead of the start of the joint trial of Croatian army generals Ante Gotovina, Ivan Cermak and Mladen Markac, the prosecution announced it would use transcripts submitted by the Croatian President's Office to prove the alleged existence of the so-called joint criminal enterprise.

The indictment alleges that the three generals, together with the late president Franjo Tudjman, the late defence minister Gojko Susak, the late generals Janko Bobetko and Zvonimir Cervenko, and other unidentified members of the Croatian wartime leadership, planned and carried out a combined military and police operation codenamed Storm in early August 1995 with the aim of ethnically cleansing the areas of Croatia that were under Serb occupation at the time.

The prosecution claims that the plan was conceived at a meeting of the Croatian political and military leadership on the northern Adriatic archipelago of Brijuni on July 31, 1995, which was attended by Gotovina and Markac.

EP backs supervised independence
B92
29 March 2007

BRUSSELS -- Members of the European Parliament today voted to give full support to Ahtisaari’s Kosovo plan. The adopted report stated that "sovereignty supervised by the international community is the best option for securing the objectives of a peaceful, self-sustaining Kosovo.”

The report also “reaffirmed the European perspective of both Serbia and Kosovo, and called for the EU to play a central role in the current international negotiations for a settlement.”

The own-initiative report by Joost Lagendijk (Greens/EFA, Netherlands), adopted by an overwhelming majority (490 in favor to 80 against with 87 abstentions) spelled out several desirable aspects of a settlement, including access to international financial organizations, an international presence in Kosovo, with a clear definition of its role and mandate, clear provisions on decentralization which grant substantial autonomy in key areas.

The report also called on full respect of human rights, retention of Kosovo's multi-ethnic character, with protection for cultural and religious sites, the establishment of a limited, internal, multi-ethnic Kosovo Security Force, and international guarantees for the territorial integrity of all neighboring states.

The European parliament said on its website that “addressing fears, especially in Russia, that granting Kosovo any form of independence would exacerbate other separatist tensions around the globe, the report ‘underlines that the solution in Kosovo will set no precedent in international law, as Kosovo has been under UN rule since 1999 [...and] is in no way comparable to the situation in other conflict regions which are not under UN administration.’”

The document added, "in the long run, the solution regarding the future status of Kosovo lies also in the fact that both Serbia and Kosovo are due to become part of the EU, together with their neighbors, since the future of the Western Balkans lies in the European Union."

The report emphasized that the EU member states should “speak with one voice on the Kosovo issue,” by adopting a common position in Council, and maintaining it in international fora, especially the UN Security Council.

The Parliament also argued that "the European Union should have a decisive say on the final terms of the settlement."

European Parliament members also called for a visa facilitation agreement for Kosovo, to ease access for travel into the European Union.

Finally, the report stated that "the EP is prepared to make available the additional resources required in order to finance the future EU involvement in Kosovo with a view to implementing the status settlement."

The report also expressed the Parliament's support for the establishment of an ESDP (European Security and Defense Policy) mission to Kosovo.

British Refusal to Extradite Serb Angers Croatia
Balkan Insight
By Drago Hedl in Osijek and Anna McTaggart
March 30, 2007

Row over Milan Spanovic throws spotlight on Croatia’s controversial in absentia war crimes trials.

Croatia is set to appeal a decision made last week in the British courts, refusing Zagreb’s request to extradite the convicted war criminal Milan Spanovic.

While the government has declined to comment on the decision until legal proceedings are over, many in the public and judicial circles have interpreted it as British double standards.

Others disagree, and blame legal sloppiness in Zagreb. Human rights activists, meanwhile, say the decision ought to highlight problems over the way Croatia prosecutes Serb war-crime suspects in absentia.

Spanovic was convicted in 1993 along with 18 other ethnic Serbs in a mass in absentia trial held during the conflict in Croatia that raged from 1991 to 1995. Found guilty of looting, harassing and assaulting civilians, he was sentenced to 20 years’ imprisonment but never apprehended. He has been resident in Britain since 1998.

A minor altercation with the UK police last year activated an Interpol arrest warrant issued for Spanovic by the Croatian authorities. As the British authorities, to whom he had disclosed the in absentia conviction, awarded him leave to remain in 2000, Croatia filed extradition proceedings.

However, Timothy Workman, an experienced extradition judge, turned down the request, even after the Croatian government had said Spanovic would receive a re-trial upon his transfer, which is general practice in cases of in absentia convictions.

Workman concluded that sending Spanovic back to Croatia would be unjust, as so much time had passed since the original trial to allow for reliable evidence, and the British authorities - by allowing Spanovic to remain, in full knowledge of the conviction - had given him reasonable expectations that he could stay in the UK.

Workman’s findings on the reliability of evidence against Spanovic have caused a storm in Croatia, as they appear at odds with the UK’s strong view that war crimes committed during Yugoslavia’s break-up should be tried in local and international courts.

In particular, he said that “the alleged offences were said to have occurred during a period of civil war, in which inevitably evidence will be hard to find or reconstruct. Witnesses memories after such a lengthy period during which radical change took place will have faded or be inaccurate. Inevitably some witnesses may be unavailable or impossible to trace”.

Many judicial experts have interpreted this as a serious deviation from the conventional viewpoint that a statute of limitation cannot be applied to war crimes and as a subversion of the international community’s proclaimed principles that each and every war crime must be prosecuted and the perpetrators punished.

“How is it that the passage of time since the event took place 16 years ago in the Spanovic case could result in the poor memory of the witnesses when such a rationale has not been applied to some other war crimes, including the ones prosecuted in The Hague, in which the witnesses’ testimonies are deemed to be credible and accurate?” asked one senior Croatian judicial official.

In his view, the Croatian courts are paying a price for the “inflation” of in absentia trials held in the early 1990s, many of which were politically motivated and intended to relieve the anger of the victims’ families over the lack of prosecutions of perpetrators of crimes.

The judiciary then often resorted to bringing war crimes charges en masse and holding trials in absentia that awarded long sentences. Individual responsibility was sometimes not distinguished.

Croatia has issued between 600 and 700 arrest warrants in relation to war crimes and held about 400 in absentia trials, almost entirely of Serbs, according to statistics.

State appointed defence lawyers routinely did little to represent absent clients. The Spanovic trial is considered an example of this practice, which local and international observers, such as the OSCE, Amnesty and Human Rights Watch have researched and criticised.

Nevertheless, Professor Ivo Josipovic, of Zagreb University Law School, still believes the British are applying double standards in this matter. “The Spanovic trial was a sloppy affair but one should bear in mind that we are talking here of the most serious criminal offence,” he told Balkan Insight.

“Now even The Hague tribunal has transferred war crimes cases to the Croatian judiciary, confirming its confidence in the domestic justice system, it is unusual for an EU member country to refuse to hand over to Croatia a person convicted of war crimes under the explanation that the person would not have a fair trial.

“In addition, there is a trial monitoring system in place as well as the fact that in some retrials the persons who received guilty verdicts in absentia have been acquitted.”

But others say Croatia’s argument for extradition had weaknesses. A source in the justice ministry said, “The Croatian authorities issued a Croatian passport to Spanovic in 1997 and back then no one realised this was a person convicted of war crimes by a Croatian court.”

The same source added, “On several occasions, Spanovic also visited the Croatian consulate in London to obtain personal documents for his children but no one told him he was convicted, or that there was an arrest warrant with his name on it.”

According to British lawyer Anand Doobey, an expert in extradition law at Peters & Peters, this was a decisive factor in this case. “What is in question is not the period since the commission of the criminal acts per se, but [the time lapse] since the requesting authorities became aware of the whereabouts of the defendant,” he said. Doobey described the delay of nine years as “excessive”.

Ben Ward, from Human Rights Watch, HRW, in London, emphasised the importance of understanding the court’s reasoning, telling Balkan Insight it would be “unfortunate if the decision was seen as an endorsement of the view that it’s not possible to fairly prosecute war crimes committed in the Balkans in the early 1990s”.

Although the extradition case was decided on the basis of Croatian delays and UK immigration decisions, Workman also commented on human rights concerns in the way Croatia treats ethnic Serbs, quoting HRW reports among others to raise concerns.

While no legal-binding conclusion on these points was made, their mention by the English judge indicates that they would likely be relevant in any future appeal.

According to Ward, “Croatia has improved the way it processes war crimes trials in recent years but there are still problems in the way that it prosecutes ethnic Serbs for those crimes.”

OSCE monitoring shows that the courts in Croatia have made some acquittals once individuals previously convicted in “in absentia” were re-tried in person. In other cases, no new trial was held after arrest because charges were either dropped or re-qualified as non-war crimes, allowing amnesty provisions to apply. Some have also been convicted.

The OSCE Mission told Balkan Insight it now proposed “that a mechanism be found to enable review of these old pending verdicts, outside the standard procedure that requires arrest, detention, and further court proceedings”. It said this would be in keeping with similar procedures used by the prosecutor in cases where no trial has as yet been conducted, where cases that should be pursued are distinguished from those that lack substantiation

However, in absentia trials are not entirely a thing of the past in Croatia. Vesna Terselic, of the Zagreb-based Documenta, a non-governmental organisation that deals with issues to do with facing up to the recent past, said, “Unfortunately, despite the recommendation of the state prosecutor’s office to refrain from organising trials ‘in absentia’, they are still taking place in Croatia.”

Two such trials are currently underway. In another seven, some of those accused are inaccessible and consequently absent from the trials. These include two large trials in the Vukovar District Court over alleged war crimes in the villages of Lovas and Berko.

At regular meetings with representatives of the Croatian justice ministry, the OSCE Mission to Croatia has inquired how state officials plan to address the significant number of in absentia convictions. Along with the European Commission and the ICTY, it recommends enhancing the mechanisms available for inter-state cooperation as a way to try suspects in person.

“Progress in facilitating enhanced inter-state judicial cooperation will be key to avoiding impunity and resolving at least some un-prosecuted cases and avoiding further in absentia cases,” the OSCE Mission stated, emphasising that this also requires assistance from neighbouring states.

Vesna Terselic agrees. “Today, when collaboration among prosecutors’ offices is in place, such trials are not necessary,” she said. “We should also bear in mind the witnesses and victims in particular, who are forced to relive their traumatic experiences several times in court - first in trials in absentia and later on when the accused finally appear in the dock.”

The fact that the accused is not in the courtroom during the trial, added Terselic, did not help to create an impression that court proceedings were impartial and fair.

The Croatian state prosecutor’s office also wants to see the situation improved through closer interstate cooperation along the lines already established among the prosecutors in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia and Montenegro.

Given that suspects are often located in one of these countries whereas the evidence and witnesses are in another - and that there are also those cases in which the crime in question was perpetrated in the third country, it is essential that the prosecutors’ offices in the former Yugoslav republics collaborate effectively.

“We are working on a new agreement to cooperate in the prosecution of war crimes suspects and those who committed crimes against humanity and genocide,” Vladimir Vukcevic, Serbia’s war crimes prosecutor, told Balkan Insight.

“When there is a problem that states cannot extradite their citizens we’ll be transferring evidence against persons suspected of war crimes to the country where that person resides.

“We’ll also be monitoring each others’ activities, but we should say that we’ve already developed mutual trust and that judicial organs in all countries are acting in a professional manner.”

In this sense, legal experts agree that the Spanovic case, regardless of its outcome, may serve as a warning to Croatia not to continue holding criminal proceedings in absentia and focus more on cooperation with judicial organs from other former Yugoslav republics facing similar problems.

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International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR)

Official Website of the ICTR

Allegations against Bikindi Co-Counsel not well founded
UN Observer
March 20, 2007

On 9 February 2007, the Registrar’s attention was drawn to an allegation against Maitre Jean De Dieu Momo, Co-counsel for Simon Bikindi. The particulars of the allegation were that Maitre Momo had attempted to influence a protected prosecution witness in the Bikindi trial. The allegation was said to potentially affect the Prosecution case in that trial and it was said that a substantial question was raised as to Maitre Momo’s honesty, trustworthiness and fitness as counsel.

The Registrar initiated an enquiry into the facts behind the allegation. Having received the results of those enquiries, the Registrar is now satisfied that the allegations were not well-founded.

The Registrar finds that there was a meeting between Maitre Momo and a person who was subsequently placed on the list of prosecution witnesses and later was the subject of a protection order. The Registrar has concluded that there is no clear evidence that Maitre Momo breached any ethical standards and that there is no credible evidence that Maitre Momo offered financial inducements to the person involved.

The Registrar concludes that Maitre Momo’s behaviour did not have any adverse effect upon the Prosecution witness and his testimony. The Registrar finally concludes that the facts uncovered by the investigation do not reflect adversely on the honesty, trustworthiness and fitness of Maitre Momo as Co-Counsel.

The Registrar wishes to observe that Counsel must take great care when arranging to interview witnesses that the laws and institutional rules in force in the country where the witness is located are obeyed. The Registrar further observes that the greatest care is needed by the representative of a party when interviewing potential witnesses to avoid the possibility of impropriety, or the appearance of impropriety. Representatives of the parties have an overriding duty to protect the integrity of the judicial process.

Mpanga Prison Ready for ICTR Transfers, Says Mutaboba
AllAfrica.com- The New Times
by Willy Mugenzi
March 27, 2007

Mpanga Prison, proposed to house Genocide and other suspects currently at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) is ready for transfers, Secretary General in the ministry of Internal Security, Joseph Mutaboba has revealed.

Talking to The New Times on March 22 at Mpanga Prison, Mukingo Sector in Nyanza District, Ambassador Mutaboba stressed that the prison is ready for ICTR transfers, noting that the Government has played its part in meeting the required prison international standards.

With a current total of 6,494 prisoners, Mpanga Prison has absorption capacity of 7,500 prisoners, an official source told The New Times.

Sources within the prison intimated to The New Times that so far, 30 dossiers of Genocide cases have been received from Arusha.

ICTR, based in Arusha, Tanzania, was mandated to investigate and prosecute Genocide suspects who authored the 1994 Rwandan Genocide that left over one million innocent people dead and thousands of others as survivors.

The tribunal is expected to wind up its work by 2008, and hand over its documentations and suspects to the Rwandan Government.

Asked whether ICTR has accepted handing over its important archives to Rwanda, when its mandate is over, Mutaboba said: "The landing point for all ICTR archives should be in Rwanda. After all, they contain Rwanda's history. Why should they take our history?"

Most Rwandans believe that Arusha-held prisoners have more uptodate facts about Rwanda's tragedy especially providing information to Genocide survivors on the whereabouts of their relatives still missing, 13 years after the Genocide.

According to Ambassador Mutaboba, transferring Genocide suspects will promote justice and prevent any re-occurrence of similar atrocities.

One Genocide survivor said, "The presence of Jean Kambanda and his likes in Rwanda will be a perpetual Genocide archive, a reference for future generations to fear animosity and instead promote humanism."

Bihingiro John, the director of Mpanga Prison said that the prisoners from Arusha will be given their separate cells to distance them from other prisoners who have been in the country.

"We are now partitioning cells to separate them from those we have here. They will not have any direct contact with other prisoners," Bihingiro said.

Govt Might Sue UN Over '94 Genocide
AllAfrica.com- The New Times
By Edwin Musoni
March 28, 2007

The government is considering taking the UN to an international court over the latter's failure to stop the 1994 Rwanda Genocide, it has emerged. Speaking at Parliamentary Buildings yesterday, Youth, Culture and Sports Minister, Joseph Habineza, said that Kigali is currently consulting with its ambassador to the UN (Joseph Nsengimana) 'on (legal) issues to be looked at while filing a lawsuit against the UN'. He was responding to a question from Deputy Polycape Gatete on why no action has been taken against the UN, which he accused of standing by while a million Rwandans perished during the 100 days of slaughter.

"The Government has been reluctant on suing the UN for not having stopped the Genocide; it is good they apologised but we should count them responsible for the deaths of thousands," Gatete said, adding that the government should give an explanation to MPs to that effect.

Meanwhile, Habineza said that the entire international community is expected to join Rwandans to commemorate the thirteenth Rwanda Genocide anniversary come next month. The minister was briefing MPs about preparations for the upcoming commemoration of Genocide yesterday, Joseph Habineza said that arrangements were underway at all Rwandan Embassies to mark the mourning week. "Also Rwandans living in countries where we don't have embassies and the rest of the world will join us in commemorating the Genocide," Habineza said at the Parliamentary Buildings, Kimihurura.

In April 2007, the UN declared April 7 as the 'International Day of reflection on the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda.'

Habineza also told legislators that plans to send government officials abroad to hold dialogues about the 1994 Rwanda Genocide are underway.

"The African Union has already requested us to send them someone who will present a paper on Rwanda Genocide; we have also received a number of requests from the Rwandan Diaspora," he explained.

Last year, the Centre for Human Rights and Humanitarian Law at the American University Washington College of Law last year developed the Rwanda Commemoration Project to encourage schools, universities, NGOs, and community groups to hold events to commemorate the Genocide which claimed over a million lives in record 100 days. The UN system is blamed for standing by as an estimated one million ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus perished in the Genocide.

Deputy Polycape Gatete wondered why the government has not sued the UN for not stopping the Genocide yet it had capacity to do so. MPs also demanded that the government bans all kinds of ceremonies during the Genocide commemoration week that are not in line with mourning activities.

"I request that these ceremonies be banned immediately as is a week of remembrance for our beloved ones" Deputy Jacqueline Muhongaire furiously said.

In response, Habineza said that he has already banned all ceremonies including baptism. "Recently, I had an issue with the Catholic Church that wanted to carryout baptism on April 7; but I stopped them after giving them a thorough explanation;

I don't expect to be giving explanations to stop ceremonies every April," Habineza said.

The Christian calendar indicates that this year's Easter Sunday will fall on April 7, the very day the commemoration week will start.

Survivors' livelihood

Deputy Juliana Kantengwa also introduced a new motion about the bad the condition of survivors.

She was backed by Deputies Emmanuel Mugabowidekwe and Gatete backed. "What is the plan for (Genocide-related) child-headed households? Is there a budget for them? Does the Ministry have a unit in charge of these children?" questioned Mugabowidekwe, who owns an orphanage for children orphaned by the Genocide.

Deputy Gatete said there are 19,400 child-headed households, adding, "these children live in 6,000 families, and most of them share houses. Statistics also indicate that there are over 14,000 widows of Genocide."

"In the past period we have had cases of 162 genocide survivors being killed; 121 have been injured by people who intend to kill them, and over 1,000 Genocide survivors have lost their properties," said Gatete

About Frw 56 billion is required for the construction of survivors' shelter. And the Fund for Assistance of Genocide Survivors (FARG) says that it only managed to raise Frw 10 billion for that purpose. However MPs vowed to ensure that the deficit is realised from the budget.

Meanwhile, Speaker Alfred Mukezamfura urged the Executive to speed up the process of establishing the Constitutional anti-Genocide Commission and to devise stringent measures to protect survivors.

He said that MPs would hold a vigil in remembrance of the victims of the Genocide.

The national celebrations on the first day of the mourning week will be held in Murambi, Gatsibo District in Eastern Province, where 200 bodies will be reburied. The closing ceremony is scheduled at Rebero, Kicukiro District in Kigali City.

The theme for this year's Genocide memorial week is: 'Let us remember the Genocide, taking care of the survivors and fighting for justice'.

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Iraqi High Tribunal

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

Former Iraqi VP Ramadan to hang: lawyers
Reuters via The West Australian
March 20, 2007

Saddam Hussein's former vice-president Taha Yassin Ramadan will hang for crimes against humanity on Tuesday, according to legal sources who said his lawyers had been summoned this evening.

Badia Aref, a lawyer who represents former deputy prime minister Tareq Aziz who also faces charges of crimes against humanity, told Reuters the family of Ramadan had telephoned him to ask him to appeal to the president to stop the execution.

Another legal source told Reuters the execution was set for Tuesday at dawn and that the family were making a last minute appeal to President Jalal Talabani to stop it.

"The execution is not legal or correct," Aref said, adding that there should be a 30-day period between final sentence and the implementation of an execution.

Last week, an Iraqi appeals court upheld a decision by the High Court to hang Ramadan and a judge said the death sentence could be carried out "at any moment".

Ramadan was sentenced in November to life in jail for his role in the killing of 148 Shi'ites in the town of Dujail in the 1980s for which Saddam and two former aides have already been hanged. But an appeals court recommended that he receive the death penalty and referred the case back to the trial court.

The trial court in November found Ramadan guilty of issuing orders for the systematic detention, torture and killing of men, women and children from Dujail following an attempt on Saddam's life there in 1982.

Saddam and two others were also found guilty. Saddam was executed at the end of December within days of the sentence being passed, while the other two were executed in January.

While the Iraqi president normally has the power to stop death penalties being implemented, the prosecution and the government have said the statutes of the Iraqi High Tribunal state that in crimes against humanity there is no power of veto.

Former vice president under Saddam Hussein hanged
CNN
March 20, 2007

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Taha Yassin Ramadan, the former vice president under Saddam Hussein, was hanged just before dawn Tuesday, according to a source close to Iraq's High Tribunal.

An official who witnessed the execution told The Associated Press measures were taken in order to prevent a repeat of what happened to Hussein's half-brother, Barzan Hassan, who was decapitated on the gallows. Ramadan was weighed before the execution and the appropriate size rope was chosen, the official said.

Last month, Ramadan was sentenced to death by the Iraqi court for his role in the 1982 killing of 148 men and boys in Dujail. An appeals court upheld the sentence last week.

Ramadan was sentenced to life in prison in November on charges that included willful killing in the 1982 crackdown, but the next month, the tribunal's nine-member appeals chamber decided the original sentence was too lenient and ordered the court to resentence him.

The court's decision drew opposition from coalition officials and nongovernmental groups in Iraq, and some members of Iraq's legal advisory community suggested judges came under pressure from politicians.

Hussein, Hassan and another official from his regime -- Awad Bandar -- also were hanged for their roles in the Dujail crackdown.

Hassan and Bandar were executed side-by-side on January 15, and Hussein was hanged on December 30.

Anfal Proceedings Raise Concerns: Open Letter to the President of the Iraqi High Tribunal
Human Rights Watch
by Richard Dicker
March 28, 2007

President al-Shahin
Iraqi High Tribunal (IHT)
Bagdhad , Iraq

Dear President al-Shahin,

We are writing this public letter to express our concerns arising in the Anfal trial. We hope the shortcomings identified below can be rectified to bring this trial into compliance with internationally recognized fair trial standards. Fair trials are instrumental to providing justice for victims and their families and will play a crucial role in ensuring that the brutal practices of the past regime are not repeated.

Specifically, we are concerned that the charging instruments issued against the six defendants in the Anfal trial are vague and thereby violate the defendants’ right to be informed of the charges against them. We raised similar concerns with respect to the Dujail trial in our report on that proceeding and hoped the problem would be resolved. So far, no corrective action has been taken. In addition, we are concerned that the unavailability of a significant portion of defense witnesses will severely curtail the defendants’ right to an adequate opportunity to present their case.

Defects in the form of the charging instruments

Pursuant to article 19(4)(a) of the IHT Statute and article 14(3)(a) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), a defendant has the right to be informed “promptly and in detail of the content, nature and cause of the charge against him.” This requires that the charging instrument contain sufficient information about the material elements of the case alleged against each defendant to allow them to prepare an adequate defense to the charges.

In order to effectively prepare a defense, the defendant must be able to determine the type of criminal liability to be applied against him, and what facts will be proved in order to sustain that theory. Thus, at a minimum, the particular nature of the defendant’s responsibility (for example, as a planner, commander, instigator, or aider of the crime) must be clearly identified, and the defendant must be given a concise statement of the material facts that will be used to establish the defendant’s specific mode of responsibility.

Disclosure of the dossier of evidence, in itself, does not give the defendants sufficient notice of the charges against them. Because the dossier is not tailored to each defendant, it does not inform the defendant of the material facts related to his role that will be proved at trial.

The charging instruments issued against the defendants on February 20, 2007, contain insufficient material facts of the case alleged against each defendant. For most of the defendants, insufficient information is provided regarding the basis of their individual criminal responsibility for the crimes committed. Generally, this is due to inadequate clarity over the facts the prosecution intends to prove relating to their position of authority during the Anfal campaign and how they fit into the overall chain of command during this campaign.

Charging the defendants with all forms of criminal responsibility listed under article 15 of the statute creates further problems for the fair and expeditious conduct of proceedings in the Anfal trial. Although the court is not limited to charging defendants with only one form of criminal responsibility, charging all defendants with all forms of criminal responsibility recognized under article 15 makes it difficult for defendants to prepare a meaningful defense in the limited time allotted.

Moreover, the charging document fails to provide sufficient notice of the facts that will be used to support the theory of criminal liability. Each form of criminal responsibility being alleged requires proof of separate and additional material elements. For example, charging a defendant with command responsibility under article 15(4) of the statute requires proof of three elements: the existence of a superior-subordinate relationship; that the superior knew or had reason to know that the criminal act was about to be or had been committed; and that the superior failed to take necessary and reasonable measures to prevent the criminal act or punish the perpetrator thereof. The charging instrument issued against any defendant must therefore include a summary of the material facts presented to substantiate each element. Similarly, the charge of joint criminal enterprise requires the pleading of additional facts regarding the nature of the enterprise and of the participants, as well as the form of joint criminal enterprise alleged against the defendant.

From the information provided in the charging documents, many defendants are unable to determine what form or forms of criminal responsibility are being alleged against them and what facts have been used to establish such responsibility. For example, the charges against defendants Sabir Abdul Aziz al-Duri and Farhan Mutlak al-Jubouri merely state that they “deliberately participated” or “intentionally participated” in killing Kurdish civilians and directing attacks against them. It is unclear whether the facts set forth regarding their role in such attacks are intended to establish their direct responsibility, their participation in a joint criminal enterprise, or their command responsibility for the crimes committed.

By charging the defendants with all forms of criminal responsibility and failing to specify the material allegations intended to establish each form of responsibility, the defendants are unfairly prejudiced in their ability to prepare their defense.

We would therefore urge that efforts be taken to ensure that the judges and prosecutors of the IHT understand the importance of sufficiently-pleaded charging instruments and of the relevant case law on this issue. We hope that in the future, the court will provide more details in the charging instruments on the nature of the case being alleged against each defendant, especially with regard to the alleged authority and role of each defendant in the crimes committed.

Ensuring that defense witnesses can testify

A further threat to the integrity of proceedings relates to the availability of defense witnesses during the recently-commenced defense phase of the Anfal trial. Article 19(4)(e) of the IHT Statute guarantees the right of the defense “to call and examine defense … witnesses, and to present any evidence in his defense in accordance with the law.” Article 14(3)(e) of the ICCPR also guarantees the defendant’s right “to examine, or have examined, the witnesses against him and to obtain the attendance and examination of witnesses on his behalf under the same conditions as witnesses against him.” Affording defendants the opportunity to call witnesses and obtain testimony under the same conditions as the prosecution is essential to a fair trial. It is imperative that the judges of the IHT fully uphold this right during the Anfal trial and future trials.

Our understanding is that many witnesses that defendants wish to call are unwilling to come to Iraq to testify because they fear arrest. Failure to obtain the testimony of key defense witnesses threatens to undermine the fairness of trial proceedings. In this regard, we would draw attention to the Human Rights Committee’s decisions interpreting ICCPR article 14(3)(e), noting that in death penalty cases, the court’s requirement to make every reasonable effort to obtain material defense testimony is of even greater importance.

We would therefore urge the court to allow efforts to obtain safe passage of defense witnesses for the limited purpose testifying in the Anfal trial. This would be consistent with the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (article 93(2)), as well as the practice of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), which has allowed judges to grant safe-passage agreements for the purpose of obtaining witness testimony since the first case before that tribunal.

Should this prove to be infeasible for reasons beyond the IHT’s control, we urge that the court provide defense witnesses the opportunity to testify through video-link. Since trial judges would retain as much control over testimony given via video-link as with live testimony, affording this opportunity to the defense is essential to safeguard the rights of the defense while protecting the integrity of proceedings.

Although such measures are not strictly required under the IHT Statute, the ICCPR or other sources of international law, we urge the court to make every effort to pursue these options. Doing so is critical to protect the overall fairness – and the perception of fairness – of proceedings in a trial of the utmost importance to the Iraqi nation and its people.

Adherence to fair trial rights in these highly public trials plays a crucial role in building firm respect for the rule of law. Full protection of the rights of the defendants – something sorely lacking under Ba’ath Party rule – is needed for Iraq to be transformed into a society where there are fair trials that respect human rights.

Sincerely,

Richard Dicker
Director, International Justice Program

[back to contents]

Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL) &
Liberian Truth and Reconciliation Commission

Offical Website of the Special Court for Sierra Leone
The Sierra Leone Court Monitoring Programme
Official Website of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Liberia

Dutch lawyer appointed Acting Registrar for UN-backed court in Sierra Leone
UN News Centre
March 20, 2007

20 March 2007 – The United Nations-backed Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL), set up to bring to justice those responsible for the worst crimes during the country’s brutal civil war, announced today that it has appointed an experienced Dutch practitioner of international law as its Acting Registrar.

Herman von Hebel, who had been serving as Deputy Registrar since last July, replaces Lovemore Munlo, SC, who is departing after one and a half years at the Special Court.

Before joining the SCSL, Mr. von Hebel worked as a lawyer for the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs and represented his Government in negotiations on the establishment of the International Criminal Court (ICC). He also served as Senior Legal Officer at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY).

Mr. von Hebel will be Acting Registrar until Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon makes a decision on a permanent replacement to Mr. Munlo, according to a press statement released by the Court in Freetown, the Sierra Leonean capital.

The Registry is responsible for the overall administration and management of the SCSL, including its detention facility. It must ensure that witnesses are protected and that the rights of all accused are respected.

An independent tribunal created jointly by the UN and Sierra Leone, the SCSL is tasked with bringing to justice those bearing the greatest responsibility for atrocities committed after 30 November 1996, during the West African nation’s civil war. So far 11 people have been indicted on various charges of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and other serious violations of humanitarian law. The Court has jurisdiction over the case against the notorious former Liberian president Charles Taylor, whose trial will be held separately in The Hague in the Netherlands.

Press Release: Statement Taking and Awareness in the US
Official Website of the TRC of Liberia
March 20, 2007

TRC Commissioner Massa A. Washington has been visiting several key cities and states in the United States, among them Minnesota, Philadelphia and Atlanta, to create awareness of the TRC process and get the Liberian community involved.

Addressing Liberians in the US, she said that the importance of the “expansion of the TRC process to include Liberians in the Diaspora cannot be overemphasized, considering the pivotal role of Liberians, particularly in the United States, in the body politic of Liberia. Liberians abroad stuck with their homeland through thick and thin assuming various roles at different times in our national history especially in the peace process. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission recognizes the importance of the Diaspora community and is determined to give it a voice in this all important national process.”

Meanwhile, Commissioner Pearl Brown Bull on a private visit to the States, met 200 members of the group ‘Liberia First’ and members of the People’s Christian Church in Durham, North Carolina. The pastor of the church, Reverend Cecilia Towah, introduced the Commissioner and asked the faithful and Liberians everywhere to pray for the work of the TRC and to participate in the process.

Commissioner Bull talked to them about the TRC mandate and the process in Liberia, encouraging the audience to give their statements. “You may not have waged the war but you can contribute to the peace,”she said.

The Minnesota Advocates for Human Rights, a pro bono group of lawyers that represents the TRC in the US and supports its work by providing voluntary services, material resources and the funds for the diaspora programme in the US. The group has started taking statements in Minnesota and will extend the programme to other states shortly.

Liberians in US Tell of Civil War Atrocities
Voice of America
by Deborah Block
March 20, 2007

In the West African country of Liberia, thousands of people are telling their stories about human rights abuses that took place in the country, especially during the 14-year civil war. Their comments will become part of a report by the Liberian Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The aim is to promote healing in Liberia. A large Liberian community in the U.S. midwest city of Minneapolis, Minnesota is also providing testimony for the report. VOA's Deborah Block has more.

A recent event in Minneapolis encouraged Liberians to come forward to document atrocities during their country's years of civil war and conflict between 1989 and 2003.

The conflict began when rebel leader Charles Taylor tried to overthrow Samuel Doe, who had taken over the country in a military coup. Various rebel factions also battled each other. It is estimated that the violence left at least 200,000 people dead and displaced a million more.

A private group, Minnesota Advocates for Human Rights, is coordinating the Liberian testimony in the United States.

Director Robin Phillips says the views of Liberians who live in the U.S. are crucial. "A lot of the people who fled Liberia were victims of the atrocities there and if they don't include their statements then the record won't be complete."

Momolu Getaweh was the minister of information under Doe, who was assassinated in 1990. He says he was astounded how Liberians turned against each other. "To see students kill their teachers. It's very gruesome some of those things that we saw, that we witnessed."

After Doe's death, ECOWAS -- The Economic Community of West African states -- formed an interim government, but Taylor's rebels and other factions refused to recognize it. Peace accords failed until Taylor agreed to another transitional government. After major fighting ended in 1997, Liberia held democratic elections. Taylor won the majority of the votes and became president.

During his six years as president, Taylor left Liberia bankrupt and in ruins. Under intense international pressure, he resigned in 2003 and went into exile in Nigeria.

Then in 2006, after being jailed in Sierra Leone, the United Nations sent him to The Hague, Netherlands for trial. He faces charges of allegedly backing rebels in the Sierra Leone civil war.

The Liberian Truth and Reconciliation Commission says its report will not be used to prosecute Liberians who may have committed crimes. But Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf told VOA the information could also be used for other purposes. "The whole process will enhance contrition and forgiveness. And at the end of the day if the recommendations lead to other forms of justice, we'll go that route appropriately."

Ben Browne is editor of a Liberian magazine in Minnesota. He is not testifying for the truth and reconciliation report because he says it is a waste of time. "There should be a war crimes tribunal set up for people who perpetrated crimes against the Liberian people. People should pay the price for what they did during that time."

Maimen Wopea says he was tortured during the civil war and both his parents were killed. "I know those who did it. And the first time I saw one of my torturers here, my friends will tell you I shed tears, I didn't know what to do. I wanted to grab him but I was able to tell him, 'do you remember me?' And when he said 'no' I told him about our interaction and then he said 'I'm sorry.' Then I broke down in tears."

Law firms in Minneapolis are providing free services to take testimony from local Liberians. Attorney Jim O'Neil spoke to one man for four hours. "Things that were done in this conflict are almost hard to believe. They are hard to imagine and how people could do that to other human beings."

O'Neil recently visited Liberia where he says a man on the street opened up to him. "And the story this gentlemen told involved murder, rape, cannibalism and a mass grave where he said children were buried alive."

But what if these stories are not true, or they are exaggerated? Since all testimony is confidential the commission hopes most people will tell the truth.

Liberian Truth and Reconciliation commissioner Massa Washington says confidentiality is the only way some people will find out what happened to their loved ones. "For example, the woman whose son disappeared who is still waiting after 14 or 15 years. How does she get the answer as to what happened to her son? Someone out there might know."

There are plans to take testimony in other U.S. cities with large Liberian populations. The Liberian commission's report is scheduled to be released in 2008.

“Turf War” over Charles Taylor Case
Institute for War and Peace Reporting
by Katy Glassborow
March 23, 2007

The former Liberian leader’s defence team says the International Criminal Court hosting the trial is imposing its own detention rules when jurisdiction belongs to the Special Court for Sierra Leone.

Despite United Nations resolutions enshrining the exclusive jurisdiction of the Special Court for Sierra Leone over the trial of former Liberian president Charles Taylor in The Hague, defence lawyers say rules applied by the International Criminal Court are compromising the special court's autonomy.

A turf war appears to be brewing over which of the two courts has the right to set rules governing Taylor's treatment.

While other trials conducted by the United Nations-backed Special Court for Sierra Leone, SCSL, have taken place in Freetown, the court is trying Taylor at the premises of the International Criminal Court, ICC, in The Hague. The decision to locate the trial in The Hague was taken in the interests of keeping the peace in Sierra Leone and the wider region.

Avi Singh, a legal adviser on Taylor's defence team, told IWPR that as a result of the decision, the SCSL registry fluctuates between its own regulations and interpretations of the rules, and those of the host ICC.

One hotly debated issue has been the ICC’s placement of video surveillance cameras in the room set aside for confidential meetings between defence attorneys and their clients.

In early March, Karim Khan, lead counsel for Taylor's defence, notified the Special Court that his team had suspended attorney-client consultations because all possible avenues for seeking the cameras’ removal had been exhausted.

The head of public information at the ICC, Sonia Robla, told IWPR that the presence of surveillance cameras is a rule of the court "based on security reasons". They are not there to monitor conversations, as defence lawyers fear, she said.

Although the SCSL registrar and president have backed defence initiatives to have the cameras removed from the consultation rooms, the ICC seemed loath to cede authority.

Robla stressed that talks were taking place between The Hague and Freetown. On March 23, Singh told IWPR that the ICC had informed the SCSL that rules surrounding surveillance cameras would no longer apply to legal visits, in line with the treatment accorded to the ICC's only detainee, Thomas Lubanga from the Democratic Republic of Congo.

TAYLOR CASE SHIFTED IN THE INTERESTS OF STABILITY

The SCSL was established by the UN and Sierra Leone's government for atrocities committed in that country after 1996, based on the concept of a hybrid UN and national institution operating in Freetown.

Taylor was initially indicted in 2003, while he was living in exile in Nigeria. The indictment was amended in March 2006, when he was taken into custody, to 11 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Sierra Leone.

In the same month, the then SCSL president asked the Netherlands government and the president of the ICC to allow the trial to take place in The Hague, citing concerns about stability in the region should Taylor be tried in Freetown.

Singh told IWPR that "allegations that Mr Taylor poses a security risk to West Africa by his mere presence are unsubstantiated".

In June 2006, a UN Security Council resolution was passed giving a green light to the relocation. It said Taylor’s presence in West Africa would be "an impediment to stability and a threat to the peace", and called on the Dutch government to facilitate the trial in the Netherlands.

The then registrar of the SCSL, Lovemore Munlo, welcomed the resolution, and noted that although the trial would take place in ICC courtrooms, it would be conducted by the SCSL’s judges and in accordance with its rules.

"The resolution stresses that the Special Court will retain exclusive jurisdiction over Mr Taylor during his presence in the Netherlands," said Munlo.

Taylor was transferred to The Hague later in June 2006.

CEDING JURISDICTION

In December last year, Taylor's attorneys requested that an April 2006 memorandum of understanding between the ICC and the SCSL be reviewed, and their client's conditions of detention modified to ensure that the Special Court retained exclusive jurisdiction.

On March 19 this year, SCSL president Justice George Gelaga King dismissed the motion, saying that the memorandum of understanding, MoU, already states that "the Special Court shall retain full legal control and authority over the detainee and shall assume full legal responsibility for the custody of the detainee".

As Justice King pointed out, the MoU states that the SCSL will remain "fully responsible for all aspects arising out of the provision of the day-to-day detention services and facilities under this article, including the well-being of the detainee".

But Singh is adamant that the MoU is flawed in that it "both cedes jurisdiction, without authority, and states that the Special Court retains jurisdiction".

He said Justice King’s decision "reaffirm[s] the court's unwillingness to grasp the nettle of responsibility, due to a turf war between the SCSL and the ICC".

The defence team finds this doubly galling as it maintains that the ICC is not assisting in on logistical matters and is refusing to give it offices in its building

“It is clear on the one hand that we are outside the system, but on the other hand it [ICC] wants to apply its rules of detention," said Singh.

NO AVENUE FOR APPEAL

Taylor's defence team filed a request in February 2007 for the case to be tried in Freetown, stating that there had been a "significant change in circumstances", and that the security situation in Liberia and Sierra Leone no longer justified the original change in venue.

On March 12, however, Justice King dismissed this request, saying that "the rules do not provide the applicant an avenue for reconsideration or review before the president".

The fact that there is no avenue for appeal is the crux of the problem, in the view of Taylor's defence team. Singh argues that they have been "consistently refused the right to be heard on the issue".

Initial filings were rejected by the appeals chamber as premature, with judges holding that the then president's inquiry as to whether the ICC and Dutch government would be willing to host the trial in the Netherlands was part of his "diplomatic and administrative functions".

The decision on transfer was conveyed to the defence simultaneously with the transfer of Taylor in June 2006, "so the defence were effectively denied an opportunity to contest transfer – it was a fait accompli", said Singh.

When the defence tried to get the president to reconsider the issue of transfer, he rejected the motion on the grounds that there was no provision in the rules to allow him to reconsider an administrative decision.

"He is saying he doesn't have jurisdiction to review his own decision, so who is finally responsible?" asked Singh.

SURVEILLANCE – THE EYE OF THE STORM

The UN Security Council resolution stressed that the Special Court would have exclusive jurisdiction over Taylor during his time in the Netherlands, but Singh argues that this does not seem to be extended to the conditions of his detention.

Singh is unhappy that video surveillance cameras were installed in the room allocated as a meeting room for Taylor and his defence attorneys.

This happened after cameras were put in the consultation room used by Lubanga. When Lubanga’s defence counsel, Jean Flamme, objected in court, pre-trial judges agreed that the cameras should be removed and ordered the ICC's registrar to do so in late 2006.

But Taylor's team does not have a trial chamber in The Hague.

Many defence lawyers feel that the right of privileged legal counsel is part of one’s right to a fair defence, and that this cannot be afforded if there is a video camera – even one without a microphone attached – in the consultation room.

Taylor 's team told the SCSL that "the mere presence of a live video camera has a chilling effect on confidential communications… and creates an atmosphere whereby an accused does not feel free to communicate with his counsel".

Speaking from Freetown, a spokesman for the SCSL registry, Peter Anderson, told IWPR that this was a matter of interpretation of the rules.

"Our [rules] in Freetown say that during conferences between the accused and their lawyer, a member of the detention facility will be within visual contact but not within hearing distance," Anderson explained.

He said the ICC had decided to put a camera in the room instead of an actual person, and that the SCSL registrar and president had agreed with the defence that the physical presence of a person differs from a camera.

The logistical and legal framework of the arrangement between the SCSL and the ICC arrangement has never been encountered before, "so we have to work it out as we go along", said Anderson, adding that the MoU "adopts the ICC's rules of detention as our rules in The Hague".

DEFENCE INSISTS SCSL SHOULD NOT CONCEDE ON RULES

Robla said that the MoU between the SCSL and the ICC clearly states that the latter institution is responsible for the detainees in The Hague, and therefore applies its own rule on having cameras present for security reasons.

"These are our rules and if the camera is going to be removed we have to follow the appropriate channels" added Robla, stressing that the MoU includes provisions to "open up dialogue between the courts, and we are now in the process of consultations".

The defence feels that the ICC is imposing its authority and creating confusion over whose rules apply, but that ultimately Taylor is an SCSL accused and detainee, and therefore Freetown is responsible for the conditions of his detention.

"Any concession of this [SCSL] authority should be avoided," said Singh.

The SCSL president gave an order that the SCSL registry communicate its views on the surveillance cameras to the ICC, and that action should be taken.

But even though the registry agreed that the video cameras should be removed, it apparently has no jurisdiction over ICC decisions.

Nor does the jurisprudence set by Lubanga's pre-trial judges seem to be binding or relevant for Taylor. The ICC's Robla explained that "in principle, our rules apply for all our detainees, but with Lubanga the chambers took a decision. It is a general rule that the ICC has, and we are open to changes."

On March 23 Singh notified IWPR of an apparent U-turn on the matter, as the ICC told the SCSL that after internal consultation between judges and the presidency over surveillance cameras for Lubanga, a decision had been made that the rules would not apply to legal visits.

This is consistent with the decision taken by Lubanga's pre-trial judges, and means that for the sake of maintaining a uniform regime at the detention centre, surveillance cameras will not used for Taylor's legal consultations either.

Singh explained that it had also been made clear by the ICC that any changes to Lubanga’s status in respect of the rules and regulations of the ICC could have an impact on Taylor, so consultation between the two courts would take place.

FURTHER DISPUTES POSSIBLE ONCE TRIAL STARTS

Even though the issue of the surveillance camera seems to have been resolved, it appears to have happened as a result of an internal debate, rather than consultations between the two courts. This therefore leaves open the question of what happens the next time there is an inconsistency between the rules of the SCSL and the ICC.

The case exemplifies the unique problem of a Freetown-based, UN-backed hybrid court managing a trial in The Hague, and rings alarm bells for when Taylor's case reaches the trial stage. There could, for instance, be a battle over whether ICC or SCSL rules apply to the management of witnesses, the conduct of the courtroom, and the ability to access documents.

Taylor's trial is due to start in The Hague in June 2007.

Court Says Former War Hero Dies of natural Causes
AllAfrica.com - The Independent (Freetown)
by Alpha R. Jalloh
March 28, 2007

The Special Court for war crimes in Sierra Leone says an autopsy to determine the cause of death last month of Special Court indictee Sam Hinga Norman has showed that he died of natural causes.

According to the court, the autopsy report, shows that Mr. Norman died of natural causes from a myocardial infarctionâl. "The report was finalised this week after receipt of the results of toxicology tests" an official statement from the court states.

It further reveals that the autopsy was conducted on March 5 by a four-member team of pathologists and medical experts led by Prof. Mendes of Senegal. One of the experts was selected by the Special Court, and one by the Government of Sierra Leone.

"Former Vice President Dr. Albert Joe Demby, a medical doctor, observed the autopsy on behalf of the Norman family. Dr. Donald Harding, the Special Court's Medical Officer, also attended as an observer", the statement further reads.

In January, Mr. Norman was taken to Hospital Aristide Le Dantec, a military hospital in Dakar, the capital of the West African state of Senegal, for a routine medical procedure which the Special Court for war crimes said was not available in Sierra Leone. "The procedure was performed successfully on February 8. On February 22, Mr. Norman collapsed in his hospital room. Doctors tried unsuccessfully to revive him", the Court asserts.

According to them, on February 22, former Special Court Registrar Lovemore Munlo SC, ordered an inquest to determine the cause of Mr. Norman's death. Mr. Munlo has resigned recently and no reason has been given for his resignation.

The Court says a separate inquiry into the circumstances surrounding his death was ordered by the President of the Special Court, Justice George Gelaga-King. That inquiry is being conducted by Justice Renate Winter of Austria.

A second indictee, Issa Hassan Sesay, also received medical treatment in Dakar on the same day. Mr. Sesay was returned to Freetown on March 1 and the court says, "he is in good health".

Special Court says, "A copy of the autopsy report was sent to the Norman family. The results of the toxicology tests will now be made available to the family".

The late Hinga Norman was former deputy minister of defence prior to his indictment,and during the war he was the coordinator of the pro-government Civil Defence Force that fought rebels of the Revolutionary United front rebel movement. Many atrocities were committed during the war for which all sides to the war except the West African intervention force known as Ecomog, were indicted. Three of the leading figures in the war have died. They are; Sam Mosquito Bockarie former Battle Field commander of the Revolutionary United Front, Foday Sankoh leader of the RUF and Hinga Norman.

The former President of Liberia, Charles Taylor is on trial at the Hague for allegedly supporting the RUF during the war years.

Taylor’s Lawyers Want More Preparation Time
Institute for War and Peace Reporting
by Katy Glassborow
March 30, 2007

Lawyers say a dispute over surveillance cameras has wasted time that should have been devoted to preparing the former Liberian leader’s defence.

Defence lawyers acting for former Liberian president Charles Taylor have resumed consultations with their client following an 18-day protest, but they have warned the court trying his case that they will need more time to prepare his case because of a power struggle over jurisdiction.

Taylor is due to go on trial in June, to face charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity relating to conflict in Sierra Leone.

Proceedings against him are being conducted by the Special Court for Sierra Leone, SCSL, which is based in Freetown, but he is being held at detention facilities belonging to the International Criminal Court, ICC, in The Hague, and his trial will take place there. Special Court officials took the view that holding his trial in Freetown could pose security risks in West Africa.

His lawyer Karim Khan suspended consultations with him from March 5 to 22, after objecting to the presence of a video surveillance camera in the designated meeting room at the ICC.

The camera had been in Taylor’s consultation room since November, and Khan argued that the “monitoring of confidential communications” had a “constraining and chilling effect” on what should have been free and frank consultations.

Khan said an inordinate amount of time had been spent dealing with the camera issue, which he deemed a “violation of Mr Taylor’s fair trial rights”. Coupled with the 18-day suspension of consultations, he said the defence “does not see how this matter can be easily remedied [without] the provision of additional time for the preparation of the trial”.

Since Taylor was transferred to The Hague in June last year, his defence team have since argued that the trial no longer poses a threat to security in the region, and in February 2007 they requested that it be returned to Freetown.

They have also argued that the memorandum of understanding between the SLSC and the ICC which underpins Taylor’s presence in The Hague is flawed because it “cedes jurisdiction, without authority” to the ICC, even though the Sierra Leone court technically retains full jurisdiction of the trial and the way its detainee is treated.

Khan said that the issue of surveillance cameras fell into the chasm created by the apparent grey area of procedure. The ICC has insisted that the use of surveillance cameras is one of its rules, there for security rather than monitoring purposes. The SLSC’s procedure is for client-lawyer consultations to be visually monitored by a security officer out of earshot.

Although the camera in Taylor’s meeting room had no microphone, his lawyers said the presence of the camera inhibited their client from communicating freely with them.

Observers of the court such as legal expert Alison Smith from the No Peace Without Justice group, said that “the [SLSC-ICC] memorandum provides that the SCSL has charge of Taylor’s trial and detention, so it is not clear how this confusion arose”.

In late 2006, cameras were fitted in the consultation room set aside for Thomas Lubanga Dyilo from the Democratic Republic of Congo – the ICC’s first and only indictee in custody. But Lubanga’s defence lawyer Jean Flamme objected, and pre-trial judges in charge of his case ordered the registry to remove the cameras.

Taylor and his team, however, did not have the luxury of a trial chamber in The Hague, and the decision taken by the ICC judges was not binding for his case.

Although the SCSL presidency and registry backed moves to have the cameras, in accordance with the rules of detention applied in Freetown, the ICC stood firm. However, on March 22, the ICC backed down, sending a letter to the Special Court saying that surveillance cameras would not after all be used when Taylor was in consultation with his legal team.

As Khan pointed out when he notified trial judges in Freetown on March 23 that legal consultations with Taylor were resuming, the ICC decision mirrors the ruling issued by the SCSL president over a month earlier, on February 21.

Smith told IWPR that the issue of surveillance cameras may foreshadow more problems, because there seems to be an “inherent uncertainty over who has the power to do what”.

She pointed out that the two individuals currently held at the ICC detention facility belong to different legal regimes, and that “ICC judges do not have a say over one of the accused [Taylor]”.

Smith also expressed broader concerns about what would happen if other tribunals such as the Iraqi Special Tribunal asked for persons they had indicted to be held in the ICC’s detention facilities. This could be problematic, for instance because the Iraqi tribunal can issued the death penalty, while the ICC does not.

Speaking from South Africa, Justice Richard Goldstone, an international justice expert and war crimes prosecutor, told IWPR that it was clear that “SCSL judges have to be completely in charge of all procedures and rules that apply”.

The former Liberian leader may be in detention on ICC premises, but Goldstone insisted, “This is merely a housing arrangement and the ICC has no jurisdiction over decisions relating to Taylor.”

Khan stressed that Taylor’s legally privileged consultations with his defence team have been monitored since November 2006, and the “apparent inability of the Special Court registry and the ICC registry to resolve the issue in an expedient and transparent fashion forced the defence to suspend consultations”.

Khan said the defence was kept “entirely in the dark” for two-and-a-half weeks as to what action the SCSL registry was taking either to deal with its complaint, or to implement the decision of the Special Court’s president.

Avi Singh, who also works on Taylor’s defence told IWPR that although no formal appeal has yet been filed to push the trial back, “there of course exists good cause for it, and it is something that will need to be decided”.

He said that the prejudice suffered by his client related not only to the 18-day freeze when “we were forced to suspend legal consultations”, but also to the preceding period since the camera was installed, in which “we have continued legal consultations with some prejudice for more than three months, and under protest”.

“We ended up expanding considerable energy fighting the camera, when a reasonable administrative decision would have let us focus on the case,” added Singh.

Khan said the question of a possible postponement of the trial start was a matter for the three trial chamber judges – Justice Julia Sebutinde, Justice Richard Lussick and Justice Teresa Doherty – to decide on.

Taylor’s trial is due to start in The Hague in June 2007.

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United States

US Sent Guantanamo Detainees Home to Torture in Russia
Human Rights Watch
March 29, 2007

New Report Shows Why ‘Diplomatic Assurances’ Don’t Work

(New York, March 29, 2007) – Former Guantanamo detainees who were sent home to Russia in 2004 experienced torture and other abuse despite Moscow’s pledge to the US government that they would be treated humanely, Human Rights Watch said in a new report released today.

The Russian prisoners’ experience illustrates why the United States should stop relying on “diplomatic assurances” of fair treatment to justify sending prisoners from Guantanamo Bay to countries where they are at risk of torture.

The seven Russians were all detained soon after the US invasion of Afghanistan and eventually spent about two years in Guantanamo. Although they complained of mistreatment by the Americans, all of the detainees repeatedly asked authorities at Guantanamo not to be returned to Russia because they expected to be treated worse there. And indeed, three of them experienced serious torture and ill-treatment after being arrested in Russia. Two of them were convicted at unfair trials, and all of them have been harassed and hounded by Russian law enforcement.

The 43-page report, “The ‘Stamp of Guantanamo;’ The Story of Seven Men Betrayed by Russia’s Diplomatic Assurances to the United States.” reconstructs the experiences of the detainees after being returned to Russia in March 2004, based on interviews with three of the detainees, their family members, lawyers, and others. Access to the ex-detainees is limited because three of them are in prison and the rest have either managed to leave the country or are in hiding.

“The Russian experience shows why ‘diplomatic assurances’ simply don’t work,” said Carroll Bogert, associate director of Human Rights Watch and author of the report. “Governments with records of torture don’t suddenly change their behavior because the US government claims to have extracted some kind of assurance from them.”

The Convention against Torture stipulates that no person may be sent back to a country where he is at real risk of torture and allows no exceptions on national security or other grounds. The United States is a party to the convention and is therefore violating international law in transferring prisoners to countries where they may face torture. A US government statement to Human Rights Watch made it clear that Washington was aware of the threat of torture in Russia.

Many countries are attempting to deport or extradite terrorism suspects with “diplomatic assurances,” including the United Kingdom, Canada, Austria, Netherlands, and Switzerland.

Human Rights Watch urged the US government to establish screening procedures so that a person being transferred from Guantanamo Bay has an effective opportunity to challenge his transfer before an impartial body. Such procedures should also allow a detainee to challenge the reliability of any diplomatic assurances the US government may have secured.

The US government has cleared some 80 detainees for release or transfer from Guantanamo, but continues to hold them in detention nevertheless. Human Rights Watch urged that any procedure to evaluate detainees’ fear of torture need not impede the pace of returns, or the ultimate goal of shuttering the Guantanamo detention facilities entirely.

The US government says that Russian authorities promised to prosecute the detainees on terrorism charges and to treat them humanely. They did neither. After three months in Russian custody, during which they were not abused, all seven ex-detainees were released and attempted to resume normal lives in Russia, which proved impossible.

Rasul Kudaev, a resident of Kabardino-Balkaria in southern Russia, was detained after an armed uprising in the provincial capital in October 2005. According to photographs, medical records, court documents, and the testimony of lawyers and family members, Kudaev was repeatedly beaten in custody in an effort to compel him to confess to involvement in the uprising. He has still not been prosecuted for his alleged role in the uprising, but remains in custody nearly a year and a half later.

Ravil Gumarov and Timur Ishmuratov, both residents of the Russian republic of Tatarstan, were detained in April 2005 in connection with an explosion on a local gas pipeline in which no one was killed or injured. They were beaten in custody until they confessed; Gumarov was deprived of sleep for approximately one week and shackled to a small cage with his hands over his head, among other abuses.

Gumarov and Ishmuratov recanted their confessions at trial and were acquitted by the jury in September 2005. However, local prosecutors got the verdict “annulled” and won a conviction in May 2006.

“What happened to the former detainees is pretty standard for a lot of suspects in police custody in Russia,” said Bogert. “But that’s just the point. The US government knew that these men would likely be tortured, and sent them back to Russia anyway.”

Two of the detainees told Human Rights Watch that US interrogators at Guantanamo had threatened to send them back to Russia if they did not divulge information about their alleged terrorist activities.

The detainees and their families described frequent harassment by Russian police and security services, particularly the Federal Security Service, the successor to the KGB, and the Organized Crime Department of the Ministry of the Interior. “I was told many times [by Russian authorities] that after my time in Guantanamo, it wasn’t necessary to prove I was a terrorist,” former detainee Airat Vakhitov told Human Rights Watch. “That any one of us could be thrown in jail because we were terrorists.”

Guantanamo: Confessions and Questions
Council on Foreign Relations
by Eben Kaplan
March 16, 2007

A new chapter in the saga of the Guantanamo Bay detainees opened this March in rather unspectacular fashion. The first trial of an “enemy combatant” before a military commission at the controversial U.S. military base ended almost as soon as it began. David Hicks, an Australian accused of aiding al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, entered a guilty plea (BBC), preempting any lengthy legal proceedings.

Hicks’ trial was supposed to be a test run (AP) for the new military tribunal system established last year. Following a June Supreme Court that the president did not have the authority to form special tribunals for detainees at Guantanamo, Congress passed the Military Commissions Act, granting that authority. Noah Feldman, a legal expert and CFR adjunct fellow, expects more back and forth between Congress and the Supreme Court before the dust settles over the infamous prison camp.

Days before the Hicks trial, several other prominent Guantanamo inmates made their first appearance before a Combatant Status Review Tribunal; a smaller military commission charged with reviewing the detainees’ classification as enemy combatants. Chief among these was Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, long believed to be the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks. In his boastful testimony (censored transcript, PDF), Mohammed claimed responsibility for 9/11, the murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, and more than two dozen other plots. Mohammed also claimed to be the victim of torture (The Age) before his transfer to Guantanamo in September.

Around the world, many believe that the circumstances of their detention render such confessions useless. Pearl’s family met Mohammed’s confession with some doubts (JPost). Britain’s relatively pro-American Telegraph says “the world will condemn the procedures by which the verdicts were reached.” Washington Post columnist Anne Applebaum writes that Guantanamo’s affront to the rule of law is not only immoral, “it is also ineffective and in fact profoundly counterproductive.”

While Mohammed awaits trial, which could happen in the next year, Hicks will serve his prison sentence in Australia (Australian), becoming one of more than four hundred detainees to leave U.S. custody in Guantanamo. But with roughly 385 detainees remaining, including a few new arrivals, the notorious prison camp appears likely to remain in operation (McClatchy) for some time. Justice for the detainees, says the New York Times, is “a work in progress.”

The New York Times recently reported that upon his arrival as Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates lobbied his fellow cabinet members and the president to close Guantanamo. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice—who frequently gets an earful about Guantanamo when traveling abroad—sided with Gates. But President Bush, who last autumn expressed his desire to close the base, sided with Vice President Dick Cheney and Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez, who argued that alternatives to Guantanamo would prove even more troublesome. In an online debate, David B. Rivkin and Karen J. Greenberg, two legal experts, consider the proper way to deal with enemy combatants.

Gates urges closure of Guantanamo
BBC News
March 30, 2007

The US Defence Secretary, Robert Gates, has said that Congress should look for ways to close the Guantanamo Bay military prison in Cuba.

He said the military trials of terror suspects at the prison lack credibility because they have been tainted by the harsh treatment of detainees.

But he said that some detainees who have vowed to attack the US should never be released from custody.

The US has started the military trials of terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay.

Mr Gates told a House of Representatives committee that "my own view is that because of things that happened earlier at Guantanamo there is a taint about it."

'Hard core detainees'

He said he wanted the Guantanamo prison to be closed and the trials moved to the US "because I felt that no matter how transparent, no matter how open the trials, if they took place in Guantanamo, in the international community they would lack credibility."

Australian David Hicks pleaded guilty on Monday to providing material support for terrorism in the first case under a new law authorising the military trials.

The chief prosecutor for the military tribunals said on Thursday the prosecution will seek a sentence of "substantially less" than 20 years for him, AP news agency reported.

The US has faced international criticism over its continued detention of suspected al-Qaeda and Taleban militants.

About 385 people are being held at Guantanamo Bay. Some of them have been there for years without facing trial.

"The reality is there are people at Guantanamo we would like to turn back to their home countries, and their home countries won't take them," Mr Gates said.

There were about 100 "hard core" prisoners, he said, who should never be released from custody.

"I don't know if the military prison system provides the capacity to keep them, but I know that there are some people down there who if we release them have made very clear they will come back and attack this country."

He said how to move the "hard core" detainees while ensuring they do not have access to a legal system where they might be released was "an area where frankly I think there needs to be some dialogue between the Congress and the administration."

Where's Congress In This Power Play?
The Washington Post
by Frederick A.O. Schwarz Jr. and Aziz Huq
April 1, 2007

Thirty years ago, a Senate committee headed by the late Sen. Frank Church exposed widespread abuses by law enforcement and intelligence agencies dating to the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration. In the name of "national security," the FBI, CIA and National Security Agency spied on politicians, protest groups and civil rights activists; illegally opened mail; and sponsored scores of covert operations abroad, many of which imperiled democracy in foreign countries.

The sheer magnitude of the abuses unearthed by the committee shocked the nation, led to broad reforms and embarrassed Congress, whose feckless oversight over decades was plain for all to see. As a result, Congress required presidents to report covert operations to permanent new intelligence committees and created the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which squarely repudiated the idea of inherent executive power to spy on Americans without obtaining warrants. New guidelines were issued for FBI investigations.

For those of us involved in that effort to bring accountability and sunshine back to government, it is discouraging to read daily accounts of a new era of intelligence power abuses, growing out of a "war" on terrorism that is invoked to justify almost any secret measure.

In the past five years, we have learned that the executive branch has circumvented federal bans on torture, abandoned the Geneva Conventions, monitored Americans' phone conversations without the required warrants and "outsourced" torture through "extraordinary rendition" to several foreign governments. Recently we learned that the FBI recklessly abused its power to secure documents through emergency national security letters.

Once again, congressional oversight of the growing national security, intelligence and law enforcement establishments has fallen short. But there are now obstacles to reestablishing effective oversight that did not exist three decades ago.

For one thing, the country and Congress are far more polarized. There was a high degree of bipartisan unity on the Church Committee, and Republican President Gerald R. Ford generally cooperated in the effort to expose abuses and create remedies. The committee, formally known as the Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, was created in Watergate's wake and had a Democratic majority. But it focused on abuses by administrations of both parties. Indeed, its inquiries revealed that three Democratic icons, Presidents Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, all knew about or approved questionable activities. Howard Baker Jr., a senior Senate Republican who served on the panel, disagreed with some proposals but said it had carried out its task "responsibly and thoroughly."

But Congress now faces an even bigger problem than heightened partisanship. Past presidents have never claimed that the Constitution gave them power to set aside statutes permanently. (Richard M. Nixon was no longer in office when he declared: "When the president does it, it means that it is not illegal.") The Bush administration, however, appears committed to eliminating judicial and congressional oversight of executive action at all costs. This pernicious idea, at odds with the Founders' vision of checks and balances, lies at the heart of many of today's abuses.

In some ways, the "Magna Carta" of this combative ideology was the minority report issued by eight of the Republicans on the Iran-contra committee that investigated the Reagan administration's handling of covert arms sales to Iran and the secret -- and illegal -- effort to finance the contra rebels fighting in Nicaragua.

Among the report's signers was then-Rep. Dick Cheney, who led the group. They rejected the idea that separation of powers would "preclude the exercise of arbitrary power" and argued that the president needed to act expeditiously and secretly to achieve American aims in a dangerous world. Their solution to executive abuse was to water down congressional and judicial oversight. The minority report referred approvingly to "monarchical notions of prerogative that will permit [presidents] to exceed the law" if Congress tried to exercise oversight on national security matters. Cheney later insisted in an interview that "you have to preserve the prerogative of the president in extraordinary circumstances," by not notifying Congress of intelligence operations.

Cheney's views have not shifted since then. In December 2005, he referred reporters to the minority report for his view of "the president's prerogatives." And for the first time in U.S. history, executive branch lawyers have argued that the president has power to "suspend" laws permanently in the name of national security. In signing statements for new laws, the chief executive has repeatedly asserted this broad power. In internal legal opinions on torture, Justice Department lawyers have proposed that the president can set aside laws that conflict with his ideas of national security. Under this logic, laws against torture, warrantless surveillance and transfers of detainees to governments that torture all buckle.

We do not know precisely which laws were turned aside, because the administration still refuses to reveal Justice Department opinions that define what laws the executive will and will not follow. Such secrecy, which has nothing to do with the legitimate protection of sources and methods of intelligence agencies, cannot be justified.

This crisis of constitutional faith did not begin with the current Republican administration. After a burst of reforms in the 1970s, Congress quickly fell back into Cold War apathy, finding it easier to let standards lapse than to hold the executive branch to account. The Iran-contra scandal was the first warning that the Church Committee's lessons had been sidelined by the executive branch. Attorney generals issued looser guidelines on FBI investigations. The White House became a keen user of unilateral executive orders that bypassed Congress.

President Bill Clinton's stint in the White House proved no exception. He broadly interpreted his war powers and aggressively used executive orders to bypass Congress -- for example, ignoring a House vote opposing intervention in Kosovo. Clinton issued 107 presidential directives on policy, according to Harvard Law School Dean Elena Kagan. Reagan issued nine and George H.W. Bush just four.

Today, the argument for unchecked presidential power is starkly different from earlier invocations. While previous administrations have violated civil liberties -- as in the post-World War I Palmer raids and the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II -- such actions were public and short term. When Confederate troops neared Washington, D.C., in the Civil War and mobs in Baltimore attacked Union troops, President Abraham Lincoln suspended habeas corpus -- the principal legal protection against unlawful detention. As Baltimore's mayor threatened to blow up railroad bridges used by Union troops, Lincoln acted without waiting for Congress to return from recess. Yet he subsequently sought and received congressional approval.

Unlike Lincoln and other past chief executives, President Bush asserts that he has the power to set aside fundamental laws permanently -- including those that ban torture and domestic spying. The White House today argues that there will never be a day of reckoning in Congress or the courts. To the contrary, it does all it can to shield its use of unilateral detention, torture and spying powers from the review of any other branch of government. Even after five years, the lawfulness of incarcerating hundreds of detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, has not been reviewed by another branch.

Never before in U.S. history, we believe, has a president so readily exploited a crisis to amass unchecked and unreviewed power unto himself, completely at odds with the Constitution. This departure from historical practice should deeply concern those in both parties who care for the Constitution. Even in military matters, Congress has considerable authority. For instance, the Constitution specifies that Congress can "make Rules for Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces." Military intelligence, military surveillance and military detention are all matters on which Congress can dictate the terms of how the commander-in-chief's power is exercised.

Debates at the 1787 Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, and in the state ratifying conventions that ensued, conclusively undercut the current administration's claim to unaccountable power. Alexander Hamilton, the founding era's foremost advocate of executive vigor, disdained efforts to equate the new president's authority with the broad powers of the English monarchs. And even assuming that Hamilton was wrong in asserting that presidents have less power than English kings, the British monarchy had in fact been stripped of power to "suspend" parliamentary laws after the Glorious Revolution of 1688, about 100 years before the Constitutional Convention. The Constitution simply contains no unfettered executive authority to annul laws on a president's security-related say-so.

There is no reason to abandon the founding generation's skepticism of unchecked executive power. The Constitution rests on a profound understanding of human nature. Hamilton, James Madison and the other framers and ratifiers knew that no single individual, whether selected by birth or popular vote, could be blindly trusted to wield power wisely. They knew that both the executive and Congress would make mistakes.

The Supreme Court has repeatedly backed a strong oversight role for Congress. "The scope of [Congress's] power of inquiry . . . is as penetrating and far-reaching as the potential power to enact and appropriate under the Constitution," it wrote in 1975. Congress has repeatedly met its constitutional responsibility as a coequal branch, even in times of war, and regardless of partisan interests. Oversight is not a Republican or Democratic issue. In World War II, then-Sen. Harry S. Truman coordinated aggressive inquiries into the Democratic administration's mismanagement of war procurement. During the Civil War, Republicans in Congress drove Lincoln's first secretary of war from office by their investigations.

Today's questions about presidential power are certainly not ones that have Republican or Democratic answers. The institutional imbalance that is evident today should trouble legislators of both parties.

We believe that most Americans still would agree with the Church Committee when it stated: "The United States must not adopt the tactics of the enemy," for "each time we do so, each time the means we use are wrong, our inner strength, the strength that makes us free, is lessened."

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UN Reports

International community must help Afghanistan consolidate peace – UN report
UN News Centre
March 19, 2007

While progress has been made in Afghanistan in coordinating national and international efforts for development and countering the insurgency in the south, mounting violence from an emboldened insurgency, popular alienation and human rights issues put the country and its partners at “a critical juncture,” according to a new United Nations report.

“It is time for the international community to reconfirm its commitment to Afghanistan and to move expeditiously to consolidate the accomplishments of the last six years,” Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon writes in his report to the Security Council covering the past six months, proposing a 12-month extension of UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA).

“UNAMA, together with its Afghan and international counterparts, is well positioned to assist in meeting some of the challenges,” he adds, calling for the Mission to focus in the coming months on promoting a more coherent international engagement in support of development, human rights and regional cooperation.

Mr. Ban notes that insurgency-related violent incidents for January were more than double those in January 2006, and that a record 77 suicide attacks occurred during the reporting period, up from 53 over the previous six months.

A September agreement between Pakistan and the local Taliban of North Waziristan did not prevent the use of the tribal area as a staging ground for attacks on Afghanistan, which had been one of the accord’s central stipulations. Security incidents involving insurgents instead rose by 50 per cent in Khost province and 70 per cent in Paktika.

“Coordinated efforts by the Governments of Afghanistan and Pakistan to curb incursions into Afghanistan of opposition forces will therefore continue to be vital,” Mr. Ban says.

Popular alienation remains a key factor behind the revitalized insurgency, and stems from inappropriate Government appointments, tribal nepotism and the marginalization of those outside the dominant social and political groups. “The central Government’s frequent tolerance of weak governance has diminished public confidence in its responsiveness and its readiness to hold officials accountable for their transgressions,” he writes.

“In those cases where the centre has appointed capable governors, such as in Party, Cruzan and Kabul, it has failed to provide them with the resources necessary to maintain the goodwill that they have generated.”

Mr. Ban says lack of security remained the greatest challenge to the enjoyment of human rights, with teachers killed, education facilities attacked and civilians caught in crossfire. Curbs to media freedom continued to be reported, the ratio of detainees to sentenced prisoners rose while the Government continues to face “enormous challenges” in delivering economic and social rights such as sufficient food, water, health care and educational facilities, particularly for girls and women.

“Progress towards the realization of gender equality continued to be held back by discrimination, insecurity and the persistence of customary practices,” Mr. Ban says. “Honour killings of females by family members continue to be reported. Reasons included having been raped and elopement.”

In Afghanistan’s largest prison in Kabul, the capital, almost 30 per cent of female detainees are in prison for acts that do not constitute criminal offences, while a further 30 per cent are detained for adultery in breach of national due process standards. Widespread corruption in the justice system also remains a serious concern.

Mr. Ban stresses that the successful completion of the ongoing reforms of the Ministry of the Interior is a precondition for achieving a sustainable peace, not only through creating a more capable and motivated force to prevent insurgency and cross-border infiltration, but also to reverse the growth of narcotics trafficking and build public confidence in the rule of law.

“The narcotics economy, linked both to the insurgency and failures of governance and rule of law, poses a grave threat to reconstruction and nation-building,” he writes of the country which supplies more than 90 per cent of the world’s heroin. “An urgent concerted effort by all stakeholders is needed to improve implementation of the national drug control strategy.”

And he repeats UN concerns that the adoption in both houses of Parliament of a resolution on national reconciliation could lead to amnesty for those prosecutable for human rights violations in a country that has known little but occupation by Soviet forces and then internecine factional fighting and brutality for nearly three decades.

“I welcome President [Humid] Kara’s launch of the Action Plan on Peace, Justice and Reconciliation in December, which states that no amnesty should be provided for war crimes, crimes against humanity and other gross violations of human rights, and outlines a clear road map for the future. I urge the Afghan Government to maintain this momentum,” he says.

UN probe into murder of former Lebanese Prime Minister makes ‘significant progress’
UN News Centre
March 21, 2007

The United Nations probe into the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri has made good progress over the past three months, the head of the commission told the Security Council today, highlighting an increasing number of interviews carried out and a growing body of evidence gathered regarding the February 2005 killing.

Briefing the Council, International Independent Investigation Commission (IIIC) chief Serge Brammertz said the Commission had carried out 42 interviews over the past three months linked to the case, adding that seismological and explosion experiments had confirmed the likelihood that “a single blast was detonated above the ground.”

“In the last quarter, the Commission has made significant progress in several areas by further developing crime scene leads and expanding the forms of evidence relating to the perpetrators and building the linkage and context aspects of the case,” he said, while reiterating that more time is needed to complete the investigations after the Commission’s current mandate expires in June.

Allegations of tampering at the scene of the crime, which killed 22 other people, were being investigated, while efforts to identify the “geographic origin of the bomber” are also making good progress, Mr. Brammertz added.

In the IIIC report, released on Tuesday, he said the team expects to develop a “unifying factual theory” behind the crime in the next three months or so, and pointed to Mr. Hariri’s likely 2005 election victory as a possible motive behind the killing.

“The Commission’s understanding of the facts has advanced substantially, producing valuable links within and between the main components of the case. In the next reporting period, and potentially beyond that, the Commission believes that it will be able to develop further a unifying factual theory built upon newly identified linking evidence,” the report stated. The IIIC reports to the Council every three months.

“It is of some note that Hariri was killed on the day that Parliament was scheduled to debate the electoral law to be applied in the forthcoming elections. Another working hypothesis for the Commission is that those who decided upon the assassination saw it as beneficial to kill him before he formally began his election campaign, especially given the perception in the media at the time that he was likely to win.”

The 20-page report acknowledged the full support of the Lebanese Prosecutor General in the investigation, as well as noting the IIIC’s assistance in helping probe other attacks in Lebanon since October 2004, including the murder last year of Industry Minister Pierre Gemayel.

It observed that other requests for assistance made to Lebanon, Syria and other States have “received mostly positive and timely responses,” while stressing that such help remains essential to allow the Commission to carry out its investigative work effectively. The report of the IIIC, set up in April 2005, also highlighted the effect of the “volatile political and security environment” in Lebanon on the Commission’s ability to work.

East Timor truth commission to open new public hearing in Indonesia
Monsters and Critics
March 24, 2007

Jakarta - A special commission set up to gather the facts surrounding Indonesia's military rampage in East Timor after it voted for independence is scheduled to open a second public hearing next week, a spokesman said Saturday.

'The public hearing is scheduled to start on Monday, we have a total of 17 people from both sides who will deliver their statements in front of the commission's panel,' commission spokesman Chalief Akbar told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.

The Monday public hearing will be the second of five planned for the next few months. The first was held in Bali last February.

'Bishop Belo from East Timor is scheduled to open the public hearing,' Chalief Akbar said. The public hearing itself is scheduled to last for five days.

Former Indonesian president BJ Habibie and several high ranking officers from the Indonesian military and police who were allegedly involved in the violence are scheduled to appear in front of the commission's panel.

The Indonesia-East Timor Commission of Truth and Friendship (CTF) aims to establish the truth behind the violence after East Timor voted for independence in 1999, and clarify the history of the two countries. It would also investigate the actions of local militia groups and the Indonesian military as they withdrew from the territory.

The commission has been criticized by human rights groups because it lacks the ability to prosecute senior members of the Indonesian Armed Forces (TNI) for allegedly ordering military-backed militias to massacre Timorese civilians and to raze entire villages.

Several senior Indonesian army and police generals have been acquitted of any involvement in the violence and the Jakarta government has refused to hand over any suspects to a UN-run tribunal in East Timor, which voted for independence

General Wiranto, who was the chief of the Indonesian Armed Forces at the time, a leading suspect who has been indicted for war crimes by UN prosecutors in East Timor, is expected to appear before the commission in April.

The CTF's 10 members include legal and human rights experts, academics and religious leaders from both Indonesia and East Timor. It will submit its findings to both governments, and can recommend amnesties for perpetrators if they are found to be 'fully cooperative' with the commission.

Indonesia invaded East Timor, a former Portuguese colony, in 1975, beginning a brutal 24-year rule in which as many as 200,000 people died from military atrocities and during a low-scale guerrilla war with Timorese resistance fighters.

East Timor voters overwhelmingly chose independence from Indonesia instead of special autonomy, triggering a rampage by Indonesian soldiers and pro-Jakarta militiamen across the half-island territory.

Human rights groups say the hearings will simply perpetuate a culture of impunity for the serious crimes committed during East Timor's struggle for independence, since it was unlikely any senior military officers would be recommended for prosecution.

Human Rights Council calls for fact-finding missions to probe alleged Israeli abuses
UN News Centre
March 27, 2007

The United Nations Human Rights Council today adopted a resolution without a vote which called for two urgent fact-finding missions to be dispatched to the occupied Palestinian territory, voicing concern that previous attempts to investigate potential human rights abuses had been hindered by Israel.

The 47-member Council noted with regret that Israel had not cooperated with two previous resolutions which dispatched the missions.

A resolution in July said Israel must “end its military operations in the occupied Palestinian territory, abide scrupulously by the provisions of international humanitarian law and human rights law, and refrain from imposing collective punishment on Palestinian civilians,” while a November resolution called for the “immediate protection of the Palestinian civilians in the occupied Palestinian territory in compliance with human rights law and international humanitarian law.”

John Dugard, the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, reported that he had not been able to carry out his survey called for by a Council resolution last July, due to the Israeli Government’s lack of consent.

A November Council resolution dispatched a mission to Beit Hanoun in the northern Gaza Strip where an Israeli attack killed 19 Palestinian civilians earlier that month. However, a team lead by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Desmond Tutu was thwarted from carrying out its task in December.

The Council today also requested that the body’s president and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour report to the Council at its next session, slated for June, on Israel’s compliance with its resolutions of last July and November.

Speaking as a concerned country, Israel said last year’s Council resolutions were prominent examples of selectivity, politicization and double standards because the language used was narrow, restrictive and very precisely delineated.

Another resolution passed today was on procedural issues, including the timing of the submission of progress reports.

The Council also heard reports from Special Rapporteurs, who are unpaid experts serving in an independent personal capacity.

In his report, Philip Alston, the Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, said that with respect to the idea of “mercy killings,” international humanitarian law prohibits the killing of those who have laid down their arms or have been disabled.

In another report, Doudou Diene, the Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance, said that there are worrying trends, including the resurgence of racism, racial discrimination and xenophobia. He called for a dual strategy – political and legal on the one hand, and cultural and ethical on the other – to identify the root causes and reverse these trends.

The Council, currently in its fourth session which will conclude on Friday, was created last year to replace the Commission on Human Rights which had been criticized for ignoring abuses in many countries.

Tomorrow, the Council will hear reports on human rights and transnational corporations, the right to health and human rights defenders.

UN independent expert on extrajudicial killings urges action on reported incidents
UN News Centre
March 28, 2007

A United Nations independent human rights expert on extrajudicial killings today called for action in response to reported incidents in the United States, Iran, the Russian Federation, Bangladesh, Nigeria and Indonesia.

“In recent years the United States has consistently argued that the UN Human Rights Council, and all other international human rights accountability mechanisms, have no legitimate role to play when individuals are intentionally killed, so long as it is claimed that the actions were part of the ‘war on terror,’” said Philip Alston, the Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions.

“While this argument is convenient because it enables the US to effectively exempt itself from scrutiny, if accepted it would constitute a huge step backwards in the struggle to promote human rights.”

In a separate statement, he urged Iran to stop executing juvenile offenders, calling the practice “unacceptable.”

“It is time for Iran to demonstrate that its commitment to international law involves concrete action, not just empty words,” said Mr. Alston, calling on the country’s Government to “immediately commute all death sentences imposed for crimes individuals committed before the age of 18.”

In a statement directed at the Russian Federation, he called for an end to extrajudicial killings of journalists. “Murders are always tragic, but when journalists are being murdered to cover up human rights abuses, the stakes for the society are even higher than usual,” he said.

“The Government of Russia must bring to an end what appears to be a consistent pattern of failing to prosecute those responsible for these murders and of failing to take the measures required to prevent furthers assassinations of journalists.”

Egypt must instruct its police to stop using firearms to disperse crowds, he said in another statement. “Even if a country makes some demonstrations illegal, and even if the demonstrators ignore the law, that does not mean that the police are allowed to shoot at the demonstrators.”

In a report including several allegations he has received regarding Egypt, Mr. Alston expressed his appreciation for the detailed responses that the Government had made to his requests for further information regarding these incidents, but noted that his dialogue with the Government had revealed serious legal misunderstandings that required immediate reforms.

Bangladesh must stop the Rapid Action Battalion and other elite security forces “from using murder as a policing technique,” said the expert in a separate statement.

His report covers a series of allegations he has received regarding Bangladesh, “none of which were effectively addressed by the Government.”

He also called on Nigeria to “make good on its commitment to end extrajudicial executions by the police” but added in a separate statement that “unfortunately, it seems like business as usual with the Nigerian police continuing to get away with murder.”

In a letter to Nigeria Mr. Alston called for the Government “to underscore the fact that the imposition of the death penalty for offences such as sodomy is unconstitutional.” But his report indicated that the Government ignored his letter.

Indonesia should investigate all those implicated by the report into the murder of Munir Said Thalib, a leading human rights activist, said the expert said in another statement.

In a letter earlier this year, the Government responded to Mr. Alston’s inquiries in a manner that he characterized as “cooperative but incomplete.”

Also today, the Geneva-based UN Human Rights Council heard reports from the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on the issue of human rights and transnational corporations and other business enterprises, the Special Rapporteur on the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health, and the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on the situation of human rights defenders.

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NGO Reports

The members of the Human Rights Council have to implement the recommendations of the High-Level Mission on the situation of human rights in Darfur
Fédération Internationale des Ligues des Droits de l'Homme
March 16, 2007

FIDH and its member organisation Sudan Organisation Against Torture (SOAT) welcome the report of the High-Level Mission (HLM) on the situation of human rights in Darfur and ask the members of the United Nations Human Rights Council before which it is presented today to implement its recommendations.

FIDH and SOAT recall that even if the decision S-4/101 to mandate a mission was unanimously taken by the Human Rights Council last December, the Government of Sudan decided to bar the mission from visiting Darfur refusing to issue visas to its members. Despite such lack of cooperation, the mission did make an assessment of the human rights situation in Western Sudan through visits to refugee camps in Chad and meetings with UN and civil society representatives such as SOAT.

While condemning the human rights and humanitarian violations committed by the rebels, the HLM extensively reports on attacks primarily directed against the civilian population perpetrated by governement forces and janjaweed. The report confirms the government’s failure to respond to the on-going widespread and systematic rapes and sexual violences committed in Darfur. It stresses the worsening humanitarian situation and the increasing number of attaks on humanitarian agencies and workers. Moreover, the report points out the responsibility of the National Security and Military Intelligence for acts of « torture, inhumane and degrading treatment during attacks against detainees ». It also reports that « Human rights defenders, lawyers, local leaders and political opponents voicing concerns or expressing views that are critical of the government, continue to be particularly vulnerable to abuses by state security agencies ».

FIDH and SOAT also welcome the conclusion of the report denouncing the impunity of the most serious crimes committed in Darfur, notably qualifying as ineffective the work of the Special Criminal Court on the Events in Darfur and its two additional Special Criminal Courts for Nyala and El Geneina.
According to Sidiki Kaba, President of FIDH, « The report successfully shows that the gouvernment of Sudan breaches the principle of the reponsibility to protect its population from crimes against humanity decided during the 2005 World Summit. It confirms our demand : it is the responsibility of the international community to take action to ensure effective protection ».

Consequently, FIDH and SOAT urge the Human Rights Council to

  condemn the serious violations of human rights and humanitarian law committed by the belligerents in Darfur and the neighbouring countries;
  condemn the Government’s failure to protect its own citizens;
  urge Sudan to accept the deployment of an international UN-AU peackeeping mission in accordance with UNSC Resolution 1706 to enforce the DPA agreement, to protect civilians and to support all international agencies and humanitarian organisations in order to ensure immediate, full, safe and unhindered access to the affected people in Darfur in order to facilitate delivery of humanitarian assistance;
  urge the Sudanese authorities to:

put an end to the violations of human rights and international humanitarian law against civilians, humanitarian workers and AMIS forces; respect the ceasefire agreements, the DPA and all UN resolutions,
disarm its militias including the Janjawid;
re-engage in a political dialogue with the non signatories of the DPA and establish consulations with representatives of Darfurian civil society;
hold accountable perpretators of international crimes and serious violations of human rights
fully cooperate with the International Criminal Court (ICC) organs in accordance with UNSC Resolution 1593 referring the Darfur situation to the ICC, and notably to cooperate in the surrender to the ICC of Mr. Ahmad Muhammad Harun and Mr. Ali Abd-Al-Rahman when the summons to appear are confirmed by the Pre Trial Chamber 1;
respect regional and international human rights instruments ratified by Sudan;

recommend targeted sanctions, including asset freezes and travel bans, on those individuals identified as responsible for the most serious crimes committed in Darfur.

A Summary of the Case Law of the International Criminal Court
Human Rights Watch
March 23, 2007

Introduction

Early decisions by the Pre-Trial Chambers of the International Criminal Court are creating a foundation for interpretation of the Rome Statute. Although these decisions are not yet final and may be subject to appeal, they provide interesting insights into how the International Criminal Court will operate. As the first court rulings on many novel issues of international criminal law, including victim
participation, they show how the court is applying the Rome Statute in practice. To aid in understanding the court’s early jurisprudence, Human Rights Watch has created a short summary of a few key decisions in the past year. This summary is not exhaustive. Rather, it focuses on a small number of decisions Human Rights Watch believes might be of interest to those following the workings of the court. This summary is designed to provide readers a sense of the important developments in the court to date and does not contain analysis of or commentary on the decisions themselves. The full text of the decisions may be found on the website of the court at http://www.icc-cpi.int.

USA Military commissions, like CSRTs, threaten to whitewash detainee abuse
Amnesty International
March 23, 2007

In the "war on terror", detainees in US custody have been treated as potential sources of information first and criminal suspects a distant second. However, this secondary aspect is now coming into focus. Plucked from years of secret or virtually incommunicado detention, a few people held in the US Naval Base at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba are facing trial by military commission.

These trials cannot be divorced from the backdrop against which such proceedings would occur. The hallmarks of the USA’s "war on terror" detention regime – secret detention, prolonged incommunicado detention, and indefinite detention without charge – per se violate international law and are inherently coercive. Detainees have been subjected to repeated interrogations without access to lawyers or the courts. Interrogation techniques and detention conditions amounting to torture or other ill-treatment under international law have been authorized and used.

The military commissions are effectively tailored to fit the unlawful practices that have preceded them. Information coerced by cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment will be admissible. At the same time, the government may introduce evidence while keeping secret the methods used to obtain it.

To this extent, the military commission system mirrors the Combatant Status Review Tribunals (CSRTs), set up to review Guantánamo detentions in mid-2004, more than two years after detentions began at the base. The CSRTs consist of panels of three military officers who can rely on secret or coerced evidence in affirming or rejecting a detainee’s "unlawful enemy combatant" status. The burden is on the detainee, without legal representation and generally denied the possibility of obtaining witnesses or evidence, to disprove his "enemy combatant" status.

A recent study of CSRT records found that more than 14 per cent of detainees asked to see the classified evidence against them. All such requests were denied. In more than half of the cases where a detainee asked to call a witness for his CSRT hearing, the witness sought was an individual who was not a fellow detainee held at Guantánamo. All such requests for a witness from outside the base were denied. On the question of coerced evidence, the study found that:

"No Tribunal considered the extent to which any hearsay evidence was obtained through coercion…[T]he Tribunal usually makes note of allegations of torture, and refers them to the convening authority. This is less surprising than the fact that several Tribunals found a detainee to be an enemy combatant before receiving any results from such an investigation. While there is no way to ascertain the extent, if any, that witness statements might have been affected by coercion, fully 18% of the detainees alleged torture; in each case, the detainee volunteered the information rather than being asked by the Tribunal.... In each case, the panel proceeded to decide the case before any investigation was undertaken".

A CSRT finding of "unlawful enemy combatant" status makes the detainee eligible for trial by military commission. As well as having this "enemy combatant" label attached to them, detainees have also had their right to be presumed innocent systematically undermined by a pattern of prejudicial commentary. "Killers", "terrorists", and "bad people" are among the labels that have been applied to them by senior officials, including the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces, the President.

President Bush issued an executive order on 14 February 2007 establishing military commissions under the Military Commissions Act (MCA), legislation largely drafted by officials of his administration and passed by Congress last September in the charged atmosphere of congressional elections and the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. Amnesty International is deeply concerned that the military commissions convened under this discriminatory legislation will lack the independence necessary to confront internationally unlawful activities that have been conducted under the authority of the President.

Ten detainees were charged for trial under the previous military commission system, established under a November 2001 presidential order, but held to be unlawful by the US Supreme Court in the landmark Hamdan v. Rumsfeld ruling in June last year. Those 10 individuals are likely to be the first to face trial under the revised commissions.

In addition, 14 "high-value" detainees were transferred to Guantánamo in early September 2006 from years of secret CIA detention for the stated purpose of trial by military commission. These 14 detainees were subjected to enforced disappearance, a crime under international law. Where they had been held, and how they had been treated, remains classified as "top secret".

Their detentions are currently being reviewed by CSRTs in closed session because, according to the Pentagon, the 14 "might divulge highly classified information" about the CIA secret detention program. This presumably would be the same at their trials, at which the military judge can close proceedings to prevent disclosure of classified intelligence activities.

If this happened beyond the perimeters of the Guantánamo base, it would likely feature in the US State Department’s annual reports on human rights violations in other countries. The most recent entry on Cuba, for example, noted that the courts there "often failed to observe due process rights nominally available to defendants. While most trials were ostensibly public, trials were closed when there were alleged violations of state security."

Six months after their transfer to Guantánamo, the 14 so-called "high-value" detainees are still being denied access to lawyers even as the government builds its case against them. In addition, as a part of the CSRT process, the government has been releasing details of their alleged confessions to involvement in serious crimes. At the same time, it has censored from public view allegations of torture made by at least one of the detainees.

Amnesty International believes that in at least some cases, perhaps a majority of the 24 cases of detainees of 14 nationalities currently identified as potential defendants, the military commissions lack the competence – in the sense of having the jurisdiction under international law and standards – to conduct trials at all.

Civilians arrested outside of zones of armed conflict – as many Guantánamo detainees were, including the 14 transferred there in September – should not be tried by military tribunals of any kind. In similar vein, criminal offences should not be categorized as war crimes if they did not occur in an armed conflict. Simply labelling the context as a "war" does not justify bypassing civilian jurisdiction.

The military commissions will operate in something approaching a legal vacuum. Under the MCA, defendants cannot turn to international human rights law, the Geneva Conventions or the US Constitution for protection. The military commissions are part of a universe absent of judicial remedy for detainees and their families.

Exoneration will not necessarily end a detainee’s ordeal. Even if a detainee is acquitted, he may be returned to indefinite detention as an "enemy combatant". In such circumstances, and with the right to habeas corpus already foreclosed, the right to trial within a reasonable time – guaranteed in international and US law, but not under the MCA – is rendered meaningless by a detention regime that has already kept the detainees in legal limbo for years.

The pervasive unlawfulness that has marked the past five years of detentions cries out for remedy and for full and fair trials. Yet these military commissions threaten to add a new layer of human rights violations by cutting corners in pursuit of a few convictions. In so doing, they would add to the injustice that the Guantánamo detention facility has come to symbolize.

On 7 March 2007, US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates acknowledged that "Guantánamo has become symbolic, whether we like it or not, for many around the world". It since been reported that in his first weeks after taking over from Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary Gates argued that the detention facility should be shut down as quickly as possible, and that any trials of detainees held there should be moved to the US mainland.

Amnesty International agrees. It is calling on the US government to abandon the military commissions and to bring any Guantánamo or other "war on terror" detainees it charges to trial in the ordinary federal courts, without recourse to the death penalty. The Guantánamo detention facility should be closed down.

Hamas: End Military Group Attacks Against Civilians
Human Rights Watch
March 24, 2007

(Jerusalem, March 24, 2007) – Hamas’s military wing should immediately ensure that no further civilians are targeted for attack, Human Rights Watch said today. The military wing claimed responsibility for the sniper shooting of an Israeli civilian on Monday. To date, Hamas political leaders have not condemned the attack or announced measures to ensure that additional such attacks do not take place.

On Monday, a Palestinian sniper shot and wounded an Israel Electric Corporation worker while he was at work on the Israeli side of the Gaza-Israel border, near Karni crossing. The armed wing of Hamas, the `Izzidine al-Qassam brigades, claimed responsibility for the attack, which took place only days after the formation of a unity government between Fatah and Hamas. “One of the most basic prohibitions of the laws of war is the ban on targeting civilians,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “The leaders of Hamas have an absolute legal obligation to put an end to the targeting of civilians, and they should begin by denouncing the attack on the electrical worker.”

According to press reports, a spokesman for the Hamas military wing, explaining the attack, said: “the enemy has been violating calm day and night in the West Bank and in Gaza.” Such claims can in no way justify targeting an unarmed civilian. Both international human rights and humanitarian law are clear that retaliation can never justify attacks on civilians.

The spokesman also cited the unity government’s platform, saying that it “allows for resistance in all forms.” Such remarks only illustrate the importance of Hamas political leaders speaking out against and acting to prevent attacks on unarmed civilians.

“Resistance has nothing to do with it,” said Whitson. “No form of war justifies deliberate attacks on civilians.”

Human Rights Watch repeatedly has called on all parties to the armed conflict, both Israeli and Palestinian, to scrupulously observe international human rights and humanitarian law so as to minimize harm to civilians.

Yemen: Amnesty International urges Yemen to complete the ratification of the Rome Statute
Amnesty International
March 27, 2007

Amnesty International welcomes the vote in the Yemeni Council of Representatives (Majlis al-Nuwab) in favour of ratification of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (Rome Statute). The organization urges the Yemeni government to take without delay all necessary steps to complete the country’s ratification process by depositing its instrument of ratification with the Secretary-General of the United Nations.

The Yemeni Council of Representatives voted for ratification of the Rome Statute on 24 March 2007. As of 27 March 2007, 104 States have ratified the Rome Statute – over half of the international community. After depositing its instrument of accession with the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Yemen would be the 105th state party, the fourth member state of the Arab League and the first state in the Arabian Peninsula. Amnesty International hopes that ratification by Yemen will send a strong signal to all other states in the region and encourage them to take this fundamental step in the fight against impunity.

It is now essential that Yemen enacts effective implementing legislation and brings its national laws in line with its international obligations by ensuring that crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes can be investigated and prosecuted by its national courts and enabling it to cooperate fully with the International Criminal Court (Court). This process of implementation of the Rome Statute should be transparent and be open to full consultation with civil society. Yemen should also promptly accede to the Agreement on Privileges and Immunities of the International Criminal Court (APIC), which is essential to ensuring full cooperation with the Court.

Amnesty International urges Yemen to denounce the agreement signed with the United States of America (USA) committing Yemen not to surrender US nationals to the Court. Such an agreement, which amounts to granting impunity, is unlawful and violates Yemen’s obligations under international law as a signatory to the Rome Statute, even before ratification.

Background

The Rome Statute, adopted on 17 July 1998, entered into force on 1 July 2002. The Court is currently conducting three full investigations into crimes committed in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan and Uganda.

Against the backdrop of recent discussions in the Council of Representatives (Majlis al-Nuwab), the lower chamber of the Yemeni Parliament, Amnesty International had appealed to President ‘Ali ‘Abdullah Saleh to support Yemen’s ratification of the Rome Statute.

Of the 22 member states of the Arab League, Jordan became the first to ratify on 11 April 2002. Djibouti ratified on 5 November 2002 and Comoros ratified on 18 August 2006.

The USA has been conducting a campaign to undermine the Court by asking states to sign unlawful bilateral impunity agreements which commit them not to surrender US personnel accused of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes to the Court. The impunity agreement with Yemen, an exchange of notes of 10 and 18 December 2003 between the US Secretary of State Colin Powell and the Yemeni Minister of Foreign Affairs Abu Bakr al-Qirbi “regarding the surrender of persons to International Tribunals”, has been made public under the US Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). It is available on the Internet at the following web address: http://foia.state.gov/documents/IntAgreements/0000BA1E.pdf

Human Rights First and ACLU Express Disappointment at Dismissal of Rumsfeld Torture Case: Ruling 'Leaves a Gap' in Accountability
Human Rights First
March 27, 2007

NEW YORK - A federal judge today dismissed a case brought by nine Iraqi and Afghan former detainees for the torture they suffered in U.S. military custody against former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. The suit alleged that he was responsible for policies of torture and abuse. All nine were released from custody without any charges against them. The case was brought in March 2005 by the American Civil Liberties Union and Human Rights First on behalf of the former detainees.

ACLU lawyer Lucas Guttentag, lead counsel for the plaintiffs said: "We are deeply disappointed in today's decision. Despite recognizing that torture is categorically prohibited and that the treatment of our plaintiffs 'constitutes an indictment of the humanity with which the United States treats its detainees,' the court ruled that innocent civilians tortured by the United States cannot seek recourse in the federal courts to hold responsible officials legally liable. We believe that the law and Constitution require more, and that the former Secretary of Defense must be held accountable for his policies that led to this abuse."

In his ruling, Chief Judge Thomas A. Hogan of the Federal District Court for the District of Columbia described this case as “lamentable” and “appalling,” He noted that “the facts alleged in the complaint stand as an indictment of the humanity with which the United States treats its detainees.” Nonetheless, he concluded that the plaintiffs could not invoke rights under the Constitution or international law against former Secretary Rumsfeld and other military officers. The ruling concluded that constitutional protections did not apply to Iraqi and Afghan nationals in U.S. custody in those countries and that the U.S. officials were immune from lawsuits stemming from actions taken “within the scope of their official duties.”

“The right to be free from torture is fundamental under U.S. and international law, and it should not be the case that victims like our clients have no recourse in the U.S. courts,” said Hina Shamsi, deputy director of Human Rights First's Law and Security program. “This ruling leaves a gap in the law, which the judge recognized, on accountability for torture. It also puts greater pressure on Congress to ensure accountability -- as a way to deter and prevent official cruelty by those acting under U.S. authority.”

The decision details the abuse suffered by the plaintiffs in U.S. custody, including severe and repeated beatings, cutting with knives, sexual humiliation and assault, mock executions, death threats, and restraint in contorted and excruciating positions.

The ACLU and Human Rights First had argued that the Constitution and international law clearly prohibit torture and require commanders to act when they know or should have known of abuses. In addition to the orders they gave directly, Secretary Rumsfeld and the other defendants were repeatedly notified of abuse and torture at detention facilities in Iraq and Afghanistan by military reports, the International Committee of the Red Cross and other reports and complaints by human rights organizations.

The groups further charged that Secretary Rumsfeld personally approved brutal and illegal interrogation techniques in December 2002. Those techniques included the use of "stress positions," the removal of clothing, the use of dogs, and isolation and sensory deprivation.

"I was confident that the American people would stand with me for justice, and I am very disappointed,” said Thahe Sabbar, one of the plaintiffs in the case.

Retired military officers and military legal experts along with international law scholars filed legal briefs in support of the lawsuit. According to the military law experts, "It was the essence of Secretary Rumsfeld and other defendants' scope of employment to educate and train those within their command responsibility to adhere to domestic and international standards and to do everything within their power to prevent and punish deviations from them."

Legal papers filed in the case, as well as information on the former detainees, are online at www.aclu.org/rumsfeld.

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