War Crimes Prosecution Watch
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Cambodian Extraordinary Chambers (ECCC)
Official Website of the Extraordinary Chambers
Official Website of the Khmer Rouge Trial Task Force
Official Website of the United Nations Assistance to the Khmer Rouge Trials (UNAKRT)
East-West Center aids law seminar in Cambodia
The Honolulu Star-Bulletin
By Star-Bulletin staff
April 2, 2007
The East-West Center helped to put on a workshop in international criminal law recently in Cambodia to assist defense lawyers in preparing for the trial of Khmer Rouge leaders, according to a news release.
The Asian International Justice Initiative, a collaboration between the East-West Center, Hawaii, and the War Crimes Studies Center at the University of California-Berkeley, is working with the Bar Association of the Kingdom of Cambodia and the Defense Support Section of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia to help Cambodian defense counsel focus on the key legal issues likely to play a role in the upcoming trials.
The training included an overview of the international crimes, including crimes against humanity such as murder, extermination, forced labor and deportation, and sexual violence, as well as genocide.
David Cohen, director of the War Crimes Studies Center and an adjunct senior fellow at the East-West Center, chaired the workshop.
A workshop for the Khmer Rouge trials' prosecution teams will be conducted in August.
Funding for the workshop comes from a grant to the East-West Center from the British Embassy in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.
New delay for Cambodian genocide trial as foreign judges boycott guidance meeting
Associated Press / International Herald Tribune
April 3, 2007
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia: International judges for a Khmer Rouge genocide tribunal said Tuesday they plan to boycott a meeting to adopt rules to guide the trials, presenting another obstacle to the already much-delayed U.N.-backed proceedings.
The decision is certain to further hinder — and perhaps jeopardize — the long-awaited trials of former Khmer Rouge leaders for crimes against humanity and genocide. They had been expected to begin sometime this year.
The foreign judges said in a statement that they will not meet with their Cambodian counterparts on April 30 as scheduled because the Cambodian Bar Association has not responded to their request for it to reconsider the US$4,900 (€3,700) legal fee it plans to impose on each foreign lawyer practicing at the tribunal.
"The international judges wish to emphasize that the window of opportunity is closing quickly and they simply cannot allow for endless delays," they said.
Calling the fee a "prohibitive entry cost," the judges said it "would allow the accused to argue that they have not been afforded the right to have counsel of their choice," in breach of international agreements on civil and political rights.
They also said that those lawyers planning to offer their services pro bono "would be left significantly out of pocket."
The foreign judges have voiced increasing frustration as disagreements over how to operate under Cambodian law — which is to guide the trials — have slowed and complicated the tribunal preparations.
Foreign participants have the right to withdraw altogether from the tribunal, although such a move would seriously undercut the credibility of the proceedings.
Last week, Ky Tech, the bar association's president, accused the foreign judges of childish behavior and of deliberately delaying the long-awaited tribunal.
On Tuesday, he refused to budge, saying his institution is independent and cannot be dictated to by any judges, including foreign ones.
"I will not make any decision under pressure and orders from those foreign judges," he said Tuesday.
But he noted that he has been working on the fee issue with Rupert Skilbeck, the U.N.-appointed head of the defense support section of the tribunal officially known as Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia.
The radical policies of the now-defunct communist Khmer Rouge, when they held power from 1975-1979, led to the deaths of some 1.7 million people from execution, overwork, disease and malnutrition.
Cambodian judges in Khmer Rouge tribunal say ultimatum uncalled for
Deutsche Presse-Agentur/ Monsters and Critics
April 6, 2007
Phnom Penh - The Cambodian judges appointed to the joint UN-Cambodian trial of former Khmer Rouge leaders issued a statement Friday accusing a proposed boycott by their international counterparts unnecessary and aimed at delaying the process.
The Cambodian judges reiterated earlier assertions that a row over fees the Cambodian bar wants to impose on foreign lawyers was not part of the internal rules and therefore should not delay their implementation.
They were replying to Tuesday's announcement by international judges that they would boycott a scheduled April 30 plenary to adopt the internal rules if the Cambodian Bar Association did not back down on its demands for 5,000-dollar registration fees for overseas lawyers wishing to represent clients at the hearings.
Tuesday's international judges' statement further threatened to exclude the Cambodian bar from the process if it continued to refuse to drop the fees. The defence says that would severely limit the number of foreign lawyers defendants can choose from, potentially compromising the international standards' caveat of the hearings.
The 56-million dollar joint UN-Cambodian tribunal, which began work last year and is budgeted to take just three years to complete, cannot proceed without adopting internal rules governing every aspect of the work of the special tribunals.
'The national judges appointed to the ECCC (tribunals) consider that the international judges' decision not to participate in the plenary session planned at the end this month would further delay the process of the court,' the 15 national judges wrote.
'In response to the proposal to exclude the Bar Association of the Kingdom of Cambodia from the process, the national judges consider the such a move is not consistent with the substance and spirit of the Agreement between the Royal Government of Cambodia and the United Nations.
The national judges also rejected claims by the international judges that the Defence Support Section of the tribunals was actively discussing solutions to the dilemma.
Bar Association president Ky Tech has said he will not back down on the fees, claiming foreign lawyers are far better paid than their Cambodian counterparts and that it was his duty to his members to impose what he believes are reasonable fees on foreigners wishing to practice law in Cambodia.
The latest impasse is just another in a long line of delays to try a handful of aging former leaders of the 1975 to 1979 Khmer Rouge regime, during which up to 2 million Cambodians died.
Donors have expressed increasing frustration at the lack of progress, fuelling speculation they may walk away altogether if issues are not resolved soon and the hearings begin to progress.
The Cambodian government has reacted angrily to allegations by some human rights groups that it is deliberately stalling the process, strongly denying the claims and in turn accusing lobby groups of trying to hijack the trials for their own political ends.
EU donates 1 million euros to support Khmer Rouge Tribunal project
Vietnam News Agency
April 6, 2007
Phnom Penh (VNA) - The European Union will donate 1 million euros (roughly 1.3 million USD) for a project supporting the Khmer Rouge Tribunal via the Extraordinary Chambers and International Criminal Court Justice, the Cambodian Light newspaper reported on Apr. 5.
The money will be channelled through the European Initiate for Democracy and Human Rights (EIDHR), Thon Savai, President of the Cambodian Human Rights and Development Association (Adhoc), was quoted by the newspaper as saying.
The three-year project, which will be implemented by EIDHR, Adhoc and the Oxfam Novid organisation, is aimed at providing information and legal support for victims of the Khmer Rouge regime and administration assistance for judges serving at the trial of the former Khmer Rouge leaders.
Time short for Genocide Justice in Cambodia
The Sunday Telegraph
By Justine Smith
April 7, 2007
Victims of the Khmer Rouge's genocide in Cambodia are recording their accounts on video in the hope of being able to give evidence at the trials of their alleged persecutors, even if their testimony eventually is heard from beyond the grave.
Foot-dragging by the Cambodian government and legal wrangling pushed back the start of the UN-sponsored trials, which were agreed in 2003 but are now not expected to start until later this year. They are expected to last years, raising fears that many witnesses will not live long enough to give evidence.
Only three survivors of the notorious Tuol Sleng prison in Phnom Penh are still alive and they are all too aware that time is running out.
At 76, Chum Mei has already outlived the average Cambodian man by 25 years, despite the malnutrition and torture he endured in the prison, codenamed S-21 and now a genocide museum.
"During my interrogation I was electrically shocked and beaten and they pulled out my toenails," he said. "Now, I still sometimes dream that I am being beaten. Sometimes I scream until I wake my wife up."
Almost three decades after Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge regime wiped out a quarter of Cambodia's eight million population, he and fellow S-21 survivor Bou Meng, 65, have recorded their testimonies on film. Another to do so is former guard Him Huy, 50, who described how he was required to help execute prisoners at the extermination camp at Choeung Ek, one of the sites known collectively as the Killing Fields.
"They were blindfolded and handcuffed. One by one, each was taken out of the room to be executed," said Huy. "The henchmen were already waiting by the pits. The prisoners were clubbed to death with metal bars at first and then their throats were cut with machetes. They took the handcuffs and other stuff off the prisoners and pushed them into the pits. After everything was done, they filled the pit with earth."
As many as 14,000 perceived enemies of the Khmer Rouge who had been detained at S-21, met the same fate at Choeung Ek.
Huy claims that he too was a victim, brainwashed by the Maoist regime and haunted by what he had done.
"The prisoner was put on his knees and I clubbed him with a metal bar. After the hit, I threw down the metal bar and left the spot. I was very upset at being taken to work there. I am not the one to be blamed," he said.
Huy said his former boss, Pol Pot's chief interrogator Kaing Guek Eav, alias Duch, was "sometimes there" to witness the mass murders.
That could prove important evidence, as Duch is the only senior Khmer Rouge leader currently in detention awaiting trial following the death in custody last July of Pol Pot's most ferocious commander, Ta Mok, known as "The Butcher". Pot himself died under house arrest in 1998.
Mr Meng was also able to recall an encounter with Duch. He said he was saved from death only when his artistic talents were called on to draw portraits of Pol Pot. He was warned by Duch that if he did not paint flattering likenesses of the tyrant, he would be executed,
For two years he was kept barely alive with one daily ladle of gruel and forced to sleep on a concrete floor with 50 other men.
He said: "I thought to myself, it looks just like hell. After about a year of imprisonment I became so emaciated I was not sure I would live because an inmate sleeping next to me had already died.
"The young guards of about 13, 14, 15 stepped on him so many times that blood came out of his mouth. The smell became so bad before they took his body away. I couldn't sleep before midnight. I was waiting to see if my name was called. Those whose names were called were to be executed at Choeung Ek."
The men's evidence has been recorded by the Documentation Centre of Cambodia, which has spent 10 years collecting witness statements.
Campaigners fear that the delays to the start of the hearings mean that those facing trial will evade justice by outliving the witnesses. Last month, the tribunal was mired in petty squabbles over the height of the judges' chairs. Now it is prohibitive fees being levied upon lawyers who wish to appear at the trial, which the UN warns could lead to its collapse.
While the scarred nation waits for justice, the Cambodian government appears determined to ward it off until key players - who might implicate many people in power today - are silenced by death.
Brad Adams, Human Rights Watch's spokesman on Cambodia, said: "Cambodian prime minister Hun Sen does not want this trial to go ahead and he has played a game of brinkmanship with the UN, forcing them to bow to his unreasonable demands again and again.
"The tribunal has not even started to gather testimonies and key witnesses are dying. It is now or never."
U.S. official calls for Cambodian genocide tribunal to move forward
The Associated Press/ International Herald Tribune
April 7, 2007
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia: A senior U.S. official urged Cambodian and foreign judges on Saturday to put aside their squabble over legal fees and move forward with the much-delayed Khmer Rouge genocide tribunal.
"The Khmer Rouge tribunal is really the opportunity for Cambodia to show the international community how far it's advanced," Eric G. John, U.S. deputy assistant secretary of state for East Asia and Pacific affairs, said.
"And it would be a shame not to be able to show how far it's advanced by letting this (tribunal) get hung up on what is a relatively down-in-the-weeds monetary issue," he said at a press conference ending a four-day visit to Cambodia.
On Friday, Cambodian judges for the U.N.-backed genocidal tribunal blamed their international peers for delaying the long-awaited trials.
Foreign judges decided earlier this week to boycott an April 30 meeting meant to adopt rules that will guide the trials. Their decision was prompted by the refusal of the Cambodian Bar Association to reverse a decision to impose high legal fees on foreign lawyers wishing to serve at the tribunal.
The foreign judges have described the US$4,900 (€3,700) charge as prohibitive and said it would allow the accused to argue that they have not been afforded the right to have counsel of their choice, in breach of international agreements on civil and political rights.
The Cambodian judges said in a statement Friday that they regretted the foreign judges' decision, which "would further delay the process of the court."
Many fear that internal disputes could delay efforts to bring the Khmer Rouge's few surviving leaders to trial for crimes against humanity for the deaths of about 1.7 million people during the group's 1975-79 rule. The U.N.-backed tribunal, led by Cambodian and international judges, was expected to begin this year.
"I think what they need to do is look at the much larger picture and how Cambodia looks on the international stage," John said Saturday. "As goes the tribunal, also goes the image of Cambodia internationally."
Ky Tech, the bar association's president, has repeatedly refused to bow to what he has called pressure from the foreign judges. He has also accused them of childish behavior and of deliberately delaying the long-awaited tribunal.
The United States was a major lobbyist for the tribunal to be created. It has provided several million dollars (euros) to an independent center to collect evidence of the Khmer Rouge's crimes but has not given any direct funding to the tribunal.
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Central African Republic
Official Website of the International Criminal Court
ICC Public Documents - Cases: Central African Republic
Central African Republic rebels, government sign peace deal
AFP
April 13, 2007
BIRAO, Central African Republic (AFP) - A Central African Republic rebel group that has fought recent deadly battles against the military signed a peace deal with the government on Friday. The agreement signed by the Union of Democratic Forces for Unity rebels (UFDR) and the government of President Francois Bozize calls for an "immediate end to hostilities" and grants amnesty for rebel fighters.
"With the signing of this agreement, there will be no more trouble, nor fighting," Bozize said after the agreement was signed. "The population of Birao will be able to live in peace."
Talks that led to the agreement were held in the northeastern town of Birao, which the UFDR held for a month last November. The rebel group launched another attack on the town, about 800 kilometres (500 miles) to the northeast of the capital Bangui, at the beginning of last month but were repelled by government troops backed by French forces.
Damane Zakaria, acting UFDR chief, asked for a "pardon" from the people of Birao and another town, Vakaga, "for everything they suffered as a result of the rebellion."
"I promise to work for the return of peace in Birao," Zakaria said.
United Nations mission reported last month that nearly all of Birao's 14,000 residents had fled in the fighting and 70 percent of houses had burned.
Fighting over the last two years in northern CAR between various rebel groups and the military has led to numerous deaths and the displacement of more than 280,000 people, according to the United Nations.
The government in February signed a peace agreement with a rebel chief from a separate group. But several other groups refused to take part, including the UFDR.
Friday's 10-point agreement allows rebel fighters to join the regular army. The amnesty covers UFDR president Michel Am Non Droko Djotodia and spokesman Abakar Sabone, who are currently being held in prison in Benin.
Lamine Cisse, the UN secretary general's special representative in the CAR, also attended the signing of the agreement.
The government has been assisted by a multinational force from other states in the region as well as the French air force in its attempts to repel rebel groups and reduce bandit attacks in the north.
The country's army has also been accused of violent acts against civilians in the north.
There have also been fears that conflict in neighbouring Sudan's Darfur region could spill over into the CAR. The United Nations children's agency,
UNICEF, has warned of a "humanitarian disaster" in the CAR, amid fears that the country is being increasingly affected by the conflict in Sudan.
Bozize came to power following a 2003 coup.
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Democratic Republic of the Congo (ICC)
Official Website of the International Criminal Court
ICC Public Documents - Situation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo
DRC report warns of attacks
News24.com
April 7, 2007
Goma, Dr Congo - Lawmakers in the Democratic Republic of Congo have warned of dozens of crimes committed against civilians by new government soldiers, in a report seen by AFP on Saturday.
The study into the eastern Nord-Kivu region by members of the provincial assembly, which will be presented to the governor on Wednesday, details summary executions, rapes, tortures and kidnappings.
The crimes are blamed on the "mixed" army brigades of regular army soldiers and former rebels led by deposed Congolese Tutsi general Laurent Nkunda, who have been deployed in Nord-Kivu since January.
The Kinshasa government hoped this strategy would provide a peaceful solution to December's crisis following the presidential elections.
But one of the report's authors said on condition of anonymity: "Since then, there has been a reign of terror. There is killing every day in Nord-Kivu."
The report, which is based on statements from victims, residents and local authorities, said the Bravo brigade, led by one of Nkunda's supporters, "spreads desolation across the whole area it is supposed to be making secure".
In Rutshuru, it treated civilians as accomplices of the Rwandan Hutu rebels (FDLR) and local Mai Mai militia who have been in the region for years.
"February 19: In Nyakakoma, two people were burned alive, accused by Bravo soldiers of complicity with the FDLR," the 29-page report said.
"March 9: Assassination of about 20 civilians at Buramba, accused of being accomplices of the FDLR and Mai Mai... decomposing bodies are still being discovered."
An inquiry was launched into the Buramba massacre, but no arrests were made.
In neighbouring Masisi, where Nkunda was based, soldiers from the Charlie brigade are accused of similar crimes.
"Nkunda is wanted for war crimes (committed in 2004). Here, people voted for peace (in 2006). They do not understand why President (Joseph) Kabila has given Nord-Kivu on a plate to this renegade," a local lawmaker told AFP.
The report urges Kinshasa to remove the mixed brigades from the region and act to ensure attacks on civilians are ended.
A member of the Baraza group, comprised of the heads of all the ethnic communities in the region, commented: "The government promised us peace. We are still waiting.
"Again this morning, two people were killed in Goma. If this continues, the civil war will start up again because the population cannot take any more."
Feared warlord joins Congo's govt. army as colonel
Reuters
By Lubunga Bya'Ombe
April 7, 2007
KINSHASA, April 7 (Reuters) - One of eastern Congo's most feared militia warlords joined the national army on Saturday with the rank of colonel under a disarmament process to pacify the violent region after years of bloodshed, the army said.
Peter Karim's Front of Nationalists and Integrationists (FNI) has long been regarded as one of the main obstacles to peace in Democratic Republic of Congo's northeastern Ituri district, racked by militia violence since a 1998-2003 war.
The FNI and two other armed groups in Ituri signed peace deals last November after Congo's first free elections in over four decades. The group slid back into violence in December, but its fighters started joining a disarmament process in February.
General Vainqueur Mayala, the army's commander of operations in Ituri, said Karim had handed himself over on Saturday at Kpandroma, 70 km (44 miles) from Ituri's main town Bunia, in what he called "an important step in pacifying Ituri".
The November deals, under which Karim and another militia leader were offered the rank of colonel, were criticised at the time by U.S.-based Human Rights Watch, which said they should be arrested to face war crimes charges instead.
Mayala told Reuters by phone from Kpandroma that Karim would be transferred to another part of the country, to be decided by the army chief of staff, and integrated into the national army.
Seven other FNI officers gave themselves up along with Karim, as well as 307 fighters who were now at a transit centre.
Karim still has some fighters in the bush but will encourage them to join the disarmament process too, Mayala said.
"We are limited by our accommodation, as the transit centre holds no more than 500 people," he said.
Several provinces of eastern Congo are torn by violence involving local ethnic militias and some Rwandan Hutu groups who fled over the border after their country's 1994 genocide.
Another feared Ituri warlord known as Cobra Matata is still at large. Mayala said he was "in touch with Cobra Matata where he is in the bush, and he too will come and join us at some point".
The 1998-2003 war triggered a humanitarian crisis that killed an estimated 4 million people and aid workers say 1,200 more die each day from war-related violence, hunger or disease.
Landmark elections last year, won by President Joseph Kabila and his allies, were meant to draw a line under decades of instability, but many parts of the vast country are still plagued by violence. Hundreds of people were killed last month in two days of fighting in the capital Kinshasa itself.
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Darfur, Sudan (ICC)
Official Website of the International Criminal Court
ICC Public Documents - Situation in Darfur, Sudan
Top UN rights official urges probes of sexual violence, disappearances in Darfur
UN News Service
April 6, 2007
The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights today called for investigations into widespread sexual violence during attacks by Sudanese Government forces and allied militia in Darfur as well as the disappearance of over a dozen men allegedly at the hands of rebels there.
In a new report, the High Commissioner's Office describes attacks in December 2006 in eastern Jebel Marra, Darfur. At least 15 cases of sexual assault, including rape, had occurred, according to the report. At least two pregnant women were targeted in the violence.
“Soldiers came in cars heading towards the hills. Three were in green military uniform and the fourth was in civilian clothes. All four of them were armed and all of them raped me,” said one 13-year old victim, according to the report.
While some women were raped in the villages, others were abducted, taken away, raped, and later released.
“Based on testimony gathered, it appears that rape during the December 2006 attacks was used as a weapon of war to cause humiliation and instill fear into the local population. The attacks were indiscriminately aimed at a population of the same ethnicity as some rebel groups and also resulted in civilian death and displacement,” the Office of the High Commissioner, Louise Arbour, said in a statement on the reports.
Along with other recommendations, the High Commissioner is calling on Government authorities to investigate the attacks. “The investigation should aim to collect evidence to identify and prosecute those who planned, orchestrated, and/or conducted the attacks,” Ms. Arbour said. “The results of the investigation should be made public, legal action should be taken against those found to be responsible and the victims of the attacks should be compensated.”
A second report concerns the enforced disappearance of at least 19 Massalit men arrested by soldiers serving Mr. Minnawi's rebel group (SLA-Minnawi) in Gereida in South Darfur on 29 September 2006. The High Commissioner is calling on the head of the group, Special Presidential Assistant Minni Arkoy Minnawi, who is also Chairman of the Transitional Darfur Regional Authority, to immediately disclose the fate and whereabouts of these men.
Several of the men have reportedly been found dead after having been beaten at an SLA-Minnawi base where leaders were present.
“If the detainees are alive their physical integrity must be assured and they should be brought before a judicial authority,” said Ms. Arbour, adding that the Human Rights Unit of the UN Mission in Sudan (UNMIS) should be provided access to all the detainees.
“If the captured persons are dead, there must be an independent, transparent, and timely inquiry to identify those responsible and hold them accountable for crimes that may have been committed,” she said.
The High Commissioner pointed out that the systematic use of rape to punish and humiliate local communities is a war crime. It violates Common Article 3 to the 1949 Geneva Conventions, to which the Sudan is a High Contracting Party, and is punishable by the International Criminal Court (ICC). The Government has a duty to hold perpetrators of rape accountable and provide protection from such a crime.
In February, the ICC's chief prosecutor named a Sudanese Government minister and a militia commander as the first suspects he wants tried for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Darfur.
Luis Moreno-Ocampo has concluded there are reasonable grounds to try Ahmad Muhammad Harun, former Sudanese Minister of State for the Interior, and Janjaweed militia leader Ali Kushayb, for having “jointly committed crimes against the civilian population in Darfur.”
More than 2 million people have been forced to flee their homes in Darfur since Government forces and allied Janjaweed militias began fighting rebel forces in 2003, and at least 200,000 people have been killed.
U.S. diplomat tells Sudanese officials of urgent need for U.N. peacekeepers in Darfur
International Herald Tribune
By Jasper Mortimer
April 13, 2007
KHARTOUM, Sudan: The No. 2 U.S. diplomat told Sudanese officials on Friday that the humanitarian situation in the Darfur region was so grave that a United Nations peacekeeping force was urgently needed.
The visit by U.S. Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte, who arrived in Khartoum late Thursday, is part of the latest international push to persuade President Omar al-Bashir to accept U.N. peacekeepers for Darfur.
The United States is holding off on imposing sanctions against Sudan to allow time for negotiations with al-Bashir's government on approving a U.N. force to join the undermanned 7,000 African Union troops currently protecting Darfur civilians.
Under a U.N.-backed agreement last fall, a hybrid force of 22,000 U.N. and African Union peacekeepers was to be deployed in Darfur to protect and provide relief for 2.5 million forced from their homes and confined to camps.
But al-Bashir has since rejected the deployment of U.N. troops, saying they would violate Sudan's sovereignty. Many believe he fears the U.N. force would arrest Sudanese officials suspected of war crimes in Darfur. Sudan has said it will accept a small number of U.N. security forces as well as equipment to help the AU troops.
"The humanitarian situation in Darfur calls urgently for dispatching such a force. It is important that this be done as soon as possible," Negroponte told reporters after talks with Foreign Minister Lam Akol.
"That is the basic message that I am bringing with me, and this is the subject of discussion with the government of Sudan and other members of the international community," Negroponte said.
More than 200,000 people have been killed in the four-year conflict in Darfur, which began when rebels from ethnic African tribes rose up against the central government. Khartoum is accused of responding by unleashing the janjaweed militias of Arab nomads — blamed for indiscriminate killing. The government denies the charges.
Negroponte — who is on a four-nation African tour — was to visit Darfur on Saturday and hold talks with al-Bashir the following day.
In what is seen as a positive sign, Sudan's government has moved toward approving a second phase of the U.N. plan for Darfur drawn up last year. It calls for 3,000 U.N. military personnel and equipment, including six attack helicopters, to be provided to the AU force.
Sudan objected to the helicopters, but government spokesman Bakri Mulah said Friday night that the two sides were close to settling the dispute in negotiations in Addis Ababa, where the AU has its headquarters.
Mulah, a spokesman for the Information Ministry, said the helicopter question was now for al-Bashir to decide, but "according to hints from the Foreign Ministry" an agreement is close.
Asked about Sudan's objection to the helicopters, Negroponte said he "didn't want to get into the details of a peacekeeping force" with the Sudanese.
"The principle purpose of my visit is to discuss with the authorities of Sudan the situation in Darfur and to convey the deep concern of our government for the grave humanitarian situation in that part of your country," Negroponte said.
But the Sudanese focused more on demands that Washington improve ties. Foreign Ministry spokesman Ali Al Sadeq said Khartoum sees the need for normalization of relations between Sudan and the United States.
"Normal relations do help in removing differences, and not the other way round," he said. "This situation which the United States is trying to maintain is not in the interest of the relations between the two countries."
Negroponte also was to stop in Libya, which would make him the highest ranking U.S. diplomat to visit Tripoli in more than half a century.
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Uganda (ICC)
Official Website of the International Criminal Court
ICC Public Documents - Situation in Uganda
Sudan: Rebel threat to food security in the south
Integrated Regional Information Networks (IRIN)
April 11, 2007
NAIROBI, 11 April 2007 (IRIN) - Attacks on civilian populations in southern Sudan by the Ugandan rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) pose a significant threat to food security and overall stability in Equatoria states, according to a report.
The attacks, which intensified after talks between the Ugandan government and the LRA stalled in January, have left 3,500 people displaced in Torit County since February, said the report published by USAID and the Famine Early Warning System Network.
"Civil insecurity has grown in Central and Eastern Equatoria states," the report states. "The LRA abandoned the talks and retreated to the Central African Republic (CAR), attacking and looting communities, including parts of Magwi, Kajokeji, Yambio, Tambura and Torit counties, as they fled."
However, the report also speculated that LRA-related insecurity could be reduced if peace talks resume in mid-April, as scheduled.
The on-off talks, which are intended to end the 21-year-old war in northern Uganda, started in July under the mediation of southern Sudanese Vice-President Riek Machar, but stalled after the rebels demanded a new venue and another mediator. According to the LRA, their lives were in danger and the mediator was biased.
The talks, to include the former Mozambican President Joaquim Chissano, are due to resume on 13 April in the south Sudanese capital of Juba.
Chissano is the United Nations Secretary-General's Special Envoy for the areas affected by the LRA insurgency.
Delegations of leaders from northern Uganda are due to travel to meet the LRA leader, Joseph Kony, in his hideout near the Sudan-Democratic Republic of Congo border, ahead of the talks.
However, observers say the talks continue to be haunted by the fact that Kony and three other LRA commanders face indictments from the International Criminal Court for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Aid workers in southern Sudan say the rebels, though fewer in number now, have continued to launch sporadic attacks on civilian populations and to loot food. On 28 March, they attacked Nabazia, 12 km from Maridi, looted food and abducted six young girls.
The food security report also noted that while the situation had improved in northern parts of southern Sudan, it was likely to deteriorate as the April/May to August hunger season progresses.
This would particularly affect poor and recently resettled households in areas affected by civil insecurity, cattle raiding and where population resettlement is significant. These areas include Aweil East, West, North and South counties in Northern Bahr El Gazal State; Gogrial and Twic counties in Warab State; and Wuror, Diror, Pulchol and Nyirol counties in Jonglei State.
Mediators meet LRA rebel Kony on Congo border
Reuters
By Lucy Hannan
April 13, 2007
RI-KWANGBA, Sudan, April 13 (Reuters) - Mozambique's former President Joaquim Chissano met Uganda's elusive guerrilla chief Joseph Kony on Friday to push forward stalled peace talks.
Flanked by mediators and Ugandan officials, the U.N. envoy for Uganda's two-decade civil war said he wanted the government and Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) rebels to extend a landmark truce that was agreed last August but has since expired.
"It is my hope we will not leave this place without signing the documents which suspend hostilities," Chissano said after watching Kony shake hands with Uganda's top negotiator, Internal Affairs Minister Ruhakana Rugunda.
Two days of informal talks are planned in Ri-Kwangba, on the border between Sudan and Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
Peace talks began in July in Juba, capital of south Sudan, but effectively broke down in January amid mutual mistrust.
The LRA commanders are wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for war crimes, and have so far stayed away from the Juba talks, hidden at camps deep in the Congolese jungle.
Joking with Kony as he arrived at tents in the forest clearing accompanied by young rebel fighters in dreadlocks and rubber boots, Chissano said: "I can see your dressed for peace!"
The LRA is notorious for massacring civilians, cutting off the lips and ears of survivors and abducting thousands of children to serve as fighters, porters and sex slaves.
Nearly 2 million people have been uprooted by the fighting.
Hopes for peace were rekindled this week when a Catholic group helping mediate the Juba talks said both sides had made significant progress in a week of secret, informal talks with LRA representatives on the Kenyan coast, mediators said.
Pax Christi said broad agreement had been reached on extending the truce, as well as on a number of other areas.
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International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY)
Official Website of the ICTY
Bosnian Serb who raped and tortured Muslims jailed by UN war crimes tribunal
UN News Service
April 4, 2007
The United Nations war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia today sentenced a former Bosnian Serb soldier and de facto military policeman to 15 years in prison for raping and torturing Muslim women and girls in eastern Bosnia and Herzegovina between July and October 1992.
Dragan Zelenovi?, 46, pleaded guilty in January before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) to seven counts of torture and rape as crimes against humanity for his role in a series of attacks on Bosnian Muslim women in the Foca municipality. Prosecutors withdrew seven other counts as part of a plea agreement.
Reading a summary of the judgment, Judge Alphons Orie of the ICTY said the three-judge panel found that “the scale of the crimes committed was large and that Mr. Zelenovi?’s participation in the crimes was substantial.”
The victims were particularly vulnerable, Judge Orie said, noting they were unarmed, defenceless and detained under brutal conditions for long periods, living “in constant fear of repeated rapes and constant assaults.” One victim was 15 years old.
“The victims at the detention centres in Foca suffered the unspeakable pain, indignity and humiliation of being repeatedly violated, without knowing whether they would survive the ordeal. The scars left by the sexual assaults were deep and might never heal.”
On 3 July 1992, Mr. Zelenovi? and other Bosnian Serb soldiers arrested at least 60 women, children and elderly men from the villages of Trošanj and Mješaji and took them to Buk Bijela, site of a temporary detention and interrogation facility. Once there, Mr. Zelenovi? raped and tortured a 15-year-old girl and aided in the rape and torture of another victim.
Mr. Zelenovi? participated later the same month in the gang-rape and torture of a number of women and girls being held at a high school in Foca. Anyone who resisted the sexual assaults there was beaten or threatened with death.
The 15-year-old girl from Buk Bijela was repeatedly raped again – including a gang-rape by Mr. Zelenovi? and three other men – between mid-July and mid-August while being held with more than 70 other detainees at a sports hall in Foca in conditions marked by inhumane treatment, starvation, overcrowding and a lack of hygiene.
In a separate attack in October 1992, Mr. Zelenovi? and two others raped four women being held in a house just outside Foca.
Mr. Zelenovi? was arrested by Russian authorities in August 2005 after leaving his home and fleeing to Russia under a false name to avoid detection and arrest. He was transferred to the ICTY last year.
Serb paramilitaries found guilty in war crimes trial
Guardian Unlimited
April 10, 2007
Four Serb paramilitaries filmed as they killed Bosnian Muslims in 1995 were today found guilty of murder at Serbia's war crimes court.
The former militiamen - members of the notorious Scorpions paramilitary unit - were convicted in the first court case linked to the massacre of 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys at Srebrenica.
Video footage shows six Muslim men and boys from Srebrenica being shot dead in the Bosnian village of Trnovo in July 1995.
The victims were among the thousands murdered during the final stages of the 1992-1995 ethnic conflict in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
The Scorpions commander, Slobodan Medic, and a fellow paramilitary were each sentenced to 20 years in prison. Pero Petrasevic, the only defendant who admitted shooting the victims, was sentenced to 13 years.
Another Scorpions member, accused of being an accomplice, was sentenced to five years in jail, while a fifth was cleared.
The murders - which happened in the UN "safe haven" - were Europe's worst single atrocity since the Second World War. Around 100,000 people were killed in the three-year conflict.
Footage of the Trnovo killings shocked many in Serbia, where some had publicly expressed doubts over whether the Srebrenica massacre took place.
The Serbian war crimes court, set up in 2003, deals with lesser crimes referred to Serbia by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, which is based in The Hague.
More than a decade after the killings, tensions between Serbia and Bosnia continue. In February this year, the UN's highest court rejected claims that Serbia had been guilty of genocide in Bosnia.
The international court of justice dismissed Bosnia's unprecedented legal contention that Serbia was guilty of genocide "as a state".
However, it ruled that Serbia had violated an obligation to halt the Srebrenica massacre and punish those who had carried it out.
The court also said Serbia had flouted the UN's genocide convention by failing to arrest Ratko Mladic, the Bosnian Serb military commander at the time, and hand him over to the UN war crimes tribunal.
Tadi?: We will never accept Kosovo’s independence
B92
April 11, 2007
BELGRADE -- Serbia can never agree to let go of Kosovo, president Boris Tadi? told the Associated Press.
"I will do all in my power to secure a European future for Serbia," Tadi? said. "That would secure progress and prevent the longtime stagnation of Serbia in comparison to other countries in the region."
"We must not isolate ourselves from the European Union, the West and Russia. We should conduct our policies relying on those three foreign policy pillars," he added.
To speed up its pro-Western reforms and work to improve living standards for its citizens, Serbia must arrest the remaining war crimes suspects sought by the Hague Tribunal, including former Bosnian Serb General Ratko Mladi?, Tadi? told the agency.
"We must move faster toward the EU. We must remove the obstacles," Tadi? said. "There should be no compromise about that."
"Serbia will never agree to independence for Kosovo," Tadi? told the agency speaking about the southern Serbian province. "We will not give up any right that is granted to any other country in the world."
"The Ahtisaari plan is not the Holy Bible," he said. "Serbia is open for a compromise ... but we are not ready to give up part of our integrity and identity."
"There is very little time" for Serbia to try to win international support for its bid to keep Kosovo, Tadi? conceded, but added: "It must take the initiative in that short period of time."
Serbia does not want to rule Kosovo economically or politically, but will not accept it becoming an independent state, he said.
Yet Serbia's efforts to block final approval of the Ahtisaari plan at the UN Security Council "should not lead to destruction of our relations" with the United States and its Western allies who have supported the blueprint, Tadi? said.
"Serbia's house is the European Union," he said.
Austria, Serbia work on face-saving Kosovo deal
Reuters
13 April 2007
VIENNA -- Austria is working with Serbia to grant Kosovo independence in a way acceptable to Belgrade, Reuters reports.
Austrian Chancellor Alfred Gusenbauer told the agency in an interview the West had to acknowledge that Serb leaders at the moment could not endorse the independence plan proposed by UN envoy Martti Ahtisaari and a formula was needed which "did not humiliate Belgrade."
"We are working with (Serbian President) Boris Tadi? and his people to find a way to implement the essence of the Ahtisaari plan," Gusenbauer said in the interview late on Thursday.
Gusenbauer, a Social Democrat who took office in January as head of a wide coalition government, said Austria had established itself as an honest broker in the region.
"It can't be the goal to humiliate Serbia, but there needs to be a deal where both (Serbia and Kosovo) emerge from the situation holding their heads high," he said.
According to Reuters, one of the major problems in Ahtisaari's plan is “how to deal with the northern part of Kosovo inhabited predominantly by Serbs.”
Gusenbauer said one way out might be to model the area on the semi-autonomous province of Alto Adige in northern Italy, known in Austria as South Tyrol.
The region is populated predominantly by German-speaking people with Austria as their guarantor state.
Italy and Austria agreed in 1972 that the province could have special legislative rights and fill major administrative posts without interference from Rome, an element missing from Ahtisaari's plan for the Serb areas of Kosovo.
"Perhaps the northern part of Kosovo could develop in a similar fashion as South Tyrol has developed in the past in Italy," Gusenbauer said. "There are a number of models."
Belgrade itself has used Alto Adige as an example too, but in their model, the entire province of Kosovo would remain part of Serbia just as the province is entirely part of Italy.
Gusenbauer said he did not expect Russia to veto the plan in the Security Council but hoped its reluctance to agree quickly meant there was more time to find a solution.
He also advised the United States not to rush to recognize Kosovo's independence unilaterally.
Captain Dragan set for extradition
The Australian
By Natasha Robinson and James Madden
April 13, 2007
AFTER a 15-month international tug-of-war, former Serbian paramilitary commander Dragan Vasiljkovic is set to be extradited to Croatia to face charges over alleged war crimes he committed in the early 1990s.
The man known as "Captain Dragan" sat calmly in the dock of Sydney's Central Local Court yesterday as Deputy Chief Magistrate Paul Cloran told him he was wanted by the Republic of Croatia on charges of war crimes against the population of Croatia.
"(Mr Vasiljkovic) is eligible for surrender to the Republic of Croatia," Magistrate Cloran said.
Between 1991 and 1994, when he was commander of the Serbian paramilitary unit, the Kninjas, Mr Vasiljkovic is alleged to have ordered the torture of prisoners of war, participated in torture, and to have ordered his troops to attack an undefended police station and village - an ambush that killed civilians and German journalist Egon Scotland.
Yesterday's extradition order comes more than 18 months after The Australian first tracked down Mr Vasiljkovic to a Serbian cultural centre in Perth, where he was working under the name Daniel Snedden.
The accused war criminal had slipped back into Australia from his temporary base in Belgrade, two years after giving evidence at the International Criminal Court in The Hague during the trial of dictator Slobodan Milosevic, who has since died.
Mr Vasiljkovic had infuriated prosecutors at the tribunal when, in the witness box, he directly contradicted previously signed witness statements and became a hostile witness.
Under cross-examination from the unrepresented Milosevic, the former paramilitary commander referred to his former countryman as "Mr President".
Mr Vasiljkovic, 52, who migrated to Australia with his mother when he was 12, went to his homeland in 1991 and took command of a paramilitary unit in the self-proclaimed republic of Srpska Krajina.
A 1994 UN Commission of Experts report by US professor Cherif Bassiouni said "Kapetan Dragan" was described by locals interviewed during an investigation into ethnic cleansing in Bosnia and Herzegovina as "second in importance" to the brutal Serb warlord Zeljko Raznatovic, or "Arkan", who was indicted for war crimes before being gunned down in Belgrade in 2000.
In September 2005, when The Australian approached Mr Vasiljkovic while he was working as a golf instructor in suburban Perth, he denied committing war crimes and said he would welcome any investigation into his time as leader of the Kninjas.
"I would like to answer any war crime question ... I would really love to see anyone come up with an accusation," Mr Vasiljkovic said.
Three months later, the Croatian Government did just that, accusing Mr Vasiljkovic of war crimes against the Croatian people between 1991 and 1993.
Australian Federal Police arrested Mr Vasiljkovic in January last year in Sydney.
The accused war criminal's barrister, Brad Slowgrove, yesterday said that under Australia's Extradition Act, it was virtually impossible for Mr Vasiljkovic to succeed on his objection to the impending extradition.
Mr Slowgrove said his client intended to appeal against yesterday's decision.
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International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR)
Official Website of the ICTR
Prosecution Concludes Case With 953- Page Treatise
AllAfrica.com- Arusha Times (Arusha)
March 31, 2007
While the last arguments of the parties will be heard from May 28 to June 1 in the trial called "Military 1," one of the most important in the history of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), the prosecutor has submitted 953 pages of written conclusions obligating the defense teams to ask for an extension for the submission of their briefs.
The Chamber has given them until April 2 to submit them.
The trial implicates 4 officers of the former Rwandan Army, including the former director of the cabinet of the Defense Ministry, Colonel Theoneste Bagosora, accused of being the “brain" of the 1994 genocide.
The others are the former chief of military operations at the General Staff of the Army, Brigadier-General Gratien Kabilgi, the former commandant of the military sector of Gisenyi (north), Lieutenant-Colonel Anatole Nsengiyumva and former Commandant of the Paracommando Batallion, Major Aloys Ntabakuze.
In a decision dated Monday, the Chamber "orders the defense teams of Ntabakuze, Nsengiyumva and Kabiligi to submit their conclusions by April 23, 2007 at the latest."
Recognizing themselves that the text of the prosecutor's brief is very voluminous, the judges assessed that the extension would accord the three defendants "a facilitation of work during the drafting of the judgment."
In a previous decision, the Chamber had already given an extension to Bagosora's defense which related to the particular linguistic difficulties. The working language of the chief counsel, Raphael Constant, as well that of the accused is French while the prosecution's brief was submitted in English.
The judges gave an extension until May 10 to Bagosora's defense to allow the lead counsel and the accused to read the prosecution's brief as it is being translated by a translation service. The official languages of the ICTR are French end English but the majority of testimonies are done in Kinyarwanda.
Being tried for crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes, the 4 accused have pleaded not guilty.
Their trials substantively started in April 2002. The prosecutor finished his case in October 14, 2004 and the defense last January 19. In all, 242 prosecution and defense witnesses have been heard.
Judgment should be made next year.
ICTR to hear 40 more cases before mandated closure
Xinhua News Agency
April 6, 2007
DAR ES SALAAM -- The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) has 40 more cases to hear before its scheduled closure set for December 2008, according to a senior official of the United Nations court based in Arusha of northern Tanzania.
Acting Deputy Registrar of the court, Everard O'Donnell, told a local press briefing on Thursday that the UN court was expected to complete judgments of 60 cases early next year and was expected to hear between 65 and 70 cases for the entire mandated period, according to local press reports on Friday.
The ICTR court, set up in Arusha in 1995 with the United Nations Security Council Resolution 977, has so far arrested 72 accused by February this year and has so far rendered 28 verdicts including five acquittals.
Trials are underway for 44 other accused.
The ICTR court was set up to hear cases of suspects charged with genocide and the crime against humanity committed during the 1994 genocide in Rwanda.
Rwanda commemorates the 13th anniversary of the 100-day genocide on Saturday.
Country, Finland to Discuss Suspect's Extradition
AllAfrica.com The New Times (Kigali)
by Felly Kimenyi
April 13, 2007
Following the arrest of Rwandan genocide suspect Francois Bazaramba by Finnish police, Rwandan prosecution has hinted at requesting for his extradition. According to the spokesperson of National Prosecution, John Bosco Mutangana the two countries will start negotiations to have the fugitive extradited, despite the fact that they have not signed any extradition treaty.
"We are optimistic; not having this treaty cannot derail us because genocide has been internationally recognised as a crime to all UN member states. For example, we did not have that treaty with the United Kingdom but still we pushed for the extradition of the suspects that are in their country," Mutangana said.
Four former mayors suspected of genocide are in temporary imprisonment in the UK awaiting extradition, courtesy of a memorandum of understanding signed between the two countries.
Mutangana said that Bazaramba, who was a clergyman with the Baptist Church in Rwanda, is accused of having led militias that killed over 5,000 Tutsis who had been hiding on Nyakizu hill in the former Butare Province.
"Last month, we hosted senior Finnish police officers and we took them to the crime scene and because the evidence was overwhelming, they decided to arrest him when they got back," he said.
In the next phase, the Finnish government will delegate a commission that will come here to pursue investigations and talk to witnesses.
Bazaramba was detained last week courtesy to the campaign by the genocide fugitives tracking team that was set up by prosecution to help establish where the fugitives are and prepare their indictments.
Currently, there are fugitives in detention in various western countries like Denmark and Holland where each has one suspect and have started preparation to try them in their courts while Canada has one Desire Munyaneza whose trial has already started.
Meanwhile, the hearings for extradition are expected soon for Vincent Bajinya who was arrested in north London, Charles Munyaneza in Bedford, Celestin Ugirashebuja in Essex and Emmanuel Nteziryayo in Manchester.
A list compiled last year of category one indicted fugitives scattered in various countries had 91 people including Agathe Habyarimana, the wife to former president Juvenal Habyarimana. The latter, together with her family was recently denied asylum by a French court.
Beating in jail halts landmark war crimes court case
Toronto Star
by Sean Gordon
April 13, 2007
A Quebec judge has interrupted a landmark war crimes case involving a former Toronto resident after the accused arrived in court in a wheelchair with his eyes swollen shut after an altercation with a fellow inmate in a provincial detention centre.
The trial will be suspended until the accused, Desire Munyaneza, recovers from his wounds.
Munyaneza is on trial for crimes against humanity for his alleged role in the 1994 Rwandan genocide. He is the first person to go to trial under Canada's new genocide and war crimes legislation and his trial has attracted international attention.
The attack on Munyaneza began Wednesday night in a television room in north-end Montreal's Riviere-des-Prairies detention centre, and ended with him in an ambulance, drenched in blood.
The beating, apparently at the hands of a fellow inmate in the protective custody unit, has also raised questions about jailhouse security procedures.
Laurence Cohen, a Toronto-based lawyer who is part of Munyaneza's defence team, said "I was working under the assumption that if he was in protective custody that's what it was - protective custody."
Cohen said that Munyaneza reported being struck with a "heavy metal object" on Wednesday night, and that he was bleeding profusely from his nose, ears and even his eyes.
"He looks like any barroom victim, where his eyes are closed and he got slashed to his face ... He can't open his eyes, he can barely speak, he's an emotional wreck, and he's fearful. Other than that, he's fine," Cohen said when asked to describe his client's state.
Munyaneza is alleged to be a Hutu extremist who participated in the bloody Rwandan genocide during which an estimated 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were shot and hacked to death over a 100-day period.
After spending a largely uneventful 15 months in jail since his arrest in the fall of 2005, Munyaneza came to court yesterday with swollen eyes and a line of stitches running from the bridge of his nose to his cheek.
The 40-year-old former Toronto resident was led into the prisoner's dock in a wheelchair, his head slumped to one side.
Quebec Superior Court Justice Andre Denis was plainly aghast when he saw Munyaneza's condition, calling the attack "unspeakable."
"I don't have the words to express my shock at what's happened to you," Denis told Munyaneza.
Apologizing for an incident he described as unacceptable and "embarrassing" for the justice system, Denis adjourned Munyaneza's trial, ordered that he be transferred to a segregation unit, and demanded that prison officials be in court Monday to explain the circumstances of the incident.
It's not clear Munyaneza will be well enough for the trial to resume next week, defence lawyer Richard Perras told reporters outside court, saying, "he is no condition to follow the process."
Prison officials referred calls yesterday to the Surete du Quebec, which is investigating the incident.
A spokesperson for the Surete said detectives had met with Munyaneza, and described his wounds as "cuts and bruises," adding that no decision has yet been made to charge anyone in the incident.
Little is known about the inmate who allegedly attacked Munyaneza. It's believed he is of Algerian origin and has a record of violence - although the Surete would confirm none of those details, saying the investigation is ongoing.
Defence lawyers said Munyaneza was in his cell in the protective custody wing of the Riviere-des-Prairies detention centre in north-end Montreal on Wednesday night. The jail is a provincial facility that largely houses people awaiting trial.
The doors of the cellblock, home to high-risk prisoners such as sex offenders and informants, were open when a newly arrived inmate allegedly asked Munyaneza for help using a television remote in a common area on the cellblock range.
Munyaneza agreed to show the inmate, who defence lawyers said asked what the Rwandan-born businessman was in jail for. After Munyaneza demurred, the other inmate said, "I've read about you in the papers," and proceeded to batter him.
"He (Munyaneza) thought he was going to die. He was under the strong belief that if he didn't get away from this person, he would die. I don't think that's an overstatement," Cohen said. "The irony is that a lot of people won't consider him a victim in this situation because of the allegations, but in this isolated incident, no matter what you think, he's a victim."
Munyaneza, the son of a wealthy merchant in southern Rwanda who came to Canada as a refugee claimant in 1997, told his defence team that he couldn't really say when the incident happened or how long it lasted, nor could he recall how it ended.
Cohen said he has asked to see the security video from the cellblock range where the incident happened.
An escort from the Surete accompanied the ambulance that took Munyaneza to a Montreal hospital, where he was examined, treated and discharged, returning to his cell at about 1 a.m.
Courthouse officials have gone to unusual lengths to protect the security of witnesses at Munyaneza's trial. Many travelled from Rwanda, and others are living in Canada. Their identities have been kept secret by court order.
The trial, which began March 26, has featured gruesome testimony about the massacres of 1994, and this week a witness identified as C17 said she was raped by Munyaneza four times, and that he participated in several killings.
The proceedings are being watched closely by Montreal's Rwandan community, which includes many genocide survivors.
Through his time in custody, Munyaneza has had to endure only minor inconveniences at Riviere-des-Prairies, his lawyer said.
"You start out with the premise there have been no serious complaints against the institution. This is so fundamentally serious, though, it raises questions about everything," he said.
While Cohen was careful not to accuse anyone of negligence, he said prison officials will have to explain why they didn't expect an attack against his client.
Desire Munyaneza is on trial for crimes against humanity for his alleged role in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda.
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Iraqi High Tribunal
Official Website of the Iraqi High Tribunal
Grotian Moment: The Saddam Hussein Trial Blog
Dutchman accused of genocide over Iraq poison gas
Reuters
April 11, 2007
AMSTERDAM, April 11 (Reuters) - Dutch prosecutors called on Wednesday for a Dutch businessman to be convicted of genocide for selling chemicals to Iraq which were used in deadly gas attacks.
Frans van Anraat is appealing a 15-year jail sentence after he was found guilty in 2005 of complicity in war crimes for supplying raw materials that were used to make poison gas by Saddam Hussein's Iraq in the 1980-1988 war with Iran.
The poison gas was also used against Iraq's own Kurdish population, including an attack on the town of Halabja in 1988 which killed an estimated 5,000 people.
Van Anraat, who was refused release pending the appeal, was acquitted of genocide charges in 2005 as the court then said it could not be proven he knew exactly how the chemicals would be used.
"We are raising the genocide charges again and seeking a 15 years jail sentence for both complicity in war crimes and genocide," a spokeswoman for The Hague public prosecutor said.
The appeals court in The Hague is expected to rule on the case in the first half of May, she said.
An Iraqi prosecutor last December showed the court trying Saddam an internal memo from the president's office which praised van Anraat for supplying Iraq "with rare and banned chemical weapons."
In a magazine interview in 2003, van Anraat admitted to supplying the chemicals but denied knowing they were destined for Iraq and that they would be used to make poison gas. Prosecutors have said he shipped chemicals from the United States to Belgium and from Belgium to Iraq via Jordan. He also shipped chemicals from Japan to Italy, and then overland to Iraq.
Iraq: An ever-worsening crisis
International Committee of the Red Cross Press Release
April 11, 2007
Geneva (ICRC) – In a report issued today in Geneva, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) expresses alarm about the deteriorating humanitarian situation in Iraq and calls for urgent action to better protect civilians against the continuing violence.
The report entitled Civilians without protection – The ever-worsening crisis in Iraq deplores the daily acts of violence such as shootings, bombings, abductions, murders and military operations that directly target Iraqi civilians in clear violation of international humanitarian law and other applicable legal standards. While it argues that the current crisis directly or indirectly affects all Iraqis, the report focuses on the problems of vulnerable groups such as the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis forced to flee their homes and the families that host them.
The report documents the alarming state of Iraqi health-care facilities suffering critical shortages of staff and supplies. Many doctors, nurses and patients no longer dare to go to hospitals and clinics because they are targeted or threatened. The report also underlines that much of Iraq's vital water, sewage and electricity infrastructure is in a critical condition owing to lack of maintenance and because security constraints have impeded repair work.
"The suffering that Iraqi men, women and children are enduring today is unbearable and unacceptable. Their lives and dignity are continuously under threat," said the ICRC's director of operations, Pierre Krähenbühl. "The ICRC calls on all those who can influence the situation on the ground to act now to ensure that the lives of ordinary people are spared and protected. This is an obligation under international humanitarian law for both States and non-State actors."
Thanks to its close partnership with the Iraqi Red Crescent Society and its recognized status as a neutral and independent organization, the ICRC has been able to supply food and other items essential to the survival of tens of thousands of vulnerable Iraqis. It is currently providing monthly emergency aid for over 60,000 people, with the Iraqi Red Crescent handling the bulk of the distributions. Over the past year the ICRC has also delivered medical supplies sufficient to treat 3,000 war-wounded patients to hospitals across Iraq. ICRC delegates continue to visit thousands of detainees to monitor their situation and treatment and to help them and their families to stay in touch through family visits or by exchanging Red Cross messages.
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Lebanon
Ban Ki-moon receives Lebanese memo on planned tribunal for Hariri killing
UN News Centre
April 4, 2007
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has received a memorandum from 70 Lebanese parliamentarians asking him to act under the United Nations Charter and set up a special tribunal to try those alleged responsible for the 2005 assassination of the country’s former prime minister Rafik Hariri, a UN spokesperson confirmed today.
Mr. Ban is currently studying the memorandum, spokesperson Michele Montas told journalists, adding he remains concerned about Lebanon’s continuing political impasse, which has delayed a parliamentary vote on the tribunal proposal.
Ms. Montas said Mr. Ban hoped the relevant Lebanese institutions would take the necessary steps under the constitution to conclude the formal agreement to set up the tribunal, but also noted the difficulties described by the lawmakers in their memorandum.
Many Lebanese lawmakers have been calling for a session of the country’s Parliament to be convened so that they can vote on the proposal for a special tribunal. Although the Government has reached a deal with the UN on the tribunal’s form and structure, the Parliament needs to ratify the agreement for the tribunal to enter into force.
The planned tribunal will be of “an international character” to deal with the assassination of Mr. Hariri, who was killed along with 22 others in a massive car bombing in downtown Beirut in February 2005.
A senior UN official told journalists today at UN Headquarters in New York that it will be ultimately up to the tribunal to determine whether other political killings in Lebanon since October 2004 are connected to Mr. Hariri’s assassination and can therefore be dealt with by the tribunal.
Under the proposed statute, the tribunal’s chambers will consist of one international pre-trial judge; three judges to serve in the trial chamber (one Lebanese and two international); five judges to serve in the appeals chamber (two Lebanese and three international); and two alternate judges (one Lebanese and one international).
The judges of the trial chamber and those of the appeals chamber will then each elect a presiding judge to conduct the proceedings in their chamber, with the presiding judge of the appeals chamber serving as president of the tribunal.
The prosecutor, who will be independent of the Lebanese Government, will be appointed by the UN Secretary-General for a three-year term that can be renewed as the Secretary-General decides in consultation with the Government. He or she will have the power to question suspects, victims and witnesses, collect evidence and conduct on-site investigations, and should be assisted by Lebanese authorities where necessary.
The senior UN official stressed that many of these measures were introduced specifically to ensure that the tribunal is as independent and impartial as possible, and reflects the form and structure of other international tribunals, such as those covering the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone and Cambodia.
The special tribunal in Lebanon has the power to impose penalties leading up to and including life imprisonment for anyone found guilty of crimes committed.
In April 2004 the Security Council set up the International Independent Investigation Commission (IIIC) after an earlier UN mission found that Lebanon’s own inquiry into the Hariri assassination was seriously flawed and that Syria was primarily responsible for the political tensions that preceded the attack. Its mandate runs out next year.
Serge Brammertz, the current head of the IIIC, told the Council last September that evidence obtained so far suggests that a young, male suicide bomber, probably non-Lebanese, detonated up to 1,800 kilograms of explosives inside a van to assassinate Mr. Hariri.
Ban Ki-moon sends UN legal chief to Lebanon to help break impasse over tribunal
UN News Centre
April 13, 2007
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said today he is dispatching the United Nations legal chief to Lebanon on Monday to help the Government and the country’s other political leaders to end their political impasse and set up a special tribunal as soon as possible to try the suspected killers of former prime minister Rafik Hariri.
Nicholas Michel, the Under-Secretary-General for Legal Affairs, will “offer his legal assistance… to help their constitutional procedures,” Mr. Ban told reporters at UN Headquarters in New York, referring to the parliamentary ratification necessary for the tribunal to enter into force.
Mr. Ban said he hoped that Mr. Michel’s trip would help to “clarify all concerns or apprehensions” that might exist about the tribunal.
In February, on behalf of the UN, Mr. Michel signed the agreement with Lebanon to set up the tribunal, but the country’s parliamentary forces have been deadlocked and there has been no vote so far on the tribunal agreement.
The planned special tribunal in Lebanon will be of “an international character” to deal with the assassination of Mr. Hariri, who was killed along with 22 others in a massive car bombing in downtown Beirut in February 2005.
Once it is formally established, it will be up to the tribunal to determine whether other political killings in Lebanon since October 2004 were connected to Mr. Hariri’s assassination and could therefore be dealt with by the tribunal.
Mr. Michel told journalists today that his aim during the visit would be to “help the Lebanese parties to talk to each other and to find common ground so that the institutional process can be promoted towards ratification of the agreement.”
He stressed that the UN had never tried to impose such a tribunal on the Lebanese, but had responded to an initial request from the country’s authorities for such a court.
“So I work in that spirit, in the spirit of an assistance to be brought to the Lebanese authorities, in the spirit of a national dialogue, reconciliation, mutual understanding towards the establishment of the tribunal.”
In April 2004 the Security Council set up the International Independent Investigation Commission (IIIC) after an earlier UN mission found that Lebanon’s own inquiry into the Hariri assassination was seriously flawed and that Syria was primarily responsible for the political tensions that preceded the attack. Its mandate runs out next year.
Serge Brammertz, the current head of the IIIC, told the Council last September that evidence obtained so far suggests that a young, male suicide bomber, probably non-Lebanese, detonated up to 1,800 kilograms of explosives inside a van to assassinate Mr. Hariri.
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Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL) &
Liberian Truth and Reconciliation Commission
Offical Website of the Special Court for Sierra Leone
The Sierra Leone Court Monitoring Programme
Official Website of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Liberia
Rapp prepares for war crimes trial
Des Moines Register
by Lee Rood
April 12, 2007
A Drake University graduate, he is in charge of the prosecution of Charles Taylor, former Liberian president.
It is one thing to prepare for what many prosecutors would view as the trial of a lifetime. It's quite another to raise millions to support the court while working with people on three continents to build the case against a man accused of horrendous crimes against humanity.
Today, Stephen Rapp, an Iowa native, former Iowa U.S. attorney and Drake Law School graduate, returns to his alma mater to talk about his latest mission: prosecuting former Liberian President Charles Taylor.
"It's not just that the world will be looking you," the law school's dean, David Walker, said of Rapp and the trial set to begin June 4. "It's really a matter of having to establish a rule of law that is international and enforceable ... to condemn the mass taking of lives, the destruction of a people and ruination of many, many other lives."
Taylor took power in Liberia by force in 1989 and was elected president in 1997. The charges against the former warlord stem from his role in the war in neighboring Sierra Leone, where he is accused of backing rebels accused of the deaths and torture of thousands.
Rapp will lead Taylor's prosecution in the United Nations Special Court for Sierra Leone. The court, an independent tribunal established by Sierra Leone and the U.N. at The Hague, Netherlands, will try Taylor and others for crimes committed during the west African country's civil war from 1996 to 2002.
"Part of our challenge is outreach, to make sure the trial is accessible to people who want to follow it 3,500 miles away," Rapp said in a phone interview from Boston on Wednesday. "But we also need to make sure people understand what we're doing, so it's not mischaracterized or misunderstood ... so that there are no more Taylors and no more crimes like this."
Taylor's trial was moved to The Hague because of widespread security concerns in Sierra Leone, a country beset by extreme poverty following almost a quarter century of violence. There, the government is slowly re-establishing its authority, after the civil war resulted in tens of thousands of deaths and the displacement of more than 2 million people, or about one-third of Sierra Leone's population.
Part of Rapp's role has been traveling in the United States and countries in Europe to help raise money and awareness about the court, which supports itself entirely by donations from individual countries. So far, the United States has paid for about a third of its expenses, while about 40 other countries have given varying amounts.
"This year, the budget is higher than it's ever been, because the Taylor case is starting," he said.
The case will also take him frequently to Freetown, Sierra Leone, a number of international conferences, and other African countries, building diplomacy for the court's efforts and "to make sure we don't die with the secret of what we're doing," he said.
A native of Cedar Falls, Rapp paved new territory as a U.S. prosecutor in Iowa's Northern District. His office filed the first cases in the nation under the Brady Handgun Control Act and the Violence Against Women Act.
But he is best known internationally for the six years he spent as a senior trial attorney at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. There, he successfully prosecuted on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity the radio and newspaper executives who helped incite Rwanda's militia. The 2003 convictions, scholars said, set important precedent for future cases before the International War Crimes Tribunal.
A major issue in the media case was whether "hate speech" paved the way for the genocide in Rwanda or whether broadcasts and articles at the height of the violence were protected under the law as free expression.
"He's had an amazing career," Walker said of the 1974 graduate. "I love having him back. Here, one of your own is the prosecutor in one of the century's really acid-test trials."
Rapp has an intercontinental marriage: His wife, Donna (Dolly) Maier, a professor of history at the University of Northern Iowa, maintains the couple's house in Cedar Falls. When she's not teaching, she joins Rapp at their home in Arusha, Tanzania, and at The Hague. The couple has two grown children, Alexander and Stephanie.
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United States
Release of 'American Taliban' is urged
The Los Angeles Times
by Richard A. Serrano
April 5, 2007
John Walker Lindh's parents contrast his five years in prison with the 9-month sentence recently given a Guantanamo detainee.
WASHINGTON — The parents of "American Taliban" John Walker Lindh, who is serving a 20-year sentence in the country's toughest federal prison, stepped up their request for his release Wednesday by noting that the first U.S. war crimes tribunal in Guantanamo Bay recently resulted in a sentence of nine months for an Australian detainee held in U.S. custody since late 2001.
"John has been in prison for more than five years," said his mother, Marilyn Walker. "It's time for him to come home."
Lindh's lead lawyer, James J. Brosnahan of San Francisco, called the effort "a simple cry for justice."
Lindh, who grew up in Marin County, left the United States when he was 18 to study Islam. In 2001 he was in Afghanistan, serving as a soldier for the Taliban army fighting the Northern Alliance.
Soon after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, he was taken into custody by U.S. military forces and returned to the United States; the government contended that he had been trained at an Al Qaeda terrorist camp.
He was immediately branded the American Taliban by the tabloids, at a time when many Americans wanted revenge for the terrorist attacks.
In a plea deal with federal prosecutors in 2002, all terrorism charges were dropped. In the end, Lindh pleaded guilty to being a soldier for the Taliban and carrying a rifle and hand grenades while doing so.
At the time, federal prosecutors said they thought the sentence was appropriate, given that Lindh had faced life in prison with no parole if convicted of conspiring to kill Americans and aiding Al Qaeda.
Lindh, now 26, is in the federal Supermax prison in Florence, Colo.
His family and lawyers think that with the passage of time, there is a new opportunity to persuade President Bush to reduce the 20-year sentence.
In addition, they said, the ruling last week that Guantanamo Bay detainee David Hicks of Australia will be freed after serving another nine months has moved them to seek what they consider equal justice.
Hicks was captured about the same time as Lindh in Afghanistan; unlike Lindh, Hicks was convicted of providing material support to terrorists.
"The Hicks result is again evidence that John's sentence should be commuted," Brosnahan said.
Lindh's family began asking Bush for clemency in 2004, when Yaser Esam Hamdi — a U.S. citizen who was captured in Afghanistan at the same time — was deported to Saudi Arabia, where his family lives.
Brosnahan said the family and his legal team thought a reduction in Lindh's sentence was appropriate because of the leniency that others were receiving.
"It's a matter of fundamental justice," he said.
Margaret Love, who served as the U.S. pardon attorney from 1990 to 1997, noted that clemency petitions that cited other cases did not always prevail. She added that Bush, as governor of Texas and as president, has not been one to show mercy for criminal offenders.
"This president has shown very little interest in pardoning," she said. "And that's peculiar because that's the one power that's really unlimited. He has stretched the other powers of the presidency beyond the breaking point. But this one power that really is all his, with no checks except the popular will, he's shown very little interest in it."
She said that under Bush, about 900 pardon requests remained pending, along with thousands of commutation petitions.
Also hurting Lindh's chances is the death of CIA operative Johnny "Mike" Spann, who was killed in a riot in the Afghan prison where Lindh was being held. His father, Johnny Spann, would have preferred a life sentence and thinks Lindh should at least do 20 years. He said Wednesday that he opposed any commutation of the sentence.
"I would encourage President Bush not to, and I hope to hell he never considers it," Spann said.
His son's efforts to question Lindh days before his death were shown worldwide on a CNN video. Spann said those involved in the riot were "guilty of murder. That's the way I feel about it."
Nevertheless, Lindh's parents remain hopeful. They emphasized that their son was repentant and had acknowledged that while he traveled abroad to study Islam, he was too young and naive to understand what the Taliban and other terrorist groups were about.
His father, Frank Lindh, said, "We love our son very much."
Rights Groups Hail Arrests Of 3 by U.S. In War Crimes
The New York Times
by Larry Rohter
April 5, 2007
Latin American human rights groups have reacted with satisfaction and muted surprise to the arrest in the United States of three Argentine and Peruvian former military officers accused of human rights abuses who had fled their home countries to avoid prosecution there.
Of the three men detained over the weekend in Virginia, Maryland and Florida and charged with violating immigration laws, the most notorious is Ernesto Guillermo Barreiro of Argentina. During the so-called Dirty War of the late 1970s, he was the chief interrogator at La Perla, a clandestine prison in Córdoba, Argentina's second largest city, where more than 2,000 prisoners were tortured or killed.
''This is big news, and deserves to be celebrated both in Argentina and the United States,'' said Gastón Chillier, director of the Center for Legal and Social Studies, a leading human rights group in Buenos Aires. ''This is someone with a long record not just of crimes against humanity, but also of resistance to efforts to hold him responsible for his actions.''
During the 1980s, the democratic civilian government that came to power in Argentina tried to bring Mr. Barreiro to justice. But he defied a court summons to face charges and then quickly helped start a military rebellion that led to passage of an amnesty law that exempted officers below the rank of colonel -- he was then a major -- from prosecution in connection with human rights abuses on the grounds they were merely following orders.
In 2004, a year after Argentina's current president, Néstor Kirchner, came to power promising to revive such prosecutions, Mr. Barreiro fled to the Washington, D.C., area and opened an antiques store. The Argentine Supreme Court overturned the amnesty nearly two years ago, and several hundred people now face charges, including Mr. Barreiro and María Estela de Perón, the former president, who lives in exile in Spain and is fighting extradition.
The arrests have put the Bush administration in the unaccustomed position of being praised by human rights groups and news organizations in Latin America. The former officers were detained by a unit of the Homeland Security Department, which is traditionally widely criticized in the region for the way it treats illegal immigrants from Latin America.
''This administration has a very poor record as regards international human rights law and the Geneva convention,'' José Miguel Vivanco, the director of Human Rights Watch Americas, said in a telephone interview from Washington. ''However, there is nothing on the record that shows that this administration is interested in protecting individuals responsible for gross violations of human rights, unless they have some link with intelligence agencies.''
Mr. Vivanco said he was referring to Luis Posada Carriles, a Cuban exile and former C.I.A. asset who is wanted in Cuba and Venezuela on charges that he blew up a Cuban airliner in 1976, killing 73 people. The United States has also declined to extradite Emmanuel Constant, former leader of a right-wing Haitian paramilitary group who has been convicted in absentia there of organizing a 1994 massacre.
It is not yet clear how American authorities intend to handle Mr. Barreiro's case. He could either be summarily deported for having lied about his record on his visa application, tried and jailed in the United States in connection with that offense, or extradited to Argentina, normally a time-consuming process.
''It would be an irony if an immigration infraction were to delay Barreiro's return,'' said Horacio Verbitsky, an Argentine author and journalist who has written several books on human rights issues. ''The United States could impose no more severe punishment than to send him back to Argentina, where he faces life imprisonment but will receive due process and the fair trial'' he denied his victims.
The other two men being held, Telmo Ricardo Hurtado and Juan Manuel Rivera Rondon, are Peruvians. They are accused of having participated in the massacre of 69 peasants in an Andean village in 1985, when President Alan García was trying to suppress the brutal Maoist Shining Path guerrilla movement.
Mr. García is once again president, and the extradition or expulsion of the two officers to stand trial in Peru could produce embarrassing revelations there. Concerns about a cover-up or official foot-dragging are among the reasons human rights advocates say they will monitor the case closely.
''The de facto policy of the Peruvian military has been to provide zero cooperation in cases of abuses committed in the 1980s,'' Mr. Vivanco said. ''To send these fellows back is the right thing to do, but I think it would be important to get assurances at the highest levels of the Peruvian government that the military are going to break with that pattern.''
Terrorism trial begins for Padilla, once dubbed 'dirty bomber'
The Chicago Tribune
by Curt Anderson
April 13, 2007
MIAMI -- Nearly five years ago, then-Attorney General John Ashcroft told the world that the United States had thwarted a frightening al-Qaida plot to detonate a radioactive "dirty bomb" in a major city and had arrested a "known terrorist," Jose Padilla.
Speaking at a hastily arranged June 2002 news conference in Moscow, Ashcroft darkly suggested the plot could have caused "mass death and injury" and that President Bush had designated Padilla, a U.S. citizen of Puerto Rican descent, as an enemy combatant who would be held in indefinite military custody rather than face civilian criminal charges.
"He was involved in planning future terrorist attacks on American civilians in the United States," Ashcroft said, while a jittery nation still reeled from the Sept. 11 and anthrax attacks in 2001.
That started an unprecedented odyssey for Padilla, a 36-year-old Muslim convert and one-time member of Chicago's Latin Disciples street gang. A new chapter begins Monday with jury selection for terror support charges in a case with no mention of the dirty-bomb allegations or purported plots inside the United States.
"It has had so many unbelievable twists and turns," said Michael Greenberger, a University of Maryland law professor who directs the school's Center for Health and Homeland Security. "It really will be the stuff of legend in terms of how we attempted to deal with terrorists in the war on terror."
Padilla, held for 3 1/2 years as an enemy combatant, and co-defendants Adham Amin Hassoun, 45, and Kifah Wael Jayyousi, 44, face possible life in prison if convicted on charges of conspiracy to "murder, kidnap and maim" people overseas and of providing support to terror groups.
The three have pleaded not guilty to being part of a North American support cell that funneled fighters, money and supplies to Islamic extremists fighting "jihad," or Muslim holy war, in Afghanistan, Chechnya, Bosnia, Tajikistan and elsewhere around the world. The trial is expected to take at least four months.
Although there is no direct connection, the shadow of the Sept. 11 attacks hangs over the case, with dozens of potential jurors mentioning the suicide hijackings that killed nearly 3,000 people in questionnaires meant to gauge their ability to be fair and impartial.
"It is not going to be possible to eradicate 9/11 from the thoughts of jurors," said Philip Anthony, chief executive officer of the national jury consulting firm DecisionQuest. "Your strategic issue is ferreting out the underlying beliefs about 9/11. That's a lot harder."
Prosecutors say Hassoun acted as a South Florida recruiter and fundraiser for violent Muslim causes. Padilla, who had worked at a Taco Bell and as a hotel busboy after moving with his family to Broward County, became one of the warrior recruits. Padilla had converted to Islam in a Florida prison while serving a year for a 1991 weapons conviction.
A key piece of evidence is a purported "mujahedeen data form" that prosecutors say Padilla completed in 2000 -- his fingerprints are on it -- to join an al-Qaida training camp in Afghanistan.
Jayyousi's alleged major role was publication of the "Islam Report," which prosecutors say was used to spread extremist Islamic ideology and assist in the fundraising and terror support efforts. Jayyousi contends he was only reporting on global events of Muslim interest, and his lawyer says prosecutors are attempting to expand the case into a trial of various Islamic political and religious groups.
"The trial will ultimately become the United States vs. Islam," said Jayyousi lawyer William Swor.
The alleged conspiracy goes back more than a decade, with prosecutors claiming more than 50,000 intercepted telephone calls and room conversations. Many of the conversations in Arabic use purported code, with words such as "soccer equipment" and "tourism" supposedly meaning weaponry and war.
"Critical to the government's proving its case is persuading the jury that all the dots in what it claims was an international conspiracy can be connected," said Carl Tobias, law professor at the University of Richmond.
Yet there's little proof that the three were directly responsible for any specific acts of terrorism. In court papers, prosecutors listed more generalized victims such as Serbian and Croat forces in the 1990s Bosnian war, the Russian army in Chechnya and "moderate" Muslim governments in Libya, Tunisia and elsewhere.
Defense lawyers say providing assistance to one faction in these conflicts does not necessarily amount to a crime.
"There was a lot of killing on both sides," said Hassoun lawyer Jeanne Baker of the Bosnian war. "Killing only becomes murder under certain specific circumstances. Defending Muslims is not committing murder."
Padilla, the most famous of the defendants, becomes almost a bit player in this alleged conspiracy. His voice is only heard on eight of the FBI wiretaps and he is mentioned on about 20 others. One of those says that Padilla had gone to "the area of Osama," an apparent reference to bin Laden's al-Qaida camps in Afghanistan.
Padilla was hastily added to the existing Miami case in November 2005, a few days before a Supreme Court deadline for Bush administration briefs on the question of the president's powers to continue holding him without charge. Padilla's lawyers had been fighting during his long, isolated brig custody to get him out and into civilian courts.
"The way the law seemed to be heading was that the president could do whatever he wanted with someone picked up on the field of battle but not someone who was picked up in the United States," Greenberger said.
The abrupt legal move essentially ended the war powers legal battle as it related to Padilla, though several Supreme Court justices said they would revisit the issue if it appears Padilla is treated unfairly.
Padilla claimed he was tortured while interrogated in the brig -- a charge repeatedly denied by the Bush administration -- and sought unsuccessfully to have his case dismissed for "outrageous government conduct." His lawyers also wanted him declared incompetent to stand trial because of mental problems stemming from his brig custody, but that was also rejected.
U.S. officials also claim Padilla admitted involvement and training with al-Qaida during his brig interrogations, as well as the proposed "dirty bomb" plot and another plan to blow up high-rise apartment buildings. None of that can be used as evidence because Padilla had no lawyer present and was not read his Miranda rights.
"If he's acquitted, it's going to be a cautionary tale about denying full constitutional rights to U.S. citizens who are accused of a crime," Greenberger said.
Indonesian detainee denies Al Qaeda tie
The Boston Globe
by Robert Burns
April 13, 2007
Pentagon releases court transcripts
WASHINGTON -- An Indonesian linked by US authorities to a terrorist group blamed for the 2002 Bali nightclub bombings told a military hearing he had no association with Al Qaeda.
Riduan Isamuddin, who told the tribunal that he preferred to be called Hambali, also said he had no knowledge of other terrorist plots he is accused of orchestrating as the alleged operations chief of Jemaah Islamiyah, a regional terrorist group considered responsible for the Oct. 12, 2002 Bali bombings that killed 202 people.
He appeared before a Combatant Status Review Tribunal, an administrative hearing, at Guantanamo Bay on April 4 as one of 14 "high value" detainees transferred to the US naval base in Cuba in September after being held at secret CIA prisons abroad. The public and reporters are not permitted access to the hearings; a US government transcript of the unclassified portion of Isamuddin's hearing was released by the Pentagon yesterday.
The Pentagon also released the transcript of a closed hearing for Ali al-Azia Ali, also known as Ammar al-Baluchi, whom US authorities accuse of helping arrange financing for at least one of the hijackers involved in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
Ali said he is a businessman who has family ties to alleged terrorist Khalid Sheikh Mohammed but is not part of Al Qaeda or other terrorist groups.
In statements at his administrative hearing, Ali, whom the Defense Department calls Ammar alBaluchi, also asserted that during his nearly four years in US custody he gave officials "vital information" to help foil terrorist plots.
He is another of the 14 "high value" suspects at Guantanamo.
Ali said Mohammed, who is his uncle, introduced him to Sept. 11 hijacker Marwan al-Shehhi and others accused by the United States of being Al Qaeda operatives. He said, however, that Mohammed never mentioned that he was involved with Al Qaeda or plotting attacks against the United States.
Ali's hearing was held March 30. The purpose of the hearing is to determine whether the detainee is properly classified as an "enemy combatant" eligible for a military trial for war crimes.
During his hearing, a tribunal member asked Ali whether he helped hijacker Shehhi obtain a visa to enter the United States .
"I don't recall," Ali replied, according to the transcript. "Maybe I can because I have contacts. So that's normal, but I don't recall."
In a written statement presented at the hearing in support of Ali, Mohammed said he never recruited his nephew for Al Qaeda.
At his Guantanamo tribunal, Mohammed said he was responsible for dozens of successful and foiled attacks over the past 15 years.
Mohammed submitted a second brief statement contending that the United States has arrested thousands of innocent people as "enemy combatants," and he asserted that much of the classified evidence against alleged terrorists is from "confessions that were obtained under torture by the CIA."
Another accused Al Qaeda operative, Ramzi Binalshibh, who also is in custody at Guantanamo Bay, submitted a statement saying Ali had no prior knowledge of the Sept. 11 plot.
According to the office of the Director of National Intelligence, Ali is a member of an extended family of Islamic extremists, including his uncle Mohammed and cousin Ramzi Yousef, who was convicted of masterminding the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and accused of plotting to blow up US airliners.
2 'high-value' Guantanamo detainees deny terrorism
The Los Angeles Times
by Josh Meyer
April 13, 2007
WASHINGTON — Two men accused of being top Al Qaeda operatives have denied playing any role in the Sept. 11 attacks or other terrorist plots, and one of them has told U.S. military officials that he deserves leniency for providing "vital information" in the U.S.-led counter-terrorism campaign in the four years since his capture in Pakistan.
U.S. authorities accuse Ali Abdul Aziz Ali, also known as Ammar al-Baluchi, of being a close associate of Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed in various terrorist activities and of helping him arrange financing for at least one of the hijackers.
Ali admitted to having a close working relationship with Mohammed, who is his uncle, while he was living in the United Arab Emirates and later in Pakistan, according to a transcript of his closed military hearing March 30. The Pentagon released the transcript Thursday.
But Ali insisted throughout the 86-minute hearing that all of his ties to the Al Qaeda operations chief were harmless, and based on family and business connections.
Ali told the military commission that he had been a secret weapon for the CIA and other U.S. authorities in thwarting terrorism around the world.
"The United States has benefited from the vital and important information I supplied by foiling Al Qaeda plans and obtaining information on Al Qaeda personnel," Ali said during the March 30 hearing at the U.S. military base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. "So, is it fair or reasonable … that I be considered an enemy combatant?"
CIA spokesman Mark Mansfield said the agency had no comment on Ali's claims of cooperation.
The Pentagon also released the transcript of another Combatant Status Review Tribunal hearing, held April 4 for Riduan Isamuddin, who is accused of being Al Qaeda's point man in Southeast Asia until his capture in August 2003.
The two men are among the 14 "high-value" terrorist suspects who were held at secret locations by the CIA before being transferred last September to Guantanamo. Military officials at Guantanamo are holding hearings on whether the men were properly designated as enemy combatants and whether they are eligible for military trials.
At his hearing, Isamuddin, also known as Hambali, denied being an Al Qaeda member or its liaison to the militant group Jemaah Islamiyah in Southeast Asia. He also said he had had nothing to do with many terrorist plots and attacks that U.S. officials have attributed to him and the group, including plots against U.S., Australian and British embassies in Singapore and deadly church bombings in Indonesia in 2000.
He was not asked about the 2002 bombing of a nightclub in Bali, Indonesia — to which U.S. authorities have linked him — during his brief hearing.
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UN Reports
Kosovo war crimes trial splits West and prosecutors
International Herald Tribune
by Nicholas Wood
April 8, 2007
PRISTINA, Kosovo: Ramush Haradinaj, a stocky former guerrilla commander and, briefly, prime minister of Kosovo, is either one of the most impressive leaders to emerge in the Balkans in recent years or a vicious war criminal. Or perhaps both.
Haradinaj, an ethnic Albanian, and two other men began to stand trial at the UN tribunal in The Hague in March, charged with killing 40 people in 1998, during the conflict between the Kosovo Liberation Army guerrilla group and Serbian-dominated security forces.
But the leading prosecution witness, Tahir Zemaj, and his son and nephew were shot and killed during the investigation. Another witness, Kujtim Berisha, died two weeks before the trial, hit by a car in Podgorica, capital of neighboring Montenegro.
More than a third of those giving evidence for the prosecution are allowed to conceal their identities, more than in any other case at the tribunal, according to the prosecution.
The case has created a stark divide between prosecutors at the tribunal and in Kosovo and diplomats from the United Nations and Western governments. Haradinaj was a crucial partner in Western efforts to bring peace to the province, so much so that they had 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 mission supported his provisional release, which has lasted almost two years; he is the only indicted person that the court, the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, has released in order to return to active politics.
"He moved this process forward in a way that nobody else has," said Soren Jessen-Petersen, who was the head of the mission in Kosovo at the time of the Haradinaj indictment, in March 2005, just four months after Haradinaj became prime minister.
Prosecutors in Kosovo and The Hague say the United Nations and Western governments bent over backward to prevent his prosecution.
The tribunal's top prosecutor, Carla Del Ponte, has referred to the trial in The Hague 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 fighting, which lasted from 1997 to 1999. While the Serbian government vilified him as a terrorist, senior UN officials said that he was instrumental in promoting reconciliation.
"He clearly understood that Serbs could and should be part of the society," said Jessen-Petersen, who led the mission in Kosovo from June 2004 to June 2006. "And he had the credentials. Because of his background, nobody could accuse him of betraying Kosovo."
In March 2004, during rioting across Kosovo, Haradinaj was credited with preventing hundreds of rioters from attacking the best-known Serbian Orthodox monastery in Kosovo. UN officials say that he also helped ensure that a January 2005 visit by the Serbian president, Boris Tadic, passed without incident.
International officials have tried to shield Haradinaj in the name of stability. For instance, the UN administration in Kosovo repeatedly blocked prosecution on charges that he had attacked a group of former fighters of the Kosovo Liberation Army.
The effect of the relationship between the United Nations and Haradinaj, according to the prosecution, was to create a sense of impunity around him, and to scare away witnesses.
"There was a general atmosphere of intimidation; they did nothing to change this atmosphere," said Jean-Daniel Ruche, political adviser 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 a telephone interview.
The mission denies any detrimental effect on the tribunal.
"In decision after decision," wrote a UN spokeswoman, Myriam Dessables, in an e-mail message, the tribunal judges have "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."
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 raped repeatedly.
Supporters of Haradinaj say that there is no evidence linking him directly to the crimes, and they suggest that the court charged him simply to appear evenhanded.
As the indictment of Haradinaj loomed in early 2005, Jessen-Petersen said that he was aware that Western diplomats were trying to block the case. But he emphasized that the mission in Kosovo had made no approaches to the court.
Remembering Rwanda, Ban Ki-moon calls for ‘global partnership against genocide’
UN News Centre
April 9, 2007
Thirteen years after some 800,000 Rwandans were murdered by their compatriots in an orchestrated criminal campaign, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called today for “a global partnership against genocide” and pledged to strengthen United Nations mechanisms to ensure that such an event never happens again.
The post of UN Special Adviser for the Prevention of Genocide – currently held by Juan E. Méndez of Argentina – will be upgraded to a full-time position, Mr. Ban said in a message marking the anniversary of the start of the genocide.
The UN Advisory Committee on Genocide Prevention will also be boosted, the Secretary-General said, adding that Africa has taken its own steps as well, such as the proposed Pact on Security, Stability and Development for the Great Lakes Region, which contains measures on genocide prevention and punishment.
“Preventing genocide is a collective and individual responsibility,” Mr. Ban said. “Everyone has a role to play: governments, the media, civil society organizations, religious groups, and each and every one of us.
“Let us build a global partnership against genocide. Let us protect populations from genocide when their own government cannot or will not.”
Mr. Ban paid tribute to both the victims of the 1994 genocide and the survivors, whose “resilience continues to inspire us.”
The Security Council established the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) to prosecute individuals responsible for committing war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide during 1994, when Hutu militias and others killed Tutsis and moderate Hutus, often using machetes or clubs.
Noting that Member States have agreed in principle to the “responsibility to protect” populations in danger of genocide or war crimes, Mr. Ban said the “challenge now is to give real meaning to the concept, by taking steps to make it operational. Only then will it truly give hope to those facing genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and ethnic cleansing.”
Mr. Ban gave a signed copy of his message this afternoon to Joseph Nsengimana, Rwanda’s Permanent Representative to the UN.
Mr. Nsengimana thanked the Secretary-General and pledged the support of his Government to the UN as it worked to strengthen its anti-genocide mechanisms.
“We take this opportunity to once again appeal to the international community, including the United Nations system, to provide assistance and support to survivors of the genocide,” he said.
UN flag no longer protects workers, Arbour warns
CBC News
April 12, 2007
The blue United Nations flag — once an emblem to the world community that kept workers immune to armed attacks — has lost its protective power, according to the agency's top human rights officer, Louise Arbour.
"The blue flag is not any more the kind of protection that historically we assumed it was," said Arbour, a former Canadian Supreme Court judge who is now the UN's high commissioner for human rights.
"In that sense, I'm a lot more worried for my colleagues who work in the field on a day-to-day basis," she said as she received an honorary doctorate at Laval University in Quebec City on Wednesday night.
She noted that in many countries, attacks now specifically target UN personnel. Such attacks are an affront to the world community, the former war-crimes prosecutor said.
Still, she joked that although she does not always feel welcome in some countries, she does not consider herself a target.
"Yeah, I'm not welcome — I hope not to the point where people will kill me. It's usually to the point that they don't let me in at all," she said. "More realistic."
Laval University President Michel Pigeon described the former war-crimes prosecutor as "courageous," pointing out that her predecessor as the UN's human rights chief was killed in a 2003 suicide bomb attack in Baghdad.
Arbour said her most important challenge is still tracking and preventing the violation of human rights in wars.
However, she said social aspects such as extreme poverty are increasingly a concern.
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NGO Reports
Amnesty International Urges Chad to Accept U.N. Force to Protect Civilians
Amnesty International
April 4, 2007
(New York) -- Amnesty International today urged the government of Chad to reverse its position and agree to accept a United Nations force to protect Chadian civilians in the eastern region bordering Sudan. The appeal comes within days of the killings of at least 25 men, women and children who were shot to death in the Dar Sila region by Janjawid militia, acting with Chadian militias, according to the Chadian government.
Lynn Fredriksson, Advocacy Director for Africa for Amnesty International USA, said deploying peacekeepers in eastern Chad is a crucial means to save lives in the crisis-afflicted region. She called on the U.S. Senate to support a resolution introduced by Senator Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, which urges the United States to press the U.N. Security Council to send peacekeepers to Chad.
"More than two hundred thousand lives have been lost in Darfur," said Fredriksson. "The United States must keep pressing the governments of Sudan and Chad to accept peacekeepers. The international community must act now to stop the killing."
According to the Chadian government, local government militia apparently managed to halt the attack on March 30 in the villages of Tiero and Marena, but only after the deaths occurred.
However, local sources said Chadian military personnel stationed about 30 miles away became involved a day later.
"The Chadian government is clearly failing in its duty to protect its civilians affected by conflict in eastern Chad," said Tawanda Hondora of Amnesty International's Africa program.
The Security Council in August 2006 called for a "multi-dimensional presence" in eastern Chad. Initially, the government of Chad said it would accept such a force but recently reversed its position and said it will accept only police deployment, not a military force.
"Chad must immediately permit the deployment of a United Nations force," said Hondora. "The deliberate targeting, killing, rape and forced displacement of entire communities is reprehensible. The security situation in eastern Chad is still dire."
An estimated 120,000 people have been displaced in eastern Chad by the attacks by Janjawid militia, aided by local Chadian militias. Thousands more have been killed and raped.
Somalia: Fears of resumption of conflict in Mogadishu; 400 civilians killed and thousands fleeing
Amnesty International
March 23, 2007
Amnesty International today condemned the indiscriminate attacks that have taken place in recent days in Mogadishu, resulting in the killing of over 400 civilians. Amnesty International appealed to Somalia's President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed, Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, and all armed groups to ensure that their forces strictly abide by international humanitarian law and take all necessary measures to protect civilians.
A tenuous ceasefire has held up since 2 April after four days of heavy fighting, which have led to tens of thousands fleeing the city. Civilians are still fleeing in fear of a resumption of fighting. This latest escalation of conflict has been described as the worst violence for 15 years, after the Somali state collapsed in 1991.
As a result of the conflict in Mogadishu in the past two months, over 100,000 people have fled, including to Somaliland in the northwest and Puntland in the northeast. Reports suggest over 2,000 newly-displaced people have reached Doble and Harehare near the Kenyan border. Mostly women and children, they are in desperate need of humanitarian assistance. However, the border has been closed since January because of 'security concerns' on the part of the Kenyan authorities. This has prevented potential asylum-seekers from seeking refuge in Kenya, which is a clear breach of international refugee protection law.
Amnesty International urgently appeals to Kenya's President Mwai Kibaki to re-open the Kenya border and to respect Kenya's obligations under international refugee law. Amnesty International also calls on the Kenya Government to ensure humanitarian agencies have regular cross-border access to internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Somalia as an essential humanitarian measure.
An intensive Ethiopian-led military operation in south Mogadishu started on 29 March against armed opponents of the Transitional Federal Government (TFG), when a truce negotiated by clan elders collapsed after six days. The TFG had told civilians to leave certain city areas in advance of the operation by TFG police and Ethiopian troops against opponents, whom it claimed were 'terrorists' linked to remnants of the forces of the Council of Somali Islamic Courts defeated in late December 2006.
Heavy fighting ensued for four days, with over 400 civilians, including many women and children, killed in indiscriminate firing by Ethiopian tanks, helicopter gunships and artillery, or by return-fire from opponents armed with rocket-launchers and machine-guns. Over 500 civilians were also wounded, some being treated in the few medical facilities available, but others were left unattended in the streets. Residential areas, a market, a hospital and IDP settlements were among the areas hit by the attacks.
Those risking perilous flight from their homes away from indiscriminate artillery firing have been left destitute without shelter, water or food, and at risk of looting and rape by bandits, or hostility from local clans. Local and international humanitarian agencies have so far been unable to get access to the growing numbers of displaced civilians.
Sri Lanka: urgent need for effective protection of civilians as conflict intensifies
Amnesty International
April 5, 2007
Amnesty International urges all parties to the conflict to comply with their obligations under international law, to protect civilians and allow access by humanitarian aid agencies to populations in need. The security forces and the LTTE must renew their commitment to respect international humanitarian law, immediately cease all violations and take all measures necessary to ensure they are not repeated in the future.
Armed conflict in Sri Lanka between government forces, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and other armed groups, which has escalated since April 2006, continues to be marked by widespread human rights abuses.
Amnesty International is gravely concerned about the rising number of civilians being killed or injured as a result of deliberate attacks in Sri Lanka's increasing violence.
Unlawful killings, abductions and enforced disappearance of civilians are daily occurrences, as is arbitrary detention. Both sides to the conflict systematically violate their obligations under international humanitarian law to protect from harm those taking no active part in hostilities. Tens of thousands of families have lost their property and their means of livelihood, and the number of conflict-affected internally displaced persons (IDPs) nationally has risen to at least 290,000. This adds to the large numbers of IDPs who have been kept away from their homes due to lack of safety there including ongoing fighting and fear of heavily mined areas for over a decade.
Lack of civilian protection
Fighting in Batticaloa District in Eastern Sri Lanka involves government forces, the LTTE, and a breakaway armed faction led by the LTTE's former eastern military commander, Colonel Karuna. Col. Karuna broke away from the LTTE in March 2004 and has since formed a political party, the Tamil Makkal Viduthalai Pulikal (TMVP). The Karuna faction has been implicated in recruiting child soldiers. In the last month conflict has led to the displacement of at least 80,000 civilians doubling the existing IDP population in Batticaloa District to over 160,000. Fearful and facing acute insecurity, many of these IDPs are experiencing food shortages. They are unable to work and face an uncertain future due to loss of livelihoods. Water shortages are severe forcing families to attempt to dig their own wells. In one incident, the BBC Sinhala Service reported that on 3 March 2007 a child drowned in a water hole that her mother was attempting to dig.
Since hostilities escalated humanitarian access has been restricted. For example, from late November 2006 until LTTE held Vakarai town, in the northern part of Batticaloa District, fell to the Sri Lankan army offensive on 19 January UN agencies and the ICRC had only very limited access to both the area and civilians, while the Tamil Rehabilitation Organisation was unable to re-supply its aid workers on the ground appropriately to deal with civilian needs due to government imposed restrictions on bringing aid into LTTE controlled areas.
Aid agencies report that prior to the latest military offensive in March, the government as well as the LTTE severely restricted access to Batticaloa District and other conflict areas under their control, leaving tens of thousands of new IDPs, and large numbers of other affected populations, without adequate international protection and access to humanitarian assistance.
In this context civilians are at grave risk of being caught up in apparently indiscriminate artillery bombardments by both sides, or subjected to deliberate reprisal killings.
Recent incidents illustrating the continuing threat include:
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Two children and two women were among eight civilians killed on 2 March 2007 in artillery bombardments in Sittandi and Murakottanchenai in Batticaloa. Eighteen others were wounded. A witness reported, "we were just sharing the food out, getting ready for the dinner. A shell fell into the house. My nephew was killed instantly. My daughter was hurt. We carried her to Murakkottanchenai. We stopped an ambulance on the road and took her to hospital".1
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At least 16 civilians were killed in an explosion on a bus in the eastern district of Ampara on 2 April 2007. This was a suicide bombing reportedly by the LTTE followed a weekend of violence in which six tsunami reconstruction workers were allegedly shot dead by the LTTE.
Newly displaced persons living in camps in government-controlled areas of Batticaloa District report that armed men, reportedly wearing the uniforms of the Karuna faction, are infiltrating the camps, roaming them and even taking over the distribution of relief goods. Cases of abductions of IDPs have also been reported. In one incident, a 15-year-old boy was reportedly approached on 9 March 2007 by a white van as he waited for a bus at a temple near an IDP camp. Armed men tried to pull him into the van, but his struggling and screams attracted a crowd and the abductors fled. A witness said members of the Sri Lankan army observed the incident, but did not step in to help the boy. 2
Political killings: addressing a climate of impunity?
Both sides to the conflict have committed violations of international humanitarian law and human rights abuses. The LTTE has reportedly been responsible for numerous political killings and indiscriminate bomb attacks, and continues to forcibly recruit child soldiers. The group has prevented civilians from fleeing areas of combat in the north and east. Government forces have also failed to respect international humanitarian law, reportedly engaging in attacks in which civilians were killed. Government security personnel have also been implicated in extrajudicial executions.
Humanitarian workers have been targeted by unidentified gunmen. In one example which contributed to a continuing climate of fear, 17 Action Contre La Faime (ACF) workers were killed in an execution-style attack in Muttur District in August 2006. According to the Consortium of Humanitarian Agencies (CHA), since 2006 more than 2,000 relief workers have left the North and Eastern provinces due to the killings and frequent abductions.
Amid concerns that failures to effectively investigate and bring to justice those responsible for political killings risked entrenching a climate of impunity, the Government of Sri Lanka established a Commission of Inquiry (COI) and Group of Eminent Persons (IIGEP) in September 2006.
Amnesty International does not believe that an independent group of eminent persons observing an essentially national inquiry can serve as a substitute for the independence, real and perceived, of the Commission of Inquiry itself. Amnesty International therefore called on the President of Sri Lanka to add independent, impartial and competent international experts to the proposed CoI and take other steps to ensure consultation with civil society in developing its work, access to relevant materials and persons, protection of witnesses appearing before it and that the CoI's recommendations are carefully considered with a view to their full implementation.
Amnesty believes that unless these requirements are met the CoI would not be able to function as an investigative body that would address violations of international law in a meaningful way, as required by international standards. 3
In addition, existing national human rights monitoring and investigative mechanisms, such as the Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka, do not presently have the capacity to deal with large scale human rights violations. Sri Lanka's Human Rights Commission says hundreds of people have 'disappeared' so far this year, on top of 1,000 last year.
At the international level, Sri Lanka has 5749 outstanding cases being reviewed by the UN Working Group on Enforced and Involuntary Disappearances, several hundred of which have been reported since the beginning of 2006.
The need for international human rights monitors
The organisation believes there is an urgent need for human rights monitors on the ground to enhance civilian protection. The role of an international human rights monitoring presence is to conduct and make public systematic reporting to national and international bodies; report to a neutral body on a periodic and systematic basis and issue public reports. This is necessary due to the failure of domestic remedies for human rights violations -- whether committed by the government, the LTTE, or other armed groups.
The aim of monitoring would be to address all serious violations of human rights, including extrajudicial executions and enforced disappearances, and all breaches of international humanitarian law whether committed by government forces, the LTTE, the Karuna Group, or any other armed group or individuals operating on their behalf. Monitoring would consist of documenting and investigating the increasing number of abuses committed by the Sri Lankan security forces, LTTE and other armed groups; publicizing their findings and identifying the perpetrators so they can be brought to justice.
Amnesty International believes it is for the Government of Sri Lanka and other parties to the conflict to tailor to the Sri Lankan context an appropriate model. However, any model of international human rights monitoring must be founded on key principles including independence and impartiality; accountability and transparency nationally and internationally; a field presence in all key regions of the country and a victim/witness centred approach, including confidentiality and privacy. Monitoring will only be effective if adequately resourced and staffed by experienced and competent international investigators. An effective witness protection programme is key to the success of monitoring. A step forward could be the establishment of an OCHCR Office in Colombo along the lines suggested by UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. 4
Given the gravity of the human rights situation Amnesty International urges the Sri Lankan government to strengthen civilian protection and invite international human rights monitors to the country immediately.
Notes
1. BBC Sinhala Service 03/04/2007
2. "Sri Lanka: Armed groups infiltrating refugee camps", Amnesty International Press Release, ASA 37/007/2007
3.. See Amnesty International, Observations on a Proposed Commission of Inquiry and International Independent Group of Eminent Persons, AI Index: ASA 37/030/2006, 17 November 2006
4. Comments made by Louise Arbour, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, in the Interactive Dialogue at the 4th Session of the Human Rights Council, Geneva 14/03/2007.
Somalia: End Indiscriminate Attacks in Mogadishu
Human Rights Watch
April 6, 2007
Armed Groups Should Protect Civilians, Ensure Access to Aid
(New York, April 6, 2007) – The Ethiopian military, Somali government, and insurgent groups operating in Mogadishu must cease all indiscriminate attacks, Human Rights Watch said today. Human Rights Watch called on the parties to the conflict to take all necessary steps to protect the civilian population from further fighting, including ensuring access to humanitarian assistance.
Fighting between Ethiopian armed forces and insurgent groups in Mogadishu escalated between March 29 and April 2 and resulted in deaths and injuries to hundreds of civilians, including from indiscriminate shelling and mortar attacks on heavily populated areas. According to United Nations estimates, 100,000 people have fled the Somali capital since February, including tens of thousands in the past week. A ceasefire is currently in effect but further fighting is anticipated.
“Civilians in Mogadishu are paying an intolerable price for the failure of all sides to abide by the rules of warfare,” said Georgette Gagnon, deputy Africa director of Human Rights Watch. “The warring parties are legally obliged to protect civilians and to stop indiscriminate attacks.”
The escalation in fighting in Mogadishu followed weeks of increasing attacks by insurgents and counter-attacks by Ethiopian armed forces supporting the Somali Transitional Federal Government. Residents living in targeted areas of Mogadishu, primarily in the southwestern and central quarters of the town, have described near constant artillery and rocket fire from Ethiopian forces between March 29 and April 2, as the three-day ceasefire came into effect.
The insurgents are believed to include remnants of the Union of Islamic Courts militia as well as other clan militia, and are reportedly armed with heavy weaponry, including anti-aircraft guns, mortars and some artillery. In response to the insurgent attacks, Ethiopian forces used helicopter gunships and sent barrages of artillery and Katyusha rockets into neighborhoods thought to be insurgent strongholds.
The densely populated areas around Mogadishu stadium, Tawfiq, Hamar-Bile, Hararyaale, Ali Kamiin, Suuq Ba’aad, and other Mogadishu neighborhoods have been specifically targeted. After several days of shelling, Somali government officials publicly ordered residents to vacate entire neighborhoods alongside the 21st October Road of Mogadishu in order to flush out the armed attackers. One government official told the media: “We call on the civilians living in terrorist-held areas in Mogadishu to abandon their houses because it is possible that government troops may target these areas any time.”
The laws of war require parties to a conflict, to the extent feasible, to remove civilians under their control from the vicinity of military targets and to give effective advance warnings of attacks. However, doing so does not relieve an attacking force of the obligation against conducting attacks that cannot discriminate between combatants and civilians or would be expected to cause disproportionate civilian harm.
“Ordering people out of their homes doesn’t allow an army to ignore the fate of those who remain,” said Gagnon. “The Somali government should ensure that Somali and Ethiopian forces in Mogadishu respect the laws of war, especially to protect civilians.”
Most of the people displaced from Mogadishu have fled to neighboring towns such as Afgoe and Balad. There are also reports that hundreds of displaced people have traveled as far as Dhobley, near the Kenyan border. The Kenyan government closed the border with Somalia in January, after Ethiopian forces attacked and ousted the Union of Islamic Courts from most of southern Somalia in a rapid military campaign.
The Somali government has apparently closed many of the airstrips around Mogadishu – including for humanitarian agencies – and there are concerns that thousands of residents and displaced people outside the town are without vital humanitarian aid, including water, food, and shelter. Where civilians are displaced for security or imperative military reasons, the laws of war require that all possible measures be taken so that they receive satisfactory conditions of shelter, hygiene, health, safety and nutrition.
On April 4, a joint committee of Hawiye clan elders and the Ethiopian military toured the frontline areas following a temporary ceasefire agreement in order to retrieve and bury the dead. Eyewitnesses described bodies littered alongside the main street linking Mogadishu’s football stadium and Florence junction in Wardhigley district.
Although the ceasefire agreement is holding, the agreement remains fragile and renewed fighting is anticipated. As a result, scores of civilians continue to flee the city.
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Other
Amnesty for Ivory Coast conflict
BBC News
April 13, 2007
Ivory Coast President Laurent Gbagbo has signed a law giving amnesty for crimes committed during the civil war.
The amnesty, part of a recent peace deal, applies to both the New Forces rebels and the armed forces loyal to President Gbagbo.
Last month human rights group Amnesty International condemned Ivory Coast's "climate of impunity" and said both sides were guilty of large-scale rape.
A BBC correspondent says there will be no local prosecutions for such crimes.
Any on-going prosecutions are to be dropped immediately, and prisoners convicted of crimes covered by the amnesty will be released.
Economic crimes are a notable exception, as they are not covered by the amnesty.
Fears
The BBC's James Copnall in Ivory Coast says the new law will go some way to reassuring both sides that they can move forward in the peace process without fear.
Significantly, the amnesty is backdated to September 2000.
That means that crimes committed by loyalist soldiers before the war broke out will also be wiped off the slate.
The amnesty law is one of a number of measures aimed at bringing the country to free and fair elections within 10 months.
Two weeks ago, rebel leader Guillaume Soro was named prime minister, and next Monday the removal of a buffer zone between the belligerent parties is due to begin.
But our correspondent says the man Mr Soro replaced - Charles Konan Banny - voiced the fears of many Ivorians when he told the BBC he thought both Mr Soro and President Gbagbo had hidden agendas behind their apparent drive to peace.
Ivory Coast, previously the richest state in West Africa, has been split in two since rebels seized the north in 2002.
Israeli suspended over "human shield" use
Associated Press via The Seattle Times
April 14, 2007
JERUSALEM — The Israeli army said Friday that it was suspending the commander of troops seen using two Palestinian youths as human shields, the latest incident in which its soldiers appear to be protecting themselves with civilians in violation of international and Israeli law.
A foreign peace activist filmed the youths standing in front of the troops' jeep to protect it from other Palestinians throwing stones. International law and a 2005 Israeli Supreme Court ruling ban the use of human shields, an issue that came under renewed scrutiny after AP Television News footage in late February showed a Palestinian man forced to lead heavily armed soldiers in house-to-house searches for militants.
A 60-second video clip of the most recent incident was posted late Thursday on the Yediot Ahronot newspaper's Web site. The footage, shot Wednesday in Nablus, showed two Palestinian youths leaning against the front of a military jeep with their arms crossed, while a soldier sat in the passenger's seat.
The activist is heard shouting, "You can't use them as human shields, it is against the law!"
"We are not using them as a human shield," the soldier replied.
"They are standing in front of your jeep. How is that not a human shield? You are using them to protect you from stones," the activist retorted.
"We asked them to speak to their friends and ask them to stop throwing stones at us," the soldier said.
Shortly after the video was posted, the military announced that the mission commander had been relieved of operational duty, "following the incident in which IDF soldiers apparently made prohibited use of civilians."
Since the AP Television News footage was aired, other Palestinians, including an 11-year-old girl, have come forward with similar accounts.
Those cases have prompted a rare criminal investigation into whether troops broke the law.
In August 2002, a 19-year-old Palestinian student was killed in a gunfight that erupted after he was forced to knock on the door of a building where a fugitive was hiding.
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War Crimes Prosecution Watch Staff
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Professor Michael P. Scharf
Case School of Law
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