War Crimes Prosecution Watch
is a bi-weekly e-newsletter that compiles official documents and
articles from major news sources detailing and analyzing salient issues
pertaining to the investigation and prosecution of war crimes
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Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (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)
Khmer Rouge tribunal begins lawyer selection process
Monsters & Critics
July 10, 2007
Phnom Penh - Lawyers were Tuesday invited to submit their names to represent a handful of former Khmer Rouge cadre expected to be tried before the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), the media section of the court said in a statement.
The 56-million dollar joint UN-Cambodia tribunal is hoped to get underway later this year, although whom it will try has not yet been decided.
The Defence Support Section (DSS) of the ECCC said the list was open to both Cambodian and international lawyers who may be selected by clients to defend cases before the ECCC.
'We expect lawyers from all over the world to apply to be included in the list,' the statement quoted DSS head Rubert Skilbeck as saying.
'We have already had a great deal of interest from lawyers in Australia, Canada, France, Hong Kong, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, the UK and the US. I am confident that we will be able to build strong defence teams for everyone brought before the court in order to ensure fair trials.'
The statement said accused persons before the ECCC may be represented by co-lawyers - one Cambodian and one foreign.
Both Cambodian and foreign co-lawyers have to demonstrate established competence in criminal law and procedure at a national or international level. Foreign co-lawyers will also have to possess 10 years of relevant experience, the statement said.
Foreign lawyers will also have to pay a fee of 500 dollars after a decision by the Bar Council of the Kingdom of Cambodia earlier this year. Lawyers can submit their applications via the ECCC website.
The statement said co-lawyers will be assisted by a defence team made up of legal consultants and case managers. The DSS also announced applications were open for these positions as of Tuesday.
The ultra-Maoist Khmer Rouge's 1975-79 Democratic Kampuchea regime is held responsible for the deaths of up to 2 million Cambodians in its drive to turn the country into an agrarian utopia, free of markets, money and social classes.
Its leader, Pol Pot, died without facing justice in 1998. Most surviving leaders are elderly and many claim to be in frail health.
Survivor of Khmer Rouge torture center chronicles ordeal with paintings
IHT/ The Associated Press
July 12, 2007
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia: The Khmer Rouge's murderous legacy has been depicted in art by a survivor of an infamous torture center run by the radical communist regime, responsible for the deaths of nearly 2 million Cambodians.
Vann Nath, 62, opened a showing Thursday of 10 paintings portraying the notorious S-21 prison — also known as Tuol Sleng — in the middle of the capital, Phnom Penh.
"My purpose in painting these pictures was because I want the young generation to know about the Khmer Rouge regime, and to show how innocent Cambodians were accused by them of being the 'enemy' and later killed even though they were not guilty at all," he said.
Up to 16,000 men, women and children were tortured there from 1975-79 and later taken away to be executed. Only 14 people, including Vann Nath, are thought to have survived.
He managed to survive the ordeal by taking the job of painting and sculpting portraits of the group's leader, Pol Pot.monuments to a regime whose radical policies caused the deaths of an estimated 1.7 million people nationwide by execution, overwork, disease and malnutrition.
His new exhibition is meant to make a younger generation of Cambodians, who had no experience of life under the Khmer Rouge, aware of the atrocities that left the country shattered in body and soul.
"It is very hard for me to paint the pictures, but I have to overcome that in my mind because I think that if I am not showing my pictures, nobody will know how much suffering I encountered," Vann Nath said at a press conference marking the unveiling of his paintings, all done this year.
In February, Vann Nath was one among 10 Southeast Asians chosen as recipients of the Hellman/Hammett human rights award. Eight Vietnamese writers — all of whom have either been jailed or harassed by police for challenging Vietnam's one-party system — and a journalist from Myanmar forced to flee his homeland were also among the 45 writers from 22 countries to receive the award.
The awards are meant to assist writers in financial need as a result of expressing their views. The Hellman/Hammett award is named after U.S. playwright Lillian Hellman and her longtime companion, novelist Dashiell Hammett, both of whom were interrogated in the 1950s about their political beliefs and affiliations.
During the press conference, Vann Nath expressed despair over the prospects for a U.N.-backed Khmer Rouge genocide tribunal that expects to begin trying suspects early next year, though it still has not even indicted anyone. Surviving leaders of the Khmer Rouge still live freely in Cambodia.
"I am totally without hope because it's almost 30 years now," he said when asked his opinion of the tribunal. "I have no hope that the court will give me justice."
Many of those who managed to survive the Khmer Rouge years have now died without seeing any justice done, he added.
Khmer Rouge trial
The Free Press
By Richard S. Ehrlich
July 12, 2007
BANGKOK, Thailand -- Defending Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge leaders at an international tribunal may include arguing about genocide and the lack of a "smoking gun," despite the deaths of up to three million Cambodians, according to U.N. Principal Defender Rupert Skilbeck.
"One of the big questions will be whether, what happened in Cambodia, was genocide or not," Mr. Skilbeck said in an interview.
"There is a very strong legal argument to say that genocide is when you kill people because of their ethnicity, whereas the vast majority of the [Khmer Rouge] purges were not for ethnic reasons, but were for political reasons. So genocide may not be possible" as a successful prosecution charge.
Mr. Skilbeck heads the Defense Support Section of the tribunal, which is officially called the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC).
A London-based criminal lawyer, Mr. Skilbeck was previously Defense Advisor for the Special Court for Sierra Leone, and head of the Criminal Defense Section for the War Crimes Chamber in Sarajevo.
The ECCC is gearing up in Cambodia to put on trial a handful of elderly Khmer Rouge leaders, almost 30 years after their 1975-79 "killing fields" regime was toppled.
Khmer Rouge communist leader Pol Pot died in 1998.
Nuon Chea, who was Pol Pot's second-in-command, distanced himself from charges of mass murder when he told Cambodia's Phnom Penh Post newspaper in January: "Why should we have killed our own people? I do not see a reason.
"We wanted a clean, illuminating and peaceful regime," Nuon Chea, 80, said.
The number of Cambodians who died from executions, torture, starvation, disease and slavery under the Khmer Rouge is usually pegged as 1.7 million people, but the ECCC's Web site said "more than three million people perished" during to the regime's fanatic, back-to-the-jungle administration.
The surviving Khmer Rouge leaders, who reside in Cambodia, could defend themselves in various ways, Mr. Skilbeck said.
"There has to be a discussion about whether there was an international armed conflict or not," he said, because the Geneva Conventions are rules for armed conflict, which can differ for acts during peace or domestic unrest.
Pol Pot seized power after Cambodia's U.S.-backed leader Lon Nol flew to California, and Washington lost its regional Vietnam War which included massive U.S. bombardment of the impoverished Southeast Asian nation.
America is not financially supporting the tribunal which is mostly funded by Japan and Europe, with help from India, New Zealand, Australia and others.
U.S. officials "made it very clear they will fund it, but only when they are sure it is going to be a fair process," Mr. Skilbeck said.
On November 26, 1975, seven months after Pol Pot's victory, U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger said to Thai officials: "You should also tell the Cambodians that we will be friends with them. They are murderous thugs, but we won't let that stand in our way.
"We are prepared to improve relations with them. Tell them the latter part, but don't tell them what I said before," Mr. Kissinger said, according to a previously "secret" transcript recently published by the U.S. National Security Archive.
"Seven to 10 defendants," all elderly Cambodians, may stand trial at the ECCC, Mr. Skilbeck said.
Only one, Mr. Duch (pronounced: "doyk") -- who ran Phnom Penh's Tuol Sleng torture chambers -- is in jail. No arrest warrants have yet been issued to apprehend any others.
"The vast majority are living openly in houses, whether they are in Phnom Penh or in different places around the provinces.
"Some have been clearly identified as likely accused, so there is no secret about some of them. Some people perhaps won't be expecting a knock on the door. We will have to see what happens when they start to arrest people," Mr. Skilbeck said.
Cambodia abolished the death penalty.
"Anyone convicted of large-scale atrocity crimes is likely to get a sentence for the rest of their life," the U.N. Principal Defender said.
"The first trial starts sometime during next year. We will probably get a verdict before the end of next year...maybe the beginning of 2009. If there are any subsequent trials to that, it will probably take about six months each, so they'll come in six-month intervals after that."
Mr. Skilbeck said there is "no smoking gun," or single piece of evidence to convict the Khmer Rouge.
"There is no instance [on record] where the decision was made to make killings. There are no documents directly ordering large-scale atrocities to occur.
"So the prosecution, as often happens, will have to...piece together their case from lots of different people's evidence," the head of the ECCC Defense Support Section said.
Mr. Skilbeck is tasked to support the Khmer Rouge's defense lawyers -- foreign and Cambodian. He does not personally defend the accused, or wield veto power over the lawyers.
"My job is really to organize the defense, and to get it ready, and to make it happen.
"I will get all the individual defense lawyers to do the cases. Once we've got them up, and they are able to do the cases, we will give them back-up legal support to help them do the job," he said.
"Foreign or Cambodian, they will be independent, only subject to the court's ability to discipline them if they get out of line during the courtroom hearings."
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Richard S Ehrlich is a Bangkok-based journalist who has reported news from Asia since 1978 and is co-author of "Hello My Big Big Honey!", a non-fiction book of investigative journalism. He received Columbia University's Foreign Correspondents Award, and his web page is http://www.geocities.com/asia_correspondent
Prosecutors submit introductory statements for UN-backed Khmer Rouge trials
UN News Centre
July 18, 2007
Prosecutors working on the United Nations-backed trials of Cambodia’s former Khmer Rouge leaders, accused of mass killings and other horrific crimes during the late 1970s, today filed documents on cases of murder, torture and other serious crimes.
The Co-Prosecutors of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), which is composed of national and international judges, filed their first Introductory Submission – a text containing facts that may constitute crimes, identifying people suspected to be responsible for those crimes and requesting the Co-Investigating Judges to probe those crimes and suspects.
Based on their preliminary investigations, the Co-Prosecutors have identified and submitted for investigation 25 distinct factual situations of murder, torture, forcible transfer, unlawful detention, forced labour and religious, political and ethnic persecution, as evidence of the crimes committed during the period of Democratic Kampuchea, according to a press release from the ECCC.
In support of their factual submissions, the Co-Prosecutors have transmitted more than 1,000 documents constituting more than 14,000 pages, including documents from over 350 witnesses, thousands of pages of documentation from the era of Democratic Kampuchea and the locations of more than 40 undisturbed mass graves.
Under an agreement signed by the UN and Cambodia, the trial court and a Supreme Court within the Cambodian legal system will investigate those most responsible for crimes and serious violations of Cambodian and international law between 17 April 1975 and 6 January 1979.
Khmer Rouge Trial Prosecutors Submit Murder, Torture Evidence
Bloomberg News
By Paul Tighe
July 19, 2007
July 19 (Bloomberg) -- Prosecutors in Cambodia filed evidence of murder and torture in a first step to starting the trials of Khmer Rouge leaders on charges of genocide, the United Nations said.
Prosecutors have ``identified and submitted for investigation 25 distinct factual situations of murder, torture, forcible transfer, unlawful detention'' and forced labor that may constitute crimes, the UN said on its Web site.
The documents were filed yesterday in Phnom Penh by national and international judges forming what is known as the Co- Prosecutors of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia. The trial process is costing $56.3 million, with the UN providing $43 million and Cambodia's government $13.3 million.
The Khmer Rouge, which ruled from 1975 until the regime was overthrown in 1979, drove people out of Cambodia's cities to work at forced-labor collective farms as it attempted to impose a communist agrarian state. An estimated 1.7 million people died during its rule.
Between five and 10 surviving Khmer Rouge leaders may be brought to trial in court proceedings beginning next year.
Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge leader, died in his jungle hideout in 1998. Seven officials still living were named in 2003 by the Washington-based Coalition for International Justice as the main leaders who should stand trial. They include Ieng Sary, Khieu Samphan and Nuon Chea.
Ta Mok, the movement's military chief, died in July 2006. He was detained in a military prison after his capture in 1999.
Witness Testimony
The Co-Prosecutors provided more than 1,000 documents containing testimony from as many as 350 witnesses as well as a list of more than 40 undisturbed mass graves, the UN said.
``Under an agreement signed by the UN and Cambodia, the trial court and a Supreme Court within the Cambodian legal system will investigate those most responsible for crimes and serious violations of Cambodian and international law'' between 1975 and 1979, the UN said.
Vietnamese forces ended the rule of the Khmer Rouge when they captured the capital, Phnom Penh, in January 1979. Khmer Rouge fighters resisted in the west of the country until their final units surrendered to the Cambodian army 20 years later.
Ex-Khmer Rouge leader ready for genocide trial
GMA TV/ AP
July 19, 2007
PAILIN, Cambodia - The highest-ranking former Khmer Rouge leader still alive denied on Thursday that he was responsible for the deaths of 1.7 million Cambodians during the party's brutal 1975-79 rule, adding he is ready to face an international tribunal.
Prosecutors in the tribunal examining the deaths submitted a confidential list Wednesday of five former top Khmer Rouge leaders they believe should be tried, along with the evidence to back the charges. Judges will decide whether to proceed with indictments.
''They didn't specify the names of the people, but I know I'm included,'' former chief Khmer Rouge ideologue Nuon Chea told The Associated Press in an exclusive interview at his home in northwest Cambodia near the border with Thailand.
Cambodian and international prosecutors submitted evidence including thousands of pages of documentation and the locations of more than 40 mass graves.
''I will go to the court and don't care if people believe me not,'' Nuon Chea said. ''It happened 30 years ago and it's very difficult to remember. Some of them (tribunal members) never experienced that. They weren't there, how could they know what was going on?''
Seeming unperturbed, Nuon Chea sat clutching a walking stick, the legacy of a stroke that also left his mouth slightly twisted, and complained of pain in his right leg as he spoke, while his wife served homemade iced fruit juice.
He said there were more police than usual stationed outside his small house since Wednesday evening's announcement of the legal moves in Phnom Penh, and he had to be careful about what he said.
Now an ailing 82-year-old, the former ''Brother Number Two'' in the Khmer Rouge has consistently denied any responsibility for the mass brutality that engulfed Cambodia when the Khmer Rouge held power.
''I was president of the National Assembly and had nothing to do with the operation of the government. Sometimes I didn't know what they were doing because I was in the assembly,'' he said in fluent Thai. He attended university in Thailand as a youth.
''I had no intention to kill my people'', he added, ''the tribunal shouldn't rely solely on the law but on intention as well.''
He gave a chuckle and added, ''see you in court.''
Marcel Lemonde, a tribunal's co-investigating judge who is a native of France, declined to discuss when names of the suspects will be made public and when they might be arrested, though he indicated it could be soon.
The prosecutors' announcement that they had submitted the evidence Wednesday set ''the ball rolling in the legal process'' of the tribunal, said Theary Seng, director of Center for Social Development, a nonprofit Cambodian group that monitors the country's justice system. ''It is the first concrete and visible sign that the process will go forward.''
''We are encouraged by the progress of the (tribunal) and look forward to the day when identified suspects are brought to justice,'' said U.S. Embassy spokesman Jeff Daigle.
Ros Saroeun, a 53-year-old motorbike-taxi driver, reflected the opinions of many older Cambodians, commenting that ''I am delighted they will be brought to trial, because they have caused the death of more than 30 of my relatives.''
A statement from the tribunal said the prosecutors - a joint Cambodian-foreign team - submitted 25 cases to the judges involving ''murder, torture, forcible transfer, unlawful detention, forced labor and religious, political and ethnic persecution.''
All five suspects were senior leaders, it said.
It said the factual allegations in the prosecutors' submission to the investigating judges ''constitute crimes against humanity, genocide, grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions, homicide, torture and religious persecution.''
The late Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot died in 1998 and his former military chief, Ta Mok, died in 2006.
In addition to Nuon Chea, former Foreign Minister Ieng Sary and former head of state Khieu Samphan live freely in Cambodia but are in declining health.
Kaing Khek Iev, who headed the Khmer Rouge's S-21 torture center, is the only former senior official in government custody.
Cambodia first sought UN help in 1997 to set up a tribunal, but it took years of tough negotiations, with Cambodia saying it was concerned about its sovereignty, before the two parties signed a pact in 2003 agreeing to hold trials. Tribunal officials were appointed only last year.
Under the agreement, the maximum penalty for conviction for crimes falling within the tribunal's jurisdiction is life imprisonment.
Trials were originally expected to start this year but bickering between Cambodian and foreign judges over procedural rules delayed the process. - AP
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Central African Republic
Official Website of the International Criminal Court
ICC Public Documents - Cases: Central African Republic
Life eases slightly for refugees in corner of Central African Republic
UNHCR via Reuters AlertNet
By Nicolas Rost
July 10, 2007
SAM OUANDJA, Central African Republic (UNHCR) – UNHCR and sister agencies are helping to make life more bearable in this corner of north-east Central African Republic (CAR) for more than 2,600 refugees who fled attacks on their homes in Sudan's South Darfur region some seven weeks ago.
But conditions remain harsh in Sam Ouandja and getting supplies to the remote area located some 80 kilometres from the border with Sudan will become increasingly challenging during the rainy season. "It's difficult here," said Fatouma Ali Abakar, whose 20-year-old daughter has still not recovered from giving birth in Sam Ouandja three weeks ago to her first child.
Things are improving: the refugees have constructed waterproof shelters with plastic sheeting distributed by UNHCR; basic health services are being provided; and water for drinking and cooking is being treated.
And at the weekend, the World Food Programme (WFP) made a second distribution of food, which should last for three weeks. A WFP convoy carrying a further 51 tonnes of food was on its way on Tuesday to Sam Ouandja on rough roads from the distant CAR capital, Bangui. The agency has to date transported 105 tonnes of food here, including high-energy biscuits.
UNHCR has a team on the ground to manage the camp and, together with the local authorities, ensure the refugees' legal protection. A school for more than 600 children has been set up, while latrines and shelters for food distribution have been built. UNICEF, the World Health Organization, the Food and Agricultural Organization and the NGO Triangle are providing basic services such as education, access to water, food distribution and health services.
The local authorities and people of Sam Ouandja have welcomed the refugees despite having suffered themselves in recent months from conflict. The Sudanese, who fled air and ground attacks on their homes in the town of Dafak, have been given land on which to build shelters and grow food.
The refugees were in bad shape when they arrived. They had only mangos and wild fruit to eat. Even now, aid agencies struggle to respond to their most basic needs and many continue to fall sick with malaria or diarrhea. As the rains intensify, it is becoming more difficult to transport relief items along the 950-kilometre road from Bangui.
Analysts say the arrival of the more than 2,600 refugees in CAR is another sign that the Darfur crisis is affecting neighbouring countries. Some 235,000 refugees from West Darfur are sheltering in 12 UNHCR-run camps in eastern Chad. High Commissioner António Guterres has repeatedly called for an international presence along the CAR-Sudan and the Chad-Sudan borders.
CAR hosts some 8,600 refugees, mainly from Chad, Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. In the northern part, violence has forced an estimated 290,000 people to flee their homes since July 2005. Some 78,000 have sought refuge in neighbouring countries and 212,000 have been displaced within the country.
Central African army frees 11 Cameroonian hostages
Reuters
July 14, 2007
BANGUI - The army of Central African Republic has freed 11 Cameroonian hostages after a two-hour gun-battle with bandits in the remote northwest of the country, state radio reported on Saturday.
The hostages were thought to be among 22 people kidnapped late last month in Cameroon's remote east, where insecurity has increased over the last two years due to the civil conflict in neighbouring Central African Republic.
Central African state radio said one bandit was killed and two soldiers injured in the fire-fight, which took place on Wednesday.
Kidnappers often target Cameroon's nomadic, cattle-herding Mbororo people, who have a reputation for wealth and sometimes pay millions of CFA francs (thousands of dollars) to free their relatives.
Central African Republic has suffered decades of coups and instability since independence from France in 1960. President Francois Bozize himself seized power in a 2003 military uprising, before holding elections in 2005.
In the northwest, government troops have razed scores of villages in the hunt for rebels in recent years, leaving the people victim to bandits known locally as Zaraguinas.
A north-eastern revolt mounted last year from Sudan's war-torn Darfur province was eventually repulsed with the help of fighter jets and special forces from former colonial power France.
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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
U.N. denounces Congo's Anvil war crimes verdict
Reuters
By Joe Bavier
July 4, 2007
KINSHASA, July 4 (Reuters) - U.N. human rights chief Louise Arbour on Wednesday criticised a Congolese military court decision that acquitted government soldiers and former employees of Australia's Anvil Mining Ltd of complicity in war crimes.
A military tribunal acquitted nine soldiers last week of war crimes charges including summary executions, torture, illegal detention and looting during a brief armed uprising in the southern town of Kilwa, Katanga province, in 2004.
Canadian Pierre Mercier and South Africans Peter Van Niekerk and Cedric Kirsten, all Anvil employees, were also cleared of wilfully offering logistical assistance to the soldiers.
"I am concerned at the court's conclusions that the events in Kilwa were the accidental results of fighting, despite the presence at the trial of substantial eye-witness testimony and material evidence pointing to the commission of serious and deliberate human rights violations," Arbour said in a statement.
Congo's Justice Minister Georges Minsay told Reuters he had not yet read the decision of the court in Katanga's capital, Lubumbashi, and could not comment on Arbour's statement.
Scores died in a massacre of civilians in Kilwa when government forces launched a counter-attack to retake the town after it was seized by a group of 10 ill-equipped rebels in October 2004, a U.N. human rights investigation found.
Anvil runs the nearby Dikulushi silver and copper mine and the company's trucks and planes were used by the army during the operation close to Congo's southeastern border with Zambia.
The firm said its vehicles were requisitioned by the military and that it had no choice but to hand them over.
Lawyers for the victims and their families have said they will appeal against the court's verdict.
Two officers received life in prison, and two other soldiers received shorter sentences for lesser crimes unrelated to the Kilwa violence.
Arbour, U.N. high commissioner for human rights, said Democratic Republic of Congo's decision to try the three civilian Anvil employees before a military court violated the country's international obligations.
"During my visit to DRC in May this year, all authorities assured me of their highest commitment to the fight against impunity," Arbour said.
"The victims of serious human rights violations demand concrete signs of such commitment in the form of truth and justice. That is their right," she said.
Congo's "last chance" disarmament is still fragile
Reuters
By Joe Bavier
July 9, 2007
BUNIA, Congo, July 9 (Reuters) - With just weeks to go before launch of a "last chance" programme to disarm three notorious Congo warlords, some rebels say the government has yet to create the conditions for them to lay down their arms.
Ahead of elections in July last year, Congo's government, with the backing of a 17,000-strong U.N. peacekeeping force, opened talks to bring Mathieu Ngudjolo, Peter Karim and "Cobra" Matata out of the bush in the north-eastern Ituri region.
Since initial disarmament in Ituri began in 2005 following a local ethnic conflict that grew out of Democratic Republic of Congo's 1998-2003 war and killed more than 70,000 people, around 21,000 fighters have already been demobilised or reintegrated into a new national Congolese army.
Ngudjolo, Karim, and Matata lead the last three remaining militias in Ituri, where they have been accused of arbitrary killings, levying illegal taxes and looting villages.
After an agreement last November, which made the three men colonels under the command of government forces, implementing a demobilisation deal has stalled.
At his inauguration in December, newly elected President Joseph Kabila vowed to bring security to Congo's volatile eastern provinces. The militias, however, say his government is dragging its feet over a partial amnesty promised in November.
"We're still waiting for the government," Ngudjolo, flanked by machinegun-toting bodyguards wearing bandoliers of spare ammunition, told Reuters in Bunia, Ituri's largest town.
"Since they made promises, we are waiting for these promises to be kept ... It's been held up a long time, and it's worrying. It's blocking things."
SECURITY "STICK"
Due to begin in early August, the "last chance" disarmament programme is due to run for 60 days. Anyone carrying a weapon after that deadline will be considered outside the law.
Ross Mountain, deputy head of the U.N. mission in Congo known as MONUC, said the process was the final opportunity for the holdout militias to peacefully disarm.
"There's a stick. We do have troops up there and we would be willing to support a government operation to finally settle security in Ituri," he said.
Ituri armed groups did not sign the peace deal that ended Congo's five-year war and were not included under an amnesty law that pardoned fighters on all sides for political crimes, such as rebellion and threatening state security. Under the initial agreement with them last July, Congo's government promised an amnesty for the militia leaders, who human rights groups say are responsible for ethnic massacres, rape, using child soldiers and forced labour.
That clause was later modified to incorporate the Ituri militias into the existing amnesty law, which excludes immunity for war crimes and the gravest human rights abuses. But the government has yet to approve the legislation.
"Amnesty is not something we hand out like peanuts," said Yvonne Iyamulemye Kabano, Congo's Deputy Minister for Ex-Combatants, adding legal details were still being worked on.
The government is not the only one accused of stalling.
Karim's Front of Nationalists and Integrationists (FNI), responsible for the murders of nine U.N. peacekeepers in 2005, fought army forces and U.N. peacekeepers until February.
Matata consistently disobeys orders from his army superiors and last week refused to attend a ceremony to officially launch the disarmament.
Anneke Van Woudenberg, senior researcher with Human Rights Watch, doubts the disarmament will end Ituri's troubles.
"What we've seen is that when abusive militia leave, they have been replaced by Congolese army, who also abuse. We can't say, all of the sudden, Ituri is a paradise."
Monuc Condemns Murders in North Kivu
United Nations Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (Kinshasa) via Allafrica.com
July 11, 2007
During the weekly MONUC press conference this Wednesday 11 July 2007, MONUC condemned the recent murders in North Kivu province in eastern DRC, including Mr. Floribert Bwana Chuy Bin Kositi, provincial secretary of the Rassemblement congolais pour la d émocratie (RCD-Goma) political party, on Monday 9 July last in Goma, the provincial capital. This follows other recent murders in Butembo and Beni.
"Mr. Swing, UN Special Representative in the DRC to the Secretary General condemns the murder of Mr. Bin Kositi, who was also a lawyer and government official for the Office of "Contrôle Congolais" (OCC), and whose body was found in Goma on Monday 9 July 2007," said MONUC spokesman Kemal Saiki.
According to information available to MONUC, he was beaten to death, with the reasons for his death as yet unknown. The Congolese justice system, as well as MONUC's Humans Rights division, have launched an investigation into the murder, to find out whether the assasination was politically based, or because of his professional work with the OCC in North Kivu.
"This odious crime, which comes at the time when efforts are being made to bring a durable peace to North Kivu, can only increase insecurity and exacerbate instability in this part of the DRC. MONUC urges the Congolese authorities to competently do all in their power so that the authors of this cowardly assassination, which cannot be justified, are found and brought before justice," Mr. Saiki explained.
MONUC expresses its sincere condolences to the family of Mr Floribert Bwana Chuy Bin Kositi, and joins in the mourning in the province of North Kivu. This murder is in addition to other recent assassinations of personalities and civil servants in North Kivu.
On 6 July 2007, a local businessman was killed in Butembo in broad daylight at his home by armed men, like the murder, a few weeks ago, of the Chief of the National Information Agency (ANR) in Beni.
Furthermore, MONUC remains strongly concerned about the fate of the President of the National Mayi Party (PANAM), Célestin Kambale Milonga, who was arrested at his its residence in Goma, on June 24 last, by troops of the 8th Military region of the Congolese Armed Forces (FARDC).
So far there has been no news following his arrest. MONUC launches an urgent call to the military authorities to observe the existing legal procedures regarding the detention of people.
Justifiably, the population of North Kivu feel a growing insecurity. Indeed MONUC has received reports of serious human rights violations in recent weeks, including harassment, looting and other crimes, such as the forced eviction of civilians (in Kisharo, Buramba, Kisheguru, Katwiguru in Rutshuru, and in Ngungu in Masisi, in a large part by the FDLR militia, the Congolese security forces, the FARDC and other irregular armed groups.
These acts of violence, whether blind or targeted, need to stop, as they have affected this part of the country for too long, and the impunity which makes such acts possible must be brought to an end.
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Darfur, Sudan (ICC)
Official Website of the International Criminal Court
ICC Public Documents - Situation in Darfur, Sudan
Sudan Rape Laws Hurt Women
NPR
Farai Chideya (host)
July 10, 2007
And now to Kenya's neighbor Sudan, a report by the humanitarian group Refugees International has found Sudan's sexual violence and rape laws actually hurt the women they're meant to protect. In fact, the laws there shield perpetrators deny victims medical care and even expose them to further abuse. The report is called "Laws Without Justice." For more, I spoke with human rights expert Adrienne Fricke who co-authored the report and Ken Bacon the president of Refugees International. He explained how he got involved with the project.
Mr. KEN BACON (President, Refugees International): I went to Darfur and Khartoum in January with Governor Bill Richardson of New Mexico. He had been invited over there by the Save Darfur Coalition to see if he could intervene with the president of Sudan, Omar al-Bashir, in order to accelerate negotiations to end the war. And he asked me to come along as a humanitarian adviser.
In the course of our meeting with President Bashir, Governor Richardson brought up the problem of rape, which is really quite horrible and extensive in Darfur. And the president denied that rape was a problem and said you really should go talk to our justice ministry and find out what we're doing about rape even though it's not much of a problem.
So we did and while we talked to the people at justice ministry, they described what their laws were and how they enforce them and I asked if we could come over and assess how they were enforcing their laws and they said yes
CHIDEYA: Adrienne, moving on to the work that you did there, how did you go about trying to basically investigate or explore how rape was treated in the criminal justice system?
Ms. ADRIENNE FRICKE (Clinical Fellow, Harvard Law School's Human Rights Program): First and foremost, the woman - the consultant with whom I worked was fabulous. And she had worked for a year and a half on GBV issues in Darfur, specifically monitoring cases where rape victims were trying to use the legal system. So she really brought a tremendous expertise.
CHIDEYA: Can you explain what GBV issues are?
Ms. FRICKE: Oh, certainly. I'm sorry. Gender-based violence. Now, in this report we really focused on sexual violence like rape, but gender-based violence is really any violence that is directed against a person because of his or her gender.
In terms of who we were trying to speak with, we wanted to look to individuals in Sudan with insight into the problem. So, for example, human rights attorneys who were looking to bring cases and have analyzed the law.
CHIDEYA: I just want to ask you for a story. You must have found incidences of what women had gone through who were actually raped. Perhaps there is an example you can give us, a personal story of someone.
Ms. FRICKE: Well, my colleague told me of one incidence in which a girl had actually snatched the military badge of the perpetuator who had raped her during the assault. And she told me the story to illustrate the fact that the law is so flawed because despite the fact that she had this physical evidence that she had been assaulted by this specific person, she was not - that was not sufficient evidence to go forward with the claim.
CHIDEYA: Very compelling story. Ken, I want to get back to you. Give us a sense of what the laws are, and then I want to ask you about what you think you can do about the situation?
Mr. BACON: Sure. Well, first of all, the laws are very hostile to the women's interest. They really define rape as an offense against the term called geno(ph), which is intercourse between a man and woman who are not married to one another. So they look at rape in terms of adultery in a way. And the women, frequently, are charged with being an adulteress even though they've been raped. So there were very hard standards of evidence to meet, to prove rape.
And worse than that, the law grants immunity to anybody who's in uniform. So if a woman is raped by a soldier or a policeman while working for the government, that person immediately gets immunity. This is just completely unfair.
In addition, it's difficult to get medical services. This is an issue that Refugees International has been working on really for three or four years, along with many other NGOs. And finally, the nongovernment organizations who attempt to help women, frequently are harassed.
Rape is an extremely sensitive issue to the government of Sudan. And as the report makes clear, the government usually denies that rape is taking place, and, in fact, their official reports show that maybe there were five or six cases of rape in a year. But there have been very detailed, well-documented reports put out by Doctors Without Borders in Holland and by the International Rescue Committee that focused on a particular area or a clinic that give irrefutable evidence of hundreds of rapes over a relatively short period - several months, in a very localized place. So, the fact that rape is taking place in massive numbers is beyond refute.
CHIDEYA: What are you hoping to do because...
Mr. BACON: Well, that's a good question. First of all, why did we take on this project? We took it on for two reasons. The first was because the government talked to us about this, and we wrangled an invitation to come back and do it. And we felt it was extremely important to put together a good team of lawyers and Arabic speakers who could actually look at what the rape laws are and what protection or lack of protection they give to women.
We hope that by pointing to the deficiencies of the laws, we will help support internal Sudanese forces that are working to change the laws. And also, put international pressure on Sudan to change the laws. This has worked in other places like Pakistan. But there is an indigenous civil society movement now, including members of parliament, trying to push to reform the rape laws and - so that they give more protection to women.
CHIDEYA: If you had to boil down the report to one or two findings, what would the most important ones be?
Mr. BACON: The most important finding is that the laws are stacked against women, and the entire system is designed to protect men, particularly men in uniform, and those laws have to be changed.
CHIDEYA: Adrienne, when you think about all of the instances in which rape has been used as a war crime in which rape laws are not favorable to women, what do you want to take away from this experience?
Ms. FRICKE: I think it's very important to realize that, first and foremost, that the advocates in Sudan who are working so hard and have been working on this issue are, themselves, Muslims, and that there is nothing inherently Islamic about defining rape in this way. Rape is sexual violence. It is a serious crime. It is not adultery.
The other thing that, I think, is very important is that nothing will change for these women until and unless the laws change. The law changing itself on the books may not affect an immediate change on the ground, but the change on the ground will not and cannot happen until soldiers, border guards, policemen, all of the people who are affiliated with the government of Sudan understand that they will not be extended immunity for serious crimes like rape.
So I think that while the law - the change in the law itself may not be sufficient to change the entire picture on the ground for women in Darfur, it is necessary. And I think that Sudanese advocates understand that, and that is why they are pushing so hard for the change.
CHIDEYA: Well, Adrienne, Ken, thank you for your time.
Mr. BACON: Farai, thank you.
Ms. FRICKE: Thank you. It's a pleasure.
CHIDEYA: Adrienne Fricke is a human rights expert. She co-authored the report "Laws Without Justice," which focuses on Sudanese rape survivors.
We also heard from Ken Bacon, president of Refugees International, a humanitarian organization based in Washington, D.C.
You can read the full report at our Web site, npr.org/newsandnotes.
Sudan: New Warning of Famine in Darfur
AllAfrica.com: Inter Press Service
By David Cronin
July 11, 2007
A famine is looming in Darfur, according to members of the European Parliament who have just returned from a visit to the war-ravaged Sudanese province.
The 785-strong Parliament will vote Thursday on a resolution urging that European Union governments impose targeted economic and diplomatic sanctions -- such as a travel ban and an asset freeze -- on Sudanese figures implicated in the ongoing violence in Darfur.
This follows a visit by five MEPs to Darfur from Jun. 30 to Jul. 6, where they witnessed first-hand the precarious conditions in which those uprooted by terror are living.
Frithjof Schmidt, a German Green MEP, said that the security situation is imperilling the distribution of food aid to the 2.5 million people who have been displaced since 2003.
Last month Oxfam announced that it was phasing out its activities in Gereida, the largest refugee camp in Darfur, where more than 130,000 people have sought refuge. Oxfam claimed that insufficient action was being taken by those controlling the surrounding area to address attacks against aid workers. Several other relief agencies have also decided that it is too dangerous for them to work in Darfur.
"If the security situation cannot be quickly stabilised, then the aid organisations will no longer be able to provide even basic food supplies," said Schmidt. "A famine of dramatic extent is looming."
Schmidt attributed the security problems to both the "enduring terror" inflicted by the Janjaweed militia, who are widely believed to be a proxy force for the Khartoum government, and to turf wars among guerrilla fighters opposed to the government.
"The growing fragmentation of the rebel groups into about 18 competing groups increasingly threatens the implementation of international aid efforts," he added. "Arrangements concerning humanitarian convoys are scarcely possible any more, and bandits are becoming an increasing menace."
He also warned that no improvement may come in the foreseeable future. A promised 'hybrid force' composed of troops from the African Union and the United Nations may not be deployed in Darfur for another eight to 18 months, he said. In the interim, the mandate of the 5,000 African Union peacekeepers in Darfur should be transformed, said Schmidt, so that it is tasked with the active protection of the civilian population.
The EU and its member governments provided 400 million euros (550 million dollars) to the African Union Mission in Sudan (AMIS) in 2004-06.
Schmidt said that financing of the operation has to be assured, and called on the EU to "contribute significantly" for a longer duration.
Josep Borrell, chairman of the Parliament's development committee who led the MEPs' visit to Darfur, described the situation in the province as a "devil's brew", which the African-led mission cannot contain. "All they can do is write reports," he said.
"The only solution is to allow a different force than AMIS," added Borrell, a Spanish Socialist. "That is no panacea. But there will only be a solution if someone there is able to impose a solution."
Representatives of the Sudanese government that met the MEPs had claimed that there was a "Hollywood plot" of Western antipathy to Sudan, he said.
The Parliament's resolution accuses Khartoum of "blatant violation" of the UN's arms embargo on Sudan. It urges China, the largest buyer of oil from Sudan, to cease exporting weapons to the country and to lift its objection to UN sanctions against Khartoum.
The MEPs are demanding, too, that Sudan should hand over Ahmad Muhammad Arun, its humanitarian affairs minister, and Ali Kushayb, a Janjaweed leader, to the International Criminal Court. In February, ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo implicated the two men on 51 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Harun had personally led a campaign of incitement and recruitment that allowed atrocities in Darfur to continue, according to the prosecutor.
Lotte Leicht, director of the Brussels office of Human Rights Watch, criticised EU governments for failing to impose effective sanctions against Khartoum.
She argued that the Union should be identifying what assets the Khartoum authorities and those linked to them have in Europe so that they can be frozen. A precedent for carrying out an investigation had been set by the Union when it tracked the foreign interests of former Yugoslav dictator Slobodan Milosevic and his family, she noted.
"If the EU is not even doing its homework, then that only leads Khartoum to one conclusion: the EU is not serious so why should we change?" she told IPS.
Portugal, the new holder of the European Union's rotating presidency, should "articulate loud and clear", she added, that "full cooperation with the ICC" is essential.
"Sudan must surrender the humanitarian minister and the other indictee, who is already in custody," she said. "We are not talking about people who are on the run."
The EU is the principal donor of humanitarian aid to civilians in Darfur, having pledged some 285 million euros (393 million dollars) this year.
But another MEP, French Liberal Thierry Cornillet, said there is scope for greater assistance. "The important thing is to save lives," he added. "We must increase the European Union's humanitarian aid, while not forgetting that a political solution is needed to the conflict and to work towards that in parallel."
Chad’s president says he accepts EU force in east
Reuters
July 19, 2007
PARIS, July 19 (Reuters) - Chad's President Idriss Deby said on Thursday he had agreed in principle to let a European Union force into the east of his country to contain violence that has spread from neighbouring Sudan's Darfur region.
The United Nations says eastern Chad has some 230,000 refugees from Sudan, and that more than 170,000 of its own citizens have also been displaced as a result of the conflict, with over 700,000 more affected by violence in other ways.
"We have accepted it," Deby told reporters after a meeting with President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, one of the main proponents of a deployment to the area, where government forces have also been fighting Chadian rebels.
Deby said details of the plan were still being discussed, but that it was important that the international community send a contingent "to provide security for the refugees and displaced people and prevent incursions by Janjaweed militias". The violence in Darfur flared after mostly non-Arab rebels took up arms in 2003, accusing Sudan's central government of neglecting the remote, arid region. Khartoum mobilised Arab militias, called Janjaweed, to quell the revolt. International experts estimate that some 200,000 people have died in Darfur in what the United States has termed genocide. Sudan denies supporting the Janjaweed, and puts the death toll at around 9,000.
In June, Deby rebuffed a French proposal to set up a humanitarian corridor through Chad's violent east to get help to Darfur's refugees.
He also originally resisted the idea of an international force, but U.N. peacekeeping chief Jean-Marie Guehenno said on Tuesday Deby had agreed to it in principle.
Guehenno said he wanted the EU to deploy highly mobile troops by the end of 2007, for about a year, to protect a zone 900 km long by 200-400 km wide (560 by 125-250 miles).
Sarkozy's spokesman David Martinon told a weekly news conference that the plan, which includes a police element and a military component, was still "at the stage of consideration" on the EU side.
"At least there is a clear consensus within the European Union on the fact that eastern Chad must be stabilised and made secure, because it is one of the pillars of the stabilisation of the region," Martinon said.
France, Chad's former colonial ruler, has set up an airlift to deliver supplies to refugee camps near the border with Sudan.
U.N.’s Arbour tells Sudan to protect Darfur village
Reuters, via Yahoo! News
July 20, 2007
GENEVA (Reuters) - The United Nations human rights chief on Friday called on Sudan to protect a village of 4,500 people in West Darfur where armed men in military uniform have carried out abductions and sexual violence.
Louise Arbour, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, urged the Khartoum government to fulfil its pledge to set up a permanent police presence in the village of Bir Dagig, 30 kms north of el-Geneina, and also investigate the abuses.
"A number of human rights abuses are said to have been committed in the village of Bir Dagig, mostly by armed men in military uniform since the first of July," U.N. human rights spokesman Jose-Luis Diaz told a news briefing.
U.N. human rights officers sent to the village on July 1 following months of complaints had "documented forced abductions, beatings and acts of gender-based violence."
During a second visit on Wednesday, they witnessed armed men surrounding the village centre and demanding money in compensation for the alleged theft of livestock, Diaz said.
A neighbouring Arab community has accused the residents of Bir Dagig of stealing livestock, a charge they deny, he added.
Experts estimate that violence in Darfur since 2003 has killed 200,000 people and driven 2.5 million from their homes. Khartoum, which mobilised militias called Janjaweed to quell the revolt, puts the death toll at 9,000.
Diaz, asked whether the armed men were Janjaweed, replied: "It is said to be men coming from or on behalf of this neighbouring Arab community. They are said to be in uniforms and armed and to be coming on camels or horseback."
The Khartoum government initially deployed extra police to the village but withdrew them completely in April, he said. It had also sent senior officials to attempt to resolve the row, pledging to probe both livestock theft and human rights abuses.
"These things have not been done so far ... We're worried that the case is symptomatic of either the inability or the unwillingness of the authorities to protect the civilian population in Darfur," Diaz said.
Further violence in the village was also feared, he said.
Sudan agreed last month to a combined U.N.-African Union peacekeeping force for Darfur. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Monday told the Security Council to move quickly in authorising up to 26,000 troops and police for the arid region.
UN Calls On Key Rebel Leader to Embrace Peace Efforts
AllAfrica.com: UN Integrated Regional Information Networks
July 20, 2007
Khartoum
The United Nations has urged a prominent Darfur rebel leader to join efforts to end the devastation in Sudan's western region, even though Abdel Wahid Nour, leader of a faction of the Sudan Liberation Movement, has declared he would not participate in peace talks next month.
The talks, to be held under the auspices of the UN and the African Union in Arusha, Tanzania, hope to lay the foundation for negotiations with the Sudanese government, to end more than four years of conflict in Darfur.
Several rebel leaders have expressed a desire to participate, but Nour, who has little military support although he is popular in Darfur, particularly in camps for internally displaced persons, insists he will not take part in the meeting scheduled to open on 3 August.
"We need him on our side and I hope that we will see a positive interest from him," Jan Eliasson, the UN's special envoy for Darfur, told a news conference in Khartoum, the Sudanese capital.
The UN and AU are counting on the Arusha meeting to set the stage for the beginning of peace talks between the government and rebels.
"We hope very much that we will have him [Nour] taking part in the negotiation process," Eliasson said. "This is an opportunity that must not be missed and we want to keep the door open to Nour."
"We hope he understands that this process is a serious one," Eliasson added.
Only one of three negotiating rebel groups signed an agreement with the government in Abuja, Nigeria, last year. The rebel groups have since split into several factions and the UN, AU and aid workers say this has led to an increase in violence, as rebel leaders lose control over fighters.
Sanctions
During a visit to Sudan last week, United States special envoy for Darfur, Andrew Natsios, accused some rebel leaders of impeding efforts to end the conflict. "Some of them are descending into warlordism and criminality and this is not a good trend in Darfur, which is all the more reason why we need to accelerate the political process for a peace agreement," he said.
"Some rebel leaders are cynically obstructing the peace process and the United States government is very disturbed by this. It needs to end now," the US envoy added.
The international community has threatened measures against any party found guilty of obstructing peace in Darfur. At the end of a meeting in the Libyan capital Tripoli on 16 July, the delegates issued a statement "emphasising that any hindrance to the political process would be addressed through appropriate measures by the UN Security Council and the AU Peace and Security Council."
In May, Washington imposed sanctions on Sudanese individuals exacerbating violence and human rights abuses in the region, including two senior government officials and the leader of the rebel Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), Khalil Ibrahim. The US Treasury Department blamed him for violence and suffering in Darfur and said Ibrahim was personally responsible for rebel activity aimed at further destabilising the region.
JEM refused to sign the May 2006 Darfur Peace Agreement, along with Nour's faction of the Sudan Liberation Movement.
Ibrahim has said he will attend the Arusha meeting and peace talks with the government. However, no date has been set yet for the opening of the negotiations.
"From our side, of course, we would like these talks to start as soon as possible," the UN envoy said. "It is up to the parties to see whether they are ready to move in very soon after the invitations are issued."
The Darfur conflict flared when mostly non-Arab rebels took up arms in early 2003, accusing the central government of marginalising their region. About 200,000 people have died and more than two million displaced since the conflict erupted.
[ This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations ]
A godsend for Darfur, or a curse?
International Herald Tribune
By Lydia Polgreen
July 21, 2007
DAKAR, Senegal
THE announcement by researchers at Boston University last week that a vast underground lake the size of Lake Erie had been discovered beneath the barren soil of northern Darfur, a blood-soaked but otherwise parched land racked by war for the past four years, was greeted by rapturous hopes. Could this, at last, bring deliverance from a cataclysmic conflict that has killed at least 200,000 people and pushed more than 2.5 million from their homes?
That hope is built upon an argument, advanced by a United Nations report released last month and an opinion article in The Washington Post by Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations secretary general, that environmental degradation and the symptoms of a warming planet are at the root of the Darfur crisis.
"There is a very strong link between land degradation, desertification and conflict in Darfur," said the United Nations Environmental Program report, which noted that rainfall in northern Darfur has decreased by a third over the last 80 years. "Exponential population growth and related environmental stress have created the conditions for conflicts to be triggered and sustained by political, tribal or ethnic differences," the report said, adding that Darfur "can be considered a tragic example of the social breakdown that can result from ecological collapse."
The idea that more water — unearthed through a thousand wells sunk into the underground lake — could neatly defuse the crisis is seductive. Messy African conflicts, from Congo to Liberia, from northern Uganda to Angola, have a way of defying all efforts to solve them. Instead, they seem to become hopelessly more complex as they drag on, year after agonizing year. A scientific explanation for the problem (environmental degradation) along with a tidy technological solution (irrigation) gratifies the modern humanitarian impulse.
But the history of Sudan, a grim chronicle of civil war, famine, coups and despotism, gives ample reason to be skeptical.
"Like all resources water can be used for good or ill," said Alex de Waal, a scholar who has studied the impact of climate variation in Sudan and who witnessed the 1984-85 famine that is often cited as the beginning of the ecological crisis gripping Darfur. "It can be a blessing or also a curse. If the government acts true to form and tries to create some sort of oasis in the desert and control who settles there, that would simply be an extension of the crisis, not a solution."
The droughts that gripped Sudan in the 1980s, and the migrations and other social changes they forced, have doubtless played a role in the conflict by increasing competition for water and land between farmers, who tend to be non-Arab, and herders, many of whom are Arabs. But an environmental catastrophe cannot become a violent cataclysm without a powerful human hand to guide it in that direction.
"These wider environmental factors don't have impact in and of themselves" in terms of fomenting conflict, de Waal said. "The question is how they are managed."
In fact, while different regions and social groups suffer severely, Sudan as a whole has riches to spare, in oil, fertile soil, and even water. Indeed, history suggests that this newly discovered lake is just as likely to become a source of conflict as a solution to the bloodshed.
Successive Sudanese governments and their colonial precursors have adopted agricultural policies that have almost inevitably led to conflict. They have favored large mechanized farms and complex irrigation schemes, controlled by the government and its allies, over the small, rain-fed farms that are the backbone of the rural economy in much of Sudan.
In eastern Sudan, where a rebellion has been brewing for years, the Beja people have nursed grievances since Britain and Egypt ruled Sudan jointly during the first half of the 20th century. Under their rule, irrigation programs for commercial farming deprived the Beja of their prime grazing land.
Post-colonial governments, which in the early years had the blessing of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, took vast tracts of land in the name of agricultural development, turning farmers who worked their own land into wage laborers for the state and its allies.
Some Sudanese have even been pushed off their land entirely. In the early 1990s the Nuba people were forced into "peace villages," where they provided a steady supply of cheap, captive labor to mechanized farms. In other areas, including parts of Darfur, intensive mechanized farming by the government and investors who were heedless to the need to protect the fertility of the land left large tracts barren.
A vast new agricultural scheme in a largely uninhabited swath of northern Darfur is more likely to fit into this destructive pattern than not, said John Prendergast, a founder of the Enough Project, an initiative of the Center for American Progress and the International Crisis Group to abolish genocide and mass atrocities.
"Climate change and the lack of rain are much less important than the land-use patterns promoted by the government of Sudan and the development policies of World Bank and IMF, which were focused on intensive agricultural expansion that really mined the soils and left a lot of land unusable," said Prendergast, who has been studying Sudan for 20 years. "That was probably the principal impetus for a lot of intra-Darfur migration in the decades leading up to the conflict in Darfur."
During those years, the government exploited tensions over water and land to achieve its own aims, putting down a rebellion among the non-Arab tribes, who rose up because they wanted a greater share of Sudan's wealth and power. It armed tribal militias to fight the rebels, and these militias unleashed a tide of violence that ultimately would become, according to the Bush administration and many others, the 21st century's first genocide.
A report released last year by the Coalition for International Justice on the role that oil and mechanized farming have played in human rights abuses in Sudan concluded: "The predominant root of conflict in Sudan is the instability that results from the systemic abuse of the rural (and recently urbanized) poor at the hands of the economic and political elites of central Sudan."
In this analysis, the heart of the Darfur conflict, as in all conflicts in Sudan, is the battle for control of resources and riches, but not between farmers and herders, northerners and southerners, Christians and Muslims, or Arabs and non-Arabs.
It is a conflict between those at the center of the country, the elites who have controlled Sudan and its wealth for the past century and a half, and the desperately poor people who beg for scraps from the periphery.
Until that equation changes, many analysts argue, nothing else will.
[back to contents]
Uganda (ICC)
Official Website of the International Criminal Court
ICC Public Documents - Situation in Uganda
Uganda: Adequate Penalties Needed Along With Trials
Human Rights Watch via Reuters AlertNet
July 9, 2007
Provisions for trials in the June 29 agreement between Uganda and the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) are welcome, but any national trials for the most serious crimes should include penalties in the event of convictions that reflect the gravity of the crimes, Human Rights Watch said today. Punishments that are fair and fit the crime are critical for ensuring justice and peace in northern Uganda. Since July 2006, peace talks between the Ugandan government and the LRA have been taking place in Juba, the regional capital of southern Sudan, seeking to end the two-decade conflict in northern Uganda. On June 29, the parties signed an agreement in Juba on accountability and reconciliation, a critical item on the peace talks' agenda. There is now a one month recess for consultation and establishment of annexes to implement this agreement.
In 2005, the International Criminal Court (ICC), based in The Hague, issued arrest warrants for LRA leaders for crimes against humanity and war crimes. Ugandan government forces have also been responsible for human rights violations that should be prosecuted. The June 29 agreement provides that "formal courts" in Uganda will exercise jurisdiction over individuals who allegedly "bear particular responsibility" for the most serious crimes. The ICC favors national trials where possible. Such trials, however, should meet the following substantial benchmarks: credible, independent, and impartial prosecution; adherence to international fair trial standards; and penalties that are appropriate and reflect the gravity of the crime.
"The latest Juba agreement recognizes that trials are needed for the most serious crimes committed in northern Uganda, and this is welcome," said Richard Dicker, International Justice Program director at Human Rights Watch. "But the agreement leaves open the question of penalties if there are convictions. Penalties should reflect the gravity of the crimes, with imprisonment as the principal penalty."
The agreement provides that "a regime of alternative penalties and sanctions" will be introduced for "non-state actors" and will "replace existing penalties." The Ugandan penal code includes lengthy prison terms, along with the death penalty, for some serious offenses. The death penalty should not be allowed. It is not permitted at international criminal tribunals, and Human Rights Watch opposes the death penalty in all circumstances as a cruel and inhuman punishment.
"If national courts handed down a slap-on-the-wrist sentence in the event of convictions for the most serious crimes, it would simply not pass muster," said Dicker. "Such trials would be tainted even if they were otherwise fair and credible."
The ICC's arrest warrants for four LRA leaders on war crimes and crimes against humanity are a chance to ensure justice for some of the most serious crimes committed in northern Uganda and to show would-be perpetrators that no one is above the law, thereby helping to promote a peace that is durable. If the benchmarks for national alternatives detailed above cannot be met, the ICC would remain the appropriate forum to try the LRA leaders for whom the ICC has issued arrest warrants. Notably, imprisonment is the principal penalty of the ICC and of other international criminal tribunals which deal with genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity.
Under the ICC's Rome Statute, the ICC judges decide whether a trial in domestic courts is an adequate alternative. Moreover, its provisions also suggest that if a national alternative does not meet the Rome Statute's requirements, it can be brought back to the ICC for trial.
"It's for the ICC judges to decide whether a national trial provides an adequate alternative, including by taking into account the penalties provided," said Dicker. "Moreover, a case can be returned to the ICC if it does not meet benchmarks for national prosecutions."
As for national trials, the accountability and reconciliation agreement also does not address full incorporation of international crimes and theories of criminal responsibility into domestic law. These are necessary for charges to reflect the gravity of the most serious crimes and culpability where a defendant is not accused of directly committing crimes, which is often the case when leaders are tried.
The agreement also recognizes the need for an overarching framework on justice that includes formal criminal jurisdiction and complementary alternative justice mechanisms. Broader accountability measures are important components to rebuilding conflict-affected societies, Human Rights Watch said.
Background
The conflict in northern Uganda began in 1986 and has been characterized by serious crimes under international law and by other human rights abuses by the LRA and, to a lesser extent, by government forces. The LRA has been responsible for numerous willful killings, beatings, large-scale abductions, forced recruitment of adults and children, rape against girls whom it assigns as "wives" or sex slaves to commanders, and large-scale looting and destruction of civilian property. Abuses by government forces have included extrajudicial executions, rape, torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, arbitrary detention, and forced displacement.
In December 2003, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni invited the ICC to investigate the LRA. In July 2005, the court issued warrants for the arrest of the top five LRA leaders: Joseph Kony, Vincent Otti, Okot Odhiambo, Raska Lukwiya, and Dominic Ongwen. Lukwiya was killed in 2006.
MPs Probe Army and Rebel Crimes
Institute for War and Peace Reporting
By Samuel Okiror Egadu
July 10, 2007
Parliamentarians in northern Uganda gather evidence of atrocities by the Ugandan army and LRA rebels.
Northern Uganda members of parliament have compiled a dossier of atrocities alleged to have been committed by the Ugandan army, UPDF, and the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army, LRA, in the civil war between them that began 21 years ago.
The legislators are currently in northern Uganda finalising their documentation of war crimes and crimes against humanity that local people attribute to the two sides, Reagan Okumu, vice chairman of the Acholi Parliamentary Group told IWPR.
Details of the atrocities will be released soon. They include allegations of individual killing, mass killings/massacre, manslaughter, rape, abductions, shooting and bombings of homesteads and schools, burning of houses/camps, and homosexual assault by both LRA and UPDF.
In July 2005, The Hague-based International Criminal Court, ICC, issued warrants for the arrests of LRA leader, Joseph Kony and his four top commanders, Vincent Otti, Dominic Ogwen, Raska Lukwiya and Okot Odhiambo on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Lukwiya was killed by government forces last year. Specific charges against the LRA leaders allege abduction, sexual enslavement, mutilation and the killing of civilians.
"We are currently compiling a list of all atrocities committed by both LRA rebels and UPDF in the Acholi sub-region [of northern Uganda] since 1986 to date,” Okumu told IWPR. "We have two parallel teams. One is compiling and documenting all the atrocities committed by the LRA. The other is compiling atrocities committed by the UPDF. These atrocities include individual, mass killings, abduction and rape."
The rebellion in the war-torn north has left more than 1.7 million people as internal refugees. Some 100,000 people have been killed and tens of thousands have been kidnapped by the rebels, including as many as 38,000 children.
Okumu told IWPR that the dossier will be submitted to Dr Riek Machar, vice president of South Sudan, who is chief mediator at the LRA-Ugandan government peace negotiations in Juba, the South Sudan capital.
The LRA and Uganda government delegations finally worked out and signed an agreement on accountability and reconciliation on June 30. It was the third of five items on their agenda, but some details have still to be finalised. Okumo said he hoped the Acholi Parliamentary Group’s report would help the peace negotiators.
The “item three” agreement will create a commission to investigate war crimes committed by both sides. It also states that traditional tribal peace ceremonies will be used as one of the mechanisms to achieve justice and reconciliation for some war crimes.
The Uganda army and defence spokesperson, Major Felix Kulayigye, told IWPR that the Acholi members of parliament were compiling the report because they were opposed to some aspects of the Juba peace process.
Major Kulayigye alleged that they have been forcing internally displaced people to sign the documents alleging UPDF atrocities. "It's not surprising to us. We know the MPs are not happy with the Juba peace process. We are aware that [they] are forcing IDPs to sign these documents," Kulayigye told IWPR when contacted for comment.
"Have [the Acholi MPs] compiled atrocities committed by the LRA from 1986 to date? [They] have never condemned the atrocities committed by LRA."
Kulayigye said the UPDF as an institution condones neither criminality nor impunity, claiming that all soldiers who have committed crimes during the northern insurgency have been charged and punished in military courts. Some have even been executed, he said.
"We are very professional army,” asserted Kulayigye. “Any incidents committed by soldiers were handled in army courts martial in accordance with the existing laws."
The chairman of the Acholi Parliamentary Group, Livingstone Okello-Okello, strongly attacked Kulayigye's claims. He told IWPR, "What Kulayigye is talking is nonsense. We are compiling all atrocities committed by UPDF and LRA. Both armies have been denying committing atrocities in the region.
"We are independent. We are not against the peace process, as alleged by Major Kulayigye. We are the ones who [called for] dialogue between government and the rebels [to end the] rebellion. So what is Kulayogye talking about?"
Okumu said the Acholi group is continuing to document the date, and place where different incidents have occurred. Particularly successful progress had been made in the districts of Gulu, Kitgum, Pader and Amuru.
After the report is published and released, the Acholi MPs intend constructing four monuments to the dead and missing where annual commemoration ceremonies will be held.
Okumu told IWPR that they also intend constructing a cultural and resource centre in Gulu, the north’s biggest town, where all details of the rebellion will be available to visitors and schoolchildren.
The Acholi MPs are also asking the Ugandan government to establish a truth and reconciliation commission similar to the one held in South Africa under the chairmanship of Nobel Peace Prize winner Archbishop Desmond Tutu.
Kampala May Demand Annulment of LRA Warrants
Institute for War and Peace Reporting
By Henry Wasswa
July 12, 2007
Lawyers for government say demand likely if talks on ending insurgency in north succeed.
As the Ugandan government makes headway in peace talks with the Lord's Resistance Army, it’s emerged that it may ask the International Criminal Court to scrap indictments for the LRA's top five leaders as part of a final agreement with the rebels.
Any attempt by the government to have the indictments against LRA leader Joseph Kony and his top four lieutenants nullified will cause international controversy since it was Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni who himself triggered international statutes in the first place to compel The Hague-based ICC to act.
The warrants against Kony, Vincent Otti, Raska Lukwiya, Okot Odhiambo and Dominic Ongwen were historic, since they were the first issued by the fledgling ICC, which began work in 2002. Lukwiya was killed in August 2006 during a fight between the LRA and Ugandan military forces.
The war in northern Uganda has been raging since 1986, when the LRA under Kony, a self-declared mystic, began its attacks across the north, mainly in ethnic Acholi areas, ostensibly in an attempt to overthrow the Museveni government so that Uganda could be ruled in accordance with the Bible’s Ten Commandments.
With great fanfare, in January 2003, Museveni invited the ICC to indict the LRA's leaders for crimes against humanity and war crimes, arguing that his country's own justice system was unable to deal with cases of such legal magnitude.
Under the ICC's founding 1998 Statute of Rome, the ICC chief prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo was obliged to begin an investigation into the situation in northern Uganda. This resulted in arrest warrants being issued in October 2005 for Kony, Otti, Luwiya, Odhiambo and Ongwen on 33 charges of crimes against humanity and war crimes, including murder, enslavement, rape and forcible recruitment of children, some as young as seven years, as guerrilla soldiers.
The ICC is the first-ever permanent, treaty-based international criminal tribunal. Tribunals like those for the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, and Sierra Leone were set up on a case-by-case ad hoc basis by the United Nations.
At the end of June this year representatives of the Ugandan government and the LRA engaged in talks to end Uganda’s civil war put ink on a crucial draft protocol that allows suspected war criminals to be tried under traditional tribal justice systems. The protocol on "Accountability and Reconciliation", the third of five items on the peace negotiators' agenda, allows LRA suspects to be tried under tribal procedures while suspects from the government army would be tried under the formal justice system.
Both sides in the negotiations - taking place in Juba, the capital of South Sudan - have taken leave until the end of July to consult their constituents on the implementation mechanisms of their agreement, which directly sidelines the ICC indictments.
Museveni infuriated ICC officials in July last year with a policy flip-flop when, without consulting the ICC, he offered a blanket amnesty to Joseph Kony and his top aides.
The two points remaining on the Juba peace agenda items on the peace agenda are item number four, a final ceasefire agreement, and number five, comprising disarmament, demobilisation and the re-integration of tens of thousands of rebel fighters.
"When we left Juba at the end of last month, it was clear that we were to go and consult to find common ground on the implementation mechanism of the reconciliation and accountability process," Ugandan government lawyer Alphonse Owiny-Dollo told IWPR.
He said the agreement on demobilisation and re-integration was "a big leap forward, and if the final peace agreement is signed the government will be in a stronger position to go to the ICC and say 'We came to you [in 2003] because we did not have these people [the LRA] with us. They will now submit themselves to our jurisdiction, so why don’t you leave it to us?'"
The LRA has said it will not sign a final peace agreement unless the government persuades the ICC to drop the indictments against its leaders
"We are still committed to the peace talks until we get to the final peace agreement," said Martin Ojur, head of the LRA delegation at the Juba talks. "At that point, the government is supposed to go to The Hague and say, 'We are the ones who brought these people to the ICC, so can you please drop the indictments?'
"We will not sign the final agreement until we get a final solution on the ICC."
Owiny-Dollo said it was not simple, in terms of international law, to eliminate the ICC from the peace process. First, he said, the remaining items on the peace agenda have to be accomplished. "We will go to the ICC when the process is irreversible," he said.
"The consultations [with the LRA] have also involved how to talk to the ICC. It was a big leap forward.
"The law [the ICC's founding statute] says that the final jurisdiction lies with the Ugandan government. At some point, the LRA would be on trial under Uganda's traditional tribal system. In my opinion, if the ICC becomes stubborn [insisting on arresting and prosecuting the LRA], you raise the [possibility] of double jeopardy.”
Uganda war victims skeptical on talks anniversary
Reuters
By Tim Cocks and Jeremy Clark
July 14, 2007
GULU, Uganda - A year of talks between Uganda's government and Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) rebels has brought relative peace to the north, but the region's war victims are not convinced the conflict is finally over.
For two decades, the LRA waged an insurgency with the stated aim of unseating the government in Kampala and ruling Uganda according to the Bible's Ten Commandments.
Peace talks that began on July 14 last year in neighbouring southern Sudan have produced a truce and two further agreements.
Northern Uganda's refugees remain skeptical, however, pointing out that previous peace efforts collapsed.
"We hear the peace talks are meant to be going well, but we've heard that before," said Paul Odokomyero, 43, a resident of one of northern Uganda's congested camps.
"What will peace bring? We hope desperately that we will be able to go home, back to our real life."
This month, the government and LRA signed phase three of a five-stage peace deal meant to end a war that has killed tens of thousands of people and displaced 1.7 million into camps. Officials admit progress has been slow.
"It is better we move slowly than sign something that will not bring lasting peace," said chief government negotiator, Internal Affairs Minister Ruhakana Rugunda.
AMNESTY
Phase three of the agreement is supposed to deal with accountability for war crimes in what analysts say is an attempt to placate the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague.
LRA leader Joseph Kony and four others are wanted by the ICC for crimes like killing civilians, rape, mutilation and abducting children to use as soldiers, but have vowed never to sign a final deal until the court drops the indictments.
The government says it can only approach the ICC after a deal is signed and the LRA undergoes local justice in Uganda, although it has offered the LRA leaders an amnesty -- which analysts say the ICC judges are unlikely to accept.
Despite this deadlock, peace campaigners are optimistic.
"We never thought possible what we have seen this year," said Norbert Mao, chairman of Gulu district, at the epicentre of the conflict. "No one expected the LRA would sign on a dotted line. We are 60 percent of the way down the road."
Even if a final deal is reached, aid workers say rebuilding the war-shattered north is a huge task.
Hundreds of thousands of refugees have moved back to their homes in anticipation of peace, but they lack water, medicines and basic services that aid agencies provided in the camps.
"Even if tomorrow peace is signed, people will need assistance for some time to come," said Oxfam spokeswoman Io Schmid.
LRA Advised to Recruit Strong Defence
Institute for War and Peace Reporting
By Samuel Okiror Egadu
July 18, 2007
A leading proponent of peace negotiations between LRA and Ugandan government urges rebel group to prepare for Hague trials.
As the Lord's Resistance Army and the Ugandan government pursue peace negotiations, a northern official has suggested the LRA recruit a strong legal team to challenge International Criminal Court, ICC, indictments against the rebel group.
In July 2005, the ICC issued arrest warrants for five LRA commanders - Joseph Kony, Vincent Otti, Okoth Odiambo, Domenic Ogwen and Raska Lukwiya - for crimes against humanity and war crimes. Lukwiya was killed in August 2006 during fighting between the LRA and Ugandan military forces.
The LRA's second-in-command Vincent Otti has accused the ICC of being one-sided and has said that he will only go to the ICC to answer charges if the court also investigates the Ugandan People's Defence Force, UPDF.
But Norbert Mao, a former MP and the current chairman of Gulu District Council, in northern Uganda, told IWPR that Kony and his men should stop wasting time politicking about their ICC indictments and concentrate on getting top-class lawyers to defend them in The Hague.
“Kony, Otti and the others should know that their indictments can’t just be wished away,” said Mao, a lawyer who has been a prominent backer of the Uganda government-LRA peace process.
"They need to get a team of lawyers together fast to form their legal defence team. The ICC indictments need to be confronted using law, not politics," he said.
Peace talks between the rebel group and the LRA, which began in Juba, the capital of autonomous South Sudan in July 2006, resulted in a ceasefire two months later.
In June this year, the government and the LRA made further progress on a peace deal aimed at ending a civil war that has killed tens of thousands of people and displaced 1.7 million into internal refugee camps.
But in spite of progress at the talks, which are mediated by Vice President of South Sudan Riek Machar and former Mozambique president Joaquim Chissano, many would like the ICC to drop the arrest warrants against the LRA, which they say are a stumbling block to the peace process.
Instead, they would like traditional justice mechanisms to be used, such as the reconciliation ceremony of Matu Oput used by the Acholi people of northern Uganda.
In March this year, Mao and two other high-profile Ugandan lawyers Jacob Oulanya and expert on transitional justice Barney Afako met the LRA's top commanders at their Garamba National Park guerrilla base, in the northeast of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, to discuss the ICC indictments.
At the meeting in Garamba, where the LRA fled from their former bases in southern Sudan in late 2004, Mao told the LRA that the ICC would not drop the indictments.
Otti told IWPR in a recent interview he is ready to deliver himself into the hands of the ICC, but only if the court charges UPDF soldiers on similar counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
“I am ready to go and face the ICC in The Hague to answer charges if the ICC also investigates government soldiers and commanders," Otti told IWPR by satellite phone from a base deep inside the Garamba.
"If the UPDF are included on the list of indicted commanders, I will definitely go to The Hague. Short of that, I will never go.”
Otti said that for the ICC only to indict members of the LRA is “very one-sided”.
“It’s not only the LRA alone who committed atrocities in northern Uganda. It’s both the LRA and the UPDF. Why did ICC indict us alone?” he asked.
Other LRA members wanted by the ICC have in the past hinted that they would be prepared to face justice under these conditions, but this is the first time one has said so explicitly.
Mao, meanwhile, has called upon the LRA high command to review the composition of its delegation to the continuing peace talks in Juba.
“Kony needs to restructure his delegation. Let him bring people who are of value to the talks,” he said.
He suggested without naming anyone that some of the current delegation members were not up to the job, “There are some of his delegates in these peace talks who are liabilities. Others are so extremely emotional. The talks need people who are focused.”
The government delegation was reshuffled at the beginning of this year, with President Yoweri Museveni replacing military intelligence chiefs s Colonel Leo Kyanda and Colonel Charles Otema Awany with former Uganda state minister for disaster preparedness and refugees Christine Amongin Aporu.
Officials admit that the peace process has been slow. "It is better we move slowly than sign something that will not bring lasting peace," said the chief government negotiator, Internal Affairs Minister Ruhakana Rugunda.
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International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY)
Official Website of the ICTY
Bosnian Muslim army chief facing trial at UN war crimes tribunal
UN News Center
July 9, 2007
The former head of Bosnian Muslim forces during the Balkan wars of the 1990s went on trial today at the United Nations war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia on charges that include murder, rape and torture.
Three judges at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), sitting in The Hague, are hearing the trial of Rasim Deli?, who served as Commander of the Main Staff of the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina from June 1993 until September 2005.
Mr. Deli?, 58, is charged, on the basis of his command responsibility, for murder, cruel treatment and rape committed by his subordinate forces.
The charges include that he failed to take necessary and reasonable measures to punish those soldiers who executed captured Bosnian Croat civilians and soldiers in two villages in Travnik municipality in central Bosnia.
He also stands accused of failing to prevent the torture, beatings and murders – including a decapitation – committed by subordinates at Kamenica Camp, a detention centre for captured Bosnian Serb soldiers in central Bosnia.
In the most notorious murder, the decapitation of a Bosnian Serb soldier in July 1995, other prisoners were forced to kiss the severed head, which was later placed on a hook on the wall of the room where the prisoners were being held.
Mr. Deli? is also charged over the rape by his subordinates of three women at Kamenica Camp.
The ICTY expects the prosecution case will include 55 witnesses and take about 40 trial days to complete.
Former Serbian police general pleads not guilty to Kosovo war crimes charges
International Herald Tribune
July 16, 2007
THE HAGUE, Netherlands: A former Serb police general pleaded not guilty Monday to five U.N. charges of murdering and persecuting ethnic Albanians in Kosovo.
Vlastimir Djordjevic, Serbia's assistant interior minister and chief of the Public Security Department from 1997 to 2001, told the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal he was innocent of the charges. If he is convicted, he faces a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.
Djordjevic, 58, a close aide of the former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, was arrested in June in Montenegro. He had gone into hiding in 2001, even before the war crimes tribunal indicted him in October 2003.
He said Monday he stayed in "a number of foreign countries before his arrest," but did not identify the countries. He was thought to have been hiding in Russia.
Djordjevic, along with six other high-ranking Serb officials who are already on trial, is accused of plotting and instigating crimes in the Serbian province of Kosovo in the first half of 1999, including the forced deportation of 800,000 Kosovars, and the killings of hundreds of ethnic Albanians who had "no active part in hostilities," according to his indictment.
Prosecutors say Serb authorities unleashed a campaign of terror aimed at driving ethnic Albanians out of Kosovo to ensure continued Belgrade control of the province.
NATO air strikes in 1999 ended the atrocities. Since then, the province of 2 million people, 90 percent of whom are ethnic Albanians, has been run by the U.N. and patrolled by NATO troops.
The Security Council was expected to discuss a resolution later Monday that could eventually lead to Kosovo's internationally supervised independence.
In April, U.N. envoy Martti Ahtisaari recommended that Kosovo be granted internationally supervised independence — a proposal strongly supported by its ethnic Albanians but vehemently rejected by its Serb minority, Serbia, and Russia, which has close cultural ties to the Serbs.
Lovas survivor gives statement
B92, Beta
17 July 2007
BELGRADE -- Serbia’s War Crimes Prosecution says four witnesses to the 1991 Lovas, Croatia, war crime were interviewed.
One of the witnesses who gave statements Tuesday is a survivor of the massacre that took place in a mine field near the Croatian village of Lovas.
Four former Yugoslav People’s Army (JNA) soldiers, four members of the civilian and military authorities in Lovas and four paramilitaries from the Dušan Silni unit are suspected of being responsible for the vicious murders of 70 Croatian civilians in October and November 1991.
A judge with the War Crimes Chamber of Belgrade’s District Court has so far interviewed four out of five witnesses in the case, acting on the May 30 prosecution demand to start an investigation of the 12 suspects.
The process has taken two years to date, with over 50 persons interviewed and numerous pieces of evidence gathered, the prosecution said.
All the suspects in the Lovas case have been detained pending trial.
“Medak Pocket victims were not civilians”
B92
July 17, 2007
ZAGREB -- Croatia's wartime interior minister says Serb victims in 1993 were armed, not civilians.
The former interior minister, testifying Monday in the trial of two Croatian generals charged with wartime atrocities against Serbs, said all Serbs in the area were armed and none could be considered civilians.
Former generals Mirko Norac and Rahim Ademi are accused of responsibility for the killings of about 30 Serb civilians in September 1993, following Zagreb's offensive to retake land seized by Serbs in the war in Croatia, which began in 1991.
Ademi and Norac, who were at the time commanders in the area known as the Medak Pocket in central Croatia, are the highest-ranking Croatian officers to be tried for atrocities against Serbs.
Both have pleaded not guilty. Their trial opened last month.
Ivan Jarnjak, who was interior minister in 1993, testified Monday that “there were de facto no civilians” in the Serb-dominated villages in the Medak Pocket.
“They were all armed, in service of the Serb paramilitaries and they actively fought there,” he said, testifying for the prosecution. “When two armies fight, something must be destroyed and somebody must die.”
The indictment lists about 30 victims, including an 84-year-old blind woman sprayed with bullets on her porch, a man set on fire and a 31-year-old mentally retarded man who was allegedly tied to a car by Croatian troops and dragged around before being incinerated.
United Nations peacekeepers in the area at the time accused Croatian troops of intentionally killing civilians and burning their houses, carrying out a “scorched earth” policy.
Independent observers have claimed that Croats were avenging their own victims by killing ordinary Serbs.
But some in Croatia maintain that all Serbs in the area took up arms to fight against Croatia's independence from the former Yugoslavia.
Local courts have convicted several Croats of war crimes in the past few years, but the trial of Norac and Ademi will test Croatia's ability to prosecute impartially.
If convicted, both generals face 20 years in prison. Norac is already serving a 12-year sentence for orchestrating the killing of Serb civilians in the central area of Gospi? in 1991.
The trial is expected to last a year.
KLA member charged with war crimes
B92, FoNet
18 July 2007
BELGRADE -- Belgrade’s War Crimes Prosecution Wednesday indicted former KLA member Sinan Morina.
Morina, an ethnic Kosovo Albanian, is charged with war crimes committed against Kosovo Serbs in 1998, in the Orahovac area.
The indictment states that Morina, member of the KLA’s Orahovac Group, is responsible for the murder of eight Serb civilians, as well as forcible removal, illegal imprisonment, torture and rape of others.
The indictment which includes the period July 17-21, 1998, also charges him with wanton destruction of private property and religious facilities.
According to the indictment, Morina on July 19 transferred the imprisoned civilians to the village of Zo?ište, and later to Samodreža, while other members of his unit took the men to Volujak, where they murdered them.
The bodies of the victims were found in 2005 in a pit in Vilujak. The remains were identified and handed over to the families last year.
Morina was arrested on December 30, 2006, in Montenegro.
Serbia to ask UN to allow war crimes convicts to serve their sentences at home
International Herald Tribune
July 19, 2007
BELGRADE, Serbia: Serbia will ask the United Nations to allow war crimes convicts sentenced by its Netherlands-based court to serve their prison terms in their home countries, an official said Thursday.
Rasim Ljajic, the Serbian government official in charge of relations with the U.N. war crimes court for the former Yugoslavia, said the move would encourage the remaining fugitives to surrender and face justice.
The suspects still at large include two most wanted fugitives — the former Bosnian Serb political leader Radovan Karadzic and his army commander Ratko Mladic.
Mladic and Karadzic are wanted on genocide charges for their role in the 1995 massacre of 8,000 Muslims from Srebrenica and other atrocities during Bosnia's 1992-95 war. They remain free despite huge international efforts to arrest them.
The Hague tribunal officials have insisted that Mladic and the other fugitives have been hiding in Serbia, but Belgrade government leaders insist they have been unable to find them.
The new Serbian government leaders recently pledged renewed efforts to apprehend Mladic, particularly following the arrest in May of his former top intelligence officer, Gen. Zdravko Tolimir.
Ljajic said Serbia's Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica would write to the U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to "offer all state guarantees that the Hague convicts would serve their sentences (in Serbia) according to all international standards."
There was no immediate response from The Hague tribunal to the proposal, but court officials in the past have rejected the idea.
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The Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina, War Crimes Chamber
Official Website
Miloš Radic pleaded not guilty
Court of BiH
July 12, 2007
At a plea hearing held today before a Preliminary Hearing Judge of Section I for War Crimes of the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Miloš Radi? pleaded not guilty to charges of Crimes against humanity.
The indictment alleges that on 20 May 1992, in the Borkovac village, near Bratunac, Mirko Todorovic and Miloš Radic, as members of the Army of Republika Srpska (VRS), together with four other members of the VRS attacked, using riffles, 14 Bosniak civilians which were hiding in the abandoned quarry near Borkovac village. According to the indictment, these members of the VRS arrested civilians and allegedly escorted them to the village. The indictment alleges that someone from the group of VRS soldiers killed one of the civilians from the riffle, after which the rest of the soldiers allegedly participated in torture of other civilians. Soldiers allegedly took money and valuables from these civilians. According to the indictment, soldiers, than escorted civilians to a nearby creek where they shot seven of them.
Custody ordered for Rajko Vukovi?
Court of BiH
July 13, 2007
On 12 July 2007, the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) issued a decision ordering custody of one month to the suspect Rajko Vukovi?, who is suspected of War crimes against civilians.
In its motion seeking custody orders, the Prosecutor’s Office of BiH alleges that there is grounded suspicion that at the beginning of May 1992, together with a group of soldiers, following the attack on Dra?e village, Fo?a Municipality , participated in a physical abuse and killings of Bosniak civilians. The Prosecution in its motion states that on 15 May 1992, together with his brother and a group of soldiers, the Suspect came to Pokolun village, Fo?a Municipality , where he participated in killings of Bosniak civilians.
Following a public hearing the Court found that, on the basis of the evidence submitted, there is grounded suspicion that the Accused committed the offence referred to above. Further, the Court concluded that the grounds for ordering custody were established based on the substantial risk that the Suspect, if released, would interfere with the criminal proceedings by influencing co-perpetrators, and for reasons of public or property security.
Niset Ramic convicted of war crimes against civilians and sentenced to 30 years long term imprisonment
Court of BiH
July 17, 2007
Today, the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina rendered the first instance verdict in the case of Niset Rami?, finding the Accused guilty of War crimes against civilians and sentencing him to 30 years compound long term imprisonment sentence.
The Trial Panel found that early in the morning of 20 June 1992, as a member of the Sabotage Company (within the Territorial Defence in Visoko), conducting activities aimed at seizure of fire arms in the villages surrounding Visoko, came to the Hlap?evi?i village and ordered a group of around eight soldiers to surround three houses inhabited by Serbs. Following this, together with other soldiers, the Accused took six individuals of Serb ethnicity out of the houses and ordered them to move toward the Youth Centre in the village of Hlap?evi?i . On their way to the Centre, the Accused stopped the group and ordered one person to step out and to inform him about the location of hidden weapons and minefields. After this individual did not answer, the Accused shot him from an automatic firearm. He then turned to the other captured civilians and fired at them as well. As a consequence of the shooting, four civilians were killed and two wounded.
The Court has also rendered a decision pursuant to which the Accused’s custody is extended until the commencement of his imprisonment, or until the expiration of the pronounced sentence at the latest. The time the Accused spent in custody will count towards his sentence.
