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
throughout the world. To subscribe, please email warcrimeswatch@pilpg.org and type "subscribe" in the subject line.
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)
French lawyer sworn in to defend former Khmer Rouge jailer at genocide trial
IHT / AP
August 8, 2007
A French lawyer who defended a terrorist convicted in connection with the Sept. 11 attacks was sworn in Wednesday to represent a former Khmer Rouge jailer in an upcoming Cambodian genocide trial, an official said.
The Cambodian Bar Association swore in Francois Roux at a ceremony Wednesday, making him the first foreigner officially allowed to practice law at the U.N.-backed genocide tribunal, said Ly Tayseng, the association's secretary-general.
"Now he has the legal right to be an attorney at the tribunal after completing all legal requirements," Ly Tayseng said.
Roux, a human rights activist from France, is best known for being on the defense team of Zacarias Moussaoui, a Moroccan-born Frenchman convicted in a U.S. court of conspiring to commit terrorism and kill Americans in connection with the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.
He has 30 years experience of practicing law and also defended four people accused of genocide at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.
Kaing Guek Eav, the former Khmer Rouge prison chief now detained on crimes against humanity charges by the tribunal, selected Roux early this month to represent him along with a Cambodian attorney.
Kaing Guek Eav, also known as Duch, is the first top Khmer Rouge figure to be indicted for offenses committed when the Khmer Rouge held power from 1975-79.
He headed a prison in Phnom Penh, where some 16,000 suspected enemies of the regime were tortured before being taken out and executed at a mass grave near the city. Only about a dozen prisoners are thought to have survived.
Some 1.7 million people died of hunger, disease, overwork and execution during the Khmer Rouge's rule.
Prosecutors have also sought indictments for four other senior Khmer Rouge leaders, but have not named them.
The tribunal is expected to start conducting trials early next year.
Awaiting justice in Cambodia: Three decades since the 'killing fields,' the first trials of former Khmer Rouge leaders will begin — if they live long enough.
Los Angeles Times
By Paul Watson
August 12, 2007
TAPRUM, Cambodia — Down a potholed dirt road from the Diamond Crown Hotel and Casino, where Thai low-rollers place their bets on blackjack and roulette, Brother No. 2 plays a waiting game with justice.
Nuon Chea, the frail former right-hand man to the late tyrant Pol Pot, lives in a stilted house of rough-hewn planks on the Thai border, enjoying the quiet life of a retiree. He says he would be happy to talk to a new tribunal set to prosecute senior Khmer Rouge leaders for the deaths of at least 1.7 million Cambodians.
The question on many Cambodians' minds is whether he will live long enough to sit in the prisoner's dock.
More than three decades after the communist Khmer Rouge seized power in 1975, declared it Year Zero and launched into one of the 20th century's worst genocides, a special court is inching toward its first prosecutions.
Pol Pot, Brother No. 1, died nine years ago, before he could be brought to trial. It may not be long before Brother No. 2 slips away himself. At 82, Nuon Chea's heart is growing weaker. Poor circulation has left his lower legs swollen, and his blood pressure is running high.
"I have a disease," the man suspected of ordering the execution of thousands of Cambodians said wryly. "It's called old age. Some days are good, some days are bad. But generally, my health goes up and down like any old person."
The clock is also ticking for the Khmer Rouge's surviving victims, such as artist Vann Nath, one of only seven prisoners known to have made it out alive from the notorious Tuol Sleng death camp. He was saved from execution there so he could paint portraits to feed Pol Pot's ego. Now the 61-year-old artist who survived on a watery prison gruel is wasting away from kidney disease.
Vann Nath waits for justice in a cramped home above his family's restaurant, a popular breakfast spot for military officers on their way to work in the capital, Phnom Penh. Twice a week, he is attached to a dialysis machine. He relies on charity from Australia to pay medical bills of about $1,000 a month.
His greatest hope is that he and his country's tormentors can stay alive long enough to face each other in court.
"I don't want a few people at the top to die yet," he said, his voice weary. "I don't want revenge. What I need from them is that they take responsibility for their mistakes."
Invading Vietnamese troops toppled the Khmer Rouge regime in 1979, but Cambodia's government didn't begin serious negotiations with the United Nations on setting up a war crimes tribunal until after a civil war ended in 1998.
Prime Minister Hun Sen, a former Khmer Rouge deputy regional commander, didn't agree until this June to allow foreign judges and prosecutors to have a role in the trials. On July 18, prosecutors submitted to tribunal justices a list of five former senior Khmer Rouge leaders recommended for trial on charges that include genocide and crimes against humanity.
Last month, the former commander of the Tuol Sleng prison, also known as S-21, became the first person charged in the case. The other suspects have not been named, but the allegations against them are based on 25 "distinct factual situations" involving homicide, torture, forcible transfer and other crimes, a court statement said.
The tribunal will decide on indictments after reviewing more than 1,000 documents, which run over 14,000 pages. They include statements from more than 350 witnesses, a list of 40 other potential witnesses and the locations of more than 40 undisturbed mass graves, the court said.
No date has been set for trials to begin, but once they do, the court is expected to finish its work in three years. Three Cambodian and two foreign judges will hear the trials, without juries.
Other senior leaders died before Cambodia's government agreed to a tribunal with international participation, which experts say is necessary to make sure verdicts are credible.
The Khmer Rouge executed at least 200,000 Cambodians and an estimated 1.5 million or more died of starvation, disease and overwork as Pol Pot and his cadres tried to force the country into an agrarian revolution. Pol Pot was bent on quickly destroying any remnants of capitalism. In his twisted vision of communist purity, the individual was sacrificed to a faceless, highly secretive power that most Cambodians knew only as Angkar -- the Organization.
Many died in the torture chambers of Tuol Sleng, a former high school south of Phnom Penh where the regime tortured and executed more than 14,000 alleged enemies of the state, some of them babies torn from their mothers' arms and clubbed to death.
The prison's former commandant, whose name is Kang Kek Ieu but is better known to Cambodians as Duch, is the only Khmer Rouge leader now behind bars. He was charged July 31 with crimes against humanity.
Duch has informed the tribunal he can't pay for a lawyer, so the tribunal will cover the cost of his defense. He has named his longtime Cambodian lawyer and French attorney Francois Roux, who was part of the defense team in the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui, who was convicted in a U.S. court of conspiring to kill Americans in the Sept. 11 attacks.
While still in hiding eight years ago, he told the Far Eastern Economic Review that thousands of prisoners were executed under his watch, often on Nuon Chea's direct orders.
"The decisions to kill were made not by one man, not just Pol Pot, but the entire Central Committee," Duch told the magazine. "Nuon Chea, he was the principal man for the killings. Pol Pot was interested in military strategy."
Today, Nuon Chea lives with his wife of more than 40 years, guarded by half a dozen plainclothes Interior Ministry police. When a Times reporter stopped by recently, the guards were passing the time playing cards and listening to a portable radio in the shade of a bamboo and corrugated-tin shelter.
Nearby, a rusting metal sign warned in Khmer: "No Entry Without Permission." Chief guard Un Sok, an elderly man wearing a National AIDS Authority T-shirt, said Nuon Chea was too ill to be interviewed. But a nephew reached him by phone to relay a few questions.
The casino that caters to Thai villagers and traders on the edge of his dust-blown village enshrines the capitalist greed that the Khmer Rouge went to such extremes to exterminate. Yet Brother No. 2 was full of praise for political and economic development in the new Cambodia. But "there are some obstacles," he said, without naming them.
He has told close relatives that he is probably too old and frail to attend a trial nearly 200 miles away in Phnom Penh, but said in the interview that he would go when called. "I've said for a long time already that if the court invites me, I will come and explain things to them," he said.
In nearby Pailin, once the Khmer Rouge's stronghold, the movement's former head of state, Khieu Samphan, was more welcoming. The man often ranked as Brother No. 5 lives without guards in a small rectangular house on a narrow lot.
Khieu Samphan, 76, lives alone with his wife, whom he met when she was a cook in a jungle bunker in 1973, soon after U.S. Air Force B-52s began covert bombing raids against guerrilla sanctuaries in Cambodia. President Nixon stopped the airstrikes after a U.S. federal judge ruled them unconstitutional and Congress refused to fund them.
The estimated 140,000 tons of U.S. bombs dropped on Cambodia at that time caused widespread destruction and upheaval in the countryside, so the Nixon administration is partly to blame for what happened after the Khmer Rouge was left to clean up the mess in 1975, Khieu Samphan argued.
"I think the responsibility must be shared to be just," he said. Insisting that he was only a powerless Khmer Rouge figurehead, Khieu Samphan said he and other leaders did what was necessary to save their country.
But experts who have sifted through thousands of the Khmer Rouge regime's documents concluded that he was far from an innocent bystander. They say the archives show Khieu Samphan attended high-level meetings that planned bloody purges and not only knew that atrocities were being committed, but encouraged lower-ranking officials to execute prisoners.
He "was aware of the policies of arresting, torturing and executing purported enemy agents," Stephen Heder, a British expert on Cambodia, and Brian Tittemore, a U.S. lawyer specializing in war crimes, concluded in a 2004 report.
"I know, myself, that I never did anything that could damage my nation," Khieu Samphan said. "I have examined myself. I have done my duty toward my country. Without the Khmer Rouge, I think the present Cambodia would not exist. It would already be under the control of the communist Vietnamese."
The words stab at old wounds for Vann Nath, who was tortured for a week with electric shocks, his hands cuffed behind his back and his arms bound tightly across his shoulders, while Khmer Rouge interrogators demanded he confess to their lie that he was a CIA spy.
Until he escaped captivity when Vietnamese troops toppled Pol Pot, Vann Nath spent a year painting portraits of the despot, listening to the agonized screams of fellow prisoners tortured to death in nearby cells.
"I don't know what kind of patriot Khieu Samphan is," he said. "His hands are soaked in blood."
Pausing to consider the possibility that death will come sooner than justice, he said, "I won't be disappointed because I have already survived the regime. If I don't get justice, it won't be a strange feeling for me."
Cambodian genocide tribunal hit by new fears of delay
AP/ International Herald Tribune
August 13, 2007
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia: A Cambodian judge in the U.N.-backed genocide tribunal has been appointed to head the country's Appeals Court, officials said Monday, sparking fears of a further delay in the trial of former Khmer Rouge leaders.
It wasn't immediately clear how the appointment of You Bun Leng, one of two co-investigating judges, would affect the trial of five former Khmer Rouge leaders already under his investigation for crimes committed during their 1975-79 rule.
You Bun Leng said Monday that he will discuss his new appointment with his foreign colleagues, but did not say whether he would step down from his tribunal position.
He is unlikely to snub the government's new appointment, a posting with better job security, and due to the heavy workload it would be virtually impossible to hold down both jobs.
Marcel Lemonde, the U.N.-appointed co-investigating judge, declined to comment on You Bun Leng's new job.
But Peter Foster, a U.N.-appointed spokesman for the tribunal, said he was "concerned" and was seeking clarification from relevant officials.
After countless delays, You Bun Leng and Lemonde only recently initiated investigations into former Khmer Rouge leaders accused of crimes against humanity, genocide and other atrocities that caused the death of some 1.7 million people in the late 1970s.
Theary Seng, director of Cambodian nonprofit group Center for Social Development, said she was surprised at the timing of You Bun Leng's appointment, which came soon after the cases were finally put in the hands of the investigating judges.
"I think it could slow things down," said Theary Seng, whose organization closely monitors the tribunal's activities. "The timing of his transfer is just bad for the Khmer Rouge tribunal."
You Bun Leng said Monday that he will discuss his new appointment with his foreign colleagues.
The judges have so far indicted one of five suspects recommended by prosecutors, Duch, whose real name is Kaing Guek Eav and who headed the former Khmer Rouge S-21 prison. The other four have not been publicly named and still remain free in Cambodia.
You Bun Leng's replacement must focus his attention on those five cases, said Youk Chhang, director of Documentation Center of Cambodia, an independent group compiling evidence of the Khmer Rouge crimes.
"The five cases are the most important and serious ones that can be a foundation to look at other crimes committed by the Khmer Rouge at that time," he said.
The government last week by decree appointed You Bun Leng to replace Ly Vuoch Leng — the only woman serving as a top ranking judge — as president of the Appeals Court.
Ly Vuoch Leng was removed for her alleged involvement in the release of sex trafficking offenders who had been convicted by a lower court, Justice Minister Ang Vong Vathana said Monday.
He declined to elaborate, but local media reported Monday that she had allegedly taken bribes in exchange for acquitting the offenders. Ly Vuoch Leng could not be reached for comment.
The tribunal was established last year following many years of negotiations between Cambodia and the United Nations. Disagreements about tribunal rules had kept the judges' investigations from being launched until last month.
Trials are expected to take place next year.
Former Cambodian prison guard ruled eligible for U.S. asylum
San Francisco Chronicle
By Bob Egelko
August 14, 2007
A Cambodian who fled to the United States in 2000 after assassination attempts by political rivals was ruled eligible for asylum Monday by a federal appeals court, which said his work as a prison guard for the post-Khmer Rouge regime did not implicate him as a persecutor.
Pauline Im, who now lives in Fresno with his wife, was denied asylum by an immigration judge in 2003 because of the nearly two years he spent as a guard in a small Cambodian prison run by the Vietnamese army. Some of the prisoners were members of the Khmer Rouge, the communist movement that the Vietnamese ousted in 1979.
Im's duties included feeding the prisoners, taking them to bathe and receive medical attention, and unlocking their cells and handing them to another guard who would take them away for interrogation.
The immigration judge concluded that Im would face political persecution if he returned to Cambodia - a finding that would ordinarily qualify him for asylum in the United States - but he said Im was ineligible because he had taken part in persecution.
The appeals court, in a 3-0 ruling, disagreed, saying not everyone who works in an oppressive system is implicated in persecution.
The panel cited the Supreme Court's reference to a guard who had cut the hair of concentration camp inmates before their execution, conduct the court described as ghastly but only peripheral to persecution. By contrast, the appeals court ruled last year that a man who acted as an interpreter for Peruvian guardsmen while they interrogated and tortured their prisoners provided essential services for the persecutors and was ineligible for asylum.
Im played no more than a marginal role in the mistreatment of prisoners, said Judge Betty Fletcher: He never beat a prisoner, did not select anyone for imprisonment or interrogation, and merely followed superiors' instructions to unlock cell doors, something anyone else could have done.
The ruling makes both Im, 53, and his wife, Ngin Sitha, 48, eligible for asylum. The couple run a doughnut shop in Fresno and have a 15-year-old daughter in Cambodia whom they haven't seen in six years, said their lawyer, Emmanuel Enyinwa.
Im's family was killed when the Khmer Rouge took power in 1975, and he was put to work as a forced laborer, the court said. After working as a prison guard following the Vietnamese invasion, he joined a guerrilla movement, was imprisoned and tortured by the Vietnamese, but then was released and became a political activist and congressional candidate.
While working for the largest opposition party in 2000, he received death threats, then had his car and his house fired on by unknown assailants, who Enyinwa said were most likely adherents of a rival party. While Im's party filed a complaint with the United Nations, Im and his wife fled to the United States and applied for asylum.
Cambodia Puts Khmer Rouge Reign of Terror on Trial
Voice of America
By Rory Byrne
August 15, 2007
Thirty years after the brutal Khmer Rouge governed Cambodia, efforts to punish those considered most responsible for the deaths of nearly two million people have entered a new phase. A former leader of the ultra-Maoist group has just been charged with crimes against humanity while cases against four others are pending. But as Rory Byrne reports from Phnom Penh, doubts remain whether the Khmer Rouge tribunals will deliver justice.
A monument outside Phnom Penh shows some of the enormous scale of the killing in Cambodia from 1975 to 1979. Almost two million people, a quarter of the populations, died under the Khmer Rouge from overwork, starvation and execution.
The ultra-Maoist group wanted to create a rural socialist utopia. It executed political Kaing Khek Iev, commonly known as "Duch," was the commander of S-21 prison in Phnom Penh where thousands were tortured and killed.
He is the first member of the Khmer Rouge to be indicted in connection to the regime's reign of terror.
Almost 30 years after the Khmer Rouge were ousted from power, a joint international and Cambodian court is preparing to try those accused of being most responsible for the deaths.
Five former leaders are scheduled to be tried at a new court outside Phnom Penh, although more may follow later.
Civic groups warn that because Cambodia's judiciary is weak, the tribunal may be subject to political interference.
Attorney Theary Seng, whose parents were killed by the Khmer Rouge, is the director of Cambodia's Center for Social Development. "The concern, first and foremost, is political interference because some of the current leadership of the current government were members of the Khmer Rouge over a certain rank. There may be information that they do not want to surface within the trial so there are concerns that there could be political interference and we have been given indications that there are."
Helen Jarvis is the spokeswoman for the Khmer Rouge Tribunal. She says that, despite their limitations, the trials are an important part of coming to terms with the past. "Certainly, it can't meet everybody's expectations, it can't tell the whole story, it can't do everything that Cambodia needs but it's a very important piece of what is required."
Civic groups see the tribunal as part of a wider process aimed at helping the country come to terms with its traumatic past.
Lawyer Theary Seng says, "The core benefits of a trial are becoming the ancillary benefits and the side benefits of outreach, engaging the Cambodian people, of disseminating information, of talking about history, of human rights abuses, of rule of law -- those issues are now becoming the core values of having this tribunal."
This annual re-creation of Khmer Rouge atrocities aims to help Cambodians remember the past and to heal the wounds of that era. Rights activists hope the Khmer Rouge tribunal will play another part of that healing process.
Cambodian genocide judge to stay on at his job despite new appointment
AP/ International Herald Tribune
August 16, 2007
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia: A Cambodian judge said Thursday his recent appointment as head of the country's Appeals Court will not prevent him from taking part in a much-delayed U.N.-backed genocide tribunal.
You Bun Leng, one of the tribunal's two co-investigating judges, said he is not taking up his new post right away to avoid "interruption or delay in the process" of investigating cases against former Khmer Rouge leaders.
"I will continue my mission at the (tribunal) until such time as an appropriate and smooth transition can be made," he said in a statement received Thursday.
The United Nations, however, said in a statement Thursday that it remains concerned about the impact of You Bun Leng's appointment "on the efficiency of the proceedings" currently before the tribunal and on its "perceived independence."
The statement said the U.N. is seeking further clarification on the matter from the Cambodian authorities.
You Bun Leng's new appointment has also prompted observers to fear of a further delay in the trial of former Khmer Rouge leaders.
After countless delays, You Bun Leng and Marcel Lemonde, the U.N.-appointed co-investigating judge, have only recently initiated investigations into former Khmer Rouge leaders accused of crimes against humanity, genocide and other atrocities that caused the death of some 1.7 million people in the late 1970s.
The judges have so far indicted one of five suspects recommended by prosecutors. Duch, whose real name is Kaing Guek Eav, headed the former Khmer Rouge S-21 prison. The other four have not been publicly named and still remain free in Cambodia.
The tribunal was established last year following many years of negotiations between Cambodia and the United Nations. Disagreements about tribunal rules had kept the judges' investigations from being launched until last month.Trials are expected to take place next year.
[back to contents]
Central African Republic
Official Website of the International Criminal Court
ICC Public Documents - Cases: Central African Republic
Ban Ki-moon alters plans for UN presence in Chad, Central African Republic
UN News Service
August 16, 2007
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has unveiled revised plans for a United Nations presence in the troubled east of Chad and northeast of the Central African Republic (CAR), proposing that the European Union (EU) field a military force and the UN focus on training police and civilian areas such as human rights and the rule of law.
In his latest report to the Security Council on the situation in Chad and the CAR, which have both been beset by widespread population displacement because of clashes between rebels and Government forces, Mr. Ban recommends several major adjustments to his earlier plan – submitted in February – for a possible UN peacekeeping force.
After the Chadian Government raised concerns about a UN military presence, Mr. Ban now proposes an EU force, which he said has already been accepted in principle by President Idriss Déby. This force, which would be responsible for protecting civilians and ensuring humanitarian assistance can be provided, would operate for 12 months from deployment, with follow-on arrangements to be determined later.
There would now be no direct involvement of the multi-dimensional international presence in the border area, Mr. Ban adds in the report.
While Chadian police and gendarmes will continue to maintain law and order in the camps for refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs), they would be screened, trained, monitored and mentored by the UN police component and given direct logistical support from the UN.
A multi-dimensional UN presence of civilian staff, focusing on the areas of civil affairs, human rights, the rule of law and mission support, would also be established, and the headquarters will be in N'Djamena, the Chadian capital.
The UN, the EU and the Chadian authorities would have to coordinate their work very closely, starting from the mission planning stages, if this revised model for a UN presence is to be successful, the Secretary-General stresses.
He says the deployment of a UN-mandated multi-dimensional international presence in Chad and the CAR “could have a significant positive impact on the security situation there,” adding that a lasting solution to the region's crises – including the violence and suffering engulfing Sudan's Darfur region – is only possible through political agreements.
The proposed mission, which would be coordinated by a UN-appointed head of mission and Secretary-General's Special Representative, would operate in Chad's Ennedi Est department and the Wadi Fira, Ouaddai and Salamat regions and in the Vakaga prefecture and the north-eastern part of Haute-Kotto prefecture in the CAR.
Mr. Ban, who made his proposals based on an assessment mission to the region, says the humanitarian situation in eastern Chad and north-eastern CAR “has shown no signs of improving” since February, with more than 400,000 refugees and IDPs as a result of the fighting and an estimated 700,000 others in host communities also affected.
[back to contents]
Democratic Republic of the Congo (ICC)
Official Website of the International Criminal Court
ICC Public Documents - Situation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo
Congo ceases action against Hutu rebels
Reuters, via the Los Angeles Times
August 12, 2007
KINSHASA , CONGO -- Congo has suspended Tutsi-led military operations against Rwandan Hutu rebels in an effort to avoid further ethnic tension in the country's east, a senior army official said Saturday.
At least 165,000 civilians have fled fighting in North Kivu province since February, when army brigades commanded by Tutsis began operations to drive out Rwandan rebels.
Congo's ground commander Gen. Gabriel Amisi told journalists in North Kivu that the decision was made after consultation with the U.N. mission in Congo and foreign diplomats.
"They said we could not carry out mono-ethnic operations: Tutsis against Hutus. That will create genocide," he said.
The Democratic Republic of Congo, formerly Zaire, held its first free elections in four decades last year.
From his foreign lair, rebel leader vows to continue Congo's fight
The Independent
David Lewis
August 15, 2007
The Congolese rebels stop at an internet café in town to check their website and print the latest press clippings before passing the last of the hungry-looking government soldiers who are asking for cigarettes and money.
Particularly happy about one story - which likens their renegade general, Laurent Nkunda, to Robin Hood - they drive up into the hills of Masisi, passing herds of cows and Indian UN peacekeepers on the narrow paths.
To some, Laurent Nkunda and his men, armed with their AK-47s and rocket-propelled grenades, are war criminals who know nothing but life by the gun and represent everything still wrong about the Democratic Republic of Congo, which was the site of Africa's "first world war" from 1998-2002.
To others, they are just a media-savvy band of men intent on protecting people who have been targeted because of their ethnicity. There is little ground in between.
Eucalyptus trees line the rutted roads that wind their way through the steep green hills towards Mr Nkunda's base. Gunmen mingle with the local cow farmers who have produced the best milk and cheese in Congo's east for generations. Mr Nkunda is to be found in an abandoned farmhouse high in the hills of Masisi. The tall and lanky dissident general fits every stereotype about the Tutsis of Africa's Great Lakes region. With glasses perched on the end of his nose, he wanders around his heavily guarded headquarters swinging a cane and fielding calls on various phones.
Despite numerous accusations of human rights violations, he has a blind sense of belief that what he is doing is right. "They die in their thousands and no one says anything," says Mr Nkunda, launching into an explanation of the suffering of his fellow Tutsis in eastern Congo. "But I have protected them and I will, until my death," he vows.
The rebels woo visitors with pints of fresh milk and, if you ask nicely, will put on a war dance. The general also explains that he is not against joining the government forces but he says the conditions are not quite right. Tens of thousands of refugees must be allowed to return from Rwanda and security must be improved in the east, he says.
Congo 's east has always been complicated. Insecurity is rife and analysts say Tutsis are sometimes targeted but not on the scale Mr Nkunda suggests. But these are problems that have developed over the course of years and they will take many more to resolve.
It was here the war which brought the 1997 downfall of Mobutu Sese Seko began. Tutsi-dominated rebels backed by the Rwandan army marched to Kinshasa, the capital, ousting the dictator. It was also where most of the last war, between foreign-backed rebels and Laurent Kabila, Mr Mobutu's successor, took place. And, less than a year after historic post-war elections, there are fears it will be where the next one erupts, undermining years of effort and billions spent on peacemaking to end the world's most lethal conflict since the Second World War.
The main rebel leaders who had carved up the country between 1998 and 2003 were coerced into taking part in a transitional government, which ran the country as it wobbled to the 2006 elections. But other rebels, including Mr Nkunda did not and, in order for elections to take place, compromises were made.
The government issued an arrest warrant after he seized a town in eastern Congo in 2004 and his men were accused of war crimes. But, still trying to turn tens of thousands of men from rag-tag rebel, militia and army units into a cohesive national army, the government has not been able to execute it.
Therefore, shortly after he was elected, President Joseph Kabila struck a secret deal with Mr Nkunda. Their forces were meant to stop fighting each other, create temporary units and, instead, attack the thousands of Rwandan Hutu rebels still in Congo.
The rebels came to Congo when they were routed after the 1994 genocide and were at the centre of the two subsequent wars that left an estimated 3.5 million dead. Instead of resolving any of the problems, it created many more. Countless civilians were killed in the fighting and tens of thousands fled their homes as hungry and ill-disciplined soldiers went on the move, some committing massacres. Unicaf says it has helped about 250,000 displaced people since the elections last year.
Anneke Van Woudenburg , Congo analyst at Human Rights Watch, warns that Mr Kabila's botched attempt to deal with the rebels has "instead strengthened the hand of the warlord". Hundreds have been recruited from Rwanda, some forcibly, others more willingly. Mr Kabila has since pulled out of the deal. But, thought to be on his knees at the end of last year, when hundreds of his men were killed in fighting with the UN, the general has spread his sphere of influence and is setting up a parallel administration in areas his men control.
"Everything here is controlled by him," explains Dominic Bofondo, the administrator of Rutshuru, pointing on a map to the western half the territory he is meant to govern. "He has all his own tax collectors out there. We tried to send ours there but they were beaten and they fled. For the past four months, we have not been receiving any reports from our people."
Villages where politicians campaigned for votes this time last year have since been emptied across parts of North Kivu. Houses lie empty and doors kicked in as civilians fled. "Yes, we had elections. But we never suffered like this in previous wars," says Crispin Bahati, a resident of Kisharu village in Rutshuru.
"This week they pillaged four times. These men in uniforms, they just attack the population. Four times the foreigners have come saying they will help but nothing has changed. We just tighten our belts and eat every other day," he adds.
The men in uniform are a range of government soldiers, Mr Nkunda's men and Rwandan Hutu rebels. The foreigners are the UN peacekeepers, which number over 17,000, making it the largest UN mission but tiny for a country of its size.
The UN was kept in the dark over the secretive deal and peacekeepers will now have to decide what to do should fighting break out again. "It's not fair to ask us to clear up the mess if there is one," says Brigadier-General Pramod Behl, commander of the Indian peacekeepers in North Kivu province.
General Behl's men are in a difficult position because Mr Nkunda and some of his men are, simultaneously, wanted for war crimes but officially part of the national army. Their men sometimes carry out joint patrols.
General Behl is concerned peacekeepers will be pushed into a corner. They have a mandate to protect civilians but also support the Congolese government. When it comes to Congo's army, the two do not always go together.
Diplomats from countries which stumped up hundred of millions of dollars for last year's elections and continue to pay a £500m peacekeeping bill every year are trying to encourage a diplomatic solution. But the men, tanks and helicopter gunships the president is sending east give a different message. As do Congolese officials, who issue threats about Mr Nkunda while at garden parties in the capital.
Ms Van Woudenburg of HRW fears the worst. "Instead of diplomacy they are resorting to past behaviour of military force as the solution to the problem; one that is unlikely to succeed and will only result in further suffering for the people and more chaos."
Kabila's legacy of conflict
War came to eastern Zaire in 1997 when Laurent Kabila's Tutsi-led rebels crossed the country to topple veteran leader Mobutu Sese Seko. But his former supporters then turned on him and rebels backed by Rwanda and Uganda advanced on the capital of the now renamed Democratic Republic of Congo.
Laurent Nkunda's Rwandan-backed RDC rebels seized much of eastern DRC. As the war spread, President Kabila enlisted the help of Zimbabwe, Namibia and Angola. Peace accords failed to stop the bloodletting.
In 2001, he was assassinated and his son Joseph took power. Despite peace deals that led to the withdrawal of foreign forces, Mr Nkunda's rebels rejected the agreements, including a 2002 pact which gave rebels and opposition members posts in an interim government.
After the signing of a transitional constitution in 2003, Mr Nkunda took up arms again. But after landmark elections in 2006, the conflict kept bubbling in eastern Congo, despite UN peacekeepers. Mr Nkunda's forces have been accused of war crimes for over-running Bukavu in 2004. And last month, the head of UN peacekeeping, Jean-Marie JGuéhenno, described Mr Nkunda as "the most serious threat to stability".
Monuc Condemns Further Assassinations in North Kivu
AllAfrica.com - United Nations Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo
Eoin Young
August 15, 2007
At its weekly press conference on Wednesday 15 August 2007, MONUC condemned the further assassinations in North Kivu province in eastern DRC, with the killing of a journalist in Goma and a local government official in Rutshuru territory.
"The past week was marked by new assassinations that appear to be deliberately targeted, such as the assassination of an independent photo reporter in Goma, as well as the killing of a local official in Nyamilima village in Rutshuru, " explained MONUC spokesperson Kemal Saiki.
MONUC condemned to the full the cowardly assassination of independent photo reporter Patrick Kikuku Wilungala in Goma, on the night of 9/10 August. Mr Wilungula, a member of the National Congolese Press Union (UNPC), was killed by an unidentified armed man a few metres from his home in Ndosho, in Goma's Karisimbi suburb.
Unfortunately it has proven impossible, at this time, to establish whether his death was directly linked to his work.
"MONUC wishes to extend its profoundest condolences to Mr. Wilungula's family and the Congolese media, hit again through an act of violence by armed men.
MONUC's Human Rights division will spare no effort in investigating this murder, and will do all within its means to ensure that the perpetrators are brought before justice," Mr. Saiki underlined.
This assassination follows the June murder, also by armed men, of Radio Okapi journalist Serge Maheshe in Bukavu in South Kivu province, whose murder trial is underway.
MONUC reiterated its appeal to the Congolese authorities to reinforce their protection measures for media representatives on Congolese territory, and that its does all within its power to allow them to work freely, without hindrance or intimidation.
Furthermore MONUC deplored the assassination of Mr. Muzana, a local official in Nyamilima village in Rutshuru, who was killed on 13 August during the course of an attack on the village and its FARDC positions by a group believed to be Hutu combatants, with much subsequent looting.
Mr. Muzana was the last official left in Nyamilima, as his colleagues had left some months before due to threats and intimidation. Upon hearing of the attack, MONUC sent a rapid reaction force to the village to ensure no civilians would be trapped amisdst the fighting.
Upon arriving at the scene they found the bodies of Mr. Muzana and a young 12 year old girl, both of whom had been visibly targeted by the assailants.
Finally MONUC reiterated its concern over the continuing human rights violations and attacks on civilians, in particular by the various rebel groups and security forces in North Kivu.
Rwanda Anger at Congo Rebel Move
BBC News
August 15, 2007
Rwanda 's foreign minister told the BBC the rebels were attempting to gather strength in eastern DR Congo to launch attacks on his country.
Earlier this week, DR Congo said it stopped the seven-month offensive to avoid further bloodshed.
The UN says more than 160,000 people have been displaced by fighting.
The Tutsi-led government in Rwanda has twice invaded DR Congo, saying it wants to wipe out the Democratic Liberation Forces of Rwanda (FDLR).
They include members of Rwanda's former army and extremist Hutu militia, the Interahamwe, who led the 100-day genocide where 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed.
The Congolese army and UN peacekeepers had been carrying out joint operations in the area against the fighters since January.
'Dialogue'
Rwanda 's foreign minister says by stopping their military offensive, DR Congo showed it lacked the will to deal with the Hutu forces.
"These ex-Interahamwe have been looting, maiming, raping, killing the Congolese people in the hope that they will gather enough strength to come to Rwanda and finish a genocide they were unable to finish in 1994," Charles Murigande told the BBC's Network Africa programme.
"I would not imagine that a serious government can contemplate living with people who are responsible for such horrible crimes."
He said he could not understand why the Congolese government would not accept Rwanda's offer of troops to help deal with the rebels.
"In the past, we offered to mount joint operations against the Interahame. We offered to put our forces under the command of DRC commanders... but this offer has not been accepted," he said.
But Mr Murigande said Rwanda would deal with the issue through dialogue and he was about to travel to Kinshasa for talks.
Priority
The presence of Hutu forces in the east has also led to tensions between DR Congo's own Hutu and Tutsi population.
Earlier this year, Tutsi units in the Congolese army, led by the controversial Gen Laurent Nkunda, started a major offensive to try to wipe out an estimated 6,000 Hutu rebels.
Several villages where the Hutu rebels had set up bases were stormed by the army.
But this also displaced more than 160,000 civilians and instead of laying down their arms, many of the Hutu rebels simply fled further into the bush.
DR Congo's government says its priority should now be peace, development and the creation of a strong united army, rather than creating further instability.
The rebels have repeatedly said they do not want to go back to Rwanda unless they are granted amnesty.
Last year's historic elections were supposed to mark the end of years of conflict and mismanagement in DR Congo.
[back to contents]
Darfur, Sudan (ICC)
Official Website of the International Criminal Court
ICC Public Documents - Situation in Darfur, Sudan
Darfur war crimes suspect has free rein
Los Angeles Times
By Maggie Farley
August 5, 2007
EL FASHER, SUDAN — For a man accused of masterminding massacres, Ahmad Harun seems quite comfortable in the place he allegedly helped destroy.
He strolls around the grassy compound belonging to the local governor in Sudan's deeply troubled Darfur region, embracing Arab tribal leaders, soldiers and officials who have come to hear the president.
Harun, a tall 42-year-old with high cheekbones and almond-shaped eyes, was in charge of the region's security during the height of the violent attacks on farm villages that caused millions to flee their homes in 2003 and 2004. He allegedly recruited, funded and armed local militias to root out rebels who had attacked the Sudanese army, sweeping away their villages, families and the intricate fabric of Darfur's identity along the way.
He publicly relished his command, telling an open meeting of hundreds of officials, tribesmen and soldiers in West Darfur in July 2003 that he had been given "the power and authority to kill or forgive whoever in Darfur."
The rebels are like fish, Harun told a Sudanese committee that was investigating alleged war crimes in 2004, and "the villages are like water to fish." The objective, he suggested, was to eliminate the water.
And yet, on this day three years later, Harun glides unhindered and unapologetic through the parched remains of Darfur. In fact, he is the minister of state for humanitarian affairs in charge of caring for the very people he is accused of displacing. That he holds such a post says much about the limits of international power to cope with a festering crisis.
In May, the Hague-based International Criminal Court charged him and a pro-government militia leader, Ali Mohammed Ali Abdalrahman, better known as Ali Kushayb, with war crimes and crimes against humanity. But Sudan has rejected the arrest warrants, saying that the country is not a signatory to the court and that the charges against Harun are false.
Instead of being put behind bars, as the court asked, Harun still has the power to decide who lives and dies in Darfur. And without Sudan's cooperation, there is almost nothing the court can do to bring him to justice.
"It is absolutely unacceptable," complained chief prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo, whose team carefully built the case against Harun through interviews with refugees, tribal leaders, colleagues and enemies.
"Harun has to be removed from office, arrested and sent to the court," Moreno-Ocampo said in an interview. "Allowing him to be the humanitarian minister is like putting the fox in front of the chickens."
The trouble, experts say, is that asking the government to hand him over is asking it to indict itself. And charging those with the true responsibility for Darfur means targeting the only ones able to guarantee peace: the president and vice president.
"Harun has been interrogated about the allegations, and there is no case," said Interior Minister Zubeir Bashir Taha, a senior Cabinet minister who also oversees Darfur. "The evidence does not stand scrutiny, and whether it does or not, it is a matter for Sudan to decide and act upon. The prosecutor has no jurisdiction here. He is an intruder."
Further, Moreno-Ocampo's desire for swift justice competes with the aims of other U.N. bodies trying to bring peace to Darfur. The Security Council can demand that Khartoum make the arrests or face sanctions, but it is also trying to gain the government's acceptance of a 26,000-strong peacekeeping force for Darfur as well as its cooperation in peace talks.
So the court must rely on the government of Sudan to surrender Harun unless the Security Council were to order U.N. officials to arrest him — a move likely to get U.N. peacekeepers and aid workers tossed out of the country.
The choice does not have to be between peace or justice. The two are intertwined — but perhaps the most effective tool is time, Moreno-Ocampo says. He has translated the indictment into Arabic, in a booklet to take with him on his rounds of neighboring countries, explaining the court and drumming up support to keep an eye on Harun. Sooner or later, Moreno-Ocampo says, circumstances will change or Harun will make a misstep.
"This is normal, this is the process, it will take time," he says. "I don't know if it will take months or years, but Harun's destiny is the court."
That's not Harun's view. Clad in a khaki safari suit that keeps him cool in the 100-degree Darfur heat, Harun wears his knowledge of the court's impotence like armor.
"Who gave the ICC this right?" he asks. "It is a matter of politics. It is not an issue of justice."
He denies the allegations that he worked with the militias known as janjaweed to attack villages, and says that he will never go to The Hague to answer the charges. "We are not signatories" to the court, and neither is the United States, he says.
"When you sign, we are going to follow. You go first," he says with a high-pitched guffaw.
Harun faces 42 counts of individual criminal responsibility, including murder, rape, persecution and forcible transfer of population. Militia leader Ali Kushayb, who is accused of participating in the attacks and killing civilians, is charged with 50 counts.
Moreno-Ocampo deliberately chose the two to illuminate how, he believes, the government worked hand in hand with militias to commit massive crimes against civilians not involved in the conflict.
Although the court must rely on Sudan to hand the men over, if either sets foot outside the country, any police officer or Interpol official can nab him. Harun was getting medical treatment in Jordan when the court first named him as a key suspect, causing him to flee home.
Although Harun maintains a high profile at home, the indictment has had an effect. When he addressed a crowd soon after the indictments, a whispered chant rippled through the audience: "Janjaweed, janjaweed." He avoids reporters. But he laughs and jokes with tribal leaders who have come to see the president on a government show tour of Darfur. Many of the leaders have been government allies; some of them are testing the winds.
One Arab tribal chief gives a tight smile when asked whether Harun is really innocent, as he claims. The leader shakes his head, then looks around and lowers his voice. "It is not as he says, and everyone knows what he has done. He will be sacrificed, if he hasn't been already. He knows he may have little time." One Khartoum insider predicts he will have an "accident" within a year.
For Harun, the time for talking about the international court is up. Instead, he says he wants to talk about the government's humanitarian work in Darfur.
"The situation in general, based on humanitarian indicators, is good," he says. "There is full humanitarian access, the fast-track systems are functioning." When asked whether he feels a special responsibility for the people in the camps, a slow smile spreads over his face.
"They are our people," he says with a grand gesture toward the ruined land, "and we are taking care of them."
Prosecutor wary of delays in Darfur war crimes trial
Australian Broadcasting Corporation
By Eleanor Hall
August 7, 2007
ELEANOR HALL: Now to some positive news about the Darfur region of Sudan, where a brutal civil war has killed more than 200,000 people and left another two million homeless.
Overnight rebel groups made progress towards another peace deal, and last week the United Nations finally reached agreement with the Sudanese Government on sending a peacekeeping force to Darfur.
Moves to bring to justice to those accused of attacking and pursuing innocent civilians are also underway.
The International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants not only for the leader of the militia group, the Janjaweed, but also for a Sudanese government minister, accusing them of crimes against humanity.
The ICC Prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, is in Australia this week. He told me that he's ready to bring the case against the alleged war criminals, but he concedes he may have to be patient.
LUIS MORENO-OCAMPO: The worst thing happened in Darfur. Basically there were combined attack of land forces, air forces and militia Janjaweed going to villages and attacking everyone. They were not focused in any rebel activity, they just remove people from the villages.
Ahmed Harun explained that the rebels are like a fish in the water, and so his policy was basically remove the water to control the fish.
ELEANOR HALL: So do you think this Government response has amounted to genocide?
LUIS MOENO-OCAMPO: You know, genocide is a very technical … it's a crime who require specific intention. It's legal to control a rebellion. What is illegal is attack the civilian population. Widespread and systematic attack against civilian population is called crimes against humanity, and that's why we charge Harun with crimes against humanity. We are not saying nothing has happened, but we have strong evidence on this.
ELEANOR HALL: So what do you hope to achieve with this case, which is, as you say, not only against the leader of the militia group known as the Janjaweed but also against a minister in the Sudanese Government, Ahmed Harun?
LUIS MORENO-OCAMPO: No, my responsibility is to, as a prosecutor International Criminal Court, (inaudible) have to investigate the case. We are charging them with different type of crime because they … we have evidence for how Kushayb was personally involved in the execution of 32 people they took prisoners. We have Kushayb personally involved in the gang rape of a group of women, they tie women to trees and they were there for a day and night and they were raping all the members of the group, and Kushayb were there, so we have also Kushayb involved in tortures.
We have one witness who say they rape my daughter, my eight years old daughter, but they forced me to see when they were raping my daughter. I was asking them, "Why, why you are doing this to me?"
So when you're thinking this type of rape, it's not sexual abuse, it's a way to humiliate and destroy the community. So in committing these crimes, were coordinated by Harun, they forced the people to be displaced, to leave the village. And just to tell you one story, you can imagine how difficult the life of these people here, is my staff was in the car, moving a witness from one place to another, and then five mothers dropped their babies through their window of their car and saying, "please take my baby, go to Europe". So imagine how bad you can feel that you are ready to give your baby to go to a different place, to a person you don't know.
So this is a situation of two million people living in enemy camps, inside Sudan.
ELEANOR HALL: So what do you think will change for these people if your case is successful?
LUIS MORENO-OCAMPO: These people are in the worst … in a very bad situation. They need everything. They need food, they need to recover their own land, they need to recover their own life. I don't know. What I have to do justice. Justice is about dignity probably.
What I can do for them is recover some part of their own dignity. When this person exposed to our people, to my investigators, his case, that his daughter was raped before him, he's exposed but also he is recovering his dignity and he's informing his pain in evidence. So in some ways we are giving power to them, we're empowering them and we are trying to do justice for these people.
Of course they need more, they need food, that's why they need humanitarian help. Of course they need security, that's why they need the peacekeepers now. And of course they need to go back to their old life, and that's why they need some agreement.
So justice is a piece in a comprehensive solution for the region.
ELEANOR HALL: The Sudanese Government continues to deny that it has any links to the Janjaweed militia. How convinced are you that this is a lie?
LUIS MORENO-OCAMPO: No, I … look, I have evidence, I have evidence. Harun, the Minister for Interior, delivering weapons to the Janjaweed militia in his own helicopter. We have evidence of Harun paying to the militia Janjaweed in cash. We have evidence of him recruiting people.
So this is an integration of state apparatus and the Janjaweed militia acting together, coordinating the Harun, no doubt.
ELEANOR HALL: Now, the International Criminal Court says that the Sudanese Government now has a legal duty to arrest Ali Kushayb and Ahmed Harun, but what penalty can the court impose if, as seems likely, the Sudanese Government doesn't do that?
LUIS MORENO-OCAMPO: Okay, that is in the, you know, the international justice is a new idea coming in just in the last 10 years. Humanity learn that we cannot tolerate genocide or these massive crimes, so the Sudan is a bigger state and they have a legal responsibility, they have to fulfil them. So I think it's an issue of time - maybe in a few months, maybe in a few years, but in the end they will arrest Harun and would send to the court. So for me, it's clear the destiny of Harun will be before the judges in the court.
ELEANOR HALL: But can your case proceed if Ali Kushayb and Ahmed Harun are never brought before the court?
LUIS MORENO-OCAMPO: No, no, no, the courts cannot do trials in absence. So in the specific case of Darfur, the Security Council decided that I had to intervene. So probably in December, if nothing happens, I will go to the Security Council and inform them that Sudan is not cooperating with the court, and then the Security Council, they have to impose a decision.
In addition to that, in the Arab world, many states understand that what we are doing is right. I have regularly briefed the Arab League, I've regularly briefed different Arab countries, and they are consistently respecting our investigation and understanding that the law has to be applied.
So truth and legality have a lot of power, and I believe in this fight between crime and law, justice will prevail.
ELEANOR HALL: Luis Moreno-Ocampo, thanks very much for speaking to us.
LUIS MORENO-OCAMPO: Thank you.
ELEANOR HALL: And that's the International Criminal Court Prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, who is in Australia this week and who is leading the prosecution in the Darfur case.
In Darfur, Another Obstacle to Peace
Los Angeles Times
By Edmund Sanders
August 12, 2007
Chadian Arabs are crossing into Sudan, settling in areas razed or abandoned amid conflict. Some see an 'Arabization' plan by Khartoum.
TULUS, Sudan — Three years after it was burned to the ground, the village of Tulus in Darfur is springing back to life.
Corn and sesame sprout from fertile fields. Children play around newly built huts. Smoke from cooking fires once again rises from the land.
Problem is, those rebuilding Tulus are not the original inhabitants, who were chased away by pro-government Sudanese militias in 2004 and are afraid to return. Instead, their place has been taken by Chadian Arabs, who recently crossed the border to flee violence in their own country.
"It's comfortable here," said Sheik Algooni Mohammed Zeean, 42, leader of 150 Chadian Arabs who in March settled on a grassy plain not far from the ruins of Tulus' abandoned homes and school. Gesturing toward the fields bearing their first harvest in Sudan, he smiled. "I feel like this is my home now."
Over the last six months, nearly 30,000 Chadian Arabs have crossed into Sudan, many of them settling on land owned by Darfur's pastoral tribes that have been driven into displacement camps, aid groups say.
This migration has quickly become the latest obstacle to peace in western Sudan, drawing the attention of international observers and protests from those displaced from Darfur, who accuse the Sudanese government of orchestrating an "Arabization" scheme by repopulating their burned-out villages with foreigners.
"This is a government plot to give our land to Chadian Arabs," said Mohammed Abakar Mohammed Adam, 27, a farmer from the village of Bechabecha, which he said was abandoned after armed nomadic tribes known as janjaweed, widely believed to be backed by the government, attacked in 2003. But in recent months, Chadian newcomers have begun building homes atop the remains.
The Darfur conflict began in early 2003 when rebels attacked government forces to protest the poor resources and services in the neglected area. The regime in Khartoum, dominated by Sudanese Arabs, is accused of stirring up ethnic hatred by arming militias to attack villages that supported the rebels, many of whom increasingly call themselves "Africans." U.S. officials have labeled the government's campaign genocide. An estimated 200,000 people have died, mostly from disease and hunger in the early days of the crisis.
The recent influx of Chadian Arabs reflects the conflict's spread over the border, where similar clashes based on ethnic differences are destabilizing eastern Chad. Over the last year, nearly 50,000 Chadian refugees have sought shelter in Darfur, though most of the earlier arrivals were not Arab and settled in refugee camps.
Government officials in Khartoum have said little publicly about the recent influx. Sudanese Arab leaders in West Darfur are welcoming the Chadian Arabs, directing them to the vacated land and assisting them with food and supplies. They insist they are simply helping their Arab brethren at a time of crisis and that the newcomers will return to Chad as soon as it's safe.
But for some displaced Tulus villagers, now living less than 20 miles away in Habillah, news that strangers are cultivating their land has brought suspicion and anguish.
"That is our land," said Miriam Yahya Ahmed, a 60-year-old widow with four adult children. "Those people should go."
In Tulus, she lived on a small farm with fields of corn and peanuts. Now, the hunched, gray-haired woman struggles to nurture a few dozen corn stalks on a dirt patch behind her straw hut. International humanitarian groups worry that disputes over the land might reignite violence in western Darfur and lead to further delays in resolving the region's massive displacement crisis, with more than 2 million people driven from their homes.
"The mere presence of people on this land will make it more difficult for [displaced persons] to return home," said Ita Schuette, head of the Habillah branch of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the world body's refugee agency, which has been monitoring the influx.
Tensions have been heightened by rumors that some Chadians have been offered Sudanese identification cards or papers to help them establish citizenship. One Darfur hospital was reportedly asked to forge 100 birth certificates, according to a U.N. official. In another reported case, Chadians were allegedly photographed for ID cards in the city of Foro Burunga.
U.N. officials have been unable to confirm those reports and said they have found no ID cards or evidence that the government was plotting to get Chadians to immigrate. After interviewing hundreds of Chadians, the agency has concluded that many are entitled to refugee status because of the violence in their home country.
But leaders with the Sudan People's Liberation Movement, the former rebel army in the south, lodged a complaint in parliament in May about the Chadian migration. SPLM officials, who reached a power-sharing agreement with Khartoum in 2005, fear that Chadians will be issued fraudulent voting cards in an effort to sway the upcoming national census or next year's presidential election.
Others worry that the presence of Chadian Arabs will draw attacks by Darfur rebels and further destabilize the region.
West Darfur's Gov. Abu Gasim Imam, a former rebel commander whose group signed last year's controversial peace deal with the government, said he plans to dispatch about 1,000 troops to keep the peace. He expressed solidarity with displaced Darfur residents and said the Chadians should be relocated to refugee camps.
"We are very engaged in protecting the land for the original owners," Imam said. He said some Chadians might be legitimate refugees, but suggested others had ulterior motives and might be working in conjunction with Sudanese Arabs.
"This is not simply a refugee crisis," he said. "It's a strategic attempt to occupy land."
U.N. officials are pressing leaders in Khartoum to publicly reaffirm the property rights of the displaced. Under the 2006 Darfur peace agreement, the government granted the right of return to those displaced by violence, but an existing Sudanese law states that owners lose their rights if they abandon land for more than a year.
The U.N. also wants the government to designate the Chadians as refugees, which would allow them to be relocated to camps. Such a move might also alleviate citizenship concerns, since it would be difficult for people registered as Chadian refugees to later claim they are Sudanese.
The majority of Chadian Arabs have rejected offers of humanitarian aid and efforts to relocate them to camps, saying they brought most of their belongings with them, including food, seeds, tents and herds.
"For those who need help, we are giving out of our own pockets," said Al Hadi Ahmed Shineibat, a Sudanese Arab sheik who has been assisting Chadian arrivals asthey cross the border. Shineibat is the brother of Abdullah abu Shineibat, an alleged janjaweed leader cited by the State Department for attacks against Darfur villages in 2003 and 2004. Last year, Human Rights Watch accused Abdullah abu Shineibatof launching attacks in eastern Chad.
Ahmed Shineibat and other Sudanese Arab sheiks appear to be taking the lead role in assigning Chadian arrivals to disputed land in Darfur. In some cases, they have sent trucks to transport newly arrived Chadians to their assigned land. Some are also charging rent, even though they do not own the land.
So far, the influx of Chadians has avoided problems usually associated with sudden, conflict-driven displacements, such as food shortages or overcrowding. "It appears to be very well organized," Schuette, the U.N. official, said.
Resting under a tree in his home village of Um Samgamti, Ahmed Shineibat dismissed claims that the Chadian migration was part of a government-organized land grab. He predicted most Chadians would return as soon as it was safe.
"We told them when they first arrived that when the owners of the land return, they will have to leave," Shineibat said. "The land is not being occupied. It's just being used temporarily by guests. They are not Sudanese. So eventually they will have to leave."
He said Chad and Sudan have a long history of cross-border migrations and land sharing, particularly during periods of strife, and that land is traditionally returned to the original owners.
Despite his assurances, some Chadian Arabs appear to be digging in their heels. A group of about 300 who arrived in Tulus before the most recent wave initially identified themselves to U.N. interviewers as Chadian. Earlier this month, their sheik changed his story, claiming the group was from Darfur.
"We're Sudanese," said Sheik Ismail Mohammed Shein, 57. "This is our land. We are not leaving."
He claimed to have a government ID card to prove his assertion, but declined to show it.
A few miles away, those who arrived more recently with Zeean take a more conciliatory approach. They say they were chased from their village by Chadian soldiers and walked seven days with only what they could carry on their backs.
At first, the group's leader feigned ignorance about the original inhabitants of Tulus, saying he assumed the land was abandoned. Later Zeean acknowledged he was aware of the controversy over their arrival and the fears of the former residents. He vowed to leave the land if the owners returned.
"Our land in Chad is better anyway," he said.
Asked what he would do if he returned home to find strangers occupying his property, Zeean didn't hesitate: "I'd tell them to leave," he said. "That's my land."
edmund.sanders@latimes.com
Times staff writer Maggie Farley, who was recently in Darfur, contributed to this report.
Rape in Darfur persuaded charity to act
The Independent (London)
By Anne Penketh, Diplomatic Editor
August 13, 2007
When observers from Amnesty International visited Darfur in 2004, they were appalled by the number of rape victims they encountered.
The women and girls fall victim to rape as they collect firewood outside the refugee camps. Many have been gang-raped in front of their families as the conquering Janjaweed militia burnt down their homes.
Hundreds of rape cases, including against girls as young as seven or nine, were documented by human rights workers at the height of the ethnic cleansing in Darfur in 2004.
To allow the victims of mass rape to give birth is arguably tantamount to complicity in genocide. Because the most horrible conclusion of rape as a weapon of war is that it can change the ethnic makeup of a country. In the case of Darfur, it could mean the steady Arabisation of the next generation.
In 2005, about 100 countries took a landmark decision agreeing that rape should be a crime against humanity, which could be prosecuted by the International Criminal Court (ICC).
The court's statutes include "rape, sexual slavery, enforced prostitution, forced pregnancy, enforced sterilisation, or any other form of sexual violence of comparable gravity" as a crime against humanity, when used as part of a "widespread or systematic attack" against the civilian population. Today, the former Sudanese former interior minister, Ahmad Harun, and Ali Kushayb, have been accused by the court of acting together to commit war crimes, including mass rape, against Darfur's civilians.
According to ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo, Ali Kushayb - known as "colonel of colonels" in west Darfur - victimised the local population "through mass rape and other sexual offences". Mr Harun was quoted as saying: "Since the children of the Fur had become rebels, all the Fur and what they had, had become booty" of the Janjaweed.
Last May, the court issued arrest warrants for the pair. However, although Mr Kushayb is reportedly in custody in Sudan, the Sudanese authorities have refused to hand over the men for trial. The loophole for Sudan, which the government has exploited by saying that its own judicial process is under way, is that the ICC can only come into play when a state is unwilling or unable to prosecute the crimes in national courts.
The systematic use of rape has been documented in Liberia and Sierra Leone, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Somalia. But it was most reported in Rwanda, where according to the World Bank and Unifem, as many as 500,000 women were raped during the 1994 genocide against the Tutsis.
The ICC is also hearing cases against the Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda and the Central African Republic.
Darfur Displaced Say Joint AU-UN Force Needed Now
Reuters
By Simon Apiku
August 18, 2007
OTASH CAMP, Sudan, Aug 18 (Reuters) - Darfuris who fled their homes during a 4-1/2 year revolt are urging a joint U.N.-African Union force to deploy rapidly to protect them from attacks and allow their safe return to their villages.
After months of talks, threats and negotiations, Khartoum finally agreed to the 26,000-strong force, which will incorporate a struggling 7,000 AU force which has failed to stem the Darfur violence.
"There will be no peace here without the international forces," Ahmed Hirs, a resident of Otash camp just north of Nyala town in South Darfur where some 62,000 people fled their homes to seek refuge from rape, looting and killing.
"We have suffered enough. We want peace of mind and this will be possible only if the international forces come," said Adam Mohammed Ahmed, another camp resident.
Ahmed came to Otash almost four years ago following an attack on his village by militia, known locally as Janjaweed, who killed 24 men and six women.
"They burnt down our homes, forcing us to flee," he said.
The militia are accused of some of the worst atrocities against civilians in Darfur. The International
Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for a junior cabinet minister and a militia leader accused of conspiring in war crimes.
Khartoum says the Janjaweed are bandits and that the ICC has no authority over Sudanese citizens.
The joint mission is expected to fully deploy by next year, but Darfuris say that is too late. "We want them to come immediately," said Yahya Osman.
He lost everything when he fled his village west of Nyala.
They sought refuge in Otash, but say even inside the camp the violence continues. "Just yesterday my brother went out to get food for his children and he was abducted," said Ahmed.
"There are shootings and looting going on in the camp and nobody, including the AU troops, responds to these incidents."
The head of the joint mission, Rodolphe Adada, visited Otash on Friday and met with some 100 tribal leaders and camp residents, who requested his help.
"The Janjaweed abducted 17 members of my family 17 days ago," one man told Adada, asking the diplomat to help return them.
Expectations for the new force are high in the camp.
"We want them to help us get our rights, compensation and to secure our villages," said Osman.
The government has declared Darfur safe for people to return home and has said some 45 percent of those in the camps have gone back, a figure U.N. agencies say they cannot verify.
"They gave them money to persuade them to return. Some people went and then came back because of lack of security," said Osman.
International experts say an estimated 200,000 people have died in the Darfur conflict, which has displaced some 2.5 million people from their homes. Khartoum says only 9,000 people have died in the violence.
[back to contents]
Uganda (ICC)
Official Website of the International Criminal Court
ICC Public Documents - Situation in Uganda
Crime victims in northern Uganda want justice - UN
Reuters
By Stephanie Nebehay
August 14, 2007
GENEVA - Victims of atrocities in northern Uganda blame both the government and Lord's Resistance Army rebels for the murders, abductions and rapes committed during a 20-year war, the U.N. human rights office said on Tuesday.
Many survivors want compensation from the government for crimes committed by LRA rebels, the United Nations said in a study based on private interviews with 1,725 victims.
"This research study shows that the population broadly believes that both the LRA and the government -- and specifically their leaders -- should be held accountable for the harms they have caused during the conflict," the report by the office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights found.
"Sentiments of anger and vengefulness and a desire for prosecution abound in many communities," it said.
Tens of thousands of people died in the war which uprooted nearly 2 million people before a 2006 truce. The LRA is notorious for massacring civilians, mutilating survivors and kidnapping children to serve as soldiers and sex slaves.
The U.N. report, based on research in Acholiland, Lango and Teso, is a catalogue of horrific crimes, with children the main victims of abduction. Its authors said the study was designed to "amplify victims' voices".
"The most common forms of harm identified were murder, torture, abductions, rape, mutilation, arson, displacement of populations into IDP (internally displaced persons) camps, and the theft or destruction of property," it said.
'DISCOVER THE TRUTH'
Victims "repeatedly expressed their need to discover the truth about the past, especially to shed light on the identity of the perpetrators and the nature of the acts that have been committed," it said.
But they had "highly mixed views" about amnesty processes, prosecution of perpetrators before the International Criminal Court (ICC), and local justice, according to the 80-page report.
LRA leader Joseph Kony and his top deputies, wanted for war crimes by the ICC, are believed to be camped somewhere in the jungle of the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The Ugandan government has agreed to use a national process of accountability for wartime atrocities -- implicitly rejecting ICC demands that the men be handed over for trial in the Hague.
The government and rebels signed an agreement on June 30 on how to deal with war crimes in a third phase of five-phase peace talks to end one of Africa's worst conflicts.
Kampala has said a special tribunal to deal with war crimes would not handle charges of abuse by the Uganda People's Defence Forces (UPDF), as the army already has courts marshal.
A boy from Lira district said: "When we were abducted, (the rebels) made us sit on eight people who were killed. We were made to drink the blood of the corpses and some of the blood was rubbed into our chests. They cut people and cooked the bodies in drums. We were then made to eat the flesh that was cooked."
A girl, abducted at age 11 by the LRA, recalled being forced to carry heavy loads and tortured. "One time when the UPDF attacked, I was also made to kill other children if they tried to escape. Then I was forced to have sex with a big man."
The U.N. report said peace talks in Juba, southern Sudan, represented the "best-ever opportunity for a lasting peace" in northern Uganda. LRA rebels failed to raise enough money to fund travel to the latest round which had been due to start July 30.
High Commissioner for Human Rights releases new study on transitional justice in Northern Uganda
United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR)
August 14, 2007
The United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights today released a new qualitative field research study that details the perceptions of victims in the Northern Uganda conflict on accountability, reconciliation and transitional justice.
The report "Making Peace Our Own: Victims Perceptions of Accountability, Reconciliation and Transitional justice in Northern Uganda" aims to amplify the victims' voices on these three critical issues. The report seeks to contribute to ongoing discussions on how best to redress Northern Uganda's past abuses, violations and deep-seated social economic inequalities, in particular in relation to the Juba peace talks between the Government of Uganda and the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA).
The report highlights the fact that the communities hold both the LRA and the Government responsible for the harm, trauma, neglect and other rights violations endured and believe they should be held accountable. Many respondents argued that a multi-faceted transitional justice mechanism addressing different types of harm caused by different levels of perpetrators is required.
The study points to varying perceptions regarding which mechanism can best deliver truth and compensation, both of which were consistently identified as the principal transitional justices needs of the communities. Similarly, perceptions on the virtues of amnesty, domestic prosecution, the International Criminal Court (ICC) and local or traditional practices were greatly mixed. The desire to prevent impunity was however consistently present amongst affected communities.
OHCHR conducted the study from January to June 2007, with the participation of 1,725 victims of the conflict in 69 focus groups in Acholiland, Lango and Teso sub-regions. Interviews were also conducted with 39 key informants to provide a degree of cultural interpretation of responses from the focus groups.
Northern Uganda: Female Victims Demand Justice
Institute for War and Peace Reporting
By Joe Wacha
August 17, 2007
Female victims of atrocities allegedly committed by rebels in northern Uganda are demanding justice – and also protection from possible retribution if they testify in court.
Women and girls who suffered rape, abduction and genital mutilation - are calling on the Ugandan government to press charges against commanders of the Lord’s Resistance Army, LRA.
In 2005, the International Criminal Court, ICC, in The Hague issued arrest warrants for LRA leader Joseph Kony, his deputy Vincent Otti and commanders Okot Odhiambo, Raska Lukwiya, and Dominic Ongwen. Lukwiya was killed in fighting last year. The others still stand accused of crimes against humanity and war crimes in the long-running conflict.
During the conflict, the Acholi people of northern Uganda have been targeted by the LRA in violence that began in 1986 and has cost some 100,000 lives, displaced 1.7 million people, and resulted in countless numbers of people mutilated, raped or enlisted as child soldiers.
Although it was President Yoweri Museveni who in 2003 asked the ICC to come and investigate the situation in northern Uganda, he has subsequently shifted ground and indicated that he would ask the world court to drop charges if the LRA concluded a peace deal in the ongoing negotiations. His government has indicated that justice could be served instead by a combination of prosecutions under the country’s own judicial system and the use of traditional tribal justice mechanisms designed to secure reconciliation.
The views of female victims were gathered at a recent series of consultative meetings held by local members of Uganda’s parliament in the northern districts of Gulu, Lira and Soroti.
Victims told members of the Northern Uganda Women's Parliamentary Association that they were also seeking legal protection should the accused and their allies intimidate them in order to try to stop them testifying and revealing incriminating evidence.
“The women and the girls are scared that some of the accused persons might at a later date follow and want to hurt them for possibly giving evidence that might cause their conviction,” said Betty Aol, member of parliament for Gulu district.
At the same time, most speakers at the meetings said the children forcibly enlisted as rebel combatants should be forgiven for crimes they had committed.
Some of the victims attending the consultative meetings demanded financial compensation for the trauma they have experienced. Others said the government should do more to develop social systems and infrastructure in communities affected by the war.
Aol said there was much to do to help these communities recover. “It will be necessary for the government to promote social development in some areas by building infrastructure, like the school for war-affected children at Laroo division in Gulu municipality."
The Laroo school is home to 700 pupils who were abducted and forced to serve as soldiers in the conflict. Many were as young as eight years old when they were abducted.
Aol admitted that time pressures meant the consultation process by northern members of parliament had not been as wide-ranging or thorough as it might have been.
“When we started the opinion-seeking exercise - targeting the victims, representatives of child and women-friendly organisations, as well as local, religious and traditional leaders - we wanted to finish it in time for the resumption of the talks in Juba,” she said. “As a result, we have not been able to have a more focused consultation with many people at the grassroots level.”
The LRA and the Ugandan government began peace negotiations a year ago in Juba, the capital of South Sudan, and declared a ceasefire. The latest round was due to take place on July 30, but the LRA failed to raise enough money to fund the costs of its delegates.
The parliamentarians present at the meetings expressed concern that difficulties in gathering reliable evidence could hinder possible trials of combatants accused of war crimes, either within Uganda’s domestic judicial system or at the ICC.
Betty Amongi, the member of parliament for Apac District and coordinator of the Northern Uganda Women's Parliamentary Association, said that the time that has elapsed since the crimes were committed would make it harder to produce evidence.
“Some of these crimes were committed in the Nineties, and to prove crimes like rape and defilement a doctor would need to medically examine the victim and confirm that there was penetration, as well as determining the age of the victim,” she said.
Amongi said that in some cases, it was unclear whether rebels or government forces were responsible for atrocities.
The victims who attended the meetings said that because of the nature of the crimes involved, they would want female lawyers to handle their cases if LRA leaders ever came to trial.
“These are horrible things you would rather keep to yourself than mention it to a man who could be your son,” said Sylvia Akello, a local councillor in Lira District.
.
Many of the women said they would sooner not pursue charges than suffer the humiliation of recounting their ordeals to male lawyers.
Most said they had resigned themselves to their fate and hoped that their distressing memories would eventually fade over time.
“It is more than ten years now since I was abducted and defiled at the age of 11," said one woman, who kept pausing as she spoke as if to summon up the strength to carry on.
"Although I had thought I could never live with the fact for even a day, it's now several years since my release [from LRA captivity] - but every time I think about it, I just keep wishing I could never again have seen the light that day.”
The female parliamentarians hope that a report produced from these discussions will be included in the agenda of the Juba peace talks.
[back to contents]
International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY)
Official Website of the ICTY
Ukraine agrees to enforce sentences imposed by UN war crimes tribunal
UN News Centre
August 7, 2007
Ukraine today became the 12th European country to agree to enforce a sentence imposed by the United Nations war crimes tribunal that was set up to deal with the worst crimes committed during the Balkan wars in the 1990s.
Anyone convicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and given a jail term can now serve that sentence in a Ukrainian prison after an agreement was signed in The Hague, where the Tribunal is based.
Aside from Ukraine, Belgium, the United Kingdom, Italy, Finland, Norway, Sweden, Austria, France, Spain, Denmark and Germany have already entered into similar agreements with the ICTY.
In a press statement issued in The Hague, the ICTY thanked Ukraine and the other UN Member States that have struck these enforcement of sentences agreements.
General Wants to Await War Crimes Trial at Home
Javno, Reuters
August 8, 2007
Croatian war crimes suspect Ante Gotovina has asked the U.N. tribunal to let him await trial under house arrest at his home.
Croatian war crimes suspect Ante Gotovina has asked the U.N. tribunal to let him await trial under house arrest at his home, backed by government security guarantees, a court document showed on Wednesday.
"I hereby request that the tribunal allow me to await trial in this matter at my home in Pakostane, Croatia," Gotovina said in a filing to the U.N. tribunal for the former Yugoslavia that was released by the court.
Gotovina has been held in The Hague, where the tribunal sits, since his December 2005 arrest on Spain's Canary Islands.
The Croatian government guaranteed that Gotovina would always be available to appear before the court and would not pose a danger to anyone, Croatian Prime Minister Ivo Sanader said in the filing.
An electronic monitoring system could track Gotovina's whereabouts and would immediately alert the authorities to any violation, Gotovina's lawyer Luka Misetic said in the filing.
Tribunal officials were not immediately available to comment, but local media in Croatia said the court was not expected to rule on the matter for at least a month.
General Gotovina spent four years on the run before being arrested. His capture hastened Croatia's path towards membership of the European Union.
He and two other commanders, Ivan Cermak and Mladen Markac, are accused of war crimes against Serb civilians in summer 1995. Cermak and Markac are awaiting trial at home, under restrictions.
Srebrenica genocide suspect starts hunger strike
Reuters
August 9, 2007
SARAJEVO (Reuters) - A Bosnian Serb suspect in the 1995 Srebrenica massacre failed to appear before the Bosnian war crimes court to enter a plea on Thursday because he has started a hunger strike.
Ex-army captain Milorad Trbic was indicted by the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague of genocide, crimes against humanity and violations of laws or customs of war. He was transferred for trial in Bosnia in June.
"The Court was informed that the accused started a hunger strike on August 6, 2007. The Court recorded a plea of not guilty in accordance with the law," a statement from the court said.
As deputy security chief of the Zvornik Brigade of the Serb Republic army, Trbic is held responsible for the management of the military police company during the events in Srebrenica in July 1995, the statement said.
Some 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys were killed in the Srebrenica massacre after Bosnian Serb forces captured the enclave in July 1995 in what is regarded as Europe's worst atrocity since World War Two.
"The accused knowingly participated in the forcible transfer of the Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim) population from the Srebrenica enclave, as well as in the summary executions and burial of able-bodied Bosniak men from Srebrenica," the court said.
On July 14, Trbic and other members of the Zvornik brigade military police company shot and killed outside the Grbavci school up to 20 Muslims who had been detained inside the school's gym, the court's indictment said.
Trbic is the 10th accused indicted by the tribunal who has been transferred for trial in Bosnia. The tribunal wants to focus on major suspects and speed up remaining hearings on crimes in the former Yugoslavia before it closes down in 2010.
Tolimir, Luki? want to defend themselves
B92, SENSE
August 11, 2007
THE HAGUE -- Hague indictees Zdravko Tolimir and Milan Luki? told the tribunal last week they wish to represent themselves.
After the Registry told Tolimir that Belgrade attorney Nebojša Mrki? did not meet the requirements for appointment as his lead counsel, Tolimir said he wished to defend himself.
First Vojislav Šešelj was allowed last year to represent himself, followed by a decision granting Mom?ilo Krajšnik the same right in the appellate proceedings.
Now, Tolimir, charged with the Srebrenica genocide, and Luki?, charged with atrocities against Bosniak civilians in Višegrad in 1992, seek the same decision from the court.
Tolimir's motion was hand-written. Earlier, he had made the demand to have all the documents related to his case on paper and in the Serbian.
Luki? also filed a hand-written motion to the Trial Chamber, notifying it that he would no longer be represented by his counsel Alan Yatvin.
He did not provide any reasons. “The Registry has been notified that discussions are underway about the appointment of new counsel, or I will defend myself,” Luki? wrote.
In response to his letter, the Registry says that it is “not in a position” to fire Yatvin since Luki? did not provide any reasons for his decision.
The Registry added that they have not been notified about any purported talks about the appointment of new counsel for Luki?.
Miloševi?'s "private solution" for Kosovo
B92, SENSE
August 16, 2007
THE HAGUE -- The trial of former Serbian President Milan Milutinovi?, part of the Kosovo Six process, continued at the Hague.
At the end of his testimony as Milutinovi?'s defense witness, Ratko Markovi? explained why the Serbian delegation in Rambouillet sang until the wee hours, whether Miloševi? had his "private" opinion about Kosovo, and why the authorities never distanced themselves from then Deputy Prime Minister Vojislav Šešelj's threats that there would be no Albanians left in Kosovo if NATO were to intervene.
On the seventh and final day of his evidence, the prosecutor continued the cross-examination of former Serbian Deputy Prime Minister Ratko Markovi?.
The prosecutor tried to prove that the Serbian side had been seeking a military, not a peaceful solution for the Kosovo crisis. The prosecutor also alleges that the Rambouillet talks were run by Slobodan Miloševi? from Belgrade, not the 13-strong delegation led by Markovi?.
The prosecution went on to note that historian Marc Weller discussed the level of commitment of the Serbian delegation in Rambouillet in his book. Describing the talks, Weller states that most of the Serbian delegation—which included eight representatives of ethnic minorities in Kosovo—did nothing.
They behaved as if they were at a tea party. On one occasion, Weller notes, they sang and made noise until early in the morning, and the international mediators complained the next morning.
Markovi? says it is possible that some of the delegation members may have celebrated their birthday in the course of the lengthy talks, and they may have stayed up late.
They may have "sang a few songs because of the good mood." As he clarified, this was an incident, not a regular occurrence.
Only a few of the Serbian negotiators took active part in the talks, the prosecutor claims. Among them were Federal Deputy Prime Minister Nikola Šainovi? and Milan Milutinovi?, who would show up in Rambouillet from time to time, although he was not formally a member of the delegation.
The prosecutor claims that the two of them followed instructions from Belgrade. In proof of the allegation, the prosecutor notes that Šainovi? went to meet with Miloševi? in the middle of the talks. Markovi? says he doesn't know what Miloševi? and Šainovi? talked about, because the latter didn't have to report to him about who he talked to in Belgrade.
As for Miloševi?'s designs to obstruct the talks, the prosecutor argues it is proven by the testimony of Klaus Naumann, former chairman of the NATO Military Committee. Naumann says that in October 1998 Miloševi? told him, in the presence of Milutinovi? and Šainovi?, that in spring next year he would apply “the Drenica model” to solve the Kosovo problem. He would "gather all the Albanians in one place and kill them."
Markovi?'s reply is that he didn't hear Miloševi? make such statements publicly, and in his opinion, this was Miloševi?'s "private oppinion."
Vojislav Šešelj said something to that effect in early 1999. He was one of the five Serbian deputy prime ministers at the time; Markovi? was another. The prosecutor showed a video clip in which Šešelj promises "there will be no Albanians in Kosovo" if NATO launches air strikes.
When asked why no one in the government distanced themselves from the statement, Markovi? said it had been a party rally where Šešelj did not speak as a cabinet member.
As indicated earlier, the next witness to be called by Milan Milutinovi?'s defense will be former Serbian energy minister and Serbian government commissioner for Kosovo Života ?osi?. He will be followed by Jovan Koji?, former official in Milutinovi?'s cabinet.
Koštunica adviser: Time to return to Kosovo
B92, Beta
17 August 2007
BELGRADE, GNJILANE -- An adviser to the prime minister says the time has come for a number of Serbian troops to return to Kosovo.
Aleksandar Simi? told reporters Friday that UN Resolution 1244, which guarantees Serbia's sovereignty, also provides for the possibility of redeployment of a number of Serbian police and soldiers to the province.
"We believe the time is right for this," he said, echoing a statement made Wednesday by one of the Kosovo Serb leaders, Marko Jakši?.
According to Simi?, "the Albanian separatist leaders in Kosovo have demonstrated they so not in fact wish to negotiate" in the coming renewed status talks between Belgrade and Priština.
"This is yet further evidence that the only force that can make the Kosovo Albanians negotiate is the United States. If that country were to give up its bid to create a NATO state in the Balkans, real negotiations would be possible, producing a compromise, sorely needed for the Balkan and European stability," Simi? said.
Asked whether repeated claims made by state officials from Koštunica's Democratic Party of Serbia (DSS), accusing NATO of a conspiracy to set up its own state in the region, meant that Serbia had given up on its previous policy of becoming a NATO member, he said the government "did not discuss this issue."
"This was not discussed in cabinet meetings since this is not an issue for the government. The government has adopted its Partnership for Peace presentation document. This [Partnership for Peace] is an organization that gathers countries such as Russia, Belarus and others," Simi? said, adding only that "this was the direction taken by Serbia's defense and foreign policy."
The Alliance reacted Thursday to a week-long series of public accusations against it coming from Belgrade, by denying the U.S. planned to turn Kosovo into a "NATO state", Reuters reported.
"NATO has no intention of forming a state in Kosovo since it is here in a peacekeeping mission," Brigadier General Douglas Earhart told a news conference in the east Kosovo town of Gnjilane.
"The United Nations, European Union and United States are all involved in the process to decide Kosovo's status," the general said.
[back to contents]
The Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina, War Crimes Chamber
Official Website
War Victims Seek Compensation
BIRN Justice Report
By Erna Mackic in Sarajevo
August 10, 2007
Those who suffered during the Bosnian war are looking for recompense – but authorities across the region are yet to draw up proper plans for meeting their demands.
Back in 2003, a court in the Republika Srpska ordered the entity authorities to pay 4,500 KM to one Zijahudin Smajlovic as compensation for suffering that he endured during the Bosnian war in the early 1990s. Though the sum has still not been paid, the case marked an important landmark.
Today, tens of thousands of similar claims are thought to have been planned against Bosnia’s two sub-state entities, the Republika Srpska and the Federation, by those who suffered during the war there. And the number of such lawsuits that are actually being filed is beginning to gather momentum. What is more, the issue looks set to get more complex as war victims launch similar suits against state-level authorities across the region.
So far, the entity and state authorities appear to lack any kind of real strategy for dealing with this new phenomenon.
DETENTION CAMPS, ARMIES AND VICTIMS
Although there is no official record of the number of detention facilities that existed in Bosnia and Herzegovina during the 1992-1995 conflict there, the figure is thought to stand at around 500. They were operated by four armed factions – the Army of BiH (AbiH), the Army of the Republika Srpska (VRS), the Croatian Defence Council (HVO) and the Army of the Autonomous Region of Western Bosnia. Besides these sites in BiH itself, Bosnians were also detained in camps in neighboring states.
Whilst some detention facilities were set aside for prisoners of war, deserters and other military detainees, most of the people held in custody were civilians. A great number endured inhumane conditions and abuse, and many still suffer the physical and mental consequences today.
The Association of Detainees of BiH estimates that some 54,000 compensation claims have already been prepared by former inmates across the country. Most will be filed against Republika Srpska, but there could also be a considerable number of suits – potentially around 20,000 – against the Federation, according to the organization’s deputy president Sacir Srebrenica.
In a recent statement to the media, the president of the Association of Detainees from Mostar, Ramiz Tiro, said he expects some 5,000 compensation lawsuits to be filed against the Federation by people from Herzegovina alone – mainly former inmates of the Heliodrom, Dretelj and Vojno detention camps. Josip Sladic, who represents war victims before courts in BiH and Croatia, says cases have so far been filed against the Federation in the municipalities of Mostar, Sarajevo and Bihac.
In some instances, former detainees are grouping together to launch mass lawsuits. In one particularly large case, the Association of Civilian War Victims of the Sarajevo Canton recently filed a suit against the Republika Srpska, demanding “moral satisfaction” and financial compensation for 700 people who were injured or lost family members during the war.
The president of the Sarajevo victims’ association, Sanida Karovic, told Justice Report that it is estimated that there are currently some 4,000 people in the Sarajevo canton who might be eligible for compensation for wartime suffering. In one set of claims filed jointly by the Association of Detainees of BiH against the Republika Srpska authorities on behalf of former wartime inmates, 600 KM was demanded in compensation for each day that each person spent in custody. Further recompense is being sought for those who suffered physical injury, the amount depending on the nature of the harm done to them. For claimants who lost family members during the war, 70,000 KM is sought in compensation.
SUITS AGAINST STATES
Whilst most of the suits filed so far have been against the entity-level authorities of the Republika Srpska and the Federation, a relatively new development is the increasing number of people who are either planning to launch cases or have done so already against the state authorities in Bosnia and other countries that were involved in the Balkan conflicts of the early 1990s.
A further milestone was witnessed in April this year when the Montenegrin state arrived at a private settlement with a number of Bosniaks who were demanding recompense for a 1992 incident in which the Montenegrin authorities arrested a group of men on their territory and handed them over to Serb troops in BiH. They remain missing to this day. The case had dragged on for years, with Montenegro facing pressure from the international and regional human rights communities.
The Montenegrin authorities could face further suits. Muhamed Taslidza, who was held in a camp at Morninje in Montenegro, has used the media to invite other former inmates of that facility to submit documentation by August 10 in order to launch a joint case. So far, 86 have registered.
In the wake of the April decision, the Belgrade-based Humanitarian Law Fund (HLF) is also pursuing a compensation suit against Serbia on behalf of two individuals who say they were detained and abused there after fleeing the Srebrenica enclave in eastern Bosnia when it fell to Bosnian Serb troops in July 1995. The HFL says Nusret Kulovac and Sakib Rizvic were among 850 refugees from Srebrenica and Zepa who were seized while trying to shelter in the Serbian municipalities of Sljivovica and Mitrovo Polje. They are said to have subsequently been subjected to beatings, interrogations, a lack of food and poor hygienic conditions whilst in detention.
Beyond this one case, the HLF has invited the Serbian government to establish a broader formal program of reparations for suffering inflicted in the early 1990s by its police and military.
Justice Report also spoke to one man, Salko Cedic, who has plans to sue the Croatian government for compensation. He says he was arrested in a hotel in Makarska in 1992 whilst visiting family in Croatia and was deported to Herzegovina, where he was detained for over five months in the Gabela camp.
NO PLANS IN PLACE
None of the various authorities facing lawsuits have yet drawn up a real plan for dealing with the issue of compensation, despite the precedents set by the Montenegro and Republika Srpska cases, as well as international agreements which appear to put claimants in a strong position.
In 1985, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a Declaration on the Basic Principles of Justice and Power Abuse, which prompts member countries to "pay for compensation of damage to victims... and, if appropriate, to their family members" in instances in which recompense cannot be made by individual perpetrators of abuses. The same declaration recommends that states establish "national funds for payment of compensation to victims", something which is yet to occur in BiH, Serbia, Croatia and Montenegro.
Looking for an answer as to where compensation payments will come from, representatives of the Association of Detainees of BiH recently attended a meeting with the prime minister of the RS, Milorad Dodik. "Dodik said he did not have any objection to us filing the complaints and that he supported the requests of former detainees,” Srebrenica told Justice Report. “However, materialisation of these requests is problematic, as we are talking about large amounts of money. He [Dodik] said that not even some stable states would be able to pay this, let alone an entity.” Srebrenica agrees with detainees that, even where courts decide in favor of claimants, compensation payments could take a long time. Smajlovic’s case against the RS, in which the money in question is yet to change hands several years down the line, is not an encouraging precedent.
Amela Mulabdic, a spokesperson for the Federation’s finance ministry, told Justice Report that the Federation has not set aside any resources in this year’s budget to cover compensation payments. But Saliha Dzuderija, head of the Human Rights Department of BiH’s state-level Ministry of Human Rights and Refugees, says the issue of compensation payments must be solved. "There is a possibility that the state will pass laws and make agreements with the victims concerning the compensations,” Dzurderija told Justice Report. But she added that, “The process is very slow and there is no agreement concerning the necessary legal regulations.” Dzuderija went on to say that the Ministry of Human Rights and Refugees is preparing a Law on Torture Victims and Civilian Victims of War, which would address some of the issues involved. But this process, she said, faces “a range of problems, including the political ones”.
Biased Work
Court of BiH
August 13, 2007
The Court of BiH is concerned with continuous and unsubstantiated attacks by politicians. The Court perceives the comments made by Mr. Milorad Dodik, the President of the RS Government, which were published in the media on 10 and 11 August 2007, as an attempt to put pressure upon the Court. Further, the Court strongly denies all accusations of partiality, including those related to the selection of defendants.
Even though the Court does not maintain statistics regarding the ethnic background of defendants, a simple review of verdicts rendered in war crimes and organized crime cases adjudicated before the Court, which are public and available to all citizens (among other sources, on the web page of the Court), reveals that Mr. Dodik’s allegations regarding the number of verdicts and alleged failure to prosecute members of certain ethnicities are incorrect.
The Court acts upon the Indictments filed by the Prosecutor’s Office of Bosnia and Herzegovina and has no control over the instigation and conduct of criminal investigations. It cannot influence decisions regarding the selection of suspects. An impartial and objective decision about any investigation or indictment should be made by the competent prosecutor, not politicians using the media to exert pressure on the Court. Otherwise, the Court may receive indictments, which have been filed without ample evidence. Verdicts of acquittal upon such indictments would incur immense costs on the state budget, thus undermining public confidence in the work of relevant prosecution bodies.
Attacks by politicians with unsubstantiated accusations regarding selective partiality, which are presented without any basic objective analysis of the work of justice sector, are obviously an attempt to influence the work of impartial state judicial bodies. This rhetoric instills unjustified distrust and fear in the public, thus undermining the function of the entire justice system. Politicians in Bosnia and Herzegovina should not concern themselves with criminal proceedings, but rather insist on creating and maintaining the prerequisites for fair and efficient work of all the judiciary institutions, which are responsible to the citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina . Unfortunately, the Court has already been subjected to unsubstantiated accusations of partiality on several occasions, mostly by politicians. This institution has clearly shown in its work that all suspects and all defendants are equal before the law, that no one will be deprived of the right to a fair trial and that no one may be privileged on the grounds of his/her ethnic or other affiliations. These are the principles from which this institution will not deviate, regardless of circumstances or any variety of pressure.
The Court has repeatedly denied requests for information regarding the ethnic background of defendants from both national and international officials or organizations. In the context of adjudicating individual cases, such information bears absolutely no importance. The Court maintains the position that all persons suspected of war crimes and other violations of humanitarian law, as well as organized and international crime, should be prosecuted and tried in accordance with legal rights, which cannot be prejudiced in any way by ethnic or other affiliations.
Final verdict handed down, sentencing Boban Šimšic to 14 years imprisonment for crimes against humanity
Court of BiH
August 14, 2007
Today, the Appellate Panel of Section I for War Crimes of the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina rendered its verdict, finding Boban Šimši? guilty of Crimes against humanity, and sentencing him to 14 years imprisonment.
In the pronouncement of the verdict, the Appellate Panel stated that the Accused had committed the said offence in the period between April and July 1992 in the Višegrad Municipality , as a member of the reserve police unit of the Ministry of Interior of Republika Srpska.
The pronounced verdict contains, inter alia, the following findings: On 25 July 1992, as a member of a group of around ten members of the Serb army and police, the Accused participated in the attack on the village of Velji Lug , Višegrad Municipality . Seven individuals were killed during this attack, while the houses and commercial buildings owned by Bosniak civilians were set on fire. On this occasion, many Bosniak civilians were taken away to, and illegally detained in, the Hasan Veletovac Elementary School in Višegrad.
In the second half of June 1992, as a guard securing several hundred detained Bosniak civilians in the Hasan Veletovac Elementary School , together with other members of the Serb army, police, and paramilitary formations, the Accused participated in killings, enforced disappearance, and torture of detainees. He also aided in the coercing of girls and young women to sexual intercourse.
On several occasions, the Accused took girls and younger women to other members of the Serb army who perpetrated multiple rapes, beatings and humiliation on them.
The pronounced verdict, inter alia, states that on one occasion the Accused enabled Milan Luki? and other members of the Serb army to enter the premises of the Hasan Veletovac Elementary School , where they took a Bosniak civilian from a room in which he was detained together with the other civilians. Milan Luki? then slaughtered this person, following which his head was thrown into the room between other detainees.
Boban Šimši? was inter alia acquitted of the count which alleged that, on an undetermined date in the second half of June 1992, he took five girls and five younger women from the room in which Bosniak civilians were detained in the Fire Station in Višegrad, moving them to another room where, together with two Serb soldiers, he beat them and took turns raping them.
The time the Accused has been held in custody commencing from 24 January 2005 will count towards the sentence.
[back to contents]
International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR)
Official Website of the ICTR
Witness 'Sorry' for Giving False Testimony
Allafrica.com - Rwanda News Agency/Agence Rwandaise d'Information (Kigali)
August 13, 2007
A witness who testified against former Rwandan minister of higher education, Mr. Jean de Dieu Kamuhanda has admitted that he lied at the International criminal tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), RNA reports.
The witness, known by the pseudonym GAA, however rejected on Friday the other five charges including contempt of the tribunal and attempt to commit acts punishable as contempt of the tribunal.
GAA admitted that he willingly gave the false testimony when he appeared before the Appeals Chamber in May 2005 in the case of Jean de Dieu Kamuhanda who appealed against his life sentence.
"I gave a false testimony. It is the only charge which I recognize. I asked for forgiveness, I continue to be sorry ", acknowledged Friday GAA, expressing himself in Kinyarwanda.
The case arises out of an investigation by the Office of the Prosecutor on the direction of the Appeals Chamber. In March, the Prosecutor issued the 6 count indictment against GAA.
"I did not have the means to commit these acts", said GAA, upright behind the curtains, for his initial appearance, before Judge Dennis Byron, President of the ICTR. The Rwandan is represented by Mr. C. J. Maruma - a tribunal duty counsel.
GAA had explained to the appeal judges in the Kamuhanda case that a woman, also a witness in that trial and designated by the code name GEK, had involved him in a smear campaign against Kamuhanda, which the woman, who also testified in appeal, denied.
The tribunal will have to examine the partial admission and hold a trial relative to the rejected charges.
Following these proceedings, the appeal chamber ordered an investigation into the matter. This is the Tribunal's first prosecution for contempt of court and for giving false testimony during its proceedings.
According to the rules of procedure and evidence of the ICTR, false testimony under solemn declaration is liable to a fine not exceeding 10 000 US dollars or to a maximum sentence of 5 years in prison or both.
GAA was arrested in Kigali on July 30 2007 and transferred to the Tribunal on August 1.
The trial judge immediately ordered the Registrar to set a date for court to examine the guilty plea and to start the trial on the 5 counts to which the accused pled not guilty.
Death Penalty Goes As Country Seeks Justice
Allafrica.com - East African (Nairobi)
By Aimable Twahirwa
August 14, 2007
Rwanda has moved swiftly to capitalise on the international approval it received for its recent abolition of the death penalty, and signalled that it will now actively seek the extradition of suspects in the 1994 genocide known to be hiding abroad and evading justice.
"We have already signed extradition agreements with many countries in Africa, Europe and in North America. We are hoping that those countries will co-operate to bring to trial all genocide suspects, or to extradite their cases before Rwandan justice," Justice Minister Tharcisse Karugarama said. "If there are other nations that can help, we would praise this."
Mr Karugarama's statement, coming just a week after the formal abolition of the death penalty on July 25, will go some way towards appeasing genocide victims who are unhappy that perpetrators of the "ultimate crime" will escape death by firing squad.
Some 44,204 Rwandans accused of participating in the genocide are living abroad, according to an institutional judicial report published in May.
The need for Rwanda to continue the quest for justice was underlined by United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour, who issued one of the first and warmest tributes to Rwanda's decision to abolish the death penalty.
The thirst for justice remained "far from quenched," she acknowledged, adding: "With the promulgation of the law banning the death penalty, Rwanda simultaneously takes an important step forward in ensuring respect for the right to life and makes further progress in bringing to justice those responsible for the heinous crimes of the 1994 genocide."
For most countries, the abolition of the death penalty in Rwanda was a prerequisite for allowing extradition of genocide suspects to the East African nation. Rwanda's last executions of those convicted for their role in the genocide - in which more than 800,000 minority Tutsis and moderate Hutus were murdered by Hutu extremists - took place in 1998. Twenty-two persons found guilty of helping to plan the killings were publicly shot.
Since then, all those convicted of participating in the genocide have been sitting on death row awaiting execution. The abolition of the death penalty means they - and people sentenced to death for other crimes - will now be spared and serve out life imprisonment terms. In all, about 650 people will avoid capital punishment.
In 1996, the UN Security Council set up the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) to "contribute to the process of national reconciliation" and try some of the most serious cases of genocide.
The tribunal, which will have completed trials of some 70 people by the end of next year, will now be able to wind up its work and transfer 17 cases to the Rwandan justice system, ICTR prosecutor Hassan Babacar Jallow said in Kigali.
Eighteen people indicted by the tribunal are still on the run.
Rwanda can expect police forces around the globe to co-operate in tracking down these and other suspects. "It is our duty as police officers to do everything in our power to identify and apprehend these fugitives who are wanted in connection with such serious crimes," the president of Interpol, Jackie Selebi, said at its 19th African Regional Conference in Tanzania last month. Interpol has 186 member countries.
Rwandan community groups abroad are also likely to campaign vigorously for extradition proceedings to be brought against genocide suspects in their midst.
Days after the news of abolition, the Rwandan community in Canada led the way by calling for the extradition of Leon Mugesera, a former Hutu extremist who had been allowed to stay in Canada while Rwanda's death penalty was in place.
Despite the official assurances that Rwanda will now seek a return of these people, many of those who survived the genocide were critical of the death penalty ban.
"This is only going to encourage those bent on our extermination," said Gisele Dusabe. "This is a humiliation. I lost my entire family and up to today have received no compensation."
But Paul Kazoba, a Tutsi who fled to Uganda, expressed a different view. "We need to rebuild our nation," he said. "True reconciliation is only possible if one refrains from retaliatory killing."
The Gacaca courts were first set up in 2001, at a time when more than 100,000 Rwandans were waiting in jails to be tried for crimes connected with the genocide.
They have settled many cases after accepting expressions of contrition, and reparations.
[back to contents]
Iraqi High Tribunal
Official Website of the Iraqi High Tribunal
Grotian Moment: The Saddam Hussein Trial Blog
Saddam's cousin facing new trial in Iraq
KurdishMedia
August 13, 2007
Saddam Hussein's cousin known as "Chemical Ali" and 14 others will next week face charges over the brutal crushing of a Shi'ite uprising after the 1991 Gulf War.
It will be Iraq's third trial against former regime officials.
Prosecutor Jaafar al-Moussawi said the trial would begin on August 21 and Ali Hassan al-Majid, Saddam's cousin and the former defence minister, will be among the defendants while he awaits a decision on his death sentence appeal in a separate case.
After Saddam's defeat in the 1991 Gulf War, Shi'ites in the south and Kurds in the north launched uprisings and seized control of 14 of the country's 18 provinces. US troops created a safe haven for the Kurds in three northern provinces, preventing Saddam from attacking.
But the late dictator's troops marched into the predominantly Shi'ite south and crushed the uprising, killing tens of thousands of people.
The charges include genocide, mass murder and crimes against humanity, and the defendants will face a possible death sentence if convicted, al-Moussawi said.
It will be the third trial of former regime officials after the Dujail case, in which Saddam was hanged for the 1982 killings of 148 Shi'ites, and the trial of those accused of killing of more than 100,000 Kurds in a 1980s military campaign.
Al-Majid, who gained the nickname "Chemical Ali" after chemical attacks on Kurdish towns during the so-called Anfal campaign, was sentenced to death in that case but will stand trial pending his appeal, al-Moussawi said.
Two others sentenced to death for the Kurdish killings - Sultan Hashim Ahmad al-Tai, the former defence minister who led the Iraqi delegation at the cease-fire talks that ended the 1991 Gulf War, and Hussein Rashid Mohammed, a former deputy director of operations for the Iraqi armed forces - also will face trial in the latest case, he said.
Another high-profile defendant will be Saddam's trusted personal secretary and bodyguard Abed Hameed Hmoud, al-Moussawi said.
The chief judge will be Mohammed Oreibi al-Khalifa, who also presided over the Anfal trial, and the chief prosecutor will be Mahdi Abdul-Amir. Information about the defence was not immediately available.
Officials in Saddam's regime still face trials for their alleged role in other crimes. Those crimes include the slaying of members of political and religious parties, the 1990 invasion of Kuwait, the forced emigration of thousands of Shi'ite Kurds from northern Iraq into Iran, the execution of 8,000 members of the Kurdish Barzani tribe, and the destruction of the marshes in southern Iraq.
Iraq sets date for third Saddam-era trial
Yahoo News
August 13, 2007
BAGHDAD (AFP) - The Iraqi High Tribunal is this month set to open a third trial into alleged crimes committed under Saddam Hussein, this time over the suppression of a Shiite uprising, a US official said Monday.
The trial is scheduled to open on August 21, Armand Cucciniello, a spokesman at the US embassy, told AFP.
Fifteen defendants will go on trial, including Ali Hassan al-Majid, who is widely known as Chemical Ali and sentenced to death two months ago for his role in the slaughter of ethnic Kurds, Cucciniello said.
In 1991, Shiites across southern Iraq rose up against the former Baghdad regime at the encouragement of victorious US-led coalition forces, who defeated Iraq in the Gulf War after Saddam invaded Kuwait.
Tens of thousands were subsequently massacred in brutal crackdowns around the holy Shiite cities of Najaf and Karbala, as in the Hilla and Basra regions.
On June 24, the same Iraqi court condemned Chemical Ali and two other defendants to death by hanging for genocide over the systematic slaughter of ethnic Kurds in 1988.
A nine-member appeals court is currently reviewing the sentence and is expected to give its decision soon. If the appeals panel certifies the sentence, Majid will have to be executed within 30 days under Iraqi law.
In that case, all charges against him would be dropped in connection to the Shiite uprising case.
Saddam, removed from power by the US-led invasion in 2003, was executed on December 30 for crimes against humanity in a separate case and charges against him over the slaughter of ethnic Kurds were dropped.
Iraq to indict Iran-banned MKO
Press TV
August 15, 2007
Iraq has concluded to prosecute 150 members and leaders of the anti-Iran banned opposition group Mujahedin Khalq Organization (MKO).
The Public Prosecutor of the Iraqi High Tribunal, Jaafar al-Mousawi, stated that investigations revealed Tuesday that MKO members have played a leading role in the killings of Iraqi civilians.
Mousawi further commented that the terrorist group had supported Saddam Hussein's Baath regime, aiding in the suppression of the Iraqi people's uprising in 1991 and the torture and massacre of innocent people in the northern and southern regions of the country.
According to Mehr news agency, the prosecutor stressed the tribunal's attempts to bring leaders of the banned group Massoud Rajavi and Maryam Rajavi to justice, adding the Iraqi government has taken steps to even obtain the extradition of MKO criminals whom are abroad.
Al-Mousawi's remarks came as the US had given asylum to the banned coalition in Iraq and provided training to MKO terrorists.
The terrorist group has carried out countless violent actions against the Iranian people including the assassination of a president, a prime minister, 80 parliamentarians as well as thousands of defenseless Iranian civilians.
The MKO was in alliance with Saddam during the Baath regime and stationed headquarters on Iraqi soil to launch attacks on Iran.
U.S. to release last Iraqi prisoner of war, 20,000 prisoners still held in Iraq considered security threat, not POWs
Reuters via MSNBC
August 16, 2007
Thousands still in custody
U.S. and coalition forces once held thousands of enemy POWs in Iraq, many of them members of the Iraqi military or government. Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld put the number at more than 7,000 three weeks after the war began.
About 20 are still being held for criminal prosecution in the Iraqi High Tribunal, the court that convicted Hussein and condemned him to hang, said Sandra Hodgkinson, the Pentagon’s Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Detainee Affairs.
They are no longer classified as POWs because they are in the legal custody of the new Iraqi government, she said.
But thousands more captives are still being held in U.S. and coalition custody in Iraq under authority of United Nations Security Council resolutions allowing detention of those who pose a security threat, she said.
“The current estimate is somewhere in the vicinity of 20,000,”
Hodgkinson said recently.
They can continue to be held until the Security Council revokes that authority, she said.
[back to contents]
Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL) &
Liberian Truth and Reconciliation Commission
Offical Website of the Special Court for Sierra Leone
The Sierra Leone Court Monitoring Programme
Official Website of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Liberia
Court Guilty Verdicts Implicate militiamen Fighting Alongside Sierra Leone Government
Voice of America
By Howard Lesser
August 7, 2007
By a 2-1 verdict, Sierra Leone’s UN – backed war-crimes court has convicted two Civil Defense Forces (CDF) militia leaders of murder and other criminal acts committed during the country’s 11-year civil war. The split decision against Allieu Kondewa and Moinina Fofana exonerates them on charges of crimes against humanity, one of the most serious offenses facing former Liberian President Charles Taylor, who is also being tried by the Sierra Leone court. But Kondewa and Fofana, who fought alongside government forces against rebel groups during the conflict, could still face prison sentences of several decades. Attorney Elise Keppler of Human Rights Watch says that this is the court’s first punishment of Sierra Leone wartime figures for colluding actively with government forces during the struggle.
“It is significant to note that Fofana and Kondewa were convicted of war crimes, including for murder, for cruel treatment, pillage, and collective punishment. Kondewa was also convicted for recruitment of child combatants under the age of 15. And these cases and the convictions in them are quite significant in that they are the first judgments in trials involving accused from government-backed militias – government-backed forces in the Sierra Leonean conflict,” she noted.
Keppler points out that one unfortunate facet of last Thursday’s verdicts is that they failed to take note of the role played by another defendant accused of government complicity in the wartime misconduct. Former government minister Sam Hinga Norman was felled by a heart ailment in February, and died just days before a court ruling was to be delivered on his alleged offenses. As for Kondewa and Fofana, Keppler says the evidence against them may not have been sufficient to win convictions on all eight counts.
“It is worth pointing out that both Fofana and Kondewa were convicted of murder as a war crime, but not as a crime against humanity. There are different legal requirements in terms of crimes against humanity and in terms of it being either systematic or widespread. And perhaps the evidence on that was not sufficient,” she says.
In terms of a jail sentence for the convicted defendants, Elise Keppler says it is hard to predict. But she says that given the split verdict, and acquittal on some charges, the panel of judges will have a range of options.
“We’re going to need to look closely when the judges deliver their sentence. It is notable that in the recent sentencing of high-level members of the AFRC (Armed Forces Revolutionary Council), another militia, the sentences were, if I remember correctly, 45 and 50 years for the defendants. So it is quite possible that there could be very lengthy sentences. On the other hand, there was acquittal on some counts, and it would be sensible for the sentencing to be affected by that,” she notes.
Trial of Liberia’s Taylor delayed again
Reuters via The Washington Post
August 13, 2007
AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - The war crimes trial of former Liberian President Charles Taylor has been postponed again after his new defense team asked for a delay until January 2008 to prepare fully, a court spokesman said on Monday.
The trial was due to resume on August 20, but the court will now meet then to decide how to proceed and judges are expected to set a new date for the case to continue, the spokesman added in a statement.
Taylor, accused of instigating murder, rape and mutilation in a quest for diamonds during the West African country's civil war, boycotted the opening of his trial in June in a dispute over the resources allocated his defense.
Lengthy legal wrangling ensued and more funds were eventually made available to Taylor. A new defense team was appointed last month.
The Special Court for Sierra Leone was set up with United Nations backing to try some of those deemed most culpable for crimes against humanity in the country's 1991-2002 war.
Drugged up rebels and militia fighters, often only children themselves, killed, raped and maimed men, women and children.
Taylor's trial is being held in The Hague because of fears it could spur instability if held in Freetown, Sierra Leone. On Saturday, the country held its first elections since the departure of U.N. peacekeepers two years ago.
Taylor lawyer wants travel ban on Liberians lifted
Reuters
By Alphonso Toweh
August 16, 2007
MONROVIA (Reuters) - Former Liberian President Charles Taylor's defence lawyer has called for the lifting of a U.N. travel ban on Taylor's former associates so they could serve as witnesses in his war crimes trial.
Once one of Africa's most feared warlords, Taylor is on trial by a U.N.-backed court in The Hague accused of instigating murder, rape and mutilation by backing rebels during a decade of civil war in neighbouring Sierra Leone.
The United Nations imposed travel bans in 2003 against members of his administration to prevent them from undermining a transition to democracy in Liberia after he fled the country at the end of its own, parallel civil war.
"We have come here to see whether we can get witnesses and proof that will be used in the interest of Mr. Taylor," Taylor's lawyer, Courtenay Griffiths, told reporters in Liberia's capital Monrovia late on Wednesday.
"There is a climate of fear where those sympathetic to Mr. Taylor are afraid to speak out in case they too are targeted for sanctions. But ordinary Liberians should not be intimated by these measures," he said.
Griffiths, who was appointed as Taylor's new lawyer last month, has urged the court in The Hague to again delay proceedings which have already been repeatedly postponed.
Taylor boycotted the opening of the trial in a dispute over the resources allocated to his defence, prompting judges to order the court to ensure Taylor had a full defence team by the end of July, ready to resume on August 20.
Griffiths said he had filed a motion with the Special Court for Sierra Leone, which is trying Taylor in a special sitting in The Hague, asking for the removal of the U.N. travel ban on certain Liberians, without specifying whom.
"Africans cannot afford to be mere spectators while a son of their soil, Liberia's democratically elected president, is put on trial in a foreign land," he said.
"The Liberian people, who elected him by a landslide, have not been given any opportunity to have an input in the trial or to judge him through a democratic process."
Taylor, who triggered Liberia's civil war when he launched a rebellion from the Ivory Coast border in 1989, was elected president in 1997 during a lull in the brutal war, which killed an estimated 200,000 people.
Taylor's trial is being held in The Hague because of fears that his continued presence in West Africa, close to his former associates, could again destabilise the region.
Liberia: Taylor’s New Lawyer Visits
Allafrica.com - The Analyst (Monrovia)
By Jonathan Browne
August 16, 2007
The Lead Counsel of the new defense team appointed by the Special Court for Sierra Leone to represent exLiberian President Charles Taylor in The Hague, Courtenay Griffiths, (Queen Counsel), has called on the Liberian government to sponsor a trial monitoring group to witness the proceedings.
"When the US has a team in court every day following the trial, why is the Liberian government not showing any interest in what happens to Mr. Taylor?" asked Mr. Griffiths as he reminded Liberians that the trial is for them as "Taylor is still a Liberian citizen".
Mr. Griffiths, who is visiting Liberia for the first time following his appointment in July, made the call on Wednesday in Monrovia at a press conference held at the Mamba Point Hotel.
"The eyes of the world will be on Liberia during this trial; this trial must be accessible to all Liberians", he stressed.
"The Liberian government should make sure the average man or women on the street can follow the proceedings by means of provided television coverage in public spaces in the capital".
Members of his delegation to Monrovia include Mr. Morris Anyah and Mr. Roger Sathotha, and former Liberian Justice Minister, Cllr. Laveli Supuwood. The delegation is expected to visit Sierra Leone before returning to The Hague.
It remains to be seen what the Liberian government's response to the defense team leader of former President Taylor. The former president is said to still have a lot of followers in Liberia besides ordinary Liberians, who may be interested in following the trial.
It can be recalled that the last appearance in court in The Hague by Mr. Taylor in June was widely discussed at various quarters in Monrovia including university and school campuses, markets and work places as well as by ordinary people.
Mr. Taylor, who is currently in detention in the Hagues, has already pleaded "not guilty" before the Special Court on all counts of an 11-count indictment including war crimes and crimes against humanity for allegedly amongst those bearing the greater responsibility for atrocities committed in the neighboring country of Sierra Leone.
It is further alleged that Taylor supported through the provision of ammunitions and other technical supports to the key rebel group commonly refereed to as the Revolutionary United Front (RUF).
The trial had been scheduled for 20 August, but the prosecution sustained a motion for postponement filed by the defense counsel to allow them ample time for preparation. Mr. Taylor's lawyers recently requested the court to extend the trial to 7 January, 2008.
To the proposed action forwarded to the Special Court, the prosecution flatly rejected the motion on grounds that the duration of the delay is a matter solely within the discretion of the trial chamber, with due regard to the detainee's rights to a fair trial.
The prosecution has supported a call by the defense for the rearrangement of a new date in September to commence the trial.
The lead counsel further raised concerns that the UN travel ban coupled with international pressure on the Government to implement assets freeze as requested by the Security Council, is having a "chilling effect" on witnesses in Liberia, who purposefully want to talk to the defense team.
"There is a climate of fear where those sympathetic to Mr. Taylor are afraid to speak out as a precautionary move to safeguard themselves from sanctions", he noted.
However, the United Nations has guaranteed that it would relax the travel ban of any former official who may wish to testify before the court to enable that person to go to The Hague and do so.
Other members of the new defense team, headed by Mr. Griffiths, a Jamaican-born British trained lawyer, include Co-Counsel Andrew Cayley and Terry Munyard, both of whom are also educated in Britain.
The Presiding Judge of the Special Court, Ugandan lawyer Julia Sebutinde, appointed the Defense Counsel after Mr. Taylor sacked his first lawyer, Karim Kahn in June this year, saying he will defend himself.
The lead counsel, Griffiths, is a graduate of the London School of Economics with lot of experience in criminal law.
Ki-moon wants less peacekeepers in Liberia
Independent Online South Africa
By Evelyn Leopold
August 17, 2007
New York - UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon recommended on Thursday the more than 14 000 peacekeepers in Liberia be reduced by about 5 000 over the next three years starting in October.
But Ban said it was "too early to determine" when to withdraw the entire peacekeeping force, which would depend on the state of the domestic police and army in the West African nation, which has been beset by years of large-scale corruption and warfare that spilled into the region.
He said the current mandate of the force should be extended for a year.
"The important national elections due to be held in Liberia in October 2011 would also need to be taken into account in making the final decision on the mission's withdrawal," Ban said in the report to the UN Security Council.
The first step in the drawdown would be to repatriate 2 450 troops, beginning in October and ending in September 2008. This would be followed by a three-month review period to assess the overall stability of the force.
[back to contents]
United States
U.S. Supreme Court refuses to block Guantanamo Bay detainee's transfer to Algeria
Associated Press via International Herald Tribune
August 10, 2007
WASHINGTON: The Supreme Court said Friday it would not prevent the U.S. from transferring an Algerian army veteran from Guantanamo Bay to his home country.
Ahmed Bel Bacha, who has been held at Guantanamo for five years, has argued he would be tortured if turned over to Algerian officials. One of at least two dozen detainees who have expressed fear of abuse if sent home, Bel Bacha asked the court not to let the U.S. send him back to Algeria.
In a one-sentence order, the Supreme Court denied his request.
Bel Bacha's attorneys have said they believe the U.S. will soon repatriate Bel Bacha and six other Algerians. They said he has been unfairly branded an international terrorist and would rather stay at Guantanamo Bay if Algeria is his only option.
Algeria's security forces have been accused of torturing suspects, the U.S. State Department noted in its 2006 report on human rights practices, citing international and local rights groups. Stuffing a rag into a suspect's mouth while forcing contaminated liquids into the stomach until the person vomited was the preferred method because it left no traces of assault, the report said.
The United States holds about 360 men at Guantanamo on suspicion of terrorism or links to al-Qaida or the Taliban. About 80 detainees have been declared eligible for release, and the U.S. says it is in discussions with their home countries and third party nations to accept them.
U.S. military officials have said detainees are not released to countries where they likely will be tortured.
Bel Bacha, 37, lived briefly in Britain where he worked as a waiter before his capture in Pakistan.
The Pentagon alleges he received weapons training in Afghanistan and met Osama bin Laden twice, but authorities ultimately determined he did not pose a threat. A military review process found him eligible for transfer.
U.S. District Judge Rosemary Collyer, who first denied Bel Bacha's request last month, said the court lacks jurisdiction to hear cases from Guantanamo detainees that do not involve challenges to their confinement.
U.S. Marine adviser steps aside in Haditha case after criticizing investigating officer's report
Associated Press via International Herald Tribune
August 15, 2007
CAMP PENDLETON, California: A top Marine legal adviser, under fire for criticizing an investigator's report that ultimately led to the freeing of a Marine charged in the killing of 24 Iraqi civilians in Haditha, has stepped aside in the case against a second Marine charged in the slayings.
Lt. Col. Bill Riggs is a senior legal adviser to the general overseeing the prosecution of five Marines charged in Camp Pendleton in the biggest U.S. criminal case involving civilian deaths to come out of the Iraq war. Riggs recused himself from the case against Lance Cpl. Stephen Tatum, a military spokesman said Tuesday.
His action came after he contacted Lt. Col. Paul Ware, the investigating officer who had reviewed evidence against another Marine facing murder charges in connection to November 2005 killings. Riggs allegedly criticized the officer for being too harsh in assessing the prosecution's case against Lance Cpl. Justin Sharratt.
"The government version is unsupported by independent evidence," Ware wrote in the report. "To believe the government version of facts is to disregard clear and convincing evidence to the contrary."
After Ware filed his report about Sharratt, Lt. Gen. James Mattis dismissed all charges against the Marine.
"He believed my report ... adjudicated facts like in a trial and was interpreted by some as a declaration that Lance Cpl. Sharratt is innocent," Ware wrote in an Aug. 1 e-mail to several attorneys. "I viewed Lt. Col. Riggs' comments as inappropriate and imprudent. ... I was ... offended and surprised by this conversation."
The development comes as some advocacy and human rights groups, and legal experts, have voiced concerns over the lenient sentences handed down to some U.S. troops accused of abusing or killing Iraqis.
While some troops have received decades-long prison terms, others were sentenced to time served while one got a reduction in rank and no prison time after being convicted of charges as serious as conspiracy to commit murder and kidnapping.
In the latest case, a U.S. soldier who had faced more than 20 years on charges related to the beating of an Iraqi detainee with a baseball bat in 2003 and trying to cover it up was sentenced on Tuesday to be reprimanded after being convicted on lesser charges.
In the Haditha case, a total of 24 civilians died when a Marine squad responded to a roadside bomb attack on Nov. 19, 2005. Four enlisted Marines were originally charged with murder; prosecutors subsequently dropped charges against two of them, including Sharratt. Charges were also dropped against one of four officers accused of failing to adequately probe the deaths.
Ware is also assessing evidence against Tatum, and will be the investigating officer at the upcoming preliminary hearing for Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich, who is accused of murdering 18 civilians that day in Haditha.
Riggs could not be reached for comment. He recused himself from the Tatum case "to make sure there was no appearance of impropriety," Marine spokesman Lt. Col. Sean Gibson said.
Tatum's lawyer Jack Zimmerman declined to comment on Riggs' recusal.
Legal Actions Highlight General's Power
Associated Press via Washington Post
By Thomas Watkins
August 16, 2007
LOS ANGELES -- In recent months, the senior Marine commander on the West Coast has dismissed charges against three troops implicated in the deaths of 24 Iraqis and reduced the sentences of three others in the kidnapping and murder of an Iraqi man.
Lt. Gen. James Mattis' actions in two of the war's highest-profile criminal cases underscore one of the wildcards in the military justice system: the sweeping powers of a commanding general to decide the fate of those accused of war crimes.
Mattis, who commands the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force at Camp Pendleton in Southern California, decided who was charged, who got immunity, who will stand trial and, in the case of convictions, whether clemency should be granted.
His decisions were cheered by those who believe the troops were pursued unfairly by overzealous military prosecutors. But critics said the moves reflected how the justice system is tilted toward the accused, particularly in cases arising from battlefield actions.
Tom Donnelly, a security analyst specializing in defense issues at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, said Mattis' rulings are rooted in his wartime experience, which includes back-to-back visits to Afghanistan and Iraq.
"He's a Marine's Marine," Donnelly said. "He would well understand the individual pressures that any solider or Marine would be subject to in fighting in an irregular conflict."
Mattis' spokesman, Lt. Col. Chris Hughes, said the general had spent many months in Iraq's Al Anbar province since 2003.
"This (war) is tough and he recognizes that," Hughes said. Mattis is currently in Iraq and was unavailable for comment.
Mattis' combat views have pushed him into the public eye before. In 2005, speaking in San Diego, he said: "It's fun to shoot some people. I'll be right upfront with you, I like brawling."
He was told by the commandant of the Marine Corps to choose his words more carefully, but was not disciplined.
Gary Solis, a former Marine Corps prosecutor and judge who teaches law of war at Georgetown University Law Center, said the general is uniquely positioned to understand Marines accused of crimes.
"Of course he has sympathy for them," Solis said. "The question is whether that sympathy extends to being a critical factor in releasing them."
In the first case, eight men were charged with murder or dereliction of duty in the deaths of 24 civilians in Haditha. In the other case, seven Marines and a Navy corpsman were accused of kidnapping and murdering an Iraqi man in Hamdania.
The Haditha victims died when a Marine squad launched a house-to-house assault following a roadside bomb blast that killed a Marine driver.
Of four enlisted Marines accused of murder, Mattis let prosecutors drop charges against Sgt. Sanick Dela Cruz and give him immunity to testify.
Mattis last week dismissed charges against another rifleman, Lance Cpl. Justin Sharratt, and a Marine lawyer, Capt. Randy Stone, after officers who reviewed evidence recommended against sending them to courts-martial.
In his decision to dismiss charges against Sharratt, Mattis acknowledged the challenges faced by Marines in Iraq.
"Our nation is fighting a shadowy enemy who hides among the innocent people, does not comply with any aspect of the law of war and routinely draws fire toward civilians," Mattis wrote.
In the Hamdania case, seven Marines and a Navy corpsman were accused of kidnapping the Iraqi man, marching him to a ditch and fatally shooting him.
Five of them pleaded guilty to reduced charges; the others were convicted.
Mattis last week freed three junior squad members. He said in a statement that he did so out of a sense of fairness _ two corporals who were convicted at courts-martial were given no extra prison time and freed by military juries.
Only the squad leader, Sgt. Lawrence G. Hutchins III, who was convicted of unpremeditated murder, remains in prison. Mattis met with him last week but took no action to reduce his 15-year sentence.
Hutchins' congressman, Rep. William Delahunt, D-Mass., recently appealed to Mattis for clemency.
Spokesman Hughes described Mattis as a scholar who has "more books than furniture," many of which deal with warfare, history and Middle Eastern culture.
Mattis was born in Seattle in 1950 and joined the Marines in 1972.
Solis described Mattis as "one of the finest combat leaders" in the U.S. military but said the general's recent actions could send a mixed message.
"On the one hand, he has been aggressive in prosecuting, on the other, he has been merciful in assessing the judgments that result from the prosecution," Solis said.
Generals frequently cut sentences, Solis said.
For instance, the general overseeing the prosecution of Army Lt. William Calley, who in 1971 was sentenced to life in prison for his role in the massacre of Vietnamese civilians at My Lai, reduced Calley's sentence to 20 years.
Calley ultimately served only six weeks in the brig and three years under house arrest.
The Marines who had their sentences reduced were not pardoned. They will still have felony records.
"That will follow them for the rest of their lives," Solis said.
Tim Lynch, an attorney for the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, said Mattis' actions might reflect an institutional bias of Marines looking after their own. He said a similar phenomenon is sometimes seen in police forces.
"When there's an officer-involved shooting, they bend over backward to give him the benefit of all doubt," Lynch said. "It is the same in the military."
As Last Iraqi POW Released, Noriega Only U.S. POW
Reuters via The New York Times
August 16, 2007
MIAMI (Reuters) - The U.S. military will soon release the last Iraqi held as an enemy prisoner of war, leaving former Panamanian strongman Manuel Noriega as the country's only formally recognized POW.
Iraq's former Air Force commander, Hamid Raja Shalah Al-Tikriti, was captured in June 2003 and is the last enemy POW held by coalition forces, a U.S. military spokeswoman said.
He was the 10 of spades on the Pentagon's deck of most-wanted Iraqi playing cards. The military declined to give details of his release but said recently it would take place within two weeks.
"The threat that he would join active insurgency, terrorist groups or otherwise be a threat to security has been assessed as low," Air Force 1st Lt. Angela Webb, a U.S. military spokeswoman for detainee operations in Iraq, told Reuters by e-mail.
The United States has been criticized for its stance that foreign captives it holds at the Guantanamo Bay Naval base in Cuba and elsewhere are not prisoners of war.
Shalah commanded Iraq's air force from 2001 to 2003, during the rule of Saddam Hussein. That air force was once one of the Arab world's most formidable but it failed to launch a single operation during the U.S.-led war to topple Hussein in 2003 and its planes were later found hidden under camouflage netting.
Shalah's release will leave Noriega as the only captive the United States recognizes as a prisoner of war under the Geneva Conventions. He is due to be released in September from a federal prison in Miami where he is serving a drug trafficking sentence.
Noriega was a general who led Panama's military, which made him de facto leader of the country. A U.S. judge presiding over his drug-smuggling trial in Miami granted him POW status because he surrendered to U.S. troops that invaded Panama in 1989.
"He's the only POW in the United States," said Simon Schorno, a spokesman in Washington for the International Committee of the Red Cross, which monitors enforcement of the Geneva Conventions.
ONCE HELD THOUSANDS
U.S. and coalition forces once held thousands of enemy POWs in Iraq, many of them members of the Iraqi military or government. Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld put the number at more than 7,000 three weeks after the war began.
About 20 are still being held for criminal prosecution in the Iraqi High Tribunal, the court that convicted Hussein and condemned him to hang, said Sandra Hodgkinson, the Pentagon's Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Detainee Affairs.
They are no longer classified as POWs because they are in the legal custody of the new Iraqi government, she said.
But thousands more captives are still being held in U.S. and coalition custody in Iraq under authority of United Nations Security Council resolutions allowing detention of those who pose a security threat, she said.
"The current estimate is somewhere in the vicinity of 20,000," Hodgkinson said recently.
They can continue to be held until the Security Council revokes that authority, she said.
Like the 355 captives at the U.S. naval base in Cuba, they are not considered prisoners of war because they are not members of a regular, uniformed national military with a clear command structure and because they are accused of targeting civilians.
The ICRC said it has been allowed access to U.S.-held detainees in Iraq, as it has at Guantanamo. It also checks in on Noriega.
"We visited him twice in 2006 in Miami, according to our traditional methods of visits. This year we visited him once," Schorno said.
Parsing a Verdict For Jose Padilla
Wall Street Journal
By Joseph Schuman
August 17, 2007
The guilty verdict for Jose Padilla was the best result the Bush administration could have desired for a prosecution whose twists and turns helped define its post-9/11 legal strategy, though the outcome leaves unresolved many questions about the case.
After just 11 hours of deliberation, a federal jury in Miami found Mr. Padilla and two codefendants guilty on charges of conspiracy to murder, kidnap and maim people overseas, and on charges of providing material support to terrorists. The government had accused Mr. Padilla of serving as an al Qaeda recruit, defendant Adham Amin Hassoun of recruiting for overseas jihadists and Kifah Wael Jayyousi of raising money for their cause, as the Miami Herald reports. As serious as the crimes may be, they are far less notorious than the dirty-bomb plot also alleged against Mr. Padilla by the government but deemed unfit for legal and intelligence reasons for the civilian judicial system. And Mr. Padilla's extrajudicial three and a half years incommunicado in a Navy brig stand in contrast to a case in which Mr. Jayyousi was allowed free on bond until yesterday. A juror who requested anonymity tells the Herald that Mr. Padilla was viewed as "just a small pawn in this thing. He was guilty -- believe me. But there were much bigger people involved."
It wasn't clear how much that reflected other jurors' judgment, but to the Bush administration, the verdict was "a significant victory in our efforts to fight the threat posed by terrorists and their supporters,'' as Attorney General Alberto Gonzales put it. Mr. Padilla's defense lawyers will almost certainly file an appeal and cite the treatment he received as a presidentially declared enemy combatant, Newsweek says. While nothing from Mr. Padilla's military interrogations was used in the Miami trial, he "was cut off from all contact with the outside world (including his own defense lawyers) and subjected to unusually harsh treatment that would never have been permitted if he had been a normal defendant -- including allegedly bombarding him with loud noises, keeping his cell at extreme temperatures and other techniques designed to break down his defenses and force him to talk," the magazine notes. And that, his lawyers have argued, utterly affected Mr. Padilla's ability to defend himself.
The role in the case of government wiretaps, begun in the 1990s, is also likely to play a part in the debate currently raging over the Bush administration's expansion of government powers to use electronic surveillance, The Wall Street Journal says. Proponents of warrantless wiretaps will argue how crucial they are to fighting terrorism, while opponents now have another example of how the pre-9/11 judicial supervision of such surveillance didn't impede the government's ability to use it. But more heatedly debated, following what University of Maryland law professor Michael Greenberger calls "a face-saving day for the Bush administration," is what the verdict means for the administration's decision to keep as much of its terrorism detention and prosecution as possible away from American courts. "This evidence could have been presented immediately -- without the distraction and waste of valuable time" of the enemy-combatant claims, Mr. Greenberger tells Newsweek.
To the Journal's editorial page, generally a supporter of White House detention policy, "Padilla's case demonstrates the opposite" of arguments that the civilian criminal-justice system is adequate to the task of preventing terrorism. "If war opponents had their way, and if Padilla had been guilty only of planning to kill Americans on U.S. soil [instead of the charges of supporting terrorists overseas], he would walk free today," it says. "The Padilla decision is reassuring in many respects, but it is not a model for the future handling of enemy combatants." The New York Times editorial page, often a critic of the administration's policies, says the verdict is good news because a would-be terrorist is headed to jail. But it argues the case doesn't at all vindicate the administration's attempt to circumvent the American legal system. The Bush administration, it says, "was forced, grudgingly and only at the very end, to provide him with the rights guaranteed by the Constitution."
[back to contents]
UN Reports
Ukraine agrees to enforce sentences imposed by UN war crimes tribunal
UN News Centre
August 7, 2007
Ukraine today became the 12th European country to agree to enforce a sentence imposed by the United Nations war crimes tribunal that was set up to deal with the worst crimes committed during the Balkan wars in the 1990s.
Anyone convicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and given a jail term can now serve that sentence in a Ukrainian prison after an agreement was signed in The Hague, where the Tribunal is based.
Aside from Ukraine, Belgium, the United Kingdom, Italy, Finland, Norway, Sweden, Austria, France, Spain, Denmark and Germany have already entered into similar agreements with the ICTY.
In a press statement issued in The Hague, the ICTY thanked Ukraine and the other UN Member States that have struck these enforcement of sentences agreements.
Darfur UN-AU force deputy commander a war criminal?
Sudan Tribune
By Wasil Ali
August 14, 2007
A Rwandan opposition group have accused the newly nominated deputy commander for the Darfur hybrid force of being a “War Criminal”.
The Rwandan United Democratic Forces (UDF) opposition group said in a statement sent to Sudan Tribune that Major General Karenzi Karake has been documented to be responsible for a number of killings between 1992 and 2000.
Last week, the UN and the AU endorsed the nomination Karake to be the Deputy Chief Commander of UN-AU force to be deployed in Darfur.
UDF allege in once incident that Karake as Head of Military Intelligence, directed an assault against an Internally Displaced Camp (IDP) camp on April 22, 1995 leading to the death of 8,000 people.
The UDF also accused Karake of masterminding the assassination of Rwandan politicians at during 1992-94.
Rwanda has around 2,000 peacekeepers out of the 7,000 troops in Darfur as part of the African Union forces and has promised to send additional ones as part of the hybrid force.
The UDF statement described the nomination of Karake as “an insult to Africa, to Sudan as a State and to the suffering Sudanese as well as to the memory of Rwandan victims of his crimes”.
The U.N. Security Council last month authorized up to 26,000 troops and police for Darfur and approved the use of force to protect civilians against violence which has driven more than 2.1 million people from their homes over the past four years.
Northern Ugandans want justice for past atrocities, reveals UN study
UN News Centre
August 14, 2007
A new study by the United Nations human rights office shows that communities in northern Uganda blame both the Government and the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) for atrocities committed during a more than 20-year conflict, and want those responsible to be held to account.
The report, entitled “Making Peace Our Own: Victims Perceptions of Accountability, Reconciliation and Transitional Justice in Northern Uganda,” is based on private interviews with 1,725 victims of the conflict in 69 focus groups in Acholiland, Lango and Teso sub-regions.
“Most notably, this research study shows that the population broadly believes that both the LRA and the Government – and specifically their leaders – should be held accountable for the harms they have caused during the conflict,” the report by the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) found. Participants in the study “repeatedly expressed their need to discover the truth about the past, especially to shed light on the identity of the perpetrators and the nature of the acts that have been committed.”
“Sentiments of anger and vengefulness and a desire for prosecution abound in many communities,” the report added.
Also, while respondents expressed “an overwhelming desire for reconciliation,” opinions varied on the type of mechanism that would best deliver truth and compensation – both of which were “consistently identified as the principal transitional justice needs of the communities.”
Similarly, perceptions on the virtues of amnesty, domestic prosecution, views on the International Criminal Court (ICC) and local or national practices were “greatly mixed” among the victims. “The desire to prevent impunity was, however, consistently present amongst affected communities,” the report stated.
The study, which was designed to “amplify victims’ voices,” seeks to contribute to ongoing discussions on how best to redress northern Uganda’s past abuses – a central issue at peace talks between the Government and the LRA.
According to the report, current negotiations, being held in Juba in southern Sudan, represent the “best-ever opportunity for lasting peace.”
Thousands of people have been killed and an estimated 1.5 million others have become displaced in Uganda or in neighbouring countries since the LRA insurgency began in 1986. During that time, the rebel group has become notorious for abducting children and then using them as soldiers or porters, while subjecting some to torture and allocating many girls to senior officers in a form of institutional rape.
In October 2005 the ICC issued its first-ever arrest warrants against Joseph Kony, the LRA leader, and four of the group’s commanders – Vincent Otti, Okot Odhiambo, Dominic Ongwen and Raska Lukwiya – on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
UN faces calls for action in Somalia
Christian Science Monitor
By Rob Crilly
August 15, 2007
Nairobi, Kenya - Pressure is growing on the United Nations Security Council this week to bolster a beleaguered African peacekeeping force in Somalia, as fresh evidence of human rights abuses and an impending humanitarian catastrophe emerge.
The Horn of Africa nation has been a focus of violence and humanitarian crises since the ouster of its military dictator in 1991. But Somalia has reached a breaking point, say analysts and aid organizations, and international action is now crucial.
Without rapid moves toward political stability, the country's fragile, UN-backed Transitional Federal Government risks fragmenting along clan lines, says an official within the government.
Two battalions of Ugandan soldiers, under the auspices of the African Union (AU), have failed to make an impact in the capital Mogadishu, where Islamic insurgents and clan-based militia have clashed repeatedly with Somali government forces and their Ethiopian allies. The fighting amplified sharply on Monday and Tuesday, resulting in the deaths of some 30 civilians.
"The Ugandan troops have had almost no impact, and it is time for the UN and the international community to use its influence to get a genuine peace and reconciliation process moving," says Mohamed Guyo of the Institute for Security Studies in Nairobi.
The UN Security Council began discussions Monday on the future of the undermanned AU mission with the intention of drafting a fresh resolution on Somalia. UN officials say the international organization is committed to replacing the 1,600-strong AU force once a negotiated peace is in place – an eventuality that observers say looks increasingly unlikely in the near future.
Other African countries have failed to send the forces they promised – obligations that, if met, would bring the total to 8,000 troops.
Hundreds of thousands of civilians have been forced out of the capital since militias loyal to a network of Islamic Courts relinquished their hold on Mogadishu at the end of last year.
But so far attempts at reconciling the country's fragile government with opposition elements have made little progress. A clan-based conference organized last month in Mogadishu by Somalia's tenuous transitional government has been criticized for failing to represent dissident Islamists.
An adviser to the Transitional Federal Government says the Mogadishu conference is a means of showing international donors that attempts at peace are being made, though actual progress is constrained by clan conflict.
"In international terms, the conference has some miles to go," says the anonymous official. "As usual in Somalia, things are being divided up along clan lines."
Human Rights Watch: Crimes on all sides
The Union of Islamic Courts took control of much of central and southern Somalia last year, sending shock waves through the Horn of Africa and governments further afield.
Although they brought a degree of stability to a country bereft of central government for 15 years, their hard-line sharia law raised fears that Somalia would become a haven for Islamic terrorists. They were forced out after six months by Ethiopian warplanes and artillery – with tacit US backing – sent to prop up the feeble interim government.
The result is largely business as usual for Somalia's war-weary population. The capital has been the scene of repeated fighting as insurgents try to topple the Transitional Federal Government. During the most intense clashes between February and May, more than 400,000 civilians fled Mogadishu.
A report published earlier this week by Human Rights Watch casts fresh light on that fighting and underlines the need for a progress towards peace.
The study concluded that ferocious battles in the capital constituted war crimes by all sides. The New York-based group said Ethiopia's army had indiscriminately bombarded highly populated areas, targeted and looted hospitals, and summarily executed civilians.
The group blamed the transitional Somali government for mistreating detainees and failing to warn civilians of impending military strikes, while the insurgents were guilty of using heavily populated areas as bases.
"None of the parties has taken – as international law requires – all feasible precautions to spare the civilian population from the attacks," says the analysis. The Ethiopian and Somali governments deny any abuses. Ethiopia's government said the report was propaganda for Islamist radicals and distorted Ethiopia's beneficial role in supporting the Somalian government.
"The UN Security Council's indifference to this crisis has only added to the tragedy," said Ken Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch. He called on the UN to use its power to force Ethiopia and Somalia to end the abuses.
Drought may amplify Somali crisis
At the same time, the failure of this year's seasonal rains, normally from April to June, have increased to 1.5 million the number of people in need of humanitarian assistance, according to an assessment by the Food Security Analysis Unit, an independent group backed the UN, European Commission, and the US.
"Malnutrition is going to increase in parts of southern Somalia because of the failed harvest and at the same time we have to reach the people who have been displaced from Mogadishu," says Peter Smerdon, spokesman for the UN's World Food Programme in Nairobi. "There's got to be real security on the ground for distributions to take place in Mogadishu, where we last held a distribution on June 25."
UN concerned at appointment of judge on Khmer Rouge tribunal to national court
UN News Centre
August 16, 2007
The United Nations today voiced concern over the appointment to the Cambodian Court of Appeal of a judge already serving on the UN-backed tribunal trying Khmer Rouge leaders accused of mass killings and torture during the late 1970s, saying it could affect both the efficiency and perceived independence of the body.
Extraordinary Chamber in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) Co-Investigating Judge You Bun Leng was appointed President of the Cambodian Court of Appeal by royal decree on 9 August. The UN is seeking further clarification from the Cambodian authorities.
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 under Khmer Rouge rule between 17 April 1975 and 6 January 1979, when hundreds of thousands people were killed.
“The United Nations is concerned about the effect of the Decree's implementation on the efficiency of the proceedings currently before the court,” the UN Assistance to the Khmer Rouge Trials (UNAKRT) said in a press statement.
“The United Nations is also concerned about the impact of the Royal Decree on the perceived independence of the ECCC,” it added.
In a letter released by ECCC You Bun Leng said that as long as the ECCC considered his presence essential it was his duty to continue, ensuring there was no interruption or delay in the process, until such time as an appropriate and smooth transition can be made.
“I have already begun consultation with my staff and my international counterpart to reach a mutually acceptable and constructive solution that does not disrupt our work,” he said, noting that while the ECCC Law stipulated that the Co-Investigating Judges shall be appointed for the duration of the investigation, it also provided for the appointment of reserve Co-Investigating Judges.
The ECCC issued its first charges against a Khmer Rouge member three weeks ago, accusing Kaing Guek Eav, also known as Duch, of crimes against humanity over his role as chief at the S21 prison in the capital, Phnom Penh.
[back to contents]
NGO Reports
Somalia: War Crimes in Mogadishu
Human Rights Watch
August 13, 2007
UN Should Address Civilian Protection
(Nairobi, August 13, 2007) – Ethiopian, Somali and insurgent forces are all responsible for rampant violations of the laws of war in Mogadishu, causing massive suffering for the civilian population, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. Human Rights Watch urged the UN Security Council during its current deliberations on Somalia to include a strong civilian protection mandate in any peacekeeping mission. The 113-page report, “Shell-Shocked: Civilians Under Siege in Mogadishu,” is the first independent, on-the-ground investigation of the fighting that wracked Mogadishu in March and April 2007, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of civilians and the displacement of 400,000 people.
“The warring parties have all shown criminal disregard for the
well-being of the civilian population of Mogadishu,” said Ken Roth,
executive director for Human Rights Watch. “The UN Security Council’s
indifference to this crisis has only added to the tragedy.”
Human Rights Watch documented numerous war crimes among many other violations of the laws of war by all parties to the armed conflict in Mogadishu.
Violations by the insurgency, a loose coalition of Somali armed groups,
include: the indiscriminate firing of mortar rounds into civilian areas;
deployment of forces in densely populated neighborhoods; targeted
killings of civilian officials of the transitional Somali government;
and summary executions and mutilation of the bodies of captured
combatants.
Ethiopian forces backing the Somali transitional government violated the laws of war by widely and indiscriminately bombarding highly populated areas of Mogadishu with rockets, mortars and artillery. Its troops on several occasions specifically targeted hospitals and looted them of desperately needed medical equipment. Human Rights Watch also documented cases of Ethiopian forces deliberately shooting and summarily executing civilians.
Somali transitional government forces played a secondary role to the
Ethiopian military, but failed to provide effective warnings to
civilians in combat zones, looted property, impeded relief efforts for
displaced people, and mistreated dozens of people detained in mass
arrests.
“The insurgency placed civilians at grave risk by deploying among them,” said Roth. “But that is no justification for Ethiopia’s calculated
shelling and rocketing of whole neighborhoods.”
The launch of the report coincides with today’s UN Security Council deliberations on Somalia. The Security Council is due to discuss the
1,500-member African Union mission in Somalia and proposals to turn the mission into a UN force.
The armed conflict in Mogadishu has steadily escalated since the Ethiopian-backed Somali Transitional Federal Government (TFG)
established itself in Mogadishu in January 2007. In December 2006, Ethiopian forces with US support ousted the coalition of Islamic Courts from Mogadishu and other areas of south-central Somalia in a lightning offensive.
Since January 2007, a coalition of insurgent groups, including the Islamic Courts’ militant Al-Shabaab militia, has waged almost daily
attacks on Ethiopian and TFG forces, including several suicide attacks, and killed TFG civilian officials. The insurgency repeatedly launched mortar attacks from densely populated neighborhoods of Mogadishu, jeopardizing civilian security, in violation of the laws of war.
On March 29, Ethiopian forces launched the first of two major counterinsurgency offensives in the city. Ethiopian troops indiscriminately bombarded insurgent strongholds with barrages of “Katyusha” rockets, mortars and artillery, making no apparent effort to distinguish between civilians and insurgent targets.
A second Ethiopian offensive from April 18 - 26 targeted and destroyed additional areas of the city and added several hundred more civilians to the total death toll. While the precise number of civilian casualties is not yet known, estimates range from 400 to more than 1,300 deaths resulting from both rounds of fighting.
Ethiopia’s intervention in Somalia is closely linked to regional security concerns, including a proxy war with Eritrea and the presence
of two Ethiopian rebel movements in Somalia.
In January 2007, the United States launched several air strikes in southern Somalia, and again in June in Puntland, in the northeast. These attacks were the first US military interventions in the country since its forces departed in 1994. The US alleged that militants within the Islamic courts were sheltering individuals connected to international terrorism networks, including people wanted in connection with the US embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998.
“Since the major fighting ended in April, Ethiopian and Somali
government forces have routinely violated the rights of civilians on the
streets of Mogadishu,” said Roth. “Effective counterterrorism can only
be built on respect for basic rights and an end to impunity for serious
crimes.”
Human Rights Watch called on the UN Security Council and key
international actors to use their leverage with Ethiopian and Somali
government forces to end abuses and encourage respect for international law.
Concerned countries should also request and support an increased UN human rights monitoring and reporting mission in Somalia.
[back to contents]
Other
'New proof' of Japan sex slaves
BBC News
by Chris Hogg
May 11, 2007
Reports from Japan say documents have been found that suggest the Japanese authorities forced women to work as sex slaves during World War II.
They come from the Dutch government archives and include the testimony of a 27-year-old Dutch woman from May 1946.
The Kyodo news agency says the documents show women were coerced into prostitution in occupied Indonesia.
PM Shinzo Abe had claimed there was no evidence of Japanese officials forcing women into prostitution.
The documents are reported to have been found by a Japanese journalist investigating Japan's wartime crimes in Asia.
'Comfort women'
The Dutch woman's testimony says she had her clothes ripped off her by Japanese military police.
She says she was taken to a brothel and forced to work as a prostitute, despite her efforts to resist.
That testimony, it is claimed, was submitted to the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal as evidence of forced mass prostitution in Magelang, in what is now Central Java, in 1944.
Other documents are said to include further allegations that the Japanese forced women into prostitution.
Earlier this year Prime Minister Abe said that investigations had failed to find any documentary evidence that the Japanese authorities in wartime had issued orders to soldiers to coerce women into sex slavery.
He said though that he stood by a Japanese government apology to the women, known in Japan as "comfort women".
The journalist who found these documents says they contradict the prime minister's denial that the authorities were directly involved in coercion.
The Japanese Foreign Ministry says it is aware of his claims but has not seen the documents so cannot comment on what they might contain.
It says the Japanese government has investigated its wartime activities in Indonesia thoroughly and acknowledges and apologises for the country's wartime use of sex slaves.
[back to contents]
War Crimes Prosecution Watch Staff
Advisor
Professor Michael P. Scharf
Case School of Law
Editor in Chief
Brianne Draffin
Managing Editor
Zachery Lampell
Technical Editors
Margaux Day
Patrick Schuette
Contact: warcrimeswatch@pilpg.org
Cambodia
Zachery Lampell, Senior Editor
Sally Laing, Associate Editor
Central African Republic & Uganda
Brandy Womack, Senior Editor
Kathleen Rudis, Associate Editor
Darfur, Sudan
Patrick Dowd, Senior Editor
Colin Nisbet, Associate Editor
Democratic Republic of the Congo
Michelle Oliver, Senior Editor
Niki Dasarathy, Associate Editor
Iraq
Carol Rubin, Senior Editor
Kerri Peterson, Associate Editor
Rwanda
Morgan Weibel, Senior Editor
Tamar Chalker, Associate Editor
Sierra Leone & Liberia
Kate Beukenkamp, Senior Editor
Matt Weinbaum, Associate Editor
United States & Lebanon
Kevin Hussey, Senior Editor
Jessica Mate, Associate Editor
Former Yugoslavia
George Inman, Senior Editor
Michelle Celli, Associate Editor
Kathleen Hines, Associate Editor
Vassili Touline, Associate Editor
UN Reports
Kyle McCoy, Senior Editor
Jeff Moyle, Associate Editor
NGO Reports
Kathleen Gibson, Senior Editor
Krista Nelson, Associate Editor
War Crimes Prosecution Watch is prepared by the
International Justice Practice of the Public International Law & Policy Group
and the Frederick K. Cox International Law Center of
Case Western Reserve University School of Law
and is made possible by grants from the Carnegie Corporation of New York
and the Open Society Institute.
