War Crimes Prosecution Watch

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)

Former Khmer Rouge Leader Demands New Toilet, Mattress and Better Prison Food
Associated Press via Live-pr.com
September 22, 2007

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AP) - Days after being indicted on crimes against humanity, former Khmer Rouge official Nuon Chea is finding plenty to complain about in prison.

The top aide to late Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot was detained Wednesday for his alleged role in the deaths of an estimated 1.7 million people during the regime's 1975-79 rule. He since has demanded a mattress, a new toilet and more fish in his diet, his lawyer Son Arun said Saturday.

Nuon Chea was especially upset with his squat toilet, which the frail, 81-year-old found difficult to use, the lawyer said.

“He has had difficulty trying to get up after using it because of an ailment in his knees,” Son Arun said. “I have requested the tribunal to replace it with a sitting toilet for him.”

He said Nuon Chea also complained about backaches from sleeping on a woven mat and has asked for a mattress.

“As for his food, he has asked for his meals to be made of fish and vegetable, and his soup to be less salty. He doesn't like meals with fat in it.” Son Arun said.

Reach Sambath, a spokesman for the U.N.-backed genocide tribunal, said the squat toilet was better for security reasons because they “have less moving parts that could cause injuries and less places to hide things.”
He said, however, the tribunal was considering Nuon Chea's requests.

Nuon Chea is the highest-ranking Khmer Rouge leader detained to appear before the panel.

Kaing Guek Eav, also known as Duch, who headed the former Khmer Rouge S-21 torture center, was charged on July 31 with crimes against humanity. Prosecutors have recommended three other suspects for trial, but have not named them publicly.

Both defendants have been given services out of reach for most Cambodians, including cable TV, round-the-clock access to medical care and high-calorie meals.

Reach Sambath has said such services are necessary to ensure they live long enough to have their cases tried in court.

Nuon Chea “planned, instigated, ordered, directed or otherwise aided and abetted” crimes that include “murder, torture, imprisonment, persecution, extermination, deportation, forcible transfer, enslavement and other inhumane acts,” a charge sheet says.
Nuon Chea has denied any guilt.

Top Khmer Rouge Leader Must be Fit to Stand Trial: Rights Groups
AFP via Google News
September 23, 2007

PHNOM PENH (AFP) — A Cambodian human rights coalition on Sunday called on a UN-backed tribunal to make sure the recently detained Khmer Rouge leader Nuon Chea gets proper healthcare so he is able to stand trial.
It said it was concerned that 81-year-old Nuon Chea, arrested Wednesday and charged with crimes against humanity, could die before answering for his role in one of the 20th century's worst genocides.

The Cambodia Human Rights Action Committee (CHRAC), a coalition of 23 organisations, called on the tribunal to form a special team of international doctors to look after the most senior surviving leader of the Khmer Rouge.
"CHRAC notes that the presence of Nuon Chea to be able to appear before (the tribunal) would be extremely and necessarily important in order to seek justice for all Cambodian dead and alive victims," the group said in a statement.

"CHRAC wishes to call upon (the tribunal) for both Cambodian and UN sides to pay much more attention for his health care ... to ensure that he would be absolutely able to stand before the co-investigating judges," it added.
The group raised the example of Ta Mok, a top Khmer Rouge military commander who died last year in Phnom Penh, where he had been imprisoned since 1999.

Nuon Chea was last week brought from his home in northwest Cambodia to Phnom Penh, where he was put in the tribunal's custody.

There are concerns about his health. He has already suffered a stroke and is the oldest of the communist movement's former top cadres likely to stand trial for atrocities committed nearly 30 years ago.

Nuon Chea, known in the regime's circles as "Brother Number Two", was allegedly a key architect of the execution policies of the Khmer Rouge, which is blamed for the deaths of up to two million people between 1975 and 1979.

He has denied the charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity, saying he was never in a position to order any of the deaths that occurred under the Khmer Rouge.
Public trials at the tribunal are expected in 2008.

Lawyer Ponders Bail for Khmer Rouge's Brother Number 2
EARTH times.org
September 25, 2007

Phnom Penh - The attorney for former senior Khmer Rouge leader Nuon Chea said Tuesday that he was looking at ways to negotiate bail for his client as other prime candidates for indictment took a wait-and-see attitude to their fate. Lawyer Son Arun said he had not yet proceeded with a bail application on behalf of the 82-year-old, known as Brother Number 2 in the Khmer Rouge but he was studying options. Nuon Chea faces charges of crimes against humanity and war crimes before a UN-Cambodian tribunal.

Arguably the most senior surviving leader of the Khmer Rouge's 1975-79 Democratic Kampuchea regime, under which up to 2 million Cambodians died, Nuon Chea was arrested last week at his Pailin home on the Thai border.
The investigating judges of the UN-Cambodia Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia had recommended he remain in detention for at least a year because they believed there was enough evidence to indicate he could pose a threat to witnesses.

Lin Na, a close aide to Nuon Chea, said Nuon Chea had not requested bail and the decision was entirely with his lawyer.

"Nuon Chea did not initiate this request," he said. "At the moment, we are more preoccupied with the issue of visits from his wife and family."

Nuon Chea's wife has fretted publicly that the jail cannot properly accommodate his dietary requirements without her involvement.

The tribunal's newly built prison, which Nuon Chea currently shares only with former S-21 torture centre commandant Kang Keng Iev, alias Duch, is equipped with around-the-clock medical staff, television, air conditioning and other luxuries, court spokesmen said.

Meanwhile, other candidates for trial were mum on the likelihood that they would see a courtroom. Former Democratic Kampuchea head of state Khieu Samphan, who has been touted by many advocates as a natural candidate because of his seniority, declined comment.

"I apologize profusely," Samphan said by telephone. "I am very sorry, but you understand that it is better for me not to comment at present."

Ieng Vuth, deputy governor of Pailin, who faces the possibility that both his parents might face trial, also declined comment although he denied rumours they were overseas.

Vuth is the son of Ieng Sary, former Democratic Kampuchea deputy prime minister and foreign minister, and Khieu Thirith, a senior regime cadre and sister-in-law of the movement's leader, Pol Pot, who died at home in 1998.

"I applaud the decision of the Cambodian government to arrest Nuon Chea," Vuth said. "However, I reserve comment on the issue of my parents."

Hearings were expected to get under way in the long-awaited process next year. Tribunal prosecutors have said they are considering five prime candidates for trial but have not named the remaining defendants.

Joint Statement: ECCC Project Board Agrees on New Recruitment and Contracting Procedures
United Nations
September 25, 2007

The second meeting of the Project Board for “Special Support of the Cambodian Side of the Budget for the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia” (ECCC) took place on 19 September to review progress made since their last meeting in June 2007, particularly in human resource management.

To support ECCC operations that are under the direct responsibility of the Royal Government of Cambodia, UNDP administers multi-donor contributions of $5.3 million from a UN Trust Fund that is transferred by UNDESA, and over $1 million from another donor. The project is implemented by the ECCC and contributes to the Cambodian side of the ECCC budget. Some of the funds administered by UNDP are used for ECCC personnel, who are recruited, managed by and under the responsibility of the Cambodian side of the ECCC.

The project entitled, "Special Support to the Cambodian Side of the Budget for the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia" is governed by a Board, created by a project agreement between the Royal Government of Cambodia, UNDP and the United Nations signed in June 2006.. The Project Board provides oversight, reviews progress on implementation of activities, proposes necessary recommendations within the scope of the project and approves the annual work plan and budget.

At its September meeting, the Board reviewed steps taken to improve the implementation of recruitment procedures of national staff to ensure greater transparency and effectiveness. Important aspects of these procedures include open advertising and competitive selection through transparent screening procedures. The actions respond to recommendations made by UNDP’s Office of Audit and Performance Review and by a UNDP contracted human resources specialist who worked with the ECCC in July 2007.

The Board welcomed the adoption of a personnel manual which formalizes detailed steps including how to create posts, advertise, screen, and contract staff. In addition, a code of conduct -- to be signed and followed by all staff – will be developed. This code prohibits, among other things, ECCC staff from receiving or soliciting payments other than salaries for the performance of official duties.

The Board also discussed and agreed on further improvements on performance review and decisions on contract extensions of ECCC employees, expected to be implemented by the end of December 2007. This will include a job match assessment to review the skills required for a post and the incumbent's skills, with the participation of an independent third party.

The Board took note of these human resource actions already undertaken by the ECCC and their willingness to implement improved procedures. The Board further said that these actions could help to ensure the quality of support to the court and the integrity of public funds.

Nuon Chea Seeks Foreign Lawyer to Join Defense
Voa News
By Sok Khemara
September 25, 2007

Detained Khmer Rouge commander Nuon Chea has begun seeking in earnest a foreign lawyer to join his defense against charges of atrocity crimes.

He is reviewing the credentials of three or four out of 10 applicants so far, Nuon Chea's Cambodian attorney, Son Arun, told VOA Khmer Tuesday.

"I will call to interview those lawyers in a few days to review their qualifications and experience in international crimes," he said.

Nuon Chea had wanted a Thai lawyer, but none have applied, Son Arun said. Applicants had so far come from the US, UK, France and the Netherlands, he said.

The Khmer Rouge courts allow for Cambodian and foreign defense, adhering to principles outlined during the UN-sponsored tribunal's inception.

"The process has begun," Rupert Skilbeck, head of the tribunal defense section, told VOA Khmer.
Nuon Chea could have a foreign "co-lawyer" within a week, Skilbeck said.

Nuon Chea told reporters before his arrest last week that he was considering defending himself against the courts, but soon decided to take on a Cambodian lawyer once he was detained and charged with crimes against humanity and war crimes.

A second Khmer Rouge defendant, Kaing Khek Iev, better known as Duch, has already retained a foreign lawyer, French attorney Francois Roux, who represented US terror convict Zacarias Moussaoui and defendants at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. Duch's trial could start as early as February 2008.

Khieu Samphan, the nominal head of the regime, who is widely expected to face similar charges, has already retained controversial French attorney Jacques Verges, who has extensive war crimes trial experience.

Illness Halts Questioning of KRouge Leader: Lawyer
Source: AFP via Google News
September 26, 2007

PHNOM PENH (AFP) — Rocketing blood pressure and dizziness forced judges with Cambodia's genocide tribunal to stop questioning detained Khmer Rouge leader Nuon Chea Wednesday, his lawyer said.

Attorney Son Arun said his client, who has a history of health problems, could only utter a few words in response to questions from judges with the UN-backed court, who halted the interview after about two hours.

"(Nuon Chea) is not well. When they questioned him heavily he became dizzy," Son Arun told AFP, adding that Nuon Chea's blood pressure was checked during the interview and found to be dangerously high.
Judges Wednesday quizzed Nuon Chea on his role in the Khmer Rouge's hierarchy, Son Arun said.

"He could only answer them with a few words and he could say no more... When the judges questioned him for a while he could not answer correctly and could hear almost nothing," he said, adding that questioning may continue in the afternoon.
"He did not want to say a lot because he said he could not hear clearly," Son Arun said, adding that the judges felt his client was simply being uncooperative.

Nuon Chea, 81, is the oldest of the Khmer Rouge's ageing leaders, all of whom are suffering a variety of ailments, making health a major concern for the court tasked with trying the communist regime's leaders.

The former top lieutenant to Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot, Nuon Chea, who was the regime's chief ideologue, was arrested last week and charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity.

On Tuesday, Nuon Chea's family demanded he be released on bail, saying they doubted the tribunal's ability to care for his health.

A tribunal to try the regime's top leaders got underway last year. Five suspects, including Nuon Chea and former regime prison chief Duch, are under investigation, with public trials expected in 2008.

By the time the communist Khmer Rouge regime fell in 1979 up to two million people had died of starvation, disease, overwork or were executed in one of the worst atrocities of the 20th century.

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Central African Republic

Official Website of the International Criminal Court
ICC Public Documents - Cases: Central African Republic

Security Council approves UN presence in Central African Republic, Chad
UN News Service
September 25, 2007

25 September 2007 – The Security Council today established a United Nations-mandated, multidimensional presence, which will include European Union military forces, in eastern Chad and north-eastern Central African Republic (CAR) to help protect civilians and facilitate humanitarian aid to thousands of people uprooted due to insecurity in the two countries and neighbouring Sudan.

Deeply concerned about the humanitarian threat posed by armed groups on the borders of the Sudan’s troubled Darfur region, the 15-member body set up, for a period of one year, the UN presence “intended to help create the security conditions conducive to a voluntary, secure and sustainable return of refugees and displaced persons.”

In doing so, it also approved the deployment of an EU military force, also for a period of one year, with the authority to “take all necessary measures” in support of the UN presence.
The UN presence will include a UN Mission – to be known by its acronym MINURCAT – with 300 police and 50 military liaison officers, as well as civilian staff, focusing on the areas of civil affairs, human rights, the rule of law and mission support. The Mission will be headquartered in the Chadian capital, N’Djamena.

In the resolution passed unanimously today, the Council also endorsed the establishment of a new unit of Chad’s police to maintain law and order in refugee camps and areas with large numbers of displaced civilians in the eastern part of the country.

According to Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s latest report on the situation in Chad and the CAR, the humanitarian situation “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.

Mr. Ban wrote that the deployment of a UN-mandated multidimensional presence in Chad and the CAR – both of which have been beset by widespread population displacement because of clashes between rebels and Government forces – “could have a significant positive impact on the security situation there.”

The Council has already authorized deployment of a 26,000-strong joint UN-African Union force (to be known as UNAMID) to suppress ongoing violence in Darfur, which has had a spillover effect on the region.

The Secretary-General added in his report that a lasting solution to the region’s crises, including the violence and suffering engulfing Darfur, is only possible through inclusive political agreements.

UN: Security Council’s Troop Plan in Chad/CAR Risks Failing Many
Human Rights Watch
September 27, 2007

Forces Should Protect all Civilians in Danger

(New York, September 27, 2007) – The international forces for Chad and the Central African Republic, authorized by the United Nations Security Council, should focus on protecting civilians affected by escalating violence in the region, Human Rights Watch said today. But it is crucial that the operation address the protection needs of those most affected by ongoing insecurity.

On September 25, the UN Security Council authorized resolution 1778, which provides for the deployment of a multi-dimensional international presence in eastern Chad and northeastern Central African Republic (CAR). The forces are comprised of a UN mission (MINURCAT), a Chadian police force trained by the UN, and a European Union military operation (EUFOR).

“An international deployment could help stabilize the region and allow people to return safely to their homes,” said Peter Takirambudde, director of the Africa division at Human Rights Watch. “But it is crucial that the force provide protection to all of those at risk, not just to refugees and displaced persons.”

Security Council resolution 1778 focuses assistance on areas of eastern Chad and northeastern CAR where continued armed conflict, general lawlessness, and chronic instability – partly related to the conflict in the adjoining Darfur region of Sudan – have exacerbated the humanitarian crisis.

The bulk of the international mission’s personnel would deploy to eastern Chad, with a small EUFOR presence in CAR’s volatile northeastern corner and a MINURCAT contingent based in Bangui, CAR’s capital.

In eastern Chad, where 230,000 refugees from Darfur live in camps run by the UN, at least 180,000 Chadians have been left homeless after attacks by armed groups, including “Janjaweed” militias from Darfur. In Chad, the EU-UN deployment is weighted heavily toward a presence around refugee camps and large displaced persons sites. In CAR, the international mission’s focus is on the north-east, although much of the worst violence against civilians has been in the northwestern part of the country bordering Chad.

Human Rights Watch called on the EU and UN to address the needs of the most vulnerable civilians: displaced persons who remain outside the large camps and civilians still living in their home communities.

“It is imperative that EU forces act to protect those civilians at greatest risk, wherever they may be,” said Takirambudde. “This will mean interpreting their mandate as broadly as possible.”

Arab groups, which have been displaced by the conflict in large numbers but tend not to congregate in large towns, could be left unprotected by a too-narrow deployment. Displacement patterns for Arabs differ from those of non-Arabs for cultural reasons, but also because, in many cases, Arabs have been displaced by government-sponsored violence, and consequently avoid large towns where government security forces – as well as humanitarian aid agencies – are based.

Arab civilians in southeastern Chad recently described to Human Rights Watch numerous cases of extrajudicial killings, beatings and rape in the wake of disarmament campaigns conducted by the Chadian army and government-backed paramilitary forces. EUFOR and MINURCAT will need to engage with the government to bring an end to such abuses. MINURCAT’s human rights unit will have important monitoring and reporting responsibilities in this regard, and support for a strengthened judiciary will also be crucial.

Chadian forces and allied paramilitaries also have been recruiting young men and boys from displaced persons camps in the area, including by force. Such recruitment activities have been reported at most of the large, well-organized camps in the Goz Beida area, including Gassiré, Gouroukoum, Habilé, and Koubigou. These sites are in urgent need of protection. However, Human Rights Watch is concerned that the police force that will be established by the Chadian government to maintain law and order in the camps under Resolution 1778 may not be up to the task.

“Chadian police already assigned to protect refugee camps have been implicated in forced recruitment, including of children,” said Takirambudde. “The Chadian police force, called for by the Security Council resolution, will need to be closely monitored.”

The EU deployment will likely involve between 3,000 and 4,000 troops, but the details of the force, including the rules of engagement, have yet to be approved by the EU Council of Ministers. France is likely to lead the operation and provide most of the troops. It has significant military assets and personnel deployed in bilateral assistance to the governments of Chad and the CAR, and has repeatedly intervened militarily on behalf of those governments.

EUFOR would operate for an initial 12-month period, and transition to a UN command would be assessed after six months.

The InteCentral African Republic's quiet conflict uproots more than 290,000
UNHCR
By Hélène Caux
September 27, 2007

PAOUA, Central African Republic, September 26 (UNHCR) – A humanitarian crisis has been quietly unfolding in the Central African Republic (CAR), with more than 290,000 people uprooted from their homes over the past two years.

Fighting between government forces and various rebel groups since mid-2005 has left an estimated 212,000 people internally displaced in the north-west and north-east, while a further 80,000 have fled to neighbouring Chad, Cameroon and Sudan's South Darfur region.But the outside world remains largely ignorant of the suffering in this country. "The humanitarian crisis in northern CAR has been largely overshadowed by the crisis in Darfur and eastern Chad," said Bruno Geddo, UNHCR representative in the Central African Republic. "Thousands of people have been living in the bush – sometimes for as long as two years. They lack everything and live in constant fear of being trapped again in fighting between government forces and rebel groups," he added, referring to recurrent clashes around this north-west town some 60 kilometres south of the border with Chad and 500km from the capital, Bangui."The usual pattern is that rebels attack key towns in the north, the government soldiers take them back and retaliate on the surrounding villages," claimed a displaced man met recently on the road between the town of Paoua in north-west CAR and the nearby border with southern Chad. "We, the civilians, are in the middle and we are paying the price."Hundreds of civilians have been killed, thousands of houses burned and hundreds of villages abandoned in the fighting since 2005. But in some villages, people leave their harsh bush sanctuary and return for a few hours every day to check on their properties or even to go to school.

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Democratic Republic of the Congo (ICC)

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

Government Forces Commit Worst of Widespread Abuses - UN Report
UN News Service (New York)
September 17, 2007

Government soldiers in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) remain responsible for the country's worst human rights abuses, carrying out arbitrary executions and raping, robbing or extorting civilians, according to the latest report by the United Nations peacekeeping mission.

The human rights assessment for July, released today, shows that Congolese police, soldiers and members of rebel groups fighting the Government have also perpetrated serious abuses, especially in the violence-wracked Kivu provinces in the far east of the vast country.

The UN mission, known as MONUC, reported that a widespread climate of impunity allows many of these abuses to go unpunished, even months after they were committed.
It cited a separate report by the UN Human Rights Office in the DRC indicating that Congolese soldiers and police officers used indiscriminate and excessive force - and in some instances carried out summary executions - in quelling protests in Bas-Congo province by an opposition movement in late January and early February. Six months after those events, the people responsible for the human rights violations have not been arrested.

Today's report details numerous instances of human rights abuses by the Congolese armed forces (FARDC), including at least 10 documented cases of arbitrary executions and one particularly gruesome case on 29 July in which a soldier in North Kivu province allegedly raped and then chopped to death a Hutu woman and her three-month-old baby.
It further outlines rights violations by the Congolese national police (PNC) and by armed rebel groups, including the murder and rape of villagers and the extortion and robbing of civilians.

The assessment also finds continued weaknesses and systemic failures in the administration of justice across the DRC and that prison inmates and family members who visit them in jail have been beaten by authorities.

Yakin Ertürk, the UN Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women, conducted a 12-day visit in July to the DRC, where she met with Government officials, UN agencies, national and international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and victims of violence.

Ms. Ertürk denounced the shortcomings of the criminal justice system in dealing with cases of sexual violence, including the high number of alleged perpetrators who have been granted bail after being charged with serious crimes.

She described the patterns and level of sexual violence in South Kivu province as the worst she has ever seen in four years as a Special Rapporteur.

Congo Warlord Recruiting Children
Associated Press via google news
By Eddy Isango
September 19, 2007

KINSHASA, Congo (AP) — A warlord in eastern Congo is recruiting child soldiers in violation of international law, U.N. and government officials said Wednesday.

Nephtali Nkizinkiko, a deputy in Congo's national assembly, said that forces loyal to former army general Laurent Nkunda raided 10 secondary schools and four primary schools in the past week "where they took the children by force in order to make them join their ranks."

The U.N. has also confirmed that children are being recruited by different armed groups, "especially by the rebel forces of warlord Laurent Nkunda," said Michel Bonnardeaux, a spokesman for the U.N. Mission in Congo.

It was not known how many children have been forcibly recruited, Bonnardeaux said. He said girls are being taken to serve as sex slaves, while boys are used as fighters. Those who try to escape are often recruited by rival armed groups based in the lawless eastern part of the country.

Nkunda's rebels clashed with Congo's army last month in North Kivu province, causing thousands of villagers to flee their homes.

Once controlled by rival rebel factions who eventually signed a peace deal in 2002 to end a four-year war, eastern Congo has been wracked by fighting between local militias, renegade soldiers and the army.

Nkunda quit the army after the war and launched his own rebellion, claiming the country's transition to democracy was flawed and excluded the country's ethnic Tutsi minority. Nkunda has also said he is fighting to protect ethnic Tutsis from Rwandan Hutu rebels who took refuge in eastern Congo following Rwanda's 1994 genocide.

FDLR Captives Speak on DRC Support, Rebel's Intelligence
New Times (Kigali)
By Magnus K. Mazimpaka
September 23, 2007

New information indicates the DR Congo is supplying arms to and actively behind the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) to launch a military attack on Rwanda.

FDLR, in return, is supporting the Congolese army to fight against rebel leader General Laurent Nkunda.

Recent testimonies by FDLR captives who were recently captured by the Nkunda group showed that the Congolese government is supplying them with ammunition.

The captives, who were arrested by Nkunda troops, also dismissed reports that the arms Rwandan insurgents are currently using were acquired in 1998.

The New Times interviewed the captives a week ago without presence of any other party.
They freely agreed to be recorded and photographed.

One of them, Lieutenant Karekezi Bizimungu, 29, testified that President Joseph Kabila promised the FDLR government would keep its promise of assisting them attack Rwanda.

He said FDLR commander, General Mudacumura, keeps telling the rebels that they would soon attack Rwanda and take power by force.

"We believed it was possible given the morale in the bushes," said Lt. Bizimungu.
He said FDLR has a network of spies that are regulary sent over to Rwanda.

He said: "Spies keep moving in and out of Rwanda but reports are kept secret, and low-profile soldiers such as me cannot understand what they come up with. But they give us morale that we will easily attack any time."

Bizimungu joined the rebel group in 1994 while living in Mugunga refugee camp, about 30km from Goma, when FDLR was recruiting young boys from refugee camps to join the militia. He was 16 at the time.

With most of FDLR fighetrs accused of participating in the 1994 Genocide which resulted in the death of at least a million people, FDLR is also blamed for a series of grave atrocities in the eastern DRC, Uganda, Burundi and other violent attacks on Rwanda.

The rebel group collects taxes and has instituted a reign of terror on the Congolese population in areas in controlds.

Blacklisted as a terrorist group, FDLR is accused of violence, rape, robbery and murders of Congolese Tutsis, a reason that allegedly made Nkunda pick up arms to defend his kin.

Intelligence movement
Members of the FDLR spy network are registered as Congolese civilians and hold Congolese identity cards, the captives said.

The captives said FDLR is still recrurting fighters from Rwanda, including children. "They (intelligence agents) go to local authorities and register for cards. They cross the border into Rwanda and woo some locals to join FDLR," Bizimungu said.

Some of those recruited are relatives of friends of FDLR rebels.

Corporal Nohel Rwabilinda, a 17-year-old child soldier who was smuggled into the Congolese jungles in 2003, was born from Kabeza in Remera, Kigali. He said he joined his father, Boniface Rwabilinda, in the bush whom he had last seen in 1994 when he was three years old.

"Someone picked me saying he was taking me to meet my father. We illegally crossed into Kivu and I found myself in the jungles."

Gen. Nkunda's intelligence agents monitor all FDLR activities. The two rebel groups spy on each other across the region.

Speaking recetnly from Nkunda's base in Masisi territory 100km from Goma, Chief of Intelligence Major Freddy Kambare Matsongani said that his spy network recently arrested many FDLR agents after they entered Nkunda's stronghold. "We have captured a lot of them and we know their movements."

He said two FDLR battallions crossed Masisi territory into Rutsuru, on the Congolese side of Virunga National Park, on 12 September.

"They are always with Congolese soldiers escorting them. They crossed and we have evidence they were protected by government soldiers."

A brigade commander of Nkunda said that when they are on the battle line, he can distinguish a Congolese soldier from an FDLR rebel.

"FDLR fight better than Congolese soldiers and are the ones sustaining the Congolese army." "We (FDLR) help Kabila's soldiers because they say they will help us get into Rwanda," Bizimungu says.

Nkunda said he had handed over fifty FDLR to Monuc (UN Mission in Congo) in September, but that the UN peacekeepers released them later.

"We later came to find those captives on the war front in subsequent clashes," he claimed.
However Monuc denies having received the captives.

The six captives who The New Times met were handed over to Monuc forces in Goma on September 13.

Corporal Jean de Dieu Niyonzima, 29, from Ruhengeri, was arrested this year in Masisi on a mission to spy on Nkunda and later cross over to Rwanda.

On September 9 three groups of FDLR soldiers and Congolese army (FARDC) were captured by Nkunda's forces on a frontline.

All those captured admitted they were fighting against Nkunda under the command of Congolese government military commanders. "Sometimes it is a FARDC or our (FDLR) commander leading us," Rwabilinda said.

The captured rebels also said that some FDLR rebels were registered for new Rwandan Identity Cards in the recent nationwide registration exercise.

"They used Congolese IDs when crossing but when they reached in Rwanda, they registered for the new IDs using the ones they have now," said Rwabilinda.

Besides the FDLR and Congolese government soldiers, Nkunda forces are also fighting other Congolese militia groups in the troubled North Kivu province.

The conflict has seen thousands of children conscripted into the military.

Few of them can tell why they fight but say they are influenced by parents and relatives.
The 17-year-old Rwabilinda, who joined the FDLR when he was 13 ostensibly to meet his father, said he was left without choice when he failed to return home after he arrived in FDLR strongholds in North Kivu.

"First they tell you they don't fight and that they are settled and cultivating. But when you get there and try to escape they kill you if you are caught. Everyday, they tell you they are fighting Tutsis and they will soon get hold of the power."

Nkunda accuses Kinshasa, decries genocide
Nkunda has consistently accused the Congolese government of working with the FDLR, whom he says is trying to exterminate Congolese Tutsis in the same way they perpetrated the 1994 Genocide.

"Those who committed Genocide in Rwanda in 1994 are now in here (DRC); do you think we should leave them to go ahead and commit the same attrocities here?" the General asked.

Nkunda said the FDLR wants Congolese in the eastern Congo to follow their ideology, and that that is what he is fighting against. In an interview, Nkunda accused Kinshasa of allying with the Rwandan negative forces. "We have evidence of the alliance of the Congolese government and FDLR, and we fear Tutsis in Congo will be exterminated.
There are signs of Genocide and we cannot keep quiet because already some Tutsis were killed here. People must be aware we cannot wait until it happens; I think we can prevent it," he said. Nkunda said people should not confuse the Congolese Tutsis and Rwandan Tutsis.

"My cause is to protect targetted Congolese and not Rwandans. I am fighhting for the freedom of this Congolese region and its population. Nobody therefore should link me to any other interests."

Nkunda's message, however, is not believed by all. The Congolese government and some sections in the international community call him a criminal guilty of killing civilians in North Kivu and forcing thousands from their homes.

Efforts to bring both sides to a round table collapsed several weeks ago when Congolese forces attacked Nkunda's troops.

Rwanda says a political solution was the best answer to the standoff between Kinshasa and Nkunda. Nkunda said he had captured a huge area of eastern Congo but that he has showed willingness to negotiate despite Kinshasa's rejection for talks.

"This war was not our business. Guns cannot address problems," he said, adding, "Sake (about 30km from Goma) was under our forces and we were moving into Goma. Monuc stopped us asking for talks, and we stopped and ignored all those advantages. But there is a problem with the government of (DR) Congo."

Nkunda insists his intention is not to overthrow Joseph Kabila's government, but to hold Kinshasa responsible for its failure to deal with the Rwandan Hutu rebels who fled to DRC after the 1994 Genocide.

"Kabila has created alliances with the FDLR to attack Congolese civilians, and our point is legitimate," he said. "We cannot allow these FDLR to continue causing insecurity and killing innocent people."

Meanwhile, President Kabila paid a surprise visit to Goma last week. His trip, according to observers did little to calm the raging tensions in the region.

He walked a few meters waving to the small crowd that had gathered near the airport, but some booed, highlighting the feeling by the majority of people in the area that a sustainable solution to the conflict was still missing.

A source said Kabila was probably briefed about the recent harassment of journalists in Sake by Congolese authorities.

The reporters had held a press conference with Nkunda in Masisi.

ICC to Determine Lubanga Trial Date On 1 October
United Nations Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (Kinshasa) via AllAfrica.com
By Eoin Young
September 27, 2007

The International Criminal Court (ICC) fixed an agenda for a hearing on Monday 1 October 2007 for the Thomas Lubanga case, when the earliest start date for the trial and other important issues relating to the case will be decided. Mr. Lubanga is charged by the ICC with war crimes including the enlisting and conscription of children under the age of 15.

As well as the earliest start date of the trial, the ICC hearing on Monday 1 October 2007 will discuss the volume of evidence and the number of witnesses to be called on by the prosecution.

The languages to be used during proceedings and the disclosure of the evidence the prosecution seek to rely on will also be decided.

Thomas Lubanga is the leader of the Union of Congolese Patriots (UPC), an armed militia in Ituri in northeastern DRC, and is implicated in numerous human rights human rights violations against civilians as well as the murder of UN peacekeepers.

Mr. Lubanga is the first person put on trial by the ICC in the Hague, Netherlands, and is charged with war crimes including the enlisting and conscription of children under the age of 15, in order to use them actively in hostilities.

The warrant of arrest against Mr Lubanga was issued under seal on 10 February, 2006 and unsealed on 17 March, 2006, the same day as he was arrested in Kinshasa and transferred to the Court in The Hague.

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Darfur, Sudan (ICC)

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

Civilians Under Attack in Scramble for Darfur
Human Rights Watch
September 19, 2007

As the United Nations and African Union prepare to deploy the world's largest-ever peacekeeping mission to Darfur, Sudanese government forces, allied "Janjaweed" militia, rebels and former rebels have free rein to attack civilians and humanitarian workers in Darfur, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today.

The situation in Darfur has evolved from an armed conflict between rebels and the government into a violent scramble for power and resources involving government forces, Janjaweed militia, rebels and former rebels, and bandits. But these complexities should not deflect attention from Khartoum's responsibility for indiscriminate aerial and ground attacks, complicity in Janjaweed attacks against civilians, failure to hold rights abusers accountable, and its unwillingness to establish a policing force that can protect civilians.

"The new peacekeeping mission in Darfur will need the resources and political support to protect civilians," said Peter Takirambudde, Africa director at Human Rights Watch. "Targeted sanctions should be imposed on Sudan if it obstructs peacekeepers and allows attacks on civilians."

The 76-page report, "Darfur 2007: Chaos by Design - Peacekeeping Challenges for AMIS and UNAMID," describes the current human rights situation in Darfur. Recent case studies from across Darfur illustrate how the proliferation of armed actors and the government's failure to strengthen the rule of law - particularly the police - are contributing to the abuses.

After civilians are displaced from their homes, they find themselves trapped in camps for the internally displaced. If they venture outside to farm, collect firewood, or return home, they risk being beaten, raped, robbed, or murdered - usually by Janjaweed and former rebels. Outsiders who are now occupying their land block prospects for sustainable peace and their return. Inter-tribal Arab fighting has left hundreds of more people dead and thousands displaced.

The report describes the critical ways in which the new peacekeeping mission, the UN-AU Mission in Darfur (UNAMID), and the international community must provide better civilian protection and address the shortcomings that have hampered the African Union's current mission, the AU Mission in Sudan (AMIS).

Human Rights Watch called on the United Nations and African Union to deploy UNAMID widely and strategically, and to give it strong rapid-response capabilities. UNAMID will need to carry out regular day and night patrols (including firewood and market day patrols), employ well-trained and well-resourced policing units, and contain human rights officers who can publicly report on their findings (including experts in sexual and gender-based violence as well as children's rights).

The full deployment of UNAMID may take many months. In the interim, support that the international community promised to AMIS must be delivered. Peacekeepers in Darfur must immediately resume protection activities, such as firewood patrols. Such patrols can help deter abuses, but in many places have been suspended for over a year.

Human Rights Watch called on the UN Security Council, the African Union, and the international community at large to impose targeted sanctions against the Sudanese government and other parties to the conflict if they fail to meet key benchmarks for improving the human rights situation in Darfur.

Specifically, all parties to the conflict should end attacks on civilians. The Sudanese government should end its unlawful use of UN and AMIS colors or markings on aircraft. The government should also end support to abusive Janjaweed militias and initiate programs to disarm them.

Khartoum should facilitate the expeditious deployment of AMIS and UNAMID, and all parties to the conflict should ensure that peacekeepers can carry out their mandate unhindered. The government, militia, rebels, and former rebels should increase humanitarian access, and the government should end the consolidation of ethnic cleansing in land use and occupation.

Finally, the Sudanese authorities should end impunity through full cooperation with the International Criminal Court (ICC), including the carrying out of arrest warrants. It should promote accountability by undertaking legal and other reforms to strengthen Sudan's justice system.

In early September, however, the Sudanese government audaciously nominated an international war crimes suspect to co-chair a committee to hear human rights complaints in Darfur. Ahmed Haroun, who also serves as the state minister for humanitarian affairs, is one of two men facing arrest warrants for war crimes and crimes against humanity by the ICC (please see: http://hrw.org/english/docs/2007/05/02/sudan15822.htm).

"People in camps across Darfur have told us that they don't feel safe to return home," said Takirambudde.

Human rights violations continue to be reported in Darfur, say UN experts
UN News Centre
September 24, 2007

Serious violations of international humanitarian and human rights law by all sides in the Darfur conflict continue to be reported, a group of seven independent United Nations rights experts said today in an interim report on the situation in the war-wracked Sudanese region.

The report of the Group of Experts on Darfur, presented to the Human Rights Council in Geneva, said they had received “excellent cooperation” from the Sudanese Government in their consultations and meetings since they issued their last report and recommendations in June.

But the ultimate measure of the Government’s implementation of those recommendations would be a concrete improvement in the human rights situation in Darfur, they said. While they noted that Khartoum had partially implemented some recommendations, there was no indication so far “that a clear impact on the ground has been identified.”

More than 200,000 people have been killed and at least 2.2 million others have been displaced from their homes since rebels began fighting Government forces and allied Janjaweed militia groups in 2003.

In March this year, the Human Rights Council set up the Group of Experts to monitor the situation on the ground amid mounting international concern at armed attacks against civilians and humanitarian workers, the widespread destruction of villages and the lack of accountability for the perpetrators of gender-based violence against women and girls.

The Group of Experts said it was not able yet to deliver a detailed assessment, which would have to wait until a complete report can be delivered to the Council in December.

The experts called on the Government to continue its efforts to implement the recommendations, such as by tackling impunity and by ensuring that all allegations of human rights violations are duly investigated and any perpetrators brought to justice.

They also urged all parties to the Darfur conflict to end violence against civilians, particularly women, children, internally displaced persons (IDPs), people with disabilities and humanitarian workers.

The Group is chaired by Sima Samar, the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Sudan, and its Rapporteur is Walter Kälin, the Secretary-General’s Representative on human rights of IDPs. Mr. Kälin presented today’s interim report to the Council.

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

Echoes of Genocide in Darfur, Eastern Chad
The East African (Nairobi) via www.allafrica.com
By John Pendergast And Colin Thomas-Jensen
September 25, 2007

Is the genocide in Darfur over? Reports in major news outlets suggest that genocidal attacks by Khartoum-sponsored militia are a thing of the past and that Darfur's agony today is born of anarchy.

Clearly, the violence in Darfur has escalated - but suggesting that the crisis there is now a free-for-all, with the moral equivalency that phrase implies, ignores the political logic driving a catastrophe that appears, on the surface, to be defined by armed chaos. The reality is far different - and, for the recently-authorised AU-UN peacekeeping force and upcoming peace negotiations to be successful, that reality must be understood.

Various writers in the Western capitals have missed the broader context of the process that is underway in Darfur. Beginning in mid-2003, Sudan's government set forth to destroy and displace the civilian support base for Darfur's rebel groups. The promotion of anarchy and inter-communal (or, popularly, "inter-tribal") fighting is part and parcel of Khartoum's genocidal counter-insurgency campaign. The conditions in Darfur and eastern Chad today are not evidence of an end to genocide and the onset of an entirely new and different war - they are the echoes of genocide.

The regime's behaviour is unswerving. Khartoum employed a similar divide-and-destroy strategy during its war with the Sudan People's Liberation Army(SPLA) during the 1990s. Having sown the seeds of divisions between various Southern Sudanese ethnic groups, government officials in Khartoum sat back and watched as inter-communal violence tore southern communities to pieces.

Some of the worst violence occurred when Dinka and Nuer commanders in the SPLA fought in Upper Nile, leading to the deaths of tens of thousands of people. Only when the SPLA reunified and communities began to work toward reconciliation did a peace deal for Southern Sudan become possible.

Who is primarily responsible? In Darfur, the same government officials lit the match to ignite the genocide and fuel the chaos we are witnessing today. As the government's divide-and-destroy policy envisioned, there is indeed increased fighting between and among communities, including among Arab groups that had previously worked together to destroy non-Arab villages.
But this masks the more intentional, better-resourced, and well-camouflaged strategy of the Sudanese regime, in which many of those leading the fighting on the ground today are but pawns.

With varying degrees of intensity, the regime and its assortment of militia allies and turncoat rebels continue to employ multiple tactics to achieve its objectives to destroy the Darfurian opposition, to permanently alter the demographics of Darfur and to deny Darfurians a meaningful role in national politics, including: Killings resulting from direct attacks against non-Arab civilians by Sudanese armed forces and allied militias; rape and sexual violence; forced displacement of civilian populations into camps; systematic destruction of livelihoods; aerial bombardment; resettlement of Arab civilians (including citizens of Chad and Niger) on land belonging to the displaced; and anarchic conditions that prevent displaced persons from returning home and relief workers from saving lives.

Violence is unrelenting in Darfur, but "tribes-in-arms" do not have a monopoly on violence against civilians. More than 500,000 people have been displaced in the past 15 months, most often by attacks by government army and air force, the former rebels under Minni Minawi's command that have joined the government, or other government-backed militias.

In June 2007, a large-scale government offensive in the Jebel Marra region displaced 30,000 civilians. In August, another 25,000 civilians fled from government-sponsored attacks and inter-communal violence. And recent heavy fighting between Darfur rebel groups and government forces spilled into Western Kordofan state.

The phenomenon of Arab militias turning on each other fits neatly into the government's strategic agenda as well. Having cut deals and granted impunity to various Arab militias to kill, rape, and loot non-Arab civilians, the government now derives strategic benefits from watching its former allies attack each other over the spoils. First, these agreements guarantee that no stakeholder in Darfur can assume military, strategic, or economic control of Darfur, and thus ensures itself an upper hand in peace negotiations. Second, they intensify the disruption of relief programmes in Darfur.

As a direct result of policy decisions made at the highest levels in Khartoum, humanitarian conditions continue to deteriorate. Chronic insecurity generates a steady flow of displaced civilians into large camps, putting further strain on UN agencies and non-governmental organisations already caught in the line of fire. In the past 12 months, attacks against humanitarian workers have increased by 150 per cent. What better way to restrict access than by fomenting violence and lawlessness?

The regime learned much from its 20-year war with Southern Sudanese rebels about how best to undermine humanitarian operations through helping to create conditions of insecurity that then deny relief agencies regular access. Despite some of the press accounts, malnutrition rates are increasing substantially for the first time since the end of 2004. Many of the largest camps in all three provinces of Darfur are reporting a significant spike in the number of malnourished children and adults.

For the first time in the last three years, malnutrition rates are climbing above emergency levels. Contrary to what some writers have recently suggested, Darfur is not "saving itself."

The recent upsurge in violence has come at the worst possible time. Darfur is in the middle of the rainy season; humanitarian access is already restricted and surplus food supplies are depleted. Weakened by hunger, the victims of Khartoum's policies are even more susceptible to cholera, malaria, typhoid, and other communicable diseases that increase during the rainy season.

Strangely, some "analysts" have focused on the uncertainty surrounding how many people may have actually died so far in Darfur. Without any remotely comprehensive mortality study, such an argument is counter-productive and not based on any empirical evidence. The real issue is not abstract number-crunching, but significant pressure on the Khartoum regime to stop blocking aid agencies from conducting the kind of comprehensive mortality and morbidity studies that help inform their work and help create more realistic estimates of the number of lives lost in this tragedy.

With its presence in the field, the humanitarian community is best placed to determine the facts on the ground, and the Darfur they describe in confidence is a place where civilians continue to die in large numbers. Yet aid groups are walking a tightrope: Speaking out publicly about the worsening situation would almost certainly elicit a strong reaction from Khartoum and jeopardise the only lifeline for 4 million people in need of assistance.

In late August, the government of Sudan expelled the country director of the non-governmental organisation Care, which provides assistance to nearly 525,000 Darfur residents. The message is clear: Khartoum is in firm control of the humanitarian community in Sudan, and can expel anyone, at any time, for any reason. In this case, the regime had obtained an internal Care e-mail outlining security conditions on the ground and various scenarios for maintaining the security of Care staff. The government also expelled Canadian and European Union diplomats.

Why is the government of Sudan stepping up its intimidation of humanitarians and diplomats now, so soon after it agreed to the deployment of the hybrid AU-UN peacekeeping force? The answer is very simple: The pragmatic and survivalist policy-makers in the ruling National Congress Party constantly calculate how much they can get away with.

And with the hybrid force's deployment foremost in the minds of the international community, khartoum believes that it will respond meekly to these expulsions for fear that strong condemnation could jeopardise the hybrid agreement.

The purpose of course is to strengthen the regime's hand in dictating the terms of the hybrid force's deployment and in influencing the next steps in the peace process. Evidently, the government of Sudan is correct; the EU apologised, and their representative was allowed to stay on in Khartoum. Canada, on the other hand, responded appropriately - condemning the Sudanese government and expelling a Sudanese diplomat from Ottawa.

While a violent free-for-all between numerous armed groups - rebel factions, Arab militias, and organised criminals - has consumed parts of Darfur, the ruling National Congress Party in Sudan has managed, for the most part, to contain the chaos in Darfur and export it to Chad with minimal disruption to its main business: Hoarding Sudan's growing oil wealth while it undermines the landmark 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement with the SPLM.

What needs to be done most urgently? The Sudanese government has by no means diminished its efforts to win the Darfur war militarily and destroy all forms of opposition in the region. Regime negotiators will press for further implementation modalities for the 2006 Darfur Peace Agreement, because it has become a tool in the regime's counter-insurgency strategy of buying off individual rebel movements and co-opting them into doing the regime's dirty work in Darfur.

All efforts must be made by negotiators to work tirelessly to create unity among Darfur's armed and unarmed groups around a series of sound and acceptable proposals at the peace talks, and to connect such efforts with a renewed push to implement the 2005 CPA in Southern Sudan.

John Pendergast is co-chair and Colin Thomas-Jensen is policy advisor to the Enough Project

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Uganda (ICC)

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

Ugandan rebels to consult public on peace talks
Agence France-Presse
September 25, 2007

NAIROBI, Sept 25, 2007 (AFP) - Ugandan rebels will next month hold a rare convention to seek public views on current peace efforts before resuming talks with the government, a spokesman said Tuesday.

Some 500 northern Uganda delegates will meet in Ri-Kwangba, a remote jungle clearing on the Sudan-Democratic Republic of Congo border in mid-October for a week, Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) spokesman Godfey Ayoo told AFP.

A joint team of rebels and mediators will travel next Monday to the war-torn region to mobilise delegates for the first-ever public forum since LRA leader Joseph Kony took over a two-year-old rebellion in northern Uganda in 1988.

"The agenda will be to get people's views on comprehensive solutions to the conflict as well as matters on accountability and reconciliation," Ayoo said.

The convention is tentatively scheduled for October 15 ahead of resuming face-to-face
talks with the government in the south Sudan capital Juba, he said.
Previous bids to discuss accountability at the peace talks were hampered by the International Criminal Court's (ICC) arrest warrants for Kony and four top commanders for war crimes.

Northern Uganda elders have urged the ICC to drop charges in favour of traditional justice because Kony has vowed never to sign a final accord amid lingering arrest warrants.

The meeting's resolutions will form the backbone of the LRA position at talks, whose resumption date is yet to be announced.

The ongoing Juba negotiations, seen as the best chance yet to end the conflict, have been tortuous but violence has receded, improving security in the region where human rights groups have accused both sides of atrocities.

The conflict between the government and the LRA started in 1986 and has left tens of thousands of people dead as well as 1.8 million people displaced, out of a total of 2.7 million people living in northern Uganda.

The LRA has been accused of committing atrocities including murder, rape, mutilations and mass abductions since it took leadership of a regional rebellion among northern Uganda's ethnic Acholi minority in 1988.

Plan to Flush LRA Out of DRC “Recipe for Impunity”
Institute for War and Peace Reporting
By Samuel Okiror Egadu
September 25, 2007

Amnesty says deal between Museveni and Kabila will push rebels into Sudan, which refuses to cooperate with ICC.
Human rights organisations have criticised the recent deal between the Ugandan and Congolese presidents to flush out Lord’s Residence Army, LRA, rebels in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.

President Yoweri Museveni and his Congolese counterpart Joseph Kabila agreed on September 8 to launch joint military operations with the UN peace keeping mission in Congo, MONUC, to push the LRA out of their Garamba National Park hideout within 90 days.

But some human rights activists are dismayed, saying the two presidents should instead be concentrating on their obligations to deliver to The Hague four LRA commanders indicted by the International Criminal Court, ICC.

Christopher Hall, senior legal advisor at Amnesty International’s international justice project, describes the landmark agreement between Museveni and Kabila as a “recipe for impunity”.

“It simply commits them, not to fulfill their legal obligations under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court to arrest and surrender the four leaders of the Lord's Resistance Army to the ICC, but simply to push them over the border into Sudan, a state that has not ratified the Rome Statute and which has refused to cooperate with the court,” said Hall.

The LRA has in the past operated from southern Sudan, employing many of the same tactics as on its home ground in the north of Uganda, terrorising the population with brutal killings, abductions and pillaging.

“MONUC should be launching a long overdue law enforcement effort now to arrest and surrender these persons who are suspected of war crimes and crimes against humanity. There is no reason to wait one minute longer,” added Hall.

LRA leader Joseph Kony, his deputy Vincent Otti, and top commanders Okot Odiambo and Domenic Ogwen are wanted by ICC for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

They face charges of murder, rape, sexual enslavement, mutilation, abduction and recruitment of child soldiers. The fifth indicted commander, Raska Lukwiya, was killed in August last year in a battle with government forces in Kitgum.

One of the triggers for the decision by Kabila and Museveni to take military action is the LRA leadership’s refusal to leave the Garamba park and bring its guerrilla fighters to assembly points in villages just across the border in Sudan.

In a ceasefire agreement reached in August last year, LRA leaders committed themselves to assembling their forces at two Sudanese villages, Ri-Kwangba and Owiny-Kibul, within three weeks. This did not happen, and further agreements to bring the rebels to the assembly points in November and December last year were not honoured.

The latest addendum to the cessation of hostilities agreement, signed on April 14 this year, contained a modification – made at the LRA’s request – that the assembly area should be limited to one location, Ri-Kwangba. The operation was meant to be completed by the end of June, but once again, it has not happened.

Northern Uganda has been largely peaceful since the commencement of talks between the Kampala government and the LRA in July last year, and people have slowly begun returning to their homes from refugee camps.

However, the Museveni-Kabila deal has angered the rebels who say it violates the spirit of the ongoing peace talks in Juba, southern Sudan, and have warned that any attack on their Garamba base means a resumption of war in the region.

The chairperson of the Acholi Religious Leaders Peace Initiative, ALPI, told IWPR that the Kabila-Museveni deal could endanger the Juba talks. “It’s an unfortunate agreement,” said John Baptist Odama, also a bishop at the Gulu archdiocese. “The agreement jeopardises the trust put on the peace talks.”

He said the only hope remaining for those Ugandans who have lived in refugee camps during two decades of insurgency are the Juba peace talks.

“The people have suffered a lot and need to rest by going back to their villages. If the peace talks succeed, it will be victory for IDPs, the LRA, Uganda, South Sudan, Congo, Africa and the whole world,” he said. “The hope of the people lies on the talks.”

The ICC insists that it is the arrest warrants against Kony and the others that have contributed to a reduction in the number of LRA attacks and have brought the rebels to the negotiating table in Juba.

In an earlier interview with IWPR, the ICC director for international cooperation, Beatrice Le Fraper Du Hellen, called upon the 105 countries that signed the treaty creating the ICC to enforce the arrest warrants.

“Those arrests warrants must be executed and enforced by Uganda, DR Congo and the other 105 state parties to the Rome Statute. Kony and his other indicted commanders must be arrested and surrendered to The Hague for trials,” said Le Fraper.

“The ICC doesn’t have its own police force. Its police force is 105 state parties. ICC relies on the support of 105 member states. The four most wanted LRA criminals must be arrested and surrendered to the court in The Hague.”

DRC protests to Uganda after six die in border clash
AFP
September 26, 2007

Democratic Republic of Congo protested to Uganda Wednesday after six Congolese nationals were killed and five injured by Ugandan troops on Lake Albert, marking the border between the two countries. "In the face of these serious acts resulting from irresponsible and unacceptable behaviour by the Ugandan army, the (DRC foreign) ministry expresses the strongest protest of the government," a ministry statement delivered to the Ugandan embassy in Kinshasa said.

DR Congo "demands explanations from the Ugandan government" of the incident "which is not calculated to strengthen neither in the spirit or the letter" recent agreements concluded by the two neighbours. The UN mission in DR Congo, MONUC, said Tuesday that there had been "two separate incidents" on Monday at Lake Albert, a region where oil was recently discovered.

"There was a firefight on Monday afternoon on Lake Albert in which six (Congolese) were killed and five were wounded," said MONUC's military spokesman Gabriel de Brosses. De Brosses said the dead included a Congolese soldier, two other men, two women and a child. According to witnesses speaking to the UN-backed Okapi radio, eight Ugandan soldiers on a motorised dinghy approached a civilian boat carrying around 40 passengers and opened fire after two Congolese soldiers aboard refused to give up their weapons.

A Ugandan army spokesman said earlier that two Congolese soldiers and one Ugandan soldier had died in a clash in Ugandan waters of the lake, involving a barge belonging to Canada's Heritage Oil Corp. But Heritage said its vessel was not involved.

Heritage said its vessel was "within Ugandan waters in Lake Albert in the process of lifting cables to mark the completion of a seismic survey" when a UN patrol boat detained the ship and its crew. "This was a routine check, not hostile, and there was full cooperation. After a short interview at shore, the vessel and crew were released and returned to base in Uganda," a statement said.

The clash between border forces was a "separate, unrelated, isolated incident," it added. "No employees or sub-contractors of Heritage were involved."
The company challenged a UN official, who told AFP the oil exploration vessel was escorted out of "Congolese waters" to "avoid increasing tensions" between the two nations and "to ensure the crew's safety." In a second episode, according to the UN, Uruguayan soldiers belonging to MONUC discovered the Heritage vessel on the DR Congo side of the lake and escorted it to a Congolese border town, according to Michel Bonnardeaux, MONUC spokesman for civilian affairs. He said no violence occurred at that time.

The Ugandan army spoke earlier of one incident involving the Heritage vessel in which three soldiers, two Congolese and one Ugandan, had died.
Kicoco Tabaro, army spokesman for western Uganda, insisted that the vessel belonging to Canada's Heritage Oil Corp had been on the Ugandan side of Lake Albert when it was seized and commandeered to the Congolese side. Tension between the two Great Lakes nations has shot up since August 1 when Uganda accused DRC troops of killing a British engineer exploring for oil on the Ugandan side of Lake Albert.

Oil companies have been working in the region for many years, and last year Heritage and Australia's Hardman Resources said they had found large deposits there and would start extraction in 2009. Uganda invaded DR Congo in 1998 during its neighbour's civil war in 1998 on the ground it was tracking down Ugandan rebels. Some Ugandan troops were accused of wide rights abuses and of plundering gold and diamonds.
Kampala and Kinshasa signed an agreement in September in Tanzania to open "joint oil exploration and exploitation" in Lake Albert.

Ugandan Opposition to Visit LRA Lair
Institute for War and Peace Reporting
By Samuel Okiror Egadu
September 27, 2007

Politicians say they have a useful role to play in furthering the difficult peace process between the Ugandan government and the northern rebels.

The chief mediator in the on-off peace talks designed to end a two-decade insurgency by the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army has invited Ugandan opposition leaders to meet the guerrilla force’s commanders at their headquarters in the northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo.

Riek Machar, the vice-president of the semi-autonomous South Sudan region, is refereeing the negotiations between the Ugandan government and the Lord’s Resistance Army, LRA.

He said he hoped the meeting would help build confidence and speed up the peace process.

Since negotiations got under way in July last year, northern Uganda has been largely peaceful, and people have slowly begun returning to their homes from the squalid refugee camps that until recently housed some 1.7 million villagers who had fled the fighting.

The talks, held in the South Sudan capital Juba, were adjourned three months ago, and a date for their resumption keeps being set back, with mid-October now cited as the earliest possible date for a return to the table.

Machar has invited a number of leaders and members of the major Ugandan opposition parties, who have long accused their government of shutting them out of negotiations with the LRA, to take part in the trip.

The flight into the Garamba National Park is being organised by the United Nations, through its special envoy to northern Uganda, former Mozambican president Joaquim Chissano. The group is expected to fly into the 5,000 square kilometre park at the end of September or in early October.

The politicians will meet LRA leader Joseph Kony, his deputy Vincent Otti, and two other senior commanders, Dominic Ongwen and Okot Odhiambo.

All four are the subjects of arrest warrants issued by the International Criminal Court, ICC, in The Hague on 33 counts of crimes against humanity and war crimes. The ICC warrants allege that in the course of northern Uganda’s two decade-long civil war, the four leaders "engaged in a cycle of violence and established a pattern of brutalisation of civilians by acts including murder, abduction, sexual enslavement, mutilation, as well as mass burnings of houses and looting of camp settlements."

The charge sheet further alleges that Kony and his men abducted children as fighters, porters and sex slaves for the LRA movement.

The rebel leaders moved into the Garamba park in late 2004 after leaving their former bases in southern Sudan.

Opposition leaders who spoke to IWPR were enthusiastic about their forthcoming trip. They believe their meeting with LRA commanders and negotiators will enable them to offer guidance and support that will in turn help the peace negotiations regain momentum.

Wafula Oguttu, spokesman for Uganda’s main opposition party, the Forum for Democratic Change, FDC, said it was important for leaders from his party to go to Garamba because it is the dominant political force in the north, the focus of the LRA rebellion.

“We are willing to go to Garamba for the sake of peace, for our people who have suffered for the last 20 years,” he said.

John Ssebana Kizito, the leader of the Democratic Party who contested the 2006 presidential election, said, “The opposition has a role to play in these peace talks. Since we have been sidelined [from the Juba peace negotiations] by the government, we are happy to be invited to the Garamba”

“We are going to spice up the talks by giving morale to the rebels. We shall also find out the gaps that are delaying the peace negotiations.”

The Democratic Party holds eight of the 289 seats in Uganda’s parliament.

John Ken Lukamuzi, leader of the Conservative Party, which has only one seat in parliament, said his party had always favoured negotiations.

“While they [the Museveni government] chose the option of the gun, we didn’t. In 2003, I moved a motion in parliament urging government to hold peace talks with the rebels. Consequently, the CP is obliged to participate in the Garamba talks,” he said.

The Uganda People’s Congress, UPC, has its traditional heartland in the north of the country. The UPC dominated Ugandan politics from independence in 1962 until 1971 when President Milton Obote was overthrown by Idi Amin. It is now led by the late president’s widow Miria Obote and has nine seats in parliament.

UPC secretary general Peter Walubiri said opposition leaders ought to be part of the Juba peace negotiations given their local knowledge.

“Our direct involvement in Juba would speed up the peace process and the signing of the comprehensive agreement,” he said. “Some of us know more about this issue than the government’s chief negotiators and would be [good for] such resourceful persons to be involved in the talks.”

Uganda’s chief negotiator at the talks, Interior Minister Ruhakana Rugunda, represents a parliamentary constituency in the far southwest of Uganda. The ethnic and cultural divide between north and south has been a major factor in post-independence Ugandan politics.

Most of the opposition leaders interview by IWPR felt that the ICC’s intention to prosecute Kony and his lieutenants were a stumbling block to peace, and wanted to see the arrest warrants dropped.

“FDC doesn’t want ICC,” said the party’s leader Oguttu. “We as a party don’t believe in The Hague. We want truth and reconciliation.”

Lukamuzi described the ICC arrest warrants as “a big impediment to the Juba peace talks”.

“They should be dropped,” he said.

The UPC’s Walubiri agreed, adding, “We prefer the rebels to be tried using local traditional justice systems. We also want a Ugandan truth and reconciliation commission to be formed to handle issues of accountability and reconciliation, both with regard to the northern conflict and other less publicised wars in the country.”

Walubiri alleged that the Ugandan government and the ICC had conspired to indict only LRA commanders while exonerating the Ugandan People’s Defence Force, UPDF.

“Both the LRA and the UPDF have committed atrocities in northern Uganda in the course of the war,” he said. “The government rushed to the ICC to cover up its own atrocities. This is nothing but a conspiracy.”

All the opposition leaders were strongly opposed to an agreement that Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni and Joseph Kabila, president of DRC, reached in September to launch a joint military drive to clear the LRA out of Garamba by mid-December.

The LRA reacted to the news with a furious threat to resume hostilities. “Any attack on our military positions… shall be treated strictly as a declaration of war,” said its spokesman Godfrey Ayoo.

Ugandan opposition politicians warned that if the Museveni-Kabila deal is implemented, it will inevitably mean a resumption of the civil war, which has claimed some 100,000 lives and seen the abduction of an estimated 38,000 minors to fight as guerrilla soldiers.

“The Museveni-Kabila agreement disturbs us so much,” said FDC spokesman Oguttu. “If Uganda and DR Congo go ahead and attack LRA in Garamba, this will lead to the resumption of war in northern Uganda. This will definitely be a major blow to the peace talks.
“Museveni is clearly not after a peaceful means of ending this war. He wants to be a military conqueror. However, this rebellion can’t be solved through a military approach as he [Museveni] has tried it for the last 20 years and failed. The only solution to this insurgency is through peace negotiations.”

Lukamuzi commented, “The [Museveni-Kabila] agreement was miscalculated. They are squeezing LRA too much. Government chose dialogue with the rebels in Juba, so let’s go on with dialogue and not jump back again into a military approach with Kabila.”

The government’s chief negotiator, Interior Minister Rugunda, defended the Museveni-Kabila agreement, saying it was in line with the terms of the Juba peace process. He pointed out that under current ceasefire arrangements, the LRA’s guerrillas are required to assemble in the South Sudan border village of Ri-Kwangba, not in DRC.

“The agreement will improve the security of the region,” he told IWPR. “It will further increase impetus to the peace process in Juba by telling the LRA to respect the Cessation of Hostilities Agreement, which involves moving to Ri-Kwangba.

“The LRA doesn’t have any business to do in Garamba. They should respect the agreement they signed.”

Uganda: UPC Snubs Peace Consultations
New Vision
September 27, 2007

THE Uganda People's Congress (UPC) party has rejected the Government's invitation to the consultations on the Juba peace talks. The Government on Saturday invited the UPC to participate in the final and conclusive round of consultations which started yesterday at Munyonyo Speke Resort. The UPC president, Miria Obote, said the peace talks had been poorly handled and that their invitation was very late. "Besides, the process is being done on a narrow area of the formal justice system and not on the major issue of accountability and reconciliation. This is absurd," she said. Addressing the party's weekly press briefing yesterday in Kampala, Miria accused the Government of handling the talks with 'hypocrisy'.

"UPC would like to reiterate that the Government is holding an olive branch in one hand and a dagger in the other. "It is talking peace on one hand and employing military and scaring strategies on the other hand." The Government is currently conducting nationwide consultations on what people would want included in the reconciliation package with the LRA rebels. The findings will inform the discussions when the parties resume talks in Juba.

The UPC also advised the Government to dismiss the ultimatum issued by the US secretary of state for African affairs, Jendayi Frazer, which called for the talks to end within a certain time frame or have war declared on one of the parties.

"It will be recalled that a similar ultimatum by Museveni in 1994 instead derailed the peace talks initiated by Betty Bigombe. This approach is uncalled for.

"It does not create an ambient atmosphere for meaningful peace talks," Miria said.

On the boarder crisis between the DR Congo and Uganda, Miria called for the intervention of the African Union and the United Nations. She said the two organisations should investigate the cause of the clashes and to come up with a joint solution.

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International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY)

Official Website of the ICTY

War crime lawyers fight UN on top job
Guardian Unlimited
By Ed Vulliamy
September 23, 2007

The new leadership of the United Nations is facing a defiant challenge from within one of its few recent successes - the war crimes tribunal in The Hague - over who will steer the epic trials towards their close.

Prosecution lawyers at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) - trying Europe's bloodiest war criminals since the Nazis - fear a backstage deal has been struck between new UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon over an appointment of a successor to chief prosecutor Carla Del Ponte, who leaves in December. Senior Hague lawyers say they are ready to quit over the issue.

Accounts by tribunal and UN sources of how a former Belgian attorney-general petitioned for the job and has reportedly been guaranteed it affords a rare insight into the veiled sanctums of the UN.

Sources at the ICTY, at UN headquarters in New York and across the world of international law and human rights advocacy, say Del Ponte's succession has been pledged in secret to Serge Brammertz, a Belgian criminologist who became deputy prosecutor at the new International Criminal Court and heads the UN commission into the murder of Lebanese premier Rafiq al-Hariri in 2005, which he wants to leave.

The entire senior prosecution staff at the tribunal have taken the unprecedented step of sending a joint letter to Ki-Moon, contesting a Brammertz appointment by proposing Del Ponte's current deputy David Tolbert, who has worked for nine years at the tribunal, for the job.

'The matter is not one of personalities nor Brammertz's standing', says one lawyer. 'It's the difference between someone who knows the history, understands every case and can deliver a completion strategy, or someone brought in by the Secretary General just to shut the tribunal down, with no experience of the cases, background or region.'

Ki-Moon's office will not comment, citing confidentiality of the appointments procedure. But the lawyers' view is backed unanimously by organisations with an interest in the tribunal's work, including the George Soros Foundation, Human Rights Watch and campaigners within former Yugoslavia itself, all of whom have also petitioned Ki-Moon.

'Just because people haven't heard of the names remaining to stand trial doesn't mean that they are not the most important cases,' says Kelly Askin, senior legal officer at the Soros Foundation. 'It's crucial that there be continuity - and the fact is we have someone available who knows the institution and the people, and has followed every case and every detail for nine years. Several senior staff have told me they will leave the tribunal if David Tolbert is not appointed.'

The ICTY has had a bumpy journey since it was established under pressure from then President Bill Clinton's Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, in 1994. It was seen at the time as an act of contrition after the UN's catastrophic failure to intervene as hundreds of thousands died in three years of savage 'ethnic cleansing' in Bosnia, culminating with the massacre of 8,000 men and boys at the UN-protected 'Safe Area' of Srebrenica in July 1995.

The tribunal lost its biggest catch with the death in prison of former Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic, and is haunted by the failure to catch the two Bosnian Serb leaders accused of unleashing the genocide in Bosnia - General Ratko Mladic and former President Radovan Karadzic. Their capture would extend the tribunal's mandate beyond 2010, and make for a climactic end-game; Del Ponte made what could be her final trip to Belgrade this week as a last-ditch attempt to secure, under her watch, the two leaders.

But for all the publicity over Karadzic and Mladic, the tribunal - the first of its kind since the Nuremberg trials - has seen remarkable successes. Even apart from the convictions secured, accounts of the slaughter have been told for the historical record in intimate language from the witness boxes. There have been dramatic moments as killers and leaders have been confronted by victims.

The tribunal won a guilty plea from Karadzic's co-President Biljana Plavsic, for her role in the overall planning of war crimes. New laws of war have been written: the Serb siege of Sarajevo was deemed a war crime, as was the use of systematic mass rape as a means of persecution at Foca, in Eastern Bosnia.

But crucial trials are outstanding or still in process - the leadership of the Bosnian Croat war machine, which laid murderous siege to East Mostar and set up a gulag for Muslims, is currently standing trial; notorious paramilitary warlord Milan Lukic awaits trial, accused of locking scores of families in houses and burning them alive in Visegrad. Above all, Momcilo Peresic - Milosevic's most senior general - is also due for trial. It is a critical case, because a conviction would establish Serbia's direct involvement in the genocide, in stark counterpoint to a ruling by the International Court of Justice, which rejected a case by the Bosnian government against Serbia for its involvement in genocide.

The team that convicted Krstic, Krajsnik and those preparing the cases against Lukic and Peresic all are signatories to the letter to Ki-Moon.

An ICTY statement last week said del Ponte's mandate had been extended until 31 December. 'The successor to the current prosecutor has not yet been appointed yet,' it said.

Mark Ellis, of the London-based International Bar Association, said: 'It struck me as very odd that the UN would make a decision which would in essence put a newcomer in charge.'

War crimes tribunal should not close until all suspects are caught, Bosnia tells UN
UN News Center
September 26, 2007

The United Nations war crimes tribunal set up in the aftermath of the 1990s Balkan wars should not close until the most notorious suspects still at large, the former Bosnian Serb leaders Radovan Karadžic and Ratko Mladic, are brought to justice, the Chairman of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina told the General Assembly today.

Speaking this afternoon at the annual high-level debate at UN Headquarters in New York, Željko Komšic said all suspected war criminals from the various territories of the former Yugoslavia who have not been arrested should be brought before the courts.

The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), which is based in The Hague in the Netherlands, was set up by the Security Council in May 1993 to deal with the worst violations of international humanitarian law during the Balkan wars.

Mr. Karadžic and Mr. Mladic are two of only four men who are still at large, but under the completion strategy established with the Council, the ICTY has said it will try to finish all trials at the first instance by the end of next year.

A former political leader of the Bosnian Serbs, Mr. Karadžic faces two counts of genocide, five counts of crimes against humanity, three counts of violating the laws or customs of war and one count of grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions.

Mr. Mladic, who led the Bosnian Serb military forces, faces 15 charges, including two of genocide, seven of crimes against humanity and six of violating the rules or customs of war.

Mr. Komšic said authorities in Bosnia and Herzegovina had been working closely with the ICTY on issues ranging from extradition and the processing of criminal charges to the provision of working conditions for court representatives and access to documents.

“We are creating a legal framework and have a special department of the War Crimes Court to start processing war crime cases,” he said. “This is one of the conditions for establishing mutual trust and reconciliation in a post-conflict Bosnia and Herzegovina”

During his address Mr Komšic also stressed the need for urgent UN reform, saying the July 1995 massacre of more than 7,000 Muslim men and boys at Srebrenica – a Security Council-designated “safe area” – was a notorious example of how “my country paid a high price for the imperfect and inefficient UN system.”

Therefore, he said, it was essential that the UN and its various bodies and agencies be strengthened and revitalized, including the Security Council, the General Assembly and the Secretariat.

Witness: Woman Was Impaled Alive
Javno
September 27, 2007

Retired Croatian colonel Marko Jagetic says that 70 bodies of Serb civilians were collected after the campaign Medacki Dzep.

Retired Croatian Army medical corps colonel Marko Jagetic testified at the trial of generals Rahim Ademi and Mirko Norac. He said that, after the campaign Medacki Dzep, more than 70 corpses of Serb civilians were collected in nearby villages and that many of them had marks that indicated torture and massacre.

Almost all the executed [people] were civilians and no weapons or documents were found on any of them – said Jagetic, who was the army doctor in charge of the team that collected the bodies of the dead after the campaign.

Following the order of Kornelije Brkic, the head of medical corps at central command, he was to find 52 bodies for a trade, but those bodies could not have signs of torture or abuse. He says that Brkic told him that, if the opposite were the case, his own body may end up in the group for the exchange.

Most bodies had gunshot wounds that, as the witness says, could not have been afflicted from close proximity. There were, however, many cuts, says Jagetic, adding that many of the injuries pointed to heavy torture and a massacre of civilians.

For instance, on the body of Andjelija Jovic, he saw injuries caused by the victim being impaled alive. Former head of forensic medicine in Rijeka Renata Dobi-Babic also confirmed this to him. She was at the helm of the medical team in charge of getting the 52 bodies ready for the exchange.

Jagetic: It was important to move the bodies before UNPROFOR arrived

The bodies that could not be traded because they had torture marks were buried using a mechanical shovel near Gospic or thrown into septic tanks.

Command was not interested [in knowing] what would happen with the bodies that were not going to be traded. The only thing that was important was that all the bodies be moved from the zone UNPROFOR was entering – said Jagetic.

He also said that there were more men than women among the victims, “mostly middle-aged people.”

He added that, in the field, he saw traces of torture, two men hanged from a tree with a chain and a rope, and that he discovered remains of a human spine and pelvis on a site where a house had burned down.

He also heard about the crimes from soldiers and, a year after the campaign, one of the soldiers had recalled that they had roasted a lamb under the bodies of the two hanged civilians.

When UNPROFOR started entering the area, they excavated a chetnik leader who had been cut to pieces alive for two hours. He was then put in a trench, covered with earth and a mechanical shovel passed over him – testified Jagetic.

He also said that, in the course of the campaign, houses were pillaged and burned down and cattle was taken away.

Norac: Jagetic was forced to retire because he liked to have a few and this is why he is resentful

Jagetic says that, during the conflict, he sometimes felt that it was admiral Davor Domazet Loso who commanded the campaign who, in his words, ordered artillery attacks on Udbina and Korenica.

UNPROFOR asked that the fire be ceased and they threatened to start bombing our towns too – said Jagetic. After his testimony, accused general Norac said that it was not true that the discovered bodies were civilians because Serbian soldiers changed into civilian clothes. He added that he found Jagetic’s testimony pretentious and lacking credibility.

Jagetic had to retire because he liked to have a few, so he is resentful – said Norac, to which the witness smiled and said that he did not feel it necessary to comment. Residents of the villages around Medacki Dzep – Mile Drca, Milan Pavlica, Milka Radakovic and Nikola Vidovic – were supposed to testify before Jagetic, but none of them appeared in court. Pavlica had passed away and the remaining three either did not receive subpoenas or were not found at their addressed in Serbia.

U.N. tribunal upholds acquittal of Kosovo ex-rebels
Reuters Canada
By Alexandra Hudson
September 27, 2007

THE HAGUE (Reuters) - The Appeals Chamber of the U.N. war crimes tribunal cleared two Kosovo Albanians of war crimes for the second time on Thursday, upholding their 2005 acquittal on charges of torture, murder and cruel treatment.

Appeals judges agreed with an earlier ruling that Fatmir Limaj, 36, a senior Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) member, was not guilty of murder, torture and inhumane acts during the 1998-99 conflict in the southern Serbian province.

They also upheld the acquittal of Isak Musliu, 36, another member of the now disbanded KLA, of the same crimes.

"The Appeals Chamber finds that the Trial Chamber reasonably found that Fatmir Limaj does not incur criminal responsibility for any of the offences charged in the indictment," Judge Fausto Pocar said.

The Appeals Chamber upheld the conviction and sentence of a third man, Haradin Bala, a former prison camp guard, found guilty of murder, torture and cruelty and sentenced to 13 years.

During the original trial, Limaj and Musliu were cleared of all charges of abducting and murdering Serb civilians as well as Albanians suspected of collaborating with Serb authorities while Kosovo was in the grip of a separatist insurgency.

The province has been administered by the United Nations since 1999 when NATO forces intervened to stop the murder of Kosovo Albanian civilians by Serb forces battling the uprising. Internationally mediated talks on its future are still ongoing.

The trial of the men -- the first international war crimes trial of Kosovo Albanians -- sparked protests by Kosovo's ethnic Albanian majority, who see KLA soldiers as fighters for independence and freedom from Serb oppression.

Limaj, still a popular and influential figure in Kosovo, is one of the highest profile former KLA guerillas to be indicted by the Hague, along with former prime minister Ramush Haradinaj, who is still on trial for war crimes during the conflict.

NO CRIMINAL ENTERPRISE

According to the original indictment, KLA forces led by Limaj and Musliu started rounding up Serb and Albanian civilians from central Kosovo in May 1998, imprisoning some 35 people in the Lapusnik Prison Camp.

Limaj and Musliu controlled the camp, where detainees were routinely subjected to lengthy interrogations, beatings and torture. Bala worked there as a guard.

By end-July 1998, soldiers under the command of the two men had murdered a total of 22 people, some in the camp, some in a clearing in the woods in the nearby Berisa mountains, the indictment said. Bala personally committed some of the murders.

Prosecutors appealed the original "not-guilty" verdicts citing errors in the procedure, and arguing that Limaj and Musliu had planned the use torture in Lapusnik all along.

But the Appeals Chamber ruled that although factual findings showed KLA soldiers committed cruel treatment and torture, this did not constitute a deliberate criminal enterprise.

The judges upheld that Limaj had no direct role in the treatment of prisoners in the camp.

At the time of the original acquittal, Serb officials said it was a "judicial disgrace" and accused the court of bias.

Croatia protests 'scandalous' Vukovar ruling to UN chief
FOCUS News Agency
September 28, 2007

Zagreb. Croatia protested on Friday to UN chief Ban Ki-moon the leniency of prison sentences handed out by the UN war crimes court over the 1991 Vukovar massacre which were perceived here as "scandalous".

"Croatia cannot remain silent in a moment when justice is being ignored by an institution which has been founded to serve it," Prime Minister Ivo Sanader said in a letter sent to Ban.

The Hague-based UN tribunal on Thursday sentenced a former Serb-dominated Yugoslav army officer Mile Mrksic to 20 years for aiding and abetting the torture and murder of 194 Croat prisoners of war.

His subordinate Veselin Sljivancanin was sentenced to five years in jail. The third accused, Miroslav Radic, was acquitted because judges found there was no evidence he was aware of the killings at a pig farm near Vukovar.

Croatia will voice its view over the issue before the General Assembly and the Security Council, Sanader said, stressing the time "has come to question all the aspects of the UN court's work."

"Vukovar and Ovcara (farm) are the sites of the worst war crimes committed in Croatia during the 1991-1995 war," of independence from the former Yugoslavia, Sanader said.

"They stand alongside Srebrenica and Sarajevo as internationally recognized symbols of war and destruction imposed to innocent victims of Slobodan Milosevic's regime."

The three-and-half-year-long siege of the Bosnian capital and the massacre of some 8,000 Muslims in Srebrenica remain the darkest episodes of the 1990s wars that tore apart the former Yugoslavia.

The Vukovar massacre also figured in the UN court indictment against Milosevic, whose trial dragged on for four years before the former Belgrade strongman died in detention in March 2006.

The ruling provoked outrage in Croatia among Vukovar survivors, officials and general public.

Several dozen protesters joined families of those killed at the capital's main square on Friday. Some 20 women from Vukovar held pictures of loved ones killed by Serb forces in Vukovar.

"This is another blow to those who have survived 1991," said Ivan Psenica, head of an association of Croatian detainees at the protest.

"We expected that the international community that had not done enough in 1991 to prevent that evil would now punish the perpetrators, not because of us but for the future generations so something like that would never happen again," he said.

Croatian newspapers blasted the ruling as "scandalous".

"The Hague court's disgrace!" said the front-page of Vecernji List, the country's highest-circulation daily.

"Shameful verdict for the butchers from Ovcara," far, read the main headline in Novi List.

"By acquitting one of three Serb officers and giving an extremely mild sentence to another, the court lost any credibility, and not only in Croatia," said a Jutarnji List commentary.

"The UN war crimes court can now put a key in its door ... it does not have to wait until 2010," when it is officially expected to wind up its work, said a Novi List column entitled "The death of The Hague court".

The fall of Vukovar after a three-month siege by Yugoslav army and local Serb rebels marked the beginning of the 1991-1995 war that claimed some 20,000 lives.

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