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)

Khmer Rouge suspects claim destitution
Associated Press via Yahoo! News
By Ker Munthit
November 13, 2007

Two former ministers of Cambodia's brutal Khmer Rouge regime, both charged with crimes against humanity, have said they need financial aid to defend themselves before the country's U.N.-backed tribunal, according to a statement issued Tuesday.

The claim by Ieng Sary, a former foreign minister, and his wife Ieng Thirith, an ex-social affairs minister, was disparaged by fellow Cambodians, who said they had lived in relatively lavish circumstances until their arrest Monday.

The couple were formally charged with crimes against humanity Tuesday by Cambodia's U.N.-supported genocide tribunal. Ieng Sary also was charged with war crimes.

"It's a big step because they are big fish," said Kek Galabru, president of the Cambodian human rights group Licadho.

The radical policies of the communist Khmer Rouge are widely blamed for the deaths of some 1.7 million people from starvation, disease, overwork and execution. None of the group's leaders has faced trial yet, though four people have been arrested by the tribunal.

Their arrests Monday came almost three decades after the Khmer Rouge fell from power, with many fearing the aging suspects might die before they ever see a courtroom. Trials are expected to begin next year.

The U.N.-assisted tribunal was created last year after seven years of contentious negotiations between the United Nations and Cambodia.

Ieng Sary, who a tribunal document said is 82, and his wife, 75, were members of the inner circle of the Khmer Rouge. They were French-educated like the group's late charismatic leader Pol Pot, whose extremist policies turned the country into a virtual charnel house. Ieng Thirith's sister, Khieu Ponnary, was Pol Pot's first wife.

People familiar with the lifestyle of Ieng Sary and his wife say they are financially well-off. They pointed to the villa the couple own in Phnom Penh, their Toyota Land Cruiser and their ability to regularly travel by plane to neighboring Thailand for medical treatment.

Their travel and property makes their claims of destitution "laughable" and "ludicrous," said Theary Seng, director of the Cambodian nonprofit group Center for Social Development.

"Why don't they sell their villa" to finance their legal fees, Youk Chhang, director of the Documentation Center of Cambodia, wondered out loud. His group researches Khmer Rouge atrocities.

Rupert Skilbeck, a tribunal official, said the U.N. will pay the legal fees for all defendants until the end of this year, and is currently assessing the defendants' financial means to determine whether the payments will continue.

Ieng Sary "promoted, instigated, facilitated, encouraged and/or condoned the perpetration of the crimes" when the Khmer Rouge held power, according to a July 18 document presented by the tribunal's prosecutors to its investigating judges.

It said there was evidence of Ieng Sary's participation in crimes which included planning, directing and coordinating Khmer Rouge "policies of forcible transfer, forced labor and unlawful killings."

Ieng Thirith is accused of participating in "planning, direction, coordination and ordering of widespread purges ... and unlawful killing or murder of staff members from within the Ministry of Social Affairs," the prosecutors' filing said.

At a trial conducted in 1979 under the auspices of Vietnam, which invaded Cambodia to oust the Khmer Rouge, Ieng Sary was sentenced to death in absentia. But the proceedings, in the fashion of a Soviet show trial, served the purposes of propaganda more than justice.

Because the U.S. and China opposed the government installed by the Vietnamese — and supported a resistance coalition in which the Khmer Rouge played a part — there was little backing for a genocide trial, even as the scale of the horrors the regime perpetrated became more obvious.

Only when the Khmer Rouge failed to honor a 1991 U.N.-brokered peace agreement did the idea of an international genocide trial gain traction. In 1997, Cambodia finally broached the idea.

Khmer Rouge leader suffers stroke prior to arrest
Associated Press via International Herald Tribune
November 14, 2007

Khieu Samphan, the former Khmer Rouge head of state whose arrest by a UN-backed genocide tribunal has been widely expected, arrived by helicopter in the capital for medical treatment after suffering a stroke, his daughter said Wednesday.

Family members said Khieu Samphan was stricken Tuesday, just a day after two of his colleagues from the brutal Khmer Rouge regime were arrested by the tribunal.

Prime Minister Hun Sen told reporters he had dispatched a helicopter to Pailin in northwestern Cambodia to bring Khieu Samphan to Phnom Penh, where his health will be closely monitored. The former Khmer Rouge leader's daughter, Khieu Rattana, confirmed his arrival.

Khieu Samphan's wife, So Socheat, said he was slowly recovering and could speak more clearly, walk with some help and eat after receiving home care from doctors in Pailin, the former Khmer Rouge guerrilla stronghold where the couple live.

Reach Sambath, a tribunal spokesman, said the tribunal was not involved in the government's decision to fly Khieu Samphan to Phnom Penh. He said the tribunal did not yet have jurisdiction over Khieu Samphan.

On Monday, the authorities arrested Ieng Sary, the former Khmer Rouge foreign minister, and his wife Ieng Thirith, the social affairs minister. Both were charged Tuesday with crimes against humanity. Ieng Sary was also charged with war crimes.

Khieu Samphan knew his arrest was imminent, said his daughter, Khieu Rattana, who added that she did not think this caused his stroke. "He has been aware all along that he will be arrested. He is not concerned about it and said he is ready to go to the tribunal," she said.

So Socheat said her husband fainted and collapsed to the floor when he tried to get up from a hammock Tuesday evening.

"His mouth became twisted, and he was not able to pronounce any clear words," she said.

She said that when her husband regained consciousness he told the doctors present that he could not afford to pay any medical expenses if he were taken to a hospital for treatment.

The Khmer Rouge regime was blamed for the deaths of some 1.7 million people from starvation, disease, overwork and execution from 1975 to 1979. None of the group's leaders has faced trial.

The UN-assisted tribunal was created last year after seven years of contentious negotiations between the United Nations and Cambodia.

The arrests of the Khmer Rouge suspects have come almost three decades after the group fell from power, with many fearing the aging suspects might die before they ever see a courtroom. Trials are expected to begin next year.

Four have been arrested so far, including Ieng Sary and his wife.

According to prosecutors' documents made available to The Associated Press, the fifth suspect they are seeking to charge is Khieu Samphan.

Nuon Chea, the former Khmer Rouge ideologist, and Kaing Guek Eav, also known as Duch, who headed the Khmer Rouge S-21 torture center, were detained this year on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Khieu Samphan was head of state of murderous Khmer Rouge
International Herald Tribune/Associated Press
November 19, 2007

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia: Khieu Samphan, arrested Monday by Cambodia's U.N.-backed genocide tribunal, was an intellectual who served as the head of state of the murderous Khmer Rouge movement in the late 1970s.

He became the fifth suspect detained by the tribunal.

The tribunal is seeking accountability for atrocities during the Khmer Rouge regime's 1975-79 rule that led to the deaths of an estimated 1.7 million people from starvation, disease, overwork and execution.
Khieu Samphan has repeatedly denied responsibility for any atrocities. In a book published last week, he defended many of the policies of the ultra-communists although he has admitted that some killings took place.

Born July 27, 1931, the son of a provincial judge, Khieu Samphan won a government scholarship to study in Paris in the early 1950s. There he joined a Marxist circle of Cambodian students who formed the nucleus of what later became the Khmer Rouge.

After returning from Paris in the late 1950s he helped create the left-leaning French-language newspaper, l'Observateur. He also established his reputation as an honest intellectual and attracted a following among students at home.

His activities and popularity, however, alienated then-head of state Prince Norodom Sihanouk, whose police stripped and beat him on the streets of the capital in July 1960 before detaining him for a month in August.

Khieu Samphan fled into the jungle to join Cambodian communists in 1967 to escape the government's stepped-up crackdown on the leftists.

In his 2004 memoir, he claimed that he was merely a "shell" for the Khmer Rouge, despite his title as the head of state he received a year after the group took power on April 17, 1975.

He said he had nothing to do with its radical policies to evict people from cities, abolish money and replace private ownership with communal cooperatives across the country.

The secretive Khmer Rouge regime was overthrown from power in January 1979 by a Vietnamese invasion.

Khieu Samphan re-emerged as its chief representative while the guerrillas conducted diplomatic and military campaigns to oust the Vietnamese occupation army and its satellite regime led by Hun Sen, a former Khmer Rouge soldier who is currently Cambodia's prime minister.

In late 1991, Khieu Samphan returned to the Cambodian capital as the chief Khmer Rouge representative under the Paris peace accord. He was met by a government-organized mob that almost lynched him. He and his entourage were rescued in an armored personnel carrier that drove them to the airport from where a plane flew them to Thailand, Cambodia's neighbor the Khmer Rouge used as an exit door to the outside world for nearly two decades.

The Khmer Rouge boycotted the 1993 U.N.-supervised election and resumed fighting a small scale guerrilla war.

Khieu Samphan retained his high profile through the group's clandestine radio broadcasts until the movement collapsed in 1999.

Until his arrest, he had lived in Pailin, a former Khmer Rouge stronghold in northwest Cambodia, and spent some of his time tending ducks in his backyard.

He claimed he was awaken to the reality of his regime's brutality only after watching a 2003 documentary about the Khmer Rouge S-21 prison, where as many as 16,000 people are believed to have passed through its gates before being taken for execution. Only about a dozen are thought to have survived.

"When I saw the film, it was hard for me to deny (the killings). There's no more doubt left," Khieu Samphan said in an interview with The Associated Press at the time.

"Everything has to go the trial's way now, and there's no other way," he said. "But I also want the public to understand about me, too. I was not involved in any killings," he said at the time.

UN-backed Cambodian trials of Khmer Rouge leaders set to start
World Socialist Web Site
By John Roberts
November 19, 2007

Two former leading members of the Khmer Rouge government were detained by Cambodian police last Monday as part of the lead up to UN-backed trials of those responsible for the deaths of up to two million people in the 1970s through mass executions, starvation and forced labour.

Khmer Rouge foreign minister Ieng Sary and his wife Ieng Thirith, also a former minister, had been living in the capital Phnom Penh for more than a decade after surrendering to the government of Prime Minister Hun Sen in 1996. They received a limited amnesty. The two were taken to the headquarters of a special tribunal and are likely to be charged with crimes against humanity.

Two other Khmer Rouge leaders were arrested earlier this year—Kaing Geuk Eav, also known as “Duch”, and Nuon Chea, often referred to as “comrade number two”. Duch ran the notorious Tuol Sleng prison and interrogation centre. Nuon Chea was regarded as the deputy of Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot (Saloth Sar) who died in 1998. At least two other Khmer Rouge leaders are believed to have been identified by prosecutors—former president Khieu Samphan and Meas Muth, a son-in-law of military chief Ta Mok, who died last year.

The investigative phase of the trials of Duch and Nuon Chea have already begun behind closed doors in the special court known as the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC). Public trials are not expected to begin until well into next year.

The death of an estimated 20 percent of the Cambodian population was one of the great crimes of the twentieth century. However, there will be no objective accounting of this terrible period by the UN-backed tribunal. The trials will be narrowly focussed on the activities of individual Khmer Rouge leaders, rather than delving into the criminal responsibility of the major powers, particularly the US, for the tragedy.

The very fact that it has taken more than a decade to establish the ECCC is evidence of the protracted behind-the-scenes manoeuvring to protect the interests, and dirty secrets, of all the key players. The composition of the court, the makeup of the prosecutor team and the details of procedure have all been the subject of bitter wrangling to ensure that no side gained the upper hand in steering the proceedings and deciding the outcome.

The make-up of the tribunal—17 Cambodian and 13 international judges—was decided in May 2006. Among the more contentious issues have been the rights of the accused to be represented by foreign lawyers and the mechanism for resolving conflicts between Cambodian and foreign judges, who come from the US, the Netherlands, Poland, France, Australia and Sri Lanka. The legal procedure is a hybrid based on Cambodian law, derived from the legal system of the former French colonial power, and international legal practices imposed by the UN.

Even after the judges were appointed, they haggled for months over rules and trial procedure. It was not until June 2007 that the basic framework for the trials was agreed. The prosecution team headed by Canadian lawyer Robert Petit, who has worked on war crimes trials in Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Kosovo and East Timor, and his Cambodian counterpart Chea Leang, began in July.

In the investigative phase, the judges review the evidence in camera and decide which cases will proceed to public trial before five-member panels of three Cambodian and two international judges. Verdicts require the agreement of a majority of the Cambodian judges and at least one UN-appointed judge. The court has not provided a starting date for the trials. But now that the investigative phase is underway, proceedings are deemed to have formally begun.

Theary Seng, director of the Centre for Social Development, told the Honolulu Advertiser last month: “There are things happening right now in the Khmer Rouge tribunal, but we don’t have access to it. There’s concern that the [Cambodian] government wants to control the results, and the information that is made public.”

It is certainly the case that the Hun Sen government has a vested interest in manipulating the tribunal’s proceedings. Hun Sen, like many of the country’s present ruling elite, was a Khmer Rouge official. He served as district deputy leader before fleeing to Vietnam to avoid an internal purge. He returned with an invading Vietnamese army in January 1979 to head a new government after the Pol Pot regime was ousted.

But Hun Sen and his ministers are not the only ones with something to hide. The US is directly responsible for destabilising Cambodia. As part of the Vietnam War, the Nixon administration instigated the CIA-directed coup by General Lon Nol to oust the neutral government of King Norodom Sihanouk in 1970. Saturation US bombing from 1969 to 1973 killed an estimated 700,000, devastated the economic life of the country and opened the door for the Khmer Rouge to seize power in 1975.

While sometimes falsely depicted as socialist, the Khmer Rouge regime was guided by an extreme form of Maoism—an eclectic mixture of Stalinism, nationalism and peasant radicalism. Its hostility to intellectuals, workers and urban life reflected the sentiments and interests of backward layers of the peasantry, not the working class. The Khmer Rouge’s response to the economic destruction wrought by the US military was to drive the urban population into the countryside on the basis of its reactionary perspective creating a rural utopia without money or industry.

After being driven from power, the Khmer Rouge and its royalist allies continued to enjoy wide international support despite its terrible crimes. Right up to 1991, the US, China and the European powers continued to recognise the Khmer Rouge as the legitimate government of Cambodia as a useful counterweight to both Vietnam and the former Soviet Union.

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the major powers saw the opportunity to open up Cambodia as a source of cheap labour and raw materials. In the name of national reconciliation, the UN intervened in the 1990s to affect a compromise between the Hun Sen regime, the Khmer Rouge and the royalist Funcinpec party. Prince Sihanouk, the former king, was installed as head of state from 1993.

But the enormity of Khmer Rouge atrocities meant that they could not simply be swept under the carpet. A large segment of the Cambodian population was directly affected by the mass murders of the 1970s. The UN-backed tribunal has been established to finally bury these terrible crimes. It is, however, presiding over a potential political powder keg.

Suggestions in August and September that Prince Sihanouk, now 85, should be compelled to testify before the courts provoked uproar in the national parliament. The prince was granted legal immunity by parliament in 2004 when he retired as head of state.

Information Minister Khieu Kanarith threatened to throw the ECCC out of Cambodia if it tried to call Sihanouk as a witness. Hun Sen went on national radio to denounce the idea as “a tactic to destroy Cambodia” and warned of serious consequences for anyone trying to revoke Sihanouk’s immunity. The minor parties in the ruling coalition, including Funcinpec, quickly lined up with Hun Sen.

Sihanouk announced that he would refuse to testify. He collaborated closely with the Khmer Rouge against the Vietnamese-backed government while in exile in Beijing from 1979 to 1991. Sihanouk has hinted that if he was compelled to take the stand and face cross-examination of his role, then he would spill the beans on others, including the US.

The Honolulu Advertiser last month noted that some Cambodian villagers already “question why former US leaders will not be prosecuted for the massive bombing campaign that killed hundreds of thousands between 1969 and 1973.” Speaking to the Phnom Penh Post in September, Asian Human Rights Commission researcher Mong Hay commented: “If he [Sihanouk] were to face cross examination as a witness the King Father could be made to reveal something people would rather remain hidden. It could be like opening Pandora’s box.”

Those involved in the trials are well aware of the political minefield ahead. An article last year by Australian lawyer Gwynn MacCarrick entitled “Lessons from the Milosevic Trial” lamented the fact that the Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic had been able to turn his trial in The Hague into a political platform to indict the role of the US and the European powers in the Balkans.

MacCarrick advised prosecutors in the Cambodian trials to “get smarter and more efficient”, “keep it simple” and keep the trial free from “posturing”. The process, she wrote, should ensure “a timely and disinterested judgement from legal institutions which are, to the extent possible, freed from their political context”.

Whether they succeed or not, all those concerned in the trials will undoubtedly seek to do precisely that. The aim is to convict and punish a few scapegoats in order to block any examination of the “political context”, past and present, to obscure the role of the major powers and to prevent the necessary political lessons from being drawn.

Releasing Khmer Rouge torturer could spark public outrage
Associated Press via Hindustan Times
November 21, 2007

Prosecutors urged a UN-backed genocide tribunal on Wednesday to deny bail to the former head of the Khmer Rouge's largest torture center, saying his release could pose a threat to public order in Cambodia.
Kaing Guek Eav, alias Duch, is charged with committing crimes against humanity as the commandant of the regime's notorious Tuol Sleng prison. He is one of five people held in connection with the communist regime's brutal 1970s rule of Cambodia.

Duch has been in custody since 1999. He became the first defendant to appear before the long-awaited tribunal when his bail hearing opened on Tuesday. His defence lawyers argued that Duch's human rights were being violated by his long detention and he should be freed on bail ahead of trials expected to start next year.

Prosecutors called Duch a "flight risk" and urged the court on Wednesday to keep him behind bars, for his own safety and in the interest of public order.

If Duch were released he could be harmed both by "accomplices wishing to silence him and by the relatives of victims seeking revenge," Robert Petit, a prosecutor from Canada, told the court.

Petit added that "the entire public order (could) be jeopardized" if the ageing Khmer Rouge official was freed.

The Khmer Rouge regime was blamed for the deaths of an estimated 1.7 million people during its reign from 1975-79. Many have said they feared the surviving Khmer Rouge leaders might die before being brought to justice, as did the movement's notorious leader, Pol Pot, in 1998.

Khmer Rouge Figure Appears in Court
New York Times
By Seth Mydans
November 21, 2007

More than 28 years after the killing stopped, the first Khmer Rouge defendant stepped into a public courtroom on Tuesday to answer for the deaths of 1.7 million people — a tiny, self-effacing man who once commanded an efficient and ruthless torture house.

The defendant, Kaing Guek Eav, 66, known as Duch (pronounced DOIK), was seeking bail on charges of crimes against humanity. His lawyer’s claim that Duch’s human rights were being violated by his long detention drew laughter from Cambodian spectators.

Duch is one of five major Khmer Rouge figures who have been arrested and charged by a special tribunal in the past four months after decades of delays caused by war, politics and disputes over legal sovereignty. Trials are expected to begin next year.

“It’s beyond a dream,” said Chea Vannath, a leading human rights campaigner here. “I used to live under the Khmer Rouge regime, and I could never dream that those leaders would ever be brought to trial.”

From 1975 to 1979 the Khmer Rouge forced millions of people into labor gangs, and huge numbers died of starvation, exhaustion and disease while others, like those in Duch’s prison, Tuol Sleng, were tortured and sent to killing fields.

Duch, the personification of one of the great mass murders of the last century, seemed to shrink into his chair as he faced a panel of five red-robed judges and a tribunal filled with prosecutors, lawyers and clerks.

A frail, big-eyed man in a white polo shirt, he leaned forward, he leaned back, he put on and removed his glasses. His eyes darted around the courtroom. Invited to address the court, he rose with his palms together in a gesture of respect and pleading, raising and lowering them in front of his face.

“I lodged the appeal,” he began, and was stopped by the command of a judge: “Please speak loudly!”
“The reason I lodged the appeal,” he said again, “is because I have been detained without trial for 8 years, 6 months and 10 days already.”

This detention, most of it in a military jail before the special tribunal was created last year with the assistance of the United Nations, was the basis for the assertion by his lawyer, Kar Savuth, that his human rights had been violated, “even if he was not beaten or tortured.”

A ripple of laughter ran through the Cambodian spectators, who were watching the proceedings on giant screens in an auditorium next to the cramped pretrial chamber.

“This is Cambodian style, they laugh,” said Kek Galabru, the founder of Licadho, a local human rights group. “It’s too much for them because they know that when he was torturing Cambodians there was no talk about the human rights of the victims. Even me, when I hear that, I laugh.”

At least 14,000 people were tortured under Duch’s orders at Tuol Sleng prison, also known as S-21, and sent to the killing fields. Only a handful are known to have survived.

“Under his authority, countless abuses were committed, including mass murder, arbitrary detention and torture,” said a judge, reading the indictment to the court.

He listed methods of torture that included beating, stabbing, suspension from ropes, removal of fingernails and submersion in pits filled with water.

Converted in 1996 by American evangelical missionaries, Duch has become a born-again Christian, apparently ready to confess his sins. When he was discovered in 1999 by journalists he admitted at length to ordering and taking part in atrocities. Comparing himself to St. Paul, he told the journalists, “After my experience in life I decided I must give my spirit to God.”

When the trials begin, his testimony could be damaging to some of his fellow defendants.

A former mathematics teacher, Duch brought the strictness and efficiency of a schoolroom to his prison in a former high school in the center of Phnom Penh, the capital.

“He was strong,” a former Tuol Sleng guard, Him Huy, told David Chandler in “Voices from S-21: Terror and History in Pol Pot’s Secret Prison” (University of California Press, 1999). “He was clear. He would do what he said.”

When asked what kind of man Duch was, another guard told Mr. Chandler, “Ha! What kind of man? He was beyond reason.” The guard said he was most horrified by Duch’s decision to allow two of his brothers-in-law to be brought to the prison and put to death.

“Duch never killed anyone himself,” the former guard said, but he occasionally drove out to the Choeung Ek killing field to observe the executions.

The hearing on Tuesday came one day after the arrest of the former Khmer Rouge president, Khieu Samphan, 76. He was the last of the five initial defendants sought by prosecutors. Taken by the police from a hospital where he was recovering from what was thought to be a stroke, he was charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Two other defendants were arrested last Wednesday: the former foreign minister Ieng Sary, 82, and his wife, Ieng Thirith, 75, a fellow member of the Khmer Rouge central committee.

The fifth defendant, Nuon Chea, 82, the movement’s chief ideologue, was arrested in September. He had been living quietly next door to Mr. Khieu Samphan in a former Khmer Rouge stronghold where most of their neighbors were also former members of the Khmer Rouge.

All of these defendants have complained of medical ailments, and through the years of delays fears have grown that some might die before being brought to justice. The top Khmer Rouge leader, Pol Pot, died in 1998.

In his interview in 1999 with the journalists Nic Dunlop and Nate Thayer, Duch gave what could be a preview of some of his testimony in the trial.

Confirming the authenticity of documents recovered in Tuol Sleng, he pointed out notations made by his superiors.

“This is the handwriting of Nuon Chea,” he said. “You see his handwriting is square. Mine is more oval.”
He admitted his own part in the atrocities but said that he had acted under direct orders and that the entire leadership had been aware of the killings.

“The decisions to kill were made not by one man, not just Pol Pot, but the entire central committee,” he said.

No Decision on Release, as Duch Hearing Closes
VOA Khmer
By Mean Veasna
November 21, 2007

The Khmer Rouge tribunal wrapped up two days of public hearings on whether torture center head Duch should be released ahead of his atrocity crimes trials next year.

An announcement is expected in coming days, following the first public hearing of a Khmer Rouge leader since the tribunal's inception.

Prosecutors argued Duch was a flight risk, and that his release could jeopardize his own safety and lead to the destruction evidence. Defense argued that Duch was held illegally for eight years with trial by the military courts.

"As the last word, what request do you have for the Pre-Trial Chamber?" Judge Prak Kimsan asked Duch at the hearing.

"My only last request is for the judges to grant me a temporary release," said Duch, who oversaw S-21, the prison and torture center also known as Tuol Sleng.

An estimated 16,000 Cambodians were interred at Tuol Sleng, and most of them allegedly were tortured and executed and buried in mass graves outside the capital.

Duch's public hearing was a test run for trials to come, broadcast on local television and inundated with journalists and observers. For many, it provided the first glimpse of a man accused of acts of atrocity under the Khmer Rouge regime.

Tribunal officials hope the process alone will help Cambodians reconcile with their past.

"Finally, people in Cambodia can see that justice is being done," said Robert Petit, the UN-appointed co-prosecutor for the tribunal courts.

Khmer Rouge Leaders Kept Isolated From Each Other
VOA Khmer
By Win Thida
November 22, 2007

The first five Khmer Rouge leaders detained by the tribunal courts have little or no contact with each other and are allowed daily exercise in shifts, the wife of the regime's chief ideologue, Nuon Chea, said Thursday.

Ly Kimseng, whose husband has been detained since September 19, said she has been allowed to visit three times, but that the former cadre of the regime are not allowed to communicate with each other.

"There are separate rooms," she said. "While one [defendant] is allowed to be out, the others are not. For example, when I come, they only open my husband's room, but not the other rooms."

Visitors are not allowed contact with other detainees, she said. "I think they're afraid we will talk to each other about something."

Five of the Khmer Rouge's former senior leaders are now in the tribunal jail, awaiting trial: Nuon Chea, former nominal head Khieu Samphan, foreign minister Ieng Sary, social affairs minister Ieng Thirith and Tuol Sleng prison chief Kaing Khek Iev, alias Duch.

The restrictions were in place as part of regulations of the special courts, tribunal spokesman Reach Sambath said. "They are detained suspects, so they cannot talk to each other, except to their attorneys and relatives, and this is also part of an international law."

Nuon Chea's lawyer, Son Arun, said the prohibition was in accordance to law, and Ieng Sary's attorney, Ang Udom, said certain prohibitions were reasonable.

The detainees should be allowed some interaction by tribunal officials, however, Ang Udom said. "They should not prohibit that much. They should not be that emotionless, because other detainees can also see and talk to each other, even though it is not the same case."

The extraordinary nature of the cases made restrictions necessary, said Hisham Moussar, a legal expert for the rights group Adhoc. "They are not detained in an ordinary court, and the hearing is not ordinary either. It is special, and so far everything is done based on international standards."

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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

Congo Militia Leader Faces First ICC Trial In March
VOA News
November 12, 2007

The International Criminal Court has set a March trial date for Congolese militia leader Thomas Lubanga, the first person to face trial at the world court.

The court says Lubanga's trial will start on March 31 of next year. The court also told prosecutors to make available to defense lawyers all the evidence they plan to use against Lubanga by December 14.

Lubanga is accused of recruiting and using thousands of child soldiers to fight for the armed wing of his party - The Union of Congolese Patriots - during the Democratic Republic of Congo's civil war.

Lubanga's lawyers have disputed the charges, saying he worked to end the war.

Lubanga is the first person to be charged at any international court for the alleged use of child soldiers.

Some estimates suggest child soldiers made up 40 percent of all armed forces in the Congolese civil war. The conflict involved six other countries, and led to the deaths of some four million people.

The International Criminal Court is also in the early stages of prosecuting Germain Katanga, another Congolese military leader accused of crimes against humanity during the country's civil war.

In addition, the court has indicted two people for war crimes in Sudan's Darfur region and four leaders of Uganda's rebel Lord's Resistance Army. The court's prosecutor is also investigating crimes in the Central African Republic.

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Darfur, Sudan (ICC)

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

The Don Quixote of Darfur
Time
Bu Romesh Ratnesar
November 12, 2007

In the eyes of Luis Moreno Ocampo, the war in Darfur will end thousands of miles from the killing fields, in a narrow, wood-paneled room carved out of an old parking garage in the Hague. It is here that Moreno-Ocampo, the Argentine prosecutor of the five-year-old International Criminal Court (ICC), intends to bring to justice the perpetrators of Sudan's genocide. Moreno-Ocampo and his team of lawyers will occupy one side of the courtroom, presenting their evidence to a three-judge panel that will decide the case. On the other side will sit the defendant, Ahmad Muhammed Harun, Sudan's former Interior Minister, whom Moreno-Ocampo has charged with orchestrating the slaughter in Darfur. "The prosecution of Harun will break the system that is responsible for these crimes. It will force a change in behavior," says Moreno-Ocampo. As he imagines the possibilities, a smile crosses his face. "I would love to be in court with Harun. I have a great case."

But there are a few problems. Nearly six months since Moreno-Ocampo gave the U.N. Security Council a warrant for the arrest of Harun and Ali Kushayb, a leader of the government-backed janjaweed militia, neither man has been delivered to the Hague. After initially cooperating with Moreno-Ocampo, Sudan now rejects the ICC's authority to try those involved in Darfur's atrocities. And with the world pushing for a truce between the government and Darfur's feuding rebel groups, the cause of justice may well become a casualty of a negotiated peace. Having spent 18 months preparing the case against Harun, Moreno-Ocampo doesn't know when, if ever, he will actually face him in court. "This law is still new. This idea of arresting people who are still active in militias or in government--that's a new dimension." He pauses for a beat. "The world is complicated," he says.

Since arriving in the Hague in 2003, Moreno-Ocampo, 55, has become the public face and voice of the ICC, the first permanent global court devoted to prosecuting crimes against humanity. Though largely obscure outside legal and human-rights circles--and hampered by the fact that the U.S. and a number of other countries are not state parties to the court--the ICC has raised its profile in recent months, opening its first two trials against warlords from Congo. It will gain wider public attention with the Nov.2 U.S. release of Darfur Now, a Syriana-style documentary that chronicles Moreno-Ocampo's pursuit of Harun. Appearing at screenings of the film this fall in Toronto and New York, Moreno-Ocampo received standing ovations, not to mention an audience with Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie.

Moreno-Ocampo speaks in clipped, declarative sentences and sports the three-day stubble of a man who constantly looks as if he just got off a long-haul flight. When I met him for breakfast at the ICC's cafeteria in late October, he ordered two coffees at a time, to avoid having to go back for refills. Though he has indicted nine people from three different conflicts, Moreno-Ocampo knows he needs to deliver results in the form of high-profile convictions to ensure that the court evolves into something more than a monument to good intentions. "The next few years will tell whether the ICC is a success or failure," says Juan Méndez, president of the International Center for Transitional Justice. "If he ends up only producing two or three trials and has 20 outstanding warrants, the appetite for international criminal justice will fade away completely."

Moreno-Ocampo gained fame in Argentina in the '80s for prosecuting human-rights abuses committed by the country's ruling military junta. In 2003 he signed on for a nine-year term as prosecutor at the ICC. Unlike earlier tribunals--such as U.N.-sponsored courts for war crimes in the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda and Sierra Leone--the ICC is able to prosecute atrocities in conflicts that are still raging.

That mandate led Moreno-Ocampo to Darfur. After the Security Council voted in 2005 to authorize the ICC to investigate war crimes committed there, Moreno-Ocampo launched a probe that involved deposing hundreds of witnesses in 17 countries. By the end of 2006, the prosecutor's team produced evidence of Harun's role in planning and executing the killing campaign against Darfur's civilians. In a bracing scene in Darfur Now, a female rebel soldier, whose son was killed by the janjaweed, tells her comrades of "a man named Ocampo" who will deliver punishment to their enemies.

Moreno-Ocampo believes in the inevitability of international justice, the idea that even the world's worst thugs will face a reckoning in court. "To me, he really seems like a Don Quixote figure," says Ted Braun, director of Darfur Now. "He's one man, working alone, taking on the world with a great vision of what he can do, but without a lot of overt backing." If that bothers Moreno-Ocampo, he doesn't show it. Finishing his coffee, he tells me that the ICC is helping to establish a new approach to international relations, in which states interact "on the basis of laws, not on the concept of friends and enemies. There are still criminals, but no enemies. That is the idea." Moreno-Ocampo is working to make the idea real.

EU Makes New Commitments, In Words
Inter Press Service (IPS)
By David Cronin
November 14, 2007

BRUSSELS - The European Union's latest annual report on how it promotes human rights states that the 27-country bloc is "determined to work towards the prevention of crimes of international concern and the ending of impunity for perpetrators of such crimes."

According to campaigners, that determination has not been on display in the EU's response to the alleged genocide in Darfur.

In April, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued warrants for the arrest of Ahmed Haroun, Sudan's minister for humanitarian affairs, and Ali Kosheib, a leading figure in the Janjaweed bandits who are accused of carrying out widespread killings with the backing of the Khartoum government.

Both men face 51 counts of crimes against humanity and war crimes, including murder, rape, forcing people from their homes, and persecution.

The EU's human rights report mentions that it recently appointed a special envoy to deal with the Darfur crisis, which has claimed the lives of 200,000 and uprooted 2.5 million people in the past four-and-a-half years. Danish diplomat Torben Brylle has been given a mandate that includes responsibility for fighting against impunity, the report adds.

But since the ICC's arrest warrant was issued, Ahmed Haroun has been appointed chairman of a committee monitoring security in Sudan, including the western province of Darfur. As part of his new responsibilities, he can assess complaints of human rights abuses in Darfur.

Lotte Leicht, Brussels director with Human Rights Watch, says it is "frankly inexplicable" that EU governments have responded to Haroun's new appointment with "utter silence".

She points out that Haroun is now in charge of investigating the kind of war crimes he himself is alleged to have carried out. As the minister responsible for Darfur's security four years ago, he reportedly recruited and armed Janjaweed forces that killed hundreds of civilians, raped girls and women, and caused widespread damage to property in the villages of Bindisi, Arawala, Kodoom and Mukjar.

Leicht is urging EU foreign ministers meeting next week (Nov. 19-20) to formally warn Sudan that they will introduce sanctions against its government if it continues to ignore the arrest warrants against Kosheib and Haroun.

An innovative approach could be taken to sanctions in this case, she believes. Officials in the Khartoum government could be banned from travelling to Europe and have their financial assets frozen for a 12-month period. Yet the application of these measures could be suspended for three months and then automatically applied if Khartoum has not complied with this requirement within that time.

A similar approach was taken recently with Uzbekistan. Eight Uzbek officials were banned from travelling to Europe in October 2005, in response to Tashkent's refusal to permit an international investigation into the Andijan massacre in May that year, during which Uzbek forces killed hundreds of mostly unarmed protesters. Even though little progress has been detected on human rights, the EU agreed to suspend the sanctions last month, but has warned that they could be re-imposed if insufficient action is taken by Tashkent.

Initially, Human Rights Watch criticised the easing of restrictions on Uzbekistan, yet it argues now that the general approach can have merits. If applied to Sudan, it would be "a good way of using the stick and the carrot at the same time," Leicht told IPS.

Despite the desperate humanitarian situation caused by the conflict in Darfur, officials from Portugal, the current holder of the EU's presidency, have confirmed that it does not figure on the agenda for foreign ministers next week. The Union's assistance to an African-led peacekeeping force in Sudan is likely to be discussed at a related meeting involving EU defence and development aid ministers, a spokesman for the Lisbon government added.

Nick Grono from the International Crisis Group, an organisation focused on resolving conflicts, argued that "sanctions do matter in Sudan."

He noted that President Omar al-Bashir has only made concessions to international opinion when he has felt isolated. For example, Bashir agreed that a joint United Nations and African Union peacekeeping force may be deployed in Darfur after the U.S. and Britain had threatened to impose a no- fly zone over the province, Grono added.

"We do believe pressure works," said Grono. "It has just not been tried in Sudan."

Ulrich Delius, an Africa specialist with the German Society for Threatened Peoples, said it is "most disturbing" that Europe has not taken a firmer stance on Darfur.

It is wrong, he feels, to shy away from sanctions out of fear that they could have negative consequences for peace talks between Khartoum and a variety of rebel groups.

"It's fine that the peace process is starting but it might take years before there is any meaningful result of that," he told IPS. "We are seeing no real change of mind by the Sudanese government in the direction of peace, human rights and democracy. When we are talking to (European) politicians, most of them share more or less our analysis of the situation. Yet they are making no efforts to put more pressure on the Sudanese government. This is really worrying."

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Uganda (ICC)

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

UN court rules out lifting Ugandan rebels’ arrest warrants
AFP
By Bogonko Bosire
November 22, 2007

NAIROBI (AFP) — The International Criminal Court ruled out Thursday canceling arrest warrants for Ugandan rebel commanders, saying the rebel leaders and not the warrants are the obstacle to peace.

"It is time to marginalise, isolate and arrest individuals sought by the court. The international community must give them no support," ICC Deputy Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda said in a statement.

"People such as Joseph Kony or Ahmed Haroun committed unspeakable atrocities; they are a stumbling block to lasting peace and security," she added.

In 2005, the Hague-based ICC indicted five Ugandan rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) commanders, including its chief Joseph Kony and his deputy Vincent Otti, on a raft of charges such as murder, rape and enslavement of children. One of the indicted commanders has since died.

The world's first war crimes tribunal has also charged Haroun, Sudan's secretary of state for humanitarian affairs, over atrocities in the country's western region of Darfur.

Although the LRA is engaged in peace talks with the government, Kony has vowed never to sign a final peace accord unless the warrants are withdrawn.

Northern Ugandan elders and some government officials have called on the ICC to support traditional forms of justice in a bid to speed up peace and reconciliation.

But Bensouda said the warrants are here to stay, since "peace and justice can work together."
"ICC is not an impediment to peace ... I think the warrants that have been issued by the ICC have contributed tremendously to making the perpetrators of these crimes come to, even negotiate with the government," she told the BBC.

"This idea of 'because we are talking peace therefore justice should be thrown out of the window' is not the correct position that has to be taken," she added.

The ICC position came as a LRA rebel team is currently visiting war-torn Uganda regions to collect public views on issues of accountability and reconciliation in the peace talks, which are key to ending the conflict.

The team has pleaded for forgiveness for their part in the conflict.

An armistice signed in August last year has halted active fighting and the ongoing talks in the southern Sudan capital Juba are seen as the best chance to end the conflict that has raged in northern Uganda since 1988.

Meanwhile, Uganda's state-run New Vision newspaper Thursday reported that Otti had been killed, deepening confusion that has raged over the fate of the rebel deputy chief in the recent weeks.
The LRA has flatly rejected the claims, but the ICC said it was investigating.

The conflict has left tens of thousands of people dead as well as 1.8 million displaced, out of a total population of 2.7 million in northern Uganda, where the militia had engaged in enslaving, torturing, raping, and murdering civilians.

The LRA, which initially claimed they were fighting for the establishment of a government based on Biblical theology, has now accepted to sit down with the government and address economic and political marginalisation.

The two sides have yet to fix a date of resuming the fitful talks.

Doubts Raised Over LRA Peace Tour
IWPR
Caroline Ayugi, David Rupiny and Felix Warom
November 23, 2007

The credibility of a reconciliation tour of northern Uganda by a delegation of the Lord’s Resistance Army, LRA, has been challenged by victims and an ex-rebel official.

Despite the team’s dozens of meetings with hundreds of victims of LRA violence, Captain Ray Apire, a former spiritual advisor to Kony, known as “the bishop”, said Kony seems uninterested in a peace deal.

"Kony is not reconciling with anybody,” Apire told IWPR. This was made apparent by the widely reported internal power struggle that has left his second-in- command, Vincent Otti, dead, he said.

On November 22, state-owned newspaper New Vision reported that three recent LRA defectors had confirmed that Kony executed Otti by firing squad in early October. Stories of Otti’s death first surfaced nearly a month ago and he has been unheard of since.

Kony has denied that Otti is dead, saying he is only under house arrest.

“Kony is still interested in war,” insisted Apire. “If Kony was…talking peace, he would not kill Otti. Why would they fight for power, if they are…dissolving the LRA group and resolving the conflict through talks?”

He said that while the disintegration of the LRA was a sign of the army’s possible demise, it also shows that Kony intends to keep control of his militia.

Apire escaped from the LRA in June 2004, saying that the army has lost its purpose, and has been living in Gulu. He questioned the LRA delegation’s links to Kony.

"When asked about Otti, they kept saying he was sick, denying that Otti was arrested,” Apire said of the LRA team. “Kony later contradicted them by saying Otti was under house arrest. This means the team is not coordinating with Kony in the bush, because they don't know some of the facts.

Apire is not the only one dismayed by the LRA delegation’s tour, a series of orchestrated events in which victims are asked publicly if they have forgiven Kony, with most saying they have.

The tour is part of the LRA’s efforts to consult people in the north of the country on reconciliation and accountability elements of their peace deal with the government.

But war victims in Gulu contacted by IWPR said they were unable to speak out because the LRA team dictated what kind of questions were asked and limited the number of people who could talk at each gathering.

Uganda’s presidential advisor on northern Uganda affairs, Richard To-dwong, who has been traveling with the team, said he didn’t like the way victims were treated.

"People are asking: why did you hurt us if you were fighting a just war as you claim?” he said. “These questions should be answered because at the end of the day, total reconciliation comes from the victims."

Michael Okello 32, of Koch Goma internal refugee camp, complained that rebel team leader Martin Ojul chose a very disparaging way of asking for forgiveness from victims. It seemed as if Ojul was making them apologise, he said.

"This is adding insult to injury. Does it mean that these people came all their way to tell us to rise up our hands so that they take our pictures and show the world?” he asked. “Are they after genuine reconciliation?

“They want us to reconcile but they haven't accounted for the atrocities they committed."

To many, Ojul was not offering an apology on behalf of the LRA. Rather he was trying to create an impression that the Acholi community has forgiven Kony and is opposed to a trial for Kony and his top commanders in front of the International Criminal Court, ICC, in The Hague.

However, chances of the warrants being dropped are low.

ICC deputy prosecutor Fatou Bensouda said this week that warrants are still outstanding for Kony and three LRA commanders and that the court expects member states, such as Uganda, to arrest them.

She said that even though continuing conflicts present obstacles to the arrest of suspects, the interests of peace and justice demand that states take assertive action.

“Arresting criminals in the context of ongoing conflicts is a difficult endeavour,” she said. “Individuals sought by the court often enjoy the protection of armies or militias.”

The choice of the LRA team to visit home areas of its members also sparked questions about the fairness of consultation mission.

Four out of six members of the LRA delegation, including Ojul, Michael Anywar, Peter Ongom and Joel Obita, visited their own villages as part of the tour, rather than places where rebels attacked civilians.

These people should have gone to Atiak where they killed people in their hundreds, and Omot in Pader, where they killed over 20, insisted Kenneth Nyero of Gulu.

“Such are the places where they truly need to ask for forgiveness,” he said.

Atiak is Otti's home village, and he reportedly ordered the attack there in 1995.

Though the regions of northern Uganda bore the brunt of the LRA war, the West Nile area in northwestern Uganda also suffered.

It too was visited by the team, and war victims demanded compensation, post war reconstruction, and also called for the LRA leaders to be punished under Ugandan law, if possible.

The LRA are reported to have staged bloody ambushes on West Nile-bound cargo and passenger vehicles on the Karuma-Pakwach highway, the major route to West Nile. Hundreds of people were either killed or abducted and vast quantities of goods were looted.

Arua district councilor Christine Aciferu asked that Kony return all abducted children and women from West Nile. “It is only fair that we get these children back,” said a tearful Aciferu.

“Our region failed to grow because of the ambushes which simply instilled fear and tortured our people,” said Luiji Candini, Arua secretary for security.

Once the LRA team’s tour is finished, it is expected to return to the Sudan-Congo border and deliver the results to Kony. That will likely be followed by a very public event in which several hundred people from northern Uganda will meet Kony to discuss the peace deal between the rebels and the government.

Back in Gulu, Apire said that while he was doubtful that peace would be accomplished, he nonetheless predicted Kony’s demise.

"Kony told us several times from the bush that he is like Moses, who will not reach the Promised Land," said Apire, suggesting that Kony would die before his army achieved victory.

Caroline Ayugi, David Rupiny and Felix Warom are IWPR contributors.

Uganda’s Rebels Call For Queen’s Intervention in Peace Process
Voice of America
By Peter Clottey
November 23, 2007

Uganda’s Lord Resistance Army (LRA) rebels are calling on Queen Elizabeth II to convince President Yoweri Museveni to work with them to find a lasting peace to the northern Uganda conflict. The rebels say President Museveni had often reneged on his previous promises of finding a peaceful end to the over 20 years of the rebel insurgency. The LRA also accused President Museveni of failing to equitably distribute the wealth of the nation, which they said has led to lack of development in northern Uganda.

David Matsanga is the technical advisor for the rebels on International Criminal Court (ICC) matters. From the Kenyan capital, Nairobi he tells reporter Peter Clottey that President Museveni has previously been a stumbling block to ending the violent crisis in northern Uganda.

“First of all I want to say that Ugandans do welcome the visit of the queen, but the queen has come to a place where there exists a mafia system. First of all it oppresses all opposition, it has created a conflict in northern Uganda, which has gone on for 21 years. And this conflict would have been finished long time ago had it not been for the mafia people who have actually let us down and put it a problem in the system of the government of Uganda,” Matsanga noted.

He said they are calling for the queen’s intervention in finding a lasting peace to the northern Uganda conflict. “The LRA would expect the queen to tell President Museveni his honor of pledges of peace and the agreement. The queen should tell President Museveni to stop harassing his opponents. Northern Uganda has been marginalized for a long time 21 years. When you drive there things are not equitably distributed in that country. It is very true, the south is very different from the north and the east,” he said. He reiterated some of the LRA’s expectations of the queen’s visit.

“We would like the queen to visit all the places of Uganda and see for herself what type of a situation, poverty that President Museveni has brought on the people of Uganda other than have a Kampala show.
The queen should push President Museveni to change his habit of military dictatorship, the dictatorship that has oppressed the people of Uganda for the last 21 years and the LRA wants the queen to push for the peaceful resolution of this conflict,” he emphasized. Matsanga said the rebels are committed to finding a lasting peace to their over 21 years of insurgency in northern Uganda.

“The LRA high command, general Kony is committed to peace, the entire high command is committed to the peace process. But the problem we have here is we have a president who does not honor peace.
When you sign an agreement he does not honor. So this time we want to use this opportunity to tell the queen to tell him (President Museveni) that he should honor the agreement,” Matsanga noted.

He urged the queen to tell President Museveni to bring peace to the victims of the violence that has plagued northern Uganda between the government and the rebels.

“Why the Commonwealth exists is because the queen has honored the agreement, but the president we have with our President Museveni is that he says this and he wants to do that. This time the Ugandans are determined that they want peace, they don’t want to have double standards on the peace process, and that’s why the entire command of the LRA is committed to a peaceful resolution through Dr. Riek Marchar’s (mediator of the peace talks) efforts in Juba. And we are committed to make sure that we shall achieve a lasting sustainable peace to our country,” he said.

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International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY)

Official Website of the ICTY

Nominations for the tribunal for Lebanon and the ICTY
International Justice Tribune
November 19, 2007

On November 13, United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon designated Canadian Daniel Bellemare to head the International Investigation Commission into the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafic Hariri.

The assistant deputy attorney general of Canada will replace Belgian Serge Brammertz who took the position in early 2006. This nomination occurs as the new United Nations tribunal for Lebanon is taking shape. This court, which will sit at The Hague, should begin its work in mid-2008. The UN secretary general announced also that Brammertz will replace Carla del Ponte in 2008 as chief prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.

Croatian journalists face ICTY charges
Southeast European Times
By Natasa Radic
November 20, 2007

Eight journalists in Croatia could be charged with contempt of court for publishing confidential information.

The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) at The Hague has ordered the questioning of eight Croatian journalists who disclosed confidential information related to the war crimes trial of three former Croatian generals.

One of the journalists, Vecernji List reporter Davor Ivankovic, was interviewed on Thursday (November 15th) at The Hague's Zagreb office about his decision to report classified portions of the indictment against Ante Gotovina, Ivan Cermak and Mladen Markac.

Three television journalists -- Goran Rotim, Djurica Drobac and Josip Saric -- and four other print journalists -- Sinisa Pavic, Jasna Babic, Snjezana Pavic and Ivan Zvonimir Cicak -- also face questioning.

In May, the journalists published the names of seven military and political officials who were mentioned in the generals' indictment as participants in an alleged joint criminal enterprise during the 1990s. The seven were not indicted nor prosecuted, but their names were listed.

All are well-known to the Croatian public, and were included in a confidential section of the indictment. The journalists, ignoring the ICTY rule that such sections must not be published, released the names.

The reporters will have to explain to ICTY representatives why they did so. They are banned from speaking about their conversations with the investigators and from defending themselves publicly.

Last month, ICTY investigators questioned Slobodna Dalmacija editor-in-chief Mladen Plese, along with the former editor-in-chief of state-run Croatian Television, Vladimir Roncevic, in connection with the same case. Neither has been charged since their interviews.

If charged with contempt and found guilty, journalists could face prison or fines. Through their lawyers, the eight have said they do not intend to reveal why they published the names. Along with many other NGOs in Croatia, they argue that the ICTY is attacking media freedom and the independence of journalists.

Former Diplomats Stress Hague Tribunal Failure
Javno
By Karmen Horvat
November 20, 2007

About 20 former US diplomats and representatives in former Yugoslavia have sent a letter of dissatisfaction to UN Under-Secretary-General.

About 20 former US diplomats and representatives in former Yugoslavia, scientists and legal experts, have sent a letter to UN Under-Secretary-General for legal affairs Nicolas Michel, in which they point out being “depressed” with The Hague verdict to the “Vukovar Three” and express hope the ICTY Appeals Committee will “most fully re-examine it”.

Letter of concern and dissatisfaction with The Hague Tribunal

The letter, signer by 23 persons, points out the “verdict in the `Vukovar Three` case is a disturbing example of The International Criminal Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia failing to entirely serve the interests of justice”.

- As people who have serviced in former Yugoslavia for a long time, academic and legal experts, we signed below are strong supporters and friends of the ICTY. In spirit of this support, we are obliged to express being depressed by the verdict in the recent `Vukovar Three` case – the letter to UN Under-Secretary-General states, signed by former USA Ambassador in Croatia Peter Galbraith, former USA special emissary for southeast Europe Robert Gelbard, head of the UNTAES mission in eastern Slavonia Jacques Paul Klein and former OSCE head in Bosnia-Herzegovina Robert Beecroft, among others. Stating that they do not wish to interfere with the court proceedings, signers have “collectively expressed hope” the case will be most fully re-examined in the appeal before the Tribunal, in relation to the sentence, as well as broader assessment of legal responsibility.

“First mass murders after World War II were committed in Vukovar”

Explaining their concern with the verdict, they point out that crimes in Vukovar were exceptionally public and that “they have not only traumatised the Croatian public, but have shocked the world`s conscious as well”.

- What is more, these crimes were first mass murders in former Yugoslavia, creating a precedent which will, four years later, culminate with the worst bestialities in Europe after World War II – the letter states, with a copy forwarded to the ICTY.

Crimes were so striking and unforgettable that there is recognition, with Serbs and other non-Croats, about the terrible injustice imposed to Vukovar victims – the letter stresses.

It is also warned that the ICTY, failing to accurately and respondingly determine responsibility of those who have handed over prisoners to others who tortured and killed them, could have inadvertently lessened the significance of protection from the Geneva convention.

Disappointment with the “Vukovar Three” verdicts

Signers express disappointment with sentences to the “Vukovar Three”, pointing out that first-charged general Mile Mrksic, who was found guilty for torturing and killing 194 prisoners, was sentenced to only 20 years, following general Veselin Sljivancanin, who had the central role in crimes, according to evidence, was sentenced to only five years in prison.

They also point out that ICTY`s reputation depends on it ensuring justice for all crime victims in former Yugoslavia, including Serbian victims as well and they state the example of Serbian victims in Mrkonjic grad, B-H.

Signers include president of Serbian Helsinki Committee Sonja Biserko, Belgrade Humanitarian Legal Centre president Natasa Kadic, Tufts University professor Bruce Hitchner and others.

“The letter is out personal reaction”

Letter initiators are Edward Joseph, professor at John Hopkins University of Washington, former UNPROFPR, UNMIK, IFOR, OSCE, International Crisis Group official and Jacques Klein.

- The letter was our personal reaction. We believed this decision was very problematic – Joseph told Hina news agency.

When asked if he expects the appeal verdict to the “Vukovar Three” would be significantly changed in relation to the first degree verdict, Joseph said he could not tell, but that they have expressed hope of changes in the letter.

- Vukovar is a precedent, first mass murder. This was the first step on the path leading to Srebrenica. Vukovar is a tragedy for Croats, like Srebrenica is a tragedy for Bosniaks – Joseph pointed out, adding that obviously, The Hague failed to see this.

Ed Joseph was UNPROFOR`s officer for civilian affairs in Croatia from September 1992 until the end of Croatian Homeland War, engaged in Knin, Zadar, Zagreb and elsewhere. He was in B-H: Sarajevo, Mostar, Bihac and Zepa in July 1995 when Serbs committed genocide in nearby Srebrenica.

Call for Serbia to Release Confidential Documents
IWPR
By Merdijana Sadovic
November 23, 2007

Academics say they want disclosure so that Serbia’s role in the Bosnian war can be assessed objectively.

A group of international scholars, legal experts, and rights activists have signed an open letter demanding that the minutes from wartime meetings of Serbia’s Supreme Defence Council, SDC, be made public.

The letter, which has been signed by 50 scholars, legal experts, human rights activists and journalists, was sent to the Serbian government, as well as the presidents of the International Court of Justice, ICJ, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, ICTY on October 10.

In the letter, the group are demanding the minutes be disclosed to the public so that Serbia’s role in the 1992-95 Bosnian war can be assessed objectively.

In February this year, the ICJ handed down its verdict in Bosnia’s lawsuit against Serbia, acquitting Serbia of direct involvement in genocide in the plaintiff country.

During this case, the Bosnian team requested that an uncensored version of all SDC documents be made available to this court and accepted into evidence.

The documents - which Serbia handed over to the ICTY prosecution so that they could be used in the case of former president Slobodan Milosevic - have been marked as confidential and are still not available to the public.

On receiving the documents, the ICTY is thought to have promised not to disclose them to the ICJ.

This decision followed a deal between chief ICTY prosecutor Carla Del Ponte and Serbia’s ex-foreign minister Goran Svilanovic, outlined in a letter she sent to him in May 2003, in which she agreed not to challenge Serbia’s right to protect its national interests in relation to the documents.

However, ICJ judges refused to demand these transcripts from the ICTY or to order Serbia to hand over the uncensored minutes of the SDC meetings, saying they had enough evidence to make a judgement in this case.

Signatories of the letter are now saying that this was a politically motivated decision which may have altered the outcome of the ICJ case - and prevented the country being found guilty of genocide.

“We, members of the international academic community, believe that this decision - reached without a review of all the available evidence - amounts to a miscarriage of justice and a betrayal of the principle that international criminal law should act to prevent and punish the crime of genocide,” said the letter.

There has been much speculation that the SDC documents could have been valuable for Bosnia’s ICJ case against Serbia, and could have helped prove the link between Belgrade and Bosnian Serb forces.

This may also explain why Serbia has been so reluctant to reveal them in full.

“It is reasonable to surmise that, had the uncensored minutes of SDC meetings been put before the ICJ, the verdict might have gone differently and Serbia might have been found guilty of genocide,” continued the letter.

“The fact that the court decided not to ask for these minutes leads us to believe that the court's conduct of the case, as well as its verdict, was influenced by political considerations.”

The signatories blame both the ICJ and the ICTY for failing to uphold the principles of international law.

According to them, the ICJ made a huge mistake by not demanding these documents from Serbia - a request which could not have been ignored.

On the other hand, “the ICTY's concession to Serbia was the result of a political agreement reached by Chief Prosecutor Carla del Ponte with the Serbian government, and is therefore evidence again that the international courts have allowed politics to interfere with the legal process”, they claim.

“As representatives of the academic community from all over the world, we demand that the international public be told the whole truth. We therefore request that the full and uncensored minutes of the SDC meetings be made public, so that the role of the Serbia in the 1992 to 1995 Bosnian war can be assessed objectively.”

Signatories of the letter include historians Noel Malcolm and Marko Attila Hoare; former ambassador to the United Nations and chairman of the Security Council Diego Arria; French publicist Sylvie Matton; award-winning British journalist Ed Vulliamy; and human rights activist Sonja Biserko.

"Army had nothing to do with Albanian exodus"
SENSE
November 23, 2007

THE HAGUE -- General Vladimir Lazarevic, one of the Kosovo Six, continued his defense at the Hague.

On the last day of Lazarevic’s cross-examination, the prosecutor returned to what is, as he himself said, his favorite topic – the question whether the Joint Command of the army and the police in Kosovo existed or not.

Since the beginning of the trial of the six former Serbian officials charged with Kosovo crimes in 1999, the prosecution has been trying to prove that there existed a Joint command and that it served Slobodan Miloševic as an informal body implementing the plan for the expulsion of Albanian civilians.

The prosecution alleges that Lazarevic, a former Yugoslav Army (VS) general, was himself a member of this body. Together with other five politicians and generals, Lazarevic is charged with taking part in a joint criminal enterprise whose goal was to change the ethnic balance of the province.

When Lazarevic called the Joint command a non-existent body, the prosecution showed minutes from a meeting of the Interdepartmental Staff for the Fight against Terrorism from October 1998.

At that meeting, Slobodan Miloševic invites Nebojša Pavkovic, the then Priština Corps commander, to present a report on behalf of the Joint Command. Lazarevic first contended that the person taking minutes might have made a mistake.

When the prosecutor showed him that the Joint Command was mentioned in ten other places, Lazarevic repeated what he had said in his examination-in chief: the joint command was a term used for combined operations of the army and police, and not a body.

In his examination-in-chief, Lazarevic said that the term armed non-Albanian population used in a number of military documents referred to the Civil Defense troops subordinated to the Ministry of Defense.

The prosecution then showed him a document issued by the General Staff in February 1999 ordering them to participate in actions together with the VJ units.

Lazarevic replied that such an order was, in his view, in the sphere of the impossible as the army had no authority over these groups.

Many witnesses testifying for the prosecution identified local armed Serbs as the perpetrators of the gravest crimes against civilians. According to the prosecution, these local armed Serbs were actually the people behind the phrase armed non-Albanian population.

Lazarevic admitted yesterday that during the war, he was aware of the fact that many people left Kosovo, but rejected the possibility that the army was responsible for this.

The people fled from the battlefield and this caused concern for the army, he told the court.

The general testifying in his own defense will be re-examined by Mihajlo Bakrac, his defense counsel. Lazarevic’s testimony will thus take full fifteen working days.

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The Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina, War Crimes Chamber

Official Website

Kravica: Denying Genocide
BIRN
November 14, 2007

Defence teams announce that they intend to challenge the accepted number of Srebrenica victims.

As part of the Defence evidence presentation process, attorney representing the 11 indictees charged with genocide against Bosniaks from Srebrenica, will try to deny the "the facts which qualify these acts as genocide".

On behalf of the 11 Defence teams, attorney Milos Peric suggested that court expert Svjetlana Radovanovic be invited to testify before the Court of BiH about the authenticity of the data concerning the exact number of victims in Srebrenica. The Trial Chamber has approved the request.

"In this way we shall try to deny some facts related to the qualification of genocide," explained Peric.

Witness Vladan Bogdanovic, who was examined by Velibor Maksimovic's Defence team, provided an alibi for the indictee by saying that he used to see him in Skelani at the time of the "Srebrenica happenings".

"It is a small place, and we used to see each other several times a day," said Bogdanovic.

The Prosecution of BiH charges Velibor Maksimovic, Milos Stupar, Milenko Trifunovic, Petar Mitrovic, Brane Dzinic, Aleksandar Radovanovic, Slobodan Jakovljevic, Miladin Stevanovic, Dragisa Zivanovic, Branislav Medan and Milovan Matic with having committed the murder of more than 1,000 Bosniaks in a warehouse in Kravica village near Srebrenica on July 13, 1995.

During the cross-examination, Prosecutor Ibro Bulic insisted on having the witness explain what the "happenings in Srebrenica" meant. The witness was not able to give an explanation. After the Trial Chamber asked him to answer the question, the witness said that there was "fighting in the vicinity of Srebrenica".

The trial is due to continue on November 15, when Tomo Kovac, who was chief of the Republika Srpska police in 1995, is expected to testify via video link.

Appellate Panel hands down the verdict in Gojko Jankovic case
Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina
November 19, 2007

The Appellate Panel of Section I for War Crimes of the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) has issued the final verdict in the case of Gojko Jankovic, partially upholding the defense appeal, and modifying the Trial Panel’s verdict of 16 February 2007 in the legal qualification of the acts constituting the criminal offence of Crimes against humanity, for which the Trial Panel had convicted the Accused. The Trial Panel’s verdict remains unchanged in the remaining parts, including the long-term imprisonment of 34 years, which the Trial Panel imposed on the Accused.

The Trial Panel found Gojko Jankovic guilty of Crimes against humanity. On 14 April 1992 the Accused commanded a group of soldiers who attacked the hamlet of Brežine / Zubovici in the municipality of Foca, which was inhabited by civilians of Muslim nationality. Following the attack some of these civilians were taken into captivity, interrogated and beaten, and then transferred to the Foca Prison camp. Further, on 3 July 1992 the Accused commanded a group of soldiers who attacked Muslim civilians hiding in the woods on the Kremnik hill. During this attack three civilians were killed, several of them were wounded, while seven male and thirty women and children were captured. The captured civilians were interrogated and brutally beaten, and the Accused, together with several soldiers under his command, shot seven male captives. Between mid June and mid August 1992, the Accused on several occasions raped a female detainee who was held in the Partizan sports hall in Foca.

The Accused was acquitted of participating in the rape of another female person in the period between 7 April and May 1992. The time the Accused has been held in custody from 14 March 2005 will count towards the sentence. The case of Gojko Jankovic is the second case transferred to the BiH Authorities by the International Criminal Court for Former Yugoslavia.

Mejakic et al: Blood Pools in Keraterm
BIRN Justice Report
November 19, 2007

A Prosecution witness has described how he survived the shooting in room 3 in Keraterm detention camp at the end of July 1992.

Prosecution witness Enes Crljenkovic told the Court about the mass execution of detainees in Keraterm detention camp in July 1992 and said that Dusan Fustar, one of the four inductees charged before the Court of BiH for crimes committed in Omarska and Keraterm detention camps, took part in this crime. "At 7pm, shooting started in the room number 3, where we were detained. I remember I was lying on the floor in a pool of blood," said witness Enes Crljenkovic. "The morning after, I saw about 190 bodies, cut in pieces. There were about 60 wounded people. That morning Dusan Fustar came in and asked for volunteers who would load the bodies onto a truck," said the witness, who said he had been brought to Keraterm detention camp on July 20, 1992. The Prosecution of BiH charges Dusan Fustar, Zeljko Mejakic, Momcilo Gruban and Dusko Knezevic with having participated in the murder, torture, rape and beating of Bosniaks and Croats in Omarska and Keraterm detention camps in 1992. "I did not know Fustar from before, but other detainees in Keraterm told me what his name was. As far as I can remember, he was of middle height, big, massive and had mustaches. He used to wear military uniform and a cockade. I think he was 52 years old at the time," Crljenkovic pointed out. The indictment alleges that, from May 24 to August 30, 1992, Fustar was commander of one of the three guard shifts in Keraterm detention camp, in which about 1,500 Bosniaks and Croats were detained. Crljenkovic said that, one-day after the massacre, Fustar took 22 detainees out of room number 3 and they never came back. "He entered the room and told Ismet Bajic to choose 20 people who would go out. Fustar then locked the door and we heard shooting. We never saw those people again," Crljenkovic said, adding that he was not sure if Fustar was "a guard or detention camp commander", but he claims to have seen him in Keraterm detention camp when the detainees were beaten up. "Every day ... brothers Predrag and Nenad Banovic and Dusko Sikirica would beat people with sticks, gun butts and revolvers, and Fustar was there. As far as I can remember he did not beat anyone, but he did not prevent others from doing that," said Crljenkovic.

In November 2001 the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) sentenced Sikirica to 15 years imprisonment for crimes committed in Keraterm detention camp. In October 2003 the ICTY sentenced Predrag Banovic to eight years imprisonment for crimes committed in Omarska and Keraterm detention camps. The indictment against Nenad Banovic was withdrawn due to lack of evidence. During cross-examination, Crljenkovic said that he saw Fustar in Trnopolje detention camp, to which he was transferred, together with a group of detainees, on August 8, 1992. "I think that, after the dismissal of Keraterm detention camp, he was a guard in that detention camp for some time. As far as I can remember he was a major," Crljenkovic said. As proposed by the Prosecution of BiH, the Trial Chamber admitted as material evidence reports on exhumations undertaken on the territory of Prijedor, together with the book entitled "The Missing People from Prijedor" and "The Additional Report on Exhumations and Ways of Death, Prijedor Municipality" written by ICTY investigator Nicholas Sebire. The trial is due to continue on November 20, 2007.

Bozic et al: ICTY Evidence Refused
BIRN
November 21, 2007

The Trial Chamber has turned down a Prosecution request to admit facts established in The Hague.

At the trial of four former VRS members charged with crimes committed in Bratunac in July 1995, the Prosecution of BiH asked that it be allowed to admit, as material evidence, reports compiled by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). The reports in question concern the existence of mass graves on the territory of Srebrenica and Bratunac. The Prosecution of BiH charges Zdravko Bozic, Mladen Blagojevic, Zeljko Zaric and Zoran Zivanovic, former members of the Bratunac brigade military police with VRS, with responsibility for the happenings in and around the elementary school in Bratunac, where Bosniaks were detained after a failed attempt to escape Srebrenica in July 1995. However, the Trial Chamber has refused Prosecutor Kwai Hong Ip's proposal to include the ICTY report on exhumations from Glogova 2 grave in the list of evidence. The prosecutor explained that the report describes the exhumations undertaken in Glogova, but it does not indicate the origin of people buried in the grave. The Defence teams objected the proposal and asked that the investigator and author of the report be examined in the courtroom instead. Ip also asked that a report containing details on what was found in the Glogova mass grave be admitted as material evidence. The report also contains data on how the persons, whose remains were discovered in the grave, had died. The defense objected to this proposal, instead asking for examination of the pathologist who had written the ICTY report.

The Trial Chamber will render its decision at a later stage. At the trial, the Defence cross-examined Muris Brkic, a state Prosecution investigator who had appeared as a Prosecution witness at an earlier hearing. Brkic was present when the exhumations from Glogova, Zeleni Jadar, Budak and Pusmuljici mass graves were carried out. According to Brkic, protected Prosecution witness PW1 revealed the locations of these graves to the investigative bodies. "He showed us the places where the mass graves were, saying that he had visited them, but he was not able to confirm that the bodies of the people who had been killed in the school in Bratunac had been transferred to the Glogova grave." The trial is due to continue on November 27.

Sipic: Guilt Admission Agreement
BIRN
November 23, 2007

For the first time in the history of the War Crimes Chamber, a Defense attorney and the Prosecution of BiH have reached an agreement on an admission of guilt.

The Prosecution of BiH and the Defence team of war crimes inductee Idhan Sipic have reached an agreement on the admission of guilt. Defence attorney Binasa Abaspahic told Justice Report that the agreed sentence would range "between six and ten years' imprisonment”. Boris Grubesic, PR of the Prosecution of BiH, confirmed that an agreement was made by which the suspect voluntarily waived his right to a trial and that he may not file an appeal against the verdict. Abaspahic says that the agreement, which was negotiated by the two parties, will now be submitted to the Trial Chamber. It will render a final decision accepting or rejecting the agreement and propose the sentence.

This is the first case in the history of the War Crimes Chamber that the Prosecution of BiH has negotiated a guilt admission agreement with a suspect. Sipic surrendered on October 25 this year and admitted that, in September 1995, he murdered a woman and threw her body into a well in Kljuc municipality. At that time, Sipic was a member of the Reconnaissance Unit with the Fifth Corps of the Army of BiH.

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International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR)

Official Website of the ICTR

Rwanda; ICTR Asks France to Prosecute Fr Munyeshyaka, Bucyibaruta
The New Times
By Felly Kimenyi
November 23, 2007

The Arusha-based International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, (ICTR) has requested France to try Fr. Wenceslas Munyeshyaka and Laurent Bucyibaruta, two Genocide suspects arrested in France.

Tim Gallimore, the spokesman of the ICTR Prosecutor confirmed the decision which was taken on Tuesday.

"Trial Chamber referral bench granted the Rule 11 bis request of the Prosecutor to transfer to France for trial the cases of Laurent Bucyibaruta and Wenceslas Munyeshyaka," he said in an e-mail.

Rwanda's Special Representative to the ICTR, Alloys Mutabingwa, said:

They passed that decision but I am still reading and digesting it. Right now I cannot comment anything regarding this," Mutabingwa said by phone from Arusha, Tanzania yesterday.

"The Prosecutor submitted the transfer applications on 12 June under the Tribunal's Rule 11 bis which allows for the transfer of ICTR indictees to national jurisdictions for trial.

The transfers are part of the Tribunal's Completion Strategy which calls for all trials to be completed by the end of 2008 and all appeals by 2010 when the ICTR will close," the court said in a statement.

The rule states that the President of the ICTR "may designate a Trial Chamber for the purpose of referring a case to the authorities of any State that is willing to prosecute the accused in its own courts".

Munyeshyaka, a former parish priest of Kigali's St. Famille church and Bucyibaruta, who was Prefet (Governor) of Gikongoro have, since July this year, been arrested twice in France under a warrant from the UN Genocide tribunal.

Subsequently, the decision by ICTR to drop their demand to have the suspects transferred to Arusha was announced in the Paris court that was due to rule on the duo's possible transfer from France on Wednesday.

The court later postponed the ruling until next month.

According to the ICTR-prepared indictments, the two are charged with among other crimes, genocide and incitement to commit genocide, extermination, murder and rape.

Munyeshyaka was last year tried in absentia alongside Maj. Gen Laurent Munyakazi on the killings of hundreds of people who had sought refuge at St Famille church.

Both were sentenced to life imprisonment.

Munyakazi has since appealed to the Supreme Court after the Military High Court upheld an earlier ruling by the Military Tribunal.

Rwanda had earlier asked for Munyeshyaka, who has since after the Genocide, been living and working in France as a parish priest to either come and serve his sentence in Rwanda, or request for a re-trial for which he is constitutionally entitled to.

Another Genocide suspect who was recently arrested in France and awaiting extradition proceedings is Dominique Ntawukuriryayo, a former local leader in the Southern Province.

ICTR Divestiture Decisions Did Not Arrive in Time in France
Hirondelle News Agency
November 22, 2007

In spite of the divestiture by the ICTR to the benefit of France in the cases of Wenceslas Munyeshyeka and Laurent Bucyibaruta, the Court of Appeal of Paris differed Wednesday to 12 December the examination of the transfer request of the two men because it did not received in time the originals of the announced documents.

Only an electronic sending has an effect cautioned the Court of Appeal of Paris of these decisions whereas an original document is necessary.

"We can reasonably think that this decision will lead to the ipso facto dropping of the transfer request to the ICTR", declared Wednesday in the hearing Jean-Charles Lecompte, the prosecuting attorney at the Court of Appeal of Paris. The ICTR decisions are dated 20 November.

In June 2006, France and the ICTR signed an agreement making it possible for the international tribunal to transfer to France certain cases to be tried there, including those concerning Munyeshyaka and Bucyibaruta.

On 26 September 2007, the Court of Appeal of Paris had asked the ICTR to communicate documents to it before coming to a conclusion about the transfer request of the two men. These documents having not arrived "in time", the court ordered Wednesday the deferral of the case.

The investigation chamber requested from the ICTR originals or certified documents of its transfer requests and wished that the prosecution of the international tribunal confirm or deny "the existence and current relevance" of its divestiture request to the benefit of France to try the two men.

In France, the two men are also subject of prosecution initiated by survivors of the genocide. Wencelas Munyeshyaka and Laurent Bucyibaruta were respectively indicted in 1995 and 2000 for crimes against humanity and genocide. First arrested in July 2007 at the request of the ICTR, they were released. A second warrant, issued in September, led to their arrest and their release a few days later by the investigation chamber of the Court of Appeal of Paris.

The two men are from now on the responsibility of French justice, but the charges pronounced against them have not been specified yet. Already the subject in 1995 of an international arrest warrant, Munyeshyeka had been exonerated by a decision of the Court of Appeal. The prosecution tried again in 1998 after a decision by the final court of appeal.

Furthermore, the Court of Appeal of Paris rejected Wednesday the release request of the Rwandan Dominique Ntawukuriryayo, accused by the ICTR of having taken part in the 1994 genocide. Last week, the Court of Appeal of Paris authorized his transfer to the ICTR, which must complete its first instance trials by the end of 2008. An appeal to the final court of appeal was filed.

More Than Half of ICTR Prisoners Estimate That They Are UN "Political Prisoners"
Hirondelle News Agency
November 20, 2007

More than half of the people imprisoned at the detention center of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) in Arusha, Tanzania, have drawn up a negative assessment of the tribunal and declared to be "political prisoners" of the United Nations.

In a letter addressed to the United Nations Security Council, and sent to the Hirondelle agency, these prisoners, accused or convicted, affirm that "the ICTR has put us in prison, first and foremost, for political reasons. On that account, we are political prisoners of the United Nations".

The text which is dated 15 November was signed by 31 of the 55 prisoners. None of the convicts that pleaded guilty signed the document. The prized defendant of the tribunal, the former cabinet director of the defence minister, Colonel Théoneste Bagosora, accused of being "the mastermind" of the 1994 genocide, did not sign it either.

The list of authors of the text includes convicts, defendants on trial or awaiting their trials.

According to them, "the Office of the Prosecutor actively sought evidence to convict persons chosen arbitrarily as samples representing socio-professional and political categories from the side of the vanquished even by fabricating it in complicity with the RPF, whereas judgments by the Chambers are not concerned with establishing the truth".

They "urge the UN authorities, particularly, the members of the Security Council, to make an objective assessment of the judicial activity of the ICTR with regard to its official missions, so as to acknowledge that this Tribunal has failed in its most important objective of establishing the truth, administering fair justice, fighting impunity, as well as, reconciling the Rwandan people ".

"We request the UN authorities to invite the ICTR to proceed, without delay, with the indictment of General Paul Kagame and his collaborators, accused of serious violations of international humanitarian law ", the official statement continues.

These prisoners also request that the Security Council "abort the conspiracy aimed at transferring to Rwanda ICTR accused and convicted persons" ..."to intervene in order to put an end to hunting down and to arbitrary arrests of Hutus in exile on the basis of arbitrary lists made by the RPF regime whose awful objective is to silence any political opposition".

Since the beginning of its trials in 1997, the ICTR has delivered 29 convictions and 5 acquittals.

This project is funded by Belgium, European community, Norway and Luxemburg

Rwanda Genocide – Country Sets up a Tracking Team for Persons Accused of Genocide
Hirondelle News Agency
November 16, 2007

Gathered in council of ministers Wednesday, the Rwandan government decided to create a team charged with tracking persons accused of genocide at large in other countries, reported an official source Friday.

The team is made up of 4 members of the prosecution and of three members of the national police, indicates an official statement in Kinyarwanda consulted on the official website of the Rwandan government.

The council of ministers also set up a commission in charge of the "transfer of cases and end of work" of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR).

The prosecutor general of the republic is the president of the commission while the secretary-general at the ministry of Justice is the vice-president.

It also includes the secretary-general of the ministry of foreign affairs, of the ministry of the Interior and of the Supreme Court.

The ICTR prosecutor, Hassan Bubacar Jallow, plans, if the judges authorize it, to transfer to Rwandan courts three accused already in the custody of the ICTR and another who is still at large. According to the press service of the prosecutor, 14 persons are still at large. At the ICTR, a tracking team is responsible, since the beginning, of the search for fugitives.

The ICTR, which must finish by the end of next year its first instance trials, is constrained to transfer certain cases to national courts, including those in Rwanda.

Former Rwanda Mayor Jailed by Genocide Tribunal
Reuters
By Daniel Wallis
November 16, 2007

NAIROBI, Nov 16 (Reuters) - A former Rwandan mayor was jailed for 11 years on Friday after pleading guilty to a charge of extermination during the country's 1994 genocide.

Juvenal Rugambarara, the 48-year-old former mayor of Bicumbi near the capital Kigali, was arrested in Uganda in Aug. 2003.

"He was found guilty of extermination because he failed ... to take necessary and reasonable measures (to investigate) the crimes committed in the commune and for the apprehension and punishment of the perpetrators," the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) said in a statement.

The ICTR in Arusha, Tanzania, is prosecuting the architects of the genocide, when an estimated 800,000 people were killed.

The tribunal said Rugambarara was entitled to credit for time spent in detention since his arrest.

It had earlier charged him with nine counts including genocide, but dropped eight of them following two years of negotiations between his lawyers and the ICTR prosecutors.

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Iraqi High Tribunal

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

US Rebuffs Iraq Demand for Handover of Prisoners
Reuters
By Ross Colvin
November 12, 2007

BAGHDAD, Nov 12 (Reuters) - U.S. forces on Monday rebuffed demands from Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki for three former high-ranking members of Saddam Hussein's government and military to be handed over so they could be hanged.

The U.S. military said it would continue to keep the men in its custody until the Iraqi government resolved an internal dispute over the legal and procedural requirements for carrying out the death sentences.

An appeals court in September upheld the sentences against Saddam's cousin, Ali Hassan al-Majeed, widely known as "Chemical Ali", former Defence Minister Sultan Hashem, and a former army commander, Hussein Rashid Muhammad.

The three were convicted of genocide for their roles in a campaign against Iraq's Kurds in 1988 in which tens of thousands of people were killed. Under Iraq's constitution their sentences should have been carried out within 30 days.

Maliki accused the U.S. embassy on Sunday of thwarting his Shi'ite-led government's attempts to execute the three and demanded they be handed over as soon as possible so their sentences could be carried out.

"The Coalition Forces are not refusing to relinquish custody. We are waiting for the GOI (government of Iraq) to come to consensus as to what their law requires before preparing a physical transfer," said Colonel Steve Boylan, spokesman for the U.S. military commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus.

"Changes in Iraqi law subsequent (to) earlier executions have led to disagreement within the GOI as to what the applicable requirements now are," Boylan said.

President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, and Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi, a Sunni Arab, insist that the constitution gives the three-man presidency council final authority for approving the executions. Both men are opposed to the hangings going ahead.

Maliki disagrees and his government tried unsuccessfully to execute the prisoners in September. That attempt was stopped only after Hashemi threatened to resign.

"There continues to be differences in viewpoint within the government ... regarding the necessary Iraqi legal and procedural requirements for carrying out death sentences issued by the Iraqi High Tribunal," Boylan said.

"Coalition Forces will continue to retain physical custody of the defendants until this issue is resolved in accordance with their laws," he said in an email to Reuters.

Maliki's government last month formed a seven-member committee, including legal experts and advisers to Talabani and Maliki, to reach consensus on the issue.

While many Iraqis are anxious to see Chemical Ali, once one of the most feared men in Iraq, go to the gallows, there has been a chorus of calls from the Sunni Arab community for Hashem's life to be spared, with many arguing he was a soldier simply following orders. (Editing by Sami Aboudi)

Confusion over Chemical Ali’s Fate
CNN
November 13, 2007

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- A legal debate and reconciliation politics have delayed the scheduled executions in Iraq of three Saddam Hussein-era officials and the hiatus is causing an uproar among Iraqi officials.

Ali Hassan al-Majeed, also known as Chemical Ali; Sultan Hashem Ahmed, and Hussein Rashid, all from the Sunni-dominated Hussein government, were found guilty of war crimes during the bloody Anfal offensive during the late 1980s in Iraq's Kurdish region.

They were to be executed by hanging within 30 days after an Iraqi appeals court upheld their sentences in early September.

However, the three remain in United States custody amid protests over the case and will remain so until there is a meeting of the minds among Iraqis on how to proceed.

The case has served to underscore vagueness over how Iraqi law addresses executions and the political importance U.S. officials place on winning the hearts and minds of the country's restive Sunni Arab population.

"There continue to be differences in viewpoint within the government of Iraq regarding the necessary Iraqi legal and procedural requirements for carrying out death sentences issued by the Iraqi High Tribunal," Mirembe Nantongo, spokeswoman at the U.S. Embassy in Iraq, told CNN on Monday.

"Coalition forces will continue to retain physical custody of the defendants until this issue is resolved. There is still discussion within the government of Iraq over the legal requirements in this case. The U.S. is not refusing to relinquish custody. We are waiting for the government of Iraq to come to consensus as to what their law requires before preparing a physical transfer."

Iraqi law requires that the three members of country's presidency council sign the execution warrants but doesn't address what happens if the leaders don't ratify the executions and apparently allows no room for sentence revisions.

In this case, Jalal Talabani, the Kurdish president and Tariq al-Hashimi, the Sunni vice-president, are unwilling to sign an execution order. The third member of the council is the Shiite vice-president, Adel Abdul Mahdi.

One Western official close to the case told CNN that Iraqi courts have not addressed whether the absence of a signature constitutes a de facto pardon or a stay of execution.

But Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, addressing the issue on Sunday before reporters, said the Iraqi High Tribunal made a final ruling in the case and an appeals court upheld the ruling. He said the sentence should have been carried out even if the order is not signed.

Talabani has selected a panel of experts to study the matter.

A major concern among Iraqi and U.S. officials and citizens is the political impact of the verdict -- which accuses the three of spearheading the Anfal campaign, where as many as 180,000 people were said to have been killed.

The general sentiment is that Chemical Ali is guilty of planning the campaign. However, many Sunni Arabs and U.S. officials believe Hashem and Rashid should not be executed.

The Western official says Rashid was not "criminally culpable for anything that happened during Anfal" and that Hashem had been and is "extremely popular" among military officials, with a "constituency" in Iraq that "cuts across Sunni-Shia lines."

U.S. officials believe the executions of th