War Crimes Prosecution Watch

The Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina, War Crimes Chamber

Djukic: Severe trauma
BIRN Justice Report
By: Kapija Tuzla
June 17, 2008

Prosecution witness Amra Ponjavic recalls the massacre she witnessed in Tuzla on May 25, 1995. She said that, besides the physical pain, she still suffers from "a severe trauma" as a consequence of that event. "It was one of a few quiet and sunny days that year. Me and my friends went to Kapija. The music was loud, but my friend said he heard an air attack alarm. I stood up, wanting to leave the place. At that moment a shell hit the ground. I remember the light, tingling in my ears, smoke and dust. All of a sudden it was all dark around me. It was as if I stayed by the table alone and everyone else lied on the floor," the witness said.

Ponjavic testified at the trial of Novak Djukic, former commander of Ozren Tactical Group with the Republika Srpska Army, VRS. The Prosecution charges him with having ordered the shelling of Tuzla on May 25, 1995, when 71 people were killed and several hundred were wounded at Tuzlanska kapija. Ponjavic recalled that, after having noticed that she was wounded and feeling afraid of "another shell," she started walking away from the place. She said that, as she was leaving Kapija, she saw that a two-year old son of her friends had been killed and she saw many wounded people. "I went to 'Gradina' hospital together with two wounded boys. The doctors did not know what had happened. A few minutes later, the hospital was crowded with patients. Corridors were full of wounded people," Ponjavic told the Court. Charles Bratz testified as Prosecution witness. After the shell hit Kapija, Bratz, former deputy commander of the North-East Sector with UNPROFOR, "coordinated the investigation" on May 26, 1995. As he explained to the Court the investigation was conducted by UNPROFOR experts and a team from Sarajevo and Tuzla. According to this witness, he visited the location which was hit by the mortar on that day. He also visited the hospital where there were "about 200 young people," as well as the morgue to which the killed people were transported. The recording, showing the visit to those locations, was presented by the Prosecution in the courtroom. The mentioned recording was included as evidence. The recording shows a room, in which there were many killed people and children, as well as wounded persons, whose body parts were missing.

As Bratz said, three days after the shelling, on May 28, 1995, a joint report was made and he signed it. "The report contained a clear conclusion saying that it was a 130mm shell and the attacks were intentional and had Tuzla town as its target. They may not have targeted the downtown area but they targeted the town for sure," Bratz explained. The report was presented by the Prosecution as evidence, together with numerous attachments, such as the drawings of the location hit by the shell, photographs, list of the killed, drawing of the shell and the weapons, as well as a map, showing "the location from which the shell had probably been fired." This location was not mentioned in the courtroom, although the report makes a reference to that location. The indictment alleges that Djukic ordered the Artillery Squad, situated in Panjik village on mount Ozren, to shell Tuzla, using 130mm cannons. The trial is due to continue on June 24, when four Prosecution witnesses will be examined.

Bozic et al: UN Report on attack against Srebrenica
BIRN Justice Report
By: Bozic, Blagojevic; Zaric, Zivanovic
June 17, 2008

A court expert, engaged by the Defense of the four former military police members, denies that Srebrenica was heavily shelled in July 1995.

On the second day of his testimony, court expert Radovan Radinovic, who was invited by the Defense teams, claims that the reports, made by international observers, describing detonations in Srebrenica in July 1995 were "not correct."

According to this court expert, the international observers "were not situated in the town" and therefore they could not have known what was happening ten kilometers away from them. In addition, Radinovic said that, if it was true that about 300 or 400 detonations could be heard in Srebrenica per day, it would mean that the town was severely destroyed, "which was not the case." As per a request made by the Defense of Zdravko Bozic, Mladen Blagojevic, Zeljko Zaric and Zoran Zivanovic, Radinovic compiled a report on the role of the military police in Srebrenica in July 1995.

The State Prosecution charges the four men, as members of the Military Police Squad with the Bratunac Brigade, with having participated in the separation of men from women and children and guarding buses, which transported the captured men from Potocari to Bratunac in July 1995. The men were then detained in a school building in Bratunac, where they were mistreated and abused, and some were murdered. During cross-examination, Radinovic said the Military Police Squad did not have a mandate to control the convoys transporting humanitarian aid, which were supposed to go to the protected enclave of Srebrenica, and they were acting as "physical security" only. As per the court expert's findings, Momir Nikolic, chief of the security section with the Bratunac Brigade Staffs, had "a task to control the humanitarian aid convoys which came to Srebrenica in order to avoid possible malversation." The Hague Tribunal sentenced Momir Nikolic to 20 years imprisonment for crimes committed in the Srebrenica area. Asked by the Prosecutor if Srebrenica residents received the food transported by the convoys, the witness said that "all previously announced convoys were allowed to enter Srebrenica, provided that they transported the goods, as per the earlier announced lists."

The Prosecutor asked the court expert why about 2,000 Bosniak men were separated from women, children and the elderly in Potocari, bearing in mind that the Bratunac Brigade had a list of 389 persons, who were suspected of having committed war crimes against Bosnian Serbs, as indicated by the court expert on the first day of his testimony. The court expert responded by saying that he did not know who had made the list of 389 names, adding that, on the basis of their documents, the identity of those men should have been determined and not all of them should have been separated. As per the court expert's findings, the Military Police Squad "had a task to escort the captured persons" and there were regulations, specifying how those people should have been treated and when it was allowed to use force. The court expert said that the detainees were escorted by members of the Military Police Squad and some other, "even more important, units." "All tasks executed by the military policemen were under the mandate of the Bratunac Brigade," the court expert concluded. The trial is due to continue on June 26.

Marko Adamović and Boško Lukić plead not guilty
State Court of BiH
June 18, 2008

At the plea hearing before the Section I for War Crimes of the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), the accused Marko Adamović and Boško Lukić plead not guilty. The Indictment charges Marko Adamović and Boško Lukić with the criminal offenses of Crimes against Humanity and Organizing a Group of People and Instigating the Perpetration of Genocide, Crimes against Humanity and War Crimes.

The Indictment alleges that from April to December 1992 Boško Lukić and Marko Adamović, together with other members of the Crisis Staff of the Ključ Municipality, planned, prepared, instigated, aided and abetted and participated in the campaign of persecution of the non-Serb population of the Ključ Municipality. Boško Lukić acted as the Commander of the Territorial Defense Staff of the Ključ Municipality, member of the Crisis Staff of the Ključ Municipality and member of the Ključ Town Defense Command, while Marko Adamović acted as a member of the Crisis Staff of the Ključ Municipality, Commander of the Ključ Town Defense Command and the Deputy Commander of the Ključ Battalion of the Territorial Defense.

Among other things, the Indictment alleges that after the shelling of the Ključ settlements Pudin Han and Velagići, inhabited by the Bosniak population, on 28 May 1992, all the civilian population was called to gather near the Community Center in Velagići. After civilians gathered in front of the Centre, they were ordered to go in front of the Ključ Public Security Station. While going towards the Ključ Public Security Station, the civilians were allegedly stopped at a police checkpoint and the men were separated from the women and children. After the separation, the women and children were released without a right to return to their homes, while the men were interrogated and registered, and then some of them were released, while more than 200 of them were allegedly deprived of liberty and imprisoned in the premises of the Primary School Nikola Mačkić.

The Indictment further alleges that from 27 May 1992 the army and the police searched villages and settlements in the Ključ Municipality inhabited by the Bosniak population and that civilians were arrested and brought to the detention facilities established in the primary school in Sanica, the primary school Nikola Mačkić in Ključ, the former railway station in Sanica and the Ključ Public Security Station.

Gasal et al: Trial postponed
BIRN Justice Report
June 18, 2008

The trial of four former Bosnian Army members has been postponed as the witnesses failed to appear.

A Prosecution witness who was invited to testify at the hearing on June 18, failed to appear in the courtroom. The trial of the four former members of the Bosnian Army has therefore been postponed until June 25, 2008.

As per the current legal regulations, the gap between two subsequent hearings may not be longer than one month. However, Trial Chamber Chairman Davorin Jukic said that, in the case, this was "a rather reasonable time span" and "a retrial would not be in the best interest to the indictees." The parties did not have any objections concerning the extension of the prescribed time span between the hearings.

The State Prosecution charges Nisvet Gasal, Musajb Kukavica, Enes Handzic and Senad Dautovic with the crimes against civilians in the Bugojno area. Handzic and Dautovic are charged with war crimes against the wounded and the sick and war crimes against prisoners of war. The indictment alleges that, from August 1993 to March 19, 1994 Gasal and Kukavica were responsible for the functioning of the detention camp formed at 'Iskra" football stadium, where more than 300 Croatian men were held in inhumane conditions. Among other things, the detainees were used as human shields by the Bosnian Army at the frontlines. The indictment alleges that Handzic and Dautovic, in cooperation with the civil municipal authorities in Bugojno and military units of the Bosnian Army, "participated in a joint criminal enterprise, with an aim of detaining, torturing and killing the detained Bosnian Croats." According to the indictment Handzic was assistant commander for security with the 307th Brigade of the Bosnian Army and Dautovic was commander of the Joint Staffs of the Bosnian Army for Bugojno town. They are charged, on the basis of their command responsibility, with having failed to undertake measures in order to prevent the crimes against detainees and punish the perpetrators.

Status conference in the Vinko Kondić case scheduled
State Court of BiH
June 19, 2008

A status conference before the Section I for War Crimes of the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), in the Vinko Kondić case, has been scheduled for 20 June 2008 starting at 2:00p.m. in courtroom 4. Vinko Kondić is charged with the criminal offence of Crimes against Humanity and criminal offence of Organization of Group of People and Incitement to Perpetration of Criminal Offences of Genocide, War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity.

The indictment alleges that since June 1991 the accused Kondić, as a member of the Executive Committee of the SDS Municipal Organization in Ključ, the Commander of the Ključ Police Station (SJB), a member of the Ključ Crisis Headquarters and a member of the Ključ Defense Council, together with other members of the SDS as well as with the military and civilian authorities in the Ključ Municipality, took part in the perpetration of criminal offences against Croat and Bosniak civilians.

On 18 November 1991, the accused Kondić undertook activities aimed at stopping a convoy of refugees from Slunj, the Republic of Croatia. On this occasion, the police under the command of Vinko Kondić took out from the bus and deprived of liberty able-bodied Croat male civilians, 30 of them at least. Having been tortured in the Police Station (SJB) Ključ, the civilians were transported into the previously formed camp Stara Gradiška. The indictment further alleges that during the period from 27 May 1992 to late August 1992 the military and the police searched the villages and settlements in Ključ, Sanica and other villages inhabited by the Bosniak population. On this occasion, civilians were unlawfully arrested and taken to the detention facilities of the elementary schools in Sanica and Nikola Mačkić in Ključ, the former railway station in Sanica and the Police Station (SJB) Ključ. During the unlawful arrest at least 1161 men were escorted by the police and transported to the Manjača Camp. Immediately upon the arrival in the Camp, one civilian died due to the punching injuries sustained, while two more civilians died in the Manjača Camp.

The indictment further alleges that on 10 July 1992 the military entered into the villages and hamlets of the Ključ Municipality. On this occasion, all detained men were taken to the premises of the Elementary School in Donji Biljani. Some of these men were put on buses, taken into an unknown direction and killed, so that on 10 July 1992 at least 219 persons were killed.

Kravica: Two trials completed
BIRN Justice Report
June 19, 2008

Thirty months after the indictment was confirmed, two trials for genocide in Srebrenica have now been completed.

Two and a half years since the confirmation of the indictment, the evidence presentation at the trial of Petar Mitrovic and Miladin Stevanovic has been completed. The Prosecution charges the two men with having participated in the genocide after the fall of Srebrenica in July 1995. The Trial Chamber, sitting at both trials, announced that the closing arguments "might be presented on July 9." Mitrovic and Stevanovic, former members of the Second Special Police Squad from Sekovici, were originally charged under the same indictment as nine other policemen and members of the Republika Srpska Army, VRS, but, in May this year, the Court divided the case intro three separate cases. Although there are now three separate cases, the Prosecution proposed to present its closing arguments at a joint hearing, to be attended by all 11 indictees. At the last hearing, held on June 19, Krsto Stojkic, former criminal inspector, who was an investigator in the Defense team, was examined. The Defense made a proposal to include Nenad Vasic's statement as evidence, claiming that he did not want to come to Sarajevo. Krsto Stojic, who examined Vasic in 2005, said that he refused to appear at the hearing "as he is afraid of being arrested". The Trial Chamber rejected the proposal to include his statement as evidence. The public was not informed about the content of Vasic's statement. The presenting of evidence at the trial of Petar Mitrovic was completed in early June, after the Defense cross-examined protected Prosecution witness S4 at a closed session.

Mihaljevic: Prosecution files appeal
BIRN Justice Report
June 19, 2008

The State Prosecution has appealed the first instance verdict against the former HVO member, which acquitted him of war crime charges.

The Prosecution of Bosnia and Herzegovina filed an appeal against the first instance verdict, acquitting Zdravko Mihaljevic of the counts, charging him with war crimes in Kiseljak municipality in 1993. As indicated in the Prosecution's public announcement, the appeal refers to "the violation of provisions contained in the Criminal Proceedings Code of Bosnia and Herzegovina" and "incorrect and incomplete factual status." The State Prosecution charges Zdravko Mihaljevic, known as Pijuk, as former member of "Ban Josip Jelacic" – the Second Battalion of the Croatian Defense Council, HVO, and commander of "Maturice" Special Purposes Squad, with having participated in the attack against, and the murder and torture of civilians in Tulice village, in Kiseljak municipality, in June 1993. The indictment alleges that Mihaljevic, in cooperation with two other "Maturice" members, killed seven men by shooting from "an automatic gun" on June 12, 1993 and shot one more person by "shooting the person from a close distance."

On April 16 this year the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina announced a first instance verdict against Mihaljevic, acquitting him of the charges. Justifying its decision, the first instance Trial Chamber said that "the Prosecution has not been able to prove, beyond reasonable doubt, that the indictee is guilty." "The Chamber considers the fact that Mihaljevic participated in the crimes described in the indictment to be disputable. However, we have clearly and undoubtedly determined, on the basis of the statements given by witnesses and material evidence, that the crimes did happen. We have determined with no doubt, that a broad and systematic attack against Bosniaks was conducted in the Kiseljak, Busovaca and Vitez areas," the justification for the verdict alleged. The Appellate Chamber of the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina shall consider the appeal filed by the State Prosecution and render a decision, to be announced at a later stage.

Stupar et al: Indictee testifies
BIRN Justice Report
June 19, 2008

One inductee testifies at the trial for the genocide in Srebrenica.

Aleksandar Radovanovic, one of the nine indictees, who are charged with the genocide in Srebrenica on July 13, 1995, testified as a Defense witness and described the events, which happened in July 1995. The Prosecution considers that Aleksandar Radovanovic, Milos Stupar, Milenko Trifunovic, Brano Dzinic, Slobodan Jakovljevic, Velibor Maksimovic, Dragisa Zivanovic and Branislav Medan, who were former members of the Second Special Police Squad from Sekovici, and Milovan Matic, member of the Republika Srpska Amry, participated in the shooting of more than 1,000 Srebrenica residents in Kravica. Prior to the start of the testimony, Dragan Gotovac, the indictee's Defense attorney, asked the Trial Chamber if one part of the examination could be conducted with no public presence as those were "very sensitive facts". "The inductee might say some things, evaluations or statements about some people, which might not be benign in terms of the safety of the indictee's family. In addition, the identity of a closed witness may be disclosed," Gotovac said, explaining his request, which was approved by the Trial Chamber.

In the course of the open part of the hearing, Radovanovic said Rade Cuturic, known as Oficir, told him and other Special Police members to "go in the direction of the yellow bridge" in Srebrenica on July 12, 1995. "It was said that some Muslim soldiers, who had not surrendered, were in the woods. Oficir told us how to treat potential prisoners, if we captured any in that area," Radovanovic said, adding that Cuturic was commander of the Second Squad at that time. The Prosecution considers that indictee Milos Stupar was commander of the Second Squad in July 1995. Radovanovic said that, after arriving to the yellow bridge, he was supposed to go "to Zvornik, to guard something," but, on his way to Zvornik, he stopped in Sandici. The cross-examination conducted by the Prosecutor and other Defense attorneys was open to the public. Answering other Defense attorney's questions, Radovanovic said that Velibor Maksimovic and Dragisa Zivanovic "did not go to the field" in Kravica and Sandici in July 1995. Brano Dzinic and Branislav Medan were supposed to testify at this hearing as well. However, their Defense teams informed the Court that they would like to withdraw this proposal. At the next hearing, scheduled for July 3, indictee Milenko Trifunovic is due to be examined.

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Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC)

Official Website of the Extraordinary Chambers
Official Website of the Khmer Rouge Trial Task Force
Official Website of the United Nations Assistance to the Khmer Rouge Trials (UNAKRT)

UN at Fault if Tribunal Fails: Hun Sen
VOA Khmer
By Mean Veasna
June 11, 2008

Prime Minister Hun Sen called on the international community to fund the Khmer Rouge tribunal during a time of financial crisis.

A failure of the tribunal due to the lack of funds will be the responsibility of the UN, and the UN would lose its reputation, Hun Sen told the English-language Mekong Times Wednesday.

"I call on the UN and those who promised to provide money," he said. "Any failure of the court due to budget shortages is not Cambodia's responsibility."

Hun Sen's comments "show how much interest and how much support he gives to the court," tribunal spokesman Peter Foster said. "It would be disappointing for everyone if funding did not come forward and we were not able to proceed."

Tribunal administration officials are currently revising a budget proposal in an effort to bring the amount they need from donors below $114 million.

The tribunal was initially budgeted at $56 million, but officials say they need more if the courts are complete trials for five jailed Khmer Rouge leaders.

Tribunal officials will present a revised budget to donors next week, Foster said.

Khmer Rouge victims given a voice in Cambodia trials
International Herald Tribune
By Seth Mydans
June 16, 2008

If Sok Chear had her way, she would slice the elderly man into ribbons and pour salt into his wounds. She would beat him up and torture him and give him electric shocks to make him talk.

For Ly Monysar, "Only killing them will make me feel calm. I want them to suffer the way I suffered. I say this from the heart."

Sok Chear, an office worker, and Ly Monysar, a security guard, are two of the millions of Cambodians who suffered for four years in the late 1970s under the brutal Communist Khmer Rouge, who caused the deaths of 1.7 million people.

Today, three decades later, five aging former Khmer Rouge leaders have been arrested and are awaiting trial. And Sok Chear and Ly Monysar have an innovative role to play in the tribunal, where the first case is expected to get under way this autumn.

They are two of hundreds of people who have applied to the court to be recognized officially as victims of the Khmer Rouge and to bring parallel civil cases against them.

They will have the chance, not to beat and torture them but to seek symbolic reparations - a monument, perhaps, or a museum or a trauma center.

It is a controversial experiment in this unusual hybrid tribunal, which is administered jointly by the United Nations and the Cambodian government, cobbling together elements of both local and international law.

"For the first time in history the internal rules of a tribunal will give victims of crimes the possibility to participate as parties," said Gabriela GonzÃƒÂ¡lez Rivas, deputy head of the tribunal's victims unit.

Victims have been included in other comparable tribunals like the International Court of Justice, but their role has been more limited.

As civil parties, the victims here will have standing comparable to those of the accused, including the rights to participate in the investigation, to be represented by a lawyer, to call witnesses and to question the accused at trial, according to a court statement.

"Participation in these types of proceedings is a tool of empowerment," Rivas said. "People can tell their story, feel that what happened to them is a consideration, a recognizing that what happened to them shouldn't have happened."

The inclusion of victims is part of the evolution and refining of the mechanisms of international justice, said Diane Orentlicher, special counsel of the Open Society Justice Initiative, in an interview by telephone from New York.

"There has been a growing recognition, after 15 years of international and hybrid courts like this one, not to exclude victims from the justice that is being dispensed on their behalf," she said.

"This is one of the frontier issues in ongoing efforts to improve ways in which war crimes trials are carried out."

The Cambodia tribunal has been criticized for compromising international standards of justice with its awkward admixture of Cambodian law and its vulnerability to manipulation by the country's strongman, Prime Minister Hun Sen.

The participation of victims is drawing more criticism, partly from people concerned for the rights of the accused and the preservation of the presumption of innocence.

Victor Koppe, a defense attorney for one of the Khmer Rouge leaders, called the presumption of innocence "the most fundamental issue" in a case whose defendants have already found a place in history books as the perpetrators of the killings.

"The question is whether or not everything in this tribunal is institutionalized in such a way that only guilty verdicts can come," he said.

Other critics say the court is being distracted by social agendas from its core task of seeking justice for crimes against humanity.

"I would put this under the category of therapeutic legalism," said Peter Maguire, a specialist in international justice and author of "Facing Death in Cambodia."

"The task of an international criminal court is to convict the guilty and exonerate the innocent," he said. "To ask more of it than that is asking way too much of any criminal trial."

For many people, though, these related benefits are the main purpose of the trials in a country that has never fully come to grips with its tormented past.

The trials will offer a catharsis and a measure of healing, they say, and will set a base line for an end to impunity in this still raw and sometimes lawless country.

"This is an invention of the 1990s where people freighted the trials with all this baggage," said Maguire. "How do you measure closure, how do you measure truth, how do you measure reconciliation? These are not empirical categories."

These added elements can also encumber an already tortuously slow process, the critics say.

Almost two years of the tribunal's budgeted three-year mandate have passed since it was set up in August 2006, after nearly a decade of contentious negotiation between the United Nations and the Cambodian government.

Nearly a year has passed since the first of the five defendants was charged in the case. A new budget has been submitted, and most analysts are confident that more money will be found from international donors to extend the life of the tribunal. But as Maguire put it, this court needs to get hustling.

So far, Rivas said, her office is processing about 1,300 applications to participate from people who say they are victims. About half of them seek to be civil parties, while the other half offer evidence that could be submitted to prosecutors. Most names have been channeled through a documentation center or through human rights groups.

Ten people have been accepted so far as civil parties, she said.

As the number grows, it is likely that they will be combined into class actions representing religious or ethnic groups, victims of particular crimes or other parties.

Theary Seng, 37, a Cambodian-born American lawyer who lost her parents to the Khmer Rouge, is organizing two groups of orphans - including Sok Chear and Ly Monysar - to bring civil cases.

In February, Seng became the first - and so far the only - victim to address the court, standing face to face with a man she blames for the deaths of her parents.

Though her words were addressed to the court, she said, her eyes were locked directly with those of the defendant, Nuon Chea, 81, the most senior of the five imprisoned leaders - the man Sok Chear said she wanted to flay.

In a short statement, Theary Seng contrasted the legal protections that Nuon Chea is receiving with the arbitrary arrest and abuse she said she and her younger brother suffered as children under the Khmer Rouge.

Nuon Chea, the Khmer Rouge ideologue, was sometimes known as Brother No. 2 to Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge leader, who died in 1998.

"He was stoic, stoic," said Theary Seng, recalling the confrontation. "He's completely stoic. Eighty percent of the time I was addressing him in my statement. He didn't break the stare."

Nearly one-fourth of the Cambodian population died between 1975 and 1979 from execution, torture, starvation and overwork in the mass labor brigades the Khmer Rouge created.

Today, though, most of the survivors are as stoic as their victimizers. When asked about the tribunal, most simply say they want to know who caused their suffering and why.

But the approach of the court sessions has aroused the feelings of many people, and those who have applied to be counted as victims are among those with the strongest emotions.

Sok Chear, 32, who said she was raped and brutalized as a girl by the Khmer Rouge, remains inconsolable over the loss of her father, an engineer, who disappeared into the hands of the black-clothed cadre and never returned.

"We were always waiting for him to come home, but he never came," she said. "We were always waiting and waiting. Even now, I still look around. Maybe my father is still alive."

Tears still come when she talks about him.

"He gave me rice to eat, and I want to repay him," she said, "even one plate of rice, my gift to him, even one plate for him to eat from his daughter."

Ly Monysar, 41, is a broken man, poor and sick and bitter, his voice quavering as he tells of the loss of his entire family when he was a boy of 9.

He sustains himself with fantasies of revenge every bit as chilling as the calculated brutality of men like Nuon Chea.

"I want to kill all those people who did this to me," he said.

"And if I can't, I'll come back in the next life and find them. I'll create my own genocidal regime and take my revenge on them all."

Proof needed in genocide cases, says UN exec
Inquirer.net
By Robert Gonzaga
June 18, 2008

A top prosecutor in the genocide trials in Cambodia says citing command responsibility "without proof of direct link" in the prosecution of cases involving extrajudicial killings is unjust.

"It's easier to prosecute someone with blood on his hands than the person who ordered, or perhaps more relevant to the context, the person who let it happen," said Robert Petit of the United Nations Assistance to the Khmer Rouge Trials (UNAKRT).

"You have to prove that the person is specifically responsible in some way. Just holding a general responsible for the action of subordinates if he had no way of knowing is just undermining the system," said the UNAKRT prosecutor.

Petit addressed prosecutors, lawyers and human rights workers during a two-day conference on the prosecution of crimes against international human rights and international humanitarian law here. The conference started on Monday at the Vista Marina Hotel.

The conference discussed issues that concerned human rights workers, journalists and lawyers who, according to a participant, were targets of atrocities most often suspected to be sanctioned by the state."

Petit, however, believed that without established links to masterminds in government or the military, it was unjust to go after persons in authority."

"I'm saying you have to have that proof. You prove that every day [in court]. You prove that this person knew, or should have known, but did not act to prevent [the crime] and did not act to sanction [the perpetrator]," he said.

He said motives could be "very relevant" to sentencing because "not all murders are equal and not all murderers are equal."

"But if you put motive as an element that the prosecution must prove, for example, that you acted because you wanted to stifle dissent, or you wanted to prevent prosecution of a political-based crime, or you wanted to scare an activist, you are just making it hard for the prosecution," he said.

Ibarra Gutierrez Jr., director of the University of the Philippines' Law Center, sought to separate extrajudicial killings involving human rights workers, journalists and legal professionals from ordinary killings.

He said distinguishing extrajudicial killings from murder or homicide would go beyond the definition of merely taking the life of a particular victim. He said a political slaying was "actually more a violation of certain state obligations or the rule of law."

Commission on Human Rights Chair Leila de Lima said the CHR would continue to monitor compliance by the government of its obligation under international treaties and instruments on human rights.

De Lima, who was appointed to lead the CHR in May, assured the participants that the commission would be "independent, credible and transparent."

Cambodia's genocide tribunal to get more Japan funding
Radio Australia
June 18, 2008

Japan has agreed to donate nearly $US3 million to Cambodia's genocide tribunal as it prepares to bring former Khmer Rouge leaders to trial.

A spokeswoman says the funding will go to the operations of the United Nations-backed court's administration office.

Court officials are also in New York this week seeking some $US100 million so the tribunal can continue operations.

They are set to meet potential donors on Friday.

Japan has already contributed more than $US21 million to the tribunal.

The radical Maoist Khmer Rouge regime, which ruled Cambodia from 1975 to 1979, is blamed for the deaths of up to two million people by execution, starvation and excessive work.

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Darfur, Sudan (ICC)

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

ICC Prosecutor discusses Sudanese Govt war crimes
Australian Broadcasting Corporation
By Leigh Sales
June 6, 2008

The prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), Luis Moreno-Ocampo joins Lateline to discuss the courts attempt to prosecute members of the Sudanese Government for war crimes.

LEIGH SALES, PRESENTER: And earlier I was joined from The Hague by the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Luis Moreno-Ocampo.

Mr Prosecutor, you told the United Nations last week that the entire Darfur region was a crime scene. Can you paint the picture for us? What are the types of crimes of which you've been able to gather hard evidence?

LUIS MORENO-OCAMPO, PROSECUTOR, ICC: Now we are conducting a second investigation into Darfur and we've found there are still Government forces integrated with militias Janjaweed attacking villages. They happen now - May. There are fewer villages attacked then before because there are a few village who remain inhabited by these people, because in 2003-2004 there were many attacks, now less attacks, but the pattern is the same. Armed forces surround the village and Janjaweed militias attack the citizens and armoured civilians, raping women, killing men, pillaging and forcing them to leave the city - that's happening now. And in other cases, take their aeroplanes, bombing schools - that happen in May. In relation to this, the same people who are in the camps are also under attack in different ways. When they leave the camps, women are raped, men are killed and inside the camps they are attacked, especially the leaders and the teachers are targeted, arrested, tortured. In relation to that, we have evidence of how the land of these people is usurpated avoiding that they come back to the places. And so people are attacked in the camps, attacked in the village, can not go back to the land. No ...

LEIGH SALES: How does this compare to what you saw in the first case you were investigating? Is the level of violence better or worse?

LUIS MORENO-OCAMPO: It's different, because in the first case we just saw the attacks against the village, 2003-2004. So, we saw when they attacked the villages and people were removed and the rationale was they were trying to isolate the rebels. But the new thing is, people removed and forced into camps and now attacking the camps. And that is different. It's not just they were attacking illegally in their own homes. Now they're removed, put in camps and they are attacking the camps and they can not go back. And that is the new scenario. And, in addition, we see also evidence of the cover up. It's a deliberate intent to cover up the crimes, because they are using the State to commit the crimes, they had to promise impunity and then no one is prosecuted in Sudan. No one is fired. On the contrary, the people who are involved in the crimes are promoted. Haroon, the Minister for the Interior who coordinated attacks in 2003-2004 is now the Minister of Humanitarian Affairs in charge of the people in the camps. So, he's in charge of the same victims he displace and he's attacking these people in the camps. And that is our second case.

LEIGH SALES: You mentioned that there seems to be a coordination of the violence between the Government and militias, that there's State apparatus in use, that there's a cover up. Who is actually ultimately responsible? Who is directing this? Does it go to the very top levels of Government?

LUIS MORENO-OCAMPO: I'm limited in my evidence. I'm doing criminal - I have to identify criminal responsibility. So, I am putting all this information together and we are discussing the case. The policy is to identify who is the most responsible and they are limited in their evidence. So, I will present my case to the judges in July.

LEIGH SALES: And at that point, will you be prosecuting particular individuals that you claim are directing these campaigns of violence?

LUIS MORENO-OCAMPO: That's the point. The point is these crimes are committed - it's not a crime committed by a person using a gun. Here, the gun is the State. They are using the State apparatus and integrating Janjaweed militias to attack the civilians. And that is a problem for the citizens in Darfur: those that have to protect them are attacking them. Imagine if in Sydney, the police attack the citizens. So, what you can do? That is a problem. That's why they need international community to protect them.

LEIGH SALES: Can you give us a sense of the scale of your investigation? How do you even begin on a case of this size?

LUIS MORENO-OCAMPO: Oh yeah, it's very interesting. We have to identify is massive attacks or massive numbers of criminals involved. So, we start with the documents collected by the UN Commission of Inquiry. We also collect documents from the Government of the Sudan who provide us their own information and then we start to identify witness. We can not go to Darfur to investigate, because we can not protect people in Darfur. So, what I did is, I collect witness, identify witness in the world. I identify 600 witnesses; finally we decide to take 100 testimonies and we took them in 18 countries. So, we conduct the investigation in the world and we identify 100 people who are victims in Darfur and now are in different places escaping from the region. So, we identify them, collect information. And the first case we can prove very, very, in relation to Haroon, in a very interesting way. We have eyewitness who saw Haroon delivering weapons in his own helicopter in three different places. We have eyewitness who saw Haroon paying Janjaweed militias to integrate in the forces. We saw - we have eyewitness who saw Haroon inciting Janjaweed militia leaders to attack the civilians, including Ali Kushayb, and then we have eyewitness who saw Ali Kushayb commanding four different attacks. So, in addition to documents, we have a very interesting eyewitness proving the criminal responsibility of these two persons. And now we're trying to define with the new evidence we collected who is the most responsible for this massive attack against the civilian population in Darfur for the last five years.

LEIGH SALES: So, you have to rely on witnesses who are no longer in Darfur. Is that because if you took testimony from people still inside the country they would be at too much of a risk?

LUIS MORENO-OCAMPO: They would be attacked, yes, absolutely. I have a duty to protect the witness, so, for me, interviewing the witness is the beginning of the relations. So, and I cannot protect the witness inside Darfur, inside the Sudan. So that's why I choose witness around the world.

LEIGH SALES: And what sort of protection do you offer to people who are going to be witnesses or testifying in this case for you?

LUIS MORENO-OCAMPO: Depends on the circumstances, but normally it's confidential information. We like to protect them, so we don't like to tell how we're doing it. But, right now, after four years of investigating massive ongoing crimes in different parts of the world, we have no witness attacked and that we are very proud that we can protect each of them.

LEIGH SALES: It's now nearly six months since part of a UN peacekeeping force arrived in Darfur. Based on the evidence that you're seeing, has the presence of these peacekeepers made any difference to the level of violence?

LUIS MORENO-OCAMPO: That's one of the issues that we - humanitarian aid is critically important in Darfur. Without the humanitarian assistance provided by UN and different NGOs, 2.5 million people will die. So, this is so dramatic. Security is key. Peacekeepers do have a critical role. But the problem is, we have to remove people at Haroon. Haroon cannot be in charge of his victims. If not, would never be enough peacekeepers. I use example, look, you have fire, you have to remove the arsonist. If not, will never be enough firefighters. So, it's not just the number of firefighters. If the arsonists remain in charge of the problem, the fire will continue and that's the problem with the impunity. Impunity is not an empty concept. When we define Haroon is a person who has commit serious crimes according to the evidence, this is serious information and has to be taken into consideration and has to be removed from the position.

LEIGH SALES: But when you talk about Haroon being responsible for most of these crimes and then now he's the Minister for Humanitarian Affairs, isn't the Sudanese Government simply making a mockery of this entire process?

LUIS MORENO-OCAMPO: That for me - is the lack of arrest of Haroon is in this year someone higher than him is giving introduction and support, is more. Haroon is also appointed to be the leader of the investigation of human right abuses in the Sudan. And that for me, is a way to ensure those - because basically, when you use state apparatus to commit crimes, you have to promise impunity, because you are forcing public servants to do illegal acts. So, you have to promise impunity. And when you appoint Haroon, a person charged with 50 counts of crimes against humanity and war crimes as the lead to mitigate human rights abuses in Sudan, then, the message is, "Don't worry: no one will be mitigated." And for me, this ??? this year of someone higher than Haroon committing the crimes and covering up the crimes.

LEIGH SALES: So, given that, is there anything the international community can do to persuade the Sudanese Government to arrest Haroon and also the other individual who was identified as a war criminal in your first case?

LUIS MORENO-OCAMPO: I think in this, we are much better now. In the last meeting last week, Security Council visit Khartoum and inform them they need to comply with the Security Council resolution and the court decision, but the Government informed they are not going to comply. So, that is an open challenge to the Security Council's authority and that's something the Security Council has to deal with.

LEIGH SALES: And, what are the options available to the Security Council?

LUIS MORENO-OCAMPO: Ask the Security Council. I have my duties on mandate. I can not be involved in this conversation. But, they are the maximum authority. Basically, they have to force the Sudan to respect the law. Sudan is a member of the UN system; Sudan is a member of the international community; it's a big country - they have to respect the law.

LEIGH SALES: From the evidence that you were seeing, do you believe it's time for a large scale military intervention in Darfur, possibly under the auspices of NATO?

LUIS MORENO-OCAMPO: No, I don't think so. We never request military interventions. We believe that Sudan has the responsibility to manage the conflict. The have the responsibility to arrest Haroon. That's why it's very important to put this in the top of the agenda. In any negotiation with Sudan, this issue can not disappear. And for a long time, for one year, the issue of Haroon was not on the agenda. Now is an agenda. That's important. So, I think we have to be consistent and request the respect for the law and they have to secure their warrant. That would be a solution.

LEIGH SALES: Does the lack of compliance by the Sudanese Government illustrate that, to a degree, the International Criminal Court is powerless?

LUIS MORENO-OCAMPO: I don't think it's powerless. On the contrary, we just arrest a person in Baju. It's basically, show the difficult task we have. And of course this case in which we are indicting a Minister who is serving in government is probably one of the most difficult tasks, but what are the options? The option before that was just wars and then, we don't like a war. We like just a legal operation. We have to arrest Haroon. That's the only activity. That way it's a new tool. But, of course, it has to be - is difficult? Yes. Is useless? No, on the contrary. We can not hide the crimes. That's the point. There's a cover up of the crimes - the prosecutor's office can not be part of the cover up. The international community should not be part of the cover up. How to solve the problem? It's a different question. Difficult.

LEIGH SALES: It seems like every time the world sees a mass atrocity, vows are made that it will never be allowed to happen again. And yet, here we are. How can that be?

LUIS MORENO-OCAMPO: That's a point: many times, humanity say, "Never again." Now, it tends to put wars in operation. We have new tools. We have the International Criminal Court working - doing the crimes - and that's why it's an opportunity. Of course, then, you have to be creative in how you make a political solution for the problem. The issue - we need political solution, but has to be inside the law. This happen in different countries. It happen in Spain today, happened in the bus in Ireland, happened in Colombia today. So there are many cases in which you have negotiations - political negotiations - inside the law and that is a new scenario in international relations, because the International Criminal Court exists.

LEIGH SALES: Luis Moreno-Ocampo, I'll look forward to the day where we won't need to have you on a program like this, because we wouldn't have these problems in the world. But thank you for making time to join Lateline.

LUIS MORENO-OCAMPO: Thank you very much.

ICC counsel condemns plans to divert plane carrying Darfur suspect
Sudan Tribune
By Wasil Ali
June 16, 2008

(WASHINGTON) – One of the registered counsels at the International Criminal Court (ICC) described an attempt by the world court to divert a plane carrying a Darfur war crimes suspect as "illegal".

The French-Libyan born counsel Dr. Hadi Shalluf told Sudan Tribune in a phone interview that diverting planes "is a violation of international law because of the negative impact it has on civil aviation".

"Even if it was done for the purpose of applying the law it is still considered a criminal act" he added.

Earlier this month the ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo told Sudan Tribune that the world court attempted to divert a plane that carried Ahmed Haroun, state minister for humanitarian affairs, on his way to Saudi Arabia in December to perform the annual Islamic pilgrimage.

The plan was coordinated with a number of unidentified countries. The Saudi government was made aware of it, according to Ocampo.

Shalluf said that he is "very surprised that the court would to resort to something disgraceful and immoral like this. I condemn this act".

He said that the operation would have been legal only if the place landed at its destination and then the ICC could have asked for extradition of Haroun. But he stressed that only a State Party to the ICC is obliged to comply with such a request.

The ICC counsel also said that countries which were part of the plan "are in violation of civil aviation treaties signed in Montreal and New York and any other international conventions regarding safety of passengers".

"The court's mandate does not include arresting suspects directly. The ICC can ask countries to execute arrest warrants in accordance with Rome Statue. Otherwise the court becomes a hijacking institution and a police institution" Shalluf said.

The French advocate said his position would have still been the same if the plane was carrying Slobodan Milosevic or Radovan Karadzic.

He further said the plan if successful would have created a "regional conflict and even war" between Sudan and the countries that were enlisted for help in this operation.

"The ICC and its prosecutor bear the full responsibility for this and the UNSC must investigate how that was allowed to happen" he said.

SPECIAL COURT FOR DARFUR

Shalluf reiterated his position that the ICC has no jurisdiction over the Darfur war crimes saying that Sudan is not party to the Rome Statue which forms the basis of the court.

Sudan has not ratified the Rome Statue, but the (UNSC) invoked the provisions under the Statue in March 2005 that enables it to refer situations in non-State parties to the world court if it deems that it is a threat to international peace and security.

But Shalluf disputes this interpretation saying that the UNSC can refer cases of countries that are parties to the Rome Statue. He proposed a special court for Darfur crimes consisting of Sudanese judges and submitted it to the P-5 members of the UNSC as well as the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon.

Asked whether the special court proposal is irrelevant after the report by the ICC prosecutor to the UNSC in which accused the Sudanese state apparatus of covering up the crimes committed in Darfur, Shalluf described Ocampo as being "out of touch with reality".

"The prosecutor does not deal with the Darfur case realistically. He lives in his own bubble in isolation from the international community. He does not understand the true structure of the African continent or Sudan" he said.

"It is not for his place to question the Sudanese judiciary or any other person for that matter. Sudan is a sovereign state and recognized by the whole world. Sudan judicial system is independent and fair" Shalluf added.

Shalluf said his proposal is based on his belief that the Darfur case is "too complicated to be handled by the ICC".

"We asked for the formation of a special court based in Sudan or any other African countries" he said.

Nigeria has made a similar suggestion on a special court when the issue of the ICC and Darfur came up in the UNSC in 2005 but it lacked support from Europe and Sudan itself.

Shalluf also blamed the Sudanese government "for failing to deal with the issue of Darfur crimes. This why we saw what happened with the attack by Darfur rebels on the capital".

However the ICC counsel acknowledged that he has not received any response from the P-5 or UN on his proposal.

"Definitely I don't expect acceptance to this proposal for the time being. However I am positive that it is being reviewed. The UNSC referring the Darfur case to the ICC should be voided" Shalluf said.

CASE AGAINST THE ICC

Shalluf was appointed by the court on August 2006 to represent and protect the general interests of the defense in the Darfur case before the ICC during the proceedings on the preservation of evidence and protection of witnesses.

The judges of the Pre-Trial Chamber I of the ICC who were assigned the Darfur case, invited the observations of Antonio Cassese the head of UN commission of inquiry on Darfur and by Louise Arbour the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights concerning the protection of victims and the preservation of evidence in Darfur.

Shalluf filed a long series of motions to challenge the jurisdiction of the Court and the admissibility of the Darfur case at the ICC that were eventually rejected by the judges.

The ICC registry also refused to compensate him for his legal services from December 2006 to February 2007 on the grounds that he exceeded the scope of his mandate. The judges said he presented baseless requests and motions. Furthermore they described the filings made to challenge the jurisdiction of the ICC in Darfur as "frivolous and vexatious".

Shalluf filed a complaint with European court of Human rights against the ICC and the European parties to the Rome Statue saying that he was denied the right to appeal the judges decision on his compensation.

"This is violation of European law which states that any person should be entitled for a fair trial. The right to appeal is cornerstone of a fair trial. The Rome Statue is incomplete since it empowers the ICC chambers to review appeal requests on cases they already rejected" he said.

"You don't expect the same court that denied a motion to accept a decision to appeal. This is a serious defect in the Rome Statue" he said.

Shalluf said the case is still pending before the European court.

The judges of the ICC issued their first arrest warrants for suspects accused of war crimes in Sudan's Darfur region a year ago.

The warrants were issued for Ahmed Haroun, state minister for humanitarian affairs, and militia commander Ali Mohamed Ali Abdel-Rahman, also know as Ali Kushayb. Sudan has so far rejected handing over the two suspects.

At UN, Changes to Council's Sudan Statement, French Words for Chad But Not Lubanga
Matthew Russell Lee
16 June 2008

On Darfur, the Security Council on Monday unanimously passed a Presidential Statement urging "the Government of Sudan and all other parties to the conflict in Darfur to cooperate fully with the [International Criminal] Court, consistent with Resolution 1593 (2005), in order to put an end to impunity for the crimes committed in Darfur." An earlier version had concluded, "as required by Resolution 1593 (2005), including in respect of the arrest warrants."

The deletion of the reference to the arrest warrants for Ahmad Harun and Ali Kushayb, according to Inner City Press' sources in the Council, came at the demand of Libya. These sources say that Libya was opposing the whole Presidential Statement, until sponsor Costa Rica threatened to turn it into a formal resolution, which does not require unanimity and would, in this view, have isolated Libya as not even calling for compliance with previous Council resolutions.

Costa Rican Ambassador Jorge Urbina was asked to respond to the characterization of his country, by Sudan's Ambassador to the UN, as a "banana republic." Amb. Urbina said that while he had not come to criticize any other member state, in the Human Development Index Costa Rica is 48th, while Sudan is 147th, reflecting each country's respect for international law. But that's not what the Index measures... Meanwhile on neighboring Chad, where rebels took over the eastern town visited by Council Ambassadors and Inner City Press last week, Goz Beida, France rushed through a Presidential Statement calling on soldiers, peacekeepers and police to "put an end to the activities of armed groups in the region." Afterwards, Inner City Press asked French Ambassador Jean-Maurice Ripert to respond to reports that the Justice and Equality Movement, described as a Darfur rebel group, has been called into service of defending Chadian president Idriss Deby Itno. Amb. Ripert did not respond to that.

When Inner City Press asked if France believes that Sudan is behind this most recent rebel move in Chad, Ripert said you have only to look where they came from, that is, from Sudan. While it seemed he was saying that the rebels had turned back, upon follow-up questioning he said that the rebels have turned north and east. We'll see.

Footnote: The International Criminal Court, which received support from the Council's Presidential Statement on Monday, is also in disarray, as the case against Congolese rebel Thomas Lubanga for, among other things, recruiting child soldiers has fallen apart. Prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo failure to turn over discovery and potentially exculpatory material to Lubanga and his lawyers; the case has been suspended and on June 24 Lubanga may be released. Inner City Press asked Costa Rica Ambassador Jorge Urbina, given his country's interest in the ICC, to comment, but he said he had only come to the stakeout to speak about the Presidential Statement.

Inner City Press asked Ambassador Ripert of France to comment on the freezing and prospective dropping of the child soldier recruitment charges against Lubanga. Ripert said he would not comment on "judicial subjects." He looked, several reporters noted, sick or tired or both. Here's hoping for a new era of openness.

ICC secures support for Darfur investigations from UN & EU
Sudan Tribune
June 17, 2008

The International Criminal Court (ICC) received a boost today from the UN Security Council (UNSC) and the European Union (EU) who issued formal statements voicing support for the work of court in Darfur.

The UNSC unexpectedly reached a unanimous agreement this morning on a presidential statement introduced by Costa Rica calling on Sudan to "fully cooperate" with the ICC.

The statement read by the UNSC president for June, the US envoy at the UN Zalmay Khalilzad, urged "the Government of Sudan and all other parties to the conflict in Darfur to cooperate fully with the Court, consistent with resolution 1593 (2005), in order to put an end to impunity for the crimes committed in Darfur".

Libya, a non-permanent member at the UNSC refused to endorse the statement unless the text was watered down to support an "end to impunity" instead of explicitly demanding compliance with ICC arrest warrants, council diplomats told Reuters.

It was also reported that Costa Rica threatened to table the text as a resolution which does not require unanimous approval by UNSC members.

The statement represents a political setback to the Sudanese government which appeared confident that the UNSC could not reach consensus on the text. A previous attempt to adopt a similar statement in December 2007 was blocked by China, Russia and Qatar.

Last week Sudanese UN ambassador Abdel-Mahmood Abdel-Haleem told the daily Al-Rayaam that the presidential statement failed to see the light after six UN Security Council (UNSC) countries objected to it.

The Sudanese official said that the countries including China, Russia, South Africa, Burkina Faso, Libya and Indonesia argued that the statement "will spoil the peace efforts in Darfur".

Diplomats also told Reuters that China supported the statement on Sudan to avoid drawing more unnecessary attention to its close ties with Sudan ahead of the Beijing Olympics.

Abdel-Haleem told Reuters by telephone from Khartoum that the council statement had not changed his country's position on the ICC.

"There is no way we are going to hand over anybody," he said, adding that the Sudanese judicial system was capable of bringing any Sudanese war criminals to justice.

The EU foreign ministers also concurrently issued a stronger statement threatening sanctions against Sudanese officials obstructing cooperation with the ICC.

"The [EU council stands ready to consider measures against individuals responsible for not-cooperating with the ICC should they continue to disregard their obligations under a U.N. resolution" ministers said in a statement agreed on Monday.

The ministers stopped short of giving instructions to EU experts to draw up sanctions that could be imposed, after France and Spain argued a step-by-step approach, EU diplomats said.

'SIGNAL OF IMPATIENCE'

Human Rights Watch (HRW) was quick in welcoming the adoption of the UNSC presidential statement saying it "signals international impatience with impunity for Darfur war crimes suspects".

"The unanimous Security Council statement sends the message that Khartoum cannot obstruct justice by recycling unkept promises to accept peacekeepers," Richard Dicker, director of HRW International Justice Program said in a statement today

"Sudan must take real action on both justice and peacekeeping" he added.

Dicker also applauded Costa Rica for providing "invaluable leadership" and also commended the US for backing the presidential statement.

"We also welcome the role played by the US government as Security Council president. This support for justice marks a further break from Washington's previously ill-conceived and highly ideological opposition to the ICC" he added.

The US came close to vetoing resolution 1593 referring the Darfur case to the ICC but bent down to domestic pressure as well as the European bloc at the UNSC. Washington has recently showed signs of warming up to the court despite its long standing fears that it may be used to bring frivolous cases against its troops deployed worldwide.

However Khalilzad rejected the notion of a shift in US policy towards the ICC.

"Our policy in general with regards to the ICC is well known. There is no change. With regards to Darfur we have supported the PRSC [presidential statement] but that's no reflection in terms of our overall approach to the ICC" the US envoy told reporters.

The statements by UNSC and EU come weeks before the ICC prosecutor is due to present evidence on a new case to the judges.

"The Office anticipates that it will be able to present a new application under Article 58 of the Statute to the Judges by July 2008" the prosecutor said in his report to the UNSC earlier this month.

In his report to the UNSC, Ocampo made his harshest condemnation of Khartoum saying that he collected evidence of a "criminal plan based on the mobilization of the whole state apparatus, including the armed forces, the intelligence services, the diplomatic and public information bureaucracies, and the justice system".

The judges of the ICC issued their first arrest warrants for suspects accused of war crimes in Sudan's Darfur region a year ago.

Ocampo said that his office is investigating who "is maintaining Haroun in a position to commit crimes; who is instructing him and others".

The statements by Ocampo were taken to suggest that he is going after senior Sudanese officials.

Sudan has not ratified the Rome Statue, but the UN Security Council (UNSC) invoked the provisions under the Statue that enables it to refer situations in non-State parties to the world court if it deems that it is a threat to international peace and security.

ICC says arrest of Darfur suspects is responsibility of states
Sudan Tribune
June 17, 2008

The International Criminal Court (ICC) said today that the responsibility for arresting Darfur war crimes suspects lies with the states.

"The ICC does not have a police force to execute arrest warrants. We rely on countries to help us on that" an ICC official told Sudan Tribune on condition of anonymity.

The disclosure of the arrest attempt angered the Sudanese government which described Ocampo as a "terrorist" and demanded that he be removed from office.

Sudan's envoy to the UN Abdel-Haleem Abdel-Mahmood todl Reuters that it was especially infuriating that other countries were willing to help the ICC in the failed operation.

Some legal experts including Hadi Shalluf, an ICC registered counsel, questioned the legality of the plane diversion and condemned the countries involved.

Ocampo said that Saudi Arabia was made aware of the plan to arrest Haroun.

The official declined to the name the countries involved, but added that states attempting to arrest ICC suspects "are expected to conduct arrest operations legitimately and legally in a manner compatible with international law and compatible with support for an independent, judicial institution".

The statements by the ICC official suggest that the countries involved were the ones who determined that diverting the plane was the ideal way to nab the Sudanese minister.

The judges of the ICC issued their first arrest warrants for suspects accused of war crimes in Sudan's Darfur region a year ago.

[back to contents]

Democratic Republic of the Congo (ICC)

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

ICC's first-ever war crimes trial delayed
AFP
Jun 11, 2008

THE HAGUE (AFP) — The International Criminal Court announced Wednesday that its first-ever war crimes trial, involving former Congolese militia chief Thomas Lubanga Dyilo, will no longer open on June 23.

"During a public hearing held on 11 June 2008, Trial-Chamber I announced that the trial in the Lubanga case will not start on 23 June 2008, as previously scheduled," said a statement from the court, without giving a reason or a new starting date.

Approached for detail, a spokeswoman cited only "procedural reasons," saying that the judges will explain their decision in writing within the next week.

A lawyer for the accused, Jean-Marie Biju-Duval, had asked Tuesday that the trial be declared "impossible" following a dispute over disclosure of certain pieces of evidence.

He had complained that the prosecutor had not given the defence letters produced by the United Nations, and that they were to be provided only to the bench, in the absence of the defence.

Lubanga, 47, is accused of abducting minors under 15 and using child soldiers in attacks by the armed wing of his Union of Congolese Patriots between September 2002 and August 2003 in the war-torn Democratic Republic of Congo.

According to humanitarian non-governmental organisations, inter-ethnic fighting and violence involving militias in the country's Ituri province -- centred on control over one of the most lucrative gold-mining territories in the world -- lies behind some 60,000 deaths going back to 1999.

The conflict has also created tens of thousands of refugees, they say.

Lubanga's trial would be the first before the ICC, set up six years ago as a worldwide permanent court mandated to try war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.

Since the court took up its functions, it has opened four investigations into crimes committed in DR Congo, Uganda, Sudan and Central African Republic, issuing 10 arrest warrants.

For DR Congo, the ICC has issued three arrest warrants and currently has three Congolese war crimes suspects in custody.

Lubanga was transferred to the court in March 2006. Two of his rival warlords, Germain Katanga and Mathieu Ngudjolo Chui, arrived at the ICC detention unit in October 2007 and February 2008 respectively.

The prosecutor accuses the three men of crimes committed in the mineral rich Ituri region of DR Congo.

Ituri was wracked by ethnic bloodshed between the Hema and Lendu peoples from 1999 and embroiled in a broader rebel war that raged in the DR Congo between 1998 and 2003, drawing in more than half a dozen African armies.

The trial in the case of Thomas Lubanga Dyilo will not start on 23 June 2008
International Criminal Court Press Release
June 11, 2008

ICC-CPI-20080611-PR322-ENG

Situation: Democratic Republic of the Congo

Case: The Prosecutor v. Thomas Lubanga Dyilo

During a public hearing held on 11 June 2008, Trial-Chamber I announced that the trial in the Lubanga case will not start on 23 June 2008, as previously scheduled. A written decision will be handed down by the judges within the next seven days.

Background information

On 17 March 2006, Thomas Lubanga Dyilo, the founder and leader of the Union des patriotes congolais (Union of Congolese Patriots) was arrested and surrendered to the Court upon a warrant of arrest issued by Pre-Trial Chamber I at the request of the Prosecutor.

On 29 January 2007, Pre-Trial Chamber I confirmed the charges brought by the Prosecutor against Thomas Lubanga Dyilo, namely war crimes consisting of conscripting and enlisting children under the age of 15 into the FPLC, the military wing of the Union des patriotes congolais (UPC), and using them to participate actively in hostilities in Ituri, from September 2002 to 13 August 2003.

The Prosecutor v. Thomas Lubanga Dyilo is the first case to arise from the situation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC); the second case is The Prosecutor v. Germain Katanga & Mathieu Ngudjolo Chui, and the third case is The Prosecutor v. Bosco Ntaganda. Investigations are ongoing in the DRC.

War crimes court reprimands prosecutor, will consider release of ex-Congo warlord
Associated Press via PR-Inside
June 16, 2008

A war crimes tribunal reprimanded prosecutors on Monday for withholding evidence vital to the defense of a former Congolese warlord charged with recruiting child soldiers, and said it will consider next week whether to release him.

The ruling opened the prospect that the first case to come before the International Criminal

Court will be thrown out before coming to trial, and could raise barriers for future cases in gathering information on potential war crimes suspects.

Thomas Lubanga, head of the Union of Congolese Patriots, is charged with recruiting, conscripting and sending children into battle in the Congo in 2002-2003.

After a tense hearing last week, the judges said they feared Lubanga would be denied justice, and indefinitely postponed the scheduled June 23 start of his trial.

Announcing their reasoning Monday, the judges said "the trial process has been ruptured to such a degree that it is now impossible to piece together the constituent elements of a fair trial."

It said it will convene a hearing June 24 for arguments on whether Lubanga should be freed and the case against him halted.

The court said the prosecution had refused to disclose evidence that could help establish Lubanga's innocence or mitigate his guilt, and had declined to give classified documents to the court so that the judges could decide whether they were critical for the defense.

The documents had been provided by the United Nations and other organizations on condition they remain confidential.

The prosecution is allowed to use material gained on a confidential basis only for the purpose of generating evidence than can be used in court. The judges found, however, the prosecution had intended to use secret information in the trial, and that was an abuse of the confidentiality agreements.

Prosecutors acknowledged they were withholding more than 200 documents. Among them, 95 contained potential exculpatory information that would be beneficial to the defense case.

The judges ruled the prosecution had made "inappropriate use of confidentiality agreements."

In a 44-page ruling, they complained that the United Nations had rejected appeals to allow the court to review the documents, and that they did not even know which other organizations provided information to the prosecutors.

Confidentiality agreements are accepted in international law to protect U.N. personnel and aid workers for non-governmental organizations who often are in the middle of precarious conflict situations. Confidential material cannot be used against the defendant on its own.

But the court said the prosecution had gathered material "under the cloak of confidentiality" to identify evidence they would use in the trial, which they said was illegal.

"The choices for the prosecution are clear and stark. Either it must disclose all the potentially exculpatory evidence in its possession to the accused, or it will chose not to do so because of the improper agreements it has reached with information providers," the ruling said.

The judges said their ruling was issued "with great reluctance," especially if the trial is canceled and they are unable to issue a verdict on issues "of significance to the international community."

Lubanga's case is the first to deal exclusively with the use of child soldiers. He is accused of sending hundreds of children under age 15 to fight in the wars in Congo's eastern Ituri region.

Lubanga was arrested in March 2006, the first suspect to come into the custody of the International Criminal Court which became operational in 2002.

The ICC is an independent court, financed by the countries which ratified the 1998 Rome Statute that created it. The United States has refused to sign the treaty.

Trial of Congolese warlord may be thrown out of International Criminal Court
International Herald Tribune
By Marlise Simons
June 16, 2008

Judges at the International Criminal Court in The Hague warned that they may throw out the very first case at the new tribunal because they believe a fair trial may no longer be possible, the court said on Monday.

The judges added that they would discuss next week whether to release Thomas Lubanga, a former Congolese warlord who has been charged with recruiting child soldiers during the militia violence in the Ituri region of the Congo in 2002-2003.

Lubanga's long-awaited trial was due to begin on June 23 and prosecutors had hoped to use the case to highlight the widespread practice of pressing young boys and girls into African wars, where they were often drugged and used as killers, messengers, cooks and sex slaves.

But the case against Lubanga, who arrived at the court's prison in The Hague in March 2006, has been delayed several times by procedural problems, including disagreements between prosecutors and judges.

On Friday, after a tense hearing, the judges ordered all proceedings stopped. In their ruling, which was released on Monday, the judges said that the prosecution had withheld "significant" exculpatory evidence from the defense. As a result, they wrote, "the trial process has been ruptured to such a degree that it is now impossible to piece together the constituent elements of a fair trial."

At issue are more than 200 documents, provided by the United Nations and others, on condition that they be kept confidential. Such secret information can be used by the prosecution only to generate new evidence, the court said, and not as part of the evidence at trial.

The judges reprimanded prosecutors for "misuse" of the material, saying they planned to use "confidential" information in the trial, which was illegal, and it should have been disclosed to Lubanga and his lawyers, as well as the court.

In a 44-page ruling, the judges complained that the United Nations had rejected requests for the court to be able to review the documents and added that further classified material was being used from other unknown sources.

The judges said they issued their ruling "with great reluctance," particularly if this meant canceling the trial which involved issues "of significance to the international community."

Lubanga's lawyers could not immediately be reached. If the accused is released, he will have spent three years in custody. He was arrested in Congo in 2005 and held there for one year before being sent to The Hague.

Suspended DRCongo war crimes trial 'not finished': cler
AFP
June 17, 2008

KINSHASA (AFP) — The suspension of war crime proceedings against former Democratic Republic of Congo militia chief Thomas Lubanga Dyilo "does not mean the end of the matter," a court official said here Tuesday.

"The procedure is not finished. It has been suspended for technical reasons, valid reasons," said Clerk of the International Criminal Court (ICC) Silvana Arbia, adding that the decision indicated the importance accorded to the rights of the defence.

Lubanga is accused of abducting minors under 15 and using child soldiers in attacks by the armed wing of his Union of Congolese Patriots between September 2002 and August 2003 in the war-torn DR Congo.

His trial had been due to start on June 23. On June 11, however, the ICC said it was postponing the opening of the case with a lawyer for the accused asking that the trial be declared "impossible" due to a dispute over disclosure of certain pieces of evidence.

Two days later, the judges said they were placing a moratorium on proceedings.

Arbia added that she hoped that a solution to the legal problems in the case would be found.

If the proceedings were suspended permanently, however, she said the ICC would see that it looked at how to compensate victims.

The court has said that it will decide on June 24 whether Lubanga should be freed.

According to humanitarian NGOs, inter-ethnic fighting and violence involving militias in the country's Ituri province -- centred on control over one of the most lucrative gold-mining territories in the world -- lies behind some 60,000 deaths going back to 1999.

The conflict has also created tens of thousands of refugees, they say.

Registrar's first visit to the Democratic Republic of the Congo
International Criminal Court Press Release
June 17, 2008

ICC-CPI-20080617-PR326-ENG

The Registrar of the International Criminal Court, Ms Silvana Arbia, has been visiting the Democratic Republic of the Congo since 15 June 2008. This is her first mission to the country since taking up office in April.

On this occasion, Ms Arbia met with a number of high-ranking Congolese officials including the President of the National Assembly, ministers and representatives of both the military and civilian judicial authorities. She thanked them for the DRC's cooperation to date and voiced her desire for the prompt execution of all of the Court's requests for cooperation in the interests of justice.

In executing arrest warrants issued by the Court, the Congolese authorities have already surrendered three suspects: Thomas Lubanga Dyilo, Germain Katanga and Mathieu Ngudjolo Chui. Ms Arbia also expressed the hope that the legislation implementing the Rome Statute will soon be adopted by the Congolese parliament. In her view, this will help to bolster the domestic legal system, so that it can deal with international crimes.

For their part, the Congolese authorities stated their willingness to continue cooperating with the ICC "for the good of humanity but above all for the good of the Congolese nation".

As Ms Arbia is also responsible for the ICC field offices, she had a working meeting with all of the Court's field staff. "The effectiveness of the Court's work very much depends on what you do in the field. Be aware that you are the public face of the Court by demonstrating the utmost integrity", she told them. The meeting also allowed the new Registrar to appreciate the situations with which the ICC teams working in the field are faced.

The Registrar also met with national and private Congolese mass media as well as representatives of civil society organisations, representatives of bar associations, victims and women associations based in Kinshasa active in the area of international criminal justice. The discussions were focused inter alia on latest judicial developments at the Court including the decision of 13 June by Trial Chamber I in the Thomas Lubanga case, on the preparations for the upcoming confirmation of charges in the Katanga and Ngudjolo Chui case, on the participation of victims before the Court,and on the concept of fair trial.

During the two day visit, Ms. Arbia in a meeting with the Special Representative of the UN Secretary General, Mr. Allan Doss updated him on the judicial status of the Lubanga and Katanga and Ngudjolo Chui cases and touched upon various issues pertaining to the ICC-UN cooperation.

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Uganda (ICC)

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

Darfur / DRC / CAR / Uganda / ICC Prosecutor to brief European Union Foreign Ministers on 16 June
African Press Organization
June 16, 2008

Today in Luxembourg, ICC Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo will brief the European Union during a meeting of the General Affairs and External Relations Council of the European Union.

The meeting takes place as part of Prosecutor Moreno-Ocampo's co-operation activities with the United Nations and regional organisations, among them the African Union, the Arab League and the EU. It is the first time the ICC Prosecutor has been invited to address the Council to provide an update on ICC activities, in particular in Darfur.

The European Union is a major supporter of the Court. In Luxembourg , the Prosecutor will address the need to enforce the judicial decisions of the Court, including the arrest warrants, in a consistent manner. Six arrest warrants of the ICC are still outstanding. No support, no financial aid should reach any indicted criminals. There is no possible exit strategy for fugitives from the Court. There can be no double standards. Joseph Kony, leader of Northern Uganda's Lord's Resistance Army and his lieutenants, Sudanese Mininster of State for Humanitarian Affairs, Ahmad Harun, Janjaweed/Militia leader Ali Kushayb, and militia leader Bosco Ntaganda must end up in the ICC courtroom.

In July, the Prosecutor will present evidence to ICC judges on his new investigation into massive crimes in Darfur.

The International Criminal Court is an independent, permanent court that investigates and prosecutes persons accused of the most serious crimes of international concern, namely genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes if national authorities with jurisdiction are unwilling or unable to do so genuinely. The Office of the Prosecutor is currently investigating in four situations: The Democratic Republic of Congo, Northern Uganda, the Darfur region of Sudan, and the Central African Republic, all still engulfed in various degrees of conflict with victims in urgent need of protection.

Kony must appear in court, says prosecutor
The Monitor
By Rodney Muhumuza
June 18, 2008

The International Criminal Court has said in its latest statement that Lord's Resistance Army chief Joseph Kony "must end up in the ICC courtroom."

According to the June 16 statement, the ICC, which indicted Kony and his top lieutenants at the end of 2005, is seeking the support of the European Union to "enforce its judicial decisions, including the arrest warrants, in a consistent manner".

ICC Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo on Monday briefed a meeting of the General Affairs and External Relations Council of the European Union on his strategy.

Six warrants of the ICC are still outstanding, and The-Hague court hopes that greater international cooperation could lead to the arrest of the indicted men still at large.

"No support, no financial aid should reach any indicted criminals. There is no possible exit strategy for fugitives from the Court. There can be no double standards," the statement said.

Other than Kony and his top lieutenants, the other wanted men include: Ahmed Harun, the Sudanese minister of state for humanitarian affairs; Ali Kushayb, the Janjaweed militia leader; and Bosco Ntaganda, a Congolese war crimes suspect.

The issue of the ICC arrest warrants against the LRA leadership became a major sticking point during the South Sudan-mediated peace talks, which have since collapsed. Kony is said to have refused to sign a comprehensive peace deal in April because matters regarding his security were not well addressed.

The ICC was also criticised for focusing only on the crimes committed by the LRA and ignoring those committed by the Ugandan military.

Recent efforts to revive the peace process have been unsuccessful so far, and it is reported that Kony has been terrorising villages and abducting children in the Central African Republic since February 2008.

Still, even though the UPDF has threatened to attack the LRA, there have been no recent clashes between the Ugandan military and the rebel outfit. Dr Riek Machar, the South Sudan vice-president who mediated the talks, has reportedly said Kony should be given a second chance.

According to Dr Machar, already-signed aspects of the peace agreement should be implemented "in good faith", even if the rebel leader refuses to append his signature to the final deal.

"It's essential to continue to encourage the LRA to re-engage with the peace process and complete formal signing of the final peace agreement," Dr Machar reportedly said in a recent report on the Juba Peace Process. "If we succeed in this, then we would be able to proceed with the full implementation of the agreements."

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The Trial of Alberto Fujimori

Fujimori on Trial

Salazar says Fujimori ordered him to give SIN money to Montesinos
Fujimori On Trial
June 12, 2008

Sixty-eighth session. Former Peruvian military general and director of the National Intelligence Agency (SIN), Julio Salazar Monroe, continued with his testimony. Salazar admitted that he only completed the basic intelligence course and never took the advanced course. He also said that Fujimori gave him the order to deliver sums of money from the SIN to Vladimiro Montesinos.

Chief Public Prosecutor Jose Pelaez made the announcement after giving orders to suspend the trial from next Wednesday until June 11 to allow Fujimori to hava an operation for oral leukoplasia.

1. Incidents during the hearing:

Post-operation recovery

According to the report from the Institute of Legal Medicine, which was read aloud at the hearing, Fujimori will be able to take part in his trial and his post-operation recovery will last a total of one to two weeks, meaning there is no limitation on the trial’s continuation. However, due to Fujimori’s health, the President of the Court decided that the sessions will now only take place in the morning.

Exchange of words between Fujimori’s (and Salazar Monroe’s) lawyer and state prosecutor

During the session, there were repeated disputes between Fujimori’s lawyer, César Nakazaki and the state prosecutor, Avelino Guillén. At one point, Nakazaki interrupted the prosecution’s examination to say "I remind you that he is a witness," implying that the prosecution’s tone toward Julio Salazar Monroe was incriminatory. In turn, Guillén replied, "I remind you that he is your client." It is important to remember that Nakazaki has represented Salazar since 2001 and during the present hearing, another lawyer from Nakazaki’s firm is taking the role of representing Salazar.

Nakazaki’s interventions

The interventions made by Salazar’s lawyer were few. More interventions to defend the witness’ right against self-incrimination were made by Fujimori’s lawyer, Nakazaki.

2. Julio Salazar Monroe’s testimony – The most relevant aspects of Salazar’s testimony were:

The SIN had intelligence analysts

When the state prosecutor asked if the SIN had intelligence agents, Salazar answered: "it depends on how you interpret it, because it’s a very broad concept […] The SIN didn’t have operative intelligence agents; what the SIN had were intelligence analysts."

Fujimori ordered Salazar to give Montesinos money from the SIN budget

Salazar testified that when he was director of the SIN, Fujimori ordered him to give money from the SIN (from Reserve 1 and Reserve 2) to Vladimiro Montesinos. The witness did not remember when exactly he received this order from Fujimori. Also, when Salazar gave this information, his defense lawyer requested to speak to him. After the lawyer talked to the witness, the state prosecutor asked Salazar if it was true that he received Fujimori’s order to give SIN money to Montesinos. The witness confirmed that this was true.

Salazar admitted that he ordered the money to be delivered, which was done through Col. José Villalobos Candela, who at that time was head of the SIN’s office administration. Salazar also indicated that Fujimori approved his own accountability through a supreme resolution.

Vladimiro Montesinos had SIN staff at his disposal

The witness admitted that Montesinos had SIN staff members — including some active Peruvian military personnel — at his disposal, although as SIN director, Salazar did not know what work these staff members carried out. Furthermore, the witness did not know about an additional account that was supposedly managed by Montesinos in the SIN, where monthly payments were made to various non-SIN employees, nor did he know that this account had US$600,000.

The witness also stated that he was unaware that seven private safes were installed in Montesinos’ private offices.

Montesinos’ role at the SIN

Salazar reiterated that "Mr. Vladimiro was advisor to the High Office and personal advisor of the country’s president." However, he admitted not knowing if Montesinos had a parallel agenda to the SIN’s, since he had absolute independence in the assignments the president gave him. It is important to remember that previously, SIN advisors Pedro Huertas Caballero and Rafael Merino Bartet, have testified before the Judicial Power that they only received orders and were accountable to Montesinos. However Salazar said he never knew about this.

Montesinos and the SIN tapes ("Vladivideos")

Salazar said that as SIN director he never knew about the meetings that Montesinos held and filmed in Salazar’s offices. The witness said he never found out about the videos (commonly referred to "Vladivideos" by Peruvians) and was similarly unaware that various politicians and judges met in the offices, such as:

Jaime Beltrán Quiroga, former Supreme Court member
Alex Kouri, Luz Salgado (member of Fujimori’s political party), Absalón Vásquez (currently being tried for the forging of signatures, used to nominate Fujimori as a presidential candidate in the 2000 elections)
Daniel Borobio
Julio Vera Abad

Though these meetings were carried out during workdays at the SIN and in Salazar’s offices, Salazar indicated that Montesinos never asked him for authorization to hold these meetings or to film them.

On Plan Cipango

The witness claimed that the Plan Cipango document had no validity whatsoever, saying: "not even an illiterate person in the army does this," and "this plan has no signature," and also "it is not an authentic document." These statements contradict what was said by Gen. Santiago Martin Rivas and former Col. Víctor Raúl Silva Mendoza.

3. Next session will continue with Julio Salazar Monroe

At the next session on Friday, June 13th, the prosecution will continue with its examination. According to statements made by one of the lawyers for the victims’ families, Ronald Gamarra, Vladimiro Montesinos is expected to begin his testimony on June 20.

Salazar confirms that he received verbal orders from Fujimori
Fujimori On Trial
June 18, 2008

Seventieth session. Former military official Julio Salazar Monroe continued his testimony. Through Salazar’s testimony, the Public Prosecutor seeks to demonstrate (as stated on p.30 of the formal accusation), that Fujimori was the highest power in the Colina detachment’s command chain and decisions on the execution of crimes were given through Vladimiro Montesinos, Fujimori’s personal advisor and de facto director of the National Intelligence Service (SIN).

1. Incidents during the hearing:

Fujimori’s defense lawyers

Fujimori’s lawyer César Nakazaki was not present at this session, rather it was lawyer Gladys Vallejo and lawyer Johan Pinedo who assumed Fujimori’s defense. On various other occasions they have also assumed legal representation of Salazar Monroe - the witness during this session.

However, in the first recess during the trial, Luis Delgado Aparicio (former secretary general of the pro-Fujimori political movement, Si Cumple), was seen talking to lawyers Vallejo and Pinedo about asking the Court for a trial suspension until Wednesday, June 18. Delgado’s argument was that Fujimori was bleeding after his operation, which caused him some pain.

Satisfactory medical report

On resuming the session, defense lawyer Pinedo asked the Court to suspend the session, for the reasons provided by Delgado. However, the Court asked the doctors from the Institute of Legal Medicine and from the National Penitentiary Institute to evaluate Fujimori’s health, confirming that the defendant could indeed continue with the session. The session ended at 5pm for a total of six hours, with recesses each two hours. At the beginning of the session, a report stating Fujimori’s satisfactory health was turned in.

2. Julio Salazar Monroe’s testimony - The most relevant parts of Salazar’s testimony:

He received direct verbal orders from Fujimori

The witness stated that he received direct orders from Fujimori, which were given verbally. Once Salazar had carried out the orders, he returned to Fujimori, giving a direct and oral account of his task.

Contradictions on the Tarata bombing

In 2003, Salazar testified before the Judicial Power on the Tarata Street bombing, saying that he, as official director of the SIN, drafted a report that he handed in to Fujimori. However, during the current trial against Fujimori, Salazar refused to remember this and said that he probably would have written a report, but that he wasn’t sure and thus couldn’t affirm it as he did in 2003. It’s important to keep in mind that Salazar was legally represented by Nakazaki, who had not yet assumed the legal defense of Alberto Fujimori. Moreover, Fujimori was at this time in Japan and showed no signs of an intended return to Peru.

National Defense Council and Vladimiro Montesinos

The witness also said that Vladimiro Montesinos participated in the National Defense Council’s meetings.

The SIN verbally decided on the formation of the Analysis Group

According to Salazar, he received a request from the former head of the Counter Subversion Office (DIRCOTE) Héctor John Caro to form a group of analysts. The agreement for the group’s formation was verbal, thus there is no written document that registers the agreement: "Everything was verbal, there is no written document."

It’s important to keep in mind that one of the principal arguments of Fujimori’s defense is that there is no written document signed by Fujimori that approved the Barrios Altos and La Cantuta crimes.

3. Next session will continue with Julio Salazar Monroe’s testimony

At the next session on Wednesday, June 18, the Public Prosecutor will continue his examination of Salazar Monroe. Afterward, the witness will be examined by the lawyers for the victims’ families, then by Fujimori’s defense lawyers (who are also Salazar Monroe’s lawyers) and lastly by the Court.

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International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY)

Official Website of the ICTY

Lukic case trial to open on 9 July
Sense Tribunal
June 12, 2008

The trial of Milan and Sredoje Lukic, for some of the most brutal crimes committed in Visegrad in 1992, is scheduled to begin on 9 July 2008. The prosecution has obtained new evidence and now wants to amend the indictment to include the rape charge

The trial of Milan and Sredoje Lukic, charged with crimes committed in 1992 in Visegrad, will start on 9 July 2008 with the opening statement of the prosecution. The prosecution will call its first witnesses on 10 and 11 July, pre-trial judge Krister Thelin announced at the status conference today.

A pre-trial conference is scheduled for 2 July 2008, but it is likely to take place seven days later, before the opening statement delivered by the prosecutor Dermot Groome, since Jason Alarid, a US attorney representing former White Eagles commander, Milan Lukic, has other business to attend to.

In the meantime the prosecution has sought leave to amend the indictment against Milan and Sredoje Lukic to include the charges of rape and sexual enslavement. New evidence has been obtained as the prosecution investigated the alibi defense of the two accused, the prosecutor clarified. Pretrial judge Thelin said that it would be more logical to reduce the scope of the indictment, not to broaden it, adding that the full Trial Chamber would rule on the prosecution motion.

In the current indictment, Milan and Sredoje Lukic are charged with some of the most serious and brutal crimes committed against Bosniak civilians in Visegrad. According to the prosecution, in 1992 Milan Lukic formed the White Eagles, also known as the Avengers, a paramilitary unit, in Visegrad. His relative Sredoje Lukic, a police officer from Visegrad, joined the unit. The two of them, the indictment alleges, burned about 140 women, children and old men alive in two locations in Visegrad – in the Pionirska Street and in the Bikavac neighborhood. The victims took shelter in Visegrad after they were expelled from the Bosniak villages around it.

The two accused pleaded not guilty to all the counts in the indictment charging them with extermination, persecution, killing, beating, cruel treatment and other inhumane acts.

Serbia's war crimes prosecutor gets death threat
Reuters
June 17, 2008

BELGRADE, June 17 (Reuters) - Serbia's war crimes prosecutor, Vladimir Vukcevic, has received a death threat for extraditing war crimes indictees to the Hague tribunal, his office said on Tuesday.

Since Vukcevic's team found and arrested Bosnian Serb war crimes suspect Stojan Zupljanin last week, they have received numerous threatening telephone calls, and there was a bomb threat when Zupljanin was transferred to prison in Belgrade.

"This was a very dramatic and pointed threat," the prosecutor's spokesman Bruno Vekaric told Serbia's RTS television. "The voice said Zupljanin's arrest would be the last one tolerated, but Vukcevic will not be forgiven any more extraditions."

The call was traced by police to the Netherlands.

In April, authorities uncovered an assassination plot targeting Vukcevic which involved Bosnian Serb former security officers.

Several judges in anti-mafia trials have reported receiving death threats and a judge in southeast Serbia was killed in a bomb blast in March.

Zupljanin is currently in custody and awaiting extradition.

His arrest leaves three ethnic Serbs still on the run from the United Nations court -- Bosnian Serb ex-general Ratko Mladic, his wartime political boss Radovan Karadzic and Croatian Serb wartime leader Goran Hadzic.

Hague Slams Croatia for 'Hiding Documents'
Balkaninsight.com
June 18, 2008

18 June 2008 Zagreb _ The Hague Prosecution has accused Croatia of hiding documents linked to the trial of three generals.

Generals Ante Gotovina, Mladen Markac and Ivan Cermak are indicted of war crimes during and after Operation Storm in 1995 when hundreds of ethnic Serbs were killed and some 250,000 fled the advancing Croatian troops.

The prosecutors for the International Criminal Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia, ICTY, based in The Hague, have asked the court to set a 15-day deadline for Croatia to submit these documents linked to the use of artillery and special police activities during the operation.

According to The Hague Tribunal, the prosecution filed its complaint against the Croatian authorities for insufficient cooperation on June 13.

The complaint concludes that the Croatian prosecution has consciously removed or concealed those documents, explaining that many were missing, using a similar practice as it did in the case against Bosnian Croat General Tihomir Blaskic, 12 years ago.

Chief Prosecutor Serge Brammertz said that although Croatian authorities have conducted a search for the documents over the last 18 months, they have handed over only a few of them.

Brammertz on Tuesday criticised countries in the region for a lack of cooperation with the war crimes tribunal. Read more: http://balkaninsight.com/en/main/news/11077/?tpid=145

In the first reaction from Zagreb, Jadranka Kosor, the head of the country’s Council for Cooperation with the ICTY, denied Croatia was hiding anything and said that some documents could not be traced, adding that "Croatia cannot provide what it does not have."

Luka Misetic, Gotovina’s attorney, said The Hague Prosecution "has a habit of looking for someone else to blame when they see they’re losing the case."

UN immunity challenged in Dutch court
AFP
June 18, 2008

THE HAGUE (AFP) — Relatives of the victims of the 1995 Srebrenica massacre challenged the notion of UN immunity Wednesday in a Dutch court that must decide whether the families can sue the world body.

The idea of unlimited immunity in such a case is "unacceptable and undermines the credibility of the United Nations," said Axel Hagedorn, one of the lawyers representing 6,000 relatives seeking to sue the UN and the Dutch state.

The families argue that UN forces, and in particular the Dutch contingent in Srebrenica, failed in their duty to protect civilians in the Bosnian Muslim enclave.

After the lightly-armed Dutch troops abandoned the town, it was taken by Bosnia Serb forces commanded by Ratko Mladic who massacred some 8,000 Muslim men.

The UN has refused to take part in the case, citing immunity, and was represented in court by the lawyer for the Dutch state, Bert Jan Houtzagers, who argued that the court had no competence to hear a suit against the world body.

Citing the UN convention on immunity privileges, Houtzagers said the plaintiffs were asking for a judgement on the UN's primary role of guaranteeing peace and security.

"It is precisely to exercise this function that the UN's immunity was created," he said.

"The immunity provided to international organisations is aimed at guaranteeing their independence," he argued, adding that any attempt to restrict the boundaries of that immunity could have "serious ramifications for future peacekeeping missions".

He also stressed that real responsibility for the massacre lay with Mladic and the Bosnia Serbs under his command.

Mladic and former political leader Radovan Karadzic remain at large almost 13 years since being indicted on war crimes charges by the Hague-based International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.

The Dutch court said it would rule on the immunity question on July 10.

The Srebrenica massacre, Europe's worst atrocity since World War II, has been termed genocide by two United Nations tribunals.

In 2002, the entire Dutch government resigned over an official report that stated its peacekeepers had been sent on an "impossible" mission.

In a separate suit heard on Monday by the same court, other relatives of survivors had sought to have the Dutch state declared liable for its troops' failure.

Houtzagers insisted that while the international community had been unable to stop a "terrible tragedy", this did not mean any individual state could be held liable.

"The state contributed troops to keep the peace and prevent war crimes. The fact that they did not succeed does not mean they are liable."

As the arguments continued at The Hague, forensic experts in eastern Bosnia said they had completed the exhumation of a mass grave believed to contain several dozen victims of the Srebrenica massacre.

Serbia: Belgrade court sentences three war criminals
Adnkronosinternational
June 19, 2008

Three former members of Serbian paramilitary groups were sentenced on Thursday to a total of 31 years in jail by a Belgrade court for crimes against Bosnian Muslims during the 1992-1995 civil war.

Serbia’s Special court for war crimes sentenced Dragan Slavkovic to 15 years, Ivan Korac to 13 and Sinisa Filipovic to three years, while the fourth indictee, Dragutin Dragicevic was acquitted of all charges.

All four belonged to Serbian paramilitary units known as "Yellow wasps" and "Pivarski" and were charged with crimes against Bosnian Muslim civilians in the eastern Bosnian town of Zvornik, bordering Serbia.

According to the indictment, they had mistreated hundreds of detained Muslim civilians in the village of Celopek, of which at least 19 were killed.

Special Serbian prosecutor for war crimes Vladimir Vukcevic said he will appeal the sentences because he considered them to be too lenient.

Vukcevic said Zvornik was the scene of the worst war crimes, where at least 900 people were killed.

It was the first case turned to a Serbian court by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia and Vukcevic anticipated that more trials will follow.

Since it was formed by the United Nations Security Council in 1993, the ICTY has indicted 161 individuals, mostly Serbs, and more than 50 have been sentenced so far to over 700 years in jail.

The ICTY is planning to finish work by 2010 and has been turning over new cases to local courts.

In a related development, a former Bosnian Serb war prisoners’ organisation said on Thursday it was planning mass protests because Bosnian courts were prosecuting only Serbs and protecting Muslims.

The organisation pointed out the case of Muslim general Atif Dudakovic, accused by Serbs of war crimes, but Bosnian Muslim authorities have not yet indicted him.

Hague seeks clarification of Šešelj comments
B92
June 19, 2008

BELGRADE -- The Hague Tribunal’s has called on Vojislav Šešelj to clarify his remarks that he has been in contact with Hague fugitives.

Hague spokeswoman Nerma Jelacic said that she had been informed that he had not spoken to the fugitives himself, but that he had been in contact indirectly.

She told daily Danas regarding Šešelj’s claims that he had talked to Hague fugitives Ratko Mladic and Radovan Karadžic, that Šešelj’s calls could not be traced because he was in the privileged position of defending himself in a war crimes case.

War Crimes Prosecution in Belgrade spokesman Bruno Vekaric told the daily that Šešelj had the right to defend himself any way he saw fit, but that it was impossible to check on every statement he made to see if it was true or relevant.

"Of course the Hague Tribunal checks on everything it deems as important to the arrest of the remaining fugitives and clearing up all the cases. We also check in cooperation with the Interior Ministry, but when we do so, we make the public aware of it," Vekaric said.

He reiterated that it was Šešelj’s manner, and the manner of his witnesses to "say various untruths before the trial chamber."

Šešelj told the Hague Tribunal yesterday that he had talked to the most sought-after Hague fugitive Ratko Mladic, and said on Tuesday that he had spoken to Radovan Karadžic as well.

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International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR)

Official Website of the ICTR

ICTR Accused Without Defence Lawyer for Four Months Now
Hirondelle News Agency
June 10, 2008

Arusha, 10 June 2008 (FH) - Leonidas Nshogoza, a Rwandan indicted at the beginning of February for contempt at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, still does not have a lawyer to defend himself.

In a letter addressed to the Registrar of the Tribunal last month, the accused reminded of the tribunal's obligation to provide him with a lawyer without any undue delay.

Defendants at the ICTR, all considered as being indigent, are provided with a lawyer from a special list maintained by the Registry. The accused provides names of three possible counsels and the Registry would approve one of them.

Nshogoza was accused by a witness of having tried to bribe him in the trial of a former Rwandan Education and Culture Minister Jean de Dieu Kamuhanda, who was sentenced to life in prison in September 2005. Indicted in Rwanda, he was imprisoned there for several months before coming to Arusha, where he was at once charged and detained. He was then a member of Father Emmanuel Rukundo's defence team. Rukondo was the former Military Chaplain.

A Canadian lawyer, Allison Turner, had acted as a defence counsel during the initial period, but her contract was terminated by the registry. The registrar proposed to Mrs Turner a payment of 50 000 USD as expenses incurred by the defence.

"This is stumbling point which has a direct impact on Nshogoza", she explained to the Hirondelle Agency, shortly before her departure to Montreal. According to her, the registry failed to fulfil its obligations by not officially naming her as a counsel.

A lead lawyer before the ICTR is remunerated approximately 100 USD per hour, but the assessment of its work, apart from the hearings, was always prone to debates and negotiations.

For the period 2005-2007, the cost of the defence accounted for 8.4% of the budget of the Tribunal (21 million USD), compared to 24% for the prosecution (60 million USD).

Transfers: A Single Rwandan Judge Should Not Deter ICTR Chambers
Hirondelle News Agency
June 13, 2008

Arusha, 13 June 2008 (FH) - The first two decisions to deny, on 28 May and 6 June respectively, by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), to transfer Yussuf Munyakazi and Gaspard Kanyarukiga to Rwanda do not retake all the arguments raised during the public hearing of 24 May on the subject.

The first decision has already resulted in an appeal and the second should also be appealed. For two of the three other motions, the same Chambers have not yet rendered their decisions.

As in Chamber III, Chamber I reviewed the legal framework assign to the transfers, the absence of capital punishment sentences, measures designed to guarantee a fair trial as well as the organization of the control of the procedures by an external institution, but it refused the transfer for the reason that it was not certain that former Rwandan businessman Kanyarukiga will benefit from a fair trial.

In the same manner, it predicts that the defendant will encounter difficulties obtaining witnesses residing in Rwanda because they are afraid, and making witnesses appear who would reside abroad because organized protection will not be sufficient according to it. Lastly, it fears that the defendant, if he is convicted, would have to serve his sentence in solitary confinement.

But it did not express any reservations on the fact that the procedure will be carried out by a single judge. On 28 May, Chamber III had said that the independence of the courts could not be thus guaranteed. Chamber I observed, for its part, that the international legal instruments do not mention a minimum number of judges to guarantee the independence of courts.

According to Chamber III, the provision retained in the law of 16 March 2007, known as the law on "transfers", which specifies that persons transferred from the ICTR as well as defendants extradited by foreign countries will be tried before the High Court by a single judge, is contrary to international standards for fair trials.

These standards, and the Chamber refers for support to the European Convention on Human Rights, the International Pact relating to Civil and Political Rights, as well as the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights, impose that trials be carried out in an fair manner by an independent and impartial court.

The independence of a court, in regards to the executive power, the legislative power and the trial parties, explains the European Court of Human Rights in the Findlay ruling against the United Kingdom of 1997 is measured, inter alia, with the guarantees taken to preserve it from external pressures.

Those envisaged by the Rwandan law on the transfers are not enough according to Chamber III.

"The Chamber considers that it is too much to expect of one individual [judge] to be able to resist the pressure of a State whose past practice has shown interference with judicial decisions".

To illustrate these interferences, it reminded the interruption of the collaboration of the Rwandan government with the ICTR at the time when the latter had pronounced the acquittal of Emmanuel Bagambiki in 2006 and deplored its attitude in reaction to the arrest warrants issued in 2007 against members of the RPF by Judges Bruguière (France) and Fernando Andreu (Spain).

These two facts show, according to the international judges, the absence of distinction by the Rwandan government between politics and the judiciary, allowing for the fear that Rwanda does not respect the independence of the courts.

The prosecutor points out that Rwanda is not the only country to have a single judge on the bench in criminal matters. Furthermore, Martin Ngoga, the Prosecutor General of Rwanda, explains that the law on transfers was adopted after a comparative study of the legislations voted in regards to cases that could face capital punishment in Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, South Africa, Botswana and Zambia. All of them envisage a single judge.

The First Instance Chamber III in the former Rwandan trader Munyakazi case, deplored, finally, that the appeal procedure before the Supreme Court does not permit to mitigate this risk of influence on the first judge. This court, composed of three judges, is qualified only to remediate errors of facts that could result in a denial of justice and only allows the reference back to first instance in very limited circumstances.

The point on which the two Chambers meet relates to the protection of witnesses. The international judges note and do not dispute the existing regulation on this point, but deplore that reality is not faithful.

While Ngoga and Gatera Gashabana, from the Bar of Kigali, are quoted in the 28 May decision, for their explanations on the new inter-institutional mechanisms aiming at facilitating the testimony of witnesses (Article 14 of the law on transfers), the International association of Defence Counsel denounces that "most Rwandan witnesses believe that the Rwandan authorities breach the protective measures".

The association also talks about the risk, for them, of "being rejected by their community, mistreated, arrested, detained, beaten and even tortured".

Chamber III, considering the number of murders of witnesses (eight in 2007 according to the report by Human Rights Watch, an NGO present in the two case as an amicus curiae) and the disadvantage of the defence due to the fact that the majority of its witnesses live abroad, does not find the right of the defence to be able to call its witnesses under the same conditions as the prosecution is guaranteed.

This reasoning does not allow for a positive forecast for the fate of the witnesses of the Tribunal which Rwanda should ensure the protection at the end of the mandate of the ICTR.

But Rwanda should not despair to receive one day a defendant transferred from the international tribunal, encourage the first instance judges in their conclusion. If it continues to develop its legal system, thus, "the Tribunal will hopefully be able to transfer future cases to Rwandan courts". Already the Appeals Chamber was seized this week of a first recourse, a second is envisaged this week.

In waiting for that moment, the United Kingdom authorized last week the extradition to Rwanda of four men wanted by Rwanda. Judge Anthony Evans, who authorized it, considered that the guarantees, in particular those for a fair trial, were in place and that the fact that "the law was not yet tested" did not constitute "an argument not to extradite".

Rwandan Catholic Head Wants RPF Soliders Trial Outside the Country
Hirondelle News Agency
June 16, 2008

Arusha, 16 May,2008 (FH)-The Head of the Roman Catholic in Rwanda, Arcbishop Thaddee Ntihinyurwa, said that the trial of the four Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF) soldiers alleged to have killed members of the Catholic clergy during the 1994 genocide, was best to have it conducted outside Rwanda in the interest of justice.

He is not convinced that the church's lost clergy would get justice, citing possible interference from government authorities, reported Rwanda News Agency (RNA).

"Justice can only be rendered by foreigners not Rwandans that are most likely to be compromised by the establishment'' claimed Ntihinyurwa.

Ntihinyurwa was then Bishop of Cyangugu at the time of genocide until 1996, when he was named to succeed Archbishop Vincent Nsengiyumva, who was among 13 clergymen allegedly killed by the RPF soldiers on 5 June 1994 in Kabgayi, Muhanga District., central Rwanda.

The Rwandan Ministry of Defence announced last week that it had detained four officers in connection with the clergymen's killings-Brig Gen Wilson Gumisiriza, Maj. Wilson Ukwishaka, Capt. John Butera and Capt (Retired) Dieudonne Rukeba.

They are expected to appear in court soon.

According to ICTR Prosecutor, Justice Hassan Jallow, Rwanda shared concurrent jurisdiction with the tribunal over such offences and that the UN Court would monitor the trial. However, he has warned that the trial can be retracted if it lacked transparency.

Justice Jallow's predecessor, Swiss Carla Del Ponte, was the first to disclose over the RPF investigations during her tenure between 1999 and 2003.

The Rwandan government in the past has been furious over the investigations and even reached a boiling point by refusing to co-operate with the UN tribunal and once even denied entry visa to Del Ponte.

RDF Officers Appear Before Court
The New Times
George Felly Kimenyi
June 18, 2008

KIGALI - The four Rwanda Defence Force (RDF) officers implicated in the murder of clergymen Tuesday appeared before Brig. Gen. Steven Kalyango of the Military Tribunal.

According to the prosecution, the officers are jointly accused of murder and complicity to murder as a war crime.

The quartet includes Brig. Gen. Wilson Gumisiriza, Maj. Wilson Ukwishaka, Capt John Butera and Capt (Rtd) Dieudonée Rukeba. They are charged with the murder of 15 clergymen who included four bishops and some priests.

"They are not all accused of the same crime; some are charged with murder, while others are accused of complicity to murder, both of which constitute war crimes," said Capt Kayijuka Ngabo, a Military Prosecutor.

He said that Gumisiriza and Ukwishaka are charged with complicity in the murder of the said catholic clergymen as they were commanders of the soldiers who purportedly committed the crime.

Both Gatera and Rukeba pleaded guilty for murder while Gumisiriza and Ukwishaka pleaded not guilty of complicity to murder.

Prosecution brought them before court requesting for the temporary detention of the officers as investigations continue. "Despite the fact that the two (Butera and Rukeba) pleaded guilty, we still need time to investigate the role their commanders (Gumisiriza and Ukwishaka) might have played in the crime," Kayijuka told court.

The priests were found at Kabgayi diocese in Muhanga District and were evacuated by the then forces of the Rwandese Patriotic Army (RPA) to pave way for military operations between RPA and the then government army.

According to prosecution, Gumisiriza was the officer in charge of the operation of evacuating the priests, who were taken to another place in Ruhango district, where they were killed on June 4, 1994.

Ukwishaka was the platoon commander of that force.

However, Gumisiriza, through Athanase Rutabingwa, his defence attorney, contested his arrest citing the principle of criminal liability.

"It is a principle that a person is individually held liable for the crime he or she commits. Why is my client being dragged into crimes that prosecution has not even ascertained?" Rutabingwa questioned.

He was reacting to an assertion by the prosecutor that given time, they would come up with the degree of Gumisiriza’s involvement in the commission of those crimes.

The prosecutor said that the crimes allegedly committed were in contravention of the Geneva Convention which provides protection to unarmed civilians during a struggle between armed belligerents.

All the accused requested for a temporary release and after hearing from both sides, Kalyango said that he would render a decision on the applications today.

They were arrested on June 11 following a joint investigation between prosecution and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR).

Rwanda Cabinet Approves Plan to Indict Foreigners
Hirondelle News Agency
June 18, 2008

Arusha,18 June,2008 (FH)-The Rwandan cabinet has approved plans to indict foreigners who, in one way or the other, played a role in the 1994 genocide, which according to the United Nations estimates claimed lives of about 800,000 people, mostly ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus.

According to Rwanda's Minister for Information, Louise Mushikiwabo, the idea was first mooted by the legislators.

"Rwanda has valid grounds to pursue non-Rwandans who were involved in the 1994 Genocide. This will be done within the confines of international law," she was quoted to have told Rwanda's official newspaper, New Times.

She explained that unlike the recent French and Spanish indictments against Rwandan officials, who, she said, used unverified evidence and "did not even have the courage to inform the concerned parties," the standards of international judicial law would be followed in Rwanda.

She denied it was a tit-for-tat against the French and Spanish indictments, though she referred to them as "unfair and insulting," adding that the matter would be raised at the next African Union Summit scheduled for Egypt.

"The government is keen to see our prosecution put out these indictments so that Rwandans aggrieved by foreigners get relief," the minister underlined.

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Iraqi High Tribunal

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

Iraqi official: US transfers 8 former Saddam Hussein regime figures to Iraqi control
International Herald Tribune
June 8, 2008

BAGHDAD: Eight former members of Saddam Hussein's regime have been transferred from U.S. to Iraqi control, Iraqi officials said Sunday.

Former regime figures sentenced to death — like Saddam's cousin Ali Hassan al-Majid, better known as "Chemical Ali" for gassing Kurds in the 1980s and former defense minister Hashim Sultan — were not among those transferred, deputy justice minister Busho Ibrahim told The Associated Press.

Ibrahim said more defendants would be transferred to Iraqi custody in the future, but did not elaborate.

Badee Izzat Aref, a lawyer for several Saddam-era officials standing trial, said the eight were transferred Friday. He said they included Iraq's former director of military intelligence, Sabir Azizi al-Douri, who was sentenced to life in prison during the Anfal trial in June 2007.

Al-Douri and al-Majid were both convicted of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity for their part in the Operation Anfal crackdown that killed nearly 200,000 Kurdish civilians and guerrillas.

Saddam's secretary, Abed Hmoud, and another senior Baath Party official, Abdul-Ghani Abdul-Ghafour, were also among those transferred, Aref said.

The U.S. military, which continues to hold dozens of former Iraqi government officials, said it was currently coordinating such transfers, but would not comment on the timing or number of detainees involved.

Aref said he disagreed with the decision to transfer the eight men to Iraqi control, saying he feared they would face mistreatment by Iraqi authorities because of their ties to the late dictator.

"We are worried about their safety. The Americans are responsible for any abuse done to them (because of this decision)," Aref told AP by telephone from the Jordanian capital, Amman.

Aref and Ibrahim did not explain the timing of the transfer, and officials from the Iraqi High Tribunal were not available to comment.

Saddam cohorts to stand trial in July
Press TV
June 11, 2008

A trial will begin next month for 14 Saddam cohorts accused of killing dozens of people protesting the assassination of a top cleric in 1999.

An uprising broke out after Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Sadiq al-Sadr, the father of Muqtada al-Sadr, was shot dead Saddam agents.

Dozens of people were killed or wounded in February 1999 by Iraqi forces in Baghdad's Sadr City due to the crackdown on the uprising, which was sparked by the assassination of the top cleric.

Meanwhile, an Iraqi court spokesman, Munir Hadad, said a trial will begin on July 21st to bring to justice those responsible for the killings. It is the fifth trial, so far, of the former regime's officials.

The defendants include former deputy prime minister Tariq Aziz, Saddam's half-brother Sabawi Ibrahim al-Hassan and his cousin Ali Hassan al-Majid, also known as "Chemical Ali" for his conduct of Halabja chemical bombing.

Iraqi High Tribunal sets fifth trial date
Middle East Times
June 12, 2008

BAGHDAD, June 12 (UPI) -- The fifth trial by the Iraqi High Tribunal begins July 21 in the 1999 assassination of Grand Ayatollah Mohammad Mohammad Sadeq al-Sadr.

Gunmen loyal to former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein assassinated Grand Ayatollah Mohammad Mohammad Sadeq al-Sadr, the father-in-law of the anti-American cleric Moqtada Sadr, Feb. 18, 1999. A Shiite uprising followed the event, with dozens killed or wounded by Iraqi security forces.

Iraqi High Tribunal spokesman Munir Hadad said the court set a trial date for July 21 to bring the perpetrators to justice, the Iranian English-language Press TV said Thursday.

Among the defendants are former Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz, the half-brother of Saddam, Sabawi Ibrahim al-Hassan and Ali Hassan al-Majid, known better as "Chemical Ali."

Aziz, Majid and six other co-defendants currently face charges in the Iraqi High Tribunal on war crimes for the execution of 42 businessmen in 1992 who protested rising food prices in the wake of U.N. sanctions of the former regime.

Chemical Ali Denies 1991 Shootings
United Press International
June 16, 2008

BAGHDAD, June 16 (UPI) -- Ali Hassan al-Majid, known as "Chemical Ali," denied at a war crimes tribunal in Baghdad shooting unarmed protesters during a 1991 Shiite uprising in Basra.

Majid faced the Iraqi High Tribunal in 2007 for alleged atrocities committed in response to a Shiite rebellion following the U.S.-led liberation of Kuwait in 1991.

The rebellion was successful in seizing control of several cities and brought rebels within 60 miles of the capital, Baghdad. U.S. President George H.W. Bush encouraged Iraqis to "take matters into their own hands" and "force Saddam Hussein to step aside" following the Iraqi defeat in the first Gulf War.

Majid rejected accounts provided by eyewitnesses saying he and Iraqi soldiers fired on peaceful demonstrators, the Iranian Press TV reported Monday.

The High Tribunal convicted Majid in June 2004 of genocide related to a rebellion in Iraqi Kurdistan. He was sentenced to death in February and reportedly suffered a heart attack in April.

Majid served as the Iraqi defense minister in the regime of former dictator Saddam Hussein. He is currently standing trial with former Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz for the execution of 42 businessmen in 1992 who protested high food costs resulting from U.N. sanctions on Saddam's regime.

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Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL)

Offical Website of the Special Court for Sierra Leone
The Sierra Leone Court Monitoring Programme

In Africa, justice for 'bush wives'
Christian Science Monitor
Jina Moore
June 9, 2008

Sierra Leone's special court rules that forced marriages are a crime against humanity. Soldiers who take women by force in Uganda and Congo may also face prosecution.

FREETOWN, SIERRA LEONE - Fatmata Jalloh was just a kid selling pancakes on a rural road in Sierra Leone when a rebel soldier snatched her and made her his wife.

"I was a child. I didn't know anything about love at that time ... but he said, 'If you don't take me [as your husband], I'll kill you,' " she remembers.

For two years, until Sierra Leone's decade-long civil war finally ended, Ms. Jalloh was the domestic and sexual slave of her "husband." She cooked and cleaned for him; he fed and sheltered her.

"There was no way not to do it," she says. "If I would leave, I would have no food. He would kill me."

Jalloh is one of thousands of African "bush wives," women taken against their will and forced to be spouses of soldiers. Public health and human rights groups estimate that over 60,000 women were victims of sexual violence in Sierra Leone, and that thousands suffer similar fates in ongoing conflicts in northern Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Now, an international criminal tribunal says forced marriage is a crime against humanity, in a ruling experts say may change the way future war criminals in Africa and elsewhere are prosecuted.

"What had occurred here with forced marriage was something very serious and very specific, and wasn't fully recognized," says Stephen Rapp, the chief prosecutor at the Special Court for Sierra Leone, which is trying nine military leaders thought to be the most responsible for crimes committed during the struggle over political power and control of the country's diamonds. "It was part of a widespread attack against civilians. Women were being taken as wives without consent, either consent by them ... or by family members."

The court's first rulings on the charges, brought against three members of the notorious Revolutionary United Front, are expected in July.

Forced marriage had long been considered a variation on sexual violence. The Special Court's trial chamber had considered it a "redundant" charge already covered by charges of rape and sexual slavery. But Mr. Rapp insists, and the court's upper chamber agreed, that forced marriage is a discrete crime.

"Of course it [forced marriage] almost always involved sex, but it involved other things – an exclusive, essentially lifetime relationship under the control of a man, a demand that this individual [the wife] provide ... household services, travel with the man, care for his needs, and everything else," Rapp says.

The decision paves the way for similar charges in northern Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, where rights groups have documented the use of bush wives in ongoing conflicts. Brigid Inder, executive director of the Women's Initiatives for Gender Justice at The Hague, says the practice is a common way of rewarding commanders and organizing battalions in the Lord's Resistance Army, which has terrorized Uganda's Acholi population for nearly 20 years. Her group has also documented the "rewarding" of bush wives to soldiers in three separate militias in Congo.

But Ms. Inder doesn't expect officials at the International Criminal Court (ICC), the world tribunal with jurisdiction over war crimes, to add indictments for forced marriage to its cases in Uganda or Congo any time soon."

"We hope they bring these charges where there is evidence of these crimes ... in the future," says Inder, who has pressed the ICC to investigate gender-based violence in Congo. "But I doubt that ... the prosecutor will amend any of his current charges."

Donald Steinberg, deputy president for policy at the International Crisis Group and former ambassador to Angola, says even if the new crime isn't prosecuted on a large scale, the Sierra Leone court's precedent may help deter forced marriage in the future.

"There's no way I believe that you're going to prosecute a large number of individuals in any of these situations, because the practice is so common in a civil war," Mr. Steinberg says. "If you can do a few very notable prosecutions almost as examples, then there is the possibility ... that this is going to have a deterrent effect ... to be very honest, that's going to be minimal."

More influential, he says, may be the role this precedent plays outside the courtroom. Because the ruling puts forced marriage on the map as a specific crime, he says, negotiators brokering peace deals might think twice about offering amnesty to its perpetrators.

"Amnesty in these situations means men with guns forgive other men with guns for crimes committed against women," Steinberg says. "It's viewed too many times by negotiators as a very easy step to take.... If more negotiators were to hear of this development and walk into negotiations and say simply, 'No amnesties for this type of activity,' I think it would make a difference."

Sierra Leone's own conflict ended in a peace deal that promised blanket amnesty to the foot soldiers of the war – which, ironically, limits the utility of the Special Court's decision for the very victims it has recognized.

"It's not, from a practical standpoint, very useful," Rapp says. The structure of the court means women can't bring charges there, and because the precedent hasn't been procedurally adopted as part of domestic law, they can't yet pursue civil claims in national courts either, he says. Besides, he adds, "most of the people convicted in these crimes don't have assets."

It's not money that someone like Siaoh Farroh is after. Taken as a forced wife after her husband and her newborn were killed, she wants the kind of justice that comes with punishment. She wants to put her "husband" in front of the Special Court. She would say: " 'This is the one who did that to me. Make them suffer for what they've done. If you're jailing others, jail him. If you're killing others, kill him.' "

Others, like Fatmata Jalloh, have moved on. She beams when she recounts how she met her new husband, the same way she met her ex-soldier: selling goods on the side of the road. When she hears of the ruling, she says it makes her happy.

"Now they can try to abolish the thing. Not even for me," she says. "For other women coming, so they don't have the same story."

Inside the RUF: at last the child soldiers of Sierra Leone have their say
The Times
Hannah Strange
June 16, 2008

The trial of the rebel leaders behind a devastating civil war is soon to come to a close. The child soldiers who knew them tell their stories

Hawa Dumbuya was eight years old when a rebel commander, his machete still wet with the blood of her neighbours, marched her into the Sierra Leone jungle and forced her to become his "wife." His name, Hawa says, was Issa Sesay, the notorious rebel leader currently on trial at the war crimes tribunal in Freetown.

For four years, until the Revolutionary United Front was disarmed in 2002, Hawa says she lived as Sesay’s slave, accompanying him on brutal missions by day and suffering his repeated rapes and assaults by night. Now 18 and rejected by her community as a "rebel wife", she lives alone, scraping a living from selling jungle fruits and awaiting the verdict of a trial which offers the only hope of justice for victims of the group’s decade-long terror campaign.

With the judges to retire in a matter of weeks, Sierra Leoneans will know soon whether the leaders of the RUF will be held to account for the depravities that became the group’s hallmark. In their quest for power and control of the country’s diamond wealth, the Liberian-backed rebel group terrorised a reluctant civilian population with mass amputations, mutilations, rape and sexual abuse, looting, murder and the use of child soldiers.

Hawa is all too familiar with such atrocities. "He forced me to have sexual intercourse with him. When I tried to refuse he said he was going to kill me. My parents had already been killed, that was why I could not do anything. He made me carry heavy loads and if I could not he beat me. Or he sent other combatants to deal with me."

A diminutive if muscular teenager, at eight Hawa could barely hold the gun Issa Sesay thrust in her hands. "I didn’t want to fight. I tried to refuse, but he beat me, and told me he would kill me."

"I carried the gun. But I never killed anyone. One time they captured a pregnant woman, during an attack on a village. They were betting on whether her baby was a boy or a girl. They told me to shoot her, but I refused, so they shot me in the leg." She is matter-of-fact as she pulls up her long skirt and points to a smooth, dark scar shaped like a two pence piece on her lower shin. Then her face contorts.

"They held the woman, screaming, and slit her belly from bottom to top. The baby came out, it was a boy. Then they killed them both."

Sesay is currently defending himself on 17 counts of crimes against humanity – including murder, looting, use of child soldiers, abduction, forced labour and sexual violence. The RUF’s leader in Sierra Leone from the 2000 arrest of overlord Foday Sankoh until the end of the war, Sesay was indicted in 2003 after his arrest in a sting operation which drew him to the capital Freetown. With Sankoh having since died in custody, Sesay is the most senior RUF commander left alive.

Having pleaded not guilty on all charges, Sesay has never expressed any remorse for his role in the civil war which left up to 75,000 people dead, many thousands more mutilated and a nation traumatised. He has frequently been pictured smiling and laughing in court while listening to allegations of his part in such depravities, which he has dismissed as "rumour and folklore". He argues not only that he was fighting a just uprising against a corrupt regime, but that he was betrayed by the government of President Kabbah, which granted an amnesty on crimes committed by the rebels as part of the eventual peace agreement. Though the amnesty was later revoked, the wheels of justice grind awkwardly – and at times even farcically – in Sierra Leone. So far just four men have been convicted of civil war crimes – all of them members of government-backed militia or military splinter groups. Sesay may yet be acquitted.

Hawa prays every day that that won’t happen.

"I saw him cut off hands, feet, sometimes male organs. One time I was standing in front of Issa Sesay when he caught a man the age of my grandfather. He told him to carry a very heavy load for him to another village. But the man couldn’t, so Issa Sesay chopped off his hands."

Sao Augusta, an 18-year-old former fighter abducted by the rebels at the age of seven, says she worked as a slave on Sesay's farm from 1998 to 1999. "He was an evil man, a very wicked man," she whispers.

Working from six in the morning till seven at night, Sao received only beatings and a meagre evening ration of bulgar wheat from her captors. Like Hawa, she soon fell victim to the RUF’s appetite for young virgins, raped at the age of 10 by Augustine Gbao, a senior commander on trial alongside Sesay.

"He came to the house where I was staying with Issay Sesay’s wife and he forcefully took me and raped me, because I was a virgin. He said he had a ceremony to perform. He had a ritual to perform, he wanted to go to the front, the war front, and one of the conditions they gave him was that he had to have sex with a virgin. I was about 10 years old."

Hawa and Sao are among many former child fighters or slaves still living in Kailahun, the RUF’s headquarters during the 11-year civil war. According to Dauda Kanu, who runs the district offices of Plan, an international NGO working to support children in the country, some 95 per cent of young people living in the area fought – willingly or not – for the RUF or another militia force.

In Kailahun town, a huddle of make-shift huts and bombed-out concrete ruins buried in the eastern rainforest just a few miles from the Liberian border, bike riders shelter from the scorching sun under the corrugated corners of lean-to stalls, waiting for their next hire. These are the rebels, the meagre living they can scratch out ferrying passengers their only opportunity for survival in a community which might have been ordered to forgive, but will never forget.

Hawa lives in a state of fear, knowing that the next stall-holder she buys from, the next customer to whom she sells her jungle fruits, could be one of her abusers. "I am afraid when I see them. I am afraid that something like that might happen again."

Gloria Bonda, seven years old when she was captured by the rebels, knows her tormentor will never be brought to justice. At 11, she became a "bodyguard" to Sam Bockarie, the notoriously sadistic RUF commander nicknamed "Mosquito" for a killing style supposedly more deadly than malaria. Killed in 2003 in Liberia while on the run from Special Court prosecutors, Bockarie was second-in-command to RUF leader Foday Sankoh, and during his two-year imprisonment from 1997 was the overall commander of the group, directing its nihilistic attack on Freetown in 1999 as part of "Operation No Living Thing."

It was Bockarie who lined five villagers up against a blood-stained wall and ordered 11-year-old Gloria to shoot them dead. "I refused, but they said if I refused, they would kill me. I did that, just so they wouldn’t kill me."

Gloria shows me where she carried out the killings. Blood still stains the walls of the dank, dungeon-like room, in a bombed-out building known as the Slaughterhouse. As she tells me of the atrocities she witnessed there, the murders she was forced to commit, her jaw hardens, her stare becomes stony and faraway.

"At the Slaughterhouse, so many people were killed by him," she says. The rebels would take groups of captured villagers there, line them up in front of a pit and shoot them so their bodies would fall in. At other times, they would be more inventive.

"There’s many ways to hurt people so that they die. Taking the knife and cutting them to death. Sometimes they beat them, flog them so that all their body was broken and all their parts would be flexible and they would die. Sometimes they would take a big drum, and fill it with palm oil, and boil it for some time. Then they would take them, and put them in it. Or they cook them, and eat them. I saw it."

Now Gloria lives alone. Her father dead, her mother killed in front of her eyes long ago, she has no one to help her survive. Shunned by many in her community for the rapes she endured and the killings she committed, she struggles to earn the money for her school fees from selling jungle fruits. With some help from Plan, who provide counselling sessions and educational support, she has just taken her West Africa school-leaving certificate. She hopes to become a nurse to help those injured in the war, but she does not know how she will pay for the course.

"They say we are rebels, that we are thieves, killers, sometimes they run away from us. There is so much stigma, forcing us to live alone without anyone. There are so many girls like us. We need help."

Plan International's report on women in war zones - Because I Am a girl: In the Shadow of War - was launched on May 15 by Cherie Blair. Visit www.becauseiamagirl.org

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Special Tribunal for Lebanon

In Focus: Special Tribunal for Lebanon (UN)

Prosecution in Al-Hariri Tribunal to Start Work in December - UN SecGen
Ashraq Alawsat
by Turki Al-Saheil
June 16, 2008

Riyadh, Asharq Al-Awsat - UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon asserted yesterday that the special tribunal for trying the killers of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri has become a fait accompli.

In an exclusive interview with Asharq al-Awsat following an official visit to Saudi Arabia, he said "we are preparing the new venue for the tribunal in the Netherlands as agreed upon and we have the judges, the prosecutors, and the records secretary."

He said the prosecution in the killing of the former Lebanese prime minister would start its work at the end of the year after pointing out that the "prosecution team's work was postponed until the end of December."

He stressed at the same time that the investigators were continuing to submit reports regularly to the UN Security Council on the progress made during their investigation of the cases before the international tribunal.

The UN secretary general's assertions came hours before leaving Saudi Arabia following a two-day visit during which he discussed a number of issues of mutual interest with the Saudi leadership.

He expressed his concern over the rise in food prices and said he was watching these rises across the world with deep concern, adding that the world food crisis has reached what he called "unprecedented" levels. In his description of the danger of the current crisis, he cited the World Bank's conclusion that "food prices which doubled during the past three years could subject around 100million people in poor countries to the danger of extreme poverty."

Against this, Bi-moon told Asharq Al-Awsat that "the Saudi contribution is unprecedented in its size and largesse. It provided food for millions of the needy all over the world." He was referring to Saudi Arabia's$500 million grant to the World Food Program [WFP].

Talking about this grant, he said "I welcome totally this important contribution by Saudi Arabia under the leadership of King Abdullah Bin-Abdulaziz, the custodian of the Two Holy Mosques. This contribution completed the aim sought by the WFP, namely, to provide $755 million for combating the rise in food and fuel prices."

On the Iraqi issue, Ban Ki-moon disclosed that the UN organization recently started to present an analysis of the disputed borders (administrative boundaries between the governorates) and said "we are willing to do more as the need requires."

He pointed out that the UN enlarged the scope of its present in Iraqi territories and said it was exerting much effort to help the Iraqi people build their homeland. On the issue of increasing the sanctions on Iran because of its nuclear program, he said this is a UNSC decision and on the issue of trying Sudanese officials in connections with crimes committed in Darfur and the call on the Sudanese Government to comply with international responsibilities and cooperate with the International Criminal Court, he said he "is feeling deeply worried by the reports of lessened cooperation by the Sudanese Government. I am fully convinced that there will not be permanent peace without justice. Peace and justice go hand in hand. There is no escaping the punishment for the war crimes in Darfur."

Hariri Tribunal Concludes Negotiations on Premises: Members of Core Staff Begin Trickling to the Hague
The Daily Star
by Michael Bluhm
June 18, 2008

BEIRUT: The UN Special Tribunal for Lebanon has now taken control of the former Dutch intelligence building in The Hague which will serve as the tribunal's headquarters, tribunal registrar Robin Vincent told The Daily Star on Tuesday. "We have now concluded the negotiations on the lease," Vincent said, adding that the lease should be signed at the beginning of next week. "The building is in the possession of the advance team. It has been secured on our behalf."

The building will become home for the UN tribunal to try suspects in the assassination of former Premier Rafik Hariri. The tribunal, created last May 30 by UN Security Council Resolution 1757, has a mandate encompassing assassinations and attempted assassinations from the failed bid to kill Telecommunications Minister Marwan Hamadeh in October 2004 through the killing of Internal Security Forces Major Wissam Eid on January 25 of this year.

The prospective court has frequently cropped up as a key issue dividing the March 14 and March 8 political camps. March 14 figures have long blamed Syria for Hariri's killing and for the string of assassinations and attempts which have bedeviled the country since, while the Syrian regime of President Bashar Assad has denied any role in the violence and has said it will not allow its citizens to appear before the tribunal.

Many on both sides have talked about the tribunal's potential use as a negotiating tool between Syria and the West, with many March 14 figures citing the length of time to establish the tribunal as a sign of its unsure status.

One member of Vincent's core staff started work in The Hague on Monday, and others will take up their posts there before the end of the month, Vincent added.

"What I've decided is that getting people to The Hague sooner rather than later is important," said Vincent, who previously served as registrar in the Special Court for Sierra Leone.

Canadian Judge Daniel Bellemare, who heads the UN team investigating the political violence and who will become the tribunal's first prosecutor, said in his April 8 report to the UN that "no one can predict or dictate how long" it will take him to submit indictments.

"Any illusion of immediacy must be dispelled," said Bellemare in his report to UN chief Ban Ki-moon, his first report since taking office in January. "Our progress is neither slow nor immediate: It is deliberate."

Vincent said he plans to arrive around the beginning of July, after the tribunal's management committee approves the operating budget for the tribunal's first year.

Vincent added that he expects the court's management committee to approve the budget within the next 10 days, and the ratification will serve as the "final trigger" for him to move to The Netherlands. The committee could still change the amount of the budget, so Vincent would not release the figure he submitted, but he previously told The Daily Star it would be around $45 million.

Bellemare has had "significant input" into shaping the prosecution's budget, Vincent said, but added that he could not set a date for when Bellemare would leave Beirut for The Hague and formally assume the office of prosecutor.

The Security Council recently extended the mandate of the investigation commission until the end of this year, so Vincent and his team will endeavor to prepare the tribunal's headquarters so that the court could begin functioning from next January, he said.

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Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Liberia

Official Website of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Liberia

Liberia's TRC Makes History...Holds First TRC Hearings Ever in the U.S., Focuses on the Diaspora Experience
TRC Press Release
June 6, 2008

MONROVIA, Commissioners of Liberia’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) will next week hold public hearings in the U.S. state of Minnesota, marking the first time any nation has ever conducted such hearings in the United States.

The hearings are scheduled to begin on Monday, June 9th with public sessions set for June 10th through June 14th and will focus on the experience of Liberians in the Diaspora, a dispatch from The Advocates for Human Rights, the Minnesota based organization partnering with the TRC to hold the event reported. All eight members of the TRC are expected to attend the hearings.

This historic event will take place at Hamline University’s Sundin Music Hall at 1536 Hewitt Avenue, Saint Paul, MN. The hearings will begin at 9:30 a.m. (Central) each day and will conclude each afternoon at approximately 5:00 p.m., according to the dispatch.

Already commissioners of the TRC have departed Monrovia for Minneapolis, Minnesota to preside over the hearings which will be held under the aegis of The Advocates for Human Rights. They are led by TRC Chairman Jerome Verdier who reiterated the need for stories of experiences of each and every Liberian during the country’s troubled past to be heard irrespective of where they reside.

“To fulfill our charter and our mission, we need to hear the stories of our citizens who fled their homes and ultimately their country. Many, many thousand Liberians suffered terrible violence and then suffered again through long and arduous travels and then suffered a third time as they arrived in new communities with little more than the clothes on their backs. Their experiences are part of what happened to our country at war with itself; understanding and sharing those experiences is an important part of our healing process,” Verdier said.”

The Advocates for Human Rights was founded in 1983 by a group of Minnesota lawyers who recognized the community’s unique spirit of social justice as an opportunity to promote and protect human rights in the United States and around the world. The mission of The Advocates for Human Rights is to implement international human rights standards to promote civil society and reinforce the rule of law.

The organization has produced more than 50 reports documenting human rights practices in more than 25 countries; educated over 10,000 students and community members on human rights issues; provided legal representation and assistance to over 3,000 disadvantaged individuals and families and works with partners overseas and in the United States to restore and protect human rights. The Advocates for Human Rights holds Special Consultative Status with the United Nations.

More than 1.5 million Liberians were forced from their homes to escape from the violence and destruction of a protracted civil conflict. Because of the historical connection between the two countries, many Liberians eventually made their way to the United States in their flight from war, including some 30,000 who settled in Minnesota. Most of their stories have never been told.

Liberia is recovering from years of conflict that was the backdrop for horrific human rights violations, including arbitrary killings, used of child combatants, rape and sexual violence, separation of families, and looting and destruction of properties. Out of a population of 3 million, an estimated 250,000 Liberians were killed, with as many as 1.5 million displaced. Of those forced to flee this violent conflict, many fled to the U.S. because of the strong historical ties between the two countries.

The TRC was agreed upon in the August 2003 peace agreement and created by the TRC Act of 2005. The TRC was established to “promote national peace, security, unity and reconciliation,” and at the same time make it possible to hold perpetrators accountable for gross human rights violations and violations of international humanitarian law that occurred in Liberia between January 1979 and October 2003.

The U.S. hearings will also provide an important opportunity for Liberians in the Diaspora to present their experiences and recommendations directly to the TRC, which is mandated to make binding recommendations to the Government of Liberia.

Each day, the commission will receive testimonies from Liberians who are part of the Diaspora experience. The testimonies will focus on their experiences in Liberia during the civil war, in flight, in refugee camps and as they established new lives in new communities in the United States.

This is the first TRC to make a concerted effort to solicit from Diaspora communities both their stories of what happened to them and their families and their recommendations for reconciliation and systematic change. This groundbreaking project gives Liberians in the Diaspora a voice in the promotion of international justice and human rights as part of the truth, justice, accountability and reconciliation processes in Liberia.

The hearings will be held at Hamline University through Saturday, June 14, and are open to the public.

'Civil War Fueled By Greed for Power
The Analyst via allAfrica.com
June 11, 2008

MONROVIA, "Liberia's civil war did not relate much to the country's ugly past but was fueled by greed and grasp for power", Former vice president Bishop Bennie D. Warner told commissioners of Liberia's Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

Testifying Tuesday at Public Hearings of the TRC at Hamline University's Sundin Music Hall, Saint Paul, Minneapolis, Minnesota, Bishop Warner said the Liberian civil war was accentuated by greed for economic wealth and power by the organizers who wanted power at the detriment of the entire citizenry.

The former vice president said the idea of the conflict and the war itself was promoted by Liberians whose only objectives were to rule the country not taking into account the impact it will have on the nation.

"Our civil war does not really relate that much to the past but was fueled by greed and grasp for power. People who wanted to and were going to rule," Warner declared. He was testifying on the "Roots of the Conflict, 1979-1980:

Rice Riots and Military Coup Against President Tolbert." The Methodist prelate was vice president to the slain president during the bloody coup that led to his death.

He said the most difficult task for Liberia is to change the mindset of the Liberian people so as to cultivate a culture of peace and tranquility as envisaged by the founders of the country.

The former vice president recommended the enactment into law of a "National Remembrance Day" for the recognition of the over 200,000 Liberians that died during the civil conflict, the construction of a national monument to remind future generations of the country's historical past and a special museum where records of the TRC would be stored for Liberians to access.

Meanwhile, a Liberian scholar and historian has attributed the country's trouble past to successive authoritarian governments since the founding of the nation.

Testifying also, Augustine Conneh, Chairman of the History Department of Morehouse College, Atlanta, Georgia said policies of authoritarianism laid by the American Colonization Society (ACS) and expanded by successive presidents and governments laid the foundation for the conflict in Liberia.

"Even though Liberia was not colonized, but political and economic exploitation, inequality and repression planted by the ACS during their settlement in Liberia were inherited by successive governments whose policies were basically authoritarian thereby creating conditions for disenchantment and conflict in Liberia," Conneh, the first witness to testify Tuesday said.

He said various Liberian presidents practiced the ACS policy of authoritarianism laying the basis for its institutionalization. One and a half million of Liberia's citizens fled the country during the 27-year conflict, many of whom settled in the United States.

The hearings here in Minnesota mark the first time in history that any truth commission has ever systematically sought to include its Diaspora citizens into the process of national healing.

Each day of the hearings, the commission will hear testimony from Liberians who fled to the United States, focusing on their experiences during the civil war, in flight, in refugee camps, and as they established new lives here.

The Advocates for Human Rights, based in Minneapolis, is assisting with coordination and implementation of the hearings.

The Advocates for Human Rights was founded in 1983 by a group of Minnesota lawyers who recognized the community's unique spirit of social justice as an opportunity to promote and protect human rights in the United States and around the world.

The mission of The Advocates for Human Rights is to implement international human rights standards to promote civil society and reinforce the rule of law.

The Advocates for Human Rights holds Special Consultative Status with the United Nations. The TRC was agreed upon in the August 2003 peace agreement and created by the TRC Act of 2005.

The TRC was established to "promote national peace, security, unity and reconciliation," and at the same time make it possible to hold perpetrators accountable for gross human rights violations and violations of international humanitarian law that occurred in Liberia between January 1979 and October 2003.

TRC Clarifies Perjury Report
The Analyst via allAfrica.com
June 16, 2008

MONROVIA, The Truth and Reconciliation (TRC) wishes to state that the Headline "Two Imprisoned for Perjury, Accused of 'lie on Sundaygar Dearboy' as published on the online news, FrontPage Africa on June 14, 2008 is misleading and does not present the truth of the situation.

Related: Two Imprisoned For Perjury - "Lied On Dearboy"

The headline is completely different from the story itself and even far apart from the findings of a probe conducted by the Special Magistrate on the matter.

The TRC clarifies that witness David Sayweah and Mr. Brown Taylue were arrested and imprisoned for their Contempt of the TRC and for committing perjury during investigations conducted by the Special Magistrate on the allegation of bribery against one of its Commissioners by Mr. David Sayweah and not because the two men "lied on Mr. Sundaygar Dearboy".

In his findings which were contained in a report to the TRC, the Special Magistrate Cllr. Andrew T. Davies maintain that indeed the testimony of Mr. David Sayweah who first gave a statement to a TRC statement taker in Grand Bassa County then later testified at the opening of the TRC Hearings in January in Monrovia accusing Mr. Marcus Davies Alias Sundaygar Dearboy of committing human rights violations were indeed the truth.

According to the Special Magistrate, "Mr. Sayweah's confession to the TRC statement taker is true and nothing but the truth that his sister was raped by men under the command of Mr. Sundaygar Dearboy and died subsequently, and that his Sayweah letter of alleged bribery against a Commissioner of the TRC was as a result of pressure to retract his statement.

It was established that at no time did Commissioner Massa Washington bribed the witness as was alleged. Commissioner Washington does not know Mr. Sundaygar Dearboy personally, have never interacted with him and therefore had no motive to target him. According to the probe result, Mr. Dearboy has himself admitted that he does not know the Commissioner.

It was also established that Commissioner Washington knew nothing about the witness statement to the statement giver and that she was out of the county doing diaspora work in the United States, and later Ghana when the witness gave his statement in Garduo's town, Grand Bassa County to the Statement Taker in October of last year.

Commissioner Washington does not know the village where the statement was taken, and only met the witness for the first time on the morning of the TRC hearings in the presence of other TRC officials.

"This being the case, how could anybody in his right mind entertain the thought that Commissioner Washington bribed Mr. David Sayweah to give false statement against Mr. Sundaygar Dearboy"? The probed report asked.

For his part, Mr. Brown Taylue was arrested and imprisoned for lying under oath and covering up on behalf of Mr. Dearboy when he Taylue misinformed the Special Magistrate during the investigations that he was the biological father of the witness Mr. David Sayweah and the deceased girl who was raped on order of then NPFL Commander, Mr. Sundaygar Dearboy and subsequently died as a result of the rape. During the investigation, it was discovered that Mr. Taylue is not the father of the witness neither is he the father of the deceased girl.

Instead, Mr. Browne Taylue is a friend of Mr. Sundaygar Dearboy and Dearboy's family and was paid and transported to Monrovia to lie to the news media via a press conference arranged by Mr. Dearboy's associates that he Taylue was the father of the two persons previously stated and that he had no daughter who had die during the war.

Both Mr. David Sayweah and Browne Taylue are now being persecuted for their contempt of the TRC for willfully obstructing and interfering with the work of the Commission by engaging in a cover up to hide the facts regarding human right offenses committed by Mr. Marcus Davis, alias Sundaygar Dearboy and his men when he Dearboy served as a commander of the NPFL rebels during the civil war.

Section 28 of the TRC Act states that: "Any person who willfully obstructs or otherwise interferes with the work of the TRC or any of its members or offices in the discharge of their functions under the Act, commits an offence and shall be liable on conviction to a fine not less than US$300.00 and not more than US$500.00 or its Liberian Dollars equivalence for the first offence to include a term of imprisonment not less than six months or both fine and imprisonment depending on the gravity of the offence".

Equally so, the men committed perjury when they lied under oath to the Special Magistrate during the month long investigations into the matter.

Confronting a Difficult Past: The Liberian Truth and Reconciliation Commision in St. Paul
Twin Cities Daily Planet
by Emily K. Bright
June 16, 2008

Witnesses at the Liberian Truth and Reconciliation hearing in St. Paul June 9-14 varied widely in their experiences and perspectives. The daughter of the Vice President under Samuel Doe in the 1980s wanted her murdered father to be remembered as a public servant willing to give his life for his country. The economic advisor under three presidents flew in from Philadelphia to give his inside perspective on what would be best for his country. A young nurse tearfully recounted finding the soldier who kidnapped and raped her during Taylor’s rebellion later promoted to a government security position.

The eight commissioners of the Liberian Truth and Reconciliation who heard testimony in St. Paul have their work cut out for them. Since January 2008, they have been holding public hearings on human rights violations during Liberia’s 14-year civil war. They are charged with making binding recommendations to the current administration on how to respond to Liberia’s past violence and to move forward.

Other countries, most famously South Africa, have held Truth and Reconciliation hearings in order to help a deeply scarred population process the events of the past, prosecute where necessary, forgive, and heal. Liberia is the first country to hold hearings outside its borders, among citizens who became refugees of the war. Last week’s hearings in St. Paul were their only stop outside of Liberia. Minnesota is home to one of the largest population of Liberians in the United States.

Liberia’s story since the late 1970s is one of corrupt leaders and coups, of brutal civil war and moments of calm in which some of those who fled the violence returned to their homes, only to have fighting break out again. Nearly one and a half million people fled their homes—half the population. About 250,000 people were killed, according to the Minnesota-based Advocates for Human Rights, who are coordinating the taking of statements throughout the United States and the United Kingdom. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) will focus on the human rights violations between January 1979 and October 2003, the year of the peace accord.

Eight commissioners—four men and four women—sat at a long table on the stage of the Sundin Music Hall at Hamline University. The audience of about fifty people included members of the media, interested onlookers, and Liberians in business suits and traditional dress. They trickled in and out as the testimonies continued. Over the course of six days, there were 21 scheduled hours of individual testimony and four and one-half hours of testimony from the Diaspora organization. That was the time allotted, but most of the testimonies ran long. Lunch breaks were cut short, and the days started earlier. There was so much to say.

The testimonies spanned the rules of three presidents: William Tolbert, killed in a coup in 1980; Samuel Doe, killed in a coup in 1990; and Charles Taylor, whose rebellion/coup sparked the civil war and who is currently being tried at the International Court of Justice for crimes against humanity.

“We all lost a lot of people. We all went through a lot of experiences. If we think about it, we’ll just be depressed more,” said witness Marie Y. Hayes, who had known all three presidents and was able to describe both their good and bad sides. She had just finished listing the names and ages of her relatives who were killed. One of the responsibilities of the TRC is to compile a list of names of those who were killed during the Civil War. There was virtually no one in Liberia who did not lose family members or friends.

To some extent, the fighting was intertribal, spurred on by decades of political maneuvering that created rifts between formerly peaceful groups. But the killing, torture, and rape was also indiscriminate, reported witness Jane Allison Samukai, whose family was forced from their suburban home by soldiers. She reported spending years in fear.

“We need to come to some sort of understanding about why this war happened,” Mrs. Hayes urged, stating that afterward she hoped to forget about those tragic events.

Her statement echoed that of TRC Chairman Jerome Verdier: “We are convinced that these hearings are the best opportunity yet for Liberians to learn from their mistakes” in order to “build a better future.”

“Thank you for coming here today, and for being honest.” Each commissioner began with some variation of this, honoring the witness’s statement before asking follow-up questions. They expressed their sympathies at each person’s loss.

The commissioners, too, went through the war. They are human rights activists: journalists, social workers, lawyers, and leaders of both Islamic and Christian faiths. It is up to them to recommend amnesties, prosecutions, reparations, and system reforms to President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf.

“We need to unite and rebuild as Liberians,” stated witness Alfred Zeo, a cousin of former President Doe, who saw his tribe given special privileges under Doe’s regime and then persecuted under Taylor’s. “We need to rebuild,” he repeated.

The question is how. That is what the commissioners must figure out.

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United States

Report: Exams Reveal Abuse, Torture of Detainees
CNN
June 18, 2008

Former terrorist suspects detained by the United States were tortured, according to medical examinations detailed in a report released Wednesday by a human rights group.

The Massachusetts-based Physicians for Human Rights reached that conclusion after two-day clinical evaluations of 11 former detainees, who had been held at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and in Afghanistan.

The detainees were never charged with crimes.

"We found clear physical and psychological evidence of torture and abuse, often causing lasting suffering," said Dr. Allen Keller, a medical evaluator for the study.

In a 121-page report, the doctors' group said that it uncovered medical evidence of torture, including beatings, electric shock, sleep deprivation, sexual humiliation, sodomy and scores of other abuses.

The report is prefaced by retired U.S. Major Gen. Antonio Taguba, who led the Army's investigation into the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal in 2003.

"There is no longer any doubt that the current administration committed war crimes," Taguba says. "The only question is whether those who ordered torture will be held to account."

Over the years, reports of abuses at Abu Ghraib and allegations of torture at Guantanamo prompted the Bush administration to deny that the U.S. military tortures detainees.

Since only 11 detainees were examined "the findings of this assessment cannot be generalized to the treatment of all detainees in U.S. custody," the report says.

However, the incidents documented are consistent with findings of other investigations into government treatment, "making it reasonable to conclude that these detainees were not the only ones abused, but are representative of a much larger number of detainees subjected to torture and ill treatment while in U.S. custody."

Four of the men evaluated were arrested in or taken to Afghanistan between late 2001 and early 2003 and later were sent to Guantanamo Bay, where they were held for an average of three years before being released without charge, the report says. The other seven were detained in Iraq in 2003 and released within a year, the report says.

All the subjects told examiners that they were subjected to multiple forms of torture or ill treatment that "often occurred in combination over a long period of time," the report says.

While the report presents synopses of the detainees' backgrounds based on interviews with them, the authors did not have access to the detainees' medical histories. Therefore, there's no way to know whether any of the inmates may have had medical or mental problems before being detained.

Among the ex-detainees was an Iraqi in his mid-40s, identified only as Laith, whom U.S. soldiers took into custody in October 2003 and who was released from Abu Ghraib in June 2004. According to the report, Laith was subjected to sleep deprivation, electric shocks and threats of sexual abuse to himself and his family.

"They took off even my underwear. They asked me to do some movements that make me look in a very bad way so they can take photographs. ... They were trying to make me look like an animal," Laith told examiners, according to the report.

According to the report, Laith said the most "painful" experiences involved threats to his family: "And they asked me, 'Have you ever heard voices of women in this prison?' I answered, 'Yes.' They were saying, 'Then you will hear your mothers and sisters when we are raping them.' "

The examiners concluded in the report that "Laith appears to have suffered severe and lasting physical and psychological injuries as a result of his arrest and incarceration at Abu Ghraib prison."

Another detainee, Youssef, was detained by U.S. soldiers nearly seven years ago when he tried to enter Afghanistan from neighboring Pakistan without a passport, the report says. He initially was held in an Afghan prison, where he describes "being stripped naked, being intimidated by dogs, being hooded and being thrown against the wall on repeated occasions," the report says.

A few months later, he was taken to the Guantanamo Bay facility, where he was subjected to interrogators who would enter his cell and force him to lie on the floor with his hands tied behind his back to his feet, the report says.

Youssef said the interrogators wanted him to confess of involvement with the Taliban, the report says.

Based on its investigation, the report calls on the U.S. government to issue a formal apology to detainees subject to torture and ill treatment by the military since fall 2001 in Afghanistan, Iraq, Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere.

The rights group also demands that the Bush administration:

• "Repudiate all forms of torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment";

• Establish an independent commission to investigate and report publicly the circumstances of detention and interrogation at U.S.-run prisons in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantanamo Bay;

• Hold individuals involved in torturing detainees accountable through criminal and civil processes; and

• Monitor thoroughly the conditions at U.S.-run prisons all over the world.

U.S. Judge Meets Lawyers to Discuss Guantanamo Cases
Reuters
by James Vicini
June 18, 2008

The U.S. District Court's chief judge said he met on Wednesday with lawyers for Guantanamo Bay prisoners and the Justice Department to go over security and procedural issues in view of a landmark ruling last week that allowed suspects to challenge their detention.

U.S. District Court Chief Judge Royce Lamberth convened the session following the high court's ruling on Thursday that held the prisoners can go before federal judges to challenge their years-long detention and seek their release.

In a defeat for what President George W. Bush has called a war on terrorism, the justices struck down the law Bush pushed through the Republican-led Congress in 2006 that took away the habeas corpus rights of the terrorism suspects to seek review of their detention by U.S. federal judges. In the meeting, lawyers for both sides discussed a number of security and procedural issues that are common to many of the nearly 200 cases pending before the court, a spokesman for Lamberth said.

"We had a constructive meeting today and will have a follow-up meeting next Wednesday. I plan to meet soon with the judges of this court to discuss the lawyers' suggestions for how we can move these cases most efficiently and expeditiously," Lamberth said in a statement.

The U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba opened in January 2002 after the administration launched what Bush called a war on terrorism in response to the September 11 attacks.

There now are about 270 prisoners at Guantanamo. Most have been held for years without being charged and many have complained of abuse.

Both the Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama and his Republican rival, Sen. John McCain, have pledged to close the Guantanamo prison, but they have differed sharply about the Supreme Court's ruling that gave the detainees expanded legal rights to seek judicial review of their cases.

Obama strongly praised the ruling, but McCain lambasted it, calling it "one of the worst decisions in the history of this country."

In a separate development, Justice Department lawyers said a U.S. appeals court should put on hold its more limited review of the military's designation of the prisoners as "enemy combatants" while the cases proceed before the federal judges.

More than 190 detainees are seeking review before the appeals court. The Supreme Court ruled that the review was an inadequate substitute for full hearings before federal judges.

Holding the appeals court cases while the other ones move forward would "minimize the disruption to military operations and help avoid the detainee cases from 'swamping' the judicial system," the lawyers said.

Charges in Haditha Killings Thrown Out
San Diego Union-Tribune
by Rick Rogers
June 18, 2008

A military judge yesterday said the poor judgment of a prominent general prompted him to dismiss all charges against the highest-ranking Marine being court-martialed in the killing of civilians in Haditha, Iraq.

Col. Steven Folsom made his ruling in a courtroom at Camp Pendleton during a hearing for Lt. Col. Jeffrey Chessani. His decision not only marked the latest setback for prosecutors in the Haditha case, but it also set the military community abuzz because it's extremely unusual for a judge to second-guess a top general.

“It has never happened in the hundreds of cases I have tried or presided over as a staff judge advocate,” said David Brahms of Carlsbad, who was a senior legal officer in the Marine Corps during the late 1980s and works as a lawyer specializing in military affairs.

In December 2006, Lt. Gen. James Mattis decided to press charges against four Camp Pendleton Marines for killing 24 men, women and children Nov. 19, 2005, in Haditha. He also charged another four Marines for not properly investigating the incident.

The charges followed months of international outrage and concern over the Iraqis' deaths, including remarks from President Bush, Iraq's prime minister and senior military officials who stressed the importance of ethical behavior on the battlefield.

Yesterday, only one of those defendants, Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich, still faced charges.

Folsom allowed the military to consider refiling charges against Chessani by Friday morning, but he banned any units linked with Mattis in the past two years from participating in the process.

Folsom ruled that Mattis acted wrongly in allowing Col. John Ewers, a subordinate who helped investigate Chessani and thus became a potential witness for the prosecution, to join deliberations about whether to file charges in the case. Folsom said the general created a real or perceived conflict of interest by doing so.

“Unlawful command influence is the mortal enemy of military justice. The appearance of unlawful command influence is as devastating as actual manipulation of a trial,” said Folsom, who described his ruling as drastic but necessary. “To restore public confidence ... we need to turn the clock back.”

When prosecutor Lt. Col. Sean Sullivan stood up to speak, Folsom told him to sit down. When Sullivan said he wanted to raise other issues, Folsom cut him short.

“Quite frankly, there are no other issues in the case,” Folsom said.

With a crack of the gavel, the hourlong hearing ended.

Mattis' oversight of the Haditha case was one of his many high-profile tasks at Camp Pendleton, where he was stationed between mid-2006 and late last year.

During that time, Mattis oversaw Marines at bases in California and Arizona as commander of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force. He also led the Marine Corps Forces Central Command, a job that required regular trips to Iraq, Afghanistan and other countries.

Now, as a four-star general, Mattis develops war strategies and plans combat exercises as head of the U.S. Joint Forces Command. He supervises more than 1 million service members, civil servants and contract employees in that role.

In addition, he is Supreme Allied Commander of Transformation for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. The job's description includes making changes to NATO's military structures, forces and doctrines.

While scrutinizing details of the Haditha case, Mattis held two-to five-hour meetings at least once a week with assistants knowledgeable about the incident. One of those people was Ewers.

During a June 2 hearing at Camp Pendleton, Mattis testified that he neither sought nor received advice from Ewers concerning the Haditha killings.

“He never offered it, and I wouldn't have accepted any,” Mattis said.

Yesterday, Navy Capt. Denny Moynihan, a spokesman for the Joint Forces Command, said Mattis testified “under oath that he did not speak to (Ewers) about the case and was not influenced by him. He stands by his statement under oath.”

Folsom said he found it hard to fathom that “not one person in a room full of lawyers” stood up to tell Mattis that Ewers' presence during the strategy sessions suggested at least the appearance of undue command influence.

Chessani showed no emotion as the judge read his ruling. Outside the courtroom, defense attorney Brian Rooney spoke on behalf of Chessani and his wife, Alissa, who stood nearby.

“They are happy. Like all of us, they are cautiously optimistic,” Rooney said. “Essentially, the judge said that if they want to file charges, they have to start back at square one.”

Chessani, who wasn't at the site of the Haditha killings, was charged with not following a lawful order and dereliction of duty.

The Folsom decision sent ripples through the circles of military and legal analysts. Some talked about what circumstances could have led to the stunning ruling, while others pondered what it might mean for the military's legal system.

“First, this should not have happened,” said Tom Umberg, a former military prosecutor who is in private practice in Costa Mesa. “But people can become lax in terms of responsibility to the system or become intimidated and fail to voice their concerns.”

Eugene Fidell, president of the National Institute of Military Justice in Washington, D.C., said criminal investigations can create highly sensitive situations, such as fact-gatherers who later become involved in other phases of a case.

But that's when it's most important to pay attention to conflict of interest and other matters of legal propriety, he said.

“I think any time roles get confused, it has a terrible effect on the administration of justice,” Fidell added. “The whole goal of independent decision making is eroded.”

Brahms also wondered why Ewers didn't object to attending the strategy meetings with Mattis, saying that Ewers is one of the most experienced staff judge advocates in the Marine Corps.

“My concern is that people are going to look at this and say that the military justice process cannot be trusted,” Brahms said. “I think that is the wrong message, but it might be the one that is taken away.”

Yesterday's ruling could portend a full collapse for the prosecution of the Haditha case, which has seen generals drop charges against one defendant after another because of factors such as lack of evidence and plea deals in which the government exonerates a Marine in exchange for his future testimony.

Prosecutors have argued that Wuterich, the staff sergeant, led some members of his squad in attacking Iraqi civilians as revenge for a roadside bomb that killed one Marine and wounded two others.

The defendants said they couldn't avoid killing the civilians during a legitimate battle that broke out with insurgents after the blast. Wuterich's attorneys have hinted that they might also allege undue command influence.

“The question is, will there be different outcomes?” Brahms said. “I don't think people have the same stomach chasing after Chessani as they do Wuterich.”

Justices, 5-4, Back Detainee Appeals for Guantanamo
The New York Times
by Linda Greenhouse
June 13, 2008

The Supreme Court on Thursday delivered its third consecutive rebuff to the Bush administration’s handling of the detainees at Guantánamo Bay, ruling 5 to 4 that the prisoners there have a constitutional right to go to federal court to challenge their continued detention.

The court declared unconstitutional a provision of the Military Commissions Act of 2006 that, at the administration’s behest, stripped the federal courts of jurisdiction to hear habeas corpus petitions from the detainees seeking to challenge their designation as enemy combatants.

Writing for the majority, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy said the truncated review procedure provided by a previous law, the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005, “falls short of being a constitutionally adequate substitute” because it failed to offer “the fundamental procedural protections of habeas corpus.”

Justice Kennedy declared: “The laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times.”

The decision, left some important questions unanswered. These include “the extent of the showing required of the government” at a habeas corpus hearing in order to justify a prisoner’s continued detention, as Justice Kennedy put it, as well as the handling of classified evidence and the degree of due process to which the detainees are entitled.

Months or years of continued litigation may lie ahead, unless the Bush administration, or the administration that follows it, reverses course and closes the prison at Guantánamo Bay, which now holds 270 detainees. Chief Judge Royce C. Lamberth of the Federal District Court here said the court’s judges would meet in the next few days with lawyers for both sides to decide “how we can approach our task most effectively and efficiently.”

There are some 200 habeas corpus petitions awaiting action in the District Court, including those filed by the 37 detainees whose appeals were before the Supreme Court in the case decided on Thursday, Boumediene v. Bush, No. 06-1195.

Despite the open questions, the decision, which was joined by Justices John Paul Stevens, David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Stephen G. Breyer, was categorical in its rejection of the administration’s basic arguments. Indeed, the court repudiated the fundamental legal basis for the administration’s strategy, adopted in the immediate aftermath of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, of housing prisoners captured in Afghanistan and elsewhere at the United States naval base in Cuba, where Justice Department lawyers advised the White House that domestic law would never reach.

In a concurring opinion on Thursday, Justice Souter said the ruling was “no bolt out of the blue,” but rather should have been anticipated by anyone who read the court’s decision in Rasul v. Bush in 2004. That decision, part of the initial round of Supreme Court review of the administration’s Guantánamo policies, held that because the long-term lease with Cuba gave the United States unilateral control over the property, the base came within the statutory jurisdiction of the federal courts to hear habeas corpus petitions.

Congress responded the next year, in the Detainee Treatment Act, by amending the statute to remove jurisdiction, and it did so again in the Military Commissions Act to make clear that it wanted the removal to apply to cases already in the pipeline. The decision on Thursday went beyond the statutory issue to decide, for the first time, the underlying constitutional question.

President Bush, appearing with Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi of Italy at a news conference in Rome, said he was unhappy with the decision. “We’ll abide by the court’s decision — that doesn’t mean I have to agree with it,” the president said, adding that “it was a deeply divided court, and I strongly agree with those who dissented.”

The dissenting opinions, one by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and the other by Justice Scalia, were vigorous. Each signed the other’s, and the other two dissenters, Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr., signed both.

Of the two dissenting opinions, Justice Antonin Scalia’s was the more apocalyptic, predicting “devastating” and “disastrous consequences” from the decision. “It will almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed,” he said. “The nation will live to regret what the court has done today.” He said the decision was based not on principle, “but rather an inflated notion of judicial supremacy.”

Chief Justice Roberts, in somewhat milder tones, said the decision represented “overreaching” that was “particularly egregious” and left the court open to “charges of judicial activism.” The decision, he said, “is not really about the detainees at all, but about caontrol of federal policy regarding enemy combatants.” The public will “lose a bit more control over the conduct of this nation’s foreign policy to unelected, politically unaccountable judges,” he added.

The focus of the chief justice’s ire was the choice the majority made to go beyond simply ruling that the detainees were entitled to file habeas corpus petitions. Under two unrelated Supreme Court precedents, formal habeas corpus procedures are not necessarily required, as long as Congress provides an “adequate substitute.”

Congress in this instance did provide an alternative procedure that might be viewed as a substitute. The Detainee Treatment Act gave detainees access to the federal appeals court here to challenge their designation as enemy combatants, made by a military panel called a Combatant Status Review Tribunal.

The detainees’ lawyers argued that because this process fell far short of the review provided by traditional habeas corpus, it could not be considered an adequate substitute. The appeals court itself never decided that question, because it ruled in February 2007 that the detainees had no right to habeas corpus in the first place, and that all their petitions must be dismissed. It was this ruling that the Supreme Court reviewed on Thursday.

Justice Kennedy said the Supreme Court, having decided that there was a right to habeas corpus, would “in the ordinary course” send the case back to the appeals court for it to consider “in the first instance” whether the alternative procedure was an adequate substitute.

But he said “the gravity of the separation-of-powers issues raised by these cases and the fact that these detainees have been denied meaningful access to a judicial forum for a period of years render these cases exceptional” and required the justices to decide the issue for themselves rather than incur further delay.

The majority’s conclusion was that the alternative procedure had major flaws, mostly because it did not permit a detainee to present evidence that might clear him of blame but was either withheld from the record of the Combatant Status Review Tribunal or was learned of subsequently. The tribunals’ own fact-finding ability was so limited as to present “considerable risk of error,” thus requiring full-fledged scrutiny on appeal, Justice Kennedy said.

Eric M. Freedman, a habeas corpus expert at Hofstra University Law School, said the court was “on the right side of history” to reject what he called “habeas lite.” Calling the decision “a structural reaffirmation of what the rule of law means,” Professor Freedman, who was a consultant to the detainees’ lawyers, said it was as important a ruling on the separation of powers as the Supreme Court has ever issued.

Mr. Bush, in his statement in Rome, said the administration would decide whether to ask Congress to weigh in once more. Success at such an effort would appear unlikely, given that the Supreme Court decision was praised not only by the Democratic leadership, but also by the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania. Senator Specter had voted for the jurisdiction-stripping measure, but then filed a brief at the court arguing that the law was unconstitutional.

In addition to removing habeas corpus jurisdiction, the Military Commissions Act also provided authority for the military commissions that the court’s 2006 decision in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld said was lacking. The case the court decided on Thursday did not directly concern military commissions, which are due to conduct trials of the several dozen detainees who have been charged with war crimes. The Justice Department said on Thursday that the decision would not delay those trials.

Divided as the Supreme Court was in this case, the justices were unanimous, surprisingly so, in a second habeas corpus ruling on Thursday. Again rejecting the Bush administration’s position, the court held in an opinion by Chief Justice Roberts that two civilian United States citizens being held in American military custody in Iraq were entitled to file habeas corpus petitions.

Proceeding to the merits of the petitions, the court then ruled against the two men, Mohammad Munaf and Shawqi Ahmad Omar, who are facing criminal charges under Iraqi law. Their release through habeas corpus “would interfere with the sovereign authority of Iraq to punish offenses against its laws committed within its borders,” Chief Justice Roberts said.

The administration had argued in the case, Munaf v. Geren, No. 06-1666, that because the men were technically held by the 26-nation multinational force in Iraq, federal courts did not have jurisdiction to hear their habeas corpus petitions. Chief Justice Roberts said that, to the contrary, what mattered was that the men were held by “American soldiers subject to a United States chain of command.”

Steven Lee Myers contributed reporting from Rome.

Guantanamo War Crimes Trial Fall Short, Says Arbour
Reuters
by Stephanie Nebehay
June 10, 2008

U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour said on Tuesday planned Guantanamo war crimes trials fell short of international standards and handing down death penalties would be "just not acceptable".

In an interview with Reuters before leaving office on June 30, the former U.N. war crimes chief prosecutor chided the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush for last week's decision to distance itself from the United Nations Human Rights Council.

It was much too soon to write off the Geneva forum set up two years ago, in which Washington could play an important role in defusing a perceived confrontation between members of the European Union (EU) and Islamic countries, according to Arbour.

The former Canadian Supreme Court judge, 61, is going home after deciding not to seek a second four-year term. Arbour has long denounced the system created by the Bush administration to try suspected al Qaeda operatives outside regular civilian and military courts, and alleged torture and secret renditions conducted in the U.S.-led "war on terrorism".

"In a process where the definition of a crime is somewhat more ambiguous, the standard of proof is lowered, the capacity to make a full answer of defence is lowered, the chances of wrongful conviction necessarily increases," Arbour said.

"So to add the death penalty to that, it seems to me, is just not acceptable," she said of the Guantanamo trials.

Arbour said international human rights law permitted the death penalty for the most serious crimes if trials are fair.

"There has to be impeccable due process, the process has to meet the highest standards of fairness," she said. "Frankly, I think the military commissions... fall short in many respects."

Shortcomings at Guantanamo included insufficient access to evidence by the defence. "I think the process is not adequate to justify recourse to the death penalty."

WRONGFUL CONVICTIONS

The Pentagon has declared the trials a national priority and is doubling the number of military lawyers assigned to them even as critics say the government is rushing because it wants to influence U.S. presidential elections in November.

Air Force Brig. Gen. Thomas Hartmann, legal adviser to the Pentagon appointee overseeing the trials, told journalists visiting the U.S. naval base in southeastern Cuba on Sunday that providing "fair, just and transparent trials" was its top duty.

Five accused al Qaeda prisoners who could be executed if convicted of plotting the Sept. 11 attacks, which killed nearly 3,000 people, appeared in court there for the first time last week after spending about three years in secret CIA prisons.

Even in trials held under a rigorous judicial system with proper defence, wrongful convictions can result, according to Arbour, an expert on Canadian and international criminal law.

PREMATURE SIGNAL

The U.S. State Department said last Friday that it would disengage from the U.N. Human Rights Council, except when there was an issue of "deep national interest".

Arbour said U.S. concerns included the Council's "perceived fixation on the Middle East" and several resolutions dealing specifically with alleged abuses by its ally Israel.

But she suggested it was "premature to send such a negative signal" just as the 47-member forum has begun examining the rights records of all states. The innovative mechanism known as the Universal Peer Review is meant to overcome double standards.

"The sooner we can persuade the Americans to join the Council and reengage more fully, the better," she said.

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UN Reports

World Court Prosecutor Says Darfur a 'Crime Scene'
Associated Press
by John Heilprin
June 6, 2008

Sudan's actions in Darfur have helped turn the region into "a crime scene," the chief U.N. prosecutor charged Thursday, expanding on a scathing report this week that directly linked the government to a feared militia blamed for much of the killing.

"Despite promises and denials, over the last five years, millions of civilians have been targeted by officials who vowed to protect them. Impunity reigns," International Criminal Court chief prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo told a rapt Security Council.

In the report obtained earlier this week by The Associated Press, Moreno-Ocampo alleged that Sudan's "whole state apparatus" is implicated in crimes against humanity in the country's western Darfur region.

According to the report, Sudan during the past six months has not shown any increased cooperation with the court — as is required under international law set by the council — in securing the arrests of people indicted by the court for crimes against humanity in the country's Darfur region.

Sudan called the allegations fictitious, vicious and harmful to the prospects of peace.

"We have seen it before. The Nazi regime invoked its national sovereignty to attack its own population, and then crossed borders to attack people in other countries," he told the council. "The evidence shows that the commission of such crimes on such a scale, over a period of five years, and throughout Darfur, has required the sustained mobilization of the entire Sudanese state apparatus."

He promised to present evidence next month at court headquarters in The Hague, Netherlands, from a lengthy probe by investigators based in neighboring Chad and from more than 100 witnesses in 18 countries.

Up to 300,000 have died in Darfur and 2.5 million have fled to refugee camps since 2003, when local ethnic African rebels took up arms against the Arab-dominated central government, accusing it of discrimination. Sudan denies backing the janjaweed militia of Arab nomads, who are accused of the worst atrocities in the conflict.

Costa Rica's foreign affairs minister, Bruno Stagno Ugarte, urged the council to toughen its stance.

"As time passes, we risk accommodating evil as the graves continue to fill in Darfur," he said. "The government of Sudan is toying with us, toying with human dignity, toying with the authority of this council."

This month's council president, U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, called it a "very disturbing report" to which the council will craft a formal response.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon also was "deeply concerned" by the report, aides said in a statement.

The allegations and countercharges come just as diplomats from the 15 Security Council nations are visiting Sudan this week to get a firsthand look at the humanitarian crisis in Darfur. The council is also trying to salvage the faltering peace process that ended two decades of civil war between the north and south in 2005.

Sudan's U.N. ambassador, Abdalmahmood Abdalhaleem Mohamed, accused Moreno-Ocampo of destroying the peace process with his charges.

"We will never submit any of our citizens to be tried in the Hague," Mohamed said. "Ocampo is destroying the peace process and we demand that this man be held accountable for what he is doing to the peace process in Sudan."

World Court Prosecutor Says He Plans New Indictments Against Sudanese Officials
VOA News
June 6, 2008

The chief prosecutor for the International Criminal Court has told the United Nations Security Council he plans to seek new indictments against Sudanese officials linked to the conflict in Darfur.

Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo told the Security Council Thursday that the entire Darfur region is "a crime scene," where rapes, attacks on schools, and seizures of land regularly occur. He said such things could only occur on such a broad scale with the compliance of the government.

He did not name the new officials he intends to prosecute.

Sudan's president, Omar al-Bashir, told a visiting U.N. Security Council delegation in Khartoum that his country will not cooperate with the International Criminal Court.

He also told council members that Sudan is the subject of an unfair and ill-intentioned campaign from some quarters, bent on exploiting the crisis in Darfur.

President Bashir also told the council that a crisis between the country's north and south over the contested oil region of Abyei would soon be resolved through dialogue.

In another development Thursday, the U.N. and A.U. envoys to Darfur say prospects for substantive peace talks on the Darfur crisis are not good. The diplomats failed to get peace negotiations between Sudan's government and Darfur rebels re-started during a two-day meeting in Geneva.

U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon urged Sudan Thursday to cooperate with the International Criminal Court over its indictments of Darfur war crimes suspects. The court issued arrest warrants for two crime suspects more than a year ago. Sudan has refused to hand over the two men.

Darfur has been mired in five years of conflict between rebels, the Sudanese government and government-backed militias. The United Nations says the conflict has displaced some 2 1/2 million people and killed up to 300,000 others. Sudan says 10,000 have been killed.

UN tribunal turns down request to transfer former businessman’s case to Rwanda
UN News Service
June 9, 2008

The United Nations war crimes tribunal set up to deal with the 1994 Rwandan genocide has announced that it has turned down a request to transfer to the small Great Lakes nation the case of a former businessman alleged to have supervised the massacre of some 2,000 Tutsi civilians taking shelter in a church.

Gaspard Kanyarukiga, who was arrested in South Africa in July 2004, has plead not guilty to charges of genocide, complicity in genocide and extermination as a crime against humanity by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR).

The Tribunal’s trial chamber found that while Rwanda has made strides towards improving its judicial system, including having the proper laws criminalizing Mr. Kanyarukiga’s alleged crimes and the abolition of the death penalty, it was not satisfied that he would receive a fair trial if his case is transferred.

Firstly, it expressed concern that the defendant would not be able to sufficiently call witnesses living outside Rwanda. It also said the defence would have difficulty accessing witnesses residing within the country because they may be too frightened to testify. Lastly, the chamber said there is a chance that Mr. Kanyarukiga could face solitary confinement if sentenced to life imprisonment.

According to the indictment presented to the Arusha-based ICTR, in 1994 he transported police and members of the notorious Interahamwe militia to Nyange church in western Rwanda, where about 2,000 Tutsi civilians had taken refuge.

The police and militia poured fuel through the church’s roof, set it on fire and then used guns and grenades to kill the Tutsis. The defendant is alleged to have supervised these events and then ordered the corpses to be removed and the church destroyed.

The indictment further alleges that the businessman held several meetings with local political and religious leaders where they discussed how to kill Tutsis.

At least 800,000 people, mostly Tutsis and moderate Hutus, were murdered during the genocide.

Former Rwandan Official Pleads Not Guilty Before UN Genocide Tribunal
UN News Service
June 10, 2008

A former Rwandan official who is alleged to have planned the killing of up to 25,000 Tutsis during the country’s 1994 genocide today pleaded not guilty to the charges brought against him at the United Nations war crimes tribunal set up to deal with the mass killings.

Dominique Ntawukuriryayo is facing charges at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) – which is based in Arusha, Tanzania – of genocide, complicity in genocide, and direct and public incitement to commit genocide for acts committed during the period from 6 April to 17 July 1994.

The indictment against the former deputy prefect in Butare prefecture alleges that Mr. Ntawukuriryayo had de facto control over local and regional leaders, administrative personnel, communal police and Interahamwe and other militias in Butare during the genocide.

In addition, he allegedly incited the public to participate in genocide by promising money, land and houses to those who killed the most number of Tutsis.

Mr. Ntawukuriryayo was arrested in France in 2007 and transferred to the ICTR on 5 June of this year.

UN Tribunal Welcomes Arrest of Bosnian Serb War Crimes Suspects
UN News Service
June 11, 2008

The Prosecutor of the United Nations tribunal set up to deal with the worst crimes committed during the Balkan conflicts of the 1990s has welcomed today’s announcement that indicted Bosnian war crimes suspect Stojan Župljanin had been arrested.

“The Prosecutor’s Office welcomes this development and the fact that this now brings the number of fugitives from four to three,” Olga Kavran, spokesperson for the Prosecutor of the UN International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), said.

Serbian authorities today informed the Tribunal, which is based in The Hague, Netherlands, that Mr. Župljanin had been arrested. There had been a previous, unsuccessful attempt to apprehend the suspect.

Ms. Kavran said today’s events confirmed what the Prosecutor has been saying for some time – namely that the remaining Bosnia Serb fugitives are within reach of Serbia.

“We hope, of course, that Župljanin will be in The Hague shortly and that he will soon be followed by the remaining three fugitives – Radovan Karadžic, Ratko Mladic and Goran Hadžic,” she added.

International Criminal Court Suspends Case Against Congolese Rebel Militia Chief
UN News Service
June 16, 2008

The International Criminal Court (ICC) has suspended proceedings against the Congolese rebel militia leader Thomas Lubanga Dyilo, accused of recruiting child soldiers, after finding that prosecutors had failed to disclose more than 200 documents to the defence that have the potential to prove Mr. Lubanga’s innocence.

The ICC trial chamber, which sits in The Hague, imposed the stay on the case on Friday and announced that the trial process will remain halted unless the stay is lifted. A hearing will now be held on 24 June to consider whether Mr. Lubanga should be released from custody.

Mr. Lubanga, the founder and leader of the Union of Congolese Patriots in the Ituri region of the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), has been charged with a series of war crimes, including conscripting and enlisting child soldiers into the military wing of his group and then using them to participate in hostilities between September 2002 and August 2003.

The judges said they had decided to stay the proceedings because the failure of prosecutors to disclose the documents they had in their possession – which contained “a significant body of exculpatory evidence” – to defence lawyers had the effect of “improperly inhibiting the opportunities for the accused to prepare his defence.”

The judges added that the disclosure of exculpatory evidence held by prosecutors is a fundamental aspect of the accused’s right to a fair trial.

The trial of Mr. Lubanga was due to have been the first to be held by the ICC, and it had been scheduled to begin next Monday.

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NGO Reports

ICC Prosecutor's Report to UN Highlights Ongoing Crimes
AMICC
June 5, 2008

ICC Prosecutor's report to UN highlights ongoing crimes: On June 5, 2008 ICC Chief Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo delivered his seventh bi-annual report to the UN Security Council regarding his office's investigation into crimes committed in the situation in Darfur. In his statement to the Council, the Prosecutor again called for the Ahmad Harun and Ali Kushayb and stated that his office would bring two more Darfur cases later this year. In response to the report, Security Council President and US Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad reiterated the US commitment to justice for Darfur and support for a Security Council Presidential Statement (PRST) in order to achieve accountability. Click here to read a New York Times article on the hearing.

Arraigning the 9/11 Suspects, Guantanamo Style
Human Rights Watch
by Joanne Mariner
June 7, 2008

Guantánamo Bay, Cuba – It should have been a great day for justice. The alleged perpetrators of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks were finally appearing in court. This was their arraignment, at which they were to be formally charged of conspiring to cause the death of 2,973 people in the United States. But this was no ordinary court at all: It was a military commission, taking place more than six years after the terrorist attacks. And the quality of justice that the defendants were due to receive was in serious doubt.

"This military commission is called to order," the judge, Marine Col. Ralph Kohlmann, announced on Thursday. Strangely, the movement of his lips and the sound of his voice were out of synch. For the press and human rights observers like me, sitting behind a glass wall in the gallery, there was a 20-second delay between the time something was said and the time we heard it. People in the courtroom would stand up to talk, but we wouldn't hear them until after they had sat back down. The mismatch was disconcerting.

Judge Kohlmann told the courtroom audience that the purpose of the delay was to protect classified information. He explained that the defendants had been "exposed" to such information, and that any statement any of them made was "presumptively classified." The 20-second delay was designed to give the security advisor, who was sitting in the courtroom listening intently, enough time to conduct the censorship deemed necessary.

Most of the daylong hearing went uncensored. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the self-proclaimed architect of the Sept. 11 attacks, was given free rein to describe his wish for martyrdom, to criticize President Bush, and even to chant Koranic verses in a surprisingly melodic voice.

Mohammed called the security measures "red lines" and said he understood that they were intended to prohibit the audience from hearing what they were not allowed to hear. "They explained them to me," he announced, without saying who "they" were. "I don't have to mention about the country names, [and] I don't have to mention about the torture."

The U.S. government's sensitivity to those two topics is familiar to observers of these cases. The government fears that the defendants might divulge details about the way in which they were treated – or, more to the point, tortured – and about the countries in which they were held.

Mohammed and the other four detainees being arraigned Thursday were originally captured in 2002 and 2003, held for years in the custody of the CIA or the abusive foreign regimes working as its allies, and not transferred to Guantánamo until September 2006. In February 2008 the CIA director, Gen. Michael Hayden, acknowledged that Mohammed had been subjected to waterboarding, a form of mock drowning. Others were reportedly subjected to other abusive interrogation methods while in CIA custody, including extended sleep deprivation, the imposition of painful stress positions, and forced nudity.

Mohammed managed not to offend the censor during his interchanges with the judge, unlike two of his co-defendants. The censor twice muted the proceedings when defendant Ramzi bin al-Shibh – who, like Mohammed and the other three, faces the death penalty in this case – discussed the psychotropic medication he is taking. Another 90-second sound cut came when defendant Ali Abdul Aziz Ali was saying how he felt his treatment was "unfair and unjust." He started describing the day of his arrest – and then his account dissolved into loud static.

Ali, the youngest of the five defendants, did manage to make a point about abuse in explaining his decision to refuse legal representation. He said that he was skeptical of the U.S. government's desire to provide him "free-of-charge lawyers" since the government had "tortured [him] free of charge for years."

Although torture was an inescapable backdrop to the case, the question of legal representation was the centerpiece of the day's proceedings. And it was this issue, above all, that made the proceedings a failure.

"The matters that we're going to be discussing today are fairly simple," Kohlmann said at the outset, a comment that struck many observers as dismissive. The same attitude was apparent moments later when the civilian attorneys for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Ramzi bin al-Shibh tried to convince the judge that any ruling on the legal representation question should be postponed. The attorneys had previously tried to postpone the arraignment, describing how, because of the government's delays in granting them security clearances, they had had only minimal contact with their clients. (Mohammed and bin al-Shibh had spent more time with their military counsel, but, as one military lawyer pointed out, there are obvious reasons for a prisoner at Guantánamo not to view a uniformed military officer as an advocate.)

After a testy exchange with the lawyers, in which Kohlmann showed little interest in hearing what they had to say, the judge abruptly indicated that he'd had enough. "Sit down," the judge warned one of the attorneys, in a peremptory tone of voice that implied "sit down and shut up." This was to be the first of several such exchanges over the course of the day.

Wearing a white robe, thick black glasses and a white turban – and looking at least 15 years older than the age he claimed (43) – Khalid Sheikh Mohammed seemed confident and self-aware. Addressing him first, Kohlmann got straight to the point: "Do you desire to be represented by the lawyers who are seated at your counsel table today?"

After chanting for a while, invoking God, and promising not to name the countries in which he had been detained, Mohammed said: "I will not accept any attorney." And that was pretty much it, in terms of the outcome, although the judge did walk Mohammed through the required steps for asserting the right to self-representation. (Do you understand that you could be sentenced to death? Mohammed: "This is what I wish." Do you understand that a lawyer knows the law better than you and is better able to keep an objective distance from the case? Mohammed: "God is all-sufficient." And so on.)

Mohammed's English was serviceable, if not fluent, and he seemed to enjoy the opportunity for verbal sparring with the court. The judge also allowed him to chat at length with his co-defendants, who were lined up at tables behind him on the left side of the room.

The content of these conversations jumped to prominence near the end of the day. From the perspective of proper justice, it was among the hearing's most appalling moments. Maj. John Jackson, counsel for the defendant Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi, informed the judge that before the hearing started, when the defendants were talking, his client had been intimidated by his co-defendants. As Jackson explained in greater detail after the hearing ended: "Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is saying to my client, 'What are you, in the American army now?' ... It was clear that Mr. Mohammed was attempting to intimidate Mr. al-Hawsawi into not accepting me as counsel. He [al-Hawsawi] was shaking."

In the end, al-Hawsawi told Kohlmann he wanted to represent himself, just as the four defendants interviewed before him had done. Although the judge decided to postpone ruling on al-Hawsawi's request, he did rule that three of the other four defendants had freely relinquished their right to counsel. (Because of the medication concerns that were raised in Ramzi bin al-Shibh's case, the judge also postponed ruling on al-Shibh's request to represent himself.)

It is a defendant's right not to accept legal counsel – but only if he does so knowingly and voluntarily. "Voluntarily" means, of course, that it should not be done out of fear, and "knowingly" means that he should have a good understanding of the consequences of what he is doing. While there may be good reason to believe that one or more of the defendants would decide to represent themselves even if given a fair opportunity to choose, the judge's precipitous rush to address this question has badly harmed future prospects for the trial.

Five defendants who represent themselves are very likely to be five defendants who receive the death penalty faster. This may be a quick way to so-called martyrdom for those who declare they want it, but it is not justice.

Trial Chamber I Suspends Lubanga Trial, ICC's First
AMICC
June 13, 2008

Trial Chamber I suspends Lubanga trial, ICC's first: On June 13, 2008 the judges of Trial Chamber I issued a decision staying the proceedings in the case of The Prosecutor v. Thomas Lubanga Dyilo. The trial was set to begin on June 23, 2008. The Chamber found that the failure of the Prosecutor to disclose evidence tending to show the innocence of the accused, as required by the Rome Statute, improperly denied Mr. Lubanga the opportunity to prepare his defense. Click here to read remarks about the first trial and its delay by Sir Adrian Fulford, presiding judge of the Lubanga trial, on February 22 at the British Embassy in The Hague. Pre-Trial Chamber I confirmed the charges against Mr. Lubanga in January 2007 for the war crime of conscripting or enlisting child soldiers as the alleged leader of the Union des Patriotes Congolais (UPC) militia in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Listen to an interview on the Lubanga case with ICC Deputy Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda.

UN: Council Faults Sudan Inaction on War Crimes Suspects
Human Rights Watch
June 16, 2008

The UN Security Council’s presidential statement criticizing Sudan’s failure to cooperate with the International Criminal Court (ICC) signals international impatience with impunity for Darfur war crimes suspects, Human Rights Watch said today. The presidential statement, issued this morning, is the first time that the Security Council has formally taken action on Sudan’s failure to comply with the ICC arrest warrants for two Sudanese suspects.

“The unanimous Security Council statement sends the message that Khartoum cannot obstruct justice by recycling unkept promises to accept peacekeepers,” said Richard Dicker, director of Human Rights Watch’s International Justice Program. “Sudan must take real action on both justice and peacekeeping.”

The Security Council statement notes the transmission of the arrest warrants to the government of Sudan one year ago and “urges the Government of Sudan and all other parties to the conflict in Darfur to cooperate fully with the Court, consistent with resolution 1593 (2005), in order to put an end to impunity for the crimes committed in Darfur.” The statement was adopted under the US presidency of the council.

On June 5, International Criminal Court Prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo briefed the Security Council on Sudan’s defiance of two arrest warrants that resulted from resolution 1593, which referred the situation in Darfur to the ICC prosecutor. Since then, Security Council members have been discussing a presidential statement introduced by Costa Rica, which joined the council in January. When the prosecutor last reported on Sudan’s non-cooperation in December, the council was unable to agree on a statement because of opposition from China.

Moreno Ocampo’s June 5 report highlighted Sudan’s continuing failure to arrest and surrender government official Ahmed Haroun and militia leader Ali Kosheib, who were charged in the court’s April 2007 arrest warrants with crimes against humanity and war crimes. He called on the Security Council to send a strong unified message to Khartoum that it is obliged to comply with Security Council resolution 1593 and to arrest the suspects.

The Security Council recently returned from a June 4-5 visit to Khartoum. Unlike its 2007 mission to Sudan, the Security Council’s terms of reference for this trip included cooperation with the ICC arrest warrants, and the council raised Sudan’s blatant noncompliance with the ICC with Sudanese officials, including President Omar El Bashir.

“The Security Council has put justice for the people of Darfur back on the table,” Dicker said. “The Sudanese authorities need to get – and act on – the message that it is past time to arrest Haroun and Kosheib and to hand them over to the ICC.”

In their comments following the prosecutor’s briefing, a clear majority of council members made strong interventions supporting a presidential statement. In a forceful intervention at the start of the debate, Costa Rica’s foreign minister, Bruno Stagno Ugarte, invoked the ghosts of Security Council missteps in Rwanda and Srebrenica to encourage the council to act.

The Security Council referred the situation in Darfur to the ICC prosecutor on March 31, 2005. On April 27, 2007, the court issued the first two arrest warrants for “Janjaweed” militia leader Ali Kosheib and Sudanese State Minister of Humanitarian Affairs Ahmed Haroun for 51 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity. In his three regular reports to the Security Council since then, the prosecutor has informed the council of Sudan’s refusal to cooperate with the ICC.

“Costa Rica provided invaluable leadership,” Dicker said. “We also welcome the role played by the US government as Security Council president. This support for justice marks a further break from Washington’s previously ill-conceived and highly ideological opposition to the ICC.”

Security Council Issues Darfur Presidential Statement
AMICC
June 16, 2008

Security Council issues Darfur presidential statement: On June 16, 2008 the United States presidency of the UN Security Council issued a Presidential Statement (PRST) adopted by consensus calling on Sudan to cooperate with the ICC, including on arrest warrants issued by the Court. It follows the June 5, 2008 seventh bi-annual report of ICC Chief Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo to the Security Council regarding his office's investigation into crimes committed in the situation in Darfur. In his statement to the Council, the Prosecutor again called for the arrest of Ahmad Harun and Ali Kushayb and stated that his office would bring two more Darfur cases later this year. Following the report, Security Council President and US Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad reiterated the US commitment to justice for Darfur and support for a Security Council PRST in order to achieve accountability.

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