War Crimes

The United Nations said Monday it had completed the panel of judges slated to oversee the prosecution of the formal investigation into the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, over three years after his Feb. 14, 2005 killing.

The U.N. Undersecretary for Legal Affairs Nicolas Michel said the panel consisted of 11 judges, with four Lebanese judges sitting on the panel. Michel noted the drafts outlining the procedural rules were completed and stressed the court would “have teeth” – or the power to issue arrest warrants for suspects.

Michel noted that many involved in the plot possibly lived outside of Lebanon and urged the international community to practice solidarity with the tribunal so it “would not remain helpless and inactive.”

A U.N. commission said Friday that a “criminal network” was behind the plot to assassinate Hariri and that it was connected with other acts of political violence in Lebanon, though it moved away from implicating Syrian interests in the plot.

It took over three years just to sit a panel of judges on this one. With Lebanon stepping every closer to the political turmoil that brought the country to a decades-long civil war, the international community, and the investigatory panel, need to open the door on the complex web that is the Lebanese confessional system once and for all.

The Lebanese Daily Star

Dith Pran, a survivor of the Khmer Rouge genocide and photojournalist for The New York Times, died Sunday of pancreatic cancer at a New Jersey hospital.  He was 65.

Dith worked alongside the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Sydney Schanberg to relay the story of the Cambodian atrocities to the international news media at both of their perils. Schanberg credits Dith with saving his life when the pair were captured by the Khmer Rouge.

Dith suffered in a Cambodian labor camp run by the radical communist regime when the Khmer Rouge seized power there in 1975.  He spent several years at the labor camp and lost more than 50 of his relatives to torture or starvation.

Schanberg remembers Dith as a journalist who was “always doing good deeds for people in the Buddhist tradition.” Dith escaped Cambodia to Thailand in 1979 where Schanberg flew to met him. He long advocated attention to the Cambodian genocides, compiling several stories and books on the subject while continuing his work with the Times.  Dith was portrayed by Dr. Haing Ngor, himself a Cambodian survivor, in the portrayal of the atrocities, “The Killing Fields,” and won an Academy Award for his role.

The world has lost a tireless advocate and a hero.

The New York Times 

For the third time since the investigation into the killing of at least two dozen Iraqi civilians in the Iraqi town of Haditha in late 2005, the U.S. Marines dropped charges against one of the accused - Lance Cpl. Stephen Tatum - in exchange for testimony. This leaves only the commanding officer of the group, Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich, facing charges in connection with the event.

On November 19th, 2005, a convoy of Marines from Kilo Company was on patrol in Haditha, about 120 miles west of Baghdad in Anbar province. A roadside bomb detonated under a humvee, killing Lance Cpl. Miguel Terrazas and wounding two others. According to Iraqi witnesses, Marines entered a house near the area and fired on its residents, killing seven. Marines then entered a second home and detonated a grenade, killing eight of its residents, including a 2-year-old boy. Witness accounts describe the Marines entering a third home, killing four men inside a small closet. Official accounts from the U.S. Marines state the entire event lasted five hours with at least 23 dead. 15 were classified as non-combatants. The Marines found two AK-47’s in the five hour raid.

Tatum was under investigation for the negligent homicide of two men, a woman and a child, as well as assault on two children injured by a grenade. Tatum claims he was responding to deadly force according to his training protocol during wartime. He claims we was acting in accordance with the rest of his unit, who had opened fire in the area in response to small-arms fire. Tatum claimed he was engaging hostile targets because his superior - Staff Sgt Frank Wuterich - was firing his weapon.

“LCpl Tatum shot and killed people … but the reason he did so was because of his training and the circumstances he was placed in, not to exact revenge and commit murder,” said an investigating officer, Lt. Col. Paul Ware.

Wuterich faces a life sentence if convicted on all charges.

Washington Post

Peacekeeping forces from the European Union raided the homes of family members of Radovan Karadzic, wanted for war crimes for his involvement in the 1995 massacre are Srebrenica.  The whereabouts of Karadzic and Gen. Ratko Mladic have been the point of much debate since the NATO intervention in Yugoslavia.  Many international officials, including Carla del Ponte, the former chief war crimes prosecutor for the United Nations, and Raffi Gregorian, a U.S. administrator in Bosnia, have said their capture is anywhere from “one phone call” away to “within a few weeks” way back in June 2007.  The homes of Kardzic and Mladic, or their family members, have been raided dozens of times over the past year.  Most officials are relatively certain either fugitive is hiding somewhere in Serbia.  I can’t get out of a parking ticket, and these guys have been on the lam for a decade.

PALE, Bosnia, March 27 (Reuters) - European Union peacekeepers raided homes on Thursday of relatives of Bosnian Serb wartime leader Radovan Karadzic, a genocide suspect on the run from the U.N. war crimes court.

Some 20 vehicles of the EUFOR peacekeeping force, supported by NATO, surrounded a house where Karadzic’s wife Ljiljana Zelen-Karadzic lives in his wartime stronghold of Pale, about 16 km (10 miles) southeast of the capital Sarajevo.

Italian carabinieri also searched the homes of Karadzic’s daughter Sonja and suspected Karadzic supporter Smiljka Popov in the centre of the mountainous town, said EUFOR spokesman Philip Treloar.

“The aim of the operation is to find material and information that could assist the ICTY (International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia) in the search for persons indicted for war crimes,” Treloar said.

The houses have been raided dozens of times since Karadzic went on the run at the end of the 1992-95 war.

The U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague has indicted Karadzic and his military leader Ratko Mladic for genocide over the 1995 Srebrenica massacre of 8,000 Muslims and the 43-month siege of Sarajevo that claimed some 11,000 lives.

The court says Mladic is hiding in Serbia. Karadzic is believed to be moving between eastern Bosnia, Serbia and Montenegro.

Col. Moe Davis, who stepped down from his high-profile position as the chief U.S. prosecutor in the Guantanamo Bay terrorism cases, Tuesday submitted a request to retire from his position with the military. Davis said he expects to complete his duties with the military in July. He is expected to then serve is a witness testifying against the U.S. government in a case he himself helped prepare - Salim Ahmed Hamdan, who was the personal driver for Osama bin Laden. He cited family reasons and the publicity surrounding his role in the terrorism cases as reasons for his decision to retire.

He has criticized the U.S. government proceedings in Guantanamo Bay for trying to rush through “sexy” cases, such as Hamdan’s, in order to seek justification for the widely-criticized tribunal system at the U.S. detention facility there. The U.S. government already took steps to prevent Davis from testifying before the U.S. Congress regarding activities at Guantanamo Bay and he expects to face obstacles in his testimony in the Hamdan case.

MIAMI (Reuters) - The Air Force lawyer who quit as chief prosecutor for the Guantanamo war court five months ago because of what he called political interference has asked to leave the U.S. military, he said on Tuesday.Col. Moe Davis said he submitted retirement papers last week, partly because of fallout from his public criticism of the Guantanamo court and partly because of family concerns. He does not expect the military to oppose his retirement. (more…)

A U.S. lawyer defending a group of American and Vietnamese people suffering from the effects of exposure to Agent Orange vowed to continue to fight following a rejecting of the case in the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals. Jonathon Moore said at press briefing in Hanoi Friday that he would take the case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court if necessary.  Here is  coverage today from United Press International;

Agent Orange case to go on, lawyer says

Published: March 24, 2008 at 9:58 AM

HANOI, Vietnam, March 24 (UPI) — A U.S. lawyer representing Agent Orange victims said he would ask for a full appeal of the case, vowing to take the fight all the way to the Supreme Court.

Jonathan Moore, who is representing the Vietnam Association of Victims of Agent Orange/Dioxin, or VAVA, pledged to continue the legal fight charging U.S. chemical companies with selling dual-use products to the military, Vietnam News reported Monday.

VAVA filed a lawsuit in January 2004 against 37 producers and suppliers of the chemical herbicide, dioxin — a component in Agent Orange — because it caused poisoning that later manifested itself as cancer, deformities and organ dysfunction in some 3 million people.

A three-judge panel in the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in February upheld a lower court’s decision rejecting the charges in support of the chemical companies, saying dioxin was sold to the military as a defoliant and not a chemical weapon.

Moore called the decision unethical in a press briefing Friday, vowing to petition for a full review by the appellate court and an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court if necessary.

Moore said the suit moved beyond the many Vietnamese and Americans impacted by Agent Orange, saying if nobody took responsibility for the health effects of Agent Orange, the use of toxins may continue in other wars.

The United Nations on Thursday condemned an attack on civilians in West Darfur by forces backed by the Sudanese government.  The U.N. report said aerial attacks accompanied ground forces on raids on several villages, resulting in over 100 dead and several thousand displaced. The United Nations is only as strong as its member states; very little action can proceed through the international body without the consent of its members.  This is significant on a theoretical footing.  The most powerful nations form the normative benchmark by which success as a nation is measured.  As go the elite nations, so go the remainders - or they are left aside.  This is basic evolutionary logic.  Where this logic fails is in places like Darfur, where repeated statements of condemnation are just words.  In order to resolve issues like Darfur and other places where repeated violations of international law occur, the world needs a new body to resolve these issues where action beyond language can effectively take place.

Deadly attacks in West Darfur breached international law – UN report

20 March 2008 –Recent attacks by militias and the Sudanese army on four villages in West Darfur that left at least 115 people dead and some 30,000 displaced violated international humanitarian and human rights law, a United Nations report released today has found. The report, issued by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), in cooperation with the United Nations–African Union Mission in Darfur (UNAMID), describes attacks on four villages north of El Geneina, the regional capital.

The attacks on the villages of Saraf Jidad, Sirba, Silea and Abu Suruj were carried out as part of a push by the Sudanese Government in late January and early February to drive back an insurgent group, the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM).

The 8 February attacks involved aerial bombardments by helicopter gun ships and fixed-wing aircraft, accompanied by ground offensives by soldiers and armed militia on horses and camels, the report says.

The report describes extensive looting during and after the attacks, and catalogues “consistent and credible accounts” of rape committed by armed men in uniform.

“These actions violated the principle of distinction stated in international humanitarian law, failing to distinguish between civilian objects and military objective,” the report concludes.

“Moreover, the scale of destruction of civilian property, including objects indispensable for the survival of the civilian population, suggests that the damage was a deliberate and integral part of a military strategy,” it adds.

UNAMID human rights staff were unable to investigate reports that similar ground and air offensives carried out on Jebel Moon and nearby areas on 18, 19 and 22 February also resulted in the killing of civilians, as the Government denied the UN access to Jebel Moon until 1 March.

According to the report, this was “in breach of its obligation to allow UNAMID officials freedom of movement under the Status of Forces Agreement signed between the UN and the Sudanese Government in February 2008.”

The attacks of the JEM rebel group, which precipitated the Government offensive, had previously been determined by the Darfur Ceasefire Commission to be in violation of the 2004 N’Djamena Ceasefire Agreement.

Meanwhile, UNAMID Deputy Joint Special Representative Henry Anyidoho travelled to one of the villages, Silea, to assess the security situation on the ground and to look at the possibility of the mission’s deployment there.

“The protection of civilians is our priority,” Mr. Anyidoho told community elders. “We will not abandon you. The UN will continue working to improve your living conditions,” he said, affirming that UNAMID would soon have a permanent presence in the area.

Currently, UNAMID conducts daily patrols from El Geneina to the conflict-affected areas, allowing humanitarian agencies and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) access to the population.

UNAMID took over from a previous AU force at the beginning of the year in a bid to quell the fighting and humanitarian suffering in Darfur, where more than 200,000 people have been killed in the past five years and at least 2.2 million displaced.

Under the shadow of the fifth anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, leaders of many Arab nations gathered in the tiny African nation of Senegal for the Organization of the Islamic Conference meeting.  While the leaders of the impoverished nation wonder if hosting such an event will ultimately generate good graces from the wealthy oil-rich patrons, some of the leaders used the high-profile forum as a platform to raise issues concerning the broader Middle East.  I wrote last week or so that many Arab leaders were pointing to the ongoing escalation in Gaza as something tantamount to war crimes.  It seems others feel the same way.

Ethnic cleansing and Palestinians

PRESIDENT Mahmoud Abbas of Palestine the other day at the OIC summit in Dakar accused Israel of ‘ethnic cleansing’ in Jerusalem by banning the building of Palestinian homes and cutting the city off from the West Bank. ‘Our people in the city are facing an ethnic cleansing campaign through a set of Israeli decisions … heavy taxes, …closing Palestinian institutions in addition to separating the city from the West Bank by the racist separation wall,’ Mr Abbas reportedly said adding this was in total violation of the peace process. The future of Jerusalem, which Israel claims as its capital, has not been accepted internationally, is one of the most divisive issues facing peace negotiators.

Peace talks between Mr. Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert faltered late last year after Israel announced plans to build hundreds of new homes in and around East Jerusalem on land it occupied in 1967. Israel says the construction is within areas it intends to keep in any future peace deal with the Palestinians. It defends its construction of the West Bank barriers that the International Court of Justice has termed illegal. An Israeli spokesman has termed the remarks of Mr. Abbas as ‘inflammatory’ while a US State Department spokesman said the use of the words ‘ethnic cleansing’ was probably an example of ‘overheated political rhetoric’.

OIC Secretary General Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu told the Islamic summit that Israelis responsible for attacks on Palestinians should be tried for war crimes. The UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon has said Israel must stop using disproportionate and excessive force’ against Palestinians. On a subsequent visit to the region, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, said the two sides had agreed to resume negotiations, but new Israeli settlement projects in the occupied West Bank have since heightened tensions.

March 16 marked the 20th anniversary of a chemical weapons attack against a Kurdish uprising by the regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq in 1988.  The international community is just coming to terms with the events.  With the U.S. pre-occupied with backing Saddam in his conflict with fever of Islamic nationalism gripping the Iranians, the massacre of thousands of Kurdish civilians and militants passed with barely a blip on the screen of the international media.  To commemorate the atrocities, Radio Free Europe/Radio Free Liberty interviewed Joost Hiltermann, the primary researcher for Human Rights Watch on the al-Anfal campaign.

Joost Hiltermann was the primary researcher for Human Rights Watch (HRW) on the 1987-88 Al-Anfal campaign by Saddam Hussein’s regime — a campaign that sought to annihilate northern Iraq’s Kurdish population. The March 16, 1988, chemical attack on the Iraqi Kurdish town of Halabjah, which killed an estimated 5,000 people, is the subject of Hiltermann’s latest book, “A Poisonous Affair: America, Iraq, and the Gassing of Halabja.” Hiltermann, now the International Crisis Group’s deputy program director for the Middle East and North Africa, spoke to RFE/RL Iraq analyst Kathleen Ridolfo ahead of the 20th anniversary of the Halabjah attack.

RFE/RL: Could you share with us your thoughts about the significance the 20th anniversary of the Halabjah chemical attacks and what it means to you as someone who closely studied what had happened there?

Joost Hiltermann: It’s been 20 years. That’s not such a long time. The events that transpired in 1988 are still very fresh in the memories of those who lived through these terrible times in Iraqi Kurdistan. I was there a month ago, and the scars are very visible. Interestingly, the Kurdistan Regional Government is only now starting to draw international attention to these events — obviously for political reasons. But it is very important that the memory of these events be kept alive. What happened was, first of all, a chemical attack on a major town that killed thousands. The first such attack in history. So far the only one; hopefully, it will always be the only one. Secondly, [it was part of] a counterinsurgency campaign that involved the systematic murder of tens of thousands of civilians — Kurdish civilians — in an act of genocide that also is relatively unknown in the world. (more…)

THE HAGUE (AFP) — The International Criminal Court said Thursday that its first war crimes trial, involving former Congolese militia chief Thomas Lubanga Dyilo, would open on June 23.Lubanga, 46, is accused of abducting children under the age of 15 and forcing them to participate in attacks by the armed wing of his political Union of Congolese Patriots during wars that ravaged the Democratic Republic of Congo.

His trial was initially scheduled to start March 31 but was postponed over logistical and procedural issues.

It will be the first trial for the ICC, which was 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 in 2002 the ICC has opened four investigations into crimes committed in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda, Sudan and the Central African Republic and issued 10 arrest warrants.

The court can only try cases involving states that are party to the ICC, 105 countries at the moment, and cases referred to it by the UN Security Council.

For the DRCongo 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 war lords, 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 the DRCongo.

Ituri was from 1999 wracked by ethnic bloodshed between the Hema and Lendu peoples as well as being embroiled in the broader rebel war that raged in the DRC between 1998 and 2003, drawing in more than half a dozen foreign African armies on rival sides.

In the Lubanga case the charge of enlisting child soldiers, a war crime, was upheld in a special hearing last year, after the prosecution produced evidence from many of Lubanga’s alleged recruits.

Lubanga’s trial will be a real test for the ICC which has raised many hopes in the past six years and already delivered some disappointments.

Many non-governmental organisations have called for Lubanga, who was arrested in Kinshasa in 2005, to be indicted for sexual violence and massacres and not just for conscripting children. There was also criticism that Lubanga is a relatively small fish.

Despite efforts by the court to try and hold some hearings in the DRCongo the trial will be conducted entirely in The Hague, far away from the victims.

In a pre-trial hearing Wednesday, British judge Adrian Fulford said the court’s requests to hold hearings there were refused by the Congolese authorities on the grounds they would “cause tensions”.

Lubanga’s case will mark the first time in international justice that victims will be able to participate in the trial through their lawyers and could demand reparations if Lubanga is found guilty.