The man describing himself as the chief of operations for former Liberian President Charles Taylor, Joseph Marzah, or “Zigzag,” told the United Nations-backed Special Court for the Sierra Leone that Taylor encouraged his fighters to “play with human blood.” Marzah told the court about roving bands of death squads terrorizing the civilian population at checkpoints by displaying severed human heads at roadblocks. “We executed everybody – babies, women, old men. There were so many executions. I can’t remember them all,” Marzah said.

Marzah told the court that weapons were flown into Sierra Leone on foreign cargo planes using “blood diamonds” for financial support. Marzah said he collaborated with a “white guy with a big stomach” to smuggle weapons and diamonds for Taylor. He later described an assassination attempt on a militia leader, Issa Sesay. He also described an order from Taylor to execute then-President Samuel Doe by intercepting his convoy. Marzah said Taylor gave him order “to execute them with knives.” Not finding Doe, Marzah and his soldiers executed 72 members of Doe’s convoy with knives later that day.

Taylor faces 11 counts of crimes against humanity and war crimes for allegedly cooperating with militants to gain access to the diamond trade, recruiting child soldiers, and other atrocities.

War crimes trial of former top Croatian generals begins at U.N. tribunal

11 March 2008 – The trial of three former senior Croatian generals accused of murdering, persecuting and displacing ethnic Serbs during the Balkan conflicts of the 1990s got under way at a United Nations war crimes tribunal today. Ante Gotovina, Ivan Cermak and Mladen Markac have pleaded not guilty before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) to charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity related to ‘Operation Storm,’ a 1995 military offensive in the Krajina region of Croatia.

Prosecutors accuse the three men of being key members of a joint criminal enterprise – along with four other men, including the former president of Croatia, Franjo Tudjman, who have since died – to forcibly and permanently remove ethnic Serbs from the Krajina region.

The indictment states that the men, or the forces under their command, murdered at least 37 Serbs, persecuted many others and plundered their property, and failed to prevent the crimes or take action against subordinates.

The joint trial, being held in The Hague in the Netherlands, is expected to take more than a year.

Ban Ki-moon names top official for Lebanon tribunal 

11 March 2008 – A veteran of numerous international court proceedings has been appointed by United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon as the Registrar of the tribunal being set up to try those responsible for political killings in Lebanon, particularly the 2005 attack that killed former prime minister Rafiq Hariri. Robin Vincent of the United Kingdom will start his duties on the Special Tribunal for Lebanon at a date yet to be determined, but “the appointment of the Registrar reflects the steady progress being accomplished in establishing the Special Tribunal for Lebanon,” according to a statement issued by Mr. Ban’s spokesperson.

From 2002 to 2005, Mr. Vincent served as Registrar of the Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL). Since then, he has served as the temporary Deputy Registrar of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and has advised on the establishment of other international tribunals, including the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) and the Special Tribunal for Lebanon.

The Security Council set up the International Independent Investigation Commission (IIIC) in April 2005 after an earlier UN mission found that Lebanon’s own inquiry into the Hariri assassination was seriously flawed and that Syria was primarily responsible for the political tensions that preceded the attack. Mr. Hariri died in a massive car bombing in Beirut in February 2005 that also took the lives of 22 others

War crimes trial of Croat General Gotovina to begin

AMSTERDAM, March 9 (Reuters) - Former Croatian General Ante Gotovina goes on trial at the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague on Tuesday charged with responsibility for the murder and mistreatment of Serbs in Croatia’s Krajina region in 1995.

Gotovina, who is accused with two other former generals Ivan Cermak and Mladen Markac and was indicted in 2001, travelled extensively using false identities before his dramatic capture in Spain’s Canary Islands in December 2005.

Uganda rebel lawyers to meet with war crimes court

Mon Mar 10, 2008 7:26am EDT

By Emma Thomasson

 AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - Lawyers for Ugandan rebels were to meet International Criminal Court officials on Monday to push the court to drop charges against their leader, which are a sticking point in talks to end the 21-year war.

Despite rapid progress in the past month at peace talks in Sudan, the Lord’s Resistance Army rebels insist any final deal with Uganda’s government be conditional on the ICC dropping war crimes’ charges against leader Joseph Kony and two deputies.

Dutch appeals court acquits businessman of arms dealing in Liberia

The Associated Press

Monday, March 10, 2008

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands: A Dutch appeals court on Monday acquitted a businessman of violating a U.N. embargo by allegedly trading weapons for timber in Liberia, citing a lack of reliable evidence.

The Hague Appeals Court overturned the verdict from a lower court that sentenced Guus Kouwenhoven to eight years in prison for trading guns for allegedly logging rights and using his lumber company to smuggle weapons later used by militias to commit atrocities against civilians in West Africa.

Bush vetoes bill outlawing CIA waterboarding

Sat Mar 8, 2008 1:53pm EST

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President George W. Bush on Saturday vetoed legislation passed by Congress that would have banned the CIA from using waterboarding and other controversial interrogation techniques.

Lawmakers included the anti-torture measure in a broader bill authorizing U.S. intelligence activities.

“Because the danger remains, we need to ensure our intelligence officials have all the tools they need to stop the terrorists,” Bush said in his weekly radio address. He added that the vetoed legislation “would diminish these vital tools.”

House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California said Democrats would try to overturn Bush’s veto and said U.S. moral authority was at stake.

“We will begin to reassert that moral authority by attempting to override the president’s veto next week,” Pelosi said.

Democratic Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts called Bush’s veto “one of the most shameful acts of his presidency.”

It is unlikely that Democrats, the majority party in Congress, could muster enough votes to overturn Bush’s veto. The bill passed the House and Senate on partisan votes, short of the support needed to reverse the president.

The House approved the legislation in December and the Senate passed it in February despite White House warnings it would be vetoed.

CIA Director Michael Hayden told Congress last month that government interrogators used waterboarding on three suspects captured after the September 11 attacks.

The simulated drowning technique has been condemned by many members of Congress, human rights groups and other countries as a form of illegal torture.

The U.S. Army Field Manual prohibits waterboarding and seven other interrogation methods and the bill would have aligned CIA practices with the military’s.

In a message to CIA employees on Saturday after Bush’s veto, Hayden said the CIA would continue to work strictly within the law but said its needs were different from that of the U.S. Army and that the CIA needed to follow its own procedures.

“There are methods in CIA’s program that have been briefed to our oversight committees, are fully consistent with the Geneva Convention and current U.S. law, and are most certainly not torture,” Hayden said.

In his remarks, Bush did not specifically mention waterboarding.

But he said: “The bill Congress sent me would not simply ban one particular interrogation method, as some have implied. Instead, it would eliminate all the alternative procedures we’ve developed to question the world’s most dangerous and violent terrorists.”

(Reporting by Richard Cowan; Editing by Eric Beech)

Thai Court Keeps Arms Dealer in Custody

By GRANT PECK – 3 hours ago

BANGKOK, Thailand (AP) — Thai police received court permission Saturday to retain custody of a reputed Russian arms dealer dubbed the “Merchant of Death” who was arrested in a U.S.-led sting operation that lured him from his home in Moscow.

Viktor Bout, 41, was arrested Thursday at a luxury hotel in Bangkok and held on suspicion of engaging with and supporting terrorist groups.

The Bangkok Criminal Court authorized his continued detention while an investigation continues. Suspects may be held for up to 84 days without being formally charged for trial.

U.S. officials tipped off Thai authorities earlier this week that Bout was expected to arrive from Moscow on Thursday to complete what he thought was an arms deal with leftist guerrillas from Colombia, said Thai police Lt. Gen. Adisorn Nontree.

Bout’s Thai lawyer, Lak Nitiwatvichan, said Bout denied all allegations against him. He sought to apply for Bout’s release on bail Saturday, but was unable to do so because Bout’s passport could not be retrieved from Thai police on the weekend.

Thai and U.S. authorities both said Friday they could file terrorism charges against Bout, and a war crimes prosecutor also expressed a desire to try him for allegedly fueling African civil wars.

Agents of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration had led Bout to believe he was dealing with representatives of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, according to U.S. officials. The U.S. considers the rebels, who have been fighting Colombia’s government for more than 40 years and are said to traffic in cocaine, a terrorist group.

Bout and associate Andrew Smulian, who is still at large, face a U.S. charge of “conspiracy to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization.”

The U.S. is seeking Bout’s extradition, but for now he will remain in Thailand, where officials said they were investigating whether he used the country as a base to negotiate a weapons deal with terrorists.

If convicted, Bout would face a sentence of 10 years in prison on the potential Thai charge, and 15 years in the U.S.

A high-ranking U.S. government official with knowledge of Bout’s history said the Russian did business in the past with the FARC as well as with insurgency groups, dictators and terror organizations in southwest Asia and Africa. The official agreed to discuss Bout only if not quoted by name.

A U.N. travel ban imposed on Bout cited his support for the Liberian regime of former President Charles Taylor in its effort to destabilize neighboring Sierra Leone and gain illicit access to that West African nation’s diamonds.

Stephen Rapp, chief prosecutor of a U.N.-backed war crimes tribunal, the Special Court for Sierra Leone, said Friday he would like to put Bout on trial. “Would we like to get our hands on Bout? Very much,” he said.

Rapp said atrocities against civilians and other abuses committed in the wars that wracked Sierra Leone and elsewhere in West and Central Africa were mainly the fault of rebel forces and political leaders.

“But individuals like Viktor Bout are also responsible and it’s important that they also face justice,” Rapp said.

Rapp said he would have a good case against Bout for aiding and abetting crimes against humanity and war crimes in Sierra Leone, based on the Russian’s arms shipments on behalf of Taylor and the Sierra Leone rebel group, the Revolutionary United Front.

Weapons were delivered into the war zone “at the time they were conducting operations with names like ‘No living thing,’ and being paid for those shipments with diamonds dug by slave labor,” Rapp said.

In October 2006, President Bush issued an executive order freezing the assets of Bout and several associates and warlords in Congo and barring Americans from doing business with them.

They were accused of violating international laws involving targeting of children or violating a ban on sales of military equipment to Congo.

According to the DEA’s conspiracy complaint against Bout, his partner Smulian told the undercover agents that Bout’s assets worth a claimed $6 billion had been frozen.

Bout’s business is said to have been centered around a fleet of transport aircraft owned and operated by several closely held companies.

In 2006, Associated Press reporters and photographers witnessed a Kyrgyzstan-registered Ilyushin-76 land at Somalia’s Mogadishu International Airport when it was under the control of the Council of Islamic Courts, a group that the U.S. government has linked to al-Qaida.

The aircraft was operated by an air cargo company based in the United Arab Emirates that was allegedly controlled by Bout.

A U.N. commission in charge of monitoring the arms embargo on Somalia later determined the plane delivered shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles to the radical Islamic group.

Bout is believed to have used his fleet of planes and contacts from his days in the Soviet air force to buy weapons in eastern Europe and deliver them to combatants around the world.

The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel sent a letter to Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak and other ministers that accused the government of war crimes in its latest incursion into Gaza.  The letter reminded the ministers that a key principle in “humanitarian international law is the principle of distinguishing between fighters and civilians during war.” 

The Israeli military launched an incursion into Gaza last week Monday that left over 100 Palestinians and three Israeli soldiers dead. Israel is responding to a barrage of rocket attacks from Palestinian militants into southern Israel.

Meanwhile, following meetings in Cairo in preparation for a summit in Damascus later this Spring, the Arab League called the Israeli attacks on Gaza “crimes against humanity.”  The ministers said in a statement they considered “these Israeli crimes as crimes of war,” adding, “The criminal aggression against Gaza shows that Israeli policy against the Palestinian people is based on genocide and ethnic cleansing.”

But will anything happen?  The argument can be made that Israel withdrew its military forces from Gaza after less than a week and that this sort of condemnation harnesses Israeli aggression, but this tit for tat sort of thing is the status quo.  Ariel Sharon, when he served in the military, was a noted aggressor against Arabs and current ministers have made statements suggesting, to coin the phrase, there will be blood.  The Palestinians use force, so the Israelis use force, so the argument goes.  But Israel also has a blockade on Gaza and the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East says it will run out of food soon.  The Israelis also tried shutting off the electricity in Gaza to force the residents there to turn against the militants, notably Hamas.  English reports say the humanitarian crisis in Gaza is the worst that it’s been in over 40 years and they blame the Israeli blockade for that atrocity.

This seems to paint a lopsided picture of international law.  There is a tenant in international relations theory that says the most powerful states make all the rules.  They succeed because they are the best at what they do; if you want to be as great, you have to play by their rules too, or you get cast aside.  A question along this front is to ask whether Man follows the rule of God because they are the rules of God, or because God’s rules are good.  In international affairs, it seems that this Hobbesian notion of supremacy also carries into international law.  As an aside, two towns in Vermont passed non-binding resolutions to indict U.S. President George Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney for violating the U.S. Constitution.  But this, and the international condemnation against Israel, is largely symbolic.  It seems, and this can be supported by the situation in Sudan where many sitting government ministers are accused of war crimes, that the powerful have the privilege of immunity as well.  It was only after the U.S. overthrew the Saddam Hussein regime that Saddam faced justice.  It was only after Yugoslavia collapsed that Slobodan Milosevic was brought before the Hague.  What does this privilege of immunity for the powerful mean for Israel?