War Crimes

The war crimes tribunal for former Liberian president Charles Taylor proceeded for its third straight day at the U.N.-backed Special Court for Sierra Leone seated at The Hague, Netherlands. The court heard Wednesday details from one of Taylor’s associates in the Special Security Service who said he had direct evidence suggesting Taylor financed and armed Revolutionary United Front rebels operating in Sierra Leone.

Varmuyan Sherif told the court Taylor ordered him to accompany RUF leader Sam “Mosquito” Bockarie on a trip to Liberia in the late 1990’s. Sherif recounted that Bockarie told him Taylor had financed his operations and provided him with a satellite phone with which to communicate with Taylor directly. Sherif said that Taylor told him to bring “whatever arms and ammunition” he ferried into the Liberian capital, Monrovia, directly to Bockarie and provide rebels with safe passage from Sierra Leone into Liberia.

Sheif said that during one trip with Bockarie, the rebel leader had a “mayonnaise bottle” on him filled with diamonds.

Just the other day, I was commentating that the Taylor trial should move beyond the horrible stories of dismemberment and child soldiers strung out on heroin and move to directly implicating this guy in the civil conflict there. Let’s hope testimony like this continues, especially if the prosecution hopes to wrap this one up by 2009. I wonder what they’re going to do with Taylor when and if they find him guilty anyhow? Let him spend his final days in his “prison” cell equipped with a private kitchen and conjugal visits? Not too bad for the overseer of some of the worst war crimes in the modern era. Hmmm … maybe he’s onto something.

The war crimes trial for former Liberian President Charles Taylor resumed its second day of testimony Tuesday. The hybrid Special Court for Sierra Leone seated at The Hague, Netherlands, heard testimony from a pastor who witnessed some of the atrocities that occurred during Taylor’s tenure as president during the 1991-2002 civil war in neighboring Sierra Leone. Taylor allied with the leader of the Revolutionary United Front, Foday Sankoh, operating in Sierra Leone to hijack the regions lucrative diamond fields.

RUF rebels conscripted child soldiers, often employing harsh narcotics to condition adolescents into service, to wage gruesome war on its villages and communities.  The pastor, Alex Tamba Teh, told the court Tuesday he witnessed one RUF commander named “Rocky” fire on 100 civilians and only spared his life because he was a clergy member.  

“After he killed the civilians… he gave the instruction that they should be decapitated. Rocky gave the order to the small boy units,” Tamba Teh said.

Tamba Teh recounted horrific details of how rebels carved RUF initials into its kidnapped victims. He said the “boy units” rounded up another boy, chopped his hands off, then chopped off his arms and feet before tossing him, screaming, into a sewage pit.

Now here’s the twist. Taylor’s defense team do not deny these horrific events took place, but they do dispute the level of his involvement.  They said bringing Taylor to The Hague smacks of a show trial to add a certain level of horror to the charges.  I tend to agree (just hold on before you start flaming me).  I’m no legal expert by any means, but it seems that conspiracy seems to be the charges that pertain to Taylor at this point of the trial.  It will be interesting to see how the testimony moves beyond these horrible accounts of child soldiers and so on.  I want to see if Taylor ordered these atrocities.  He certainly knew about it and obviously did nothing to stop it, but I would wonder what the relative level of acceptability is present on the ground in Africa.  It reminds me of a story Tom Friedman relays in his book on Beirut.  He tells the story of a guy whose chickens are stolen.  He complains to his sons that they need to find the perpetrators and his sons blow him off.  The next day, thieves steal the guys bike or something like that.  He tells his sons they need to find who stole the chickens and his sons blow him off again.  The next day, his daughter is raped.  The father says if they would have exacted revenge against those who stole the chickens, the daughter would not have been raped.  Friedman calls it “Hama rules” and I wonder if that’s the face of justice on the ground in Africa.

Let’s hope the Taylor trial moves beyond these horrific accounts and toward a strong case implicating Taylor’s oversight of this gruesome tale.  If the prosecution hopes to get this wrapped up by 2009 by blowing through nearly 150 witnesses, presumably with the majority of those witnesses like Tamba Teh, it needs to vet out the gory details and get to the heart of the matter; a national leader reigned over an 11-year civil war that resulted in the deaths of a quarter million people. The world has gone to war for much much less.

The war crimes trial of former Liberian President Charles Taylor resumed at the international court in The Hague, Netherlands Monday. The trial is the first such case involving charges brought against a then-acting head of an African government.  Taylor is charged with 11 counts of crimes against humanity, war crimes, conscripting child soldiers and sexual slavery  Taylor allegedly backed the Revolutionary United Front rebels in Sierra Leone with “blood diamonds” in an effort to control the regions lucrative diamond trade.

Prosecutors brought in a Canadian witness, Ian Smillie, who is an expert on conflict diamonds.  Smillie testified he met with Taylor as part of a U.N. investigation in 2000.  He said Taylor told him it was “highly probable” that RUF-smuggled diamonds passed through Liberia, but denied any involvement in the trafficking.

Prosecutors expect to pull in over 100 witnesses such as Smillie along with scores of others who make up a generation of amputees who survived the 1991-2002 conflict in the region.  The international system in this case is a joint collaboration between the International Criminal Court and the U.N.-backed Special Court for Sierra Leone. Officials decided to handle high profile cases such as Taylor’s at The Hague rather than at the SCSL’s seat in Freetown, Sierra Leone out of judicial and security concerns.

Prosecutors said they hoped the court would reach a judgment by 2009, but note the appeals process could last into 2010. I’ve been watching some of these trials for over a year now. The Iraqi’s waste no time stringing their officials up and take great glee in “leaking” executions over the internet (as the shameful shameful Saddam Hussein execution indicated.)  Last time we did this at an internationally sanctioned system (note Iraq is not included in that), the lead guy, Slobodan Milosevic, died in custody.  There are reports out that good ol’ Charles Taylor has himself a nice little kitchen and all sorts of perks at his “prison” cell at The Haque.  And I won’t even mention how much it costs to put this guy up everyday.  Meanwhile, the boys at Gitmo … 

Let’s hope that this time, this time, the international community can conduct a fair, impartial, speedy trial for one of the worst perpetrators of mass atrocities in the modern era.  With the former poster-child of African development, Kenya, descending into case, the African continent could certainly use a degree of reconciliation.

Raila Odinga with Kenya’s opposition Orange Democratic Movement called the recent “alleged” political killings by the ruling government there “genocide on a grand scale.”  Various reports out of Kenya have children piling up in morgues and I remember hearing reports from local priests this week (Tuesday maybe?) of children setting churches ablaze with scores of people trapped inside and stalking the capital of Nairobi with machetes. The BBC had reports this morning of people being “machete-ed” to death. Now, I’m not going to sit here in my office with my dog laying beside me and pretend I’ve seen it all, but there is nothing more frightening that a drug-crazed teenage boy juiced up on aggression and god knows what else circling a hut with a machete looking to get his rocks off.  But I digress …

Apparently, Odinga feels the same way, though, telling journalists “what we have just seen defies description” (he’s referring to the children’s bodies piled up I’m assuming from the church blaze earlier this week). This comes as Odinga was preparing for a large rally against the apparent vote fraud by incumbent President Mwai Kibaki.  I was following this during the weekend.  Friday, Odinga had a huge lead, by Saturday it was down slightly, but on Sunday the Election Committee in Kenya called it in Kibaki’s favor, so who knows what’s going on with that.  So, anyhow, Odinga was preparing for this huge protest, but decided against it in the face of roving police on horseback intimidating gathered citizens and firing live rounds over everyone’s heads. “There are fewer protesters here than there are guards,” said one journalist. Now Odinga hopes to reassemble in Friday in protest of the election results.

Washington is paying lip-service to the issue by sending Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Jendayi Frazer to put pressure on officials to stop the escalating conflict.  Oooh!  Say it isn’t so!  Not the Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs!  Now, I realize there are loads of these guys and some of them have some damn impressive backgrounds, but lip-service is lip-service regardless of its originating kisser.  I don’t want to put too much credibility into cries of genocide in Kenya, which until recently served as a model for African development, but I also have my International Diplomatic brackets all drawn up for January madness waiting for someone in Brussels or New York to start up with the “never again” speeches.  We have someone crying genocide while observing dead babies piling up in the morgue, widespread condemnation of the election results and a whole lot of blather.  Someone!  Please – send a team in there and let’s get this resolved before the fit hits the shan.

Ya know, I was talking to a colleague once on several things here.  One is this theory that this sort of thing is natural for an emerging nation.  The United States did it to the Indians, the French did it to themselves, Germany gave it a go and on and on. We will see a Sudan on par with, say, oh, Lebanon in a decade?  I can live with that.  Another question raised here is the notion of child soldiers.  On one hand, it’s pretty vile how these warlords conscript these kids with heroin and all that (ever see Blood Diamond?), but one also has to consider these kids are getting married at 11, so an “adult” in Africa for all intents and purposes is a 14-year-old kid.  But still, that doesn’t make seeing one of them wandering around wielding a machete any less frightening, and I suppose that level of exploitation and terror is exactly the point.

A court in Chad convicted six French aid workers with the charity Zoe’s Ark to eight years forced labor for allegedly kidnapping 103 African children. The aid workers claim their purpose was to help orphans displaced by conflicts in Darfur and Chad by rescuing the children from area refugee camps. The allegations regarding the abductions centered on evidence that most of the 103 children lived with a close relative or a parent. The conflict in Darfur escalated in 2003 forcing the displacement of 2.5 million and the deaths of over 200,000 people.

(more…)

The United States faces its first test of a 1994 law that makes it a crime for U.S. citizens to commit torture or war crimes overseas. A Miami federal court opened the case of the son of former Liberian President Charles Taylor, Charles “Chuckie” McArthur Emmanuel, indicted on eight counts of torture and killing from 1999 to 2002 when he lead an anti-terrorist unit called the Demon Forces in Liberia. Language and cultural barriers, third world conditions, and outright fear of retribution cause many of the difficulties of efficiently progressing with the trial.

(more…)

A Sudanese minister said the government there launched legal challenge against a French charity accused of flying over a hundred children from Chad to families in Europe. Interior Minister Zubair Bashir Taha said Sudan planned to sue Zoe’s Ark charitable organization for violating international laws by allegedly abducting children from villages and refugee camps in Chad and the Darfur region of Sudan.

“This is not abduction or the luring of children but a war crime,” the minister said. He also said Sudan planned to sue representatives in Chad for allowing Zoe’s Ark to use its airport to shuttle the children out of the country. Six people affiliated with Zoe’s Ark are being held in Chad for trying to solicit children to host families in Europe on the premise they were orphans from the war-torn Darfur region of Sudan. The Zoe’s Ark personnel face 20 years in prison with hard labor if convicted.

Officials believe most of the children involved are not orphaned and have immediate family in the region. Representatives from Zoe’s Ark said its mission was humanitarian.

AP

Thomas Lubanga, a Congolese rebel leader accused of conscripting child soldiers, will face the International Criminal Court in March 2008, the ICC announced today. Lubanga, was arrested in the Congolese capital, Kinshasa, during a crackdown following the murder and mutilation of nine U.N. peacekeepers. He allegedly forced children to undergo training for the armed wing of the Union of Congolese Patriots in order to kill members of rival tribes. His will be the first trail before the ICC.

Lubanga, 46, conscripted children to fight against the Lendu ethnic group under his Union of Congolese Patriots (UPC) – now registered as a political party. The UPC engaged in ethnic conflict with the Lendu ethnic group struggling for control of tax revenues and mines in the region.  The Democratic Republic of Congo has been embroiled in civil and regional conflicts since the massive influx of refugees fleeing the atrocities in Darfur in 1994.

International humanitarian law forbids the conscription of people under the age of 15 into military service. The ICC said in January it had enough evidence to try Lubanga for crimes against humanity. In September, the ICC was considering holding the trial in the Congo with the aim of “bringing justice closer to the victims.” 

The trial is scheduled for March 31, 2006 at The Hague, Netherlands. The court ruled that all evidence shall be submitted to the court by Dec. 14. 

Lubanga’s trial will be the first ever for the permanent international war crimes court. The ICC was established in 2002 and is backed by 104 nations.

Reuters

U.S. immigration officials are holding a former military officer of Sierra Leone’s government on war crimes charges for cooperating in the deaths of 29 dissenters there. Samuel Komba Kamba, 39, was detained following a green card interview in Texas that he attended with his wife. Kambo was twice released on bond for similar charges and a judge ruled that there is not sufficient evidence to deport Kambo back to Sierra Leone. The government of Sierra Leone claims they have no interest in his deportation. The nature of his charges, however, do not afford Kambo the right to legal counsel and he remains in jail today.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents say Kambo was involved in the 29 executions of political dissenters. A post-Sept. 11, 2001, detention law gives immigration authorities the power to hold immigrants in custody during the appeals process. Immigration cases are civil and therefore make legal counsel unavailable to immigrants. Being released on bond also is hindered. Immigration lawyers say that the appeals process can go on indefinitely while Kambo remains in jail. (more…)

Skirmishes erupted on Monday between the Congolese army and rebel fighters loyal to warlord Laurent Nkunda, shattering a three-week ceasefire in the region. The fighting, which has been ongoing for the past year, has resulted in the forced displacement of more than 300,000 people, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). The UNHCR notes that refugees are fleeing the region at an increasing pace and blame Nkunda’s rebel forces for forcibly recruiting child soldiers.

U.N. officials are supporting Congolese army claims they were responding to initial attacks from troops of Nkunda’s National Congress for the Defense of the People (CNDP).   CNDP leaders, however, contest this allegation; “The army started this war.  We were attacked by the president of the republic.  He thinks that since he was elected he can impose war,” CNDP spokesmen, Rene Abandi, said.  U.N. officials note that “Nkunda is waging a huge campaign in the media that he is being attacked” by the Congolese army.  The recent attacks, however, seem to be isolated and U.N. officials are downplaying the significance of the surge of fighting.

U.N. officials note that since December, the number of displaced persons has increased from an estimated 180,000 to over 300,000.  The conflict in Congo is a result of the spill-over from neighboring Rwanda and Uganda, which have been destabilized for years.

The Congolese civil war formally ended in 2002 and citizens elected Joseph Kabila last year.  Kabila visited with peacekeepers and humanitarian agencies last week to discuss possibilities to improve security in the region.

The CNDP was formed by Nkunda who claimed he was protecting the minority Tutsi ethnic group in the Congo from Hutu refugees in the region.  U.N. officials have stated they have evidence Nikunda is recruiting child soldiers in violation of humanitarian and international law.  International arrest warrants have been issued for Nkunda for war crimes.

AP/Reuters/HRW