On her ten day trip through Africa, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will make two stops in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) - capital Kinshasa and Goma in the east.

Estimates state that conflict in the DRC (a country the size of the US east of the Mississippi) has resulted in 3.5 million to 7.8 million deaths since 1998, and hundreds of thousands of rapes.  Thus international human rights organizations have called on Clinton to urge the prosecution of those military personnel responsible for human rights abuses - in particular ongoing crimes of sexual violence.

In fact, the stated purpose of the Secretary’s visit to Goma is to put a ‘great deal of focus on the issue of sexual- and gender-based violence which is occurring in the eastern Congo’ and she ‘intends to encourage and push the Congolese Government as well as MONUC, the UN peacekeeping force there, to take a much more aggressive stance against gender-based violence.’

Following UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon’s report on the systematic use of sexual violence as a weapon as recognized in Security Council Resolution 1820, this trip needs to be a step towards general recognition of the issue’s importance in conflict situations - not just in the DRC, but across the globe.

Mourners gathered in the Bosnian town of Srebrenica to honor the victims and mark the anniversary of the bloodiest massacres during the 1992-1995 Bosnian War.

War crimes fugitive Gen. Ratko Mladic led his troops in July 1995 into the U.N. safe-haven of Srebrenica and “stripped all the male Muslim prisoners, military and civilian, elderly and young, of their personal belongings and identification, and deliberately and methodically killed them solely on the basis of their identity,” according to the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia.

A video that surfaced during ICTY proceedings depicts members of the Scorpions paramilitary force leading Bosnian Muslims to their execution in a field in Srebrenica. In one incident, six men are shown being taken from the back of a military vehicle and forced to march single file to meet machine gun fire - one man at a time - by the Scorpions. During the video, a soldier is shown emptying an entire magazine into the head of one of the prisoners, protesting “I have a few more shells left!”

In July 1995, Dutch troops operating under the U.N. Protection Force in Srebrenica attempted to turn back Serbian forces by firing warning shots in their direction. Supporting airstrikes were called in by NATO forces, but were abandoned due to poor visibility. Dutch forces surrendered and Serbian forces captured Srebrenica on July 11, 1995.

When the situation was complete, over 8,000 civilians were massacred in the worst episode of ethnic cleansing since the extermination of the Jews in World War II.

Serbian officials in July 2008 captured Bosnian Serb wartime president Radovan Karadzic following 13 years on the run for war crimes and crimes against humanity. He allegedly coordinated events at Srebrenica along with Mladic.

Bosnian Serbs to this day deny the events at Srebrenica amount to genocide, though world leaders continue to condemn the atrocities. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown described Srebrenica as the “darkest day” in Europe since the Holocaust, while U.S President Barack Obama calls the event a “stain on our collective consciousness.”

Media reports late Friday said five security guards with Blackwater USA were told to surrender to the FBI by Monday to face manslaughter charges stemming from a 2007 shooting incident in Iraq.

Security contractors fired in response to alleged hostile fire during the Sept. 16 escort of a State Department official, killing 17 Iraqis.  FBI investigators found in November 2007 that  Blackwater security personnel fired indiscriminately in 14 of the 17 shooting deaths of Iraqi civilians.  The FBI said the contractors violated deadly-force rules in effect for security contractors, suggesting they had acted recklessly.

A federal investigation into the incident found two members, former Marine Dustin Heard, and former U.S. Army soldier Paul Sough, did most of the shooting and can be expected to face murder or manslaughter charges.

The case is expected to encounter several legal hurdles. Prosecutors said they plan to file charges under laws governing military personnel and contractors, thought Blackwater is operating in Iraq under a security contract with the U.S. State Department, a civilian agency.

Blackwater considers itself part of the Pentagon's “total force” package, which it says justifies immunity from civilian prosecution.  L. Paul Bremer, the former civilian administrator of the Coalition Provisional Authority, passed a measure in 2004 that declared, “Contractors shall be immune from Iraqi legal process.”

The latest developments come as a legal framework defining the U.S. military presence in Iraq following the expiration of the current U.N. development was passed by the three-member Iraqi presidential council Thursday, bringing the measure into force Jan. 1.

The State Department has renewed the Blackwater contract for 2009 amid widespread protests.

An Iraqi court Tuesday sentenced Ali Hassan al-Majid to death for atrocities committed against Shiites who staged an uprising in 1991 following the U.S.-led liberation of Kuwait.

Majid, known as “Chemical Ali” for his gassing of the Kurdish population in the Anfal campaign, responded to a Shiite uprising in the south of Iraq that brought rebels within 60-miles of the capital, Baghdad.

Then U.S. President George H.W. Bush had encouraged the Iraqis to “take matters into their own hands” and “force Saddam Hussein to step aside” following the first Gulf War.

The Shiites in the south said they had expected U.S. backing in the rebellion, the Shaaban Intifada, but American troops withdrew, leaving Saddam to put down the uprising.

Majid received a death sentence earlier for crimes committed during the Anfal campaign. The Kurdistan Regional Government in Iraq held a ceremony in November for victims of the operation.  U.S. forces had protected three Kurdish provinces in the wake of the Shiite uprising.

The three-member Iraqi presidency council in February said it had removed a blockade on the execution of Majid, saying he would be hanged in a “matter of days.”

He reportedly suffered a heart attack in April while in U.S. custody.

Our colleagues at The Grotian Movement have obtained the only English language translation of the decision on the Anfal campaign, an ethnic cleansing campaign against the Kurdish population in the north of the country.  The repercussions of the Anfal campaign are apparent in the disputed provincial elections law.  Iraq lawmakers passed a long-awaited provincial elections law in September, but sidelined a decision for the Kurdish regions of the country. Kurds, and others, are seeking to reverse the Saddam-era policy of altering the demographics in the north.

The Shiite-led government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki allegedly influenced the Iraqi High Tribunal by shifting justices out of the system who opposed the death penalty for former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, officials said.  These same officials contend that the rush to execute the former leader came at a time when the perception of the U.S. military effort in Iraq was at its lowest.  By broadcasting a trial of fair and even judgement of the former leader, the perception of Iraq emerging from the shadow of dictatorship would improve.

CAMBRIDGE, England ‚ Nearly two years after an Iraqi court sentenced Saddam Hussein to death, new disclosures by Western lawyers who helped guide the court have given fresh ammunition to critics who contend that he was railroaded to the gallows by vengeful officials in Iraq's new government.

These lawyers say the Iraqi prime minister …..click here to read more

In what amounts to state-sanctioned torture, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told the Senate Armed Services Committee she interrogators in Iraq were using so called harsh interrogation techniques.

WASHINGTON (AP) ‚ A military interrogation expert, Air Force Col. Steven Kleinman, told Congress on Thursday that prior to the abuses at Abu Ghraib, he witnessed interrogations of Iraqi detainees that he considers violations of the Geneva Conventions.

One interrogation was conducted by an Air Force civilian and a contractor employed by his own organization, the Joint Personnel Recovery Agency. It had sent a small team to Iraq in September 2003 to help a special forces task force improve its interrogations of stubborn prisoners. The team was asked to demonstrate an interrogation on an Iraqi prisoner. It was an unusual role for the organization, which trains soldiers how to resist interrogations, not conduct them.

Kleinman said his two colleagues forcibly stripped an Iraqi prisoner naked, shackled him and left him standing in a dank, six-foot cement cell with orders to the guards that the prisoner was not to move for 12 hours. Had the prisoner passed out, he would have hit his head on a wall, Kleinman said.

Kleinman stopped the interrogation, which had veered from his careful plan into abuse.

“Until their time in Iraq they had never seen a real world interrogation,” he said.

The men, Terrence Russell and Lenny Miller, had learned the harsh techniques working with the Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE) training program for U.S. forces, which conducts stressful mock interrogations to prepare soldiers to withstand and resist abusive questioning in the event they are taken prisoner. The program uses methods derived from the real-life experiences of American prisoners of war. The techniques include forced nudity, stress positions, exposure to extremes in weather and waterboarding, a form of simulated drowning.

Russell is a civilian JPRA employee involved in “research and program development.” Miller was a contractor who no longer works for JPRA, according to the military.

Joint Forces Command, which oversees JPRA, did not investigate Kleinman's allegations because they were made directly to the task force in Iraq, said spokesman Capt. Dennis Moynihan.

At the time, Kleinman called his now retired commander, Col. John Moulton II, to express concern about the harsh methods he saw being used in several interrogations. He said Moulton checked with his superiors and called him back to say the techniques had been specifically approved. Moulton later told investigators that he understood that the Pentagon's general counsel or higher had approved the measures, and that the prisoners were considered terrorists and were not protected by the Geneva Conventions.

The Geneva Conventions, however, did apply in Iraq.

The Senate Armed Services Committee also released responses from Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and legal counsel John Bellinger regarding their knowledge of the CIA interrogation program when Rice was the national security adviser and Bellinger was the National Security Council's top lawyer.

She and Bellinger were also briefed on SERE interrogation methods at the White House in 2002 or 2003.

“I recall being told … that these techniques had been deemed not to cause significant physical or psychological harm,” Rice wrote.

Rice told the committee the CIA had sought NSC approval before embarking on its own harsh interrogation program in the spring of 2002. Rice said she asked then-Attorney General John Ashcroft to review its legality. The Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, which advises the White House on legal matters, later determined the CIA's program to be legal.

Rice also said Bellinger advised her regularly about “concerns and issues” relating to the Pentagon's interrogation and detention program at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base. She said the Justice Department never discussed with her the FBI's now documented concerns with interrogation practices at Guantanamo Bay and CIA detention facilities.

Bellinger said he knew the FBI refused to participate in some CIA interrogations, which included waterboarding for at least three detainees. He was also aware of allegations of abuse at Guantanamo in 2003.

Also Thursday, the Senate Judiciary Committee took a step closer to forcing the Justice Department to hand over secret legal memos authorizing the Bush administration to use harsh and potentially illegal interrogation techniques on detainees.

By a 10-9 vote, the committee agreed to give the chairman, Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., authority to subpoena the memos from the Office of Legal Counsel. It is now up to Leahy to decide whether to issue the subpoena, which the Justice Department likely will fight because much of the information in the memos is highly classified.

Justice spokesman Brian Roehrkasse did not answer a question about whether the department would comply with such a subpoena.

“We regret that the committee authorized the subpoena,” Roehrkasse said in a statement. “We will continue to work with them to ensure that their legitimate oversight needs are met.”

BAGHDAD, Aug. 18 (UPI) — An Iraqi court resumed session Monday in the case against former Iraqi Deputy Premier Tariq Aziz for the execution of several merchants in 1992.

Aziz, a Christian, and seven other defendants face war crimes charges in an Iraqi court for ordering the execution of several businessmen who had protested rising food prices in the wake of U.N. sanctions on the former regime.

Witnesses took to the stand Monday concealed behind a curtain using voice alterations to disguise their identity, Voices of Iraq reported.

The former deputy premier, widely recognized by his coke-bottle glasses and bombastic English, surrendered to U.S. forces shortly after the fall of Saddam Hussein. He has been in U.S. custody since then.

First, the Times of London is reporting that the United Kingdom cut a deal with radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, which resulted in British forces sitting out the critical battle for Basra last year. The Times reports that the attack has caused some friction between the US and the UK and dented Britain's relationship on the ground in Iraq.

Second, the Wall Street Journal reports that Al-Sadr will be disarming his radical Mahdi Army.

Meanwhile, the Long War Journal dissects the methods that have allowed the US to achieve a significant decrease in insurgent IED attacks.

Jonathan Adler notes the DC Circuit's Tuesday release of Simon v. Iraq, a case where US servicemen alleged that Saddam Hussein's Iraqi intelligence services had taken them hostage and tortured them during Gulf War I. The court concluded (in contrast to earlier, similar lawsuits) that the suit could go forwards.

The plaintiffs rely on an exception to the Foreign Sovereign Immunity Act passed as part of the Anti-Terrorism & Effective Death Penalty Act of 1995, which holds that countries on the State Department's list of state sponsors of terrorism are not immune from suit for certain kinda of offenses committed against American citizens. Iraq was on the list from 1990 until after the overthrow of the Hussein regime.

The exception was amended in the National Defense Authorization Act for FY 2008. The amendment provided, among other things, an amendment to the terrorism exception by explicitly granting a federal cause of action to plaintiffs, which the DC Circuit had not found in prior cases. It also newly permitted President Bush to waive the relevant sections of the NDAA with respect to Iraq.

The executive attempted to do so here, but the court concluded that because the plaintiffs had sued Iraq before the NDAA amended FSIA, the old FSIA provisions controlled the suit. The court then found the plaintiffs had a cause of action and permitted the plaintiffs’ suit to go forwards.

Iraq will almost certainly petition for certiorari in the United States Supreme Court, so any jury trial is almost certainly more than a year away. Nonetheless, for the moment, the court's decision makes it much easier for American POWs who suffered war crimes during the Gulf War conflict to recover damages.

Full disclosure: As a law school student, the author assisted attorneys for a different group of tortured POW's filing suit under FSIA.