Although this was a much different offense than that of another former defense investigator, Joseph Nzabirinda, who in 2007 pled guilty to murder charges for his involvement in the genocide, it is nonetheless important as brings up the difficult problem of witness protection measures before international tribunals.

The ICTR has the power to order that particular witness be classified as ‘protected’ for reasons of security, and has often done so.  At trial, the witness will generally testify live under an alias, screened off from the public viewing gallery; any identifying information will be given in closed session, or else redacted from the public record if mistakenly given in open session.

However, in the past some have argued that while such measures are taken at the court’s seat in Arusha, Tanzania, the Tribunal has failed to protect witnesses after their testimony, which has in turn had a chilling effect on the willingness to testify.

While the full Nshogoza judgment is not yet publicly available, it was alleged during trial that in the context of Kamuhanda’s appeal, Nshogoza met with protected witnesses in violation of a court order not to do so and in the presence of third parties (at times sympathetic to Kamuhanda) discussed their testimony, and bribed them to recant.  Ignoring the obviously glaring problem of investigators allegedly bribing witnesses to falsify testimony, in a society that is still struggling to overcome the ramifications of the 1994 genocide of 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus, disclosing a witness’ identity even by simply meeting with them in a public place can itself have serious implications.

Nshogoza’s conviction is a step in the right direction for the ICTR, but it is also an example that needs to be taken into serious consideration when creating or implementing witness protection procedures in other instances.  While the ICC in particular has recognized this in shoring up its protection unit, the lines between bringing an accused to justice, protecting their rights, but also protecting the safety of witnesses, will forever be precarious ones to walk.

The document has been requested by the ACLU as part of its ongoing Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.  It is a report regarding then CIA inspector general John L. Helgerson’s May 2004 review of the agency’s program.

A version of the report was released by the Bush administration in 2008, but was so heavily censored that its re-release has been requested.  It is widely believed that the released document will contain a critical analysis of the effectiveness of ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’.

Considering former Vice President Dick Cheney’s statements on CBS’s ‘Face the Nation’ that these practices ‘saved thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of lives’ many hope to use the analysis as proof – from sources inside the CIA itself – that the tactics used were both illegal and ineffective.

Time will tell.

Habré, dubbed the “African Pinochet”, ruled Chad from 1982 until 1990; a Truth Commission accused his government of having carried out 40,000 politically motivated murders and 200,000 cases of torture during those 8 years.   He has lived in Senegal since his ouster in 1990.

For nearly 2 decades, affected Chadians and international human rights advocates have sought to bring him to trial. This long road was the subject of a 2007 film, and has included a Senegalese indictment issued in 2000, an international arrest warrant issued by Belgium in 2005, an AU mandate in 2006 that Senegal prosecute Habré, and in 2009, a decision by the ICJ not to extradite him to Belgium where he faces charges brought by a dual Belgian-Chadian national.

With allegations of 40,000 deaths, the AU and Senegal need to follow through on the promises they’ve made to prosecute.  But if the past 19 years are any indication, the pace is unlikely to quicken anytime soon.

Kaing Guek Eav, the leader at the notorious S-21 prison for the Khmer Rouge regime known simply as Duch, told a U.N.-backed war crimes tribunal Monday that the children of inmates were murdered to keep them silent.

“When children arrived at the center I gave the order to kill them because we were afraid those children would take revenge,” the 66-year-old told the court.

Five senior members of the Khmer Rouge were arrested in 2007 and charged with a variety of atrocities, including war crimes and crimes against humanity. It’s estimated than nearly 2 million people died during the reign of the Khmer Rouge in their effort to form an ultra-communist agrarian utopia through forced labor camps.

Duch denied responsibility for the execution of infants at S-21, a former high school, who were killed by smashing their heads against trees.

“I did not order that crime, but I believe my comrades did that,” said Duch.

Cambodia does not have a death penalty. Duch faces a maximum life sentence in prison if convicted of war crimes, crimes against humanity, torture and homicide.

South African Judge Richard Gladstone, the former chief prosecutor with the international tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, leads a team of four to the Gaza Strip, entering through the Rafah crossing June 1.

Entering through the Egyptian border point implies Israeli authorities did not grant the team permission to enter the Hamas-held Palestinian territory.

U.N. officials say Goldstone, a jurist of Jewish descent, had asked Jerusalem for permission and visas to enter Gaza, but was refused by Israeli authorities.

The Israeli military in the three-week offensive took international criticism for its heavy-handed tactics in response to Hamas shelling of border towns.

Palestinian groups claim over 1,400 people, including 926 civilians, were killed in the Israeli raid, while three civilians and 10 Israeli soldiers died during the operations.

Israel also faced a global backlash for its use of white phosphorus munitions over civilian populated areas during the attack. Though white phosphorus is permitted to illuminate targets, rights groups complain of the secondary affects of horrific burns when it comes into contact with human skin.

The Israeli military faced similar complaints during its 34-day conflict with Hezbollah militants in 2006.

“The concerns we have about individuals who may support terrorism being in the United States run from concerns about providing financing, radicalizing others,” Mueller said, as well as “the potential for individuals undertaking attacks in the United States.”

His statements were met with similar skepticism earlier in the week during budget debates over U.S. President Barack Obama’s request for funding to close the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

While most of the debate centered on the threat posed by alleged al-Qaida suspects at Guantanamo, the sweeping defeat of the measure — a 90-6 vote in the Wednesday session — may be more of a political issues as U.S. lawmakers are unwilling to step forward to volunteer to host such high-ranking suspects as Khalid Sheik Mohammad in their jurisdiction.  That argument falls flat, however,when you consider the 1993 World Trade Center plotters and shoe-bomber Richard Reid are held in U.S. detention facilities on U.S. soil.

WASHINGTON (AP) — In a major rebuke to President Barack Obama, the Senate voted overwhelmingly on Wednesday to block the transfer of Guantanamo detainees to the United States and denied the administration the millions it sought to close the prison.

The 90-6 Senate vote — paired with similar House action last week — was a clear sign to Obama that he faces a tough fight getting the Democratic-controlled Congress to agree with his plans to shut down the detention center and move the 240 detainees.

The vote came as FBI Director Robert Mueller told Congress that bringing Guantanamo detainees to the United States could pose a number of risks, even if they were kept in maximum-security prisons. Mueller’s testimony to a House panel put him at odds with the president and undercut the administration’s arguments for shuttering the facility.

“The concerns we have about individuals who may support terrorism being in the United States run from concerns about providing financing, radicalizing others,” Mueller said, as well as “the potential for individuals undertaking attacks in the United States.”

Last month, Obama asked for $80 million for the Pentagon and the Justice Department to close the facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, by January. In the eyes of the world, the prison has come to exemplify harsh U.S. anti-terror tactics and detention without trial for almost all of its inmates, most of whom were captured in Afghanistan.

The administration put its Democratic allies in a difficult spot by requesting the Guantanamo closure money before developing a plan for what to do with its detainees.

Obama is scheduled to give a major address Thursday outlining in more detail his plans for Guantanamo, but it’s already clear that many in Congress have little appetite for bringing detainees to U.S. soil, even if the inmates would be held in maximum-security prisons.

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs indicated Wednesday that Obama’s plan is still evolving.

“The president hasn’t decided where some of the detainees will be transferred. Those are decisions that the task forces are working on and that the president will lay out and discuss tomorrow,” Gibbs told reporters.

In recent weeks, Republicans have called for keeping Guantanamo open, saying abuses at the facility are a thing of the past and describing it as a state-of-the-art prison that’s nicer than some U.S. prisons. And they warn that terrorists who can’t be convicted might be set free in the United States.

“The American people don’t want these men walking the streets of America’s neighborhoods,” Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., said Wednesday. “The American people don’t want these detainees held at a military base or federal prison in their backyard, either.”

In another development Wednesday, a federal judge said the United States can continue to hold some prisoners at Guantanamo indefinitely without any charges.

Obama’s new Pentagon policy chief, Michele Flournoy, said it’s unrealistic to think that no detainees will come to the United States, and that the government can’t ask allies to take detainees while refusing to take on the same burden.

“When we are asking allies to do their fair share in dealing with this challenge we need to do our fair share,” Flournoy told reporters.

Obama ally Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., pointed out that not a single prisoner has ever escaped from a federal “supermax” prison and that 347 convicted terrorists are already being held in U.S. prisons.

Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, among the few Republicans joining former GOP presidential nominee John McCain of Arizona in calling for Guantanamo to be closed, scoffed at the idea that the government can’t find a way to hold Guantanamo prisoners in the United States. Graham noted that 400,000 German and Japanese prisoners were held during World War II.

“The idea that we cannot find a place to securely house 250-plus detainees within the United States is not rational. We have done this before,” Graham said. “But it is my belief that you need a plan before you close Gitmo.”

While allies such as Durbin have cast the development as a delay of only a few months, other Democrats have made it plain they don’t want any of Guantanamo’s detainees sent to the United States to stand trial or serve prison sentences.

Despite the setback, some Democrats said Obama should not be underestimated.

“The president’s very capable of putting together a plan that I think will win the approval of a majority of members of Congress,” said moderate Nebraska Democrat Ben Nelson. “I can’t imagine that he won’t.”

The victory puts an end to nearly a quater century of violent conflict in Sri Lanka, though the reconciliation campaign may take even longer.

European Union nations called Monday for an independent war crimes investigation into the killing of civilians in Sri Lanka.

Foreign ministers from the 27-nation EU said allegations that international humanitarian and human rights laws were violated had to be investigated, but did not say by whom.

“Those accountable must be brought to justice,” they said in a statement.

Meanwhile, Kevin Heller notes that at least one African leader is finally starting to give President Al-Bashir the cold shoulder, as South African President Jacob Zuma excluded the Sudanese ruler from his inauguration. If President Zuma’s action signals South African willingness to impose diplomatic consequences on the regime in Khartoum for the ongoing violence in Darfur, perhaps it will serve as a catalyst for some meaningful diplomatic progress even with the United States’ attention focused elsewhere.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Justice David Souter is planning to retire after nearly two decades on the Supreme Court, but his departure is unlikely to change its conservative-liberal split.

President Barack Obama’s first pick for the high court is likely to be a liberal-leaning nominee, much like Souter.

The White House has been told that Souter will retire in June, when the court finishes its work for the summer, a source familiar with his plans said Thursday night. The retirement is likely to take effect only once a successor is confirmed.

The source spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak for Souter.

Souter had no comment Thursday night, a Supreme Court spokeswoman said.

The vacancy could lead to another woman on the bench to join Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, currently the court’s only female justice.

At 69, Souter is much younger than either Ginsburg, 76, or Justice John Paul Stevens, 89, the other two liberal justices whose names have been mentioned as possible retirees. Yet those justices have given no indication they intend to retire soon and Ginsburg said she plans to serve into her 80s, despite her recent surgery for pancreatic cancer.

Souter, a regular jogger, is thought to be in excellent health.

Interest groups immediately began gearing up.

“We’re looking for President Obama to choose an eminently qualified candidate who is committed to the core constitutional values, who is committed to justice for all and not just a few,” said Nan Aron, president of the liberal Alliance for Justice.

Some of the names that have been circulating include recently confirmed Solicitor General Elena Kagan; U.S. Appeals Court Judges Sonya Sotomayor, Kim McLane Wardlaw, Sandra Lea Lynch and Diane Pamela Wood; and Leah Ward Sears, chief justice of the Georgia Supreme Court. Men who have been mentioned as potential nominees include Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick, Harvard Law professor Cass Sunstein and U.S. District Judge Ruben Castillo of Chicago.

The Obama White House began from almost its first days in office preparing for the possibility of a retirement by thinking about and vetting potential high court nominees. Those efforts only accelerated with Ginsburg’s cancer surgery.

The timing may have been unexpected, but Souter has long yearned for a life outside Washington.

He has never made any secret of his dislike for the capital, once telling acquaintances he had “the world’s best job in the world’s worst city.” When the court finishes its work for the summer, he quickly departs for his beloved New Hampshire.

He has been on the court since 1990, when he was an obscure federal appeals court judge until President George H.W. Bush tapped him for the Supreme Court.

Bush White House aide John Sununu, the former conservative governor of New Hampshire, hailed his choice as a “home run.” And early in his time in Washington, Souter was called a moderate conservative.

But he soon joined in a ruling reaffirming woman’s right to an abortion, a decision from 1992 that remains still perhaps his most noted work on the court.

Souter became a reliable liberal vote on the court and was one of the four dissenters in the 2000 decision in Bush v. Gore that sealed the presidential election for George W. Bush.

Yet as Souter biographer Tinsley Yarbrough noted, “he doesn’t take extreme positions.” Indeed, in June, Souter sided with Exxon Mobil Corp. and broke with his liberal colleagues in slashing the punitive damages the company owed Alaskan victims of the Exxon Valdez oil spill.

Souter is the court’s 105th justice, only its sixth bachelor. He works seven days a week through most of the court’s October-to-July terms, a pace that he says leaves time for little else. He told an audience this year that he undergoes “an annual intellectual lobotomy” each fall.

Souter earned his bachelor’s and law degrees from Harvard sandwiched around a stay at Oxford University as a Rhodes scholar.

He became New Hampshire’s attorney general in 1976 and a state court judge two years later. By 1990, he was on the federal appeals court in Boston for only a few months when Bush picked him to replace Justice William Brennan on the Supreme Court.

National Public Radio first reported Souter’s plans Thursday night.

Associated Press writer Jesse J. Holland contributed to this report.

Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

Add News to your iGoogle Homepage

U.S. President Barack Obama last week said the White House would not pursue legal claims against officials involved in the justification or the practice of so-called torturous techniques — isolation, humiliation, waterboarding – used to illicit “confessor” behavior in detainees.

While lawmakers on both sides of the aisle offered praise to the forward-looking release of the Bybee memos, former CIA Director Michael Hayden lashed out at Obama, telling The Associated Press the release of the memos gives terrorists the information needed to prepare for such interrogation techniques, adding it shows Washington “can’t keep anything secret.”

Meanwhile, Mark Thiessen, a speechwriter (!?) for U.S. President Bush, has come forward in The Washington Post and elsewhere giving tacit approval for such harsh interrogations techniques, saying they led to countless confessions of alleged plots against the United States.

He goes on to use fear mongering — as President Bush had in his campaign for a second term — to justify the continued use of torture.

“President Obama’s decision to release these documents is one of the most dangerous and irresponsible acts ever by an American president during a time of war — and Americans may die as a result,” he writes.

Please.

This is in stark contrast to CIA officers and academics alike who state extreme interrogation techniques are not useful in gleaning factual information from detainees.

“Where physical violence was inflicted during the course of such an attempt (at gathering information), the attempt was particularly likely to fail completely,” writes Albert Biderman in his seminal article, Communist Attempts to Elicit False Confessions from Air Force Prisoners of War.

In a more recent account, storied CIA officer Robert Baer writes in a recent edition of Time magazine that the intelligence community does not view so-called torture as a valid interrogation technique.

“The wisdom inside the CIA has always been that the best intelligence is obtained through persuasion rather than coercion,” he writes.

With Obama reversing course, suggesting a truth panel similar to the 9/11 Commission convene to examine these techniques, one thing is assured, if Khalid Sheik Mohammed — the self-confessed mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks and recipient of over 180 waterboardings – is not a stark raving terrorist lunatic, he certainly is one now.

That is not American justice.

“The healthy man does not torture others - generally it is the tortured who turn into torturers”

- Carl Gustav Jung