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War Crimes Prosecution Watch Editor-in-Chief Taylor Frank FREDERICK K. COX Volume 13 - Issue 21 INTERNATIONAL LAW CENTER November 26, 2018 Technical Editor-in-Chief Ashley Mulryan Founder/Advisor Michael P. Scharf Managing Editors Sarah Lucey Lynsey Rosales
War Crimes Prosecution Watch is a bi-weekly e-newsletter that compiles official documents and articles from major news sources detailing and analyzing salient issues pertaining to the investigation and prosecution of war crimes throughout the world. To subscribe, please email [email protected] and type "subscribe" in the subject line.
Opinions expressed in the articles herein represent the views of their authors and are not necessarily those of the War Crimes Prosecution Watch staff, the Case Western Reserve University School of Law or Public International Law & Policy Group.
Contents
AFRICA
CENTRAL AFRICA
Central African Republic
Cathedral attacked- 42 Dead (Independent Catholic News) Killing, abuse, sexual violence beyond belief': fears grow of all-out war in CAR (The Guardian) Central African war crimes suspect 'Rambo' handed to global court (Today Online) Death Toll in Cental African Republic Clashes Clashes Rises to 48 (Eyewitness News) Tensions in Central African Republic as refugees start returning (Tamil Times)
Sudan & South Sudan
US Considers Lifting Sudan’s ‘Terror State’ Designation Move Ignores Sudan’s Abuses Against its Own People (Human Rights Watch) Cirilo denounces govt’s plan to declare them terrorist groups (Sudan Tribune) US Gift to Sudan Normalising relations ignores decades of abuse (Human Rights Watch)
Democratic Republic of the Congo UN 'alarmed' by fighting in DR Congo ahead of December elections (Aljazeera) Seven UN peacekeepers killed in fight against DRC rebels (Aljazeera) Mortar bombs fired at U.N. peacekeeping base in eastern Congo (Reuters) Two Food for the Hungry staff killed in the Democratic Republic of Congo (Relief Web) WEST AFRICA
Mali
Spread of Jihadism Turns Central Mali Into Deadliest Region (Bloomberg)
Liberia
War Crimes Court Campaign Gaining Momentum As Some Lawmakers Show Support (All Africa) Liberians Rally for Justice (Liberian Daily Observer) Pres. Weah - Liberians Will Decide Between War Crimes Court and Reconciliation (All Africa) EAST AFRICA
Uganda
Kwoyelo Denies All 93 War Crime Charges, Case Adjourned to Next Year (All Africa) Witness Tells ICC Ugandan Army Nearly Caught Kony in 2010 (All Africa) A Test Case for Justice in Uganda (Human Rights Watch)
Kenya
Kenya launches internal police probe to help reform force (Washington Post) Kenya Police Warn of Terror Attack Bandits in Garissa (Kenyans) The preacher who laid the ground for violent jihadi ideology in Kenya (The Conversation) Outcry over ‘saviour complex’ fuelling exploitation of Kenyan children (The Guardian)
Rwanda (International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda)
Genocide tribunal still has time to build a lasting legacy (The New Times) Genocide prosecutor warns against bribery of witnesses (The New Times) UN demands release of Turkish judge serving on war crimes panel (Deutsche Welle)
Somalia
Car Bombs Kill at Least 20 in Somalia’s Capital (New York Times) Minister for Africa condemns latest terrorist violence in Somalia (gov.uk) US says it killed 37 militants in two Somalia airstrikes (CNN) US airstrike in Somalia against al-Shabab kills 7 extremists (Fox19)
EUROPE
Court of Bosnia & Herzegovina, War Crimes Chamber Bosnian Judiciary Restricts Information on War Crimes Cases (Balkan Insight) Croatia Cuts Bosnian Croat’s Jail Term, Causing Political Storm (Balkan Insight) Belgrade Court Convicts Bosnian Serb of War Crime (Balkan Insight) Bosnia’s Omarska Camp Security Chief Due for Release (Balkan Insight)
International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia
Bosnian Judiciary Restricts Information on War Crime Cases (Balkan Insight) Kosovo Deputy PM Limaj’s War Crimes Acquittal Upheld (Balkan Insight) Croatia Indicts Bosnian Serb for Manjaca Camp Abuses (Balkan Insight) Bosnian Serb Ex-Fighters Indicted for Vlasenica Crimes (Balkan Insight) Jailed war criminal Mladic 'sends kisses' live on Serb TV (France 24) Kosovo Activists File War Crimes Complaints Against Serbs (Balkan Insight) Bosnia Arrests Serb War Crime Suspect in Zvornik (Balkan Insight)
Domestic Prosecutions In The Former Yugoslavia
Belgrade Court Convicts Bosnian Serb of War Crime (Balkan Insight) Kosovo Deputy PM Limaj’s War Crimes Acquittal Upheld (Balkan Insight) Kosovo Activists File War Crimes Complaints Against Serbs (Balkan Insight)
Turkey
European human rights court orders Turkey to free jailed politician (Financial Times) ‘Ayşe will go on holiday again’: Cyprus invasion talk returns to Turkey (The Guardian)
MIDDLE EAST AND NORTH AFRICA
Libya
Migrants Forced Off Ship After They Refused To Return To Libya (NPR) Libya: child refugees abused in UK-funded detention centres (The Guardian) Libyan gunmen free kidnapped Egyptians held over business dispute (Reuters)
Iraq
More than 200 Mass graves found in former IS territory in Iraq: UN (The Peninsula) Iraq court sentences five Islamic State members to death (Jurist) Decorated Navy SEAL Is Accused of War Crimes in Iraq (The New York Times)
Syria
Syria demands international mechanism to investigate US-led coalition's crimes (PressTV) Exclusive – Left Behind: ISIS Children in Syria, Iraq Await Int’l Solution (Asharq Al-Awsat) Action Needed on Incendiary Weapons: Spotlighting Inadequate International Law (Human Rights Watch) Saudi Arabia drafts UN resolution condemning Syria for human rights abuses (Almasdar News) UN condemns Syrian 'war on children' as up to 30 reportedly killed in clashes (UN News) Russia rips apart Saudi UN resolution accusing Syria of human rights violations (AMN Al-masdar News) Activists accuse Syrian government of arresting returnees (The National) Syrian civilians killed in US-led airstrikes, war monitor says (ABC) Veteran war crimes prosecutor urges reform of ‘disappointing’ UN (Capital News) US-led coalition denies reports airstrikes killed dozens of civilians in Syria (Military Times) Syria war: Amnesty asks public to help track civilian casualties of US-led bombing in Raqqa (The Independent)
Yemen
U.S. halting refueling of Saudi-led coalition aircraft in Yemen’s war (Reuters) Yemen: hundreds of alleged war crimes but only 79 investigations (The Ferret) UAE crown prince sued over alleged involvement in Yemen war (Al Jazeera)
Special Tribunal for Lebanon
The Sixth International Meetings of the Defence have taken place at the headquarters of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (Special Tribunal for Lebanon)
Israel and Palestine
Court delays demolition of terrorist’s home to hear family’s appeal (The Times of Israel) Palestinian Said Killed by Israeli Military Fire Near Gaza Border Fence (Haaretz) Hamas Chief in Gaza: 'There Is No Deal or Understandings' With Israel (Haaretz) Israel Is Indirectly Cooperating With The Hague’s Probe Into 2014 Gaza War Despite Past Criticism (Haaretz) Gaza Cease-fire: Israel, Hamas Agree to Return to 2014 Deal, Source Tells Haaretz (Haaretz) 18 Palestinians Wounded by Israeli Live Fire in Border Protests, Gaza Health Ministry Says (Haaretz) Four Wounded After Israeli Soldiers Shoot at Palestinians Burning Tires in West Bank, Ramallah Says (Haaretz) Israel Closer Than Ever to Controlling Part or All of Gaza, Strategic Affairs Minister Says (Haaretz)
Gulf Region
For war-ravaged Yemen, few expect ‘game changer’ in Saudi-led airstrikes after end of U.S. refueling (The Washington Post) Saudis Shift Account of Khashoggi Killing Again, as 5 Agents Face Death Penalty (The New York Times) Rights Abuses Under Scrutiny (Human Rights Watch) Saudi crown prince’s ‘fit’ delays UN resolution on war in Yemen (CNN) Press UAE Crown Prince on Abuses in Yemen (Human Rights Watch)
ASIA
Afghanistan
Horrific Kabul bomb attack underlines growing threat to civilian lives (Amnesty International) Operation Burnham: Inquiry into controversial SAS raid outlined in Hit and Run begins (NZ Herald)
Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia
KR leaders get second life sentence (Khmer Times) Cambodia says Khmer Rouge tribunal that convicted 3 is done (Beloit Daily News) ECCC to soon determine role of Meas Muth (Khmer Times)
Bangladesh International Crimes Tribunal
Why Rohingya refugees shouldn't be sent back to Myanmar (Amnesty International) Crimes Against Humanity In Myanmar: What Can The Courts Do? (Lawyer Monthly)
War Crimes Investigations in Burma
The U.S. considered denouncing Myanmar for ‘crimes against humanity.’ It didn’t happen. (The Washington Post) Aung San Suu Kyi Stripped Of Another Honour: The International Community Must Focus On Solutions Not Punishments (The Organization for World Peace) Myanmar police shoot, injure four in raid on Rohingya camp: witness (Reuters)
AMERICAS
North & Central America
International court says it is undeterred after Bolton threatens U.S. sanctions (Reuters) U.S. halting refueling of Saudi-led coalition aircraft in Yemen’s war (Reuters) Decorated Navy SEAL is accused of war crimes in Iraq (The New York Times)
South America
A Bullet to the Head Reignites Chile's Oldest Conflict (Bloomberg) Risk jail or go hungry. Venezuelans working abroad face stark choices. (Miami Herald) Man, 19, says he survived secret extrajudicial killing in Venezuela (Local 10)
Venezuela
One year later, Venezuela still holding 5 US 'hostages' (Washington Examiner)
TOPICS
Truth and Reconciliation Commission
PYJ Describes TRC Report as ‘Fraudulent’ (Liberian Daily Observer) U. S. House of Reps Calls for Full Implementation of Liberia’s Truth & Reconciliation Recommendations (Front Page Africa) U.S. House of Representatives Passes Resolution to Support War Crimes Court in Liberia (The Bush Chicken) President Weah Concedes? (Liberian Daily Observer) Ethiopian Leaders Propose Truth and Reconciliation Commission (Ezega)
Terrorism Israel lawmakers to debate death penalty for Palestinian 'terrorists' (Middle East Eye) The CIA explored using a ‘truth-serum’ on terrorism detainees after 9/11, newly released report shows (The Washington Post) Boko Haram brought terror to Niger. Can a defectors program bring peace? (The Washington Post)
Piracy
Pirates Repelled from Stena Bulk Vessel West of Yemen (The Maritime Executive) Pirates Attack LNG Carrier in Gulf of Guinea (Maritime Executive) Crackdown on Sea Pirates Yielding Results (Independent Online) “Ukraine Commits Piracy Actions”: Moscow Reacted to the Detention of Ships in the Sea of Azov by Kiev (Maritime Herald) Navy Detains 52 Vessels, 40 Persons for Alleged Piracy Offenses (Pulse Nigeria)
Gender-Based Violence
Sexual violence is a widespread weapon of war – it's time international law caught up (Independent) Kosovo Reopens Case After War Rape Victim Speaks Out (Balkan Transitional Justice) How is sexual violence still being used as a weapon of war against men and women? (Euronews)
Commentary and Perspectives
Chemical weapons team to begin assigning blame for Syrian attacks (Reuters) How Congress can force Saudi Arabia’s hand on Yemen (Reuters) Rights group sues Abu Dhabi Crown Prince in France over Yemen (Reuters)
WORTH READING
Emmanuel Tronc, Rob Grace and Anaïde Nahikian: Humanitarian Access Obstruction in Somalia: Externally Imposed and Self-Inflicted Dimensions Oona A. Hathaway, Alexandra Francis, Aaron Haviland, Srinath Reddy Kethireddy and Alyssa Yamamoto: Yemen: Is the U.S. Breaking the Law?
AFRICA
CENTRAL AFRICA
Central African Republic
Official Website of the International Criminal Court ICC Public Documents - Cases: Central African Republic
Cathedral attacked- 42 Dead (Independent Catholic News) November 16, 2018
Refugees sheltering in the compound of the Cathedral in the Diocese of Alindao, in the Central African Republic, were attacked yesterday 15th November, by rebel forces (ex-Seleka from General Ali Darassa's faction).
The attack was reported to have been carried out in retaliation for the killing of one Muslim by an Antibalaka militia on the 14th.
Official reports state that 42 people have been killed, some unofficial reports put the figure as high as 100. Houses in the vicinity were also looted and burned. The vicar general of the diocese, Abbe Blaise Mada, and another priest also lost their lives. According to reports the second priest killed was Father Celestine Ngoumbango, but this has not yet been confirmed. Reports state that one priest was killed during the attacks, while the other later succumbed to injuries.
Killing, abuse, sexual violence beyond belief': fears grow of all-out war in CAR (The Guardian) By Rebecca Ratcliffe November 16, 2018
The UN security council has failed to agree terms for extending a peacekeeping mission in Central African Republic just days after a top aid official warned the country is at risk of sliding into full-scale war.
Jan Egeland, secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, who warned the UN peacekeeping mission is overstretched, said wider efforts to end the conflict were also failing.
“The UN effort is not succeeding, the donor effort is not succeeding and the government is in no way steering the country toward good governance,” said Egeland. “Nor are CAR’s neighbours playing the role of being good neighbours stabilising the country.”
On Thursday, the mandate for the UN’s peacekeeping mission, Minusca, was temporarily renewed for a month, following disagreements over whether it should provide support to the country’s national troops.
Aid agencies have warned that Minusca desperately needs additional resources to improve the number and quality of the mission, which has struggled to contain the crisis and faced allegations of sexual exploitation. But Minusca has struggled to persuade countries to contribute troops, while the US wants to reduce cost. Experts believe the number of troops, which currently stands at 12,000, is unlikely to rise further.
“The mission is not even close to fulfilling its mandate of protecting the civilian population,” Egeland added. “Civilians are routinely targeted, killed, abused – the sexual violence is beyond belief”.
Over a 48-hour period beginning on 31 October, 27,000 people were forced to flee after a camp and surrounding homes were burned and looted following clashes in Batangafo, in the north of the country. The site was “virtually next door” to a UN peacekeeper base, said Egeland.He added that pledges made at a Brussels conference in 2016 – when 2.06bn (£1.8bn) was promised by donors – had failed to bring about reconciliation and reconstruction in most areas of the country.
“If it [the conflict] continues like right now, full-scale war is much more realistic than any kind of reconciliation and reconstruction outcome we thought of in 2016,” said Egeland.
“This is a place where a hand grenade and loaf of bread are more or less the same price,” he said, adding that the prevalence of diamonds and other precious metals has intensified violence by armed groups. “It is very easy to get guns and grenades for a low price, and unemployed, desperate young men are even cheaper.”
Conflict broke out in CAR in late 2012, when Seleka rebels – most of them Muslims, and many from Chad and Sudan – overthrew François Bozizé. Predominantly Christian fighters, known as the anti-balaka, retaliated. The number of armed groups, often competing for natural resources, has since multiplied.
Funding shortages have forced agencies to adopt a short term approach, said Egeland, focusing resources on the most crisis- hit areas, only to withdraw support as soon as the emergency is perceived to have faded. In Carnot, in the east of the country, the Norwegian Refugee Council was forced to withdraw a school programme that provided education for young people otherwise vulnerable to recruitment by armed groups.
So far this year, the humanitarian response in CAR has received less than half of the $500m dollars needed. An estimated 1.27 million people have been forced to flee their homes as a result of the violence.
Ferran Puig, Oxfam’s country director in Central African Republic, said aid efforts were severely hampered by insecurity. “A lack of humanitarian access to some areas is really preventing us from moving around outside of the areas [that are] under control of Minusca. When you try to do humanitarian response to communities [elsewhere], it’s very difficult.”
This summer, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs warned of a rise in attacks on aid workers in the country, which is among the most dangerous for humanitarian workers. A total of 118 incidents were recorded between April and June.
There are fears over increased violence in areas such as Batangafo and Bambari, in the centre of the country. In Batangafo, 10,000 people fled to a local hospital and many others to the bush after violence erupted two weeks ago, forcing medical staff to cut back services. Roughly 5,000 people remain on the grounds, according to Médecins Sans Frontières.
Staff there normally see an average of 1,000 people for malaria cases each week, but this had fallen to 60 last week following the eruption of violence. “In two weeks’ time we are going to have severe cases of malaria because people are not arriving in the hospital, they are living in the bush,” said Helena Cardellach, field coordinator for Batangafo for Médecins Sans Frontières, which supports the hospital.
Medical workers are also concerned about increased cases of diarrhoea, malnutrition and respiratory infections, especially among children under five.
The Norwegian Refugee Council has called for an urgent review of the humanitarian response in 2019, ahead of the country’s 2020 elections, which it is feared may lead to a further escalation of violence.
Central African war crimes suspect 'Rambo' handed to global court (Today Online) November 17, 2018
A war crimes suspect wanted for alleged murder, deportation and torture of Muslims in the Central African Republic has been handed over to the International Criminal Court in the Hague, the tribunal said.
CAR officials transferred Alfred Yekatom on Saturday to officials from the global court, which is investigating six years of violence that has destabilised a region at the heart of the continent.
Yekatom, a sitting MP once nicknamed "Rambo", had been under arrest in Central African Republic since Oct. 29, when during a parliamentary session he first pointed a gun at a fellow lawmaker and then shot twice at the ceiling.
CAR government officials did not respond to requests for comment, but the country's justice minister was expected to make a statement on Monday.
Yekatom was handed over to ICC officials on Saturday and arrived in the court's detention centre in the Hague in the early hours of Sunday, the ICC registry's spokesman said.
There was no immediate comment from Yekatom or any lawyers representing him.
A U.N. commission of inquiry found that Christian militias under Yekatom had carried out war crimes and crimes against humanity by targeting Muslims.
The International Criminal Court - set up to prosecute the worst crimes when member countries can not or will not do so - issued a sealed arrest warrant for Yekatom on Nov. 11.
"We allege Mr. Yekatom is criminally responsible for several counts of crimes against humanity and war crimes committed in the Central African Republic between 5 December 2013 and August 2014," International Criminal Court prosecutor Fatou Bensouda said.
"Now, he must answer in court for his actions."
Bensouda is carrying out two separate investigations into conflicts in the Central African Republic. Yekatom's arrest is the first in the more recent conflict.
A pre-trial chamber found reason to suspect Yekatom of commanding around 3,000 members of an armed group operating within the Anti-Balaka movement, which was carrying out systematic attacks against the Muslim population.
Among the charges in the warrant are murder, cruel treatment, deportation, imprisonment, torture, persecution, enforced disappearance, and the recruitment of child soldiers under the age of 15. The former French colony, one of Africa's poorest countries despite reserves of gold and diamonds, was plunged into chaos when mostly Muslim Seleka rebels started attacking towns and grabbing territory before seizing power in March 2013. Seleka's rule prompted a backlash from Christian militia known as anti-balaka. Under international pressure Seleka handed power to a transitional government but the move effectively partitioned the country and bloody clashes continue.
No date has been set yet for Yekatom's initial appearance, but he must be brought before a judge within several days under court rules.
Death Toll in Cental African Republic Clashes Clashes Rises to 48 (Eyewitness News) November 19, 2018
At least 48 people were killed in clashes between Christian and Muslim-dominated militias in a restive Central African Republic(CAR) town last week, according to an internal UN report seen Monday by AFP.
The death toll had previously been reported as 37, including two priests, in the country's latest surge of sectarian violence.
The bloodshed was sparked in the central town of Alindao on Thursday between Christian militiamen, known as anti-Balaka, and the Union for Peace in CAR (UPC) Muslim militia.
The town's church and a camp for displaced people were torched. Pictures seen by AFP show burnt bodies in the fire.
Other than the two priests, it has not yet been possible to confirm whether those killed were civilians or armed fighters.
More than 20,000 people have been displaced by the violence, according to the UN.
One of the world's poorest nations despite a rich supply of diamonds and uranium, the CAR has struggled to recover from a 2013 civil war that erupted when President Francois Bozize, a Christian, was overthrown by mainly Muslim Seleka rebels.
In response, Christians, who account for about 80% of the population, organised vigilante units dubbed "anti-Balaka" in reference to a local machete.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Saturday said the latest attack was attributed to the UPC militia, which has its roots in the Seleka group.
However, the UPC accused "both Muslim and Christian bandits" of being behind the incident.
"The UPC has dispatched one of its units to stop looting and violence," the group said in a statement on Monday.
Alindao is a UPC stronghold and has witnessed chronic fighting in recent months that has also killed two UN soldiers and a humanitarian aid worker.
The town lies on a critical route traversing the south and east of the country and is in the heart of a region numerous gold and diamond mines that have helped fuel the conflict.
The UN has warned of a "disastrous" humanitarian situation in the region, which it said was under the control of armed groups.
Tensions in Central African Republic as refugees start returning (Tamil Times) November 20, 2018
Tensions have risen within the city of Carno in Central African Republic (CAR) as refugees, who are predominately Muslim, have started to return to find their homes and businesses occupied, exacerbating the conflict between Muslim and Christian communities.
Aid organisations and the UN aim to build new houses to ease tensions and allow occupants to voluntarily leave.
Refugees from the Central African Republic, were forced into exile due to fighting among armed groups which began in 2013.
“Over 543,000 CAR refugees to remain in neighbouring Cameroon, Chad, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and the Republic of the Congo, with smaller numbers in Sudan and South Sudan. This is the highest number of CAR refugees seen since the start of the crisis. In addition to the refugees, close to 700,000 people have been forced to flee inside the country," the UNHRC said.
Since late 2016, the nation has began to stabilise however there is still significant security threats in the “northwest, east and south-east of CAR – some not previously affected by violence”. They also note a severe lack of funding and an inability to provide for basic survival assistance:“
Food, health, shelter and water and sanitation are all primary concerns for refugees living outside formal sites and for the communities hosting them.
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Sudan & South Sudan
Official Website of the International Criminal Court ICC Public Documents - Situation in Darfur, Sudan
US Considers Lifting Sudan’s ‘Terror State’ Designation Move Ignores Sudan’s Abuses Against its Own People (Human Rights Watch) By Jehanne Henry November 7, 2018
With all eyes on mid-term elections in the United States, almost no one noticed that on the same day the US State Department quietly told just three journalists that it would, under certain circumstances, lift its designation of Sudan as a state sponsor of terrorism.
Sudan has a long legacy of abuses against its own people. During its 22-year long civil war in southern Sudan, roughly two million died and another four million were displaced. Then, in the western region of Darfur, government and militia forces destroyed thousands of villages and pushed millions of civilians off huge swathes of land, killing hundreds of thousands. The US accused Sudan of genocide in 2004, and the International Criminal Court brought charges of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide against Sudan’s President Omar al-Bashir and others.
Despite this, the US began the process of “normalizing” relations with Sudan in the last days of the Obama administration, lifting broad economic sanctions that were imposed 20 years earlier. The US cited “continued progress” in reducing offensive military operations in Darfur, Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile; improving humanitarian access; and cooperation on counterterrorism and other goals.
But the US did not require any progress on human rights. And Sudan’s security forces have continued to attack civilians and open fire on peaceful protesters. Its security agents continue to detain activists and bring trumped-up criminal charges against them and use torture and other forms of ill-treatment against detainees. The government censors the media, and arrests non- Muslims, charging them with apostasy, punishable by death.
Nearly two years later, “phase two” of normalizing US-Sudan relations finally mentions human rights, lumped together with religious freedoms, as one of six areas that Sudan needs to work on to get off the State Sponsor of Terror list, where it’s been since 1993. But it does not say how it will measure progress and still lacks benchmarks. Sudan has long sought removal from the list, which would make it eligible for loans and debt relief. But despite that incentive, without clear benchmarks, it’s hard to see Sudan being held accountable to make real improvements to its appalling rights record.
No wonder the US and Sudan prefer to celebrate their deal in private.
Cirilo denounces govt’s plan to declare them terrorist groups (Sudan Tribune) November 8, 2018
South Sudan Opposition Alliance (SSOA) led by Thomas Cirilo Wednesday denounced “government’s sinister plans” to label holdout opposition groups as terrorist organisations.
Speaking in a public meeting at the Freedom Square in Yei town, Vice President James Wani Igga announced his government plan to declare the non-signatory factions as terror groups after the end of the pre-transitional period of eight (8) months.
“South Sudan Opposition Alliance (SSOA) condemns this irresponsible utterance from Mr Wani Igga,” said the SSOA-Cirilo spokesperson Kwaje Lasu in a statement extended to Sudan Tribune on Wednesday evening.
Lasu further said it is the ruling SPLM led by President Salva Kiir which “rightfully” deserves this categorization as a terrorist organization.
“The Government of Kiir and those of Wani Igga have committed heinous crimes against humanity, war crimes, rape and displacement of 2.4 million South Sudanese since the start of the man-made infernal civil war in the country,” he added.
The factions of the SSOA- Cirilo were part of the revitalized peace forum but rejected the IGAD brokered agreement saying it does not help to achieve their aspiration for a genuine federal system and freedoms.
However, the other faction led by Gabriel Changson signed the peace agreement and expressed hope to achieve the desired goals through the mechanisms set up by the revitalized peace pact.
Lasu pointed that the statement made by Wani Igga actually revealed the “mindset and sinister intentions” of the regime towards the holdout opposition.
He stressed that this threat will not deter their struggle for “a genuine sustainable peace and true democracy to our country”.
“We will continue to advocate for equality, freedom and justice. We strive to be the vehicle of change and beacon of hope to the people of this great nation despite the flapping wings of the dictatorial regime in Juba,” he emphasized.
President Kiir and SPLM-IO leader said they want to initiate a dialogue with the non-signatories and to include them in the peace implementation process but no concrete measure has been taken yet.
US Gift to Sudan Normalising relations ignores decades of abuse (Human Rights Watch) By Jehanne Henry November 20, 2018
On the afternoon of 7 November, the day after US Midterm elections, the US State Department released a statement to the news media, "Sudan commits to strengthening meaningful cooperation and reforms," announcing "Phase II" in its new relationship with Sudan. The statement put in writing what a spokesperson told three journalists the night before: The US would, under certain circumstances, lift its designation of Sudan as a state sponsor of terrorism.
Sudan has long wanted off this list to become eligible for international loans and debt relief. With its economy in tatters, this gift could not come at a better time.With all eyes on Midterm elections, few noticed the announcement. But it marked a significant evolution in US-Sudan relations, which have long been strained. As the ruling Islamic National Congress Party came into power after a military coup in 1989, the international community began to disengage. The US, citing Sudan's willingness to harbour terrorists such as Osama bin Laden and Carlos the Jackal, put Sudan on the State Sponsor of Terrorism list in 1993 and withdrew its ambassador three years later. In 1997, the US imposed comprehensive economic sanctions, cementing its policy of disengagement.
During the 90s, Sudan's brutal and abusive tactics in its civil war against the rebel Sudanese People's Liberation Army (SPLA), which had been going on since 1985, further damaged its poor reputation. The Sudanese government and its proxies fought the southern rebels, from non-Arab and mostly non-Muslim communities, in the remote swamplands of what is now South Sudan. For over two decades, government attacks, especially around oil concessions, destroyed towns and villages, killing and maiming civilians and forcing millions to flee. The long civil war ended with the internationally mediated Comprehensive Peace Agreement, signed in 2005. But even as Sudan's leaders were negotiating that agreement, which paved the way for the South's independence, they were busy overseeing a new civil war, this time against rebel groups drawn from largely African Muslim communities in the western region of Darfur. Sudan's counter-insurgency tactics there were similar: Government forces and allied Janjaweed militia bombed and torched villages, killed thousands of people, and drove millions into camps for displaced people or to refugee camps over the border with Chad.
Concluding that the Sudanese government bore responsibility for atrocities in Darfur, the US secretary of state at the time, Colin Powell, accused Sudan of genocide in 2004. The US imposed additional sanctions on Sudan and backed deployment of African Union and United Nations peacekeepers to Darfur. In 2005, the United Nations Security Council referred the situation to the International Criminal Court, which issued arrest warrants for several commanders, including President Omar al- Bashir, for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide in Darfur. Al-Bashir, other government officials and affiliated commanders have evaded arrest.
As the war in Darfur simmered, Sudan became mired in a third civil war - in the so-called "two areas" of Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile - when rebels from those areas took up arms against the government following South Sudan's independence in 2011. There, too, government bombing and attacks killed and maimed people, and forced hundreds of thousands to flee north or to refugee camps in bordering countries. Fast-forward to 2017. Against this grim background, in January the Obama administration started a process of normalisation with Sudan by promising to lift the economic sanctions if Sudan made "sustained progress" in five areas, which included reducing offensive military operations in Darfur, Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile. Sudan was also to improve access for aid groups and to cooperate with the US on counter-terrorism and other political goals in the region. In October 2017, the US decided that Sudan had made enough progress in those areas and revoked those sanctions permanently.
The January 2017 policy did not require any progress on human rights at all, despite well-documented, ongoing abuses. At the time, Human Rights Watch pointed out that while Sudan did reduce its bombing of civilians in Darfur and the Two Areas, its forces continued to attack civilians and open fire on peaceful protesters, as it did in late 2013, killing over 170 people on the streets of Khartoum and other towns. We proposed benchmarks that include obvious, easy-to-measure changes. For example, Sudan should reform its draconian security apparatus, with broad powers of arrest and detention, which has continued to detain activists and bring trumped-up criminal charges, and to torture and ill-treat detainees. We proposed changes to the law governing the media and the government's practice of censorship, and the repeal of certain provisions criminalising actions like apostasy, punishable by death.
Now, just under two years later, the US' "phase two" offers Sudan revocation of its state sponsor of terrorism designation with continued progress in six areas that include some of the previous five areas, such as cooperation on counter-terrorism. The US "phase two" policy finally does mention human rights, but it still does not say how progress will be measured in this area. Given how non-transparent the US determination will be, one wonders if the US wants Sudan to do anything at all? After so many decades of responding to Sudan's human rights crises, the US seems to have thrown in the towel.
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Democratic Republic of the Congo
Official Website of the International Criminal Court ICC Public Documents - Situation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo
UN 'alarmed' by fighting in DR Congo ahead of December elections (Aljazeera) November 14, 2018
The United Nations has raised the alarm over fighting in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), warning that violence, which is unfolding alongside an Ebola outbreak, could hamper next month's elections.
Leila Zerrougui, head of the UN stabilisation mission to the Democratic Republic of Congo, MONUSCO, said that the provinces of Tanganyika and South Kivu and parts of North Kivu province were most at risk.
"I have grown increasingly alarmed over the situation in Beni in recent months, where we continue to face major challenges in implementing our mandate," she said.
"There is a potential for armed group interference in elections in specific areas throughout eastern DRC."
Her remarks were made on Tuesday at the UN Security Council's monthly meeting on the DRC.
Inter-ethnic bloodshed Eastern DRC has been troubled for decades by inter-ethnic bloodshed and militia violence, a crisis that has escalated this year.
The city of Beni, home to up to 300,000 people, is under threat from the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), an armed group rooted in Uganda that has killed hundreds of people since 2014.
DRC is also battling the worst Ebola outbreak in the country's history.
The unrest is running in parallel with a conflict in the central region of Kasai, casting a shadow over the country's ability to stage elections on December 23 to choose a successor to President Joseph Kabila.
Zerrougui said many hurdles had to be overcome for the elections to proceed smoothly and be credible. The official start of campaigning is on November 22. "It will be especially important for the government to take steps in the coming weeks to secure polls, particularly to ensure the participation of women, who make up 50 percent of registered voters," she said.
Zerrougui is also the UN secretary-general's special representative in the DRC.
MONUSCO, whose mission is now 17,000 strong and among the UN's largest, has been in the DRC since 1999. It has an annual budget of $1.153bn.
Seven UN peacekeepers killed in fight against DRC rebels (Aljazeera) November 15, 2018
The United Nations says seven of its peacekeepers have been killed in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), in a military operation with government forces against rebels in the country's Ebola-hit northeast
Several DRC soldiers were also killed or wounded in Wednesday's joint operation targeting Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) rebels in the Beni region, North Kivu, according to Stephane Dujarric, UN spokesperson.
Ten UN peacekeepers were wounded and one was still missing, he added. An unknown number of ADF fighters were also killed or wounded.
Dujarric said six of the killed peacekeepers were from Malawi and one was from Tanzania.
The DRC's volatile east is home to many armed groups, including ADF, vying for control of the mineral-rich region.
The ADF originated in Uganda as a rebel force against the government and carried out deadly bombings in the 1990s. A military campaign forced them to relocate to eastern DRC.
Since October 2014, ADF rebels have been accused of killing more than 1,500 people in the Beni region.
UN investigators have blamed the ADF for carrying out the deadliest single assault on the UN peacekeeping mission in the DRC in almost 25 years.
That attack on December 7, 2017 at a base in Semuliki near Beni killed at least 15 Tanzanian peacekeepers, wounded 43 others and left one peacekeeper missing.
In recent attacks, ADF rebels have also killed civilians and abducted children in the Beni region.
The rebel attacks have forced suspension of crucial efforts to contain the Ebola outbreak in some areas.
Peter Salama, the emergencies chief for the World Health Organization, predicted earlier this week that the outbreak, which has killed more than 200 people, would last at least another six months.
He said makeshift health facilities offering both traditional and modern treatment have become "major drivers" of the current, deadly transmission and are believed to be linked to more than half of the cases in Beni, the largest city affected by the current outbreak.
Salama said the current Ebola outbreak is "arguably the most difficult context that we've ever encountered", pointing to activities of two armed rebel groups in the region.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called on all armed groups to stop "their destabilising activities" and "disarm immediately", Dujarric said.
He also urged DRC authorities to apprehend and bring to justice the perpetrators of attacks against civilians, national security forces and UN peacekeepers, the spokesperson added.
Guterres gave strong backing to peacekeepers from Malawi and Tanzania "who continue to operate in an exceptionally difficult environment to protect local populations against the attacks of the ADF and other armed groups," Dujarric said.
Mortar bombs fired at U.N. peacekeeping base in eastern Congo (Reuters) November 16, 2018
Mortar bombs were fired at a U.N. peacekeeping base and gunfire could be heard on Friday in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s eastern city of Beni, an area which has seen a surge in fighting with rebel groups, two sources said.
The attack follows the death of twelve Congolese soldiers and seven U.N. peacekeepers in clashes with militias earlier this week - one of the deadliest for troops in Congo’s volatile eastern borderlands since a rebel attack in early 2018.
Congolese army spokesman Mak Hazukay said the army was monitoring the situation in Beni and had imposed a curfew on part of the city.
Eastern Congo has been plagued by banditry and armed insurrections for more than two decades since the fall of military ruler Mobutu Sese Seko. The past year has seen a surge in violence around North Kivu region.
Beni is the epicenter of the region’s Ebola epidemic and efforts to control the outbreak - the worst in Congo’s history with over 300 infected and two-thirds of those killed - have been hampered by insecurity.
Two Food for the Hungry staff killed in the Democratic Republic of Congo (Relief Web) November 19, 2018
Two humanitarian aid workers from Food for the Hungry (FH) were tragically killed in Tanganyika province, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), on Thursday, November 15.
“We are devastated to confirm the tragic loss of our two staff members,” said FH CEO Mike Meyers. “Our hearts and prayers are with their families as we grieve alongside them.”
The two workers were returning to their field site of work Thursday morning on motorcycle, approximately 80 km from the FH Kalemie office, when they were accosted on the road by armed individuals and fatally shot.
FH has temporarily suspended all operations in the area and is engaging in a thorough investigation with local authorities to seek justice.
“We denounce this terrible attack on humanitarian lives, and the ongoing violence in DRC,” said Meyers.
The Democratic Republic of Congo is continuously listed as one of the top ten most dangerous places for aid workers according to Humanitarian Outcomes. The killing of humanitarian workers is considered a war crime by the United Nations and international law.
In 1995, Food for the Hungry (FH) entered DRC to assist unaccompanied refugee children who were victims of the civil war that ravaged the country, as well as those fleeing from the genocide in Rwanda. Since then, FH has focused efforts on community development, including helping communities rebuild and reestablish livelihoods, improving access to water and sanitation, and reducing food insecurity through agriculture and livestock production.
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WEST AFRICA
Mali
Spread of Jihadism Turns Central Mali Into Deadliest Region (Bloomberg) By Katarina Hoije November 20, 2018
A mix of jihadist violence, communal conflict and suspected army abuse have rendered central Mali the country’s deadliest region as the influence of Islamist insurgents and separatist rebels in the north is spreading, according to a human- rights group.
Mali’s government has been struggling to restore state authority in the north and center since a 2012 Islamist insurgency that’s reverberated across West Africa. More than 500 people have been killed in attacks or mass executions in the central Mopti region during the first six months of the year, the International Federation for Human Rights said in a report published Tuesday, citing testimonies from civilians and local leaders. Soldiers were involved in at least six of the attacks, the Paris-based group said in the report. In one incident, several of 67 people escorted by soldiers were later found in a mass grave. The recent violence has forced an estimated 34,000 people to flee their homes and aid organizations are struggling to provide food, the Norwegian Refugee Council said in a statement Wednesday.
A loose alliance of Tuareg rebels and Islamist insurgents seized large swathes of the north in 2012. A French military intervention succeeded in pushing back the insurgents a year later, but they’re now moving into Mali’s more densely populated center, where they stoke ethnic tensions through the targeted assassinations of local leaders.
In some villages, jihadists have enforced Sharia law, closed public schools and are forcing women to cover their heads, Amy Dicko, an activist from the nomadic ethnic Peul group, said by phone Monday from Mali’s capital, Bamako.
“In my village there are no marriages as the jihadists have banned people from celebrating” while those who don’t obey are abducted and sometimes killed, said Dicko.
Since the 2015 emergence in the Mopti region of a jihadist movement led by the Peul preacher Amadou Koufa, disputes between herders and Bambara and Dogon farmers have repeatedly turned violent. Already tense relations between ethnic groups have been exacerbated by accusations of the military cooperating with self-defense militias in the fight against the jihadists, who recruit mainly among young Peul herders, said Florent Geel, head of the rights group’s Africa desk.
‘Global Jihad’
“These are herders caught up in a global jihad, which in reality has much less appeal than the struggle for access to grazing land, the unlawful arrest of a family member or state corruption,” Geel said by phone from Paris.
An investigation into some incidents mentioned in the report are underway and “soldiers implicated in any attacks will be sanctioned,” Defense Ministry spokesman Boubacar Diallo said.
While some of the military perpetrators have been identified and removed from their positions, the failure to prosecute offenders has led the population, and specifically the Peul, to distrust state authority, Geel said.
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Liberia
War Crimes Court Campaign Gaining Momentum As Some Lawmakers Show Support (All Africa) By Jackson F. Kanneh November 12, 2018
As campaigners in Liberia prepare to stage a peaceful march in Monrovia to call for the establishment of war and economy crimes court, some members of the 54th National Legislature have vowed to lobby with their colleagues for the introduction of a resolution in support of the establishment of a war and economy crime court.
Attending a National Justice Conference Friday in Monrovia, five members of the 54th Legislature expressed support for the establishment of the court in consultation with their constituency.
River Gee County district#3 Representative Francis Dopoh; Rustonly S. Dennis of Montserrado District#4, Hanson S. Kiazolu of District #17, Richard N. Koon of District #11 and Ceebee Barshell of Montserrado County District #3 assured the war crimes court campaigners of their commitment to bring justice to the victims of the civil war.
Speaking to FrontPage Africa after the National Justice Conference, Representatives Dennis and Dopoh pledged their support for the establishment of the economy and war crimes court.
According to them, the establishment of war crimes court is necessary because it will serve as a precedent for future generation.
Justice, according to the two lawmakers, is very important in the developmental agenda of any country. According to them, Liberia will be more stable and peaceful after the establishment of the court depending it is the will of the Liberia citizen.
"Once the call for the establishment of the court has the desire of our people I will support it even if I am the lone man to take up the revolution once my people support me I will take up the challenge.
"The issue of the court is not about the warlords, it is about what happened during the war so we should not be scare here to establish the court. This country will be peaceful, justice and peace are all part of development so let nobody threaten us here", Rep. Dopoh said.
"We should not be begging when it comes to justice, we just need to look at the timing and the security. So, again the voice of the people will prevail. And as an individual I stand for justice and I cannot go contrary for what I stand for. So, if any of my colleagues are human right violators when we shall have pass any resolution on the matter he or she will be permitted before the law", the Montserrado district#4 lawmaker noted.
Speaking earlier at the conference, Uchenna Emelonye, Country Representative of the office of the Higher Commissioner for Human Rights, assured the people and government of Liberia of the necessary support needed in the fight for peace and justice.
He called on the CDC-led the government to implement the report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) in order to bring lasting peace to the people of Liberia.
"As the office of the higher commissioner for human rights, we commit to supporting the government and people of Liberia in their quest for reconciliation and accountability for past human rights violations. In the same concluding observation, the committee urged the government of Liberia to take all measures necessary to implement the TRC recommendations.
"It further recommends to the government of Liberia to establish, as a matter of priority, a process of accountability for past gross human rights violations that conforms in international standards", he averred.
At the end of the National Justice Conference, participants from both local and international human rights organizations signed a joint resolution calling on the government of Liberia and her international partners for the establishment of an economy and war crime court in the country.
Liberians Rally for Justice (Liberian Daily Observer) By Hannah N. Geterminah November 13, 2018
Hundreds of Liberians under the banner “Campaigners and Victims For Justice,” yesterday, November 12, marched through the principal streets of Monrovia to present petitions to the American Embassy, European Union, United Nations and to the office of President George Weah, calling for the establishment of War and Economic Crimes’ Court in Liberia to seek justice for victims of the 14 years civil conflict (1989-2003).
The protest march which created a traffic gridlock across Monrovia, was well attended by a mix of old people, youth, children, and even street hustlers including Zogos, who sang and danced as they trooped from their assembly point at the Centennial Pavilion to the United States Embassy and then to the European Union office, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and finally to the United Nations headquarters on Tubman Boulevard, crying for justice for their loved ones and families victimized during the war.
In a related development, a separate group of demonstrators had also besieged the entire Jallah Town route connecting the Capitol By-Pass demanding the restoration of electricity to the community, which the protesters claimed had been in darkness for over three weeks. Meanwhile the war crimes protesters continued singing and chanting “We are the victims we can’t get tired, the pro-poor government we want justice, Liberian people what you want….we want justice, your leave us oh da justice we want…”
A concerned Liberian resident from Canada, Emmanuel Savice, who led the protest action declared, “We are serious about justice and accountability because no country will develop without ending the culture of impunity. If you ever think that God will come down and bless us, the two hundred and fifty thousand souls will continue to keep us down until we seek justice in this country.”
When asked about the views of those Liberians that are calling for restorative justice, instead, Savice angrily said, “We want retributive justice for our people we lost their lives. You can’t tell me what I want. I lost my three brothers, one sister, my mother is still mourning for them. That is why I am pushing for international justice for every human being who his or her life.”
Continuing, Savice said the current government campaigned on a platform for justice, “so they must stand up and listen to the cry of innocent Liberians who lost their parents and other relatives during the war and give them justice.”
The protesters in their Petition said that crimes committed by the perpetrators violated international criminal laws, international human rights laws and international humanitarian laws and therefore they should not go unpunished.
Savice said there are facts and evidence that tell the sad and ugly story of the country which is readily and conspicuously available in every nook and cranny of the country.
“Heads of warring factions were involved in the massive killing of our people and the destruction of our country and they still walk freely in the midst of their victims that they violated, degraded, abused, vilified, raped and sexually enslaved during the heydays of their violence,” he said. Savice said, “These war criminals’ massacred and engaged in extra-judicial killings, and other unthinkable crimes against their victims and they still linger in the minds of Liberians, owing to the fact that justice is being delayed and denied.”
He said the sorrow and agony of the Liberian people lie in the ugly fact that these very war criminals have been rewarded with state power in all its ramifications, thereby giving them political control over their victims against their will.
“This kind of scenario continues to torment and psychologically affect the people of Liberia. It is no secret that the Liberian brutal civil war produced numerous massacres like the killings of the five Catholic Nuns, the Sinje Massacre, the St. Peter’s Lutheran Church Massacre in Sinkor and others,” he said.
The petitioners said only a War Crimes Court will bring justice to the families, relatives, and friends of victims who were gruesomely murdered and raped. Savice said seeking justice for these barbaric crimes is the only way to right the wrong, reconcile the country and its people and finally end the culture of impunity in Liberia.
“It will be sad, regrettable and shameful for the world to let these atrocities go unpunished. It will be disappointing and a mistake for such heinous crimes to go unpunished. These appalling crimes must be investigated, and the required judicious measures taken to avoid replication in the future,” he said.
Savice further maintained, “Also on record is the persistent greed and dishonesty of leaders of the country who also, with impunity continue to unduly amass wealth for themselves, thereby subjecting the entire citizenry to horrible poverty.” He said the constant wave of corruption which pervades the country keeps the people in a state of poverty and disease has denied them basic life incentives because people elected to power personalize the country’s wealth at their detriment.
He said corruption in government must be wiped out to bring about the needed development in the country. “Corruption is eating up every part of Liberia, impoverishing 90% of the citizenry. It is eating up the entire country making development stagnant,“. Savice said corruption is the vice responsible for reducing many citizens to beggars on a daily basis and it must stop, he emphasized.
Pres. Weah - Liberians Will Decide Between War Crimes Court and Reconciliation (All Africa) By Lennart Dodoo November 16, 2018
President George Manneh Weah will not give a definite stance on the establishment of war crimes court in Liberia but says Liberians would have to decide between development, reconciliation and war crimes court.
"I think what we need to do is that, we got to find out what we need. Do we need war crimes court now to develop our country? Or do we need peace to develop the country? That's where all of us Liberians need to sit and talk about advancement and what is necessary for us," said President Weah while responding to questions from reporters upon his return from Paris, France. President Weah's statement comes at a time when the U.S. House has passed a resolution reassuring the U.S.-Liberia ties and at the same time calling on Liberia to fully implement the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) recommendations and the establishment of war crimes court.
"The best thing for us is what the leader will do. So, if it means for us to reconcile this country, if it is the way that Liberia will develop and progress, then we have to work towards that," President Weah said.
Speaking about the just attended international peace summit in Paris, France, President Weah said, the summit was good as it was intended to promote peace. He said, the international community recognizes the importance of peace in national development and nation building, and therefore Liberians should take cue from the summit. President Weah also told reporters about the IGF Forum where the issue of fake news was discussed.
"The safety of our country is to evaluate those news that go out there. Some journalists for some reason try to send out hate messages out there; messages that could destroy our entire nation.
"It was a very important subject and we need to filter what is coming in to our people and what they listen to. We must see how we can counter those fake news as it is not good for our and growth and our country," the Liberian President added.
President George Weah said the decision on whether to establish a special court to prosecute people bearing greatest responsibility of the country's civil crisis rests upon the shoulders of all Liberians.
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EAST AFRICA
Uganda
Official Website of the International Criminal Court ICC Public Documents - Situation in Uganda
Kwoyelo Denies All 93 War Crime Charges, Case Adjourned to Next Year (All Africa) By Julius Ocungi November 13, 2018
Former Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) rebel commander Thomas Kwoyelo has denied all the 93 charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity against him.
Kwoyelo who appeared before the International Crimes Division's three member panel of judges at Gulu High Court on Tuesday pleaded not guilty to the charges.
The 93 amended indictments against Kwoyelo were read in court by the ICD Registrar Harriet Ssali as the three judges; Jane Kigundu, Duncan Gaswaga and Michael Elubu listened.
The charges relates to murder, attempted murder, pillage, robbery, sexual violence, rape, hostage taking and kidnap allegedly conducted in Pabbo Sub County Kilak County in present day Amuru District between March 1993 and 2005.
Kwoyelo denied ever committing the offences nor having knowledge about them.
He was represented in court by Charles Dalton Opwonya, Boriss Anyuru, Caleb Alaka and Evans Ocheng.
The trial judge justice kigundu has adjourned court to February 4, 2019.
Witness Tells ICC Ugandan Army Nearly Caught Kony in 2010 (All Africa) By Tom Maliti November 14, 2018
A former aide to Joseph Kony, leader of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), told the International Criminal Court (ICC) that about eight years ago the Ugandan army ambushed a unit Kony led in north-eastern Congo, but Kony evaded capture.
Kenneth Oyet told the court the ambush happened sometime in 2010 when the unit Kony led was in a place called Doruma, which is close to the border with Sudan's then autonomous region of Southern Sudan. (This region became the Republic of South Sudan in 2011.) Oyet said he left the LRA after this ambush.
Oyet's testimony on November 5 was the first time in the trial of Dominic Ongwen, a former LRA commander, that a witness had testified about how close the Ugandan military got to capturing Kony. There is an outstanding ICC arrest warrant for Kony issued in July 2005. This was the same time that an ICC arrest warrant was issued for Ongwen; that arrest warrant remained outstanding until Ongwen surrendered in January 2015.
Ongwen has been on trial since December 2016 on 70 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity that he allegedly committed between July 2002 and December 2005 in northern Uganda. He has pleaded not guilty to all counts.
Testifying about the 2010 ambush, Oyet said on that day they had walked for about one and a half miles and they were somewhere between Doruma and a place called Nzara in Sudan when Kony ordered them to stop.
"He selected four of us and asked us to move ahead and check if the road is clear and find out if there are soldiers or not," said Oyet. He said some time after the four of them went ahead, soldiers of the Uganda People's Defence Forces (UPDF) started shooting at them.
"Kony had stayed back for about a mile or more away from us. When they (the UPDF) started firing at us, they (Kony and the rest of the unit) were far away," said Oyet. He said Kony and the other members of the unit that remained with him got away.
Oyet said he was shot during this ambush and got separated from the other three LRA fighters he was with. Oyet said when he was shot, he fell, and he decided to lie low for some time. He said it was at this time he decided to escape the LRA. Oyet told the court that after he had rested, he tracked the UPDF soldiers who had ambushed them.
"I met them shortly thereafter and I handed myself to UPDF soldiers," said Oyet.
Prosecutor Adesola Adeboyejo cross-examined Oyet about his decision to leave the LRA. She asked him whether he would agree with her, "more people left the bush because of amnesty than any other reason?"
"That's correct," answered Oyet.
"And this was because they heard people over the FM radio talking about the amnesty?" asked Adeboyejo.
"That's correct," replied Oyet.
Adeboyejo then asked whether when people in the LRA heard "former comrades" on the radio, "you all realized that amnesty was real?"
"Yes," said Oyet.
"And so, this was what gave you the courage eventually to make the decision to hand yourself over when you were injured?" asked Adeboyejo.
"That's correct," answered Oyet.
When Adeboyejo finished cross-examining Oyet, Abigail Bridgman, one of Ongwen's lawyers, asked him further questions in re-examination.
"Why did you not leave the LRA as soon as you heard about the amnesty?" asked Bridgman.
"The reason why I stayed in the LRA was because it was extremely difficult to leave. One, you had also to think about your life ... If you decide to up and go without any thought, then you are risking your life," replied Oyet. Earlier in the day, Oyet told the court the LRA abducted him from his village in 1994.
Bridgman then read to him an excerpt of his statement in which he said amnesty was meaningless if the LRA were able to go to your village and destroy it in retaliation for you leaving the group.
"Yes, that's accurate because if you escape to the area where you originate from, they will go to the area. There will be repercussions, they (the villagers) will be killed," Oyet answered.
Oyet concluded his testimony on November 5. A transcript of his testimony is available here.
A Test Case for Justice in Uganda (Human Rights Watch) By Oryem Nyeko November 15, 2018
An alleged commander in the rebel group Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), Thomas Kwoyelo, has been in prison since he was captured by Ugandan forces in 2009. He has been awaiting trial at the International Crimes Division (ICD) of Uganda’s High Court, one of Africa’s first specially created chambers designed to try the most serious crimes, like war crimes or crimes against humanity, in the country they were committed. He has been detained for so long that his lawyers are applying to have him released on bail, despite his trial finally beginning a few weeks previously in September. His bail hearing was meant to be before the court today, but has been postponed to January.
Kwoyelo’s trial has been fraught with many such delays and complications. Pretrial proceedings started in 2011, but the High Court ordered Kwoyelo released when his lawyers argued that he qualified for amnesty under a controversial domestic law that arguably helped end the war between Uganda’s military and the LRA, but at the time also allowed people responsible for serious crimes to avoid prosecution. The Supreme Court overturned the decision in 2015 and although the case resumed in 2016, objections raised by Kwoyelo’s lawyers, lack of funds to conduct the hearings, and late filings by the lawyers, among other things, delayed the case.
This year, the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights issued a communication ordering the Ugandan government to compensate Kwoyelo for failing to hold his trial within a reasonable time.
The court is also struggling when it comes to victim participation in Kwoyelo’s case. In the ICD, victims’ lawyers present their views and concerns to the court, and should suspects be convicted, there may also be an opportunity for reparations. Government officials, however, say resources to allow victims to participate fully in the proceedings are insufficient. Lawyers who would represent over 90 people who have applied to participate as victims in Kwoyelo’s case have had to rely in part on the support of nongovernmental organizations to conduct outreach about victim participation and to consult their clients.
The ICD could be a model for other countries to adopt. But there are clearly lessons to be learned from these halting starts if it is going to be capable of delivering justice for international crimes, including through fair trials.
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Kenya
Official Website of the International Criminal Court ICC Public Documents - Situation in the Republic of Kenya
Kenya launches internal police probe to help reform force (Washington Post) By Tom Odula November 9, 2018
Kenya's internal security minister Friday launched a police internal affairs unit to investigate allegations of abuses in the force including corruption and accusations that officers kill suspects and perpetrate other human rights abuses.
The new investigation body has been welcomed with optimism by some rights activists, but many remain skeptical on its ability to bring adequate change.
The internal affairs unit will put the police on a "trajectory of reforms," Internal Security Cabinet Secretary Fred Matiangi said. The unit has been launched amid allegations by human rights groups and the public that police killed 22 suspects in the last two weeks in a low-income area of Nairobi.
Rights groups have for years claimed that Kenya's police force is riddled with corruption and carries out abuses.
Eric Kiraithe, a former police spokesman who is now the government spokesman admitted that corruption in the force saying it "runs deep and wide."
The local chapter of the international anti-corruption watchdog Transparency International has for more than a decade ranked the Kenyan police as the most corrupt institution in a country where corruption is endemic. The abuses have continued despite an exercise in which all 100,000 officers are being scrutinized, rights advocates say. Some 2,000 officers have been fired out of around 50,000 scrutinized as the exercise which started in December 2013 and is continuing.
When that investigation began, body parts from a person reported kidnapped were sent to the National Police Service Commission with a note warning the chairman to tread carefully.
The Independent Medico-Legal Unit, or IMLU, has conducted autopsies on the bodies of the 22 killed by police. "Our preliminary investigations indicate that those were extrajudicial killings," said Peter Kiama, the executive director of the group. "They were not done according to the law. The police were in a position to arrest and not kill those individuals."
The IMLU in 2014 documented how a majority of police killings at that time were connected to police extorting money from suspects and not police work. He said human rights defenders who raised concern about the killings are being threatened.
Kiama said the internal affairs unit can be effective if given independence and resources.
"This is a huge investment and the demonstration of political will is a plus," he said, adding that despite the challenges facing the new unit, "there is justification for skepticism but there is space for optimism."
Kenya Police Warn of Terror Attack Bandits in Garissa (Kenyans) By Derrick Okubasu November 10, 2018
The National Police Service, on Friday, issued an alert over impending attacks at the Isiolo/Garissa border.
In a Facebook post, the police suspected that some individuals could be mobilising bandits to stage attacks against some communities.
“The National Police Service wishes to warn that it has received information to the effect that some individuals could be mobilising bandits to stage attacks against some communities living along the Isiolo/Garissa border,” read the post.
The post further clarified that the earmarked locations included Modogashe, Skanska, Janju, Bulo, Eldere and other market centres in the area.
It also warned that those found inciting against certain communities or mobilising them to fight would face the law.
The post continued that the measures will be replicated in other towns such as Wajir where cases of violence were on an upward spiral.
“Equally, we wish to note that similar measures are being taken in respect of the recent upsurge of violence in parts of Wajir county involving two subclans
“No one irrespective of their status in the society, will be spared should they be found to be responsible for inciting violence.” concluded the post.
The Borana from Isiolo have had a long history of warring their Garissa counterparts, the Lagdera with the recent starting in 2015.
At least 15 people have been killed in the clashes across the troubled border.
The preacher who laid the ground for violent jihadi ideology in Kenya (The Conversation) By Hassan Juma Ndzovu November 18, 2018
There are a number of explanations about the genesis of jihadi ideas in Kenya.
One is that it could be linked to the emergence of the large and diverse Salafi community. The Salafi are also popularly known as the Wahhabi because of their association with the teachings of 18th century conservative Saudi scholar Muhammad Abd-al- Wahhab. The Salafists first appeared in Kenya in the 1980s under a community of believers known as Ansari Sunnah (the protectors of the tradition of Prophet Muhammad). This heralded the emergence of individuals with extreme religious views among Kenya’s Muslims, who make up 11.2% of the population of 51 million.
Another theory is laid at the door of increasing numbers of Muslims studying in the Middle East particularly Saudi Arabia, exposing them to the Wahhabi way of thinking – the Saudi form of Salafism.
The third theory is that the insurgency in Somalia, spearheaded by al-Shabaab brought together Muslims from Somalia, Kenya and other nationalities in a conflict zone. This provided a greater opportunity for Kenyan jihadists to feel part of a global Islamic movement.
But my research traces the intellectual genesis and the ultimate growth of the jihadi ideology back to a prominent Muslim cleric – Sheikh Abdulaziz Rimo.
Rimo was born in 1949 at Diani in Kwale County on the Kenyan coastline. Early in his 20s, Rimo secured an eight-year scholarship to study at the Islamic University of Medina in Saudi Arabia in 1972. After completing his studies, he returned to Kenya to propagate the Islamic faith among the Digo Muslim community of Kenya’s south coast. This was an undertaking he frequently referred to as jihad – the religious duty of exerting oneself to realise a noble cause.
It’s my view that Rimo’s efforts ushered in a new way of addressing political issues among Kenyan Muslims. His biggest influence included framing the grievance of Muslims along religious lines. By doing so he promoted the idea that religion could be used to solve political problems.
Rimo’s history
Like other African students, the reformist imprint of the Medina University scholars left an indelible mark on Rimo. Certainly, the Medina phase was crucial for him in terms of initiating him into the Wahhabi-Salafi teachings. The period shaped him into a Salafi sheikh, which is evident in his sermons. In both words and action the Sheikh denounced Muslims who, in his interpretation, had deviated from the “true” faith.
As a result, he alienated many, particularly those Muslims who held more tolerant views of their religion.
Rimo didn’t confine himself to moral and spiritual issues. In his mosque sermons he also occasionally veered into political matters. And he joined the 1990 pro-reform campaigns, becoming a fiery critic of the leadership of Daniel Arap Moi who ruled Kenya between 1978 and 2002. This led to his imprisonment for six years.
Rimo retreated to a bonded community that came to be known as the Ansari Sunnah. Members of this community were urged to sever ties with institutions that represented the “infidel” state.
The justification for creating the community was to protect its members from the influence of the wider society which was perceived as “un-Islamic”. And it was used to propagate a “purist” brand of Islam among the wider community.
Ideology of the dispossessed
Rimo was clearly the intellectual predecessor to the subsequent group of jihadi clerics in Kenya. Although the Sheikh did not take up arms against the state, his approach contributed to future violent confrontation. With the appearance of al-Shabaab and other jihadi groups in Kenya, Rimo had already laid the ground that was favourable for advancing jihadi ideology.
For example, one of Rimo’s student, Sheikh Aboud Rogo, was unwavering in his vocal push to carve up an Islamic state in Kenya at any cost, including the use of violence if necessary.
Following in the footsteps of Rimo, and using Islam as their political ideology, subsequent jihadi clerics lost no opportunity to express abhorrence for their critics and those they considered infidels and apostates. Their provocative sermons and statements were directed against the state, Christians and anti-jihad Muslim clerics. All were accused of advancing anti- Islamic agenda for allegedly supporting government’s efforts in the war on violent extremism.
The sermons of the prominent jihadi clerics also focused on justifying violent jihadi activities in so-called Muslim areas they considered occupied’ by non-Muslims.
For example, Rogo declared support and validation for the attacks against Christians in various parts of the country. The sheikh depicted the attacks as justified retribution by the supposedly marginalised Kenyan Muslims. He preached intolerance and exclusion in his sermons. According to him, Christian churches had a hidden agenda to undermine Islam.
Conclusion
The jihadi initiative remains a loose political force in Kenya. This is dangerous for a few reasons.
Firstly, the country is experiencing religious radicalisation and ethnic popularisation at a time when some sections of Kenyan society are calling for secession. Secondly, the dangers of people being attracted to radical solutions are multiplied when a country has a poor human rights record, weak political institutions and huge economic inequalities. All are present in Kenya.
And finally, increasing communications with the rest of the Muslim world implies the waves of “reform” championed by jihadi clerics will continue to be evident in Kenya. Rimo’s impact lives on long after his death, in 2015, at his Kwale birthplace.
Outcry over ‘saviour complex’ fuelling exploitation of Kenyan children (The Guardian) By Harriet Grant November 19, 2018
Campaigners trying to fight the exploitation of children in Kenyan orphanages say they are being undermined by a “white saviour” complex among churches and other charitable groups.
The use of orphanages as “tourist attractions” in places like Mombasa is unethical and fuelling trafficking, child support organisations say.
Traffickers are feeding a market in children, supported by tourists’ desire to visit institutions in places like Mombasa, said Michelle Oliel of the Stahili foundation, which combats child exploitation in Kenya.
“Orphanages are sites of trafficking and that was recently recognised in the US Trafficking in Persons report. There is now growing awareness of the fact that orphanages are damaging. [But] with cheaper air fares there is a proliferation of orphanages in tourist destinations. People see visiting an orphanage as part of a tourism experience like going on safari.”
Oliel said: “I went to visit one orphanage as part of our work on ending the institutionalisation of children. As soon as the children saw me they began to dance for me. This is forced begging. They know that white people come with money.”
Charity worker Sophie Otiende said she struggled to raise money for her work because she wouldn’t let volunteers meet directly with vulnerable children.
“A lot of funding comes from churches and small groups and someone will want to pay $1,200 [£940] to come and hug children for three months,” said Otiende, of Haart Kenya, a charity working to rehabilitate children trafficked into orphanages and return them their own families or communities. “I had someone offering me therapy for our girls. I asked, ‘What qualifications would you need in your country to help a trauma victim? You would need a masters degree.’”
It sometimes means they have to turn down offers of money, she said. “There is a desperate need for funds but if you want to work ethically then you pay a price. We have a short-term rehabilitation shelter and we won’t open our doors for people to come to it. We won’t take volunteers.”
In Kenya there are more than 800 registered orphanages, with an estimated 45, 000 children according to the government. Research suggests that the vast majority of children in orphanages have living parents.
“You have child finders who come into the community and take children from vulnerable families,” said Otiende. “They are promised education, food and security in exchange for the child. The families are not neglectful. This is a reality when there isn’t enough support, when a country doesn’t have a social protection system.”
Joseph Mwuwara, 20, was trafficked into an orphanage as a child. Now he is being supported through an organisation based in Kenya called Stahili.
He spoke in London last week at the Thomson Reuters Foundation’s Trust conference on trafficking, alongside Otiende and Oliel.
He described being taken from his home to an orphanage. “A stranger came to my grandmother’s home – my grandmother, who really loved us and still does. The outcome was my brother and I had to leave home and go to an orphanage. We were promised a good education and healthcare but this was not the case.
“On the first day and second day you are treated a bit well then things start getting worse. Sometimes I had to miss school because volunteers are coming, just to practise songs and dances. Once these volunteers were pleased with what we had done they would donate and give money. They would say, ‘Buy something for these kids.’ That was never done to us – everything that was bought was kept and sold.”
Mwuwara was eventually taken back to his grandmother’s by the trafficker, deeply traumatised by his experience. “My grandmother cried a lot when I came back, she was just ambushed. But today I am being helped by the Stahili foundation and they are supporting me in my training in mechanics. They have changed my life.”
Oliel said potential funders are put off supporting the work Stahili does because they prefer to fund orphanages, despite research showing children are better off in a community setting.
“Family-based care is a sixth of the cost of an institution, but when we are working to close orphanages not everybody likes to hear that.
“It’s entirely possible to get children back to their families. Typically we trace the family, then we work on psychosocial support. Nobody is suggesting getting the orphanages closed right away but if you slowly redirected the money towards family care it would be very easy.”
For Otiende, there is too the question of why a “tourist” volunteer could do work that a local might be far better qualified for. “For the cost of a flight from the US to Kenya, we could pay for a senior psychotherapist to treat around 20 children and families a month.
“There are some great funders, UBS for example. Potential funders only want to support one child. They don’t want to hear work you are doing with a family. We get letters that say, ‘We would like to sponsor a little boy or girl so I can show my daughter how lucky she is.’ Well, why does teaching values have to be at the expense of a vulnerable person?”
Otiende wants people to look at why they think they can help. “I ask people, ‘Could you volunteer in your own country in this type of work?’ No. You can’t just come with a dose of optimism.”
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Rwanda (International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda)
Official Website of the ICTR
Genocide tribunal still has time to build a lasting legacy (The New Times) November 15, 2018
On September 11 this year, the full weight of international law came down upon four men and a woman in Rwanda. They were arrested at the behest of the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals (MICT) and transferred to Arusha Tanzania to stand trial. ICTR was the predecessor of the MICT.
It is alleged that the group tried to coerce witnesses who had testified against Augustin Ngirabatware to retract their testimonies. Had they been successful, it would have led to the accused being exonerated from his 30-year jail sentence. It was a very long call but there was a remote possibility of success.
They were charged with contempt and incitement to commit contempt of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) and the Mechanism.
It is not very common to see people dragged before the tribunal for contempt, maybe because the MICT was not really looking too much into it.
The arrest of the group was a result of close cooperation between Rwanda and MICT, and going by the pledge by the visiting MICT Prosecutor, new avenues of cooperation were opened. The only question that still lingers is; what new strategy will the MICT come up with?
Are they now going to be more implicated in helping track many of the fugitives who do not feature in their indictments? The tribunal chose to limit itself to the big fish, but some of those indicted were choirboys compared to some of the most vicious characters out there.
Helping apprehend those people would be a bigger contribution and a major step in redeeming the tribunal’s image and posterity. Relationships between Rwanda and the UN tribunal have not always been that rosy, but it is never late too late to make amends. Genocide prosecutor warns against bribery of witnesses (The New Times) By Nasra Bishumba November 16, 2018
The Chief Prosecutor for the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals (IRMCT), Serge Brammertz, has sent a stern warning to those trying to bribe witnesses in cases concerning the Genocide against the Tutsi.
IRMCT took over from the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR).
Brammertz sounded the warning at the beginning of his two-day visit to Rwanda yesterday, that will see his office enter a cooperation framework with different institutions in the country to ease delivery of justice by the Tanzania-based Mechanism.
Together with representatives from the Ministry of Justice, National Public Prosecution Authority, Rwanda Investigation Bureau, the Military Courts and the National Commission for the fight against Genocide (CNLG), the tribunal formed what they called a Joint Task Force.
The aim of the taskforce is to provide access to information and facilitating easier information sharing that includes but not limited to Genocide fugitives.
Addressing the media, Brammertz said that he would be heading to the UN Security Council on December 11 where he intends to highlight the issue of those he says are trying to promote Genocide denial.
“This is a clear message to everyone out there, we will not accept that people corrupt witnesses, trying to change history and giving denial of genocide a chance.
We are also increasing the pressure on fugitive networks and those protecting fugitives. These two messages are some of the main points we want to tell the Security Council really soon,” he said.
Brammertz’s warning follows the arrest of five people in Rwanda in September on suspicion of using bribery and coercion to secure reversal of witness testimonies in a case of a convicted Genocide mastermind, Augustin Ngirabatware.
Ngirabatware is a former Minister of Planning in the genocidal government, who is serving a 30-year prison.
The suspects are accused of directly, and through others, offering bribes and exerting pressure to influence the evidence of protected witnesses in order to reverse a conviction that had been upheld by the MICT Appeals Chamber.
The five suspects, all Rwandans, were arrested in September on an indictment issued by Brammertz and shortly transferred to Arusha, Tanzania where they will stand trial.
About the Joint Task Force
Shedding light on the Joint Task Force that was formed yesterday, Brammertz said that the partnership would be beneficial to all the institutions involved because there was a lot of information that could be shared to bring to justice those who committed the atrocities.
“We are actively looking for fugitives so we are constantly updating files so this is mostly about information sharing. We want to facilitate access to information because we have more than one million documents which are potentially beneficial to the cases regarding the fugitives this country is still looking for,” he said.
He pointed out that his office continues to work with partners like Interpol and was into talks with more than ten countries where fugitives were suspected to be hiding.
The Inspector General of National Public Prosecution Authority, Jules Marius Ntete, told reporters that the joint task force would work hand-in-hand with the Mechanism to ensure it delivers justice for Rwandans.
“We realised that it is very important to have that kind of synergy. In the past, every institution worked alone but we have put in a lot of efforts so that these fugitives can be brought to justice,’ he said.
The court, which was established to try masterminds of the Genocide against the Tutsi, is still looking for three key fugitives – Felicien Kabuga, the financier of the Genocide, former Minister of Defence Augustin Bizimungu, and notorious officer of Ex- FAR, Protais Mpinranya.
The other six fugitives indicted by the tribunal but remain at large were referred to Rwanda for trial. Brammertz is expected to meet Justice minister Johnston Busingye on Friday.
UN demands release of Turkish judge serving on war crimes panel (Deutsche Welle) By AP, Reuters, AFP November 17, 2018
The UN has called for the release of a Turkish judge who is serving on a MICT war crimes panel. Aydin Sedaf Akay was arrested in Turkey in September after the failed July coup against the Ankara government.
The United Nations has demanded the release of the Turkish judge Aydin Sedaf Akay who was arrested in Turkey in the aftermath of the failed July coup.
Akay was arrested on September 21 despite his diplomatic immunity. The 66-year-old judge is a member of a five-member UN panel assigned in July to review the judgment of former Rwandan planning minister Augustin Ngirabatware.
The president of the United Nations Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals (MICT) Theodor Meron, told the UN General Assembly that Turkey had repeatedly ignored his requests to visit Akay since his arrest and this risked violating judicial independence. "As a result of his detention, the proceedings have come to a standstill,” said Meron.
Meron demanded Turkey "immediately release judge Akay from detention and enable him to resume his lawfully-assigned judicial functions" on the UN panel.
Nominated by Turkey
Turkey put Akay forward to be appointed as a judge within the tribunal. He also formerly served as a diplomat for Turkey. The MICT was established by the United Nations Security Council in December 2010 to carry out a number of essential functions of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) and the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), after the completion of their respective mandates.
Since the attempted coup in July, Turkish authorities have cracked down on those with suspected ties to an Islamic cleric in exile in the United States. Turkey blames Pennsylvania-based Islamic cleric Fethullah Gulen for inciting the July coup attempt. Turkey has arrested, detained or sacked tens of thousands in the military, security forces, judiciary, civil service, education and media since a state of emergency was declared after the failed coup. More than 270 people died in the attempted coup.
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Somalia
Car Bombs Kill at Least 20 in Somalia’s Capital (New York Times) By The Associated Press November 9, 2018
Four car bombs exploded outside a hotel in the capital, Mogadishu, on Friday afternoon, killing at least 20 people and injuring 17, the police said. The Islamic extremist group the Shabab claimed responsibility.
After three devices exploded in front of the hotel, a fourth blast hit as medics tried to rescue the injured.
The bombs detonated near the perimeter wall of the Sahafi Hotel, which is across the street from the Somali Police Force’s Criminal Investigations Department, said Capt. Mohamed Hussein.
Some of the victims were burned beyond recognition when one car bomb exploded next to a minibus, he said.
Somali security forces fatally shot four gunmen who tried to storm through a hole blown into the hotel’s wall but did not succeed in entering, he said. “Although they failed to access the hotel, the blasts outside the hotel killed many people,” Capt. Hussein said.
“The street was crowded with people and cars; bodies were everywhere,” said Hussein Nur, a shopkeeper who shrapnel injuries. “Gunfire killed several people, too.”
Among the dead was the manager of the Sahafi Hotel, whose father was the owner before he was killed in a Shabab attack there in 2015, Capt. Hussein said.
Minister for Africa condemns latest terrorist violence in Somalia (gov.uk) November 13, 2018
The Minister for Africa, Harriett Baldwin, has condemned the terrorist attacks carried out in Mogadishu on 9 November, and offered her condolences to the families of the victims.
Minister for Africa Harriett Baldwin said:
I was deeply saddened to learn of the appalling attacks in Mogadishu on 9 November, which have killed and severely injured many Somalis. My thoughts are with the families of the victims, as well as the people and government of Somalia. I wish those wounded a rapid recovery, and pay tribute to the first responders who reacted to the attack.
All acts of terrorism are indefensible, and the UK condemns this criminal attack in the strongest possible terms. Our determination to support Somalia stands fast. We will continue to help battle against terrorism in the region, and we remain committed to supporting a prosperous and secure Somalia.
US says it killed 37 militants in two Somalia airstrikes (CNN) By Ryan Browne November 20, 2018
The strike targeted the militants associated with al-Shabaab, al Qaeda's largest affiliate.
A US defense official told CNN that the strikes were carried out by unmanned drone aircraft and that the target of the first strike was an al-Shabaab camp.
Africa Command said the "precision strike was a planned and deliberate action" that killed 27 militants in the first strike and a subsequent strike the US says they killed an additional 10 militants.
"These precision airstrikes were conducted in support of the Federal Government of Somalia as it continues to degrade al- Shabaab. Airstrikes reduce al-Shabaab's ability to plot future attacks, disrupt its leadership networks, and degrade its freedom of maneuver within the region," the statement said.
The US military currently assesses that the airstrikes did not injure or kill any civilians.
While the US has now conducted 31 airstrikes against al-Shabaab in 2018, the strikes usually target small groups of militants.
The last major strike against al-Shabaab took place last month and killed some 60 al Qaeda-affiliated fighters.
In March of 2017, President Donald Trump authorized the US military to carry out precision strikes targeting al-Shabaab in an effort to bolster the federal government of Somalia.
Prior to that, the US military was only authorized to carry out airstrikes in self-defense of advisers on the ground.
The US has some 500 troops in Somalia, primarily in advisory roles.
While the Department of Defense recently announced plans to reduce the number of US troops in Africa, the Pentagon has said that US forces in Somalia will be unaffected by the drawdown.
A senior US defense official told CNN last week that the US was concerned about international terror threats emanating from East Africa which is one of the reasons US counterterrorism forces in Somalia were shielded from the cuts.
US airstrike in Somalia against al-Shabab kills 7 extremists (Fox19) November 21, 2018 The U.S. military says it has carried out an airstrike in central Somalia targeting al- Shabab that killed seven extremists.
The U.S. Africa Command statement says Tuesday's airstrike occurred in Quy Cad in the Mudug region. The strike was carried out a day after two other U.S. airstrikes killed 37 extremists with the al-Qaida-linked al-Shabab.
Like the previous statement, this one says it believes no civilians were killed or injured.
The U.S. has carried out 33 airstrikes this year against al-Shabab, the deadliest Islamic extremist group in Africa. The military says the airstrikes are aimed at reducing al-Shabab's ability to plan attacks, disrupting its leadership networks and limiting its freedom of movement in the Horn of Africa nation.
Al-Shabab often targets the capital, Mogadishu, and other cities with deadly bombings.
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EUROPE
The Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina, War Crimes Chamber
Official Court Website [English translation]
Bosnian Judiciary Restricts Information on War Crimes Cases (Balkan Insight) By Emina Dizdarevic November 8, 2018
Fifteen years after the judiciary was reformed in Bosnia and Herzegovina, courts and prosecutions do not apply uniform rules on transparency, so indictments at the state level cannot be accessed, audio and video recordings of hearings that are made available are only ten minutes long, and journalists still encounter delays and obstructions in getting responses to their inquiries.
Journalists and editors say that the judiciary is increasingly closed to the media, which makes it impossible to prepare high- quality reports on judicial processes involving war crimes, corruption and organised crime.
Mervan Mirascija of the Open Society Fund, which monitors the country’s judiciary, said that the transparency of the judiciary is “the key condition for the work of courts and prosecutions”.
“We live in a country that is still scarred, 25 years after the end of the war. We must have judicial truth in order to put this society at ease and be able to look into the future, but, unfortunately, the level of accessibility of information is decreasing each year. That is a worrying phenomenon,” Mirascija said.
Neither the Bosnian state prosecution and court, nor the High Judicial and Prosecutorial Council, which oversees the country’s justice system, agreed to talk to BIRN about the transparency issue for this article.
Lack of indictments undermines coverage
Vildana Kurtic, a journalist with Federal TV, a Bosnian public broadcaster, said it is impossible for journalists working for the electronic media to report on proceedings without having access to indictments.
“When a journalist comes to a trial for the first time, it is almost impossible for him to do good coverage without having read the indictment,” Kurtic explained.
“Meanwhile if we do not have the indictment, we may not be able to comprehend what some situation described in the courtroom is about. If a defendant is entering his plea and says ‘I admit guilt on count three’, the term ‘count three’ means nothing to us if we do not have the indictment in front of us,” she added.
From the establishment of the state prosecution in 2003 to the spring of 2012, all indictments were uploaded to the internet and submitted to journalists, accompanied by a media announcement.
In the early years of the state prosecution, while foreign prosecutors still worked for it, it was so transparent that it provided a list of evidence alongside the indictment, as well as an annex entitled ‘The Results of the Investigation’, which contained an explanation of prosecutorial decisions.
But transparency decreased in 2012, when the state-level Agency for the Protection of Personal Data told the state court and prosecution that they could not publish all data automatically.
The state prosecution then removed all indictments from its website, while the court adopted revisions to the rules on access to information, which implied the use of initials instead of full names in court documents and the issuing of ten-minute audio and video recordings from trials rather than full versions of proceedings, which significantly reduced the material available to reporters.
In response to the change, BIRN Bosnia and Herzegovina launched a campaign entitled ‘Stop Censorship’, which was supported by international organisations like the International Commission for Missing Persons, ICMP, and associations of Bosnian war victims, such as Women - Victims of War.
The ICMP coordinator for the Western Balkans, Matthew Holliday, said he supported the campaign because it was of crucial importance for the public to have accurate information on war-crime trials.
“The media plays a key role in communicating the actions undertaken to ensure justice for victims of war crimes or violations of human rights and informing the public about it,” Holliday said.
Associations representing war victims and other injured parties are most affected by the judiciary’s decision to restrict information to the media, said Bakira Hasecic, the president of Women - Victims of War.
“I think that both the court and prosecution are closed to the public, the non-governmental sector and ordinary citizens to a large extent. I think you should ask them why. They obviously do not want the public to be informed, knowing they did a lot to hide the identities of perpetrators of crimes and anonymise them,” Hasecic said.
As a result of public pressure, the High Judicial and Prosecutorial Council formed a working group to analyse the outcome of the ‘Stop Censorship’ campaign and decided that anonymisation could not be applied in cases in which there was a justified public interest – in other words, in cases dealing with war crimes, terrorism and corruption.
The council also concluded that there were no obstacles to publishing confirmed indictments. Despite that, the state prosecution has never published a single indictment since then.
One of the working group members, Sabina Sarajlija, a prosecutor from Sarajevo, argued that judicial institutions should publish confirmed indictments.
“These are indictments have already been subject to judicial review. I believe that prosecution offices should assume the obligation to do it, at least in complex cases and in cases in which the public is interested,” Sarajlija said.
Although more than three years have passed since the issuance of the High Judicial and Prosecutorial Council’s recommendations, the prosecution declined to say whether it is planning to publish indictments any time soon.
Video restrictions hamper electronic media
The Bosnian state court returned verdicts to its website after the ‘Stop Censorship’ campaign, but continued the practice of giving only ten-minute extracts of audio and video recordings from courtrooms to the media.
Admir Arnautovic, spokesperson for the Tuzla Cantonal Prosecution, argued however that there is no reason for not giving entire recordings from hearings to the media, as happened prior to 2012.
“In certain situations, the media could even be allowed to bring in their equipment for making audio-visual, audio and video recordings,” Arnautovic suggested.
The video recordings currently being given to the media last for ten minutes at the maximum and, according to Kurtic, they are “unusable material”. “It can happen that our journalists spend three or four hours in courtrooms and a cameraman even comes and waits in front of the courtroom in order to record at least one audio statement, but you just get a DVD containing ten minutes of a testimony which was maybe the least important on that day,” Kurtic said.
“Or you may get only one shot [from one single angle] depicting a witness testifying, which means you have around 20 seconds of material that can be used in the news,” she added.
Television editor Suzana Stambol pointed out that the regulations put electronic media at a disadvantage compared to text- based outlets.
“You can enter the courtroom, but you must not bring a voice recorder or phone. You can only take a pencil and paper,” Stambol said.
Meanwhile electronic media are only are supplied with “a DVD with pre-cut images which, in most cases, are not usable on TV”, she added.
Lawyer Nina Kisic suggested that the Bosnian state court should follow the example of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, ICTY, which used to offer live coverage of hearings on its website with a half-hour delay and publish all court documents.
“In the last year and a half approximately, all trials have been published. So video recordings of all hearings have been uploaded to the website. There is also a court archive of all documents and all transcripts, which can be found on the ICTY website. I think the Bosnian state court should follow this good practice,” Kisic said.
No public oversight without media reporting
Journalists and editors claim that courts’ internal protocols on access to information for media have led to fewer reports about cases being published or broadcast.
They also raised concerns that the process of getting responses to their inquiries and arranging interviews with judicial officials has deteriorated.
Arnautovic claimed that some judicial officials were not properly trained to communicate with the media.
“They don’t know the structure of the media, the way it operates or how information should be released to the media. These people are often burdened with formal-legal language, so neither the media nor the public understand what they are talking about,” he said.
Stambol claimed that there are political motivations behind the unwillingness to make information about sensitive cases public.
“I think the non-transparency of the judiciary is a consequence of the role played by politics and of influence on the judiciary. It is actually in the interest of politicians to close the door for the media to courts and prosecutions, and to the judiciary as a whole, in order to prevent some important incidents or large-scale organised crimes in this country from being uncovered,” Stambol said.
Experts argued that if the country’s courts and prosecutor’s offices do not become more transparent about their work, it will not be possible for the media to fulfil its role as the only public outlet of information about judicial process.
“The media should contribute to the wider public’s monitoring of the work of the judiciary, it should be a corrective to our work, to point out the judiciary’s bad sides, but also make good outcomes popularly known. I believe that only media that do their job professionally, expertly and ethically can contribute to getting the right information based on verified facts to the general public,” Sarajlija said.
Mirascija argued that if information continues to be withheld, the public will remain uninformed about serious criminal cases.
He urged the High Judicial and Prosecutorial Council to step in immediately and give all courts “an interpretation of its instructions on how to respect the principles of transparency”.
Croatia Cuts Bosnian Croat’s Jail Term, Causing Political Storm (Balkan Insight) By Emina Dizdarevic, Anja Vladisavljevic November 9, 2018
The decision last week by Zagreb County Court to cut war criminal Marko Radic’s sentence has caused a political storm in Sarajevo.
A public feud erupted between a Bosnian Croat minister and his Bosniak deputy, while a war victims’ association filed a criminal complaint against the minister, Josip Grubesa.
The judgment which cut Radic’s sentence from 21 years to 12-and-a-half years in prison was handed down by Zagreb County Court on October 1. It amended a verdict originally delivered by the Bosnian state court in Sarajevo, which convicted Radic in March 2011.
Radic, who was convicted of committing crimes against humanity in the Bosnian town of Mostar, was due to remain in prison until 2027, but will now be released by the end of this year because of the time he has already served.
No ‘joint criminal enterprise’ in Croatia
The Zagreb court amended the Bosnian judgment because Croatia does not recognise the legal concept of a ‘joint criminal enterprise’, which formed part of the Sarajevo verdict convicting Radic.
Although there are currently about a dozen other people in Bosnia and Herzegovina who have Croatian passports and are serving war crimes sentences for crimes involving a joint criminal enterprise, lawyers are doubtful that Radic’s case can serve as a precedent enabling them to ask for a transfer to Croatia in search of a shorter sentence.
Bosnian justice minister Grubesa was the official who allowed Radic’s request to serve the rest of his time in Croatia.
His deputy, Nezir Pivic, told BIRN that Grubesa’s decision in the Radic case was “illegal and unacceptable”. He added that it will not be permitted in similar cases.
“This cannot happen, since this case should also have never happened. Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia have an agreement that clearly defines this as illegal,” said Pivic.
The Bosnian state court’s verdict in 2011 found that Radic, as commander of the First Bijelo Polje Battalion of the Croatian Defence Council’s Second Brigade, participated in setting up prisons and ordering the arrest and unlawful detention of several dozen Bosniak civilians, including women, children and elderly people.
The verdict also said that he participated in the unlawful detention of Bosniak men at the Heliodrom prison camp. The men were taken to the village of Vojno to do forced labour and kept in brutal, humiliating and inhumane conditions in a garage and the basement of a house in the village.
A question of dual citizenship
In October this year, Grubesa approved Radic’s transfer to Croatia, after which Zagreb County Court reduced his sentence.
Grubesa said that Bosnia and Herzegovina is a signatory to the European Convention on the Transfer of Sentenced Persons – according to which every convict can serve his or her sentence in the country whose passport he or she holds – and that Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia have a bilateral agreement which allows for this.
His deputy Pivic claimed however that the Bosnia-Croatia agreement explicitly forbids the extradition of either country’s citizens, which means that such transfers can only happen in cases in which people who only hold a Croatian passport are sentenced in Bosnia and Herzegovina. If they also have Bosnian citizenship, they cannot be transferred, he said.
“Croatia has shown no cooperation [with Bosnia and Herzegovina] in these [war crimes] cases [against Bosnian Croats] so the minister should have been protecting Bosnian interests,” argued Pivic.
“Finally, the County Court changed the verdict so that Radic is allowed to go free in just a few days, which is unacceptable,” he added.
Watchdog organisation TRIAL International also said that Radic’s transfer was “unacceptable” because the agreement between Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia does not envisage the extradition of either country’s own nationals.
“Considering there was a dilemma about how to act in cases in which there are people with dual citizenship, the answer is in the European Convention on the Transfer of Sentenced Persons,” said TRIAL’s legal advisor Adrijana Hanusic-Becirevic.
The convention states that only “foreigners” imprisoned for a crime can be transferred to their home countries, Hanusic- Becirevic pointed out. “Since Radic is not a foreigner in Bosnia and Herzegovina, but a citizen, and according to media reports has residency in Mostar, he is already serving his sentence in his community. So his transfer – as well as violating the agreement between Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina –goes against the logic and spirit of the European convention,” she said.
The Association of Victims and Witnesses of Genocide filed a criminal complaint against minister Grubesa, calling the process through which Radic achieved his freedom “illegal”.
“The minister violated the laws of Bosnia and Herzegovina and allowed a war criminal to reduce his sentence by half,” the president of the association, Murat Tahirovic, told BIRN.
Grubesa declined to answer questions about the Radic case, but wrote a lengthy statement in which he described his deputy’s remarks and the criminal complaint as the “unacceptable gathering of cheap political points” and the misuse of “victims’ pain”.
The minister also said he was sorry that some politicians want certain people who have been convicted of war crimes “to be thrown in cells to which the keys are lost”, which, he added, is “not acceptable or in line with international standards”.
“In this specific case, a convict asked for his case to be transferred to Croatia for him to serve the rest of his sentence, and no authority in Bosnia and Herzegovina could stop this request, since this convict has this right,” insisted Grubesa.
He argued that extradition and the transfer of sentences are two different practices.
Lawyers disagree over Radic’s transfer
Lawyers and legal experts are also split on the issue of the legality of Radic’s transfer.
Nina Kisic, a lawyer specialising in war crimes cases in Sarajevo, claimed such transfers highlight “differences in [countries’] systems which allow justice to be avoided”.
“The problem is that these inter-state documents allow it,” said Kisic.
But Jelena Djokic-Jovic of Documenta - Centre for Dealing with the Past, an NGO in Zagreb, told BIRN that the entire process was “conducted in accordance with legal regulations”.
“In the Radic case, command responsibility was considered the basis for conviction – that he failed to prevent the crimes, ordered and participated in the establishment of the detention system and personally committed some crimes. He was sentenced to 12-and-a-half years in prison. Compared with sentences handed down to members of Croatian forces, I would say this is in the same range, or maybe slightly longer,” Djokic-Jovic said.
However, she also said that the Sarajevo authorities “could have requested the execution of the sentence pronounced by the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina”.
Commenting on the Zagreb court’s decision to remove the reference to a joint criminal enterprise in the Radic verdict, Djokic- Jovic also explained that Croatian law does not recognise the concept. “Croatia, in a political sense, is wary of that concept, particularly when taking into account the verdict against Jadranko Prlic and others,” she explained.
Prlic and five other former Bosnian Croats were sentenced by the Hague Tribunal to a total of 111 years in prison in 2017 for taking part in a joint criminal enterprise involving high-ranking officials in Zagreb, whose aim was to expel Bosniaks from territories controlled by Bosnian Croat forces.
The verdict, which named the late Croatian President Franjo Tudjman as a participant in the joint criminal enterprise, was heavily criticised by Croatian politicians, who deny that Zagreb played an active role in the Bosnian war.
Djokic-Jovic noted that in 2016, the Croatian government adopted a decision which “stops Croatian judicial bodies from acting in cases in which responsibility was founded on a joint criminal enterprise”.
However, Belgrade-based lawyer Aleksandar Lazarevic, who represents war crimes defendants at the Bosnian state court, said there is nothing controversial in the Croatian court’s decision to remove the parts of the verdict referring to a joint criminal enterprise.
In Lazarevic’s opinion, the joint criminal enterprise concept is being applied retrospectively by courts in The Hague and Sarajevo that deal with war crimes, as it did not exist in law at the time the crimes were committed.
“You cannot designate something a crime now and try people for committing that crime if it was not designated as such at the moment of its commission,” Lazarevic said.
At the same time as Radic, the Bosnian state court also convicted three other members of the First Bijelo Polje Battalion of the Croatian Defence Council’s Second Brigade.
Dragan Sunjic was sentenced to 16 years in prison, Damir Brekalo to 20 years and Mirko Vracevic to 12 years for committing crimes as participants in a joint criminal enterprise at the Vojno prison, in collaboration with other soldiers and guards.
In a separate trial, a former prison chief in Mostar, Ivan Zelenika, was sentenced to six years, while former Croatian Defence Forces member Ivan Medic was sentenced to seven years, Edib Buljubasic to six years and Marina Grubisic Fejzic to five years for participating in a joint criminal enterprise aimed at removing the Serb population from the Herzegovina area.
The defence lawyers for most of these convicts told BIRN that they had no intention of requesting their clients’ transfer to prisons in Croatian so they would be released sooner.
Fadil Abaz, who represented Ivan Zelenika, said it was “incomprehensible for one of our citizens to request that his sentence be executed in another country”.
“He is our convict, he was sentenced on the basis of our laws. The fact that he has dual citizenship does not give him the possibility to go from one country to the other,” Abaz said.
Midhat Koco, the lawyer for Dragan Sunjic, said there were “no indications or requests” that his client wanted a transfer to Croatia.
“I do not want to comment on that. If the law allows for it, it is OK. If not…” Koco said.
Danilo Mrkaljevic, Mirko Vracevic’s lawyer, also said he had not requested a transfer for his client. “We have not been in contact since the completion of the case,” Mrkaljevic said.
Bosnian deputy justice minister Pivic was also adamant on the issue: “The Radic case will not become a precedent for similar cases,” he insisted.
Belgrade Court Convicts Bosnian Serb of War Crime (Balkan Insight) By Filip Rudic November 13, 2018
A court in Belgrade sentenced a former Bosnian Serb soldier to seven years in prison for the murder of a Bosniak civilian in the Kljuc area during the Bosnian war in 1992.
Belgrade Higher Court handed down a first-instance verdict on Tuesday sentencing Milanko Devic, a former Bosnian Serb Army soldier, to seven years in prison for killing a Bosniak civilian in 1992.
Devic was found guilty of killing civilian Ismet Sljivar in the second half of July 1992 in the village of Sljivari in the Bosnian municipality of Kljuc, together with two other fighters.
According to the prosecution, the three men arrived at Sljivar’s house armed, in Bosnian Serb Army uniforms. Using threats, they took Sljivar to a site near the river Sanica, where they shot him dead and threw his body in the river.
Tuesday’s verdict can be appealed.
Devic was initially charged before the Bosnian state court, but the case was turned over to the Serbian judiciary since, according to the Bosnian prosecution, Devic holds Serbian citizenship and almost never visits Bosnia.
Charges against Devic were filed in Serbia in April 2016, according to the Serbian war crimes prosecution.
The cantonal court in the Bosnian town of Bihac in February 2017 identified Bogdan Sobot as another of the three fighters who killed Sljivar, and sentenced him to eight years in prison.
The Bosnian Supreme Court upheld Sobot’s guilty verdict in February 2018, but reduced his sentence to six years.
Bosnia’s Omarska Camp Security Chief Due for Release (Balkan Insight) By lbina Sorguc November 14, 2018
The Bosnian state court said it will grant early release to Zeljko Mejakic, the highest- ranking official at the notorious Omarska detention camp, who was sentenced to 21 years in prison for crimes against humanity.
Zeljko Mejakic, who controlled security at the Bosnian Serbs’ notorious Omarska detention camp in the Prijedor area in 1992, will be given a conditional release on January 25, the state court confirmed to BIRN.
Mejakic is currently serving a 21-year sentence for crimes committed at the Omarska camp, including murders, unlawful detention, torture, sexual violence, persecution and other inhumane acts.
The Bosnian Justice Ministry decided to give him a conditional release in late January because he will have served two-thirds of his sentence, the state court said.
According to the second-instance verdict convicting Mejakic, the time he spent in custody from July 2003 onwards, when he was arrested in Serbia, was counted towards his sentence.
Mejakic was sent from Serbia to The Hague Tribunal in July 2003, then his case was transferred from The Hague to Bosnia and Herzegovina in May 2006. His final verdict was handed down by the Bosnian state court in May 2008.
Around 6,000 Bosniak and Croat men and women were detained at Omarska and some 700 of them were killed in the three months during which the camp operated at the beginning of the Bosnian war in 1992.
It was finally closed on August 21, 1992, when the last group of detainees was transferred to Trnopolje detention camp.
Convicted alongside Mejakic were Momcilo Gruban, leader of one of the three guard shifts at the Omarska camp, and Dusko Knezevic, who had no official function at Omarska and another Bosnian Serb detention camp in the Prijedor area, Keraterm. All three men were found to have acted as part of a joint criminal enterprise.
Gruban was sentenced to seven years in prison and Knezevic to 31 years.
Edin Ramulic of the Foundation for Building the Culture of Memory from Prijedor said that Mejakic’s conditional release did not come as a surprise.
“The institution of long-term imprisonment means absolutely nothing, unfortunately,” Ramulic told BIRN.
“Mathematically, all of them have the right to be released early. That is surely a negative message in terms of prevention. The sentences were short anyway and they will be shortened even more. And all this only relates to a small group of people who will actually be brought to justice [for wartime crimes],” he added.
Miodrag Stojanovic, a lawyer who has represented war crimes defendants in The Hague, pointed out that if had Mejakic been sentenced by the UN court, he would have already been released according to the tribunal’s rules.
“We will fight for the conditional release of defendants after they have served two-thirds of their sentences, respecting The Hague’s standards,” Stojanovic told BIRN.
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International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY)
Official Website of the ICTY
Bosnian Judiciary Restricts Information on War Crime Cases (Balkan Insight) By Emina Dizdarevic November 8, 2018
Fifteen years after the judiciary was reformed in Bosnia and Herzegovina, courts and prosecutions do not apply uniform rules on transparency, so indictments at the state level cannot be accessed, audio and video recordings of hearings that are made available are only ten minutes long, and journalists still encounter delays and obstructions in getting responses to their inquiries. Journalists and editors say that the judiciary is increasingly closed to the media, which makes it impossible to prepare high- quality reports on judicial processes involving war crimes, corruption and organised crime.
Mervan Mirascija of the Open Society Fund, which monitors the country’s judiciary, said that the transparency of the judiciary is “the key condition for the work of courts and prosecutions”.
“We live in a country that is still scarred, 25 years after the end of the war. We must have judicial truth in order to put this society at ease and be able to look into the future, but, unfortunately, the level of accessibility of information is decreasing each year. That is a worrying phenomenon,” Mirascija said.
Neither the Bosnian state prosecution and court, nor the High Judicial and Prosecutorial Council, which oversees the country’s justice system, agreed to talk to BIRN about the transparency issue for this article.
Lack of indictments undermines coverage
Vildana Kurtic, a journalist with Federal TV, a Bosnian public broadcaster, said it is impossible for journalists working for the electronic media to report on proceedings without having access to indictments.
“When a journalist comes to a trial for the first time, it is almost impossible for him to do good coverage without having read the indictment,” Kurtic explained.
“Meanwhile if we do not have the indictment, we may not be able to comprehend what some situation described in the courtroom is about. If a defendant is entering his plea and says ‘I admit guilt on count three’, the term ‘count three’ means nothing to us if we do not have the indictment in front of us,” she added.
From the establishment of the state prosecution in 2003 to the spring of 2012, all indictments were uploaded to the internet and submitted to journalists, accompanied by a media announcement.
In the early years of the state prosecution, while foreign prosecutors still worked for it, it was so transparent that it provided a list of evidence alongside the indictment, as well as an annex entitled ‘The Results of the Investigation’, which contained an explanation of prosecutorial decisions.
But transparency decreased in 2012, when the state-level Agency for the Protection of Personal Data told the state court and prosecution that they could not publish all data automatically.
The state prosecution then removed all indictments from its website, while the court adopted revisions to the rules on access to information, which implied the use of initials instead of full names in court documents and the issuing of ten-minute audio and video recordings from trials rather than full versions of proceedings, which significantly reduced the material available to reporters.
In response to the change, BIRN Bosnia and Herzegovina launched a campaign entitled ‘Stop Censorship’, which was supported by international organisations like the International Commission for Missing Persons, ICMP, and associations of Bosnian war victims, such as Women - Victims of War.
The ICMP coordinator for the Western Balkans, Matthew Holliday, said he supported the campaign because it was of crucial importance for the public to have accurate information on war-crime trials.
“The media plays a key role in communicating the actions undertaken to ensure justice for victims of war crimes or violations of human rights and informing the public about it,” Holliday said.
Associations representing war victims and other injured parties are most affected by the judiciary’s decision to restrict information to the media, said Bakira Hasecic, the president of Women - Victims of War.
“I think that both the court and prosecution are closed to the public, the non-governmental sector and ordinary citizens to a large extent. I think you should ask them why. They obviously do not want the public to be informed, knowing they did a lot to hide the identities of perpetrators of crimes and anonymise them,” Hasecic said.
As a result of public pressure, the High Judicial and Prosecutorial Council formed a working group to analyse the outcome of the ‘Stop Censorship’ campaign and decided that anonymisation could not be applied in cases in which there was a justified public interest – in other words, in cases dealing with war crimes, terrorism and corruption.
The council also concluded that there were no obstacles to publishing confirmed indictments. Despite that, the state prosecution has never published a single indictment since then. One of the working group members, Sabina Sarajlija, a prosecutor from Sarajevo, argued that judicial institutions should publish confirmed indictments.
“These are indictments have already been subject to judicial review. I believe that prosecution offices should assume the obligation to do it, at least in complex cases and in cases in which the public is interested,” Sarajlija said.
Although more than three years have passed since the issuance of the High Judicial and Prosecutorial Council’s recommendations, the prosecution declined to say whether it is planning to publish indictments any time soon.
Video restrictions hamper electronic media
The Bosnian state court returned verdicts to its website after the ‘Stop Censorship’ campaign, but continued the practice of giving only ten-minute extracts of audio and video recordings from courtrooms to the media.
Admir Arnautovic, spokesperson for the Tuzla Cantonal Prosecution, argued however that there is no reason for not giving entire recordings from hearings to the media, as happened prior to 2012.
“In certain situations, the media could even be allowed to bring in their equipment for making audio-visual, audio and video recordings,” Arnautovic suggested.
The video recordings currently being given to the media last for ten minutes at the maximum and, according to Kurtic, they are “unusable material”.
“It can happen that our journalists spend three or four hours in courtrooms and a cameraman even comes and waits in front of the courtroom in order to record at least one audio statement, but you just get a DVD containing ten minutes of a testimony which was maybe the least important on that day,” Kurtic said.
“Or you may get only one shot [from one single angle] depicting a witness testifying, which means you have around 20 seconds of material that can be used in the news,” she added.
Television editor Suzana Stambol pointed out that the regulations put electronic media at a disadvantage compared to text- based outlets.
“You can enter the courtroom, but you must not bring a voice recorder or phone. You can only take a pencil and paper,” Stambol said.
Meanwhile electronic media are only are supplied with “a DVD with pre-cut images which, in most cases, are not usable on TV”, she added.
Lawyer Nina Kisic suggested that the Bosnian state court should follow the example of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, ICTY, which used to offer live coverage of hearings on its website with a half-hour delay and publish all court documents.
“In the last year and a half approximately, all trials have been published. So video recordings of all hearings have been uploaded to the website. There is also a court archive of all documents and all transcripts, which can be found on the ICTY website. I think the Bosnian state court should follow this good practice,” Kisic said.
No public oversight without media reporting
Journalists and editors claim that courts’ internal protocols on access to information for media have led to fewer reports about cases being published or broadcast.
They also raised concerns that the process of getting responses to their inquiries and arranging interviews with judicial officials has deteriorated.
Arnautovic claimed that some judicial officials were not properly trained to communicate with the media.
“They don’t know the structure of the media, the way it operates or how information should be released to the media. These people are often burdened with formal-legal language, so neither the media nor the public understand what they are talking about,” he said.
Stambol claimed that there are political motivations behind the unwillingness to make information about sensitive cases public. “I think the non-transparency of the judiciary is a consequence of the role played by politics and of influence on the judiciary. It is actually in the interest of politicians to close the door for the media to courts and prosecutions, and to the judiciary as a whole, in order to prevent some important incidents or large-scale organised crimes in this country from being uncovered,” Stambol said.
Experts argued that if the country’s courts and prosecutor’s offices do not become more transparent about their work, it will not be possible for the media to fulfil its role as the only public outlet of information about judicial process.
“The media should contribute to the wider public’s monitoring of the work of the judiciary, it should be a corrective to our work, to point out the judiciary’s bad sides, but also make good outcomes popularly known. I believe that only media that do their job professionally, expertly and ethically can contribute to getting the right information based on verified facts to the general public,” Sarajlija said.
Mirascija argued that if information continues to be withheld, the public will remain uninformed about serious criminal cases.
He urged the High Judicial and Prosecutorial Council to step in immediately and give all courts “an interpretation of its instructions on how to respect the principles of transparency”.
Kosovo Deputy PM Limaj’s War Crimes Acquittal Upheld (Balkan Insight) By Die Morina and Doruntina Baliu November 14, 2018
The appeals court in the town of Gjakova/Djakovica on Wednesday upheld the verdict acquitting Kosovo’s Deputy Prime Minister Fatmir Limaj of war crimes.
The verdict cleared him of charges that he did not take reasonable and necessary measures to prevent the killing of two ethnic Albanian civilians in October 1998, when he was a Kosovo Liberation Army commander.
“The court assessed the [original] verdict and found that the first-instance court gave clear and complete reasons for the argument that the accused Fatmir Limaj was not the perpetrator of the criminal offence of a war crime against civilian population,” the verdict said.
The appeals court said the original trial was presented with “no single piece of evidence that the accused committed the criminal offence”.
In March this year, the Basic Court in Gjakova/Djakovica acquitted Limaj of all charges relating to the murders of the two civilians, Ramiz Hoxha and Selman Binishi.
He had been accused, as the commander of 121st Brigade of the Kosovo Liberation Army, of not acting to stop their killings.
Hoxha, from Bellanica in Kosovo, and Binishi, from Banja, Limaj’s birthplace, were seized on October 2, 1998 near the mosque in Bellanica and executed near the village of Kravasari, some four kilometres away.
The indictment alleged that Limaj saw the bodies of the victims and was aware that the crime had been committed.
The guerrilla commander turned politician has been tried and found not guilty of war crimes several times in the past.
In May 2016, the Kosovo appeals court upheld a verdict acquitting Limaj and nine other former KLA fighters of war crimes against civilians and prisoners of war at an improvised jail in Klecka during the late 1990s conflict.
After a previous trial at the UN-backed tribunal in The Hague, Limaj was also acquitted in 2005 of war crimes against Serbs and Albanians suspected of collaborating with Serbia.
Croatia Indicts Bosnian Serb for Manjaca Camp Abuses (Balkan Insight) By Anja Vladisavljevic November 15, 2018
The County State Attorney’s Office in Zagreb on Wednesday charged a 68-year-old citizen of Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina with committing war crimes against prisoners of war while he was a captain in the Bosnian Serb Army in 1992.
Although the State Attorney’s Office did not give the suspect’s name and surname, local media have suggested that he is called Dane Lukaic.
The man is charged with ordering his Bosnian Serb Army subordinates at the Manjaca prison camp near the Bosnian town of Banja Luka to beat and injure two Croatian Defence Council, HVO members as well as three Croatian Defence Forces, HOS detainees.
He is also charged with personally inflicting serious injuries on one of the HOS members.
The State Attorney’s Office said that he was the leader of a security services operational team responsible for collecting intelligence from prisoners of war from the middle of June until September 16, 1992.
In June this year, police in Croatia arrested a Bosnian Serb who was entering the country on suspicion that he ordered the inhumane treatment of prisoners at the wartime Manjaca prison camp. Local media have suggested that the man was Lukaic.
Bosnian Serbs imprisoned Bosniaks and Croats at the Manjaca camp during the war in 1992.
The camp operated from 1991-92 and briefly again in 1995. The majority of prisoners were Croat and Bosniak soldiers and civilians.
Bosnian Serb Ex-Fighters Indicted for Vlasenica Crimes (Balkan Insight) By Emina Dizdarevic November 15, 2018
The state court in Sarajevo on Thursday confirmed the indictment charging Simo and Zoran Stupar and Zoran and Goran Tesic with contravening the Geneva Conventions’ provisions on the protection of civilians during times of war.
The prosecution accuses the four men of having “personally and directly” participated in attacks on villages and other places in the Vlasenica municipality inhabited by Bosniaks, including Dzamdzici, Alihodzici and Gradina, from April 1992 to the end of September that year.
During these attacks, they are accused of involvement in the murders of at least 16 Bosniaks, the persecution of several dozen civilians, including minors, and of detaining people at the Susica detention camp and the police Public Security Station in Vlasenica.
“Houses and other property owned by the Bosniak population were pillaged and set on fire” during the attacks, the prosecution also said in a statement when it initiated the charges.
According to the indictment, Simo and Zoran Stupar and Goran Tesic, committed the crimes as police officers at the Public Security Station in Vlasenica, and Zoran Tesic as a Bosnian Serb Army soldier.
The men are due to enter their pleas in the upcoming period.
Jailed war criminal Mladic 'sends kisses' live on Serb TV (France 24) November 16, 2018
Bosnian Serb army chief Ratko Mladic, sentenced to life imprisonment for genocide, spoke live by telephone to a Serbian television channel from a Dutch jail Friday saying he was sending kisses, sparking outrage and increased monitoring from authorities.
It was the first time Serbs have heard the voice of the man once dubbed the Butcher of Bosnia since he was convicted in November 2017 for war crimes and genocide.
"Grandpa Ratko sends you kisses," the 75-year-old told the Happy commercial station.
Mladic was found guilty notably over the 1995 Srebrenica genocide -- Europe's worst slaughter since World War II. Serb forces led by Mladic killed more than 8,000 Muslim men and boys.
Mladic's son Darko Mladic phoned him in jail Friday during a TV show and put the call on speaker.
Serbian ultra-nationalist leader Vojislav Seselj, also condemned for war crimes, was present in the studio amid a cheerful atmosphere.
"Tell Voja (Seselj) to come and see me to play chess, the last time I beat him 7-1," Mladic joked with a trembling but also gleeful voice from his cell in the seaside resort of Scheveningen.
Mladic never admitted his guilt while many Serbs in both Bosnia and Serbia still consider him a hero who defended his people. Bosnia's inter-ethnic war, that accompanied the collapse of Yugoslavia, claimed about 100,000 lives.
- 'Thank you general' -
"Thank you general," TV presenter Milomir Maric repeated.
"I hail notably Russia ... the communist party of the Soviet Union ... of Russia," Mladic said correcting himself during the nearly three-minute conversation.
The Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals (MICT), which has taken over from the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), said that Mladic was not given a necessary prior approval to contact the media.
"There are reasonable grounds to believe that the detainee may have committed an offence," it said in a statement.
As consequence the MICT will listen and summarise his phone calls in the next 30 days, the statement said.
Serbian authorities constantly deny the massacre was a genocide, a view repeated by Prime Minister Ana Brnabic in an interview with German Deutsche Welle this week, labelling it a "hideous crime, it was a war crime".
"I am not happy because of it,(but) it wasn't done in the name of the Serbian people, and Serbs cannot be collectively blamed for what happened there."
Bosnian Muslim leader Bakir Izetbegovic told N1 regional television that the radio phone in "rubbed salt in our wounds".
In March, Mladic launched an appeal urging UN judges to acquit him on all charges.
Kosovo Activists File War Crimes Complaints Against Serbs (Balkan Insight) By Perparim Isufi November 19, 2018
Activists from the Civil Society Group filed 61 criminal complaints on Monday against named Serbs who they alleged committed crimes in the municipality of Gjakova/Djakovica during the 1998-99 war.
This was the seventh series of war crimes complaints to be filed to prosecutors by activists in Gjakova/Djakovica.
The head of the Civil Society Group, Shkendije Hoda, said that since the start of their campaign, the prosecution’s interest in investigating war crimes in the Gjakova/Djakovica area has increased.
“We have some 62 files with 100 testimonies and we are continuing to collect evidence from citizens of the Gjakova municipality,” Hoda said.
“We are seeing that we have the support from the prosecution and police in collecting war crimes evidence because they have started to question witnesses in Gjakova. This is a success because we are seeing that the state is interested in this issue,” she added.
In June, the group submitted 150 war crimes complaints to the Special Prosecution.
More than 10,000 ethnic Albanian civilians were killed during the war in Kosovo, and hundreds of thousands expelled. Some of the victims were later found in concealed mass graves in Serbia.
About 1,600 people are still listed as missing, mostly ethnic Albanians but also some Serbs.
Bosnia Arrests Serb War Crime Suspect in Zvornik (Balkan Insight) By Lamija Grebo November 19, 2018
Bosnia’s State Investigation and Protection Agency on Monday arrested Dusan Spasojevic, who is suspected of committing crimes against the civilian population in the Zvornik area in 1992.
“He has been charged with committing war crime against a Bosniak victim in the village of Jusici in May 1992 in his capacity as a member of the Territorial Defecse of the Serb Municipality of Zvornik,” the state prosecution said in a statement.
Spasojevic will be handed over to a prosecutor, who will question him and decide what further action to take in the case.
[back to contents] Domestic Prosecutions In The Former Yugoslavia
Belgrade Court Convicts Bosnian Serb of War Crime (Balkan Insight) By Filip Rudic November 13, 2018
A court in Belgrade sentenced a former Bosnian Serb soldier to seven years in prison for the murder of a Bosniak civilian in the Kljuc area during the Bosnian war in 1992.
Belgrade Higher Court handed down a first-instance verdict on Tuesday sentencing Milanko Devic, a former Bosnian Serb Army soldier, to seven years in prison for killing a Bosniak civilian in 1992.
Devic was found guilty of killing civilian Ismet Sljivar in the second half of July 1992 in the village of Sljivari in the Bosnian municipality of Kljuc, together with two other fighters.
According to the prosecution, the three men arrived at Sljivar’s house armed, in Bosnian Serb Army uniforms. Using threats, they took Sljivar to a site near the river Sanica, where they shot him dead and threw his body in the river.
Tuesday’s verdict can be appealed.
Devic was initially charged before the Bosnian state court, but the case was turned over to the Serbian judiciary since, according to the Bosnian prosecution, Devic holds Serbian citizenship and almost never visits Bosnia.
Charges against Devic were filed in Serbia in April 2016, according to the Serbian war crimes prosecution.
The cantonal court in the Bosnian town of Bihac in February 2017 identified Bogdan Sobot as another of the three fighters who killed Sljivar, and sentenced him to eight years in prison.
The Bosnian Supreme Court upheld Sobot’s guilty verdict in February 2018, but reduced his sentence to six years.
Kosovo Deputy PM Limaj’s War Crimes Acquittal Upheld (Balkan Insight) By Die Morina and Doruntina Baliu November 14, 2018
An appeals court upheld the verdict acquitting former Kosovo Liberation Army commander Fatmir Limaj, who is now deputy prime minister, clearing him of responsibility for the murders of two ethnic Albanian civilians in 1998.
The appeals court in the town of Gjakova/Djakovica on Wednesday upheld the verdict acquitting Kosovo’s Deputy Prime Minister Fatmir Limaj of war crimes.
The verdict cleared him of charges that he did not take reasonable and necessary measures to prevent the killing of two ethnic Albanian civilians in October 1998, when he was a Kosovo Liberation Army commander.
“The court assessed the [original] verdict and found that the first-instance court gave clear and complete reasons for the argument that the accused Fatmir Limaj was not the perpetrator of the criminal offence of a war crime against civilian population,” the verdict said.
The appeals court said the original trial was presented with “no single piece of evidence that the accused committed the criminal offence”.
In March this year, the Basic Court in Gjakova/Djakovica acquitted Limaj of all charges relating to the murders of the two civilians, Ramiz Hoxha and Selman Binishi.
He had been accused, as the commander of 121st Brigade of the Kosovo Liberation Army, of not acting to stop their killings.
Hoxha, from Bellanica in Kosovo, and Binishi, from Banja, Limaj’s birthplace, were seized on October 2, 1998 near the mosque in Bellanica and executed near the village of Kravasari, some four kilometres away. The indictment alleged that Limaj saw the bodies of the victims and was aware that the crime had been committed.
The guerrilla commander turned politician has been tried and found not guilty of war crimes several times in the past.
In May 2016, the Kosovo appeals court upheld a verdict acquitting Limaj and nine other former KLA fighters of war crimes against civilians and prisoners of war at an improvised jail in Klecka during the late 1990s conflict.
After a previous trial at the UN-backed tribunal in The Hague, Limaj was also acquitted in 2005 of war crimes against Serbs and Albanians suspected of collaborating with Serbia.
Kosovo Activists File War Crimes Complaints Against Serbs (Balkan Insight) By Perparim Isufi November 19, 2018
A group of civil society activists in Kosovo filed 61 criminal complaints about war crimes by Serbian police and military forces to the Special Prosecution in Pristina.
Activists from the Civil Society Group filed 61 criminal complaints on Monday against named Serbs who they alleged committed crimes in the municipality of Gjakova/Djakovica during the 1998-99 war.
This was the seventh series of war crimes complaints to be filed to prosecutors by activists in Gjakova/Djakovica.
The head of the Civil Society Group, Shkendije Hoda, said that since the start of their campaign, the prosecution’s interest in investigating war crimes in the Gjakova/Djakovica area has increased.
“We have some 62 files with 100 testimonies and we are continuing to collect evidence from citizens of the Gjakova municipality,” Hoda said.
“We are seeing that we have the support from the prosecution and police in collecting war crimes evidence because they have started to question witnesses in Gjakova. This is a success because we are seeing that the state is interested in this issue,” she added.
In June, the group submitted 150 war crimes complaints to the Special Prosecution.
More than 10,000 ethnic Albanian civilians were killed during the war in Kosovo, and hundreds of thousands expelled. Some of the victims were later found in concealed mass graves in Serbia.
About 1,600 people are still listed as missing, mostly ethnic Albanians but also some Serbs.
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Turkey
European human rights court orders Turkey to free jailed politician (Financial Times) By Laura Pite Nov. 20, 2018
Europe’s top human rights court has ordered Turkey to release prominent opposition politician Selahattin Demirtas, as it ruled his pre-trial detention was a political act aimed at stifling free and fair elections.
In a judgment that risks infuriating Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish president, and reigniting tensions between Ankara and Europe, the European Court of Human Rights said on Tuesday that multiple extensions of the pre-trial detention of the former leader of the leftwing Peoples’ Democratic party (HDP) had served a political agenda.
The Strasbourg-based court ruled by six votes to one that decisions to keep Mr Demirtas behind bars during two “crucial” elections had “pursued the predominant ulterior purpose of stifling pluralism and limiting freedom of political debate”. It said these freedoms were at “the very core of the concept of a democratic society”.
The ECHR demanded that Turkey “take all necessary measures to put an end to [Mr Demirtas’s] pre-trial detention” and ordered Ankara to pay €10,000 in damages and €15,000 in costs.
The court’s decision was welcomed by Mr Demirtas, who said it confirmed that he was a “political hostage” and had been subjected to “grave violations” by Turkish courts. “As we have said from the very first day, the operation against the HDP, the detentions and the prosecutions are not legal, they have been conducted with a political motive,” he said in a statement issued by his party.
However, Mr Erdogan — who has previously described the former HDP leader as a “terrorist” and a “traitor” — said that Turkey was “not bound” by ECHR decisions. That claim was rejected by a spokesman for the president of the Council of Europe, which oversees the European Court of Human Rights, as incorrect. But a third of ECHR rulings against Turkey have not been fully implemented, and Strasbourg is limited in its powers to force Ankara to comply.
The HDP made history in 2015 when it became the first pro-Kurdish party to win enough votes to enter the Turkish parliament. Mr Demirtas, a Kurdish former human rights lawyer, led the party to unprecedented success by reaching out not only to Kurdish voters but also to leftists and liberals across Turkey.
In November 2016, following the collapse of a ceasefire with the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ party (PKK), he was arrested and accused of supporting the group — which is classified as a terrorist organisation by Turkey, the EU and the US.
The former HDP leader remained behind bars throughout a 2017 referendum campaign to radically strengthen the powers of the president, which Mr Erdogan narrowly won. In presidential elections that took place in June this year, Mr Demirtas ran for office from his jail cell.
The ruling risks complicating EU efforts to build bridges with Turkey, and comes ahead of a visit by Federica Mogherini, Brussels’ top foreign affairs official, to Ankara on Thursday. Although the Council of Europe is separate from the EU, its work is followed closely by member states.
Nonetheless, legal experts say that the court’s ability to force Turkey to abide by its rulings is limited. Kerem Gulay, an assistant professor of international law at Istanbul’s Koc University, said the Council of Europe could suspend Ankara’s membership if it refused to comply, but added that it was “highly unlikely” to do so.
‘Ayşe will go on holiday again’: Cyprus invasion talk returns to Turkey (The Guardian) By Helena Smith Nov. 21, 2018
A prominent Turkish opposition leader has caused alarm by calling for a repeat invasion of Cyprus, using the code phrase Ankara’s army deployed to launch an assault on the island 44 years ago.
Amid rising tensions over a push to exploit potential oil and gas reserves in the eastern Mediterranean, Meral Akşener, who heads the İyi (Good) party, upped the ante, predicting the issue would be cause for war.
“You should know that if need be ‘Ayşe will go on holiday again’,” warned the nationalist politician, who ran for president against Recep Tayyip Erdoğan earlier this year and was nicknamed the “she wolf”.
“Cyprus is Turkish and will remain Turkish,” she said to rapturous applause in an address before Ankara’s parliament.
Exploration for hydrocarbons by international companies commissioned by divided Cyprus’s Greek-run south amounted to “imperialist activity” aimed at Turkey, the opposition leader insisted.
The threat came as the Turkish government also ratcheted up the rhetoric, warning that drilling for deposits in contested gas fields off the Mediterranean island would affect regional stability.
The US energy giant, ExxonMobil, began exploratory drilling for potential spoils in an area south of Cyprus this week. “We have warned the Greek Cypriot administration to stop the unilateral exploration for hydrocarbons in the eastern Mediterranean,” said Turkey’s foreign ministry spokesman Hami Aksoy on Sunday. “We renew our warnings to the companies involved … we remind them that sharing the natural resources of the island of Cyprus relates to the core of the Cyprus issue.”
Ankara has vowed it will also start drilling in waters off the island, describing exploration by ExxonMobil as a threat to “specific and delicate balances in relation to resolving the Cyprus issue”.
The island has been split since 1974, the year Turkey seized its northern third in an invasion regarded as one of its most successful military operations following an Athens-orchestrated coup aimed at uniting the east Mediterranean outpost with Greece. Ever since, Ankara has stationed an estimated 40,000 troops in the rump state, recognised by no one in the world but Turkey and known as the “Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus”.
With hopes of offshore reserves also growing, failure to reunite the island has triggered competing claims over ownership of deposits amid argument over the extent of exclusive economic zones in seas around the island.
Under president Nicos Anastasiades, the internationally recognised south has licensed several companies to explore for potential deposits with Greek Cypriot officials holding out for the prospect of major finds.
This week Washington also waded in, with the US Department of State calling on Turkey to refrain from indulging in rhetoric or action that would stoke further tension in the region.
Washington has long insisted that while Cyprus has the right to drill for resources in its exclusive economic zone, any natural wealth “should be equitably shared in the context of an overall settlement.”
Earlier this year, Turkey dispatched warships to prevent an Italian drillship, also commissioned by the Anastasiades government, from exploring for reserves off Cyprus in a move that underlined rising tensions over the underwater resources.
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MIDDLE EAST AND NORTHERN AFRICA
Libya
Official Website of the International Criminal Court ICC Public Documents - Situation in the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya
Migrants Forced Off Ship After They Refused To Return To Libya (NPR) By Camila Domonoske November 20, 2018
The Libyan coast guard forcibly removed more than 70 migrants from a ship that had rescued them after the migrants refused to disembark, saying they had been imprisoned and tortured in Libya before and feared going back.
The migrants have now been placed in Libyan detention centers, which are notorious for human rights abuses including torture and slavery. Several migrants were reportedly injured in the forced removal and have been hospitalized.
The migrants attempted to cross the Mediterranean in a rubber boat more than a week ago, and were picked up by a cargo ship that brought them to Libya, docking in the port city of Misrata.
Amnesty International said last week that the ship's return to Libya "appears to be a clear breach of international law, given that Libya cannot be considered a safe place to disembark."
Fourteen of the rescued migrants, including some children, agreed to leave the boat and enter Libyan detention centers. But the rest remained on board, describing concerns for their safety in Libya.
"I would rather die on the cargo ship," one migrant told a Doctors Without Borders team last week.
The unusual standoff lasted more than a week before the Libyan coast guard boarded the ship, called the Nivin, on Tuesday.
Both France 24 and Reuters —citing the port authority and the regional coast guard, respectively— have confirmed that the ship had been boarded and that tear gas and rubber bullets were used to force migrants off the ship.
Multiple people were injured in the process, both news outlets report.
In a statement, the U.N.'s humanitarian coordinator for Libya, Maria Ribeiro, said the "humanitarian community is saddened by the turn of events." "Refugees and migrants on board included Ethiopian, Eritrean, South Sudanese, Pakistani, Bangladeshi and Somali nationals," she wrote. "Their reluctance to leave the relative safety of the ship that rescued them from peril at sea is an understandable human reaction. ... It is regrettable that mediation efforts undertaken did not lead to a peaceful resolution."
Last week, while the migrants refused to leave the Nivin, teams from Doctors without Borders conducted 60 medical consultations. They mostly found injuries related to burns from fuel spills during their attempted crossing. The group's head of mission in Libya, Julien Raickman, said those teams also "witnessed the despair aboard."
"Among the group, there are people, including minors, who have been held captive and tortured for a year or more by traffickers to obtain money," she wrote.
"It's an utter shame that once again the only response given to people in search of safety is prolonged arbitrary detention in the country they desperately attempt to leave," Raickman said.
The United Nations has repeatedly denounced the treatment of migrants in Libyan detention centers.
In 2016, a UN report found that migrants in Libya "are subjected to arbitrary detention, torture, other ill-treatment, unlawful killings, sexual exploitation, and a host of other human rights abuses."
In 2017, human rights monitors visited detention centers in Tripoli and witnessed "thousands of emaciated and traumatized men, women and children piled on top of each other, locked up in hangars with no access to the most basic necessities," UN human rights chief Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein said. Men, women and children said they were beaten by guards, while women said they were raped.
Then a CNN investigation found evidence of open-air slave markets selling African migrants in Libya.
Migrants told NPR's Ruth Sherlock and Lama al-Arian that the official detention centers function as slave markets, with one Gambian man calling the center where he was held the "prison where they sell people."
And outside of those detention centers, migrants also face threats from militias, criminal gangs and smuggling networks.
A man named Mohammed, from Niger, said he paid smugglers to take him across North Africa into Europe, but he was imprisoned by a militia, held for ransom and sold to a man who used him as a farm laborer. Sherlock and al-Arian report:
"Sometimes the farmer would give him food, sometimes he wouldn't, says Mohammed. The way he was treated depended a lot on the farmer's mood. 'You know, sometimes, he would [be] happy and sometimes he would be sad,' Mohammed says. 'When he was happy, he would share his happiness with me.'
"'And when he was down...' his voice trails off. He later describes being beaten, and given only scraps of food to eat.
"One time, he says, he built up the courage to ask the farmer for payment for his work. 'I asked how he was OK with not giving me what was rightfully mine,' he says. The farmer's answer was to pull out a gun and shoot, narrowly missing him."
Mohammed eventually escaped. He said his mistake was coming to Libya in the first place.
Al Jazeera spoke to multiple migrants on board the cargo ship Nivin before the forced removal.
One said his brother was killed by people smugglers in Libya; another said he saw detainees shot to death at an official detention center, during an escape.
Two migrants said the crew on the cargo ship that saved them, said they would be going to Malta — but then headed to Libya instead.
Humanitarian rescue ships have traditionally taken rescued migrants to Europe — but that's grown more difficult as more European ports have closed off access to migrant rescue vessels. And the small fleet of lifesaving vessels dwindled this summer, before vanishing completely.
The last privately operating rescue ship, the Aquarius, is not currently operating, after Panama revoked its registration; the Italian government has also demanded the seizure of the vessel, alleging that humanitarian groups engaged in illegal dumping.
In the absence of humanitarian missions, many migrants are rescued by Libyan patrol boats, which by policy take migrants to Libya. Others are picked up by commercial ships, like the Nivin. And this is not the first timea commercial ship has taken migrants to Libya in what appears to be a violation of international law.
Amnesty International has said that Europe is complicit in the abuse of migrants in Libya, for policies seeking to block migrants from accessing Europe — which mean people reach Libya and find themselves trapped.
Italy, in particular, has provided support to the Libyan authorities in the interest of intercepting more migrants.
Thousands of migrants die attempting to cross the Mediterranean each year. Tens of thousands are currently in detention in Libyan facilities.
Libya: child refugees abused in UK-funded detention centres (The Guardian) By Diane Taylor November 20, 2018
Child refugees are facing abuse and malnutrition in a network of 26 Libyan detention centres the British government is helping to fund, the Guardian has learned.
In the first accounts to the media from minors being held in the camps, the children described being starved, beaten and abused by Libyan police and camp guards. One said the conditions were like “hell on earth”.
According to documents seen by the Guardian, there are 26 active camps which are part-funded by the UK across Libya. While the existence of the camps had previously been reported, the scale of the network was not public. There are no exact figures available on the number of children being held but there are thought to be hundreds and possibly more than 1,000. There are at least 5,400 refugees and migrants being detained in total, the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) says.
The Department for International Development confirmed the government was contributing funds for the centres: “We continue to help fund the European Union Trust Fund’s work to improve conditions for migrants in detention centres.”
The government insists the funding is necessary as part of a humane effort to dissuade people from making the dangerous Mediterranean crossing. Arguing that migrant detention centres are the responsibility of the Libyan authorities, it is understood to have raised concerns over the treatment of detainees with the Libyan government.
But critics see the Libyan camps as a way for European countries to outsource their problem with migrants and asylum seekers and contend that they are implicated in the problems with a system they fund “to make sure they don’t get to Europe”.
The revelations from the children – who risk severe punishment if guards discover they have been speaking to the media – provide the most detailed account yet of life in the camps for minors. Earlier this month, Amnesty International said conditions in the detention centres were unsustainable and that torture and ill-treatment were rife.
“There is a callous disregard on the part of Europe and other states for the suffering of those languishing in detention centres,” the Amnesty report said.
A 16-year-old boy in one of the centres said: “I have been here for four months. I have tried to escape three times to cross the sea to Italy but each time I have been caught and brought back to the detention centre. We are dying here but no one is taking responsibility. We need to be taken to a place of safety but we are locked in here 24 hours a day. We do not see sunrise and we do not see sunset.”
The centres are designed to keep asylum seekers from crossing the Mediterranean to Europe. The UK and other EU countries have spent tens of millions trying to prevent asylum seekers from conflict zones, such as Eritrea and Sudan, entering the region. Last year the UK government spent £10m in Libya on various initiatives, including the detention centres.
Critics see the work as part of the government’s former “hostile environment” migration policy, intended to deter people from seeking sanctuary in the UK as well as removing those who were already in the country.
A 13-year-old Eritrean asylum seeker in a Tripoli camp told the Guardian detainees got just one or two small portions of white pasta a day and many were starving and malnourished. Diseases such as TB were rife. Many possessed just one T-shirt and one pair of shorts and were freezing now temperatures were dropping.
“I am very scared and very hungry,” the boy said. “I want to reach the UK where I will be safe. We have nothing here, no food, no clothes, no phones. I miss my mother and father so much.”
A 30-year-old Eritrean asylum seeker in the camp said the boy had travelled from Eritrea via Sudan with a 16-year-old cousin. “He cries all the time for his parents,” she said. “He is so sad I let him go to sleep with me. The conditions here are so bad. We are treated like donkeys, not like human beings. We are not allowed to have phones so we have to hide them when the police come.”
This week a 24-year-old refugee tried to hang himself in the toilet area of one of the camps, a 16-year-old in the same camp said. Three others saw him and quickly cut him down. He survived.
The teenager said his friend had lost hope because he was registered with UNHCR in January 2018 but was still languishing in the detention centres.
In a message sent late on Monday evening he said: “All the refugees are waiting to do like what our bro do cos they suffered long time. Libya is hell on earth. The world never help us and see our problem.”
One 17-year-old Eritrean boy who escaped from a detention centre and reached the UK has claimed asylum. An expert medical report found almost 50 torture scars on his body, consistent with being beaten with batonsand sticks. In a witness statement the boy said some of the injuries were sustained in beatings from guards at the camp, and others from traffickers. Many of those in the camps are from Eritrea but there are also asylum seekers from Ethiopia, Iraq, Somalia, Sudan and Syria.
The policy to keep out as many asylum seekers as possible by holding them at key crossing points into Europe appears to be working. In the year ending March 2018, the number of asylum applications in the UK from main applicants decreased by 8% to 26,547. The falls are consistent with the wider trend across Europe, with a decrease of around 41% in applications to EU countries in the last year.
Giulia Tranchina, of Wilsons solicitors, who is representing the 17-year-old Eritrean boy in London, said: “What young men, women, children and babies are suffering in detention in Libya is one of the biggest failures of our human civilisation. European governments, in our name, with our taxpayers’ money, are paying Libyan authorities, militias and army generals to continue detaining and torturing refugees on our behalf, to make sure they don’t get to Europe.”
A spokeswoman for UNHCR said: “We remain incredibly concerned about the plight of detained refugees and migrants. Conditions in detention are extremely dire.”
She said the current figure of 5,409 refugees and migrants being detained in Libya did not include those being held captive by smugglers.
A DfID spokeswoman said government funding was also used to encourage migrants to return to their home countries, for emergency evacuations of refugees, and for healthcare. UK government officials had raised with their counterparts in the Libyan Government of National Accord the need to respect the human rights of migrants, ensure the provision of basic services and explore alternatives to detention centres, she said.
Libyan gunmen free kidnapped Egyptians held over business dispute (Reuters) November 21, 2018
Egyptian workers taken hostage in Libya this week over a financial dispute between Libyan contractors and their Egyptian partner have been freed, a relative of one of the hostages said.
The governor’s office in Kafr el-Sheikh, the Egyptian province the workers are from, confirmed their case had been “resolved”, following coordination with government ministries, without giving further details.
The 16 workers were seized four days ago in Tobruk, in eastern Libya, by unknown gunmen after Libyan contractors accused a business partner from the same Egyptian village as the kidnapped men of fleeing the country after he stole 100,000 Libyan dinars ($72,000).
The kidnapping had stoked concerns over the fate of thousands of Egyptians, most of them working as laborers, in Libya — a country torn by lawlessness since Western-backed rebels toppled leader Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.
A brother of one of the hostages said the kidnappers freed the workers, some into the custody of local contractors who paid money on their behalf, while the rest signed undertakings to stay in Libya and work to settle the gunmen’s demands.
Residents of the small village which the kidnapped workers came from — Al-Herda in the Nile Delta province of Kafr el-Sheikh — earlier said that three of the hostages had escaped their captors but their whereabouts were not known.
Thousands of Egyptians, most driven by a lack of jobs, have sought work in Libya since 2011, risking their lives in a country where Islamist militants and militias largely rule. One resident of the Egyptian village said his brother paid 7,000 Egyptian pounds ($390) to smugglers who helped him reach Libya through desert roads.
In 2015, Islamic State militants killed 20 Egyptian Christians who were kidnapped while working in Libya.
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Iraq
Grotian Moment: The International War Crimes Trial Blog
More than 200 Mass graves found in former IS territory in Iraq: UN (The Peninsula) November 8, 2018
More than 200 Mass graves containing up to 12,000 victims have been found so far in Iraq that could hold vital evidence of war crimes by the Islamic State group, the UN said Tuesday.
The United Nations in Iraq (UNAMI) and its human rights office said they had documented a total of 202 Mass graves in parts of western and northern Iraq held by IS between 2014 and 2017.
Even more sites could be uncovered in the months to come, the report warned, urging Iraqi authorities to properly preserve and excavate them to provide closure for victims' families.
"The Mass grave sites documented in our report are a testament to harrowing human loss, profound suffering and shocking cruelty," said the UN's representative in Iraq, Jan Kubis.
"Determining the circumstances surrounding the significant loss of life will be an important step in the mourning process for families and their journey to secure their rights to truth and justice," he said.
IS overran swathes of Iraq in 2014, executing fighters and civilians en masse and using other forms of repression to seize and keep territory in the country's north and west.
The Mass graves may "contain critical forensic material" that could help uncover the details of these violations, as well as identify the victims, the UN said.
UN investigators in August began collecting evidence on war crimes, crimes against humanity, or genocide for Iraqi courts to use in trials of accused IS militants. Infamous sinkhole
Out of the 202 Mass graves documented in the UN's new report, just 28 of them have been excavated and 1,258 bodies exhumed by Iraqi authorities.
Nearly half the total sites are in Nineveh province, where IS's one time Iraqi capital Mosul lies and where the jihadists committed mass atrocities against the Yezidi minority.
According to Iraq's high commission on human rights, more than 3,000 Yezidis remain missing in Nineveh, in addition to another 4,000 people.
The rest of the sites are distributed in the northern regions of Kirkuk and Salaheddin, or Anbar in the west.
Some of those that have yet to be excavated are secured by Iraqi armed forces, but others remain endangered by fighting or are contaminated by explosive devices left behind by IS.
The largest, according to the report, is expected to be the Khasfa sinkhole south of Mosul, where as many as 4,000 people may have been killed.
IS has planted explosives at Khasfa, which killed a journalist and three members of Iraqi paramilitary forces last year. After capturing Mosul, Iraqi government forces went on to oust IS from its other urban strongholds and declared victory against the jihadists in late 2017. 'A full reckoning'
But many Iraqi families have missing relatives who they suspect may have been killed by IS, or are desperately looking for the remains of loved ones they know were executed by the jihadist group.
Their quest to uncover the truth often leads them into Iraq's exhausting state bureaucracy. "Families of victims must report to more than five State entities to complete the legal requirements to establish the fate of a missing person," said the report, calling for the creation of a single body to handle the process.
Iraqis are still searching for answers on the more than one million people who went missing during the reign of strongman Saddam Hussein, which ended in the US's invasion in 2003.
Since then, thousands more have disappeared in bloody waves of sectarian violence, then as militias became prominent across the country, and most recently as IS took over parts of Iraq.
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, said revealing the truth behind the Mass graves would be "critical to ensuring a full reckoning for the atrocities committed by IS."
"IS's horrific crimes in Iraq have left the headlines but the trauma of the victims' families endures, with thousands of women, men and children still unaccounted for," she said.
Iraq court sentences five Islamic State members to death (Jurist) By Charles Gallmeyer November 12, 2018
The Central Criminal Court of Iraq on Monday convicted five members of the Islamic State to death by hanging.
The five members were accused of detonating a car bomb at an Iraqi Army security checkpoint in Baghdad, resulting in the death and injuries of 13.
According to the Media Center of the Supreme Judicial Council in the Rasafa Federal Appeal Court, the alleged terrorists admitted to being members of the Islamic State, performing duties in affiliation with the organization, as well as to the bombing itself.
The court convicted the perpetrators under the Iraqi Anti-Terrorism Law, No. 13 of 2005, which allows the death penalty as punishment for convictions of terrorism.
The verdict can be appealed and is subject to challenge before the Federal Court of Cassation.
Decorated Navy SEAL Is Accused of War Crimes in Iraq (The New York Times) By Dave Phillips November 15, 2018
Edward Gallagher was something special, even by the punishing standards of the Navy SEALs. Both a lifesaving medic and a crack sniper, he was repeatedly decorated for valor and for coolheaded leadership during 19 years of combat deployments. After his latest tour, fighting Islamic State militants in Iraq, he was named the top platoon leader in SEAL Team 7 and nominated for the Silver Star, the military’s third- highest honor.
But now, less than a year later, Special Operations Chief Gallagher, 39, is locked in the brig, facing charges that during that same deployment — his eighth — he shot indiscriminately at civilians, killed a teenage Islamic State fighter with a handmade custom blade, and then performed his re-enlistment ceremony posing with the teenager’s bloody corpse in front of an American flag.
The Navy has charged Chief Gallagher with premeditated murder, attempted murder and nearly a dozen other offenses, including obstruction of justice and bringing “discredit upon the armed forces.” If he is convicted, he could spend the rest of his life in prison.
Chief Gallagher denies all the charges.
The case has sent waves through the secretive world of the SEALs, who prefer to operate behind the headlines in an atmosphere of silent professionalism. And the case may widen as the investigation implicates other SEALs who did not report what they knew. A lieutenant has already been charged. The chief’s arrest has also shaken his family, who cannot square the list of war crimes with the sailor they have long known.
“This is not who Eddie is,” his wife, Andrea Gallagher, said in an interview. “He is a lifesaver. He is that guy who runs into the burning building when other people are running out.”
In a two-day preliminary hearing at Naval Base San Diego that concluded Thursday, prosecutors presented accounts from several other SEALs in Chief Gallagher’s platoon describing his behavior as reckless and bloodthirsty. They said he fired into civilian crowds, gunned down a girl walking along a riverbank and an old man carrying a water jug, and threatened to kill fellow SEALs if they reported his actions.
Some platoon members were so distraught by the chief’s actions, investigators said, that they tampered with his sniper rifle to make it less accurate, and fired warning shots to scare away civilians before the chief had a chance to shoot them.
“They said they spent more time protecting civilians than they did fighting ISIS,” Special Agent Joe Warpinski of the Naval Criminal Investigative Service told the military court.
Chief Gallagher sat in the courtroom in dress uniform during the hearing, his face deeply creased and tanned from years of combat duty. He did not testify.
His lawyer, Phillip Stackhouse, said the charges were baseless. He said the only evidence that the chief had killed anyone came from accounts offered by a few SEALs who were disgruntled because they could not meet their leader’s demanding standards.
“I promise you, we will call many more SEALs who will say none of his ever happened,” Mr. Stackhouse said.
The purpose of the hearing, known as an Article 32 hearing, was to determine whether the case should proceed to a trial. Both sides said they believe it will, probably in 2019.
The son of a West Point graduate and career Army officer, Chief Gallagher enlisted in the Navy as a medic in 1999 and deployed to Iraq, attached to a Marine infantry unit. Then he decided to become a SEAL, and was one of the few Navy medics ever to complete the Marines’ demanding scout sniper school. He finished his SEAL training in 2004.
His combination of skills put him in high demand. He deployed frequently with different teams, steadily advanced in rank, and built a record studded with awards for exemplary conduct and valor, braving fire to kill enemies and save friends in Iraq and Afghanistan.
His eighth deployment, from February to September 2017, was to Mosul, Iraq. Some of the SEALs who served under him told investigators that at first they were excited to be led by someone with Chief Gallagher’s reputation, but they soon started to see him as unhinged. He fired his rifle about ten times as often as other snipers, they said, even at times when there seemed to be no targets.
“Every single sniper in the platoon said he was not a good sniper,” Agent Warpinski told the court.
The chief was hard on his platoon, investigators said, berating and punishing SEALs who he thought were not aggressive enough.
Chief Gallagher’s lawyers said that hard feelings in the platoon over his actions had led some SEALs to concoct stories in the hope of forcing him from command.
In May 2017, Iraqi forces captured an enemy fighter who had been wounded in an airstrike. Video images show the bleeding fighter, who was thought to be between 12 and 17, being brought to the SEAL platoon on the hood of a truck, and Chief Gallagher and others cutting away his clothing to give medical aid.
Photos of the fighter viewed by The New York Times appeared to show that medics had put tubes used to treat a collapsed lung in his side and cut an emergency airway in his throat.
Navy investigators said that one SEAL medic was kneeling over the fighter’s head, treating him, when Chief Gallagher walked up and, without saying a word, took out a handmade knife and stabbed the teenager several times in the neck and side.
Investigators said two other SEALs gave similar accounts.
Members of the platoon then posed for photos with Chief Gallagher as he held the teenager’s head up by the hair with one hand, and held his knife in the other. Photos show Chief Gallagher then raising his right hand to perform a re-enlistment ceremony over the dead body, while another SEAL member holds an American flag. Soon after the episode, investigators said, Chief Gallagher texted a photo of the body to a fellow SEAL member with the message, “I got him with my hunting knife.”
Mr. Stackhouse, the defense lawyer, said the teenager had probably died of the serious injuries he suffered in the airstrike, and that no evidence had been offered showing any stab wounds. As for the photos taken afterward, posing with the body, Mr. Stackhouse said, “these types of pictures are not unique, they’ve been in every Iraq case I’ve ever done.”
Investigators say several SEALs in the platoon spoke to commanders about the episode, but that no action was taken. Some of them reported it to higher leadership in December 2017, and again in April, when a criminal investigation was opened.
In September, when the Navy became aware of what prosecutors said were efforts by the chief to intimidate witnesses, he was arrested and put in pretrial confinement.
In the hearing Thursday, a Navy prosecutor, Chris Czaplak, said the chief had done damage beyond murder.
“Does the public still believe we are the good guys, because Chief Gallagher decided to act like the monster the terrorists accuse us of being?” he said. “He handed ISIS propaganda manna from heaven. His actions are everything ISIS says we are.”
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Syria
Syria demands international mechanism to investigate US-led coalition's crimes (PressTV) November 10, 2018
The Syrian government has demanded an independent and international mechanism to investigate the crimes being perpetrated against civilians by the US-led coalition purportedly fighting the Daesh Takfiri terrorist group.
The Syrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates, in two separate letters addressed to United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres and the rotating president of the UN Security Council Ma Zhaoxu on Saturday, stated that the Friday airstrikes by the US-led coalition against the eastern town of Hajin near the Iraqi border, which claimed the lives of at least 26 local civilians, including 14 children, once again exposed Washington’s false claims of combating terrorism and revealed that the military alliance had no respect whatsoever for the lives of innocent people and international law.
The letters added that the US-led coalition’s goals were to kill as many Syrian people as possible, further destroy Syria’s infrastructure, undermine the country’s future, sovereignty and territorial integrity, and hinder a political settlement of the ongoing crisis.
“All these attempts constitute a blatant violation of all United Nations Security Council resolutions on Syria,” the Syrian foreign ministry said.
“Whilst the United States and its allies continue to commit war crimes and crimes against humanity, the Security Council has maintained an awkward silence and failed to take any measure to stop these misdeeds,” it pointed out.
The Syrian foreign ministry highlighted that the Damascus government had on several occasions pointed to the US-led coalition’s systematically barbaric attacks against innocent civilians, and its use of internationally banned weapons, including white phosphorus bombs.
The ministry then called on the UN Security Council to shoulder its responsibilities, and propose an independent and international mechanism to help stop the coalition’s crimes, investigate them and punish their perpetrators. The US-led coalition has been conducting airstrikes against what are said to be Daesh targets inside Syria since September 2014 without any authorization from the Damascus government or a UN mandate.
The military alliance has repeatedly been accused of targeting and killing civilians. It has also been largely incapable of achieving its declared goal of destroying Daesh.
Exclusive – Left Behind: ISIS Children in Syria, Iraq Await Int’l Solution (Asharq Al-Awsat) By Nazeer Rida November 12, 2018
France’s announcement that it plans to repatriate 150 children of ISIS fighters represents only part of a growing humanitarian dilemma in Syria and Iraq. As of yet, the international community has not come up with a unified way to handle this issue. Fears are meanwhile, mounting over the emergence of a generation of stateless people and another generation of extremists should they remain in former ISIS strongholds.
Syrian estimates said that some 2,000 children of ISIS fighters do not have proper identification papers. Most of them live in refugee camps in Raqqa that are under the control of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). Some of them do not have a father and only carry ISIS-recognized documents.
Sources from Raqqa told Asharq Al-Awsat that ISIS members used to marry Syrian women from regions under their control. Their wedding was officiated by an ISIS-approved cleric, while the real name of the husband is often omitted from the vows. The husband usually went by an alias. After the death or escape of these fighters, the children are left behind without a family name or identification card to face an unknown future with their mothers.
A similar problem is emerging in Iraq among women who were forced to marry ISIS fighters.
The source told Asharq Al-Awsat that warning signs linked to this problem first emerged in 2015. As ISIS began to lose its safe havens in Syria, fighters fled, leaving their children and wives to their fate. The children were registered at ISIS institutions under the fathers’ aliases.
Director of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights Rami Abdulrahman underlined this problem, saying that “large numbers” of ISIS children are currently in Syria.
These figures could be as much as 2,500 children and mothers, he told Asharq Al-Awsat.
“The dangers are not just linked to them growing up as stateless, but there are concerns that they may be raised in an extremist environment because they do not have civil status and official documents,” he warned.
The Britain-based Observatory said that children born to foreign ISIS fighters in Syria live in Kurdish-controlled northern regions, regime-controlled areas or with their families in ISIS pockets in the western, southern and eastern Syrian desert.
Abdulrahman said that the majority of the ISIS wives are either Syrian or Iraqi, while the fathers are non-Syrian. The fathers often had aliases reflecting the countries they come from. The majority of Syrian ISIS fighters are known to authorities.
The dilemma facing some countries revolves around the children whose fathers are known, he stressed.
Some European countries sought to resolve this problem by suggesting that only the children be repatriated. This has led to humanitarian concerns over the mothers, who would be forced to part ways with their children.
In October, France announced that it was working on repatriating children held by Kurdish-Syrian forces. They are suspected to be the children of French extremists and their mothers will be left behind to stand trial before local authorities.
"Those who have committed crimes in Iraq and Syria must be tried in Iraq and Syria," said a statement from the French foreign ministry at the time.
"The exception is minors, whose situation will be examined on a case-by-case basis, and there is a particular duty to safeguard the best interests of the child,” the statement added.
Their return hinges on their mother’s approval to be separated from them.
With the help of Kurdish authorities and the International Committee of the Red Cross, Paris was able to determine some of their locations in Kurdish-held northeastern Syria.
During the summer, German security officials had announced that they were prepared to repatriate over 100 infants born to Germans who had traveled to Iraq and Syria to fight for ISIS. Some 1,000 people are believed to have departed Germany to fight for the terrorist group.
Berlin said that up until November 2017, it had evidence that more than 960 Germans had left their home country for Syria and Iraq. A third of them are believed to have returned, while some 150 likely died in battles. Back in Raqqa, children live in three refugee camps in Kurdish-held regions.
Nawaf Khalil, head of Germany-based Kurdish Center for Studies, said that Kurdish authorities provide the children with psychological support. They hail from 46 countries, while three children are orphans. This prompted the authorities to bring in three women to care for them.
Some children have been repatriated to their countries, such as Kazakhstan, Indonesia and Chechnya.
Action Needed on Incendiary Weapons: Spotlighting Inadequate International Law (Human Rights Watch) November 14, 2018
Countries at an upcoming United Nations disarmament conference, faced with evidence of 30 new incendiary weapons attacks in Syria, should agree to strengthen the international law that governs their use, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today.
The 13-page report, “Myths and Realities about Incendiary Weapons,” counters common misconceptions that have slowed international progress in this area. Incendiary weapons produce heat and fire through the chemical reaction of a flammable substance. While often designed for marking and signaling or producing smokescreens, incendiary weapons can burn human flesh to the bone, leave extensive scarring, and cause respiratory damage and psychological trauma. They also start fires that destroy civilian objects and infrastructure.
“The excruciating burns and lifelong disabilities inflicted by incendiary weapons demand a global response,” said Bonnie Docherty, senior arms researcher at Human Rights Watch and lead author of the report. “Simple changes in international law could help save civilian lives during wartime.”
The report details the exceptionally cruel harm caused by incendiary weapons, explains the shortcomings of existing law, and lays out steps countries should take in response. The report, designed as an accessible overview of the incendiary weapons issue, was co-published by Harvard Law School’s International Human Rights Clinic.
Countries that are party to the Convention on Conventional Weapons (CCW) are scheduled to address incendiary weapons at the UN in Geneva from November 19 to 23. Protocol III to this treaty imposes some restrictions on the use of incendiary weapons, but it does not provide sufficient protections for civilians.
In 2018, the Syrian-Russian military alliance used incendiary weapons in at least 30 attacks across six governorates of Syria, based on Human Rights Watch research. The majority of these attacks involved ground-launched rockets, but air-dropped weapons have also caused harm. For example, an incendiary airstrike on March 16 in Eastern Ghouta killed at least 61 people and injured more than 200.
Human Rights Watch documented an additional 90 incendiary weapons attacks in Syria from November 2012 through 2017. The total number is most likely higher. Syria has not joined Protocol III, but Russia has.
The countries at the UN meeting should address the weaknesses of Protocol III as well as articulate their policies and practices. They should also establish a forum dedicated to reviewing the protocol more formally in 2019 with the intention of strengthening its protections for civilians.
Government support for action against incendiary weapons has grown significantly in recent years, although a small number of countries that view existing law as adequate have opposed proposals to amend the protocol.
Protocol III has two major loopholes that have weakened its impact. First, its definition excludes multipurpose weapons, such as those with white phosphorus, which may be primarily designed to provide smokescreens or illumination, but which can inflict the same horrific injuries as other incendiary weapons. White phosphorus, for example, can continue to smolder in bandaged wounds and reignite days after treatment if exposed to oxygen. In 2017, the US-led coalition used white phosphorus while fighting to retake Raqqa in Syria and Mosul in Iraq from the Islamic State. The United States is party to Protocol III.
Second, while the protocol prohibits the use of air-dropped incendiary weapons in populated areas, it allows the use of ground-delivered models in certain circumstances. Because all incendiary weapons cause the same effects, this arbitrary distinction should be eliminated. A complete ban on incendiary weapons would have the greatest humanitarian benefits.
“Nations should make strengthening international law on these weapons a priority for the disarmament agenda,” said Docherty, who is also associate director of armed conflict and civilian protection at the Harvard clinic. “Stronger obligations would limit the conduct of treaty countries and, by increasing stigmatization of incendiary weapons, influence the behavior of other countries and non-state armed groups.”
Docherty will present the report’s findings at a side event at the United Nations in Geneva at 1:15 p.m. on November 20 in Conference Room XXII.
Saudi Arabia drafts UN resolution condemning Syria for human rights abuses (Almasdar News) November 16, 2018
During Thursday’s UN session, the Saudi Arabian delegation submitted a resolution that called on the international community to condemn Syria for human rights abuses.
In response to the Saudi resolution, the Syrian delegate Dr. Bashar Al-Ja’afari slammed the Gulf nation for their own human rights abuses within their own country and in the international community.
Dr. Ja’afari pointed out Saudi Arabia’s double standards when it came to human rights, while also referencing the fact that the Gulf nation is not part of the UN’s international covenant on civil and political rights.
“We consider that voting for this resolution is a hostile act against Syria and it would exclude its proposers from contribution to efforts exerted to achieve a political solution and the reconstruction process,” he continued.
The Syrian diplomat condemned Saudi Arabia’s role in the humanitarian crisis in Yemen, adding that they are in no position to criticize any nation.
UN condemns Syrian 'war on children' as up to 30 reportedly killed in clashes (UN News) November 16, 2018
Geert Cappelaere, UNICEF Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa, said in a statement that the killings demonstrate that “the war on children is far from over in Syria.”
Mr. Cappelaere added that the Syrian war, which has now lasted almost eight years, has been marked by a complete disregard for the fundamental principle of protection for children: “Between January and September 2018, the United Nations has verified the killing of 870 children – the highest number ever in the first nine months of any year since the start of the conflict in 2011. These are only verified cases, with actual numbers likely to be much higher.”
More than 5 million children are in need of humanitarian assistance, with almost half forced to flee their homes. Many families have lost everything – including, for those who have fled the country, the protections that come with citizenship.
UNICEF is making critical efforts to minimize the impact of the crisis on children, including in the life-saving areas of health, nutrition, immunization, water and sanitation, as well as education and child protection.
Mr. Cappelaere called on warring parties to protect all children, no matter where they are in Syria and no matter whose control they live under.”
Russia rips apart Saudi UN resolution accusing Syria of human rights violations (AMN Al-masdar News) November 17, 2018
Russia’s Deputy Permanent Representative to the United Nations Gennady Kuzmin ripped apart on Friday the Saudi Arabian resolution accusing Syria of human rights violations.
During the UN General Assembly Third Committee meeting on Friday, the Russian delegate said the resolution was nothing more than an attempt to settle a score with the Syrian government.
“It is just a mechanism for geopolitical score-settling,” Kuzmin said about the resolution.
“We have spoken out more than once against attempts to transform the Third Committee into a body rubber-stamping the nations’ politicized resolutions with the only aim of mount pressure on the government of one of the UN member states,” he said.
He slammed the resolution on human rights in Syria as a vivid example of this practice. “Each year, its content is becoming more and more detached from reality,” Kuzmin stated. “This document has turned into a poisonous concentrate of all ideas and initiatives which Damascus’ opponents failed to ‘push through’ at other platforms.”
Syria’s Ambassador to UN Bashar Al-Jaafari pointed out that Saudi Arabia, which authored the resolution, had breached requirements for drafting these documents.
“While it was drafted, no public meetings were held, since most of the discussions on the resolution were behind closed doors at the Saudi mission,” he said.
Ja’afari also pointed out that Saudi Arabia has a long track record of human rights violations, citing recent events in Yemen and the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
Activists accuse Syrian government of arresting returnees (The National) By Hashem Osseiran November 18, 2018
Activist-run monitoring groups are accusing the Syrian government of arresting hundreds of refugees and internally displaced Syrians who have returned to government-held territory.
The Syrian government has been calling on refugees to return arguing that the conditions are now safe after a string of government victories secured President Bashar Assad’s control over more than sixty percent of the country.
The Russian military on Friday said nearly 270,000 Syrian refugees have returned home in recent months- a small portion of the 5.6 million Syrians who are believed to have fled abroad to escape the conflict.
Many are returning from neighbouring Lebanon, which has spearheaded the repatriation of Syrian refugees. Lebanese security agencies estimate that around 80,000 Syrians have returned since July.
The reopening of the Nassib border crossing between Jordan and Syria in October has prompted the Syrian government to double-down on calls for the millions of refugees there to return home.
UN agencies and rights groups, however, say that repatriation may be premature, especially since they cannot guarantee that returns are being done in a voluntary and safe manner. Many fear refugees would face persecution returning to government- controlled areas in the absence of a comprehensive political agreement.
The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) on Friday said that more than 700 repatriates have been arrested since October, after returning to government-held parts of the country. It said that the returnees were mostly from Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey and other countries in the region.
Off the 700, only 230 remain detained, the monitoring group said, explaining that most had been released after brief detention.
The reason behind their arrest was not immediately clear, but the Syrian government has been known to detain people on charges of assisting or supporting rebel groups. Relatives of rebel sympathizers have also been detained in the past as a pressure tactic. Lebanon’s minister of refugee affairs confirmed to the National on Sunday that his office has received reports of Syrians being detained after returning to government-held parts of Syria from Lebanon, but said that he could not detail how many.
The National also tried to contact The Refugee Affairs Directorate at Jordan’s interior ministry, but they were not available for comment.
The Syrian Network for Human Rights, a separate activist-run monitoring group, corroborated reports by the SOHR in the latest instalment of its monthly reports on arbitrary detention in Syria.
The SNHR said it documented a total of 488 arbitrary arrests carried out by warring parties in Syria during the month of October. Syrian government forces were responsible for more than 60 percent of arrests, the monitoring group said.
Those who were arrested, included internally displaced civilians who returned from northern Syria to government-held regions after accepting so-called reconciliation deals, the SNHR said. Additionally, “Syrian regime forces launched a sweeping arrest campaign against individuals who had returned from neighbouring countries."
The SNHR did not provide specific figures.
In recent months, Damascus has taken measures to encourage returns. Earlier in October, President Assad signed a decree granting amnesty to all those who accused of desertion, failure to follow conscription notices or failure to follow orders during the war, on the condition they report to authorities within four to six months.
Earlier this month, the Syrian military issued a new circular discharging individuals called up for reservist military service and dropping penalties against those who dodged extra military duty. An estimated 800,000 men, both inside and outside Syria, are expected to be covered by the decision.
Syrian civilians killed in US-led airstrikes, war monitor says (ABC) November 18, 2018
At least 40 people, mostly women and children, have been killed by US-led airstrikes on the last pocket held by Islamic State militants in eastern Syria, according to a war monitor and Syrian state media.
Rami Abdurrahman, head of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said the airstrikes on Saturday hit homes in Abu al-Hassan village, near the town of Hajin, which lies along the border with Iraq.
Mr Abdurrahman said the airstrikes killed at least 43 people, including 17 children and 12 women.
He said it was not immediately clear if the men killed in the strikes were militants.
However the US-led coalition denied civilians were killed.
It said in a statement it conducted 19 strikes in the area in support of ground operations against IS.
It said all the targets it struck were "legitimate" and no civilians were present.
It said another 10 strikes in the area were not carried out by the coalition.
Syrian state news agency SANA had also reported the strikes, saying 40 were killed in the remote area of Buqaan, another village next to Abu al-Hassan.
Activist Omar Abou Leila, who monitors the war from Deir el-Zour, also confirmed the strikes but said it was difficult to verify the death toll.
The activist said IS militants were preventing civilians from leaving the area, resulting in the high casualty toll among them.
The US-led coalition and its local partners on the ground, the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, launched the campaign against the last IS-held pocket in early September.
The Observatory has recorded at least 191 civilians killed since September 10, including 65 children and 45 women.
They are mostly Iraqis and believed to include family members of IS militants, the Observatory added.
Speaking on Saturday, the coalition's Deputy Commander Major General Christopher Ghika described the fight against IS as "difficult".
"We never thought or said this fight would be easy," he said.
"These are some of the most determined fighters and they've had a lot of time to prepare their defensive positions, so this isn't an easy fight, and our Syrian democratic force partners with coalition support are taking the fight every day to the enemy."
Veteran war crimes prosecutor urges reform of ‘disappointing’ UN (Capital News) November 18, 2018
Former war crimes prosecutor Carla Del Ponte, who for years was part of a UN commission probing rights abuses in Syria, is calling for reform of the UN “talk shop”.
She also argued that the upholding of human rights had reached a low point, questioning if they still existed.
“The UN is a big disappointment to me,” she told Swiss weekly NZZ Am Sonntag in an interview published Sunday, insisting that “the UN should be reorganised.”
Del Ponte, a 71-year-old Swiss national who came to prominence investigating war crimes in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, was part of the UN Commission of Inquiry on Syria for five years, before slamming the door last year.
During her time working with the commission, which is tasked with investigating human rights violations and war crimes in Syria’s brutal civil war, Del Ponte said she was disappointed to find that the UN was basically a “talk shop”.
“There are lots of civil servants, too many. Only a few of them really do any work,” she lamented.
Del Ponte, known for her frankness, reiterated her frustration at the lack of accountability for the horrendous crimes committed in Syria, where more than 360,000 people have been killed since the conflict erupted in 2011.
“We had hoped that the International Criminal Court or an ad hoc court would deal with the war crimes in Syria,” she said, criticising the blocked UN Security Council for standing in the way of such a process by “doing nothing”.
She also criticised the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva. Half of the 47 countries that currently hold rotating membership, including the likes of China, Saudi Arabia and Burundi, “are violating human rights on a daily basis”, she maintained.
“They should be thrown out. Immediately,” she said.
She joked that she had been asked at a recent event if she would consider becoming UN Secretary-General, a job she said she would gladly take.
“But I would probably not last in office for long.”
Del Ponte, who said she is planning to retire for good at the end of this year, warned that international justice as a whole was currently in a sorry state.
“We have reached a low point,” she told the paper.
“Human rights are no longer valid. We have to ask ourselves today if they still exist,” she said.
But she stressed that “we have no choice but to believe in human rights.”
“We must believe that an independent international court can bring justice.”
US-led coalition denies reports airstrikes killed dozens of civilians in Syria (Military Times) November 18, 2018
The U.S.-led coalition denied reports that airstrikes it carried out in a part of eastern Syria held by the Islamic State group killed dozens of civilians, while opposition activists reported clashes Sunday between government forces and ISIS in nearby districts.
The coalition said late Saturday that it struck only “legitimate” militant targets, and that another 10 airstrikes in the area were not carried out by U.S.-led forces.
Coalition strikes were carried out to support ground operations against ISIS targets, which were assessed to be free of civilian presence, according to a press release from Operation Inherent Resolve, the U.S.-led coalition fighting the Islamic State group.
“We can’t specify who is firing into the area for operational reasons, but we can say definitively these shots did not come from coalition or partner security forces, and are therefore irresponsible and dangerous,” said Army Col. Sean Ryan, a coalition spokesman.
ISIS controls an area in eastern Syria near the Iraqi border where some 15,000 people, including fighters and their families, live. U.S.-backed fighters of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces have been trying to capture the area since September.
Syrian government forces and Iran-backed militiamen have also bombarded the ISIS-held area in recent weeks, according to opposition activists.
Syrian state media, a war monitor and an ISIS-linked news agency reported Saturday that coalition airstrikes killed 40 people, mostly women and children.
The coalition said in a statement late Saturday that it conducted 19 strikes in the area starting late Friday in support of ground operations against ISIS. It said no civilians were present near the targets it struck.
Syria and Russia regularly launch airstrikes against suspected militants, and Iraq has carried out cross-border strikes targeting ISIS.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and Deir Ezzor 24, an activist collective, meanwhile reported clashes Sunday between Syrian government forces and ISIS in other parts of Deir el-Zour. It said government forces shelled areas controlled by ISIS in the same region where the U.S.-led coalition reportedly carried out the airstrikes.
Although ISIS has been mostly defeated in eastern Syria, the extremists still have hideouts in the desert from where they launch attacks.
Syria war: Amnesty asks public to help track civilian casualties of US-led bombing in Raqqa (The Independent) By Richard Hall November 21, 2018
Anyone with access to an internet connection will soon be able to investigate civilian casualties caused by the US-led military coalition bombing of Raqqa during the battle to capture the city from Isis.
Amnesty International is launching a new project that it hopes will involve thousands of members of the public in its ongoing investigation into the destruction in the city.
“Strike Tracker”, designed in conjunction with independent casualty monitor Airwars, will allow anyone to sift through satellite pictures of Raqqa over the period of the battle and mark when a building was destroyed. Doing so will help investigators research potential war crimes.
“There is a mountain of evidence left to sift through, and the scale of the civilian devastation is simply too large for us to do this alone,” says Milena Marin, senior adviser for tactical research on Amnesty International’s Crisis Response team.
“With thousands of ‘Strike Trackers’ on the case to help us narrow down precisely when and where coalition air and artillery strikes destroyed buildings, we can significantly scale up our ability to map out the apocalyptic destruction in Raqqa.”
Around 80 per cent of Raqqa was destroyed and at least 1,400 civilians killed in the four-month battle that saw the the US-led coalition use overwhelming air power to oust jihadi fighters from their de facto capital last year.
Amnesty says the coalition has shown little interest in properly accounting for the death toll. In lieu of a proactive effort by the coalition to find out how many civilians it killed, the rights group has been conducting on-the-ground investigations of its own in Raqqa, which it claims has produced “compelling evidence of apparent violations of international humanitarian law”.
Those investigations led the coalition to revise its initial civilian casualty assessment for the city from 23 to more than 100. But that number is “just the tip of the iceberg”, according to Ms Marin.
“The coalition’s blatant denials and shoulder-shrugging are unconscionable – their military offensive killed and maimed hundreds of civilians and then left the survivors to pick up the pieces,” she says.
Raqqa was liberated from Isis by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces in October 2017. The fighters faced an entrenched enemy and required overwhelming US air power and military support to capture the city.
During the battle, Isis prevented civilians from leaving and used them as human shields – a tactic which greatly contributed to the high civilian death toll. But Amnesty says the coalition failed to properly adapt its strategy to protect civilians.
In October, Amnesty claimed its investigation into the coalition’s air campaign in Raqqa provided “a strong prima facie case that many coalition attacks that killed and injured civilians and destroyed homes and infrastructure violated international humanitarian law”.
A spokesperson for the coalition told The Independent at the time that “the cost of liberating Raqqa came at a very high cost”, but insisted there was no alternative.
“The fighting to liberate the citizens of Raqqa was often house to house against an enemy with no regard for human life that used IEDs and booby traps every step of the way, and Raqqa citizens as human shields,” said US army colonel Sean Ryan.
“Liberating the citizens of Raqqa was the goal and the other choice would be to let Isis continue to murder, torture, rape and pillage the citizens of Raqqa, and that is simply unacceptable,” he added.
[back to contents] Yemen
U.S. halting refueling of Saudi-led coalition aircraft in Yemen’s war (Reuters) By Phil Stewart November 9, 2018
The United States is halting refueling of aircraft from the Saudi-led coalition engaged in Yemen, the United States and Saudi Arabia said on Friday, ending one of the most divisive aspects of U.S. assistance to the Saudi war effort.
Saudi Arabia, in a statement released by its embassy in Washington, said it had decided to request an end to U.S. aerial refueling for its operations in Yemen because it could now handle it by itself.
U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis backed the decision and said the U.S. government was consulted.
The move comes at a time of international outrage over the murder of U.S.-based Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, and after Democratic and Republican lawmakers threatened to take action in Congress next week over the refueling operations.
Critics of the Saudi campaign - including Democrats who won control of the House of Representatives in elections on Tuesday - have long questioned U.S. involvement in the war, which has killed more than 10,000 people, displaced more than 2 million and led to widespread famine in Yemen since it began in 2015.
“I’ve been calling for this for over three years,” said Representative Ted Lieu, a Democrat from California.
“We shouldn’t be supporting coalition war crimes and I look forward to continuing to scrutinize the U.S.’s role in Yemen when we’re in the majority next Congress.”
Even as President Donald Trump’s administration has condemned Khashoggi’s murder, the White House has sought to preserve its relationship with Saudi Arabia.
A coordinated decision by Washington and Riyadh to halt the refueling could be an attempt by both countries to forestall further action by Congress.
Senators Todd Young, a Republican, and Jeanne Shaheen, a Democrat, had warned the Trump administration was running out of time to act.
“If the administration does not take immediate steps... we are prepared to take additional action when the Senate comes back into session,” Young and Shaheen said.
CONTINUING U.S. SUPPORT
Beyond refueling, the United States provides limited intelligence support to the Saudi-led coalition and sells it weaponry used in Yemen’s war.
Mattis said the United States would play a continuing role to help the Saudi-led coalition and Yemeni forces minimize civilian casualties and expand humanitarian efforts.
He also suggested plans to build up Yemeni troops.
“The U.S. and the Coalition are planning to collaborate on building up legitimate Yemeni forces to defend the Yemeni people, secure their country’s borders, and contribute to counter Al Qaeda and ISIS efforts in Yemen and the region,” Mattis said in a statement.
Earlier this year, Mattis had defended U.S. military support to Saudi-led coalition forces in Yemen, when lawmakers weighed forcing the Pentagon to end Washington’s involvement.
Mattis argued that halting U.S. military support could increase civilian casualties, since U.S. refueling had given pilots more time to select their targets. He told them cutting off support could jeopardize cooperation on counter-terrorism and reduce American influence with Saudi Arabia.
Mattis also argued it would embolden the Iran-aligned Houthi rebels, who have fired missiles at Saudi Arabia and targeted commercial and military vessels off Yemen’s coast. Still, a halt to refueling could by itself have little practical effect on the war. U.S. officials told Reuters only a fifth of Saudi-led coalition aircraft require in-air refueling from the United States.
In recent weeks, Mattis has appeared to voice a growing sense of urgency toward ending the conflict. At the end of October, Mattis joined U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in calling for a ceasefire.
United Nations Yemen envoy Martin Griffiths is aiming to convene the country’s warring parties for peace talks by the end of the year.
Saudi Arabia, in its statement, said its coalition was hopeful that U.N.-sponsored negotiations would lead to a negotiated settlement and “an end to the aggression by the Iranian backed Houthi militias’ against the Yemeni people and countries in the region.”
Yemen: hundreds of alleged war crimes but only 79 investigations (The Ferret) By Billy Briggs November 20, 2018
There have been 366 alleged war crimes in Yemen but only 79 investigations by the Saudi-led coalition and the Ministry of Defence (MoD) has conducted no inquiries of its own, we can reveal.
A reply by the MoD to questions submitted under freedom of information law also revealed the UK government does not know how many investigations are ongoing, or whether any incidents involved smart bombs using laser guided missiles made in Scotland.
The UK government has faced criticism and legal challenges over its arms sales to Saudi Arabia but ministers have defended lucrative contracts with the Saudis by insisting it has “one of the most robust export control regimes in the world”.
The Department for International Trade, which sanctions export licences for arms sales, has repeatedly said that “risks around human rights abuses are a key part of its licensing assessment”.
But our revelations have called this into question and prompted fierce criticism of the UK government by politicians, human rights groups, and charities working on the ground in Yemen who are trying to cope with a humanitarian catastrophe.
The SNP said the number of alleged war crimes was “incredibly concerning” and called for end to arms sales while Amnesty International said the figures “make an absolute mockery of the government’s claim it has a ‘robust’ system for exporting arms”.
The MoD said the number of alleged violations of international humanitarian law listed on a “tracker” database was 381. Of these, 15 were duplicate entries, which means some alleged incidents were recorded on more than one occasion.
The MoD also said it does not have access to all the information required to assess whether war crimes have been committed, pointing out that investigations are conducted by the Saudi-led coalition’s Joint Incident Assessment Team (JIAT).
“We do not know how many ongoing investigations the JIAT are conducting,” the MoD said, adding: “We do not have a full picture of which specific items have been used in Yemen.”
A damning report by Human Rights Watch in August accused the JIAT of failing to “provide credible, impartial, and transparent investigations into alleged coalition laws-of-war violations”.
Others, including the UN Panel of Experts, Amnesty International, and Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders), have reached similar conclusions about JIAT’s failings.
Since Yemen’s war escalated in 2015, the Saudi-led coalition has been accused of targeting schools, hospitals and civilian areas with airstrikes, prompting widespread criticism.
Meanwhile, a new report said that air raids have intensified this month. Of 42 air raids monitored by the Yemen Data Project, 62 per cent hit civilian targets.
The SNP’s Westminster leader, Ian Blackford MP, said the Saudi-led coalition’s JIAT “does not carry any legitimacy”. He described the revelations of hundreds of alleged violations of international humanitarian law in Yemen as “incredibly concerning”. He added: “It is even more worrying that the MoD is unaware of how many have been have been investigated. There must be a full and independent UN-led investigation into all violations in the conflict to ensure that all sides are held to account.
“The UK government is not a mere bystander in the war, it is an active player. Despite the mounting evidence of breaches in international law, the UK government is still content on looking the other way, whilst simultaneously supplying arms and military advice to the Saudi government. The sale of arms to the Saudi government must end now.
“If the UK aims to be a serious partner for peace, it must stop fuelling the conflict with billions of pounds worth of arms, and instead hold the Saudi regime to account.”
Oliver Sprague, Amnesty International UK’s arms expert, said: “These figures make an absolute mockery of the government’s claim that the UK has a ‘robust’ system for exporting arms.
“With the MoD not even trying to investigate Coalition airstrikes and the UK relying on implausible Saudi assurances and the Coalition’s own woefully slow and deeply-flawed investigations, it’s clear that ministers have no reasonable means of assessing the risk that UK arms exported to Saudi Arabia will end up killing civilians in Yemen.
“Ministers need to stop burying their heads in the sand. Overwhelming evidence of its reckless military behaviour in Yemen – including the Coalition’s bombing of hospitals, homes and even school buses – should have meant a halt in arms sales to Saudi Arabia long ago.”
Scottish Labour MP and Shadow Scotland Minister, Paul Sweeney, said: “It is increasingly clear the UK government views lives in Yemen as expendable. I intend to raise further questions of ministers in parliament.”
Ross Greer MSP, international relations spokesperson for the Scottish Greens, said: “That the overwhelming majority of their suspected crimes are not even being investigated has not slowed the UK government down in continuing the supply of arms, as well as logistical and political support for the Saudi regime.
“It’s time the arms sales end, the political support ceases and the sanctions begin. Otherwise their rhetoric around human rights will again be revealed as nothing more than appalling hypocrisy.”
Kristine Beckerle of Human Rights Watch said: “The UK claiming arms can still be shipped off to Saudi Arabia without a clear risk they will be used unlawfully in Yemen is akin to burying one’s head in the sand. The UN, human rights groups and Yemeni activists have researched, documented and reported on scores of apparently unlawful coalition attacks on markets, hospitals and homes, some likely war crimes, many carried out with Western weapons.
“If the UK really wants to use its leverage to mitigate civilian harm in Yemen, it should join the ever growing list of states holding up weapons sales.”
Human Rights Watch has analysed the work of the coalition’s investigative body over the last two years, she added. “It became very clear very quickly that, two years after the body was created, it still wasn’t meeting international standards. Given their failings, the coalition’s investigations certainly do not serve as an adequate assurance for states like the UK that hope to keep exporting weapons.”
Andrew Smith of Campaign Against Arms Trade said: “The MoD’s data is not just a collection of numbers on a spreadsheet. These are real attacks, and have killed real people. The ongoing process clearly isn’t good enough, and is being used to whitewash the crimes and abuses of the Saudi-led coalition.”
Tamer Kirolos, Save the Children’s Yemen country director, said: “The JIAT has consistently failed to meet international standards regarding transparency, impartiality and independence. It is effectively investigating itself and in the majority of cases ends up largely absolving itself of any responsibility or wrongdoing.”
The Department for International Trade said: “The government takes its export responsibilities very seriously operating one of the most robust export control regimes in the world. Risks around human rights abuses are a key part of our licensing assessment and the government will not license the export of items where to do so would be inconsistent with any provision of the consolidated EU and national arms export licensing criteria.”
UAE crown prince sued over alleged involvement in Yemen war (Al Jazeera) November 21, 2018
A French rights group has sued Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed al- Nahyan for his alleged involvement in the war in Yemen.
The Alliance for the Defence of Rights and Freedoms (AIDL) accused Al-Nahyan of war crimes, complicity in torture and inhumane treatment in Yemen.
"It's in this capacity that he has ordered bombings on Yemeni territory," the complaint filed by French lawyer Joseph Breham said on Wednesday, according to Reuters news agency.
The lawsuit was filed in a Paris court during Al-Nahyan's visit to France.
The complaint against Abu Dhabi's crown prince cites a report by United Nations experts that said coalition attacks may have constituted war crimes and that torture was carried out in two centres controlled by Emirati forces.
The United Arab Emirates (UAE) is one of the coalition countries heavily involved in the war in Yemen, where it regularly takes part in bombing raids.
One of the cases referred to in the lawsuit is the bombing of a building in the Yemeni city of Sanaa in 2016 when a wake was taking place for the father of the Houthi administration’s interior minister.
The complaint is similar to one filed in April against Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman during his visit to France.
French prosecutors are currently looking at that lawsuit in a legal process that is expected to last a year.
France is a close ally of both the UAE and Saudi Arabia, which heads a coalition fighting the Iran-aligned Houthi rebels who control most of northern Yemen and the capital Sanaa.
Over the last couple of weeks, however, pressure has grown on President Emmanuel Macron over French arms sales to the two Gulf countries.
France also has a military base in Abu Dhabi, which it opened in 2009.
Western countries have provided arms and intelligence to the Arab states in the alliance, but have shown increasing reservations about the war since the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the kingdom's consulate in Istanbul last month.
In recent weeks, several Western countries have called for a ceasefire to end the nearly four-year-old war that has killed more than 10,000 people and caused the world's most urgent humanitarian crisis.
UN agencies say up to 14 million Yemenis are at risk of starvation if the port of Hodeidah is closed by fighting or damage.
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Special Tribunal for Lebanon
Official Website of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon In Focus: Special Tribunal for Lebanon (UN)
The Sixth International Meetings of the Defence have taken place at the headquarters of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (Special Tribunal for Lebanon) November 12, 2018
The Sixth International Meetings of the Defence were held from 8 to 9 November 2018 at the headquarters of the STL in Leidschendam. They were organised by the Defence Office of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL), with the support of the Association of Defence Counsel practising before the International Courts and Tribunals (ADC-ICT), the International Criminal Court Bar Association (ICCBA), and the Office of Public Counsel for the Defence at the International Criminal Court (OPCD).
The Meetings opened on 8 November with welcome addresses from the President of the STL, Ms Ivana Hrdličková, the President of the ICCBA, Mr Chief Charles Taku, the President of the ADC-ICT Ms Colleen Rohan, and the Head of Defence Office of the STL, Ms Dorothée Le Fraper du Hellen. There was also a keynote speech from His Honour Judge Sir Howard Morrison.
The first day included discussions before representatives from the diplomatic community on the contribution of the defence to international criminal justice and the relationship between the defence and the other actors in the field of international criminal justice. Two roundtable discussions, made up of legal practitioners, were held on these topics. One was chaired by H.E. Ms Sabine Eva Nölke, Ambassador of Canada to the Kingdom of the Netherlands, and the other by H.E. Mr Abdel Sattar Issa, Ambassador of Lebanon to the Kingdom of the Netherlands. Mr François Roux, the former Head of Defence Office of the STL, gave the closing speech on this first day.
On 9 November, the Meetings continued in the presence of professionals working for the defence. These mainly comprised lawyers practising before national or international criminal jurisdictions, representatives of bar associations and lawyers’ associations, and members of the defence offices of the various international criminal tribunals. Following a presentation on the legal tools available to the defence, two roundtable discussions were given over to the challenges faced by the defence over the past year before each of the international criminal jurisdictions. Working sessions in the afternoon focussed on matters relating to detention and new trials, with the aim of strengthening defence capacity in those areas.
The Meetings also provided the opportunity to present an exhibition by students from the Design Academy Eindhoven, inspired by the work of the defence before the international criminal tribunals.
The Meetings ended with the adoption of a joint statement delivered by Mr Emile Aoun, Defence Counsel at the STL and Representative of the Chair of the Beirut Bar Association, following which Ms Dorothée Le Fraper du Hellen thanked all those taking part for their contribution to the success of the event.
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Israel and Palestine
Court delays demolition of terrorist’s home to hear family’s appeal (The Times of Israel) By Tamar Pileggi November 8, 2018
The High Court of Justice on Thursday issued a temporary injunction preventing the army from demolishing part of the family home of a Palestinian fugitive accused of killing two Israelis in a terror attack last month.
A judge gave the state 10 days to respond to an appeal filed by the family of 23-year-old Ashraf Na’alowa not to raze their home in the northern West Bank village of Shuweika. The court said a judicial panel would hear the family’s appeal in the coming days, and a decision would be handed down before November 22.
Na’alowa has been on the run since killing his coworkers Kim Levengrond Yehezkel and Ziv Hajbi on October 7 at the factory in the Barkan Industrial Zone, in the central West Bank.
Days after the attack, the IDF issued a demolition order for Na’alowa’s home, in keeping with the Israeli policy of razing homes of convicted Palestinian terrorists.
In most cases, the demolition orders are issued after a suspect has confessed, or has been convicted in court. However in Na’alowa’s case, the IDF decided to go ahead with the punitive measure because the Shin Bet security service has significant incriminating evidence against him, the Ynet news site said.
The family first appealed the demolition orders to the IDF, but on Tuesday, that appeal was rejected and the army reissued the orders for part of the home.
A notice distributed by IDF Central Command, Maj. Gen. Nadav Padan said the basement and ground floors of Na’alowa’s home, where the suspected assailant lived, would be destroyed.
On Wednesday, the families of the victims demanded more severe reprisal measures from Israel against Na’alowa and his family.
At a memorial rally held at the Barkan complex, Levengrond Yehezkel’s father, Rafi, said the family demanded that Na’alowa be put to death if caught.
Hajbi’s brother Tal criticized the IDF for the decision to demolish only the basement and ground floors of the Na’alowa home.
“A partial demolition of the terrorist’s home is unacceptable. The whole home must be razed,” Hajbi said, “and the family must be expelled.”
The demonstrators marched from the entrance of the industrial zone to the Alon Group factory where Yehezkel and Hajbi were killed and a third Israeli, Sara Vaturi, was wounded.
According to Hadashot TV news, the Defense Ministry has been in regular contact with the victims’ families regarding the home demolition. The station said that an aide for Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman had told Rafi Yehezkel in a phone call that there were legal constraints, but that his boss was working to circumvent them.
After the injunction was issued Thursday, Rafi Yehezkel slammed the court for “celebrating my daughter’s bloodshed and humiliating our family.” The grieving father told media outlets that he was ashamed to live in “a country with no justice or compassion,” and said he was considering giving up his Israeli citizenship in protest.
IDF troops are still searching for Na’alowa, who has been on the run since killing his coworkers on October 7.
The military has launched an investigation of the Barkan attack to determine, among other things, how the gun was smuggled into the industrial park and whether the terrorist had intended to take Levengrond Yehezkel hostage, having used zip-ties to bind her hands before shooting her.
Levengrond was a secretary while Hajbi worked in accounting at the Alon Group’s factory in the industrial park. Na’alowa was employed there as an electrician.
Several members of Na’alowa’s family have been detained or arrested following the attack. The Israeli military has issued a number of warnings to Palestinians in the northern West Bank not to aid the attacker in his escape.
A Palestinian security official has confirmed to The Times of Israel that PA security forces are assisting in the search for Na’alowa.
On Sunday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave the go-ahead for lawmakers to advance a controversial bill that aims to make it easier for Israel to sentence convicted Palestinian attackers of civilians and soldiers to death.
Netanyahu reportedly approved the legislation going against the advice of the security establishment. According to Israel Radio, Netanyahu told members of his coalition that opposition to the bill from both the Shin Bet and IDF should not stop them from advancing the legislation.
Palestinian Said Killed by Israeli Military Fire Near Gaza Border Fence (Haaretz) By Jack Khoury November 8, 2018
A 20-year-old Palestinian male was killed by Israeli military fire on Thursday near the Israeli border in central Gaza, the Palestinian Health Ministry reported. He was identified as Mohammad Ala Abu Sharabin.
According to Palestinian reports, Israeli forces opened fire at four youths near the border fence. Red Crescent emergency responders took the wounded Palestinian to a nearby hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
The incident comes one day after the organizing committee for the March of Return in Gaza announced that the marches along the border fence with Israel will continue this weekend, despite the positive diplomatic developments and improved conditions in the Strip in recent days.
A leading activist told Haaretz that the marches will continue until the blockade on Gaza is lifted completely, but that the level of violence will be limited and that marchers will not approach the fence, based on decisions made last week.
This approach was backed by Ibrahim al-Madhoun, a leading Hamas political analyst in Gaza. “The continuation of the marches of return while increasing the number of participants in the next few weeks is the most effective weapon we have to force the occupation to lift the blockade, and bring about the success of the Egyptian effort to achieve this goal. That’s why we need quiet marches that prove that we are a people that desires life and loves to live,” Madhoun wrote Wednesday on a Hamas-affiliated website.
Sources in Gaza made it clear, however, that while the recent improvements in the electricity supply, the payment of salaries to Hamas officials and the launching of a project to create jobs are welcome steps, they aren’t elements that could lead to a substantive change in the lives and future prospects of Gazans. “Change requires bringing raw materials to the various factories and production lines as well as increasing exports, along with the construction of large projects that will provide jobs for tens of thousands. Then we can talk about real change,” a Hamas activist said.
On Wednesday, Gaza's Finance Ministry paid partial salaries to Hamas officials in the Strip. The ministry's director-general, Yusuf Al-Kayali, said a day earlier that the ministry would pay 60 percent of the July salary to Hamas employees. According to reports in Gaza, the payment was made in connection with the negotiations to establish calm in the region, involving Egypt, Qatar and United Nations’ envoy to the Middle East Nickolay Mladenov, with Qatar footing the bill for the wages.
Hamas and the Palestinian factions in Gaza celebrated what they described as the triumph of the March of Return and the sacrifice of Gaza’s residents to get the blockade lifted. Statements issued emphasized that the eased conditions were the result of the Palestinian struggle, and they were not achieved in return for a diplomatic concession to Israel or any other country. “The achievements reinforce the steadfastness of the Palestinian people seeking to achieve their full rights that were taken from them because of the siege,” they wrote.
At the same time, the director-general of Gaza’s Welfare Ministry, Yusuf Ibrahim, said his ministry would pay 700 shekels ($191) to every family whose child was killed in the demonstrations near the border fence. A payment of $100 will be given to an additional 50,000 families in the Strip. Ibrahim also presented his job-creation plan that will help some 10,000 skilled workers in the Strip. The Qatari committee for the rehabilitation of the Strip said its envoy to Gaza, Mohammad al-Amadi, would come to Gaza shortly to announce new infrastructure and humanitarian aid projects.
These steps come after several days in which the hours of electricity were extended because of the diesel fuel Qatar has supplied to the Gazan power station. After details of the evolving agreement with Israel were published in the Al-Ahkbar newspaper, Israel announced it would allow Gazan fishermen to go further out from shore than they can now, while Hamas and the Palestinian factions committed to reducing the violence during the marches along the border fence.
Hamas Chief in Gaza: 'There Is No Deal or Understandings' With Israel (Haaretz) By Jack Khoury November 9, 2018
Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar said on Friday that the organization has not formed any deal with Israel or reached any agreements.
Anyone who says that "there is a deal or understandings with the occupation does not tell the truth," Sinwar said.
The Hamas leader spoke during a rally near the border with Israel, east of Gaza.
Sinwar added that while there was no emerging deal with Israel at the moment, Hamas is establishing "understandings" with Egypt, Qatar and the United Nations "in order to lift the blockade [on Gaza]."
Sinwar also said that he could tell that the Israeli blockade on the Strip, which began 12 years ago, "is starting to disintegrate."
The Hamas chief's statement contradicts recent reports on progress in Egyptian-mediated talks between Israel and the Palestinians.
Last month, Sinwar made a different statement, telling the Italian daily la Repubblica in a first interview with a Western outlet that he saw a "historic opportunity for change."
Sinwar also called for a cease-fire after months of violent clashes on the border and numerous rocket attacks on Israel.
While Sinwar spoke, protests along the border between Israel and the coastal enclave took place as they have every weekend for months.
A 28-year-old Palestinian, identified as Rami Khaman, succumbed to his wounds and was pronounced dead on Friday evening after being shot while protesting east of Rafah.
Thirty-six Palestinians were wounded by live Israeli fire during the protests, the Red Cresecent Movement reported Friday evening. Overall, 144 people were injured, 27 of whom were hit by rubber-tipped bullets. Forty people were evacuated to hospitals to receive medical care.
On Thursday, according to Palestinian reports, a 20-year-old Palestinian man died after Israeli forces opened fire at four youths near the border fence. Red Crescent emergency responders took the wounded Palestinian to a nearby hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
The incident took place one day after the organizing committee for the March of Return in Gaza announced that the marches along the border fence with Israel will continue this weekend, despite the positive diplomatic developments and improved conditions in the Strip in recent days.
Also on Thursday, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas reportedly agreed not to foil efforts to reach an agreement in the Gaza Strip following Egyptian pressure.
Abbas' consent, which was reported by the Saudi-owned Al-Hayat newspaper, means that he will not impose new sanctions on the Strip.
Abbas was pressured to this position by Egypt's president, Abdel-Fattah al-Sissi, according to the Arabic daily, but stipulated that an agreement must later be reached that will restore Palestinian Authority control of the Strip.
Israel Is Indirectly Cooperating With The Hague’s Probe Into 2014 Gaza War Despite Past Criticism (Haaretz) By Yaniv Kubovich November 11, 2018
Over the last few months Israel has been transferring material to the International Criminal Court in The Hague, which is examining whether war crimes were committed in the Gaza Strip. According to defense sources, the material relates to events that took place during Operation Protective Edge, the 2014 Israel-Gaza war. The ICC is also looking into the demonstrations along the Gaza border fence that began on March 30.
In the past, Israel sharply criticized the court, saying that it had no authority to discuss the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. However, there is concern in the political and military echelons that the court will open a criminal investigation into Israel’s actions in the Strip, a process that could lead to a wave of lawsuits against those involved and even to their arrest abroad.
In the last few months, diplomatic, military and legal officials have held discussions, some of them attended by the prime minister, to prepare for the court’s initial findings regarding the 2014 Gaza war. Toward that end, Israel has begun using third parties to transfer documents to the court that could bolster its stance and influence the examination team, which until now has been exposed mainly to the evidence presented by the Palestinian side.
Military advocate general Maj. Gen. Sharon Afek has presented material regarding Israel’s response to the demonstrations in Gaza, but defense sources say these have been for internal use only and have not been passed on to the ICC or to any other body.
The sources say Israel has made a distinction between the two subjects of the court’s examination: While Israel is not cooperating with the ICC on its probe of incidents at the Gaza fence, it is already holding indirect discussions with the court over Operation Protective Edge.
Last April the ICC’s chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda said that violence against civilians could be considered an international crime, as might the use of civilians as a cover for military operations. She added that the situation in Palestine was under investigation. She warned that the court was following events in Gaza, and emphasized that guidelines for opening fire at demonstrators could be considered a crime under international law.
Officials told Haaretz that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s decision to postpone the evacuation of the Bedouin village of Khan al-Ahmar came after Israel realized that such a move could influence Bensouda, who said she would not hesitate to use her authority with regard to the village. Last month, Bensouda said she was watching with concern the plan to evacuate the West Bank Bedouin community and that a forced evacuation would lead to violence, adding that the needless destruction of property and transfer of populations in occupied territories are a war crime, based on the Treaty of Rome. She linked the planned evacuation to events in Gaza, saying she was concerned by the ongoing violence for which both sides are responsible.
Gaza Cease-fire: Israel, Hamas Agree to Return to 2014 Deal, Source Tells Haaretz (Haaretz) By Yaniv Kubovich, Noa Landau, Jack Khoury and Almog ben Zikri November 13, 2018
Israel and the Palestinian factions agreed to a cease-fire that would follow the agreement the two sides reached in 2014, a diplomatic source told Haaretz on Tuesday evening after three days of hostilities between Israel and the Palestinians.
"The situation remains very precarious and can blow up again," the foreign source who is involved in the agreement added.
"What we have seen in the past 48 hours was very dangerous and no efforts should be spared to avoid similar flare-ups. However, and on the bright side of all of this, the fuel shipments, under the UN’s supervision, continued to flow into the Strip unhindered," the source said.
An Israeli official responded earlier to cease-fire reports, saying that a cease-fire has been reached and that "Israel reserves its freedom to operate."
The official added that "requests by Hamas to form a cease-fire came from four different mediators. Israel responded that developments on the ground will determine [the Israeli reaction]." The four mediators the official mentioned are Egypt, the United Nations, Norway and Switzerland.
The Palestinian factions in Gaza released a joint statement saying that "a cease-fire has been reached and we have responded to Egyptian efforts on this matter." The Palestinian factions also stated that they are "committed to the cease-fire as long as Israel doesn't break it and doesn't attack the Palestinian people."
Hamas, the group ruling the coastal enclave, said it "really appreciates efforts alongside different entities to obtain a cease-fire and we thank and cherish the Egyptian effort and the international effort, as well as the role the Norwegians and Qataris played."
Hamas also thanked the Palestinian people and stated that it was proud of Palestinians "for standing strong in backing forces of the resistance until victory was had in pushing off Israeli aggression."
The UN Security Council announced that it will convene later Tuesday for a special session following the escalation in hostilities between Israel and the Palestinians. Israel's envoy to the UN, Danny Danon, said ahead of the meeting that Israel "will not accept a call for 'both sides to act with restraint.'"
"There is a side that attacks and fires 400 rockets toward civilians and there is a side that protects its civilians. Every member country in the Security Council ought to ask itself how it would respond after a barrage of missiles is fired at its people," Danon stated.
The United States on Tuesday condemned rocket and missile attacks from Gaza into Israel and said it stood with Israel as it defends itself.
"We condemn in the strongest terms the rocket, missile and mortar attacks that are taking place from Gaza into Israel," U.S. State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said at a news briefing. "We call for the sustained halt of those attacks. We stand with Israel as Israel defends itself against these attacks. It is simply unacceptable to target civilians."
Israelis took the streets of Sderot, one of the main cities in southern Israel to suffer from the rocket threat, to express their dismay following news of the cease-fire.
One protester told Haaretz: "I'm protesting over the oversight, the disgrace, the silencing. The cease-fire agreement that has just been signed is very, very sad. We're very angry at the government. We expected them to do something to stop terror. But a cease-fire, especially one announced by Hamas, is not what we expected."
Hundreds of protesters gathered at the entrance to Sderot, blocking roads and burning tires. Residents of the city were joined by Israelis from Gaza-border communities.
Israel Police forces were dispatched to disperse the demonstration.
Minutes after the cease-fire was announced, the Israeli army said that Iron Dome missile defense batteries intercepted over 100 rockets out of the 460 rockets that were fired at Israel from the Gaza Strip during the three-day round of hostilities. The Israeli military attacked 160 Hamas and Islamic Jihad terror targets in the Strip, among which were four unique terror assets.
Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman's bureau released a statement following news on the emerging cease-fire in which it denied previous reports that said Lieberman supported a halt to Israeli strikes on Gaza. "The defense minister's stance is consistent and hasn't chaged. [News of] Lieberman's support of halting attacks are fake," the statement read. Education Minister Naftali Bennett also released a statement denying he supported any kind of cease-fire.
Associates of the defense minister said that from the moment the latest round of hostilities began, he demanded that Israel take a "tough and resolute action against Hamas." Sources close to Bennett said that he "firmly resisted [a cease-fire] in the clearest way possible."
Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked and Jerusalem Affairs Minister Zeev Elkin also contested the cease-fire at the cabinet meeting.
Nonetheless, other sources said that all of the cabinet ministers eventually came to support defense officials' stance that Israel should act to end hostilities. Minister Yoav Galant said in an interview with the Israel Television Company that the dispute in the cabinet meeting was not over whether a cease-fire should be implemented but rather on what future steps Israel ought to take.
Some cabinet ministers claimed after news broke of the cease-fire agreement that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu "imprisoned" them in the conference room, alluding to the notion that while they were discussing potential solutions to the escalation, the premier was aware that there were already advances underway to promote a cease-fire.
Israel's security cabinet convened for six hours and was briefed by IDF officials on the attacks and extensive actions against terror elements in Gaza.
In Gaza, Clerics in government offices received news of the cease-fire by announcing that they will return to work starting Wednesday morning. Parades celebrating the halt in hostilities started throughout the Strip on Tuesday evening, as part of attempts by Hamas and other Palestinian factions to convey a sense of victory to Gazans.
Meanwhile, Palestinian reports said Israel struck in northern Gaza. The attack reportedly resulted in casualties and Gaza’s Health Ministry said a 29-year-old man identified as Khaled Maaruf was killed.
The head of Hamas' political wing, Ismail Haniyeh, spoke for the first time about the escalation since the flare-up began, saying on Tuesday afternoon that "if Israel stops the airstrikes, we can return to the cease-fire understandings."
A different Hamas official stated earlier that “as soon as Israel stops its aggression on the Gaza Strip, the forces of the resistance will halt the fire. All mediators must stop Israel.”
Netanyahu spoke on the phone with French President Emmanuel Macron about the ongoing tensions.
Netanyahu thanked Macron for hosting him in Paris for a conference marking the 100th anniversary of World War I's end earlier this week, and apologized for having left the conference early in order to return to Israel due to the hostilities.
Netanyahu told the French president that Israel was enforcing its right to protect itself from terror elements that are acting to hurt Israeli civilians. The premier also said that the international community ought to continue its efforts to curb Iranian aggression in the region.
'Completely different'
Israel came under a heavy barrage of rocket fire from the Gaza Strip starting Monday, a day after a flare-up in which an Israeli officer and seven Palestinians were killed. An anti-tank missile launched from Gaza hit a bus in southern Israel Monday afternoon, severely wounding a 19-year-old soldier.
The projectiles fired from the Strip hit Israel in a number of locations. In Asheklon, a 40-year-old man was killed after a house was hit by a rocket late Monday night. Two women who were in the same building at the time of the incident are said to be in critical condition. The fatality is a man from the West Bank Palestinian city of Hebron, not an Israeli citizen as initially suggested by local media.
The victim was found by other civilians buried in the rubble an hour after police and firefighters had already left, in what neighbors described as a "terrible failure" to locate him.
Rescue operations at the building had identified a 60-year-old woman, unconscious with blast wounds and multiple injuries, around 40 minutes after the house was hit, but had altogether missed the other casualties. The other victims were spotted by a man who had come to take pictures of the damage one hour after the hit.
Israel Police said comprehensive searches were conducted by emergency and rescue forces, "sometimes while risking their lives, in dozens of sites where rockets fell in the south, with their primary objective being to save human lives and prevent them being harmed." The statement emphazised that during the searches, the structure was under the immediate threat of collapse, due to gas canisters catching fire.
In Gaza, seven Palestinians have been killed in Israeli airstrikes during the latest round of violence, according to Palestinian sources. The Israel Air Force struck over 100 Hamas and Islamic Jihad targets overnight Monday, including an intelligence compound said to be located in the heart of the city next to a school, a mosque and diplomatic facilities.
The complex itself houses a kindergarten and a munitions warehouse. The Israeli army said it is used for intelligence gathering, research and development. Hamas' Public Security offices were also hit, said the spokesperson.
A senior Air Force officer said on Tuesday that the airstrikes Monday overnight were "completely different from anything we've known in the past. These are targets of high-rise buildings in city centers." According to the officer, such targets were only struck twice during the entire campaign of 2014's Operation Protective Edge. "Just tonight, we've hit four" of these targets, he said.
"We've learned how to attack these targets at the heart of residential neighborhoods and obliterate them without killing anyone in the strike. We uphold our values, we're not fighting against civilians," said the officer, adding they were acting to "exact a price from the other side."
IAF also fired at a Palestinian said to be a member of a group launching rockets in the northern Gaza Strip. An Israeli helicopter also struck "a number of suspects" trying to cross the border fence in the north of the Strip, the spokesperson added.
Palestinians reports claim that a man who was killed during the Israeli strike was 26-year-old Khaled Sultan, a farmer, and not part of a group launching rockets.
Another Palestinian report Tuesday says an Israeli helicopter opened fire on a group of people east of Gaza City, claiming one was killed and several were wounded. The man killed was Mussab Hus, 23, Palestinian reports said.
Hamas' military wing spokesman said Monday that Be'er Sheva and Ashdod would be targeted next if "Israel persisted in its aggression." The Islamic Jihad echoed the statement, saying Gaza factions have the capacity to continue their offensive.
Senior Hamas official Husan Badran said Tuesday that "if Netanyahu is interested in ending this round, he must fire [Defense Minister] Lieberman, who in his foolish conduct caused the escalation."
The office of the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories posted a statement on its Arabic Facebook page, saying: "Hamas and the terrorist organizations in the Gaza Strip are the ones bringing ruin upon Gazans! The persistent launching of rockets at Israel have grave repercussions in the Gaza Strip. Residents of Gaza, terrorism has repercussions."
Following a situation assessment, the Israeli army eased security restrictions for residents of southern Israel, including school activity within sheltered institutions. People are allowed to leave bomb shelters, but were instructed to remain in their vicinity.
Schools will be closed in most major southern Israeli cities, including Be'er Sheva, Sderot, Ashkelon, Kiryat Malachi, Kiryat Gat and Ashdod. Students in regional councils Sha'ar Hanegev, Eshkol, Merchavim and Sedot Hanegev will also not attend school.
The Israeli army reinforced Armored Corps and Infantry units near the Strip, the IDF Spokesperson's Unit said.
18 Palestinians Wounded by Israeli Live Fire in Border Protests, Gaza Health Ministry Says (Haaretz) By Jack Khoury November 16, 2018
Forty people were wounded in a protests along the border between Israel and the Gaza Strip, including 18 by live fire and five by rubber bullets, Gaza's Health Ministry reported Friday afternoon.
Of those injured, three are considered to be in serious condition, the ministry said.
Protesters started backing away from the border between Israel and the coastal enclave at around 5 P.M.
The organizing committee for the weekly protests called for a mass turnout this week on Friday, this time under the slogan “normalization with Israel is a crime and treason.” It said the slogan for next week's protest will be "the resistance forces are uniting the Palestinian people." Hamas spokesman Abdel Latif Qanou said the Arab countries that are working for normalizing their relations with Israel are “sticking a knife in the back of the Palestinian people and harming their national rights.” The protests on Friday were intended to continue the “popular” and nonviolent struggle to “break the blockade on Gaza completely,” he added.
On Thursday, an Egyptian intelligence delegation arrived in Gaza to meet with senior Hamas officials, including Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, to continue negotiations toward a long-term cease-fire.
The weekly protests decreased in violence two weeks ago, after the Palestinian factions agreed to tone down aggression in the riots along the border fence and the launching of incendiary kites and balloons.
A spokesman for the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Daoud Shihab, said the protests would continue in a different format, but did not provide any further details. It is thought he is referring to agreements with Egypt calling on Palestinians to reduce their level of violence during the protests.
At a conference held in preparation for the protests at the beginning of the month, the factions – Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and others – agreed to reduce the level of friction with Israel because of internal Palestinian reconciliation talks promoted by Egypt. The decision was also reached in part in response to the Israeli decision to expand the fishing area along the Gaza coast and allow cash from Qatar to enter Gaza and pay the salaries of Hamas government officials.
Four Wounded After Israeli Soldiers Shoot at Palestinians Burning Tires in West Bank, Ramallah Says (Haaretz) By Jack Khoury and Yotam Berger November 19, 2018
Israel Defense Forces soldiers opened fire on Palestinians who were burning tires outside the village of Deir Abu Mashal, near the settlement of Neve Tzuf in the central West Bank. Sources in the Palestinian Authority Health Ministry in Ramallah report that four people were injured, one seriously and the others slightly.
The wounded were evacuated to nearby Salfit Hospital.
On October 26, a Palestinian man was killed in clashes with Israeli soldiers in the village of Al-Mazra’a, also in the vicinity of Ramallah. The Red Crescent ambulance service reported at the time that nine people had been shot with live fire, and two were badly injured.
Two days before that incident, Palestinian media reported that a 23-year-old man named Mohammed Bisharat was killed in clashes in which stones were thrown at IDF soldiers in the village of Tammun in the West Bank. According to reports, Bisharat was fatally injured from gunshots and died later, and three other Palestinians were injured.
Israel Closer Than Ever to Controlling Part or All of Gaza, Strategic Affairs Minister Says (Haaretz) By Noa Landau November 21, 2018
Israel is "closer than ever" to controlling part or all of Gaza, Strategic Affair minister Gilad Erdan said on Wednesday.
Speaking at the Jerusalem Post Diplomatic Conference in Jerusalem, Erdan said that "moving from defense to offense against Hamas means targeted assassinations of terror leaders in Hamas' military wing."
This, Erdan says, "means being ready to take control of the Gaza Strip and hold it until we dismantle the terrorist infrastructure, Today we are closer than ever – since the devastating disengagement plan – to having to control parts of the Strip, or all of it."
Following Erdan's comments, several other ministers voiced a similar statements. At the same conference, Construction and Housing Minister Yoav Galant said Hamas politburo chief Yayha Sinwar's "days are numbered." Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu then promptly asked the ministers to scale back the rhetoric and "maintain the line" set by the government cabinet.
Erdan also addressed Airbnb's recent decision to bar listings of homes in West Bank settlements, saying "anybody who supports Israel should stop using Airbnb and tap other services."
The company's decision, Erdan said Tuesday, is based on UN Security Council Resolution 2334 passed during the term of Barack Obama as U.S. president, calling for distinction between Israel and Judea and Samaria, East Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights; and an international blacklist of companies operating beyond the Green Line, which was compiled and managed by the UN Human Rights Council.
The decision Obama spearheaded at the UN Security Council helped legitimize the Human Rights Council's decision to compile this international blacklist, Erdan said.
The policy of distinguishing between Israel and the West Bank is discriminatory and achieves an opposite, and dangerous, effect, the minister said.
"The purpose of the policy is to undermine the very activity that could be a basis for sustainable peace. If the Human Rights Council does publish the blacklist of companies doing business beyond the Green Line, the U.S. and other democracies should react by halting all funding for the UN until it ceases its anti-Israel position," Erdan said.
On Airbnb's decision specifically, Erdan said that given the company's decision to capitulate to the pressure of the Human Rights Council and BDS, Israel is considering its moves.
"On the one hand we will try to explain to the company why the decision is wrong and harmful," Erdan said. "I, parallel, we will examine other forms of action. I mean to ask senior Americans to consider using the existing laws against discrimination and boycotts. The states and their employees should not be doing business with companies that discriminate against Israel. We will also study whether this is discrimination based on nationality, which is prohibited under the law in France and elsewhere. Under Israeli law, Israelis could consider suing against the decision."
Yisrael Katz, the minister of transportation and of strategic affairs, told the conference: "Following the recent events in the south – the violence on the [Gaza border] fence, the burning of the fields, the firing of hundreds of rockets at Israeli communities – we are closer than ever to a war with Hamas over which there is no alternative. We must land the strongest blow possible to restore a situation of deterrence."
Referring to last week's resignation of Defense Minister Avidgor Lieberman, Katz said it "contributed to Hamas' victory" in this month's round of fighting in the south and added that the situation in the Gaza Strip "has no political solution and there is no such thing as a stable agreement with Hamas."
Speaking about Yahya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas in Gaza, Galant, who is a reserve major general and a member of the security cabinet, told the conference: "I'll say this as clearly as possible. Yayha Sinwar's days are numbered. He won't end his life in an old-age home. If [they] want war, we will defeat them. If [they] want to talk, we will speak with them. There will be another large [military] operation in Gaza. We will define when and how. We won't allow Hamas to run this."
If there is a reason for it, Israel will carry out such a major operation and win, Galant said, adding that Hamas usually provides such reasons. "In my opinion, it's not to Israel's benefit but if it's necessary, then we will do it," but said war was the last option. Noting that he knows Gaza well from his early army service and up to his service as a major general, he said there is no comparing Israel's strength with that of Hamas.
From a broader perspective when it comes to the peace process with the Palestinians, Galant said: "There is no Palestinian partner. There hasn't been a Palestinian partner for the past 100 years now. Strong control over Judea and Samaria [the West Bank] is a clear Israeli security interest. We cannot give away a centimeter of the Western part of the Jordan Valley to anyone. There is no alternative to full Israeli control from the Mediterranean to the Jordan."
The housing and construction minister also called Defense Minister Lieberman's resignation a mistake and said he believes Lieberman stepped down for political reasons rather than over security issues.
[back to contents]
Gulf Region
For war-ravaged Yemen, few expect ‘game changer’ in Saudi-led airstrikes after end of U.S. refueling (The Washington Post) By Ali Al Mujahed and Sudarsan Raghavan November 10, 2018 The decision by the United States to stop refueling warplanes of a Saudi-led coalition fighting in Yemen was welcomed by Yemeni rebel officials, human rights activists and aid workers on Saturday.
It also sent a strong signal, they said, about Washington’s increasing unease over airstrikes by its closest Middle East allies that have killed thousands of civilians in Yemen.
But those interviewed said the decision is unlikely to rein in the coalition — unless firmer action is taken. Nor will it alone change the trajectory of Yemen’s war, they said, or its growing humanitarian crisis, which now includes more than 14 million people on the brink of famine — more than half of Yemen’s population.
The United States, Britain and other Western powers continue to assist the coalition with intelligence, logistical support and sales of billions of dollars in weaponry, much of it being used in the conflict in Yemen, the Middle East’s poorest nation.
Saudi Arabia on Friday night claimed that it had asked the Pentagon to stop aerial refueling of its warplanes because its forces were capable of performing the task themselves.
“The U.S. decision to stop refueling coalition aircraft is significant because it implies that the U.S. is trying to distance itself from the devastating impact on civilians of poorly targeted airstrikes,” said Elisabeth Kendall, a Yemen scholar at Oxford University. “But it is not a military game changer.”
Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and other Sunni Muslim countries in the coalition are seeking to oust Shiite Houthi rebel forces, who the United States and allies say are backed by Iran. Tehran denies this.
The goal of the Saudi-led campaign is to restore Yemen’s internationally recognized government, which was driven out of the Yemeni capital, Sanaa, in 2015, and to prevent Iran from gaining a foothold on the Arabian Peninsula.
On Saturday, the Houthi deputy minister of information, Fahmi al-Yusufi, described the U.S. decision as an “assurance for those opposing the American involvement in the aggression” by the Saudi-led coalition.
Another Houthi political official dismissed the refueling stoppage as incremental because the United States is still providing intelligence and other logistical support, as well as sending U.S. military trainers to Saudi Arabia to help in the war effort.
The U.S. move “will have an effect on the duration of their aircraft in the air, but it will not paralyze the aggression’s ability to escalate the conflict,” said the official, Mohammed Albukhaiti. “The siege on Yemen is a U.S. and Western siege because such a siege is beyond the capabilities of Saudi Arabia and the UAE.”
The U.S. refueling of coalition aircraft has long been controversial because of the large numbers of civilians that have been killed in coalition airstrikes. The United Nations estimates that at least 10,000 have died, but other reputable organizations have tallied more than 50,000 killed since the war began more than three years ago.
Coalition airstrikes have struck hospitals, health clinics, weddings, funerals, factories and other nonmilitary targets. Human rights groups and The Washington Post have observed fragments of U.S.-made munitions at numerous attack sites.
In August, more than 40 children were killed when a U.S.-made bomb hit their school bus during a coalition airstrike. Saudi Arabia initially claimed that Houthi fighters were on the bus but recanted amid international pressure triggered by images of the bloody aftermath.
After each airstrike, Yemenis often blame the United States in the same breath as the Saudi-led coalition for the tragedies. Human rights activists have suggested that the United States could be complicit in war crimes in Yemen.
The mounting civilian death toll, despite promises by the coalition to be more careful in its targeting, brought increasing focus on ending the U.S. refueling from U.S. lawmakers who are seeking to curb arms sales to Saudi Arabia and end U.S. involvement in Yemen’s war.
In recent congressional hearings, it became clear that the Pentagon had little oversight of Saudi Arabia’s military activities in Yemen. In March, Army Gen. Joseph Votel, the head of U.S. Central Command, told Congress that U.S. forces did not track whether U.S. fuel or munitions had been used in coalition operations that resulted in civilian deaths.
Human rights activists on Saturday said the U.S. decision to end the refueling support was long overdue.
“Any step aimed at reining in the Saudi Arabian and UAE-led coalition’s reckless aerial bombardment of civilian areas in Yemen is a step in the right direction,” said Amnesty International’s Middle East research director, Lynn Maalouf. But the refueling stoppage, she added, “does not go far enough,”
Kristine Beckerle, the Yemen researcher for Human Rights Watch, said “the decision to end refueling is a clear, if extremely belated, acknowledgment of the awful way the coalition has been waging this war, and the risks the U.S. has taken when it comes to complicity.”
“The U.S. and other coalition allies should be seizing this moment to suspend all arms sales, demand an end to abuses and call for accountability for the too many we’ve already seen,” Beckerle added.
The refueling halt comes as the coalition has mounted a fierce offensive on the Yemeni port city of Hodeida in the past week. Scores of airstrikes have struck in and around the city. Civilian casualties are again mounting amid the air assaults and shelling. The port is the main gateway for much of the food, fuel, medicines and humanitarian aid entering northern Yemen, home to 80 percent of the country’s population.
With the Hodeida offensive threatening to deepen the crisis, aid workers hope the United States will go further to help Yemenis.
“The U.S. has an opportunity to continue taking steps that make a very real difference for people in Yemen,” said Suze van Meegen, protection and advocacy adviser in Yemen for the Norwegian Refugee Council.
Among those steps, she said, were “pushing for an immediate cease-fire” and making sure that “all seaports and airports in the country are open and functioning, allowing for the swift transportation of food, fuel and people in need of medical treatment.”
With Friday’s decision, more of the responsibility for preventing civilian casualties will fall squarely on the Saudis. It remains to be seen whether the Trump administration will be pressured to do more to rein in the coalition.
“Saudi Arabia has framed the announcement as a win, claiming that it requested the U.S. to stop refueling its aircraft because its own improved military professionalism means it can now do this for itself,” Kendall said.
“The question now is: Will this be enough to satisfy Congress that the U.S. cannot be held responsible for errant airstrikes, or is it just a first step to further measures?”
Saudis Shift Account of Khashoggi Killing Again, as 5 Agents Face Death Penalty (The New York Times) By Ben Hubbard and David D. Kirkpatrick November 15, 2018
Saudi Arabia threatened five of its agents with the death penalty on Thursday for killing the dissident Jamal Khashoggi, as the kingdom changed its story, again, about how the crime was committed and continued to try to distance its de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, from any responsibility.
Announcing an update on the kingdom’s own investigation, the public prosecutor portrayed the killing of Mr. Khashoggi at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul as an improvised decision taken at the last minute by a team that had been dispatched there with orders to retrieve him.
While the prosecutor’s report did not name any of the suspects, the leader of the team that confronted Mr. Khashoggi at the consulate was Maher Abdulaziz Mutreb, a frequent companion of Prince Mohammed, who often traveled with him abroad, according to a Saudi official familiar with the investigation.
Thursday’s explanation closely echoed a previous Saudi account — portraying the killing as a rendition gone wrong — that President Trump had derided as “one of the worst in the history of cover-ups.”
But the Saudis acknowledged for the first time on Thursday that the team sent to meet Mr. Khashoggi in Istanbul had not only ambushed and killed him in their consulate but had also dismembered his body — as Turkish officials have maintained for weeks.
Speaking to reporters in the Saudi capital, Riyadh, a spokesman for the public prosecutor said the order to kill Mr. Khashoggi had been taken by only a single intelligence agent on the scene in Istanbul, without authorization from superiors in Riyadh, and that it was accomplished with a deadly dose of a tranquilizer — not by strangulation, as the kingdom had previously said.
The mutilation of the body, the prosecutor said, was a spur-of-the-moment decision to get the body out of the consulate.
In addition to the five threatened with execution, by beheading, six others have been charged with crimes related to the killing. The prosecutor’s office said none of the accused could be identified while the investigation goes on. The announcement on Thursday filled in none of the many remaining gaps in the accounting of the killing and offered almost nothing to shake the conclusions of United States intelligence agencies and many Western officials that Prince Mohammed had to have authorized the assassination.
These gaps, and the Saudis’ insistence that the killing was an improvisation, present a dilemma for the Trump administration, which has embraced the crown prince as the central figure in its plans for the region and has stood by him in the face of mounting outrage over Mr. Khashoggi’s killing.
Just hours after the Saudi announcement on Thursday, the Trump administration said it was slapping sanctions for human rights violations on 17 Saudis who were involved in the killing, including a top adviser and several security agents with close ties to the crown prince himself.
Many questions remained on Thursday. Saudi prosecutors said the team included a criminal evidence specialist to clean up the scene if necessary. However, publicly available information about that agent portrays him as a medical doctor specializing in autopsies, and the Turks have said he arrived in Istanbul with a bone saw.
Nor did the Saudi investigation disclose the name or contact information of a supposed local collaborator who prosecutors said disposed of Mr. Khashoggi’s remains in a still unknown location. The prosecutors said they interviewed the accused agents to produce a sketch of the collaborator, which they said they would share with the Turks.
Mr. Khashoggi, a Virginia resident and Washington Post columnist, disappeared inside the consulate on Oct. 2, and Saudi Arabia maintained afterward that he had left unharmed. When the kingdom later acknowledged that he had died inside, it first claimed he had been strangled by accident in a fight with its agents — an account that convinced almost no one.
The kingdom finally acknowledged three weeks ago that evidence provided by Turkey had indicated a planned assassination, and the Trump administration welcomed the admission as a sign of progress toward accountability. “The Saudis have acknowledged that this was a premeditated attack,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told Fox News on Nov. 4.
Now, the kingdom is hedging on that acknowledgment of premeditation, with the prosecutor indicating the killing of Mr. Khashoggi was planned, at most, within a few hours before it took place.
Turkey has applied pressure on the kingdom to reveal who ordered the killing and has implied the plan must have been approved by Prince Mohammed. This week, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey expressed frustration that the prince was failing to follow through on his promise to expose the truth about the disappearance and death of Mr. Khashoggi.
On Thursday, Turkey quickly dismissed the Saudis’ new explanation, with the country’s foreign minister, Mevlut Cavusoglu, declaring it “unsatisfying.”
“The dismembering of the body is not an instant decision,” Mr. Cavusoglu said, according to news reports. “They brought the necessary people and tools to kill him and dismember the body in advance.”
The American sanctions targeted 17 people for their connections to the killing, including Saud al-Qahtani, a close aide to the crown prince; Mr. Mutreb, the intelligence agent who has often traveled abroad as part of the crown prince’s security detail; and Salah Tubaigy, the autopsy specialist who Turkish officials say dismembered Mr. Khashoggi after he was killed.
The public prosecutor said that Mr. Qahtani, a powerful aide to Prince Mohammed who has directed vast social media campaigns against the kingdom’s enemies, met with some of the agents before they flew to Turkey. The purpose, the prosecutor added, was to give them “some useful information” related to “his belief that the victim had been co-opted by organizations and countries hostile to the kingdom and that his presence abroad constituted a danger to the security of the homeland.”
Thursday’s sanctions were the harshest responses yet by the United States to Mr. Khashoggi’s killing, but the death has also energized Congress. A bipartisan group of senators on Thursday introduced legislation that would block weapons sales to Saudi Arabia and impose further sanctions on individuals involved in the killing and aspects of the Saudi-led war in Yemen.
The United States did not sanction the most senior Saudi official implicated in its internal investigation, the deputy head of Saudi intelligence, Brig. Gen. Ahmed Asiri. Prosecutors said that in the days before the killing he had ordered an operation to return Mr. Khashoggi to the kingdom, by convincing him or “by force.”
A team of 15 operatives was assembled, with five of them charged with confronting Mr. Khashoggi, the prosecutor’s announcement said. Heading the group was Mr. Mutreb, who knew Mr. Khashoggi from their time working together at the Saudi Embassy in London. Mr. Khashoggi came to the consulate to get the paperwork he needed to marry his Turkish fiancée. An argument broke out with the Saudi agents, the prosecutors said, so Mr. Mutreb gave the order to kill Mr. Khashoggi.
The agents bound Mr. Khashoggi and gave him a large dose of a tranquilizer, which killed him, the prosecutors said. The team then dismembered him and gave his remains to a local collaborator to dispose of before filing a false report to Riyadh stating that Mr. Khashoggi had left the consulate safely.
It was this false report, the prosecutor said, that accounted for the denials and changes in the Saudi story in the weeks following Mr. Khashoggi’s killing.
Turkish officials have laid out a parallel narrative of how Mr. Khashoggi died, based on what they say is an audio recording of the killing captured inside the consulate. Turkish officials familiar with the recording have said Dr. Tubaigy moved quickly and methodically to dismember Mr. Khashoggi’s body with a bone saw, further suggesting premeditation.
The audio recording, shared by the Turks with the C.I.A. director, Gina Haspel, during her visit last month to Ankara, also appears to cast doubt on the Saudi assertion that Mr. Khashoggi’s killing had not been planned in advance and was not expected by top officials back in the kingdom.
According to three people familiar with the recordings, Mr. Mutreb can be heard instructing a superior in Arabic over the phone to “tell your boss” that the mission was accomplished.
United States intelligence officials believe the “boss” referred to by Mr. Mutreb is almost certainly Prince Mohammed, the people familiar with the recording said.
But those people said that Prince Mohammed’s name is not heard, so the belief that he was the “boss” was a matter of deduction. It is also possible that Mr. Mutreb may have incorrectly believed that Prince Mohammed ordered the killing.
Saudi officials disputed that account of the audio recording, saying Turkey had provided a transcript of a recording and allowed Saudi intelligence services to listen to it. The officials said that the recordings heard by Saudi intelligence agents did not contain the phrase “tell your boss.”
It is possible that the Turks may have shared their evidence selectively with other intelligence services, including the Saudis and Americans.
Saudi officials remain insistent that Prince Mohammed did not know about the killing in advance.
“Absolutely, his royal highness the crown prince has nothing to do with this issue,” the Saudi foreign minister, Adel al-Jubeir, said at a news conference in Riyadh on Thursday.
“Sometimes mistakes happen,” he added. “Sometimes people exceed their authority.”
Thursday’s statement from the Saudi prosecutor put the blame for the killing squarely on Mr. Mutreb and four other agents the Saudis say were in the room with him when Mr. Khashoggi was killed.
In a statement carried by the state news service, the public prosecutor said he would seek the death penalty for those five men and that criminal charges had been filed against them and six others, while the investigation continued.
If the death sentences of agents who had worked so closely with the crown prince are carried out, it would surely shock a kingdom where powerful princes often protect those they trust.
The Saudi courts could take years to render a verdict and might ultimately reduce the sentences. As an absolute monarchy, Saudi prosecutors and judges all report to the king and his royal court, headed by Prince Mohammed.
Scholars of Saudi Arabia said the capital punishment of five government agents could carry a high cost for Prince Mohammed. “It would send a really bad message to his close allies and the people he has trained to carry out these operations: They are not safe if things go wrong and they are the ones to be blamed,” said Madawi al-Rasheed, a professor at the London School of Economics.
“But if he does not kill them, how does he protect himself from the international outrage?” Professor Rasheed added. “It is a double bind.”
Rights Abuses Under Scrutiny (Human Rights Watch) November 15, 2018 Saudi Arabia faced international scrutiny of its human rights record at the United Nations Human Rights Council on November 5, 2018, as countries pressed for concrete steps to end abuses, Human Rights Watch said today.
Country representatives gathering in Geneva for the periodic review of Saudi Arabia’s human rights record made recommendations that included the immediate release of Saudi activists – including women driving activists – jailed solely for peacefully advocating reform. They also called for an end to discrimination against women and justice for the slain journalist Jamal Khashoggi, including assuring accountability for his killers.
“Many countries have problematic records, but Saudi Arabia stands out for its extraordinarily high levels of repression, which have come into focus in the aftermath of Jamal Khashoggi’s brutal murder,” said Michael Page, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “Saudi Arabia should respond to international criticism of its human rights record and make meaningful changes, including the immediate release of jailed human rights defenders as a first step.”
Among the recommendations were to respect freedom of expression and the rights of human rights defenders. Since Mohammad bin Salman became crown prince in June 2017, Saudi authorities have escalated an intensified a coordinated crackdown on dissidents and human rights activists.
On May 15, just weeks before the Saudi authorities lifted the ban on women driving on June 24, Saudi authorities began arresting prominent women’s rights activists, accusing several of them of grave crimes such as treason that appear to be directly related to their activism. By September, at least nine women remained detained without charge, though some anticipated charges could carry prison terms of up to 20 years. The nine are Loujain al-Hathloul, Aziza al-Yousef, Eman al- Nafjan, Nouf Abdelaziz, Mayaa al-Zahrani, Hatoon al-Fassi, Samar Badawi, Nassema al-Sadah, and Amal al-Harbi.
More than a dozen prominent activists convicted on charges arising from their peaceful activities are serving long prison sentences. They include Waleed Abu al-Khair, a human rights lawyer serving a 15-year sentence imposed by the Specialized Criminal Court in 2014, on charges stemming solely from his peaceful criticism of rights abuses in media interviews and on social media.
Regarding the Khashoggi killing, recommendations during the November 5 session included inviting “a team of international experts to participate in the investigation,” as well as collaborating with the Human Rights Council to “establish a hybrid mechanism for the impartial and independent investigation.” On October 20, Saudi Arabia admitted that people acting on behalf of Saudi Arabia had murdered Khashoggi at the country’s consulate in Istanbul, Turkey on October 2.
Human Rights Watch has said that other countries should reject Saudi Arabia’s attempted whitewash of the killing and that the UN should open an investigation to independently determine the circumstances surrounding the killing. The inquiry should include determining Saudi Arabia’s role, and identifying those responsible for authorizing, planning, and carrying out the apparently brutal murder.
Saudi Arabia also faced calls to abide by international humanitarian law in its military operations in Yemen. The Saudi-led coalition has committed numerous violations of international humanitarian law, including apparent war crimes, and has failed to carry out meaningful and impartial investigations into alleged violations. The work of the Joint Incidents Assessment Team (JIAT), established by the coalition in 2016, has fallen far short of international standards regarding transparency, impartiality, and independence. As of September, the unit had cleared the coalition of wrongdoing in the vast majority of airstrikes investigated.
Country representatives also recommended that Saudi Arabia end discrimination against women, including by ending the discriminatory male guardianship system. Under this system, women are not allowed to apply for a passport, marry, travel, or be released from prison without the approval of a male guardian, usually a husband, father, brother, or son. One country urged Saudi Arabia to guarantee women’s rights by enacting anti-discrimination legislation.
Saudi Arabia faced numerous calls to end the death penalty or adopt a moratorium on executions, especially for child offenders and for people convicted of “non-serious crimes.” Saudi Arabia has executed over 650 people since its previous Universal Periodic Review in 2013, over 200 of them for nonviolent drug crimes. International standards, including the Arab Charter on Human Rights, ratified by Saudi Arabia, require countries that retain the death penalty to use it only for the “most serious crimes,” and in exceptional circumstances.
In 2018, Saudi authorities began seeking the death penalty against dissidents in trials that did not include accusations of violence, including for supporting protests and alleged affiliation with the Muslim Brotherhood. A handful of men are on death row for offenses allegedly committed when they were children.
Country representatives also said that Saudi Arabia should accede to major human rights treaties and covenants, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), which along with Universal Declaration of Human Rights make up the International Bill of Human Rights. Saudi Arabia is one of only a handful of countries in the world that have not signed or ratified those treaties, though Saudi representatives have claimed since 2009 that ratification is under consideration.
“The world should seize this opportunity to demand justice for Saudi Arabia’s serious rights abuses and harmful practices, many of which have been going on for decades,” Page said.
Saudi crown prince’s ‘fit’ delays UN resolution on war in Yemen (CNN) By Michelle Kosinski November 17, 2018
Washington (CNN)Multiple sources tell CNN that a much-anticipated United Nations Security Council resolution calling for a cessation of hostilities in Yemen and for Saudi Arabia to allow humanitarian aid to reach millions of starving people was "stalled" this week after the resolution's sponsor, British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt, met face-to-face with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
Two sources said the crown prince "threw a fit" about the resolution. Two other sources with knowledge of the discussion didn't go so far as to describe the crown prince as angry, though they didn't deny he was annoyed.
Putting it into more carefully diplomatic terms, one said, "He didn't like the idea." According to the other source, the Saudis "have their reservations," but the source said it remained a courteous discussion.
As part of a British effort to draft a Security Council resolution against the continued fighting and humanitarian crisis in Yemen, Hunt flew to Riyadh this week to sit down with bin Salman, who has faced intense criticism and scrutiny over the brazen killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in early October at the hands of officials in his inner circle.
Sources say Hunt took the draft with him and discussed it with the crown prince, who wanted changes or better yet, no resolution at all. Bin Salman, known in diplomatic circles by his initials, MBS, viewed the pending resolution as weakening the Saudi position in the conflict over Yemen and emboldening its Houthi rebel rivals.
"MBS didn't like the resolution on principle," said a source familiar with the Riyadh meeting.
But the message Hunt delivered was a strong one, a fourth source said, and came after he'd consulted with US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian. "'This is what Western powers think, and this is what you need to do. What is your plan to stop this?'" Hunt conveyed to the Saudi, according to this source, who added, "He heard what we said."
In what's seen as a positive move, the Saudis have now agreed to facilitate Houthi negotiators' travel to Sweden for talks.
Hunt left with the understanding that he would work on changes to the resolution with his team, as well as with his counterparts in the US and elsewhere. These allies share concerns that a bad reaction from Saudi Arabia to a strongly worded UN resolution could set back the start of a process to resolve the war in Yemen.
Even so, one of the sources familiar with the Riyadh meeting said Western allies "are not inclined to act on all of MBS's recommendations."
At a Security Council meeting on Friday, British Ambassador Karen Pierce said the UK would introduce the new resolution on Monday.
The Department of State and Saudi Arabian Embassy in the US did not respond to requests for comment.
The encounter puts in stark light the efforts of the UK, US and other allies to hold the kingdom's leadership accountable for serious alleged human rights violations, while still maintaining good working relationships with Saudi Arabia in the volatile region.
The US and UK were the top two arms sellers to Riyadh in 2017, with $5.2 billion and $1.2 billion in sales, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.
Hunt's meeting with the crown prince also underscores bin Salman's resistance to pressure on Yemen, which has become the world's worst man-made humanitarian disaster, as babies, children and adults slowly starve to death.
The three-year conflict between the Saudi-led coalition and its enemies, Iran-backed Houthis, has devastated the country and killed at least 10,000 people. UN experts say the Saudi coalition's bombings of civilians are potential war crimes. The world body has also said the Saudis' partial blockade of the country means 18 million people don't have reliable access to food, creating the conditions for the worst famine in 100 years.
The World Food Program warned Friday that the country is "marching to the brink of starvation." Its executive director, David Beasley, who just returned from Yemen, told reporters he touched babies who felt like "ghosts" due to starvation.
The UK's willingness to make changes to the resolution to ease Saudi concerns drew sharp criticism from human rights advocates.
"The Saudi sway over some members of the UN Security Council has become a serious liability," said Akshaya Kumar, the deputy United Nations director for Human Rights Watch. The UK for months has resisted bringing a UN resolution on Yemen and the US has been loath to criticize Riyadh for the destruction there.
"It's absolutely mind-boggling that the world's most powerful body has chosen silence for months even as warnings of famine have mounted," Kumar said. "At this point, vague appeals to 'all parties' to improve their behavior won't work. Any resolution that doesn't specifically mention the Saudi-led coalition by name and call it out for its role in the carnage in Yemen won't have the required effect in Riyadh."
In an effort to win an edge in any negotiations, Saudi Arabia has repeatedly tried to gain a definitive military edge before agreeing to talks. Khashoggi's killing, tied to bin Salman's inner circle, put Saudi Arabia on the defensive diplomatically, giving the US and UK an opening to press Riyadh.
In late October, US Secretary of Defense James Mattis and Pompeo called on all participants in the civil war to agree to a ceasefire "in the next 30 days," amid criticism of US support for the Saudi-led coalition in the conflict. The administration will likely face greater pressure to restrict arms sales to Saudi Arabia and act on Yemen now that midterm elections have given Democrats control of the House of Representatives.
The UK Foreign Office said in a statement that Hunt's trip, which also included meetings with the United Arab Emirates and Yemeni leaders, "helped improve understanding on steps that would lead to a cessation of hostilities. The Foreign Secretary had constructive discussions on pathways to achieve de-escalation and reduce tensions, and was clear that both sides would need to play their part in the confidence-building measures."
The fourth source familiar with Hunt's discussions said the foreign secretary was in the region "to talk about a full sweep of issues in relation to Yemen" and as a result, also visited the UAE, a core member of the Saudi coalition.
Hunt also spoke to the Saudi crown prince about the country's standoff with Qatar and about the need for accountability in Khashoggi's killing. On Thursday, the Saudi Public Prosecutor's Office charged 11 people and sentenced five to death for the Virginia resident's killing.
One source with knowledge of the discussion between Hunt and the crown prince told CNN that such a meeting, between a British foreign secretary and the Saudi de facto head of state, is unusual; that based on diplomatic protocols, the foreign secretary would normally meet with a lower-level counterpart to talk over a pending action.
The fourth source familiar with Hunt's meeting said the Saudis "have their reservations" about the resolution, "but it's a tool to get both sides to come to the table. And it does need to reflect the reality on the ground."
One source with knowledge of discussions says the US has not been shying away from supporting the resolution, and that US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley has been enthusiastic about getting something done.
The source said others in the US administration don't seem to be as willing as Haley to forcefully call out Saudi Arabia in this way.
But MBS's serious pushback to a potential statement by the UN Security Council -- merely a resolution calling for humanitarian aid and stopping the fighting -- also shows that such moves have an impact at the highest level of Saudi government.
"The Saudis are hugely sensitive -- ultra, ultra sensitive -- to international perceptions," a diplomatic source told CNN. "They hate criticism. And MBS brings a whole new level of paranoia about this."
Press UAE Crown Prince on Abuses in Yemen (Human Rights Watch) November 20, 2018
President Emmanuel Macron of France should raise serious concerns with Abu Dhabi’s crown prince regarding laws-of-war violations in Yemen, Human Rights Watch said today. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed al Nahyan of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) will visit Paris on November 21, 2018.
The UAE plays a prominent role in the Saudi-led coalition’s military operations in Yemen. Since March 2015, the coalition has indiscriminately bombed homes, markets, and schools, impeded the delivery of humanitarian aid and used widely banned cluster munitions. Human Rights Watch has documented nearly 90 apparently unlawful coalition attacks, some of them likely war crimes. The UAE and UAE-led proxy forces have arbitrarily detained, forcibly disappeared, and tortured Yemenis in southern and eastern Yemen, including Yemeni activists who have criticized coalition abuses.
“As the UAE’s de facto leader and deputy commander of its armed forces, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed al Nahyan could have acted to stop grave abuses in Yemen, but instead war crimes have mounted,” said Bénédicte Jeannerod, France director at Human Rights Watch. “If President Macron is truly concerned about the humanitarian crisis in Yemen, he should tell the crown prince that France will stop selling weapons to the UAE if there’s a real risk of their unlawful use.”
Despite Saudi Arabia’s and the UAE’s records of abuse, France, along with the United States and the United Kingdom, continue to sell weapons to both countries. In June, the French newspaper Le Figaro reported that French special forces were on the ground in Yemen, alongside UAE forces.
Macron should press the UAE to investigate alleged serious violations by its armed forces and Yemeni forces it supports, to appropriately prosecute those responsible for war crimes, and to provide reparation to victims of violations, Human Rights Watch said. France should stop supplying weapons and munitions to the UAE if there is a substantial risk that these arms are being used in Yemen to commit or facilitate serious violations of international humanitarian law or international human rights law.
Despite leading considerable efforts to present the UAE as progressive and tolerant, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed al Nahyan, the nation’s de facto leader, has largely failed to improve his country’s human rights record. Domestically, UAE authorities have carried out a sustained assault on freedom of expression and association since 2011. In 2014, the UAE issued a counterterrorism law that gives authorities the power to prosecute peaceful critics, political dissidents, and human rights activists as terrorists. UAE residents who have spoken about human rights issues are at serious risk of arbitrary detention, enforced disappearance, imprisonment, and torture. Many are serving long prison terms or have left the country under pressure.
In March 2017, the UAE detained Ahmed Mansoor, an award-winning human rights defender, on speech-related charges and held him incommunicado for more than a year. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison on May 29, 2018 for crimes that appear to violate his right to free expression.
UAE courts also imposed a 10-year prison sentence in March 2017 on a prominent academic, Nasser bin Ghaith, whom authorities forcibly disappeared in August 2015, for charges that included peaceful criticism of the UAE and Egyptian authorities.
On October 4, the European Parliament adopted a strongly worded resolution calling for the immediate release of Mansoor and all other “prisoners of conscience” in the UAE. The resolution expressed concern that “attacks on members of civil society including efforts to silence, imprison, or harass human rights activists, journalists, lawyers, and others has become increasingly common in recent years.” It said that European institutions should make respect for human rights activists “a precondition to any further development of relation between the EU and UAE.”
In addition, despite some reforms, many low-paid migrant workers remain acutely vulnerable to forced labor. The kafala (visa-sponsorship) system ties migrant workers to their employers. Those who leave their employers can face punishment for “absconding,” including fines, prison, and deportation. A 2017 law extended key labor protections to domestic workers, previously excluded from such guarantees, but its provisions remain weaker than those of the country’s national labor law.
Yet over the past several years, the UAE and France have strengthened their bilateral relations across a range of areas, including security, trade, and cultural exchanges. In 2017, France increased its arms sales to the UAE and opened the Louvre Abu Dhabi museum amid serious concerns regarding labor abuses in building the museum. On October 11, the UAE joined the International Organization of the Francophonie, which promotes the spread of French language and values, as an associate member, although human rights and democratic principles are at the heart of the organization’s charter.
“By failing to address the UAE authorities’ serious rights violations in Yemen, France risks glossing over a dark reality,” Jeannerod said. “Despite outward appearances, the UAE has repeatedly shown itself to be resistant to improving its human rights record at home and abroad.”
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Afghanistan
Horrific Kabul bomb attack underlines growing threat to civilian lives (Amnesty International) November 20, 2018
Responding to the deaths of at least 40 people and the wounding of at least 60 in a bomb attack at a religious event in Kabul today, Amnesty International’s Deputy South Asia Director Omar Waraich said:
“This sickening attack once again lays bare the growing risks to civilians in Afghanistan, where a record number of civilians were killed in the first half of 2018 – many of them children.
“Any attack in which civilians are deliberately targeted constitutes a war crime under international law, yet those killed in Kabul today will merely become another statistic.
“Armed groups must immediately halt all attacks targeting civilians and indiscriminate attacks, while the Afghan government must make the protection of civilian lives its absolute priority.
“This attack also once again highlights the irresponsibility of countries in the European Union who claim Afghanistan is a safe place for refugees and asylum seekers to be returned to.”
No one has yet admitted responsibility for the blast.
According to the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), a total of 1,692 civilians were killed between January 1 and June 30 this year, marking the highest figure for civilian casualties recorded by the UN body.
Operation Burnham: Inquiry into controversial SAS raid outlined in Hit and Run begins (NZ Herald) By David Fisher November 21, 2018
The extraordinary and historic nature of the inquiry into a controversial NZSAS raid was laid bare amidst concerns over the release of classified and secret information.
Those secrets meant it was likely the inquiry would be "one of the most complex in New Zealand's history", said Kristy McDonald QC, whose role was to help dig out and report the truth behind the raid commonly known as Operation Burnham.
"While other countries have undertaken public inquiries into the activities of their armed forces while in service overseas, this is the first in New Zealand to do so as far as we are aware.
McDonald's words gave context to what was expected to be one of the few open and public hearings to be held by the inquiry.
The two-day hearing was intended to set out a process by which the inquiry would operate, including how much information would be made public and the reasons for secrecy.
Its genesis was the book Hit & Run, which brought the most serious allegations ever to be aimed at the elite NZSAS.
The book, by authors Nicky Hager and Jon Stephenson, was published 18 months ago and alleged war crimes, the death of six civilians and wounding of 15 others during a "revenge" raid in Afghanistan on August 22, 2010.
The NZ Defence Force has utterly rejected the premise, saying the NZSAS acted with honour and integrity in an operation which saw nine insurgents killed.
There was no inquiry until there was a new Government, when Attorney General David Parker said one must take place because of "the need for the public to have confidence in the NZDF". It began in a basement courtroom in the High Court at Wellington.
The intent was to get to the truth, said Sir Terence Arnold QC, former Supreme Court judge, introducing himself and former Prime Minister Sir Geoffrey Palmer as the chairmen who would consider and weigh evidence in the inquiry.
McDonald explained the search for the truth amidst classified documents and the secretive NZSAS was fraught.
Careless production of classified information could pose a real and significant damage to the interests of New Zealand and its citizens, she said.
Yet, said McDonald, an inquiry which was insufficiently open threatened the ability to engage public trust.
The threat was not just direct but required considerations on the impact of releasing information which belonged to other governments.
She said New Zealand relied heavily on intelligence from foreign governments and some of this was information needed for the inquiry.
If information from other countries was disclosed it would likely breach agreements, which in turn could lead to a reduction in sharing and - as a result - damage the interests of New Zealand.
"The inquiry ought not place itself in the position of damaging the interests of New Zealand, or the public, by its conduct."
The public gallery was about two-thirds filled, outnumbered by those in the business end of the courtroom.
Along with the knighted chairmen and McDonald were those with a specific interest in what had happened.
On one side of the equation was Hager, representing himself, and lawyers representing Stephenson. Deborah Manning, who famously represented asylum seeker Ahmed Zaoui, was there for the Afghan villagers.
They have sought greater openness while also seeking protection for the identities of journalistic sources and the villagers.
On the other, there were lawyers for the Crown - there for diplomatic and intelligence interests - and separate lawyers for the NZ Defence Force.
The intelligence agencies, NZDF and the supporting government establishment have pushed for almost complete secrecy on the basis of protecting classified information associated with the raid.
There were also those whose interest fell neither one way or the other. There was Bruce Gray QC, who was representing former Defence Minister Wayne Mapp - a pivotal player at the time later revealed as a source for the book who held nagging doubts over what had occurred.
And there was Bell Gully partner Alan Ringwood, who was there for the nation's media, with submissions pushing for as much openness as possible.
The opening of the inquiry revealed it was misnamed. Its official title is Inquiry into Operation Burnham, yet submissions revealed there never was an "operation" called Burnham.
Instead, there was an "Objective Burnham" - one specific individual who was the target of the NZSAS on the night of August 22 in 2010.
There were two other objectives - in total, three men had been identified as the insurgents responsible for attacks on New Zealand and other coalition forces.
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Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) Official Website of the Extraordinary Chambers Official Website of the United Nations Assistance to the Khmer Rouge Trials (UNAKRT) Cambodia Tribunal Monitor
KR leaders get second life sentence (Khmer Times) By Cheang Sokha November 16, 2018
The trial chamber of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), better known as the Khmer Rouge Tribunal was packed on Friday (Nov. 16) when the sentence in case oo2/02 was pronounced – Khieu Samphan and Nuon Chea were both sentenced to life imprisonment.
Their new life sentences (case 002/02) will merge with the life sentences they got in 2014 (case 002/01).
Presiding judge, Nil Nonn, said that 92 year-old Nuon Chea, former Deputy Secretary of the Communist Party of Kampuchea, and 87 year-old Khieu Samphan, former Head of State of Democratic Kampuchea, were found responsible for the genocide against the Cham and the Vietnamese, forced marriages and rape (nationwide), and purges against Cambodians between April 1975 and January 1979.
The majority of the Cham from Kampong Cham were arrested and later executed. Buddhism was banned and pagodas shut down, hundreds of monks were forcibly defrocked, people were forced to marry strangers against their will.
People from all over the country, laymen and monks, foreigners and nationals, students and civil servants – folks from all walks of life came to Phnom Penh to witness the sentencing.
Morn Mao, 65, travelled from Oddor Meanchey to hear the verdict said, “Justice has finally prevailed. The leaders of the brutal regime cannot avoid punishment.”
The hybrid court (government of Cambodia and the UN) previously sentenced Kaing Guek Eav (Kang Kek Iew), aka Duch, commander of S-21 (Tuol Sleng) to life in prison.
Ieng Sary, former Deputy Prime Minister for Foreign Affairs under the Khmer Rouge and his wife Ieng Thirith, former KR Social Affairs Minister, both died while on trial.
Pol Pot was never put to trial because he died in 1998.
Cambodia says Khmer Rouge tribunal that convicted 3 is done (Beloit Daily News) By Sopheng Cheang November 18, 2018
Cambodia has reiterated it intends to end the work of the U.N.-backed tribunal that last week convicted the last two surviving leaders of the Khmer Rouge of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.
Deputy Prime Minister Sar Kheng said the tribunal's work had been completed and there would not be any additional prosecutions for acts that led to the deaths of an estimated 1.7 million people in the 1970s. The only other person convicted was the regime's prisons chief.
He cited the terms under which the tribunal, staffed jointly by Cambodian and international prosecutors and judges, had been established, limiting its targets to senior leaders of the Khmer Rouge regime that was in power from 1975 to 1979. The rules also allow prosecuting those most responsible for carrying out atrocities.
Sar Kheng spoke Saturday at a government ceremony in the northern province of Oddar Meanchey and his remarks were reported Sunday.
On Friday, the tribunal convicted and gave life sentences to Nuon Chea, 92, the main Khmer Rouge ideologist and right-hand man to its late leader Pol Pot, and Khieu Samphan, 87, who was the regime's head of state. The sentences were merged with the life sentences they were already serving after an earlier conviction for crimes against humanity.
In nine years of hearings and at a cost exceeding $300 million, the tribunal has convicted only one other defendant, Kaing Guek Eav, alias Duch, who as head of the Khmer Rouge prison system ran the infamous Tuol Sleng torture center in Phnom Penh. Cases of four more suspects, middle-ranking members of the Khmer Rouge, had already been processed for prosecution but have been scuttled or stalled. Without the cooperation of the Cambodian members of the tribunal, no cases can go forward.
Long-serving Prime Minister Hun Sen has repeatedly declared there would be no more prosecutions, claiming they could cause unrest. Hun Sen himself was a midlevel commander with the Khmer Rouge before defecting while the group was still in power, and several senior members of his ruling Cambodian People's Party share similar backgrounds. He helped cement his political control by making alliances with other former Khmer Rouge commanders.
In his remarks, Sar Kheng sought to reassure former Khmer Rouge members that they would not face prosecution.
"Because there are some former Khmer Rouge officers living in this area, I would like to clarify that there will be no more investigations taking place (against lower-ranking Khmer Rouge members), so you don't have to worry," said Sar Kheng, who is also interior minister.
He acknowledged that even without more prosecutions, the tribunal still had to hear the appeals expected to be lodged by Nuon Chea and Khieu Samphan, but aside from that task, its work was finished.
ECCC to soon determine role of Meas Muth (Khmer Times) By Taing Vida November 20, 2018
Judges of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia are expected to issue a joint closing order against former Khmer Rouge navy commander Meas Muth before next year, tribunal spokesman Neth Pheaktra said during a Cross Talk discussion with Khmer Times yesterday.
The joint closing order will determine whether Mr Muth should stand trial under the court’s jurisdiction, he said.
“The closing order to be issued by the end of this year will determine whether Mr Muth is under the court’s jurisdiction,” Mr Pheaktra said.
Mr Muth and former Khmer Rouge air force commander Sou Met were initially named suspects in Case 003 regarding crimes against humanity.
However, Mr Pheaktra noted that a judicial investigation on Mr Met in Case 003/02 was terminated in June 2015 following his death.
Mr Muth was charged in absentia in March 2015 with genocide, crimes against humanity and breaches of the 1949 Geneva Convention.
Kim Khon, a Siem Reap province resident, said the court should continue to try senior Khmer Rouge officials.
“We want to see progress in cases 003 and 004 and learn the reason why the regime was so cruel,” Mr Khon said. “These acts cannot be done without leaders giving orders to subordinates.”
Ang Udom, Mr Muth’s lawyer, yesterday said that his client is old and quietly lives in Battambang province.
“I have no comments or expectations of the closing order – I would like to only see the result,” Mr Udom said. “Mr Muth is now 80-years-old. His health is fine. He is living in Battambang province like an ordinary elderly man.”
In February last year, the judges closed Case 004 against former Khmer Rouge district secretary Im Chaem, noting Ms Chaem did not fall under the court’s jurisdiction.
“They dismissed the case because according to the judges’ evaluation of the evidence collected during the investigation, Im Chaem was not subject to the ECCC’s jurisdiction,” Mr Pheaktra said. “Which means that she was not a senior leader of the Khmer Rouge.”
The Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, a joint establishment between the Cambodian government and the United Nations, has so far tried three senior leaders of the brutal regime and sentenced them to life imprisonment, including Kaing Guek Eav, alias Duch, who commanded S-21 torture centre.
Ieng Sary, the former Foreign Affairs Minister and his wife Ieng Thirith, former Social Affairs Minister, died in 2013 and 2015 while Pol Pot died in 1998 before prosecution. On Friday, the Khmer Rouge Tribunal convicted Nuon Chea and Khieu Samphan to life in prison for genocide in case 002/02. Both men were already serving life imprisonment for crimes against humanity in case 002/01, which concluded in 2014.
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Bangladesh International Crimes Tribunal
Why Rohingya refugees shouldn't be sent back to Myanmar (Amnesty International) November 15, 2018
Since August 2017, more than 720,000 Rohingya have fled a vicious campaign of violence by the Myanmar security forces and sought refuge in neighbouring Bangladesh.
This week some refugees could be returned from Bangladesh to Myanmar under an agreement reached earlier between the two governments that sidestepped safeguards mandated under international law.
Here, Amnesty International explains how this situation has come about and why the forcible return of Rohingya refugees to Myanmar is unlawful, being premature, and putting their lives, liberty and other key human rights at risk.
Who are the Rohingya people?
The Rohingya are a predominantly Muslim ethnic minority in Myanmar. Until recently, more than a million lived mostly in Rakhine State, in the west of the country, on the border with Bangladesh.
The Rohingya assert longstanding ties to Rakhine State, and the overwhelming majority were born in the country as were their parents and grandparents. Virtually all of them have no citizenship and no reasonable claim to citizenship other than in Myanmar. Despite this, the government, insists that there is no such group in the country, instead claiming that they are “illegal immigrants” from Bangladesh. It refuses to recognize them as citizens, effectively rendering the majority of them stateless.
Their lack of citizenship has had a cascade of negative impacts on their lives, and has allowed the authorities in Myanmar to severely restrict their freedom of movement, effectively segregating them from the rest of society. As a result, they struggle to access healthcare, schools and jobs. This systematic discrimination amounts to apartheid, a crime against humanity under international law.
How have so many Rohingya ended up in Bangladesh as refugees?
Since August last year, more than 720,000 Rohingya have fled their homes in Myanmar’s northern Rakhine State after the military unleashed a brutal campaign of violence against them.
During this campaign, launched in response to coordinated attacks on security posts by the armed group the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA), security forces killed thousands of Rohingya, raped women and girls, hauled men and boys off to detention sites where they were tortured, and burned hundreds of homes and villages to the ground in what were clearly crimes against humanity. A UN report has concluded these crimes may also constitute genocide.
While the crisis in Rakhine State since 25 August is unprecedented in the scale of displacement, it’s not the first time the Rohingya have been subject to violent expulsion from their homes, villages and country at the hands of the Myanmar state. In the late 1970s and early 1990s hundreds of thousands were forced to flee to Bangladesh after major military crackdowns which were accompanied by wide-ranging human rights violations.
More recently, in 2016 almost 90,000 Rohingya were forced to flee to Bangladesh after Myanmar security forces responded to attacks on police posts by an armed Rohingya group with a campaign of violence targeting the community as a whole. At the time, Amnesty International concluded that these actions may have amounted to crimes against humanity.
Today, the UN estimates that there are altogether more than 900,000 Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh.
How were the Rohingya refugees received in Bangladesh? At first, the new arrivals were welcomed. Across Bangladesh, there was an outpouring of sympathy for the persecuted minority driven from their homes. The Bangladeshi government, which had long been ambivalent towards the Rohingya, embraced them.
On a visit to the Rohingya refugee camps, Bangladesh’s Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina declared that if Bangladesh could feed their 160 million people, it could feed hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees.
While the Bangladeshi government has generously hosted the refugees, they have not given them refugee status – leaving them without legal status on either side of the border. Bangladesh is not a signatory to the UN Refugee Convention.
The refugees are squeezed into threadbare shelters, mostly made of flimsy tarpaulin and bamboo. During the severe monsoon season, many homes were at risk of damage. Thousands of families were relocated and the shelters were reinforced. But they are still at risk in the case of a cyclone striking. The camps are also extremely congested. The area where most of the Rohingya refugees have taken shelter is large enough to count as Bangladesh’s fourth largest city, with nearly a million people, including the local host community residing there.
Why shouldn’t Bangladesh return Rohingya refugees to Myanmar?
The Rohingya have an inalienable human right to return to and reside in Myanmar – it is their home, and if they choose to they must be allowed to return. But governments must not organize returns unless they ensure that they are safe, voluntary, and dignified. As things currently stand, none of those conditions have been met, despite claims to the contrary by both the Myanmar and Bangladesh governments. The UN has repeatedly stated that conditions in Myanmar are not conducive to returns. The Bangladeshi government has agreed to have UNHCR, the UN refugee agency, oversee the returns process. UNHCR has undertaken the responsibility to interview every family that has expressed willingness to go back and certify that this is a voluntary return before they can be repatriated to Myanmar. This includes ensuring that refugees are also given the option to remain in Bangladesh if they choose to do so.
The cruel and entrenched system of discrimination and segregation that made the Rohingya so vulnerable in the first place has to be dismantled. Safe and dignified returns also means guaranteeing that once back, they can enjoy equal rights and citizenship and that the extreme human rights violations they have suffered will stop.
Safe and dignified returns also require those responsible for the horrific abuses against the Rohingya to be held to account. As it stands, almost all perpetrators remain at large and continue to evade justice, while maintaining positions of power that enable them to perpetrate more violations. The Rohingya cannot be left living in fear of a fresh wave of violence that will, if they survive, drive them across the border yet again.
Forcibly returning refugees from Bangladesh to Myanmar, where their lives, safety and other key human rights remain at grave risk, is a violation of the fundamental principle of international law known as non-refoulement.
What should happen now?
The Governments of Bangladesh and Myanmar must uphold their commitment that Rohingya refugees will only return safely, voluntarily and with dignity. Both governments must also ensure that refugees in Bangladesh are able to make free and informed choices about return, based on access to full and impartial information about conditions in Rakhine State and the support to remain in Bangladesh if they choose to do so.
Both governments must also ensure that Rohingya are consulted and included in all decisions affecting their futures. At the moment, Rohingya refugees do not have a seat at the table, and decisions about their future are being made without their knowledge and therefore obviously without their consent.
As the UN agency mandated with the protection of refugees, UNHCR must play a key role in any organized return process, including providing refugees with objective, up-to-date, and accurate information in relevant languages and formats to allow them to make genuinely free and informed choices about whether and when they would like to exercise their right to return, obtaining their consent and monitoring that conditions are safe for return in Myanmar – before, during and after any returns take place, ensuring their long-term sustainability.
The international community has an important role to play – in ensuring that returns are not forced, but also in pushing Myanmar to create the conditions which would allow for safe, voluntary, and dignified returns. The international community must also do much more to support Bangladesh and share the responsibility and financial burden of hosting almost a million refugees. Shamefully, only 40% of the UN’s appeal for USD 950 million has been committed. Governments and donors around the world need to step up to support this effort. Finally, Rohingya refugees are entitled to continue to seek asylum in Bangladesh and the authorities there must keep borders open to refugees who continue to flee now or will in the future. The Bangladeshi government should also explore all options to ensure continued international protection for this community. To be truly voluntary, refugees need alternatives – including to remain in Bangladesh with asylum protections, including refugee status, and to resettle or relocate to a third country if they choose to do so. So far, these options do not exist.
Crimes Against Humanity In Myanmar: What Can The Courts Do? (Lawyer Monthly) By Eleri Griffiths November 20, 2018
In September, the UN human rights council (UNHRC) presented its full account on the independent fact-finding mission on Myanmar. Formed to establish the facts and circumstances of alleged recent human rights violations by the military (‘Tatmadaw”) and security forces, the Mission concludes that systematic targeting and clearance operations have occurred in Myanmar and that the human rights violations committed are of such gravity that a referral to the International Criminal Court (ICC) should be made.
However, as Myanmar does not recognise the ICC and is not a State Party to the Statute of Rome, the case once again raises questions on the role and limitations of the ICC as arbitrator of the most serious human rights offences.
The situation in Myanmar
Amongst its conclusions, the Mission found that military forces in Myanmar use Rakhine men, women and children for forced or compulsory labour, soldiers having subjected women to sexual violence, forced evictions through land confiscation, arbitrary arrest and detention, and violations of the rights to life, to physical and mental integrity, and to property.
Systematic “targeted and terrorising attacks” on the entire Rohingya population was termed a “clearance operation” by the authorities, but a “human rights catastrophe” by the mission. This included mass killing, abductions and rape and other sexual violence perpetrated on a “massive scale”, including gang rape of women and girls (sometimes up to 40 raped together and in front of families and the community) and people burnt to death in their homes. Rape victims were “often marked by deep bites”. Many children were shot, stabbed or burned by military forces acting with complete impunity and absence of accountability. Ethnic armed organisations have also violated human rights, though not generally systemically.
Oppression of Rohingya was considered severe, systemic and institutionalised from birth to death. violence and human rights violations fuelled by the silencing of critical voices by the Myanmar authorities. This and other violations has led to a mass exodus of Rohingya into nearby Bangladesh.
In light of its findings, the Mission called for both diplomatic and humanitarian action by the international community to protect Myanmar’s people from genocide. In particular, it concluded that there is sufficient information for the ICC to determine liability for genocide, crimes against humanity (including murder; imprisonment; enforced disappearance; torture; rape, sexual slavery and other forms of sexual violence; persecution; and enslavement (with additional crimes in Rakhine State)), and possible finding of apartheid or war crimes.
Can the ICC intervene?
The ICC was established to deal with incidents of genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, or the crime of aggression. Its involvement is considered necessary in Myanmar due to deeply entrenched impunity in Myanmar’s political and legal system and the government being demonstrably unwilling and unable to investigate and prosecute the crime, the latter being a precondition to prosecution at the ICC.
A clear jurisdictional issue is raised by Myanmar not being a State Party to the Statute of Rome; the ICC can only exercise powers relating to crimes occurring on the territory (or by nationals) of a State Party by special agreement with the state or by the UN Security Council referral.vii Absent a Security Council referral, crimes which took place in Myanmar would not usually fall within the Court’s jurisdiction unless Myanmar accepted it, which seems unlikely given the government’s lack of co- operation with the Mission.
The key in this case is the allegation of forcible deportation of nearly 700,000 Rohingya from Myanmar to Bangladesh, which is a state party to the statute. “Deportation or forcible transfer of population” (through expulsion or other coercive acts) is explicitly identified as a crime against humanity. By preliminary ruling sought for the first time by the Officer of the Prosecutor, the Court determined that it does have jurisdiction over deportation initiated within a non-party state (in this case Myanmar), but completed in a state party (Bangladesh). It also ruled that the same rationale may apply to persecution connected with the deportation or other inhumane acts intentionally causing great suffering, or serious injury to body or to mental or physical health, such as the refusal to readmit Rohingya to Myanmar.
What happens next?
The Officer of the Prosecutor has opened a preliminary examination of the events in Myanmar to decide whether there is a reasonable basis to proceed with an investigation. This included the questions of admissibility and the interest of justice. If a prosecution is intended, a warrant must be obtained for the accused’s arrest.
Getting further than that is more problematic. Enforcing an arrest warrant issued by the Court is a requirement imposed upon on State Parties, which Myanmar again is not. Non-party states can be invited to co-operate, but are not obliged to do so under the statute and Myanmar has already disputed the Court’s jurisdiction making that, again, unlikely. Whilst charges can be confirmed in the accused’s absence in some circumstances, he/she must be present during the trial. Therefore, without a voluntary surrender or movement to a State Party where they can then be arrested, it is difficult to see how, realistically, the Court will secure the presence of alleged perpetrators from Myanmar, stifling any prosecution.
Even if perpetrators do travel into a state party, arrest will not necessarily follow. For example, Omar Al Bashir, President of Sudan, is subject to two arrest warrants from 2009 and 2010 for crimes committed in Darfur. He remains at large has allegedly travelled unhindered to state and non-state parties without being surrendered to the Court, despite the Court Registry’s advance reminder of the state’s obligations. A further 15 Defendants remain at large, some over 13 years after arrests warrants were issued.
In its recent ruling, the Court drew attention to the duty of a UN member states to co-operate with the ICC where the Security Council so requires, that being a duty deriving from its UN membership as opposed to acceptance of the statute. Whether this will impact on Myanmar’s co-operation will remain to be seen. In the meantime, fact finding missions, investigations and arrest warrants may all serve to show the world that crimes of the nature seen in Myanmar are not acceptable. But if moving the case beyond the pre-trial stages is stifled by the accused’ non-attendance, a clear question mark remains over whether justice for the Rohingya will ever be delivered.
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War Crimes Investigation in Burma
The U.S. considered denouncing Myanmar for ‘crimes against humanity.’ It didn’t happen. (The Washington Post) By Shibani Mahtani and John Hudson November 15, 2018
A memo sent to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo this summer gave the green light for a tough U.S. response to systematic slayings and mass expulsions against Myanmar’s minority Rohingya Muslim population.
Key bureaus inside Foggy Bottom signed off on the memo’s conclusion: Myanmar’s military and its allies committed “crimes against humanity” in a series of actions documented in a State Department report, over a year in the making.
Such a declaration would have been a powerful warning shot to Myanmar’s leaders and military, signaling the United States would side with other nations calling for harsh punishments that could include international prosecution.
It also would have marked a turning point in U.S. policy toward Myanmar, after largely celebrating its gradual steps toward democracy since 2011.
But the recommendations in the August memo did not ultimately become U.S. policy, according to several people familiar with the process. They spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the news media.
There was no determination of crimes against humanity. The State Department assessment was held back, and a summary was quietly released in late September — a month after the United Nations took the lead in calling for possible prosecution against Myanmar’s generals.
Vice President Pence told Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi that the persecution by her country of Rohingya Muslims was inexcusable. (Reuters)
Now, months later, major questions persist over Pompeo’s handling of the Myanmar report, a $1.4 million undertaking.
A bipartisan push in Congress seeks to obtain the full version of the report and get explanations on why Pompeo did not follow the memo’s recommendation for a crimes-against-humanity designation.
At the State Department, meanwhile, officials initiated a diplomatic security investigation seeking to identify the person who leaked to a Politico reporter details of the deliberations on the crimes-against-humanity label, said the people familiar with the process. A State Department spokesman declined to comment on the leak investigation or the internal memo.
Myanmar and its de facto leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, faced strong pressure last week at regional summits in Singapore.
Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad on Tuesday took direct aim at Suu Kyi, saying she was trying to “defend the indefensible” over the Rohingya abuses. A day later, Vice President Pence, in a tense meeting with Suu Kyi, said violence against the Rohingya was “without excuse” and pressed her on accountability for those responsible. He was the most senior U.S. official to meet the Myanmar leader since the crisis.
Still, Pence and other officials have shied away from labels that could force the United States to act more strongly — giving Myanmar continued breathing room at a critical time.
Inside the State Department, meanwhile, regional specialists and human rights experts grimaced at what they viewed as a missed opportunity for the United States to throw its full weight behind growing international denunciations of Myanmar for the abuses, which drove out more than 700,000 Rohingya to refugee camps in neighboring Bangladesh.
The report, packed with damning details, was ready to go Aug. 17, the same day the United States sanctioned Myanmar generals and military units responsible for the atrocities.
Its delay and quiet after-hours release over a month later launched another round of criticism of the Trump administration as unpredictable and erratic on human rights issues on the global stage.
In late August, a U.N. fact-finding mission found that Myanmar’s campaign against the Rohingya bore the hallmarks of genocide and called for military generals to be investigated and prosecuted.
Following the U.N. report, Canada’s legislature in September voted unanimously to call the actions there genocide, and the European Union is considering removing Myanmar from a preferential trade status.
The United States, however, has struggled to define its position on Myanmar and decide on action to take in response.
The part of the State Department report made public — a 20-page executive summary released after hours on Sept. 24 — does not hold back.
It noted a “pattern of planning and premeditation,” punching holes in Myanmar’s narrative that it was simply responding to attacks by Rohingya militants. Almost half of the Rohingya interviewed witnessed rape, and almost all witnessed killings.
“In some areas, perpetrators used tactics that resulted in mass casualties, for example, locking people in houses to burn them, fencing off entire villages before shooting into the crowd, or sinking boats full of hundreds of fleeing Rohingya,” the report said.
Still, some lawmakers demand to see the full report, not just the summary. Rights groups, meanwhile, complain that it fails to spell out any next steps against Myanmar’s leaders.
“While the facts of the State Department investigation are strong, what’s missing is a clear indication of how the U.S. government intends to respond,” said Sarah Margon, Washington director at Human Rights Watch.
In a rare bipartisan initiative, Sens. Todd C. Young (R-Ind.) and Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) have taken the lead in calling for more answers from the Trump administration.
In late September, the two senators sent a letter to Pompeo noting that the State Department report “did not specifically define these atrocities as genocide or crimes against humanity.” It went on to request a formal legal determination regarding the “actions of the Burmese military to Congress without delay.”
The State Department has not yet responded to the letter, a committee aide said. When asked about why the report included no determination on crimes against humanity, Deputy Secretary of State John Sullivan told reporters in September “there weren’t legal judgments expressed in it because that wasn’t the point of the report.”
“It was basically a forensic examination of what happened,” he said.
Several people familiar with the report, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the news media, speculated that Pompeo was upset by a leak of a speech intended to coincide with the report’s planned release in August and that it prompted him to cancel the rollout.
The same day the report was released, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, announced $185 million in aid to Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh and those who remain in Myanmar. Haley announced on Oct. 9 that she would be resigning from her post by the end of the year.
Some congressional aides attributed the change of State Department thinking to national security adviser John Bolton’s hard- line opposition to the International Criminal Court. The United States is among several dozen nations, including China, India and Israel, that do not recognize the ICC, based in The Hague.
If the United States had formally accused Myanmar of crimes against humanity, Washington would have come under pressure to refer the allegations to the ICC through a U.N. Security Council resolution.
“It would’ve put the administration in an awkward position, that it’s okay for the ICC to go after Burma but not the United States,” said a congressional aide, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss government deliberations. Myanmar is also known as Burma.
A State Department spokesman denied that the United States had stumbled, pointing to Pompeo’s call for Myanmar to take “concrete steps” to investigate the human rights abuses chronicled in the U.S. and U.N. reports.
“The United States will continue to work with our allies and partners to help promote ... justice for victims, and [ensure] that those responsible for mass killings, gang rapes and other atrocities are held accountable,” the spokesman said.
Aung San Suu Kyi Stripped Of Another Honour: The International Community Must Focus On Solutions Not Punishments (The Organization for World Peace) By Haylee Isaacs November 16, 2018
Amnesty International has withdrawn their ‘Ambassador of Conscience’ honour from Aung San Suu Kyi, expressing that they “could no longer justify her status as an Ambassador of Conscience” when she “no longer represents a symbol of hope, courage and the undying defence of human rights.” The withdrawal follows a number of organizations rescinding its awards from Suu Kyi including the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and numerous awards from universities. Meanwhile, the Rohingya community continue to overcrowd in gruelling conditions within Bangladesh refugee camps with inadequate food, water and sanitation services with no end in sight.
Aung San Suu Kyi was once the face of hope for Myanmar but has faced international condemnation for not speaking or taking action against the Myanmar military performing what many accept to be crimes against humanity. Myanmar has been the focus of human rights concerns with an increase in campaigns of ethnic-based violence that forced an estimated 700,000 Rohingya Muslims to flee into neighbouring nations, resulting in an estimated 25,000 deaths. The Rohingya have been rendered stateless by the Myanmar government for decades and aren’t even considered a Myanmar minority. The Myanmar Times reported they are frequently referred to as ‘Bengalis’ and that they are subject to an apartheid “more appalling than South Africa’s.”
The Rohingya refugee crisis has led to increasing regional pressure to house increasing numbers of displaced persons. Unicef reports that Bangladesh has received more than half a million Rohingya as of April 2018; more than half of them children. This has resulted in intense strain on Bangladesh’s already lacking resources. They received more than $480 million in funding to help with the crisis but these are short term solutions. Bangladesh recently announced they want to send these asylum seekers back to Myanmar where they are not yet safe from harm. To return to Myanmar as a Rohingya Muslim is considered a death sentence. The Guardian reported that the announcement has re-ignited fear in the refugee camps, with some choosing to flee to avoid repatriation while others are so terrified of returning that they attempt suicide.
International tribunals and judicial systems through international institutions are effective as both deterrent and punitive measures; examples lie within Yugoslavia and Rwanda. Nothing can repair the damage that leaders have done or allowed to occur, but past cases have taught us that post-conflict punitive measures in their respective courts have led to some amount of justice. The latest U.N. report stated that the Rohingya crisis was “textbook ethnic cleansing.” It also went so far as to name six senior military figures as suspects to the war crimes, giving the United Nations a strong case for I.C.C. prosecution.
Withdrawal of honours sends a signal to recipients that they have not upheld the expectation that the international community has of them, but punishing Suu Kyi brings little positive improvement to Myanmar’s current situation. The international community must remember there are lives at stake amongst a distressing lack of basic rights. Rohingya citizens have been trapped in a brutal system of limited healthcare and apartheid for many years. Protection, reconciliation and constitutional reform must be the priority.
Myanmar police shoot, injure four in raid on Rohingya camp: witness (Reuters) By Shoon Naing November 18, 2018
Myanmar police shot and injured four Rohingya Muslims on Sunday, after detaining two men accused of smuggling people out of a camp for displaced people in western Rakhine state, a witness and police told Reuters.
Some 20 police entered Ah Nauk Ye camp, about 15 km (9 miles) east of the state capital Sittwe on Sunday morning, apprehending the two men accused of owning a boat used in an attempt to smuggle 106 Rohingya out of the country on Friday.
The rickety vessel, which carried 25 children among its passengers, had been bound for Malaysia when authorities stopped it south of Yangon, detaining those on board. The incident, and similar recent boat departures, have raised fears of a fresh wave of dangerous voyages after a 2015 regional crackdown on people smugglers.
Maung Maung Aye, a 27-year-old Rohingya Muslim from the camp who witnessed the shooting, told Reuters four people were injured in the incident, with two of them in serious condition.
“People from the camp went out to look and police shot at people,” he told Reuters by phone.
Police said the Rohingya surrounded them with swords and threw stones at them, injuring some officers.
“I heard that Bengali from the camp tried to grab the arrested people back from the police and police had to fire warning shots. I heard some Bengali got injured. I don’t know the details,” said police inspector Than Htay from a nearby police station.
Many people in Myanmar call the Rohingya “Bengali,” implying they are interlopers from Bangladesh.
Maung Maung Aye disputed that version of events. He said the Rohingya did not attack the police or try to grab the arrested men. He said police fired at residents and not into the sky.
Myanmar government spokesman Zaw Htay did not answer calls seeking comment.
Tens of thousands of Rohingya have been confined to camps outside Sittwe since violence swept Rakhine in 2012. They are denied free movement, access to decent healthcare and education.
In August last year, Solidarites International, an international aid group, warned the conditions at Ah Nauk Ye, home to more than 4,000 Rohingya, were severe.
It said the “natural environment” at the camp was “unsuitable to human settlement” and warned of water shortages, poor access to livelihood opportunities and communal violence.
For years, the Rohingya have boarded boats organized by smugglers in the dry months between November and March, when the sea is calm. The perilous journey to Thailand or Malaysia, often undertaken in overcrowded vessels, has cost many lives.
Fashion show canceled amid 'racist' ad uproar
The 106 Rohingya detained off Yangon on Friday were put on a navy ship destined for the Rakhine camps on Sunday.
More than 700,000 Rohingya fled a brutal army crackdown in the northern part of Rakhine last year, according to U.N. agencies. U.N. investigators have accused the Myanmar army of “genocidal intent” and ethnic cleansing.
Myanmar denies the allegations genocide, saying it was battling terrorists. Attacks by Rohingya insurgents preceded the army’s crackdown that began in late August 2017.
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AMERICAS
North & Central America
International court says it is undeterred after Bolton threatens U.S. sanctions (Reuters) November 9, 2018
The International Criminal Court said on Tuesday it would "continue to do its work undeterred" a day after U.S. National Security Adviser John Bolton threatened sanctions if the tribunal investigated U.S. activities in Afghanistan.
The Hague-based court said in a statement it was an independent and impartial institution with the backing of 123 countries.
"The ICC, as a court of law, will continue to do its work undeterred, in accordance with those principles and the overarching idea of the rule of law," it said.
ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda said last year there was a “reasonable basis to believe” war crimes and crimes against humanity were committed in Afghanistan and that all sides in the conflict would be examined, including members of the U.S. armed forces and Central Intelligence Agency.
Bolton said on Monday that if such an investigation was launched, the Trump administration would consider banning ICC judges and prosecutors from entering the United States, sanctioning funds they have there and prosecuting them in U.S. courts.
The United States did not ratify the Rome treaty that established the ICC during the presidency of Republican George W. Bush. Instead, it adopted the American Services-Members' Protection Act, nicknamed the Hague Invasion Act because it authorised the use of any means necessary to free U.S. personnel held by the court. (Reporting by Anthony Deutsch Editing by Andrew Heavens)
France, a major advocate of the ICC, said the institution should be left to do its work without hindrance.
“France, with its European partners, supports the International Criminal Court, both in its budgetary contribution and in its cooperation with it,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Agnes von der Muhll said in a statement.
“The court must be able to act and exercise its prerogatives without hindrance, independently and impartially, within the legal framework defined by the Rome Statute,” it said.
U.S. halting refueling of Saudi-led coalition aircraft in Yemen’s war (Reuters) By Phil Stewart November 9, 2018
The United States is halting refueling of aircraft from the Saudi-led coalition engaged in Yemen, the United States and Saudi Arabia said on Friday, ending one of the most divisive aspects of U.S. assistance to the Saudi war effort.
Saudi Arabia, in a statement released by its embassy in Washington, said it had decided to request an end to U.S. aerial refueling for its operations in Yemen because it could now handle it by itself.
U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis backed the decision and said the U.S. government was consulted. The move comes at a time of international outrage over the murder of U.S.-based Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, and after Democratic and Republican lawmakers threatened to take action in Congress next week over the refueling operations.
Critics of the Saudi campaign - including Democrats who won control of the House of Representatives in elections on Tuesday - have long questioned U.S. involvement in the war, which has killed more than 10,000 people, displaced more than 2 million and led to widespread famine in Yemen since it began in 2015.
“I’ve been calling for this for over three years,” said Representative Ted Lieu, a Democrat from California.
“We shouldn’t be supporting coalition war crimes and I look forward to continuing to scrutinize the U.S.’s role in Yemen when we’re in the majority next Congress.”
Even as President Donald Trump’s administration has condemned Khashoggi’s murder, the White House has sought to preserve its relationship with Saudi Arabia.
A coordinated decision by Washington and Riyadh to halt the refueling could be an attempt by both countries to forestall further action by Congress.
Senators Todd Young, a Republican, and Jeanne Shaheen, a Democrat, had warned the Trump administration was running out of time to act.
“If the administration does not take immediate steps... we are prepared to take additional action when the Senate comes back into session,” Young and Shaheen said.
CONTINUING U.S. SUPPORT
Beyond refueling, the United States provides limited intelligence support to the Saudi-led coalition and sells it weaponry used in Yemen’s war.
Mattis said the United States would play a continuing role to help the Saudi-led coalition and Yemeni forces minimize civilian casualties and expand humanitarian efforts.
He also suggested plans to build up Yemeni troops.
“The U.S. and the Coalition are planning to collaborate on building up legitimate Yemeni forces to defend the Yemeni people, secure their country’s borders, and contribute to counter Al Qaeda and ISIS efforts in Yemen and the region,” Mattis said in a statement.
Earlier this year, Mattis had defended U.S. military support to Saudi-led coalition forces in Yemen, when lawmakers weighed forcing the Pentagon to end Washington’s involvement.
Mattis argued that halting U.S. military support could increase civilian casualties, since U.S. refueling had given pilots more time to select their targets. He told them cutting off support could jeopardize cooperation on counter-terrorism and reduce American influence with Saudi Arabia.
Mattis also argued it would embolden the Iran-aligned Houthi rebels, who have fired missiles at Saudi Arabia and targeted commercial and military vessels off Yemen’s coast.
Still, a halt to refueling could by itself have little practical effect on the war. U.S. officials told Reuters only a fifth of Saudi-led coalition aircraft require in-air refueling from the United States.
In recent weeks, Mattis has appeared to voice a growing sense of urgency toward ending the conflict. At the end of October, Mattis joined U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in calling for a ceasefire.
United Nations Yemen envoy Martin Griffiths is aiming to convene the country’s warring parties for peace talks by the end of the year.
Saudi Arabia, in its statement, said its coalition was hopeful that U.N.-sponsored negotiations would lead to a negotiated settlement and “an end to the aggression by the Iranian backed Houthi militias’ against the Yemeni people and countries in the region.”
Decorated Navy SEAL is accused of war crimes in Iraq (The New York Times) By Dave Phillipps November 15, 2018 Edward Gallagher was something special, even by the punishing standards of the Navy SEALs. Both a lifesaving medic and a crack sniper, he was repeatedly decorated for valor and for coolheaded leadership during 19 years of combat deployments. After his latest tour, fighting Islamic State militants in Iraq, he was named the top platoon leader in SEAL Team 7 and nominated for the Silver Star, the military’s third- highest honor.
But now, less than a year later, Special Operations Chief Gallagher, 39, is locked in the brig, facing charges that during that same deployment — his eighth — he shot indiscriminately at civilians, killed a teenage Islamic State fighter with a handmade custom blade, and then performed his re-enlistment ceremony posing with the teenager’s bloody corpse in front of an American flag.
The Navy has charged Chief Gallagher with premeditated murder, attempted murder and nearly a dozen other offenses, including obstruction of justice and bringing “discredit upon the armed forces.” If he is convicted, he could spend the rest of his life in prison.
Chief Gallagher denies all the charges.
The case has sent waves through the secretive world of the SEALs, who prefer to operate behind the headlines in an atmosphere of silent professionalism. And the case may widen as the investigation implicates other SEALs who did not report what they knew. A lieutenant has already been charged.
The chief’s arrest has also shaken his family, who cannot square the list of war crimes with the sailor they have long known.
“This is not who Eddie is,” his wife, Andrea Gallagher, said in an interview. “He is a lifesaver. He is that guy who runs into the burning building when other people are running out.”
In a two-day preliminary hearing at Naval Base San Diego that concluded Thursday, prosecutors presented accounts from several other SEALs in Chief Gallagher’s platoon describing his behavior as reckless and bloodthirsty. They said he fired into civilian crowds, gunned down a girl walking along a riverbank and an old man carrying a water jug, and threatened to kill fellow SEALs if they reported his actions.
Some platoon members were so distraught by the chief’s actions, investigators said, that they tampered with his sniper rifle to make it less accurate, and fired warning shots to scare away civilians before the chief had a chance to shoot them.
“They said they spent more time protecting civilians than they did fighting ISIS,” Special Agent Joe Warpinski of the Naval Criminal Investigative Service told the military court.
Chief Gallagher sat in the courtroom in dress uniform during the hearing, his face deeply creased and tanned from years of combat duty. He did not testify.
His lawyer, Phillip Stackhouse, said the charges were baseless. He said the only evidence that the chief had killed anyone came from accounts offered by a few SEALs who were disgruntled because they could not meet their leader’s demanding standards.
“I promise you, we will call many more SEALs who will say none of his ever happened,” Mr. Stackhouse said.
The purpose of the hearing, known as an Article 32 hearing, was to determine whether the case should proceed to a trial. Both sides said they believe it will, probably in 2019.
The son of a West Point graduate and career Army officer, Chief Gallagher enlisted in the Navy as a medic in 1999 and deployed to Iraq, attached to a Marine infantry unit. Then he decided to become a SEAL, and was one of the few Navy medics ever to complete the Marines’ demanding scout sniper school. He finished his SEAL training in 2004.
His combination of skills put him in high demand. He deployed frequently with different teams, steadily advanced in rank, and built a record studded with awards for exemplary conduct and valor, braving fire to kill enemies and save friends in Iraq and Afghanistan.
His eighth deployment, from February to September 2017, was to Mosul, Iraq. Some of the SEALs who served under him told investigators that at first they were excited to be led by someone with Chief Gallagher’s reputation, but they soon started to see him as unhinged. He fired his rifle about ten times as often as other snipers, they said, even at times when there seemed to be no targets.
“Every single sniper in the platoon said he was not a good sniper,” Agent Warpinski told the court. The chief was hard on his platoon, investigators said, berating and punishing SEALs who he thought were not aggressive enough.
Chief Gallagher’s lawyers said that hard feelings in the platoon over his actions had led some SEALs to concoct stories in the hope of forcing him from command.
In May 2017, Iraqi forces captured an enemy fighter who had been wounded in an airstrike. Video images show the bleeding fighter, who was thought to be between 12 and 17, being brought to the SEAL platoon on the hood of a truck, and Chief Gallagher and others cutting away his clothing to give medical aid.
Photos of the fighter viewed by The New York Times appeared to show that medics had put tubes used to treat a collapsed lung in his side and cut an emergency airway in his throat.
Navy investigators said that one SEAL medic was kneeling over the fighter’s head, treating him, when Chief Gallagher walked up and, without saying a word, took out a handmade knife and stabbed the teenager several times in the neck and side.
Investigators said two other SEALs gave similar accounts.
Members of the platoon then posed for photos with Chief Gallagher as he held the teenager’s head up by the hair with one hand, and held his knife in the other. Photos show Chief Gallagher then raising his right hand to perform a re-enlistment ceremony over the dead body, while another SEAL member holds an American flag.
Soon after the episode, investigators said, Chief Gallagher texted a photo of the body to a fellow SEAL member with the message, “I got him with my hunting knife.”
Mr. Stackhouse, the defense lawyer, said the teenager had probably died of the serious injuries he suffered in the airstrike, and that no evidence had been offered showing any stab wounds. As for the photos taken afterward, posing with the body, Mr. Stackhouse said, “these types of pictures are not unique, they’ve been in every Iraq case I’ve ever done.”
Investigators say several SEALs in the platoon spoke to commanders about the episode, but that no action was taken. Some of them reported it to higher leadership in December 2017, and again in April, when a criminal investigation was opened.
In September, when the Navy became aware of what prosecutors said were efforts by the chief to intimidate witnesses, he was arrested and put in pretrial confinement.
In the hearing Thursday, a Navy prosecutor, Chris Czaplak, said the chief had done damage beyond murder.
“Does the public still believe we are the good guys, because Chief Gallagher decided to act like the monster the terrorists accuse us of being?” he said. “He handed ISIS propaganda manna from heaven. His actions are everything ISIS says we are.”
South America
A Bullet to the Head Reignites Chile's Oldest Conflict (Bloomberg) By Laura Millan Lombrana November 19, 2018
The killing of a young man by police in southern Chile last week has reignited a centuries-old conflict with the country’s indigenous Mapuche population, threatening to undermine support for billionaire President Sebastian Pinera.
Militarized police shot Camilo Catrillanca through the head as he drove a tractor near the village of Ercilla following reports of a violent car theft nearby. The government later said a police officer had destroyed video evidence of the incident.
The killing came eight months after Pinera returned to power on a platform that included imposing law and order on the Araucania region that has seen a wave of arson attacks, many against forestry companies such as CMPC SA and Empresas Copec SA. The Mapuches, who didn’t lose their independence until the 1880s, are demanding greater autonomy. Pinera’s creation of a special militarized police unit, dubbed by local media as the Jungle Command, is now threatening to backfire, with Catrillanca’s death triggering protests as far away as Santiago. "This death symbolizes the failure of the government’s plan for Araucania," said Kenneth Bunker, a Chilean political analyst and a visiting professor at Sapienza University in Rome. "Mistakes such as this one allow the opposition to come together as one against the government and that’s what’s happening right now -- the government will be in trouble."
Chile’s governing coalition of four conservative parties lacks a majority in the House of Deputies or the Senate, forcing Pinera to negotiate with center and left-wing parties if he wants to fulfill key election promises such as reforming the pensions system, improving healthcare --and bringing peace to Araucania.
Jungle Command
"Pinera’s approach to conflicts in Chile by being tough on crime has a cost," Bunker said. "The government is giving the opposition reasons to not negotiate because no one wants to talk with a government that is not popular."
Pinera’s approval rating fell to 41 percent last week, the lowest since his second term began in March, according to a weekly survey by Cadem released Monday.
Created in June, the Jungle Command is equipped with bullet-proof jackets, drones and high-tech communications systems. The group was trained in Colombia on new techniques to combat terrorism, according to a statement by the presidency.
"I hope this is a start of a new era in this beautiful region," Pinera said in June.
After Catrillanca’s death, the president tweeted that the incident was "unfortunate," while adding that police have "a duty to fight crime, and the right to defend themselves when they are attacked." Since then, more revelations of police misconduct have come to light and the United Nations, Amnesty International and Chile’s Human Rights Institute have called for a thorough investigation.
Risk jail or go hungry. Venezuelans working abroad face stark choices. (Miami Herald) By Marta Oliver Craviotto and Jim Wyss November 19, 2018
Unable to get a passport in his native Venezuela and fearing for his life, Alex hopped an overcrowded boat and had himself smuggled onto the tiny island of Trinidad earlier this year, a quick 20-mile trip.
He applied for asylum, but about a month into his stay he was rushed to the hospital with malaria. When he was released from the clinic after 16 days, he found immigration officials waiting for him.
Although the 22-year-old barber believed that his asylum application offered a modicum of protection, he was charged with entering the country illegally and deported to Venezuela in April along with 81 other Venezuelans.
Alex, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he is evading authorities, said life in Venezuela was impossible.
“I can’t stay where I live because they know I’m a member of the opposition and many of my friends have been killed,” he said.
About a month ago, with no other options, he returned to Trinidad and Tobago, where he has remained holed up on a farm, desperate for work but afraid to leave for fear of getting picked up by police.
Trinidad and Tobago is now home to more than 40,000 Venezuelans, many of whom entered the country out of desperation and without documents. While more than 7,000 have applied for asylum or refugee status, they’ve found that the designation doesn’t make them legal residents. They still risk being jailed for working without permission or not having the proper documents.
Last week, 78 Cuban migrants — many of them asylum seekers — were detained on charges of blocking the sidewalk as they protested for better conditions outside of the United Nations building in Port of Spain.
“I’m always scared of the police here,” said a recent Venezuelan immigrant named Mario, who is an asylum seeker and also spoke to the Miami Herald only if he could remain anonymous. “I’m scared to go to the doctor. I can’t go to the police if something happens to me. I can’t even open a bank account.”
In September, the government reported that there were 118 people at the Immigration Detention Center west of Port of Spain — about 75 percent of them there for entering the country illegally — and almost all of them Venezuelan. But activists say they really don’t know how many people are detained at any given time. Living Water Community, a local nonprofit that works with the U.N. to register asylum seekers, says it hasn’t been given unfettered access to the Immigration Detention Center since 2014. Venezuela’s economic, social and political chaos has forced more than three million people to flee their country in recent years. And while Venezuelans are now found in almost every nation in Latin America and the Caribbean, they’re discovering no two situations are alike.
While migrants are sometimes offered temporary work permits in Colombia, Peru and Chile, some small nations and territories of the Caribbean have been much less welcoming.
On the Dutch island of Curacao, island officials took over the process of registering asylum seekers and refugees in July 2017. Since then, an Amnesty International report found the government had virtually quit approving asylum requests and had stepped up deportations. In 2017, the government repatriated 1,203 Venezuelans, and an additional 386 were deported during the first four months of 2018 — often without the right to seek protection. The White House has also floated the idea of denying asylum to those who enter the United States illegally.
The backlash comes as some small islands fear being flooded by Venezuelans. In Curacao, 16 percent of the population is now Venezuelan. In Aruba, Venezuelans represent 15 percent, and in Trinidad and Tobago, they make up 3 percent of the population, according to the latest U.N. figures.
Trinidad and Tobago’s Ministry of National Security and its immigration and police departments — all of which oversee different aspects of immigration — declined to be interviewed.
But opposition lawmaker Rodney Charles said it’s clear that the current administration is deeply conflicted. Trinidad sits less than 15 miles from Venezuela at its closest point, and has strong economic ties with President Nicolás Maduro’s administration. He said there are fears that if Trinidad openly acknowledges asylum and refugee cases, “it will alienate the Maduro government.”
And yet there’s also the real fear that the island “might be overwhelmed” by Venezuelan migrants, he said.
“We do not have a well-thought-out foreign policy, and our immigration policy is not reflective of our current circumstances,” he said. “The government’s approach is to put its head in the sand and hope things will disappear.”
In the meantime, Venezuelans living in Trinidad and Tobago say they feel stuck in a place where they may have the right to exist but not the right to truly live. And they fear detention and deportation every time they leave home.
Andrea, a 27-year-old mother of two from Valencia, Venezuela, said she knew she had to leave her country when her biweekly paycheck from her job in a grocery store would only buy two days’ worth of food amid rampant hyperinflation. Like the other migrants, she boarded an overcrowded boat and took the 40-minute trip to southern Trinidad.
She spent two months working illegally on a farm for about $20 a day before one of the workers turned her and others over to the police. Even though she had applied for asylum, she claims she was sent to the Immigration Detention Center, and then to prison for three months on charges of entering the country illegally.
At the prison, she says she was housed with murderers and drug traffickers. “It’s a nasty, disgusting place that’s not fit for human life,” she said. She was eventually transferred back to the immigration center for another two months and is now facing deportation, but that action has been put on hold due to her asylum status.
In April, when Trinidad and Tobago deported the 82 Venezuelans, including some applying for asylum, the U.N. Refugee Agency called it of “grave concern” and asked the country to “abide by its international obligations.” Since then, advocates say the nation has refrained from mass deportation of asylum seekers — even though many migrants worry it’s a real possibility.
Facing these hardships, many of the Venezuelans blame the UNHCR — the U.N.’s refugee agency — and other nonprofits for processing their asylum claim but not helping guarantee their rights. But the agencies point out that they’re entirely dependent on the host country.
“The fact that a person or a family has been forced to flee their own homeland and find themselves in another country — not of their choosing but to remain alive — should not be something that penalizes them from being able to regain possession of their lives and have a basic modicum of human dignity,” said Chris Boian, a spokesman with UNHCR. “This is what our organization talks about every day with governments around the world.”
Given the restrictions in Trinidad and Tobago, many would like to be resettled in a third country where they can legally work. But the reality is that less than 1 percent of refugees and asylum seekers ever qualify for resettlement, due to the limited number of slots provided by receiving countries.
“The essential dichotomy is how to help people who have been forcibly displaced and are in another country find solutions that are acceptable to and are, above all, workable for to the countries that are hosting the refugees,” Boian said. “And no two situations are alike.”
Mario, one of the asylum seekers, said in many ways, his life in Trinidad mirrors what he left behind.
“In Venezuela I was always worried about getting arrested by the SEBIN [political police], and here I’m worried about getting arrested by the police,” he said. “The difference here is that if you work you can make enough to eat, and that’s not possible in Venezuela.”
Man, 19, says he survived secret extrajudicial killing in Venezuela (Local 10) By Cody Weddle and Andrea Torres November 20, 2018
Venezuelans report police officers killed seven young men during a recent secret extrajudicial execution at a former office building that was converted into apartments for the poor in downtown Caracas.
A dozen police officers from a special unit of the national police were looking for suspects involved on a police shooting on Monday. The officers were going door to door ordering women and children to stay inside and taking some men downstairs, witnesses said.
The men were blindfolded and their hands were tied.
The officers asked the men to raise their hands if they had a criminal record. Witnesses said those who raised their hands were taken back upstairs. A shooting followed. The seven were shot in the chest. The police department reported the officers were responding to shots fired.
Miguel Pico said the shots he heard were clearly not part of a shoot out. Lisbeth Mijares agrees. Her brother was among the seven killed.
"It was never a shootout because all of the men were downstairs with their hands tied," Mijares said.
A 19-year-old man, who was helping to make plantain chips when officers arrived, said he managed to escape to a parking lot, and when police officers found him they threatened to kill him should he not hang over something valuable.
"I remembered the shoes. I went upstairs. I opened the suitcase and just thanked God," the man who did not want to be identified said.
Many of the neighbors said many of the witnesses have moved out for fear of reprisal.
Earlier this year, Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein, the United Nations human rights chief, called for an internal investigation into human rights violations during crime-fighting operations in poor neighborhoods conducted without arrest warrants and ending in the extrajudicial killings of young men.
"The failure to hold security forces accountable for such serious human rights violations suggests that the rule of law is virtually absent in Venezuela," he said. "The impunity must end."
The United Nations released a report saying Luisa Ortega Diaz, Venezuela's former attorney general, recorded the killing of 505 people by security forces during crime-fighting operations and was investigating some 357 security officers for crime- related killings.
United Nations investigators cited "credible, shocking" accounts, and a trend of officers who were reportedly not afraid to tamper with a scene to make it appear as if there was an exchange of fire.
The Venezuelan government hasn't released statistics on extrajudicial killings. According to the U.S. State Department killings committed by police in Venezuela are often classified as "resistance to authority," and prosecutions often resulted in light sentences and convictions were often overturned on appeal.
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One year later, Venezuela still holding 5 US 'hostages' (Washington Examiner) By Steven Nelson November 18, 2018
Just days before Thanksgiving last year, a group of longtime Houston residents landed in South America for a meeting about Citgo, the U.S.-based, Venezuela- owned oil company where they worked. But the meeting was a ruse.
Instead of discussing business, the company executives were fired, arrested, and thrown in jail two days before planned family gatherings, accused of negotiating a loan on poor terms.
One year later, the deposed executives — including five naturalized American citizens — remain in custody as Venezuela’s authoritarian government presides over an economic collapse and ever-worsening relations with the Trump administration.
Defenders view the group's alleged crime as flimsy pretext for leadership change at Citgo, where the men were replaced by executives believed to be closer to socialist President Nicolas Maduro. Among them are CEO Asdrubal Chavez, a cousin of Maduro's mentor and predecessor, Hugo Chavez.
In prison, the situation is bleak, according to people familiar with the men’s little-reported detention. Ordinary Venezuelans are losing weight due to food scarcity, and behind bars one of the U.S. captives lost 50 pounds in six months, a source told the Washington Examiner earlier this year.
“We’ve gotten no more information about the situation for a while and are only notified about whether or not food can be dropped off on a weekend,” said one family member, who asked not to be named.
“I don’t believe there is a strategy about keeping everything low-profile, rather I think we are all scared,” the relative said. “At this point in time, I know as much about the situation as you do. … Right now, I can only hope and pray for an end.”
The State Department declined to comment on specific cases, but an official told the Washington Examiner that "in some cases, we have difficulties obtaining access to detained individuals in Venezuela, particularly those with dual citizenship."
"The U.S. Department of State and our embassies and consulates abroad have no greater responsibility than the protection of U.S. citizens overseas,” the official said. “We also call for the Venezuelan government to ensure that all U.S. citizens detained in Venezuela, including dual-nationals, are afforded a swift, fair, and transparent judicial process."
In May, Venezuela released one American detainee, former Mormon missionary Joshua Holt, who was held on weapon charges, after high-profile advocacy from politicians including Rep. Mia Love, R-Utah, Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., and President Trump. But most articles on Holt’s release didn't mention the Citgo leaders’ incarceration.
Despite the relative obscurity of the detentions, a senior Trump administration official said after being asked on a White House conference call in March that the men were being used as "hostages."
“The individuals that are being held in Venezuela, whether dual U.S.-Venezuelan citizens from the Citgo company or the U.S. citizen Joshua Holt, are being held from our perspective illegally, illegitimately by the government of Venezuela,” the official said. "These individuals are bargaining chips that the Maduro dictatorship is using as hostages, and we are still calling for them to be released.”
That official did not respond to a request for comment, and the White House's National Security Council declined to comment.
The American detainees are Citgo’s former vice president for refining Tomeu Vadell, former vice president for supply Jorge Toledo, former vice president for shared services Jose Luis Zambrano, former Corpus Christi refinery director Alirio Zambrano, and former head of public affairs Gustavo Cardenas.
It's unclear if other Americans are held in Venezuela, but a current State Department travel advisory warns: "Security forces have arbitrarily detained U.S. citizens for long periods. The U.S. Embassy may not be notified of the detention of a U.S. citizen, and consular access to detainees may be denied or severely delayed."
As president, Trump has made a point of winning freedom for Americans abroad, with successes ranging from hostile North Korea to allied Egypt. But cases with louder advocates and without dual citizenship appear to have had a better shot.
Recently, Turkey released detained pastor Andrew Brunson, held on dubious links to a coup attempt, after Trump applied sanctions to government ministers, following bipartisan agitation from politicians including Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire and Sam Brownback, the former Republican governor and senator from Kansas.
Trump thanked Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, but did not publicly request by name the release of other Americans held on similar charges, including NASA scientist Serkan Golge, who has dual citizenship and was sentenced to 7.5 years in prison in February.
American politicians working on behalf of the five U.S. citizens in Venezuela won't publicly discuss the case in an apparent nod to family wishes, contributing to near-invisibility for the men.
A spokesperson for Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., who has advocated for the families, declined to comment. A spokeswoman for Rep. Pete Olson, R-Texas, who has taken a leadership role supporting the families, many of them constituents, ignored multiple requests for comment.
A Houston attorney who represents some family members declined to comment and asked that this article not mention she was contacted.
The Venezuelan embassy in Washington did not provide a statement on the case, nor did Citgo, which is 50.1 percent owned by bondholders of the Venezuelan state oil company Petroleos de Venezuela. Citgo is 49.9 percent held by Russian oil company Rosneft.
There are some signs of U.S. government action against the new Citgo leadership, though it’s unclear if that action is directly linked to the detentions. Last year, before the arrests, the U.S. adopted rules to prevent Maduro from using Citgo to evade sanctions. And in July, the U.S. canceled the visa of Citgo CEO Chavez, though it's unclear why.
One person familiar with the company said there’s a bigger-picture reason for concern, arguing the corporate coup is directly related to Maduro’s desire to control Citgo.
“This is not a meatpacking company — this is a company that has three major refineries in the United States and a lot of national security assets,” they said. “That should be the story.”
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TOPICS
Truth and Reconciliation Commission
PYJ Describes TRC Report as ‘Fraudulent’ (Liberian Daily Observer) By David S. Menjor November 8, 2018
Senator Prince Y. Johnson (PYJ) has again described the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s report as a fraudulent political instrument only intended to nail him and a few others who were deeply involved in the civil war in Liberia.
In a live video conversation with Mac Jabateh at his (PYJ’s) church in Paynesville recently, Johnson said Jerome Verdier’s TRC report is full of contradictions and it is not worth being taken seriously.
Jabateh is a social media political commentator who operates Mac Jabateh Political and Social Forum on Facebook.
“Verdier wanted to nail me but God confused him. He who called me a disciplinary leader during the war was the same person who accused me of killing people of a whole community. His TRC’s report showed that my rebel group, Independent National Patriotic Front of Liberia (INPFL) was a disciplined force because of my able leadership,” he said.
PYJ said it is mockery for the same TRC report which said earlier that he, Johnson, was a good man to again say he committed crimes against humanity and, as such, he should be tried by a tribunal.
He challenged TRC chairman Cllr. Jerome Verdier to bring forward proof showing crimes that he committed anywhere in the country as alleged by many who claimed to be disenchanted over the delay by the government to implement the recommendations of the TRC which calls for the establishment of a tribunal to try him and others linked to war crimes during the Liberian civil war.
“I am not afraid because I know I am a free man and will remain a free man,” he boasted.
He said when the National Patriotic Front of Liberia’s (NPFL) leader, Charles Taylor became President of the country he granted amnesty to all those who were involved in the war.
“There are two laws. One which was passed by the 51st Legislature says that all those who participated in the war from 1990 to 2003 are to be granted amnesty. The other law is found in the 1986 Constitution. It has granted amnesty to the People’s Redemption guys who perpetrated crimes against our people. They killed people at the Lutheran Church in Sinkor. So I am a free man as far as I am concerned,” he said.
Although his claim of a law allegedly passed by the 51st Legislature granting amnesty to anyone who participated in the war could not be confirmed by the Daily Observer, Article 97 of the 1986 Revised Constitution states that “No executive, legislative, judicial or administrative action taken by the People’s Redemption Council or by any persons, whether military or civilian, in the name of that Council pursuant to any of its decrees shall be questioned in any proceedings whatsoever.”
The Article continues, “And, accordingly, it shall not be lawful for any court or other tribunal to make any order or grant any remedy or relief in respect or any such act.”
PYJ said Liberian taxpayers paid their money for the formation of the TRC in order to solicit views from across the fifteen political subdivisions but, after its tour, the TRC failed to provide the exact numerical ratio between those in favor of the establishment of a tribunal for the adjudication of war crimes and others who said there is a need for reconciliation and sustenance of peace.
“The Act creating the TRC says that the alleged perpetrators of crimes and alleged victims should meet face to face in order to authenticate facts but that did not happen. Cllr. Pearl Brown Bull, who was one of the commissioners of the TRC, got vexed with the idea and took the matter to the Supreme Court but, at the end, the Supreme Court said the TRC was not a court to do that,” he noted.
He laughed out why the same TRC Report on the war praised him so much for helping a lot of people to survive during the war but also went on to claim that he committed atrocities against other people.
“The documents I showed you, I have not shown them to any other journalist. The reason is that most of them are not objective in their reporting, he alleged. “I will be a free man if I take these documents to any war crimes court.”
PYJ said he wrote the TRC at some point in time questioning its report on him, which he termed as a fraudulent report, but no reply came his way from the Commission.
“I wrote them and asked as to whether they understood what they were saying in their own report. How can you say I am a disciplinarian but at the same time refer to me as a killer,” he asked.
When asked to give his opinion on the Liberia Council of Churches’ (LCC) position which calls for national healing through reconciliation and sustainability of peace, PYJ said the LCC is composed of sound minded persons who love the country and are interested in its forward march.
He said he has received several communications from Cllr. Verdier in which he descended on two of the TRC Commissioners, Massa Washington and John H. T. Stewart for challenging his decisions in which he (Verdier) proceeded wrongly.
“The American advisor to the TRC was even vexed with Verdier for the many mistakes he made. In fact, the white man shared with me a couple of his letters to Verdier, with one of them being his letter of resignation from his service at the Commission due to the too many irregularities he found. I get all of the documents in my possession,” he claimed.
He boasted that he is a fair man and truly worship God in whom he solely relies on all his assistance in times of joy and difficulties.
“You cannot punish us and let the PRC people go free. They killed our people. They are responsible for the crisis. Therefore, we cannot bear any burden without the PRC people also in court because they too are responsible for the calamities the country suffered,” he said. Concerning the settlement of land disputes in Nimba, particularly between the Mandingo ethnic group and the Mano and Gio people (two dominant tribes in the county), Johnson said Musa Hassan Bility is to blame for the persistent land crisis between his kinsmen and other people in the county.
According to him, Businessman Bility became chairman of the committee set up by former President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf when he PYJ was in Nigeria at an ECOWAS function and was surprised that Bility’s push for the chairperson position was only because of money.
“You know the Bible says that money is the root of all evil. Bility who has more than fifteen land cases against him in Nimba took on the position of chairman on the very committee I served only because more than US$1,000,000 was set aside for the committee to work and settle the land crisis in the county,” he alleged.
“Musa Bility told me that he was selected by the Caucus. So in a meeting, I told him to step aside and allow me to serve as chairman but he refused. And since then nothing good has happened to put to rest the land conflicts there,” he said. PYJ said for Bility to be on the disputes resolution team is a conflict of interest.
“I asked to be the chairman because with me at the front we could be able to look into the matters appropriately and transparently,” he boasted.
Meanwhile, calls and a text message to Mr. Bility for his reaction to Sen. Johnson’s claims did not get a reply up to press time.
U. S. House of Reps Calls for Full Implementation of Liberia’s Truth & Reconciliation Recommendations (Front Page Africa) November 14, 2018
The U.S. House of Representatives has passed H. Res. 1055 to reaffirm strong U.S.- Liberia ties and call for full implementation of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s recommendations.
On the House floor prior to the vote, Chairman Ed Royce delivered the following remarks (as prepared for delivery):
“I rise in support of H. Res. 1055, which affirms the strong ties between the United States and Liberia and calls for full implementation of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission recommendations. I want to thank Reps. Donovan and Johnson for their work on this resolution.
During my time as Chairman of the Africa Subcommittee, we held hearings and passed legislation to bring attention to the brutal civil war in Liberia and Sierra Leone that killed 200,000 people and displaced more than 1 million – one of whom, who was also orphaned by this conflict, worked in my own office in Congress. We heard a young girl – no more than 10 years old – recount the atrocities she herself endured during the war, a gruesome illustration of the horrific and lasting impact this conflict had on the people of Liberia and Sierra Leone.
The Africa Subcommittee worked across party lines and alongside the international community and the people of Liberia to apprehend the notorious warlord Charles Taylor. Today, he remains behind bars.
In 2003, the Government of Liberia, rebel groups and political parties signed a comprehensive peace agreement. A Truth and Reconciliation Commission was created, which recommended the establishment of a war crimes tribunal to ensure justice for the people of Liberia.
Unfortunately, however, this war crimes tribunal has never been established, although Liberian government figures and activists alike have continued to call for one. This resolution repeats this important call.
We have turned the page on this horrific chapter in Liberia’s history. In March, the U.N. peacekeeping mission there officially ended. It is not often we get to celebrate the successful end of a mission, and we remember the 202 peacekeepers that lost their lives to bring peace and stability in the region.
President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf was democratically elected in 2005 and reelected in 2011 before stepping down from power. Last year, the country experienced its first democratic transition of power since November 1944. This further strengthened democratic institutions and set an important precedent for future leaders.
Much more needs to be done to crack down on corruption and create a more conducive environment for trade and economic investment. The government must ensure policies are in place to encourage businesses to invest, grow and create jobs.
But this resolution affirms the U.S. commitment to continue to partner with Liberia to support civil society, rule of law and good governance. We stand by the Liberian people in their continued efforts for a more prosperous and democratic Liberia. The United States and Liberia have shared close historical, political and economic ties over the course of a nearly 200-year relationship. The United States is home to an estimated 80,000 people of Liberian ancestry. This resolution commends this diaspora population, which has been instrumental in America’s efforts to build a peaceful, democratic and prosperous Liberia.”
U.S. House of Representatives Passes Resolution to Support War Crimes Court in Liberia (The Bush Chicken) By Gbatemah Senah November 15, 2018
Amid the growing call for the establishment of a war crimes court, the United States House of Representatives has passed a resolution to reaffirm strong U.S.-Liberia ties and call for full implementation of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s recommendations, including the establishment of a special war crimes tribunal.
Resolution 1055 was introduced in September by outgoing Representative, Daniel Donovan, Jr., a Republican lawmaker who represents New York’s Staten Island, which has one of the highest concentrations of Liberians in the U.S.
Donovan was defeated in the recent U.S. midterm election by Democrat Max Rose, who won 52.8 percent of the total votes.
The resolution was earlier passed in October by the House Committee on Foreign Affairs.
Prior to the votes after being introduced on the floor of the House of Representatives, the chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, Ed Royce, expressed his support for the resolution and praised Donovan and his co-sponsors for the resolution.
“I rise in support of H. Res. 1055, which affirms the strong ties between the United States and Liberia and calls for full implementation of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission recommendations,” Royce said.
He said during his time as chair of the Africa Subcommittee, the U.S. Congress conducted hearings and passed a legislation to bring attention to the civil war in Liberia and Sierra Leone that killed 200,000 people and displaced more than 1 million, including a staff currently serving in his office who became orphaned because of the war.
“We heard a young girl – no more than 10 years old – recount the atrocities she herself endured during the war, a gruesome illustration of the horrific and lasting impact this conflict had on the people of Liberia and Sierra Leone,” he explained.
He further told members of the U.S. House of Representatives that the work of his committee reached across party lines to lead to the arrest and trial of former president Charles Taylor, who is currently serving a jail sentence for aiding and abetting war in Sierra Leone.
Royce said despite the country’s current peace and democratic gains, much more is required to crack down on corruption and create a more conducive environment for trade and economic investment. He expressed the need for the government to ensure that policies are in place to encourage businesses to invest, grow, and create jobs.
“We stand by the Liberian people in their continued efforts for a more prosperous and democratic Liberia,” he noted.
The passage of the resolution by the U.S. House of Representatives came just two days after a group of activists under the banner of the Campaigners and Victims for Justice gathered to stage a peaceful protest calling for the establishment of a war crimes court in the country.
The protesters gathered in front of the U.S. embassy, the European Union embassy, the United Nations headquarters, and paraded along principal streets in Monrovia.
Since the Truth and Reconciliation Commission released its final report in 2008, recommending prosecution for war criminals, no one has been tried for war crimes in the country.
In July, the U.N. Human Rights Committee said the government should establish a process for justice, expressing concern that “none” of the alleged perpetrators had been brought to justice.
Recently, former U.S. ambassador-at-Large for global criminal justice, Stephen Rapp, and United Nations High Commission for Human Rights’ country representative to Liberia, Uchenna Emelonye, called for the establishment of a war crimes court in the country.
President Weah Concedes? (Liberian Daily Observer) November 15, 2018 Credible reports reaching this newspaper suggest that President George Weah has finally conceded to calls for the establishment of a war and economic crimes court for Liberia. According to sources, President Weah made the concession recently when attending a UNESCO conference in Paris, France. Attempts by this newspaper to contact Minister of State for Presidential Affairs to confirm the reports proved futile and a text message sent to his phone went unanswered.
This latest development comes in the wake of a National Justice Conference held here in Monrovia last week. The Justice Conference drew together a large number of local and international human rights organizations, actors and justice campaigners and it concluded with a call for unrelenting efforts and concrete action to advance the quest for accountability.
Meanwhile, the United States House of Representatives, in Resolution 1055 on Tuesday, November 13, affirmed strong United States-Liberia ties and US support for democratic principles, and calls for full implementation of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission recommendations, including the establishment of an Extraordinary Criminal Tribunal for Liberia.
The Resolution published on www.congress.gov, the U.S. House of Representatives said the bill was submitted by Rep. Daniel M. Donovan, Jr. (Republican, New York for himself and Rep. Henry C. Johnson, a Democrat from Georgia), and it was referred to the Committee on Foreign Affairs.
The Resolution affirmed strong United States-Liberia ties and support for democratic principles, and call for full implementation of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission recommendations, including the establishment of an Extraordinary Criminal Tribunal for Liberia.
The Resolution said the United States is home to an estimated 80,000 people of Liberian ancestry living in vibrant communities across the country, who have been instrumental in America’s efforts to build a peaceful, democratic, and prosperous Liberia.
“Liberia and the United States share close historical, political, and economic ties over the course of a nearly 200-year relationship. The people and Government of the United States have deep interest in Liberia’s democratic stability and post- conflict development noting that the civil war from 1991 to 2002 resulted in the death of over 200,000 people in Sierra Leone and Liberia, the internal displacement of over 1,000,000 persons, and horrific cases of amputations, mass rape, and human rights abuses conducted under the leadership of Charles Taylor,” the Resolution said.
The US House of Representatives said former Liberian President Charles Taylor was convicted through the Special Court for Sierra Leone for 11 different charges of war crimes, crimes against humanity, such as rape, sexual abuse, and slavery, and violation of international law, including the use of child soldiers and a comprehensive peace agreement was signed by the Government of Liberia, rebel groups, and political parties in 2003.
It said the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, as established under the 2003 comprehensive peace agreement, was formally created in 2005 with a mandate “to promote national peace, security, unity and reconciliation by investigating gross human rights violations and violations of humanitarian law, sexual violations, and economic crimes that occurred between January 1979 and October 2003.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission released a report in December 2008 recommending the establishment of an Extraordinary Criminal Tribunal for Liberia and listed individuals, corporations, and institutions recommended for further investigation and prosecution, among other recommendations (but) the Government of Liberia has not fully implemented the recommendations of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to date, including the establishment of an Extraordinary Criminal Tribunal.
The resolution said Liberia experienced its first democratic and peaceful transition of power since 1944 after President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf respected constitutional term limits and George Weah defeated Vice President Joseph Boakai, following a runoff during the 2017 Presidential elections
It said the United States congratulated the people of Liberia on the successful conclusion of the Presidential runoff election and recognized the important role Liberia’s Supreme Court, political parties, security forces, and civil society organizations played in holding a peaceful and transparent contest; and the United States Government and American citizens have invested in Liberia to rebuild and support democratic institutions, post-conflict recovery, economic growth, improved access to education and health care, professionalization of the country’s military and civilian security forces, and efforts to foster accountability and transparency of government institutions.
Therefore the US House of Representatives resolved upholds its commitment to maintain and foster the enduring relationship between the people and the Governments of the United States and Liberia; (and) urges the Government and people of Liberia to support the truth and reconciliation process through full implementation of the recommendations of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, including the establishment of an Extraordinary Criminal Tribunal as well as supports efforts by the Department of State and United States Agency for International Development to advance Liberian efforts toward national reconciliation through continued support for the rule of law, effective governance, and the robust role of civil society. in addition to Donovan, who recently lost his legislative seat in the recent U.S. mid-term elections, the resolution, cosponsored by eight other lawmakers, including Rep. Henry C. Johnson, Jr. [D-GA-4]*, Rep. Brian K. Fitzpatrick [R-PA-8], Rep. Brad Sherman [D-CA-30], Rep. Christopher H. Smith [R-NJ-4], Rep. Karen Bass [D-CA-37], Rep. David N. Cicilline [D-RI-1], Rep. Scott Perry [R-PA-4] and Rep. James P. McGovern [D-MA-2].
The resolution comes after two major events took place in Monrovia, in support of a war crimes tribunal, first among them being the “National Justice Conference”, organized by the CSO Platform, Global Justice and Research Project and other partners including Civitas Maxima and the Center for Justice and Accountability. On Friday, Nov. 9, in Monrovia Ambassador Stephen Rapp, former United States Ambassador at Large on War Crimes, expressed the need for the Liberian government to take serious steps to hold alleged perpetrators in the country’s 14-year civil war accountable for the atrocities they committed.
Ambassador Rapp said there is no way people can protect their children and grandchildren or realize sustainable peace in a post war country without holding people, who committed war crimes, accountable for their actions.
Then on Monday, Nov. 12, hundreds of Liberians under the banner, “Campaigners and Victims for Justice”, marched through the principal streets of Monrovia and presented petitions to the American Embassy, European Union, United Nations and to the office of President George Weah, calling for the establishment of War and Economic Crimes’ Court in Liberia to seek justice for the victims of the 14 years civil-war (1989-2003).
Meanwhile, while Liberians have called for the establishment of Economic and War Crimes’ Court, the US House of Representatives Resolution has called for the establishment of an Extraordinary Criminal Tribunal to ensure that the recommendations in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission are upheld by the government.
The Resolution will now go to the US Senate for concurrence, which in turn is expected to mount further pressure on the Liberian government to live up to the expectation of the International community and thousands of Liberians who want economic and war criminals to face trial.
In fact, since former President Charles G. Taylor was tried and sentenced to 50 years imprisonment in a British Jail, for his support to RUF rebels who hacked off the limbs of their victims, many Liberians have since felt there were many war and economic criminals roaming Liberia freely that deserve to face justice for their actions against humanity.
Though calls for the establishment of a war and economic crimes court appear to have gained momentum, there are some Liberians who charge that the establishment of such a court will instead serve to undermine national unity; but their voices are few and far in between. With the the American Government now adding its voice to the establishment of an Extraordinary Criminal Tribunal to try war time offenders, Senator Prince Y. Johnson (and his likes) may be having sleepless nights, for the truth is now clear that he and others may face justice for violations of international human rights law, international humanitarian law, gross violations of human rights and egregious domestic crimes.
Ethiopian Leaders Propose Truth and Reconciliation Commission (Ezega) November 16, 2018
Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed's Council of Ministers has disclosed that it has drafted a bill for the establishment of National Truth and Reconciliation Commission, according to information from the Office of the Prime Minister. The draft bill has been sent to the House of People's Representatives for approval.
According to the office of the Prime Minister, the draft bill is meant to address people's grievances on two decades and half rule of the EPRDF (Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front).
The proposed commission is probably something similar to what South Africa had after the Apartheid rule, and what Rwanda had after a tragic genocide.
Based on online media reports, while many Ethiopians applaud the proposed measure, others see a little parallel with precedents and whether this will actually lead to greater unity and democracy in Ethiopia.
The Council of Ministers' bill is intended to cover aspects of power abuse, corruption and various national- and ethnic-based grievances from many corners of Ethiopia.
Since the current leaders of Ethiopia are also from the EPRDF, and have been in various positions of power for some time, it is unknown whether the measure will cover all parts of the EPRDF in depth or mostly dwell on the Tigrayan People's Liberation Front (TPLF).
To many, the obvious culprit is the TPLF, which has been the dominant wing of the EPRDF and is now out of power and influence.
If the ongoing campaign against corruption and power abuse is of any indication, the TPLF will likely be the recipient of a far larger proportion of the investigation than others.
The council of ministers has also recommended the establishment of Identity and Boundary Commission to resolve boundary and identity disputes across the country.
Over the last five years or so, numerous tensions and clashes have flared up in parts of the country over claims and counter claims of boundary areas and identity questions.
There is a long-standing dispute between Oromia and Somali regions over land and people, which, in the past, resulted in several deadly clashes and the dislocation of hundreds of thousands of people from their homes.
Southern Ethiopia region saw demands for separate state-hood from Sidama community, which also led to multiple clashes, especially early this year.
The Amhara region has claims over areas currently controlled by Tigray, specifically the Wolkite and Raya areas.
Multiple deadly clashes have also been reported between Oromia and Benishangul-Gumuz regions, one that resulted in the massive dislocation of people from their areas.
Many in Amhara region are also believed to harbor claims against the Oromia state over pockets of land in different areas.
It is unknown if the proposed commissions will genuinely address these numerous disputes and grievances to the satisfaction of the different groups and regions, and unify Ethiopia, or mostly used as a tool to solidify power by one group or the other and perpetuate the main issue Ethiopia is facing today: the much stronger ethnic-based politics.
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Terrorism
Israel lawmakers to debate death penalty for Palestinian 'terrorists' (Middle East Eye) November 8, 2018
Israel's parliament will renew debate next week on a bill that would make it easier to sentence Palestinian attackers to death, Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman said on Tuesday while vowing to have it passed.
'After over three years of a stubborn struggle, the death penalty for terrorists law will finally be brought to the law committee next Wednesday [November 14], and then for its first reading in the Knesset plenum,' Lieberman said on Twitter.
The bill, which passed a preliminary vote by the full parliament in January, would ease the requirements military courts in the occupied West Bank must meet to sentence Palestinians convicted of 'terrorist' crimes to death.
As the law stands now, a panel of three military judges must unanimously approve any death penalty in military courts.
The new bill, planned by members of Lieberman's Yisrael Beitenu party at his behest, would change the requirement to a majority instead of unanimity.
Israel has not carried out any executions since 1962, when Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann was hanged.
Israel abolished the use of capital punishment for murder in civil courts in 1954, though it can still in theory be applied for war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide, treason and crimes against the Jewish people.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has expressed support for the death penalty in certain cases.
But a senior member of Netanyahu's party said on Tuesday that he would object to the bill since the Israeli security establishment opposed it. 'I won't support imposing the death penalty before there's a serious debate and decision in the government and security Cabinet,' Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz wrote on Twitter.
'According to the IDF [Israel Defence Forces], Shin Bet [internal security service] and all the security establishment not only would [the death penalty] not help the fight against terror, it would cause great damage,' he said.
A law to sentence what Palestinian assailants to death was one of Lieberman's election promises in 2015, and government support for it was a condition for Yisrael Beitenu joining
Israeli elections are expected to be called in the coming months and politicians have been ramping up campaign rhetoric.
The Palestinian government on Tuesday said the bill was 'a public invitation to commit murder, and execution, and carry out massacres against our Palestinian people'.
'This is a clear breach of laws, international and humanitarian,' a statement from the Palestinian government said.
The CIA explored using a ‘truth-serum’ on terrorism detainees after 9/11, newly released report shows (The Washington Post) By Eli Rosenberg November 13, 2018
The CIA explored finding a “truth serum” to use on terrorism detainees in the years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, according to a declassified report that was released as part of a lengthy Freedom of Information lawsuit.
The report, written by a chief CIA medical official whose identity has not been disclosed, detailed that Project Medication, as the effort was named, was shelved in 2003.
But not before the agency doctors had explored whether “drug-based interviews” would make for a less harsh alternative to the brutal interrogation practices like sleep deprivation, small-space confinement and waterboarding that the CIA employed in the years after 9/11, tactics that have come to be widely referred to as torture.
The report noted the agency’s previous forays into the field of truth serums, citing a 1961 report that concluded that individuals who could withstand interrogations would probably still be able to hold out in altered mental states. It also cited the CIA’s use of LSD and other drugs during its notorious MK-ULTRA project in the 1950s and ’60s, when the agency conducted 149 experiments in mind control, including the use of 25 unwitting subjects.
A drug called Versed, known by its generic name, midazolam, was identified by the report as the preferred drug for truth inducement. A benzodiazepine, a class of drugs normally used to treat anxiety, the drug did have a drawback for interrogation purposes, the report noted: It had to be administered by a physician intravenously, compared to LSD, which could be administered without a subject’s knowledge.
“Ambivalently, Versed was considered possibly worth a trial if unequivocal legal sanction first were obtained,” the report noted.
But the report noted that any use of such a drug would probably bump up against legal obstacles: those that banned conducting medical experiments on prisoners, as well the use of mind-altering drugs in interrogations. The CIA never asked the Justice Department to look at the issue, effectively shelving it.
Ordered released by a judge as part of Freedom of Information Act lawsuits filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, the report sheds more light on a contentious aspect of President George W. Bush’s legacy: the CIA’s use of brutal interrogation techniques after 9/11. It details the tactics used against suspects, including slapping, being thrown against a wall, waterboarding and being confined in a cramped box.
And it shows the complicated legal and moral arguments employed by agency officials, including those in the medical world, to justify such ethically challenging decisions.
Though the harsh interrogation methods have been widely condemned since, including by President Barack Obama, and outlined in a public Senate report that noted that the techniques were “in violation of U.S. law, treaty obligations, and our values,” no CIA officers were ever prosecuted for their roles.
“Perhaps the most striking element of the document is the CIA doctors’ willful blindness to the truth of what they were doing,” ACLU staff attorney Dror Ladin wrote about the report. “CIA doctors decided that waterboarding actually ‘provided periodic relief’ to a prisoner because it was a break from days of standing sleep deprivation. Similarly, CIA doctors decided that when a different prisoner was stuffed into a coffin-sized box, this provided a ‘relatively benign sanctuary’ from other torture methods.”
The involvement of doctors and psychologists in the CIA’s interrogation programs has drawn wide outcry from the medical community.
The CIA declined to comment but pointed to statements made by one of its legal officers in a court case that said the report was a working draft that had never been finalized.
The report was titled “Summary and Reflections of Chief of Medical Services,” on participation in the CIA’s extraordinary rendition program.
The ACLU had been working for more than two years to get the report released, as the government has fought the disclosure, the Associated Press reported. But a federal judge in New York ordered it released in September 2017, and it was eventually given to the ACLU in August.
Boko Haram brought terror to Niger. Can a defectors program bring peace? (The Washington Post) By Max Bearak November 20, 2018
Atop a remote desert dune in the poorest corner of the least-developed country in the world is an internment camp, the site of a high-stakes program that U.S. officials hope will be a model for winning the war on terrorism.
The camp is in Niger, where the U.S. government has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on a military strategy to counter groups aligned with the Islamic State and al-Qaeda. It now houses 132 former Boko Haram fighters who are referred to as “the repentant ones.”
With Boko Haram still thousands of fighters strong and able to control entire swaths of West Africa, the U.S. State Department is about to invest millions of dollars into an alternative strategy that is locally born: a deradicalization program started by a Nigerien governor that promotes defections and prepares ex-combatants for reintegration into society.
Lured by the local governor’s promises of amnesty, the defectors at the camp in Goudoumaria risked death by escaping one of the world’s most bloodthirsty terrorist groups. But for over a year they have languished in the remote outpost, without work or school as distraction, waiting for officials in the country’s capital to decide who among them should be put on trial and who should be pardoned.
Capt. Moussa Garba Hassane, a Nigerien military officer who oversees the camp, said, “To them, their detention seems like it may be everlasting. We have promised them training and reintegration, but instead we have put them in an oven and forgotten about them.”
Challenges are stacked against the program. The part of Niger where it is taking place barely has an economy after a decade of war, and much of its population has been traumatized by the fighting, making reintegration of fighters hard to fathom.
The State Department’s main partner, the Nigerien government, has taken more than a year to pass a law that lays out how it will determine whether defectors should be put on trial or rehabilitated and released through the program. The law, once passed, will unlock the majority of U.S. funding, but almost nothing has been done to deradicalize the ex-fighters yet. Many in the camp expressed regrets at defecting, lamenting the loss of their youth first to Boko Haram, and then to the camp.
The U.S. military, which lost four soldiers in Niger last year, has thrown its support behind the fledgling program.
“We realize that most, if not all of the issues we face alongside our African partners can’t be solved by military action, which is why our command is fully committed to a whole of government approach in support our African partners,” said Maj. Karl Wiest, a spokesman for the U.S. military’s Africa Command.
State Department officials are optimistic the bureaucratic bottleneck will soon be past, and say they are confident that the program will be more than just an experiment.
“We need to prove that deradicalization has to be part of the game plan,” said Neal Kringel, who heads the Africa desk at the State Department’s Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations. “We’re hoping that what we’re doing in Niger can eventually be extended elsewhere.”
Mustafa Aboubacar was 22 when Boko Haram first showed up near his home on the shore of Lake Chad in 2013.
“It was dozens of them, and they came at night. They said, ‘If you run, we shoot you,’ ” he said in an interview at the camp in Goudoumaria.
But a few days later, he recalled, a Boko Haram commander handed him 1 million Nigerian naira, or about $6,250 at the time, an astronomical sum in a country where the average income is about $400 a year. It was an investment in his family’s goods- trading business, with two major strings attached: He had to supply the militants with whatever they needed, risking arrest or worse, and he would have to join them whenever they needed foot soldiers.
The U.S. military estimates that Boko Haram’s two factions, the larger of which has pledged allegiance to the Islamic State, now have a combined 5,000 fighters across the Lake Chad Basin, which includes parts of Nigeria, Niger, Chad and Cameroon. Over nearly a decade, they have forced innumerable young men like Aboubacar to join them and have killed tens of thousands and left almost 2.5 million without homes.
The number of fighters may seem small, but it totals more than all of Africa’s other Islamic State affiliates combined, and many of the militant group’s members regularly move between civilian life and combat, making them hard to track.
Months after Aboubacar accepted Boko Haram’s money, the group invaded his hometown, Bosso, storming a nearby Nigerien army compound and killing dozens of soldiers.
That was the beginning of three years “in the bush” he said, during which he “committed too many sins to bear.” Asked whether he killed anyone, he thought for a long time and then claimed he had forgotten.
Like many who are now in the internment camp for defectors, Aboubacar, now 27, heard about the local governor’s amnesty program over the radio. He, his two wives, his infant child and another fighter escaped their encampment, walking for days across Lake Chad’s rapidly drying landscape. His friend died on the way, but Aboubacar arrived safely and became one of the first defectors.
Almost two years later, the word that would best describe him is exasperated. Nothing happens in the camp all day, except prayer. The food is the same every day. He’s been in the internment camp long enough to have had another child with his second wife, who is 15, and worries the boy will grow up within the confines of the mud-walled camp, rimmed with barbed wire.
“I’ve had enough of this,” he said. “Coming here, it was a big mistake.”
These “repentant ones” are now in a state of limbo, while officials in Niamey, Niger’s capital, mull the contours of the screening process that will decide the defectors’ fate.
Should people like Aboubacar be considered terrorists who may have committed war crimes and thus must answer in court? Or should these young men, some of whom were teenagers when they were forced at gunpoint to join Boko Haram, be considered the victims of terrorism instead?
Under legislation awaiting passage in Niger’s assembly, a panel of high-ranking judicial and law enforcement officials would attempt to assess, for each defector, the likelihood that he had committed a war crime. Those deemed not likely war criminals would be released into the community and providing with religious and psychological counseling, along with occupational training. The others would be sent to trial.
U.S. officials say the wait for a legal framework to screen the defectors is essential, if frustrating. Because this is the first program of its kind, a strong framework would provide the basis for Niger’s government to continue it even if a new administration came into power. The framework could be adapted to other conflicts, such as in Somalia or even Afghanistan.
In countries like those, U.S. military leadership has acknowledged that enemies such as al-Shabab and the Taliban can’t be eliminated by killing every last member. Extremist groups also commonly discuss U.S. military presence in their countries in their recruitment propaganda. Harder still to fix are radicalization’s underlying causes — job scarcity, lack of education, and even oppression from governments that the United States supports.
An even larger question lurks beneath the neat plans to counsel, train and reintegrate the defectors: Even if the program works, will the thousands of families that have lost everything — sisters, uncles, limbs, homes — to Boko Haram’s reign of terror accept the defectors back into society? After nearly a decade of violence, most people here are destitute, exhausted and yearning for a return to normalcy. And yet trust and forgiveness can be especially tall orders.
“Even my son is with Boko Haram, and I can’t forgive him,” said Alhaji Ari Mustafa, 68, who was once wealthy enough to make gifts of his goats and go on the pilgrimage to Mecca but has now been in a refugee camp outside Diffa for four years. “I find it difficult to trust this plan. If it works, that means the criminals will return to our villages. If it fails, it will be bad, too. We will lose hope.” Boko Haram’s 2016 attack on the military base in Bosso took place on Dan Dano Lawaly’s third day as governor of Niger’s Diffa region.
That day, Boko Haram decapitated dozens of Nigerien soldiers and made off with their uniforms and weapons. Diffa was paralyzed with fear.
The Nigerien government imposed a state of emergency, still in effect today, that banned all motorcycle travel, and all use of Lake Chad and the Komadougou River, the lifeblood of an economy reliant on fishing and pepper farming. Everything ground to a halt. Millions faced a choice between becoming reliant on humanitarian aid or joining Boko Haram, which promised prospective fighters motorcycles, phones and concubines on the other side of the Komadougou, in Nigeria, where the group is strongest.
“Many felt that Boko Haram were liberators at first,” said Moulaye Hassane, chief of research at the Nigerien government’s National Center for Strategic and Security Studies. “People in Diffa — many of them don’t even know the color of our currency. When they realize the state has given them nothing and Boko Haram is promising everything, it is very easy to see why so many made that choice.”
Lawaly sympathized. “I said to myself, you can either save them or kill them,” he remembered. “But this thing doesn’t end with guns, no way.”
With the help of local traditional chiefs and community radio stations, he started sending out messages that defectors would be protected.
By the time he had 180 people, including defectors and their family members, he was invigorated and proud, calling them “my children.”
It was around then that the Nigerien and U.S. governments took interest. The Americans flew Lawaly to Washington for meetings, and to northern Uganda, where the U.S. military had helped successfully implement a much smaller defection program, aimed at Joseph Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army.
“It was in D.C. that I realized the Americans might suffocate this program, even with good intentions,” Lawaly said. “They would say, ‘These defectors of yours may have committed war crimes, so we have to get the legal framework sorted out.’ And I’d say, ‘They’re abused kids, for God’s sake.’ ”
A legal framework would, however, codify the program, ensuring its survival beyond Lawaly’s tenure. And as it happened, Lawaly was sacked earlier this year when his party pulled out of Niger’s ruling coalition.
“It can’t be a one-man show if this is going to be sustainable,” said Kringel, the State Department official. “We have to have a process that categorizes and then deals with each defector appropriately.”
Mahamadou Kindin wonders how he’ll be categorized. He joined Boko Haram when he was 17, partly out of peer pressure. A group of fighters came to Jabullam, his village in Nigeria, just on the other side of the Komadougou River from Niger.
They held a big sermon claiming to be the representatives of “true Islam” and asked anyone “brave enough” to step forward and join them. Two friends whom he looked up to did, and then he felt his own feet moving.
The next 3½ years were hellish, he recalled. He was present at some of Boko Haram’s most infamous attacks — Baga, Damasak, Karamga, Bosso.
“The commanders told us to shoot anything that moved,” Kindin said.
In Bosso, he was shot in the leg, and his commander consoled him and said he had been brave.
But he didn’t feel brave. He said he felt sickened. He knew in his heart that he was sinning, and that “true Islam” was something other than what his commander thought. Like Aboubacar, he now says he’d never join Boko Haram again but admitted that it’s partly because the group would surely kill him for defecting even if he tried.
“Even if they made me sultan of all of Lake Chad, I’d never go back,” he said.
He feels safe in the camp but has no idea what he’ll do if he’s released. He has a wife and a child to support. He had heard the promises that once the U.S. money comes through, he might get trained as a carpenter or a welder and be “reintegrated.”
The big question is where: Where will he be welcomed? Where will those trades be needed? Where are his parents? “I can’t go back to Jabullam,” he said. “Jabullam is gone. We burned it to the ground.”
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Piracy
Pirates Repelled from Stena Bulk Vessel West of Yemen (The Maritime Executive) November 6, 2018
The crew of the Stena Imperial successfully thwarted a pirate attack on November 3 whilst northbound through the Red Sea west of Yemen.
The tanker was on her way from the Far East to Rotterdam when two suspicious skiffs approached from the port side at a distance of 1.5 nautical miles. The alarm was raised and the Master and the on board security team mustered on the bridge. Hand flares were fired towards the skiffs as warning shots as they were continuously approaching towards the vessel.
The Master broadcast a security message about the attempted attack and also contacted a close by warship. Both skiffs ceased approach after flares were fired from the vessel and passed by the stern. One of the skiffs which passed astern again tried to approach the vessel, and once again hand flares were fired. The skiff then slowed down and moved towards another vessel.
The threat of piracy off Somalia and Yemen increased last year after the Aris 13 hijacking in March. However, Erik Hånell, CEO Stena Bulk, says that on the whole the pirate situation in the Gulf of Aden has calmed down. “There have not been any hijackings for a long time. But when we sail off the coast of Yemen, we choose to use guards due to the lawless state prevailing in the country at the moment. This has created the same kind of desperation in the population as we saw in Somalia a number of years ago. But we are monitoring the situation closely via our security department, which also keeps an eye on the situation in general on the global level. For us, it is extremely important to take the measures that are required so that the crew feel safe and that we at the same time follow the local regulations.”
Stena Bulk chiefly employs professional security firms, and the team comprises of well-educated former soldiers. Normally there are three to four people in each team on board the ships passing through the high risk areas of Yemen and Nigeria. The team is not allowed to use its weapons unless the captain has approved. The guards always follow the captain’s orders, but in situations like this they of course provide their professional advice, on which the captain then bases his decisions, said Hånell.
“The crew onboard the Stena Imperial acted in a very professional manner during the incident and worked closely with the security team to resolve the situation as safe as possible. We put a very high value on our crew and always make sure that they are provided the proper training to be able to handle all sorts of situations in a calm and professional way. A well trained crew working together with a security company when transiting these areas also makes us as owners feel secure about their safety onboard,” he said.
Pirates Attack LNG Carrier in Gulf of Guinea (Maritime Executive) November 12, 2018
On November 6, pirates pursued and fired on an unnamed LNG tanker in the Gulf of Guinea.
At about 0600 hours UTC, nine pirates in a speedboat approached the vessel at a position about 30 nm southwest of Bonny, Nigeria, an oil and gas production hub in the Niger River Delta. The attackers opened fire on the vessel and made several attempts to get close, but the master sped up and took evasive maneuvers. The pirates ultimately abandoned the attack and departed.
According to maritime security firm AKE, LNG carriers' double-walled, insulated tanks are not vulnerable to small arms fire. The ICC IMB reports that the vessel and crew are safe.
Piracy is unfortunately common in the Gulf of Guinea, especially off the coast of the Niger River Delta. Kidnap-for-ransom is the most common type of attack, and according to Oceans Beyond Piracy, 100 seafarers were kidnapped in the waters off the Gulf of Guinea last year.
Last month, pirates abducted 11 crewmembers from the container ship Pomerania Sky as she was headed for the port of Onne, Nigeria. Those abducted included eight from Poland, two Filipinos and a Ukrainian. Nine crew members remained on board the vessel and brought her safely into port.
In September, pirates kidnapped 12 crewmembers from the Swiss bulk carrier Glarus in Nigerian waters. The vessel was carrying wheat between Lagos and Port Harcourt in the Niger Delta, and the attack happened about 45 nm southwest of Bonny Island. The pirates reportedly used long ladders and cut the razor wire on deck to gain access to the vessel.
Crackdown on Sea Pirates Yielding Results (Independent Online) By Mphathi Nxumalo November 16, 2018
Durban - The fight against piracy on the East Coast of Africa is being won, the South African Maritime Safety Authority’s acting chief operations officer, Sobantu Tilayi, said. In an interview with the Daily News, Tilayi said that through patrols they have been able to decrease pirate activity on the East Coast. This was coupled with other patrol operations conducted by the South African Navy.
He was speaking after a three-day workshop by the International Maritime Organisation was held in Durban from Monday.
The workshop, which included about 60 delegates from countries in the west Indian Ocean region and the Gulf of Aden, which lies between Somalia and Yemen, discussed security issues covered by the Jeddah Amendment to the Djibouti Code of Conduct 2017. This code of conduct is aimed at tackling issues of criminality in the maritime environment which include human trafficking, illegal fishing and piracy among other things.
Some of the signatories are Madagascar, South Africa and Mozambique.
Through joint partnerships with other countries, Tilayi said countries have been able to deal with pirates on the East Coast of the continent.
Tilayi felt this was important as successful economies and strong security worked handed in hand.
He added that improved security meant they would take preventive action as was the case with trawlers fishing illegally.
He said Samsa had chased six vessels last year and had effected arrests on two of them.
“To prevent any of these illegal activities from happening, maritime safety authorities from as far as Egypt constantly share information with each other about activities that happen on the sea. There are still a number of challenges that are being faced from an economic perspective,” he said.
According to Tilayi, the lack of ships carrying the South African flag has been a sore point in the shipping industry for a number of years.
“A ship carrying the flag of a country means a country can get tax revenue from the company and also hire locals from that country, thereby boosting the economy.”
Tilayi said the country had about four vessels flying the South African flag. He hoped that by March next year they would be able to add another two vessels. Samsa was in talks with the South African Revenue Service to create incentives for vessels bearing the South African flag.
“Ukraine Commits Piracy Actions”: Moscow Reacted to the Detention of Ships in the Sea of Azov by Kiev (Maritime Herald) By Svilen Petrov November 19. 2018
Kiev’s provocative actions in the Sea of Azov are aimed at destabilizing and escalating tensions, RT told the State Duma. Recently, Ukraine has detained 15 vessels for “illegal” calls to the ports of Crimea, while in the State Border Service of the country are watching about 940 “vessels-violators”. The Council of Federation of the Russian Federation stressed that the steps of Kiev are “obvious lawlessness” and Ukraine should be ready for retaliatory measures from Moscow.
On Thursday, November 15, in the State Border Service of Ukraine announced the detention of 15 vessels for calls to the Crimean ports. At the same time, “in sight of the border guards” there are about 940 “vessels-violators”, most of which serve the work of ports in the Crimea.
“In general, 15 ships were detained and are in the ports of Berdyansk and Mariupol. Some of them have been arrested, in the other part, the relevant courts continue, ”the State Border Service of Ukraine reported.
Moscow has already expressed outrage at the position of Kiev. Thus, the first deputy chairman of the State Duma Committee on Defense, Alexander Sherin, in a conversation with RT, stressed that the Ukrainian provocation is aimed at destabilizing and developing a tense situation. “Ukraine would not have been able to afford that if there was no corresponding order from the United States for this. Kiev at the moment behaves like Archduke Ferdinand, who is trying to do everything to stand up for him, ”said Sherin.
At the same time, the deputy drew attention to the fact that these courts have “absolutely nothing to do with any territorial claims”.
“They are simply engaged in trade and business. The European Union and the entire world community should be on their side, because we are talking about merchant courts, and not military courts. Ukraine performs acts of piracy by and large, ”the first deputy chairman of the defence committee of the State Duma concluded.
In turn, the deputy of the State Duma of the Russian Federation from the Crimea Ruslan Balbek pointed out that the international community does not notice the aggressive behaviour of Ukraine. According to him, attempts to appeal to the world community – “this is a cry into the well.”
“Either we“ cut off nuts completely ”in relations with Ukraine at sea and arrest them, after which we escort to the Russian port any Ukrainian vessel that violates our laws regarding territorial waters and the economic zone even one iota. Either we take the Ukrainian slaps for granted and humbly tolerate such antics, ”RIA Novosti quotes Balbek. In response to such actions of Kiev, Russia may block the Sea of Azov for all Ukrainian swimming facilities. This was stated by a member of the Federation Council Committee on Defense Franz Klintsevich.
“We are literally being pushed into harsh retaliatory actions … In fact, Ukraine itself really breaks the agreement on the Sea of Azov, from which only it will suffer,” Klintsevich wrote on Facebook. According to him, the actions of Kiev are “obvious lawlessness” – regardless of whether they are Russian ships or other foreign states since they entered the ports of Crimea completely legitimately.
Kiev by its actions violates not only a bilateral agreement but also international obligations regarding the transport communication by sea, said Denis Denisov, director of the Institute for Peacekeeping Initiatives and Conflictology. He added that decisions made in Ukraine often “contradict common sense” and an objective situation.
“In this regard, the arrests of merchant ships that called at the ports of Crimea are the best indicator of how Ukraine, violating agreements itself, demonstrates that there is such a problem and it will be solved by force. But the Russian side has much more opportunities for asymmetrical and asymmetric influence on such a Ukrainian position, ”said Denisov in a conversation with RT.
Recall that on December 24, 2003, the Russian Federation and Ukraine signed an agreement on the legal status of the Sea of Azov and the Kerch Strait. According to the document, they are the internal waters of the two countries, and all emerging issues and disputes are resolved through dialogue.
Ukrainian politicians have repeatedly called for the rupture of this memorandum, but the country’s Foreign Ministry responded that denouncing the treaty would only create new problems.
“Accordingly, if we break the agreement that is in force now and move to the international plane, Russia will declare that from its point of view there will be an absolutely logical 12-mile and 24-mile zone along the Crimean coast (inland waters. – RT)”, – added the Deputy Ukrainian Minister for Uncontrolled Territories and Internally Displaced Persons Georgiy Tuk.
Navy Detains 52 Vessels, 40 Persons for Alleged Piracy Offenses (Pulse Nigeria) November 19, 2018
According to the FOC, the seminar is to educate the officers to have a better understanding on procedures of arresting, detaining and prosecution of vessels.
The Nigerian Navy on Monday said it had 52 vessels and no fewer than 40 persons currently in its custody, for various alleged piracy related offences.
The Flag Officer Commanding (FOC), Western Naval Command, Rear Adm. Habila Ngalabak, disclosed this while speaking with journalists during a one-day seminar for its officers at the Nigeria Navy Ship (NNS) Quorra, in Apapa, Lagos.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the theme of the seminar is “Maritime Offences and Procedures for Arrest and Detention of Ships in the Nigerian Maritime Environment’"
According to the FOC, the seminar is to educate the officers to have a better understanding on procedures of arresting, detaining and prosecution of vessels.
“The seminar is to refresh our minds on the issues of arrest, detention and prosecution of vessels at sea. “The seminar could not have come at a better time than this because we are approaching December, so we have to get ourselves alert on our duties.
“We have 52 vessels of different classes and types presently in our custody for different offences and quite a lot of them are under litigation and investigation.
“Some are being investigated for us to know the type of offences and also the agency that they would be sent to for prosecution,’’ he said.
On the exact time of the arrest of the suspects, the FOC said he could not categorically give specifics because over the years, “the number of arrests keep rising.
“It’s a situation that keeps changing. There are some that have been arrested and their cases have been disposed of from the list and others are still joining.
“It takes time for the prosecution to be concluded so some of them have been there for three to four years.
“In the last two to three months, we have really had a major arrest of maritime offenders which are piracy related offences and within this period, we have arrested no fewer than 40 persons for one offence or the other,’’ he said.
Present at the seminar was the Commander, NNS BEECROFT, Commodore Okon Eyo and other commanding officers of various naval ships.
The Nigerian Navy is in charge of policing the nation’s territorial waters.
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Gender-Based Violence
Sexual violence is a widespread weapon of war – it's time international law caught up (Independent) By Daniela Nadj November 10, 2018
The decision to award the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize to Nadia Murad and Denis Mukwege – two campaigners against sexual violence in war – has rightly been hailed as a much-needed signal that the international community recognises the severity of this problem in an increasingly conflict-ridden world.
Violence against women has been a topic engaging feminist legal scholars and international lawyers for a long time. A sustained feminist advocacy emerged around widespread reports of sexual violence experienced by women during the armed conflicts in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda in the early 1990s.
This culminated in the creation of the International Criminal Court in 2002, whose statute enables the prosecution of a range of sexual harms.
So giving this prestigious prize to two frontline human rights activists does highlight the growing global recognition of the widespread and endemic sexual harms women suffer during wartime. But despite this welcome recognition – and the widespread reporting of sexual violence incidents in conflict – the international legal system lacks a binding convention on the prohibition of violence against women. There is therefore a gap between symbolism and legal reality.
Personal ordeals
Murad was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her advocacy work in relation to her experience as a Yazidi-Kurdish woman who had survived sexual violence and assaults – including numerous rapes and prolonged sexual enslavement at the hands of Isis in northern Iraq in 2014. In 2016 she became UN goodwill ambassador for the dignity of survivors of human trafficking, using her appointment to raise awareness of the trafficking of women before the United Nations Security Council.
In 2017 she published her memoir, The Last Girl: My Story of Captivity, and My Fight Against the Islamic State, in which she recounts her ordeal at the hands of Isis and advocates for the prosecution of Isis fighters before the International Criminal Court. She has also continually reiterated the idea that rape and sexual slavery need to be conceptualised as weapons of war and treated as such by international criminal law.
In a recent interview she said: “Rape has been used throughout history as a weapon of war. I never thought I would have something in common with women in Rwanda – before all this, I didn’t know that a country called Rwanda existed – and now I am linked to them in the worst possible way, as a victim of a war crime that is so hard to talk about that no one in the world was prosecuted for committing it until just 16 years before Isis came to Sinjar.”
Mukwege gained worldwide acclaim for his work as a surgeon, gynaecologist and women’s rights activist. He founded the Panzi Hospital in Bukavu in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in 1999 as a clinic specialising in gynaecological and obstetric care, performing complex surgeries on women who had been raped and suffered vicious sexual assault during armed conflict in the DRC from 2003 to 2016.
Having treated 40,000 survivors of sexual violence, he is today considered one of the world’s leading experts on “repairing” the internal physical damage caused by gang rape. In addition to restorative surgery, the hospital also provides psychological support for victims and offers a one-stop hospital for rape survivors, as well as providing financial support for the women affected in order to enable them to reintegrate into society.
Both activists have brought to the world’s attention the gendered nature of armed conflict and have shone a light on a pervasive phenomenon of modern wars. This has also been one of the central concerns of the UN Security Council, which has passed eight resolutions on its Women, Peace and Security agenda since 2000.
Time for action
But despite the powerful symbolic victory of the Nobel Peace Prize, the reality on the ground remains that a binding convention on the prohibition of gender-based violence in all its forms is still lacking. The 1979 Women’s Convention (CEDAW), often heralded as the most significant treaty for the elimination of discrimination against women, does not contain a specific prohibition against gender-based violence.
Neither does the 1992 CEDAW Committee Declaration No 19 – a landmark declaration defining gender-based violence, which is symbolic rather than binding in nature. The UN resolutions on Women, Peace and Security, such as UN Resolution 1325 – which calls on all state actors and those involved in post-conflict reconstruction efforts to incorporate a gender-based perspective into the transitional peace process and emphasises the full and equal participation of women in all peace-related efforts – have not led to the securing of a binding resolution on the prohibition of gender-based violence.
There remains a persistent moral gap between rhetoric and practice when it comes to addressing gender-based violence. What is lacking is a clear political will to implement a multilateral convention that would impose obligations on state parties. As former UN special rapporteur on violence against women, its causes and consequences, Rashida Manjoo told me when I interviewed her in 2015: “One of the challenges is that, whereas the rhetoric is that violence against women is a human rights violation, the reality is that there is an absence of responding to that in a deeper way that demands a different response. So when the rhetoric is that it is a human rights violation, and we do not acknowledge that it is pervasive, that it is systemic and that it has numerous structural causes, including socioeconomic causes, then actions must reflect this reality.”
This is especially important in light of the fact that gender-based violence almost always exists on a continuum of violence. Frequently, there is a link between the prolonged incidents of domestic violence in peacetime and the levels of sexual violence seen in armed conflict. This has been seen time and time again, in Yugoslavia and Rwanda, as well as in the DRC.
The recent recognition of the advocacy efforts of the two Nobel laureates therefore serves as a vital reminder that the actual work of drafting and putting into effect a binding convention for the prohibition of violence against women is an urgent priority, which can no longer go unaddressed by the international community.
Kosovo Reopens Case After War Rape Victim Speaks Out (Balkan Transitional Justice) By Die Morina November 16, 2018
Special Prosecutor Drita Hajdari told BIRN Kosovo’s TV programme ‘Jeta ne Kosove’ on Thursday evening that she has relaunched investigations into the case of Vasfije Krasniqi Goodman after she became the first woman to speak publicly about her experience of being a victim of sexual violence during the 1998-99 war.
In 2014, Kosovo’s Supreme Court acquitted two former Serb policemen who were initially indicted for raping Krasniqi Goodman.
“The case of Vasfije has been reopened. I decided to reopen her case, but not against the perpetrators, because the procedures against [both of] them were closed with the final verdict… I do not have the legal basis [for bringing a new case against them],” Hajdari told the programme.
She explained that one of the reasons for reopening the case was that rape was used as a weapon by the enemy side during the war.
“I am doing this because they [Serbs] committed rape during the war, it was a tool of war. These rapes in Kosovo did not happen by accident and these are not isolated cases,” Hajdari said.
“These are weapons which were used by the enemy during the war,” she added.
Hajdari said that she has already issued a request to the police to begin further investigations.
“I have issued a request, an authorisation to the police- the unit of investigations on war crimes, in which I have [explained] precisely the action they should take in this case; among other things, the witnesses will be interviewed again in the future, maybe Vasfije herself too,” she said.
Krasniqi Goodman gave an interview to Kosovo’s public broadcaster, RTK last month, saying that she was raped twice after being taken from her home by Serb police officers in April 1999.
No verified statistics exist on the number of victims of sexual violence inflicted by Serbian forces during the Kosovo war.
A report by Amnesty International published in December 2017 said only a few of those accused of wartime rape in Kosovo have been prosecuted.
In a socially conservative society, few of the victims can count on support from their families to share their experiences. Fearing stigmatisation, many have continued to suffer in silence.
How is sexual violence still being used as a weapon of war against men and women? (Euronews) By Emma Beswick November 17, 2018
"Rape as a weapon is a tool, it has an objective," be it silencing a political opponent or attacking women in societies where they are symbols of fertility, war crime lawyer Celine Bardet told Euronews at the Women's Forum Global Meeting 2018.
Her NGO, We are Not Weapons of War (WOWW), is dedicated to fighting sexual violence in conflict zones and she strives to bring the issue to the fore.
Another champion of the cause is the Grand Duchess of Luxembourg Maria Teresa, who also told Euronews about the need for action in this area.
“It is getting worse than it has ever been and it is worldwide in conflict zones, fragile situations, in camps or women fleeing from one country to another,” she said. “It is absolutely necessary to raise awareness.”
Her commitment to the cause has led her to host an event, the Stand Speak Rise forum, in March 2019 in Luxembourg, which aims to help end sexual violence in fragmented areas. Warzones and post-natural disasters are two situations where such incidents are rife, according to the Grand Duchess.
War crime lawyer Bardet said the issue of rape as a weapon in wartime is often overlooked.
“Nobody wants to look at sexual violence,” she said. "Even when everybody knows that it's widespread, it's a big issue.”
Sexual violence against men
While Bardet doesn't think rape as a weapon of conflict happens as frequently to men as women, she said there's no doubt it still happens, but often for different reasons.
"In Libya, men are involved in public life, they are political representatives, they are tribal chiefs," she explained. "If you rape them, then you humiliate them, you destroy them and then they disappear."
Another conflict that saw men affected by sexual violence was the Bosnian War, according to Bardet, who worked with victims.
Rape on migration routes
The WOWW founder has no doubt that sexual violence is widespread among migrants. Of the migrants she has spoken to through her organisation, she estimated that seven out of 10 told her they have been raped or were the victim of sexual torture.
"When it comes to migrants, we don't know how widespread the issue is," she said.
What needs to change?
The lack of data available on the subject is one of the challenges WOWW faces.
Bardet aims to conduct the first global study into the extent of rape as a weapon of war — something she believes will allow her organisation to "offer a better response to the phenomenon”.
"There are very few studies on this and which shows that this is not something we are making a priority,” she said.
Bardet thinks that more needs to be done to bring the perpetrators to justice, something that the Grand Duchess supports.
“When a crime against humanity is committed anywhere, it is committed against all of us,” the lawyer concluded.
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Commentary and Perspectives
Chemical weapons team to begin assigning blame for Syrian attacks (Reuters) By Anthony Deutsch November 13, 2018
The global chemical weapons watchdog will in February begin to assign blame for attacks with banned munitions in Syria’s war, using new powers approved by member states but opposed by Damascus and its key allies Russia and Iran.
The agency was handed the new task in response to an upsurge in the use of chemical weapons in recent years, notably in the Syrian conflict, where scores of attacks with sarin and chlorine have been carried out by Syrian forces and rebel groups, according to a joint United Nations-OPCW investigation.
A core team of 10 experts charged with apportioning blame for poison gas attacks in Syria will be hired soon, Fernando Arias, the new head of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), told the Foreign Press Association of the Netherlands on Tuesday.
The Syria team will be able to look into all attacks previously investigated by the OPCW, dating back to 2014.
The OPCW was granted additional powers to identify individuals and institutions responsible for attacks by its 193 member states at a special session in June. The decision was supported by the United States and European Union but opposed by Russia, Iran, Syria and their allies, highlighting deep political division at the agency.
“The mandate is to identify the perpetrators of crimes committed with chemical weapons, but the OPCW is not a court or the police”, and will refer cases to U.N. organizations with powers to punish those responsible, Arias said.
The expert team will “be in charge of identifying the perpetrators for Syria in the first stage”, Arias said, and might later be expanded to look at attacks globally.
The June decision followed attacks with other chemical weapons. In Salisbury, England, a former Russian spy and his daughter were poisoned in March with the military-grade nerve agent novichok, and the half-brother of North Korean leader Kim Jong UN was assassinated in Malaysia with VX in February 2017.
How Congress can force Saudi Arabia’s hand on Yemen (Reuters) By Mohamad Bazzi November 16, 2018
The Trump administration is ending one of the most important elements of U.S. military assistance to the Saudi-led war in Yemen: the refueling of Saudi warplanes. The Nov. 10 announcement is part of the White House response to the killing of dissident Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi and follows appeals for a ceasefire in the war that Riyadh and its allies have been waging against Iran-backed Houthi rebels since March 2015.
So far, the Saudis and their partners, especially the United Arab Emirates, have responded to calls for a ceasefire with more war. The Saudi-led alliance renewed its offensive against the port city of Hodeidah, which is the entry point for 80 percent of Yemen’s food, fuel and other imports. Already, half of Yemen’s 28 million people are on the brink of starvation, and the United Nations has warned that disruption to the port at Hodeidah could trigger a large-scale famine.
But ending the mid-air refueling of Saudi aircraft is not enough to stop the conflict. In addition to refueling warplanes and providing intelligence assistance, the United States has rushed billions of dollars’ worth of missiles, bombs and spare parts to help the Saudi military continue its bombing campaign, starting under President Barack Obama. Yet neither the Obama nor Trump administrations put enough pressure on the Saudis to negotiate a political settlement with the Houthis to end the war.
Riyadh is facing more scrutiny of its actions in Yemen since Saudi agents murdered Khashoggi at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2. The international outcry is forcing the Trump administration to reexamine its alliance with the kingdom, especially the brash and ruthless crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, who is the architect of the Yemen war. But Donald Trump and his senior aides have made clear that they still support the prince and won’t try to isolate him.
The most intense pressure on the Saudis is now likely to come from the U.S. Congress, where both Democrats and Republicans have tried to curtail American military assistance to the Saudis and their allies. With the Democrats winning control of the House of Representatives in the Nov. 6 midterm elections, Democratic lawmakers will be able to exercise greater oversight of U.S. military involvement in Yemen when they take office in January. Republicans in the House recently blocked a vote on a Democrat-led resolution invoking the 1973 War Powers Act, arguing that Congress never authorized support for the Saudi coalition. The measure called for an end to military assistance and ordered Trump to withdraw a handful of U.S. special forces operating along the Yemeni-Saudi border. The incoming Democratic majority is poised to take up the measure again next year.
The Yemen war is a complex conflict with a changing set of alliances. The latest phase began in September 2014, when the Houthis marched into the capital, Sana’a, and threatened to take over the rest of the country. The Houthis, who belong to a sect of Shi’ite Islam called Zaydis, were allied with former President Ali Abdullah Saleh, a longtime dictator who was ousted from power after the Arab Spring uprisings spread to Yemen in 2011. Saleh was a longtime Saudi and U.S. ally, but his deputy, Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi, replaced him in 2012 under a Riyadh-brokered deal. Most of Hadi’s government fled to Saudi Arabia after the initial Houthi offensive. While Saudi leaders declared that Iran, through the Houthis, was on the verge of taking over Yemen, the rebels did not receive significant help from Tehran before the Saudi intervention in 2015.
The war has triggered a humanitarian catastrophe. The Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project found that more than 57,000 people, including combatants, have died since January 2016. The war has also left more than 22 million people – 75 percent of Yemen’s population – in need of humanitarian aid, and 1.1 million infected with cholera.
Trump quietly escalated U.S. military involvement in Yemen soon after taking office. In March 2017, he overturned an Obama administration decision to suspend the sale of over $500 million in laser-guided bombs to the Saudi military. In spite of growing criticism in Congress, the Senate narrowly approved the sale in a vote of 53 to 47. That close vote does not bode well for Congress to approve future arms sales to Saudi Arabia.
Before Khashoggi’s murder, the Trump administration showed little willingness to pressure Riyadh over Yemen. In September, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo assured Congress that Saudi Arabia and the UAE were trying to reduce civilian deaths and enable aid deliveries. Congress required the administration to make this certification as a pre-condition for the Pentagon to continue providing military assistance. But Pompeo’s claim contradicted most other independent reviews of the war, including a report issued in August by a group of UN experts. The report found both the Houthis and the Saudi-led coalition responsible for war crimes, but the Saudis and their allies “caused most of the documented civilian casualties” due to their air strikes.
After the Khashoggi killing, seven U.S. senators wrote to Pompeo, questioning his decision to certify that Saudi Arabia and the UAE were doing enough to prevent civilian casualties and proposing restrictions on military assistance and upcoming arms deals. Meanwhile, Senator Bob Menendez, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, for months has blocked the administration from moving ahead with a multi-billion dollar deal to sell 120,000 missiles and other munitions to Saudi Arabia and the UAE.
Saudi leaders think they can withstand the international backlash against Khashoggi’s murder and their war in Yemen. And the Trump administration is trying to contain the furor by limiting some elements of U.S. military assistance but maintaining weapons sales and allowing the war to continue. The kingdom and its allies are more likely to accept a ceasefire and peace talks if Washington makes it clear that it will no longer support an open-ended war in Yemen. If Trump continues to avoid tough actions against the crown prince, Congress will have to take the lead instead. Rights group sues Abu Dhabi Crown Prince in France over Yemen (Reuters) By Emmanuel Jarry November 21, 2018
A rights group filed a lawsuit against Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan during his visit to France on Wednesday, accusing him of war crimes, complicity in torture and inhumane treatment in Yemen, a lawyer for the group said.
The complaint by the International Alliance for the Defence of Rights and Freedoms (AIDL) said Prince Mohammed, who is Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces, is responsible for attacks that hit civilians.
“It’s in this capacity that he has ordered bombings on Yemeni territory,” said complaint filed on behalf of the AIDL, which is based in France.
There was no immediate response from the Crown Prince’s court or the UAE government media office to an emailed request for comment.
Diplomatic efforts to halt the war in Yemen have proved unsuccessful and attempts by rights group’s to hold the war’s protagonists to account have gained little international traction so far.
The complaint, filed in a Paris court, comes as pressure grows on French President Emmanuel Macron to curb arms sales to Saudi Arabia and the UAE, which head a coalition fighting the Iran-aligned Houthi rebels who control most of northern Yemen and the capital Sanaa.
France also has a military base in Abu Dhabi.
A number of Yemenis have joined the legal action, AIDL lawyer Joseph Breham said.
Prince Mohammed, a close ally of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, is due to have lunch with Macron on Wednesday.
French prosecutors are already studying a similar complaint filed in April against the Saudi crown prince, starting a legal process likely to last years.
The complaint against Abu Dhabi’s crown prince cites a report by U.N. experts that said coalition attacks may have constituted war crimes and that torture was carried out in two centers controlled by Emirati forces.
The complaint makes reference to the bombing of a building in Sanaa in October, 2016, where a wake was taking place for the father of the Houthi administration’s interior minister.
The Yemen war has killed more than 10,000 people and forced from their homes more than 3 million - more than 10 percent of the population.
Documents from Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and Oxfam on arbitrary detentions and the use of illegal cluster bombs are also referenced in the complaint.
The lawyers said French courts were competent to handle the case in line with the United Nations convention against torture.
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WORTH READING
Humanitarian Access Obstruction in Somalia: Externally Imposed and Self-Inflicted Dimensions By Emmanuel Tronc, Rob Grace and Anaïde Nahikian November 16, 2018
Access obstruction in conflict settings has emerged as a critical operational and policy concern across the humanitarian sector, but there remains a dearth of analysis regarding the ways in which humanitarian organizations perpetuate self- inflicted access obstacles.
Drawing on qualitative interviews conducted with local and international actors negotiating frontline humanitarian access in Somalia, this paper will examine the ways in which this context elucidates this phenomenon. Toward this end, this paper examines two dimensions of humanitarian access obstruction in this context. The first set of dynamics consists of externally imposed obstacles that stem from governmental actors, Al-Shabaab, access "gatekeepers" motivated by financial gain, and the insecure nature of the environment. The second set of dynamics consists of self-inflicted dimensions of access obstruction that emanate from decisions that international humanitarian organizations (IHOs) have made at the strategic or policy level. These issues include the physical "bunkerization" of IHOs, programmatic shortcomings, the discounting of local humanitarian actors' agency, and the ways that IHOs exhibit programmatic partiality in response to donors' interests and counterterrorism legislation. Through examining these issues, this paper highlights fact that, although the discourse on humanitarian access obstruction tends to emphasize difficulties arising from externally imposed obstacles, it is also important to interrogate the value and methods of humanitarian programming itself.
Yemen: Is the U.S. Breaking the Law? By Oona A. Hathaway, Alexandra Francis, Aaron Haviland, Srinath Reddy Kethireddy and Alyssa Yamamoto Harvard National Security Journal, Forthcoming November 16, 2018
The war in Yemen between the Saudi Arabia-led coalition and an alliance of local factions is in its fourth year. The conflict has caused thousands of civilian deaths, forced millions of people to flee their homes, and pushed the country to the brink of famine, all part of what UN agencies have described as a catastrophic situation.
The United States has played a large, though poorly understood, role in this war, providing weapons, intelligence, targeting expertise, and logistical support to the Saudi-led coalition. That coalition, in turn, has been accused of aggravating the humanitarian disaster with airstrikes that have killed hundreds of civilians and a blockade that has restricted the flow of vital supplies available to Yemen’s population. A January 26, 2018 report by the United Nations Panel of Experts on Yemen documented many violations of international humanitarian law (IHL, also known as the law of armed conflict) and human rights law, including ten air strikes by the Saudi-led coalition in 2017 leading to at least 157 fatalities and 135 injuries. All of this raises serious legal questions—under both domestic law and international law—regarding the U.S.’s involvement in the conflict in Yemen and the resulting humanitarian disaster. Many of these issues have been raised by politicians, scholars, journalists, and non-government organizations separately, but thus far there has been no comprehensive legal analysis. This article aims to fill that gap.
This article begins in Part I with a brief background of the current conflict in Yemen between the Houthis and the U.S.- supported Saudi-led coalition. It then moves to legal analysis, starting in Part II with the four domestic laws that are potentially implicated: (1) The War Powers Resolution; (2) the Arms Export Control Act; (3) the War Crimes Act and the U.S. federal statute for aiding and abetting; and (4) the Alien Tort Statute. Part III turns to an analysis of the international legal issues implicated by U.S. participation in the conflict. In addition to whether the United States is a party to the conflict, Part III examines: (1) Whether the United States a party to the conflict between the Saudi-led coalition and the Houthis? (2) Article 2(4) of the UN Charter, (3) the International Law Commission’s (ILC) Draft Articles on State Responsibility, and (4) Common Article 1 of the Geneva Conventions. In the course of these analyses, this article notes several potential legal violations. Finally, Part IV concludes by looking at the challenges of enforcing these potential violations of domestic and international law.
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War Crimes Prosecution Watch Staff
Founder/Advisor Dean Michael P. Scharf
Editor-in-Chief Taylor Frank Managing Editors Sarah Lucey Lynsey Rosales
Technical Editor-in-Chief Ashley Mulryan
Senior Technical Editors Lysette Roman Jaclyn Cole
Associate Technical Editors Demari Muff Kurt Harris Kristin Lyons
Emerging Issues Advisor Judge Rosemelle Mutoka Contact: [email protected]
Africa
Central African Republic Amy Kochert, Senior Editor David Codispoti, Associate Editor
Sudan & South Sudan Amy Kochert, Senior Editor George Kamanda, Associate Editor
Burundi Alexandra Hassan, Senior Editor Timothy Anderson, Associate Editor
Democratic Republic of the Congo Amy Kochert, Senior Editor Elizabeth Connors, Associate Editor
Kenya Elen Yeranosyan, Senior Editor Emily Hoffman, Associate Editor
Libya Alex Lilly, Senior Editor Jessica Sayre Smith, Associate Editor
Rwanda (International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda) Elen Yeranosyan, Senior Editor Luke Palmer, Associate Editor
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Lake Chad Region Alexandra Hassan, Senior Editor Abby McBride, Associate Editor
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Uganda Elen Yeranosyan, Senior Editor Luke Palmer, Associate Editor Matthew O'Connor, Associate Editor
Europe
Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina, War Crimes Section Mary Preston, Senior Editor
Julia Ozello, Associate Editor
International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia Mary Preston, Senior Editor Benjamin Boggs, Associate Editor
Domestic Prosecutions in the Former Yugoslavia Mary Preston, Senior Editor Alexander Peters, Associate Editor
Middle East and Asia
Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia Morgan Austin, Senior Editor Ariana Pike, Associate Editor
Special Tribunal for Lebanon Mary Preston, Senior Editor Andrea Shaia, Senior Associate Editor
Iraq Alex Lilly, Senior Editor Gloria Neilson, Associate Editor
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Syria Alex Lily, Senior Editor Tyler Portner, Associate Editor
Bangladesh Estefanía Sixto Seijas, Special Senior Editor Amanda Makhoul, Associate Editor
War Crimes Investigations in Burma Estefanía Sixto Seijas, Special Senior Editor Elizabeth Safier, Associate Editor
Yemen Morgan Austin, Senior Editor Emma Lawson, Associate Editor
Israel/Palestine Morgan Austin, Senior Editor Matt Casselberry, Associate Editor
Americas
North and Central America Morgan Austin, Senior Editor Shannon Golden, Associate Editor
South America Amy Kochert, Senior Editor
Topics
Terrorism Alayna Bridgett, Senior Editor John Collins, Associate Editor
Piracy Alayna Bridgett, Senior Editor Nicole Divittorio, Associate Editor
Gender-Based Violence Estefanía Sixto Seijas, Special Senior Editor Rachel Adelman, Associate Editor
Truth and Reconciliation Commissions
Alayna Bridgett, Senior Editor Sophia Billias, Associate Editor
Commentary and Perspectives
Alayna Bridgett, Senior Editor Courtney Koski, Associate Editor
Worth Reading
Taylor Frank Andrew Schiefer, Associate Editor
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