Michael P. Scharf and |
War Crimes Prosecution Watch Volume 4 - Issue 24 |
Editor in Chief Managing Editor Senior Technical Editor |
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 warcrimeswatch@pilpg.org and type "subscribe" in the subject line.
International Criminal Court
International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda
Special Court for Sierra Leone
Court of Bosnia & Herzegovina, War Crimes Chamber
Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia
Canada's Truth and Reconciliation Commission
Official Website of the International Criminal Court
ICC Public Documents - Situation in Darfur, Sudan
Deferring Al-Bashir Trial Will Not Help Sudan
Business Day
February 16, 2002
In the debate over the International Criminal Court’s (ICC’s) indictment of Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, the respective sides — the justice purists and the peace pragmatists — give no ground. Recent developments at the ICC and the African Union (AU) made that clear. But neither of these extremes offers good law or good policy.
As the ICC upheld an appeal clearing the way for al-Bashir to be charged with genocide, in addition to the crimes against humanity and war crimes charges he already faces, the AU was quick off the mark, criticising the decision as detrimental to the peace process in Sudan.
In truth, the decision is a technicality — going to evidentiary standards that must be discharged prior to the issue of arrest warrants — and it would be a negligent prosecutor who didn’t appeal against the initial, mistaken interpretation that sufficient evidence had not been established to support a genocide charge. But it isn’t hard to see why the decision might be read as an intensification of the campaign against al-Bashir. In the public’s perception, genocide represents the worst of crimes. Its possible addition to the charge sheet invites the public to view al-Bashir as even more irredeemable.
But if a charge of genocide is a powerful public advocacy tool, it’s not an effective legal strategy. Genocide is notoriously difficult to prove. The prosecution has to establish that the perpetrator had a specific intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a particular national, ethnic, racial or religious group. It isn’t enough to show the perpetrator intended to intimidate or oppress the group, or that the perpetrator intended to destroy all his political opponents, as political groups do not fall within the prescribed list.
This is why legal observers have questioned the prosecutor’s initial decision to charge al-Bashir with genocide against members of the Fur, Marsalit and Zaghawa groups in Darfur. If he were to be acquitted of these charges , many will see the judgment as a form of exoneration, a diminution of his legal responsibility, rather than what it is: an inability merely to establish the specific intent.
It may have been wiser simply to proceed with charges of crimes against humanity and war crimes — which, legally speaking, entail no fewer deaths and no less responsibility than does genocide.
At the AU last week, there was no greater willingness to see the bigger picture. Its statement on the ICC contained no repetition of the decision at Sirte, Libya, last year to withhold co- operation from the ICC in al-Bashir’s arrest and surrender but it did endorse SA’s proposal regarding deferrals of cases before the ICC. The AU is up in arms as the United Nations Security Council, which has deferral power, has not responded to its request for deferral of the Sudan matter.
The attention given to deferral as a way forward seems misplaced. Certainly it’s difficult to imagine how al-Bashir, unless particularly shortsighted, would be appeased by the prospect of a one-time deferral. Deferral, if granted, means the ICC will not pursue a case for 12 months, but after that the case springs back into action unless deferred again. This means that unless al-Bashir plans on staying in power in perpetuity and every year pressing upon his friends the need for deferral, he will have to face justice. The prospect of deferral can only generate a perverse incentive for al-Bashir never to relinquish office.
SA’s proposal for dealing with deferral requests only amplifies the perverse incentives. In terms of the proposal, if the Security Council has not acted on a deferral request within six months, the General Assembly can decide the matter. What this would mean for al-Bashir is that the six- month period during which the Security Council entertains the request would be most usefully spent not in bringing about reform in Sudan and progress towards peace, but in lobbying members of the General Assembly to grant the deferral request. It is likely only to intensify political wrangling on the matter.
The polarised nature of the al- Bashir indictment makes it unsurprising that the protagonists can’t see the wood for the trees, but recent developments suggest they’re at risk of setting it on fire.
Sudan Votes May Spark Progress, Peace for Darfur
Time News
By Alex Perry/Juba
February 22, 2010
The expected April re-election to the presidency of Sudan of an indicted war criminal, Omar al-Bashir, does not sit well with the world's pro-democracy campaigners. Sudan has not had a meaningful election since 1986 — elections in 2000 were boycotted by the vast majority of the country, according to the U.N. Commission of Human Rights — and so holding one is seen as a rare sign of reform from Bashir's military regime. That's until you remember that an election is meant to be about freedom and not endorsing the rule of an autocrat whom the International Criminal Court (ICC) has charged with seven counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity. But democracy's champions — particularly the U.S. government, the busiest and most heavyweight supporter of the coming vote in Sudan — may be feeling a little more at ease this week after the main rebel group in the war-torn province of Darfur agreed a cease-fire with the government.
The details of the deal still have to be hammered out at ongoing peace talks in Doha, Qatar. But on state television, Bashir outlined the broad brushstrokes, announcing that in return for peace he would cancel death sentences hanging over 100 captured fighters from the rebel Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), and free a third of them. "Today ... we heal the war in Darfur," Bashir said. A JEM spokesman, speaking to al-Jazeera, said Bashir's government sought a cease-fire so as to ensure a peaceful vote in western Sudan.
This is welcome vindication for those, particularly Barack Obama and his special envoy to Sudan, Scott Gration, who view the promotion of elections as a cornerstone of Western foreign policy. The belief that liberty and equality "are chiefly to be found in democracy," as Aristotle wrote, is thousands of years old. But Western faith in the ballot box can sometimes seem blind and naive. Elections in Iraq, Afghanistan and Zimbabwe have been accompanied by deadly violence. In 2006, an election in the Palestinian territories brought to power the Islamist militants of Hamas, a proscribed terrorist organization in the U.S.
In Sudan, however, the coming election seems to be doing what it is meant to — focusing one of the world's most repressive regimes on trying to produce at least the appearance of a credible process, and so inspiring progress on a whole range of issues. Few people will risk their lives to vote and a low turnout, particularly one due to insecurity, would reflect badly on Bashir. So suddenly, after seven years of fighting that killed tens of thousands and made refugees of 2.5 million, because of an election in Sudan there could soon be peace in Darfur.
In Sudan's other great unresolved conflict — between Khartoum and the south of the country — another kind of election, a referendum, on whether to secede from the north, is due next year. The north and the south have fought two wars in the last half-century that have killed 2 million people, and an overwhelming majority of southerners are expected to opt for their own independent state. The approaching reality of that separation seems to have persuaded Sudan to accept what previously provoked them into war. Last month, Bashir announced that if the south did vote to go its own way, he wouldn't stand in its way. The referendum is also concentrating minds on both sides on resolving the issues at the heart of their long conflict. A process is under way to demarcate the border. And on the explosive question of how to divvy up the vast oil fields that straddle that frontline, the south's minister for presidential affairs, Luca Biong Deng, told the Financial Times this month that his government would continue to split oil revenues 50/50 with the north even after independence.
Elections can't fix everything, of course. No one expects Bashir to quietly accept an unfavorable result, for instance, something that is a small but rising possibility with the entrance of some heavyweight rivals in the presidential race. There are concerns about how confusing the vote will be — in the south, voters will be asked to cast 12 separate votes for various national and regional institutions — and the competence of the election officials. And a poll alone can hardly turn the south into a fully functioning nation. After decades of war and chronic underdevelopment, David Gressly, the U.N.'s regional coordinator for southern Sudan, reckons that it will take billions more dollars in aid and another "10 to 15 to 20 years" of international assistance to get the place on its feet. But after more than half a century of suffering in Sudan, the approach of two votes is achieving far more than sanctions, peacekeepers, the ICC or George Clooney. That's a boost for democracy in a continent that could sorely use some more.
Rebels, Khartoum Sign Peace Deal to End Darfur Conflict
AHN News
February 24, 2010
Sudan President Omar al-Bashir and one of two Darfur rebel groups signed a framework ceasefire deal Tuesday in Doha, Qatar in a major step to ending the seven-year conflict in Darfur.
The ceasefire deal with the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) also provides for steps on a power-sharing scheme that will give rebels government positions, establishment of a $1.5 billion fund to develop the region, the conversion of JEM into a political party, the pardoning of 100 JEM rebels and the signing of a final peace deal.
Bashir was able to sign the deal personally despite a warrant of arrest issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC) as Qatar is not a signatory to the ICC charter and is not obliged to arrest the Sudanese leader.
Democratic Republic of the Congo (ICC)
Official Website of the International Criminal Court
ICC Public Documents - Situation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo
Fourth Defense Witness Appears In Lubanga Trial
LubangaTrial.org
By Wairagala Wakabi
February 15, 2010
The fourth witness called by the defense in the Thomas Lubanga trial appeared in court today but did not give any evidence in public session. The witness testified with protective measures including face and voice recognition.
The start of today’s hearing was delayed by an hour and a half, due to what Judge Adrian Fulford said were “difficulties” which the defense team had experienced earlier in the day.
The judge referred to these difficulties when the hearing finally kicked off: “We fully understand the difficulties that you had earlier today. Thank you for promptly contacting the court, and congratulations notwithstanding the difficulties of enabling us to save at least something from the afternoon,” he said. He did not elaborate what the difficulties were.
As the witness was called into court, Catherine Mabille, the head of Lubanga’s defense team, said she wanted to make sure that there was somebody to assist the witness to read the oath.
After the witness took the oath, court went into closed session for the rest of the day.
Last week, Mabille mentioned that the witness would require these protective measures. Mabille also requested last week that legal representatives of victims whose clients were not directly affected by the testimony of this witness should not be allowed in court while she gave evidence.
But Judge Fulford said he did not think the legal representatives would present a threat to her identity if they learnt who she was.
Today’s was the second defense witness to have testified with protective measures. The very first witness, who claimed he was the father of a prosecution witness who he said lied to court about having been a child soldier, testified with protective measures, although defense lawyers said he had earlier promised that he would testify without them.
The second and third defense witnesses have testified in full public view and also given their names. But most of their testimony was given in closed session.
Lubanga is accused of the war crimes of enlisting, conscripting and using child soldiers in armed conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo during 2002 and 2003. His defense case opened on January 27, 2010. The prosecution started their case on January 26, 2009, and closed it on July 14 last year.
Lubanga Trial Adjourned Over Transcription Problems
LubangaTrial.org
By Wairagala Wakabi
February 16, 2010
The Thomas Lubanga trial today took an early adjournment after the defense noted that there were mistakes in the English transcript of the testimony of the fourth defense witness.
Catherine Mabille, the lead defense attorney, asked for the adjournment, and Judge Adrian Fulford granted it about two hours before the time court was scheduled to end the day’s
proceedings.
The adjournment was requested as the prosecution’s Olivia Struyven was cross-examining the fourth defense witness who was testifying for the second day with protective measures such as face and voice distortion.
Before the adjournment, Mabille had pointed out that in the French transcript there were two names mentioned by the witness, whereas in the English transcript there was only one name. She said since she intended to question the witness again about that name in her redirect examination, the disconnect between the transcripts would present a problem.
The judge asked the various parties to consult with transcribers to establish whether the witness had mentioned the second name.
When the hearing resumed, Mabille said during the break the defense team together with Lubanga had double-checked and found that from page 27 of the English transcript of the day’s proceedings, “there are very serious interpretation problems” and the defense found it difficult to continue.
“I have discussed this with OTP (the Office of The Prosecutor) and with Paolina [Massidda, of the Office of Public Counsel for Victims],” Mabille said. “May we request the chamber that after the prosecutor and the legal representatives complete their examination, we should adjourn and re-read the entire transcript, that is double cross-checking interpretation of the transcript. And after that we can all intervene in the information contained on the transcript.”
The defense counsel also told court that Lubanga had said the witness who was testifying was very clear. “There shouldn’t be any difficulties apart from the fact that she speaks fast, but he says her answers have been very clear. And what we have on this last page [of the transcript] is not very clear,” Mabille said.
In response to Mabille’s application, Judge Fulford said there would be no question of asking the defense to conduct a re-examination of the witness if there was a material possibility that the transcript had “more than minimal problems”.
“It simply wouldn’t be fair,” said the judge. “Therefore you will not be required to conduct your re-examination in the short term this afternoon. And if, as a result of checking overnight, there are changes which put Ms Struyven at a disadvantage, she will have the opportunity of asking additional linked questions before re-examination.”
Struyven had earlier questioned the witness about an unnamed man who visited her home. Neither the prosecutor nor the witness mentioned in public what the purpose of the unnamed person’s visit was.
Two previous defense witnesses have been examined at length about their meetings with intermediaries of the OTP. These two witnesses accused the intermediaries of concocting evidence, including bribing or duping parents and guardians of young boys into joining alleged schemes in which the boys were falsely presented to OTP officials as having served as child soldiers.
Lubanga is being tried at the International Criminal Court (ICC) with the war crimes of enlisting, conscripting and using child soldiers in armed conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo during 2002 and 2003.
Lubanga Lawyers Want to Share Notes with Katanga Defense
LubangaTrial.org
By Wairagala Wakabi
February 17, 2010
The Thomas Lubanga defense team has asked judges to grant them permission to exchange information with lawyers for Germain Katanga, another former Congolese leader on trial at the International Criminal Court.
Lubanga’s lawyer Jean-Marie Biju-Duval told judges today that there are four witnesses common to the two trials and it is about these witnesses that the defense teams want to meet and to share information.
Although he did not say whether they were defense or prosecution witnesses, Biju-Duval said the identities of the witnesses were known to both defense teams.
Prosecutor Nicole Samson said prosecutors in both the Katanga and the Lubanga case opposed the proposed meetings and sharing of information by the defense teams.
Katanga is jointly charged with Mathieu Ngudjolo Chui, also a Congolese national, with three crimes against humanity and seven war crimes. The ICC alleges that the two men led militia groups which used child soldiers and committed atrocities against members of the Hema ethnic group in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
The Union of Congolese Patriots (UPC), which Lubanga is alleged to have led, was predominantly made up of Hema and fought against the groups which the ICC claims were led by Katanga and Ngudjolo.
“The defense has to share information about these witnesses… It is our right and we need to do so,” Biju-Duval said. “We think it is useful and necessary for the defense teams to the share results of their investigations. There’s nothing against that. This will only help in the establishment of the truth.”
He told judges that the information they wanted to share was of two categories: information collected by the respective defense teams, and information provided to the defense teams by the Office of The Prosecutor (OTP).
Samson said prosecutors did not see how it could be possible to exchange information without violating the orders restricting who got access to information concerning the individual cases.
“The information is known to the defense teams and it is possible that in the course of their exchanges, the information that is otherwise protected in one case is revealed, not internationally, is revealed in the other case,” she said.
Judge Adrian Fulford said barring defense teams from speaking to each other would be a denial of their rights to free speech and association, and would also represent an impediment to the preparation of their cases.
But Samson said that while each defense team was aware of the orders imposed on them by the courts regarding disclosure of information, there would be no means of monitoring the communication which would take place between the defense teams. She added that it was not the case that every item of evidence in a document compiled by OTP was of equal relevance across the two cases.
Judges are expected to make a ruling on Friday.
Meanwhile, the fifth defense witness called by the Lubanga defense started testifying today, but gave all of his testimony in closed session. He testified with protective measures.
Lubanga Defense Heads to Congo for ‘Critical Research’
LubangaTrial.org
By Wairagala Wakabi
February 18, 2010
The Thomas Lubanga trial today took a break to allow his attorneys to travel to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to conduct what Judge Adrian Fulford referred to as “critical research”.
As a result, there will be no hearings until Wednesday March 3, 2010, Judge Fulford announced today, just after the fifth witness called by the defense had completed giving evidence. This witness, and the one before him, testified in closed session hence it was not possible to know what their testimony was about. Both of them testified with extensive protective measures.
Today, Judge Fulford directed the defense team and representatives of the Victims and Witnesses Unit (VWU) to meet and resolve an outstanding issue which he said related to research which the defense wished to carry out during their visit to the DRC next week.
Mr. Lubanga is being tried at the International Criminal Court (ICC) with the war crimes of enlisting, conscripting and using child soldiers in armed conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo during 2002 and 2003.
He has denied the charges, and his defense has said it will prove to court that prosecution witnesses were coached, and that those who testified as former child soldiers actually never were. The ICC alleges that Mr. Lubanga headed the Union of Congolese Patriots (UPC) and was commander-in-chief of UPC’s armed wing which used child soldiers.
Since the defense case started on January 27, 2010, five witnesses have been called. The first three witnesses testified that intermediaries of the Office of The Prosecutor (ICC) bribed and duped some boys and their parents or guardians into joining the alleged scheme to fabricate evidence.
Witness Tells of “Anger” Before Bogoro
Institute for War and Peace Reporting
By Emily Ponder
February 19, 2010
A witness in the trial of two alleged Congolese warlords told the International Criminal Court, ICC, this week of how soldiers were assembled before an attack on the village of Bogoro in 2003.
His anonymity preserved through face and voice distortion, Witness 250 was giving evidence for the fourth week in the case against Germain Katanga and Mathieu Ngudjolo, on trial for their alleged participation in the raid on Bogoro in the Ituri region of the Democratic Republic of Congo, DRC, in which roughly 200 people were killed and much of the village burned.
Both defendants are charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity, including pillaging, murder, rape, sexual slavery and enlisting child soldiers during the Ituri conflict.
When David Hooper, representing Katanga, and Jean-Pierre Fofé Djofia Malewa, Ngudjolo’s counsel, cross-examined the witness, the chamber heard details about the organisation of troops leading up to the attack on Bogoro.
Witness 250, who was a member of the National Integrationist Front, FNI, allegedly headed by Ngudjolo, said that he joined a parade of other FNI troops as well as members of the Patriotic Resistance Force, FRPI, the force said to be led by Katanga.
He said the troops were doing exercises and warming up at a site around seven kilometres from Bogoro, as commanders gave them instructions.
When Hooper asked if the witness had sounded horns and beat drums before the attack, he replied, “All of that expressed our anger. Anger of fighting and going into Bogoro.”
The witness told Hooper that he did not see Katanga and Ngudjolo at the beginning of the attack, but about 15 to 30 minutes after Bogoro fell, the two men arrived in the village from separate directions.
The witness said that Katanga and Ngudjolo addressed the troops after they had assembled at a predetermined meeting point after the attack. He said that was how he knew they had authority over the soldiers.
Witness 250 has testified consistently that only soldiers from the Union of Congolese Patriots, UPC, allegedly led by Thomas Lubanga, were present in Bogoro when it was attacked.
However, the indictment states that the FNI and FPRI forces went on an “indiscriminate killing spree” murdering roughly 200 civilians.
The witness told the chamber of an attack on his village of Zumbe in the area of Bedu-Ezekere, which he said was carried out by the UPC prior to Bogoro. He said that the UPC and the Uganda People’s Defence Force, UPDF, filled the area with land mines and massacred women and children.
The witness said that in order to defend themselves from these attacks on the area, the population then took up arms.
The attack on Bogoro, according to the witness, was a measure to protect the region from the UPC. He said that UPC soldiers lived in Bogoro and from there went to Beni, south of Bogoro, and to the Ezekere region.
Witness 250 said, “You had to destroy the force that was there [in Bogoro]…so they couldn’t wipe out the population.”
The witness will continue to give testimony before the chamber next week.
Lubanga Witnesses Shun Testifying in Public
LubangaTrial.org
By Wairagala Wakabi
February 19, 2010
The two witnesses called by Thomas Lubanga’s defense this week gave their evidence in closed session, thereby providing no indication of their identities or of the issues they testified about.
Before taking a two week break to allow the defense to conduct research in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the court heard a request by Lubanga’s lawyers to be permitted to exchange information with the defense team for German Katanga, another former Congolese leader on trial at the International Criminal Court (ICC).
On Monday, when the first defence witnesses for the week was due to appear, the start of hearing was delayed by an hour and a half, due to what Judge Adrian Fulford said were “difficulties” which the defense team had experienced earlier in the day.
The judge referred to these difficulties when the hearing finally kicked off. “We fully understand the difficulties that you had earlier today. Thank you for promptly contacting the court, and congratulations notwithstanding the difficulties of enabling us to save at least something from the afternoon,” he said. He did not elaborate what the difficulties were.
After taking the oath in public session, this witness went on to give the rest of her evidence in closed session. The second witness also only gave the oath in public, then went on to give all his testimony in closed session.
This week’s witnesses brought the total of defense witnesses to have testified with protective measures such as voice and face distortion to three.
The very first witness, who claimed he was the father of a prosecution witness who he said lied to court about having been a child soldier, also testified with protective measures, although defense lawyers said he had earlier promised that he would testify without them.
The second and third defense witnesses testified in full public view and also gave their names. But most of their testimony was given in closed session.
Lubanga is accused of the war crimes of enlisting, conscripting and using child soldiers in armed conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo during 2002 and 2003. His defense case opened on January 27, 2010. The prosecution started their case on January 26, 2009, and closed it on July 14 last year.
Meanwhile on Tuesday, the trial today an early adjournment after the defense noted that there were errors in the English transcript of the testimony of the fourth defense witness.
Catherine Mabille, the lead defense attorney, asked for the adjournment, and Judge Fulford granted it about two hours before the time court was scheduled to end the day’s proceedings.
Mabille pointed out that in the French transcript there were two names mentioned by the witness, whereas in the English transcript there was only one name. She said since she intended to question the witness again about that name in her redirect examination, the disconnect between the transcripts would present a problem.
On February 17, the Lubanga defense asked judges to grant them permission to exchange information with lawyers for Germain Katanga, another former Congolese leader on trial at the ICC.
Defense lawyer Jean-Marie Biju-Duval told judges that there were four witnesses common to the two trials and it is about these witnesses that the defense teams wanted to meet and to share information.
Prosecutor Nicole Samson said prosecutors in both the Katanga and the Lubanga case opposed the proposed meetings and sharing of information by the defense teams.
Katanga is jointly charged with Mathieu Ngudjolo Chui, also a Congolese national, with three crimes against humanity and seven war crimes. The ICC alleges that the two men led militia groups which used child soldiers and committed atrocities against members of the Hema ethnic group in DRC.
The Union of Congolese Patriots (UPC), which Lubanga is alleged to have led, was predominantly made up of Hema and fought against the groups which the ICC claims were led by Katanga and Ngudjolo.
“The defense has to share information about these witnesses… It is our right and we need to do so,” Biju-Duval said. “We think it is useful and necessary for the defense teams to the share results of their investigations. There’s nothing against that. This will only help in the establishment of the truth.”
Samson said prosecutors did not see how it could be possible to exchange information without violating the orders restricting who got access to information concerning the individual cases.
“The information is known to the defense teams and it is possible that in the course of their exchanges, the information that is otherwise protected in one case is revealed, not intentionally, is revealed in the other case,” she said.
Judge Fulford said barring defense teams from speaking to each other would be a denial of their rights to free speech and association, and would also represent an impediment to the preparation of their cases.
But Samson said that while each defense team was aware of the orders imposed on them by the courts regarding disclosure of information, there would be no means of monitoring the communication which would take place between the defense teams. She added that it was not the case that every item of evidence in a document compiled by OTP was of equal relevance across the two cases.
Judges said they would make a ruling after getting submissions on the specific restrictions which had been placed on the disclosure of information by the two trials.
Meanwhile, the trial on Thursday took a break to allow his attorneys to travel to DRC to conduct what Judge Fulford referred to as “critical research”. As a result, there will be no hearings until Wednesday March 3, 2010.
Judge Fulford directed the defense team and representatives of the Victims and Witnesses Unit (VWU) to meet and resolve an outstanding issue which he said related to the research which the defense wished to carry out during their visit to the DRC next week.
Lubanga Lawyers Want ‘Vulnerable’ Witness to Testify Via
Video Link
LubanagaTrial.org
By Wairagala Wakabi
February 23, 2010
Thomas Lubanga’s attorneys have asked for permission for one of the defense witnesses to testify via video link from Ituri in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). They said traveling to The Hague would be cumbersome for the “extremely vulnerable” witnesses.
Judges Adrian Fulford, Elizabeth Odio Benito, and René Blattmann ruled on February 10, 2010 that the law allowed witnesses to testify electronically for various reasons.
However, they did not grant the defense request – instead, they directed the Victims and Witnesses Unit (VWU) of the court to assess the matters raised by the defense, and then advise judges whether giving evidence in the Netherlands would be significantly detrimental to the witness and whether using a video link was a reasonable alternative for the witness.
The judges nonetheless pointed out that the suggested personal circumstances of the witness led to a strong prima facie conclusion that requiring her to travel to The Hague to give evidence would be detrimental to her psychological well-being and her dignity.
“On the basis of the defense submissions, the change in environment could be extremely destabilizing and upsetting for the witness, bearing in mind her domestic circumstances and her unfamiliarity with the basic norms of life in Europe,” the judges said.
The defense described the witness as “extremely vulnerable” and said she would suffer great prejudice and harm if she had to travel to the court to testify. She is in her mid forties, and resides in a country area that is relatively inaccessible, said the defense, adding that the witness lived in conditions of extreme poverty, and had never previously travelled.
The defense said the witness had never used a toilet, a sink, or a telephone. Given the length of time she would need to spend, first, in the Congolese capital Kinshasa obtaining a passport and, thereafter, in the Netherlands, the defense suggested that this would be a traumatic experience for her, and that she would be completely helpless and at a loss in these unfamiliar environs.
According to the defence, her evidence will relate to two prosecution witnesses. She will provide evidence contrary to one prosecution’s claim that he was sure his mother was dead, the defense said.
Legal representatives opposed the defense application, observing that it was not made on the basis that the witness was unable to travel to The Hague or that she had refused to testify in person, but instead it was founded on her alleged vulnerability.
The legal representatives also noted that the application was not made by the VWU or by the witness, but by the defense. They argued that because Lubanga’s supporters are influential in Bunia, they might have contact with the witness and influence her evidence.
Judges said the Rome Statute required the court to take appropriate measures to protect the safety, physical and psychological well-being, dignity and privacy, of victims and witnesses.
The statute also allows witness to testify through electronic means. Article 69(2) of the Statute provides that the court may “permit the giving of viva voce (oral) or recorded testimony of a witness by means of video or audio technology, as well as the introduction of documents or written transcripts…”
“Contrary to the contention of the legal representatives, applications for evidence to be given via a video link are not restricted to the two suggested limited situations, namely when the witness has either refused to attend court or is unable to do so,” the judges ruled.
Judges will make a final ruling on the defense request after hearing back from the VWU. So far, five defense witnesses have testified in the trial of Lubanga, whom the ICC alleges was the commander-in-chief of the Patriotic Forces for the Liberation of Congo (FPLC), a militia group that used child soldiers in inter-ethnic fighting in DRC.
Lubanga’s defense team is currently in Congo conducting additional research for their case. The trial resumes on Wednesday March 3, 2010.
Feuding Kenyan Leaders Meet
The New York Times
By Jeffrey Gettleman
February 24, 2010
After a week of playing political hard-to-get that put this country on edge and caused Kenya’s stock market and currency to slide, Kenya’s feuding president and prime minister finally met Tuesday.
The two sat down and talked for more than an hour in President Mwai Kibaki’s s office in downtown Nairobi, the capital, according to Kenyan lawmakers. “It was a good meeting,” said Jakoyo Midiwo, a political ally of the prime minister, Raila Odinga. “They agreed to address the issues that divide us.”
Mr. Odinga and Mr. Kibaki had been locked in a bruising political impasse for more than a week, after Mr. Kibaki revoked Mr. Odinga’s suspensions of the ministers of agriculture and education on suspicion of corruption.
The acrimony between them is hardly new. Mr. Kibaki and Mr. Odinga have been rivals for years, and it was a disputed election between them in 2007 that caused Kenya to crack open in ethnic violence that killed more than 1,000 people. After that, under intense international pressure, Mr. Kibaki and Mr. Odinga joined together in a so-called grand coalition government. But the coalition has been roundly lambasted as dysfunctional, corrupt and a “grand letdown,” with this impasse being one of the low points.
If there is a single issue that continuously holds Kenya back, that retards its economy, discredits its judiciary, poisons its politics, and impoverishes its people, it is corruption. Independent audits have been delving into reports of graft, and the day before Mr. Odinga suspended the two ministers, Mr. Kibaki suspended several high-ranking civil servants.
But Mr. Odinga said more action was needed, and moved against the Agricultural and Education Ministries, both of which have been hit by staggering corruption scandals.
In the Agricultural Ministry, the audits found that officials cut sweetheart deals in which grain from Kenya’s emergency reserves was sold at subsidized prices to political cronies at a time of looming famine. The result was that the cronies made enormous, under-the-table profits, the national grain reserves dwindled, food prices spiked and people in the hinterland starved.
At the Education Ministry, the accusations involved the disappearance of millions of schoolbooks and chunks of donor money.
On the afternoon of Feb. 14, Mr. Odinga abruptly announced the suspensions of the ministers and said that he was referring their cases to criminal prosecutors. A few hours later, Mr. Kibaki derided those moves, saying Mr. Odinga had no such power. For much of the past week, Kenya’s two top officials appeared to studiously avoid each other, despite urgings from Kenya’s biggest aid donors to reconcile. The two were supposed to meet on Sunday to resolve their differences, but the meeting was postponed without explanation.
Many Kenyans have asked why Mr. Kibaki reflexively reinstated the ministers whose departments had become incubators of graft. One interpretation is that he wanted to humiliate Mr. Odinga and show that, despite the facade of a coalition government, the president still holds all the power. Political analysts say that Mr. Kibaki also wanted to cozy up to the large ethnic voting bloc behind the agricultural minister, William Ruto.
Likewise, many people here suspect Mr. Odinga of being motivated not so much by genuine anguish over corruption but by more selfish political calculations. He may have announced the suspensions, the conventional wisdom goes, to cut the charming, ambitious Mr. Ruto off at the knees. Mr. Ruto used to be a political ally but seems ready to challenge Mr. Odinga to become the opposition’s candidate in the next presidential election in 2012.
“This is not about corruption,” said John Githongo, Kenya’s former anticorruption chief who now runs a grass-roots political organization. “That’s nonsense. It’s about politics and political alignments in the build-up to the next election.”
Much of the governmental in-fighting goes back to the violent days in 2007 and early 2008 when Kenya violently split along ethnic lines after the flawed election. Kenyan human rights groups have said that Mr. Ruto is suspected of orchestrating some of the bloodshed by inciting members of his ethnic group to kill members of the president’s ethnic group. The International Criminal Court at The Hague is investigating the case, and Mr. Odinga has said he will cooperate with the court, which has been interpreted as meaning that he would allow Mr. Ruto to be tried in Europe.
If that happens — though many Kenyans doubt it ever will — political analysts say that Mr. Ruto’s ethnic community, the Kalenjin, will vent their rage toward Mr. Odinga. That could make it very difficult for Mr. Odinga if he runs for president again in 2012, because it was in no small part the large bloc of Kalenjin votes that made him the leading contender in 2007, and possibly even the winner, had there not been widespread fraud.
International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR)
Karemera: Former UN Mission Chief Blames Gen Dallaire
Hirondelle News Agency
February 16, 2010
The head of the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR) during the 1994 genocide, Jacques-Roger Booh-Booh, heaped blame on the former UN force commander, General Romeo Dallaire, and on the international community, while testifying on Tuesday before the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR).
Mr. Booh-Booh, a Cameroonian, was called to the witness stand by the defence of Joseph Nzirorera, in 1994 the Secretary General of the then ruling party MRND.
Nzirorera is on trial with Mathieu Ngirumpatse and Edouard Karemera, respectively the President and Vice-President of the MRND in 1994. The three men are charged for their "superior responsibility" in the crimes committed by their subordinates. They plead not guilty.
Mr. Booh-Booh, now a retired diplomat, claimed that General Dallaire, a Canadian, had failed in his duties as UNAMIR Chief of Staff.
"On the evening of April 6 [1994, the night President Habyarimana's plan was shot down], he was nowhere to be found", declared Mr. Booh-Booh, who was examined by Nzirorera's lead defence counsel Peter Robinson.
The former head of UNAMIR blamed General Dallaire for reporting neither on the circumstances of the plane crash nor on the political murders which were perpetrated the following day, April 7.
"What happened at Kigali's airport, which was under the UNAMIR supervision?", Mr. Booh-Booh asked. "How could it be that Prime Minister Agathe Uwilingiyimana was killed while under UN protection? What happened to the ten Belgian Blue Helmets [in charge of her security]?".
"No report, no report at all!", he added.
Mr. Booh-Booh also mentioned the assassination of several Rwandan ministers under UN protection.
He went on describing a poor working relationship with General Dallaire: "There was no cooperation. No UN Peace keeping force has ever had two bosses. UNAMIR was plagued with severe malfunctions".
Another series of remarks targeted the international community, accused of having abandoned Rwanda.
"We should have stayed with the Rwandans", Jacques-Roger Booh-Booh regretted, criticizing Western countries for evacuating their citizens from Rwanda instead of providing the military equipment to African states which, he claimed, were ready to intervene.
"The international community ignored the tragedy", he said. "I hope this will be the last time I testify with regard to the problems in Rwanda. All too often, I have a tendency to speak my mind".
The testimony is due to continue on Wednesday.
Ngirabatware’s Lawyers Request the Cooperation of the Holy
See
Hirondelle News Agency
February 17, 2010
Former Minister of Planning Augustin Ngirabatware on Wednesday asked the ICTR to request the Holy See to arrange for a meeting between his lawyers and the Apostolic nuncio to Rwanda in 1994, Monsignor Giuseppe Bertello.
Charged with genocide and crimes against humanity, Augustin Ngirabatware pleads not guilty.
His lawyers want Mgr. Bertello to testify, as they assert he would, in support of Ngirabatware's alibi for the period between April 7 and April 12, 1994.
According to the indictment and to several prosecution witnesses, Ngirabatware was in his hometown of Nyamyumba (Gisenyi Prefecture) from April 6 to April 12, inciting Hutus to kill their Tutsi neighbours.
In a written request submitted to the judges, the Defence asserts that the defendant was in fact in Kigali where he met most notably with the papal nuncio.
According to the Defence, the prelate could also disprove allegations that their client misappropriated foreign aid money to fund the Interahamwe militia.
As a member of the diplomatic corps, Mgr. Bertello participated in various meetings held at the Ministry of Planning to monitor how development funds were used, Ngirabatware's lawyers support.
The request introduced by the Defence states that Mgr. Bertello only incompletely responded to a questionnaire which was sent to him on September 3, 2009.
When a second questionnaire was forwarded to him, he refused "to provide the requested information and details", according to Ngirabatware's Defence.
The Defence asks the Chamber to either deliver a ruling requesting the Holy See to facilitate a meeting with Mgr. Bertello or, at least, call upon the Holy See « to cooperate on a voluntary basis » to arrange for a meeting between the lawyers and the prelate.
Karemera: The Interim Government Was “Illegal”, Mr.
Booh-Booh Says
Hirondelle News Agency
February 18, 2010
The head of the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR) in 1994, Jacques-Roger Booh-Booh, labeled the interim government formed after the death of President Habyarimana as "illegal", when he testified on Thursday before the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR).
However, Mr. Booh-Booh did not follow the Prosecution in its claim that the interim government ought to be qualified as "criminal".
Now a retired diplomat, Mr. Booh-Booh, a Cameroonian, was called to the witness stand by the defence of Joseph Nzirorera, who was in 1994 the Secretary General of the then ruling party MRND.
"In my opinion, it was an illegal government (...) I kept my distance from a government which, given my background as a jurist, I thought of as being illegal", he said to the court.
When Prosecution counsel Don Webster supported that the interim government was actually a gang of criminals, the former head of UNAMIR replied: "I don't know of a criminal government".
Nevertheless, he made clear that UNAMIR did not accept the explanations given by the interim government for the massacres which were committed. In their messages, Mr. Booh-Booh said, the interim government referred to the organized killings as "interethnic trouble".
"The UNAMIR did condemn [these explanations]. But don't ask me to borrow your language (...) The language of a prosecutor and the language of a diplomat are not the same", he explained.
Don Webster insisted asking Mr. Booh-Booh if the RPF, then a rebel movement, was not right to refuse negotiations with a criminal government.
"I can't judge the position of a political party to which I do not belong", Booh-Booh responded.
During the three days of his testimony as a defence witness, the Cameroonian diplomat likewise stated points of disagreement with Nziroera's Lead defence counsel Peter Robinson.
Nzirorera is on trial with Mathieu Ngirumpatse and Edouard Karemera, respectively the President and Vice-President of the MRND in 1994. The three men are charged for their "superior responsibility" in the crimes committed by their subordinates. They plead not guilty.
Setako Judgment Now Set for February 25
Hirondelle News Agency
February 19, 2010
The judgment of genocide-accused, former Rwandan military officer, Lieutenant-Colonel Ephrem Setako which was scheduled to be rendered on February 24, has now been moved forward to February 25.
The Chamber notified the parties that it was compelled to change the date to accommodate the accused lead defence Counsel, Professor Lennox Hinds who said that he could only be in Arusha, at the Tribunal's seat on the evening of February 24.
The Chamber highly cautioned that in case it happened that Mauled Day (Muslim celebration) was to be celebrated on February 25, then the judgment would be handed down the following day, February 26. If the celebrations were to be held on February 26, there would be no change for the judgment day.
Lt. Col Setako is facing six charges including genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. He has pleaded not guilty.
This will be the second judgment delivered by the ICTR this year, after that of Tharcisse Muvunyi, who was sentenced on February 11 to 15 years in jail.
Setako's defence closed its case on June 25, 2009 after fielding a total of 34 witnesses while the Prosecution ended its case on April 22, 2009 after calling 20 witnesses. The parties presented their closing arguments on November 5, 2009.
Karemera: Ex-MRND President Called for Training and Arming
of Youth Civilians
Hirondelle News Agency
February 23, 2010
Genocide-accused former President of then Rwandan ruling party MRND, Mathieu Ngirumpatse, was alleged by a prosecution counsel before the ICTR to have written a letter in which he called for the secret training and arming of youths to fight Tutsis -almost one year before the genocide.
The letter dated February 15, 1993, was presented to Francois Karera, former Kigali Rural Governor for comments as he was cross-examined on Monday by the prosecution counsel Saidou N'Dow. It was among the documents ceased when Ngirumpatse was arrested on June 11, 1998 in Mali.
Karera, a genocide-convict, was testifying in defence of the former MRND Secretary General, Joseph Nzirorera, jointly tried alongside Ngirumpatse and MRND Vice President, Edourd Karemera.
‘'You claim that MRND was the party for peace and unity but in the letter, Ngirumpatse called for training and arming youths secretly. How would the party which represents peace and unity call for training and arming civilians secretly?,'' N'Dow asked Karera.
Karera quickly responded: ‘'Which country in the world does not train its army secretly. Any army would be trained in that manner.'' But this response did not satisfy N'Dow. He immediately reminded the witness that it was not about training the army, but rather training and arming civilians.
During re-examination by the Ngirumpatse's co-defence counsel, Frederic Weyl, Karera reasserted that the language used by Ngirumpatse in that letter was justified. ‘'This is how any authority and patriotic person will write during war times. There is no ambiguity in this letter as it is written during war time,'' stressed Karera.
He said that on February 8, 1993, a week before the letter was written, Rwandese Patriotic Front (RPF) rebels, now in power in Kigali, started hostility again and almost reached Kigali City. ‘'The letter was written in that specific context of the attacks by the RPF,'' the witness defended.
Part of the indictment against Ngirumpatse stated that: ‘'Starting in 1993 Mathieu Ngirumpatse and other national leaders (....) provide military training and arms to Interahamwe militias (the youth wing of MRND)...''
The three defendants are held responsible for their superior responsibility for the crimes allegedly committed by their subordinates, the MRND party members, especially the Interahamwe militiamen.
Karera concluded his testimony and the case continues Wednesday.
Ngirabatware: Tutsis were “Insulted and Humiliated” Before
the Genocide
Hirondelle News Agency
February 23, 2010
A Tutsi woman witnessing for the Prosecution against former Minister of Planning Augustin Ngirabatware, who is on trial before the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), described on Tuesday how she was humiliated and insulted, day in day out, when working in the public service prior to the 1994 genocide.
"All Tutsis in our department were insulted and humiliated. We were all openly humiliated", said the witness dubbed ANAP to protect her identity.
She inadvertently mentioned the name of the department she had been working in but the presiding Tanzanian judge, William Hussein Sekule, ruled that this detail should not be made public.
"All these years, I was gripped by fear", the witness said referring to the period after the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) had launched its attack from neighbouring Uganda on December 1, 1990.
"I was Tutsi, I was accused of being a member of the RPF, I had all reasons to be scared", she added.
Her fears and the threats were exacerbated by the downing of President Juvénal Habyarimana's plane on April 6, 1994, which triggered off large-scale killings.
She then decided to seek refuge in a neighbour's house, the beginning of ordeal during the genocide.
When the Chamber requested the trial to proceed behind closed doors, the witness, who now holds Belgian citizenship, had not yet leveled direct accusations against Augustin Ngirabatware.
Prior to her testimony, British lead defence counsel Peter Herbert had pointed out that the personal data on the witness's identification slip for the hearing was at variance with the data given to Belgian authorities in view of her naturalization.
The Chamber did not allow for a debate of the matter but Peter Herbert is expected to raise the issue again during cross-examination.
Charged with genocide and crimes against humanity, Augustin Ngirabatware pleads not guilty. According to the indictment, he incited Hutus to kill their Tutsi neighbours in his hometown of Nyamyumba (Gisenyi Prefecture) between April 6 and April 12, 1994. He is also charged with misappropriating public funds to finance the Interahamwe militia.
Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL)
Offical Website of the Special Court for Sierra Leone
The Sierra Leone Court Monitoring Programme
Liberia’s Charles Taylor, Now Facing Trial, Was No Stranger
to Washington
Washington Post
By Colum Lynch
February 15, 2010
Charles Taylor, the former Liberian warlord and president on trial in The Hague on war crimes charges, saw the value of purchasing a good reputation in Washington.
International prosecutors say that even as Taylor terrorized West Africa in the 1990s in pursuit of power and control over the region's diamonds, gold and other natural resources, he spent millions to recruit a group of Democratic and Republican lobbyists to burnish his image abroad and secure access to powerful American politicians, including presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.
Those efforts -- estimated at a cost of at least $2.6 million and involving top former state department officials, businessmen and a pastor -- ultimately failed to undo his rogue status in the West or to keep him in power.
But with the support of several influential lobbyists, he was able to routinely make his case to top U.S. policymakers. One lobbyist, Lester Hyman, organized a meeting between Taylor's wife, Jewel Howard Taylor, and Hillary Rodham Clinton, then the first lady, to discuss micro-enterprise in Africa. Hyman also sought to arrange a meeting for Taylor and President Bill Clinton along the sidelines of a U.N. General Assembly meeting, but Taylor ultimately declined to travel to New York. Hyman also met directly Madeleine K. Albright, then secretary of state, in a bid to have Taylor's criminal record cleared on charges related to his escape from a Massachusetts prison in the mid-1980s.
Hyman and several other lobbyists who defended Taylor in the United States said they were motivated primarily by humanitarian or religious concerns, not by greed or profit. "Money was never the factor. It was a great loss for me and for the firm," said Hyman, whose former company, Swidler & Berlin, received about $630,000 from Liberia from September 1997 to April 1999, according to the prosecution. "I was never representing Charles Taylor. I was representing the 3 million citizens of the country. They were the ones who were really suffering. I was trying to see if I could resolve some of the problems between the United States and the Liberian government."
But Hyman, who was awarded a concession to oversee Liberia's shipping registry, and the others also had significant economic interests in the region. The conservative evangelical preacher Pat Robertson received a 1999 concession to run a gold-mining exploration in southeastern Liberia.
Robertson, meanwhile, offered to approach top Bush administration officials on Taylor's behalf, Taylor told prosecutors. Frustrated that the United States would not do anything to prevent Taylor's fall from power, Robertson lashed out at Bush in 2003, accusing him of "undermining a Christian, Baptist president to bring in Muslim rebels to take over the country."
A spokesman for Robertson, Chris Roslan, acknowledged that Robertson was awarded the gold concession by the Liberian government but said there was no "quid pro quo" to provide Liberia with political favors in return.
U.N.-backed prosecutors have charged Taylor with 11 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity for lending support to the brutal Sierra Leonean rebel movement, the Revolutionary United Front, which allegedly killed and maimed thousands of civilians during the country's civil war in the late 1990s. The prosecution maintains that Taylor armed the RUF in exchange for access to Sierra Leone's diamond mines. Taylor has denied the charges.
But Taylor believed his public relations strategy in Washington was bearing fruit. He credited Hyman with exploiting his contacts in the State Department to persuade Massachusetts authorities to expunge his criminal record after his escape from prison in Plymouth. "I'm sure State had something to do with it," Taylor said.
Hyman said he personally urged Albright to clear Taylor's record after he'd won Liberia's presidential elections. But he said she refused. "Madeleine Albright's position was that this is a matter that has to be resolved by the commonwealth of Massachusetts," he said. "The most Madeleine would say was that [the State Department] would abide by whatever decision the district attorney there made."
Albright, who is traveling in Russia, was not available to comment, according to a spokeswoman.
Taylor said he found other assistance in Washington, too. He said that Gen. Robert Yerks, an unpaid advocate with business interests in Liberia, had helped build support for his government from influential policymakers.
"Yes. The general as a friend of Liberia did secure some favorable actions on the part of the United States government or its representatives," Taylor said in testimony earlier this month.
Yerks served as an informal political adviser for Taylor. In a February 1999 letter, Yerks urged Taylor to improve his relations with Washington by continuing a "high-profile" effort to broker a peace deal in Liberia.
He also counseled him to destroy a cache of unusable weapons as a "magnanimous gesture" to Washington and to resolve an outstanding dispute with the U.S. oil company Mobil, whose headquarters was ransacked during civil unrest involving Taylor's fighters in 1996.
Yerks also boasted to Taylor about his contacts with senior State Department officials, including Susan E. Rice, then assistant secretary of state. Several months later, Rice sent Yerks a personal letter commending Taylor's peace efforts and urging him to encourage the RUF's leader, Foday Sankoh, to implement a recent peace agreement.
She also noted that Liberia stood to receive greater international assistance if Taylor carried out a series of reforms recommended by the International Monetary Fund aimed at eliminating government monopolies. "Protecting the business interests of foreign investors will go a long way to improve Liberia's image abroad," Rice wrote. "We are pleased that Liberia has friends who can help guide it in the right direction."
U.S. officials said that Yerks exerted no influence over Rice. "The letter from then-Assistant Secretary Rice was a statement of U.S. policy at that time, which was to press Liberia to join other key regional players in bolstering a fragile, weeks-old peace accord that halted the conflict in Sierra Leone, which had lasted many years and taken tens of thousands of lives," said Rice's spokesman, Mark Kornblau.
‘Covert Account’ Helped Taylor Evade UN Arms Embargo
Daily Observer
February 17, 2010
Former Liberian president, Charles Taylor, has described how he evaded a United Nations arms embargo by funneling millions of dollars through a secret personal bank account to buy arms and ammunition in an effort to defeat rebels threatening to oust his government.
Taylor made the disclosure when his trial for war crimes continued in The Netherlands on Monday, February 15.
“The largest disbursement from this account went to arms and ammunition,” Taylor said, asserting that the purchase was necessary to fight against Liberians United for Reconciliation and Development (LURD) rebels, since his country was under a United Nations arms embargo.
The bank account, opened in his name at the Liberian Bank for Development and Investment (LBDI) in 1999 and into which millions of US dollars were deposited during his time as president, was a major focus for prosecutors’ cross-examination of the former warlord.
Prosecutors have alleged that the money in this account was not used for official purposes but instead provided a way for Taylor to divert money away from state coffers in order to enrich himself. Taylor had dismissed the claim during his cross-examination, and today his defense team helped give him the opportunity to explain the existence of this account during his re-examination.
He said that the Liberian legislature authorized him to open the secret account in his name, and that it was used both for arms supplies and for other purposes benefiting the Liberian government.
“This account is a covert account opened by the government of Liberia at this time. It had to be opened in my name,” Taylor said.
“The largest disbursement from this account went to arms and ammunition. Out of this account, we paid salaries for special units, the ATU [Anti-Terrorist Unit] was paid, the SSS [Special Security Services] was paid, and various presidential projects in dealing with goodwill within that period were paid out of this account. These are the four categories that we paid out of this account,” the former president explained.
He also told the judges that his former defense minister, Daniel Chea, had been wrong when he told the American-based Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) television series, Frontline World, during a May 2005 interview, that the disarmament process in Liberia in 1995 was a fiasco.
“I fully disagree with Mr. Chea to say that that was a fiasco; I totally disagree. The United Nations, ECOWAS [Economic Community of West African States], the African Union, all of the observers said that the disarmament, while it was not total – in fact no disarmament can be total – the statement used during that period, there was substantial disarmament sufficient to carry out the elections, and so for him to say that it was a fiasco is total nonsense,” Taylor asserte.
In the May 2005 interview, Chea told Frontline World that Taylor had disappointed the people of Liberia because he opened too many fronts that he could not contain. In Monday’s re-examination, Taylor dismissed the assertion as ‘untrue’.
The accused former president, on trial for war crimes in The Hague, concluded his cross-examination by prosecutors on February 6, 2008. He is now responding to questions from his lawyers in a second direct examination.
The former Liberian president is on trial for his alleged support to Revolutionary United Front (RUF) rebels, who waged an 11-year rebel war on the people of Sierra Leone. He has denied all allegations against him, saying that his association with the RUF rebels was purely for peaceful purposes in the neighboring West African country.
Veteran War Crimes Lawyer Tapped as Top Prosecutor
UN News Centre
February 22, 2010
A United States attorney, who leads the prosecution against former Liberian president Charles Taylor, has been named by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon as the new Prosecutor of the United Nations-backed tribunal trying the worst acts committed during the decade-long brutal civil war in Sierra Leone.
Since 2007, Brenda Joyce Hollis has served as a principal trial attorney in the Office of the Prosecutor in the Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL), where she heads up the legal team prosecuting Mr. Taylor, who is under indictment for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Prior to that, she was an expert legal consultant on international law and criminal procedure, training judges, prosecutors and investigators at courts and international tribunals in Indonesia, Iraq and Cambodia.
Ms. Hollis has helped victims of international crimes in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Colombia prepare submissions requesting investigations by the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague.
She was also senior trial attorney at the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia (ICTY) from 1994-2001, serving as lead counsel in preparing the case against former Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic as well as cases in which rape was charged as torture.
The newly-appointed prosecutor paid tribute to Deputy Prosecutor Joseph Kamara, who has served as Acting Prosecutor since Stephen Rapp left the post last September.
Also today, Mr. Ban named Binta Mansaray, a Sierra Leonean national, as the Special Court’s Registrar.
Appointed as Deputy Registrar in 2007, she has served as Acting Registrar since last June.
Ms. Mansaray first joined the SCSL as an Outreach Coordinator, where she designed its acclaimed grassroots programme to inform the people of Sierra Leone and Liberia about the Special Court and its trials.
Prior to joining the SCSL, she worked as a human rights advocate for victims and ex-combatants.
The Special Court is an independent tribunal established jointly by Sierra Leone’s Government and the UN in 2002. It is mandated to try those who bear the greatest responsibility for atrocities committed in Sierra Leone after 30 November 1996.
Last September, the eight prisoners convicted and held by the SCSL were transferred to Rwanda to serve their sentences since no prison in Sierra Leone meets the required international standards. The remaining trial, involving Mr. Taylor, is continuing at The Hague, where it was moved for security reasons.
Binta Mansaray Named Special Court Registrar
Sierra Express Media
February 22, 2010
The Secretary-General of the United Nations has named Binta Mansaray of Sierra Leone as Registrar of the Special Court. Ms. Mansaray, who was appointed Deputy Registrar in July 2007, has served as Acting Registrar since June 2009.
Binta Mansaray joined the Special Court for Sierra Leone in 2003 as Outreach Coordinator, where she designed the Court’s acclaimed grassroots programme to keep the people of Sierra Leone, and later Liberia, informed about the Court and the trials.
Prior to joining the Court, she was a human rights advocate for victims and ex-combatants with a number of organizations. She held the post of Country Representative for the Women’s Commission for Refugee Women and Children in Sierra Leone, worked with the Campaign for Good Governance, and served as consultant with the United Nations Mission in Sierra Leone (UNAMSIL) and a number of civil society organizations.
During her time as Acting Registrar, Ms. Mansaray has overseen the end of trials in Freetown and the transfer of convicted persons to serve their sentences, as well as the downsizing of the Court and consideration of residual issues. She has also continued to focus on the legacy of the Special Court and the continuing trial of former Liberian President Charles Taylor in The Hague.
Charles Taylor was Not Part of a Plan to Commit Crimes in
Sierra Leone; He Did Not Receive Diamonds from Sierra Leonean Rebels, Witness
Says
CharlesTaylorTrial.org
By Alpha Sesay
February 25, 2010
Former Liberian president Charles Taylor did not form or contribute to any plan to commit crimes in neighboring Sierra Leone, nor did he receive any diamonds from Sierra Leonean rebel forces as alleged by prosecutors, according to Mr. Taylor's first witness.
Yanks Smythe has spent the last four days refuting prosecution allegations that Mr. Taylor aided and abetted Revolutionary United Front (RUF) rebels whose 11-year civil conflict in Sierra Leone saw the commission of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and other serious violations of international humanitarian law. Prosecutors have alleged that without stepping foot in his neighboring country, Mr. Taylor provided support to the RUF rebels through the supply of weapons in exchange for diamonds.
"Are you aware of Mr. Taylor during that period of time, himself committing any crimes within the territory of Sierra Leone?" defense lawyer Mr. Anyah asked the witness today.
"During those periods I was with Mr. Taylor, he never stepped foot in Sierra Leone so he couldn't have committed those crimes in Sierra Leone," Mr. Smythe said.
Mr. Anyah further asked the witness whether he was "aware of Mr. Taylor during that period of time being part of some sort of criminal enterprise or conspiracy the purpose of which was to commit a crime in Sierra Leone?"
"No I was never aware of Mr. Taylor being part of any of that, to commit crimes in Sierra Leone," the witness responded.
"Are you aware of Mr. Taylor during that period of time in any way aiding and abetting, facilitating or furthering the commission of any crime in Sierra Leone?" Mr. Anyah pressed the witness further.
"I am not aware of Mr. Taylor doing any of those to commit crimes in Sierra Leone," the witness again responded.
Mr. Smythe also refuted prosecution allegations that Mr. Taylor received huge supplies of diamonds from RUF rebels while he served as president of Liberia. During the presentation of the prosecution's case, several witnesses testified that Mr. Taylor received diamonds from RUF commanders including Issa Sesay and Sam Bockarie. Some witnesses told the judges that members of Mr. Taylor's security forces travelled to Sierra Leone to collect diamonds from RUF rebels for onward transmission to Mr. Taylor.
"I have never seen Mr. Taylor with diamonds, never heard of Mr. Taylor receiving diamonds from anyone during those periods," Mr. Smythe said.
Mr. Taylor's defense counsel, Mr. Anyah, focused specifically on the assertions of certain witnesses that diamonds transported from Sierra Leone were put in mayonnaise jars and handed over to Mr. Taylor. The witness said that no such thing ever happened.
"Have you ever seen Mr. Taylor receive a mayonnaise jar of diamonds?" Mr. Anyah asked the witness.
"I've never seen Mr. Taylor receiving a mayonnaise jar of diamonds," Mr. Smythe responded.
"Have you heard or did you hear during that period of time of Mr. Taylor receiving diamonds in particular from any member of the RUF?" Mr. Anyah asked further.
"I have never heard of Mr. Taylor receiving diamonds from any member of the RUF," Mr. Smythe responded.
At the end of today's proceedings, Mr. Anyah brought the direct-examination of the witness to a close. Prosecutors will commence the cross-examination of the witness tomorrow.
Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Liberia
Official Website of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Liberia
‘No Justice, No Peace’: TRC Stands by Final Report
Liberian Daily Observer
February 15, 2010
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) says it has ‘absolutely no regret’ about the recommendations contained in its Edited and Final Report, as they are in line with the findings and facts arising from the Liberian conflict.
Addressing a news conference over the weekend at the commission’s 9th Street headquarters in Sinkor, Monrovia, TRC Commissioner, Massa A. Washington, said the commission has done its work as it was mandated to do.
Washington, who has oversight on Women and the Media observed that since the submission of the TRC Final Report to the Liberian Presidency and the Executive Branch of government, the National Legislature and other stakeholders, the report has generated intense public debate – some agreeing and some disagreeing with the TRC’s findings and recommendations.
“The debate,” the commissioner pointed out, “is good for Liberia and its democratic process. It has popularized the Report and the TRC process. It may not be a perfect document, but it represents the truth and facts of what took place in this country.”
She maintained that during its course of operation, the TRC had determined that gross violations of international human rights and humanitarian laws, egregious domestic violations and other forms of violations were very much pervasive in Liberia’s several wars and armed conflict.
Washington maintained that the types of crimes committed in the Liberian civil war, including cannibalism (eating of human flesh by humans), disembowelment of pregnant women, gang and multiple raping of women and children, massacres and extrajudicial killings undoubtedly took the meaning of war crimes and crimes against humanity to a level that should not be treated with impunity.
Responding to calls in some quarters for the country to forgive and move on, the TRC commissioner asserted that the commission had addressed the issue of reconciliation in its Final Report. For instance, she told the news conference, based on the testimonies of witnesses and other reports gathered across the country, about 8,000 perpetrators were identified with regard to the various violations with which they were associated.
Of this number, Washington pointed out, 116 most notorious perpetrators have been recommended in the Final Report of the TRC for prosecution in a criminal tribunal.
“The TRC also wants accountability within the framework of due process of law as there can be no genuine reconciliation without justice,” she asserted.
Washington, who is a professional journalist, also rejected recent comments on the TRC Report by Dr. Amos C. Sawyer, Chairman of Governance Commission (GC), that the TRC had not addressed the issue of reconciliation in its Final Report.
“We did not approach reconciliation at face value. We did not see it as a theory. We addressed it pragmatically,” she asserted.
The TRC is expected to hold a major news conference today at its headquarters.
Another Group Calls For Criminal Tribunal in Liberia
The Inquirer
By Garmonyou Wilson
February 23, 2010
A group calling itself, the Liberian Working Group (LWG) is calling for a Liberian Criminal Tribunal to prosecute all major actors in the Liberian civil conflict beginning 1990 and beyond. Speaking to reporters yesterday the National Coordinator for the Human Rights Protection Forum (HRPF), Adama Dempster said that the LWG is a division of HRPF and has been working over the years to launch after several investigations of its own surrounding the years of conflict in the country. Mr. Dempster said, “LWG is made up of distinguished practitioners, academics, and members of the civil society of Liberia.” He continued, “The LWG has prepared for use by the United Nations, the African Union and/or the Government of Liberia the following; A map of the conflict that claimed the lives of tens of thousands of Liberian citizens, a list of those who bear the greatest responsibility for war crimes and crimes against humanity, a draft statue that either creates hybrid international war crimes tribunal similar to the Special Court for Sierra Leone or an internationalized domestic court, a draft set of rules of procedure and evidence for that justice mechanism and a series of appellate briefs that address the judicial issues surrounding such a court.”
“The time is now for beginning the justice process as the Truth and Reconciliation Commission winds down its work. The efforts of the Liberian Working Group compliment the work of the Commission and help implement some of its recommendations,” the Executive Committee Representative-Liberia pronounced. “The LWG has laid down a clear path to make this a reality and stands ready to work with stakeholders at the international, regional, and local level,” Mr. Dempster continued. In his disclosure the National Coordinator for HRPF and Executive Committee Representative-Liberia of LWG, Adama Dempster said that they are backed by several organizations and institutions mainly, Impunity Watch (based in the U.S.), Rwanda, Sierra Leone and Uganda Special Courts, local civil society organizations and many Liberians. “The people of Liberia deserve a fair and open process by which those who murdered, raped, maimed, and mutilated approximately 600,000 of their fellow citizens be brought to justice,” he concluded.
The Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina, War Crimes Chamber
Accused in the Duško Jević et al. Case Pleaded Not
Guilty
State Court of BiH
February 19, 2010
At the plea hearing before the Section I for War Crimes of the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), in the Duško Jević et al. case, all the accused pleaded not guilty. Duško Jević, Mendeljev Đurić and Goran Marković are charged with the criminal offence of Genocide.
As inter alia alleged in the Indictment, the accused Jević in the capacity of Deputy Commander of the Special Police Brigade of the MUP RS and the Commander of the Training Center of the Special Police Brigade Jahorina; the accused Đurić in the capacity of the Commanding Officer of the 1st Squad of the Training Center Jahorina; the accused Marković in the capacity of the Commanding Officer of the 2nd Platoon of the 1st Squad of the Training Center Jahorina, commanded their units, acting individually and in concert with other participants, planned, ordered, incited and took part in the realization of the systemic and joint criminal act. The accused allegedly during the period from 10 July until 19 July 1995, as co-perpetrators, inflicted severe bodily and mental injuries to a group of Bosniaks, committed killings of male members of the group of Bosniaks and forcefully transferred women, children and elderly persons from the UN protected zone Srebrenica in order to completely exterminate national, ethnic and religious group of Bosniaks.
Investigation Into Nedjo Ikonic to be Completed Soon
Balkan Investigative Reporting Network
February 19, 2010
The State Prosecution files a custody extension motion against Nedjo Ikonic, claiming that it is likely to complete its investigation soon, based on the suspicion that he took part in genocide in Srebrenica.
The Defense said "the same purpose would be achieved" by releasing the suspect and ordering prohibiting measures against him.
The Trial Chamber will render its decision at a later stage.
The Prosecution asked for Ikonic to remain in custody due to the possibility that he might seek to flee, influence witnesses and accomplices and disturb the peace.
"If released, Ikonic would seek out the network of his accomplices, while victims might refuse to appear before the Court and testify. In that way they would be exposed to trauma even more and they would lose confidence in the judicial system. We believe we will soon be able to complete the investigation and then make a decision on filing an indictment," Prosecutor Ibro Bulic said.
Ikonic is suspected of having commanded a police unit which participated, in collaboration with the Republika Srpska Army, VRS, in controlling the roads in the vicinity of Srebrenica in July 1995. He was deported to Bosnia and Herzegovina at the beginning of 2010, after he had been arrested in the US and sentenced to one year in prison for having given false data to the country's immigration authorities.
"One might conclude that there is a justified danger of escape, considering the fact that he was sentenced for immigration fraud in America and the fact that he unsuccessfully attempted to settle in Canada," Prosecutor Bulic said, adding that Ikonic also has citizenship of the Republic of Serbia.
The suspect's Defense said the Prosecution's motion was "a general and abstract formulation", adding there were no reasons for extending his custody.
"His departure for America was based on economic and social reasons. He did not flee from criminal prosecution. He has nowhere to flee. We consider this process was unlawfully implemented, because my client was not examined by the Prosecution after his arrest," Nenad Rubez, Defense attorney of Ikonic, said.
The Prosecution of Bosnia and Herzegovina said that it did not examine Ikonic following his arrest, but that it was planning to do so in the coming period. Prosecutor Bulic said the suspect was brought before a preliminary hearing judge of the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina after his arrest. He said that one month in custody was then ordered.
According to the Criminal Procedure Code, a prosecutor is obliged to examine the arrested person with 24 hours of the arrest. Following the examination, the prosecutor decides whether to file a custody order motion or release the suspect. As stipulated in the Code, if the person is not taken to a prosecutor within 24 hours of the arrest, the person should be released.
Dragan Djokic Asks for Reduction of Sentence
BIRN Justice Report
February 22, 2010
The Defense calls on the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina to reduce the 12-year sentence against Dragan Djokic, who was found guilty by a court in Croatia of crimes against civilians.
Dragan Djokic, who was sentenced for war crimes against civilians by the District Court in Sisak in the Republic of Croatia in 2006, filed with the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina, a proposal to serve his sentence in this country, whose citizenship he possesses.
The Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina accepted the proposal, which was not objected by the Prosecution, due to the fact that the Law on International Legal Aid in Criminal Affairs stipulates that an individual has the right to serve his sentence in another country if the Court of that country "fully accepts the enacting clauses contained in the verdict".
"This Court has determined that the conditions described in the Law on International Legal Aid in Criminal Affairs have been met," the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina said in its verdict pronounced in November 2009, confirming the sentence of 12 years against Djokic.
The Defense appealed the verdict, calling on the Court to take into consideration the fact that the indictee is a father of two, who does not have a previous criminal record, and the fact that 18 years have passed since the crime was committed, as mitigating circumstances and pronounce "a more benign sentence" against Djokic.
Nenad Balaban, Defense attorney for Djokic, failed to appear at the hearing, held before the Appellate Chamber of the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina on February 22, at which the appeal was considered, while Jadranka Lokmic Misirasa, State Prosecutor, said that the allegations in the Defense's appeal "cannot be assessed" and "the pronounced sentence is adequate".
The Appellate Chamber will render a decision concerning the appeal at a later stage.
Djokic was sentenced to 12 years in prison for murdering a civilian in Ravno Rasce on August 9, 1991, as a member of the paramilitary formations of the Republic of Serbian Krajina, RSK, Army. The Supreme Court of Croatia confirmed the verdict in 2008.
The RSK was established in parts of Croatia controlled by Serb authorities on April 1, 1991. It ceased to exist in 1995.
According to the Law on International Legal Aid in Criminal Affairs, when deciding in which country a person will serve his sentence, the decision on the sanction has to be based on the criminal legislation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, but the sentence pronounced by the Court cannot be "graver than the one pronounced by a foreign court".
Pelemis and Peric: Well Organized Events
BIRN Justice Report
February 22, 2010
Richard Butler, court military expert, says that mass executions of civilians in the Srebrenica area were "well organized and planned actions".
"I have said several times that the evidence indicates that the events that happened in the area controlled by the Zvornik Brigade in July 1995 were not accidental, but well organized. A link between the police and army was established, as well as cooperation between the Zvornik and Bratunac Battalions. This was an organized event aligned with the orders issued by the military and political leaders of Republika Srpska," Butler said testifying via video link at the trial of Momir Pelemis and Slavko Peric.
The State Prosecution charges Pelemis and Peric with participating, on July 15 and 16, 1995, in the murder of about 1,200 Bosniak men from Srebrenica, who were detained in the "Kula" school building in Pilica and Pilica Center in Zvornik municipality.
The indictment contends that Pelemis was Deputy Commander and Chief of Headquarters of the Zvornik Brigade of the Republika Srpska Army, VRS, and Peric was Assistant Commander for Security of the same Unit.
During his testimony Butler explained that indictee Pelemis, as Deputy Battalion Commander, "controlled all activities conducted by the Battalion and ensured the execution of all orders", while Peric took care of "counter-intelligence and security affairs for the Battalion".
"Brigade or battalion commanders at all levels in the VRS were responsible for detainees. Battalion security officers had two-fold tasks in relation to prisoners-of-war. Firstly, in collaboration with commanders they had to question the prisoners in order to obtain information. Secondly, they had to provide and secure a location at which the prisoners would be held," Butler said.
Speaking about his findings and opinion, entitled "Report on military events in Srebrenica in July 1995", Butler said that, prior to the fall of Srebrenica, "the Bosniak authorities" made a plan for all men, capable of serving in the military, "to try reaching the territories in the vicinity of Tuzla, which were controlled by the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina".
"Starting on July 11 and 12, a column wriggling through the VRS positions was formed, while the others, including the elderly, women and children, went to the Dutch Battalion in Potocari. Already on that day the VRS and police forces disarmed UNPROFOR and took over control of the civilians. Then they separated the men who were capable of serving in the military, and detained them in buildings on the territories controlled by the Zvornik Brigade. The men were then executed," Butler said.
He said that "the mass execution of men" took place in the Grbavci, Petkovci, Pilica, Kravica and Orahovica areas from July 13 to 16, 1995.
"When we look at the scope and scale of the actions that had to be undertaken in order to conduct the executions, it is clear that the Headquarters and members of the Zvornik brigade must have been informed and aware of what was happening. From the military point of view, there were buses, tractors, detainees guarded by soldiers and policemen, and more than a thousand detainees at each location. We are therefore speaking about the complexity of the engineering services, preparation of graves and provision of food and drinks for those who carried out the shooting," Butler said.
Dean Manning, a former Hague Tribunal investigator, was due to testify via video link at this hearing, but his examination was postponed because of technical reasons.
The next hearing is due to take place on March 15, when the Defense of the two indictees will cross-examine Butler.
Stupar: Retrial to Begin in March
Balkan Investigative Reporting Network
February 22, 2010
At a status conference the Appellate Chamber announced that statements given by 26 witnesses who testified about Stupar at the first instance trial will be heard during the retrial.
"We will accept the Defense's proposal to examine witness Radoslav Stuparevic in court," Appellate Chamber Chairwoman Azra Miletic said.
In July 2008 Stupar was sentenced, as former Commander of the Second Special Police squad, to 40 years in prison for genocide in Srebrenica. In the first instance verdict the Trial Chamber determined that it had not been proved that the indictee "knew that his men would commit the crime, but it has been proved that he found out about it later, but he failed to take any action to punish them".
Stupar and ten other members of the Second Squad and Republika Srpska Army were tried for the murder of more than 1,000 Srebrenica residents in Kravica Agricultural Cooperative, Bratunac municipality, on July 13, 1995.
Petar Mitrovic, Slobodan Jakovljevic and Branislav Medan were sentenced, by a second instance verdict, to 28 years in prison. Brano Dzinic and Aleksandar Radovanovic were sentenced to 32 years and Milenko Trifunovic to 33 years. Milovan Matic, Miladin Stevanović, Velibor Maksimovic and Dragisa Zivanovic were acquitted.
In October 2009 the Appellate Chamber upheld the appeal filed by Milos Stupar's Defense and overturned the part of the first instance verdict referring to him. It ordered a retrial, because "criminal procedure was violated, which led to a doubt about the correctness of determined facts".
"This trial will only cover the part of the verdict which was overturned," Azra Miletic said. "Stupar was found guilty on the basis of his command responsibility. The Defense filed an appeal pertaining to this part of the verdict. The Prosecution did not file an appeal. Therefore, this trial will not be based on the original indictment, because Stupar was not found guilty of having participated in the crime, together with the others."
In its appeal the Defense said that the first instance verdict was "incomprehensible and contradictory in itself". It said it was unclear whether Stupar was found guilty of being an accomplice to genocide or a co-participant in genocide - "which is contradictory to the concept of command responsibility, of which he was also found guilty".
Hodzic et al: Suspect Responsible for Opening of
Investigation
BIRN Justice Report
February 25, 2010
The Prosecution of Bosnia and Herzegovina files a motion requesting extension of custody of Zulfikar Ališpago on suspicion that he participated in crimes committed in Trusina village. The Defense says these grounds are insufficient and calls on the Court to pronounce prohibiting measures.
The Trial Chamber will render a decision at a later stage.
The State Prosecution based the custody extension motion in the case of Zulfikar Ališpago, known as Zuka, on the grounds for suspicion that he took part in the crime in Trusina village, the possibility that he might try to flee or influence witnesses or accomplices, and the possibility that he might disturb the peace if released.
The Prosecution said this justified the extension custody, while the Defense argued that these reasons were "insufficient and unconvincing" and said prohibiting measures should be ordered instead.
Ališpago is suspected, as Commander of the "Zulfikar" Special Purposes Squad with the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina, of having failed to take "necessary and reasonable measures" to punish members of his unit who conducted an attack on Trusina village in Konjic municipality on April 16, 1993. During the attack 19 civilians and three members of the Croatian Defense Council, HVO, were killed.
Acting on a warrant issued by the Prosecution of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the State Investigation and Protection Agency, SIPA, arrested Ališpago on February 1, 2010. He has been held in custody since then.
Asim Crnalic, Defense attorney of Ališpago, said the Prosecution did not have "adequate evidence" of Alispago's participation or awareness of the crime, and proposed that the Court set bail, in cash or real estate, to ensure that the suspect does not leave Bosnia and Herzegovina.
"Mr. Zulfikar Ališpago has cooperated with the Prosecution of Bosnia and Herzegovina for a long time. He knew an investigation was being conducted against him, but he did not flee. (...) I consider the Prosecution's statement about the possibility of disturbing the public order to have political connotations, as it indicates that top civilian and military officials were involved in the Trusina crime, and the Defense does not deny the crime happened. However, the Prosecution does not specify who these officials were," Crnalic said.
Addressing the chamber, Ališpago said he did not command the Special Unit at the time when the attack on Trusina was conducted, adding that Nihad Bojadzic was responsible for the Unit at the time. He said the investigation into crimes committed in that village was opened thanks to the help he had given the Prosecution.
"I think I deserve credit for the entire investigation. Although I knew I was suspected of the crimes committed in Trusina, I have not fled," Ališpago said.
Nihad Bojadzic, former Deputy Commander of the "Zulfikar" Special Purpose Squad of the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina, was arrested, in November 2009, on suspicion that he participated in the same crimes. Under a warrant issued by the Prosecution of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Mensur Memic, Dzevad Salcin, Senad Hakalovic, Jusuf Hadzajlija and Nedzad Hodzic were also arrested.
The suspects were members of the Special Squad and the "Neretvica" 45th Mountain Brigade of the ABiH.
Rasema Handanovic and Edin Dzeko, who are suspected of participation in this crime, are reported to have been arrested in the US.
International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY)
UN Court Slams Serbia on Mladic
Serbianna
February 18, 2010
A United Nations court hunting indicted war crimes fugitive Ratko Mladic slammed Thursday the missed opportunities to arrest him, blaming a lack of political will.
"We knew exactly where Mladic was three, four years ago", the Belgian prosecutor for the International Criminal Court for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague said in an interview in the Dutch daily, Volkskrant.
"Opportunities to arrest him were missed," Serge Brammertz said, "there was a lack of political will".
Since Serbian President Boris Tadic took office in 2008 however, new people have joined the secret services and "today we may have less information on [Mladic's] exact location but more political will," Brammertz said.
Mladic is "as professional as those who are hunting him," the prosecutor added. "We are going on the principle that he is not alone." Mladic "is a general, he knows how the information services work and can react accordingly".
Brammertz could not say whether it would be "a question of weeks or months" before Mladic's arrest.
"I can only say there is no reason to think he is not in Serbia," he said.
Mladic, 67, has been on the run since being indicted in 1995 by the international court. He is wanted for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity for his role in the Srebrenica massacre of some 8,000 Muslim men and boys.
Mladic and Croatian Serb wartime leader Goran Hadzic are the only remaining fugitives from the court and are believed to be in hiding in Serbia.
Hadzic, 51, is wanted for the murder of hundreds of people and the deportation of tens of thousands of Croat and non-Serb civilians during the 1991-1995 Croatian war.
International Community Smuggled Arms, Claims Karadzic
Institute for War and Peace Reporting
By Rachel Irwin
February 19, 2010
Former Bosnian Serb president Radovan Karadzic this week demanded that several countries turn over documents which he claims will prove they were illegally smuggling weapons into Bosnia during the war.
"[The documents] will show not only what was happening on the groundÉ[but also] that members of the UN were on the side of the warring party, rather than neutral parties," Karadzic said at a February 15 hearing in the Hague tribunal, which included representatives from Germany, France, Croatia and Iran. Bosnian representatives were unable to attend due to "technical obstacles".
A 1991 United Nations arms embargo prevented countries from supplying weapons to armies in the former Yugoslavia, but Karadzic claims that many funneled weapons to the Bosnian army, composed mostly of Bosniaks.
In the past several months, he has requested related documents from several countries which he says are pertinent to his defence. The hearing this week was held to discuss states' progress in locating the documents, or in Germany's case, why they do not wish to hand them over.
"We can't arrive at a full picture and have a fair trial if we do not have all the elements," Karadzic told the court this week.
German ambassador Thomas Laufer disagreed, questioning the relevance of the requested documents.
"Karadzic is facing charges of genocide and other crimes, and it not clear why [these documents] are required," Laufer said. "We stick to our position."
Karadzic responded that "the events in Bosnia are not part of a vacuum".
"The smuggling of weapons that arrived through Germany Éthat is of significance and will impact on the testimonies on international witnesses," he continued.
He added that several countries, Germany included, "predicted what would happen in Yugoslavia and some of them contributed actively to what would happen there".
In a more detailed written request to the German government dated August 12, 2009, Karadzic stated that many of the documents were directly related to the July 1995 Srebrenica massacre, in which about 8,000 Bosniak men and boys were killed. It is considered the single worst atrocity to occur on European soil since World War II.
Karadzic, the president of Bosnia's Republika Srpska from 1992 to 1996, is accused of planning the Srebrenica massacre as well as with overseeing the siege of Sarajevo that left nearly 12,000 people dead.
The indictment – which lists 11 counts in total – alleges that he is responsible for crimes of genocide, persecution, extermination, murder and forcible transfer which "contributed to achieving the objective of the permanent removal of Bosnian Muslims and Bosnian Croats from Bosnian Serb-claimed territory".
Karadzic wrote in the August 12 request that intelligence gathered by the German government will show that he never "favoured, planned, or condoned the killing of civilians in Srebrenica".
Furthermore, Karadzic stated that the smuggling of weapons to the Bosnian army will show that there was a "legitimate military objective to commence operations" on Srebrenica, since the smuggled weapons were, he claims, being used to launch attacks on Bosnian Serb civilians.
Laufer was not convinced by Karadzic's assertions, and told judges that the accused "simply claims that certain people had knowledge of certain events".
"No one can possibly check up on this," Laufer continued. "The way Karadzic is explaining himself is not motivating us to [meet] his demands."
Judge Kwon said that the court will determine whether or not the documents are relevant to Karadzic's case and, as part of that process, he asked the prosecution to clarify some issues relating to Srebrenica.
"The prosecution does not dispute that arms were smuggled in and that Muslim attacks continued after [Srebrenica] was declared a safe area," explained prosecutor Alan Tieger.
He added that the prosecution had never taken the position that the Bosnian army was not a legitimate military target.
Karadzic said he appreciated Tieger's words.
"This leads us to the conclusion that the decisions I made in relation to Srebrenica were legitimate," Karadzic said. "However, that charge remains in the indictment."
He added that attacks against Serbs were "very, very violent" and that he has evidence that "[Bosniak] fighters from the enclave returned with chains of Serb ears around their necks".
Judge Kwon interjected and told Karadzic that "it's one thing to have a legitimate cause in waging war, but totally a separate matter on how it is waged".
"I would like to remind you that the purpose of this trial is to judge whether you are guilty of the charges in the indictment," the judge continued. "This is not an opportunity to produce [evidence] of all the events that happened at the time."
Judge Kwon also asked if the requested documents were at all relevant to the charge that Karadzic is responsible for taking more than 200 UN personnel hostage in 1995.
"The taking of hostages, this was done spontaneously and in a panic," Karadzic responded. "People perceived these armed representatives as biased. [The hostages] did side with one side in the conflict and that is what we are going to show."
While Germany objected to providing the requested documents, representatives from France said that they could disclose one of the documents sought. Others, however, were actually internal UN documents they did not possess.
Croatian ambassador Josko Paro said that his country had provided 15 documents to the accused, and would need more time as regards further requests.
Iranian representatives said they had completed a search for the requested documents but found none. They also questioned the relevance of such documents for the accused's case, especially as relates to the events in Srebrenica.
When asked by Judge Kwon to explain this, Karadzic said the documents will "demonstrate that the charges by the prosecution are not as they seem.
"We have to show there is no evidence for this charge [of genocide] in the indictment. The Serbian side was put in a position to defend its very survival."
The trial is scheduled to recommence on March 1.
Detainees Used as "Human Shields"
Institute of War and Peace Reporting
By Julia Hawes
February 19, 2010
Witnesses in the Hague tribunal trial of Jovica Stanisic and Franko Simatovic told judges this week how they had been held captive in 1992 by a Serb unit known as the Red Berets.
Witnesses JF009 and JF008, who both testified under protective measures, described being detained at Percin's Disco in Doboj, Bosnia in July 1992 along with other male Muslim and Croat civilians.
Witness JF009 said that he was one of 50 detainees who were removed from the disco and used as "human shields".
"When we set off, one of [the soldiers] came and shot a man in the head," the witness told the judges on February 17. "He told us that, Ôthis is what will happen if you try to escape'."
Stanisic and Simatovic have been charged with participating in a joint criminal enterprise, with the objective of forcibly and permanently removing non-Serbs from large areas of Croatia and Bosnia through persecution, murder and deportation of the Croat, Bosnian Muslim and Bosnian Croat populations.
Stanisic served as the head of the Serbian State Security Service, DB, from 1991 to 1998, while Simatovic worked under the authority of Stanisic as the commander of the special operations unit of the DB.
According to the indictment, Stanisic and Simatovic established, organised and financed training centres for Serb forces, with the purpose of establishing military actions in Croatia and Bosnia.
The indictment states that Stanisic and Simatovic sent these forces to Croatia and Bosnia, where they committed crimes and took control of towns and villages in Serb-held areas in Croatia and Bosnia, forcing non-Serbs to leave the territories.
According to the indictment, Serb forces established a training centre at Mount Ozren in the municipality of Doboj, Bosnia, in 1992. On or about July 12, 1992, the indictment continues, special units of Serbia's DB used "non-Serb detainees as human shields and approximately 27 of these civilians were killed".
Witness JF009, whose face was obscured during the proceedings, said that in April 1992 Serb soldiers came to his village, where a majority of the residents were Muslim. The witness's village was not named due to protective measures.
According to the witness's 2001 statement to the Office of the Prosecution, OTP, the soldiers were not local. Based on their pronunciation and dialect, the witness reiterated this week, he believed they were from outside Bosnia but did not know the exact location of their origin.
The villagers were brought to the disco by Red Berets, a special operations unit of the DB, during the Muslim holiday of Bajram, the witness said.
Klaus Hoffman from the OTP read out the statement of Witness JF009, describing the events of July 12, 1992.
"One soldier burst inside [the disco] with a rifle. He had a camouflage uniform on and requested 50 men to come outside," the witness told the court, adding that the soldier belonged to the Red Berets unit.
According to the witness' statement, the detainees were subsequently used as "human shields".
Hoffman continued to read from the witness's statement, where he said that the men were told to remove their shirts and form a number of rows. Witness JF009 described how the solider shot one of the detainees as an example to the other men.
"Are you able to describe the person that shot this detainee?" Hoffman asked.
"He was in a camouflage uniform. He also had a red beret on his head," the witness said.
The witness said that he did not know the man that was shot, but that he believed the victim was Croatian.
"What happened to his body?" Hoffman asked.
"We were ordered to throw his body into the river Bosna," the witness said.
Hoffman read from the witness's 2001 statement, in which he described Muslim men, women and children, all civilians, being transported out of the village of Doboj in July 1993.
"Did you and the other villagers leave of your own free will?" Hoffman asked.
"No," the witness told the judges. "Buses arrived to take us and we had to pay 50 deutschmarks for transportation."
"We had no choice at all," he added. "We all spent ten years or even longer living as refugees."
Judge Alphons Orie asked the witness who told the villagers to board the buses out of Doboj.
The witness said that the police arrived with the Red Cross from Doboj, and that the villagers were told to collect the bare necessities.
"Did anyone refuse to board the buses?" Judge Orie asked.
"No one would have remained there alive," the witness said. "Even if you had been insane you would not have stayed there."
Witness JF008 testified about the events in Doboj during the spring and summer of 1992. The witness had also been held in Percin's Disco in Doboj.
The witness was taken away from his village with 20 others, according to his statement to the OTP, on April 15, 2009.
Witness JF008 was detained in two additional locations in July 1992, including a district prison in Doboj where he was held for 15 days, and in military storage halls alongside Bosniaks and Croats, according to the witness's statement.
"Nobody ever told us why were being taken away," the witness told the judges.
According to his statement, the witness was finally transferred to the disco in Doboj. Witness JF008 said there were between "312 and 320" detainees at the disco.
Witness JF008 said that he had no contact with the soldiers at the disco except on the day prisoners were used as "human shields" on July 12.
The witness said that he was not among the 50 men taken out of the disco, but that his brother was. Two men returned to the disco to describe what had happened to the other men who had not returned.
"How did you feel that day upon hearing this story?" the prosecution asked.
The witness, who initially believed his brother had died because he did not immediately return to the disco, told the judges, "I felt terrible."
According to the witness's statement, the Red Berets were feared by everyone, including the local police. He said that they had trained approximately 100 local soldiers and integrated them into their unit in 1992.
The witness said that after the Red Berets left in September, the locals who had been trained with the unit went back to their respective units. By 1993, people were banned from wearing red berets, he added.
Simatovic's defence attorney Mihajlo Bakrac asked the witness how 300 men could fit inside the disco.
"The area was so small," the witness said. "We all sat there with our legs folded and we were one on top of the other, like sardines in a can. all the way to the door.
The trial continues next week.
War Crimes Prosecutor: Hague is Intriguing Topic
B92
February 24, 2010
Serbian War Crimes Prosecutor Vladimir Vukčević stated that the topic of the Hague Tribunal legacy was "very intriguing."
"Here is the meeting of representatives from the whole region, it's very temperamental. It is designed so the panelists, those were Judge Patrick Robinson, Chief Prosecutor Serge Brammertz and several others now, are directly answering questions. The questions are quite provocative, atmosphere in the hall is overheated, there are many a lot interruptions," he said.
The Serbian prosecutor made his comments while attending a conference on the legacy of the Hague Tribunal in The Hague, with the court 's officials and international experts participating.
He stated that Serbs, Bosniaks (Muslims) and Croats were at the conference, as well as the relatives of the victims, so that it all "contributed to an atmosphere that was a tad overheated".
The Serbian deputy prosecutor, and spokesman for the prosecution Bruno Vekarić are also taking part in the conference.
The participants will during several discussions consider "strategy" and "long-term preservation of legacy" of the Tribunal through "archives and an information center" as well as "the importance of the legacy for the victims and communities in the former Yugoslavia".
The topics will also include war crime trials before national courts, development of capacities of national judiciaries for those trials, and the future of the Hague Tribunal's legacy.
Justice Minister Snežana Malović, President of the Supreme Court of Serbia Nata Mesarović and President of the War Crimes Court Siniša Važić are also attending the conference.
Director of the Humanitarian Law Fund NGO Nataša Kandić and defense council before the Tribunal Tomislav Višnjić have spoken during the yesterday's debates.
Representatives of the judiciaries and governments of Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, the host country the Netherlands, and numerous non-governmental and international organizations such as OSCE and UN are all taking part.
Brammertz on arrests of fugitives
Hague Tribunal Chief Prosecutor Serge Brammertz warned that if the remaining two fugitives stayed at large it would have a negative effect on the court's legacy.
Brammertz said that the Hague Tribunal's prosecution would contribute to the legacy by "completing the current proceedings" but also by ensuring that the fugitives, Ratko Mladić and Goran Hadžić, were arrested.
"If it does not happen, it would have a negative influence on the Tribunal's legacy," he said.
The chief prosecutor stressed that "the Tribunal's success would ultimately depend on how national judiciaries continue our work" in the region of the former Yugoslavia.
"We have full confidence in the presidents of the courts and prosecutors in the region. I absolutely believe in their commitment to solve problems and change awareness," he pointed out.
Brammerts specified that the Hague Tribunal Prosecution had in the past two years submitted investigative material about 43 persons, against whom indictments had not been raised in The Hague, to national judiciaries.
As an obstacle for cooperation of judiciaries in the region, the chief prosecutor mentioned the inability to extradite the accused, adding that harassment and protection of witnesses was still an open issue.
The Hague Prosecution, however, he pointed out, does not act as have the role of controling national judiciary systems.
Robinson: Karadžić's trial until 2014
President of the Hague Tribunal Patrick Robinson said at the same gathering that he expects that the trial of Radovan Karadžić, as the last before the Tribunal, will be finished in February 2014.
Robinson, however, said that the appeal phase of the accused's trial, in his opinion, should be completed in February 2014.
"The UN Security Council should extend the mandate of the Tribunal judges until 2011 in March," he said.
Asked about compensation to the victims of war crimes, the Hague Tribunal president said that he was a great supporter of payment of compensation and that he had launched the issue three times before the Security Council and the UN General Assembly.
"I haven't received a favorable answer so far, I hope that is only because of the economic crisis," he said and stressed that he was also advocating the forming of a commissions for determining the truth in the countries of the former Yugoslavia.
Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC)
Official Website of the Extraordinary Chambers
Official Website of the Khmer Rouge Trial Task Force
Official Website of the United Nations Assistance to the Khmer Rouge Trials (UNAKRT)
Lawyer: Ex-Khmer Rouge Foreign Minister Stands No Chance of
Bail
Earth Times
February 11, 2010
A lawyer for the Khmer Rouge's former foreign minister Ieng Sary said Thursday he has "no illusions" that the UN-backed war crimes tribunal might release his client from pre-trial detention ahead of an expected trial next year. Speaking after Thursday's bail hearing, Michael Karnavas criticized as "ridiculous" arguments by the prosecution and lawyers for victims that allowing Ieng Sary to be held under house arrest could lead to social unrest.
He said the government would easily be able to provide security to ensure public safety.
"In my opinion there's no intention to release any of them under any circumstances - pre-trial detention is being used as a form of punishment because these cases may never get to trial or be fully completed," Karnavas said.
"I don't think there's a valid argument that this society is so fragile that you will have massive demonstrations in the streets [if he is granted bail and house arrest]," he added.
"So this may be one way of showing the public that they are incarcerated and spent their final years in jail."
Thursday's bail hearing was the third filed by lawyers for Ieng Sary, who was arrested in November 2007. Since then he has been in pre-trial detention, facing charges of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.
A tribunal spokesman said the court would likely rule on Ieng Sary's bail application in the coming weeks.
Ieng Sary is one of four senior surviving leaders of the Khmer Rouge in detention awaiting trial for their alleged roles in the deaths of an estimated 1.7 million people.
Lawyers for former head of state Khieu Samphan are to apply for bail on Friday, while lawyers for former social affairs minister Ieng Thirith will do so on Monday. Rulings for those bail requests are also expected in a few weeks.
The tribunal last month concluded its two-and-a-half year long investigation into Ieng Sary, Khieu Samphan, Ieng Thirith, and former Brother Number Two, Nuon Chea.
A final decision on whether to prosecute or dismiss charges against them is expected in September. Should the trial go ahead, as is expected, it will likely begin early next year.
The trial would be the second case that the tribunal, known as the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), will hear. The first case, which saw the regime's chief executioner Comrade Duch tried for crimes against humanity and war crimes, was heard last year.
A decision is expected in Duch's case in the coming weeks.
Around a quarter of Cambodia's population is thought to have died from execution, disease, starvation and overwork during the Khmer Rouge's rule of Cambodia from 1975-79. Its leader, Pol Pot, died in 1998 on the Thai-Cambodian border.
Former Khmer Rouge 'First Lady' Seeks Release from War
Crimes Trial
Earth Times
February 15, 2010
Lawyers for Ieng Thirith, the former "First Lady" of the Khmer Rouge, called for her release from pre-trial detention at the international war crimes court Monday. Ieng Thirith, 78, appeared to struggle to recall the name of her husband and co-accused, former foreign minister Ieng Sary, when asked by the court.
"I seem to forget his name," said the former minister for social affairs, before turning to the court's security guards. "What is his name? Can you please help me?"
Her Cambodian lawyer told the court she should be released to house arrest because there was little evidence to link her to the alleged crimes. He claimed she was not a threat to witnesses, would not try to destroy evidence and was not a flight risk.
Lawyer Phouv Seang Phat also criticized court investigators for using what he described as "a default policy of detention," saying they failed to comply with international human rights standards.
"[Her continued detention] is unjustifiable and constitutes an infringement of her human rights and cannot be considered necessary," he said.
But the prosecution said Ieng Thirith remained a threat as shown by a previous outburst in court and 70 similar threatening tirades in the detention centre, where she is being held with her husband and three others.
During her court appearance in February 2009, Ieng Thirith denied the prosecution's allegation that she was aware of the killings at the notorious Tuol Sleng prison in Phnom Penh, and claimed she had done nothing wrong.
"Don't accuse me of being a murderer or you will be cursed to the seventh circle of hell," the former Shakespeare scholar and professor of English shouted during that appearance.
Her lawyers ensured Monday that Ieng Thirith did not speak out of turn, even asking the court to muzzle the prosecution in its descriptions of her to avoid sparking a similar reaction.
"The prosecution's statements may provoke her to go against her own wish not to speak," one of her lawyers said in making the request that was rejected by the judges.
Prosecutors said the charge of genocide filed against her late last year constituted a strong reason to keep her in custody. They argued that she was a flight risk since she faces the possibility of life behind bars if convicted.
Ieng Thirith's request was the third heard by the court in as many days. Lawyers for Ieng Sary filed a similar request on February 11, as did the legal team for Khieu Samphan, the regime's former head of state. The tribunal is expected to rule on all three applications in the coming weeks.
Ieng Thirith, Ieng Sary, Khieu Samphan and former "Brother Number Two" Nuon Chea are charged with genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes, as well as crimes under Cambodian law for their alleged involvement in the deaths of an estimated 1.7 million Cambodians during the Khmer Rouge regime.
A final decision on whether to prosecute or dismiss charges against the four is expected in September. Should the trial go ahead, as is expected, it is likely to begin early next year.
Around one-quarter of Cambodia's population is thought to have died from execution, disease, starvation and overwork during the Khmer Rouge's rule of the country from 1975-79. Its leader, Pol Pot, died in 1998 on the Thai-Cambodian border.
Tribunal to Launch Digital Web Portal
Phnom Penh Post
By James O'Toole
February 18, 2010
The Khmer Rouge tribunal announced plans Wednesday to make court materials, including previously classified information, available digitally through a "virtual tribunal" project.
UN court spokesman Lars Olsen said the new portal will include "all case‐related evidence which we can make public without copyright concerns". This material, he added, will consist of "minutes of meetings from Democratic Kampuchea, situation reports from district chiefs, and all the evidence which has been classified" up to this point.
"The whole public case file would be included," he said.
The "virtual tribunal" is being developed in partnership with the US's Berkeley and Stanford universities, and will include court documents and videos as well interviews, education tools and expert commentary, the court said in a statement Wednesday. Olsen said no specific launch date has been set for the project, though the court hopes to unveil it "during this year".
Youk Chhang, director of the Documentation Centre of Cambodia, said organising all of the court's data on one site will make it easier for observers to follow proceedings.
"Even though the court's public documents are already available, having this special software in place, it helps the public access better," he said, adding that the project would "contribute to historical and legal education in Cambodia".
Olsen said the finished product will hopefully be of use to both scholars of the Khmer Rouge era and members of the general public.
"This is part of the ongoing efforts from the court to improve and enhance its outreach activities in order to foster a greater understanding among regular Cambodians of the court process," he said.
Re-Assignment of Judges in the Pre-Trial Chamber
ECCC
February 23, 2010
Following the nomination by the United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, and the approval by the Supreme Council of the Magistracy, His Majesty the King Norodom Sihamoni has appointed Ms. Catherine Marchi-Uhel (France) as new international judge to serve in the Pre-Trial Chamber of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC).
Judge Marchi-Uhel, who until this appointment was international reserve judge in the Supreme Court Chamber of the ECCC, replaces Judge Kathinka Lahuis (Netherlands). Judge Lahuis will now serve as international reserve judge of the Pre-Trial Chamber. Judge Florence Mumba (Zambia) has been appointed as new reserve judge to the Supreme Court Chamber of the ECCC.
Due to the increase in its workload, the Pre-Trial Chamber of the ECCC will now be sitting full time.
Judges Seek To Include Civil Parties: Tribunal
VOA Khmer
By Kong Sothanarith
February 24, 2010
Khmer Rouge tribunal judges say they are working to admit as many civil parties into the trial process as possible, following complaints by victims of the regime in a provincial forum on Saturday.
Victims had voiced disappointment in the process of civil party selection for an upcoming trial of five jailed Khmer Rouge leaders, which they said was admitting too few people, in a process that was dragging on.
A tribunal spokesman said Wednesday the judges were reviewing applications "every day," and that speculation on the number of applicants to be admitted to the trial process was premature.
"As you are aware, [there are] 4,004 applications," the spokesman, Lars Olsen, said. "So it might take until the closing order in September to review all of them. Everyone has to wait until September before they know the outcome of the application procedure."
Three hundred applicants had already been accepted by investigating judges, he said. "So it's clear that the final number of civil party applicants will be significant."
Less than 50 applications have been rejected so far, he added.
However, Thun Saray, president of the rights group Adhoc, said the court had more work to do in informing the public about the complaint process. People are filing complaints that are outside the purview of the court, he said.
Adhoc sponsored a forum in Takeo province on Saturday, in which victims complained about the civil party application process.
The court could admit all applicants, he said. "What's the difference between 2,000, or 3,000, or 4,000 admitted applicants?"
Olsen said Wednesday applicants can only be admitted if their claims fall inside the investigation of the court, but the court cannot inform the public of this jurisdiction because that information is confidential.
In Focus: Special Tribunal for Lebanon (UN)
300-Strong Security Force on Alert for New Court Summoning
Orders in Hariri Case
Naharnet Newsdesk
February 23, 2010
The Special Tribunal for Lebanon reportedly plans to request from the Lebanese government to assign 300 Lebanese army soldiers and officers to be ready for the summoning orders to be issued by STL President Daniel Bellemare against a number of Lebanese personalities.
The daily Al-Liwaa on Tuesday said Bellemare will refer the orders to the STL Beirut office.
It quoted Lebanese judicial sources as saying that the move comes as part of the completion of investigations into the crime in preparation for issuing the charge sheet, which may be delayed pending finalization of investigation.
Canadian Truth and Reconciliation Commission
Forgiveness Not Possible for Some Residential School Survivors: Commissioner
The Canadian Press
By Chinta Puxley
February 21, 2010
After travelling the country and hearing horrific tales of abuse suffered by aboriginal residential school survivors, the head of Canada's Truth and Reconciliation Commission says he realizes that forgiveness is not an option for many victims.
The commission's first official national event is still several months away, but new chair Justice Murray Sinclair has been on the road since his appointment last July gathering stories from former students from British Columbia to Nova Scotia.
"Many people say they can never forgive anybody. We've heard elders say you can't forgive an institution that doesn't have a soul or a spirit," Sinclair said in an interview with The Canadian Press from the commission's new headquarters in Winnipeg.
"It's not a question of forgiveness for them. It's a question of moving on. Some have said there will never be any reconciliation for them and we just accept that as part of the truth-telling process."
The $60-million commission is finally getting underway after losing the first year of its mandate to infighting and the resignation of its commissioners. They couldn't agree whether reconciliation or historical documentation should be at the heart of the commission's mandate.
Part of a landmark compensation deal reached with residential school survivors, the commission is to hold its first national hearing in Winnipeg this June, followed by six other hearings across Canada.
Graphic details of rampant sexual and physical abuse are expected to be heard.
About 150,000 First Nation, Inuit and Metis children were forced to attend the government schools over much of the last century. The last school closed outside Regina in 1996.
When the new set of commissioners was appointed last July, they set about attending survivor ceremonies and information sessions across the country, averaging about seven a month.
They quickly decided to use the travelling meetings as a chance to begin gathering stories from school survivors, Sinclair says. Some of those stories were told in the open, others in private. Most took at least two hours.
"A lot of the painful stories that people talk about, both in the open sessions and in private, are about things that they saw happen to other people ... and the pain of seeing that and the fear they felt," says Sinclair, without going into detail.
"Everybody has a particular level that they need to achieve before they feel that they can move on from it," Sinclair says.
Michael Cachagee says he understands how it is that many can't forgive.
The executive director of the National Residential School Survivors' Society says forgiveness was a concept taught to many by the very churches that ran the schools and perpetuated the abuse that haunts victims.
"They talked about spirituality and they talked about forgiveness and all that other stuff," Cachagee says. "Then they did some horrible, horrible things to us."
Many survivors are also suspicious about the whole commission, especially given its inauspicious start, he says. Some feel left out of the process and feel like it's being run by the Crown - the body responsible for the schools in the first place.
" A lot of suspicion still hangs there today," Cachagee says. "This has to be more than just optics."
Spain to Accept Five Guantanamo Detainees
The Washington Post
By Peter Finn
February 16, 2010
Spain announced Monday it will accept five detainees held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the largest commitment by a European country and a boost for the Obama administration's dragging effort to close the military detention center.
Foreign Minister Miguel Ángel Moratinos told reporters in Madrid that the detainees will not pose a security threat and that any transfers to Spain "will be done with all the legal guarantees so as to defend the security situation that our country requires."
Spain previously agreed to accept two detainees, a Yemeni and a Palestinian. They have been cleared for release by an inter-agency panel that reviewed the cases of each detainee held at Guantanamo Bay.
Spanish officials told reporters that they still expect to accept the Yemeni and the Palestinian, and that they are examining the files of other prisoners cleared for release and will take three more.
The Obama administration has resettled 24 detainees, including 15 to Europe, two of whom are awaiting trial in Italy. Nine European countries have taken in detainees in the past year.
The administration has also repatriated 24 detainees to Yemen, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and elsewhere.
It has transferred one detainee to federal court in New York for trial on terrorism charges relating to the 1998 embassy bombings in East Africa.
The administration has also received commitments from other European countries, including Latvia and Bulgaria, to take detainees. Other announcements might be forthcoming, an administration official said recently.
There are 192 detainees being held at Guantanamo Bay. Approximately 110 have been cleared for resettlement in a third country or for repatriation.
The Obama administration did not close the military detention center within a self-imposed one-year deadline. It faced congressional and other political opposition to moving detainees into the United States for prosecution or to be held in indefinite detention.
The administration has also suspended the repatriation of Yemeni detainees because of instability in their home country, where the government is battling a branch of al-Qaeda. There are about 90 Yemeni detainees at Guantanamo Bay; about two-thirds of them have been cleared for transfer, but only if conditions in Yemen improve.
Obama last year named veteran diplomat Daniel Fried as a special envoy to work with other nations to accept Guantanamo Bay detainees. His efforts have had some success -- he had met recently with Spanish officials -- despite fears that other countries will not accept detainees for resettlement if the United States is unwilling to do the same.
U.S. officials said some countries are nonetheless eager to be seen to help Obama, and many share his commitment to close the facility at Guantanamo Bay.
In the case of Spain, the government of Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero wants to restore good relations with the United States. Ties had frayed after Zapatero withdrew Spanish troops from Iraq in 2004, a decision that infuriated the Bush administration.
U.S. Court Dismisses Suit over Guantanamo Suicides
Reuters
By Jeremy Pelofsky
February 17, 2010
A U.S. judge has dismissed a lawsuit by the families of two detainees who died at the controversial American prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in a case seeking compensation from U.S. officials.
The two men, one from Saudi Arabia and the other from Yemen, were found dead in June 2006 in apparent suicides. Their families filed a lawsuit accusing the officials of subjecting the men to torture and abuse before they died at the prison.
The U.S. military had accused the Saudi, Yasser al- Zahrani, of going to Afghanistan to fight in a "jihad" with the Taliban and carrying a radio. Al-Zahrani had worked as a cook and denied ever fighting, the military has said.
The Yemeni, Salah Ali Abdullah Ahmed Al-Salami, was accused by the U.S. military of having links to al Qaeda and was captured in a safe house in early 2002 where a notebook with information about nuclear bomb-making was found. He had denied knowledge about past or future attacks on the United States.
At the times of their deaths, the families questioned why they would commit suicide because it violated their Muslim faith. U.S. military investigators in 2008 ruled their deaths suicides by hanging.
The families had filed the lawsuit in a Washington federal court seeking unspecified damages. The Obama administration countered that it should be dismissed because the court had lacked jurisdiction over the prison for such claims.
U.S. District Judge Ellen Huvelle in a decision late on Tuesday granted the Obama administration's request.
Lawyers for the families were not immediately available for comment.
President Barack Obama pledged in January 2009 to close the controversial prison within a year, arguing it has served as a recruiting symbol for anti-American militants. His efforts to shutter the facility have been hampered by legal and political hurdles.
There are still 192 detainees at the prison.
France Orders Five Former Gitmo Inmates back to Court
Associated Press
By Nicolas Vaux-Montagny
February 17, 2010
France's highest court on Wednesday overruled a lower court's acquittal of five former inmates at the Guantanamo Bay prison and ordered an appeals court to rehear the case centering on terrorism charges.
The Court of Cassation did not immediately explain its reasons for the ruling, but a copy of its decision will be available Thursday, a spokesman for the court said.
The high court said a new appeals court panel will be created to handle the case, said the spokesman on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly on the matter.
A defense lawyer representing two of the men criticized the ruling, saying it amounted to a "sinister page in the history of the judicial system" and "a great cruelty on a human level."
France is among the few Western countries to prosecute nationals who have returned home from Guantanamo. The acquittal had been a high-profile foreign disavowal of the prison, which President Barack Obama wants to shut down.
The Paris criminal court in 2007 convicted the five — Ridouane Khalid, Brahim Yadel, Khaled ben Mustafa, Nizar Sassi and Mourad Benchellali — of "criminal association with a terrorist enterprise," a broad charge often used in terror cases in France.
During the original 2007 trial, the suspects had acknowledged having spent time in military training camps in Afghanistan, but said they had never put their combat skills to use.
But last February, a Paris appeals court ruled that agents from the French counterterrorism agency DST who questioned the five inmates at Guantanamo in 2002 and 2004 had overstepped their roles, and overturned the convictions. The court ruled that DST could not act as both a spy agency and a judicial police service, which questions detainees under French law.
The men, who were arrested in Afghanistan in 2001, each spent a total of 2.5 to 3 years in custody at Guantanamo and in France, to which they were repatriated in 2004 and 2005.
All seven French citizens who were at Guantanamo were sent home in 2004 and 2005. One was immediately released; another was acquitted in trial; the last five were convicted for roles in a terror group in Afghanistan.
The five were each sentenced to a year in prison. Because they had served more than that time before the trial, they did not return to prison after the sentencing.
William Bourdon, a lawyer for Sassi and Benchellali, called the court's ruling "a step backward for the state of law in France ... unfortunately, this is a rather sinister page in the history of the judicial system."
"For my clients, a third trial after all these lost years — notably 2 1/2 years at Guantanamo, for nothing — amounts to a great cruelty on a human level, and it's unbearable," he said. Asked how they responded to the decision Wednesday, he said simply: "Badly."
Bourdon said a new trial isn't likely to take place until at least next year, and that there is little likelihood that the former detainees will be ordered to return behind bars no matter what the final verdict is.
Uighurs at Guantanamo Urge Court to Hear Case
Associated Press
February 19, 2010
The lead lawyer for Chinese Muslims confined at Guantanamo Bay says the Obama administration is acting a lot like its predecessor by trying to prevent Supreme Court review of controversial detention policies in the fight against terrorism.
The court should reject the administration's ''ploy'' and hear the Chinese Muslims' case as scheduled on March 23, Boston-based attorney Sabin Willett wrote Friday in a letter to the court. The Chinese Muslims, or Uighurs (pronounced WEE'-gurs), argue that courts have the authority to release the detainees into the United States.
The administration is employing the ''familiar tactic of imprisoning and delaying for years, then seeking dismissal at the last moment to evade review,'' Willett said, citing efforts by both the Obama and Bush administrations in earlier cases.
The Justice Department wants the court to back out of the case now that all seven Uighurs who remain at Guantanamo have received offers of resettlement in other countries.
The justices' resolution of the matter is important because it could affect other Guantanamo detainees -- those who have been cleared for release but have no place to go -- and further complicate President Barack Obama's now-delayed pledge to close the facility at the U.S. naval base in Cuba.
The case grew out of the high court ruling in 2008 that Guantanamo detainees could challenge their confinement in federal court. That decision is worthless, the Uighurs argue, if a judge cannot ultimately order some detainees to be released.
The government agrees they pose no terror threat but also says they could be tortured if they are returned to China.
The administration's call for the court to dismiss the case stems from the decision by Switzerland earlier in February to take two brothers, including one who had previously not been offered a new home.
The administration acknowledges that an invitation to the other five detainees from the Pacific island nation of Palau has been withdrawn, but Palau's president recently said his country remains receptive to taking them. A second nation the administration refused to identify also at one point was willing to take the Uighurs.
The Web site of the president of the Maldives, an island nation in the Indian Ocean, says the country is willing to take up to three Guantanamo detainees, although it doesn't identify them or their nationalities.
The court last week asked both sides to explain how the invitation from Switzerland affects the case. The administration has always opposed a court order that the Uighurs be released in the United States. With other nations willing to accept them, the administration said, the Uighurs may well no longer be able to claim they should be released in this country.
Report Faults Two Authors of Bush Terror Memos
The New York Times
By Eric Lichtblau and Scott Shane
February 19, 2010
After five years of often bitter internal debate, the Justice Department concluded in a report released Friday that the lawyers who gave legal justification to the Bush administration’s brutal interrogation tactics for terrorism suspects used flawed legal reasoning but were not guilty of professional misconduct.
The report, rejecting harsher sanctions recommended by Justice Department ethics lawyers, brings to a close a pivotal chapter in the debate over the legal limits of the Bush administration’s fight against terrorism and whether its treatment of Qaeda prisoners amounted to torture.
The ethics lawyers, in the Office of Professional Responsibility, concluded that two department lawyers involved in analyzing and justifying waterboarding and other interrogation tactics — Jay S. Bybee, now a federal judge, and John C. Yoo, now a professor at the University of California, Berkeley — had demonstrated “professional misconduct.” It said the lawyers had ignored legal precedents and provided slipshod legal advice to the White House in possible violation of international and federal laws on torture. That report was among the documents made public Friday.
But David Margolis, a career lawyer at the Justice Department, rejected that conclusion in a report of his own released Friday. He said the ethics lawyers, in condemning the lawyers’ actions, had given short shrift to the national climate of urgency in which Mr. Bybee and Mr. Yoo acted after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. “Among the difficulties in assessing these memos now over seven years after their issuance is that the context is lost,” Mr. Margolis said.
Indeed, the documents released Friday provide new details about the atmosphere in which Mr. Yoo and the Justice Department prepared their initial findings in August 2002, shortly after the capture of Abu Zubaydah, suspected of being an operative for Al Qaeda.
The report quotes Patrick Philbin, a senior Justice Department lawyer involved in the review, as saying that because of the urgency of the situation, he had advised Mr. Bybee to sign the memorandum, despite what he saw as Mr. Yoo’s aggressive and problematic interpretation of the president’s broad commander-in-chief powers in trumping international and domestic law.
Mr. Philbin said that “given the situation and the time pressures, and they are telling us this has to be signed tonight — this was like 9 o’clock, 10 o’clock at night on the day it was signed — my conclusion” was that it was permissible for Mr. Bybee to sign the memorandum. “They” apparently referred to White House officials.
In a separate portion of the report, Mr. Yoo denied that the White House or the Central Intelligence Agency, which had requested the legal opinion, had exerted any pressure on him in his legal findings. “I don’t think of them as being particularly aggressive,” Mr. Yoo said, adding, “I had never felt that anybody was pushing us in one direction or another.”
The Office of Professional Responsibility, however, suggested in its report that the legal conclusions were in effect pre-ordained. It said that John Rizzo, the C.I.A. lawyer who requested the opinion, had “candidly admitted the agency was seeking maximum legal protection for its officers” against possible criminal prosecution. Mr. Rizzo objected to the way his remarks were characterized by the office.
Mr. Margolis said that in rejecting harsher sanctions, “this decision should not be viewed as an endorsement of the legal work that underlies those memoranda.” But he said the legal advice of Mr. Yoo and the other lawyers, while “flawed” and insufficient in some areas, did not rise to the level of “professional misconduct,” which could have resulted in bar reviews or other disciplinary action.
Indeed, Mr. Margolis’s 69-page report was often more critical of the ethics office than of the Bush administration lawyers themselves. Mr. Margolis, who has served at the Justice Department for more than three decades and handles many high-level disciplinary issues, saved some stinging criticism for Mr. Yoo.
“While I have declined to adopt O.P.R.’s findings of misconduct, I fear that John Yoo’s loyalty to his own ideology and convictions clouded his view of his obligation to his client and led him to author opinions that reflected his own extreme, albeit sincerely held, view of executive power while speaking for an institutional client,” Mr. Margolis said.
In their responses to the ethics office’s report, Mr. Yoo and Mr. Bybee adamantly denied that they had done anything but gave their honest and reasoned legal judgments on pressing matters of national security.
O.P.R. officials, however, were not persuaded.
The report said “situations of great stress, danger and fear do not relieve department attorneys of their duty to provide thorough, objective, and candid legal advice, even if that advice is not what the clients want to hear.”
Representative John Conyers Jr., the Michigan Democrat who leads the House Judiciary Committee, said the ethics office report released Friday made clear that the authors of the interrogation memorandums “dishonored their office and the entire Department of Justice.”
Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, said, “Mr. Bybee and Mr. Yoo may keep their law licenses, but they will not escape the verdict of history.”
The ethics’ office findings also criticized Steven Bradbury, who wrote four memorandums in 2005 and 2007 also justifying the harsh interrogation tactics. It said “we had serious concerns about some of his analysis” but said the problems did not amount to misconduct.
The ethics report also criticized former Attorney General John Ashcroft and two of his senior aides, Michael Chertoff and Adam G. Ciongoli, saying they “should have looked beyond the surface complexity” of the legal memorandums and pressed harder to determine whether the legal foundations were solid or not. But it did not accuse them of wrongdoing, and other officials defended their work.
The ethics report is not the last word on the emotional national dispute about torture. In August, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. opened a criminal investigation to determine whether the C.I.A. interrogation program broke the law, and that inquiry is expected to continue for months.
But the Justice Department’s findings about its own lawyers are a milestone in the long debate over the treatment of Qaeda prisoners. Interrogators were directed to use coercive methods in an effort to find out whether new terrorist attacks were planned. The interrogators’ bosses, from top C.I.A. officials to former President George W. Bush, have justified their policies by saying the Justice Department’s opinion was that the methods were legal.
So the political debate over interrogation often returned to the legal opinions Mr. Yoo, Mr. Bybee and other officials of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel had written declaring that none of the C.I.A.’s methods were illegal torture.
Some of the brutal interrogation methods that Mr. Yoo and Mr. Bybee approved for use on Qaeda prisoners, including wall-slamming and the near-drowning of waterboarding, had never before been authorized in American history, and the United States had condemned such treatment as torture and abuse when used by other countries.
Over less than a year starting in August 2002, according to intelligence officials, waterboarding was used on three Qaeda prisoners, including Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the chief planner of the Sept. 11 attacks. The coercive methods set off a heated dispute inside the C.I.A., and their use was suspended after a damning inspector general’s report in 2004.
A scaled-back set of harsh methods was approved by the Justice Department and White House in 2007, but they were rarely if ever used before President Obama banned such methods shortly after taking office.
UK Police Seek Evidence from Guantanamo Detainee
The Associated Press
By David Stringer
February 19, 2010
British police investigating allegations that the country's spies colluded in torture are seeking evidence from a Guantanamo Bay detainee who alleges he had his head beaten against a wall while a U.K. intelligence officer looked on, lawyers told a court Friday.
Shaker Aamer, 42, a Saudi-born man who lived in Britain before his detention, is among the 196 remaining detainees - and the last with ties to the U.K. - at the U.S. prison camp in Cuba. He claims he was the victim of violence while held in Afghanistan in 2002.
Police have applied to London's High Court for access to secret documents on Aamer sent by Britain to the U.S. panel assessing the fate of detainees still held at Guantanamo. The U.S. has previously refused to return Aamer to Britain citing security concerns.
Aamer's attorney Richard Hermer told a hearing that police also have visited the detainee's legal team to seek details on his claim that an official from Britain's domestic spy agency MI5 was present during his alleged abuse.
Britain's government has previously rejected Aamer's allegations, and no criminal investigation is taking place in connection with his case.
However, police are investigating two cases of alleged misconduct by MI5 and MI6 - the country's foreign intelligence agency - in relation to suspects held overseas.
Speaking following the High Court hearing, another lawyer for Aamer, Gareth Peirce, said his evidence is crucial to those police inquiries.
"It is potentially one of the most important criminal investigations there has been in this country," Peirce said. "Mr. Aamer is a victim and key witness in that investigation - and yet where is he? He is in Guantanamo where the police can't go to interview him. A missing witness."
Police declined to comment on whether officers would seek to interview Aamer in person, or elaborate on their interest in his allegations.
An officer from MI5 is being investigated over claims he may have colluded in the mistreatment of Binyam Mohamed, a former Guantanamo Bay detainee, in Pakistan in 2002. In September, MI6 referred concerns over the conduct of one of the agency's officers to the government's chief legal adviser, who later asked police to investigate.
Britain's Foreign Office said in a statement that Aamer's legal team had made "unsubstantiated allegations" about U.K. involvement in his alleged abuse.
"We do not accept allegations of U.K. involvement or complicity in his mistreatment," the Foreign Office said in a statement. "We firmly reject any suggestion that we torture or mistreat people or ask others to do so on our behalf."
Peirce also claimed that Britain had not done enough to pressure the U.S. to release Aamer. A total of 13 British citizens, or British residents, have been released from Guantanamo since 2004, including Mohamed - who returned last February.
The Foreign Office said it has repeatedly demanded Aamer be released, and is continuing to press authorities in Washington. "This is a decision for the United States, and there is no guarantee that we will be successful," the ministry said.
UN Rights Chief Insists on Probe into War Crimes
Express News Service
February 14, 2010
Navi Pillai, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCHR) has reiterated her call for an international probe into allegations of war crimes in Sri Lanka in the final phase of the fighting between the government forces and the LTTE.
According to the BBC, Pillai told a gathering in Dublin, Ireland, that her office felt that Sri Lankan national investigations into the allegations had not worked so far.
She said that the UN Secretary General, Ban ki-Moon, was “seriously committed” to getting President Rajapaksa to comply with the undertaking he gave to him. But till date the response from Colombo had been poor.
Pillai said that she met Mahinda Samarasinghe, the Sri Lankan Minister for Human Rights, in Geneva recently, and reminded him that the Sri Lankan presidential election was over and it was time something was done to investigate charges of war crimes committed by the Sri Lankan forces.
However, speaking to the Asia Today programme of the BBC, Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa had said that he would not allow any such investigation as there was no reason for one.
Palestinians to Present Draft Text on Goldstone Report to UNGA Next Week -- UN
Kuwait News Agency
February 18, 2010
A UN official late Wednesday said the Palestinian delegation to the UN will present to the General Assembly next week a draft resolution calling, once again, on Israel and the "Palestinian Side" to conduct independent investigations into what Justice Richard Goldstone described as "war crimes" they both committed during the war on the Gaza Strip early last year.
"What I understand is that our Palestinian friends will present to the General Assembly next week a draft resolution which would call on both parties to conduct independent investigations into their actions" during the war on the Strip early last year, the official told reporters.
He recalled that Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's report to the Assembly earlier this month concluded that neither Israel nor the "Palestinian side" has complied with an assembly resolution adopted last November which already called on both parties to conduct independent and fair investigations within three months.
Ban said in his report that Israel responded saying the investigation is going on, and that the Palestinian Authority said it had just established a commission which will soon begin its work.
The official said the draft resolution would "call" on the Secretary-General to report to the assembly, once again, three months after the adoption of the resolution, and on Switzerland, in its capacity as depositary of the Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilians in Time of War, to convene a meeting of the High Contracting Parties to the Convention.
The Assembly resolution last November only "recommended" that Switzerland convene such a meeting.
He said the Palestinian decision to call for an assembly meeting next week will be finalized following an Arab Group meeting which will be held soon.
He noted that the Palestinian delegation will not ask the assembly this time to "endorse" the Goldstone report. When it did last November, at the request of Syria, many European countries abstained or voted against the resolution.
He speculated that the Palestinians want to keep the Goldstone issue "alive, " but "my feeling is that we are heading towards slow death. I wonder how it can go any further."
UN General Assembly to Meet Friday on Gaza 'War Crimes'
AFP
By Gerard Aziakou
February 24, 2010
The UN General Assembly has scheduled a meeting on Friday to decide whether to repeat its demand that Israel and the Palestinians conduct proper probes into allegations of war crimes in Gaza.
A United Nations fact-finding mission after a conflict that began in late December 2008 accused both Israel and the Islamist movement Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip, of war crimes and possible crimes against humanity.
Some 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis were killed during a 22-day Israeli military offensive into Gaza, which followed unrelenting rocket-fire into Israel from the Palestinian enclave.
The South African judge who headed the UN mission, Richard Goldstone, recommended that both sides face possible prosecution before the International Criminal Court in The Hague if they failed to conduct credible, independent investigations within six months.
The General Assembly issued an ultimatum that those probes must be conducted by February 5 this year, but UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said on the eve of that deadline that their efforts had proved inconclusive.
A copy of the Arab-sponsored draft resolution to be tabled on Friday calls again on both the Israelis and the Palestinians "to conduct investigations that are independent, credible and in conformity with international standards."
It also asks Ban to report back to the assembly "within a period of five months on the implementation of the present resolution, with a view to the consideration of further action, if necessary, by the relevant UN organs and bodies, including the Security Council."
A spokesman for General Assembly president Ali Triki confirmed to AFP that he would convene the plenary meeting of the 192-member body on Friday.
Diplomats said the text of the draft resolution, a copy of which was obtained by AFP, enjoys broad support among members, including several European delegations which view it as relatively mild.
"I expect that it will be adopted with an overwhelming majority, bigger than during the vote last November," Yahya Mahmassani, the Arab League's permanent observer to the UN, told AFP.
That vote saw the assembly overwhelmingly adopt a similar resolution to Friday with 114 voting in favor, 18 against, and 44 abstaining.
The latest draft resolution takes note of Ban's February 4 report which contained responses provided by Israel and the Palestinians.
A 46-page report from Israel denied violations of international law, but admitted "tragic results" due to the "complexity and scale" of conducting a military operation in a heavily populated area.
It also noted that two Israeli senior officers -- a brigadier general and a colonel -- had been disciplined for the firing of white phosphorous shells toward a UN compound.
A preliminary report from the Palestinian side said a commission of five well-known judges and legal experts had been set up to look into allegations of war crimes on its side during the conflict.
Israel, which had strenuously opposed the non-binding resolution and the Goldstone report which it endorsed, voted against the November resolution as did its staunchest ally, the United States, along with Australia and a few European countries.
Many European Union countries, including Britain, France, Sweden and Spain, abstained after failing to secure amendments to the text, including one that would have dropped references to possible Security Council action if the report's findings were not implemented. Russia also abstained.
A key finding of the Goldstone report was that Israel used disproportionate force in response to repeated rocket attacks by Gaza-based militants and failed to take adequate measures to protect civilians during its Gaza onslaught.
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