With Hamas and Israel ignoring international calls for a cease-fire, the top human rights official with the United Nations called for an investigation into war crimes in the Gaza Strip. The Israeli military pushed deeper into the Hama-held Gaza Strip Sunday in the 16th day of assaults on the tiny Palestinian enclave. Khaled Meshaal, the […]
Palestinian human rights officials suggested the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank may file formal war crimes charges against Israel in international court for activity in the Hamas-held Gaza Strip. Israeli forces launched their twelfth day of assaults on the tiny enclave on the border with Egypt. Hamas, the militant leadership of the Gaza Strip, […]
I’ve written before about concerns surrounding Bosnian political stability. Within the international community, the chorus of worried voices is getting louder. Thomas Barnett argues the risk of further dissolution is endemic to the creation of a new nation. Stop Genocide blog, however, notes this piece by Morton Abramowicz and Daniel Serwer, arguing that Bosnia and […]
It's hardly news now – but the biggest Darfur story over the holidays was definitely this piece by the always-excellent Nicholas Kristof. Kristof lays out a set of serious actions the United States emissary to Sudan has been proposing to President Bush, and argues President-elect Obama should consider them immediately. Among the proposed actions: * […]
Happy New Year. We’ll resume a full posting schedule this coming week; in the meantime, here's the 2008 review for the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (drafted before the recent Bagosora conviction by the tribunal's spokesperson), and here is Balkan Insight on the War Crimes Chamber of the State Court of Bosnia & Herzegovina. In […]
Naturally, posting is light this week, and we wish all of you the best of the holiday season and a joyous celebration of whichever holidays you choose to celebrate. We’d be remiss not to note, however, the conviction in federal court of the Fort Dix plotters, who the Department of Justice alleged had prepared to […]
2008 was a year of dramatic developments in war crimes law. There were major events in the prosecutions of Radovan Karadzic, once the world's most wanted man; Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the architect of the 9/11 attacks; and Charles and Chucky Taylor. The Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court sought a historic indictment of Sudanese leader […]
U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney in an interview Monday with ABC News admitted that the use of water-boarding was permissible for 9/11 mastermind, Khalid Sheik Mohammed. Cheney, considered one of the most powerful vice presidents in U.S. history, supported his position that harsh interrogation techniques were appropriate for KSM. KSM was captured in an early […]
Pakistan claims to have arrested one of the alleged Mumbai ringleaders, Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, at a Lashkar i Tayyiba camp in Pakistan. The Washington Post notes the camp is officially run by Jamaat-ud-Dawa, an aid organization with ties to Lashkar. Jim Arkedis draws three inferences: – the link between the LeT and ISI is (was?) pretty […]
As Georgetown's Center for National Security Law notes, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four men who stand accused of helping him plan the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon offered to plead guilty today in front of a military tribunal at Guantanamo Bay. However, U.S. Army Colonel Stephen Henley, the presiding judge, […]
We haven't written on Darfur much lately – not because the genocide there has slowed (it hasn't), but because other war crimes like the Mumbai atrocity and the Gulf of Aden pirates have been making bigger news. It's still not clear what will happen with the ICC's Sudan indictments (though Chief Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo briefed […]
Media reports late Friday said five security guards with Blackwater USA were told to surrender to the FBI by Monday to face manslaughter charges stemming from a 2007 shooting incident in Iraq. Security contractors fired in response to alleged hostile fire during the Sept. 16 escort of a State Department official, killing 17 Iraqis. FBI […]
Blake Hounshell at Passport provides discussions of two critical suspects in the bombings: Dawood Ibrahim and Yusuf Muzzamil. Muzzamil is a leader of Lashkar e-Tayyiba, a Kashmiri terrorist group with operations around the subcontinent and alleged ties to the Pakistani state, particularly Pakistan's radical Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). Naturally, the path forward will be fraught with […]
An Iraqi court Tuesday sentenced Ali Hassan al-Majid to death for atrocities committed against Shiites who staged an uprising in 1991 following the U.S.-led liberation of Kuwait. Majid, known as “Chemical Ali” for his gassing of the Kurdish population in the Anfal campaign, responded to a Shiite uprising in the south of Iraq that brought […]
Happy Thanksgiving to our readers. It was, of course, not a happy holiday for the victims of the terrorist attacks in Mumbai, India; Jose Guardia has this running summary. This is CNN's. At least 160 people, including four Americans, appear to be dead in Cafe Leopold, the Taj Mahal and Oberoi hotels, and the Chabad […]