Former Yugoslavian Gen. Momcilo Perisic faced the court at The Hague Thursday on 13 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity for the July 1995 massacre at Srebrenica. Perisic faces a maximum life term for war crimes perpetrated against some 8,000 Muslims, including murder and extermination. Prosecutors will try to establish a correlation between […]
As my esteemed colleague warned earlier, the potential for a trial for Sudanese President Omar al-Beshir is in jeopardy. On Wednesday, lawyers at the International Criminal Court at The Hague urged a panel of judges to issue an arrest warrant for genocide. Prosecutors met in a closed-door meeting to deliver evidence supporting their claims that […]
We noted a few months aggo the ground-breaking indictment of Sudanese president Omar Hassan al-Bashir on charges of war crimes, genocide, and crimes against humanity. Unfortunately, prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo is facing pressure to withdraw the indictment; the Australian Broadcasting Corporation reports Moreno-Ocampo will stand firm, but it appears the ICC lacks support in Africa, with […]
The Shiite-led government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki allegedly influenced the Iraqi High Tribunal by shifting justices out of the system who opposed the death penalty for former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, officials said. These same officials contend that the rush to execute the former leader came at a time when the perception of […]
Two members of the Macedonian parliament were charged with war crimes related to the country's brief 2001 civil war between ethnic Macedonians and ethnic Albanians. The cases could destabilize the country, as Balkan Insight reports a significant number of ethnic Albanian politicians will be charged. Indeed, the leader of the largest Albanian party, the Democratic […]
In what amounts to state-sanctioned torture, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told the Senate Armed Services Committee she interrogators in Iraq were using so called harsh interrogation techniques. WASHINGTON (AP) ‚ A military interrogation expert, Air Force Col. Steven Kleinman, told Congress on Thursday that prior to the abuses at Abu Ghraib, he witnessed […]
The chief prosecutor for the International Criminal Court, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, called on the world community to work in unison to bring Sudanese war criminals to justice. Moreno-Ocampo, who was in New York Monday ahead of the 63rd annual session of the U.N. General Assembly on Sept. 23, said world leaders could do a better job […]
Agence-France Press reports indicted Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic repeated his allegations that he was offered immunity by Richard Holbrooke to the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) today, asserting that Holbrooke acted on behalf of the entire United Nations Security Council and, therefore, that his immunity offer should be considered binding. Despite […]
Rasim Delic, a former commander of the Bosnian Muslim army, received a three-year prison sentence at The Haque for failing to intervene in torture committed against captured Serb soldiers in the 1990s. Prosecutors had sought a 15-year prison term for the former commander, The New York Times reported, though trial judges failed to find sufficient […]
Clint Williamson, the U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes, visited the Georgian capital of Tbilisi Friday to examine accusations of war crimes, local reports said. “My visit to Georgia underlines how seriously the U.S. regards the information on crimes committed during the conflict and how Washington is concerned about proceeding events that result in ethnic cleaning,” […]
Today is, of course, the anniversary of the September 11 attacks. President Bush's remarks on the dedication of the Pentagon's memorial to the victims are here. There's little Dan or I can add to the great deal that has been said about the attacks except to add our prayers for the victims and their families […]
Former Darfur Commission chair and ICTY President Antonio Cassesse has this op-ed in the Lebanese Daily Star on the international law implications of the Russia-Georgia conflict.
U.S. military officials denied claims by the United Nations and the government of Afghanistan that an airstrike in Herat province killed over 90 Afghan civilians. A U.S. investigation into video archives and eyewitness accounts of the Aug. 22 raid found only five Afghan civilians were killed in the strike on the Taliban stronghold in western […]
The Hague released the Serbian Navy admiral who commanded the shelling of Dubrovnik in 1991 today, announcing that his 7-year sentence had been cut short due to good behavior. Miodrag Jokic was commander of the local Serbian navy and was convicted in 2003 of commanding a portion of the bombardment during which two civilians were […]
A week ago, the newspaper Bosnia Daily (no online edition) reported that an arrest of General Ratko Mladic, the highest-ranking war crimes suspect from the 1990's conflict, was still at large. De Weld reports that it's not quite that simple, and Mladic's whereabouts and living situation are the subject of a myriad of contradictory reumors […]