Posts Tagged ‘ICC’
Saturday, September 26th, 2009
Yotam Feldman; 26/9/09
A senior prosecutor at the International Criminal Court in The Hague said Monday that he is considering opening an investigation into whether Lt. Col. David Benjamin, an Israel Defense Forces reserve officer, allowed war crimes to be committed during the IDF’s three-week offensive in the Gaza Strip this winter. The officer – a dual citizen of Israel and South Africa, where he was born – served in the Military Advocate General’s international law department, which authorized which targets troops would strike before and during the operation. Newsweek magazine released an interview Monday with ICC Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo of Argentina in which he said he is convinced his office has the authority to launch an investigation into Benjamin’s actions. The ICC has until now refrained from trying IDF officers, as it lacks authority to do so, since Israel is not a signatory to the 2002 Rome Treaty that founded the court. South Africa, however, did sign the treaty, so the ICC is authorized to indict its citizens.
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Tags: ICC, Israel, Terrorism
Posted in Human Rights, Israel & Palestine, Terrorism | No Comments »
Monday, August 17th, 2009
Michael Pelly; 17/8/09
Holocaust survivor Thomas Buergenthal is delighted the US has stopped acting like terrorists. The judge of the International Court of Justice in The Hague says his country made the mistake of “assuming the only way to fight terrorism is to throw your values out of the window”. “I don’t believe that. I think we could have done a lot without Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib and these other things,” Judge Buergenthal said in Sydney last week. “If we stuck to our values and own procedures, we could have achieved more without facing any of the problems we face now.
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Tags: ICC, Terrorism, USA
Posted in Human Rights, Terrorism, USA | No Comments »
Tuesday, March 17th, 2009
17/3/09; (4 Items)
A group of the world’s most experienced judges and human rights investigators have called for a full investigation into alleged abuses of international law in the Gaza conflict. In a letter to the United Nations Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, the 16 signatories stress the need for an investigation into the conflict in December. They said both sides had allegations to answer for in the conflict.
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Tags: ICC, Israel, Terrorism, UN, USA
Posted in Human Rights, Israel & Palestine, Racism, Terrorism, USA | No Comments »
Wednesday, March 11th, 2009
Linda Heard; 11/3/09
In 1998, 120 countries signed a treaty establishing a permanent international criminal court so that “no ruler, no state, no junta and no army anywhere will be able to abuse human rights with impunity”. The principle is great and honorable. A truly international court that protects ordinary citizens from abuse by their own governments and foreign nations is something we should all welcome. But wait…there’s just one problem. The International Criminal Court (ICC) doesn’t hold to its own constitution because, to date, it has held only Africans to account. Currently, the court is holding investigations into “the situations” in Uganda, the Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
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Tags: Global, ICC, Legal
Posted in Africa, Human Rights | No Comments »
Tuesday, February 3rd, 2009
Barak Ravid; 3/2/09; (7 Items)
The government will impose sanctions on Israel-based employees of the Al Jazeera network in response to the closure last month of the Israeli trade office in Qatar, which hosts and funds the network. Qatar had closed the office in opposition to Israel’s military offensive in the Gaza Strip. Following the closure, the Foreign Ministry, in conjunction with the newly-formed national information directorate in the Prime Minister’s Office, considered declaring the station a hostile entity and closing its offices in Israel. After submitting the idea to legal review, however, concerns emerged it would not be permitted by the High Court of Justice. Instead, it chose to limit the network’s activity in Israel and the Palestinian Authority.
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Tags: Addicted to War, Healing, Human Rights, ICC, Israel, Settlements, USA, Victims Vigil
Posted in Human Rights, Israel & Palestine, Terrorism, USA | No Comments »
Friday, January 23rd, 2009
Peter Beaumont; 23/1/09; (3 Items)
Israel has admitted — after facing mounting pressure — that its troops might have used banned white phosphorus shells during its three-week Gaza offensive. As the last Israeli troops left the Gaza Strip, the military said it would look at claims by the United Nations and human rights groups that it improperly used the munition, in contravention of international law. Under review by Israeli officer Colonel Shai Alkalai is the use of white phosphorus by a reserve paratroop brigade in northern Israel. According to army sources, the brigade fired up to 20 phosphorus shells into a heavily built-up area around the township of Beit Lahiya.
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Tags: Human Rights, ICC, Israel, Terrorism; Arms, USA
Posted in Arms, Human Rights, Israel & Palestine, Terrorism, USA, United Nations | No Comments »
Thursday, January 22nd, 2009
Barbara Ferguson; 22/1/09; (7 Items)
Barack Hussein Obama wasted no time plunging into foreign policy on his first full day in office yesterday, finally freed from the constraints of tradition that had forced him and his staff to remain silent about world affairs until he became president. Obama made a flurry of calls to Arab and Israeli leaders in a signal that Middle East peacemaking is a top priority following Israeli aggression against Gaza.
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Tags: Aid prevented, Arms, ICC, Israel, Terrorism, UN, USA
Posted in HIV-AIDS, Israel & Palestine, USA, United Nations | No Comments »
Wednesday, January 14th, 2009
14/1/09; http://news.theage.com.au/world/war-crimes-court-to-hold-its-first-trial-20090114-7g7s.html
After months of delays, the International Criminal Court will hold its first-ever trial, of Congolese militia leader Thomas Lubanga, starting January 26, The Hague-based court confirmed Tuesday. Lubanga will go on trial for war crimes for allegedly enlisting child soldiers into his militia in the gold-rich Ituri region of eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. The trial was initially set to take place on June 23 last year but was suspended when judges ruled that prosecutors had wrongly withheld evidence that was potentially favourable to Lubanga’s defence. Prosecutors had refused to release the documents, many of which were provided by the United Nations, because the international body had requested strict confidentiality. The court ruled in November that the reasons for halting the trial no longer existed as the trial chamber had been able to fully examine the documents. The ICC is the first permanent world court set up to judge war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity. It started work in 2002. Lubanga is charged with three counts of war crimes for using child soldiers in the armed wing of his Union of Congolese Patriots (UPC) between September 2002 and August 2003. Humanitarian groups say inter-ethnic fighting and violence involving militias in Ituri – centred on control over one of the most lucrative gold-mining territories in the world – has claimed some 60,000 lives going back to 1999 and created tens of thousands of refugees.
Tags: Global, ICC, War Crimes Court
Posted in Human Rights, Terrorism, War | No Comments »
Wednesday, August 6th, 2008
Geoffrey Robertson; 6/8/08
The appearance of Radovan Karadzic in The Hague dock has provided some satisfaction for victims of his Bosnian Serb regime – not only families who grieve for those it massacred but for all of us forced impotently to read of the atrocities at Sarajevo and Srebrenica, a form of wickedness never experienced in Europe since the Nazis. The big question is whether justice will be seen to be done better than in the convoluted and inconclusive trial of Slobodan Milosevic. Can the Karadzic trial be fair, expeditious and effective – and cost-effective as well? The trial will surely benefit from lessons learnt in the course of the Milosevic proceedings, when prosecutors “threw the book” at the defendant and the judges insisted that all charges against him over the three wars he waged – in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo – should be heard together.
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Tags: Europe, Human Rights, ICC, UN
Posted in Human Rights, Religion, Terrorism, United Nations | No Comments »
Wednesday, July 30th, 2008
30/7/08: See: http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24100079-12335,00.html
Bosnia’s war crimes court today sentenced seven Serbs to heavy jail terms after finding them guilty of genocide for the murder of more than 1000 Muslims during the 1995 Srebrenica massacre. Of the seven, six were convicted of direct participation in the murder of more than 1,000 Muslims in a single day in Kravice, near the ill-fated eastern Bosnian town, said Court of Bosnia-Hercegovina judge Hilmo Vucinic.
Tags: Europe, ICC, Terrorism
Posted in Human Rights, Terrorism | No Comments »
Thursday, July 24th, 2008
Aryeh Neier; 24/7/08: The writer, president of the Open Society Institute and a founder of Human Rights Watch, is the author most recently of Taking Liberties: Four Decades in the Struggle for Rights. (c) Project Syndicate, 2008. www.project-syndicate.org
It is only a little more than 15 years ago that the first of the contemporary international courts was created to prosecute those who commit war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide. That court, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), may soon mete out justice to a new defendant, following the arrest in Belgrade of Radovan Karadzic, wartime leader of Bosnia’s Serbs. Yet, there is already a persistent theme in criticism of such tribunals: in their effort to do justice, they are obstructing achievement of a more important goal, peace. Such complaints have been expressed most vociferously when sitting heads of state are accused of crimes. The charges filed by the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court against Sudanese President Omar Bashir for crimes against humanity and genocide in Darfur are the latest example. Indeed, the denunciations of the justice process this time are more intense and more vehement than in the past. The complaints were also loud in 1995, when the ICTY’s prosecutor indicted Karadzic and his military chief, General Ratko Mladic, and even louder when they were indicted again later in the same year for the massacre at Srebrenica.
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Tags: Human Rights, ICC
Posted in Australia, Human Rights, Israel & Palestine, USA, United Nations | No Comments »
Wednesday, July 16th, 2008
Steven Freeland; 16/7/08
This week marks the 10th anniversary of the statute of the International Criminal Court. On July 17, 1998, delegates from more than 120 countries attending a conference in Rome voted to establish a permanent international criminal body to act quickly and effectively when the most serious forms of international crime were committed. The Rome Statute confirmed the international community’s aim of “putting an end to impunity”. As a permanent court, the ICC is unlike previous international criminal tribunals established as ad hoc bodies, such as the Nuremberg and Tokyo tribunals following World War II and the International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. The ICC began its activities in July 2002, following ratification by the requisite 60 countries (there are now 106 state parties). Australia ratified the Rome Statute in July 2002 and remains a strong supporter of universal justice and the work of the court.
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Tags: Anniversary, ICC
Posted in Human Rights, Terrorism, United Nations | No Comments »
Tuesday, July 15th, 2008
14/7/08
The Arab League is being called to rescue one of its leaders, President of Sudan, Omar Al Bashir. Reports say he is being considered by the International Criminal Court (ICC) as a suspect in the ongoing conflict and massacres in Darfur. Al Bashir, being the president, holds a moral responsibility for the bloody conflict in the unfortunate region. He, nevertheless, tried to resolve the crisis long before the West got hold of the issue and made it an election banner in more than one country. But the real question is, why is he being singled out? There are many presidents and international figures, amongst us, who could also be tried for crimes against humanity. Yes, we are thinking of Ariel Sharon (AKA: the Butcher of Lebanon) who should have been prosecuted years before Slobodan Milosevic was arrested, and George W. Bush, whose catastrophic foreign policies have resulted directly in the killings of thousands of innocent people in both Afghanistan and Iraq.
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Tags: Afghanistan, ICC, Iraq, Israel, USA
Posted in Afghanistan, Human Rights, Iraq, Israel & Palestine, USA, United Nations | No Comments »
