IJCentral: International Justice Central

You showed us the crime but not the criminal – is the basic message from the ICC’s Pre-Trial Chamber I to the Prosecutor.

At 103 pages their actual decision is significantly more detailed than that, but in essence the judges decided not to confirm the charges against Abu Garda not because they do not think that the attack on Haskanita did not happen, and not because they do not think that was a crime - but simply because they did not find substantial grounds to believe that Abu Garda himself played a role in the attack.

I will go into a brief summary of the decision below for those interested in the legal reasoning, but first a quick two (and a half) points of note.

As a public relations matter this is a disastrous decision for the Court vis a vis the Sudanese government. Until today this case – the only one of the Darfur cases to date that has gone to the confirmation of charges stage – could be used by ICC advocates as the counter-argument to Khartoum’s propaganda about the ICC being a tool of western imperialism focused on attacking the Sudanese government. A case against a rebel showed even-handedness on the part of the Prosecution. It was the kind of thing people like me could use in situations like last week when I had to debate one of the Sudanese government’s lawyers on Al Hurra television. As he claimed that the ICC (and indeed every organization based in the west) only ever spoke about government crimes and never spoke about crimes committed by rebels, I asked why, if that was the case, was there a prosecution of Darfuri rebels in The Hague? He replied that the rebel case was a farce. One can readily imagine how rapidly today’s decision will be used to feed such a view.

Secondly, it is probably important to point out, in particular to the families of the peacekeepers killed in the attack on Haskanita, that today’s decision does not necessarily signal the end of a prosecution for the attack on the peacekeeping mission.

As you will see if you can be bothered reading the summary below, the Chamber did not refuse to confirm the charges because there is not a serious crime against the peacekeeping mission to be answered for; rather it declined to confirm the charges due to the lack of evidence pinning Abu Gardu to the crime. The Chamber explicitly left the door open for the Prosecution to provide more evidence in the future, and there is every reason to think – especially given the lengths the Chamber went to in order to determine that the attack on Haskanita was indeed a crime – that the Chamber would be happy for the case to go forward if the Prosecution presented better evidence regarding the alleged perpetrator/s of the crime.

And a final little note . . . I want to propose Judge Tarfusser for a Champion of Resource Conservation award. At a total of four pages it’s worth reading his Separate Opinion for yourself. But to paraphase: Why did you idiots spend 100 pages of time and energy on a whole bunch of things you did not even need to address?

His argument, correct in my view, was that because the Chamber decided there were not substantial grounds to believe that the accused before them was actually involved in the attack, there was no reason for the Chamber to wade into whether or not that attack constituted a crime under the Rome Statute. Tarfusser also raises the interesting question of why the Majority decided to assess whether a crime occurred as per Count 2 of the charges (attack on a peacekeeping mission) but not whether crimes had actually occurred regarding Counts 1 and 3. My guess? In light of the spirited defence Abu Garda’s lawyer put on to argue that the AMIS base at Haskanita had lost its protected status and become a legitimate military target by the time of the attack, the Chamber wanted the message to the AU and all actors in Darfur generally to be loud and clear – In the view of this court AMIS deserved protection under the law.

Ok – to sum up the nuts and bolts of the decision:

The Prosecution charged Abu Garda with three war crimes:

#1 - violence to life (Art. 8(2)(c)(i));

#2 – intentionally directing attacks against persornel, installations, material, units and vehicles involved in a peacekeeping mission (Art. 8(2)(e)(iii));

#3 – pillaging (Art.8(2)(e)(v))

The mode of liability charged was co-perpetration or indirect co-perpetration (Art. 25(3)(a)) (without excluding other possible modes).

After all the background and procedural issues the decision jumps straight to the second count, of an attack on a peacekeeping mission. The decision covers the three agreed upon foundations of a peacekeeping mission (consent of the parties; impartiality; non use of force except in self-defense), and references the recent jurisprudence of the Special Court for Sierra Leone on this point. But what really counts is when it gets to whether the Haskanita base was, at the time of the attack, no longer impartial.

This goes to one of Abu Garda’s lines of defence. His first line of defence – a winner as it turned out – was, I wasn’t there. His second line of defence was – even if you say I was there, this wasn’t a crime. His lawyer argued that by virtue of allowing a Sudanese government officer to provide intelligence on rebel positions from the Haskanita base, the base had lost its protected status and become a legitimate military target. The court finds that regardless of whether or not the Sudanese government officer was providing the government with this intelligence at an earlier point, there was no such officer there on or around the period that the base was attacked.(see para. 147)

Having established that the attack did occur and that it was a crime, the court then goes to the question of whether there are substantial grounds to believe Abu Garda is criminally responsible.

According the Prosecution, Abu Garda was party to a common plan to attack the Haskanita base. Thus the first question the Chamber addresses is whether such a plan existed. The Prosecution argued that the plan was formulated at two meetings immediately prior to the attack. The Court finds that inconsistency of witness statements, combined with the Prosecution’s reliance on summaries from anonymous witness (which are permitted but assigned a lesser probative value by the court), leads to a conclusion that there are not substantial grounds to believe that Abu Garda was actually present at either of the two meetings.

Nevertheless, the court notes that the law permits the existence of a plan to be inferred from subsequent coordinated action, and seeks proof of this through evidence that either Abu Garda issued orders to attack Haskanita, or that he himself directly participated in a joint attack on the base.

The court concludes there are no substantial grounds to believe that Abu Garda issued orders because it finds there are no substantial grounds to believe that he was even in a position to issue orders on the date of the Haskanita attack. (see para. 216) The Court was not satisfied that the splinter group of JEM (called JEM-CL) that was formally announced in October 2007, was in existence and under Abu Garda’s control at the time of the attack in September, as the Prosecution alleged.

Moreover the Court also could not find substantial grounds to believe that Abu Garda was directly involved in the attack himself (see para. 230) (In one of the more damning lines of the judgment the court states that during the confirmation hearing the Prosecution “both states that Mr Abu Garda directly participated in the attack and that he did not.”)

All told, the Court failed to find substantial grounds to believe that Abu Garda himself was involved in the attack on the Haskanita base in any way at all. As the charges of murder and pillaging were related to the attack on the base, this finding meant there was no need for the court to consider the other charges.

source: Bec Hamilton

The ICC’s decision that Omar al-Bashir may be charged with genocide has played into the hands of the Sudanese regime.

Yesterday, the international criminal court decided that Sudan’s president, Omar al-Bashir, may be charged with genocide. Bashir has a knack for being in places that embarrass the court when such rulings are made. Last March, when a warrant for his arrest for war crimes and crimes against humanity was issued, he was in front of TV cameras in north Darfur. Yesterday, he was in Qatar meeting the emir for talks on the Darfur peace process – making a mockery of the arrest warrant as he travels freely and enjoys the support of his Arab and African brethren.

Despite my belief that Bashir may be guilty of crimes against humanity, not only in Darfur but in other parts of the country, I cannot help but think that the ICC has over-reached itself in this instance. The timing was again unfortunate, with the first Sudanese elections in 24 years due in April and the country holding on to a fragile peace in preparation for a referendum in 2011 when the south will vote on secession.

The decision has played right into the hands of the authorities who declared that the ruling was made in order to “stop the efforts of the Sudanese government toward elections and a peaceful exchange of power”. No doubt as much political capital as possible will be made of this during Bashir’s electoral campaign. Another presidential candidate, Sadiq al-Mahdi, has declared that if he is elected he will not hand over Bashir to the ICC reflecting what he believes is the national electorate’s appetite for the punitive process.

The charge of genocide, demanded by Luis Moreno-Ocampo, was left off the original warrant but could now be re-instated. The logic behind the court’s ruling seems vague and obfuscated in technicalities. A statement from the court yesterday said the pre-trial chamber had applied an “erroneous standard of proof” when considering the original arrest warrant, and Ocampo declared that he has “fresh proof of al-Bashir’s genocidal intentions”. Ocampo’s dogged pursuit of the charge smacks of grandstanding in response to international indifference to the arrest warrant and suggests that there is a desire to flex muscles in the knowledge that it is unlikely Bashir will ever be tried. This posturing not only brings into question the motivation behind the appeal, it also undermines the whole process and seriously tests the court’s credibility while exposing structural and procedural weaknesses.

It is not a simple leap of logic; genocide is not merely an escalated form of human rights abuse. I fear that the court may be giving Bashir and his regime too much credit. Could he and his junta be guilty of gratuitous crimes against humanity in order to consolidate power and dispatch challenges to authority? Yes. But an organised, deliberate and concerted effort at ethnic cleansing diverts too much time and resources from a government much more concerned with the business of maintaining Khartoum as a fortress and securing strategic access to resources and oil-rich areas in the south.

Moreover, different ethnicities have co-existed in Sudan for decades with rebellion only erupting in response to marginalisation from the centre, as opposed to racial tension. This is a legacy of centralised rule in the north and a lack of concern for the nation’s peripheries which are only dealt with when grievances erupt. To project a genocidal nature on to these dynamics stereotypes and simplifies in the extreme. In conversation with family and friends in Sudan yesterday, most seemed unclear about the concept of genocide, which is so absent from the country’s political culture.

It does not help that the conflict in Darfur is relatively dormant while increasing casualties as a result of clashes in the south are drawing attention away from the west. In addition, last October, the US – historically the Sudanese government’s most robust disciplinarian, chose to take a softer line when Obama opted to engage with the Khartoum regime, a volte face after his uncompromising pre-election rhetoric.

The ICC has no mechanism of enforcement, so support for its rulings is only likely to be for moral rather than pragmatic reasons; Moreno-Ocampo himself implies this when he states that the reason he pursued the appeal was the he wanted the world to “know what happened”, believing “it is important for the victims”. Unfortunately, this latest move alienates those who supported the initial arrest warrant and further weakens international resolve to condemn Bashir.

Within Sudan, it makes the ICC appear even more out of touch and irrelevant as Bashir and his National Congress party gear up for parliamentary and presidential elections which, if Bashir wins, will further reinforce his legitimacy, strengthen his mandate and consign the ICC to even further obscurity.

source:  The Guardian

ADDIS ABABA — The African Union on Friday said the International Criminal Court’s decision to consider adding genocide charges to an arrest warrant for President Omar el-Beshir harms Sudan’s peace process.
“The AU reiterates that the search for justice should be pursued in a manner not detrimental to the search for peace. The latest decision by the ICC runs in the opposite direction,” the pan-African body said in a statement.
An appeals chamber of the International Criminal Court (ICC) on Wednesday ordered a review of Beshir’s arrest warrant for alleged atrocities in the western Sudanese province of Darfur.
It directed judges to reconsider their decision omitting genocide from the warrant issued in March last year, saying they had made “an error in law”.
The African Union said the ICC’s decision comes at a sensitive time for Sudan—with elections due to be held in April and a referendum on self-determination for Southern Sudan set for January 2011.
“For the African continent, the successful completion of these processes and, more generally, the implementation of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) are of utmost importance,” it added.
The AU had asked the UN Security Council to defer proceedings against Beshir, but it has yet to do so.
On Tuesday, the 53-member bloc sought an amendment to the Rome Statute that established the ICC to enable the UN General Assembly to defer cases when the Security Council fails to decide on them.
The Sudanese embassy in Addis Ababa on Friday also denounced ICC’s latest ruling.
“It is quite obvious that the ICC decision is more political rather than legal and it is propagated by known circles to Sudan to destabilise the country,” a statement said.
The ICC issued the arrest warrant for Beshir on five counts of crimes against humanity and two of war crimes committed in Sudan’s war-torn western Darfur region—its first-ever warrant for a sitting head of state.
“At this crucial juncture, when all Sudanese are expected to participate in the general election in April, ... the ICC confirmed the appeal of the prosecutor general to include genocide against the president ... that undoutedly will undermine the peace process ...” the embassy said.
“The government of Sudan gives peace the priority,” it added, arguing the ICC decision will both imperil the peace talks underway in Doha, Qatar and aggravate the suffering of the people of Darfur.
The UN says up to 300,000 people have died and 2.7 million fled their homes since the ethnic minority rebels in Darfur first rose up against the Arab-dominated Sudan government in February 2003.
Khartoum says 10,000 people have been killed.
The ICC has no means of its own to enforce the warrant for Beshir’s arrest and relies on states to execute it. It cannot try Beshir in absentia.
Beshir has visited several countries, non-signatories to the ICC’s founding Rome Statute, since the warrant was issued. Many African and Arab states along with Sudan’s key ally China have called for the warrant to be suspended.

source: AFP

The President of the Assembly of States Parties to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, H.E. Mr. Christian Wenaweser (Liechtenstein), visited Uganda from 24 to 27 January 2010 in order to discuss the preparations for the Review Conference, scheduled to take place from 31 May to 11 June in Kampala.
   
During his visit, President Wenaweser met H.E. Mr. Yoweri Kaguta Museveni, the President of Uganda, as well as H.E. Mr. Frederick Ruhindi, Deputy Attorney-General/Minister, and the H.E. H. Okello Oryem, the Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, as well as other senior officials of the Ministry of Justice and Constitutional Affairs and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. President Wenaweser also held a briefing with the diplomatic community, delivered a lecture to the Uganda Law Society and met with staff of the ICC field office in Kampala.

In addition, the President took part in a programme, organized by the NGO No Peace Without Justice and Human Rights Network of Uganda (HURINET-U), intended to give delegates who will attend the Review Conference an opportunity to meet with victims in Northern Uganda and to assess the impact that the Court has had in that region. In addition to meeting with local officials, he also met landmine survivors at the Gulu Regional Referral Hospital and Disability Rehabilitation Center, as well as victims, traditional, religious and civil society leaders at Acholi Inn, followed by a meeting with victims and the local community in Pabo sub-county.

On 27 January President Wenaweser travelled to Bunia, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where he held meetings with NGOs, local religious leaders and students. He also visited the ICC field office as well as a project which ensures the safe reintegration of girls who were abducted or otherwise associated with a fighting force.

President Wenaweser then continued his Africa trip in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, from 28 to 30 January, where he met with, inter alia, the Executive Secretary of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, Mr. Abdoulie Janneh, and the Legal Counsel of the Secretariat of the African Union, Mr. Ben Kioko, to discuss the forthcoming establishment of the ICC liaison office in Addis Ababa and Review Conference issues. The President also met with delegates attending the African Union Summit, Ambassadors posted in Ethiopia and with senior United Nations officials.

The International Criminal Court was ordered on Wednesday to reconsider indicting Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir with waging genocide in Darfur.

Appeals judges said the court was wrong to conclude in March that there was insufficient evidence to merit charging Mr. al-Bashir with three genocide counts. Instead, it had charged him with seven counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity for allegedly orchestrating a campaign of murder, torture, rape and forced expulsions in Darfur province.

The standard of proof the court sought for genocide charges “was higher and more demanding than what is required” in its statutes, appellate judge Erkki Kourula of Finland said Wednesday.

The decision likely paves the way for Mr. al-Bashir to be indicted with humanity’s worst crime – attempting to wipe out entire ethnic groups in the war-ravaged province.

Mr. al-Bashir, the first sitting head of state indicted by the world’s first permanent war crimes tribunal, refuses to recognize the court’s jurisdiction and has vowed never to surrender.

His indictment in March further isolated his hard-line regime. Since the charges were issued, he has travelled to friendly countries, but called off trips to nations where he fears he could be arrested and sent to The Hague.

His government expelled 13 of the most important international aid agencies working in Darfur in response to the charges, further compounding the humanitarian crisis in a region where 300,000 people have died since fighting broke out in 2003 between the government and rebels. The United Nations says 2.7 million people have been driven from their homes.

ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo accuses Mr. al-Bashir of mobilizing the entire Sudanese state apparatus with the aim of destroying a substantial part of the Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa ethnic groups in Darfur over more than six years.

Prosecutors accuse Sudanese troops and the janjaweed Arab militia they support of murdering civilians and preying on them in refugee camps. Mr. Moreno Ocampo said part of the alleged genocide was a campaign of rape to drive women into the desert, where they die of starvation.

Analysts said March’s decision was vital in laying the groundwork for potential indictments of other leaders who have been mentioned as possible targets of war crimes investigations as it rejected head of state immunity.

source:  Associated Press

Appeals judges at the International Criminal Court have ordered the chamber to reconsider its decision to omit genocide from an arrest warrant for Omar al-Bashir, Sudan’s president.

The ruling in The Hague on Wednesday follows an appeal by Luis Moreno-Ocampo, the chief prosecutor at the International Criminal Court (ICC), to charge al-Bashir with genocide.

Moreno-Ocampo, who has implicated al-Bashir in the deaths of 35,000 people, said a genocide charge would ensure “the world knows what happened” to victims of the conflict in Sudan’s Darfur region.

“I believe it is important for the victims. That is why I am pursuing these charges,” he told the AFP news agency.

Erkki Kourula, an ICC judge, said the pre-trial chamber’s decision to not include genocide was based on an “erroneous standard of proof”.

‘Political act’

The court’s pre-trial judges will now have to rule again on whether to add genocide to list of charges against al-Bashir.

The Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), Darfur’s main armed, anti-government group, welcomed Wednesday’s ruling.

“This is a correct decision,” Ahmed Tugud, JEM’s chief negotiator said. “We believe that what we have seen on the ground in Darfur amounts to a crime of genocide.”
But Khartoum said the ruling served only to hinder the country’s elections, due in April.

“This procedure of the ICC is only to stop the efforts of the Sudanese government towards elections and a peaceful exchange of power,” Rabie Abdelati, a senior information ministry official, was quoted by the Reuters news agency as saying.

The decision came as al-Bashir visited Doha to meet Qatari Emir Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani for talks on the Darfur peace process.

Sudan’s foreign ministry, which described the ruling as a “political act”, said the ICC aimed to “jeopardise the current peace process in Doha”.

Accusations denied

The Netherlands-based ICC indicted al-Bashir on seven charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity last March, but said there was not enough evidence to charge him with three counts of genocide.

Moreno-Ocampo appealed that decision, arguing that prosecuting al-Bashir for genocide did not depend exclusively on whether it could be proved that the Sudanese head of state had genocidal intentions.

Sudan’s government has persistently denied the accusations, and al-Bashir has said the warrant against him is “all lies”.

He also says the ICC has little power to enforce the arrest warrant.

Tania Page, reporting for Al Jazeera from The Hague, said that Moreno-Ocampo’s apparent victory at the appeals court did not mean an arrest was any closer.

“The ICC doesn’t have its own police force, so even though the issue for arrest on war crimes and crimes against humanity against Omar al-Bashir has been in existence for over a year now, he hasn’t been arrested.

“He’s travelled without impunity to half a dozen countries, throughout Africa. He’s lived his life as normal, so to speak.”

‘Weak’ position

The Arab League last year issued a statement rejecting al-Bashir’s indictment, while the African Union has said it will no longer co-operate with the ICC over the arrest warrant.

Hassan Meki, the chancellor of the International African University in Khartoum, Sudan’s capital, says the ICC currently finds itself in a very weak position.

“The African Union is behind Bashir, the Arab [League] is behind Bashir, and countries of the Non-Aligned [Movement] are behind Bashir,” he told Al Jazeera.

“They think this is a vague and a false accusation against a legitimage president, and they think that at this time, something like that will disturb the process of democratisation [in Sudan]. And Africa needs peace - not more problems, not more wars, not more tests.”

According to UN estimates, around 35,000 people have been killed in Sudan’s Darfur region since 2003, a further 300,000 have died from hunger and disease, and some 2.7 million were displaced.

However, the Sudanese government puts the number of people killed in the violence around 10,000.

Al-Bashir is the first acting head of state to be indicted by the ICC, and is the most senior figure pursued by the court in The Hague since its inception in 2002.

Millions hungry

The United Nations has announced that the number of Sudanese in need of food aid has spiked this year, as compared to last year number’s of 4.3 million needy.

Around 11 million people are now reportedly in need of food aid across Sudan, with around half of all South Sudanese going hungry.

The UN has cited drought and tribal conflicts as causing the crisis.

The UN’s World Food Programme is also facing a total deficit of $485m needed to fund food aid this year.

source: Al Jazeera

One of the most urgent responsibilities the international community faces is in Sudan, which is facing a renewal of nationwide violence.

Many accomplishments hang in the balance. The Bush administration helped to orchestrate a Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) there in 2005. One of its key provisions is that a referendum will be held in January 2011 in the southern region, so that citizens can decide whether to secede or remain part of a unified nation.

Since 2005, combat has largely been restrained, northern troops have pulled out of the south, a national unity government in Khartoum and a regional southern government in Juba have been formed, and oil wealth has been shared. There has been progress on some disputed border areas, and legislation was passed to prepare for April elections—a critical feature of CPA implementation and part of the longer-term democratic transformation process. If this electoral effort is successful, many of the ethnic groups and political factions will be involved for the first time in a transparent process, which will be important practice for the southern referendum scheduled for next January.

The Carter Center has been deeply involved in this huge nation for more than 20 years, attempting to negotiate peace between the Islamic government in Khartoum and non-Muslim revolutionaries in the south. During the past year, we have observed a peaceful and surprisingly successful nationwide voter registration that reached 16 million Sudanese, or nearly 80 percent of estimated eligible voters, and the active campaign period is scheduled to begin Feb. 13. We are also training 3,000 local election observers.

But all this progress is in danger of being abandoned. The National Election Commission makes tardy decisions and has inadequate funding and government support, and there is insufficient public education about its actions. There are serious unresolved disputes about exact lines of the border, permanent division of oil wealth and infrastructure, and whether the 2008 census process adequately counted potential voters in the south, Darfur and other areas. The Khartoum government has passed an unacceptably repressive National Security Forces Act, and there has been a recent increase in violent clashes in the south.

We still have great concern about Darfur, where the problem is now general lawlessness instead of the former organized insurgency and brutal responses by government forces and irregular Arab militias. Problems there have been exacerbated by the government’s expulsion of aid organizations that are needed to minister to the needs of some 2.7 million displaced people. An atmosphere of impunity also has led to increased attacks on international aid workers and peacekeepers in the past year.

The international community must do more to help ensure successful elections. Our center will be able to deploy 60 observers for the April election. But additional monitors from Africa and the European Union are urgently needed. Indications are that they would be welcomed by the political factions, hopefully without restrictions.

The involvement of the international community will also be vital to help implement the referendum results—either independence for the south or healing of the internal national divisions that have racked Sudan for a quarter century. (Win or lose, the international legal status of President Omar al-Bashir as an indicted war criminal will not be changed.)

It is almost impossible to imagine the tragedy for Sudan from the resumption of war, which would undoubtedly impact the nine contiguous nations. Perhaps more serious would be the risk of religious antagonisms in a much broader region, with Muslims supporting the northern region against allies of the south. It is crucial that the United Nations and individual countries intercede to ensure the full implementation of the 2005 CPA with aggressive and sustained support for the faltering progress toward peace and democracy.

Former president Jimmy Carter is founder of the nonprofit Carter Center.

source: Washington Post

Gaza Strip-ruling Islamic Hamas movement accused Israel on Monday of trying to evade from taking its leaders to international courts for committing war crimes against civilians in the enclave.

Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum said in a statement that punishing two senior Israeli army officers for targeting civilians during the latest Israeli war on the Gaza Strip is “a pre-emptive action to escape from the international court.”

“The Israeli move came before the adjournment of the findings in the fact-finding Goldstone report to the (United Nations) Security Council, which will be later taken to the International Criminal Court,” said Barhoum.

He said the Israeli claim of punishing two senior Israeli army officers for committing war crimes against civilians in the Gaza Strip “is a clear evidence and official recognition of committing war crimes in the Gaza Strip.”

The Israeli media earlier on Monday reported that the Israeli army commander of southern Israel had reprimanded two officers for attacking civilians’ areas in Gaza. The reports didn’t give what kind of punishment it was.

Israel waged last winter the 22-day military operation called ” Cast Lead” in the Gaza Strip, killing at least 1,440 Palestinians, 70 percent of them civilians, according to Palestinians.

Barhoum called on the international community and the human rights groups “to enhance taking the leaders of the enemy to International Criminal Court and sue them for committing awful war crimes against innocent civilians.”

Meanwhile, Ismail Radwan, a Gaza-based Hamas leader told Xinhua that “the leaders of the Israeli occupation must be taken to International Criminal Courts for committing awful war crimes against innocent civilians.”

“The Israeli punishment of the two officers is certifying what has been mentioned in the Goldstone report that massacres had been committed against women and children,” said Radwan.

In November, the UN General Assembly endorsed the UN fact- finding Goldstone report that accused both Israel and Hamas of committing war crimes and asked the two sides to conduct independent probes of the charges before Feb. 5.

source: Xinhua

ITEN, Kenya — Witnesses of the post-election violence that broke out in Kenya two years ago have been receiving death threats, as the International Criminal Court continues its push to prosecute the perpetrators.
“If you don’t shut up, we’ll send you money to buy your coffins. You talk too much. You’re a woman. Shut up!”
The mother of six, who asked to be named only as Margaret for fear of reprisals, scrolls through the inbox of her mobile phone: she has received dozens such text messages over the past three months.
The midde-aged woman, from a small village in the Rift Valley, cringes every time her phone rings and constantly looks over her shoulder in the street.
She is a Kalenjin and her husband a Kikuyu, the two main tribes who fought each other during the weeks of ethnic and political violence that left some 1,500 people dead following the disputed December 2007 polls.
“Having lived with my family in the same village for all those long years, I thought they’d never touch us,” she said. “But ... my shop and home were the first to be burnt down.”
She saw women cooking for huge numbers and then 200 young men armed with bows, machetes and clubs returning from their mission and shouting: “We have finished the work.”
“I could not stay silent for what I had heard and seen. I wanted to confront my demons to find peace,” she told AFP, explaining her decision to testify with Kenya’s Waki commission probe into the violence.
That’s when her second nightmare began: her account to the home-grown investigation could make her a witness if the Hague-based ICC or a special local tribunal brought cases against key suspects.
Three ICC experts are currently in Kenya on the latest of a series of trips aimed at consolidating their case and assessing the level of progress made by Kenya’s government on setting up a local court.
According to rights groups in Kenya, around 10 potential witnesses have fled the country, with the assistance notably of the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights.
ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo himself voiced concern over the phenomenon in a letter addressed to Kenya Justice Minister Mutula Kilonzo on January 21.
“No one will stop the ICC by attacking Kenyan citizens,” he also told a Kenyan television network.
One rights activist who has been documenting threats on post-poll violence victims said he was keepiong a very loow profile for fear of being killed.
“Many of my cases involve people brutalised by gangs, militias and government security forces,” he told AFP.
The coalition government formed as a result of an international mediation that followed the disputed 2007 election has fallen behind on every measure pledged and needed to heal the country.
Despite government assurances that the problem was resolved, tens of thousands of displaced people were not able to return to their homes and their stories are slowly being forgotten.
“The suspects have taken over the voice of everybody else,” said Ken Wafula, director of the Eldoret Centre for Human Rights and Democracy. “They are trying to direct the situation, but justice shouldn’t be run by the suspects.”
Many of the victims of the violence that shocked the world two years ago, from the Kibera slums in Nairobi, to the farmlands of the Rift Valley, are willing to testify but they are increasingly aware of the risks involved.
Lawmaker Martha Karua, justice minister during the violence, warned last month that witnesses were being harassed by suspects.
“It is disappointing that the government can fail to provide security to the witnesses of the post election violence,” she said at a public meeting.
According to Wafula, “politicians are leaking out names of witnesses and endangering their lives.”
Six cabinet ministers are on a list of key suspects transmitted by the Waki commission to the ICC and who might face arrest warrants should Ocampo not be satisfied with Kenya’s own judicial endeavours.

source:  AFP

Sudan President Omar al-Bashir’s party has said it will back the leader of its former civil-war enemies in the south’s presidential election in April.

The National Congress Party (NCP) said it would not field a candidate against ex-rebel leader Salva Kiir and wanted good relations with his SPLM party.

But one southern official told the BBC he did not believe the NCP and accused them of backing the SPLM’s rivals.

The two sides signed a deal in 2005 to end two decades of north-south war.

There have been tensions in recent months about the possibility of the oil-rich south voting to secede from the north in a referendum in a year’s time.

The BBC’s Peter Martell in the southern capital, Juba, says there has been a grudging acceptance in the north of the likelihood of a split.

And in a major about-turn last week, Mr Bashir said he would accept the result of the referendum next year - even if the south opted for independence.

Destabilising the south?

The NCP said it would not field its own candidate for the post of president of Southern Sudan.

“We hope the SPLM will do the same by withdrawing their candidate for the president of the republic,” NCP presidential adviser Ali Tamim Fartak told Reuters news agency.

Mr Kiir is not standing as the SPLM’s rival to Mr Bashir in the national election, but the party has fielded Yassir Arman as a candidate

But the SPLM’s envoy to the US, Ezekiel Lol Gatkout, said the SPLM would not withdraw Mr Arman.

“If they are interested in sponsoring us why are are they interested in sponsoring armed groups that are destabilising the south,” he told the BBC’s Network Africa programme.

He said the NCP was backing Lam Akol, who left the SPLM last year to set up his own party.

“The SPLM-Democratic Change was created by the NCP to challenge the SPLM,” he said.

Last year, some 2,000 people died in clashes in the reigon and southern politicians have often blamed the northern NCP.

They say the NCP wants to destabilise the region so the election and independence referendum have to be delayed indefinitely.

But northern politicians have strenuously denied the allegations.

The election in April will be the first multi-party national election in a generation.

The 22-year war between the mainly Muslim north and the Christian and animist south claimed the lives of some 1.5 million people.

source: BBC News