IJCentral: International Justice Central

Nairobi — A campaign to silence several potentially key witnesses for the International Criminal Court Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo appears to have intensified in the last two weeks.

In December Ocampo went before the ICC pre-trial chamber to seek permission to start formal investigations into the post-election violence in early 2008. The ruling is due this week.

The witnesses reported the attacks to different police stations in Rift Valley and Western provinces, as well as to human rights organisations that are documenting evidence to be presented to Ocampo.

The Star has obtained Ocurrence Book numbers and dates where the witnesses have reported the incidents but we cannot report them for security reasons.

Four witnesses claimed to have escaped death narrowly on different days between the December 23 and yesterday.

Witness “A” has been on the run for the last six months. He gave evidence in camera on certain politicians to the Waki Commission to investigate post-election violence.

On December 28, he was hauled out of a taxi and beaten senseless by four men who claimed that they had been paid to kill him.

“They told me that unless I withdraw my evidence from Waki they will return to kill me,” said Witness A. He claimed that he had also been attacked by the same men in October but that his neighbours rescued him.

” After the attack, I went to hide at my uncle’s house near Mt. Elgon.

They followed me there but they missed me. They then murdered my cousin and told my relatives that they will kill more people unless they produce me,” said the shaken witness who fled to a neighboring country yesterday.

Twenty-five year-old Anthony Juma was tied up by the gang which then used a rope to hang the young man.

Police in Bungoma confirmed the killing at Brigadier village.

Witness “B” used to live in Kitale but for the last three months has been staying with friends and relatives around the country. He also testified in camera to Waki.

On December 27 he says he was attacked in Nairobi’s Komarock area.

“For a whole week three people kept following me and at some point confronted me on December 23 near Afya Center. I knew two of them were security officers because I had worked with them at some point”.

“They told me that I was too dangerous to be left out there so I should write my will. On December 27 the same people arrived at a friend’s house in Komarock asking for me but I escaped through the back door.

They shot my friend twice in the leg for refusing to produce me,” said Witness B.

Witness C who is nursing a fracture on his left hand and several panga cuts said he was attacked on January 1 in Kericho.

“I had just returned from my home in central province when they came to my house. They said they wanted to warn me against meeting Ocampo or writing to him and even before I responded they slashed me several times and broke my arm,” said Witness C.

He claimed the same people had warned him several times of “dire consequences” in the past six months.

Another witness has suffered post-traumatic stress and is being treated at the Moi Referral Hospital in Eldoret after being threatened with death along with his family in Uasin Gishu district.

A witness who was a human rights activist in Naivasha was murdered last April after he rejected offers for a scholarship, or money to go and do business in South Africa. His name cannot be revealed to protect his family.

Six other witnesses in Naivasha accepted the offers and left the country to study and do business on condition that they will not testify anywhere including at the ICC if asked to do so.

All the potential ICC witnesses had appeared before the Waki Commission in camera.

Last November the Star exclusively reported that several witnesses had received death threats from cabinet ministers who suspect that ICC may indict them.

Justice minister Mutula Kilonzo then confirmed that some witnesses had written to him expressing fear for their lives.

“I’m aware that some witnesses are fearful for their lives but I’m sure you know that it’s the responsibility of the Attorney General to ensure their safety,’ Mutula said.

Yesterday Attorney General Amos Wako, who is responsible for witness protection, did not answer his mobile telephone or respond to our text messages.

Kenya’s Witness Protection Act was enacted into law in December 2006, and operationalised in September 2007 but the AG’s office has been accused of not effectively implementing it.

The ICC has already set up a pre-trial chamber followed a meeting between Ocampo, President Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga in Nairobi on November 5. The bench will rule later this month if Ocampo can go ahead and investigate Kenya’s case.

Eleven other witnesses, mostly from the North Rift, are on the run moving from one town to another seeking refuge from relatives.

One of those returned home last November to find that his maize had already been harvested by unknown people who threatened his now hungry family.

source: All Africa

THE HAGUE — Lawyers for Congolese warlord Thomas Lubanga, accused of recruiting child soldiers, will open their defence at the International Criminal Court on Thursday, the court announced.
Lubanga, 49, went on trial a year ago charged with war crimes for using children under the age of 15 to fight for his militia during the 1997-2002 civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo. He has pleaded not guilty.
“On January 7, 2010 at 09:30am (0830 GMT), the defence team of Thomas Lubanga Dyilo will start the presentation of its case,” said a court statement.
The defence case, led by Catherine Mabille, is expected to last several months and call around 30 witnesses, it said.
Prosecutors say Lubanga’s role in the conflict was driven by a desire to maintain and expand control over the eastern Ituri region, one of the world’s most lucrative gold-mining areas. Rights groups claim inter-ethnic fighting has killed 60,000 people in Ituri over the last decade.
Prosecutors say his militia abducted children as young as 11 from their homes, schools and football fields and took them to military training camps where they were beaten and drugged. The girls among them were used as sex slaves.
The prosecution wound up its case on July 14 after calling 28 witnesses, including former child soldiers, over 74 days of hearings.
Its first witness, a child soldier, retracted his testimony under Lubanga’s constant glare from the dock, forcing the court to examine new ways of shielding witnesses.
The ICC is the world’s only independent, permanent court set up to try genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.

source: AFP

The Ugandan military says its forces in the Central African Republic have killed the acting guerilla commander of the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army.  The death adds to the lengthening list of recent captures and killings of senior LRA combatants as the hunt for its infamous leader continues.

Ugandan military spokesman Felix Kulayigye says LRA commander Bok Abudema was killed Thursday, following a skirmish with Ugandan forces the previous day during which one LRA combatant died.

He told VOA that information gathered from defectors and analysis of the group’s upper command had led Ugandan military intelligence to conclude that Abudema was acting as rebel-leader Joseph Kony’s number two and as top field commander of his guerilla forces at the time of his death.

Longtime LRA analyst Levi Ochieng says confirming the exact rank of the dead rebel commander is difficult because the Ugandan military often tries to raise the profile of its vanquished foes and because the LRA leadership is in a constant hazy shift.

“The problem is that it kind of keeps changing.  At some point he was high up in the ranks and at some point he disappeared, and then the UPDF keeps coming up with different rankings, so it is quite confusing,” he said.

But he says Abudema has been a well-known guerilla leader for many years.

“He has been in one of the top echelons of the Lord’s Resistance Army.  Abudema was at least among the top seven [rebel leaders],” he added.

The Ugandan forces have been actively pursuing the rebel group’s forces for the past year, following a coordinated multi-lateral attack against Kony’s base in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo in December 2008.

The initial strike, known as Operation Lighting Thunder, was largely deemed a failure after Kony escaped and his guerilla’s retaliated against thousands of Congolese civilians, killing more than 600 in what is known as the “Christmas massacres.”

But since that time the rebel force has dispersed into small roaming groups scattered across the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, the Central African Republic, and southern and western Sudan.  Its remaining men are thought to be in the hundreds, although the Ugandan military claims the group’s fighting force has shrunk to the double digits.

By Uganda’s count more 300 rebels were killed in the past 13 months, while more than 50 defected to the government’s side and 40 more have been captured.  It claims to have freed more than 500 abducted by the group.

The Ugandan military spokesperson says the revel leader is on the run in the region.

“Joseph Kony is oscillating between the Central African Republic and the Bahr el-Ghazal, southern Darfur areas,” he said.

Western Bahr el-Ghazal is a region of South Sudan, neighbored by the restive region of Darfur to the north.

Kony faces an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Source: Voice of America

It was a relief to get the news today of the unsuccessful appeal by Peru’s ex-president Alberto Fujimori to challenge the guilty verdict and 25-year sentence he received last April.  This reaffirms the Fujimori trial as a landmark positive event for the global human rights movement, and a definite blow to Fujimori supporters and their aspirations to put Fujimori in power again (the 5 judges of the appeals court handed down a unanimous decision).  The trial, as so often happens in cases that address competing historical narratives (Fujimori positioning himself as a hero who vanquished terrorism, and his opponents and civilian victims seeing him as a human rights criminal who gutted Peru’s democracy).  The whole story can be seen in the Skylight Pictures documentary “State of Fear”, which is based on the thorough work done by the Peruvian Truth and Reconciliation Commission. 

KHARTOUM, Sudan — Outwardly, all seems normal at the Khartoum University campus. The sun streams through the hundred-year-old passageways. Noisy students mill around the campus with reckless abandon.

But a closer look reveals something strange. No one discusses politics openly. A rally opposing the Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir is quashed within minutes. Government “inspectors” are said to roam the halls, listening for anyone “inciting dissent.”

Only after careful negotiations will five students agree to meet in a small room of the law department to discuss the current politics, including the arrest warrant that has been issued by the International Criminal Court against Bashir for crimes against humanity and war crimes in Darfur.

On the condition that their real names are not used, they talk about whether the ICC’s first arrest warrant against a sitting head-of-state is a ground-breaking moment for international justice or whether it will frustrate the endeavors for peace and prolong the war.

“There can be no peace without justice,” is a black and white mantra. But realities on the ground in Sudan are gray.

Omar is a second year law student who is against the indictment. “This interference will hold back peace in the region,” he declares. An Arab from Nyala city in South Darfur, 23-year-old Omar has unshaken faith in Bashir’s ruling National Congress Party.

Another student, Ibrahim, who was arrested for organizing a pro-ICC rally, sees Bashir’s NCP in a more negative light. His home village was attacked and scorched in the conflict in Darfur.

“Even if Bashir develops Darfur that does not release him from his crimes,” he said.

Since childhood, Ibrahim, who is half-Fur, has felt suffocated by the Arabization of the Sudan. “I would have learned English rather than Arabic,” complained the 25-year-old student.

His classmate Fatima, 20, an Arab from North Sudan, seems annoyed with questions about growing up in an Islamic state. “No religion treats women better than Islam,” she declares, pushing a stray strand of hair behind her pink headscarf. “The ICC is a political tool controlled by Western powers. Bashir does not deserve to go to jail, Bush does.”

Like many Sudanese, Fatima does not believe that international intervention will help the Darfurians. “They need peace and development, not justice,” she said.

It is not safe to talk for very long. As curious students pop their heads into the small room, the group is eager to disperse. “They could be informers,” someone explained. Minutes after they scatter, an inspector arrives and begins to ask questions.

Since the ICC’s arrest warrant was issued against Bashir in March, the state propaganda machine has churned out scores of Bashir posters and bumper stickers that are seen all over Khartoum. The president appears both commanding and vulnerable. The state message is clear — Sudan stands behind its leader and rejects the ICC as a biased neo-colonial tool of powerful nations.

The country’s Arab population from a wide range of classes — academics, businessmen, merchants and students — supports Bashir and believes that their leader has been unjustly framed.

“There were gross crimes committed but targeting Bashir is not the solution,” said, Jafaar Mirghani, a well-known historian in the capital city.

Among Sudan’s small non-Arab intelligentsia, many have an opposing view that Bashir should be tried for crimes, but they do not have power.

“I am firmly convinced that you cannot have sustainable peace without justice,” said Nasreedeen Abdulbari, a Harvard-educated lawyer who teaches international law at Khartoum University.

These non-Arab intellectuals along with a handful of Darfurian leaders who support the ICC are labeled by the state media as pawns of Western countries and international NGOs. “Bashir has manipulated all public opinion,” said Alfred Taban, a Christian and the editor of “The Khartoum Monitor” newspaper, which is subject to regular visits by the censor inspectors.

The Christian majority of South Sudan, however, has little interest in Darfuri problems, and is occupied with the 2011 referendum that will allow them to decide on whether to secede from the Muslim northerners against whom they have fought two bloody civil wars lasting 40 years.

Internationally, the calls for an immediate arrest of Bashir appear to be weakening. The Group of 77 nations (G77), which includes 132 of the United Nation’s 192 members, is under the chairmanship of Bashir for 2009.

As international political pressure dims, even the pro-ICC groups may be prepared to look past the arrest warrant if the Bashir government truly delivers on peace. This means allowing free and fair national elections in 2010, and working out a peace deal which gives the people of Darfur a real stake in the political pie.

The former rebel leader, Minnie Minnawi, observed that the time is ripe for the Bashir government to make meaningful compromises. “Most important there must be a voluntary release of power to the Darfurians,” said the fierce Zaghawa fighter who signed a failed peace agreement in 2006.

In Darfur, the government clamps down on millions of voices inside the displacement camps but humanitarian workers suggest that the first priority of the war victims is for the fighting to stop.

They also fear that someone worse may take Bashir’s place.

A Darfurian aid worker in the displacement camps of South Darfur, who would only identify himself as Mohammad, described the ICC indictment of Bashir as “strange.” “It is dividing the

Sudanese community and disrupting the work of the humanitarian operations and the peacekeeping force,” he said.

A merchant in New York City, Rahama Daffallah, recently returned from visiting his family in the Abu Shouk camp in North Darfur. Although, he really despises Bashir, Daffallah isn’t sure about the arrest warrant. “I ask myself that even if the ICC takes him away and cuts his head, then what will we get?”

Source:  Global Post

 

The International Criminal Court has been urged to publish in local media the rules of procedure and evidence to enable more witnesses make their reports to the trial chambers on 2007 post-election violence.

Consequently, the ICC could extend the 30-day period given to local witnesses to make their representations to the chambers, a human rights lobby has said.

The Kenya National Commission on Human Rights said the actions would allow more victims to give their views.

Article 15 of the Rome Statute says victims may present their views to the pre-trial chambers in accordance with rules of procedure and evidence.

“However it is likely most have been unable to make their representations,” KNCHR vice-chairman Hassan Omar, said.

In an interview with the Nation, Mr Omar said Kenyans need to know the process of representations to the Pre-trial chambers.

The victims, he said, also require protection and facilitation to give their views to ICC.

Attorney General Amos Wako, Mr Omar said, should act with speed and table a Bill in Parliament to amend the Witness Protection Act to guarantee witnesses of their security and give them necessary support “to submit their evidence to ICC or make presentations to ICC.”

Mr Omar said most victims of the chaos that left 1333 people killed and more than 600,000 uprooted from their homes were contacting KNCHR with hope that they will be given an indication on how to make their representations to the pre-trial chambers.

“The ICC should make it clear how the guidelines are so that victims can present their views without jeopardising their security and safety. The process should further be made more convenient. The 30-day period has almost lapsed. It is not the work of KNCHR to facilitate victims,” Mr Omar said.

Through various responsibilities shared across its organs, the court is obligated under article 68(1) of the Rome Statute to provide for the protection of victims and witnesses appearing before the court, including ensuring their safety, dignity, privacy, and physical and psychological well-being.

This obligation extends to all witnesses—without regard to their affiliation with either the prosecution or the defense—and to all victims.

Victims of the post-election violence in the North Rift started presenting their views on whether the ICC should investigate those suspected of being behind the clashes early this month.

This followed an order dated December 10 from judges Ekaterina Trendafilova, Hans-peter Kaul and Cuno Tarfusser of the Pre-Trial chamber II of the ICC in Netherlands.

The order empowers the Victims Participation and Reparations Section to receive and summarise the victims’ views before submitting them.ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo’s request stated that victims or their legal representatives were notified on November 23 of his intention to request authorisation to commence an investigation into the situation in Kenya.

In response to the notification, victims were to make their representations in writing to the chamber within 30 days after the date of the notification.

“Victims’ representations at this particular stage are a procedure of limited scope, which is merely confined to the prosecutor’s request for authorisation of an investigation,” the document read in part.

Source: The Daily Nation

 

(New York) - United Nations Security Council members should express strong support for an African Union panel’s call for justice for victims in Darfur given the consistent failure by the Sudanese government to hold perpetrators of serious crimes accountable, Human Rights Watch said today.

On December 21, 2009, the Security Council will be briefed on the report of the African Union High-Level Panel on Darfur. The panel, led by the former South African president Thabo Mbeki, was established in March to explore ways to secure peace, justice, and reconciliation in Darfur. In October, the panel issued a comprehensive 125-page report.

“The panel rightly lays the near total absence of justice for horrific crimes committed in Darfur at Khartoum’s feet,” said Richard Dicker, International Justice Program director at Human Rights Watch. “We look to President Mbeki and the Security Council to strongly back the panel’s call for prosecutions of serious crimes.”

In its report, the panel analyzes the Darfur crisis, discusses the potential for negotiating a political settlement, and suggests initiatives aimed at achieving justice and reconciliation.

The report details inaction by the Sudanese government to hold perpetrators of crimes in Darfur to account and indicates that justice for these crimes should be a priority. The report says that “the perpetrators of the serious crimes in Darfur have overwhelmingly remained unpunished” and the Sudanese government cannot “ignore its own duty to deal with the crimes.”

The panel recommends a “hybrid court” for Darfur, including Sudanese judges and judges appointed by the African Union, along with a truth and reconciliation commission. It says that Sudan needs to strengthen its domestic criminal justice system and remove immunities under domestic law for state officials who violate human rights. The panel does not take a position on whether the proposed hybrid court or national efforts should seek to try Darfur cases before the International Criminal Court (ICC).

Human Rights Watch said that the establishment of a hybrid court is likely to face major obstacles, including the lack of political will that has undercut domestic efforts for Sudan to hold perpetrators accountable for crimes committed in Darfur.

“Khartoum has been stonewalling on justice for years,” Dicker said. “The proposed hybrid court and national law reforms could potentially help, but should not derail the ICC cases for one minute.”

The ICC has been investigating and prosecuting crimes in Darfur since 2005, when the Security Council referred Darfur to the ICC under Resolution 1593. The ICC currently has cases against four individuals suspected of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Darfur. Among them is President Omar al-Bashir, for whom the ICC issued an arrest warrant on March 4.

Sudan has not cooperated with the ICC, despite its obligation to do so under Resolution 1593. The Mbeki panel found that persons displaced by the Darfur conflict “welcomed the prospect of ICC prosecutions as the only appropriate mechanism for dealing with the situation they have suffered in Darfur, and expressed strong support for the work of the ICC,” which the Sudanese government “continues to reject.”

The African Union has called for the Security Council to defer the ICC’s case against al-Bashir. Article 16 of the Rome Statute, which created the ICC, permits the Security Council to grant deferrals for renewable one-year periods under the council’s authority to maintain peace and security. However, progress on domestic accountability efforts is not a basis for an article 16 deferral under the Rome Statute, Human Rights Watch said.

“The Security Council should support the Mbeki panel’s call for legal reform in Sudan as a way to improve accountability for human rights abuses,” said Georgette Gagnon, Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “Genuine reforms could also help create the conditions necessary for free and fair national elections in April 2010.”

In October, Human Rights Watch issued a report on human rights abuses and repression across Sudan that includes wider recommendations to the Security Council, including establishing an independent monitoring mission and imposing targeted sanctions.

Background on National Efforts to Prosecute Serious Crimes in Darfur

On June 7, 2005, the day after the ICC prosecutor announced he was opening investigations into the events in Darfur, the Sudanese authorities established the Special Criminal Court on the Events in Darfur. However, by June 2006, authorities had brought only 13 cases before these courts, all involving low-ranking individuals accused of minor offenses such as theft. In the sole case relating to a large-scale attack on civilians, the court merely convicted the accused of theft that occurred after the attack.

In August 2008, Sudan’s justice minister, Abdelbasit Sabdarat, appointed a special prosecutor and legal advisers in each of Darfur’s three states to investigate crimes from 2003 onward. In October 2008, Sudanese justice officials announced that the special prosecutor had completed an investigation into allegations against Ali Kosheib, a militia commander who is wanted by the ICC for war crimes and crimes against humanity. In February 2009, the special prosecutor for Darfur stated that three men, including Kosheib, had been charged in a case related to events in Deleig, Mukjar, Bandas, and Garsila.

However, there has since been no indication of any progress in this or any other case, and the special prosecutor has complained publicly that he has had difficulty gaining access to and interviewing victims.

The ICC’s Darfur Cases

The ICC has issued arrest warrants for three suspects for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Darfur: President al-Bashir; Ahmad Harun, the former minister of state of the interior and the former minister of humanitarian affairs; and Ali Kushayb, an alleged commander of the Janjaweed militia. The ICC has also issued a summons to appear for a Sudanese rebel leader, Bahar Idriss Abu Garda, for alleged war crimes committed as part of an attack on an African Union peacekeeping base, Haskanita. Applications for arrest warrants or summons to appear for two other rebel commanders - who are believed to have also participated in the Haskanita attack and whose names have not been disclosed - are under review.

Source: Human Rights Watch

THE HAGUE, Netherlands — The International Criminal Court is facing serious logistical and legal challenges in 2010 as financial constraints could mean that three major trials will be forced to compete for time and space in a single courtroom.

But the issues facing the international body go far beyond courtroom logistics.

As the United States, which is not a member of the court, looks on from the outside, many of the 110 nations that have ratified the treaty that created the judicial body are beginning to question whether the tens of millions that have gone to finance the court over the past seven years has been well spent.

After all that time and money, the court has merely one trial - and one courtroom - to show for its efforts.

That’s due to change after the first of the year, when three separate cases - against Thomas Lubanga; Germain Katanga and Mathieu Ngudujolo; and Jean-Pierre Bemba - all from the Democratic Republic of Congo, are expected to be under way. But to save money, all three are likely to be forced to share a single courtroom, creating a logistical nightmare.

Practically, this means that one trial will likely be held in the morning and another in the afternoon. When one of those trials enters recess, a third could be conducted.

The move also threatens the right of defendants to be tried within a reasonable amount of time.

“It’s a concern to think that we can finally get to the stage where we have ... defendants before the court and we’re told there aren’t enough resources to facilitate the trials in an expeditious manner, and of course that impacts on the fair trial rights of the defendants,” said Lorraine Smith, who monitors the ICC for the International Bar Association.

Proceedings in the case of former militia leader Lubanga have been stalled for several months, but are now scheduled to resume on Jan. 6.

The trial of ex-militia chiefs Katanga and Ngudujolo, which began on Nov. 26, was adjourned on Dec. 2 and will resume on Jan. 26.

The case of former vice-president Bemba, accused of crimes in the Central African Republic, will start on April 27.

Analysts are wondering how the court will cope.

“It’s quite difficult to manage all of those (cases) with limited facilities and limited resources,” said Elizabeth Evenson, a lawyer with the international justice program at Human Rights Watch.

The problem stems from the fact that the court’s budget assumed that cases could be held consecutively, rather than simultaneously.

If worse comes to worse, officials say they would consider dipping into the court’s $14.45 million contingency fund, a move opposed by outside observers.

“We are not comfortable with resorting to the contingency fund where the particular activity is foreseeable,” said Smith of the international bar association.

But providing adequate financing for the court has become a growing problem in recent years.

In November, the 110 nations that finance the court approved a $148.8 million budget for 2010, up from the $137 million approved for the current year.

Jonathan O’Donohue, a legal adviser for Amnesty International, faulted last year’s budget process for slashing $7.2 million from the court’s proposed budget, a move he said “undermined the integrity of the process” and ignored the advice of experts who scrutinized the court’s proposed budget.” Yet, even O’Donohue said he understands why countries that finance the court are beginning to wonder what they’re getting for their money.

“You’re looking at a court that’s seven years old and has only recently begun its first case,” he said, referring to the Lubanga trial. “At this particular point in the court’s history, there are concerns that there is a lot of investment without a lot of results.” But O’Donohue said it would be a mistake for the states to total up “the first seven budgets and conclude those hundreds of millions of euro are the cost for the one trial that is taking place.” There is also a growing awareness that international justice is a very expensive venture, as already seen by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. The tribunal for the former Yugoslavia alone has cost well over $1 billion.

“International justice can be very expensive in terms of setting up and running a court,” O’Donohue said, pointing to the costs of salaries, building space, travel, investigations, translators and legal aid for defendants and victims, among other expenses.

And the recent international financial crisis has forced an increasing number of states to ask if they can afford international justice.

“We are enduring an economic crisis in proportions not seen since the great depression,” said Francisco Aguilar-Urbina, the Costa Rican ambassador to The Netherlands who served as the facilitator of the 2010 working group that produced the court’s budget. “It’s very difficult to give more money 1/8to the court3/8, when at home people are left without hospitals, schools and basic services.”

Source:  McClatchy

Rachel Irwin is a reporter in The Hague who writes for The Institute for War & Peace Reporting, a nonprofit organization that trains journalists in areas of conflict.

GENEVA — The UN’s human rights chief called for the elusive leaders of Uganda’s Lord’s Resistance Army to be brought to justice for crimes against humanity after two new reports Monday catalogued an orgy of killings and torture.
In two reports, Navi Pillay urged countries to bring LRA leaders to the International Criminal Court after about 1,300 civilians were butchered in dozens of attacks in Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo until June.
The reports documented harrowing accounts of often “carefully synchronised” attacks on villages where civilians were slaughtered with a varietry of balded wepaons or guns, mutilated, tortured and raped.
At least 1,400 people, including 600 women and children were also abducted in DR Congo alone, to serve as sex slaves or porters, said the office of UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.
“These attacks and systematic and widespread human rights violations carried out by the LRA… may constitute war crimes and crimes against humanity,” Pillay’s report on DR Congo said, echoing a similar statement on crimes against humanity in her report on Sudan.
“The international community, including governments in the region, should cooperate with the International Criminal Court to search for, arrest and surrender the LRA leaders accused of crimes against humanity,” the report said.
The LRA guerrilla group first appeared in northern Uganda in 1988.
LRA chief Joseph Kony and two other leaders are wanted by the International Criminal Court since 2005 on 33 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity, according to the UN rights office.
The reports said that some 230,000 people fled the attacks in DR Congo’s northern Orientale province as well as another 38,000 in south Sudan.
In southern Sudan’s Western and Central Equatoria states, close to the border with DR Congo, at least 81 civilians were killed and many more wounded, raped or abducted between December 2008 and March 2009, the report said.
“The brutality employed during the attacks was consistent, deliberate and egregious,” it said, saying they “may amount to crimes against humanity.”
Witnesses told UN investigators that the LRA operated in groups of five to 20, armed with a variety of bladed weapons, axes, clubs and spears, as well as AK 47 assault rifles and machine guns.
The report said that in attacks on two villages “attackers used pangas, axes, bayonets, hoes and knives on the majorty of victims.”
“They reserved their firearms for those who attempted to escape,” it added.
One witness reported discovering the mutilated body of a neighbour.
“The villager’s leg had been chopped off, his jaws had been dislocated and his teeth had been pulled out,” it said.

source: AFP
A similar but more extensive pattern was reported between September 2008 and June 2009 in DR Congo.
Women and girls were raped before being killed, and many of those seized were subjected to sexual slavery, forced to marry LRA members and act as porters for the rebel group, according to the report.

I was recently present for a Q&A session following a screening of “The Reckoning: The Battle for the International Criminal Court” to a class of Jeannette K. Watson Fellows in New York.  It was an extremely rewarding and inspiring experience, because I really felt that our documentary was having an effect on an amazingly bright and engaged audience of young people who seem destined to become future leaders.  They were more informed than most audiences are about the International Criminal Court (ICC) and their questions went right to the heart of the issues.  ICC Prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo has often said that the ICC is a court for the next and future generations, as they understand that we live in a globalized interconnected world that needs effective institutions to help build secure and peaceful societies. 

“The Reckoning” has also had a huge response from law students, as evidenced on the IJCentral Twitter feed and Facebook groups and the audience turnout at festival screenings, as well as campus screenings constantly being organized at Law Schools all over the world.  Recently our outreach partner Facing History and Ourselves hosted a 2-week workshop about how to teach “The Reckoning”, and over 600 educators from 70 countries participated, as well as Prosecutor Moreno Ocampo, Darfur activist Bec Hamilton, former Nuremberg prosecutor Ben Ferencz, and former Legal Counsel to the U.S. State Department John Bellinger III.  The long term impact of all of these educators teaching successive classes of students about global rule of law will be huge and long-term.  We’ve now started a section of IJCentral called IJCentral Action Network, and we encourage you to join the global conversation about international justice.  And if you want to see some of the young people from every corner of the globe that are working at the ICC, check out this video we made titled Demons and Dreamers.