Cambodia’s war crimes tribunal releases former Khmer Rouge leader

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age, Alzheimer's, Cambodia, Genocide, healthcare, justice, Khmer Rouge, massacre, Torture, Tribunal, War Crimes

Cambodia’s war crimes tribunal releases former Khmer Rouge leader

Cambodia’s war crimes tribunal set free a former leader of the Khmer Rouge on Sunday, upholding a decision that has outraged survivors seeking an explanation of the mass killings committed more than 30 years ago.

Ieng Thirith, 80, who has been declared mentally unfit for trial, was driven out of the UN-backed tribunal’s compound by family members. She made no comment to reporters.

The Sorbonne-educated Shakespeare scholar served as social affairs minister during the Khmer Rouge’s rule from 1975-79, during which an estimated 1.7 million people died of execution, medical neglect, overwork and starvation.

The tribunal initially announced its decision to free Ieng Thirith on Thursday, saying medical experts had determined there was no prospect for her to be tried due to a degenerative mental illness that was probably Alzheimer’s disease.

Prosecutors then delayed her release by filing an appeal demanding that conditions be set to restrict her freedom.

On Sunday, the tribunal’s supreme court said it had accepted the appeal, which is expected to be heard later this month. In the meantime, it set three provisional conditions on her movement.

The tribunal said Ieng Thirith must inform the court of her address, must turn in her passport and cannot leave the country, and must report to the court whenever it summons her.

Ieng Thirith was the Khmer Rouge’s highest-ranking woman and also a sister-in-law of the group’s top leader, Pol Pot, who died in 1998.

She is accused of involvement in the “planning, direction, co-ordination and ordering of widespread purges,” and was charged with crimes against humanity, genocide, homicide and torture.

Three other senior Khmer Rouge leaders are on trial, including her husband, 86-year-old Ieng Sary, the regime’s former foreign minister; 85-year-old Nuon Chea, its chief ideologist and second-in-command; and 80-year-old Khieu Samphan, a former head of state.

The tribunal said earlier that Ieng Thirith’s release did not mean the charges against her were being withdrawn and was not a finding of guilt or innocence. It plans to consult annually with experts to see whether future medical advances could render her fit for trial, although that is considered unlikely given her age and frailty.

Survivors of the Khmer Rouge called Ieng Thirith’s release shocking and unjust. They said they had waited decades for justice and found it hard to feel compassion for her suffering.

“It is difficult for victims and indeed, all Cambodians, to accept the especially vigorous enforcement of Ieng Thirith’s rights taking place at the [tribunal],” said Youk Chhang, director of the Documentation Center of Cambodia, a group that researches Khmer Rouge atrocities.

In a statement on Sunday,, he noted the irony of Ieng Thirith receiving “world class health care.” As social affairs minister she was “personally and directly involved in denying Cambodians even the most basic health care during the regime’s years in power,” he said.

The tribunal began in 2006 – nearly three decades after the fall of the Khmer Rouge – following years of wrangling between Cambodia and the UN. The lengthy delays have been costly and raised fears that the former leaders could die before their verdicts come.

Serbian president denies Srebrenica genocide

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Bosnia, Genocide, massacre, trauma, war, War Crimes

Serbian president denies Srebrenica genocide

Serbia‘s new president has denied genocide took place in Srebrencia, contradicting the international criminal prosecution of Serbian leaders from the Yugoslav wars and angering the Muslim co-president of Bosnia.

Tomislav Nikolic, the rightwinger elected as Serbian president last month, said on Montenegrin television: “There was no genocide in Srebrenica. In Srebrenica, grave war crimes were committed by some Serbs who should be found, prosecuted and punished.

“It is very difficult to indict someone and prove before a court that an event qualifies as genocide.”

The former Serbian general Ratko Mladic is on trial in The Hague accused of genocide in Srebrenica. Bosnian Serb forces under his command slaughtered around 8,000 Muslim men and boys after capturing the town, which had been declared a safe haven by the United Nations, towards the end of Bosnia’s 1992-95 war. It was Europe’s worst atrocity since the second world war.

The Bosnian Serbs’ wartime political leader, Radovan Karadzic, is also on trial in The Hague accused of genocide.

Bakir Izetbegovic, who shares Bosnia’s presidency with a Croat and a Serb, said Nikolic’s comments were insulting to the survivors. “The denial of genocide in Srebrenica … will not pave the way for co-operation and reconciliation in the region, but on the contrary may cause fresh misunderstandings and tensions.

“By giving such statements Nikolic has clearly demonstrated that he is still not ready to face the truth about the events that took place in our recent past.”

Nikolic said he would not attend the annual commemoration of the Srebrenica massacre in July. “Don’t always ask the Serbian president if he is going to Srebrenica,” he said. “My predecessor was there and paid tribute. Why should every president do the same?”

Both the international criminal tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and the international court of justice (ICJ) have ruled that the Srebrenica massacre amounted to genocide.

Serbia wants to join the European Union. A spokeswoman for the EU’s foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, said her office would seek clarification of Nikolic’s statement but “would like to remind everyone that Srebrenica has been confirmed as genocide by both the ICTY and the ICJ. Srebrenica was the largest massacre in Europe since world war two, a crime against all of humankind. We should never forget and it should never be allowed to happen again.”

Nikolic’s win over the incumbent president, Boris Tadic, sent a chill through a region that still recalls his last spell in government – as deputy prime minister in a coalition with Serbia’s late strongman Slobodan Milosevic when Nato bombed Serbia to drive its forces out of Kosovo during a 1998-99 war.

Nikolic has split from ultra-nationalists, recasting himself as a pro-European conservative and saying he will pursue Serbia’s drive for EU membership.

Tadic oversaw the arrest and extradition of Karadzic and Mladic. He pushed an apology for the massacre through parliament and travelled to Srebrenica as part of a drive to foster reconciliation.

Tens of thousands flee ‘extreme violence’ in Congo

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Child Soldiers, Congo, Genocide, internally displaced people, massacre, mutilation, rape, Rwanda, Torture, war

Tens of thousands flee ‘extreme violence’ in Congo

Villagers and townspeople in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo are facing “extreme violence” with atrocities including mass executions, abductions, mutilations and rapes being committed almost daily, according to aid workers in Goma, the capital of North Kivu province.

Fighting between the government army, the FARDC, and a group of mutineers led by a fugitive UN war crimes indictee, Bosco Ntaganda, has escalated since April. Armed militias including the notorious FDLR, a Rwandan rebel group based in Congo, have joined the fray in a multi-fronted battle for territory, money and power. But the violence has received relatively little international attention so far.

“The crisis in Congo is the worst it has been for years. The activity of armed groups has exploded, with militias making the most of the chaos to prey on the local population,” Samuel Dixon, Oxfam’s policy adviser in Goma, said on Wednesday. “Large areas of [North and South] Kivu are under the control of different armed groups – some villages are being terrorised from all sides, with up to five groups battling for power.

“Local people are bearing the brunt of extreme violence, facing the risk of massacre, rape, retaliation, abduction, mutilation, forced labour or extortion … In less than two months, more than 100,000 people in North Kivu have been forced to flee,” Dixon said.

Expressing alarm at the deteriorating situation, the UN refugee agency said the violence had sent tens of thousands of refugees spilling over the border into Rwanda and Uganda, while many more people were internally displaced.

Melissa Fleming, spokeswoman for the UNHCR, said UN agencies and the Red Cross would soon begin to distribute relief supplies. “Some of the displaced report cases of extortion, forced labour, forced recruitment of minors and beatings by armed men,” Fleming said.

Aid workers said heightened instability was making it difficult to establish the true extent of the violence and to get supplies to those most in need, who had often taken refuge in remote, inaccessible areas.

“The mutiny in North Kivu is part of a broader picture of insecurity caused by multiple armed groups and by elements of the Congolese forces. Since the FARDC has been fighting the mutiny, other armed groups active in eastern Congo have opportunistically moved into areas left vacant by the army,” an internal NGO field report seen by the Guardian stated.

“In South Kivu in early May 2012, 30 people were killed in Lumenje zone by the FDLR … During the night of 13 May, at least another 40 civilians lost their lives and 35 were injured following a brutal FDLR attack on Kamananga. This incident took place only 2kms from a Monusco base [Monusco is the name of the UN’s 20,000-strong stabilisation force in Congo].”

The report went on: “A letter left by the FDLR at the scene warned of a series of revenge attacks if the opposing group, the Raia [militia], did not stop attacking them. In the last two massacres the FDLR mutilated the dead to discourage further actions against them …

“In Mambas territory, a mai mai [militia] group reportedly raped over 70 women in the second week of May and armed clashes around Itembo allegedly led to the death of 17 civilians.”

Overall, the total number of internally displaced people in Congo is believed to be at its highest level in three years: up from 1.7 million to 2 million.

The latest upheavals follow warnings, first reported in the Guardian on 16 March, that the army’s offensive against the FDLR, launched in February, could destabilise the Kivus and have disastrous consequences. Controversially, the UN supported the offensive, arguing it was the best way to end chronic instability in the region.

The army’s plan went awry last month after President Joseph Kabila of Congo called for the arrest of Bosco Ntaganda, an ex-rebel general whose forces were supposedly integrated into the FARDC in 2009.

Ntaganda is wanted by the international criminal court for alleged war crimes, including the recruitment of child soldiers, but had appeared to be enjoying to official protection. His response to Kabila’s call for his arrest was to lead a mutiny of former officers and hundreds of their men, who have formed a new rebel group called M23.

“Civilian safety has to be the number one priority for the UN and the government army,” Dixon said. “Military action against rebels must not put local people at further risk. It is unacceptable that such widespread violence in Congo goes unstopped and under-reported. More must be done to tackle the political and underlying drivers of the conflict.”

Ratko Mladic goes on trial for Bosnia war crimes

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Bosnia, ethnic cleansing, massacre, Tribunal, War Crimes

Ratko Mladic goes on trial for Bosnia war crimes

Ratko Mladic, the Serb military commander in the Bosnian war, has gone on trial for the worst crimes against humanity that Europe has witnessed since the second world war.

Facing 11 charges including two counts of genocide, the 70 year-old former general appeared unrepentant on Wednesday. When he entered the courtroom at a war crimes tribunal in The Hague, he gave a sarcastic thumbs-up and a slow handclap to the public gallery. At one point, he looked directly at a survivor of the Srebrenica massacre and drew his finger across his throat.

“We visited him before the trial and tried to persuade him to be quiet, not to say anything at all,” Branko Lukic, his defence lawyer said. “He told me he made that sign at a woman in the gallery who provoked him by showing him the middle finger. He is like that. He does the same to me.”

After the break, Mladic complained about gestures from the public gallery. The judge told him to focus on the trial while warning the gallery he would put up a screen up around the court if there was any further “interaction”.

For more than four hours, the prosecution at the international criminal tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, outlined its case. Dermot Groome, one of the two senior prosecutors, said that the evidence would show that Mladic, as the head of the Bosnian Serb general staff, was directly responsible for the atrocities committed. More than 100,000 people died in the conflict, mostly Muslims and Croats, including tens of thousands of civilians.

“The prosecution will present evidence that will show beyond a reasonable doubt the hand of Mr Mladic in each of these crimes,” Groome said. In his statement, he drew on the defendant’s published directives to his troops during the war, as well his wartime notebooks seized by Serbian police in a Belgrade flat where he had been hiding during his 16 years on the run.

Groome’s also highlighted the individual tragedies that lie beneath the statistics, like the 14 year-old boy whose father and uncle were among 150 men from the same community murdered by Bosnian Serb forces in November 1992. He also told the story of a seven-year-old boy in Sarajevo killed by a Serb sniper while out with his mother gathering firewood. The bullet passed through her stomach and into his head. Lying wounded on the street, she thought her boy was simply following her instructions to take cover. It was only when UN soldiers lifted up his limp body that she realised he was dead.

Groome said that by the time Mladic’s forces stormed the supposedly UN-protected enclave of Srebrenica in 1995, killing 8,000 Muslim men and boys, “they were well rehearsed in the craft of murder.”

He added that Srebrenica was “different in scale, but no different in intent” from other atrocities carried out by Bosnian Serb forces. “It was no different in its utter inhumanity.”

One of the survivors in the gallery, Zumra Sehomerovic, said: “I am proud when I see Mladic finally behind that glass, in front of the court. It has come after 16 years but there is no statute of limitations on the crimes he committed”.

Her husband and three other family members were killed at Srebrenica and she said she saw the general up close when he appeared at the scene to “reassure” the terrified captives.

“When I look at him today, I see the man I saw then in 1995. I was standing a metre from him,” Sehomerovic said. ” There he was with his sleeves rolled up, and he was telling us everything would be OK. He was giving chocolate to the children and said he said he just needed to keep some of the men for a prisoner exchange but that everybody would be together again soon. And then he killed them all.”

Groome said the documentary evidence pointed to an “overarching” plan, set out in a list of six war aims drawn up by Mladic, aimed at ethnic cleansing hundreds of thousands of Muslims and Croats and carving out an ethnically pure Serb homeland in western and eastern Bosnia.

The prosecution statement also focused on the 44-month siege of Sarajevo. Groome quoted Mladic from wartime documents and interviews in which he appeared to boast about “putting a ring around the dragon’s head of Sarajevo”.

At one point the general is quoted as saying: “I have blocked Sarajevo from all four sides. There is no exit. It is in a mousetrap.”

Lukic said that he intended to cross-examine prosecution witnesses carefully, but would let the prosecution present its entire case before making his own opening statement.

“Our strategy is not to reveal our strategy and to keep our cards close to our chest,” Lukic said, but pledged to present “new evidence” when his turn came. He predicted that the trial could take more than four years to complete.

In court, Mladic cut a much diminished figure from the bluff, stocky and ruddy-faced military commander he was in the war. He survived for 16 years on the run, at first with the help of the Serbian army and the Serbian government in Belgrade, but since the election of a reformist president, Boris Tadic, in 2004, the layers of protection fell away. Mladic was cut off from funds and had been reduced to hiding in the garden shed of a relative in a Serbian village when he was caught last year.

The Bosnian Serbs’ wartime leader, Radovan Karadzic, was caught in 2008, living under a false name and posing a new-age healer. He is already midway through his trial at The Hague. Slobodan Milosevic, the former Yugoslav president who orchestrated the Balkan wars from Belgrade, died of a heart attack in his cell in 2006 before a verdict could be delivered in his case.

At the start of Wednesday’s hearing the presiding judge, Alphons Orie of theNetherlands, said the court was considering postponing the presentation of evidence, due to start on 29 May, owing to material omitted by the prosecutors when it disclosed evidence to the defence. Groome said he would not oppose a “reasonable adjournment”.