War Crimes

This is the first in a 3-part year in review series on war crimes around the world in 2011.   Ratko Mladic – Europe’s Most Wanted War Criminal In early April Bosiljka Mladic, Ratko Mladic’s wife told the media that her husband was dead. Less than two months later he was arrested in Lazarevo in […]

  San Marino became the first nation to ratify an amendment proposed at the 2010 Kampala Review Conference of the Rome Statute, which governs the International Criminal Court. San Marino deposited its ratification of the amendment to Article 8 at U.N. Headquarters today becoming the first nation to ratify the amendment classifying the use of […]

Today is the world’s first International Criminal Justice Day. It marks the thirteenth year since the passage of the Rome Statute in 1998 that created the International Criminal Court. Today the I.C.C. has 116 state-party members. There are currently six active investigations into situations in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uganda, Sudan, the Central […]

From Amanda Bowen at Citizens for Global Solutions (WASHINGTON, D.C., June 28, 2011) In issuing an arrest warrant for Muammar Gaddafi, the International Criminal Court has demonstrated yet again that tyrants and human rights abusers around the world—even if they are heads of state–will not enjoy immunity from international law, and will be held responsible […]

Ratko Mladic was arrested today in Lazarevo, Serbia ending a sixteen year long manhunt (as predicted in our Year In Review article).  He was the Serbian military commander responsible for the Srebrenica massacre in which over 7,000 Muslims were murdered, and has been labeled Europe’s most wanted war criminal. The two most notorious fugitive war […]

Last week the U.S. ‘took out’ Al Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden. As an American, I cannot help but have a visceral reaction of delight. Such a major blow will surely expedite the end of ‘the war on terror’. Whatever your opinion is of that endeavor, we can all be relieved by its conclusion. If […]

Governments have attacked and killed civilian protesters across the Middle East. These attacks have resulted in action by the International Criminal Court and international military forces against Libya but inaction against similar atrocities in other Middle Eastern states. This discrepancy in response by the I.C.C., international community, and the U.S., have drawn cries of hypocrisy. […]

On friday Richard Goldstone walked back his important and controversial 2009 Goldstone Report on potential war crimes resulting from the Israeli incursion into Gaza earlier that year in a Washington Post Op-Ed. He held that while Palestinian crimes were ‘of course’ intentional, he did not want to second guess difficult decisions made by Israeli commanders […]

(From The Phnom Penh Post) By James O’Toole and Cheang Sokha Appeals in the case of former S-21 prison chief Kaing Guek Eav began at the Khmer Rouge tribunal yesterday with a contentious debate on the court’s jurisdiction and its right to try the accused, better known as Duch. Prosecutors, the defence and civil party […]

Last week Libya became the subject of official investigation by the International Criminal Court, the sixth since the court’s inception in 2002. There are three ways in which an investigation can be initiated by the Office of The Prosecutor; referral of a situation by a state party of the Rome Statute, referral from the U.N. […]

Stephen Rapp, the U.S. Ambassador-at-large for war crimes issues, declared this week in Bangladesh that “(p)re-charging detention is not automatically a violation of international standards.” This statement could be taken innocuously – as arguably true; or it could be taken as an implicit nod of approval by the U.S. for the illegal detention and torture […]

In 2010 as might be expected, justice was brought to some and impunity enjoyed by others. The Office of the Prosecutor at the International Criminal Court opened preliminary investigations into possible war crimes involving the March sinking of the South Korean warship, Cheonan, and the November artillery attack on Yeonpyeong Island by North Korea; religious […]