Weekly News Wrap: Monday, July 20, 2015

Your weekly selection of international law and international relations headlines from around the world:

Africa

• Hissene Habre, the former leader of Chad once described as “Africa’s Pinochet” by Human Rights Watch (HRW), is about to face trial in Senegal over the alleged political killings of thousands of people during his time in power.
• Malian masons have rebuilt eight mausoleums destroyed by Islamist militants that took over the desert city of Timbuktu in 2012, the United Nations and Malian officials said.
• The United States will offer to help Nigeria’s new leader track down billions of dollars in stolen assets and increase U.S. military assistance to fight Islamic militants, U.S. officials said, as Washington seeks to “reset” ties with Africa’s biggest economy.
• Women jailed in a Kigali prison for murdering their Tutsi neighbors in Rwanda’s 1994 genocide talk about the killings as if they are still trying to justify why they took part in one of the most notorious mass killings of modern history.
• Suspected Nigerian Boko Haram insurgents killed at least a dozen villagers and wounded several others in an attack in southeastern Niger on Wednesday night, security sources said.

Middle East and Northern Africa

• One senior Tunisian Islamic State leader alongside five other foreign jihadists were killed in an air strike near the northeastern city of Hasaka, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported on Monday.
• Explosions destroyed six cars belonging to members of the Hamas and Islamic Jihad militant groups in Gaza City on Sunday, witnesses said, injuring no one but drawing threats of a response.
• Saudi Arabia has arrested 431 people suspected of belonging to Islamic State cells and thwarted attacks on mosques, security forces and a diplomatic mission, the interior ministry said on Saturday.

Asia

• A top U.S. Navy admiral said he joined a routine surveillance flight over the disputed South China Sea on Saturday and that the U.S. was committed to freedom of navigation in the region.
• Japanese corporation Mitsubishi has issued an historic apology for forcing American prisoners of war (POWs) to work in its mines during World War II.
• Indian and Pakistani forces traded fire across their disputed frontier over the weekend, when Muslims celebrated the festival of Eid al-Fitr, injuring several civilians and raising tension despite a recent agreement aimed at improving ties.

Europe

• A British man who was last year sentenced by a U.S. court to 12-1/2 years in prison after pleading guilty to running a website that supported the Taliban, has been released, his family said on Sunday.
• Revelations of U.S. spying in Europe have soured transatlantic relations, prompting a White House apology and, as leak followed leak over the past two years, have fostered feelings of moral superiority among Europeans, yet EU governments are stepping up surveillance of their own citizens.
• British pilots have participated in airstrikes over Syria on the behalf of allies such as the United States and Canada, the Ministry of Defense said on Friday.

Americas

• The United States and Cuba have reopened embassies in each other’s countries for the first time in 54 years in a move that officially restores their full diplomatic ties.
• Colombia’s FARC rebels released a soldier they had held for nearly two weeks on Sunday, President Juan Manuel Santos said, a day before a unilateral ceasefire declared by the group was set to start.

Oceania

• Several hundred Australian nationalists and anti-racism activists clashed with police in Melbourne on Saturday in a rare display of violence in a country where immigration is an increasingly emotive political issue.

UN/World

• The U.N. Security Council must intervene in Burundi to prevent mass atrocities and the risk of a regional conflict, seven independent U.N. human rights investigators said on Thursday.