In association with the International Commission of Jurists

International Human Rights Law

20 Jan

The SEAL in question is Matthew Bissonnette, who published the bestselling No Easy Day under the pseudonym Mark Owen. According to the Intercept, the federal government is investigating Bissonnette for revealing classified information and using his position to make money while still on active duty: A former Navy SEAL who shot Osama bin Laden and wrote a bestselling book about the raid is now...

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12 Jan

The article is forthcoming in the Journal of International Criminal Justice. Here is the abstract: In March 2015, Simone Gbagbo, the former First Lady of Côte d’Ivoire, was convicted of various crimes in an Ivorian court and sentenced to 20 years in prison. Despite her conviction and sentence, however, the Appeals Chamber has held that her case is admissible before the ICC....

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12 Jan

[Please see the update below] Three U.S. citizens, and one Belgian national, have filed a civil lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Washington D.C. against the State of Israel alleging various injuries and damages suffered during an Israeli commando raid on their U.S.-registered ship.  The plaintiffs were activists who were sailing their vessel in support of the Palestinians on the Gaza...

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20 Dec

From CNN: For the first time in its 70-year history, the United Nations has officially recognized a Jewish holiday. U.N. employees who observe the Jewish faith will have the day off and no official meetings will take place on this date from now on, according to the Israeli mission to the organization. Yom Kippur, or the Day of Atonement, considered the most important...

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18 Dec

Although anything I post about Israel invariably elicits angry comments, nothing makes Israel's supposed "defenders" more angry than my posts -- see here and here -- about Breaking the Silence, the Israeli organisation that collects testimonies by IDF soldiers about their experiences in combat. I'm obviously not the only one who has noticed the anger toward the organisation; Haggai Mattar recently...

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15 Dec

Last week, the ICTY Appeals Chamber reversed the acquittals of Jovica Stanisic and Franko Simatovic, the former head and deputy head of the Serbian secret police under Milosevic, and ordered them retried. One of the two grounds for reversal was the Trial Chamber's adoption of the specific-direction requirement; in the majority's view (the vote was 3-2), specific direction is not an element...

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13 Dec

[Ruti Teitel is the Ernst C Stiefel Professor of Comparative Law, New York Law School and the author of Globalizing Transitional Justice (OUP paper2015).] I have learned a great deal from the thoughtful responses to my article (.pdf) by the participants in this symposium. Dinah PoKempner is correct to say that my article doesn’t address the merits of a “right of...

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10 Dec

Here is Moreno-Ocampo's latest doozy, concerning the possibility of Israelis being prosecuted for war crimes related to Israel's illegal settlements in the West Bank: Where the Israeli High Court of Justice has approved specific settlements as legal, this could provide a complete defense to any allegations that they are war crimes, former International Criminal Court chief prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo told the Jerusalem...

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10 Dec

[Chandra Lekha Sriram, Professor of International Law and International Relations and Director, Centre on Human Rights in Conflict, University of East London.] This insightful article covers a great deal of subject matter, far more than can be analysed in a brief comment. These include not only the topics signaled by the title, but also the relationship between transitional justice and international...

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09 Dec

[Cesare Romano is Professor of Law, Joseph W. Ford Fellow, and Director of the International Human Rights Clinic at Loyola Law School, Los Angeles. He is also Senior Research Fellow of iCourts, University of Copenhagen, and of Pluricourts, University of Oslo.] Last September, the President of Colombia, Juan Manuel Santos, and Timoleón Jiménez, the top commander of the Revolutionary Armed Forces...

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