Search: Complementarity SAIF GADDAFI

...of the underlying socio-economic conditions. Chelsea Purvis pleaded for more engagement with African human rights law. The Emerging Voices symposium will take a one week break to make space for a symposium on the two lead articles in the latest issue of the American Journal of International Law, starting on Monday. In a guest post, Ozan Varol argued why the Egyptian military’s ouster of President Morsi was not a democratic coup. Kevin updated us on the latest twist in Libya’s efforts to avoid handing over Saif to the ICC. At...

...seal products. We also had many posts on the ongoing Chevron/ Ecuador saga (such as this one), including a roundtable discussion on Chevron/Ecuador and the rise of arbitral power with the American Lawyer’s Michael Goldhaber. International criminal law was also consistently discussed throughout the year, particularly in Kevin’s posts. Examples include posts concerning Seselj (1, 2), Ruto and Kenyatta (1), and the continuing story of Libya, the International Criminal Court and Saif (see, e.g., 1, 2, 3, 4, 5). We also had an ongoing discussion concerning specific direction (such as:...

This week on Opinio Juris, Kevin analyzed the ICC’s Pre-Trial Chamber’s rejection of Libya’s admissibility challenge. He examined the PTC’s analysis of Libya’s inability to prosecute, and expressed surprise that Libya’s failure to provide Saif with defence counsel was evidence of its “inability” instead of “unwillingness”. If you find yourself in Johannesburg next week, you can hear more from Kevin on the admissibility challenge during a lunchtime lecture at the Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa. In other ICC news, Jennifer Trahan argued that Germany’s ratification of the Kampala Amendment...

...authority of the Court is to be respected, its orders and requests must be complied with. Further latitude would simply enable Libya to perpetuate its tactics of delay, obfuscation and prevarication and its consistent attempts to mislead the Chamber and the Registry as to its true intentions. Libya’s intentions and actions are very clear. None of this is remotely surprising, of course. But it puts the lie to Libya’s constant claims in Saif’s case to be cooperating fully with the Court. Libya only cooperates when it gets what it wants....

...from the Saif case and posted about a new law passed by Libya’s National Transitional Council (NTC) granting blanket amnesty to pro-revolution rebels. The (aspiring) Law Professors or Law PhDs/JSDs amongst our readers will undoubtedly be interested in Kevin’s post on Doctors, Professors and (North) American exceptionalism. The ongoing tensions around the Scarborough Shoal in the South China Sea were often featured in this week’s news wraps. Julian Ku analysed what the US’ reaffirmation of its 1951 Mutual Defense Treaty with the Philippines entails. He argued that the treaty’s obligations...

...justice actors facing continuing intimidation, death threats and other forms of violence, in particular by non-state actors. As a result, there have been very few investigations and prosecutions of crimes under international law in Libya following the toppling of Gadhafi. In the very handful of cases that have been investigated and prosecuted, serious human rights violations have occurred, including violations of basic fair trial rights. The case against 37 former Gadhafi-era officials, including Muammar Gadhafi’s son Saif Al-Islam and the former head of the intelligence service Abdallah Al-Senussi, both indicted...

...referral of the Mavi Marmara incident. In other posts, Kevin welcomed the US State Department’s call on Rwanda to stop supporting the M23 rebels in the eastern DRC; Kristen discussed the most notable points of the ECJ’s most recent judgment in Kadi; and Chris pointed out the NewSpace 2013 Conference that is currently on in Silicon Valley. Finally, Jessica provided daily news wraps, and there was some unintended hilarity courtesy of Google News about Libya’s snail pace on Saif. Many thanks to our guest contributors and have a nice weekend!...

Dapo Akande has just posted about the Pre-Trial Chamber’s recent conclusion that Art. 95 of the Rome Statute permits Libya to delay surrendering Saif to the Court pending resolution of its admissibility challenge. I don’t want to rehash the general issue; readers can simply check out Dapo’s post and my post here. Instead, I want to focus on the one issue that Dapo acknowledges the Pre-Trial Chamber ignored: namely, whether Art. 89(2) is mere surplusage in light of the PTC’s reading of Art. 95. I say yes; Dapo says no,...

...rejected outright a proposal from Japan to take the dispute about the Dokdo Islands to the International Court of Justice. The Japanese government may review a bilateral currency swap agreement with South Korea. In its territorial dispute with China, Japan has deported 14 Chinese activists that had sailed to the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands. Justice in Conflict has an insightful post about Libya and the ICC regarding the stalemate over Saif and Senussi. An Australian court has decided that a 90-year-old alleged Nazi war criminal cannot be extradited to Hungary. China’s President...

...Compared to other instances of allegations against a Head of State, the time between Min Aung Hlaing’s warrant application and issuance is the lengthiest thus far. The issuing of arrest warrants against Putin and Duterte took less than a month, whereas warrants against Gaddafi and Netanyahu took one month and six months respectively. The wait for a warrant for al-Bashir had previously been the longest (eight months). Historically, international criminal prosecution of Heads of State faced significant setbacks. Efforts following the First World War to prosecute the Ottoman Grand Vizier...

...no reason to believe, however, that the warrant for al-Werfalli will be any more successful than the ones for Gaddafi and al-Senussi: the LNA has already made clear they will not surrender him to the ICC, and the GNA has zero prospect at present of capturing him. On Wednesday, Rodrigo Duterte, the President of the Philippines, instructed his police to shoot human-rights activists who are “obstructing justice” by investigating his war against (alleged) drug dealers. That war has involved at least 7,000 extrajudicial killings in the past 13 months and...

...approach to hate speech is not a prerequisite to functioning democracy. On the contrary, our European friends would argue that democracy is better served by banning such material. Either way, our exceptionalism on this score doesn’t serve us very well. This isn’t any sort of apology for the killing (especially ugly given Stevens’ dedication to the rebel effort against the Gaddafi regime). In the first instance, it’s a recognition of international realities: do we want to take hits like this so that films like that can be made? In the...