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Search: Syria Insta-Symposium

13 May

Picking up on Jens’ post about the Administration’s apparent lack of plans for holding detainees picked up in Iraq/Syria, I too found the Times report troubling. In part I suspect it was because I was immediately reminded of one of the findings of the many Pentagon investigative reports issued after the revelations of torture at Abu Ghraib and other U.S. detention facilities in Iraq. All apart from criticisms of changes in policy and legal interpretation, some of the harshest blame for the widespread nature of the abuse was the total...
13.05.16 | |

13 Dec

...Russian passenger plane in Sinai that killed all 224 people on board on Oct. 31. Asia Chinese oil major Sinopec is building a filling station on an island in the South China Sea, as China continues to expand its civilian infrastructure in the disputed waterway, entrenching its reach in the maritime heart of Southeast Asia. Europe Russia on Sunday warned Turkey to stop staging what it called provocations against its forces in or near Syria after one of its warships fired warning shots at a Turkish vessel in the Aegean...
13.12.15 | |

27 Feb

...she has sole custody. (link) Read more … about Adam Haseeb—in his memory…. He is my son who is now deceased. I blame the abduction—and how the State Department handled this case on his death…. Back in the year 2000 I was not notified that his father had obtained a passport on Adam and then while we were still fighting for custody he abducted four year old Adam to Syria. Hakeem Haseeb (Was a U.S. citizen—converted to ISLAM) and had no relatives in Syria…. Adam Haseeb, R.I.P. (November 9, 1995...
27.02.07 | |

08 Nov

...giving UN humanitarian agencies and their partners authority to breach Syria’s sovereignty by using border crossings to access that state. The rationale was to permit this violation of sovereignty ‘in order to ensure that humanitarian assistance, including medical and surgical supplies, reaches people in need throughout Syria’. The Security Council, in a distinct yet not unrelated situation of war and crisis then, might have acted under a different power and source of legitimacy than the Flotilla, but it should not be considered as less political, or as being more humanitarian....
08.11.14 | |

18 Oct

...a cease-fire in Syria during the Muslim holiday of Id al-Adha, as proposed by Lakhdar Brahimi, the UN-Arab League Special Envoy for Syria. The International Criminal Court has pleaded with the UN Security Council for more support to ensure states cooperated with inquiries of the Court, citing problems in Darfur and Libya. GIsha, the Israeli NGO advocating for the freedom of movement of Palestinians, has claimed that reports released by the Israeli Defence Ministry under a freedom of information request show that Israel limited food supplies in the Gaza strip...
18.10.12 | |

05 Apr

...on this blog that the plausibility test might be akin to a ‘reasonable grounds’ standard and notes that in the Gambia v. Myanmar, the Court heavily relied on reports of the Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar, which concluded, ‘on reasonable grounds, that the factors allowing the inference of genocidal intent are present’ (§1441). This mission clarified that it ‘employed the “reasonable grounds” standard in making factual determinations’ (§10). Similarly, in Canada and the Netherlands v Syria, the Court relied on reports by the Commission of Inquiry on Syria, which applied a...
05.04.24 | and |

11 May

...allies have conducted 15 air strikes against Islamic State in Syria and 13 in Iraq since Friday, the coalition leading the operations said in a statement. Asia Malaysia detained 1,018 Bangladeshi and Rohingya refugees after they arrived in three boats on Monday, police said, a day after Indonesian authorities rescued 600 stranded off the coast of Aceh. South Korea has said that North Korea’s recent test-firing of a ballistic missile from a submarine was “very serious and concerning”, and that it will respond “mercilessly” to the threat. China has invited...
11.05.15 | |

10 Aug

The UK has appointed a senior judge to lead the inquest in the death of Russian ex-spy Litvinenko from polonium poising in 2006 in London. Veteran international diplomat, Lakhdar Brahimi, has been tapped as Kofi Annan’s successor as UN-Arab League joint special envoy for Syria. In the Syrian conflict, government troops have forced rebels from a key district in the city of Aleppo. In response to the PILPG memo featured in our Weekday News Wrap on Wednesday, the New International Law Blog offers an analysis posing the question: Would intervention...
10.08.12 | |

07 Oct

Looking back at all the debates over whether the United States could have legal authority to use force in Syria, I was struck by the presence of two very different types of arguments about the Responsibility to Protect (R2P). For some, the R2P questions were interpretative in nature — what did R2P mean (i.e., does it require Security Council authorization) and how does its meaning apply in the Syrian context? Obviously, different interpretative methods and techniques could generate different answers to what R2P meant, and, with them, different outcomes for...
07.10.13 | |

26 Sep

...situation. Middle East and Northern Africa The United States called Russia’s action in Syria “barbarism”, while Moscow’s UN envoy said ending the war was “almost an impossible task”, as government forces relentlessly bombed the besieged city of Aleppo. Yemen plans to complain to the U.N. Security Council over what it says are Iran’s weapon transfers to Houthi allies fighting the internationally recognized Yemeni government, the foreign minister said on Saturday. Four alleged members of al Qaeda’s Yemen branch, including a local commander, were killed in a suspected U.S. drone strike...
26.09.16 | |

09 Feb

...renditions.” As Human Rights Watch notes: The CIA has regularly transferred detainees to countries in the Middle East , including Egypt and Syria , known to practice torture routinely. There are reportedly 100 to 150 cases of such “extraordinary renditions.” In one case, Maher Arar, a Syrian-born Canadian in transit in New York , was detained by U.S. authorities and sent to Syria . He was released without charge from Syrian custody ten months later and has described repeated torture, often with cables and electrical cords. In another case, a...
09.02.06 | |

19 Apr

[Jennifer Trahan is Associate Clinical Professor, at The Center for Global Affairs, NYU-SPS, and Chair of the American Branch of the International Law Association’s International Criminal Court Committee. The views expressed are those of the author.] Postings on Opinio Juris seem fairly squarely against the legality of the U.S. missile strike last week into Syria. Let me join Jens David Ohlin (blogging on Opinio Juris) and Harold Koh (blogging on Just Security) in making the contrary case. When NATO intervened in Kosovo in 1999, member states did not have UN...
19.04.17 | |