Bloomberg reports very disturbing statements made by a spokesperson for the Free Syrian Army: Communities inhabited by Shiite Muslims and President Bashar al-Assad’s Alawite minority will be “wiped off the map” if the strategic city of Al-Qusair in central Syria falls to government troops, rebel forces said. “We don’t want this to happen, but it will be a reality imposed on everyone,”...
In previous posts (here and here), I discussed the reasons why Obama will never actually enforce the "near certainty" standard regarding civilian casualties and noted that the standard is vastly more restrictive than IHL's principle of proportionality. In this post, I want to explain why the new targeting standards for the use of lethal force "outside the United States and...
There is a classic jury instruction that reads, "[a] witness who is willfully false in one material part of his or her testimony is to be distrusted in others. You may reject the whole testimony of a witness who willfully has testified falsely as to a material point, unless, from all the evidence, you believe the probability of truth favors his...
As Bill Schabas noted in his recent post, the Comoros referral raises interesting questions concerning the Pre-Trial Chamber's power to review a decision by the OTP not to open a full investigation into a situation. Most people who don't keep a copy of the Rome Statute in their back pocket probably believe that the OTP has complete discretion concerning such...
In my previous post, I expressed my skepticism that the OTP will open a formal investigation into the situation -- loosely defined -- involving Israel's attack on the MV Mavi Marmara. In this post, I want to raise two issues concerning Comoros' referral that I find particularly troubling. First, why is Comoros being represented by Turkish lawyers, the Elmadag Law Firm...
This is very interesting. The Union of the Comoros, a state party to the Rome Statute since 2002, has formally referred Israel's attack on the flotilla that included the MV Mavi Marmara to the ICC. The question I want to address in this post is whether the Court has jurisdiction over the flotilla attack. I think it's clear that it does...
Baher Azmy, the legal director of the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), has flagged a very interesting ATS case that is due to be re-argued in light of the Supreme Court's recent -- and much discussed here at Opinio Juris -- decision in Kiobel. Here is CCR's description of the case, Al Shimari v. CACI: Al Shimari v. CACI was originally...
This according to the Commission of Inquiry on Syria, which has considerable investigative ability. Reuters: (Reuters) - U.N. human rights investigators have gathered testimony from casualties of Syria's civil war and medical staff indicating that rebel forces have used the nerve agent sarin, one of the lead investigators said on Sunday. The United Nations independent commission of inquiry on Syria has not yet seen...
The Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights seems to be condemning the forced feeding of hunger-striking Guantanamo detainees as torture, or perhaps as cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment in violation of the Convention Against Torture. Force-feeding hunger strikers is a breach of international law, the UN’s human rights office said Wednesday, as US authorities tried to stem a...
I want to take a moment to spruik (if you don't know the word, look it up!) Jeffrey Kahn's new book, Mrs. Shipley's Ghost: The Right to Travel and Terrorist Watchlists, which has just been published by the University of Michigan Press. Here is the publisher's description: Today, when a single person can turn an airplane into a guided missile, no...
New evidence that Syria has used chemical weapons against insurgents have spurred new calls here in the U.S. for military action in Syria. Here is the LA Times (hardly an interventionist paper): An American or multilateral response should of course be proportional to the offense. That means considering whether chemical weapons were used against civilians or militants, and whether a "whole...
Two years ago, I wrote a long post analyzing the most serious charge in Bradley Manning's court martial -- aiding the enemy, a violation of Art. 104 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) and 10 USC 904. I claimed in the post that someone like Bill Keller, the Executive Editor of the New York Times during the WikiLeaks era,...
