So says a draft UN report that studied events in the Congo between 1993 and 2008: An exhaustive U.N. investigation into the history of violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo has concluded that the Rwandan military and its allies carried out hundreds of large-scale killings of ethnic Hutu refugees during the 1990s that amounted to war crimes,...
The report is here. I have neither the time nor the stomach to fully engage with it, but I couldn't let paragraph 82 pass without comment: 82. The United States is currently at war with Al Qaeda and its associated forces. President Obama has made clear that the United States is fully committed to complying with the Constitution and with all...
So reports Reuters: The Dutch prosecutor's office said on Friday it would look into whether Dutch peacekeeping soldiers should face criminal charges over the 1995 massacre in the Bosnian town of Srebrenica. About 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys were killed at Srebrenica after Bosnian Serb forces overran the United Nations-protected enclave where Dutch troops were ...
In the interests of being fair and balanced (as always!), I thought I would post on this good response by David Bosco to Jeremy Rabkin's recent essay on the International Criminal Court in The Weekly Standard (which I discussed here). Although I am not totally convinced by it, I think Bosco offers the best possible defense of the ICC that would...
I have been negligent in failing to post on two excellent assessments of the recent ICC Review Conference in Kampala and its ultimate decision on aggression. Both assessments (one by Heritage's Brett Schaefer and the other by George Mason's Jeremy Rabkin) give the Obama Administration some credit for limiting the damage to U.S. interests at Kampala. But both ultimately conclude...
Dave has kindly sent another post on piracy. Here it is. Kevin graciously offered me the chance to respond to his contrasting reading of the logic of Judge Jackson’s decision dismissing the piracy charge. But since we both reach the same ultimate conclusion—that the correct legal definition of piracy should be that contained in the 1958 High Seas Treaty/1982 UN Convention...
I have to respectfully disagree with Dave's interpretation of Judge Jackson's decision. The decision is almost certainly incorrect from the standpoint of the law of nations; as Dave rightly points out, the definition of piracy in the High Seas Convention and in UNCLOS likely represents the customary standard. But I think Judge Jackson's decision makes complete sense given the US's...
In the first U.S. court opinion on piracy since 1820, a U.S. judge in Norfolk, Virginia has dismissed piracy charges against Somali defendants in United States v. Said. The Court held that attempted piracy is not piracy for the purposes of U.S. criminal law. (h/t Eugene Volokh). As I mentioned in an earlier post, the relevant U.S. statute criminalizing piracy leaves...
Omar Khadr's trial began a couple of days ago at Guantanamo. Here is what the prosecutor said in his opening statement: This trial is about holding an Al Qaeda terrorist accountable for his actions and vindicating the laws of war. Two small problems with this. Throwing a grenade at U.S. soldiers is not an act of terrorism. And four out...
Two commenters on my previous post on Kagame's increasing authoritarianism questioned whether Rwanda arrested Peter Erlinder because of his representation of defendants at the ICTR. Fortuitously, Kate Gibson -- my colleague on the Karadzic case and a defense attorney at the ICTR -- has just published an ASIL Insight on the arrest that supports my claim. Here is a taste...
Hell must have had central air conditioning installed, because I find myself in complete agreement with Ruth Wedgwood's recent post at EJIL: Talk! on Paul Kagame's rapid descent into authoritarianism. Here is a snippet: The West’s failure to address Tutsi violations of the laws of war has allowed Kagame to conclude, justifiably, that he can do nearly anything with...
My friend Nancy Combs new book on international tribunals, Fact-Finding Without Facts: The Uncertain Evidentiary Foundations of International Criminal Convictions, has just been published by Cambridge University Press. Here is the description: Fact-finding Without Facts explores international criminal fact-finding - empirically, conceptually, and normatively. After reviewing thousands of pages of transcripts from various international criminal tribunals, the author...
