David Bernstein is back with yet another attack on Human Rights Watch. This time, Bernstein is up in arms that, in 2006, HRW retracted a claim that armed Palestinian groups had committed war crimes by using human shields -- an action that he believes proves, in light of HRW's refusal to apologize for its allegedly false criticisms of Israel, that...
The Rwandan government announced today that it will stop taking new gacaca cases as of July 31st and that it intends to wind down gacaca operations within five months. Gacaca is a traditional local justice procedure (gacaca roughly means “justice on the grass” in Kinyarwanda) that the government modified to process the staggering number of low-level genocide cases and...
For critics of universal jurisdiction, Spain's UJ statute has become the poster child for accusations of excess. How strange it seems that roughly ten years ago it was so widely celebrated as the provision that brought down General Augusto Pinochet. Spain's indicting the former Chilean dictator and Britain's detaining him on the attendant arrest warrant and extradition request...
A couple of weeks ago, Sweden did something unprecedented for an EU nation -- it indicated it would proceed with the extradition of an accused Rwandan génocidaire to Kigali. Sylvere Ahorugeze, a 53-year-old former director of Rwanda's civil aviation authority, is implicated in the 1994 murder of a group of civilians in the Kigali suburb of Gikondo. He...
My thanks to Deb for her post on the Preliminary Report. I won't rehash what she said; I just wanted to offer a few thoughts on the military commissions and the detention policy. First, I think it is interesting that the Obama administration seems to be conceding that "material support for terrorism" is not a violation of the laws of...
British Justice Secretary Jack Straw recently proposed amending the United Kingdom's International Criminal Court Act of 2001 (which permits universal jurisdiction prosecution of atrocity crimes) to allow authorities to file cases for atrocities committed as far back as January 1, 1991. This would close a loophole that has been giving safe haven to génocidaires who enter the UK after...
David Bernstein has another snide post about Human Rights Watch today, this time concerning a presentation Sarah Leah Whitson gave about the Middle East at a panel discussion. I won't bother debating Bernstein's characterization of the presentation; you can watch it here. I'm more interested in the ease with which Bernstein disposes of the extremely complicated international-law issues raised by...
I want to thank Opinio Juris for having me over the next couple of weeks as a guest-blogger. I noticed that Eugene Kontorovich's thought-provoking posts last week dealt primarily with the issue of Israeli settlements in the West Bank. My posts to start will not be that focused. If I had to discern one overarching theme for...
There's gall -- and then there's the Sudan: Sudan said on Monday it had referred Chad to the U.N. Security Council, accusing its neighbour of launching an air raid inside Sudanese territory. Sudan's army said two Chadian planes attacked a region inside the west Darfur district on Thursday -- the fourth raid Khartoum says N'Djamena has carried out in Sudan in two...
A recent poll conducted by WorldPublicOpinion.org has found that the public in four Muslim-majority and African countries support the ICC's arrest warrant for Bashir, despite the fact that the governments in those countries oppose it: That's remarkable -- but the results of another question, designed to assess support for intervening in Darfur, by force if necessary, should the much-feared...
David Bernstein is in high-dudgeon mode again about Human Rights Watch's fundraising in Saudi Arabia. This time, he is up in arms about a statement Ken Roth made to The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg during a recent email exchange. Goldberg asked Roth if his "staff person attempt[ed] to raise funds in Saudi Arabia by advertising your organization's opposition to the pro-Israel...
Two updates of note. First, the Ugandan government has said in no uncertain terms that it will arrest Bashir if he enters the country: Henry Oryem Okello, Uganda's minister for international affairs, spoke after meeting with the International Criminal Court's chief prosecutor, Luis Moreno Ocampo, in Kampala. Police "will ensure that he is arrested" if al-Bashir arrives, Okello said. Ocampo added: "It is...
