JURIST - Paper Chase: Sunday, December 12, 2010

[JURIST] The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit [official website] on Friday reversed [opinion, PDF] its prior decision and allowed a suit by the heirs of victims of the Armenian genocide [BBC backgrounder; JURIST news archive] to proceed. The court decided 2-1 to withdraw its August ruling [JURIST report], which found California Civil Procedure Code § 354.4 [text] unconstitutional because it interfered with foreign relations by recognizing the World War I-era killings of more than one million Armenians by Turkish soldiers as a genocide. The court rejected arguments that the US has an official policy of not recognizing the killings as a genocide. The court pointed to Congress recognizing a day of remembrance for the incident and statements by the executive branch that have described the incident as genocide. The lawsuit was brought by a California citizen of Armenian descent who initiated a class action suit against insurance companies, alleging they had failed to pay benefits. Most historians recognize [San Francisco Chronicle report] the incident as a genocide, but Turkey has urged the US not to do so.

The Armenian genocide remains a contentious issue in US law and politics. In August, a panel of the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit [official website] unanimously dismissed a lawsuit [JURIST report] challenging the exclusion of materials questioning the Armenian genocide from a school curriculum. In March, the Obama administration announced its opposition to a resolution [JURIST report] labeling the World War I-era killings as genocide. The announcement came after the US House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs passed the resolution [JURIST report] by a vote of 23-22. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Teyyip Erdogan condemned the resolution, and the Turkish government recalled its ambassador to the US.

[JURIST] A Sudanese civil society group filed a lawsuit Sunday challenging the actions of the commission handling the January 9 self-determination referendum in southern Sudan. The challenge, filed with the Sudanese Constitutional Court, alleges that the commission violated the procedures [Reuters report] for the referendum, set out in the 2009 Southern Sudan Referendum Act [text, PDF] and the Sudanese Constitution [text, PDF], in conducting voter registration and in failing to hold to the timetable set out for the vote. The Society Organization Network also accused the commission of placing members of the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) [party website], a pro-secession party, in senior posts and preventing voters in the north from registering to vote. Members of the SPLM described the lawsuit as sabotage [Xinhua report] by the National Congress Party (NCP), the dominant political party of the north. In September, a human rights expert told the UN that Sudan is not prepared for the referendum [JURIST report]. Mohamed Chande Othman, a Tanzanian judge and independent expert on the Sudan human rights situation, presented a report [text, PDF] to the UN Human Rights Council [official website] warning that Sudan does not have the necessary infrastructure in place for the January referendum. The report cites major setbacks, including the suppression of free speech and of the press, restrictions on other civil and political rights, and inadequate protection of society due to a lack of well-trained police officers, prosecutors and judges.

The referendum is meant to be the culmination of the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) [UN press release] that ended two decades of civil war. Also in September, the UN Security Council issued a statement [text] calling on the CPA parties to take "urgent action to facilitate peaceful and on-time referenda that reflect the will of the Sudanese people, to respect their results, and to resolve key remaining post-referenda issues." In April, Sudan attempted to have its first democratic multi-party election in almost a quarter of a century, but it was fraught with controversy. Two political parties in eastern Sudan accused the ruling NCP [JURIST report] of using voter fraud and intimidation in gaining electoral victories in their region of the country during the national elections.

[JURIST] The First Municipal Court in Belgrade [official website, in Serbian] on Friday acquitted 10 men suspected of helping former Bosnian Serb military leader Ratko Mladic [case materials; JURIST news archive] evade arrest. Mladic is one of two high-level targets still at large under the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) [official website] and faces charges of genocide and crimes against humanity for allegedly overseeing the Srebrenica massacre and other war crimes violations during the Bosnian civil war [JURIST news archives]. The men were charged with helping Mladic by renting apartments in Belgrade for him in 2002. Judge Dragan Garic held that some of the charges were barred by the statute of limitations [Press Online report, in Croatian], which had expired in 2008 and 2009. For the remaining charges, Garic held that there was not enough evidence to warrant a conviction. Prosecutors have announced that they will appeal [PTC report, in Croatian] the ruling to the Court of Appeal in Belgrade [official website, in Serbian].

In September, ICTY prosecutor Serge Brammertz [official profile] called on Serbia and other governments [JURIST report] to increase efforts to find and arrest Mladic. Brammertz said failure to arrest Mladic would send war criminals the message that if they avoid capture long enough, the world will cease to care about bringing them to justice. Brammertz also emphasized the importance of seeking justice for Mladic's victims. Authorities must work quickly to arrest Mladic, Brammertz noted, since the ICTY is scheduled to be shut down in three years. In May, Mladic's family filed a claim in the Belgrade District Court seeking to have him declared officially dead [JURIST report] in order to collect his state pension and sell his property. Earlier that month, the ICTY announced that the Office of the Prosecutor filed a motion to amend the indictment against Mladic [JURIST report] to include 11 counts of genocide, crimes against humanity and violations of the laws and customs of war in order to help speed up court proceedings once Mladic is captured.