The commander of Dutch UN troops in Srebrenica in 1995 told a preliminary hearing at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia Thursday that he did not know Serbian forces had begun killing Muslim men and boys until it was too late. Ton Karremans said that initally his orders had been to protect refugees [...]
Chief lawyer to Saddam Hussein Ziad Khasawneh Thursday accused the Iraqi Special Tribunal and the US government of purposely ignoring repeated requests for legal documents and effectively keeping defense counsel unaware of the trial timetable. Khasawneh, a Jordanian and head of the Committee for the Defense of Saddam Hussein, said in an interview that he [...]
British millionaire Friedhelm Eronat has been awarded oil rights for the Darfur region of Sudan , an area where the Sudanese government has been accused of war crimes and mass murders. Human rights groups like Global Witness are outraged that anyone is doing business with Sudan's government before a peace settlement has been reached. Eronat, [...]
Venezuela has officially requested the extradition of alleged terrorist and Cuban exile Luis Posada Carriles . Carriles, a naturalized Venezuelan and former CIA collaborator, is wanted for allegedly blowing up a Cuban airline in 1976 and later escaping from a Venezuelan prison in 1985. The US had previously refused Venezuela's call for Carriles' extradition for [...]
World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz visited a Rwandan genocide memorial Thursday and apologized on behalf of the international community for its failure to prevent the 1994 mass genocide . Wolfowitz is on his first visit to Africa since his March approval as World Bank president . Reuters has more.
Notes from a series of Pentagon meetings in 2003 show that General Counsel of the Department of the Navy Alberto Mora warned high-level officials that Guantanamo interrogation techniques could expose them to criminal prosecution, according to ABC News. Mora's reluctance to completely support the interrogations at Guantanamo was known earlier, but his warning to some [...]
The US Senate Judiciary Committee Thursday approved North Carolina judge Terrence Boyle for the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, effectively sending him to the full Senate for confirmation. Boyle survived a close party line vote in the GOP-controlled Committee, an approval that Senate Democrats have warned leaves judicial candidates susceptible to filibuster [...]
The US government Thursday publicly expressed support for expanding the UN Security Council by "two or so" permanent members, saying that a larger expansion could hinder the effectiveness of the group. Review the State Department briefing by US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs R. Nicholas Burns. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan proposed expansion in [...]
Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica denied earlier reports Thursday that his government was negotiating a surrender with war crimes suspect Ratko Mladic . Two Serbian newspapers and a rights activist claimed that the government was contacting Mladic, who is wanted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in connection with the Srebrenica [...]
Veteran civil servant Donald Tsang was declared the new leader of Hong Kong Thursday after his nomination was supported by roughly 85 percent of the election committee, a 796-member group largely loyal to Beijing. A vote was originally planned for July 10, but the amount of support for Tsang made it unnecessary ; two other [...]