US wants ICTY kept open until most wanted war crimes suspects caught News
US wants ICTY kept open until most wanted war crimes suspects caught

[JURIST] US ambassador to Bosnia-Herzegovina Douglas McElhaney has told the Nezavisne Novine [media website] daily that the US wants the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) [official website] to stay open beyond the end of its scheduled trials in 2008 and appeals in 2010 until police arrest two of the tribunal's most wanted fugitives. Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic [ICTY case backgrounder; BBC profile] and his military commander Ratko Mladic [ICTY case backgrounder; JURIST news archive] are wanted by the ICTY for alleged crimes committed during Bosnia's 1992-95 war, including organizing the 1995 slaughter of 8,000 Muslims in Srebrenica [JURIST news archive]. Both Karadzic and Mladic have been charged and indicted [BBC report] at the ICTY in absentia. AFP has more.

Earlier this week departing ICTY chief prosecutor Carla Del Ponte [official profile] told a conference that the tribunal had achieved marked success [JURIST report] in bringing international war criminals to justice, noting that while six war crimes suspects are still at large, the court has succeeded in putting on trial more than 160 people, including presidents, premiers, and military commanders.

THIS DAY @ LAW

Thomas Becket, former Chancellor of England, murdered by Henry II's knights

On December 29, 1170, Archbishop Thomas Becket, former Chancellor of England, was murdered in Canterbury Cathedral by knights acting in the name of Henry II.

Becket and Henry had been entangled in a power struggle over, among other things, criminal jurisdiction over clergy. Read a contemporary account of the murder of Thomas Becket.

Texas attains US statehood

On December 29, 1845, Texas became the twenty-eighth state to join the United States of America when US President James K. Polk signed the Ordinance of Annexation. Texas had a complicated path to statehood because it had formerly been part of Mexico and then an independent republic. The US Congress passed the Annexation of the Republic of Texas Joint Resolution on March 1, 1845. Voters in Texas then approved the Ordinance of Annexation in October, before it was approved by the US Congress and signed into law by President Polk on this day in 1845. The US Supreme Court later ruled in Texas v. White that, despite its unique path to statehood, Texas did not have the right to secede from the union.