By Greg Hall
Impunity Watch Reporter, Europe

MOSCOW, Russia – Russia was initially reluctant to intervene in the Syrian conflict because of the way in which the United Nations handled the Libya crisis.  In addition, Russia has been a long time ally of Syria.  However, on August 3, 2011, the Russian government joined the United Nations Security Council and condemned the widespread human rights violations committed by the Syrian government.  Russian President Dmitry Medvedev issued a statement to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, implying that a “sad fate” would await him if he does not implement reforms and make peace with the opposition.

The Syrian people’s quest for dignity and liberty has been sustained and unflinching for the five months since the civil unrest began. They have no armed forces or organized militias, nor have the people received outside support to help their cause. An estimated two thousand people, including children, have been killed by their own government and more than ten thousand have been detained, many of them tortured, for peacefully demanding an end to repression. Tanks also are being deployed against civilians.

Russia’s statements demonstrate a perceived shift in Moscow’s position on the Syrian crackdown.  However, Russia and China were two of four countries out of thirty-seven countries in the United Nations Human Rights Council that were opposed in condemning the violence by Syrian authorities and dispatching a team to investigate the alleged human rights violations.

Russia stated that it generally opposed intervention into the affairs of other countries. Hillel Neuer, director of U.N. Watch, stated that “the world’s top human rights body shouldn’t be appeasing Syrian allies like Moscow and Beijing; the E.U. and the U.S. should make sure not to sacrifice moral clarity on the altar of consensus.”

Russia’s cooperation in the Syrian affair is necessary.  The United States, like other European governments, seeks consensus.  Either way, Russia will be closely watched by many in the Arab world as more and more Arab communities continue to demand greater freedoms.

For more information, please see:

Humans Rights Watch – Russia should help Syrians – 25 August 2011

CNS News – U.N. Human Rights Council Condemns Violence in Syria Without Support From China and Russia – 23 August 2011

By Alexandra Halsey-Storch
Impunity Watch Reporter, Europe

THE HAGUE, Netherlands–On Thursday, notorious genocide suspect and former commander of the Serbian Army, Ratko Mladic appeared at the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal of Yugoslavia (ICTY) for a pre-trial hearing at The Hague. He wore a gray suit, crème colored shirt and “sober black tie.” Lead defense attorney Branko Lukic, to whom Mladic left most of the talking, accompanied him.

At his arraignment in July, Mladic was thrown out of court after shouting at the judges.  Pursuant to international law, A plea of not guilty was entered on his behalf by the presiding judges.

On May 26, after 16 years of hiding, Mladic—one of the United Nation’s most wanted fugitives—was found north of Belgrade in the small farming town of Lazarevo.  Officials arrested him after receiving a tip. He was thereafter indicted on 11 counts of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity that were committed during the 1992-1995 Bosnian war.  He has been incarcerated at The Hague prison. Should he be found guilty, Mladic faces life in prison.

At the hearing, presiding Judge Alphons Orie explained that the purpose of the hearing was to set deadlines for pre-trial procedures.  He expressed concern over the inevitably long length of the trial and Mladic’s purported bad health, and asked when prosecutors would be ready to turn over evidence to the defense that could demonstrate Mladic’s innocence.

While the pre-trial hearing on Thursday was largely procedural, at controversy was Mladic’s health and its potential effect on the trial; however, due to privacy rules, the conversation was conducted without the media being present, in a closed session.

What is known is that the defense attorney argued that Mladic, whose poor health has been a persistent issue since his arrest, might be too ill to stand trial.

When Mladic appeared in court on May 27, his questioning was postponed to the following day as a result of illness. Furthermore, according to the defense, Mladic was committed last week to a hospital in The Hague for a hernia operation; however, the court claimed that to the contrary, Mladic had not left the detention center.

In response to Mladic’s poor health, the prosecution proposed in a motion that the trial be set up into two phases.  First, the prosecution would try Mladic as the mastermind behind the worst genocide since World War II: the death of 8,000 Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica in July of 1995, who were “mowed down” with their “hands behind their backs” by the Serbian Army.  The prosecution said that sufficient evidence for this atrocity could be collected within a year as ICTY had already collected relevant evidence from the preceding trials of Mladic’s subordinates and Radovan Karadzic.

The prosecution further proposed that once a decision had been entered for the first crime, Mladic would be tried in a following trial for the remaining crimes, foremost, the three and a half year siege of Sarajevo where 10,000 people died, including 1,500 children.

Lukic responded that this procedure would not be conducive to the defense’s argument; however, he has until August 31 to respond in greater detail to the motion before the judge makes a ruling.

The next pre-trial hearing is set for October 6.

For more information, please see:

The New York Times — Serbian Says Jailed Mladic Will Face War Crimes Trial — 27 May 2011

CNN.com — Mladic back in court after Croatia suspect pleads not guilty — 25 August 2011

Expatica.com — Court gives Mladic lawyers week to decide on split trial — 25 August 2011

Monsters and Critics — Mladic back in ICTY courtroom for procedural hearing — 25 August 2011

The Washington Post — Former Bosnian Serb military leader Ratko Mladic back in court for pretrial hearing — 25 August 2011

Radio Netherlands Worldwide  — Mladic: 2 pre-trial plans? — 27 August 2011

By Greg Hall
Impunity Watch Reporter, Europe

LEXINGTON, Kentucky, United States of America – An extradition hearing has been set for a Croatian woman, Azra Basic, who had been living in the United States but was charged with murder and torture relating to the collapse of Yugoslavia in the 1990s.  Basic has become a naturalized citizen of the United States.  Basic’s attorney, Patrick Nash, has questioned the motion for Basic’s extradition and seeks to dismiss the case.

“I think we’ve got a really valid argument on the dismissal motion, using a treaty of this age in the way they’re using it is fraught with problems,” Nash said, further noting that the statute of limitations has expired on the alleged crimes.

Assistant U.S. Attorney James Arehart said in a motion that it is up to the executive branch of the federal government to determine if a treaty is in effect, even though the country has changed names and forms of government.  “The political ideologies of the predecessor and successor states are irrelevant,” Arehart wrote.

Basic is accused of torturing and killing ethnic Serbs at prison camps from April to June in 1992.

Basic had been living in Powell County in Kentucky for several years and working in a nursing home before her arrest in March of this year.  Friends of Basic refer to her as a “big-hearted” person, who was so scarred by her experience in Croatia that she could not watch war movies and cut all ties with her homeland.  They defend her by saying that she was in a place of war and forced to make impossible moral choices.

Now after almost twenty years, Basic faces extradition back to Bosnia.  If convicted of the alleged crimes, Basic could spend the rest of her life in prison.  Basic states that she is not pleased with the current situation but understands the legal process takes time.

People that know Basic and her story state that she was just acting as a human being.  Others are calling for justice for her alleged atrocities.

The United Nations estimates that nearly 104,000 people died in the ethnic strife.  The conflict was the most brutal since World War II.

For more information please see:

Chron.com – Hearing set for woman accused of Bosnia war crimes – 22 August 2011

The Republic – Federal Court hearing set for woman accused of Bosnia war crimes in Yugoslav wars – 22 August 2011

New York Times – Dark past in Balkan war intrudes on new life – 3 April 2011

By Polly Johnson
Senior Desk Officer, Europe

THE HAGUE, Netherlands – Prosecutors at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) have proposed splitting former Bosnian Serb military commander Ratko Mladic’s trial into two parts, a move intended to ensure that a verdict is reached. Mladic was arrested earlier this year and is awaiting trial for his role in the 1995 Srebrenica massacre in the Balkans, in which eight thousand Bosnian Muslim men and boys were massacred in Europe’s worst atrocity since World War II.

According to an assistant at ICTY’s prosecutor’s office, the first trial will address the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, while the second trial will address Mladic’s remaining crimes that occurred in Sarajevo and Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Mladic, 69, was arrested on May 26 in Serbia after sixteen years on the run and in hiding. When he appeared in court in June, Mladic disputed the charges and became belligerent in the courtroom, calling the charges against him “obnoxious.”

Mladic has been accused of deliberately delaying the trial, by both complaining of his health and by refusing to accept a court-appointed lawyer. When he first appeared in court, he told the judge that he was “gravely ill.”

Some fear that Mladic’s tactics will delay the trial indefinitely, just as Slobodan Milosevic’s trial was delayed. Milosevic, the former president of Yugoslavia, died in custody while awaiting trial.  Serge Brammertz, lead prosecutor at ICTY, said that splitting Mladic’s trial in two would minimize the possibility of his trial ending up like Milosevic’s. Prosecutors said that the first trial, dealing with Srebrenica, could be presented in one year.

Prosecutors filed the motion to split the trial in two on Tuesday. “Trying the Srebrenica indictment first will maximize the likelihood of completing a trial and having a judgment issued,” part of the court filing read.

Facing charges of war crimes, genocide, and crimes against humanity, Mladic could face life in prison if he is found guilty.

For more information, please see:

Deutsche Welle – UN prosecutor may fast-track war crimes trial for Mladic – 17 August 2011

International Business Times – Ratko Mladic Trial Update: Prosecutors Want Two War Crimes Cases – 17 August 2011

Reuters – Prosecutors seek two war crimes trials against Mladic – 17 August 2011

Sydney Morning Herald – UN prosecutor wants separate Mladic trials – 17 August 2011

By Terance Walsh
Impunity Watch Reporter, Europe

MINSK, Belarus – Belarusian authorities arrested a leading human rights activist last Thursday in Minsk on charges of tax evasion.

The detainee, Ales Belyatsky, is the founder of the human rights group Vyasna. Belyatsky himself called the charges “punishment and retribution” for his efforts in defending human rights.  The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe labeled the arrest the “latest example of persecution.” If convicted, Belyatsky will face up to seven years in prison.

The charges arose from Belyatsky’s bank account in Lithuania, which Belyatsky uses to support his human rights work in Belarus.  The Belarusian government has refused to register all but one independent human rights group in the country.  If a group is denied official registration it cannot open a bank account in its name and cannot comply with Belarus’s financial regulations.

Human Rights Watch’s Europe and Central Asia director Hugh Williamson explained,  “In reality what the Belarus authorities are doing to civil society and Belyatsky in particular, amounts to entrapment.  First they push human rights defenders to work in the margins of the law, deny them capacity to function, then when they seek to continue to work in the only way they can, the authorities use criminal law, pretending that it has nothing to do with their human rights work. Any intelligent observer knows different.”

Belyatsky’s supporters have slammed Lithuania for its role in facilitating the arrest.  Lithuanian authorities handed Belyatsky’s financial information to Belarusian authorities upon request.  Opposition politician Alyaksandr Milinkevich decried, “The sudden betrayal of activists and human rights activists is, really, a betrayal on the part of the Lithuanian authorities. We need to look into it to make sure it does not happen again and that other countries don’t do similar things.  This could destroy our democratic society that has struggled for human rights for so many years.”

The arrest has drawn the ire of several nations.  The United States Embassy in Minsk branded the detention as “another unfortunate sign of Belarus’s self-isolation and further deviation from European standards and principles.”  Germany called for the release and labeled the arrest a “political abuse of criminal law.”

Opposition leaders in Belarus remain defiant in the face of Belyatsky’s arrest.  “We expected this and we were ready for it. Let them imprison us all. That’s all I can say — if they want Vyasna to stop working, let them imprison us all,” Vasnya lawyer Uladzimer Labkovich said. “If they don’t, then we will continue our work to the maximum because otherwise the biggest reproach we would get when Belyatsky gets out would be that we let the work lapse.”

Milinkevich called for a tougher stance against the Belarusian government.  “We need to make the decision to treat the Belarusian government like a dictatorship,” he said. “If we consider it a dictatorship, then democratic countries will not react to letters asking for information and they won’t react to letters demanding the extradition of people who are fighting for freedom.  How can they react as if Belarus were a country where people live in freedom and have free elections and are a part of the European community? No — this is a dictatorship.”

For more information please see:

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty — Belarusian Opposition Dismayed By Lithuania’s Aid In Activist’s Arrest — 10 August 2011

The Moscow Times — Belarussian Detained Over Cash — 8 August 2011

Human Rights Watch — Belarus: Leading Rights Defender Detained — 5 August 2011

Voice of America — Belarus Arrests Leading Human Rights Activist — 5 August 2011