By David Sophrin
Impunity Watch Reporter, Europe

MOSCOW, Russia – Nine neo-Nazi gang members were sentenced yesterday by a Moscow city court for their role in a string of ethnicity-motivated killings.

The teen-aged defendants, sentenced to twenty-three years in prison for their role in five murders and one attempted murder, belong to an organization called ‘The White Wolves’.  The White Wolves were formed two years ago for the purpose of targeting non-ethnic Russians.  They have gained notoriety for publishing videos of their attacks on the internet.  According to Russian law enforcement authorities, the leader of the White Stripes is an eighteen year old Georgian named Alexi Dzhavakhashvili.

This organization is just one of a number of groups that have interwoven ultra-nationalist and racist ideologies and turned their focus to foreign ethnic groups within Russia.  Evidence presented at their trial demonstrated that they were responsible for eleven murders.  Their primary targets were migrant workers of central Asian ethnicity, as well as foreign students from various African and Asian countries.

The attacks appear to be ideologically motivated to serve the group’s political objectives of forcing non-ethnic Russians out of the country.  In one assault, a immigrant from Kazakhstan was stabbed seventy-three times.  The assault was filmed, with one attacker shouting “Russia for the Russians”.

According to the Russian human rights group SOVA, approximately 60 people were killed and 300 injured in ethnicity-motivated attacks this past year.  Since the fall of the Soviet Union, Russia has seen an steady increase in membership and interest in neo-Nazi and nationalist groups.  The tactics of these nationalist groups include the targeted killings of human rights activists, bombings and arson.

The twenty-three year sentences handed down by the Moscow court were the maximum allowable prison terms for juvenile offenders.

For more information, please see:

AP – 9 Russian neo-Nazis Get Up to 23 Years in Prison – 25 February 2010

BBC – Neo-Nazi skinheads jailed in Russia for racist killings – 25 February 2010

RADIO FREE EUROPE – Russia Court Jails Nine For Ethnic Murder – 25 February 2010

REUTERS – Russian court jails 9 for ethnic murders – 25 February 2010

RIANOVOSTA – Russian White Wolves skinheads jailed for race-hate murders – 25 February 2010

By Kenneth F. Hunt
Impunity Watch Reporter, Europe

TIRANA, Albania – A United Nations special expert has accused Albania of stalling an investigation into illicit organ harvesting of ethnic Serbs. The allegations of exploitation of Serbs stem from events in Kosovo during the 1998-1999 Kosovo War. As such, the UN and other international bodies are pressuring the country to comply with a full investigation.

UN Special Rapporetuer, Philip Alston, after a personal seven day trip to Tirana, has accused the government of stifling an investigation into the abduction, killing, and organ harvesting of some 300 ethnic Serbs during the War.

Mr. Alston said that Albanian officials believe that outside investigation of these allegations are “politically motivated and absolutely without any foundation.” As a result independent inquiries have not resulted in “meaningful co-operation [by] the government of Albania.”

Serbia initially launched an investigation in March 2008 after Carla del Ponte, the former UN War Crimes Chief Prosecutor, published a book called The Hunt.

In the book Ms. del Ponte alleged that hundreds of Serbs were kidnapped, taken to the notorious “yellow house” in the town of Burrel in northern Albania, where the victims had their organs extracted by Kosovo Albanian militants. The organs were then sold to foreign traffickers and clinics.

In writing the book, del Ponte was summarizinga search of the “yellow house” by UN investigators, which turned up  “pieces of gauze, a used syringe and two plastic IV bags encrusted with mud and empty bottles of medicine, some of which was of a muscle relaxant often used in surgical operations.”

Despite new pressures from the UN, Albanian Prime Minister Sali Berisha has summarily dismissed the allegations as “fictitious”. Mr. Berisha also insists that the matter has already been properly investigated by Albania after Serbia and the European Union launched investigations in 2008.

If Albania continues to refuse to cooperate, Mr. Alston said the United Nations will take further action. In the mean time, the Council of Europe, EULEX, and Serbia’s war crimes prosecutor are all currently investigating the allegations.

For more information, please see:

BBC – UN says Albania ‘stalling’ Serb human organs inquiry – 23 February 2010

NEW YORK TIMES – U.N. Sleuth Calls on Albania to Allow Organ Inquiry – 23 February 2010

RADIO SRBIJA – UN: Tirana should be open to independent investigation – 23 February 2010

By Elizabeth A. Conger
Impunity Watch Reporter, Europe

WARSAW, Poland – Polish flight authorities have admitted their involvement in the CIA’s secret program for the rendition of high-level terrorist suspects from Iraq and Afghanistan. After six years of denying denying their involvement, Warsaw’s air control service confirmed that at least six CIA rendition flights landed in Szymany airfield in northern Poland. 

Two human rights groups, the Open Society Justice Initiative, based in New York, and the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights, based in Warsaw, received the flight logs from the Polish Air Navigation Services Agency in September, and released reports regarding Polish involvement in the rendition program on Monday after analyzing the data for the past several months.

Darian Pavli, a lawyer with the Open Society Justice Initiative, said: “The thing that is quite shocking is that the European investigations requested these specific flight records some four years ago…The Poles all these years said that they could not locate them, the flights didn’t exist.”

For years human rights investigators have asserted that Poland was the location of one of the “black sites,” part of of the network of the CIA’s overseas prisons where suspected Al-Qaeda operatives were detained and subjected to brutal interrogation techniques. Polish authorities repeatedly denied the allegations, and refused to cooperate with international investigations.

An extensive Council of Europe investigation in 2007 found that a prison facility located near the Szymany airfield was rented by the CIA from the Poles and used to detain “especially sensitive high-value detainees.” The Council’s report accused fourteen European governments of permitting the CIA to run detention centers or carry out rendition flights between 2002 and 2005.  According to former American intelligence officials, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, chief plotter of the 9/11 attack, was interrogated at the  secret base near the Syzmany airport after his capture in 2003. 

CIA spokesman, Paul Gimigliano, said: “The agency does not discuss publicly where facilities related to its past detention program may, or may not, have been located.”

The Polish Air Navigation Services released flight data showing that at least two of the planes linked to CIA rendition flights, a Boeing 737 and a Gulfstream V, flew from Kabul and Rabat, in Morocco, to Syzmany at least six times between February and September 2003. Kabul and Rabat are the locations of the detention of at least two of the rendition detainees. Flight logs also revealed an attempted cover up by the CIA and Polish authorities, with aviation authorities being told that several of the flights were destined for Warsaw, rather then Syzmany, and names of pilots having been changed.

The Polish government declined to comment on the contents of the reports issued by the two rights groups, but Foreign Ministry spokesman, Piotr Paszkowski, said that the prosecutor’s office was currently investigating the allegations.

Adam Bodnar, head of the legal division at Warsaw’s Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights, said: “These flight records reinforce the troubling findings of official European inquiries and global human rights groups, showing complicity with CIA abuse across Europe.”

He added: “Of course Polish authorities may help the CIA in the fight against terrorism, but they are bound by the Polish Constitution, which prohibits torture.” 

For more information, please see:

The Guardian – Poland admits role in CIA rendition programme – 22 February 2010

The New York Times – Data Shows Rendition Planes Landed in Poland – 22 February 2010

The Wall Street Journal – Poland Delivers Official Confirmation of CIA Flights – 22 February 2010

Washington Post – Details posted on alleged CIA-flights to Poland – 22 February 2010

By David Sophrin
Impunity Watch Reporter, Europe

PODGORICA, Montenegro – The opposition political leader in Montenegro was attacked outside of his home in the capital city of Podgorica on Saturday.

Nebojsa Medojevic, the leader of the political party Montenegro Movement for Change (PZP), has been an outspoken critic of current Prime Minister Milo Dukanovic.  Among the allegations that Medojevic has made against the Prime Minster is that he has been protecting the former Yugoslavian republic’s organized crime elements and its illegal drug trade.

According to police reports the attacker threatened to kill Medojevic and warned him “to stop mentioning the name of Branislav Micunovic”, one of the nation’s wealthiest individuals.  In the past Medojevic as described Micunovic as having control over the country’s police forces and being “the most powerful person in Montenegro”.  Shortly after the attack the local police announced that they had captured the individual who carried out the assault on Medojevic.  The PZP reported that the suspect in custody is a relative of Micunovic.

Following the attack Medojevic declared that he will not stop continuing his fight against organized crime in Montenegro.  “I am in fear of being killed and I expect there will be more attacks in the next few days, because the attack on me is a message from the mafia to stop my fight against crime-generating organizations and organized crime.”  Medojevic also commented that he thought the attack on him was an example of “classic Mafia-style intimidation.”

The Police Director of Montenegro,Veselin Veljovic, has stated that the “police have no information on the well-known…businessman Branislav Micunovis having any connections to Drako Saric, or the cocaine smuggling business.”

For more information, please see:

NOVINITE – Montenegro Opposition Leader Allegedly Attacked by Mafia – 21 February 2010

RADIO MONTENEGRO – Montenegrin opposition seeks security council session after attack on party head – 21 February 2010

SETIMES – Montenegrin opposition leader assaulted – 21 February 2010

B92 – Montenegrin politician attacked and threatened – 2o February 2010

By Elizabeth A. Conger
Impunity Watch Reporter, Europe

INTERLAKEN, Switzerland – The Council of Europe has announced plans to streamline procedures at the European Court of Human Rights. The reforms, designed to alleviate the court’s current backlog of 120,000 cases, were agreed upon by ministers from the Council of Europe’s forty seven member states at a meeting in Interlaken on Friday.

Embodied in Protocol 14, the reforms allow for one judge, rather than three, to decide on a case’s admissibility. Furthermore, cases similar to those previously brought before the court will be decided by a three-judge panel, rather than the original seven-member panel. Judges will be able to strike off the record those cases with similarities to those already decided, and reject those cases where the applicant has suffered no “significant disadvantage.” Protocol 14’s reforms will also allow the Committee of Ministers, charged with supervision of the enforcement of judgments, to work more effectively in ensuring that national governments enforce compliance with court decisions.

Judgments at the Court of Human Rights have taken an average of six years or more. Without reform, it is estimated that the current backlog in cases would remain on the docket until 2056.

More than 27,000 of the pending cases originate in Russia, and deal primarily with alleged abuses by Russian security forces in Chechnya involving extra-judicial killings, torture, disappearances, and dismal prison conditions. Russia had initially resisted the reforms, viewing the court as anti-Russian. However, Russia finally agreed to the reforms in January after the Council of Europe agreed to a provision stating that a Russian judge would participate in any decisions about Russia.

Initially created in 1959 as a court of last resort for Europeans who believed that their fundamental rights had been infringed in their home country, the European Court of Human Rights underwent reform on November 1, 1998.  The reform of the court established it as a full time entity, and allowed for the hiring of full-time judges. Most of cases in recent years have come from Russia, Turkey, Ukraine and Romania. It has delivered more than 10,000 judgments since 1998, and has handled a wide array of issues such as book banning in Turkey, crucifixes in Italian classrooms, the right of homosexuals to serve in the British Army, and the disappearances of Chechen rebels.

Karina Moskalenko, a Russian lawyer who runs a civil justice organization to aid Russians seeking to have their cases heard in Strasbourg, told Deutsche Welle that although it is not ideal having to go to France to get a fair hearing, the unreliability of the current justice system in Russia leaves no other option. She said:

“It would be much better if our citizens were protected by Russian courts or authorities, but as long as that is not the case, it’s good that people know who they can turn to.”

The first measures of Protocol 14 are scheduled for implementation in June of 2011, and a review of the reforms will be made in five years.

For more information, please see:

BBC – Mammoth backlog prompts European rights court reforms – 19 February, 2010

Swissinfo.ch – Ministers agree to reform European rights court – 19 February, 2010

Deutsch Welle – Strasbourg, the great white hope for human rights – 18 February 2010

VOA – European Court Facing Huge Backlog – 18 February 2010