The Middle East

International Criminal Court Drops the Prosecution of Israeli Raid on Mavi Marmara

By Max Bartels 

Impunity Watch Reporter, The Middle East 

 

Jerusalem, Israel

Officials of the International Criminal Court stated Thursday that they were not pursuing any case against Israel for potential war crimes for the 2010 raid on the Mavi Marmara. The raid was conducted by Israeli Defense Force Commandos on a passenger ship that was attempting to break the Israeli blockade of Gaza and deliver aid. During the raid eight Turkish citizens and one Turkish- American was killed by the commandos.

Footage from the Mavi Marama shows activists preparing to fight off Israeli troops as they board the ship. (Photo curtesy of The Times of Israel)

A prosecutor for the International Court announced that there was a reasonable basis to believe that the Israeli commandos committed war crimes during the raid. However, the prosecutor also announced that the case lacks the specific gravity required for the prosecution of those crimes to be pursued. The same prosecutor also said that the International Criminal Court shall prioritize war crimes that are committed on a large scale or pursuant to some plan or policy.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry issued a statement saying that there was no basis to open a preliminary investigation in the first place. They further stated that they regretted that the International criminal court wasted its time in the initial inquiry. The Israeli’s believe that the allegations of war crimes were legally unfounded and politically motived, the international Criminal Court was established to prosecute the worst atrocities in the world, and that this event can hardly fall under that category.

A law firm in Turkey originally filled the request for the International Criminal Court to investigate the incident. Neither Turkey nor Israel has signed onto the Rome Statute, the international agreement that governs the International Criminal Court. However, the ship was registered to the Comoros Islands, which is a party to the Rome Statute and establishes standing for the case. A lawyer representing the Comoros Islands stated that they will not give up the struggle for justice and will pursue the claim.

Many are worried about the ramifications of this news. Pro-Palestinian activists will likely be very upset at the news, they have repeatedly tried to draw the International Criminal Court into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Tensions in Jerusalem are high at the moment and there are concerns that this news will further escalate violence.

For more information, please see: 

The LA Times — International Court will Not Prosecute Israel in Aid Flotilla Case — 6 November, 2014

The Christian Science Monitor — Gaza Flotilla Raid: International Court Drops Case Against Israel — 6 November, 2014

The Jewish Daily Forward — International Criminal Court Will Not Prosecute Israel in Gaza Flotilla Incident — 6 November, 2014

The Times of Israel — With Marmara Case Closed, Ramallah Learns going to ICC not Easy as ABC — 6 November, 2014

Apartheid in Israel? New public transportation ban on Palestinian travelers

By Ashley Repp

News Desk Reporter- Middle East

Bethlehem, Israel/Palestine-

Israel transportation authority announced that beginning this month, Palestinians with work permits will be banned from using the public transportation that settlers use from the West Bank to Israel proper. This announcement received mixed reviews, with many claiming that this move to segregated buses is racist and demonstrative of apartheid.

Segregated busses
Palestinians wait in line for buses at a security check point in the West Bank (photo courtesy of RT)

Israeli authorities reported that the new bus scheme was implemented in order to allay the fears of Israeli settlers, many of whom reported that they do not want to share buses with Palestinians for security reasons.  Many rights groups argue that the bus ban is simply an excuse to segregate non-Jews from Jews, and that Israel has been moving in the direction of segregated buses since March 2013, when it introduced a Palestinianonly bus for those traveling on work permits.

Although Israeli authorities initially asserted that they cannot, and would not, prohibit Palestinians with Israeli work permits from riding public buses with Israelis, they did submit that Palestinians would be strongly encouraged to ride the buses designated for their use. Israeli rights groups pushed back against this, and pointed to reports logged by an Israeli group that records checkpoint incidents. In one, soldiers ordered Palestinians off of a bus and told them to walk 2.5 kilometers to the nest checkpoint. When and older man spoke up, a soldier told him that he should take a “private van,” and that the Palestinians are not allowed on that highway and on public transportation.

Many are concerned that the segregated buses will be an opportunity to further reduce contact between Palestinians and Israelis, and is a step towards apartheid. Israel had long avoided serious accusations of apartheid because of the lack of “petty” apartheid, which would include separate cafes, streets, highways, and buses. Those within Israel (not those in the occupied territories), are technically, under Israeli law, allowed to use any and all facilities. Though there are many reports of Arab-Israelis being excluded from particular places, under the letter of the law, such actions are discriminatory. Those in the occupied territories face much heavier restrictions. The establishment of a Palestinian ban on buses in response to security concerns of settlers, is concerning, and suggests that the claim of security concerns, is being used as a catch-all reason to discriminate.

Pursuant to the apartheid argument, in March 2013, Zahava Gal-On, leader of the Meretz party, demanded that the segregated bus line be discontinued immediately, contending that the bus did nothing but demonstrate the incompatibility of democracy and occupation. Now, Israeli Justice Minister, Tzipi Livni, is calling the segregated buses racist and representative of apartheid, and she simply will not stand for it. With tensions already running high in Israel and the occupied territories, the new ban could easily exacerbate the situation.

 

For more information, please visit:

International Business Times- Palestinians banned from Israeli public transport system in the West Bank– 26 Oct., 2014

RT- ‘This is apartheid!’ Israeli minister blasts bus segregation for Palestinians– 1 Nov., 2014

Voice of America- In Israel, Palestinian bus ban slammed as racist– 30 Oct., 2014

Al Jazeera- Israel launches segregated bus service– 4 Mar., 2013

Yazidi Target of Sexual Violence and Other War Crimes Committed by Islamic State  

By Kathryn Maureen Ryan
Impunity Watch, Managing Editor

BAGHDAD, Iraq – Jana, a 19 year old girl, was finishing her final year of secondary school with hopes of one day becoming a doctor when her village was taking over by fighters from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS). Jana belongs to Iraq’s Yazidis religious minority. The Yazidis are a Kurdish community who practice Yazidism, an ancient faith with strong ties to Zoroastrianism and ancient Mesopotamian religions that has been heavily influenced by both Islam and Christianity. Yazidism is practiced by Kurdish communities that are practiced in both Iraq and Syria.

 

According to a United Nation’s report ISIS fighters “gathered all the males older than 10 years of age at the local school, took them outside the village by pick-up trucks, and shot them.”Among those believed to have been murdered by ISIS fighters were Jana’s father and eldest brother.

“I was hiding behind a water tank in the front yard and saw them killing my father and brother and [taking] away my mother and sister. I don’t know anything about them since” a 14-year-old Yazidi girl living in a refugee camp in Iraq’s Duhok governorate. A19 year old Yazidi said “They put us in trucks and drove us to a big building, before transferring us to a hall across the road. She continued, “Then their seniors came and started condemning our religion and asking us to convert to Islam … They separated me along with other young ones and ordered us to stay there while taking away the elderly women. She added, “The man I was given to raped me several times and then left me in the room on my own. I was shaking from pain and fear in that hot room, my entire body sweating. Suddenly, another man came and did what he wanted to do despite me crying and begging him, kissing his foot to leave me alone …”

Thousands of Yazidi women and girls have abducted by ISIS fighters, many were taken during their attack on the Sinjar district on 2 August 2014. 2,500 girls and women were abducted during the attack on Sinjar. Since then, one hundred girls and women have managed to escape their jailers and rejoin their community.

The enslaved women have become a source of income for the ISIS group. Treated like cattle, they are trafficked in markets in Mosul in Iraq, and Raqqa in Syria. The women and girls are often sold for between $25 and $1,000. Women who resisted are killed and many have committed suicide, some Yazidi who managed to get their stories out of ISIS controlled territories have said they would rather face death than life as a sex slave.

Enslavement of women has been used as a weapon of war by ISIS, it is used as a means of subjecting the community, dissolve family units and even pollute the bloodlines of the populations targeted by ISIS. Some young girls were “cheaply sold” and mainly given to young boys as a way of recruiting them into the ISIS ranks.  ISIS itself publically encourages that taking of women as spoils of war and as a form of punishment of those they consider “infidels.” The organization claimed “One should remember that enslaving the families of the kuffar — the infidels — and taking their women as concubines is a firmly established aspect of the Shariah, or Islamic law,” in the ISIS propaganda publication “Dabiq.”

Kurdish authorities say they have rescued around 100 Yazidi women, in part through the payment of ransoms to Arab tribesmen who acted as intermediaries. However, thousands of women remain enslaved by the ISIS group.

For More Information Please See:

CNN International – ‘Treated Like Cattle’: Yazidi Women Sold, Raped, Enslaved By ISIS – 30 October 2014

CNN International – Why ISIS’s Treatment of Yazidi Women Must Be Treated As Genocide – 30 October 2014

International Business Times – ISIS News: ‘Raped, Abused’ Yazidi Women Beg West To Bomb Their Brothel and Kill Them [VIDEO] – 30 October 2014

Al Jazeera – Traumatized By ISIL, Yazidis Seek Help – 28 October 2014

Iranian Women Executed for Murder of her Alleged Rapist

By Max Bartels 

Impunity Watch Reporter, The Middle East 

 

Tehran, Iran 

A 26-year-old woman, Reyhaneh Jabbari, was hanged on Saturday after she was sentenced to death for murder. The execution has human rights groups questioning the validity of the trial because the woman claimed self-defense and the man she killed was her alleged rapist. The woman was originally sentenced to death after her trial in 2009, where it was decided that she killed a man who was a former employee of Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security. The U.N released a statement saying that the man hired Jabbari when she was 19 as an interior designer, to work on his office, and that Jabbari stabbed him after she was sexually assaulted.

IW #22 Iranian Woman Killing
Jabbari arguing her case in Iranian Court (Photo Curtesy of The Independent)

Since her original conviction and sentence in 2009, Iran’s Supreme Court upheld the verdict, even in the face of considerable international pressure from the U.S. and Europe. The pressure did succeed in getting Jabbari a 10- day stay of execution in late September, and many were hopeful that some other punishment would be handed down during that time. Under the Iranian Islamic Penal Code, the courts of Iran follow “an eye for an eye” concept, when a murder is committed, the defendant, if found guilty must face the same fate. Also under the Iranian Islamic Penal code there is a provision for the family of the victim to show mercy to the defendant, if the family so wishes the death sentence can be lessened. Many were hoping that the family of the victim would exercise this right on Jabbari, due to the public outcry in support of her case. A Justice Minister of the Supreme Court even stated in early October that he predicted that the case would come to a “good ending”. However, the family stayed silent and the execution process resumed after the 10- day stay.

The Tehran state prosecutors office issued a statement attempting to curtail sympathy for Jabbari, and lay out the facts of the case as they saw them. According to them Jabbari had repeatedly admitted to premeditated murder and had invented the rape charge in an attempt to divert the case from its course. The office laid out further evidence that Jabbari had texted a friend her intention to kill and had bought the knife used in the murder just a few days prior to the crime.

The execution has sparked renewed criticism of Iran and the new President, Rouhani, who was touted for his positions on bringing Iran out of isolation. The U.N. has documented the number of executions in the country at 531 this year, this is a marked increased from previous years and puts Iran at second in the world for recorded use of capital punishment, behind China. Secular voters in Iran are upset that domestic reform has taken a back seat to foreign policy under Rouhani. Others believe that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and the judiciary, both still filled with hardline Islamists are increasing the rate of execution to make Rouhani look bad.

For more information, please see:

CNN — Iran Postponed Execution of Woman Who Killed her Alleged Rapist — 2 October, 2014

MSNBC — Iranian Woman Hanged for Killing her Alleged Would-Be Rapist — October 27 2014 

The Independent — Reyhaneh Jabbari  in Iran for Murder of Her Attempted Rapist — October 25, 2014

Reuters — Iran Hangs Woman Convicted of Killing Alleged Rapist — October 25, 2014

Christians have few options under ISIS- flee, convert, or die

By Ashley Repp
Impunity Watch Reporter, Africa Desk

AMMAN, Jordan- Iraqi Christians have been a key target of ISIS, and are the group to experience some of the most heartbreak since ISIS began advancing through Iraq. Mosul, the heart of the Iraqi Christian community for over a thousand years, was aggressively targeting by ISIS. Residents were given three option, convert to Islam, be killed, or flee. Some chose to flee, first north to Irbil, then ultimately to Jordan. Most had to leave their lifelong homes, all of their possessions, and flee for safety in order to remain Christian. The bishop, as well as priests in the area, were executed. ISIS places the letter “N” (in Arabic pronounced “noon” “ن” ), on the doorways of shops and homes, as a shorthand reference to the word “nasrani,” which means “Christian” in Arabic. The shops and homes were looted, damaged, and then made available for militants and their families to live in; a devastating experience for those forced to flee from life-long family homes.

ISIS
Christians crucified by ISIS (photo courtesy of Maghreb Christians)

Jordan, in partnership with a Catholic charity, Caritas, extended an invitation for these refugees to seek shelter in Jordan, in recognition of the severe persecution faced by Iraqi Christians at the hand of ISIS.  Jordan has expressed concern that this latest round of persecution of Christians could mean that even more flee to the West, which is troubling as the Middles East once had a very large Christian population and majority in some countries. One refugee told Catholic and Muslim Jordanian leaders that “humanity is dead in Iraq,” that men are running around with swords claiming that territory is now under Islamic rule, and that it is almost unimaginable that this is all occurring in the 21st century.  Another refugee suggested that he firmly believes that soon, there will be no Christians left in Iraq, as just in the past months, tens of thousands have fled, including whole Christian cities.

St. Mary’s Church in Amman has become a refuge for many fleeing Christians, as well as some Muslims. The church has opened its doors to the refugees, providing over 100 people a place to sleep, but this is only a fraction of those Christians that have fled Iraq. Aid groups, including IsraAID, and Israeli organization, has provided aid to the Christian refugees, supplying mats for beds, and food for infrants, among other needs. Father Khalil Jaar, the priest at St. Mary’s Church said that the doors of the church will be open and he is willing to help anyone that comes to him in need during this time of crisis and upheaval.

Authorities warn that things are likely to get worse, and more complicated in the coming weeks and months, as more and more flee persecution, and the weather begins to become colder.  It often snows in this region of Jordan during the upcoming months, and nearly all of the refugees have fled with nothing but the clothes on their backs and a handful of family keepsakes. Peace seems hardly a faint possibility as the situation becomes more dire in Iraq. One man, Basem Peter Rafael, an Iraqi Catholic who fled to Jordan during the Gulf War with his family, said that when his son was born 23 years ago during the war, they named him Salam, the Arabic word for peace, with the hope that peace would soon come to the region. Two decades later, peace seems even further away.

 

For more information, please visit:

BBC News- Iraqi Christian Refugees Lament Lives Destroyed by ISIS– Oct. 14, 2014

BBC News- Escaping ISIS- Iraq’s Christians find refuge at Jordan church– Oct. 5, 2014

Israel 21c- IsraAID Assists Christian and Yazidis refugees fleeing ISIS– Oct. 19, 2014

Aljazeera- Islamic State takes Iraqi Christian town– Aug. 7, 2014

BBC News- Refugee misery for Iraqi Christians who have fled IS– Oct. 19, 2014