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Ex-Guatemalen Soldier Convicted for Failure to Disclosure Involvement in Massacre

by Michael Yoakum
Impunity Watch Reporter, North America

RIVERSIDE, CALIFORNIA, United States –  Former Guatemalan special forces officer Jorge Sosa was sentenced Monday to 10 years in a federal prison for failing to disclose information in his immigration documents about his involvement in a massacre back in Guatemala. Sosa will also be stripped of his citizenship as part of the sentence.

Sosa, 55, is expected to be sent back to Guatemala after serving his ten year sentence. (photo courtesy of the LA Times)

Sosa was convicted of lying on his 2007 naturalization paperwork about his participation in the killing of at least 160 unarmed civilians in the village of Dos Erres in 1982.  The former second lieutenant was not tried for war crimes but instead found to have failed to disclose that he participated in the massacre.

Prosecutors said Sosa was able to become a citizen because he did not disclose his affiliation with the Kaibiles, an elite team of soldiers in the Guatemalan military.  During the trial, the prosecutors explained that Sosa’s unit was dispatched to Doe Erres to recover firearms but instead, at Sosa’s direction, his men raped and killed the villagers.  No weapons were ever recovered.

“These are the crimes the defendant lied about and didn’t disclose,” Judge Virginia Phillip said to the court. “The particular facts of what occurred on Dec. 7, 1982, at Dos Erres cannot be characterized in any other way than as crimes.”

Sosa is not the first to be prosecuted for his part in that massacre.  Several members of that unit have been prosecuted in Guatemala.

Sosa claimed innocence, saying he was not in the village during the massacre. His lawyer, Shashi Kewalramani, considered the sentence excessive and announced Sosa’s intention to appeal the conviction. Kewalramani added that the trial served as a forum to try Sosa for his alleged involvement in the massacre and not the charges at hand.

“Over our objections, the government made it a murder case, basically supplanted the Guatemalan court and decided to try that case up in the United States,” Kewalramani said.

For more information, please see:

Fox News – Ex-Guatemalan soldier linked to massacre is sentenced for lying on US citizenship forms – 11 February 2014

ABC News – Ex-Guatemalan Soldier Sentenced to 10 Years in US – 10 February 2014

LA Times – Ex-Guatemalan soldier linked to massacre gets 10-year sentence  – 10 February 2014

SF Gate – Ex-Guatemalan soldier sentenced to 10 years in US – 10 February 2014

USA Today – Ex-Guatemalan soldier sentenced to prison for lying – 10 February 2014

Syria Photographs Provide Evidence of Systematic Torture by Assad Regime

By Thomas Murphy
Impunity Watch Reporter, Middle East

DAMASCUS, Syria – A team of international war crimes prosecutors and forensic experts has issued a report stating that there is “direct evidence” of “systematic torture and killing” by the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.

This image from the report purportedly shows ligature marks around the neck of a prisoner. (Courtesy of The Guardian)

Their report, based on thousands of photographs of dead bodies of alleged detainees killed in Syrian government custody, would stand up in an international criminal tribunal, the group says.

“This is a smoking gun,” said David Crane, the first chief prosecutor of the Special Court for Sierra Leone and one of the report’s authors. “Any prosecutor would like this kind of evidence — the photos and the process. This is direct evidence of the regime’s killing machine.”

The bodies in the photos showed signs of starvation, brutal beatings, strangulation, and other forms of torture and killing, according to the report.

A Syrian government defector codenamed “Caesar” provided testimony and 27,000 photographs as evidence used in the report; in all 55,000 such images were brought out of the country. According to the report, Caesar worked as photographer in the military police. Once the war started, he was required to document “killed detainees.”

A complex numbering system was also used to catalog the corpses. The system allowed intelligence agencies to identify the corpses and then later to provide false documentation that the person had died in a hospital. According to the report the system may have also served other purposes such as documenting each person’s death without involving family members, proving that orders had been followed, or perhaps it was simply the way it had always been done.

The fact that all the bodies were photographed, the report’s authors say, strongly suggests that “the killings were systematic, ordered, and directed from above.”

The report was authored by Crane, Sir Desmond de Silva, former chief prosecutor of the Special Court for Sierra Leone, and Professor Sir Geoffrey Nice, former lead prosecutor against former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic.

“Ultimately, the validity of our conclusions turn on the integrity of the people involved,” de Silva said. “We, the team, were very conscious of the fact there are competing interests in the Syrian crisis — both national and international. We were very conscious of that.”

For further information, please see:

Al Jazeera – Why Syria’s Assad enters Geneva talks in a position of strength – 23 January 2013

CNN – Gruesome Syria photos may prove torture by Assad – 22 January 2013

Reuters – Dooming the Syria talks before they begin – 22 January 2013

BBC – Syria photos may prove claims of torture – 21 January 2013

Guardian – Syria regime document trove shows evidence of ‘industrial scale’ killing of detainees – 20 January 2013

North Korea Ousts Another Top Official

By Brian Lanciault
Impunity Watch Reporter, Asia

PYONGYANG, North Korea–In another sign of an escalating power struggle amongst North Korea’s elite, South Korea’s intelligence agency reported Tuesday the “No. 2 man” in the isolated North appeared to have been disposed from power.

Former Vice Chairman of the North’s National Defense Commission, Jang Seong-thek has been ousted from his powerful position according to South Korean intelligence sources. (Photo Courtesy of AP)

 

The National Intelligence Service (NIS) told South Korean lawmakers that Jang Song Thaek, uncle of the North Korean leader, Kim Jong Un, was “recently ousted from his position” as Vice Chairman of North Korea’s powerful National Defense Commission, and that “two of his closest confidantes — Ri Yong Ha and Jang Soo-Kil — were publicly executed in mid-November,” according to opposition lawmaker Jung Cheong Rae.

Still unverified, Jang’s ousting could represent the most serious political shakeup in North Korea since former leader Kim Jong-Il’s death in December 2011.

Jang was widely regarded as second in command in the North Korean leadership, owing to his blood-link to the ruling family, and his visible presence abroad. He married the daughter of North Korea’s founder Kim Il-sung in the early 1970s and was a close confidant of late leader Kim Jong-il.

“The NIS has assessed the cause of Jang’s fallout to be an internal power struggle,” Cho Won-jin, a conservative lawmaker who was briefed by the NIS, told reporters. “It was a power struggle to consolidate Kim Jong-un’s one man rule.”

Jang was known to have played a critical role in ensuring the smooth succession of his nephew into his role as the head of North Korea’s intelligence and police agencies. Jang was also known as one of the more pro-market reformers among North Korea’s powerful elite.

His influence was on display during a state visit to China in August 2012, on which he brought along fifty North Korean representatives to discuss the two countries’ cooperation in special economic zones near the border. He was received by the then-Chinese President Hu Jintao and Prime Minister Wen Jiabo.

Some South Korean experts suggest the instability created by this alleged power struggle could lead the isolated nuclear-armed state to take even greater provocative actions on the world stage, in an effort to quell discord and reinforce unity, and reinvigorate the North’s international perception.

“In looking at past cases, when the North Korean regime becomes unstable, there could be more frequent provocations directed against the South,” Yang Moo-jin, a North Korean expert at the University of North Korean studies in Seoul, told South Korea’s Yonhap news agency. “If so, then the South-North Korean relations could worsen and the tension on the Korean peninsula will heighten.”

Other experts were not surprised by the reports of Jang’s ouster.

“The signs have been there for some time that Jang was fading. He has been appearing less and less frequently in Kim Jong Un’s presence, or indeed, at all. If that change in his previously high-profile visibility was not caused by health problems, it suggested a political problem,” said one expert, who spoke to CBS News. 

The expert also suggested that Jang’s appearance as a “top leader” was hyperbolic, and indicated that the regime is, and always has been, top-centric.

“There is no power in North Korea except that at the top. From the moment Kim Jong Il died almost two years ago, Jang was vulnerable. He probably had a lot of enemies, but he no longer had any top cover,” said the expert. “It wouldn’t be surprising if Kim Jong Il had told his son to watch Jang carefully, and to cut him down when the time came.”

For more information, please see:

BBC News–North Korea powerbroker ‘dismissed’— 3 December 2013

Washington Post–Kim Jong Un’s uncle ‘very likely’ removed from power— 3 December 2013

Bangkok Post–N. Korean leader’s powerbroker uncle ousted, says South Korea— 3 December 2013

CBS News–North Korean Leader Kim Jong-un reportedly sacks his uncle Jang Seong-thaek, No. 2 man in regime— 3 December 2013

Al Jazeera–N Korean leader’s powerbroker uncle ‘sacked’— 3 December 2013

Human Rights Group Says 6,000 Women Raped During Syrian Conflict

By Thomas Murphy
Impunity Watch Reporter, Middle East

DAMASCUS, Syria – A report issued by the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Network estimates that 6,000 women have been raped since the beginning of the Syrian conflict. The report adds that women are being targeted by snipers and used as human shields.

The report documented 6,000 cases of rape with many more likely unreported. (Photo Courtesy of AP)

The report states the capture, torture, and rape of women is used as strategy to leverage prisoner exchanges and exact revenge on the opposition. Often times women will be abducted in effort to force their male relatives to surrender.

“They are being used as privilege, not in the sense that they are favored, but because sometimes of their relationship to opposition members or government-related members,” EMHRN spokeswoman Hayet Zeghiche told the BBC.

Many of the rape victims are socially stigmatized and forced to leave their families or fear returning to their families because of possible retribution. The social stigma attached to rape victims leaves them alone and isolated.

“Syrian women exposed to sexual abuses subsequently found themselves victimized not only by the crime itself, but also by enduring the silence that surrounds the crime and the social pressure related to it,” the report said.

The findings were backed up by Lauren Wolfe, an award-winning journalist who has focused on rape in conflict for several years. She is currently the director of Women Under Siege, a group that has been mapping reports of sexual violence in Syria over the past year.

“The general rule that I go by, and a lot of public health researchers go by, is for every one woman who speaks out, there are up to 10 more that remain silent,” Wolfe said.

Seventy-percent of the documented rape victims report that they were raped by government or pro-government forces. This is not uncommon in scenarios where, like in Syria, rebel fighters rely heavily on civilian support.

The report said rape was documented in seven provinces, including Damascus, mostly “during governmental raids, at checkpoints and within detention facilities.”

On Monday, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon announced that first peace talks during the conflict would begin on January 22. He added that it would be “unforgivable not to seize this opportunity to bring an end to the suffering and destruction.”

For further information, please see:

BBC – Syria conflict: Women ‘targets of abuse and torture’ – 26 November 2013

Global Post – 6,000 cases of women raped during Syrian conflict, human rights group says – 26 November 2013

Gulf News – ‘Rape used as women of war against Syria women’ – 25 November 2013

Reuters – Syrian women suffer inside their country and out – 11 November 2013

Nepal Votes to Elect New Constituent Assembly Despite Bomb Threats and Violence

By Brian Lanciault
Impunity Watch Reporter, Asia

KATHMANDU, Nepal–Voters gathered outside polling booths across Nepal Tuesday to elect a Constituent Assembly that will attempt, yet again, to draft a constitution.  The interim government hopes to finally bring stability to the Himalayan nation.

Security personnel were deployed in force this past week to secure polling centers against various bomb threats as Nepal seeks to elect a new Constituent Assembly to draft a constitution. (Photo Courtesy of AP).

Candidates from over 100 political parties and several independent ones are competing in the election. The assembly will also double as a parliament and select a government. Nepal has 12 million registered voters.

Police said there were no reports of violence Tuesday morning. But, explosions rocked the capital in Kathmandu and other cities Monday night. Two people were injured in the explosion in Katmandu. Police believe the two suspects were supporters of an alliance of 33 opposition parties which have been attempting to disrupt and shut down the election.

Nepalese officials assured the public that security was formidable and tight, stating that they should have no fears of voting.

“We assure the voters we have done all that is necessary to ensure there will be free and fair election,” Nepal’s Chief Election Commissioner Neel Kantha Upreti told reporters, adding there was “more” than enough security.

The government ordered a four-day public holiday to allow voters to return to their villages in the mountainous country.

However, the opposition party alliance has been enforcing a nine-day transportation blockage to prevent voters from reaching the remote villages. The opposition appears upset at the appointment of a Supreme Court judge-led government in March, saying the larger parties have denied them any opportunities in the decision making leading up to the election.

There were several attacks on public vehicles that had defied the transportation embargo. A truck driver was killed and two dozen people have been injured in these attacks.

The previous Constituent Assembly was elected in 2008, following the end of a 10-year Maoist revolution and the overthrow of the centuries-old monarchy.

But the assembly was sabotaged by infighting and never finished its work. The result has been a power vacuum that left the country without a proper constitution for almost seven years.

Some of the disagreements center on whether to divide the country into a federal system based on ethnic groups or strictly by geography. But the parties mostly squabble over who gets to lead the country.

Analysts predict none of the political parties is likely to get a majority in the election. Any coalition government formed between two or more parties would face the insurmountable task of writing a constitution where each clause garners approval from two-thirds of the assembly. In a country with more than 100 ethnic groups and languages, this is a tall order.

The United Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), the party of former communist rebels, hopes to repeat the last election and emerge as the largest party. Its main competitors are the Nepali Congress and Communist Party of Nepal (United Marxist Leninist).

Rastriya Prajatantra Party Nepal, which seeks to revive a Hindu nation and bring back the monarchy, also hopes to win a chunk of the seats in the assembly.

For more information, please see:

BBC News– Nepal voting ends for new Constituent Assembly— 19 November 2013

Times of India– 12 million divided Nepalese expected to vote for stability— 19 November 2013

Al Jazeera– Bomb blast at Nepal polling booth— 19 November 2013

Bangkok Post– Nepal defies bombing, braves threats in post-war poll— 19 November 2013