A Voice for the Voiceless

Body of Missing Ukrainian Yeshiva Student Found

By David Sophrin
Impunity Watch Reporter, Europe

KIEV, Ukraine – The body of a missing Jewish student from a Kiev Chabad yeshiva, who had been missing for over two weeks, was found yesterday.

The remains of Aryeh Leib Mizenson, 25, who had disappeared on April 20, were found in the Ukrainian capital.  The police had to used DNA testing to determine the identity of the body, which was found dismembered.

Antisemitic sentiment within the active Ukrainian neo-Nazi community is suspected to have played a role in Mizenson’s death.  Local law enforcement officials have detained a member of a local neo-Nazi gang in connection with his death.  The fact that the day of his disappearance, April 20, is the anniversary of Adolph Hitler’s death, is not believed to be a coincidence.  Acts of violence against Jewish targets have been carried out by neo-Nazi groups in the past in the area.

Yaakov Zilberman, a leading member of Kiev’s Jewish community believes that antisemitism played a role in the killing.  “Many Jews here are confronted by groups of skin-heads wearing Nazi uniforms at metro stations in central Kiev.  The skin-heads walk around without fear in the center of town and no one says a word.”

The chief Ukrainian rabbi, who was out of the country at the time that Misenzon’s body was found, announced that he would return to Ukraine for the student’s funeral.

Law enforcement officials have requested that the Misenzon’s family delay his burial until the investigation can be completed.

For more information, please see:

HAARETZ – Body of Ukrainian Jew missing since Hitler’s birthday found in Kiev – 9 May 2010

INDYPOSTED – Dismembered Body of Ukrainian Jew Found In Kiev – 9 May 2010

JERUSALEM POST – Yeshiva student murdered in Ukraine – 9 May 2010

YNEWSNET – Jewish man murdered in Kiev; Chabad: Anti-Semites did it – 9 May, 2010

Brazil Supreme Court Upholds Amnesty for Torture, Disappearance

By Sovereign Hager
Impunity Watch Reporter, South America

BRASILIA,Brazil-International human rights groups are vehemently opposing the Brazilian Supreme Court’s decision not to reinterpret a 1979 law giving amnesty to members of the former military government responsible for extrajudicial killings, torture, and rape. Instead, the Court held that such acts were political acts and therefore deserved amnesty.

While Argentine, Bolivia, Chile, Peru, and Uruguay have prosecuted individuals accused of human rights violations during military dictatorships, Brazil has not. Rights groups argue that the amnesty law puts Brazil in breach of conventional and customary international law that does not allow amnesty for crimes of torture and extrajudicial executions.

Tim Cahill of Amnesty International commented that “in a country that sees thousands of extra-judicial killings every year at the hands of security officials and where many more are tortured in police stations and prisons, this ruling clearly signals that in Brazil nobody is held responsible when the state kills and tortures its own citizens.”

Amnesty International also called on Brazil to come into conformity with the rulings of the Inter American Court of Human Rights, which has stressed that ” all amnesty provisions  . . . designed to eliminate responsibility are inadmissible, because they are intended to prevent the investigation and punishment of those responsible for serious human rights violations such as torture, extrajudicial, summary, or arbitrary executions, and forced disappearance, all prohibited because they violate rights recognized by international human rights law.”

The Court voted in a 7-2 majority that the law should remain intact because it had been approved by society as a whole, including the bar association, armed forced, and political exiles. Thousands of people were imprisoned, tortured, or disappeared in Brazil under military rule form 1964-1985.

For more information, please see:

Amnesty International-Brazil Court Upholds Law that Protects Torturers-30 April 2010

AP-Brazil’s Top Court-Amnesty Law Will Not Change-30 April 2010

NY TIMES-Brazil: No Change to Amnesty Law-30 April 2010

Time Square Bombing Suspect Linked To Yemeni Cleric

By Ahmad Shihadah
Impunity Watch Reporter, Middle East

WASHINGTON DC, USA – The Pakistani-American man accused of trying to detonate a car bomb in Times Square has told investigators that he drew inspiration from Anwar Al-Awlaki, a Yemeni-American cleric whose militant online lectures have been a catalyst for several recent attacks and plots, an American official said Thursday.

The would-be bomber, Faisal Shahzad, was inspired by the violent rhetoric of Mr. Awlaki, said the official, who would speak of the investigation only on condition of anonymity. “He listened to him, and he did it,” the official said, referring to Saturday’s attempted bombing on a busy street in Times Square.

New evidence is deepening a notion, albeit still unverified, that the failed car bombing in Times Square was not the work of one disgruntled young man, but inspired by a global extremist network stretching from Yemen to Pakistan, united by the Internet and a common radical vision of faith.

According to one account, Shahzad told investigators that he actually met with Awlaki – as well as Hakimullah Mehsud, the leader of the Pakistani Taliban, and even Abdulmutallah, who tried to blow up a Northwest airliner landing in Detroit on Christmas Day. Investigators are skeptical, reports the New York Daily News, saying Shahzad claims to know most of the biggest players in the world of radical Islam. They have yet to verify his statements.

If true, Shahzad’s apparent susceptibility to Awlaki’s sermons, coupled with an ability to travel to Pakistan for training, and then back to the US with an American passport, offers a disturbing portrait of a virtual jihadi highway, linking mentality to means and money.

Investigators are not yet sure where that money came from. They are looking to question a courier who allegedly funneled money to Shahzad to pay for the SUV used in the attack, as well as the improvised explosives. But the source country remains unknown, the Associated Press reports.

As a result, the United States is likely to push Pakistan to press harder against militant enclaves in that country’s North Waziristan region, deemed the epicenter of the network behind the failed bombing. But that is likely to strain an already threadbare relationship between Washington and Islamabad, experts warn.

For more information, please see:

CSM – US-Born Cleric Inspired Times Square Bomber Faisal Shahzad – 7 May 2010

New York Times – Times Sq. Bomb Suspect Is Linked To Militant Cleric – 6 May 2010

AOL News – Times Square Suspect Reportedly Inspired By Radical Cleric – 7 May 2010

Lithuanian Appeals Court Says Baltic Pride 2010 Can Proceed

By Kenneth F. Hunt
Impunity Watch Reporter, Europe

VILNIUS, Lithuania – On Friday May 7, a Lithuanian appellate court approved a gay pride parade scheduled for Saturday May 8 in the country’s capital of Vilnius.

The Supreme Administration Court of Lithuania, located in Vilnius, overturned a decision earlier in the week by a lower court in anticipation of Saturday’s parade. The Baltic Pride Parade 2010 is expected to draw hundreds of Lithuanian participants, as well as persons from other countries.

That decision, on Wednesday May 5, banned the protest in anticipation of violence.  The lower court’s decision was based on its determination that national and local authorities would be unable to guarantee the safety of the participants in the parade.  More than a thousand protesters and opponents of the parade are now expected to attend.

After the decision, a number of human rights groups protested what they perceived to be an intolerable disregard for gay rights, but did not expect a reversal on appeal.  Those human rights group accused the lower court judge and the Lithuanian Attorney General of masking homophobia with illegitimate public safety concerns.

However, the Supreme Administration Court, perhaps surprisingly, held that the rights of freedom of assembly and freedom of expression trump safety concerns.  The Court declared that “those who share unpopular points of view or are members of minority groups” must be protected.

The Court also ruled that the lower court decision ban on the parade would have violated multiple articles of the European Convention on Human Rights.

This decision was surprising to many Lithuanians, given the country’s spotty record of protecting the rights of its gay citizens.  It was especially unexpected given the people of Lithuania’s, and its government’s, overwhelmingly negative attitudes towards gay rights issues.

73 percent of respondents to a recent poll opposed the planned parade in Vilnius.  Also, more than 80 percent of Lithuanians consider homosexuality to be a disease according to a 2006 poll.  Moreover, the Lithuanian government has been criticized by human rights groups and the European Union, of which Lithuania is a member, for endemic disregard for sexual minorities within the country.

No major gay pride event has been permitted in the country since its inception in 1991, so Saturday’s parade will be the country’s first ever. Moreover, the Lithuanian Parliament in 2009 tried to pass a bill that would prevent public officials and educators from providing information about homosexuality from children.  The bill ultimately failed, but nevertheless showed the officially sanctioned disinformation plaguing the former Soviet republic.

For more information, please see:

AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL – Lithuania’s Baltic Pride March Gets Green Light – 7 May 2010

ASSOCIATED PRESS – Lithuanian court reverses ban on gay pride parade – 7 May 2010

CARE2 – Lithuania’s Gay Pride Gets a Boost as Baltic Pride 2010 March is Reinstated – 7 May 2010

Taiwan Executes Four Inmates

By Hyo-Jin Paik
Impunity Watch Reporter, Asia

TAIPEI, Taiwan – Despite talks of abolishing the capital punishment system, Taiwan has executed four men.  These executions, whereby the inmates were shot by a firing squad, were Taiwan’s first since December 2005. 

Although death penalty is a sensitive issue in Taiwan, it is widely supported by the Taiwanese public.  In fact, the former justice minister resigned in March because the Minister refused to sign death warrants for prisoners. 

However, a human rights group called the Foundation for Judicial Reform condemned the recent executions saying, “We are shocked and angered . . . the justice ministry sped up the executions in a reckless process despite concerns over capital punishment.”

This Taiwanese rights group is claiming that the Justice Ministry purposely hastened the process for the four inmates who were executed. 

Amnesty International’s Asia-Pacific Deputy Director Catherine Baber said, “These executions cast a dark shadow on the country’s human rights record and blatantly contradict the Justice Minister’s previously declared intention to abolish the death penalty.”

In defense, Taiwan’s Ministry of Justice released a statement saying that the prisoners were “put to death according to the laws as the four were convicted of grave offenses,” adding that the executed inmates “did not request Constitutional interpretations of their cases.”  Taiwan reserve capital punishment for serious offenses, such as aggravated murder, kidnapping and robbery.

Nevertheless Baber said, “The world was looking to the Taiwanese authorities to choose human rights, and to show leadership on the path towards abolishing the death penalty in the Asia-Pacific.  [The] executions extinguished that hope.”

Along with Amnesty International, Taiwanese Alliance to End the Death Penalty (TAEDP) also expressed its “shock and anger.”  TAEDP often raises the question of legality over executions, and with regards to the recent executions, TAEDP’s Executive Director Lin Hsin-yi said that the executions were “furtively and hastily” carried out without notice to the inmates’ families.

49 Taiwanese were put to death between 2000 and 2005.

For more information, please see:

AFP – Taiwan rights groups lash out at executions – 1 May 2010

BBC – Taiwan conducts rare executions – 1 May 2010

Focus Taiwan – Rights groups condemn Taiwan’s executions – 1 May 2010