“You Don’t Forget Your Torturers”: Wachira Waheire’s 30-Year Quest for Justice in KenyaIn 1986, Wachira Waheire was whisked off the street, taken to Kenya’s most infamous torture chamber, and sentenced to four years in prison. Over the next 30 years, his quest for justice led him to meetings with his torturers to courtroom showdowns with the country’s Attorney General. Discover his ongoing struggle for truth, acknowledgement, and reparations alongside all survivors of abuse in Kenya.
“Left Behind”: Young Photographers Capture Marginalization in TunisiaOngoing economic and social inequality, a legacy of the dictatorship, affects Tunisians across generations, but has particularly pronounced impacts on young people. ICTJ worked with four young photographers to confront the consequences of marginalization and explore its impacts on Tunisian youth. Their four photo galleries comprise the exhibition “Marginalization in Tunisia: Images of an Invisible Repression.”
The Bumpy Road to Peace and Accountability: Transitional Justice in the African Great Lakes RegionIn Africa’s Great Lakes region, countries face common challenges like bad governance, inequitable distribution of natural resources, and ethnic divisions. As nations like Burundi, Central African Republic and South Sudan work towards peacebuilding and accountability, they should learn from what has worked and what has not in neighboring countries, writes Sarah Kihika Kasande, ICTJ’s Head of Office in Uganda.
Justice Mosaics: How Context Shapes Transitional Justice in Fractured Societies What hope is there for justice for victims of atrocities in profoundly fractured societies, where systems of government have broken down and social and political divisions run deep? What is the role of transitional justice in forging peace in countries like Colombia, after decades of conflict? Or in countries like Tunisia, after years of repression and corrosive corruption?
The Case for Action on Transitional Justice and DisplacementAs the refugee crisis deepens, does action on transitional justice issues have to wait for peace? A new paper explores what sort of consultation and documentation work can be done now, while conflict is ongoing, to shape outcomes moving forward.
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The US Senate Foreign Relations Committee has advanced a bill that could be a small but meaningful step toward justice in the long and brutal Syrian conflict.
Democrat Senator Ben Cardin, who co-sponsored the bill with Republican Senator Marco Rubio, said the proposal aims to “make it clear to all who are participating in atrocities in Syria that they will be held accountable for their activities.” Rubio, who notably pressed Secretary of State Rex Tillerson during his confirmation hearing on Russian war crimes in Aleppo, said that passage of the bill by the committee last week was “another step towards accountability for the war crimes and crimes against humanity committed against innocent civilians.”
The US has supported several initiatives on justice in Syria, including the establishment of a mechanism through the United Nations General Assembly to investigate and collect evidence of abuses. There have also been severalresolutions introduced in Congress that highlight Syria’s humanitarian catastrophe.
This new bill requests the State Department to report on how the US is promoting accountability in Syria, which could help integrate justice for war crimes into US policy. The committee adopted amendments to the bill to ensure that US support for justice is comprehensive, better balanced, and more impartial than when originally introduced. However, it still does not cover forces of all warring parties. To ensure meaningful and credible justice, it is crucial that investigations and prosecutions address all serious crimes committed in Syria regardless of the alleged perpetrators.
The bill, which still needs to pass the full Senate and the House to become law, offers a boost for justice in Syria, and sends an important signal that for the US, accountability is a bipartisan issue. Congress should ensure that the State Department works diligently to support impartial justice any way it can.
Dr Agnes Reeves Taylor, BSc, MSc, MA, LLM, PhD: Lecturer/ MBA & PhD Supervisor at London School of Commerce, Coventry University
The ex-wife of former Liberian President Charles Taylor has appeared at Westminster Magistrates’ Court in London to face torture charges.
Agnes Reeves Taylor, 51, is suspected of ordering and carrying out torture between 1989 and 1991, during a civil war in the West African state.
She is to be tried at the Old Bailey, the Central Criminal Court, on 30 June.Up to 250,000 people are believed to have been killed in Liberia’s civil war, which ended in 2003.: Read More click link:
U.S. charges ex-Liberian defense minister, war criminal.
U.S. charges ex-Liberian defense minister with lying in citizenship bid
A former Liberian defense minister, said by the United States to be a war criminal, has been arrested in New Jersey and charged with lying on his application to become a U.S. citizen about his past role in seeking control of the West African country.
A Liberian national, living near Philadelphia since the late 1990s, has been charged with gaining U.S. asylum by lying about his role as the rebel commander “Jungle Jabbah” who allegedly committed civil war atrocities including murder and conscripting child soldiers, U.S. officials said on Wednesday.
Mohammed Jabbateh, 49, who lives in East Lansdowne, Pennsylvania, was indicted on two counts of fraud in immigration documents and two counts of perjury.
A Former Commander of Liberian Rebels Is Arrested in Switzerland
A Former Commander of Liberian Rebels Is Arrested in Switzerland
MONROVIA, Liberia — The Swiss authorities have arrested a former commander of a Liberian rebel military faction who is accused of ordering civilian massacres, rapes and other atrocities in northern Liberia during the nation’s first civil war from 1989 to 1996
EX-WIFE OF CHARLES TAYLOR CHARGED WITH TORTURE, ARRESTED IN LONDON
Immediate Press Release
Today the Metropolitan Police Service charged Agnes Taylor with torture for her alleged involvement with atrocities committed by Charles Taylor’s rebel group, the National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL), during the first Liberian Civil War.
Charles Taylor, who brought civil war to Liberia with the NPFL’s invasion in 1989 and who was President of Liberia from 1997-2003, was convicted by the Special Court for Sierra Leone in 2012 for planning, aiding and abetting the commission by the rebels of the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) of crimes such as acts of terrorism, murder and rape in Sierra Leone. He is currently serving a 50-year sentence.
Charles Taylor, however, has never been held accountable for his crimes committed in Liberia because the Liberian authorities have made no effort to investigate and prosecute crimes committed over a decade of civil war that claimed well over 150 000 lives, most of whom were civilians.
This landmark case marks the second time someone formerly associated with the NPFL has been charged with crimes committed during Liberia’s civil wars. The first case involved NPFL front line Commander Martina Johnson who was arrested in Belgium in September 2014 for her alleged role in wartime atrocities.
The Geneva-based organization Civitas Maxima and the Monrovia-based Global Justice and Research Project (GJRP) provided the initial information to the UK authorities, which led to the Metropolitan Police Service commencing an investigation.
As partner organizations, Civitas Maxima and the GJRP document alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity committed during the Liberian civil wars and represent victims in their pursuit of justice.
This the fourth time since 2014 that the collaborative work between Civitas Maxima and its partners in Africa – GJRP in Liberia and the Centre of Accountability and Rule of Law (CARL) in Sierra Leone – has led to information being passed to European authorities resulting in the arrest of an alleged perpetrator of international crimes, with the first three arrests occurring in Switzerland and Belgium and the fourth now in the United Kingdom.
To find out more about Civitas Maxima please visit
“You Don’t Forget Your Torturers”: Wachira Waheire’s 30-Year Quest for Justice in KenyaIn 1986, Wachira Waheire was whisked off the street, taken to Kenya’s most infamous torture chamber, and sentenced to four years in prison. Over the next 30 years, his quest for justice led him to meetings with his torturers to courtroom showdowns with the country’s Attorney General. Discover his ongoing struggle for truth, acknowledgement, and reparations alongside all survivors of abuse in Kenya.
“Left Behind”: Young Photographers Capture Marginalization in TunisiaOngoing economic and social inequality, a legacy of the dictatorship, affects Tunisians across generations, but has particularly pronounced impacts on young people. ICTJ worked with four young photographers to confront the consequences of marginalization and explore its impacts on Tunisian youth. Their four photo galleries comprise the exhibition “Marginalization in Tunisia: Images of an Invisible Repression.”
The Bumpy Road to Peace and Accountability: Transitional Justice in the African Great Lakes RegionIn Africa’s Great Lakes region, countries face common challenges like bad governance, inequitable distribution of natural resources, and ethnic divisions. As nations like Burundi, Central African Republic and South Sudan work towards peacebuilding and accountability, they should learn from what has worked and what has not in neighboring countries, writes Sarah Kihika Kasande, ICTJ’s Head of Office in Uganda.
