By Alexandra Sandacz Impunity Watch Reporter, Europe
MOSCOW, Russia – The Russian Interior Ministry recently announced their intent to seek an arrest warrant for Bill Browder, CEO of Hermitage Capital Management. The arrest warrant regards charges of “stealing” energy company, Gazprom, shares a decade ago and “interfering” in Gazprom’s policies.
However, this case has no legal basis because there were never any criminal sanctions for owning Gazprom shares.
Browder, who once led the biggest foreign investment fund in Russia, quarrels with the Russian government amidst his campaign to blacklist Russian officials involved in the death of Hermitage lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky.
Jamison Firestone, Magnitsky’s former boss and a close associate of Browder in lobbying for the blacklists, stated, “This is a pure vendetta and everyone knows it. If it was really illegal to buy Gazprom, every Western hedge fund manager in Moscow would already be on the way to the airport.”
Another Hermitage Capital representative said, “The retroactive and arbitrary application to one market participant of a criminal standard in relation to a practice that is considered lawful for all other market participants is the hallmark of a politically-directed abuse of justice in this case.”
Furthermore, “President Putin treats the law and the truth like a child in a sandbox. There are no rules. There is no law, and he thinks he can do whatever he wants. This may be true in Russia, but it is not true elsewhere in the world.”
The Interior Ministry affirmed that if Browder’s arrest is endorsed, he will subsequently be placed on the international wanted list.
The Interior Ministry continued, “As the accused Browder is evading arriving for investigative procedures, even though he has been notified about this necessity using various methods, the investigation has filed a request with a court on considering his arrest in absentia as a pretrial restrictive measure. If a court grants this request, the mechanism of declaring Browder internationally wanted will be launched.”
Hermitage Capital Management stated that the warrant “follows a coordinated Russian state propaganda campaign in the last three months, where all Kremlin-controlled TV channels, including NTV, Rossiya, and 1TV ran slanderous programs accusing Mr. Browder of murders, stealing IMF money in 1998, causing the Russian default, stealing Gazprom shares, and being a UK spy.”
Nevertheless, the Moscow court refused to issue the warrant because Mr. Browder was not given enough warning about the proceeding. The Russian Criminal Procedure Code states that arrests cannot be ordered for a person before he or she is declared internationally wanted.
The court will review the request again in a week.
This will be the second known case of an ‘in absentia arrest warrant’ concerning a Westerner in Russia.
By Madeline Schiesser Impunity Watch Reporter, Europe
THE HAGUE, Netherlands – In May, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) will mark its 20th anniversary. During two decades, the tribunal issued indictments against 161 persons for crimes committed against tens of thousands of victims in the former Yugoslavia. However, as this benchmark approaches, activists and diplomats alike reflect on the achievements and limitations of the ICTY.
The ICTY left a lasting impression on international law, and thanks to its legacy, the question is no longer if leaders should be held accountable, but rather when. (Photo Courtesy of the Friedrich Naumann Foundation)
Created by UN Security Council resolution in May 1993, the ICTY was the first international court since the Nuremberg and Tokyo war crimes trials at the end of World War II.
Since then, the court has now begun to wind down, with only three cases left on its docket, and no new indictments since 2004. Its most recent high profile indictee, Former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, died in 2006 in custody before a verdict was reached.
A look back at the ICTY has been sparked by a controversial debate on the ICTY held by the U.N. General Assembly earlier this month after former Serbian Foreign Minister Vuk Jeremic, currently president of the General Assembly, called for the debate. The discussions, characterized as one-sided, prompted a walkout by the U.S. delegation, while senior Serbian officials used the debate to bring allegations that the court was essentially an “inquisition” directed against Serbia.
Jeremic said in opening the session, “The paramount question is how international criminal justice can help reconcile former adversaries in post-conflict, transitioning societies”
However, Judge Theodor Meron, president of the ICTY, had previously criticized the planed debate, saying it “pose[d] questions in terms of fundamental respect for the rule of law,” and that “It is not a [debate] in which my participation would make any significant contribution to the norms which I hold dear.”
The ICTY was also criticized in November, when it acquitted on appeal Croatian ex-Generals Ante Gotovina and Mladen Markač, who had been sentenced to jail for significantly contributing to a Joint Criminal Enterprise through their roles in a 1995 offensive to drive Serbian rebels out of the Krajina region with unlawful artillery attacks on four towns. However, the appeals chamber found the evidence insufficient to show the artillery attacks were unlawful and therefore overturned the convictions and ordered the men’s release, prompting angry reactions.
Richard Dicker, director of the International Justice Program at Human Rights Watch, explains the desirability of reviewing the ICTY to set the record straight: “There’s a need for a review because we are approaching the 20th anniversary of the establishment of the tribunal,” he says. “It’s essential and responsible to do a careful, thoughtful, critical review. Everyone who is committed to bringing justice for these crimes — to seeing victims get redress — wants the system to work better.”
One of the main criticisms of the court has been the slow proceedings. Dicker suggests future war crimes trials should look into issues of expediency while still respecting the rights of the accused to a fair trial. Phillippe Sands, a professor of law at University College London and a lawyer involved in the international courts, says the ICTY’s early delays reflected that the court was in “new, untried, untested waters.” “There is a broad recognition that in some of the cases, the initial charges — both in terms of investigation and actual prosecution — were probably too great, too large, which meant that the trials ran on. The judges reacted, and I think they sent certainly signals to the prosecutor’s office to be more narrowly focused,” Sands explains.
Another criticism has been the handling of evidence and lengthy testimony by the court. For example, in the Milosevic case, the defense was permitted to call an enormous number of witnesses, dragging the trial out for years prior to Milosevic’s death.
The ICTY also needed to merge criminal doctrine from divergent legal systems. “For example, the treatment of evidence is very different in the civil-law countries like France, or Italy, or Germany on the one hand, than it is in a common-law country like the United Kingdom, or the United States, or South Africa, or India. So you’ve got a sort of coming together that inevitably slows things down,” Sands said.
It also took time for the ICTY to truly appreciate the needs of justice and reconciliation of the victims and diverse peoples of the Balkans. Dicker explained that, “The tribunal did not have an outreach program until close to the year 2000. That effort to explain what it was doing was never funded out of the UN budget, but in fact, was funded by voluntary contributions from states and private individuals.” And although there were high hopes that the court would foster reconciliation, Geraldine Mattioli-Zeltener, the advocacy director in the International Justice Program of Human Rights Watch concedes that “Reconciliation is a very tall order for a court of justice.” Unfortunately, rulings by the ICTY may have created more fractioning between the Serbs, Bosnians, Croatians, and Kosovar Albanians than reconciliation.
Interestingly, an area in which the ICTY showed success was in overcoming the language barrier— often one of international law’s greatest difficulties. Translation in the ICTY remains faster than in the newer International Criminal Court, whose language must change with each case, because the ICTY mostly works in three languages: French and English—the two working languages of the United Nations—and “BCS”— Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian. (Note, when addressing crimes committed in Kosovo and Macedonia, the court temporarily will also work in Albanian and Macedonian.). Although the internal politics of the “BCS” language are complex, its institution has allowed for high-quality, quick translations, at close to the speed of monolingual dialogue.
Prosecutors before the war crimes court also met the challenge of prosecuting a crime without the ability to investigate the crime scene. Senior Trial Attorney Peter McCloskey described how his office received assistance in this area from NATO and “crazy journalists” who had discovered mass graves on their own. Prosecutors also experienced difficulty during the wars in Bosnia and Herzegovina as well as Kosovo with a lack of available records. Nevertheless, in two decades, the court has managed to accumulate millions of pages of documents and thousands of witness statements and dossiers.
Despite the shortcomings that present themselves alongside the ICTY’s achievements, the tribunal has marked a significant milestone for international criminal law. As Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon stressed earlier this month in front of the U.N. General Assembly, “Impunity for war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide and other serious international crimes is no longer acceptable, nor is it tolerated. Where once [victims] might have gone unheard, left to suffer in silence, today they have a platform.” He further emphasized the sanctity of the Court’s rule of law: “It means implementing their decisions. And it means safeguarding them from those who seek to undermine them for reasons that may have more to do with politics than justice.”
By Ali Al-Bassam Impunity Watch Reporter, Middle East
DAMASCUS, Syria — On a day where the anniversary of the 1946 withdrawal of French troops was commemorated, President Bashar al-Assad issued general amnesty for crimes committed in Syria before April 16. Under the amnesty, those who fought for opposition forces will serve only a quarter of their original sentence if found guilty for war crimes.
President Assad’s decree replaces death sentences with a sentence of life imprisonment with hard labor. (Photo Courtesy of Raw Story)
The Syrian state-run newspaper, SANA, reported that “President Assad has issued decree number 23, granting a general amnesty for crimes committed before April 16, 2013.” The amnesty also replaces death sentences to life imprisonment with hard labor. Prisoners with advanced age or incurable diseases will be pardoned, and rebels who turn over their weapons will also be pardoned. The decree does not apply to those found guilty of smuggling weapons, or serving time for drug-related crimes.
While the decree grants a reduced sentence to rebel fighters, the decree itself refers to them as “terrorist groups,” since the Syrian government denies the existence of an uprising, and claims that it is suffering from terrorists attempting to carry out a foreign conspiracy. Recently, Assad said that Syria’s neighbors were to blame for inciting the revolt, and said that they will pay a “heavy price.” In an interview with a Turkish television station, Assad warned viewers of a possible spillover from the conflict in Syria into neighboring countries, and predicted that it “will have an immediate domino effect that will reach countries across the Middle East.”
Assad made similar promises before during the two-year war, and even offered pardons for those “convicted of acts against the state.”
Activists and opposition forces balked at the decree, calling it “political theater,” and said that many dissidents still remain in Syrian prisons. They also believe that the decree does not go far enough. Moaz Alkhatib, Syria’s opposition leader, made his skepticism known in a Facebook post. “We want an amnesty on crimes and the release of all innocents of which there are more than 160,000. Most importantly among them are the women and children. If this happens we will say it is a token of a Syrian solution,” said Alkhatib.
Even though the Syrian government refuses to disclose prisoner-related statistics, it is estimated that tens of thousands of prisoners, including thousands of political prisoners, are currently incarcerated.
Meanwhile, the number of casualties in Syria is on the rise as the conflict continues. The United Nations estimates that over 70,000 people have been killed in the two year period. Last March was also considered to be the bloodiest month of the entire conflict. The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that they recorded over 6,000 deaths within that period.
Also, the conflict itself has resulted in the displacement of over 1.3 million refugees to neighboring countries, while two million are displaced within Syria.
Yes, everybody loves Al-Qaeda, everybody spoils her and exploits her, no wonder she misbehaves. Western governments often use her as an excuse to intervene, or not, according to their particular calculations at the time, and dictatorial regimes use her as an additional instrument of control over their people, a tool for intimidation and punishment, as well as an affordable means to fight their internecine wars, or conduct their occasional campaigns against western interests. Today, Assad accused the U.S. of supporting Al-Qaeda in Syria, yet all intelligence reports from before the revolution claim that his regime is the biggest supporter of Al-Qaeda in the Levant. Some fiends are just too bloody useful not to be embraced, by all. The Assad regime itself had for long played a similar role to Al-Qaeda’s. Theirs was a mercenary state par excellence. Now, the chickens have come home to roost, but, the Assads have always had a vindictive streak, and they will not go gently into that good night. To the brainwashed lot and downright idiots who still believe in them, the Assads’ last stand will be viewed as heroic. It’s good that the age of such fucked-up heroism is finally drawing to a close. Unfortunately, Al-Qaeda will likely survive this apocalypse: she’s too fucking useful to be left to die.
Death Toll:157 martyrs, including 10 women and 7 children: 75 in Damascus and Suburbs most in Jdaidet Artouz; 38 in Homs; 12 in Idlib; 9 in Raqqa; 8 in Daraa; 7 in Deir Ezzor; 7 in Aleppo; and 1 in Hama (LCC).
News
Assad says West will pay for backing al Qaeda in Syria“The West has paid heavily for funding al Qaeda in its early stages in Afghanistan. Today it is supporting it in Syria, Libya and other places, and will pay a heavy price later in the heart of Europe and the United States,” he told Syrian television channel al-Ikhbariya, according to extracts published on the Syrian presidency’s Facebook page on Wednesday. Assad was speaking a week after Syria’s rebel al-Nusra Front, one of the most effective rebel forces battling his troops, formally pledged allegiance to al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahri.
Evidence of Nerve Gas in Aleppo DeathsDr. Hassan, the director of the hospital in Afrin who did not want his full name used, said he didn’t have evidence about who was responsible for the attack in Sheikh Maqsood or what kind of chemical was released. But he said the symptoms and treatment clearly indicate that chemical agents caused the deaths of a woman and two children, and injured more than a dozen people. Medical personnel involved refused to give their last names, citing fear of retaliation. Patients exhibited hyper-salivation, increased secretions, eye pain, muscle spasms and seizures, and loss of consciousness, Dr. Hassan said. Volunteers who helped rescue Yasser’s family and medical staff who came in contact with the victims all exhibited the same symptoms. Roughly 1,500 doses of atropine were used to counter the poison, exhausting the local supplies in Afrin. A group of Syrian doctors and activists who run Bihar Relief Organization provided an additional 2,000 units to the hospital in Afrin. The haphazard response portends catastrophe if chemicals weapons are used in a larger scale.
U.N. lists Syrian army and militias as sex predatorshe U.N. Security Council Wednesday accused Syria’s army and intelligence agency and a pro-government militia of being sexual war criminals for rape and assaults on women and children, along with the Al-Qaeda movement in Mali and various African rebel movements. The “name and shame” tally of alleged sexual predators and outlaws was in a report adopted unanimously by the U.N. Security Council as part of a debate on “Women in Peace and Security.” It was drafted by Zainab Hawa Bangura, the U.N. chief’s Special Representative for Sexual Violence in Conflict.
Israel hopes Turk deal defuses “friendly fire” risk over SyriaA continued diplomatic freeze might have been tolerable, Israeli officials said, but not the possibility of inadvertently trading fire with Turkey should the Syria crisis trigger major military intervention. Israel, Turkey and another Syrian neighbor, Jordan, have been conferring with Washington on contingency options should Damascus fall to a more than two-year-old insurgency and its chemical weapons be taken by jihadi rebels or Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Obama discusses Syria in talks with Abu Dhabi Crown PrinceThe president will also meet the leaders of Turkey, Qatar and Jordan in the coming weeks, as Syrian rebels renew their appeals for Washington to provide weapons and as President Bashar al-Assad battles for survival.
Syrians take up backyard refining of crude oilThe brothers get their raw material from the Deir al-Zor countryside, driving two and a half hours in their truck to purchase oil barrels from middlemen or those in control of the oil fields: local tribes and the jihadist Nusra Front. Nusra got involved in the oil business about six months ago, they say. “Nusra are operating in both lines, business and fighting,” Ahmad says. The group has been labeled a terrorist organization by the United States and its leader has pledged allegiance to Al-Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahri. But on the ground, Nusra has won respect from some locals for its fighting prowess, discipline and ability to organize daily life in rebel-held areas.
Special Reports
Life and death in Damascus’s shrinking Square of SecurityEvery Damascene today is just one or two degrees removed from the latest casualty. On a daily basis we hear the sonic booms and air raids of fighter jets, the shelling from government-mounted missile batteries stationed in the hills overlooking north Damascus, and rocket and mortar fire from rebels on the outskirts… Damascus today feels smaller and emptier, shrunk to the dozen or so districts under government control known collectively as the ‘Square of Security’. You can walk briskly from one end to the other in under two hours. As it shrinks, Damascenes with a dark sense of humor have taken to calling it the Triangle of Security. It includes the historic Old City, where the biblical Saint Paul walked on the Street Called Straight. All the city’s major commercial districts are also in the Square-turned-Triangle, including the ancient bazaar and contemporary shopping malls. It includes middle class districts, parliament, various ministries and intelligence branches. It is here that Assad and most government officials live. Assad’s forces are increasingly bringing artillery into the centre of this area, firing from the densely populated area towards the rebels outside.
The Flag of our ForefathersAcross every corner of Syria, at every protest, Free Syrian Army checkpoint and every liberated square you’ll find the red, white & green Revolutionary flag, standing tall – or more precisely, Syria’s Flag of Independence. Despite the Assad regime’s attempts to marginalize this flag by shamelessly slandering it as the “French” flag they cannot cover up that it has been an important part of Syria’s history and that every Syrian President from Muhammad Ali al-Abd of the Syrian Republic, to Shukri al-Quwatli, Adib Shishakli, Hashim Atassi to even Assad have stood before it.
Syrian opposition begins rewriting history in textbooks“The narrative is going to be written and rewritten many times as the course of this tragedy plays out,” said Amr Al-Azm, a Syrian dissident and professor of Middle East history at Shawnee State University in Ohio. “Right now they are just taking things out, but as time goes on they will start to rewrite the history books once we see who the victor is.”
The Shiite crescent eclipsed: a photo essayThe notion of a “Shiite crescent” stretching from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean has always been problematic, for a very simple reason. While there are millions of Shiites in Iraq and Lebanon, the swath of territory along the middle Euphrates in Iraq and Syria is entirely Sunni. Mindful of this vulnerability, Iran decided in the 1980s to raise the profile of Shiism in Syria, with the cooperation of the Syrian regime. The driver was the strategic relationship between Syria and Iran, dating back to Iran’s 1979 revolution. In support of this relationship, Iran and Syria collaborated to forge cultural and religious ties. Syria has only about 100,000 Twelver Shiites (of the same denomination as those in Iran, Iraq, and Lebanon). But the pillars of the Asad regime (above all, the Asads themselves) hail from the Alawite sect, two or three million strong, which in recent decades has presented itself as a variety of Shiite Islam. Against this background, Syria and Iran worked together to bolster Shiite influence in Syria, as part of a strategy to legitimate the Iran-Syria bond and the Shiite standing of the Alawites.
Syrian network for human rights documented 113 victims , Wednesday 17/4/2013 all across Syria, including 10 children, 9 ladies , 1 tortured to death , 34 armed rebels
