Latest News and Events
Published June 18th, 2013 by Raphaelle Rafin
Laszlo Csatary, another name on the Simon Wiesenthal Center List of Most Wanted Nazi War Criminals, has been charged by a Hungarian court for his participation in Nazi war crimes. Laszlo Csatary, 98, is accused of having overseen deportations of Jews to the Auschwitz death camp while serving in the Kosice police. After Kosice, then called Kassa, was annexed by Hungary in 1938, laws drastically restricting the rights of Jews were implemented. A ghetto was established in 1944, with trains living to Auschwitz. 70 percent of Kassa’s Jewry was murdered.
The indictment accuses Mr Csatary of torturing and murdering 15,700 Jews during World War II – partly as a culprit, partly as an accomplice. “With his actions, Laszlo Csatary… deliberately provided help to the unlawful executions and torture committed against Jews deported to concentration camps… from Kosice,” the prosecutors’ statement said.
Shortly after the war, Mr. Csatary fled to Canada as a refugee, where he spent nearly fifty years in Toronto. In 1948, a Czechoslovakian court sentenced him in absentia to death for torturing Jews. He disappeared in 1997 after being stripped of his Canadian citizenship. With help from the Simon Wiesenthal Center and from Operation Last Chance, reporters from the Sun’s newspaper tracked him down to a two-bedroom apartment in a smart district of Budapest, Hungary.
Anti-facist protesters and journalists have been celebrating the news and are besieging Laszlo Csatary’s Budapest apartment. Efraim Zuroff, director of the Wiesenthal Centre, welcomed the arrest of Mr. Csatary: “[Mr. Csatary] was known to be a sadist, he had a determination to round all Jews up and forcibly deport them to Poland. To achieve justice against this man will bring a degree of closure for families of the victims, for the Jewish communities of Hungary and Slovakia.” But controversy surrounds the exact role of Laszlo Csatary and the timing of the trial. The evidence is thin and his responsibility questionable. Laszlo Karsai, Hungary’s pre-eminent Holocaust historian, himself the son of a Holocaust survivor declared “Csatary was a small fish. I could name 2,000 people responsible for worse crimes than he was. The money spent hunting down people like him would be better spent fighting the propaganda of those who so energetically deny the Holocaust today.”
Mr. Csatary is also charged in Slovakia. He denies all allegations against him. His Hungarian trial is expected to start within three months.
Published June 18th, 2013 by Raphaelle Rafin
Doughty Street Chambers has published its latest “Human Rights Bulletin”, summarizing key human rights decisions in UK courts as well as in European courts and internationally. The bulletin was prepared by pupils at Doughty Street Chambers Graeme Hall, Sam Jacobs and Tim Cooke-Hurl. It is available here.
Published June 16th, 2013 by Julien Maton
The Antonio Cassese Initiative is very grateful to have received an una tantum donation from the ‘Stichting Praemium Erasmianum’.
This foundation aims to strengthen the position of the humanities, the social sciences and the arts. Every year the foundation awards the Erasmus Prize, intended for persons or institutions that have made an exceptional contribution to culture in Europe. In 2009, Antonio Cassese received the Erasmus Prize for his significant contribution to the development of a universal system of law and for motivating a great number of student and collaborators in his function as judge, scholar, teacher and critic. Therefore, to continue his legacy, the Initiative has decided to use the donation to motivate students and young professionals to take part in the development of international law by writing a paper on new perspectives in international criminal law.
Oxford University Press has kindly accepted to contribute to the Prize with a donation in books.
Requirements:
All students and young professionals under the age of 30 (date of birth after the 1st of July 1983) are invited to hand in an abstract on a subject dealing with new perspectives in international criminal law. The abstract should be submitted by the 1st of July 2013 and should be limited to 400 words.
Abstracts can be sent to: contact@cassese-initiative.org indicating your name, address, phone number, e-mail, date of birth and your educational and/or professional background.
For more information about the Prize and the call for papers, please click here.
Published June 14th, 2013 by Julien Maton
Judge Frederik Harhoff
Yesterday, a Danish newspaper revealed that Frederik Harhoff, Danish judge at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), sent a letter, in which he alleged that the American President of the Tribunal, Judge Theodor Meron, pressured other judges to approve the recent acquittals of top military leaders, namely Ante Gotovina, Momčilo Perišić, Jovica Stanišić and Franko Simatović.
Judge Harhoff’s letter, dated June 6, was e-mailed to 56 people, including several lawyers. The newspaper did not say how it obtained a copy.
Harhoff pointed out that the tribunal had set up a fairly firm legal practice, which allowed for the conviction of military or political leaders with respect to crimes of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity, if such persons had associated themselves with or in some manner helped to make these crimes possible.
But this “just” practice is now changing, thinks Harhoff, making reference to the above-mentioned acquittals and the alleged pressure that the President Meron would have put on judges.
“It would seem that the military establishment in leading states such as Israel and the US felt that the tribunal was getting too close to the military commanders’ responsibilities […] The Court was heading too far in the direction of commanding officers being held responsible for every crime their subordinates committed”, wrote Judge Harhoff. (more…)
Published June 12th, 2013 by Julien Maton
The Jordanian parliament has approved a treaty with the United Kingdom designed to trigger the deportation of radical cleric Abu Qatada.
The agreement has been approved by both houses of the Jordanian parliament but must still be signed off by the country’s King Abdullah. It is expected to be ratified by the British parliament by June 21.
The British Government has been trying to deport Qatada to Jordan, where he was convicted of terror charges in his absence in 1999.
Abu Qatada has fought against deportation from the UK for almost eight years. He has argued he would face inhumane treatment and that he could not get a fair trial.
Last month, Qatada unexpectedly volunteered to leave the United Kingdom as soon as the treaty between the UK and Jordan is ratified by both countries.
Khalil Attieh, the Jordanian parliament’s deputy house speaker, said: “Parliament on Tuesday approved a treaty with Britain to help Jordan extradite suspects from Britain. […] The agreement does not specifically mention Abu Qatada but it includes him and others.”
The European court of human rights and British courts have both ruled that it would amount to a “flagrant denial of justice” if Qatada had been sent to Jordan without assurances that he would not face a trial based on evidence obtained by torture.
The treaty states that anyone deported from the UK must be treated humanely and be given a fair trial. It includes specific guarantees designed to ban the use of torture evidence.
Published June 7th, 2013 by Raphaelle Rafin
Workers from the National Democratic Institute NGO wait as Egyptian police raid their Cairo offices in December. Photograph: Mohammed Asad/AP
On 4 June 2013, the Cairo Criminal Court convicted 43 NGO workers, including Americans, Europeans, Egyptians and other Arabs, for working at unregistered non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in Egypt and receiving illegal foreign funding. 27 of the defendants, including 15 Americans, were sentenced in absentia to five years imprisonment. 11 Egyptians who faced lesser charges were handed one-year suspended sentences. The court also ordered the closure of five international NGOs operating in Egypt: Freedom House, the International Republican Institute, the National Democratic Institute, the International Center For Journalists, and the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung.
The judgment is based on a provision of the penal code which dates back to the Mubarak era and that is for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCHR) “vaguely worded and has often been interpreted in ways that have led to severe limitations of the right to freedom of association.”
Technically, international NGOs addressed formal applications to operate in the country. As the Egyptian authorities never granted the authorizations, the NGOs were forced to operate in a legal limbo: without official approval but without any official rejection of their requests.
The Egyptian authorities began the crackdown against international NGOs in July 2011 during the country’s military rule. But the situation of international NGOs did not improve under President Morsi’s mandate: the Shura Council is currently discussing a new law which imposes severe restrictions on the registration and activities of civil society in Egypt and gives the government the power to restrict funding of organizations operating in the country.
Many voices were raised against the verdict. Aside from the UNHCHR, Amnesty International has called on Egyptian authorities to overturn the conviction. “The verdict appears to be intended to deal a deadly blow to civil society in Egypt,” said Philip Luther, Director of Amnesty International’s Middle East and North Africa Programme. “The Egyptian authorities must act now to protect independent civil society in Egypt and respect their commitment to human rights. This ruling sends a message that the Egyptian authorities continue to view NGOs with suspicion because of their work addressing and exposing human rights violations.”
As the verdict concerns German and American NGOs, both States have expressed their concerns about the judgment. While German Chancellor Angela Merkel acknowledged the judgment “with great dismay”, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry harshly criticized the decision, calling it “incompatible with the transition to democracy” and expressing its disappointment as the Egyptian government violates its commitment to support civil society.
The NGOs plan to challenge the verdict.
Published June 6th, 2013 by Julien Maton
The Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia
Today, the Defence Team for a named suspect in Case 004 at the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), issued the following press statement. The Defence Lawyers ask the Co-Investigating Judges to ensure equality of treatment of the parties in Case 004:
“The Co-Lawyers for a named suspect in Case 004 at the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (the suspect’s name remains confidential during the ongoing investigation) call on the Co-Investigating Judges to move immediately to ensure the fair trial rights of our client and to guarantee equality of treatment with other parties in Case 004 by granting the suspect immediate access to the case file.
ECCC law explicitly guarantees all parties to proceedings the right to access the case file at all times. Yet one year after our client selected Mom Luch and Richard Rogers as national and international lawyer and over seven months since Göran Sluiter was selected as the second international lawyer, the case proceeds against our client without access being granted to the case file. The suspect stands accused of crimes without being provided any information as to the nature and cause of these allegations.
The treatment of the suspect stands in stark contrast to the treatment of civil parties in Case 004. In April 2013, Co-Investigating Judge Mark Harmon issued a decision granting access to the case file to twenty civil party lawyers. In this decision, Judge Harmon held that “recognised lawyers have the right to examine and make copies of the original case file of the judicial investigation to which their client is a party”. However, in a decision on 17 May 2013, in which Judge Harmon recognised Mom Luch and Göran Sluiter as lawyers for the suspect, he neglected to grant access to the case file. This omission is particularly perplexing given the explicit nature of ECCC law guaranteeing access to the case file and given Judge Harmon’s own ruling that recognised lawyers have the right to access.
The disparity in treatment of the suspect and the civil parties is in violation of the suspect’s rights guaranteeing fairness in proceedings and a balance of rights between the parties – namely the prosecution, the civil parties and the defence. The situation as it stands now entails a hierarchy of rights at the ECCC whereby the rights of the suspect are subordinate to those of the prosecution and the civil parties. In order to uphold the fair trial rights of the suspect, the Co-Investigating Judges must grant the defence immediate access to the case file. A failure to do so will undermine the integrity of the entire proceedings in Case 004.
Furthermore, given the responsibility of prosecutors in international and internationalised tribunals to ensure equality and fairness of proceedings, the co-lawyers call upon the Co-Prosecutors to express a view on the matter of equal access to the case file.”
If you wish further information, please contact Göran Sluiter via email at gsluiter@bohler.eu
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Latest Analysis
Published June 10th, 2013 by Julien Maton
by Wayne Jordash and Scott Martin
The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia
On 2 June 2013, an Op-Ed in the New York Times discussed the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (‘ICTY’) and its purportedly damaged legacy. The catalyst for this contribution was recent acquittals at the ICTY, latterly in the case of Prosecutor v. Stanišić & Simatović. As counsel for Mr. Stanišić, we read with interest the emotive views expressed in response to the acquittal and the concerns advanced by this contributor and others concerning what the acquittal meant, not just for the ICTY, but also for international criminal justice as a whole.
In this Op-Ed, the author challenged the institutional integrity of the ICTY on the basis of a handful of trial and appellate (acquittal) judgments over the past year. He wrote that these judgments have set too high a standard for conviction, one that fails to “bring justice to the victims, peace to the region, and a measure of truth to the story”. While unclear what the author considers is the right legal threshold (the author appeared to argue for a conviction in the case of Prosecutor v. Stanišić on the basis of a mode of criminal liability (superior responsibility) that was not even alleged and, in the latest contribution, that associating with perpetrators of crimes is the same as committing crimes), we respectfully disagree with the premise underlying the piece – that acquittals must be based on an erroneous approach to the law and are bad for the business of international justice. (more…)
Published June 2nd, 2013 by Julien Maton
by Christian Axboe Nielsen
In my previous article on this blog, I argued that both international criminal justice and the international public would benefit if the ICC and other international criminal courts and tribunals had an office of the historian. While writing that article, I began to wonder whether it might not also be advisable for there to be a Freedom of Information Act for international criminal justice institutions. After all, it is in many, if not most, cases easier to obtain documents from governments in Western Europe and North America than it is to do so from international organizations. Transparency is one of the hallmarks of the judicial process in the modern world, and international criminal courts and tribunals are in principle committed to openness in court proceedings. Yet in practice, they often fall far short of this goal.
Part of the problem begins already at the investigative stage. Eager – and sometimes desperate – to get an investigation going, the Office of the Prosecutor (OTP) sometimes agrees to accept large collections of information under conditions of confidentiality and restricted use. During the early years of the ICTY, national governments, nongovernmental organizations and international organizations provided vast quantities of documentation to the Tribunal under Rule 70 – “Matters Not Subject to Disclosure.” Although the drafters of Rule 70 must surely have envisaged its use for sensitive intelligence or other confidential material used only for lead purposes, it quickly became apparent that some of the generous providers of information to the ICTY provided information subject to Rule 70 by default. Much of this material should never have been confidential in the first place but now risks remaining so.
Perhaps the best example of this were the thousands of pages of digests of Yugoslav media reports provided by the US government from its Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS). Now (somewhat ironically) renamed the Open Source Center, the collections of translated Yugoslav media reports were invaluable to the nascent Tribunal – but the information they contained was anything but confidential. All of these reports had previously been freely transmitted by various media outlets in Yugoslavia. Nevertheless, the entire collection of FBIS material was provided subject to Rule 70. Only in its latter years did the ICTY become somewhat more assertive and selective in its willingness to accept documents under Rule 70. (more…)
Published May 26th, 2013 by Julien Maton
by Wayne Jordash, Scott Martin and David Martini
On 17 April 2013, the Supreme Court of the United States (“Supreme Court” or “Court”) issued its long awaited Kiobel opinion. In a 9-0 ruling, the Alien Tort Statute, 28 U.S.C. § 1350 (“ATS”) was narrowly construed to limit the extraterritorial reach of US federal courts. Human rights activists fear the decision closes the door on a variety of cases that could have relied upon the ATS to access US federal courts in obtaining civil remedies against multinational corporations operating overseas.
However, this opinion needs to be carefully scrutinised before gloomy predications about the future might be allowed full vent. Whilst the Court was clear that the presumption against extraterritorial application applies to the ATS, the decision still “leave[s] open a number of significant questions regarding the reach and interpretation of the Alien Tort Statute”.[1] According to the reasoning of Court, there may still be room for human rights litigation if the interests “touch and concern” the US with “sufficient force”.[2] Justice Breyer’s concurring opinion, although only persuasive, reinforced this potential, noting that the ATS may apply where American interests are “substantially and adversely affected”.[3]
Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum Co. was a class action lawsuit brought by Esther Kiobel, a Nigerian national, and other Nigerian nationals residing in the US (“Petitioners”) against Royal Dutch Petroleum, a foreign corporation, and its subsidiaries (“Respondents”) for alleged violations in Nigeria under the ATS. The Petitioners were claiming health, environmental and other human rights violations within Nigeria arising from the Respondents’ oil exploration activities. The Petitioners accepted that the Federal Republic of Nigeria (“Nigerian Government”) was responsible for the exploration and development rights, but alleged that the Respondents colluded with the Nigerian Government in the use of military force upon protesters, including beating, raping, arresting and killing residents and destroying or looting their property. Accordingly, it was alleged that the Respondents aided and abetted the Nigerian Government, particularly its military, in violation of the Petitioners’ human rights, including through the commission of crimes against humanity: extrajudicial killings; torture and cruel treatment; arbitrary arrest and detention; violations of the rights to life, liberty, security and association; forced exile; and the destruction of property. (more…)
Published May 4th, 2013 by Julien Maton
by Jennifer Holligan & Vani Sathisan*
An Internationalised Cambodian Court
The Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia
Between 1975 and 1979, the ultra-Maoist Khmer Rouge forcibly evacuated Cambodia’s urban centres and enslaved the population in rural cooperatives that were designed to transform the nation into an agrarian society. To this end, the regime separated families, prohibited religion, shut down educational institutions, abolished all human rights, and adopted policies to eliminate intellectuals and ethnic and religious groups, such as the Vietnamese, Khmer Krom, and Cham minorities. These policies resulted in the execution and death of almost a quarter of the population.
By an Agreement between the Royal Government of Cambodia and the United Nations, the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) was established in 2003 as an internationalised tribunal to hold perpetrators of the Khmer Rouge regime accountable. The ECCC has jurisdiction over certain crimes set out in its National Penal Code such as murder, religious persecution and torture, as well international crimes of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.
These crimes are included in the Closing Order and Indictment against the defendants in ‘Case 002’, which charge former senior leaders of the regime for their involvement in the atrocities. However, the trial proceedings for this case – commonly referred to as first mini trial ‘002/01’ – and related judicial decisions have fallen short of victims’ expectations in several respects.
Impossible to Make Case 002 ‘Representative’?
22 September 2011 Severance Order
Since the beginning of the current trial proceedings, which many feel may be the first and last mini trial for Case 002, its scope has been arbitrarily limited by a decision issued by the Trial Chamber (“Severance Order”) on 22 September 2011. This Severance Order has profoundly limited the evidence put forward by witnesses and civil parties at trial. (more…)
Published April 30th, 2013 by Julien Maton
by David Tolbert
The Constitution Project’s bipartisan Task Force on Detainee Treatment has found that the United States government engaged in the widespread use of torture against suspects detained during the “War on Terror.” Its 577-page report documents widespread abuses against detainees, including prolonged, arbitrary detention; physical and sexual abuse; enforced disappearance by way of secret transfer to undisclosed locations (“extraordinary rendition”); and other cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment or torture.
The independent panel of distinguished legal and security experts, former members of Congress, academics, and diplomats concluded that there had never before been “the kind of considered and detailed discussions that occurred after September 11, directly involving a president and his top advisers on the wisdom, propriety and legality of inflicting pain and torment on some detainees in our custody.” And yet, “despite this extraordinary aspect, the Obama administration declined, as a matter of policy, to undertake or commission an official study of what happened, saying it was unproductive to ‘look backwards’ rather than forward.”
This posture, if maintained, runs contrary to the US government’s repeated assertions of its commitment to human rights as well as its obligations under law, including as a signatory of the United Nations Convention against Torture. To regain its creditability in the eyes of the world, the government must take steps to acknowledge and address past violations and provide redress to victims of US-sanctioned abuses. This is the minimum that international law demands. Decades of American discourse in support of human rights ring hollow in the silence of US inaction on these abuses.
The International Center for Transitional justice, through its Accountability Project, and other human rights groups have consistently advocated for an official inquiry into allegations of US-sanctioned torture. Senator Patrick J. Leahy, of Vermont, proposed the establishment of a truth commission to examine allegations of detainee abuse following the September 11 attacks as far back as February 2009; but Congress, shamefully, has failed to act. (more…)
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The indictment accuses Mr Csatary of torturing and murdering 15,700 Jews during World War II – partly as a culprit, partly as an accomplice. “With his actions, Laszlo Csatary… deliberately provided help to the unlawful executions and torture committed against Jews deported to concentration camps… from Kosice,” the prosecutors’ statement said.
