Author Archives: Eléonore Coeuret

Ethiopia: After Years on the Run, Eshetu Alemu Will Face Trial

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Door-to-door searches by Red Terror Troops to hunt down opposition members

After years on the run to evade justice, a member of former Ethiopian ruler Mengistu Haile Mariam’s Government faces trial for his role in the 1970s genocide in the country.

Eshetu Alemu’s trial began in The Hague on 21 November 2016.

Eshetu Alemu is brought to trial for war crimes committed in Ethiopia during the Mengistu era in Gojjam Province. This case is the result of a year-long investigation. Even if Ethiopia has requested extradition there is no treaty to that effect.

Eshetu Alemu has Ethiopian origin but also holds the Dutch nationality. He was serving as a member of the Provisional Military Administrative Council during the reign of the Derg, the Coordinating Committee of the Armed Forces, Police, and Territorial Army that ruled Ethiopia from 1974 to 1987 and which elected Mengistu Haile Mariam’s as its chairman.

He has already been convicted and sentenced to death in absentia in Ethiopia on December 12, 2006 by the Derg-Tribunal in its 12 years ‘Red Terror’ trials, during which former President Mengistu was also convicted for genocide. Eshetu Alemu was among the dozens of the dreaded council’s members who fled into exile. Continue reading →

No Trial for Michel Desaedeleer

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Diamond miners working, May 15, 2003, in a diamond mine outside Freetown, Sierra Leone ©Getty

Michel Desaedeleer died on September 28th in a Belgian prison. He was accused of being involved in the trade of « blood diamond » in Sierra Leone. He was arrested in Spain in August 2015 due to allegations that he committed a war crime, more precisly the inhuman and degrading treatment of people through his participation in the blood diamond trade with the former Liberian President Charles Taylor and the Revolutionary United Front (rebel group in Sierra Leone involved in the country’s civil war from 1991 until 2002).

There will be no trial for Michel Desaedeleer, even if it was supposed to take place in a near future. The international jurisprudence will thus not see its first trial dealing with crimes allegedly committed in furtherance of natural resource trade. Indeed, Desaedeleer was the first businessman arrested on international charges of pillaging blood diamonds and enslaving civilians and hailed the case as a landmark. As Alain Werner, the Director of Civitas Maxima said in 2015: “This is a landmark case, the first of its kind, and it will help to raise awareness of the pivotal role played by financial actors in the trade of mineral resources that fuel armed conflicts in Africa and elsewhere”.

The case was built against him by Luc Walleyn, lawyer in Brussels, Civitas Maxima in Gevena and the CARL (Center for Accountability and the Rule of Law). The work accomplished until now will still be usefull as the arrest of Michel Desaedeleer, his imprisonment and the beginning of the judicial process represent a victory for the victims who were enslaved.

African Union Approves Regional Force in South Sudan

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4. Ilawyer Image - African Union Approves Regional Force in South SudanSouth Sudan conflict was one of the main concerns of the last African Union (AU) Summit held in Kigali (Rwanda) on 17 and 18 July 2016, where the African leaders made it official that they were willing to deploy troops in South Sudan.

UN chief Ban Ki-moon expressed his support for the AU deployment.

South Sudan just emerged from the 2013-2015 civil war which displaced 2.2 million people. Notwithstanding, the recent fighting between rival forces which left hundreds of people dead jeopardizes the Peace Deal signed in August 2015.

Even if a 12 000-strong UN peacekeeping force is already in South Sudan, the African leaders want to put into order a stronger mandate. According to Smail Chergui, the AU Peace and Security Commissioner, “the UN doesn’t have the mandate to impose peace“.

The details on the force are not agreed yet, but it will involve soldiers coming from Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Sudan and Uganda and the model used will probably be similar to the intervention deployed within the UN’s mission in Democratic Republic of Congo held in 2013. Smail Chergui explained that “African troops are ready to engage in very difficult situations“.

The Kosovo Peacekeeping Mission, a “Total Failure”?

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On Wednesday, 13 July, the Human Rights Advisory Panel submitted a report about the United Nation Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK). In this report, the Panel, whose role is to issue recommendations to the UNMIK, described the Kosovo peacekeeping mission as a “total failure”.

The report strongly criticizes the UNMIK’s handling of civilian grievances in Kosovo, including its failures to investigate disappearances and killings as well as negligence in the mass poisoning of hundreds of displaced Roma which were left in squalid United Nations camps built on land contaminated with lead.

According to the panel, “now that the Panel has concluded its mandate, putting an end to an eight-year process of issuing admissibility decisions, opinions, and recommendations, the Panel is forced to proclaim this process a total failure”.

This conclusion is a source of embarrassment for the United Nations, which regularly assails governments for a lack of accountability and defends victims whose human rights have been violated in conflict zones around the world.

The Panel ends its report  apologizing « profusely to the complainants for its role in this sham ».

The United Nations Peacekeeping Department, which oversees UNMIK, said that UNMIK « values the work of its advisory panel » but emphasizes the fact that the Panel is not a Tribunal.

UNMIK officials had no immediate comment on the report.

German Jihadist Convicted of War Crime

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2. Ilawyer photo - German Jihadist Guilty of War Crime

© Torsten Silz/AFP

The Oberlandesgericht Frankfurt am Main, a Frankfurt Regional Court, has convicted Aria Ladjedvardi, a 21-year-old German Jihadist with Iranian roots, of two years in prison for committing a war crime for appearing in a set of photos with severed heads of Syrian army servicemen in Syria.

Indeed, between March 8 and April 16, 2014, a group of fighters attacked a checkpoint in the Idlib Province. According to the statement read by the court this Tuesday, they captured, beheaded and impaled the heads of two soldiers on spikes before putting them on public display.

The defendant posed with the heads of those soldiers in three photos found in his mother’s mobile phone, one of which was shared on the social network Facebook.

The Regional Court emphasized Mr Ladjevardi’s inacceptable behavior and held a violation of international humanitarian law for treating the two Syrian army soldiers “in a degrading and humiliating manner”.

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A Step Closer to Having the Crime of Agression under the ICC Jurisdiction

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1. ilawyer photo - Palestine 30th ratification of the Kampala Amendment… A Step closer to having crime of aggression jurisdiction activated before the ICC

On 26 June 2016, Palestine ratified the amendments to the Rome Statute on the crime of aggression.

By this ratification, Palestine deposited the thirtieth instrument of ratification which opened the possibility of giving jurisdiction to the International Criminal Court (“ICC”) to try the crime of aggression.

Indeed, the provisions of articles 15 bis and ter of the Rome Statute provide that the ICC will not be able to exercise its jurisdiction over this crime until at least thirty States Parties have ratified or accepted the amendments; and a decision is taken by two–thirds of States Parties to activate the jurisdiction at any time after 1 January 2017.  Continue reading →