Focus on International Justice – April
Crimes against migrants
French NGOs have filed a criminal complaint against Fabrice Leggeri, the former director of the European border agency, Frontex, for complicity in crimes against humanity and torture. It is claimed that under Leggeri’s direction, the Mediterranean has become the deadliest migration route in the world, through a policy aimed at preventing, at all costs, the entry of migrants into the EU. An Italian court has dismissed all charges of aiding and abetting illegal immigration in the Iuventa case. Italian prosecutors had brought charges against refugee and human rights defenders and 3 NGOs, for their search and rescue missions in the Mediterranean Sea.
Less than a year ago, a fact-finding mission of the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva concluded that the European Union was responsible for complicity in the detention, murder, torture, rape and abduction of migrants. The mission’s report also concluded that: “the practices and patterns of gross violations continue unabated, and there is little evidence that significant steps are being taken to reverse this disturbing trajectory and offer relief to victims”.
Read more at: link 1, link 2 and link 3.
What else happened this month?
[Restorative justice and crimes of the past] – Brazil has issued its first-ever official apology for the persecution of Indigenous people during its military dictatorship. The President of the Brazilian Amnesty Commission, charged with investigating crimes committed under the dictatorship between 1964 and 1985, knelt before Djanira Krenak, an indigenous leader, to apologise on behalf of the Brazilian state.
On 2 April, the Colombian Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP) inaugurated its first restorative justice program. Former military officials, charged with over 6,000 extrajudicial killings under the ‘forced positives’ policy, began planting native trees in an area near Bogotá before groups of victims.
The European Court of Human Rights has condemned Romania for violating the human rights of victims of the Holocaust. In the 1990s, the 1950s convictions of 2 men charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity for the persecution of Romanian Jews in 1941 were overturned. The victims of these crimes found out about the acquittals only in 2016, by accident.
Read more at: link 1, link 2 and link 3.
[Liberia] War crimes court to be established – On 9 April, Liberia’s parliament voted to approve the establishment of a specialised war crimes court. As stated in the Senate resolution, the Liberian Truth and Reconciliation Committee recommended the establishment of an Extraordinary Criminal Court of Liberia, an international domestic court with authority to prosecute individuals accused of gross human rights violations, serious humanitarian laws violations, and certain domestic crimes. Around 250,000 people were killed during the country’s civil wars between 1989 and 2003.
[Guatemala] Ixil Genocide hearings begin – A court in Guatemala City began hearings on the case of genocide, crimes against humanity, enforced disappearance, and sexual violence against Benedicto Lucas García. It is alleged that under his command and supervision, the Guatamalan army committed atrocities against the Maya Ixil people with the ‘aim of exterminating them’. 844 victims have been identified for this case, and Lucas García has denied all the charges against him.
[US] Torture in Iraq – This month, a Federal Court in Virginia is beginning hearings on a case brought by 3 Iraqi men who were tortured in the US-run detention centre, Abu Ghraib, in Iraq. The men are suing CACI Premier Technology, the private company contracted by the US government to provide interrogators to the prison.
An American man has been sentenced to 70 years in prison for torturing an Estonian citizen, who worked at his weapons factory, in the Kurdistan region of Iraq in 2015.
Read more at: link 1 and link 2.
[Romania] Former President indicted for protest crackdown – Ion Iliescu, the former President of Romania, along with other former officials, has been indicted for crimes against humanity for a deadly crackdown of a protest in 1990. After Iliescu allegedly called in miners to help quash demonstrations, protestors were killed, raped, injured, and unlawfully detained. Iliescu was first ordered to stand trial in 2017, but charges were dropped on procedural grounds.
[Argentina] Torture and crimes against humanity cases – NGOs have supported a Ukrainian man in filing a criminal complaint in Buenos Aires, Argentina. In this universal jurisdiction case, Mr M claims he was tortured in a detention centre in a Russian-occupied town, by Russian officials.
A court has convicted Argentine officials for their cover-up of the 1994 AMIA bombing, qualifying the attack on the Jewish community centre as a crime against humanity. After Iran-backed Hezbollah was identified as the perpetrator of the attack, Argentina asked Interpol to issue a red notice seeking the arrest of Iranian minister, Ahmad Vahidi.
Read more at: link 1 and link 2.
[Palestine] War and weapons in Gaza under scrutiny – Polish prosecutors have opened an investigation into a Polish aid worker killed during the Israeli airstrike on World Food Kitchen workers in Gaza on the 1st of the April.
NGOs in the UK, France, and Germany have filed cases before national courts to halt the countries’ sales of weapons to Israel.
A Franco-Israeli soldier is the subject to a criminal complaint of torture in France, after videos shared on social media showed him mistreating a group of detained Palestinians.
Read more at: link 1, link 2, link 3, link 4 and link 5.
[Rwanda] Genocide cases before national courts – A Rwandan woman, Beatrice Munyenye, has been given a life sentence by a court in Huye, Rwanda. For crimes she committed during the genocide of the Tutsis in 1994, Munyenye was charged with genocide through murder, complicity in genocide, incitement to commit genocide and complicity in rape but was acquitted of planning genocide.
A case against Emmanuel Nkunduwimye for murder, rape, and genocide has begun before a court in Brussels, Belgium.
Lawyers for the NGO Survie have filed a criminal complaint in Paris for war crimes and murder. The aim is to establish responsibility for the death of two French policemen and one of their wives in Kigali in the early hours of the genocide in April 1994.
Read more: link 1, link 2 and link 3.
[Syria] Universal jurisdiction in Europe – Mohamed Hamo, a former Brigadier General, is the first Syrian military official to stand trial for crimes committed during the country’s civil war. His case of aiding and abetting abuses of international law is being heard before a court in Stockholm, Sweden.
German prosecutors have charged two men and arrested another for their alleged involvement in crimes committed by a rebel group, Liwa Jund al-Rahman, that fought alongside Islamic State jihadists in 2013-2014 in Eastern Syria.
Citing the advanced age of Rifaat al-Assad and his return to Syria, a group of Syrian NGOs have asked Swiss courts to expedite the trial of war crimes and crimes against humanity and have asked authorities to forward his international arrest warrant to Interpol.
Read more: link 1, link 2 and link 3.
[Ukraine] War crimes and treason – A Russian solder has been convicted of war crimes by a court in Kyiv, Ukraine. After admitting his guilt, Radik Gukasian was sentenced to 12 years imprisonment for killing a civilian.
French prosecutorial authorities have launched an investigation into the death of Pierre Zakrzewski, a Franco-Irish journalist, who was killed in Horenka, Ukraine, while covering Russia’s invasion of the country.
A Ukrainian man has been jailed for life for treason after it was revealed that he provided information to Russian intelligence services on the pizzeria that was the target of a missile airstrike in Kramatorsk, Ukraine, last June.
Read more at: link 1, link 2 and link 3.
[International courts] – This month, the International Court of Justice held hearings on Armenia’s case of ethnic cleansing against Azerbaijan. Armenia claims that Azerbaijan has been violating the UN Convention Against Discrimination since it gained control of the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave in 2020.
The ECHR ruled that Russia violated the human rights of Georgians living in the regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Russia has been occupying these regions since its invasion of Georgia in 2008 and was notably found to have violated the rights to life and liberty, as well as the prohibition of torture.
Read more at: link 1 and link 2.
Photo: Syrians and Iraq refugees arrive at Skala Sykamias Lesvos in Greece. Wikimedia Commons.
