Category Archives: War crimes

Russia accused of ‘deliberate’ starvation tactics in Mariupol in submission to ICC

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Lawyers say strategy of denying food and services to people in Ukrainian city during siege could amount to war crime

Russia engaged in a “deliberate pattern” of starvation tactics during the 85-day siege of the Ukrainian city of Mariupol in early 2022, which amounted to a war crime, according to a fresh analysis submitted to the international criminal court.

The conclusion is at the heart of a dossier in the process of being submitted to the ICC in The Hague by the lawyers Global Rights Compliance, working in conjunction with the Ukrainian government. It argues that Russia and its leaders intended to kill and harm large numbers of civilians.

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Spying, hacking and intimidation: Israel’s nine-year ‘war’ on the ICC exposed

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Exclusive: Investigation reveals how intelligence agencies tried to derail war crimes prosecution, with Netanyahu ‘obsessed’ with intercepts

When the chief prosecutor of the international criminal court (ICC) announced he was seeking arrest warrants against Israeli and Hamas leaders, he issued a cryptic warning: “I insist that all attempts to impede, intimidate or improperly influence the officials of this court must cease immediately.”

Karim Khan did not provide specific details of attempts to interfere in the ICC’s work, but he noted a clause in the court’s foundational treaty that made any such interference a criminal offence. If the conduct continued, he added, “my office will not hesitate to act”.

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Attacks on health workers in conflict zones at highest level ever – report

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More than 2,500 attacks in 2023, including medics killed and clinics bombed, in war zones such as Gaza, Sudan and Ukraine

Attacks on health workers, hospitals and clinics in conflict zones jumped 25% last year to their highest level on record, a new report has found.

While the increase was largely driven by new wars in Gaza and Sudan, continuing conflicts such as Ukraine and Myanmar also saw such attacks continue “at a relentless pace”, the Safeguarding Health in Conflict coalition said.

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Assad officials face landmark Paris trial over killing of student and father

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Prosecution of three high-ranking Syrian officials to be tried in absentia could pave way for president’s case

At midnight on 3 November 2013, five Syrian officials dragged arts and humanities student Patrick Dabbagh from his home in the Mezzeh district of Damascus.

The following day, at the same hour, the same men, including a representative of the Syrian air force’s intelligence unit, returned with a dozen soldiers to arrest the 20-year-old’s father Mazzen.

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‘Bullet wounds are common’: crime rife in DRC’s rebel-besieged city of Goma

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Robberies, shootings, extortion and rapes have surged since the Rwandan-backed M23 militia cut off the eastern Congolese capital

In broad daylight on 16 April, three armed and uniformed men held up a city centre mobile phone shop.

Threatening staff, they helped themselves to about £700 worth of goods, before making off on a motorbike, disappearing into the busy streets of Goma, in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo.

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Children ‘piled up and shot’: new details emerge of ethnic cleansing in Darfur

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As El Fasher stands on the ‘precipice of a massacre’, rights groups call for sanctions after new testimony describes atrocities carried out by RSF paramilitaries in Sudan

Gruesome new testimony details one of the worst atrocities of the year-long Sudanese civil war – the large-scale massacre of civilians as they desperately tried to flee an ethnic rampage in Darfur last summer.

Witnesses describe children, still alive, being “piled up and shot” by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) as they attempted to escape the regional capital of El Geneina in June last year during a bout of ethnic violence in which thousands of civilians were killed.

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UK accused by Amnesty of ‘deliberately destabilising’ human rights globally

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Rights chief also warns Britain will be ‘judged harshly by history for its failure to help prevent civilian slaughter in Gaza’

The UK has been accused by Amnesty International of “deliberately destabilising” human rights on the global stage for its own political ends.

In its annual global report, released today, the organisation said Britain was weakening human rights protections nationally and globally, amid a near-breakdown of international law.

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Liberia senate votes to establish war crimes court

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The court will investigate crimes against humanity committed during the African country’s two civil wars between 1989 and 2003

Senators in Liberia have voted overwhelmingly to establish a war crimes court, two decades after civil conflict ended in the west African country.

The new court will investigate and try crimes against humanity and corruption committed during Liberia’s two civil wars between 1989 and 2003, which killed up to 250,000 people.

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UK Foreign Office holding secret talks with Sudan’s RSF paramilitary group

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Exclusive: Rights groups denounce negotiations with Rapid Support Forces, accused of ethnic cleansing and war crimes

Foreign Office officials are holding secret talks with the paramilitary group that has been waging a campaign of ethnic cleansing in Sudan for the past year.

News that the British government and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) are engaged in clandestine negotiations has prompted warnings that such talks risk legitimising the notorious militia – which continues to commit multiple war crimes – while undermining Britain’s moral credibility in the region.

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Minister told to name sources in Afghan inquiry or face potential jail term

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Johnny Mercer given 10 days to reveal source of claims British troops engaged in war crimes

The minister for veterans’ affairs, Johnny Mercer, has been given 10 days to reveal the source of allegations British troops engaged in war crimes in Afghanistan, or face a potential prison sentence.

Mercer in effect admitted last month in front of the public inquiry into the claims that he believed members of the SAS had engaged in dozens of unlawful killings of Afghan civilians between 2010 and 2013.

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‘Man-made famine’ charge against Israel is backed by mounting body of evidence

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Prospect of Israel facing war crimes charges has moved closer after UN condemnation of Gaza aid restrictions

The accusation by the UN and other humanitarians that Israel may be committing a war crime by deliberately starving Gaza’s population is likely to significantly increase the prospect of legal culpability for the country, including at the international court of justice.

Amid reports that the Israel Defense Forces are hiring dozens of lawyers to defend against anticipated cases and legal challenges, the charge that Israel has triggered a “man-made famine” by deliberately obstructing the entry of aid into Gaza is backed by an increasing body of evidence.

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Sweden’s veteran peace movement stung by ‘reckless’ entry to Nato

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Activists say public debate has been shut down by overhyped claims of imminent war since Ukraine invasion

The Swedish flag will be raised on Monday outside Nato’s HQ in Brussels. But while the prime minister, Ulf Kristersson, basks in the glow of his country finally joining the western military alliance after months of delays, Sweden’s once thriving peace movement is smarting.

Once widely visible in debates and on the streets – particularly over nuclear weapons, disarmament and the Vietnam war – the movement had already been on the wane since the end of the cold war.

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Warlord behind 1,500 murders returns to Colombia after 12-year sentence in US

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Salvatore Mancuso was taken into police custody and is expected to cooperate with investigation into war crimes in 1990s and 2000s

A Colombian warlord found responsible for more than 1,500 murders and cases of forced disappearance has been returned to his native country after serving a drug-trafficking sentence in the United States and being denied several requests to be sent to Italy, where he also has citizenship.

Salvatore Mancuso arrived in Bogotá’s El Dorado airport on a charter flight that also carried dozens of Colombians who had been deported from the US after illegally crossing the southern border. Mancuso was quickly taken into police custody, wearing a green helmet and a bulletproof vest.

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Dozens of civilians killed by Ethiopian state troops in Amhara region, say reports

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Witnesses claim victims shot ‘execution style’ during house raids after clashes between government forces and Fano rebels

Ethiopian government troops went door-to-door killing dozens of civilians last month in a town in the country’s Amhara region, according to residents, who said the bloodshed took place after clashes with local militia.

The killings in Merawi appear to be one of the deadliest episodes in Amhara since a rebellion by Fano, an armed Amhara group, erupted last year over a disputed plan to disarm regional forces.

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Gaza activist tells of beating and abuse in Israeli detention

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Human rights worker Ayman Lubbad is among the Palestinian prisoners claiming abuse in Israeli custody, where six have died

The Gaza-based human rights activist Ayman Lubbad has not seen his wife and three children for more than a month, since he was ordered to strip to his underwear in the street outside his home, then driven away with other Palestinian men for a week of abuse and detention.

He was tortured and humiliated, he said, giving one of various accounts of recent Israeli abuse of Palestinians in detention; at least six have died, and one autopsy report showed serious injuries, Haaretz newspaper reported.

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‘They attacked us. They displaced us’: grieving Sudanese confront Swedish oil giant over their days of slaughter

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A historic trial, which will call on 61 witnesses worldwide, is expected to set a precedent for global corporations in foreign jurisdictions

Before the arrival of Lundin Oil in the town of Leer, now part of South Sudan, life there was peaceful, says George Tai Kuony. His childhood was that of a “typical village boy”, driving cattle, helping his family and going to school. But in June 1998, when he was 15, armed forces entered the town and changed his life for ever.

He fled, became separated from his family and hid for seven days before he was able to return. “When we got there, Leer wasn’t the town I had left seven days ago,” says the 40-year-old lawyer and human rights defender. “Everything was burned down, everything was destroyed. I could see the bodies of dead people lying in the street.” As a result of the conflict, he lost his father, and later his mother and one sibling.

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Former Yugoslavia countries must face past horrors or risk return to conflict, Council of Europe official says

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Council’s commissioner for human rights says some people prosecuted in the Hague for war crimes ‘return to their communities as heroes’

The failure of the countries of the former Yugoslavia to address their violent past has had devastating consequences for human rights and could ultimately lead to a return to conflict in the region, according to a new Council of Europe report.

The report, published on Thursday by the council’s commissioner for human rights, Dunja Mijatović, said the region has been backsliding for many years on seeking justice and accountability for the brutal wars of the 1990s in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo, which killed more than 130,000 people.

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Whistleblower David McBride loses bid to stave off trial over public interest defence

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ACT supreme court says law provides no duty to members of the military to act in the public interest

David McBride has lost a bid to stave off his trial after again failing to convince a court that soldiers have a duty to act in the public interest.

On Wednesday, the ACT supreme court delivered a blow to McBride as he prepared for his jury trial over the alleged leaking of confidential military information to journalists.

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Myanmar’s military commanders responsible for rape and torture – war crimes report

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Security Force Monitor finds 64% of senior army officers led units allegedly committing killings, rapes, torture and disappearances

New research into alleged war crimes in Myanmar has concluded that the majority of senior commanders in the Myanmar military, many of whom hold powerful political positions in the country, were responsible for crimes including rape, torture, killings and forced disappearances carried out by units under their command between 2011 and 2023.

The research, by the Security Force Monitor (SFM), a project run by Columbia Law School’s Human Rights Institute, states that 64% – 51 of 79 – of all Myanmar’s senior military commanders are responsible for war crimes. It claims that the most serious perpetrator of human rights violations is Gen Mya Tun Oo, Myanmar’s deputy prime minister, former defence minister and a member of the ruling military council.

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What are the rules of war – and how do they apply to the Israel-Gaza conflict?

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International humanitarian law dictates the rules combatants should follow – with a central tenet that ‘civilians should not be targeted’

Amid the horror of the attacks by Hamas on Israel and the response by the Israeli military in Gaza, there have been calls for both sides to abide by international law and accusations of breaches.

So what is the framework of international laws that is supposed to govern war or armed conflicts?

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