Category Archives: War crimes

Campaigners seek to overturn Liz Truss’s resumption of Saudi arms sales

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Lawyers will argue the then trade secretary ignored Saudi air force’s bombing of civilians in Yemen

Anti-arms trade campaigners will seek to overturn a decision made by Liz Truss to resume UK arms sales to Saudi Arabia, arguing she ignored a pattern of bombing civilians by the country’s air force in Yemen.

A judicial review brought by the Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) starts in the high court on Tuesday, the latest step in a long-running battle over the legality of a lucrative trade worth more than £23bn since the war in Yemen began.

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Ukraine war pushes civilian casualties from explosive weapons to four-year high

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Reported casualties in Ukraine were eight times more than Afghanistan – and real figure likely to be much higher

Civilian casualties from the use of explosive weapons soared by 83% last year because of the war in Ukraine, according to a monitoring organisation that counts the number of deaths caused by conflict and war.

Action on Armed Violence (AOVA) said the total number reported killed and injured in 2022 was 20,776, the highest level since 2018, with 10,381 casualties in Ukraine alone, based on reports from English language media.

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Russia must face tribunal for ‘crime of aggression’ in Ukraine, say cross-party leaders

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Pressure grows on Putin as politicians and lawyers point to principles that led to Nuremberg trials of Nazi war criminals

Demands for a special tribunal to investigate Russia for a “crime of aggression” against Ukraine have been backed by senior UK politicians from across the political divide in a move to show Vladimir Putin and his generals that they will be held to account.

In a joint statement shared with the Observer, figures including the Labour leader Keir Starmer, the former Nato secretary general George Robertson, the former foreign secretary David Owen, and former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith say the tribunal should be set up to look into the “manifestly illegal war” on the same principles that guided the allies when they met in 1941 to lay the groundwork for the Nuremberg war crimes trials of Nazi leaders.

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Starvation being used as a weapon of war in South Sudan, report reveals

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International community urged to intervene as hundreds of thousands forced into refugee camps as homes and crops destroyed and aid workers attacked

Starvation is being used as a weapon of war by South Sudan government forces against their own citizens, an investigation has found.

Deliberate starvation tactics used by government forces and allied militia, and by opposition forces, are driving civilians out of their homes, exacerbating Africa’s largest refugee crisis, according to the report published on Thursday.

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Russia says Ukrainian soldiers executed prisoners of war in Donbas region

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A video has circulated on social media reportedly showing Ukrainian soldiers shooting at least 10 Russians

The Kremlin has accused Ukrainian soldiers of executing more than 10 Russian prisoners of war following the circulation of a video on social media purporting to be from the frontline.

The footage appears to show a group of Russian soldiers emerging from an outbuilding in the grounds of a house with their hands above their heads before they are told to lie facedown.

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Alleged Russian ‘torture room’ uncovered in liberated Kherson

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Ukrainian investigators claim Russian forces took over juvenile detention centre, beating and killing people inside

Ukrainian investigators have uncovered a claimed “torture room“ in Kherson city where dozens of men were allegedly detained, electrocuted, beaten and some of them killed.

Police said Russian soldiers took over the juvenile detention centre
in around mid-March and turned it into a prison for men who refused to collaborate with them or who were accused of partisan activity.

Three neighbours and two local shopkeepers said they started hearing screams about six weeks after they saw Russian soldiers take over the building. The witnesses said they started seeing people being taken in with bags on their heads, and some bodies being removed.

Mykola Ivanovych, whose balcony overlooks the back yard of the
detention centre, said he saw two bodies thrown into the garages behind the centre. The Guardian was with press and prosecutors when they first entered the site, and the bodies had been removed.

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Perpetrator of Syria’s Tadamon massacre still working on military base

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Maj Amjad Yousef, identified on videos as killer of dozens of people, accused of directing more mass killings

The Syrian intelligence officer at the centre of one of the most shocking acts of the civil war – the Tadamon massacre – is still working on a military base outside Damascus and has since been accused by colleagues of directing up to a dozen more mass killings.

Amjad Yousef, a major in one of Syria’s most feared intelligence units, is operating from the Kafr Sousa base, where he has been for most of the past six months since the Guardian revealed his role in shooting dead dozens of people across a death pit in Tadamon, a suburb of the Syrian capital in 2013.

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Red Cross frustrated by lack of access to PoWs in Russian-occupied Donetsk

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ICRC responds to criticism from Zelenskiy, saying it is being refused entry to Olenivka prison

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has gone public with its frustration at being refused entry to a notorious Russian prisoner of war camp after scathing criticism from Volodymyr Zelenskiy.

In his daily evening address, Ukraine’s president accused the ICRC of a lack of leadership, suggesting that officials were picking up their salaries without doing their jobs.

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Tigray rebels tortured and killed civilians in renewed fighting, survivors claim

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Witnesses claim the attacks in Amhara region last month were carried out on those the TPLF suspected of supporting Ethiopian federal forces

Tigrayan rebel forces have killed dozens of civilians during their latest occupation of a town in the Amhara region, survivors claim, after fighting resumed last month in the northern area of Ethiopia.

The alleged killings took place in the town of Kobo, located along the highway to the capital, Addis Ababa. Between 13-15 September, Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) fighters shot dead unarmed civilians they suspected of supporting federal forces and local militias, survivors have told the Guardian.

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Former Liberian rebel charged with war crimes awaits Paris trial

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Kunti Kamara charged with torture, cannibalism and complicity in crimes against humanity during civil war between 1989 and 1996

A former Liberian rebel commander will go on trial in Paris on Monday charged with acts of barbarity including torture, cannibalism, forced labour and complicity in crimes against humanity during the country’s first civil war more than 25 years ago.

It is the first trial in France of a non-Rwandan suspect accused of wartime atrocities since the special crimes against humanity tribunal was set up in Paris in 2012.

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Pro-Kremlin neo-Nazi militia inciting the torture and murder of Ukrainian prisoners

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Task Force Rusich, linked to the Wagner Group, advises its fighters not to report the capture of Ukrainians to Russian commanders

A neo-Nazi pro-Kremlin group active in Ukraine is inciting atrocities against prisoners of war and explicitly advocates the torture of captives including “removing body parts”. The self-styled “Task Force Rusich” is fighting in Ukraine on behalf of the Kremlin and is linked to the notorious Wagner Group mercenaries.

A message on Rusich’s Telegram channel sent on 22 September advocates the “destruction of prisoners on the spot”.

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Izium: after Russian retreat, horrors of Russian occupation are revealed

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As the Ukrainian city’s five-month ordeal ends, the evidence of dead bodies and survivors’ testimonies suggests Izium could be another Bucha

Standing in the gloom, Maksim Maksimov pointed to the spot where he was tortured with electric shocks. Russian soldiers took him from his cell in the basement of Izium’s police station. They sat him on an office chair and attached a zig-zag crocodile clip to his finger. It was connected by cable to an old-fashioned Soviet military field telephone.

And then it began. A soldier cranked the handle, turning it faster and faster. This sent an excruciating pulse through Maksimov’s body. “I collapsed. They pulled me upright. There was a hood on my head. I couldn’t see anything. My legs went numb. I was unable to hear in my left ear,” he recalled. “Then they did it again. I passed out. I came round 40 minutes later back in my cell.”

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Zelenskiy rebukes Amnesty for accusing Ukraine of endangering civilians

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Ukrainian president and British and US ambassadors criticise report that says soldiers should not be based in empty schools

A report by Amnesty International accusing the Ukrainian army of endangering civilians has drawn criticism from western diplomats, including the British and US ambassadors to Ukraine, as the country’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, attacked its findings.

The report accused the Ukrainian military of putting civilians at risk by positioning themselves in residential areas, saying that soldiers should not be basing themselves in empty schools or repurposing civilian buildings in urban areas as it meant the Russians would target them and civilians would be caught up in the crossfire.

But critics say the report was poorly researched and put together. They argue that the report ignores Ukraine’s wartime realities and draws moral equivalence between Russia, the aggressor, and Ukraine, the victim.

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Ukraine ‘endangers civilians’ with army bases in residential areas, says Amnesty

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Ukraine government and international law experts argue report ignores wartime realities

Amnesty International has said the Ukrainian army is endangering the life of civilians by basing themselves in residential areas, in a report rejected by Ukrainian government representatives as placing blame on it for Russia’s invasion.

The human rights group’s researchers found that Ukrainian forces were using some schools and hospitals as bases, firing near houses and sometimes living in residential flats. The report concluded that this meant in some instances Russian forces would respond to an attack or target residential areas – putting civilians at risk and damaging civilian infrastructure.

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Social media posts chart life and death of girl in Russian strike

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Liza Dmitrieva, four, was killed in a strike in the central Ukrainian city of Vinnytsia on Thursday

The life and death of four-year-old Liza Dmitrieva in a Russian missile strike on the central Ukrainian city of Vinnytsia on Thursday is a symbol of a conflict where death often comes without warning and from above.

A series of video and still images posted on social media appear to track the last hours of Liza, who turned four in March in the midst of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Her mother, Iryna, lost a leg in the strike, which was condemned by Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, as “an open act of terrorism”.

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Network of Syria conspiracy theorists identified

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Campaign disseminating disinformation sent thousands of tweets, often targeting the White Helmets

A network of more than two dozen conspiracy theorists, frequently backed by a coordinated Russian campaign, sent thousands of disinformation tweets to distort the reality of the Syrian conflict and deter intervention by the international community, new analysis reveals.

Data gathered by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) identified a network of social media accounts, individuals, outlets and organisations who disseminated disinformation about the conflict, with 1.8 million people following their every word. The three principal false narratives promoted by the network of conspiracy theorists involved misrepresenting the White Helmets, the volunteer organisation working to evacuate people in Syria. They also focused on the denial or distortion of facts about the Syrian regime’s use of chemical weapons and on attacking the findings of the world’s foremost chemical weapons watchdog.

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Rape used ‘systematically’ during Lebanon’s civil war, report finds

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Levels of torture and sexual violence used by combatants against women and girls during the 15-year conflict shocked investigators

The full scale of the rape, torture and killing of women and girls during Lebanon’s civil war has been revealed after survivors were interviewed about their experiences for the first time in over 30 years.

Testimonies gathered by the human rights organisation Legal Action Worldwide (LAW), documented in a new report, provide evidence of systematic violence against Lebanese and Palestinian women and girls by government forces and militias during the 15-year war, which began in 1975. The conflict saw more than 100,000 people killed and 1 million displaced.

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Kremlin mulls Nuremberg-style trials based on second world war tribunals

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Russia to seek to justify invasion of Ukraine by staging show trials of war prisoners, conflict scholars fear

The gloating began just days after the missiles began falling on Ukraine. “Get ready for Nuremberg 2.0,” one former Russian diplomat wrote in a WhatsApp message. Vladimir Putin’s invasion to “denazify” the country has always pointed toward a purge and show trials. Now Moscow may seize on that chance.

As Russia holds hundreds of prisoners from the Azovstal steelworks in Mariupol, its proxies in east Ukraine have floated the idea of holding a “military tribunal” inspired by Nuremberg that observers say would reflect a mass show trial meant to justify Russia’s invasion to the world.

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Alleged Wagner Group fighters accused of murdering civilians in Ukraine

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Belarusian pair are first international mercenaries to face war crimes charges since invasion began

Two alleged Wagner Group fighters from Belarus have been accused of murdering civilians near Kyiv, making them the first international mercenaries to face war crimes charges in Ukraine.

Ukrainian prosecutors late on Tuesday released the names and photographs of eight men wanted for alleged war crimes – including murder and torture – in the village of Motyzhyn. Several are believed to have fought in Syria.

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Ukraine destruction: how the Guardian documented Russia’s use of illegal weapons

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Cluster bombs, fléchettes and unguided missiles on residential areas: as prosecutors investigate alleged Russian war crimes in Ukraine, our reporters reveal the evidence they discovered on the ground

At about midnight on 1 March 2022, a Russian air force jet dropped a series of 250kg Soviet-era explosives over Borodyanka, north of Kyiv. They were powerful FAB-250 bombs, designed to hit military targets such as enemy fortifications and bunkers. There were no such structures, however, in this quiet town of 13,000 people.

The bombs fell on at least five residential buildings, splitting them in two. Dozens of bodies were found under the rubble when the Russians withdrew from the Kyiv region in early April, leaving in their path a gigantic crime scene that Ukrainian prosecutors investigating alleged war crimes by Russia and its president, Vladimir Putin, have been working on for weeks.

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