Category Archives: War crimes

Syrian regime blamed for sarin gas attacks in landmark report

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Report by UN-aligned body that oversees chemical weapons use is hailed by rights groups

The UN-aligned body that oversees chemical weapons use has for the first time blamed the Syrian regime for using sarin gas on the battlefield in a report hailed by rights groups as a landmark moment with implications for war crimes investigations.

The report, released on Wednesday by the Organisation for the Prevention of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), accuses the Syrian Air Force of twice using sarin to attack the town of Ltamenah in late March 2017. It also found that regime aircraft had bombed the same town with chlorine gas in the same week.

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Bill sets five-year limit to prosecute UK armed forces who served abroad

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Legislation to stop ‘vexatious’ claims excludes alleged crimes by military personnel in Northern Ireland

A five-year time limit on bringing prosecutions against soldiers and veterans who have served abroad – except in “exceptional circumstances” – is to be imposed under legislation introduced by the government.

Clauses in the overseas operations (service personnel and veterans) bill would protect serving and former military personnel from what the defence secretary, Ben Wallace, claimed was a “vexatious” cycle of claims and re-investigations.

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Senior ICC judges authorise Afghanistan war crimes inquiry

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Decision overturns earlier rejection of request to examine actions of US soldiers

Senior judges at the international criminal court have authorised an investigation into alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Afghanistan, overturning an earlier rejection of the inquiry.

The ICC investigation will look at actions by US, Afghan and Taliban troops. It is possible, however, that allegations relating to UK troops could emerge in that process.

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Papers reveal Anglo-French distrust before Srebrenica massacre

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Archives show British PM was warned France may have made secret deal with Bosnian Serbs

Days before the Srebrenica massacre in July 1995, John Major was warned France had possibly brokered a secret deal with the Bosnian Serbs to halt airstrikes in return for the release of western military hostages.

This claim, detailed in a secret Foreign Office note to the prime minister, is among documents available to read at the National Archives in Kew fromTuesday that expose the depth of Anglo-French distrust during the Balkans conflict.

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ICC to investigate alleged Israeli and Palestinian war crimes

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Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu hits out at ‘baseless and scandalous decision’

There is sufficient evidence to investigate alleged Israeli and Palestinian war crimes committed in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip, the international criminal court has announced.

In a landmark decision, the ICC said it saw “no substantial reasons to believe that an investigation would not serve the interests of justice”.

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Ilhan Omar writes to US Syria envoy over Turkish white phosphorus allegations

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Congresswoman calls on US Syria envoy to give full briefing on October incident in border town

Four US congressional Democrats have written to Donald Trump’s Syria envoy asking him to spell out what information the US has about the alleged use of white phosphorus by Turkey against Syrian Kurdish civilians in October.

Ilhan Omar and three of her colleagues in the House of Representatives called on Jim Jeffrey to provide a full briefing – in private if necessary – into whether it believes the incident during the Turkish invasion two months ago amounts to a war crime.

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Aung San Suu Kyi denies genocide charges against Myanmar – video

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Aung San Suu Kyi has dismissed allegations of state violence against Rohingya Muslims at The Hague. Speaking on the second day of hearings at the International Court of Justice in the genocide case against Myanmar, the country's de facto prime minister denied there had been genocidal intent in her government't treatment of the Rohingya and blamed the conflict on an uprising by separatist insurgents

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Aung San Suu Kyi impassive as genocide hearing begins

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World’s failure to act over Myanmar is ‘stain on collective conscience’, UN court told

Aung San Suu Kyi has sat impassively through graphic accounts of mass murder and rape perpetrated by Myanmar’s military at the start of a three-day hearing into allegations of genocide at the UN’s highest court.

“I stand before you to awaken the conscience of the world and arouse the voice of the international community,” Abubacarr Marie Tambadou, the Gambia’s attorney general and justice minister, said as he opened his country’s case against Myanmar at the international court of justice (ICJ) in The Hague. “In the words of Edmund Burke: ‘The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.’

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British government and army accused of covering up war crimes

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Alleged evidence implicates UK troops in murder of children in Afghanistan and Iraq

The UK government and the British army have been accused of covering up the killing of children in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Leaked documents allegedly contain evidence implicating troops in killing children and the torture of civilians.

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Germany charges two Syrians with crimes against humanity

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Charges – including 59 counts of murder – linked to UN exhibition of torture photographs in 2015

Germany has charged two alleged former Syrian secret service officers with crimes against humanity, federal prosecutors have announced.

The two men were arrested in the capital, Berlin, and the southern state of Baden-Württemberg in February, in a coordinated operation by German and French police.

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Syria: videos of Turkey-backed militias show ‘potential war crimes’

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Arab forces have allegedly been filmed torturing Kurdish fighters and mutilating bodies


Calls for war crimes investigations into the conduct of militias used by Turkey in Syria are mounting after a spate of new videos depicting Ankara-linked fighters torturing captives and mutilating dead bodies.

Footage of atrocities allegedly committed by Arab forces in northern Syria is circulating widely across Kurdish regions of the country, sparking fears of renewed fighting and a deepening ethnic divide in the region, even as a tenuous ceasefire begins to settle.

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‘We Syrians are being used as political tools… yet again’

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Despite last week’s US-brokered truce, fighting continues on the Turkish-Syrian border

It’s an unusually hot autumn in the plains of southern Turkey, where in some places nothing but wire fencing is all that separates this country from the chaos that has engulfed Syria over the last eight years.

Cotton, pistachio and olive trees grow on both sides of the border. But plumes of black smoke are only rising above towns on the Syrian side.

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Syria war criminals may find the law is finally closing in on them

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After the latest atrocity by pro-Turkey forces, the long era of impunity may be near an end

Actual or suspected war crimes have been reported at every stage of Syria’s long-running civil war – and Turkey’s latest cross-border incursion has unleashed another wave of atrocities, including executions of civilians and other alleged crimes against humanity.

But despite huge amounts of documentary evidence collected since 2011 by the UN and independent human rights groups, the perpetrators of such crimes in Syria, whether they are governments, armed factions or individuals, have mostly escaped punishment. This has encouraged a sense of impunity among wrongdoers – and dismay among victims.

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UK, US and France may be complicit in Yemen war crimes – UN report

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Panel lists 160 key actors in Yemen war who could face charges, adding to pressure on UK to end Saudi arms sales

Britain, the US and France may be complicit in war crimes in Yemen by arming and providing support to a Saudi-led coalition that starves civilians as a war tactic, a United Nations report has said.

A UN panel of experts has for the first time compiled a list of 160 military officers and politicians who could face war crimes charges, including from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, the Houthi rebel movement and Yemeni government military forces. A secret list of those most likely to be complicit has been sent to the UN.

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Don’t call them Syria’s child casualties. This is the slaughter of the innocents

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As violence escalates, more children have died in rebel-held areas in the past month than in all of 2018. But does anybody care?

Murdered children are no longer news. International media coverage of the war in Afghanistan, where child deaths reached an all-time high last year, is sporadic at best. In Yemen it is estimated that at least 85,000 under-fives have died of starvation since 2015, a figure that numbs the mind. In Syria, especially, it is hard to keep count because children are being killed almost every day – and who is really counting?

Harrowing images briefly capture public attention. One of the more recent showed five-year-old Riham struggling amid the rubble of her bombed home in Ariha, in Syria’s north-western Idlib province, to save her baby sister, Tuqa. Riham died later in hospital along with her mother and another sister. Thanks to her efforts, and White Helmet rescuers, Tuqa survived.

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Kosovo PM resigns before questioning at The Hague

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Ramush Haradinaj agrees to appear at Serbia war crimes inquiry but not as leader

Kosovo’s prime minister has resigned after being invited for questioning by a Hague-based court investigating crimes against ethnic Serbs during and after the 1998-99 war.

Ramush Haradinaj said he had agreed to be interviewed at the Kosovo Specialist Chambers and Specialist Prosecutor’s Office next week and did not want to appear there as prime minister.

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A brutal warlord has been convicted – so why doesn’t it feel like a triumph? | Vava Tampa

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Bosco Ntaganda killed, raped and enslaved Congolese people for years while living in plain sight. Does the world care so little?

In 2015, the international community – led by the US and the UK – finally decided to take Bosco Ntaganda to the international criminal court to face justice for war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Ntaganda, known as “The Terminator”, became one of the most feared, powerful and brutal warlords in DRC since Rwanda, backed by Uganda, reinvaded DRC in 1998.

Related: DRC warlord 'the Terminator' convicted of war crimes

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US to deny visas for ICC members investigating alleged war crimes

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Washington also threatened economic sanctions if war crimes court goes ahead with inquiry into US troops in Afghanistan

The United States has announced it will revoke or deny visas to members of the International Criminal Court involved in investigating the actions of US troops in Afghanistan or other countries.

The US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, said Washington was prepared to take further steps, including economic sanctions, if the war crimes court goes ahead with any investigations of US or allied personnel.

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Those responsible for Syria’s agony must be brought to book, starting at the top

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Despite Russia blocking attempts to investigate Assad’s war crimes, there are glimmers of hope

The final unravelling of the Islamic State’s evil caliphate exerts a horrible fascination. The jihadis committed many appalling crimes in Syria and Iraq – exploiting the chaos caused by the Syrian civil war – and were responsible, directly or indirectly, for murderous attacks in Britain and several other European countries.

Most people expect a reckoning. It is only right that Isis fighters who have been captured alive, and those who gave them aid and succour, should face justice as soon as possible.

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UN says Israel’s killings at Gaza protests may amount to war crimes

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Inquiry accuses army of killing demonstrators ‘who were not posing an imminent threat’

UN investigators have accused Israeli soldiers of intentionally firing on civilians and said they may have committed war crimes in their lethal response to Palestinian demonstrations in Gaza.

The independent Commission of Inquiry, set up last year by the UN’s human rights council, said Israeli forces killed 189 people and shot more than 6,100 others with live ammunition near the fence that divides the two territories.

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