Category Archives: International criminal court

Ugandan president and son accused of sponsoring violence in ICC testimony

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Documents containing allegations of torture filed to court in support of complaint made by Bobi Wine

The Uganda president, Yoweri Museveni, and his son Muhoozi Kainerugaba have been accused of sponsoring violence and abusing critics in harrowing testimony filed before the international criminal court.

The submissions contain detailed allegations of the torture of opposition figures and activists who report being arrested arbitrarily and being held incommunicado in “torture centres”, where they were reportedly interrogated about their links with the opposition figure Bobi Wine and subjected to physical harm and indignifying treatment.

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UN says Russian forces have tortured and executed civilians in Ukraine

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Report details widespread and systematic torture with summary executions of more than 70 people

Russian forces have carried out widespread and systematic torture of civilians detained in connection with their attack on Ukraine, summarily executing more than 70 of them, the UN human rights office said on Tuesday.

It interviewed hundreds of victims and witnesses for a report detailing more than 900 cases of civilians, including children and elderly people, being arbitrarily detained in the conflict, most of them by Russia. The vast majority of those interviewed said they were tortured and in some cases subjected to sexual violence during detention by Russian forces, the head of the UN human rights office in Ukraine said.

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South Africa grants Putin and Brics leaders diplomatic immunity for summit

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ICC warrant for Russian president’s arrest issued in March over alleged war crimes in Ukraine

South Africa has issued blanket diplomatic immunity to all leaders attending an August summit, meaning Vladimir Putin might be able to travel to Johannesburg and not fear the country acting on an international criminal court warrant for his arrest.

South African officials insisted the broad offer of immunity, issued in a government gazette, may not trump the ICC arrest warrant. As an ICC member, South Africa would be under pressure, and possibly under a legal requirement, to arrest Putin. The court issued a warrant for his arrest in March over the alleged forcible deportation of children from Ukraine to Russia.

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UK ‘should impose sanctions on human rights abusers in Sudan’ – report

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UK all-party group says failure to bring to justice Darfur abusers 20 years ago has led to current violence

The UK should impose sanctions on human rights abusers in senior Sudanese military positions as well as designate the Wagner group operating in Sudan as a terrorist group, a report from the all-party group on Sudan has urged.

The group, including the Conservative former Africa minister Vicky Ford, said on Wednesday the west has allowed impunity to become the norm, and the failure to bring to justice many of those responsible for the genocide in Darfur 20 years ago has allowed the same militia to regroup and form part of the forces now blocking democracy in the country.

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US indicts alleged Russian spy who tried to infiltrate ICC in The Hague

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Sergey Cherkasov studied in US under false identity and is accused of working for Russian intelligence

US authorities have released new details about an alleged Russian spy who attempted to penetrate the international criminal court in The Hague, using a false identity developed over a decade.

An indictment made public on Saturday accuses Sergey Cherkasov, who US intelligence believes is an elite “illegal” operative of Russia’s GRU military intelligence agency. Cherkasov posed as Brazilian citizen Victor Muller Ferreira over many years.

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ICC to plead for extra money to pursue Russian war crimes in Ukraine

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International court’s prosecutor to make case at conference in London after Putin warrant issued

Karim Khan, the prosecutor of the international criminal court, will plead on Monday for extra cash to pursue Russian war crimes in Ukraine, including the potential prosecution of Vladimir Putin for overseeing the abduction of children from Ukraine to Russia.

Khan made his dramatic move against the Russian president last week ahead of a conference in London co-hosted by the UK and the Dutch government aimed at raising cash to fund the ICC’s war crimes investigatory work inside Ukraine. The ICC’s budget has not been increased even though it has 40 investigators working inside Ukraine.

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Joe Biden hails decision to issue ICC arrest warrant against Vladimir Putin

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US president joined by German chancellor in support of action taken after Russia’s abduction of Ukrainian children

The US president, Joe Biden, has backed the International Criminal Court’s decision to issue an arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin over his role in the abduction of Ukrainian children, saying it was “justified”.

Germany’s chancellor, Olaf Scholz, was among other international leaders who welcomed the decision, saying on Saturdayyesterday that it showed “nobody is above the law”.

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‘It’s justified’: Joe Biden welcomes ICC arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin

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US president says Russian leader has clearly committed war crimes and move makes ‘a very strong point’

Joe Biden has welcomed the international criminal court’s decision to issue an arrest warrant for the Russian president for war crimes in Ukraine.

The US president said Vladimir Putin had clearly committed war crimes and that the arrest warrant for the Russian leader made a “very strong point”.

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Kremlin likely to spin ICC arrest warrant as proof west wants to remove Putin

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Supporters of the invasion of Ukraine are portraying the court’s decision as a sign of western antagonism to Russia

The international criminal court’s arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin will probably be portrayed as a point of no return in Russia, where the Kremlin will spin the court’s decision as proof that the west is seeking nothing short of regime change.

While Putin has already been preparing his public for a long war, the arrest warrant will for the first time raise the concrete possibility that Russia’s leaders and other prominent supporters of the war could face justice at The Hague if they ever find themselves under arrest.

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Putin’s alleged war crimes: who are the Ukrainian children being taken by Russia?

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What we know about the children behind the indictment of Vladimir Putin and his children’s commissioner for abduction

• Russia-Ukraine war – latest news updates

The international criminal court in The Hague has indicted the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, and children’s commissioner, Maria Lvova-Belova, for the mass abduction of Ukrainian children.

This means there is now an international arrest warrant out for Putin, a reflection of the speed with which the international legal community has pursued allegations of war crimes during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

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Russia says it does not recognise Hague court amid reports of arrest warrants

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International criminal court prosecutor is said to be preparing to formally open two war crimes cases

Moscow has said it does not recognise the jurisdiction of the international criminal court in The Hague, after reports that the court is expected to seek its first arrest warrants against Russian individuals over the war in Ukraine.

“We do not recognise this court; we do not recognise its jurisdiction,” Vladimir Putin’s spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, told journalists in Moscow on Tuesday morning.

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ICC to issue first arrest warrants linked to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine

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Two war crimes cases to be opened over abduction of Ukrainian children and targeting of civilian infrastructure

The prosecutor at the international criminal court will formally open two war crimes cases and issue arrest warrants for several Russians deemed responsible for the mass abduction of Ukrainian children and the targeting of Ukrainian civilian infrastructure, according to reports on Monday.

The New York Times and Reuters news agency reported that the prosecutor, Karim Khan, would ask pre-trial judges to approve arrest warrants on the basis of evidence collected so far. If successful, it would be the first time ICC warrants have been issued in relation to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

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Pentagon accused of blocking effort to hand Russia war crimes evidence to ICC

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Defence department reportedly unwilling to share intelligence over fears precedent could be set against US soldiers

The Pentagon has been accused of blocking the sharing of US intelligence with the international criminal court (ICC) about Russian war crimes in Ukraine.

The Biden White House and state department have been a proponent of cooperation with the Hague-based ICC, as a means of holding Russian forces accountable for widespread war crimes, but the defence department is firmly opposed on the grounds that the precedent could eventually be turned against US soldiers.

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Ukraine urges ICC to investigate video appearing to show Russians killing PoW

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Graphic clip shows detained combatant standing in a shallow trench before being apparently shot

Ukraine has urged the international criminal court to investigate footage circulating on social media that appeared to show Russian fighters killing a Ukrainian prisoner of war.

In the graphic clip that first circulated on Telegram, a detained combatant is seen standing in a shallow trench and smoking a cigarette. The soldier says “Glory to Ukraine” and is then apparently shot with automatic weapons.

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‘They were shot in the head’: morgue gives up truth of Rodrigo Duterte’s drug war

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Crusading pathologist Raquel Fortun finds evidence of multiple murder at the direction of ‘a madman’ in the exhumed remains of young Filipinos

It was in an old university stockroom, with wooden tables salvaged from a junkyard, that Raquel Fortun began to investigate the merciless crackdown launched under the former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte.

Fortun, one of only two forensic pathologists in the country, has now spent more than 18 months examining the exhumed remains of dozens of victims of the so-called “war on drugs”, revealing serious irregularities in how their postmortems were performed – including multiple death certificates that wrongly attributed fatalities to natural causes.

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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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Shireen Abu Akleh: Al Jazeera submits new evidence to ICC

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Network files formal request against Israel over shooting of Palestinian-American journalist in West Bank

Al Jazeera television network has filed a formal request to the international criminal court against Israeli forces over the killing of the veteran Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh.

Abu Akleh was shot in the head during an Israeli raid in a refugee camp on the outskirts of the occupied West Bank city of Jenin in May, while wearing a helmet and flak jacket that clearly indicated she was a member of the press. Several investigations by human rights organisations, as well as international news outlets and the UN, have concluded that Abu Akleh, 51, was shot by an Israeli soldier. Her colleague Ali al-Samoudi survived after being shot in the shoulder.

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UN confirms death of one of last Rwandan genocide fugitives

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Phénéas Munyarugarama is second person wanted for their involvement in 1994 mass killings to die

One of the last five fugitives wanted for his role in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, Phénéas Munyarugarama, died in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2002, UN prosecutors have announced.

Munyarugarama, a local army commander, “died of natural causes” and was buried in Kankwala, in the eastern DRC, the Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals (MICT) announced in The Hague.

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Ukraine names 10 Russian soldiers in alleged human rights abuses in Bucha

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Prosecutor general Iryna Venediktova says ‘more than 8,000 cases’ of suspected war crimes identified

Ukraine’s prosecutor general has named 10 Russian soldiers allegedly involved in human rights abuses during the month-long occupation of Bucha.

Iryna Venediktova also told German TV that that Ukranian investigators had identified “more than 8,000 cases” of suspected war crimes since Russia’s invasion, which included accusations of “killing civilians, bombing of civilian infrastructure, torture” and “sexual crimes”.

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Janjaweed militia blamed for attacks that left at least 200 dead in Darfur

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Death toll likely to rise, say witnesses to indiscriminate attacks on Kreinik and El Geneina by Sudan’s notorious Rapid Support Forces

At least 200 people are now known to have died in West Darfur in the latest attack on civilians and local forces blamed on Janjaweed militia.

Darfur, the semi-arid western region of Sudan where a vicious civil war erupted in 2003, has seen a new outbreak of fighting over the past few months as rival groups clash over water and grazing land, shortages of which are being exacerbated by the climate crisis.

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