Karadžić at the ICTY

Late last week in the presence of victims, journalists, diplomats, and representatives of civil society groups, the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) delivered guilty verdicts in Radovan Karadžić's trial for war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide. From 1992 to 1996, Karadžić was president of the Republika Srpska, or Bosnian Serb Republic. His leadership of the breakaway group spanned the four-year-long siege of Sarajevo and included the massacre at Srebrenica in which 8,000 Bosnian men were killed in the worst crime of its kind in Europe since World War II. Bringing to an end legal proceedings that had first begun with an appearance before the court on July 31, 2008, the ICTY sentenced Karadžić to forty years in prison.

Beginning in April 1992, first the Yugoslav People's Army and later the irregular forces of the Republika Srpska took up positions outside Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia. Over a period of 1,425 days--a full year longer than the Germans' siege of Leningrad in World War II--Serbian forces lobbed mortar shells into the city from nearby mountains and killed both citizens and soldiers with sniper fire on the streets. Roughly 14,000 people died during the siege (including over 5,000 civilians) and tens of thousands more fled the city. On the night of August 25, 1992, the National and University Library of Bosnia and Herzegovina was destroyed along with most of the two million manuscripts it housed. The library had been targeted by the Serbs for weeks. (For a brief UNESCO video on the National Library's destruction, go here.)

In the period before the massacre at Srebrenica, one of the most dramatic crimes committed under Karadžić's leadership was the shelling of the market in Sarajevo on February 5, 1994. A mortar fired from one of the hills surrounding Sarajevo exploded in a crowded outdoor market killing 68 people. Karadžić responded to the international outcry following the market bombing by claiming that the Bosnians had staged the scene to mislead the media. The bodies, Karadžić alleged, had been taken from the morgue and posed to look like victims of a mortar attack. Only the most ardent supporters of the Bosnian Serbs were fooled by these lies.

Although Sarajevo had been under attack at that point for almost two years, the manner and magnitude of the killing in the market shocked the international community and led to NATO intervention. NATO airstrikes targeted Serb positions surrounding the city and allowed Bosnian military forces to launch an offensive against the forces of the Republika Srpska. Following a ceasefire negotiated in October, the parties agreed to the Dayton Accords, an agreement brokered by the United States, on December 14, 1995. On February 29, 1996, the Bosnians declared the end of the siege as the last Bosnian Serb fighters withdrew.

Before his arrest in 2008, Karadžić managed to hide in plain sight in Serbia's capital, Belgrade. He grew a long white beard, tied his hair in a knot at the top of his head, and assumed the name "Dr. Dragan Dabic." As Dr. Dabic, Karadžić promoted alternative health care, lecturing publicly and even going on television. The government of Serbia for years showed little interest in arresting Karadžić, but pressure from the European Union (no cooperation with the ICTY, no membership in the EU was its message) eventually resulted in both Slobodan Milosevic, the former president of Serbia, and Karadžić being arrested and delivered into the custody of the ICTY.

Katanga Convicted

One of the longest-running trials at the International Criminal Court (ICC) has ended with the conviction of Germain Katanga, a warlord involved in fighting in the Ituri district of Democratic Republic of Congo. Katanga was found guilty of one count of being an accessory to crimes against humanity and four counts of war crimes.

The charges against Katanga stemmed from an attack on the village of Bogoro on February 24, 2003. In that attack, villagers were shot or killed with machetes, in some cases while sleeping. Prosecutors alleged that the attack was intended to "wipe out" the village, which was considered strategically important due to its proximity to the Ugandan border in a gold-rich region.

Katanga made his first appearance before a pre-trial chamber of the ICC on October 22, 2007. His case was originally linked to that of another defendant, Mathieu Ngudjolo, but the cases were severed and Ngudjolo was acquitted late last year.

The first conviction obtained by the ICC, of Thomas Lubanga Dyilo in March 2012, also involved fighting in the DR Congo. Lubanga was sentenced to fourteen years in prison.

Katanga's conviction is only the second in the ICC's twelve-year history. 

Karadžić and Mladić

Today in a courtroom of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague, two of the chief architects of the ethnic cleansing in Bosnia during the 1990s came face to face. On trial for genocide and other crimes related to his role as the political leader of Republika Srpska, Radovan Karadžić called upon Ratko Mladić, the Bosnian Serb military leader during the ethnic cleansing, to testify on his behalf. Mladić, whose trial for similar crimes is ongoing, denounced the court as "satanic" and refused to answer the substantive questions Karadžić presented, citing his health and his desire not to incriminate himself.

International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia

Both Karadžić and Mladić are charged with genocide in connection with the fall of Srebrenica in 1995. Over 7500 Bosnian men were executed when the army of the Republika Srpska, commanded by Mladić, overran a poorly defended United Nations "safe area" that had been created in an effort to protect Bosnians fleeing fighting in surrounding communities.

Meanwhile, trials at the ICTY continue to raise questions regarding their length and cost. To address these questions, Stuart Ford offers a way to judge the complexity of cases in order to compare more accurately the efficiency of different courts. By the measures he employs, the ICTY fares well in comparison to courts handling similarly complex criminal cases.

The Prophet Motive

What drives Joseph Kony to kidnap children and enslave them, to slaughter innocent people, and to spread fear across some of the most impoverished states in Africa? Peter Eichstaedt takes a crack at that question in a brief article--"Kony 20Never"--on the Foreign Affairs website.

Eichstaedt, who never found Kony in spite of pursuing him for years (like Ugandan and American military forces), did speak to some of Kony's former lieutenants. What emerges from those conversations is a portrait of a man who is convinced that he speaks for God and is offended when his own people, the Acholi, reject him (perhaps because his soldiers have burned their villages and stolen their children). Eichstaedt also says that Kony is a survivor (and survivalist) who fears being tried by the International Criminal Court (which indicted him in 2005) because he believes it would lead to his execution--in spite of the fact that the ICC is not empowered to impose the death penalty.

Those looking for a rational actor may need to check in on some other rebel leader.

Convictions at the ICTY

Yesterday the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) handed down sentences in the cases of two former Bosnian Serb officials convicted of crimes against humanity and war crimes. Mićo Stanišić and Stojan Župljanin were both sentenced to 22 years in prison having been convicted of the following charges: "persecution, a crime against humanity, through the underlying acts of killings; torture, cruel treatment, and inhumane acts; unlawful detention; establishment and perpetuation of inhumane living conditions; forcible transfer and deportation; plunder of property; wanton destruction of towns and villages, including destruction or wilful damage done to institutions dedicated to religion and other cultural buildings; and the imposition and maintenance of restrictive and discriminatory measures."

Both men were also convicted of murder and torture, which are classified as war crimes. Župljanin, but not Stanišić, was convicted of extermination as an element in the crimes against humanity.

The charges stemmed from the defendants' efforts to establish an ethnically pure Bosnian Serb state (Republika Srpska) following the breakup of Yugoslavia. The resulting conflict in Bosnia, which lasted from March 1992 to December 1995, claimed approximately 150,000 lives. During the war, scenes reminiscent of those in Nazi concentration camps were played out in various locations across Bosnia as a genocidal policy of "ethnic cleansing" was implemented by the Bosnian Serbs and, on occasion, other parties to the conflict.

To date, the ICTY has indicted 161 people and has discharged cases involving 136. Sixty-nine people have been convicted of crimes; 18 have been acquitted; 13 have been transferred to other courts for trial; 36 cases have been terminated without a verdict (as, for example, in the case against former Serb president Slobodan Milosevic, who died before the conclusion of his trial) or have had charges withdrawn; and 25 cases are ongoing.

Ieng Sary (1925-2013)

Brother Number 3, Ieng Sary, has died in Phnom Penh at age 87 while standing trial for genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes committed as part of the Cambodian genocide from 1975 to 1979. His case in the mixed UN-Cambodian tribunal called the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), designated Case 002, will continue with his co-defendants, Nuon Chea and Khieu Samphan. Ieng's wife, Ieng Thirith, was also a co-defendant in the case before her dismissal due to advancing dementia.

Ieng was a co-founder of the Khmer Rouge along with his brother-in-law (and Brother Number 1), Pol Pot. He served as foreign minister during the Communists' genocidal rule in Cambodia, a period in which approximately 1.7 million people died from executions, starvation, and forced labor as the Khmer Rouge attempted to return Cambodia to "Year Zero." Ieng persuaded many educated Cambodians who had left the country to return to help rebuild it; most were subsequently imprisoned, tortured, and killed.

Ieng's death before the conclusion of his trial has highlighted one of the most significant problems with the ECCC. The long delay in its creation coupled with its very slow pace of operation has severely limited its ability to prosecute those who were most responsible for the destruction of Cambodia in the 1970s. Pol Pot died of natural causes in 1998, well before the tribunal began its operations in 2006.

To date, the ECCC has spent $175.3 million and has completed one trial, that of Kaing Guek Eav ("Comrade Duch"), who was in charge of the notorious Tuol Sleng prison in Phnom Penh. Two other cases--Case 003 against Meas Mut and Sou Met and Case 004 against Im Chaem (a Buddhist monk now)--are ready for trial but are mired in political controversy. The government of Hun Sen, who has ruled Cambodia as prime minister since 1985, has numerous links to the Khmer Rouge terror that it prefers not to have revisited through trial testimony. Hun Sen has said that he will block future indictments.

Behind the Scenes at the ICTY

The BBC's Michael Buchanan provides a tour of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in this video. Stops on the brief tour include a courtroom, holding cells on the floor below the courtrooms, and a wing of the prison in Scheveningen.

Sovereignty and Atrocity

Human Rights Watch is reporting today that eleven children were killed over the weekend when a Syrian MiG-23 dropped cluster bombs on the town of Deir al-'Assafeer. An indiscriminate attack of any kind on noncombatants violates international humanitarian law, but the focus in HRW's account of what happened is on the use of cluster munitions, and for good reasons.

Cluster bombs, first, are used primarily as antipersonnel weapons. When noncombatants die in an attack employing conventional bombs or artillery shells, a plausible claim can sometimes be made that the deaths were unintended collateral damage incidental to an attack on a legitimate target. On the other hand, when civilians--and only civilians--are killed by cluster bombs, there is a strong case to be made that a war crime has been committed.

Second, cluster munitions tend to leave behind a deadly legacy of what are sometimes rather bureaucratically referred to as explosive remnants of war (ERW). Everywhere they have been employed, unexploded submunitions--bomblets--continue to pose a threat to civilians (poor farmers more often than not) long after the conflict ends. Disposing of unexploded submunitions is very hazardous, requiring both resources and political will that post-conflict societies often find to be in short supply. According to HRW, video footage of the attack on Deir al-'Assafeer and its aftermath shows at least fifty unexploded bomblets around the site.

Human Rights Watch maintains that cluster munitions "are subject to a ban under international law due to the harm they cause to civilians," in the words of Mary Wareham, the organization's arms division advocacy director. The ban to which Wareham refers is articulated in the 2008 Convention on Cluster Munitions, which entered into force on August 1, 2010. The Convention today has 111 signatories, 77 of which have ratified the agreement. Syria is not a party to the agreement, however, which means the ban does not apply to it in the absence of a determination that the ban is part of customary international law (a claim that has not, to my knowledge, been pressed by HRW).

There is no question that the use of cluster munitions to deliberately target noncombatants is illegal. The deaths of eleven children in the bombing of Deir al-'Assafeer should be added to the long list of crimes for which the Assad regime ultimately should be held accountable. But it is not clear--in fact, it is almost certainly wrong to say--that international law makes it illegal for Syria to use cluster munitions under any conditions. While I would prefer to side with Wareham and Human Rights Watch on this issue, the fact that Syria is not a party to the Convention on Cluster Munitions is significant. It has opted out of the obligations imposed on states parties by the Convention, as has the United States. The right to do so, however unfortunate in this particular case, is inherent in the notion of sovereignty. Sovereignty shields states--including bad ones like Syria--from the imposition of law, including laws banning cluster munitions, by outsiders. But only up to a point.

Wareham states that "all governments, including Syria’s allies, should condemn Syria’s continued use of cluster bombs," and there is good reason for this, even if Syria is not legally subject to the ban imposed by the Convention on Cluster Munitions. The condemnation of other governments can erode the protection that sovereignty provides for the use of cluster munitions by states that have not ratified the Convention. While sovereignty ensures that states bear primary responsibility for their own laws and their own actions (at least insofar as their actions are confined to their own territories), international law as a means of limiting the freedom of states pushes back against sovereignty where customary international law and, more importantly, peremptory norms (jus cogens) are involved. If cluster munitions are to be "subject to a ban under international law," it will come from universal ratification of the Convention on Cluster Munitions or, more likely, from a sufficiently widespread acceptance of the Convention and broad-based condemnation of holdouts that, in combination, generates a customary international law norm against possession or use of the weapons. Human Rights Watch may have jumped the gun in suggesting that a ban on cluster munitions currently exists, but it is hastening the day when that will be true by publicizing what the Syrian government is doing with these weapons.

The Campaign to Ban Autonomous Killer Robots

Last week, Human Rights Watch, joined by the Nobel Women's Initiative, launched a campaign to develop an international ban on autonomous killer robots. A 50-page report, Losing Humanity: The Case Against Killer Robots, published jointly by HRW and Harvard Law School's International Human Rights Clinic, was released on Monday.

According to the report, the U.S. Department of Defense is spending roughly $6 billion per year on unmanned systems, a figure projected to grow quickly given the military's avowed interest in procuring more robotic weapons with expanding capabilities. A number of other countries are also investing in military robotics with increasing degrees of autonomy. The most newsworthy example in recent days has been Israel's Iron Dome missile defense system. At present, the Iron Dome system puts a human operator in the loop, but it is clearly a system for which fully autonomous operations would be possible.

The report opposes the deployment of lethal autonomous robots on three grounds: (1) such robots would not conform to the rules of international humanitarian law as they relate to noncombatant immunity, proportionality, and military necessity; (2) they would not be subject to extra-legal protections for civilians such as those predicated on human compassion and empathy, thus making them suitable for use by repressive governments against their own populations; and (3) they would make it difficult to establish accountability for war crimes given the elimination of direct human agency. The report concludes with a recommendation that those involved in the development of robotic weapons generate a code of conduct governing work that might lead to the creation of fully autonomous systems.

The Emancipation Proclamation and the Lieber Code

Yesterday was the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation--the instrument by which Abraham Lincoln transformed the Civil War from a struggle against Southern secession into a moral crusade to rid the nation of the blight of slavery. In a commentary published on the New York Times Opinionator blog, John Fabian Witt, a professor at Yale Law School and author of Lincoln's Code: The Laws of War in American History, draws an interesting connection between the Proclamation and the formulation of the Lieber Code.

The Lieber Code, more formally known as Instructions for the Government of the Armies of the United States in the Field, is the forerunner of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which governs the conduct of U.S. military personnel while also codifying the law of armed conflict for them. In a broader sense, the Lieber Code is the forerunner of the international law of armed conflict--or international humanitarian law--as a whole. In the late nineteenth century, a number of European countries modeled their own codes of military conduct after the Lieber Code, thus contributing to the convergence of views on international humanitarian law that was manifested in the 1907 Hague Conventions and the 1949 Geneva Conventions.

Witt notes that the emancipation of slaves was contrary to the laws of war as they were understood at the time. The Confederacy's president, Jefferson Davis, reacted strongly against the Emancipation Proclamation and threatened to respond by enslaving or executing any captured black Union troops while also subjecting their white commanding officers to punishment as war criminals. The Union threatened retaliation for any such responses and the Civil War seemed to be on the verge of taking a decidedly uncivil turn.

In this context, a new code of conduct for the Union armies was created by Columbia University law professor Francis Lieber. Its provisions were drawn largely from customary international law, but it defended the emancipation of slaves by the Union as a humanitarian measure and promised a vigorous defense of the rights of black soldiers. Article 58 states, "The law of nations knows of no distinction of color, and if an enemy of the United States should enslave and sell any captured persons of their army, it would be a case for the severest retaliation, if not redressed upon complaint."

The Union hardly had a spotless record in its conduct of war. General William Tecumseh Sherman, in fact, regarded his own cruel tactics as an essential part of bringing the war to a successful conclusion. In his September 1864 letter to the city of Atlanta, he wrote, "You cannot qualify war in harsher terms than I will. War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it; and those who brought war into our country deserve all the curses and maledictions a people can pour out." In the end, however, the Lieber Code probably helped to deter some of the inhumane conduct that might have occurred in its absence. And, without a doubt, it contributed to the international effort to codify the law of armed conflict.

"In a Consistent World"

Archbishop Desmond Tutu, winner of the 1984 Nobel Peace Prize, the 1986 Albert Schweitzer Prize for Humanitarianism, and the 2005 Gandhi Peace Prize (among many others), suggested yesterday that, "in a consistent world," George W. Bush and Tony Blair should be facing prosecution by the International Criminal Court for their roles in the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Tutu's comments, published as an opinion piece in The Observer in which he explained his reasons for backing out of a conference in which Blair was scheduled to speak, were reported by the Associated Press as a call for the prosecution of Bush and Blair.

Here are Tutu's actual words, which seem to fall somewhat short of actually calling for prosecution but are quite damning nonetheless:

The cost of the decision to rid Iraq of its by-all-accounts despotic and murderous leader has been staggering, beginning in Iraq itself. Last year, an average of 6.5 people died there each day in suicide attacks and vehicle bombs, according to the Iraqi Body Count project. More than 110,000 Iraqis have died in the conflict since 2003 and millions have been displaced. By the end of last year, nearly 4,500 American soldiers had been killed and more than 32,000 wounded.

On these grounds alone, in a consistent world, those responsible for this suffering and loss of life should be treading the same path as some of their African and Asian peers who have been made to answer for their actions in the Hague.

While it is highly unlikely that Bush or Blair will ever face prosecution for their roles in the invasion of Iraq, both men left office with a tarnished image in large part due to the Iraq War. Bush, in fact, had a 22 percent approval rating at the end of his second term (the lowest approval rating for a departing president in the history of Gallup's approval poll) and is the only living ex-president with an approval rating below 50 percent. He was given no role--and was scarcely mentioned--during the recently concluded Republican National Convention. For his part, Blair also left office (in 2007) with an approval rating under 30 percent.

Taylor's Sentence

The Special Court for Sierra Leone has imposed a sentence of fifty years in prison for former Liberian president Charles Taylor.  Judge Richard Lussick, who delivered the sentence, said the crimes Taylor had committed were of the "utmost gravity in terms of scale and brutality."

For more on the sentence--and the trial as a whole--see the Open Society Justice Initiative's special website here.

False Start in the Mladić Case

The trial of Ratko Mladić, which began yesterday in the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) at The Hague, was suspended today due to errors in the prosecution's handling of evidence.  Both sides have conceded that the errors were clerical in nature, but the defense must be given time to review documents that have not previously been made available.  The judge in the case, Alphons Orie, has not indicated when the trial will resume.  Defense attorneys are asking for a delay of six months.

Mladić was the commander of Bosnian Serb (Republika Srpska) forces in the Bosnian War of 1992-1995.  He is accused of ordering two of the worst atrocities of that conflict, the 44-month-long Siege of Sarajevo, in which over 10,000 residents of the city were killed by random shelling from the surrounding hills, and the Srebrenica Massacre, the largest mass murder in Europe since the end of World War II.  He was indicted by the ICTY on charges of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide in 1995, but remained at large in Serbia until his capture on May 26, 2011.

In the first day and a half of the trial, before the suspension, prosecutors presented an overview of the atrocities committed in the war, previewing what will be their efforts in the trial to establish Mladić's responsibility as the commander of Bosnian Serb forces for those crimes listed in the indictment.  Videos of Mladić, including one from Srebrenica, were shown to supplement radio intercepts and narrative descriptions of evidence linking Mladić to the crimes.  In one clip he speaks directly to the camera saying, "We give this town to the Serb people as a gift.  Finally, after the rebellion against the Dahis, the time has come to take revenge on the Turks in this region."  (The "rebellion against the Dahis" refers to the Serbs' 1804 revolt against Ottoman rule.)

Although Mladić is 70 and frail, the critical role he played in the Bosnian War has made his prosecution especially important to those seeking justice for what happened in that conflict.  Prosecutors and victims alike must hope that the trial of Mladić does not play out like that of Slobodan Milošević, who died in prison without a verdict after having been on trial for five years.

The Charles Taylor Verdict

Charles Taylor, a former warlord who was president of Liberia from 1997 to 2003, has been convicted on eleven counts of war crimes by the Special Court for Sierra Leone sitting in The Hague.  In a trial that began in 2006 and that, over the years, included lengthy testimony from Taylor and over a hundred other witnesses concerning conflict diamonds, amputations, and cannibalism, prosecutors sought to link particular war crimes in Sierra Leone’s civil war to Taylor without written orders or testimony putting him at the scene of the crimes.  They were able to do so using intercepted communications and testimony from Taylor’s radio operators.

Taylor was a high-ranking member of Samuel Doe’s government in Liberia following the 1980 coup that toppled William Tolbert.  In 1983, he was dismissed from the government and charged with having embezzled Liberian government funds.  He fled to the United States where, on May 24, 1984, he was arrested and charged with laundering the funds that had been embezzled through an American bank.  He escaped from prison sixteen months later—with help from the CIA, according to his own testimony at trial—and made his way to Libya where he gained support from Muammar Gaddafi.

Eventually Taylor traveled to Cote d’Ivoire where he formed the National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL) and attacked Liberia in an effort to unseat Doe.  A rival organization eventually deposed Doe, but the civil war continued in the form of an ethnic conflict wrapped up in a struggle to control natural resources.

Elections were held in Liberia in 1997 following the conclusion of the war a year earlier.  Taylor won the election with 75 percent of the vote (using, among others, the campaign slogan “he killed my Ma, he killed my Pa, but I will vote for him”).  As president of Liberia, he supported the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) rebel force in the civil war in neighboring Sierra Leone, allegedly by supplying arms for diamonds.  It was his engagement with the RUF that prompted his indictment for war crimes and crimes against humanity by the Special Court for Sierra Leone.

Sentencing in the case has been set for May 3.

Child Soldiers: Dealing with Responsible Parties

On October 3, 2008, President George W. Bush signed into law the Child Soldiers Accountability Act, introduced in 2007 by Senator Richard Durbin and passed unanimously in both the House and the Senate in September 2008.  The act, which has extraterritorial reach, makes it a federal crime to recruit or use children under 15 as soldiers.

Yesterday, a federal immigration judge ordered the deportation of George Boley, a former Liberian warlord, under the terms of the Child Soldiers Accountability Act.  It is the first time the Act has been used for this purpose.

Boley was the leader of an organization called the Liberian Peace Council (LPC), one of seven separate organizations waging war in Liberia during an internal struggle that lasted, with only a brief interruption, from 1989 to 2003.  As many as 250,000 people died in the civil war, which was characterized by the use of child soldiers and frequent atrocities against noncombatants.  Liberia's Truth and Reconciliation Commission recommended that Boley and other warlords be prosecuted for atrocities committed during the war, but no charges have ever been filed.  (Former Liberian president Charles Taylor, however, is being tried in the Special Court for Sierra Leone for his role in fomenting that country's civil war.)

According to a story in the Rochester (N.Y.) Democrat and Chronicle, Boley is a longtime resident of Clarkson, New York.  He attended college almost forty years ago at the College of Brockport where he earned a bachelor's and a master's degree before earning a Ph.D. at the University of Akron.  He was a minister in the government of Samuel Doe, but came to the United States in 1990 following Doe's murder.  In 1993, Boley returned to Liberia as the leader of the LPC.

Boley has been in federal custody for the last two years while fighting deportation.

Justice for Comrade Duch

Kaing Guek Eav, also known as Comrade Duch, had his conviction upheld and his sentence increased by the Supreme Court Chamber of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) earlier this week.  The ECCC was established as a mixed Cambodian-international tribunal to try those responsible for the Cambodian genocide of 1975-79.  In less than four years, the Khmer Rouge regime led by Pol Pot killed approximately 1.7 million Cambodians, or roughly a quarter of Cambodia's population.  Duch was head of a prison--S21--in Phnom Penh called Tuol Sleng.  Nearly all of the approximately 15,000 people who passed through Tuol Sleng were killed.

 Tuol Sleng (S21)

Duch was convicted of crimes against humanity and grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions in July 2010 in the first trial conducted in the ECCC.  He appealed the verdict in March 2011, claiming that, as a junior official in the Khmer Rouge, he was merely following orders on pain of death.  His argument was rejected by the court, which increased his sentence from 35 years to life in prison.  Judge Kong Srim called Duch's crimes "among the worst in recorded history."

Presidents in Prison

Former Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega is being flown from Paris to Panama today, leaving a French prison for a twenty-year prison sentence back home.  For the last twenty-two years, since his capture by the U.S. military forces that invaded Panama in what was called Operation Just Cause, Noriega has been imprisoned--first in the United States where he was convicted on charges of drug trafficking, money laundering, and racketeering, then in France where he was convicted for money laundering.  In Panama, Noriega has been convicted on various human rights charges stemming from murders of political opponents committed during the six years he ruled Panama.

Noriega is not the only former leader in prison.  Former Liberian president Charles Taylor has been incarcerated at The Hague since 2006 when he was surrendered to the Special Court for Sierra Leone by the Liberian government headed by President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the first democratically elected female leader in Africa.  (Sirleaf was one of three women awarded the Nobel Peace Prize yesterday in Stockholm.)  Taylor is awaiting the Court's verdict in his trial for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by forces under his control in Sierra Leone's civil war.

Former Ivory Coast president Laurent Gbagbo was turned over to the International Criminal Court by the new government of Ivory Coast two weeks ago.  He is now awaiting trial in The Hague.

Hosni Mubarak, the Egyptian president ousted by protesters earlier this year, is on trial on a variety of charges including corruption and ordering the killing of protesters.  Due to health problems, including stomach cancer, the 83-year-old Mubarak has been detained in a military hospital in Cairo.  His trial, currently on hold, is scheduled to resume on December 28.

Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, the former president of Tunisia who was ousted in the first wave of the Arab Spring protests, has thus far avoided prison.  However, he has been convicted in absentia of corruption and drug possession.  He and his wife escaped during Tunisia's revolution to Saudi Arabia where they remain in spite of a Tunisian extradition request.

On Wednesday of last week, former Israeli president Moshe Katsav entered prison to begin serving a seven-year sentence for rape.  (The presidency in Israel, it should be noted, is a largely ceremonial office.)  Although Katsav maintains his innocence, his conviction was affirmed by a three-judge panel of Israel's Supreme Court.

Current president of Sudan Omar al-Bashir is currently under indictment by the International Criminal Court. for crimes related to the Darfur genocide.  He, however, remains in office.

Of course, the imprisonment of former leaders is not always a good thing.  In October, former Ukrainian prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko was sentenced to seven years in prison on a charge of abuse of office.  Ms. Tymoshenko denounced the verdict, which observers outside Ukraine have widely criticized as having been politically motivated.

War School

This short film has been out a while, but I just learned about it recently.  Warning:  It's pretty intense.  (It's also pretty effective.)

A "Kill Team" Conviction

Staff sergeant Calvin Gibbs was convicted on three counts of murder and sentenced to life in prison for a series of sport killings in Afghanistan between January and May 2010.  Gibbs was one of five members of the Fifth Stryker Brigade, Second Infantry Division, charged with murder for deliberately killing civilians.  Three have entered guilty pleas.  In all, twelve members of the brigade have been charged with crimes related to activities of the so-called "kill team."  Ten of those have pleaded guilty or been convicted to date.

According to an Army investigation into the killings that was leaked to the Washington Post last year, a member of Gibbs' unit claimed that he hoped to make a necklace from fingers that he cut from the hands of those he killed.  Gibbs also had a tattoo on his calf that he used to keep track of his kills.  Red skulls represented kills in Iraq while blue skulls indicated kills in Afghanistan.

There are many atrocities in war that go unpunished.  Indeed, war itself may be the greatest atrocity.  But what happened today in a U.S. court martial is a reminder that not everything is permissible in war.  And sometimes activities that cross the line--even in war--are actually punished.

Taylor on Trial

The war crimes trial of former Liberian president Charles Taylor began in the Hague on Monday. Taylor is accused of a variety of crimes associated with his support for the rebels in the bloody civil war in neighboring Sierra Leone, crimes that include enslavement and the use of child soldiers.

For live-blogging of the trial and links to trial documents (including a report on the role of the diamond trade in Sierra Leone's civil war [.pdf] submitted into evidence by the prosecution), see this site sponsored by the Open Society Institute. The BBC is providing some of the best coverage of the trial, including this background story posted on Monday and this summary of Charles Taylor's career here.