Those Clever Quadrotors

Back in March, I linked to a video of quadrotors--small robotic flying machines programmed to act autonomously--playing the James Bond theme. I'm not sure this is better, but it's still pretty impressive.

Not for Attribution

The story about Iran's Fars News Agency plagiarizing a story from The Onion is too good not to share. Enjoy.

Equatorial Guinea v. France

Equatorial Guinea has filed an application with the International Court of Justice seeking an order that would compel France to end its corruption investigation against the country's president and vice president. France, in an investigation known popularly as biens mal acquis or ill-gotten gains, has seized a Paris estate valued at approximately 150 million euros along with several million euros worth of art, wine, and automobiles owned by Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue, Equatorial Guinea's second vice president and son of long-time president, Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo. A similar forfeiture case involving property in the United States was filed last year by federal prosecutors and is now being litigated.

A press release issued by the ICJ today states,

Equatorial Guinea asserts that those procedural actions violate the principles of equality between States, non-intervention, sovereignty and respect for immunity from criminal jurisdiction. The Republic of Equatorial Guinea therefore asks the Court "to put an end to these breaches of international law" by ordering France, inter alia, to "bring a halt to [the] criminal proceedings" and to "take all measures necessary to nullify the effects of the arrest warrant issued against the Second Vice-President of Equatorial Guinea and of its circulation”. In its "request for provisional measures", Equatorial Guinea requests the Court, in particular, to "order  . . . the return . . . of the property and premises . . . belonging to the Republic of Equatorial Guinea" and seized by the French judges in the context of the investigation.

Equatorial Guinea has argued that the estate that was seized in Paris, along with its contents, is a diplomatic residence--and thus protected by diplomatic immunity--as a result of the fact that its principal resident Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue is, in addition to his other responsibilities, the Equatoguinean representative to UNESCO, which is headquartered in Paris. French authorities have taken the position that Obiang's diplomatic responsibilities were created in an effort to extend diplomatic immunity after the corruption investigation was well under way.

Before the ICJ can proceed with a case based on Equatorial Guinea's application, France must consent to the jurisdiction of the Court.

There has been no comment from the French government regarding Equatorial Guinea's application.

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.

Joshua Casteel (1979 - 2012)

I learned this week of the death, back on August 25, of Joshua Casteel. Chances are that you've never heard of Joshua Casteel, but he left his mark on the world in a way that deserves to be pondered, discussed, and perhaps even emulated. If nothing else, the trajectory of his life and the "crystallization of conscience" that he experienced merit thoughtful consideration, especially in an age when it seems that, as Yeats put it, "The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity."

Casteel grew up in an evangelical Christian home in Iowa, steeped in patriotism and conservative views. At 17, he joined the Army Reserves, then went to the University of Iowa on an ROTC scholarship. On entering active duty, he was assigned to language school where he studied Arabic. In 2004, just weeks after the torture scandal became public knowledge, Casteel was assigned to Abu Ghraib as part of the Army's 202nd Military Intelligence Battalion. He was a translator and an interrogator in one of the world's most notorious prisons.

The "crystallization of conscience"--the moment when Casteel decided to apply for conscientious objector status--came in response to the comments of a Muslim prisoner (and self-proclaimed jihadist) he was interrogating:  "[He said] I wasn’t fulfilling the call to turn the other cheek, to love one’s enemies. When posed with that kind of challenge, I had nothing I could say to him. I absolutely agreed with him. My position as a U.S. Army interrogator contradicted my calling simply as a Christian."

Casteel was honorably discharged as a conscientious objector in May 2005. He joined Iraq Veterans Against the War, published a book entitled Letters from Abu Ghraib, earned an MFA in writing at the University of Iowa, and wrote two plays about his experiences in Iraq. In 2010, be began studies at the University of Chicago's Divinity School. Soon after, he was diagnosed with lung cancer, which claimed his life on August 25, 2012.

Soldiers of Conscience, a documentary produced in 2007 and broadcast on PBS the following year, featured Casteel's story. An excerpt appears in the clip below.

A Milestone for Transparency

For over a decade, a global campaign to promote government accountability in resource-rich states--some of which are dictatorships and, more to the point, kleptocracies (like Equatorial Guinea)--has been underway. The name of the campaign, as well as its premise, is simple: Publish What You Pay (PWYP). The idea is that if oil and mining companies reveal what they pay to governments for the right to extract natural resources, the veil of secrecy that often facilitates corruption will be lifted. The people of the state--and the governments of other states--will be in a better position to compare government expenditures on education, health, and other social goods to the income the government derives from the sale of natural resources that are also national resources.

As I have often noted here, Teodoro Obiang of Equatorial Guinea has spent thirty-three years in power amassing a fortune for himself and his family while the country as a whole remains mired in poverty as bad as any in Africa. Obiang's son--less discreet in his spending than his father, whom he is being groomed to succeed--is under investigation in the United States, France, and Spain for corruption. In the U.S., a $30 million mansion in Malibu, a $38 million jet, and a $2 million collection of Michael Jackson memorabilia are at stake in a Justice Department lawsuit. In France, a $180 million estate has been seized by authorities. The staggering dimensions of Equatorial Guinea's corruption are, in large measure, a product of its petroleum wealth, which, in the 1990s, launched the Obiang family into the ranks of the super-rich (and super-corrupt). The American oil companies that have operated in Equatorial Guinea for the past twenty years have not been required to reveal what they pay in royalties to the Obiang family (also known as the Equatoguinean government)--until now.

Two weeks ago, on August 22, the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) issued rules required by the Cardin-Lugar Amendment to the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010. The Amendment, cosponsored by Sen. Benjamin Cardin (D-MD) and Sen. Richard Lugar (R-IN), is also called the Extractive Industries Disclosure Provision. (For the text of the amendment as enacted, go here.) Under the SEC's new rules (available here), all companies involved in resource extraction (oil production and mining) that are required to file reports with the SEC--all publicly traded companies involved in extractive industries, in other words--must "include in an annual report information relating to any payment made by the issuer [the company], a subsidiary of the issuer, or an entity under the control of the issuer, to a foreign government or the Federal Government for the purpose of the commercial development of oil, natural gas, or minerals." The data provided must be broken down by payee, project, and type of payment and must be presented in a format that facilitates automated search functions.

Intense lobbying by oil companies delayed the rules for sixteen months beyond the deadline mandated by Congress. The companies claimed that disclosure was not permitted in some of the countries where they operate and that the cost of data collection and reporting would be prohibitive. These arguments were undercut by the fact that some companies--including Newmont Mining, an American company, and Norway's Statoil--voluntarily disclose the information being required by the SEC rules with no apparent effect on either operations or profits. (James North, writing in The Nation, has more on industry opposition to the rules.)

Rather than putting American corporations subject to the reporting requirements at a competitive disadvantage, there are indications that the SEC's PWYP rules will establish an international standard that will be adopted by other resource-importing countries. In May 2011, the G8 Summit in Deauville, France expressed support for mandatory reporting rules for extractive industries. In October 2011, the European Commission proposed legislation for the European Union similar to the Cardin-Lugar Amendment. There are proposals for similar rules in Canada and Australia. In this respect, American leadership in the promotion of transparency in the resource sector may mirror the experience with the adoption of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act of 1977, which led to a global movement to ban the payment of bribes. In any event, the decision to put the weight of the United States government behind the international effort to promote transparency in extractive industries is a welcome addition to the global campaign against corruption.

The Militarization of the Ivory Trade

The world is currently experiencing "what is likely to be the greatest percentage loss of elephants in history," according to Richard G. Ruggiero of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. A very compelling story in today's New York Times describes the problem and its causes, which include the sale of ivory to finance the operations of both rebel forces, among them the Lord's Resistance Army led by fugitive war crimes suspect Joseph Kony, and state-based military forces, such as the Ugandan army that has been pursuing Kony with American support. Underlying the calculus that turns elephant poaching into weapons is a thriving black market driven by demand in China where ivory now sells for as much as $1000 per pound. Like oil in Nigeria, coltan in Angola, and diamonds in Sierra Leone a few years ago, ivory is now fueling conflict, enriching transnational criminal organizations, and testing the limits of international cooperation.

The dimensions of the problem are visible in the fact that 38.8 tons of ivory--representing over 4,000 dead elephants--were seized by customs officials worldwide last year. In Garamba National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo, park rangers use military-style tactics  while wielding machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades to battle poachers. They are commonly outnumbered and outgunned.

Read the story. It provides an outstanding case study of the way that global demand for scarce natural resources can drive 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.

Health Security and Bad Governance

Sometimes it helps to read the end of a news story first.

An article by Adam Nossiter published yesterday in the New York Times ("Cholera Epidemic Envelops Coastal Slums in West Africa") concludes with an observation from Jane Bevan, a sanitation specialist working with UNICEF in West Africa: "We know governments have the money for other things. I'm afraid sanitation is never given the priority it deserves."

The article describes a serious cholera outbreak centered in the slums of Freetown, Sierra Leone and Conakry, Guinea. Sierra Leone reports over 11,600 cases of cholera since January with 1,000 new cases each month. According to Doctors Without Borders, 250 to 300 people have died in Freetown and Conakry since February.

Cholera is a highly contagious disease caused primarily by exposure to the feces of an infected person. It causes vomiting and diarrhea leading to dehydration and electrolyte imbalances that, if not treated with rehydration therapy, may be fatal.

Heavy rains, which have caused flooding in shanty towns where sanitary toilets are rare, must be listed among the immediate causes of this outbreak. The existence of the shanty towns in Freeport and Conakry, however, owes much to a decade of civil war in Sierra Leone that drove many people from the countryside to the cities and to over fifty years of dictatorship in Guinea with similar effects on the distribution of population there. But if Jane Bevan is correct, these causes of the cholera outbreak could have been averted--or at least significantly mitigated--if the governments of Sierra Leone and Guinea had allocated resources in a way that took the health of their people into account. And this is something that Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights seems to require. (See also Article 12 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.)

The primary responsibility of government--anywhere--is to ensure the security of its citizens. This responsibility is commonly, but improperly, framed in terms of national security with a focus on external military threats. But the most serious threats affecting people all over the world--that is, the threats most likely to kill or threaten the well-being of people, even in a state like Sierra Leone that has recently emerged from conflict--are not generally military threats. Disease, poverty, environmental degradation, climate change, political repression, and a host of other "soft" threats are what people must face more often than the "hard" threat of war. It is important, consequently, for governments (even in the developed world) to shift their focus from national security to human security.

"Quite Spectacular"

Today's New York Times provides an overview of the French government's property seizures in the biens mal acquis case involving Equatorial Guinea. The money quote comes from William Bourdon, founder of Sherpa, which was one of the organizations that brought the original complaint in the biens mal acquis case:  "We didn't wish to target the Obiang clan particularly, but their looting of public funds is quite spectacular."

Modern Warfare

C. J. Stivers, a New York Times reporter covering the civil war in Syria, last week posted photos on his blog of a member of the anti-government al-Tawhid Brigade checking text messages while handling the machine gun in the back of a truck racing toward Aleppo at 80 miles per hour. The subject could have been catching up with members of his social network, but under the circumstances his texts more likely contained tactical information--"watch for government forces near the airport," or something like that.  Regardless, the suggestion the photos make is that all fighting forces--military and paramilitary alike--are networked these days.

Walking Wounded

Nicholas Kristof's piece in tomorrow's New York Times about Maj. Ben Richards is a must-read.  It is a reminder that the human costs of war are truly incalculable.  It is also a reminder that when we fail to pay the economic costs of war--by inadequately funding the care of veterans--we dishonor brave men and women.

From Torture Victim to President

As a young woman, Dilma Rousseff joined a guerrilla group opposed to the military junta ruling Brazil.  She was captured and spent three years in various prisons where she was repeatedly tortured.  Now, four decades later, she is Brazil's president.

Rousseff's story, the subject of a front-page article in yesterday's New York Times, is remarkable, but it is not unique.  So many of Latin America's politically active citizens were victims of state repression from the 1960s to the 1980s that we should not be terribly surprised to find that some of the ones who survived have now made it to the tops of their political systems.  In addition to Rousseff, there is former Chilean president Michelle Bachelet who was tortured by Chile's military dictatorship in the mid-1970s.  (Her father, a general loyal to President Salvador Allende, suffered a fatal heart attack while being tortured by the regime of General Augusto Pinochet, which ousted Allende.)  José Mujica, president of Uruguay, was also tortured by his government.

Perhaps the best-known torture victim to experience such a dramatic change of fortune was South Africa's president from 1994 to 1999, Nelson Mandela.  In Eastern Europe following the fall of communism, several former dissidents who had been imprisoned (but not tortured) for their anti-communist activities, including Václav Havel in Czechoslovakia and Lech Wałęsa in Poland, assumed the leadership of their states.

Teddy Bears for Human Rights

Two Swedish ad agency employees--Thomas Mazetti and Hannah Frey--flew a small plane from Lithuania into Belarus last month and dropped 879 teddy bears with parachutes and human rights messages over various cities, including Minsk, the capital. This week, in response, Alexander Lukashenko, who has ruled Belarus since 1994 and is called Europe's last dictator, fired the country's generals in charge of border security and air defense.

Belarus represses all forms of dissent and regularly jails those suspected of opposing the regime. Dissidents in the country have posed teddy bears on the streets of Minsk in silent protests against the Lukashenko regime. This, in fact, was the inspiration for the air drop undertaken by Frey and Mazetti.

Frey said, "Hopefully, we've made people more aware in the world and that there will be more people supporting Belarusian people."

For more on the air drop, see the Associated Press story here or the Los Angeles Times story here.  Mazetti and Frey's video appears below.

France Gets Serious

According to multiple sources, on July 19 French authorities seized the Paris home of Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue.  Obiang is the subject of a French arrest warrant issued in connection with a corruption investigation.

The home, a six-story mansion near the Arc de Triomphe, is estimated to be worth between 100 and 150 million euros.  Last year, eleven luxury automobiles were seized as part of the same investigation.

The arrest warrant and most recent property seizure came after Obiang failed to appear in response to a summons for questioning.  According to his attorney, "Mr. Obiang has judicial immunity as he is the vice-president of Equatorial Guinea and therefore could not attend the summons."  His appointment as vice president in his father's government came in May.

For more on the property seizure, see BBC News, Reuters, or AFP.

A Warning on Cyber Attacks

"Destructive cyber-attacks against critical infrastructure are coming."  This was Gen. Keith Alexander's warning to the Aspen Security Forum last week.  Gen. Alexander heads the National Security Agency and the U.S. Cyber Command.  He should know what he's talking about--although he also clearly knows how to grow a budget.

According to Gen. Alexander, efforts to hack into U.S. infrastructure systems increased 17-fold between 2009 and 2011.  However, the number of attacks for any given year were not provided.

A video of the interview with Gen. Alexander, conducted by NBC News correspondent Pete Williams, is available here.

The Arms Trade Treaty: A Postmortem

On July 2, representatives of 193 UN member states met in New York City for the UN Conference on the Arms Trade Treaty. The objective of the conference was to agree on the text of an international agreement that would provide for greater coordination among states in the regulation of trade in conventional weapons. On Friday, the meeting concluded without an agreement. The search for consensus was impeded by the reluctance of some of the biggest arms-trading states, including the United States, to see a treaty adopted.

Expectations for reaching an agreement ran high but were probably unrealistic given three key factors influencing the actual outcome of the negotiations.  First, the conference operated on the basis of a rule of consensus.  This meant that a single state could play the role of spoiler in the negotiations, both with respect to individual provisions of the treaty being considered and the final outcome of the negotiations.  Put differently, all participants had to accept the results in order for a treaty to be adopted.  Second, although most of the world's states were willing to sign on to rules that would make it more difficult to transfer weapons to governments that support terrorism or abuse human rights (and in fact many already adhere to domestic restrictions on arms sales to unsavory regimes), a few states profit greatly from their willingness to sell in a market made less competitive by the moral scruples of others.  The most important aim of a treaty to regulate conventional arms sales was to correct this flaw in the system, but the consensus rule meant that diplomatic pressure--shame, basically--rather than democratic processes would be required to prevent the unscrupulous from shutting down the negotiations.  Finally, one of the major players in global arms sales that also happens to be fairly scrupulous in its choice of customers--the United States--faced a significant domestic barrier to benign participation, much less effective leadership, at the conference.  As it did during the 2001 UN Conference on the Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons in All Its Aspects, the American gun lobby said, in effect, "Go ahead, make my day" to all in the American political system who might have considered support for any form of regulation of the international arms trade.  On the eve of the conference's final day, a letter signed by 51 senators that expressed reservations about a potential treaty's effect on gun ownership in the United States--a matter explicitly and consistently excluded from treaty negotiations--was delivered to the White House and the Department of State.

Supporters of the ATT, as the treaty is called, were frustrated that the Obama administration broke with the consensus by claiming on the last day of the conference that more time was needed to reach an acceptable agreement.  The call for more time came after the conference had agreed on limits in the treaty designed to appease those in the United States with concerns about the domestic protection of gun ownership.  (These concerns were, in the first place, "irresponsible demagoguery" and addressed thoroughly in this issue brief from the Arms Control Association.)  It is not the first time that the United States has lobbied to weaken the substantive provisions of a major international agreement only to reject the final product after getting what it wanted.  (See the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.)

While the control of the American gun lobby over the United States Senate combined with the two-thirds majority vote required for treaty ratification makes U.S. participation in an agreement unlikely for the foreseeable future, the rest of the world seems certain to reach agreement on the Arms Trade Treaty soon.  A statement at the end of the conference, issued on behalf of over 90 participating states, called on the conference president, Ambassador Roberto García Moritán of Argentina, "to report to the General Assembly on the progress we have made, so that we can finalize our work."  Such a report is expected to give the UN General Assembly an opportunity to vote on the text of the ATT.  Under the rules of the General Assembly, a two-thirds majority vote would be needed to adopt the treaty and send it on to UN member states for ratification.  No veto would be possible.

As incredible as it sounds, the solution posed by the American gun lobby to the problem of gun violence outside the borders of the United States is the same solution offered for the same problem inside our borders:  more guns.  The putative right to own guns of any size or class is held by merchants of death to be more important than the very real right to life.  This, at least, seems to be the inescapable conclusion to be drawn from opposition to a treaty designed to curb arms sales to governments like those in Syria, Iran, Burma, and North Korea.

The London Olympics . . . and Gender

Whether legal or cultural, gender barriers--almost all of which cause women to be left out or otherwise disadvantaged, in case that needs to be said--remain all too common in the modern world.  My own university has never had a female president or provost; my college within the university has never been led by a female dean.  The United States, Mexico, France (etc., etc.) and 52 of the 53 countries on the African continent have never had a female president.  In spite of the remaining barriers, not just in education and politics but in business, the arts, religion, and many other fields, progress is occurring.  In this year that just happens to mark the fortieth anniversary of the adoption of Title IX, there will be more women than men representing the United States in the London Olympics.  That has never happened before.  And in the upcoming Olympic Games, every single country participating will do so with both female and male athletes.  That, too, has never happened before.

Three countries--Qatar, Brunei, and Saudi Arabia--had to overcome their long traditions of gender discrimination in order ensure that every team participating in the London Olympics has both male and female representatives.  Ironically (given what I said about my university), a Pepperdine student, Sarah Attar, will be half of the female contingent on Saudi Arabia's Olympic team.  A member of the women's track team at Pepperdine, Attar will compete at 800 meters in London.

Attar was born and raised in California but has both U.S. and Saudi Arabian citizenship.  Given the limited opportunities for women in sports in Saudi Arabia, going outside the Kingdom to find Attar or someone like her was one of the few options for bringing a woman onto the Saudi Arabian Olympic team.  (The other woman on the Saudi Arabian team, Wodjan Ali Seraj Abdulrahim Shahrkhani, is from Saudi Arabia and will compete in judo.)

As this essay by Eman Al Nafjan points out, terrible discrimination against women persists in Saudi Arabia; giving in to the International Olympic Committee's threat to bar Saudi Arabia from participating in the Olympics hardly qualifies as a magnanimous gesture on the part of the royal family.  Nevertheless, from small beginnings great things sometimes emerge.  Just ask the 269 women on the U.S. team, most of whom are beneficiaries of a law called Title IX.

Torture from the Inside

Worth watching.

The French Arrest Warrant Appears

France has issued an arrest warrant for Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue, vice president of Equatorial Guinea and son of the country's president.  (The existence of the warrant, previously concealed, was first reported in April.)  Obiang failed to appear for questioning as ordered in France's Biens Mal Acquis case in which it is alleged that millions of Euros worth of goods, including a lavish home near the Arc de Triomphe, were acquired with the proceeds of corruption.  Obiang is currently facing a civil action brought by the U.S. Department of Justice last fall that seeks to seize American property, including an estate in Malibu, and almost $2 million worth of Michael Jackson memorabilia, for the same reason.