On March 4, 2015, in Kong v. Public Prosecutor, the Singapore Court of Appeal ruled that caning as administered in Singapore does not constitute torture. Yong Vui Kong was convicted in 2013 of drug trafficking and sentenced to “life imprisonment and 15 strokes of the cane” as prescribed in Singapore’s amended 2012 Misuse of Drugs Act. Kong appealed the sentence on various grounds, including that caning was a form of torture under international and common law, and particularly under the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (Art. 15(1)) to which Singapore is party....
International Law in Brief
International Law in Brief (ILIB) is a forum that provides updates on current developments in international law from the editors of ASIL's International Legal Materials.
On March 3, 2015, the United Nations Security Council adopted Resolution 2206, which creates a system by which the Council can impose targeted sanctions on parties impeding peace in South Sudan. According to the press release, the Council “endorsed the Cessation of Hostilities Agreements accepted and signed by both the Governments of South Sudan and the Sudan Peoples’ Liberation Movement (SPLM)-in Opposition on 23 January 2014, 6 May 2014 and 9 May 2014” and demanded that “all parties adhere to and immediately implement the cessation of hostilities agreements.” The resolution applies to a...
On March 3, 2015, the Appeals Chamber of the International Criminal Court (ICC) amended the Trial Chamber’s “Decision Establishing the Principles and Procedures to be Applied to Reparations” in Prosecutor v. Dyilo. According to the press release, the order was amended to “include an instruction to the TFV [Trust Fund for Victims] that it consult with victims who participated at trial and submitted individual requests on issues relating, inter alia, to the design and nature of the collective reparations awards.” The Appeals Chamber also instructed the TVF “to present a...
On February 27, 2015, the East African Court of Justice dismissed a case brought by the attorneys general of Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda, Burundi, and Tanzania seeking a declaration that the Republic of South Sudan was unfit to be a member of the East African Community (EAC). South Sudan had applied to join the EAC in 2011 under Article 3(3)(b) of the EAC Treaty, but the applicants challenged the move on the ground that South Sudan “does not adhere to universally accepted principles of good governance, democracy, rule of law and observance of human rights and social justice as required under...
On March 3, 2015, the International Co-Investigating Judge of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia charged Meas Muth in absentia for grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions of 1949 and the “crimes against humanity of murder, extermination, enslavement, imprisonment, persecution on political and ethnic grounds, and other inhumane acts” committed against “Vietnamese, Thai and other foreigners at sea and on the islands over which Democratic Kampuchea claimed sovereignty.” According to the court’s statement, Muth will be allowed to view his case file and participate in the...
On February 27, 2015, the Appeals Chamber of the International Criminal Court confirmed the acquittal of Mathieu Ngudjolo Chui of charges of crimes against humanity and war crimes in Prosecutor v. Mathieu Ngudjolo Chui. According to the press release, Chui, an alleged former leader of the Front for National Integration (FNI), a militia operating in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), was acquitted in December 2012 of “three counts of crimes against humanity (murder, rape and sexual slavery) and seven counts of war crimes (using children under the age of 15 to take active part...
On February 27, 2015, Rwanda’s high court upheld the life sentence of former justice minister Agnes Ntamabyariro who was found guilty in 2009 “for her role in the murder of Jean Baptiste Habyarimana, the head of Butare prefecture in southern Rwanda, who was a Tutsi.” Ntamabyariro was the only high level official tried by the Rwandan national courts for crimes committed during the 1994 Rwandan genocide; others were tried by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in Tanzania.
On February 26, 2015, in Shepherd v. Bundesrepublik Deutschland, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) ruled that under certain conditions third-country nationals may be granted asylum in Europe if they are in fear of persecution for refusing to perform military service that could result in the commission of war crimes. According to the press release, Andre Shepherd, a U.S. Army helicopter mechanic refused to return to Iraq in 2007 after being on duty from 2004-2005 “believing that he must no longer play any part in a war in Iraq he considered illegal, and in the war...
On February 26, 2015, the Nepali Supreme Court rejected amnesty for persons who committed serious human rights abuses during the decade-long civil war between government forces and Maoist rebels that killed more than 17, 000 people. Both groups were accused of war crimes, and in 2014 the Nepali legislature passed a bill, the TRC Act, establishing a Truth and Reconciliation Commission and a Commission on Enforced Disappearances, with discretion to grant amnesty to perpetrators. The legislation was controversial and condemned by Navi Pillay, former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, as “...
On February 26, 2015, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, in U.S. v. Al Fawwaz, convicted Khaled Al-Fawwaz of conspiracy in the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania. According to U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, Al Fawwaz, a Saudi Arabian man, was “one of bin Laden’s original and most trusted lieutenants” who, from his media office in London, England, disseminated “bin Laden's 1998 order to followers to kill Americans, a directive that was followed by the August 1998 embassy bombings” that killed 224 people. Al Fawwaz was arrested in London in...