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...
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 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...
On February 24, 2015, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights announced the first session of the working group responsible for examining the periodic reports of parties to the Additional Protocol to the American Convention on Human Rights in the Area of Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (also known as the Protocol of San Salvador). Paulo Vannuchi, the commissioner in charge of the economic, social, and cultural rights unit, called the session “ a milestone—a historic event” and added that the challenge of the Organization of American States is to advance “all human rights,...
On February 23, 2015, a jury in a U.S. District Court in Manhattan, New York, found in Sokolow v. Palestine Liberation Organization the Palestinian Liberation Organization and the Palestinian Authority liable for supporting six terrorist attacks that wounded or killed several Americans, among other victims, in Israel in the early 2000s. The jury awarded victims US$215 million in damages, and the amount is expected to be tripled as the Anti-Terrorism Act, under which the suit commenced, allows a successful plaintiff to recover “threefold the damages he or she sustains and the cost...
On February 18, 2015, the U.S. Court of Military Commission Review, a military appeals court, overturned the conviction of David Hicks, an Australian man who pled guilty in 2007 to providing material support to a terrorist organization. The Commission dismissed the finding of guilty and vacated Hicks’s seven-year sentence on the ground that the charge was not a crime at the time of Hicks’s plea. Citing U.S. v. Al Bahlul, the Commission noted that the case “was a plain ex post facto violation” and the “conviction cannot stand on the merits.” Hicks, who admitted to receiving...
On February 16, 2015, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) released a report entitled “Children’s Rights in Return Policy and Practice in Europe.” The report addresses the challenges presented by the thousands of unaccompanied children who enter the European Union each year seeking asylum. To ensure that the Union meets its international obligations under the Convention on the Rights of the Child, Europe has developed various instruments in an effort to facilitate the return of children to states such as Afghanistan, from which a significant percentage of unaccompanied children come...