Two major cases of universal jurisdiction – after years of work – have finally borne fruit in the month of April 2018: One verdict in Switzerland (Sperisen) and one in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (Colonel “Marocain”) make the case that the mobilization of human rights defenders and civil society can really make a change.
Africa on Line of 23 January 2018 report that human rights defenders NGOs have urged Liberian President Weah to prosecute war crimes.
Twenty international, African and Liberia-based human rights organizations have sent an open letter to Liberian President George Weah, calling on his administration to investigate and prosecute war atrocities. According to a release by the Center for Justice and Accountability based in the United States, the groups also called upon President Weah “to make accountability a priority” for his administration and “ensure the protection of Liberian human rights defenders, particularly those working on accountability initiatives.“
The Center for Justice and Accountability describes the two phases of Liberia civil war, which caused the killings of an estimated 250,000 people and request that the atrocities are investigated and prosecuted. “A report by Liberia’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) released in June 2009 found all sides responsible for serious violations of domestic and international law, including war crimes, crimes against humanity, widespread and systematic rape and sexual slavery, torture, use and recruitment of child soldiers, and mass executions of civilians,” the release said.
“Although the TRC recommended the establishment of an Extraordinary Criminal Tribunal in Liberia to investigate and prosecute perpetrators of serious violations of international criminal and humanitarian law, the only prosecutions to date have been outside of Liberia,” it added. Hassan Bility, Executive Director of Monrovia based Global Justice and Research Project and one of the authors of the open letter said: “Justice must be one of the cardinal points of the President’s new agenda. There must be justice for war crimes, otherwise there will be no lasting peace in Liberia.” Mr. Bility, a former journalist and torture survivor of the civil war, helped initiate the arrests of several Liberian perpetrators in Europe and the U.S. in partnership with the Swiss based NGO, Civitas Maxima.
President Weah, during his inaugural address, assured that his administration would protect human rights and justice for all Liberians: “Today, we Liberians have reached an important milestone in the never-ending journey for freedom, justice, and democracy; a search that has remained central to our history as a nation,” .
Reacting to the speech on Monday, Mr. Bility told FrontPageAfrica the President’s commitment to social justice and human rights would make some difference…“This is an opportunity for him to right many of the things that probably slipped through the safety net of the Ellen administration,” he added.
Recent cases such as the conviction of Jungle Jabbah in Philadelphia and the indictments of other alleged war criminals in Europe and the U.S. have shown that prosecuting war criminals will not reignite the civil war in Liberia, as has often been feared, added Nushin Sarkarati, Senior Staff Attorney at the Center for Justice and Accountability. “It is time to bring these examples of justice home, and make ending impunity in Liberia a priority.”
However, as the the Economist on 4 January 2018 says: Yet there are doubts about the kind of leader Mr Weah will be. Since his election as a senator in 2014, he has rarely attended parliament. Nor has he introduced or co-sponsored any legislation. Mr Weah’s relative lack of education, though, only seems to make him more popular. His supporters see the former slum-dweller as one of them—a champion from their streets. Much will depend on the ministers and advisers with whom he surrounds himself. Liberia needs better roads and schools, more jobs and electricity, and a thousand other things. Presidents, unlike footballers, must aim at multiple goals.
Then-incumbent Gambian President Yahya Jammeh arrives escorted by his bodyguards for an electoral rally on November 24, 2016. MARCO LONGARI/AFP/GETTY
Ousman Sonko, a former interior minister of Gambia suspected of human rights abuses who was arrested in January 2017, will have to remain in Swiss detention, the Swiss Federal Tribunal has ruled. Switzerland’s highest court has rejected an appeal by Sonko’s lawyers against a second prolongation of his detention. The Federal Tribunal said in a decision published in December that Sonko was still under urgent suspicion. As in a previous judgement on an appeal by Sonko, judges said they based their decision on independent reports by United Nations special observers on Gambia. These observers had not yet been questioned by the Office of the Attorney General (OAG) and the OAG also needed to go through files obtained from Gambia during the mutual assistance procedure, the latest judgement said. Trial International, an international justice organisation, accused Sonko of having personally taken part in what it described as torture between 2006 and 2016. Sonko served under ousted Gambian leader Yahya Jammeh. “As the head of detention centers, Sonko could not have ignored the large-scale torture that political opponents, journalists and human rights defenders suffered there,” said Benedict de Moerloose of TRIAL in a statement in 2017.
Barrow, the new President, had stated that he plans to install a truth and reconciliation commissionin the country in order to take account of alleged abuses under Jammeh, before deciding whether to attempt to prosecute the former president. In May 2017 in the wake of the launch of its global ‘brave’ campaign”, the Regional Director for West and Central Africa of AI, Alioune Tine, had called for justice for United Democratic Party (UDP) activist Ebrima Solo Sandeng, and for all victims of the Jammeh regime. “There must be justice for Ebrima Solo Sandeng and for all victims,” Alioune Tine told Freedom Newspaper. Alioune Tine said that, during his meeting with President Adama Barrow, he received assurances from the Gambian leader that there would be ‘zero tolerance’ for human rights abuses.
An ambitious documentary project has 7 days left to find the funding via Kickstarter:
Baltasar Garzón, the Spanish judge who took the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet to justice, is leading a movement of legal ‘warriors’ from all over the world to guarantee the international punishment of major economic, financial and environmental crimes. The tool to achieve their goal can be summed up in two words: Universal Jurisdiction. The movement composed of judges, prosecutors and lawyers tries to promote the international denouncement of actions such as food speculation, issuing junk bonds, squandering public funds and large-scale contamination. These crimes should, as genocides and war crimes, be designated as Crimes Against Humanity and prosecuted internationally.
History is filled with visionaries who understood before others that practices such as slavery, colonialism and apartheid were not part of the natural order of things: they were immoral actions carried out by a minority and should be considered as crimes. Today, this international movement led by Baltasar Garzón tries to expose that financial fraud is not a systemic problem but a premeditated act, and should be considered as criminal behaviour. The aim of the group is to foster a new Universal Jurisdiction code of principles and fight alongside the civil society to ensure its application.
During the Universal Jurisdiction Congress (Buenos Aires, September 2015), a new list of Crimes Against Humanity was drafted. After countless debates between experts from the six continents, the list now includes economical and environmental infractions. All these efforts must now work their way to national legislations. On a planet with almost 8 billion people, irresponsible economic decisions can be disastrous. With all their effort, the legal warriors work together towards a common goal: cease with the impunity of economic and environmental crimes.
In the Kickstarter post, the Director, states “For me it’s an important task to help people understand the juridical language, given the historical isolation of the judicial power and its perverse use by the political and economic powers. Democratize juridical language, understand judicial mechanisms and point out their actors, all this with the support of a hundred of the most prestigious international jurists who have united to fight against impunity in major economic and environmental crimes, is a noble objective. This documentary is about heroes, brave jurists, classical characters of film noir
Our team has been working on this project for three years now and is very committed to it. We think that if the fight of the legal warriors is made public, citizens will be able to pressure their political powers to include changes in national legislations and international relations. We are talking about establishing a new code of social conduct, a code of human relationships, consistent with the challenges of living on a planet in constant evolution. We interviewed tens of professionals and filmed in three countries so far: Argentina, Spain and Senegal, where we attended in May 2016 to the end of Hissène Habré’s trial for crimes against humanity during his dictatorship in Chad.
We now need your support to finish the production and get this film out to the world where it can make a difference! After three years working on this project, we are launching a crowdfunding campaign to find the necessary funding to finish the film. All funds we raise will enable our team to finish production, access film footage, and cover the editing and postproduction costs. We are confident that if we meet our goal, we will be able to finish the film before the end of 2017.
After my post on Civitas Maxima[https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2017/03/21/new-magazine-global-geneva-puts-civitas-maxima-in-the-limelight/] I feel that I should complete the picture with a reference to “Make Way for Justice #3” which argues that universal jurisdiction has gathered unprecedented momentum in 2016. In this annual report, ECCHR and its partners FIBGAR, FIDH, REDRESS and TRIAL Internationallook back on its application through 47 recent cases. Five years of conflict, hundreds of thousands of dead. In Syria, large-scale war crimes are committed in all impunity. Effective prosecution has been repeatedly impeded at the international level, yet justice has found a way forward: universal jurisdiction. Thanks to this principle, States can prosecute criminals regardless of their nationality or where the crime was committed. The interest of such procedures for lawless regions is obvious.
2016 alone, five States have brought charges for alleged crimes in Syria. Investigations are ongoing in three others. For victims, these proceedings may be their only chance to obtain justice. Universal jurisdiction has proved a significant tool against impunity in Syria, but it also applies to many more situations: Rwanda, Nepal, Guatemala and Iraq, to name but a few.
To illustrate this breadth, ECCHR, FIBGAR, FIDH, REDRESS and TRIAL International released their annual report on universal jurisdiction, Make way for Justice #3. In 2016 alone, 13 States have made use of this principle in 47 cases – an unprecedented success.
