AFP – The International Criminal Court chief prosecutor on Monday sought new war crimes charges against Bosco “Terminator” Ntaganda and another notorious Democratic Republic of Congo warlord. Ntaganda and Sylvestre Mudacumura are two of the “most dangerous” men in a region where millions have been killed in the past 20 years, chief prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo said in announcing the charges. Read Article
CBC – At least 72 civilians, a third of them under the age of 18, were killed by NATO airstrikes, according to a report released Monday by Human Rights Watch — one of the most extensive investigations into the issue. The New York-based advocacy group called on the Western alliance to acknowledge the casualties and compensate survivors. Read Article
BBC – South Africa must investigate Zimbabwean officials over allegations they tortured opposition figures in 2007, a Pretoria high court has ruled. Under international law, South Africa has a duty to investigate crimes against humanity, the judge said. Prosecutors had previously refused to investigate the officials, who had travelled to South Africa. Read Article
NY Times – The American military claimed responsibility and expressed regret for an airstrike that mistakenly killed six members of a family in southwestern Afghanistan, Afghan and American military officials confirmed Monday. The attack, which took place Friday night, was first revealed by the governor of Helmand Province, Muhammad Gulab Mangal, on Monday. His spokesman, Dawoud Ahmadi, said that after an investigation they had determined that a family home in the Sangin district had been attacked by mistake in the American airstrike, which was called in to respond to a Taliban attack. Mr. Mangal summoned the American regional commander, Maj. Gen. Charles M. Gurganus of the Marines, to complain, and General Gurganus apologized, Mr. Ahmadi said. Read Article
Telegraph – Almost 300 people were also hurt in the clashes, which took place three weeks ahead of presidential elections, according to the official MENA news agency. The Egyptian army also arrested 170 people. On the day Egypt’s ousted leader Hosni Mubarak turned 84, hardline Islamists were in the forefront of street fighting with the troops for the first time, a shift for groups that previously had largely stayed out of direct confrontation with the ruling military. Read article
The New Statesman – You are all potential terrorists. It matters not that you live in Britain, the United States, Australia or the Middle East. Citizenship is effectively abolished. Turn on your computer and the US Department of Homeland Security’s National Operations Center may monitor whether you are typing not merely “al-Qaeda”, but “exercise”, “drill”, “wave”, “initiative” and “organisation”: all proscribed words. [That] The British government … intends to spy on every email and phone call is old hat. The satellite vacuum cleaner known as Echelon has been doing this for years. What has changed is that a state of permanent war has been launched by the United States and a police state is consuming western democracy. Read article
DailyMail – The King of Bahrain has given the Queen a political headache by accepting her invitation to attend her Diamond Jubilee lunch at Windsor Castle next month.The decision will anger human rights groups opposed to his bloody crackdown on pro-democracy protesters.As a matter of royal protocol, the Queen was obliged to invite the king, along with other crowned heads from around the world, to her celebratory lunch on May 18, as revealed by The Mail on Sunday three weeks ago. Read article
The Independent – Special Report day three: Abandoned and afraid, the parents of Iraq’s suffering children wait in vain for help. “He needs multiple surgery outside Iraq. … He has no hearing in his left ear. They told me he has to be six before they can remove cartilage from his chest wall to put in his ear. All operations have to be outside Iraq to beautify the ear and give him his hearing.” … Compared to other children with birth deformities, Sayef Ala’a is lucky. He can see, breathe, walk, run, play and listen to his father and friends with his right ear. Read article
Special Report day two: The pictures flash up on a screen on an upper floor of the Fallujah General Hospital. And all at once, Nadhem Shokr al-Hadidi’s administration office becomes a little chamber of horrors. A baby with a hugely deformed mouth. A child with a defect of the spinal cord, material from the spine outside the body. A baby with a terrible, vast Cyclopean eye. Another baby with only half a head, stillborn like the rest, date of birth 17 June, 2009. Yet another picture flicks onto the screen: date of birth 6 July 2009, it shows a tiny child with half a right arm, no left leg, no genitalia. Read article
NY Times – Charles G. Taylor, the former president of Liberia and once a powerful warlord, was convicted by an international tribunal on Thursday of arming, supporting and guiding a brutal rebel movement that committed mass atrocities in Sierra Leone during its civil war in the 1990s. He is the first head of state to be convicted by an international court since the Nuremberg trials after World War II. Read Article
Reuters – Syria has failed to comply with a pledge to withdraw weapons from population centers, and towns where citizens met with U.N. truce monitors may have been attacked, international mediator Kofi Annan told the U.N. Security Council on Tuesday. As violence flared in the Syrian capital of Damascus, Annan told the 15-nation body “we need eyes and ears on the ground, able to move freely and quickly” to watch over the ragged ceasefire. But the head of U.N. peacekeeping said deployment was moving slowly. Read Article
BBC – South Sudan says it will only withdraw from Heglig if the UN deploys monitors there. In Sudan, President Omar al-Bashir continued his verbal attacks threatening to teach the south a “final lesson”. On Wednesday he had threatened to bring its government down. The BBC’s James Copnall in Juba, South Sudan, says the next decisive step is likely to be Sudan’s attempt to retake Heglig by force. Read article
Daily Mail – A son of Colonel Gaddafi could be tried in Libya for crimes against humanity, it emerged yesterday. The International Criminal Court (ICC) had been insisting that Saif al-Islam Gaddafi must be handed over to the Hague to face justice. The 39-year-old faces trial for killing, torturing and persecuting civilians in the early days of last year’s uprising. Read Article
independent – The documents, which were secretly sent back to the UK when former colonies became independent, shed new light on how British officials ran overseas territories including Kenya, Cyprus and present-day Malaysia. They also record how colonial administrators planned to burn other classified papers – potentially revealing abuses committed under British rule – before handing power to the new indigenous governments. Read article
PressTV – Canadian aboriginal leader Terrance (Terry) Nelson has condemned the “genocide” committed against the indigenous people in North America, and that his people in Southern Manitoba are grappling with the problem of poverty and arduous living conditions. Read article
Reuters – Former Argentine dictator Jorge Rafael Videla has admitted for the first time that the country’s brutal 1976-1983 dictatorship “disappeared” leftist opponents, a euphemism for kidnapped and murdered, and said babies were taken from their parents. Read article
AFP – Former Argentine dictator Jorge Videla admitted for the first time in a new book that “7,000 or 8,000 people” disappeared under his regime between 1976 and 1981. Caferino Reato, author of the book called “Final Disposition,” says Videla admitted the disappearances during 20 hours of interviews in the federal military prison where he is held. “Let’s say there were 7,000 or 8,000 people who had to die to win the war against subversion,” the book quotes Videla as saying. Read Article
Reuters – With some 6,000 new patients every year, an orthopaedic centre in Kabul highlights the growing number of civilians severely injured by bombs that have grown more powerful than ever before. Simon Hanna reports.
Wired – A top adviser to former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice warned the Bush administration that its use of “cruel, inhuman or degrading” interrogation techniques like waterboarding were “a felony war crime.” What’s more, newly obtained documents reveal that State Department counselor Philip Zelikow told the Bush team in 2006 that using the controversial interrogation techniques were “prohibited” under U.S. law — “even if there is a compelling state interest asserted to justify them.” Read Article
DailyMail – The Secret Intelligence Service is ‘scrambling’ to prevent Abdel Hakim Belhadj releasing details of his case following the revelation that a Labour minister sanctioned his extraordinary rendition – contravening UK policy on torture. Senior Whitehall sources say SIS bosses are willing to pay ‘whatever it takes’ to silence Mr Belhadj, who is now a senior official in the Libyan transitional government. Read article
Washington Post – More than 150,000 North Koreans are incarcerated in a Soviet-style, hidden gulag despite the communist government’s denial it holds political prisoners, a human rights group reported Tuesday. The U.S.-based Committee for Human Rights in North Korea said it based its report on interviews with 60 former prisoners and guards. It includes satellite images of what are described as prison labor camps and penitentiaries. Read Article
A hundred and thirty years since the last time Africa was carved up between outside powers history is repeating itself again. Africa is again being subjugated, this time by new players – The USA and China -but it is not imperial glory or the desire to proselytise and convert the heathen masses that drives this subtler but equally nefarious 21st century imperialism. Though the driving force today is far more basic, the tactics employed have hardly changed. To read our analysis of what is currently happening in Africa CLICK HERE
Guardian – In 2004, Fatima Bouchar and her husband, Abdel Hakim Belhaj, were detained en route to the UK, and rendered to Libya. This is the story of their imprisonment, and the trail of evidence that reveals the involvement of the British government. Just when Fatima Bouchar thought it couldn’t get any worse, the Americans forced her to lie on a stretcher and began wrapping tape around her feet. They moved upwards, she says, along her legs, winding the tape around and around, binding her to the stretcher. Read Article
Guardian – Libya is set to defy the United Nations by holding its own trial of Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, son of the country’s deposed dictator, without handing him over to the international criminal court, newly released documents show. Reports by ICC lawyers accuse Libya of orchestrating a programme of obstruction in efforts to bring him to justice in the Hague. Libya is obliged under UN rules to hand over Saif – who had been tipped to succeed Muammar Gaddafi – to the ICC, where he is indicted for crimes against humanity. Read Article
BBC – Ceremonies in Sarajevo are marking 20 years since the start of the war in Bosnia-Hercegovina, a conflict that saw the worst atrocities in Europe since World War II. The conflict began in April 1992 as part of the break-up of Yugoslavia. About 100,000 people were killed and nearly half the population forced from their homes in four years of fighting. Red chairs have filled the street in Sarajevo where the conflict began – 11,541, one for each victim there. People have been putting flowers on some of the chairs. A teddy bear, toys and schoolbooks were placed on the smaller ones that symbolise the hundreds of children killed during the four-year long siege by Serb forces. Sarajevans were asked to stop what they were doing at 12:00 GMT for an hour to mark the start of the conflict. Read Article
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