Western-supported Libyan warlord guilty of war crimes, say investigators
September 28, 2017 Leave a comment
Libya’s most powerful warlord, who was an asset of the United States Central Intelligence Agency before entering the Libyan Civil War, ordered his troops to commit war crimes, according to two American legal experts. Libya has remained in a state of war since 2011, when a popular uprising backed by the West and its allies led to the demise of the country’s dictator, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi. Currently the strongest faction in the ongoing Libyan Civil War is the eastern-based Tobruk-led Government, which is affiliated with the Libyan National Army (LNA). The commander of the LNA is Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar, an old adversary of Colonel Gaddafi, who lived in the United States under Washington’s protection for several decades before returning to Libya in 2011 to launch his military campaign.
But Haftar’s reputation as a military commander is now being challenged by two leading American legal experts. They are Ryan Goodman, a professor and former special counsel to the general counsel of the United States Department of Defense, and Alex Whiting, a Harvard University law professor who served as an international criminal prosecutor at the International Criminal Court. Together they have published a report on the Just Security blog, which is affiliated with several institutions, including the New York University School of Law. The two scholars argue that Haftar has publicly urged his troops to commit war crimes in several instances. Their report references a video that contains a brief given by Haftar in September 2015 to LNA commanders, in which he calls on them to take no prisoners. In a transcript of the LNA leader’s speech, he is reported to have told his audience: “Give no consideration to bringing prisoner[s] here. There is no prison here”. The two legal experts interpret Haftar’s statement as a clear case of “denial of quarter”, which they say is “a firmly settled part of the laws of war”. In another video, recorded in August 2016, Beleed al-Sheikhy, who is a spokesman for the LNA, is seen briefing LNA commanders about an upcoming battle in Ganfouda, a southern suburb of the port city of Benghazi. Al-Sheikhy says in the video that “anyone who is above 14 years of age will never get out [of Ganfouda] alive”. He tells the LNA troops that they should “consider this a confirmed notice”.
In June of this year, a report published by the United Nations suggested that the main reason for the LNA’s military prowess lies in the secret support it receives from the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. In August, a British-based newspaper claimed that Haftar has been holding secret meetings with Israeli officials since 2015, and that the Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency, has secretly provided the LNA with military aid, including night vision equipment and various sniper rifles.
► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 28 September 2017 | Permalink
A Rwandan former intelligence chief, whose legal team is led by the wife of British former Prime Minister Tony Blair, has been freed after a court in the United Kingdom refused to extradite him to Spain to face war crimes charges. General Emmanuel Karenzi Karake, 54, was the most senior intelligence official in the administration of Rwandan President Paul Kagame. He rose to fame as a commander in the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), an armed rebel group from Rwanda’s minority Tutsi tribe that fought to end the genocide inflicted upon the Tutsis by their rival Hutus. In 1994, following the death of nearly a million people, the RPF took power in Rwanda and ended the slaughter. That accomplishment caused a rapid upsurge in the popularity of Karake and other senior RPF leaders. Karake’s popularity remains strong among the Tutsis despite his dramatic falling-out with Kagame in 2010, which led to the general’s dismissal from the government.
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Senior Serb intelligence officials given prison sentences for war crimes
July 1, 2021 by Joseph Fitsanakis Leave a comment
TWO SENIOR FORMER OFFICIALS in the now defunct domestic security apparatus of Serbia have been given prison sentences totaling 24 years, after being found guilty of war crimes by a United Nations court. The crimes of the two officials stem from the Yugoslav Wars, a series of bloody ethnic conflicts that followed the breakup of the former Yugoslavia in 1991.
The two former officials, Jovica Stanišić, 70, and Franko “Frenki” Simatović, 71, deny that they trained Serbian elite police units in methods of exterminating non-Serb populations in various regions of the former Yugoslavia. The two men were initially acquitted of all charges against them by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). But the initial ruling was quashed, and the two men were tried again, this time by United Nations Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals, which took over ICTY’s operations after its mandate ended.
Stanišić directed the State Security Service (SDB), which operated under the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Serbia as the country’s primary domestic security agency. Simatović was an intelligence officer who, from 1991 until 1998, commanded the feared Special Operations Unit, known as JSO. The JSO was an elite police force that operated under Stanišić’s SDB. Prosecutors accused the two men of working under direct orders by Serb President Slobodan Milošević, with the aim of ethnically cleansing non-Serbian populations. Milošević died in 2006 in prison at The Hague, Netherlands, where he was held facing charges of genocide and crimes against humanity.
On Wednesday, each of the two men were given 12 years in prison. Simatović has already served eight years in prison, and Stanišić close to five. Both continue to deny the charges against them, and their lawyers said they would appeal the convictions.
► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 01 July 2021 | Permalink
Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with former Yugoslavia, Franko Simatovic, International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), Jovica Stanišić, State Security Service (Serbia), State Security Service Special Operations Unit (Serbia), war crimes, Yugoslav Wars