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Ivory Coast ex-leader’s party in disarray | AP
By Robbie Corey-Boulet
Each morning, briefcase in hand, Laurent Boblet takes two taxis and two minibuses to the headquarters of the Ivorian Popular Front, the party of Ivory Coast’s former strongman who is now facing international charges of crimes against humanity.
Photo: VOA-M Motta/Flickr
African states pledge to eradicate DRC rebels | Al Jazeera
“The Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda and neighbouring states have called for the creation of an international military force to eliminate armed rebels in the DRC’s volatile east.”
Congo unrest challenges UN | Deutsche Welle
By Hilke Fischer
Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo teeters on the brink of chaos as civilians flee the fighting. Analysts warn only a radically new UN strategy can help.
The Democratic Republic of Congo seethes with unrest. Numerous rebel groups are fighting in the east of the country over territory, natural resources and political influence.
Particularly badly hit is the eastern province of North Kivu. Moustapha Mwiti coordinates civil society groups in the DRC. He says local residents there are in the middle of war zone. “Many are fleeing, others are being killed and villages are being torched,” he says.
Photo: picture-alliance/dpa
Defiant Libyan militia hold ICC team for a third day | The National
By: Alice Fordham
CAIRO // A mountain militia in western Libya defied diplomats, the International Criminal Court and their own president yesterday by detaining an ICC legal delegation for a third day.
The four ICC staff are accused of trying to pass forbidden material to Saif Al Islam, imprisoned son of the former Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi, while visiting him in Zintan. The military council in Zintan said they tried to give him a camera and a letter from Mohamad Ismail, a senior member of the Qaddafi regime.
Photo: B.R.Q./Flickr
Should Saif al-Islam be tried in Libya? | Al Jazeera
On Friday, the armed brigade that has been holding Saif al-Islam, Muammar Gaddafi’s son, captured four ICC staff members who went to meet him, accusing them of trying to pass documents to him.
The incident highlights the problems posed by the existence of powerful local militias in Libya and calls into question the authority of the central government under the National Transitional Council (NTC) in the run-up to the general elections.
The ICC and Libyan authorities have been unable to agree on where al-Islam should be tried.
The ICC wants to try him for crimes against humanity. But Libya says he should be tried in his own country and has refused to hand him over to the ICC.
ICC Turns Attention to Mali | Institute for War and Peace Reporting
By IWPR Contributor
The prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, ICC, has turned his attention to Mali, where he will look into a spate of recent atrocities, using special powers that allow him to launch an investigation on his own initiative.
Analysts have largely welcomed Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo’s move to investigate the situation in Mali, and believe it could help deter further crimes in the country. But the prosecutor’s power to initiate an investigation without a referral from the United Nations Security Council or from an ICC member state known as “proprio motu”, Latin for “on his own impulse”, is under scrutiny since his first full-scale probe, in Kenya, has met with resistance and limited cooperation from that country’s government.
In a statement released on April 24, the ICC’s Office of the Prosecutor, OTP, announced that it was looking into the possibility that war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide had been taking place in Mali.
The prosecutor’s concerns stem from the violence that swept the country at the beginning of the year, as a Tuareg rebels launched an uprising in the north, leading to clashes also involving Arab and Islamist militias. A military coup in March left Mali in chaos, with the north of the country outside effective government control.
If the ICC’s prosecutor is to move to a full investigation in Mali, there may be valuable lessons to be learnt from the OTP’s experience in Kenya.
In that case, the prosecutor chose to invoke his proprio motu powers rather than wait for a referral from the Kenyan state following the violence that erupted after a disputed presidential election in late 2007.
He has only succeeded in getting the charges against four of the original six indictees upheld. As soon as the six suspects charged, a debate began within the country over whether Kenya should leave the ICC. It ultimately chose to remain a signatory to the court’s founding treaty, the Rome Statute, but its stance has soured the government’s relationship with the court.
Photo: شبكة برق | B.R.Q/Flickr
All Africa | Central Africa: Muted Applause for Ugandan Rebel’s Arrest
By Simon Jennings
As the Ugandan military seeks to flush out Joseph Kony, leader of the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army, LRA, analysts are downplaying the significance of last weekend’s capture of a senior commander from the group.
According to the Ugandan army, LRA officer Caesar Acellam was captured in a pre-planned ambush as he crossed the Mbomu river between the Democratic Republic of Congo, DRC, and the Central African Republic, CAR.
Felix Kulayigye, spokesman for the Ugandan People’s Defence Force, UPDF, described Acellam as a “big fish”, and predicted that his detention would accelerate the arrest of other LRA members, including Kony himself.
The International Criminal Court, ICC, in The Hague has charged Kony and two of his commanders, Okot Odhiambo and Dominic Ongwen, with atrocities committed during the 20-year insurgency which ravaged northern Uganda until 2006. Two others whom the ICC charged in 2005 have since died.
Analysts say it is not clear what Acellam’s arrest means for the pursuit of the three ICC indictees, since the precise circumstances have not been made public.
“The key question again is whether this was a result of a negotiation and he had a path smoothed for him; whether he simply walked out of the bush or whether he was tracked down and captured,” Ben Shepherd of Chatham House’s Africa programme said. “Until we know more details on that, it is very hard to know what the implications are.”
The Nation | International Criminal Court on Trial in Kenya
By the time International Criminal Court prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo held a press conference in The Hague in December 2010 to announce that he was charging six Kenyans with crimes against humanity, speculation about the names on his list had been rife here for months. At the newspaper where I work, various reporters claimed to have it on good authority that such-and-such a person would be cited as having played a key role in the violence that followed the contentious 2007 presidential election. Security was stepped up in areas thought ripe for a renewal of the fighting, which had left more than 1,000 people dead and brought former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan to town to broker a peace agreement. Having lived through the post-election period, I couldn’t help being a bit nervous.
In the end, Kenyans’ good sense prevailed; even the area that had experienced the most vicious attacks remained calm (those attacks, while triggered by the disputed election, can be traced back to longstanding land disputes between members of the Kalenjin and Kikuyu communities). But the ICC process—the prospect of which had been roiling the country since Annan threatened to involve the court if Kenya didn’t set up a credible tribunal itself—was only getting started. Now that the country has been plunged into full-on campaigning for the next presidential election—currently scheduled for March 2013, though the date is still being disputed—the ICC looms ever larger in public life.
Every twist and turn of the ICC process has been the stuff of high drama: thanks to live televised pre-trial proceedings, Chief Judge Ekaterina Tredafilova became as well known as Kenya’s top soccer stars, and bitter battles have erupted in Parliament over the question of whether anyone charged by the ICC should be allowed to run for president. This latter is an issue of considerable relevance, since two of the four people now awaiting trial (charges against the other two were not confirmed) are presidential aspirants. One, Deputy Prime Minister Uhuru Kenyatta, is the US-educated son of the country’s first president. The other, William Ruto, is a prominent member of Parliament. The two have been traveling the country together holding “prayer meetings” at which their supporters portray them as victims of a neocolonial effort to subjugate Africa.
AllAfrica.com | Liberia: Taylor Verdict a Warning to War Crimes Perpetrator
The landmark guilty verdict today against former Liberian President Charles Ghankay Taylor is a warning to those most responsible for atrocity crimes that they can be held accountable.
A decade after the war in Sierra Leone, the Special Court’s ruling marks the first time that a former head of state has been found guilty of war-time atrocities by an internationally-backed court since the Nuremberg trials.
The verdict is a fresh lesson to all those in power that they do not enjoy impunity and a sign of hope in Sierra Leone that those most responsible for the heinous crimes of the eleven-year civil war (1991-2002) are being brought to book. Nevertheless, Liberians are still waiting for Taylor and others to be tried for atrocities committed in the civil war in their country.
“The guilty verdict against Charles Taylor by the Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL) is a watershed moment in the fight to hold high-level perpetrators accountable”, says Gilles Yabi, Crisis Group’s West Africa Project Director. “It is also a momentous day for the victims’ families, who have waited patiently for this ruling since the court began its work”.
