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08 Mar 2017 - NPWJ News Digest on international criminal justice
Articles
Israeli settlements law could make it easier to prosecute Jewish state for war crimes, NGOs warn
by The Independent, 06 Mar 2017
An Israeli law which retroactively legalises 4,000 Jewish settler homes could make it easier to prosecute Israeli politicians, military personnel and civilians, NGOs have warned. In a 63-page petition delivered to Israel's High Court, the NGOs said the law could be considered criminal under international law and argued it constituted an annexation of parts of the West Bank. The law, passed by the Knesset in early February, retroactively recognised more than 4,000 "wildcat" settlement homes built on private Palestinian property in the West Bank. “The petition stresses that the implementation of the provisions of the law may serve to incriminate Israeli citizens and security personnel who would implement it, as well as the MKs who voted in support of the law, as their actions may be considered war crimes according to international criminal law,” the petition said, according to The Jerusalem Post. It said the Knesset acted outside its jurisdiction by approving the law, because it has no authority over the West Bank, which is beyond Israel's sovereign border. The law marks the first time Israel has applied its own civil law to land it recognises as Palestinian-owned in the West Bank. “To date, and for nearly 50 years, Knesset legislation in relation to the West Bank was limited to individual legal rights – applying only to Israeli citizens who live in the West Bank – while legislators refrained from directly administrating the area itself,” the petition added.
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Turkey referred to U.N. Security Council over detained judge
by Reuters, 06 Mar 2017
Turkey is compromising the judicial independence of a United Nations war crimes tribunal by holding one of its judges in detention despite an order to release him, the court ruled, referring the matter to the U.N. Security Council. The U.N. court had earlier ordered Ankara to release Judge Aydin Sefa Akay, a Turkish national who was detained last year on suspicion of involvement in last July's failed coup, which claimed some 240 lives. Akay, a judge on the Mechanism for the International Criminal Tribunals (MICT), had been due to hear a request to reopen the case of a Rwandan genocide convict when he became one of around 40,000 people to be detained in connection with the coup. "Turkey's non-compliance materially impedes the Appeals Chamber's consideration of the merits of this case and threatens the independence of the Mechanism's judiciary," court president Theodor Meron said in a written ruling published on Monday. The court, which is based in The Hague, said it had been unable to reach Akay. The successor to tribunals that tried crimes committed during the Yugoslav wars and the Rwandan genocide, the court has no enforcement powers of its own. The U.N. Security Council can decide to pressure Turkey diplomatically or via sanctions or even force, though it very rarely acts in such cases. Turkish media reported that Akay had been arrested for having a messaging application on his phone that was allegedly used by many of the plotters in the coup, blamed by authorities on followers of exiled Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen.
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African Court Gets New Judges
by AllAfrica, 06 Mar 2017
The Arusha-based African Court on Human and Peoples' Rights (AfCHPR) is to welcome two new judges. Judges Bensaoula Chafika from Algeria and Chizumila Rose Tujilane from Malawi will be sworn in on Monday to replace Justice Fatsah Ouguergouz (Algeria) and Justice Duncan Tambala (Malawi), whose term expired last September. The judges were elected in January during the 28th Assembly of Heads of State and Government of the African Union in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Justices Chafika and Tujilane join Lady-Justice Ntyam Ondo Mengue from Cameroon and Lady-Justice Marie Thérése Mukamulisa from Rwanda who were elected in October last year in Kigali, Rwanda. The fifth female judge already at the Court is Lady Justice Solomy Balungi Bossa who was elected in June 2014. For the first time in the history of AfCHPR, there will be five female judges sitting on the 11-member court. The Court will hold its 44th Ordinary Session from Monday to March 24. The judges will examine about 80 applications and four requests for advisory opinion. The Court meets four times a year in Ordinary Sessions and may hold Extraordinary Sessions.
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Duterte May Be Guilty of Crimes Against Humanity, Rights Group Says
by The New York Times, 02 Mar 2017
Human Rights Watch said on Thursday that President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines may have committed crimes against humanity by inciting killings during his bloody antidrug campaign. Thousands of people have been killed by the police or by vigilantes since Mr. Duterte became president in June, and rights groups say the police may have ordered the extrajudicial killings of drug dealers and users, a charge that officials have denied. In a report released on Thursday, Human Rights Watch examined 32 deaths from October to January, all involving the Philippine National Police. Police reports asserted that officers had committed the killings in self-defense, but witnesses characterized them as “coldblooded murders of unarmed drug suspects in custody,” the rights group’s study said. “We think there’s a very strong case to be made in front of the I.C.C. that crimes against humanity have been committed,” Elaine Pearson, the Australia director at Human Rights Watch, said by telephone, referring to the International Criminal Court. She said the first step should be parallel investigations into Mr. Duterte’s antidrug campaign by the United Nations and by the Philippine Justice Department. In a statement on Thursday, Ernesto Abella, a spokesman for Mr. Duterte, said the report’s allegations were baseless. “A war on criminality is not a war on humanity,” he said. “On the contrary, it is a war precisely to protect humanity from a modern-day evil. To say otherwise is to undermine society’s legitimate desire to be free from fear and to pander to the interests of the criminals.” The Philippines is a member of the International Criminal Court. In October, the court’s chief prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, said in a statement that she was “deeply concerned” about reports of extrajudicial killings in the country.
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