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"Law does not cease to exist because it is broken or even because it is broken on a large scale. Neither does the escape of some criminals abolish penal justice" Sir Frederick Pollack (1845-1937)
"Crimes against international law are committed by men, not by abstract entities, and only by punishing individuals who commit such crimes can the provisions of international law be enforced." Judgment of the International Military Tribunal for the Trial of German Major War Criminals, The Law of the Charter 30 September 1946
Most perpetrators of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity never stand trial for their crimes. Cases brought before national courts are often only known in the country or region where the trial occurred. In some cases the accused persons are prosecuted for international crimes which have been incorporated into domestic law. In other cases the accused are prosecuted for regular domestic offenses, such as murder, because the nation has failed to adequately incorporate international crimes into domestic law even when that nation has ratified the relevant international treaties.
The importance of domestic prosecution of international crimes can not be underestimated. International tribunals are designed to judge only the most serious cases of international crime. In many instances it may be preferable for a competent national court to decide such a case. Domestic trials of genocide and other international offenses can play a crucial role in establishing a culture of legal justice in the aftermath of such massive crimes.
Below are summaries of cases in which criminal acts considered to be international crimes were tried by domestic courts. Viewed together the cases summarized fall into three broad categories, each category having features which make such trials somewhat controversial. The three categories are: 1) trials occurring soon after crime was committed, usually soon after the former regime has collapsed and sometimes while hostilities continue; 2) trials occurring in another country, by courts exercising jurisdiction over the criminal act because the crime is regarded as an international offense; 3) trials occurring many years after the crime occurred, because there is no statute of limitations for the offense, and often because the accused person has been beyond the reach of justice, the relevant evidence has been unavailable or the political will to prosecute has been insufficient.
The summaries below are compiled from press reports. Most of the cases were brought to trial in the years since 1995.
Burundi Joseph Budigoma, and Dedite Ndikuriyo, army officers of the Ngozi commando battalion of the Burundi Armed Forces, were convicted by a military court (conseil de guerre) for their role in the massacre at two hill settlements in Itaba commune, Gitega province on September 9, 2002. Between 173 and 267 persons were killed many of them women, children and the elderly. The defendants were originally charged with murder, but these charges was dropped. The two men were convicted on the lesser charges of breaching public solidarity (manquement à la solidarité publique ) and failure to follow orders (violation de consignes militaires) on the grounds that they had failed to give a report of the incident. The military prosecutor reportedly argued that as civilians had been given the order to leave the area whenever combatants were present those who stayed behind were correctly considered as combatants. Army spokesman Colonel Augustin Nzabampema confirmed the sentencing and release: "The lenient sentence is explained by the fact that the two officers did not have direct responsibility for what happened in Itaba."
After the trial Irene Khan, Secretary General of Amnesty International. commented: "The Burundian authorities initially claimed that the victims had been killed in crossfire between the army and combatants from the Conseil National pour la Défense de la Démocratie - Forces pour la Défense de la Démocratie (CNDD-FDD), National Council for the Defence of Democracy - Forces for the Defence of Democracy. As more details came to light, it became clear that the army was solely responsible for the killings; that CNDD-FDD fighters had already left the area; that the civilian population had been deliberately targeted; and that most of the victims had been shot at point blank range. Others had been shot as they attempted to flee, or burnt alive in houses where they had hidden. . . . Once again it is clear that there is simply no will to hold the Burundian armed forces accountable for their actions and to bring them to justice for gross human rights violations. . . The failure to properly investigate, hold fully accountable and bring to justice members of the armed forces suspected of being responsible for gross human rights violations is almost absolute."
More than 500 unarmed civilians including scores of children were killed in massacres in Burundi during 2002. Despite hundreds of such killings each year since 1993, very few soldiers even face trial for human rights violations. In the rare prosecutions that do take place, convicted defendants receive disproportionately light sentences, which are not only insulting but serve to reinforce the impunity of the armed forces. "The culture of impunity is very deep," said Eugene Nindorera, a former government minister of human rights. "Lots of crimes are committed in the full light of day, but such is the atmosphere of fear and retribution that no one denounces the perpetrators." (Reuters 2 May 2003). For details see the News Monitor Sep 2002 and Oct 2002.
Egypt 95 Defendents alegedly involved in secatian rioting IN February 5, 2001 a Crminal Court i Sohag in southern Egypt court, headed by Judge Mohamed Afifi, has acquitted all but four of 96 people charged with involvement in a January 2, 2000 sectarian riot which resulted in the deaths of 20 Coptic Christians and one Muslim.
in the country's worst religious violence for decades.Only four defendants received jail terms ranging between one and 10 years, harshest sentence was 10 years in jail for just one man, convicted of accidental homicide and illegal possession of a weapon. and none of 38 was convicted of premeditated murder.
Defence lawyer, Abul-Qassim el-Sherif oo many people became involved. It was difficult to know who were the perpetrators and who were the victims
Jan 200 In the end, however, the Many had expected lenient verdicts on the grounds that the police had not prepared a proper case against the suspects. 'Justice not done' But the ruling will leave many in th
village of Al-Kosheh Kosheh, about 440km (275 miles) south of Cairo,Twenty Christians and one Muslim died after a dispute between a Muslim and Christian over a piece of cloth degenerated into several days of killings and lootingA local priest told the BBC that justice had not been done. He said that security forces who had stood by while Christians were being killed had then protected the killers from punishment.
Egyptian Organisation for Human Rights, Hafez Abu-Se'eda, "the sentences prove the independence of the Egyptian judiciary and its long-enshrined tradition of protecting the rights of defendants." Citing the court's report explaining the reasons for the sentences, Abu-Se'eda said that lack of evidence and the arbitrary arrests which took place following the clashes made it impossible for judges to hand down harsh sentences.
In its report, the court, headed by Judge Mohamed Afifi, said that "it had doubts concerning the accusations made against the defendants, and whether they were the actual perpetrators." It added that the papers submitted to it "lacked conclusive material evidence that would satisfy the court that any of the defendants committed the crimes of which he is accused." The prosecutors, said the court, also excluded the names of certain suspects accused by eyewitnesses of taking part in the riots "without any justification and contrary to existing laws."
BBC 5 February, 2001, Crime without culprits? By Khaled Dawoud and Jailan Halawi Al-Ahram Weekly 15 - 21 February 2001
By Caroline Hawley in Cairo A court in Thirty-eight Muslims had faced the death penalty for their role in the clashes, which swept the just over a year ago. T. Security forces ringed the court as the judge delivered his verdict in what has been an extremely sensitive case.e Christian community angry. Although 20 Christians died, no-one has been found guilty of their murder. A Western diplomat who has been following the case closely also expressed surprise at the outcome. He said it was not clear whether incompetence or a cover-up was to blame.
The general-prosecutor's office announced on Sunday that it was "studying the court's report explaining the reasons for the sentences it handed down [on 5 February] in Al-Kosheh case, in preparation for contesting these with the Court of Cassation, [the highest court of appeal in the land]."
Diaa Rashwan, the managing editor of the annual State of Religion Report issued by Al-Ahram's Centre for Political and Strategic Studies, pointed out that Al-Kosheh's sentences were not unprecedented. He said that there were several cases in the past in which militants were accused of assassinating top officials, but were acquitted due to insufficient evidence. The best known case of this type is that of the late Parliament Speaker Rifaat Al-Mahgoub who was gunned down by suspected Gama'a Islamiya militants in 1990. After facing a trial that lasted for years, a group of leading Gama'a militants were found innocent due to insufficient evidence.
The criminal court in Sohag had acquitted nearly all 96 defendants who were blamed for some of the country's worst sectarian riots in decades which occurred in the village ofin southern Egypt a year ago. Following a spate of false rumours circulating in the village amidst already tense relations between the two confessional groups, clashes erupted on 2 January 2000 The sentences stunned most observers in view of the gravity of the crimes and the large number of those killed. The Patriarch of the Coptic Orthodox Church, Pope Shenouda III, expressed displeasure with the ruling at a public seminar held at the Cairo Book Fair last week, saying that the Church was considering filing an appeal. Expatriate Coptic groups in the United States and Canada, known for their strong objections to the government's handling of relations with Christians, also unleashed a fresh campaign in the international press, claiming that Egyptian courts gave Muslims licence to kill Christians and escape unpunished. However, spokesmen for local human rights groups were the first to rush to defend the court's ruling, and affirm that it had no political or sectarian implications. "On the contrary," said secretary-general of the None of the defendants was caught red-handed, and most arrests were made days after the actual incidents took place "despite the heavy local police presence at the time of the events. No weapons or other tools used in the crimes were seized, and neither were the goods which the defendants were accused of stealing," said the court's report. It added that most of the accusations were based on circumstantial evidence, and noted that investigators even ignored the fact that some witnesses made accusations against people who were said to have been at more than one place at the same time. During a visit by Al-Ahram Weekly to Al-Kosheh shortly after the clashes, Muslims and Christians recounted different versions of how the clashes started and who took part in them. Villagers would repeat a certain story and insist that they were sure of what they were saying, despite admitting later that some of them were not even in Al-Kosheh at the time of the clashes. Taking the stories of their families or friends for granted, they would accuse certain persons of carrying out the killings. The atmosphere was chaotic indeed, and this did not escape the court's attention. Muslim families advanced an even more incredible version, insisting that all the killed Christians were gunned down by their own fire while shooting at Muslims. Prosecutors did not swallow this, and all 38 defendants accused, and cleared, of murder were Muslims. Another reason for their acquittal was that the court suspected that the "confessions" they made had been extracted from them by torture. Such sentences, said Rashwan, "confirm the independence of the judiciary, and that it does not take political considerations into account before handing down rulings." In cases like Al-Kosheh, convicted defendants and the general-prosecutor's office are the two parties entitled to appeal the sentences. The convicted defendants exercise the right of appeal if they believe the sentences are too harsh, while the general-prosecutor's office may seek a retrial if it believes the sentences are too lenient and that the court did not take into consideration certain evidence that might have resulted in harsher sentences. Yet, for someone like Bishop Wissa of the Al-Kosheh church, who was blamed by the court for inciting Christians, justice means that the actual killers should be found, put on trial and given appropriate punishment.
Ethiopia Article 281 (genocide) of the Ethiopian Penal Code of 1957 Mengistu Haile Mariam, former Prime Minister, Fikre Selassie Wogdereyes, and Tesseam Belay Mengistu were among a long list of defendants charged on December 13, 1994, under Article 281 (genocide) of the Ethiopian Penal Code of 1957. Many of the defendants are former members of the 108-person body called the Dergue Coordinating Committee of the Armed Forces whch ruled Ethiopia from September 12, 1974 military coup until May 28, 1991. The trial opened in 1994 with the reading of the 269-page document by the Special Prosecutor's Office (SPO) against these sixty-six living defendants. Twenty-one of the defendants are being tried in absentia (Mengistu Haile-Mariam is sheltered by President Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe), and all could face the death penalty if convicted. The document, alleging acts of genocide and other human rights violations, is based upon 309,215 pages of relevant government documents, many with clear signatures of high ranking officials. Among the crimes described were the killing of 1,823 identified victims (including former Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie on August 27 , 1975 and the Patriarch of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church), bodily harm to 99 identified victims and enforced disappearances of 194 identified victims. Also included was the forced relocation policy which caused the deaths of about 100,000 persons in an artificial famine in the mid-1980s. In 1997, the Chief Special Prosecutor Girma Wakjira announced a new total of 5,198 persons charged with Dergue-era crimes. He said 2,246 of the offenders were in custody, and another 2,952 were accused in absentia. The trial of former Dergue leaders has been going on in Addis Ababa since 1996, and has already heard more than 100 witnesses.
In March 1997 additional trials of Dergue-era defendants opened before the Federal High Court in Addis Ababa. The SPO subdivided the defendants in three groups by degree of responsibility: 1) policy and decision makers; 2) intermediary level officials who relayed orders, but initiated some decisions on their own; and 3) the hands directly involved in committing the crimes. Mirroring the Dergue's committee structure, the SPO had structured the prosecutions by committee, leading to 172 cases, each of multiple defendants.
The enormity of these prosecutions has caused a serious crisis in the Ethiopian judiciary. Court proceedings have encountered constant delays and has left federal courts with a backlog of thousands of ordinary cases. Many of the defendants were in pretrial detention for years before appearing in court. The trials have come under criticism for violations of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which Ethiopia ratified on June 11, 1993. The main areas of concern are detention without charge or trial, as well as violations of the the right to counsel, and the right to prepare an adequate defense.
Trial proceedings to date have focused on the period of political terror in the 1970s, without giving attention to the policy of mass forced resettlement in 1984, in which 1.5 million people from the "famine affected areas" in the north were moved to the "uninhabited virgin areas" in the southwest. The relief organization Medecins Sans Frontiers (MSF) describing this act as an "operation that will be described with hindsight in a few years' time as one of the greatest slaughters in the history of the twentieth century.'" By the end of 1985, 500,000 to 600,000 people had been resettled. Approximately 100,000 of those resettled died during the trip or in the resettlement camps, which were run like prisons. According to a report by MSF issued in 1986, "There can be no doubt that resettlement is the biggest killer in Ethiopia, not famine."
Getachew Terba, a former district governor and army lieutenant, was convicted by an Addis Ababa court on 9 November 1999 for ordering the detention, torture and execution of five alleged government opponents during the Red Terror campaign of 1977-78. Getachew Terba was the first person to be condemned to death.
Zeleke Zerihun, Colonel and former police officer in the Dergue's "Red Terror", was convicted on December 27, 1999 by the Federal High Court in Addis Ababa Zeleke is the fifth person to have been sentenced for his part in the "Red Terror".
In late November 2000 more trials were held in response to criticism over the court's slow rate of progress. On May 8, 2001 the official Ethiopian press announced that in the previous six months a total of 222 person had received sentences ranging from two years to life imprisonment in verdicts passed between early November 2000 and the end of April 2001. The same announcement said that the sixth criminal chamber of Ethiopia's federal high court also acquitted 122 defendants for lack of evidence
Twenty-seven former officers defendents charged with genocide were acquitted in June 2001 by a court in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa. The 27 defendents, with ranks ranging from brigadier to sub-lieutenant, were charged with genocide and crimes against humanity allegedly committed in Eritrea during the previous military government. Fifteen of those acquitted had been tried in absentia. The court ordered the central prison administration to release the officers immediatly.
Twenty Ethiopians, including three women were acquitted due to insufficient evidence on January 2, 2003 by a high court in the eastern region of Oromo State on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity. The defendants were accused of summarily executing five civilians during the 1977-78 "Red Terror" period of military-communist Dergue regime that ruled Ethiopia from 1974 to 1991. Nine of the accused were tried in absentia while 11 others had spent between two and 10 years in preventive custody. The court deemed the accusations were not borne out by material evidence and witness testimonies gathered by the special prosecutor in charge of the case according t reports the state-run Addis Zemen newspaper, quoted by AFP.
Since 1994, Ethiopia has been conducting trials of people accused of genocide and crimes against humanity, particularly during the "Red Terror" period under Mengistu. In early 2003 nearly 5,200 former soldiers and communist activists were still due to be tried by the courts. About 2,200 are in prison in Ethiopia, but several of the key accused are to be or have been tried in absentia. About 500 people have been acquitted, and 600 are to be tried between January and September of 2003. Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam.Mengistu was convicted in absentia after fleeing to Zimbabwe, where he has lived in exile since 1991. According to the Ethiopian judiciary. The "Red Terror" trials are due to be concluded in 2004.
Rwanda Rwanda's Organic Law No. 08/96 on Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity in English
Rwanda began trials of persons accused of participating in the 1994 genocide in December 1996. Over 120,000 people have been accused of various crimes during the genocide. Many of the perosn who were senior government official during the gencoide and are allegedly high-level perpetrators are on trial at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) in Arusha, Tanzania. The numbers of persons prosecuted in domestic courts within Rwanda has been tracked by the Centre de documentation et d'information sur les procès de génocide (CDIPG - Documentation and Information Centre on the Genocide Trials) of the Ligue Rwandaise pour la Promotion et la Défense des Droits de l'Homme (LIPRODHOR). By January 2000, more than 2,500 people have been tried. Of these, around 370 have been sentenced to death, around 800 sentenced to life imprisonment, around 500 acquitted, and the remainder sentenced to various terms of imprisonment. Twenty-two people found guilty of participation in the genocide were executed in public on 24 April 1998.
Déogratias Bizimana, a former medical assistant, and Egide Gatanazi, a former local government administrator, went on trial on 27 December 1996 at a court in Kibungo on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity. Their trial, which lasted about four hours, was the first trial in Rwanda of suspects for the genocide in 1994. The two men were pronounced guilty and sentenced to death on 3 January 1997.
Léonidas Ndikumwami, a businessman and citizen of Burundian nationality, went on trial at a court in Kigali on January 14, 1997. Three other defendants appeared initially with him, until their trial was adjourned. A defence lawyer, Paul Atita offered to defend Ndikumwami, but was told that he did not have the official authorization to represent the defendant. His request for an adjournment to obtain the necessary authorization was rejected by the judge. Ndikumwami was convicted and sentenced to death on January 20, 1997.
Frodouald Karamira, an Interahamwe militia leader in Kigali and former vice-president of the Mouvement démocratique républicain, (MDR - Democratic Republican) was the most senior genocide suspect during tried during 1997. He went on trial in Kigali amid heavy security on January [13 ] 1997. Karamira was infamous in Rwanda for a speech he gave in the Nyamirambo Stadium in Kigali on October 23, 1993, two days after the assassination of Melchior Ndadaye, the ethnic Hutu President of Burundi, killed during an attempted coup by Burundi's Tutsi-dominated army. In his virulent speech at the Stadium, Karamia reportedly called for total solidarity among all Hutus transcending divisions among political parties and populized the concept of "Hutu-Power" which became the slogan of Hutu extremists before and during the genocide which began five and a half months later. In addition to Karamira's political prominence, the case was wateched closely for three reasons: because he had been apprehended outside of Africa, because of his conversion as an adult to Hutu ethnicity which caused Rwandan Tutsis viewed him as a traitor and because of his great personal wealth. In June 1996 Karamira had been arrested in Bombay, India and extradited to Rwanda. During his transfer, on a stop-over in Addis-Ababa, Ethiopia he attempt to escape. Karamira was born an ethnic Tutsi, but under a Rwandan custom became a member of the Hutu tribe. Historically, prior to colonial rule and indepence, a change of group membership had involved Hutu converting to Tutsi ethnicity. Karamira did the reverse. After becaming a Hutu, Karamira became politcally powerful and wealthy, owning many building in Kigali, some still registed in his name at the time of the trial. To prove his loyalty to Hutus, he became an extreme fanatic.
The trial proceedings, conducted in Kinyarwanda and translated into French were broadcast in Rwanda by radio and by loud speakers to crowds outside the courthouse. On the first day of the trial Karamira's French-speaking defense attorney from Benin said he never had met Karamira before the trial, asked presiding Judge Jariel Rutaremara to postpone the proceeding s to give him time to prepare his case, The judge granted the request and the trial resumed on 28 January. A total of fifteen witnesses testified in the three-day trial. Witnesses accused Karamira of inciting violence and orchestrating the genocide through repeated radio daily broadcasts on RTLM (extremist Radio Mille Collin). Karamira had been one of the founders of the radio station in 1993. A former deputy leader of a moderate wing of the MDR party, Safili, told the court. "I would say that he caused all the attacks purely through his broadcasts." Karamira was also accussed of personally leading the murders of hundreds of Tutsis. Another witness listed all the 13 members of Karamira family allegedly murdered during the genocide, including his wife, five children, mother, four sisters and two nephews. Allegedly Karamira had members of his own family killed to prove his loyalty to Hutus. During the trial, Karamira viewed the court proceedings and his own role in terms of political parities. Speaking on his own behalf, he remarked that since there were no other parties functioning in Rwanda, it was the RPF and not the Rwandan State, which had put him on trial He also claimed that since he was appearing in court as the vice-president of MDR, he rejected any civil damages against him as an individual. Karamira furthermore claimed that transcripts from meetings and from radio and television broadcasts were badly edited and that he was in his home village during the genocide. Karamira was convicted on Februarty [ ], 1997. He was executed by firing squad in the Nyamirambo Stadium in Kigali on April 24, 1998.
Israel Nemeyimana was acquitted on February 18, 1997 by a court in Gikongoro after the judge reportedly ruled that there was no evidence against him. He was the first defendant in the genocide trials to be found not guilty.
Virginie Mukankusi, th first woman to be tried for participation in the genocide, went on trial in Gitarama in January 1997. Her defense lawyer claimed he did not have sufficient time to study her case file, yet the trial was not adjourned. None of the defense witnesses she named were called to testify. Mukankusi did not appear to understand the procedures during the trial and contradicted herself during her defense on several occasions. On February 28, 1997, she was convicted and sentenced to death.
After about two months of genocide trials, at the end of February 1997, some 13 defendants had been sentenced to death; at least six had been sentenced to life imprisonment and one had been acquitted. During the same months violence in Rwanda was continuing. On January 17, 1997 a woman who had testified against Jean Paul Akayesu at the ICTR is Arusha, Tanzania was murdered by Hutu extremists along with her husband and seven children. On February 14, 1997 Vincent Nkezazaganwa, a Rwandan Supreme Court Justice, is gunned down by uniformed gunmen at his house. During many of the early trials no defense lawyer was present, even when the defendants had reportedly instructed a lawyer to represent them in court. In the first case beginning December 27, 1996:, "When the defendant Bizumutima, asked for a lawyer, the judge and the prosecutor asked why he needed one. In many cases the defense lawyers requests for adjournment of the trial were rejected. Also frequently defense witnesses did not appear in court.
Silas Munyagishali, a former assistant prosecutor of Kigali from August 1994 until February 1996, was put on trial in Gitarama, on charges of complicity in the genocide. Some observers said the charges may have been politically motivated. Several of his defense witnesses were threatened and intimidated, and preventing them from testifying. Silas Munyagishali was sentenced to death on 22 August 1997. He appealed against the conviction on the basis of several irregularities in the trial, but the Court of Appeal rejected his appeal and confirmed his death sentence on February 20, 1998.He was executed by firing squad in Kigali on April 24, 1998.
A court in Cyangugu, in southwestern Rwanda, in February 1999 found three persons guilty of genocide and crimes against humanity, sentencing them to death. The court also sentenced 11 others to life imprisonment, seven to 15 years in jail and acquitted one suspect.
A court in Gisuma, on March 31, 2000 found Theoneste Rukeratabar, former mayor of Gisuma, and 14 others guilty for their role in the 1994 genocide. The court also sentenced eight people to prison.
A court in Taba Commune on December 17, 2000 sentenced 14 people to life imprisonment for genocide and crimes against humanity.
Wellars Benzi, former member of the Rwandan parliament and former president of the National Revolutionary Movement of Rwanda (MRND) and ten others were sentenced to death on May 26, 2001 by a court in Gisenyi which found them guilty of organizing the militias that carried out the killings of Tutsis and politically moderate Hutus. An addtional 23 others were sentenced to life imprisonment. Banzi was accused of inciting Hutus to kill Tutsis through articles published in the Kangura newspaper. Banzi was previously prominent in Rwanda in the late 1950s and 1960s under the country's first president Gregoire Kayibanda.
On May 28, 2001 four suspects who had been detained in Gitarama prison for more than four years on genocide charges were released by their community in a preliminary session of a justice system known as Gacaca. Under the preliminary Gacaca sessions, a genocide suspect is brought before members of the community where the crimes were allegedly committed and the charges read out. If no one in the community has evidence against the suspect, then he or she is freed. The Gitarama four were from the first seven cases heard in a preliminary Gacaca session at Nogwe commune in Gitarama province. The commune court in Gitarama sat in a grass patch on a small hill next to a road. There was no formal arrangement, just a few seats for visitors who included Belgian and French embassy officials. Each detainee stood before approximately 2000 local residents while Jean Barushinana, the region's prosecutor, read out their names, age and asked the community if anyone knew of any reason why the person should be detained.
On June 16, 2001 nine people were sentenced to death in Rwanda for their part in the 1994 genocide. The sentences came at the end of a trial of 126 suspects. Thirty other accused were sentenced to life imprisonment, 25 were acquitted and the remaining suspects were given sentences of between four and 20 years. "The victims were cut into pieces," the judges were as saying, "they were tortured to death with clubs, machetes, swords, iron bars." Some of the suspects avoided the death penalty by owning up to their crimes during the trial, which lasted for seven months. It was Rwanda's biggest ever trial of suspects accused of involvement in the genocide.
BBC 8 July, 2001 A prominent Rwandan musician, Juvenal Masabo Nyangezi, has been jailed for six years for having associated with those who carried out the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. The French news agency, AFP, said that Mr Nyangezi, who gained fame in the 1990s for his songs about love, Rwanda's landscape and its contemporary culture, was found guilty of having joined a group of people who killed Tutsis in the Gikongoro commune. The prosecution, which had sought a life sentence, said it would appeal against the ruling.
IRIN 11 July 2001 Eleven people were sentenced to death for involvement in Rwanda's 1994 genocide by a court in Gikongoro, southwest Rwanda, the Hirondelle news agency reported. The group was part of a joint trial of 28 people from Kinyamakara commune who were charged with genocide and crimes against humanity. Four others were acquitted, seven were sentence to life imprisonment and six were given prison sentences of between six and 15 years. Of these, four pleaded guilty. Meanwhile, the court also ordered that the accused, Masabo Nyangezi, to be immediately released. He was sentenced to six years in jail but had already spent seven years in "preventive detention". Masabo was the director-general at the Rwandan environment and tourism ministry in 1994 and is well known to the Rwandan public as a singer-songwriter, Hirondelle added. He fled Kigali during the genocide and took refuge in his home commune of Kinyamakara, where he stayed until his arrest in August 1994. The court found him guilty of participating in an attack against a local family.
IRIN 21 Nov 2001 Court Sentences Seven to Death For Genocide A lower court in the northern Rwandan prefecture of Ruhengeri sentenced seven people to death and five others to between 18 years and life imprisonment "at the weekend", Rwandan radio reported on Wednesday. At this last stage of a joint trial, which began on 17 April, the Court of First Instance convicted the defendants for genocide and crimes against humanity, the radio reported. Another 10 people were acquitted. Rwanda has thousands of genocide suspects in its prisons and is seeking to speed up trials by employing traditional Gacaca courts in parallel with regular courts. The UN is also hearing genocide cases in Arusha, Tanzania.
The East African (Nairobi) 31 Mar 2003 Freed Genocide Convicts Begin Journey Home Nairobi In 1999, five years after the Rwanda genocide, the government set up the National Unity and Reconciliation Commission to reconcile convicts and victims, writes HENRY LUBEGA Andrew Mugabo was found guilty of participating in the 1994 Rwanda genocide but has been pardoned and is now in a solidarity camp undergoing "reorientation." Although he is eager to go home, he is not sure of what reaction awaits him from those who lost relatives in the 100-day massacre. Mugabo's fear is shared by many others in the reorientation camps established around Rwanda to rehabilitate the convicts before they are allowed to return to their families. They are expected to go back to the commune they lived in before being arrested, to apologise publicly and seek forgiveness from the community. "I was forced to kill; I only wanted to stay alive. It is our leaders who should be blamed for what we did, not us," Mugabo told The EastAfrica, as he narrated what had happened in the 100 days of the killings. Mugabo, who gave such a graphic account of the genocide that it was as if it had happened the other day, said he was waiting for the end of the three months he is supposed to spend in the solidarity camp. Aged 53, and from the Muhima commune in Nyarugengye in the prefecture of Kigali village, Mugabo says the day he was told that he was leaving prison to join the solidarity camps, he felt he was in heaven. "A prison is a prison, you cannot compare it with anything else. Even if you are poor and without relatives, home is the best place to be," Mugabo told The EastAfrican in one of the numerous solidarity camps on the outskirts of Kigali. Since January, Rwanda President Paul Kagame has pardoned hundreds of genocide prisoners who have confessed and asked for forgiveness. But before they go back to their communities, they are taken to solidarity camps to be "rehabilitated and taught how the new Rwanda operates." In the camps, they are taught the history of Rwanda, among other things. Fatuma Ndagiza, secretary general of the Reconciliation Commission, which runs the solidarity camps, says the teaching of Rwandan history is meant to show people what Rwanda has gone through and how they can work together to rebuild it. "Many years away from home is not something that people can take so easily," says Ndagiza. "After being out of touch with the ordinary people, there is a need for them to be taught about what the new Rwanda needs. It's not division but unity." Mugabo, who is married with two children aged 30 and 20, says: "I know that I killed, but the blame should not be put on me. Let former government officials and our local leaders who demanded that we fulfil the government programmes come out and stand trial on our behalf." He says it is the public that will be the final judge of their fate. "The crimes were committed against the locals and the government has played its part. Now its up to the communities we are going back to, they will give us the final forgiveness, says Mugabo, who has been so battered by prison life that he looks over 70. Ndagiza, however, says that the people who have been forgiven can be taken back to the Gacaca (community) courts if there is anybody who comes forward with a new complaint against them related to genocide crimes. In 1999, five years after the genocide, the government set up the National Unity and Reconciliation Commission to work towards reconciling the convicts and the victims. However, it was not until recently that President Kagame passed a decree to set free at least 23,000 people who fall in the 2-4 categories of genocide crimes. These categories cover those who killed because they were forced to and have since confessed. There are 18 solidarity camps countrywide, where these people are undergoing what is known as engando (rehabilitation and sensitisation) before they return home. About 12km east of Kigali is Kinyinya solidarity camp, which plays host to close to 1,000 pardoned genocide convicts who are waiting to return home. Ezekeil Mukaragye, 30, from Kicikiro in Kanombe Commune, has been in prison for seven years for genocide-related crimes. It was not until he confessed to having participated in the killing of innocent people that he was pardoned under the presidential decree. He, however, says that as an individual he never killed anyone because he wanted to. It was the only way to survive during those days, he says. "Many people of my ethnic group had been killed because they refused to take part in the killing; so when I was asked to join in I had no alternative but to go ahead and kill," he told The EastAfrican. He says he hopes that when he returns home, everything will be as it was before the genocide. "I know many of my family members were killed during the war but it is time that we looked at each other as Rwandans, as one people, and worked for the good of our country," he says, adding that although he is now left with few relatives, he is ready to face society. "Since I was released from prison and started attending the Ngando, I have realised that we need to work together as Rwandans and that it was the government, that divided us, says Mukaragye. "I went to prison a non-believer but while there I was saved and that is why when they came asking for those who were ready to confess to the crimes they committed, I did not hesitate to go forward and confess." Although Mukaragye is ready to go home he still feels there is a need for the government to do more in terms of educating the masses about the advantages of forgiving so that the past is forgotten for the sake of a new Rwanda.
Bolivia Artículo §138 of Bolivia's Codigo Penal in Spanish and English "In February 1984 it was reported that two former leaders were being tried in absentia for genocide in Bolivia." [Whitaker Report, U.N. Document E/CN.4/Sub.2/1985/6, 2 July 1985, p. 40: foot note 64] Bolivia signed the Genocide Convention in 1948, but has not ratified the Convention.
Brazil Brazil's Law N°2.889 of Oct. 1, 1956 in Portuguese and English In 1988 five settlers were prosecuted for intending to "exterminate or eliminate an ethnic group or race" in relation to destruction of the Xacriaba Indians. [Charny, Encyclopedia of Genocide, p. 392]
Canada
Imre Finte, Hungarian, was acquitted in 1990 by an Ontario Court of kidnapping and manslaughter of Jews in Hungary in 1944. He was defended by controversial Victoria, British Columbia attorney Doug Christie. The prosecution was on the basis of the 1987 War Crimes legislation which resulted from the findings of the 1985 Deschênes Commission. Finte's acquittal was upheld in 1994 by the Supreme Court of Canada, which imposed a higher standard of proof saying prosecutors had to show that international law as well as Canadian law, had been violated. The 1994 Finte decision made conviction of war criminals extraordinarily difficult, dramatically shaping subsequent Canadian strategy against persons suspected of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. In 1995 the government announced it would cease such prosecutions, instead focusing on revocation of citizenship and deportation, often focusing on misleading or fraudulent statements made at the time of immigration. In 1996, immigration officials set up a process of "early detection" through meticulous examination of the requests for visas. In 1998 the government created an interdepartmental group drawn from officials of the of Justice, Immigration and the Canadian Police to coordinate these operations related to the war crimes.
Leon Mugesera, former senior adviser to Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana, was ordered deported from Canada in 1996, but remains in the country on appeal. Though not in Rwanda between April and July of 1994, he is accused of helping incite genocide in a speech he gave on November 22, 1992. In the fifteen-minute speech, made to a large crowd at a political meeting in Kabaya province where he was vice-president of the regional branch of the governing party, Mugesera stated that Rwandan law permitted the death penalty for traitors and stated that if the judicial system does not carry out this punishment against the inyenzi (pejorative word for Tutsi), the people must do it themselves. "Know that the person whose neck you do not cut," he exclaimed, "is the one who will cut yours." The speech was recorded and widely replayed. Mugesera left Rwanda for Congo, and Spain, before he was granted refugee status in Canada in 1993. In that same year he settled in Quebec City where he had previously lived during the 1980s while in doctoral studies at Laval University in "terminology and linguistic management." Beginning postdoctoral work in 1993, Mugesera brought his family to Quebec before his suspected role in inciting the Rwandan genocide led to a deportation order for lying about his background in his refugee application, along with the war crimes allegations. Although Article 318 on Advocating Genocide of the Canadian Criminal Code provides for five years imprisonment for anyone who "advocates or promotes genocide" and Section 7 of the Code provides for universal jurisdiction over crime against humanity or war crimes committed by non-Canadians found in Canada for conduct outside Canada, Canadian officials have chosen to deport rather than prosecute Mugesera.
In a surprise ruling on April 12, 2001, after Mugesera was ordered deported by two immigration board tribunals, Federal Court Justice Marc Nadon concluded there was no proof linking the November 1992 speech to genocide in the spring of 1994. Nadon asked the lower tribunal of the immigration board to review its claim that Mugesera helped incite hatred and genocide and asked the appeals tribunal of the immigration board to re-examine two conclusions it made. The first was that, although the speech may not have caused the deaths, it may have incited genocide. The other was that the speech incited hatred. Nadon also ordered that deportation proceedings against Mugesera's wife and five children be halted immediately. The government can still appeal to the Federal Court of Appeals, according to a spokesman for the federal Citizenship and Immigration Department.
www.therecord.com Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada 29 Oct 2002 'Didn't lie,' Waterloo man says 78-year-old continues his fight against deportation from Canada Tuesday October 29, 2002 BRIAN CALDWELL RECORD STAFF Helmut Oberlander leaves court yesterday accompanied by his wife Margret (left) and daughter Irene Rooney. Oberlander was in the Toronto courtroom as his hearing before the Immigration and Refugee Board resumed nearly a year after it was adjourned. TORONTO -- Helmut Oberlander maintained his innocence yesterday at a hearing that could lead to his deportation for lying about his role with a Nazi death squad. The retired Waterloo developer wasn't called to testify as lawyers made only arguments and written submissions to the Immigration and Refugee Board. But in a brief interview after the hearing adjourned, Oberlander insisted he did nothing wrong while serving as an interpreter with an infamous unit that executed thousands of civilians, mostly Jews, in the Ukraine from 1941 to 1943. "I killed no one, I hurt no one and I didn't lie when I came to Canada in 1954,'' he said, backed by a small group of supporters including his wife, Margret, and daughter, Irene Rooney. "That's everything in a nutshell.'' The government is trying to deport Oberlander, 78, after a Federal Court judge found he lied about his involvement with the death squad when he applied to emigrate from Germany in the early 1950s. Cabinet paved the way for his expulsion by stripping him of Canadian citizenship last year. But, as has been the case since proceedings against Oberlander began more than seven years ago, his fate remains unclear amid legal wrangling. Lawyers for Oberlander are seeking a judicial review of the cabinet decision, arguing it was flawed. They are also trying to have deportation proceedings put on hold until that issue is settled. The immigration hearing in Toronto was allowed to resume yesterday -- it was suspended almost a year ago -- but board member Carmen DeCarlo can't make a deportation order until a related appeal has been decided. Barbara Jackman, a lawyer representing Oberlander, has said she will argue it would be unfair to deport her client when there is no evidence he actually committed any war crimes. But the key to the immigration case will likely be a law in place until 1978, well after Oberlander had established his life in Canada. In effect, the law said anyone who had lived in the country as a permanent resident for at least five years could only be deported for treason, drug offences and a few other specific crimes. Oberlander admitted he had difficulty following twists and turns in the complex case, which was to resume today. But he and supporters made it perfectly clear what they think of the entire process. "We can only say this is a malicious persecution -- from Day 1,'' said Margret Oberlander. bcaldwell@therecord.com
Background article: www.therecord.com Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada 6 May 2000 Germany could reopen Oberlander case Saturday May 6, 2000 Jeff Outhit RECORD STAFF Helmut Oberlander may face a revived war crimes probe if he is deported to Germany. But a review of German justice suggests he has nothing to fear. Oberlander, 76, faces deportation after the Federal Court ruled in February that he lied about his war service record when he immigrated to Canada in 1954. Pending appeal, the federal cabinet must decide whether to strip him of his Canadian citizenship, which was granted in 1960. "Based on the available information, Oberlander's leaving the country or deportation to Germany is expected," Willi Dressen, Germany's senior public prosecutor in charge of uncovering Nazi war crimes told The Record. If Oberlander returns, German prosecutors may reopen the criminal case they closed against him years ago for lack of evidence. "I think that the state attorney's office in Munich, they now have an open investigation," said Dressen, who attended Oberlander's 1998 Federal Court hearing as an expert witness. "All of the available evidence will have to be examined in light of criminal law." Germany may be able to call on more evidence against Oberlander than was admitted by Canada's Federal Court, including witness recollections by deceased wartime comrades. German courts may accept affidavits from the deceased, but the statements are not strong enough on their own to secure a conviction. Germany has prosecuted only a handful of men who served in the same death squad as Oberlander and has targeted officers. Oberlander, an interpreter, held a low rank (roughly a senior private) and remains below the radar for German prosecutors. "The name Oberlander is not known in our office," said Manfried Wick, chief prosecutor of Munich State Court I, which is responsible for prosecuting war crimes by Einsatzkommando 10a. In 1970, Oberlander was summoned to the German consul-general's office in Toronto to answer questions as part of the German government's broader investigation into the activities of Ek 10a. Oberlander was not charged and Germany closed its file on him. Germany also declined to prosecute a higher-ranking Ek 10a member, Benno Harlander, who immigrated to Canada but later returned to Germany. Harlander, suspected in killings in Krasnodar, came to Canada in 1951 and settled near Brooklin, Ont. Like Oberlander, Harlander faced a German probe in 1970. Unlike Oberlander, Harlander eventually left Canada voluntarily and returned to Germany. Born in 1909, Harlander was alive in 1994 when he was interviewed in Germany by a lawyer with Canada's war crimes unit. He has since died. A different fate befell former Nazi death squad member David Geldiashvile in 1973. Geldiashvile, Soviet-born like Oberlander, became a Canadian citizen after the war but made the mistake of returning to the Soviet Union on vacation in 1973. He was arrested, tried and sentenced to death by the Soviets for serving with an Einsatzgruppe death squad in the same area as Oberlander's unit. Leaders of Ek 10a escaped postwar prosecution by the Allies at Nuremberg. Heinz Seetzen, Oberlander's first commander, killed himself while in Allied custody in 1945. The unit's second commander, Kurt Christmann, was not tried and convicted until 1980. Leo Maar, another Ek 10a interpreter who testified at Christmann's trial, was never prosecuted. GERMAN JUSTICE Seven men have been convicted of war crimes in West Germany for serving in the same Nazi death squad as Helmut Oberlander. Trials of Einsatzkommando 10a members and their outcomes: 1972: Three convicted in the 1941 massacre of 200 Jews in Taganrog and the 1942 massacre of 214 children in Jeissk. All received four-year sentences. 1973: Three convicted in the 1941 shootings of hundreds of Jews and isolated civilians in a dozen locations in the southern Ukraine in 1941. Sentences ranged from two to 4 1/2 years. 1980: One convicted in the gassing of at least 30 prisoners in Krasnodar and the shooting of more than 30 villagers in Maryanskaya. Sentenced to 10 years.
Chile
Augusto Pinochet and others. On June 5, 2000 the Court of Appeals ordered the lifting of Pinochet's immunity as a member of the Chilean Senate, thus allowing the opening of a lawsuit against the former dictator. Pinochet is the subject of 146 complaints, deposited by families of victims or Humans Rights organizations since January 1998. The examining magistrate, Juan Guzman has devoted much of his investigation to the operation "Caravan of Death " carried out just after the coup d'etat by a special commando. The operation, carried out in October and November 1973, aimed at eliminating all the political opponents with the dictatorship. The operation involved the extrajudical executions of 74 opponents and the disappearance of 19 people to the mode, in all the country. Guzman holds the former dictator responsible for these executions, along with ten others: Sergio Arellano Stark, Sergio Arredondo Gonzalez, Marcelo Moren Brito, Pedro Espinoza Cheer, Patricio Diaz Araneda, Armando Fernandez Larios, Daniel Rojas, Carlos Forest Haensgen, Miguel Aguirre Alvarez, Mario Acuna Riquelme. According to an official report, 3,197 people were killed during Gen. Pinochet's regime, and more than 1,000 remain missing after being arrested during those years.
Reuters 16 June 2003 Former Chief of Secret Police Is Indicted by Judge in Chile SANTIAGO, Chile, May 15 — A retired army general who led Chile's secret police under the former dictator Augusto Pinochet was indicted today in the 1974 kidnapping of a Spanish priest who was tortured and then disappeared. Judge Jorge Zepeda indicted Manuel Contreras, the former chief of Mr. Pinochet's feared secret police, known as DINA, charging him with arresting the priest, Antonio Llido, and taking him to a secret torture center where witnesses said he was savagely beaten. "For this, the former members of the now defunct DINA have been indicted as authors of the crime of kidnapping," the judge said in his ruling. Like hundreds of Chileans who went missing in the 1970's and 80's, Mr. Llido was never seen again. The suspicion is that he was killed, despite efforts at the time by the Vatican and the Spanish government to secure his release. Mr. Contreras, now 73, was sentenced to 15 years in prison last month for the kidnapping and disappearance of a young left-wing activist in 1975. He has already served time for plotting the 1976 car-bomb murder in Washington of a Chilean diplomat, and the courts accuse him of masterminding the similar killing of a dissident army commander in Argentina. Mr. Contreras, the highest-ranking Chilean military official convicted of human rights crimes, has denied the charges. Eight other top DINA members were also indicted in the case of Mr. Llido, who was accused of helping a rebel group. The priest's disappearance was crucial to Spain's efforts in the late 1990's to prosecute Mr. Pinochet for rights abuses.
Colombia Colombia's law of July 10, 2000 on genocide, torture and forced disappearances (Código Penal, art 101 & 102)
Jaime Humberto Cortés Parada, Freddy Padilla León, Gustavo Sánchez Gutiérrez, Jaime Humberto Uscátegui Ramírez; and Agustín Ardila Uribe (three active-duty army officers—two generals and a colonel—and two retired generals) were formally charged on July 27, 2000 by the Colombian Attorney General’s Office for failing to take adequate measures after repeated warnings to prevent the paramilitary massacre of at least 18 civilians in the village of Puerto Alvira on May 4, 1998 in Mapiripán municipality, Meta Department. Investigators for the attorney general’s office found abundant evidence in daily logbooks that military commanders in the zone were well aware of the situation. Investigators found that Ardila issued an order for an operation to protect Puerto Alvira, but Uscátegui ignored the order and Ardila never followed up on it. Also charged with direct responsibility for the massacre were six paramilitaries, including Carlos Castaño Gil, commander of the United Self-defense Forces of Colombia (AUC). Of the six, only John Tovar Jaramillo, is in custody. Uscátegui was previously arrested in for in connection with a separate massacre of some 30 people in Mapiripán in July 1997 in which he was accused of “homicide, breach of trust by omission and falsification of documents” for his failure to send troops to the region after a local judge warned authorities about the presence of paramilitary groups. Following his arrest, however, Uscátegui's case passed to the jurisdiction of the military courts, which had granted him conditional release.
2001 a civilian court earlier this year convicted a colonel of failing to stop an AUC massacre of some 30 people in 1997
Guatemala Artículo 376 of the Código Penal of Guatemala Romeo Lucas Garcia and Efrain Rios Montt - On June 14 2001 Judge Marco Antonio Posada ruled that two former presidents of Guatemala be investigated for allegedly conducting a policy of genocide against the Mayan Indians between 1978 and 1983.The ruling was the first time a Guatemalan court agreed to investigate the allegations. Garcia, won a rigged election in 1978, and his successor Mr Rios Montt, seized power in a coup in 1982. Lucas Garcia, who lives in Venezuela, is reportedly suffering from Alzheimer's disease and has not made any public statement for several years. Rios Montt is currently serving as the leader of Guatemala's Congress and as such he enjoys immunity from prosecution. Montt, also controls the political party of current President Alfonso Portilla.
Only 3 paramilitaries (PAC – Patrullas de Autodefensa Civil) and 1 civilian Military Commissioner have been convicted for atrocities committed during the State sponsored genocide and repression in which more than 200,000 people were killed and disappeared.
Tico Times /AFP 16 May 2003 Acquittals Called 'Step Backwards' for Guatemala By Edin Hernández AFP GUATEMALA CITY - Last week's acquittals of three former Guatemalan military officers accused of murdering a human-rights investigator are proof of an ebbing tide of justice and the persistence of militarism, the victim's family, diplomats and humanitarian organizations said. Last Wednesday, an appeals court absolved retired colonel Juan Valencia, who had been convicted last year and sentenced to 30 years in prison, of having ordered the 1990 murder of anthropologist Myrna Mack, who was investigating massacres of indigenous people during the country's protracted civil war (1960-96). The court also reaffirmed the acquittals of retired general Edgar Godoy and retired colonel Juan Oliva, also members of an elite Army unit who had been charged with playing a role in the crime (TT, May 9). "This ruling is a blow not only for Myrna and my family, but also for Guatemala, because this pushes aside the hope for a rule of law," the victim's sister, Hellen Mack, said. "I had the hope that judges courageous enough to convict military officials still existed, but from the looks of things, there are not. Guatemala is a long way away from being a state of law." NO JUSTICE: Esperanza Mack (left) is consoled by her daughter Hellen after acquittals. Orlando Sierra, AFP Mack was particularly critical of the appeals court, which she said is well-known for supporting military officials accused of crimes. She noted the same appeals court had thrown out the convictions of three military officers and a priest in the 1998 bludgeoning death of Church human-rights advocate Bishop Juan Gerardi. "This court was not impartial," she said, adding, "I did not expect this ruling that only shows that Guatemala is far from having justice free of fear and coercion." Over the last year, a growing number of judges and judicial prosecutors have complained about receiving death threats and actually being attacked. "This is a setback in the construction of a state of law in Guatemala and a shame of the administration of justice, as well as a demonstration of the authoritarianism and militarism that persist in Guatemalan society," humanitarian support group Mutual Aid Group (GAM) director Mario Polanco told AFP. "As GAM and the organization of families of the (civil war) disappeared, we reject this ruling and hope that Guatemalans and the international community react adequately to halt this series of abuses of justice." "This is an act that shows that in Guatemala there is no justice," U.S. Ambassador to Guatemala John Hamilton said. The envoy was in the courtroom along with Swedish Ambassador Maria Lessner and the head of the United Nations Verification Mission for Guatemala (MINUGUA) Tom Koenigs when the ruling was announced. "Although we respect the court's decision, it is disappointing that 13 years after such a barbarous murder, the intellectual authors have not been convicted," Hamilton added. The ruling has added to speculation that the U.S. may seek to limit Guatemala's role in the proposed free-trade agreement with Central America. "It is regrettable that the intellectual authors of this crime have not yet been established," Koenigs warned. "Obviously the investigations were not sufficient to establish the responsibilities of these authors, and thus, there is no conviction of them, whoever they may be." The U.N. representative admitted he was "a little surprised" by the acquittals and added that "It casts a cloud not just the system of justice but also the system of investigation because the intellectual authors remain at large." Lesser said it was "very regrettable" that "Guatemala has not been able to serve justice for Myrna and the other victims of the harsh repression the country suffered" during the civil war. No fewer than 200,000 Guatemalans are believed to have been killed or disappeared during the civil war. A report issued by Gerardi just days before his murder blamed the U.S.-backed Guatemalan Military for the majority of the human-rights abuses during the war.
Mar. 12, 2003 Ex-Colombian General Sought Over Massacre VANESSA ARRINGTON -BOGOTA, Colombia - A civilian prosecutor ordered the arrest of a retired Colombian army general for allegedly failing to prevent a massacre by right-wing paramilitary gunmen, but the former commander vowed defiance. Gen. Jaime Uscategui told The Associated Press that he had no role in the 1997 massacre of at least 22 people in the village of Mapiripan and would surrender to military authorities instead. "I am a sacrificial lamb," Uscategui said in a telephone interview Tuesday. Authorities have said that as commander of the Colombian Army's VII Brigade at the time, Uscategui had jurisdiction over Mapiripan but ignored warnings of the coming bloodbath. The killings, which occurred over five days, were horrific and are cited as among the worst atrocities carried out by paramilitaries in Colombia's ongoing civil war. Witnesses told of civilians being tortured before being killed. Some were hacked to death, their bodies thrown into a river. A military court convicted Uscategui in February 2001 of dereliction of duty and sentenced him to three years imprisonment in the case, but the Supreme Court later threw it out and ordered that he be tried in a civilian court. The former army commander told the AP the case had been "twisted" and that the prosecutor who issued the arrest warrant Tuesday had ignored his contention that another army unit - the Second Mobile Brigade - was responsible for the area encompassing Mapiripan during the massacre. He acknowledged that he had received unsubstantiated warnings of a pending massacre, but that military intelligence officials attached to the Second Mobile Brigade had too, and had failed to act on them. Uscategui said he would appeal the issuance of the arrest warrant to more senior officials in the attorney general's office, and in the meantime would turn himself over to a military installation. He said no civilian authorities had yet appeared at his door to execute the arrest warrant. Human rights groups have long complained that Colombia has tried military officials in lenient military courts, despite Colombian and international law that calls for crimes against humanity to be tried in civilian courts. However, in recent years, the Supreme Court has demanded that military officials linked to massacres be tried in civilian courts. The Colombian government insists it is battling the paramilitaries, but some elements of the Colombian Army and police across Colombia still maintain secret links with the outlawed militia. The paramilitary United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia are accused by human rights groups of having committed the most atrocities in Colombia's war, now in its 38th year, although leftist rebels have also committed many serious crimes. Guatemala
Los Angeles Times 6 June 2001 By T. CHRISTIAN MILLER Eleven communities nearly wiped out two decades ago today will file the first lawsuit in Central America accusing a sitting political figure of genocide. The lawsuit, by ethnic Maya in Guatemala's northern and central mountains, charges that the current head of Congress, Efrain Rios Montt, presided over a brutal policy of racial extermination as the nation's dictator in the early 1980s. The suit is the first step that community members hope will bring justice to those who orchestrated the deaths of more than 200,000 people, most of them Maya, during this country's 36-year civil war. It also marks a historic turning point in the effort to close old wounds in a country struggling to come to terms with a legacy of repression and brutality unmatched in Central America during the 1980s. For the first time, massacre survivors intend to publicly step forward en masse to identify those responsible for the killings. "It is good to know what happened, to clear up the past," said Juan Manuel Jeronimo, 56, who survived a massacre of 267 people in 1982 in this remote hamlet in the Guatemalan highlands. "That is why we lived: to testify and tell the truth." Rios Montt turned down a request for an interview with the Los Angeles Times, and his representatives did not return phone calls Tuesday. But military officials have denied accusations of massacres, frequently insisting that those killed were leftist guerrillas who died in battle. Many in the military discount the charge of genocide by rightly pointing out that the Maya fought both for guerrillas and for the army and paramilitary self-defense groups. The Guatemalan justice system allows civil parties such as the 11 communities to file a suit to force a criminal investigation. They become a party to any eventual prosecution of the accused. If convicted, Rios Montt could face up to 30 years in prison. Few political analysts, however, believe the suit will bring down Rios Montt, who controls not only the Guatemalan Congress but also the political party of current President Alfonso Portilla. The Guatemalan justice system is famously corrupt, often unable to resolve even the simplest crimes. BBC 8 June 2001 A Guatemalan court has sentenced three army officers and a priest to between 20 and 30 years in prison for the murder of Roman Catholic Bishop Juan Gerardi in 1998. Among those sentenced was a former military intelligence chief, Colonel Disrael Lima Estrada, who prosecutors accused of masterminding the killing. They said Bishop Gerardi, head of the church's human rights office, was bludgeoned to death to keep him from testifying in possible trials over atrocities committed during Guatemala's 36-year civil war. The trial has been seen as a test of Guatemala's justice system by human rights activists, who believe the murder was carried out on the highest orders. Damaging report Catholic church lawyers believe former President Alvaro Arzu was involved in planning the killing, and requested the judges to order an investigation. Gerardi released a damaging report into wartime atrocities Mr Arzu used parliamentary immunity to avoid testifying. Gerardi was killed two days after releasing a report which blamed the military for 95% of the atrocities committed during the civil war which ended in 1996. Some 150,000 people are believed to have been killed in the conflict, and more than 50,000 disappeared, but so far most of the crimes have gone unpunished. Key testimony Colonel Lima was sentenced along with his son, Captain Byron Lima Oliva and Jose Obdulio Villanueva, both members of the presidential guard. All three were sentenced to 30 years in jail. Gerardi's assistant, Reverend Mario Orantes, found guilty of acting as an accomplice, was given a 20-year prison term. The bishop's cook, Margarita Lopez, was found innocent of the same charges. The court said it based its ruling largely on the testimony of the key prosecution witness, Ruben Chanax, a homeless man who claimed he had been hired by the army officers. Mr Chanax said he had been told to spy on Bishop Gerardi, and to alter the scene of the crime before the police arrived. He told the court he had been warned that someone would die. Death threats Human rights groups and church organisations held a vigil outside the court as the verdict was read amid tight security. Two investigating judges, three key witnesses and at least one prosecutor fled Guatemala in fear of their lives. Flor de Maria Garcia, the final investigating magistrate, said she had received death threats at every step of the process. On the eve of the trial, which began in March, a bomb exploded outside the house of one of the three judges hearing the case. BBC 14 June 2001, Two former presidents of Guatemala are to face investigation on charges of genocide following a landmark judicial ruling. Romeo Lucas Garcia and Efrain Rios Montt - who ruled the country during its bloody 36-year civil war - are accused of ordering massacres of Mayan Indians between 1978 and 1983. Prosecutors will conduct a careful investigation that I will personally oversee Judge Marco Antonio Posada Human rights groups say the decision - the first time a Guatemalan court has agreed to investigate the allegations - reflects a welcome change of attitude among the country's judiciary. Although there is no guarantee either man will be formally charged, campaigners see the move as a major victory in their fight to bring the perpetrators of the killings to justice. Genocide policy The court passed separate rulings on Mr Lucas Garcia, who won a rigged election in 1978, and his successor Mr Rios Montt, who seized power in a coup four years later. Rios Montt: "Nothing to hide" Both men have been accused of conducting a policy of genocide against the Mayans, who were believed to be supporting left-wing rebels. Two years ago, a United Nations truth commission report found that Mr Rios Montt in particular oversaw a scorched earth policy, reducing hundreds of Indian villages to ashes. About 200,000 Guatemalans died in the civil war, in which the left-wing guerrillas fought state forces. Fighting ended following in peace accords in December 1996 'Nothing to hide' Mr Rios Montt is currently serving as the leader of Guatemala's Congress and as such he enjoys immunity from prosecution. A party spokesman said he would not comment on the ruling, but in the past he has insisted that he has nothing to hide. Mr Lucas Garcia, who lives in Venezuela, is reportedly suffering from Alzheimer's disease and has not made any public statement for several years.
WP 28 Jul 2002 Intimidation in Guatemala Papal Visit Comes as Catholics Raise Fears of New Violence By Kevin Sullivan Washington Post Foreign Service Sunday, July 28, 2002; Page A22 ANTIGUA, Guatemala, July 27 -- Pope John Paul II is scheduled to arrive in Guatemala on Monday as human rights activists, particularly those associated with the Catholic Church, face increasing death threats and other forms of intimidation aimed at preventing exposure of atrocities committed during the country's 36-year civil war. The church here has played a central role in investigating massacres and other crimes committed during the war, which ended with peace accords in 1996. The fighting, the bloodiest of Central America's civil wars in recent decades, resulted in more than 200,000 deaths and disappearances, most at the hands of the military or paramilitary groups working for the government. The war is no longer raging, as it was when the pope first visited in 1983. But the campaign of violence against the church and rights activists has revived fears that the political and military leaders who ordered or committed the wartime violence -- some of whom are still in power -- will drive the country back to levels of brutality not seen in years. In recent weeks a Catholic bishop, at least six priests and officials in the church's human rights office have received death threats. A Catholic church used to store equipment and records for anthropologists exhuming massacre victims was burned to the ground in February. Other church offices have been broken into. Nery Rodenas, executive director of the Archbishop's Human Rights Office, said he and others in his office have received death threats in faxes to their office and telephone calls to their homes. "It's had a very high cost for us," he said. "The pope's visit is important for us because it's an opportunity to show the world what is happening in Guatemala." A leading Catholic bishop, Juan Gerardi Conedera, was bludgeoned to death in 1998, as a report from an investigation he headed was being released. It blamed the Guatemalan military or its paramilitary forces for more than 90 percent of the country's war crimes. Although the government initially insisted that Gerardi's wounds were inflicted by a dog, three military officers were convicted in the case last year and sentenced to 30 years in prison. A priest was sentenced to 20 years as an accessory to the killing. Last week shots were fired at the courthouses where the officers were convicted and where their appeals are being heard. Frank LaRue, of Guatemala's Center for Human Rights Legal Action, said he believes that the shootings were "linked directly to the pope's visit," because in the government's view, "the visit of the pope is a threat." "Bishop Gerardi and the Catholic Church are symbols of the human rights movement here, and the pope has spoken out against poverty and he has challenged the structures of power here," LaRue said. "This is clearly an act of provocation to the Catholic Church." The government dismisses the violence and death threats as the work of common criminals. "Many of these acts are blown out of proportion and are aimed at discrediting the state, especially in light of the pope's visit," said Byron Barrera, spokesman for Guatemala's president, Alfonso Portillo. The 82-year-old pontiff, on his third visit to Guatemala, officially is coming to canonize Guatemala's first saint, Pedro de San Jose Betancourt, a 17th-century Franciscan friar known as the "St. Francis of the Americas" for establishing a hospital and ministering to poor Mayan Indians. In Guatemala City and here in Antigua, a colonial city just west of the capital, posters of "Hermano Pedro," or Brother Pedro, are pasted everywhere and many cars fly small flags bearing his image. As he has in the past, the pope is also expected to call for improved social justice in a country where the majority of wealth is held by a handful of families and business leaders. The U.N. Development Program says at least 83 percent of the country's 11.5 million people live in poverty. The pope's visit is also seen as another attempt to stem the church's losses to the fast-growing ranks of evangelical Protestant groups, which, according to many estimates, now account for 30 to 35 percent of a population that was once nearly exclusively Catholic. But, more than anything, the pope will bring his message of peace to a country with a violent past that seems to be haunting its present. "Guatemala is continuing down the path of lawlessness and terror," Amnesty International said in a recent report. Last Sunday, the offices of a Guatemala City human rights organization that had been investigating the military's involvement in war crimes was ransacked; six computers were stolen, along with files on the military investigation. In April, an accountant working in the organization of Nobel Peace Prize winner Rigoberta Menchu, who is pursuing genocide cases against former and current national leaders, was shot dead. Shortly before he was killed, his office received four calls in which anonymous callers played taped funeral music. Human rights workers and journalists received faxes last month threatening the lives of 11 human rights activists labeled "enemies of the state." Four forensic anthropologists examining skeletons and other evidence of atrocities were forced to leave the country in May because of death threats to them and their families. Several lawyers and judges have also been killed under suspicious circumstances. In June, members of the Civil Defense Patrols, which worked with the military during the war and are accused of countless crimes, took over much of Peten province, blocking access to the famous Mayan ruins at Tikal and stranding 62 tourists. The paramilitary forces were demanding back pay for their bloody service to the government during the war. Facing threats of further violence, the government has agreed to explore a new tax to pay them. "Genocide will not return, nor torture nor disappearances, but the situation is grave," Menchu said recently. "True peace has become a myth." The Catholic Church has had an uncomfortable relationship with Guatemala's political leaders since civil war broke out in 1960. Catholic bishops and priests were leading voices against the growing abuses of the military junta, and simply being a Catholic was dangerous during the war. At the same time, the evangelical Protestant movement was growing rapidly. It was personified by Gen. Efrain Rios Montt, who seized power in a March 1982 military coup, then ruled with a mixture of bloody ruthlessness and Scripture quotations. Many of the war's most brutal killings took place during his 18-month tenure. At 76, he still serves as president of Congress and leader of Portillo's Guatemalan Republican Front party. Rios Montt was antagonistic to John Paul II on the pope's 1983 visit. Three days before his arrival, Rios Montt ordered the execution of six suspected leftist rebels despite pleas from the Vatican to spare them. The pope said he felt insulted by the executions, which he called a "very grave offense against God." The pope has spoken out repeatedly against the efforts of evangelical Protestants to convert Catholics. Evangelicals in Guatemala responded by scrawling "The Beast" across promotional posters for the pope's 1983 visit. During his second trip, in 1996, Protestant leaders roamed the countryside with bullhorns calling him "the Antichrist." Some evangelical leaders say they welcome the pope's visit. But others grumble that the government should not have spent nearly $1 million in preparations for a visit by the leader of a single religion. Some said the church, and the pope, have brought the recent violence on themselves. "The truth is that the Catholic people are very political, and it is lamentable that in the name of God they use religion to manipulate people," said David Munguia, a leader of the Evangelical Alliance of Guatemala. "The pope isn't necessarily the Antichrist, but the general feeling is that he is a candidate."
Amnesty International 4 Oct 2002 Guatemala Myrna Mack Verdict -- A Tribute to Courage and Persistence AI Index: AMR 34/062/2002 Publish date: 4 October 2002 The sentencing of Guatemalan army colonel Juan Valencia Osorio to thirty years in prison for having ordered the 1990 killing of anthropologist Myrna Mack is an overdue but welcome step towards justice, Amnesty International said today. More on this Web site: Guatemala Two other officers, General Edgar Augusto Godoy Gaytán and Colonel Juan Guillermo Oliva Carrera, who had faced the same charges, were acquitted. They were Colonel Valencia's superior officers in the notorious Estado Mayor Presidencial(EMP), Presidential High Command. Amnesty International will study the court's judgement closely to determine whether it finds convincing the court's decision that they were indeed not involved in ordering Ms. Mack's death. "Never before had a high-ranking military official been convicted for a crime committed during Guatemala's 36 year internal conflict, and only once before had other officers been convicted for a political crime," Amnesty International noted. In welcoming the conviction, Amnesty International paid tribute to the victim's sister, Helen Mack, and the Guatemalan human rights community. "It was their courageous determination to see the killers punished and their effectiveness in mobilising international and local support which finally moved the case through the courts," the organization said. However, the organization expressed its dissatisfaction that it had taken 12 years for the case against those who ordered the killing to finally come to court. "The wheels of justice have ground slowly, far too slowly," said Amnesty International. "Twelve years is far too long to wait to see justice -- possibly only partial justice -- done." "Justice should be the rule, not the exception in Guatemala," Amnesty International insisted. "Despite a Constitutional guarantee that it is the duty of the State to guarantee justice to all of its inhabitants, only a handful of high profile cases have seen convictions for conflict-related abuses, while nobody has been held accountable for the killing and 'disappearance' of over 200,000 people, the majority of them indigenous," the organization added. "A genocide -- and that is what the Guatemala's UN-sponsored Historical Clarification Commission (CEH) determined had occurred -- cannot be swept under the historical carpet. Each and every victim and each and every survivor deserves justice," Amnesty International said. The organization also noted that the three officers were tried in an atmosphere of death threats, intimidation and violence against individuals and organisations associated with the case, including the lawyers for the prosecution. "These attacks against the human rights and legal communities in Guatemala, are symptomatic of an escalating wave of violence against those involved in seeking justice for human rights violations committed both during and following Guatemala's long civil conflict," Amnesty International said. Background Myrna Mack, founder member of the social science research institute, AVANCSO, was brutally stabbed to death in September 1990 as she left the AVANCSO office in Guatemala City. In 1989, she had published a ground-breaking study which concluded that the massive internal displacement of Guatemala's indigenous people, and the suffering it had caused, had been a direct result of the army's counter-insurgency policy. Her findings were published just as peace talks began, and were highly damaging to the government. From the beginning, efforts to convict those who carried out Myrna Mack's brutal murder encountered irregularities, incompetence and every imaginable legal manoeuvre to paralyse the judicial process. Finally, however, in 1993 Sergeant Noel de Jesús Beteta Alvarez, a member of the EMP, was found guilty of the killing and jailed for 25 years. Source: Amnesty International, International Secretariat, 1 Easton Street, WC1X 8DJ, London, United Kingdom
Reuters 8 Oct 2002 Guatemala Court Annuls Rights Convictions By Greg Brosnan GUATEMALA CITY (Reuters) - A Guatemalan appeals court on Tuesday annulled the landmark convictions of three military men and a priest in the 1998 murder of prominent bishop and human rights defender Juan Jose Gerardi. Reuters Photo The three-judge panel ordered a retrial and said it annulled the convictions because of irregularities in the testimony of a witness who claimed he saw the accused on the night of the murder. Gerardi was bludgeoned to death in April 1998, two days after publishing a four-volume report blaming Guatemala's military for hundreds of massacres and other abuses during a 1960-1996 civil war, in which some 200,000 people were killed. Retired Col. Byron Lima Estrada, his son Capt. Byron Lima Oliva, and former presidential bodyguard Obdulio Villanueva were sentenced to 30 years each for the murder at a trial in June 2001. Roman Catholic priest Mario Orantes was sentenced to 20 years as an accomplice. The convictions were initially lauded by human rights groups as a landmark victory in a country where the military traditionally enjoyed impunity for rights abuses. ELATION AND DISBELIEF Lima Estrada, Lima Oliva, Villanueva, and their relatives and supporters in the court, including active and retired military men, cheered the decision and hugged each other while rights activists and Gerardi's former colleagues looked at each other in disbelief. "There is justice in Guatemala," Lima Oliva told reporters, standing up and making a military salute upon hearing of the annulment. "We soldiers defended the country." Orantes' lawyers say he suffers from severe migraines. He is interned in a hospital and did not attend the hearing. All four will remain in prison until the retrial. TESTIMONY IN DOUBT One of the main witnesses in the case, an indigent named Ruben Chanax Sontay, told judges in the trial he was hired by Lima Estrada to spy on Gerardi, and that on the night of the crime he helped Lima Oliva and Villanueva move the bishop's corpse. Judges accepted an argument by Villanueva's lawyer that Chanax Sontay had not mentioned those details in earlier statements to investigators. "A GRAVE SETBACK" "The court is convinced that the sentencing court did not weigh up this proof," the court said on Tuesday. "The sentence is annulled. ... We order a new trial." There was no mention of when that new trial, which will be overseen by a new panel of judges, will be held. Nery Rodenas, a lawyer for the Roman Catholic church human rights office Gerardi formerly headed, and who worked alongside prosecutors in the original trial, called the verdict "a grave setback." The sentence came after a court last week sentenced a former colonel to 30 years in prison for ordering the 1990 civil-war era stabbing murder of an anthropologist who had conducted extensive research of the effects of the war on Maya Indian refugees fleeing the conflict. "My feeling is that the military is reacting to all this," said rights activist Frank La Rue. "The judges are under a lot of pressure." Gerardi's cook, Margarita Lopez, who was accused of participating in the crime but freed by judges in the trial, will not have to participate in the retrial.
AP 8 Oct 2002 New Trial in Killing of Guatemala Cleric GUATEMALA CITY, Oct. 8 (AP) — An appeals court granted a new trial today to three military officials and a priest convicted of killing a Roman Catholic bishop, ruling that a witness's testimony was flawed. In June 2001 a three-judge panel convicted retired Col. Byron Lima Estrada; his son, Capt. Byron Lima Oliva; and Sgt. Obdulio Villanueva of killing Bishop Juan Gerardi, who was bludgeoned with a concrete block in his garage in April 1998. The three were sentenced to 30 years in prison each. The Rev. Mario Orantes, Bishop Gerardi's assistant, was sentenced to 20 years as an accomplice in the killing, which occurred days after the prelate had presented a report blaming the military for 80 percent of the deaths during the 36-year civil war that ended in 1996. Today the appeals tribunal said the lower court did not adequately verify the testimony of Ruben Chanax, a homeless man. Activists had considered the convictions a human rights victory for a country plagued by thousands of atrocities. But the defendants appealed last month, claiming that the police never found the person responsible for the killing and accusing the trial judges of basing their ruling on speculation and hearsay. Mr. Chanax, who lived in a park across the street from the seminary where Bishop Gerardi was killed, testified that the Limas and Sergeant Villanueva hired him to spy on the bishop, told him someone would die on the night of the killing and enlisted his help in altering the crime scene before the police could arrive.
Haiti
Raoul Cédras, Philippe Biamby, Joseph Michel François, Carl Dorelien, Emmanuel Constant, and 32 others were sentenced on November 16, 2000 to life imprisonment by a Haitian court for their roles in the April 1994 massacre in the Raboteau neighborhood of the northwestern city of Gonaïves. The trial, which ended on November 10, also convicted 16 lower-ranking officers and their accomplices in the massacre. The court also awarded $43 million to the victims. The major defendants were convicted in absentia, including Lt. Gen. Raoul Cédras and Brig. Gen. Philippe Biamby, who are in Panama; former Port-au-Prince police chief Col. Joseph Michel François, who is in Honduras; former army Col. Carl Dorelien, who lives in Florida; and paramilitary leader Emmanuel “Toto” Constant, who lives in New York City. Cédras, Biamby, and François were the three primary leaders of the September 1991 coup that overthrew president Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
Mexico
Reuters 22 Nov 2001 Six Indian Convicts Freed in Mexico Acteal Massacre MEXICO CITY - A Mexican court freed six members of a paramilitary group imprisoned in the 1997 massacre of 45 indigenous residents in strife-torn Chiapas state, citing lack of evidence, Reforma newspaper said on Thursday. The court ratified the 35-year sentences of another 34 members of the armed group of Tzotzil Indians who attacked fellow-Tzotzil townspeople in Acteal, killing 45 men, women and children, Reforma said. The Acteal massacre was the worst single act of violence surrounding the 1994 launch of the Zapatista rebel uprising over Indian rights in Chiapas. Eight others convicted in the case, among them former members of the military and security forces, have been freed after serving half of their 2-year, seven-month sentences, the newspaper reported. The right-wing armed band that attacked Acteal villagers on Dec. 22, 1997, has been linked to the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which then ruled Mexico. The massacre was described as an act of vengeance for the death of one of the group's members in a clash with Zapatista rebels. The people of Acteal, who had fled their homes and moved to the town center due to escalating violence in the countryside, had declared their neutrality in the Zapatista rebellion and were praying for peace when they were attacked. Witnesses said military and security officials knew about the attack but failed to act to stop it. Mexico's Attorney General has said it is still investigating the crime, and more arrests could be forthcoming.
AP 22 Dec 2001 Four years after massacre, Mexico residents still seeking justice December 22, 2001 ACTEAL, Mexico (AP) -- Many villagers have returned since paramilitaries killed 45 rebel sympathizers in the tiny highland town of Acteal, Mexico, four years ago, and some of the accused killers are in prison. But survivors say the memory of the massacre has not faded. "After four years, our pain has not subsided," said Elena Perez Jimenez, who survived the massacre on December 22, 1997, when members of the a Roman Catholic community group called Las Abejas were attacked at a chapel in Acteal, in southern Mexico's volatile Chiapas state. "On the contrary, it has increased," she said. Survivors fled in fear of more violence, but many returned this year, hoping dialogue could resolve lingering local conflicts between supporters and opponents of the Zapatista National Liberation Army, a mostly Indian rebel group in Chiapas. Mexico's former ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party has lost both the presidency and the Chiapas governorship since the massacre. But despite the change, villagers still accuse the government of supporting the paramilitaries and see little hope for a resolution to the conflict. After taking office a year ago, Mexican President Vicente Fox focused on making peace with the Zapatistas, who staged a rebellion in 1994, but talks collapsed after Congress watered down an Indian-rights bill the rebels supported. In Acteal, 6-year-old Efrain Gomez is a reminder of the 1997 massacre. His jawbone was shattered by a rifle bullet in the attack, and today he is unable to talk or chew his food properly. "My poor son isn't happy," said his father, Victorio Gomez, whose wife was killed in the attack. "He is sick. He doesn't eat well." A bullet left Zenaida Jimenez Luna, 9, nearly blind and killed her parents. Today, her uncle Mariano Luna cares for her. Some suspects have been convicted, but the Law Abejas group criticized a judge's decision last month to release six convicted paramilitaries. "It's four years after the massacre, and we don't see any justice," said the group's spokesman, Porfirio Arias Hernandez. At the same time, those convicted of carrying out the massacre say innocent people were sent to prison. "There were only nine people who organized and participated in Acteal, and it pains me that my friends who didn't know anything about this problem have been sentenced to 36 years in prison," convicted paramilitary member Roberto Mendez said in an interview in prison. Mendez said he and others arrived in Acteal to confront alleged Zapatistas he accused of killing 18 Institutional Revolutionary Party members. "It wasn't a massacre," he said. "It was a confrontation with hidden Zapatistas." He claimed the victims -- 21 women, 15 children and nine men -- were simply caught in the cross fire.
Peru
Reuters 19 Nov 2002 The Americas Head of Death Squad Arrested in Peru LIMA, Peru -- In a dramatic arrest that could shed light on former president Alberto Fujimori's possible involvement in human rights crimes, Peru captured the head of an army death squad that killed 25 people in two of Peru's most notorious massacres in the early 1990s. Maj. Santiago Martin Rivas was leader of the Grupo Colina death squad. The unit was convicted of killing 15 people at a party in the Barrios Altos district of Lima in 1991 and nine students and their professor at La Cantuta university in 1992. He was arrested at his Lima home. Fujimori, who ruled Peru from 1990 to 2000, is charged with responsibility for the murders. The former president, who is now in exile in Japan, has denied the charge. Martin Rivas was one of 10 officers sentenced to up to 20 years in prison for the La Cantuta killing, which happened when Peru was in the grip of leftist rebel violence. He was released after Fujimori decreed an amnesty in 1995. But he became a fugitive after Peru's top military tribunal ruled last year that the sentences should be upheld, and a warrant was issued for his arrest. His detention brings to seven the number of Grupo Colina members behind bars; 14 are still at large, Interior Minister Gino Costa said. Costa said at a news conference that Martin Rivas had been under surveillance for a week.
Cambodia In January 2001 both houses of the Cambodian Parliament approved the "Law on the Establishment of Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia for the Prosecution of Crimes Committed During the Period of Democratic Kampuchea." The law, when ratified by the king, would establish a Cambodian court to prosecute senior leaders of Democratic Kampuchea responsible for serious violations of Cambodian and international law committed between 17 April 1975 to 6 January 1979. Under the draft law the tribunal would include a mixture of foreign and Cambodian judges.
On February 23, 2001 Prime Minister Hun Sen said there were inconsistencies in the draft law and said it would have to be revised and approved a second time in parliament. He cited a reference in the draft to the country's 1956 penal code, which allowed for the use of the death penalty, which has since been abolished. Any trial of Senior Khmer Rouge leaders is likely to reveal some evidence of the role of Hun Sen, a member of the Khmer Rouge prior to 1977. Trials are also likely to show evidence of the role of China in supporting the Khmer Rouge, as well as that of the United States between 1982 to 1991, when US backed the Khmer Rouge as the dominant member of a three organization coalition that was recognized as representing Cambodia at the United Nations until 1991.
Mass trials are not expected, but it is thought that up to 30 men, many aged in their 70s, would be tried. Among those who may stand trial are:
Kang Kek Ieu ("Duch"), head of Khmer Rouge's secret police and director of the 's notorious Security Prison S21, was arrested on May 7, 1999. At that time investigating judge of the military court, General Ngin Sam An, told reporters he was charged under two separate laws for murder and membership in an outlawed group. Kang Kek Ieu has admitted his role in mass killings. His testimony could prove important in future prosecution.
Ta Mok, military chief known as "the Butcher", was arrested in the March 1999 for Khmer Rouge era crimes. Ta Mok was Secretary of the party for the southwestern area, he orchestrates vast purges in the district of Angkor Chey, including a massacre 30,000 people. After December 1978, Ta Mok was the supreme military head of the Khmer Rouges and directed the northern stronghold of Along Veng.
Nuon Chea, ideological leader, president of parliament 1976-1979. After his defection with Khieu Samphan from the Khmer Rouge in December 1998, Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen said that putting him on trial would destroy the country's fragile fabric and granted him immunity from prosecution.
Khieu Samphan, head of state of Kampuchea, 1975-1978. After his defection with Nuon Chea from the Khmer Rouge in December 1998, Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen granted him immunity from prosecution.
Ieng Sary, after his defection in 1996 he was granted royal amnesty.
Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot died in April 1999. Born Saloth Sar, on May 19, 1928, he was leader of the Khmer Rouge and Prime Minister of Cambodia from 1975 to 1978 when it was known as Kampuchea. He was tried by a Revolutionary Tribunal of the Khmer Rouge in July 1998, but not for 1975-1978 era crimes. He allegedly died naturally in April 1999, though no autopsy was performed leaving in doubt the cause of his death. [H.J. De Nike et al, Genocide In Cambodia; [Documents from the Trial of Pol Pot and Ieng Sary , U. of Pennsylvania Press (2000). Cambodia , www.yale.edu/cgp/ ]
Ta Mok, the group's notoriously brutal military commander, and Kaing Khek Iev, the Tuol Sleng warden also known as Duch, are the only two senior figures in detention awaiting trial for crimes against humanity. As many as 16,000 prisoners are thought to have passed through Tuol Sleng's gates on the way to execution. Vann Nath, 58, is one of 14 prisoners known to have survived the prison, which is now a genocide museum. A skillful sculptor, Vann Nath said that during his year at Tuol Sleng he made a statue of Pol Pot on the Khmer Rouge's orders, "not daring to miscount even a single hair on his eyebrow." After Pol Pot's fall, he said, "I wanted so badly to see his face and hear him speak in front of a tribunal alive." But he believes that Pol Pot's end was ordained by his karma. Researcher Youk Chhang lost 10 siblings to the Khmer Rouge, including a sister whom the Khmer Rouge accused of stealing rice. He said the Khmer Rouge cut her stomach open to check for the stolen rice. Such brutality still baffles Cambodians. "What happened was as clear as daylight, but why did it happen?" Chhang said. AP 24 Apr 2003 Judge in Khmer Rouge Case Is Killed PHNOM PENH, Cambodia -- A Cambodian judge who last year sentenced a notorious Khmer Rouge commander to life imprisonment was killed by gunmen, police said. Two unidentified men on a motorcycle pulled alongside Judge Sok Sethamony's car at an intersection in the capital and opened fire, said Heng Pov, deputy police commissioner of Phnom Penh. Witnesses reported hearing five shots. On Dec. 23, Sok Sethamony sentenced Sam Bith, a former Khmer Rouge provinci
