VICTIM OF ENFORCED DISAPPEARANCE & ELITISM

Scarred By War, Ukrainian Children Carry on After Losing Parents, Homes and Innocence

https://www.military.com/daily-news/2023/05/26/scarred-war-ukrainian-children-carry-after-losing-parents-homes-and-innocence.html

Jaycee Dugard kidnap: Victim rues 'stolen life'

US kidnap victim J Maycee Dugard has said her life was stolen when she was abducted by Phillip and Nancy Garrido at the age of 11, and she hated every second of her 18 years in captivity.

Now 31, she made her first public statement, read in court by her mother, as the Californian couple were sentenced for kidnapping and rape.

Nancy Garrido, 55, received 36 years to life, and her husband 431 years.

Phillip Garrido, now aged 60, had two children with his victim.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-13631641

Shia cleric loses citizenship amid Bahrain clampdown Bahrain has revoked the...

Shia cleric loses citizenship amid Bahrain clampdown

Bahrain has revoked the nationality of the country's leading Shia cleric, amid a clampdown on Shia activists ahead of next month's parliamentary elections.


http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-11373189


Yemen 'abandons' human rights Yemeni authorities havecarried outgrave human...

Yemen 'abandons' human rights

Yemeni authorities have carried out grave human rights abuses as part of an internationally-backed crackdown on a range of security threats facing the country, rights groups have said.

In a report issued on Wednesday, Amnesty International says that growing US concern over al-Qaeda's presence in Yemen, combined with domestic challenges to the legitimacy of the government, has prompted a marked deterioration in the human rights situation in the impoverished country.

http://english.aljazeera.net/focus/2010/08/20108211759856132.html

   Report: Yemen sacrificing rights

Yemen's government has sacrificed human rights to preserve security in its battle against Shia rebels in the north and al-Qaeda fighters in the south, a new report by Amnesty International has alleged.

Yemen's catalogue of human-rights abuses over the past two years includes unlawful killings, arbitrary arrest, torture, unfair trials and enforced disappearances, Amnesty said.

The report, "Yemen: Cracking Down Under Pressure,"says that Yemeni authorities have bowed to pressure from the United States and Saudi Arabia to deal harshly with the twin threats of Yemen's local al-Qaeda branch - al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) - and the Houthi rebels in the north.

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2010/08/20108255422793894.html

Khadr 'torture' confessions allowed ...

Khadr 'torture' confessions allowed

The confessions of Omar Khadr, a Canadian citizen charged with terrorism, can be used as evidence in his trial, even though they may have been obtained through torture, a US military judge has ruled.  

Lawyers for Khadr claimed statements to military interrogators were illegally obtained through torture and asked a US war crimes court to throw them out.

That request was denied on Monday by a military judge at the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

US forces captured Khadr in Afghanistan in July 2002, when he was just 15 years old.

"Omar Khadr could potentially be the first child soldier to be prosecuted for war crimes in modern history," Al Jazeera's Monica Villamizar said, reporting from Guantanamo Bay.  

"Under international law, children captured in war should be treated as victims and not perpetrators."

Khadr is accused of killing a US soldier after throwing a grenade at the end of a four-hour US bombardment of an al-Qaeda compound in the eastern Afghan city of Khost.

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2010/08/201089205529630903.html

UN envoy warns of implications of trial of last child soldier held in Guantánamo


The start of the trial of Omar Khadr – arrested in Afghanistan in 2002 for crimes he allegedly committed as a child – before the United States Military Commission in Guantánamo Bay today could set a precedent jeopardizing the status of child soldiers around the world, a United Nations envoy cautioned. 

 http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=35574&Cr=child+soldier&Cr1=&utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

Lawsuit over Awlaki can proceed "The license ... will allow us to pursue our...

Lawsuit over Awlaki can proceed

"The license ... will allow us to pursue our litigation relating to the government’s asserted authority to engage in targeted killings of American civilians without due process," the groups said in a joint statement.

But they also said that they would continue with their challenge of the licensing system itself, accusing the government of impeding the constitutionally guaranteed right to a lawyer.

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2010/08/20108565355444665.html

The meaning of strangulation ...

The meaning of strangulation 

Thomas was forced into retirement for declaring that Jews "should get the hell out of Palestine," but New York Senator Chuck Schumer, one of the most powerful politicians in the US, has avoided any criticism or even major press coverage for remarks he made only days later that supported the continued "economic strangulation" of Gaza; in part, because, he essentially argues, the inhabitants of the benighted Strip are not Jewish.

http://english.aljazeera.net/focus/2010/06/2010616131858756851.html

> Delivering on the promise of a fair, effective and independent Court > The ...

> Delivering on the promise of a fair, effective and independent Court > The Crime of Aggression

http://www.iccnow.org/?mod=aggression


Definition of the crime of aggression: Article 8 bis adopted in Kampala defines the individual crime of aggression as the planning, preparation, initiation or execution by a person in a leadership position of an act of aggression. Importantly, it contains the threshold requirement that the act of aggression must constitute a manifest violation of the Charter of the United Nations.

UN independent expert voices concerns over the practice of targeted killing...

UN independent expert voices concerns over the practice of targeted killing

A United Nations independent human rights expert today sounded the alarm about the practice of targeted killings, saying it had a tenuous legal basis and could undermine the rules that aim to prevent extrajudicial executions and guarantee people the right to life.

Philip Alston, the UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial executions, said in a new report that legal justifications for targeted killings were often based on “excessively broad circumstances” and there was a lack of essential accountability mechanisms to ensure that they were legal.

“In terms of the first problem, there are indeed circumstances in which targeted killings may be legal,” Mr. Alston noted. “They are permitted in armed conflict situations when used against combatants or fighters, or civilians who directly engage in combat-like activities.

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=34896&Cr=&Cr1=



Amnesty's report condemns 'politicisation of justice' Amnesty International...

Amnesty's report condemns 'politicisation of justice'

Amnesty International has criticised the "politicisation of international justice" in its annual report, which documents torture in 111 countries.

The human rights group accuses powerful governments of subordinating justice to political self-interest and of shielding allies from scrutiny.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/world/south_asia/10166788.stm

Russian Court Ordered to Hear Appeal in Katyn Case Russia’s Supreme Court or...

Russian Court Ordered to Hear Appeal in Katyn Case

Russia’s Supreme Court ordered the Moscow City Court to consider an appeal in which a rights group, Memorial, sought to force the authorities to declassify a 2004 decision by military prosecutors to drop an investigation into the massacre in the Katyn forest. A Memorial leader, Yan Rachinsky, said the ruling could lead to a court decision to open up secret documents providing details about the killings of thousands of Polish officers there. Poland also wants the documents declassified.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/22/world/europe/22katyn.html

Russian Scholars Call on Medvedev to Block New Wave of ‘Lysenkoism’ 

A group of Russian scholars working both in that country and abroad have called on President Dmitry Medvedev to come to the defense of scientific research against the demands of politicians and businessmen who in some cases have been promoting “scientific charlatanism” and even a new wave of “’Lysenkoism.’”

 http://georgiandaily.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=18526&Itemid=72