January 2020 - Domestic Prosecution of International Crimes Updates
By: Raghavi Viswanath & Erez Roman, Junior Research Associates, PILPG-NL
This month saw the start of many trials of international crimes in jurisdictions such as the Netherlands and the Central African Republic. Other jurisdictions like Bosnia, Kosovo, and El Salvador have charged individuals for committing international crimes. This post compiles some of these developments relating to universal jurisdiction. The post canvasses both national and international news sources.
EUROPE
Bosnia-Herzegovina | Bosnian Serb Policeman’s Crimes Against Humanity Conviction Upheld
The appeals chamber of the Bosnian state court has confirmed Mico Jurisic’s sentence of 11 years in prison for war crimes including involvement in several murders in the Prijedor area in 1992. Jurisic was found guilty of participating in the murders of two Bosniaks in the village of Carakovo, as well as the killings of two others.
He was also convicted of the crime of attempting to kill a group of Bosniak and Roma civilians by shooting at them while they were running away, as well as inhumane treatment [January 9, 2020].
Kosovo | Ljuban Ecim is charged with committing Crimes against Humanity
In the case against Ljuban Ećim, who is charged with committing Crimes against Humanity in Kotor Varoš and the surrounding area, the Prosecutor’s Office of BiH formally proposed the summoning of 261 witnesses and provided about 1450 pieces of material evidence, as well as the Record on Questioning of the Suspect [January 26, 2020]
Netherlands | War crimes trial of Ahrar al-Sham commander begins
Another war crimes & terrorism trial has begun in the Netherlands. This time the case concerns Ahmad al Y. from Syria, who was allegedly a commander of Ahrar al-Sham and is alleged to have posed with a dead body in a humiliating way on social media [January 15, 2020]
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ASIA
Bangladesh | Supreme Court confirms death sentence for Qaisar
The Supreme Court of Bangladesh upheld the death sentence of Syed Mohammad Qaisar for crimes against humanity committed during the 1971 Liberation War. Qaisar, a former state minister of the Jatiya Party in Bangladesh, had appealed the conviction and sentence given to him by Bangladesh’s now defunct International Crimes Tribunal-2 in 2014 [January 14, 2020].
AFRICA
Central American Republic | Trial of anti-Balaka leaders begins
The trial of several anti-Balaka militia leaders, including Pino Pino and Béré Béré, has opened in Bangui. They are being prosecuted for war crimes and crimes against humanity for abuses committed in Bangassou, including the murder of six UN peacekeepers [January 15, 2019].
NORTH AMERICA
The United States of America | Ex-warlord seeks overturning of conviction
A Delaware man serving a 30-year prison term for hiding his past as a brutal Liberian warlord to gain entry into the United States urged a federal appeals court in Philadelphia to overturn his conviction and sentence. Mohammed Jabateh’s lawyers argued that their client may have committed numerous murders, rapes, and acts of enslavement, torture and ritual cannibalism during the first Liberian civil war — but the crimes did did not amount to genocide. On this basis, they sought an overturning of the conviction [January 21, 2020]
SOUTH AMERICA
El Salvador | Salvadoran general admits to infamous 1981 massacre
Juan Rafael Bustillo, a former commander of the Air Force, told a court that the elite Atlacatl Battalion carried out the El Mozote massacre in eastern El Salvador in which unarmed villagers were slaughtered. According to a U.N. report, soldiers tortured and executed over 1,000 residents of El Mozote and surrounding hamlets in the Morazan department, 180 km (110 miles) northeast of San Salvador, as they searched for guerrillas in December 1981. At a court hearing in the eastern town of San Francisco Gotera in Morazan, Bustillo testified he had had no part in the operation which he said was conducted at the behest of Colonel Domingo Monterrosa, commander of the feared Atlacatl Battalion [January 25, 2020].