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The International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor has suggested the US may have committed war crimes in Afghanistan. An investigation would expose US forces to ICC scrutiny for the first time. Delivering her annual report to members of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague on Monday, chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda said she would decide “imminently” whether to ask judges for permission to launch a full-blown investigation as to whether US military forces and CIA operatives may have committed war crimes in Afghanistan through the “cruel or violent” interrogation of detainees. Bensouda said the Taliban, Afghan government forces and US...

The Latest on an international tribunal's ruling on the case filed by the Philippines against China's claims in the South China Sea (all times local): 5:05 p.m. Taiwan's President Tsai Ing-wen is indignant at the U.N. arbitration tribunal's decision to deny China — and Taiwan — their maritime claims in the South China Sea. Although rivals, self-ruled Taiwan and China share the same territorial claims, pitting them against other claimants, chiefly the Philippines and Vietnam. The U.N. arbitration tribunal ruled in favor of the Philippines and said that the biggest feature in the Spratly Islands — Taiwanese-controlled Taiping or Itu...

If you'd randomly turned on a TV in Manila early evening yesterday, you'd probably have caught a rather dour gentleman named Perfecto Yasay telling viewers "restraint and sobriety" were the most important requirements of the moment. Without any other context, you might have thought he was delivering a eulogy. Maybe after some kind of upsetting murder, or after the country's notorious death squads ran amok. But Yasay is the Philippine Foreign Secretary, and he was delivering his country's first official response to a ruling on his country's challenge of China's claim to pretty much all of the South China Sea.

A Lebanese newspaper reported that Palestinian Authority chief Mahmoud Abbas told Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi that the Palestinian Authority would not file a case against Israel in the International Criminal Court if negotiations between Israel and the PA resumed “in the coming weeks.” According to the report in the Al-Ahabar newspaper, Abbas made the comments to Sisi during their meeting in Cairo Wednesday. The PA several weeks ago formally requested membership in the ICC. Approval of the PA's membership is expected within two months. Last week, the PA recognized the ICC's jurisdiction to investigate what it said were Israeli war...

Area two kilometres from city centre has become ‘orthodox Muslim territory’ largely ignored by authorities There have been calls for an urgent debate in the Dutch parliament about the integration of Muslim immigrants amid claims that one area of The Hague, known locally as “the Sharia triangle”, is being run by a form of unofficial Sharia police. The claims relate to the district of Schilderswijk, about two kilometres from the city centre, where an almost entirely Muslim population of some 5,000 people surrounds the El Islam mosque, fuelling criticism that the government has failed to ensure a proper ethnic mix...

On November the 16th the Appeals Chamber of the International Criminal Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) outrageously reversed convictions, acquitted and ordered immediate release of the Croatian Colonel General Ante Gotovina, commander of a military offensive known as Operation Storm (Oluja in Serbian), and Colonel General Mladen Markac, Operation Commander of the Special Police in Croatia. Gotovina was on the run until 2005, when he was arrested in Spain and transferred to the ICTY. Needless to say the acquitted generals returned to Zagreb to a hero’s welcome with the 100,000 large crowd chanting “Victory, Victory.” In Belgrade there was a...

Updated 07/10/12 – 9:06 p.m. CHICAGO (CBS) — A 5-year-old Orland Park boy at the center of an international custody battle was sent to Ireland on Tuesday to live with his father, even though he was born in the U.S. and has lived most of his life here. Jack Redmond was born in south suburban Blue Island, and has spent all but a few months of his life in the United States. His mother, Mary Redmond, says the Chicago area is all the boy has ever known. His school, his doctor, his dentist, his friends — they’re all here. Custody...

The U.S. State Dept. today revealed that it has begun searching for contractors to design and build a new embassy compound at The Hague in The Netherlands, a project that could cost as much $210 million, according to its own estimates. Development of the 10-acre site will include a new office building, Marine security guard quarters, shops annex, utility building, "perimeter security, vehicle and pedestrian access control facilities, utility building, surface parking and a vehicular emergency egress bridge," according to a solicitation that U.S. Trade & Monitor located via routine database research. State's Bureau of Overseas Building Operations first will...

AP - The International Criminal Court charged former Ivory Coast President Laurent Gbagbo with murder, rape, persecution and inhuman acts Wednesday, crimes allegedly committed as his backers fought brutal battles to keep him in power after last year’s elections. Gbagbo, 66, is the first former head of state taken into custody by the court since it was established in 2002, although prosecutors also have charged Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir with genocide and Libya’s former leader, the late Moammar Gadhafi, with crimes against humanity. “Mr. Gbagbo is brought to account for his individual responsibility in the attacks against civilians committed by...

Former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi’s son and heir apparent, Saif al-Islam, and ex-intelligence chief Abdullah al-Senussi have reportedly suggested turning themselves in to the International Criminal Court in The Hague. ­The news comes from NTC senior Libyan military official Abdel Majid Mlegta, as quoted by Reuters. Since NTC forces took control of Sirte, Gaddafi’s hometown, the colonel’s son has remained in hiding. He is believed to be somewhere near Libya's southern border with Niger. According to the NTC official, Saif al-Islam and Senussi are trying to broker a deal to surrender to the court through a neighboring country. Which country...

Ramush Haradinaj is the most senior ethnic Albanian indicted by the Hague tribunal Former Kosovan Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj is going back on trial at The Hague in its first-ever partial retrial for war crimes. He is due to re-appear before the UN War Crimes Tribunal after his 2008 acquittal was overturned on grounds of witness intimidation. The former Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) fighter and two co-accused are being retried. It is the first partial retrial ordered by the UN War Crimes Tribunal. It follows an appeal by the prosecution against the acquittal in 2008 of Mr Haradinaj. The indictment...

Statesmen aren't supposed to make comments like this. But British Prime Minister William Hague has already shown he's not much of a statesman. Mr. Hague said the American intervention was "important because only the United States can really decisively deliver Israel into a peace agreement and give them the necessary assurances". He added: "It means that as [President Obama] comes to the United Kingdom this week, on the Middle East process and the wider subject of the future of North Africa and the Middle East the policies of the UK and US are as closely aligned as they have ever...

To the Editor Edmonton Journal March 17, 2011 The letters of poet Goran Simic and history professor Srdja Pavlovic in the wake of Canada's deportation of Dr Srdja Trifkovic are rich in rhetoric, but anemic in factual content. Trifkovic is slammed with the pseudo-psychiatric smear "denial".When Hitler announced on 1 September 1939 that Germany had been attacked by Poland, the Poles denied it. That's not "denial". It is a secondary school teacher's job to purvey standard information. However a university professor's role is to train university students to be critical and to develop fresh information. For example, a search of...

May 11, 2010 — HERSH: The purpose of my [Abu Ghraib] stories was to take it out of the field and into the White House. It's not that the President or the Secretary of Defense Mr. Rumsfeld, or Bush, or Cheney, it's not that they knew what happened in Abu Ghraib. It's that they had allowed this kind of activity to happen. And I'll tell you right now, one of the great tragedies of my country is that Mr. Obama is looking the other way, because equally horrible things are happening to prisoners, to those we capture in Afghanistan. They're...

Irrefutable Proof the Hague Court Cannot Legitimately Prosecute Karadzic Case http://picasaweb.google.com/lpcyusa/ (The Documentary Secret United Nations ICC Meeting Papers Scanned Images) This legal technicality indicates the Hague must dismiss charges against Dr Karadzic and others awaiting trials in the Hague jail; like it or not. Unfortunately for the Signatures Of the Rome Statute United Nations member states instituting the ICC & ICTY housed at the Hague, insofar as the, Radovan Karadzic, as with the other Hague cases awaiting trial there, I personally witnessed these United Nations member states openly speaking about trading judicial appointments and verdicts for financial funding when...

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton expressed "great regret" in August that the U.S. is not a signatory to the International Criminal Court (ICC). This has fueled speculation that the Obama administration may reverse another Bush policy and sign up for what could lead to the trial of Americans for war crimes in The Hague. The ICC's chief prosecutor, though, has no intention of waiting for Washington to submit to the court's authority. Luis Moreno Ocampo says he already has jurisdiction—at least with respect to Afghanistan. Because Kabul in 2003 ratified the Rome Statute—the ICC's founding treaty—all soldiers on Afghan territory,...

Unreal. Team Obama may allow US soldiers to be tried in the Hague for war crimes. The Wall Street Journal reported, via Jihad Watch: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton expressed “great regret” in August that the U.S. is not a signatory to the International Criminal Court (ICC). This has fueled speculation that the Obama administration may reverse another Bush policy and sign up for what could lead to the trial of Americans for war crimes in The Hague. The ICC’s chief prosecutor, though, has no intention of waiting for Washington to submit to the court’s authority. Luis Moreno Ocampo says...

SARAJEVO (Reuters) - Bosnian police arrested on Wednesday a Muslim former deputy army commander suspected of killing more than 20 Croat civilians and prisoners of war during the 1993 Muslim-Croat war, the state prosecutor's office said. The State Information and Protection Agency (SIPA) arrested Nihad Bojadzic, 47, in central Sarajevo on orders of the state prosecutor, said Boris Grubesic, spokesman for the prosecutor's office. "Bojadzic is suspected of committing crimes against civilians and prisoners of war while serving as deputy commander of the Bosnian Muslim-led army special platoon 'Zulfikar'", he said. The mass killing occurred on April 16, 1993, during...

<p>THE HAGUE, Netherlands – Radovan Karadzic appeared at his U.N. war crimes trial on Tuesday for the first time since it began last week, claiming his "fundamental rights have been violated" by judges who started without him.</p> <p>The former Bosnian Serb leader, accused of masterminding Serb atrocities throughout the 1992-1995 Bosnian war, had boycotted the first three days of the trial. On Tuesday, Karadzic, who is defending himself, again insisted that he needed more time to prepare.</p>

The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in the Hague is considering imposing a defense lawyer on former Bosnian-Serb president Radovan Karadzic against his will. Radovan Karadzic Much of the, for want of a better term, "news coverage" of the Radovan Karadzic war crimes trial in The Hague has teetered fatuously somewhere between the hysterical and the completely irrational. The coverage often amounts to little more than shrill and often childish name-calling with Karadzic continually referred to as a "butcher", a "demon", a "monster" and every other spiteful epitaph our so-called "journalists" can think to hurl at him. Comparisons...