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THE HAGUE (AFP) — Former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic stood before the UN war crimes court Thursday to face genocide charges, in his first public appearance since his arrest after nearly 13 years on the run. Shorn of the beard and long hair he had used as a disguise until his capture on July 21, Karadzic was again recognisable as the man who became one of the most reviled figures in the Bosnian conflict of the 1990s. Wearing a dark jacket and tie, Karazdic appeared before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) to hear the 11...

Serbia's interior minister says officials found copies of Bosnian Serb government documents in the Belgrade apartment where former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic lived prior to his arrest last week. Ivica Dacic said the documents included materials on Bosnian Serb military staff meetings during the conflict in Bosnia-Herzegovina in the 1990s. He said officials turned the materials over to Serbia's war crimes court. Meanwhile, court officials say the court has not yet received Karadzic's appeal against a judicial order authorizing his extradition to the United Nations war crimes tribunal in The Hague. Karadzic's lawyer, Svetozar Vujacic says he mailed out...

Loony academic leftist Francis Boyle (last seen at LGF trying to impeach President Bush) has offered to represent the mullahs of Iran if they sue the US in the International Court of Justice. TEHRAN, July 22 (UPI) — A University of Illinois law professor says he has offered to represent Iran if it decides to sue the United States over threatened nuclear program sanctions.Iran’s Press TV reported Tuesday that Francis Boyle, an international law expert, is urging Iranian leaders to sue Israel and the United States through the International Court of Justice in The Hague over their ultimatum that Iran...

Excerpt - Acting on a claim by Mexico’s government that the U.S. government has not done enough to assure the treaty rights of Mexican nationals facing execution for murders in the U.S., the World Court on Wednesday ordered the U.S. — by a 7-5 vote — to stop five imminent executions in Texas. Leaving it up to the U.S. to choose the way to carry out the order, the international tribunal — formally, the International Court of Justice that sits in The Hague, Netherlands — told the U.S. only to “take all measures necessary to ensure” that Texas does not...

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands (AP) -- Mexico appealed to the U.N.'s highest court Thursday to block the executions of Mexicans in the United States, arguing U.S. officials have failed to comply with a judgment ordering a review of their trials. The International Court of Justice said Mexico asked the court for an "interpretation" of an earlier ruling to clarify its meaning when it asked the U.S. to "review and reconsider" the cases of the condemned prisoners. Until that can be done, Mexico said the United States "must take any and all steps necessary" to ensure that none of its citizens is executed,...

THE Rudd Government is preparing a case to take Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to the International Court of Justice for "inciting genocide" and denying the Jewish Holocaust. Australia is the only nation pursuing Iran's despotic leader, who has threatened to "wipe Israel off the map", through international laws. The Australian revealed last October that Kevin Rudd, then the Opposition leader, promised the Jewish community before last year's election he would take legal proceedings in the ICJ against Mr Ahmadinejad. The Labor leader said it was "strongly arguable" that Mr Ahmadinejad's conduct - statements about wiping Israel off the map, questioning...

The Supreme Court Stands Alone by Thomas P. Kilgannon Dulles, Virginia -- The World Court got a whoopin last week when the Supreme Court handed down its decision in the case of Medellin v. Texas, which involves Jose Medellin, a death row inmate convicted of rape and murder of two teenage girls in 1993. Writing the 6-3 majority opinion, Chief Justice John Roberts informed the wig-wearing jurists at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) that Texas courts are under no obligation to obey the ICJ’s ruling to give Medellin a new hearing. Medellin is a gang member and a Mexican...

WASHINGTON — President Bush overstepped his authority when he ordered a Texas court to grant a new hearing to a Mexican on death row for rape and murder, the Supreme Court said Tuesday. In a case that mixes presidential power, international relations and the death penalty, the court sided with Texas 6-3. Bush was in the unusual position of siding with death row prisoner Jose Ernesto Medellin, a Mexican citizen whom police prevented from consulting with Mexican diplomats, as provided by international treaty. An international court ruled in 2004 that the convictions of Medellin and 50 other Mexicans on death...

This is very good news. Congrats to the state of Texas, which had to fight the open-borders lobby and the Bush administration all the way to the high court to prevent international law from superseding American sovereignty: President Bush overstepped his authority when he ordered a Texas court to grant a new hearing to a Mexican on death row for rape and murder, the Supreme Court said Tuesday. In a case that mixes presidential power, international relations and the death penalty, the court sided with Texas 6-3. Bush was in the unusual position of siding with death row prisoner Jose...

WASHINGTON - President Bush overstepped his authority when he ordered a Texas court to reopen the case of a Mexican on death row for rape and murder, the Supreme Court said Tuesday. In a case that mixes presidential power, international relations and the death penalty, the court sided with Texas 6-3. Bush was in the unusual position of siding with death row prisoner Jose Ernesto Medellin, a Mexican citizen whom police prevented from consulting with Mexican diplomats, as provided by international treaty. An international court ruled in 2004 that the convictions of Medellin and 50 other Mexicans on death row...

The State Department's top legal adviser told international lawyers on June 6 that President Bush is so committed to the primacy of international law that he has taken his home state of Texas to court on behalf of a group of Mexican killers. The Mexicans had been sentenced to death for murdering U.S. citizens, including young children. John B. Bellinger III, legal adviser to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, cited the case, Mexico v. United States of America, in trying to convince the attorneys that the administration is doing what it can to enforce international law in U.S. courts. In...

THE HAGUE, Netherlands - The United Nations' highest court on Monday exonerated Serbia of direct responsibility for genocide in Bosnia in the early 1990s, but ruled that it failed to prevent the slaughter of Bosnian Muslims at Srebrenica. The International Court of Justice said Serbia also failed to comply with its obligations to punish those who carried out the genocide after the Bosnian Serb army captured the U.N. enclave in July 1995, and ordered Serbia to hand over suspects for trial by a separate U.N. court. It specifically demanded that Serbia hand over Gen. Ratko Mladic, the general who oversaw...

Texas can proceed with the execution of a death row inmate notwithstanding a ruling by an international tribunal and a memorandum from President Bush directing state courts to comply with the tribunal’s decision, Texas’ highest court for criminal matters ruled yesterday. “We hold that the president has exceeded his constitutional authority by intruding into the independent powers of the judiciary,” Judge Michael Keasler wrote for the court, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. The case, which has been considered by the United States Supreme Court, appears quite likely to return there. In 2004, the International Court of Justice in The...

The first trial of a state charged with genocide has opened in The Hague, where Bosnia-Hercegovina will accuse Serbia and Montenegro of war crimes. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) is hearing the case, which Bosnia first brought 13 years ago. It says Belgrade was responsible for crimes of genocide on its territory during the early 1990s Bosnian war. Belgrade denies its intention was to wipe out Muslims in eastern Bosnia and says there is no proof of the claims.

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) - Generals and politicians have been convicted of genocide, but the UN's highest court will consider Monday whether a country - in this case Serbia - can be guilty of humanity's worst crime. The stakes potentially include billions of dollars and history's judgment. Thirteen years after Bosnia filed the case with the International Court of Justice, its lawyers will lay out their lawsuit against Serbia and Montenegro - the successor state for the defunct Yugoslavia - charging it with a premeditated attempt to destroy Bosnia's Muslim population, in whole or part. "Not since the end...

The High Court of Justice recently ruled that the separation barrier built to protect Israelis against Palestinian terrorist attacks was morally justified as well as legal. While ordering some changes in the routing to limit the impact on Palestinians, the Israeli court rejected the International Court of Justice's advisory opinion, which called the barrier illegal. The ICJ's majority had erased the context of terrorism, and focused exclusively on distorted political claims related to the legal status of “occupied territory.” Judge Aharon Barak and his colleagues rebuked the ICJ, but could not yet bring themselves to state that international law has...

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court will consider today whether American courts are bound by the decisions of the International Court of Justice, a tribunal created by the United Nations and based in The Hague. Senator Cornyn, a Republican of Texas, cited today's case as one impetus for the introduction last week of a resolution in the Senate that would instruct federal courts to avoid looking to international and foreign law when interpreting the federal Constitution. Mr. Cornyn filed one of many friend-of-the court briefs in the case, arguing that the Constitution reserves the power of judicial review to federal judges,...

The Bush administration has decided to pull out of an international agreement that opponents of the death penalty have used to fight the sentences of foreigners on death row in the United States, officials said yesterday. In a two-paragraph letter dated March 7, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice informed U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan that the United States "hereby withdraws" from the Optional Protocol to the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations. The United States proposed the protocol in 1963 and ratified it -- along with the rest of the Vienna Convention -- in 1969. The protocol requires signatories to let...

Prompted by an international tribunal's decision last year ordering new hearings for 51 Mexicans on death rows in the United States, the State Department said yesterday that the United States had withdrawn from the protocol that gave the tribunal jurisdiction to hear such disputes. The withdrawal followed a Feb. 28 memorandum from President Bush to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales directing state courts to abide by the decision of the tribunal, the International Court of Justice in The Hague. The decision required American courts to grant "review and reconsideration" to claims that the inmates' cases had been hurt by the...

It's time the media and the world face the facts, set the record straight and tell the truth. United Nations corruption favors and includes an anti-Israel bias. This is why I propose renaming the morally and politically bankrupt organization a more accurate and honest moniker. Let's call it what it is. The United Nations Against Israel (U.N.A.I). The U.N.A.I is an international forum dedicated to Israel-bashing and Israel-smashing. Various and sundry branches of the United Nations Against Israel have consistently and continually endorsed Arab "Palestinian" attacks against Israel (or in U.N.A.I terminology, the use of "available means, including armed struggle"...