Gabriel Helou

Serbia's last major war crimes fugitive, a Croatian Serb wartime leader indicted for crimes against humanity during the 1991-95 Croatian war, has been arrested, Serbian president Boris Tadic says. “Goran Hadzic was a key figure in the breakaway Krajina Serb republic in Croatia, and after the arrest of wartime general Ratko Mladic earlier this year, he was Serbia's last remaining figure sought by the United Nations war crimes tribunal in the Hague. Serbia's leader held a press conference to announce the capture shortly after Hadzic's arrest at 8:24am (local time). "With this, Serbia ends the most difficult chapter in its cooperation with the court," Mr Tadic told the conference. Hadzic is charged with ordering the killing of hundreds and the deportation of thousands of Croats and other non-Serbs from the area. Mr Tadic said Hadzic was tracked down in the idyllic mountain region of Fruska Gora, near the northern city of Novi Sad, and arrested near Krusedol...

It should be made clear that the International Criminal Court does not replace the national jurisdictions of the States Parties. The Statute asserts that this Court carries out its functions in accordance with the principle of “complementarity”. [1] This means that the ICC is complementary to the judicial systems of the States Parties. And the Statute emphasizes that “it is the duty of every State to exercise its criminal jurisdiction over those responsible for international crimes”. [2] Furthermore, Article 17 of the Statute specifies the situations where the Court can hear cases. These situations are limited to if the State Party to the ICC is determined to be unwilling or unable to prosecute the alleged criminal activity domestically. If this proves to be right, then the Court could exercise jurisdiction over the criminal act in question. To give more elaboration, a case will be inadmissable, and the Court will not be able to exercise its jurisdiction, if a national authority is in...

"I’ve long supported providing the ICC with jurisdiction over the crime of aggression .  Call me old-fashioned, but I believe there is a great deal of truth to the IMT’s insistence that “[t]o initiate a war of aggression… is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.”  We cannot collapse the distinction between the jus ad bellum and the jus in bello , but it is no doubt true that war crimes and crimes against humanity are particularly likely to be committed in the context of an illegal war.  (See, e.g., Iraq.)  Prevent the illegal war, you prevent the subsequent crimes. The good news: the Review Conference has adopted a definition of aggression. The bad news: the conditions governing the exercise of jurisdiction make it very unlikely that any significant act of aggression will ever be prosecuted"

By:  Dapo Akande "The ICC review conference held in Kampala earlier this month decided, by consensus, to amend the ICC Statute so that the ICC can exercise jurisdiction over the crime of aggression once the amendments come into force. The final text of the amendments to the ICC Statute on the Crime of  aggression are now available on the ICC website (see here ). However, there seems to be some (significant) confusion as to what exactly was agreed on the crime  of aggression in Kampala. There is also room for argument as to whether some of the decisions made in Kampala will be legally effective, in other words it is possible that they will not have the legal effect the drafters sought to achieve"

By: Dapo Akande “It would be remiss of us not to note the birth of South Sudan as the world’s newest State. South Sudan gained independence from the Republic of Sudan last Saturday (9 July) and was admitted to the United Nations yesterday as the 193rd member of the UN. Independence was the result of a referendum held earlier this year in which 99% of the South Sudanese population voted for independence. South Sudan is the second African State (after Eritrea) to split from its parent state after such a referendum (which in both cases have followed a lenghty conflict).  Back in 1964, the Organization of African Unity adopted its famous resolution (see p. 17) in which it: SOLEMNLY DECLARES that all Member States pledge themselves to respect the borders existing on their achievement of national independence.”

“ Libya is responsible for a deadly 1989 attack on a French airliner, Libyan former foreign minister Abdel Rahman Shalgam told al-Hayat newspaper in an interview published on Monday. “The Libyan security services blew up the plane. They believed that opposition leader Mohammed al-Megrief was on board, but after the plane was blown up, it was found that he was not on the plane,” said Mr. Shalgam, who defected from Muammar Qaddafi’s embattled regime earlier this year. On September 19, 1989, a UTA DC-10 travelling from Brazzaville to Paris via N’Djamena crashed in Niger after explosives on board detonated, killing 170 passengers and crew, including 54 French citizens. A French court in 2009 sentenced six Libyan agents in absentia to life in prison for the attack, but Libya has never admitted it was responsible. However, Tripoli had in 2004 agreed to pay $170 million in compensation to the families of the victims. Mr. Shalgam also said that the 1988 bombing of a Pan Am flight over...

"أعلنت جمهورية سوريا اليوم اعترافها بدولة فلسطين على خطوط الرابع من حزيران لعام 1967 وعاصمتها القدس الشرقية. وقالت وزارة الخارجية السورية في بيان نشرته وكالة الانباء السورية الرسمية :"تعترف الجمهورية العربية السورية بدولة فلسطين على خطوط الرابع من حزيران لعام 1967 وعاصمتها القدس الشرقية وعلى أساس الحفاظ على الحقوق الفلسطينية المشروعة وستتعامل مع مكتب منظمة التحرير الفلسطينية بدمشق كسفارة اعتبارا من تاريخ صدور هذا البيان"