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US-Backed Kurdish Forces Peshmerga in Iraq Accused of War Crimes

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kurd-commited-genocide

Peshmerga forces in northern Iraq, trained and equipped by the United States, are allegedly razing Arab towns liberated from the Islamic State group.

A human rights group is accusing the armed forces of the Kurdistan Regional Government of carrying out a deliberate campaign to prevent the return of Arabs to towns in Iraq once occupied by the Islamic State group, a practice it says may amount to war crimes.

Armed and equipped by the United States and other major powers – and backed by U.S. airstrikes – Peshmerga forces and allied militias have played a key role in reclaiming territory captured by the Islamic State group.

However, Amnesty International is accusing those forces of razing the predominantly Arab villages they have liberated from the extremist group as part of an apparent attempt to expand the autonomous region’s territory.

More than 3 million people have been refugees by the latest conflict in Iraq, with the country experiencing “the highest and fastest rate of people displaced in the world in 2015,” according to the International Committee of the Red Cross.

The U.S. government has pledged to help rebuild those towns and villages its allied forces have retaken from the Islamic State group. However, some Arab Iraqis are discovering that their former homes no longer exist, having been bulldozed to the ground soon after liberation. “These villages were terrorists,” one KRG security official told Amnesty International, according to the report. “They didn’t just support IS, they were part of it.”

That the largely Sunni residents of razed towns either sympathized with or actively supported the extremist Islamic State is a frequent charge, but other KRG officials offered different explanations, including that areas freed from the Islamic State’s control were not yet safe enough for refugees to return to — or that Kurdish forces were merely correcting past wrongs.

“We are just taking back some of what was ours,” one official reportedly told Amnesty International, referring to former Baathist dictator Saddam Hussein’s efforts to “Arabise” formerly Kurdish parts of Iraq.

Whatever the motivation, Maher Nubul, a father of 11, told Amnesty International, “All I know is that when the Peshmerga retook the village the houses were standing.”

“We could not go back but could see it clearly from the distance. And later they bulldozed the village, I don’t know why. There is nothing left. They destroyed everything for no reason.”

According to Amnesty’s International’s Donatella Rovera, that destruction could be grounds for a criminal prosecution.

“The forced displacement of civilians and the deliberate destruction of homes and property without military justification may amount to war crimes,” said Rovera, part of a team that carried out field research in 13 towns and villages and interviewed 120 witnesses.

What researchers saw and heard on the ground was also backed by satellite imagery — and it was not isolated. “Rather,” the report states, the alleged crimes “are examples of a wider pattern across the disputed areas of northern Iraq, where parties which had long vied for exclusive control of these areas are now intent on consolidating territorial gains they have made as a result of battlefield successes against IS.”

WATCH: Amnesty International’s Donatella Rovera on the Ground in Northern Iraq

Source: http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/US-Backed-Kurdish-Forces-in-Iraq-Accused-of-War-Crimes-20160120-0005.html

https://youtu.be/WeU7FUoDZnk

Kosovo Figures Face Prosecution For War Crimes

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Senior officials of the former Kosovo Liberation Army (UCK) face indictment by a special EU court for alleged killings, abductions, and sexual violence.

The threat of indictments comes in a report published on July 29 in Brussels by Clint Williamson, a prosecutor appointed by the European Union to investigate ethnic cleansing committed in Kosovo during the 1998-99 Kosovo war.

Williamson said the suspects bear responsibility for a campaign of persecution directed at minority populations and Kosovo Albanians believed to be political opponents of the UCK leadership.

Many former UCK commanders went on to leadership positions after Kosovo declared independence in 2008.

Williamson also said there were “compelling indications” that up to 10 captives were killed to have their organs harvested for illegal trafficking during the war.

However, he said the level of evidence is not yet sufficient to prosecute the alleged crimes.

Based on reporting by “The Guardian” and AP

Group of Cypriots files war crimes complaint against Turkey

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July 14, 2014 – 15:31 AMT

AP A group of Cypriots has filed a war crimes complaint against Turkey at the International Criminal Court over what they say is its policy of settling Cyprus’ breakaway north with mainland Turks.

cypriots file war crime against TurkeyCyprus split into a Turkish-speaking north and an internationally recognized Greek-speaking south in 1974 when Turkey invaded after a coup that aimed to unite the island with Greece. A Turkish Cypriot declaration of independence is recognized only by Turkey, which maintains 35,000 troops there.

Cypriot European Parliament member Costas Mavrides, who filed the complaint on the group’s behalf, said Monday, July 14, that settlement activity contravenes international law and has significantly altered the demographics of northern Cyprus.

An Israeli-based rights organization, the Shurat HaDin Law Center, helped the group, which calls itself Cypriots Against Turkish War Crimes, draft the complaint.

Ratko Mladic war crime defence begins

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The defense in the trial of former Bosnian Serb army chief Ratko Mladic on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity has opened in The Hague, the BBC reports. 

Ratko MladicThe first witness, a former Serb army officer, says he was never ordered to fire on civilians in the besieged Bosnian capital of Sarajevo.
Mr Mladic, 72, is one of the most high-profile suspects to appear before the Hague tribunal.

Mr Mladic denies 11 charges dating to the 1992-95 Bosnian war.

Mile Sladoje, a former assistant commander of a Serb battalion in Sarajevo, was the first witness called by Mr Mladic on Monday in the trial.

In a summary of his testimony read at the hearing, he denies ever being ordered by Mr Mladic to target civilians in a sniping campaign during the three-year siege of the city in which approximately 10,000 people were killed – most of them Muslims.

“All our activities [in Sarajevo] were defense activities… There were standing orders, fire could only be returned in response to enemy fire,” he said.

Ratko Mladic’s forces are accused of conducting a prolonged campaign of shelling and sniping, designed to kill and spread terror among the civilians of Sarajevo.

Mr Mladic is specifically accused of a role in the massacre of more than 7,000 Bosniak men and boys at Srebrenica – Europe’s worst atrocity since World War II.

Mr Mladic has denounced the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) tribunal as “satanic”.

The defence argues that Gen Mladic was simply a soldier following orders.

His lawyers have described him as a self-proclaimed patriot who fought to defend his people.

The defence will also attempt to refute the prosecution’s claim that the general led a targeted campaign to ethnically cleanse parts of Bosnia of non-Serbs and make them part of a greater Serbia.

But they are expected to point out that Mr Mladic suffers from a memory disorder that makes it hard for him to differentiate between truth and fiction.

The BBC’s Anna Holligan in The Hague says that although he denies the charges, many survivors consider Ratko Mladic to be one of those most responsible their suffering.

Our correspondent says that for them, the trial is a chance to hear the truth and experience some form of justice.

The defence has been given 207 hours to present its case, the same amount of time given to the prosecution.

There is no limit to the number of witnesses the defense can call.

In the Srebrenica enclave, Bosnian Serb forces overran the UN-defended safe area, killing Muslim men and boys in July 1995.

Ratko Mladic was the general in charge of the troops. He was on the run for 16 years before being arrested in 2011 in northern Serbia, where he had been living under an assumed name.

Also being tried in The Hague is former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, who like Mr Mladic is accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity.