Digest

Digest

President Obama Courts Turkey

After spending time in London, Strasbourg, Baden-Baden, and Prague for G20, NATO, and bilateral US-EU summits, President Obama extended his recent European tour by traveling to Ankara and Istanbul, his first venture into the predominantly Muslim world as US president.

Once again reflecting an interest in revitalizing America’s diplomatic ties, Mr. Obama visited the grave of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, and met with both Turkish President Abdullah Gul and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The Turkey visit followed the President’s comments in Prague supporting the entry of Turkey into the European Union.

“The United States and Europe must approach Muslims as our friends, neighbors and partners in fighting injustice, intolerance and violence, forging a relationship based on mutual respect and mutual interest,” he said. “Moving forward towards Turkish membership in the EU would be an important signal of your commitment to this agenda and ensure that we continue to anchor Turkey firmly in Europe.”
Obama’s comments elicited tepid responses from his French and German hosts. For more information please see here and here.

Digest

Obama Calls for Talks on Nuclear Security

U.S. President Barack Obama committed to taking substantive steps toward nuclear nonproliferation during a recent 8-day diplomatic trip to Europe.  The president said he and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev had taken the first steps towards reducing nuclear weapons stockpiles during the G20 Financial Summit in London early this April and would negotiate a new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty.  The current START-I Treaty between the two countries expires December 5, 2009.

In speech on April 5th in Prague the president condemned a recent North Korean rocket launch and called for global efforts to reduce nuclear weapons testing. Obama said, “To achieve a global ban on nuclear testing, my administration will immediately and aggressively pursue U.S. ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. After more than five decades of talks, it is time for the testing of nuclear weapons to finally be banned.”

For further information, please click here.

Digest

Conference Tracks Progress of European Landscape Convention

Last Wednesday, treaty participants, NGO representatives and landscape experts attended a conference on the European Landscape Convention in Strasbourg. The Convention, which came into force on March 1, 2004, is the first international treaty focused on promoting protection, management, and planning in all aspects of the European landscape. 30 states have ratified the Convention thus far, and 19 others have either signed or hold observer status.

The conference examined the progress of the Convention in emphasizing “landscape” as the quality of a person’s surroundings. Several successful examples of landscape projects were noted, including trans-frontier workshops in Wallonia, Spain, Italy, and England, and the integration of Convention principles into law and policies in Italy.

For further information, please click here

Digest

Spanish Prosecutors Try to Shelve Israel Case

In January, a Spanish judge agreed to pursue a complaint against military officials in Israel, including former defense minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer. The complaint arose from a 2002 air attack on Gaza City that killed 15 Palestinians, mainly children, and wounded 150.  The public prosecutors have now asked that judge to shelve that complaint; the judge must issue a ruling on whether or not he will honor that request.

Spain claims universal jurisdiction over genocide, terrorism, and crimes against humanity, no matter where the crime occurs. However, this jurisdiction only applies if the crime is not the subject of a legal proceeding in the country in which it occurred. Spanish public prosecutors justified the decision to drop the case based on information that Israel had initiated its own proceedings. However, the case could be reopened if contradicting evidence about Israeli action emerges.

Israeli’s leaders criticized Spain’s decision to prosecute as politically motivated from the beginning. The decision to charge came after the most recent Israeli offensive in Gaza early this year that killed 1,300 Palestinians.  Spain has recognized the political fallout of the legal action and Spanish officials have announced an intention to alter the “universal justice” rule to avoid similar political controversy in the future.

For more information, please click here

Digest

Peru's Fujimori Claims Innocence

On Wednesday, former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori defended his innocence with regards to human rights abuse claims in a Rio De Janeiro court.  Taking the stand in his own defense, Fujimori vehemently denied responsibility for the murders of 25 people and the kidnappings of 2 others.  

These charges stem from alleged actions taken by the Peruvian government under Fujimori in response to a series of bloody guerrilla attacks in Peru in the early 1990s. Defending his policies and actions, Fujimori declared, “I did nothing wrong . . . The Peru that I inherited was a disaster. It was a Peru that had to be rescued.”

Concerns over Fujimori’s health have lengthened the trial, now in its fifteenth month.  Fujimori is believed to be the world’s first democratically elected former president to be tried for human rights violations in his own country.

For further information, please click here.

Digest

Joseph Mpambara Convicted in the Hague

Last week, the Hague District Court ruled on the case of Joseph Mpambara, a  Rwandan Hutu allegedly associated with the 1994 Rwandan genocide. The court found Mpambara guilty for the deaths of two Tutsi mothers and their children as well as for the torture of a German doctor, his Tutsi wife and their 2 month-old son. Mpambara was acquitted of charges that he was involved in the massacre of hundreds of Tutsis who had fled to a church, for the rape of four women, and for the subsequent murder of one of them.

The court found sufficient evidence that Mpambara had called for two Tutsi women and at least four of their children to be dragged from an ambulance and brutally slaughtered as they were fleeing violence.  However, the court was not able to find sufficient evidence in the testimony of five witnesses that linked Mpambara to the massacre of hundreds of Tutsis seeking refuge in a Seventh-Day Adventist church in April 1994. Only one witness linked Mpambara to the rapes, which is insufficient under Dutch law.

Mpambara was not convicted of war crimes because the court reasoned that the killings of the Tutsis and the torture of the German-Tutsi family was not part of the war between Rwanda and Tutsi rebels. The war, which took place between April and July 1994, led to the killing of nearly 500,000 people by Hutu militias.

Mpambara had sought asylum in the Netherlands, giving rise to the criminal investigation against him. Dutch law holds residents liable for war crimes and torture committed in other countries. Mpambara was sentenced to 20 years, but the court stated that this sentence did not “do justice to the seriousness of [his] crimes.”

For more information please click here. 

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