War Crimes

Editor's note: The original edition of the review below erred in saying the author mistakenly put a lieutenant colonel in charge of a brigade instead of a battalion; the error appeared in the uncorrected proof, but not in the published book. The review also says the author was hasty in referring to the targets of Vietnam's Phoenix program as Vietcong "supporters," when it was officially aimed at "cadre. " The author acknowledges that point of view, but says she "intentionally chose a less precise term to reflect the often imprecise manner the campaign was carried out on Vietnamese civilians.

A man accused of commanding a police squad that rounded up Bosnian Muslims for slaughter in 1995 fashioned a new life in Las Vegas as a modest grocery store owner before being arrested and deported to his native country, a lawyer and U.S. officials said Thursday. Dejan Radojkovic arrived in Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina, after an overnight commercial airline flight from Las Vegas accompanied by federal agents, Bosnian authorities and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials said.

Editor's note: This article first appeared in The Boston Globe on July 16, 2009. WASHINGTON -- Breaking two and a half decades of silence, former Liberian president and accused war criminal Charles G. Taylor said today that his infamous prison break from the Plymouth County Correctional Facility in 1985 was aided by the US government, addressing for the first time widely circulated conspiracy theories about his return to Liberia. In the second day of his testimony in his war crimes trial that could settle the long-standing mystery, Taylor said that on the night...

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka - A court granted bail for Sri Lanka's former Army chief on Friday, a move seen as a step toward a full pardon for the man credited with ending the country's long civil war but who later was jailed after challenging the president in elections. Sri Lanka's High Court set Sarath Fonseka's bail at $8,000 in a case where he is accused of harboring Army deserters. His lawyer, Saliya Peiris, said that Fonseka was also asked to surrender his passport. The court's decision comes ahead of a meeting between Sri Lanka's foreign minister and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton...

Sri Lanka's president has ordered authorities to free the country's jailed former army chief, a man credited with ending the country's long civil war but who later was imprisoned after challenging the president in elections. President Mahinda Rajapaksa signed papers ordering the release of Sarath Fonseka and handed them over to his chief of staff Saturday before embarking on an official visit to Qatar, presidential spokesman Bandula Jayasekara said Sunday. The papers will be sent to the Justice Ministry on Monday, Jayasekara said.

UNITED NATIONS - UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said he could not determine whether the Israelis or Palestinians had conducted credible investigations into allegations of war crimes during last year’s Gaza conflict as required under a UN resolution. In a highly anticipated report released Thursday night to the 192-nation General Assembly, Ban said “no determination can be made on the implementation of the resolution by the parties concerned.’’ A UN panel, overseen by a respected South African jurist, Richard Goldstone, found evidence...

BELGRADE -- Four members of a notorious Serb paramilitary unit who were videotaped gunning down Bosnians near Srebrenica were convicted of war crimes yesterday , two years after the footage forced Serbia to admit its role in the 1995 slaughter of nearly 8,000 Muslim men and boys. It was the first ruling by a Serbian court related to the systematic killings in the final months of the 1992-95 war in Bosnia -- Europe's worst atrocity since World War II. Trials of Serbs in Serbia have become possible only since the 2000 ouster of President Slobodan Milosevic, and the...

SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina - The Bosnian war crimes court convicted seven Bosnian Serbs of genocide yesterday in the 1995 massacre of Bosnian Muslims at Srebrenica and handed down prison sentences ranging from 38 to 42 years. Four others were acquitted. Issuing their first sentence related to Europe's worst massacre since World War II, judges at the war crimes court sent three of the former policemen to jail for 42 years, another three away for 40 years, and one for 38 years.

BENGHAZI, Libya — A car exploded yesterday in front of a hotel where foreign diplomats and journalists stay while visiting Benghazi, a rare attack in the Libyan rebels’ de facto capital. Jalal el-Gallal, a rebel spokesman, said the blast in the parking lot of the Tibesti Hotel in central Benghazi caused no injuries or deaths. The burning car sent plumes of black smoke into the air. In Geneva, a report by the UN Human Rights Council charged that Moammar Khadafy’s forces have committed war crimes.

THE HAGUE, Netherlands - The Yugoslav war crimes tribunal sentenced the former chief of the Yugoslav army to 27 years' imprisonment yesterday for providing crucial military aid to Bosnian Serb forces responsible for the Srebrenica massacre and for a deadly four-year campaign of shelling and sniper fire in Sarajevo. The case against General Momcilo Perisic was the first time the UN court convicted a civilian or military officer from Yugoslavia of war crimes in Bosnia, and underscored the Yugoslav army's far-reaching support for Serb rebels in both Bosnia and Croatia...

THE HAGUE - An apparent clerical error prompted judges to postpone the long-awaited war crimes trial of former Bosnian Serb military leader Ratko Mladic on Thursday, possibly for months. The delay cast a shadow over one of the court's biggest cases - and over the reputation of the court itself, where most prominent trials have proceeded at a snail's pace, frustrating many victims. It also highlighted problems faced by international tribunals in prosecuting sweeping indictments covering allegations of atrocities spanning years in countries far from the courts where defendants face justice.

LEIDSCHENDAM, Netherlands — Convicted war criminal and former Liberian president Charles Taylor said during his sentencing hearing Wednesday that he sympathizes with victims of the civil war in Sierra Leone he helped foment, and he asked judges to render their sentence against him in a spirit of "reconciliation, not retribution. " However, he stopped short of admitting any wrongdoing, apologizing for his actions, or expressing remorse. In a landmark ruling in April, judges at the Special Court for Sierra Leone found Taylor guilty of 11 counts of war crimes and crimes against...

An apparent clerical error prompted judges to postpone the long-awaited war crimes trial of former Bosnian Serb military leader Ratko Mladic on Thursday, possibly for months. The delay cast a shadow over one of the court's biggest cases — and over the reputation of the court itself, where most prominent trials have proceeded at a snail's pace, frustrating many victims. It also highlighted problems faced by international tribunals in prosecuting sweeping indictments covering allegations of atrocities spanning years in countries far from the courts where defendants face justice.

Former Bosnian Serb military chief Ratko Mladic's genocide trial at the U.N. Yugoslav war crimes tribunal was suspended Thursday after prosecutors mistakenly failed to turn over evidence to his defense lawyers. It was far from the first time an international trial has faced delays. Here are some other examples. —Slobodan Milosevic: The trial of the former Yugoslav President on charges of masterminding Serb atrocities throughout the wars that tore apart the Balkans in the 1990s dragged on for four years and was eventually aborted without verdicts when he...

Convicted war criminal and former Liberian President Charles Taylor told judges at his sentencing hearing Wednesday that he sympathizes with victims of the civil war in Sierra Leone he helped foment, and judges should render their sentence against him in a spirit of "reconciliation, not retribution. " However, he stopped short of admitting any wrongdoing, apologizing for his actions, or expressing remorse. In a landmark ruling in April, judges at the Special Court for Sierra Leone found Taylor guilty of 11 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity,...

Twenty years after his troops began brutally ethnically cleansing Bosnian towns and villages of non-Serbs, Gen. Ratko Mladic went on trial Wednesday at the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal accused of 11 counts of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. The ailing 70-year-old Mladic's appearance at the U.N. court war crimes tribunal marked the end of a long wait for justice to survivors of the 1992-95 war that left some 100,000 people dead. The trial is also a landmark for the U.N. court and international justice — Mladic is the last suspect from the...

John Yoo is famous, although probably not for the reasons he would like. As the author of the notorious 2003 "torture memo" that authorized American forces to waterboard enemy combatants, the University of California law professor earned himself a special place in liberal hell. I'll spare you the heavy breathing from the central press and public radio, and cut directly to a statement issued by Marjorie Cohn, president of the National Lawyers Guild: "John Yoo's complicity in establishing the policy that led to the torture of prisoners constitutes a war crime under the US War Crimes Act. John Yoo...

THE HAGUE - The president of Sudan became a wanted man yesterday when the International Criminal Court charged him with war crimes and crimes against humanity in Darfur - its first action against a sitting head of state and one that could set the stage for more world leaders to be indicted. President Omar al-Bashir's government retaliated by expelling 10 humanitarian groups from Darfur and seizing their assets, threatening lifesaving operations, a UN spokeswoman said. Susan Rice, the US ambassador to the United Nations, said the United States supported the court's action "to...

Prosecutors at the International Criminal Court on Tuesday urged judges to convict two Congolese warlords of commanding the fighters who wiped out a village in 2003, killing more than 200 civilians, including women children and the elderly. Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda said that evidence presented at the trial of Germain Katanga and Mathieu Ngudjolo proved they "are guilty beyond any doubt" of carefully planning and executing the Feb. 24, 2003, attack on the village of Bogoro. Bensouda spoke at the start of closing statements in Katanga and Ngudjolo's trial, which began in November...