GENEVA: The appeal hearings of a former Liberian rebel commander convicted of war crimes were set to conclude on Friday in a trial that was broadened in its final stages to include crimes against humanity for the first time in Switzerland.
Alieu Kosiah, who fought in the 1990s against then-President Charles Taylor’s army, was sentenced to 20 years in prison in June 2021 for rape, murder and cannibalism in one of the first trials for war crimes committed in the West African country.
During the three weeks of appeal hearings at the Federal Criminal Court in Bellinzona, the defendant sought to overturn the lower court’s ruling, arguing at length that he was not present when the crimes were committed. Kosiah’s lawyer denied the charges and said he was a minor when first recruited.
But lawyers for the plaintiffs said Kosiah’s actions were “widespread and systematic” against a civilian population.
“We feel strongly that these crimes are the epitome of crimes against humanity,” said Alain Werner, a Swiss lawyer and director of Civitas Maxima, an NGO that represents war crimes victims and is acting on behalf of some of the plaintiffs.
A verdict by the three-judge panel is expected within months. If Kosiah is found guilty of crimes against humanity, this could extend his sentence to life.
The hearings were often laden with emotion, with some Liberian witnesses and victims confronting Kosiah for the first time since the country’s civil wars. They all asked for anonymity because of the risk of reprisals back home where former warlords still hold prominent roles.
In one poignant moment, a former child soldier under Kosiah acknowledged him with a military salute in the court room and then broke down and was too upset to testify.
In another, a witness who had been held as a sex slave by a soldier described how Kosiah had stabbed one of the Liberian plaintiffs present in the back. “Many people in the courtroom were crying. It was very emotional, even 30 years later,” said Zena Wakim, one of the prosecution lawyers.
No trials have taken place in Liberia for its back-to-back civil wars between 1989 and 2003 that became infamous for their brutality and degradation, with marauding child soldiers and combatants high on drugs.
In an indication of the importance of the trial to the Liberian plaintiffs, one of them who says she was raped by Kosiah, named a recently born baby “Justice.”
“I want him in jail,” she told Reuters on the opening day of the appeal trial on Jan. 11.
Liberian warlord’s trial set to conclude in Switzerland
https://arab.news/zwvey
Liberian warlord’s trial set to conclude in Switzerland
- Lawyers for the plaintiffs said Kosiah's actions were "widespread and systematic" against a civilian population
- A verdict by the three-judge panel is expected within months
Over 1,400 migrants are rescued from overcrowded boats off Italy by coast guard
- There were 47 migrants, including two children in immediate need of medical care, aboard the sailboat in distress off the region of Calabria
- The rescues began late Monday night and ended in the early hours of Wednesday in the Ionian Sea off Calabria's east coast
ROME: More than 1,400 migrants have been rescued from overcrowded vessels, including a sailboat, in four separate operations in the Mediterranean Sea off southern Italy, the Italian coast guard said Wednesday.
There were 47 migrants, including two children in immediate need of medical care, aboard the sailboat in distress off the region of Calabria, in the “toe” of the Italian peninsula, a coast guard statement said. They were rescued by a coast guard motorboat early Tuesday.
The statement said the rescues began late Monday night and ended in the early hours of Wednesday in the Ionian Sea off Calabria’s east coast. One coast guard vessel took on around 590 migrants from aboard a fishing boat, and then later brought on around 650 migrants from another fishing boat, the statement said.
A coast guard motorboat and an Italian border police ship came to the assistance of a fourth vessel, with 130 migrants aboard.
Authorities didn’t immediately give details on the nationalities of the passengers or routes taken by the migrant vessels. But generally, many boats with migrants sighted off the Ionian Sea set out from Turkiye’s coast, where smugglers launch crowded and unseaworthy boats.
Earlier this year, a migrant boat navigating on that route slammed into a sandbank just off a Calabrian beach town and broke apart. At least 94 migrants perished and 80 others survived.
That shipwreck is under criminal investigation, including the role of several members of Italy’s border police corps, which operates vessels off the country’s long coastline. Four suspected smugglers have been arrested.
In addition, prosecutors want to know if rescue efforts could have been launched hours earlier. Italian border police boats reportedly turned back to port because of rough seas, and by the time a coast guard vessel, better equipped to navigate in poor sea conditions, reached the area, bodies were already in the water. In that case, the migrant boat had been spotted hours earlier by a surveillance aircraft operated by Frontex, the European Union’s border monitoring force.
Wednesday’s statement by the coast guard said that crew on a Frontex surveillance plane had spotted a fishing boat with the 590 migrants aboard. A Frontex patrol boat and a Frontex support vessel were among the assets involved in the rescue operations for the two fishing boats, according to the coast guard.
Alarm Phone, a nongovernmental organization that frequently receives satellite calls from migrant vessels in distress and relays the information to maritime authorities in Italy and Malta, was among the organizations signaling the need for rescue for the 130 people aboard the fourth boat.
Erdogan proposes destroyed dam probe in Zelensky call
- Moscow and Kyiv have traded blame for the destruction of Kakhovka hydroelectric dam
- President Erdogan said that a commission could be established with the participation of experts from the warring parties, the United Nations and the international community
ISTANBUL: President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Wednesday proposed, in a call with his Ukrainian counterpart, creating an international commission to probe the destruction of a major dam in southern Ukraine, his office reported.
Moscow and Kyiv have traded blame for the destruction of Kakhovka hydroelectric dam, which was ripped open early Tuesday after a reported blast.
“President Erdogan said that a commission could be established with the participation of experts from the warring parties, the United Nations and the international community, including Turkiye, for a detailed investigation into the explosion at Kakhovka dam,” his office said after the call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
The Kakhovka dam sits on the Dnipro River, which feeds a reservoir providing cooling water for the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station, Europe’s largest, some 150 kilometers (90 miles) upstream.
The destruction of the dam caused torrents of water to pour into the Dnipro, pushing thousands of civilians to flee the flooded areas while raising fears of an ecological disaster.
NATO member Turkiye, which has good ties with Moscow and Kyiv.
First batch of 630 pilgrims from Indian-administered Kashmir leaves for Hajj
- Out of India’s Hajj quota of 1,75,025 pilgrims, 12,000 departing from Kashmir region
- This year’s contingent is the region’s largest-ever embarking on the spiritual journey
NEW DELHI: The first batch of 630 pilgrims from Indian-administered Kashmir performing Hajj this year left for Saudi Arabia on Wednesday from Srinagar airport, an official from the region’s Hajj authority said.
Out of India’s annual Hajj quota of 1,75,025 pilgrims, 12,000 will be departing from the Himalayan region, nearly double Kashmir’s Hajj contingent last year and the region’s largest-ever group embarking on the spiritual journey that is one of the five pillars of Islam.
Special Hajj flights from India started in the last week of May.
“We have the highest quota this year,” Safina Baig, chairperson of the Jammu and Kashmir Haj Committee, told Arab News after 630 pilgrims departed for Jeddah from Kashmir’s main airport in Srinagar.
“It was an emotional scene with many feeling overwhelmed by the opportunity to perform Hajj in their lifetime.”
Most pilgrims were selected through a draw, except for the elderly and women traveling without a mahram, or male guardian.
“Generally, the selection process happens through draw but as a special gesture we are allowing single women and people above 70 to apply directly without going through the process of draw,” Baig said.
Special arrangements had been made by the Indian government for women traveling without a mahram, she said, including separate accommodation and women helpers.
“By Allah’s grace, I got the opportunity to travel alone to perform Hajj,” said Shamima Akhter, 56, a widow from the southern Pulwama district of Kashmir, who is among 120 Kashmiri women pilgrims traveling to Saudi Arabia alone.
“This is a good decision to allow single women to travel.”
Akhter’s three daughters helped her raise about $5,000 to pay for her Hajj package, which is around $1,000 more expensive for Kashmir compared with other regions of India.
Baig said she had raised the issue of the higher cost with the Ministry of Minority Affairs and the Haj Committee of India.
“What I understand is that the rise in the total expenses is due to higher prices of air fare from Kashmir,” she said.
“Kashmir is a Muslim majority region, and the government should be more considerate … I feel that the government should provide some relief to the Kashmiri Hajis. It sends a good message.”
Attacks by suspected militants in Burkina Faso kill 21
- Burkina Faso struggling with a militant insurgency that swept in from neighboring Mali in 2015
- Nearly a third of the country lies outside the government’s control, according to official estimates
OUAGADOUGOU: Twenty-one people, most of them members of the security forces, have been killed in Burkina Faso in attacks by suspected militants, security sources said on Wednesday.
Fourteen members of the VDP volunteer militia and four soldiers died on Monday in Sawenga in central-eastern Burkina, while five were wounded, a source said.
Another security source confirmed the toll, saying that the clash occurred during an operation to secure the area, and that “more than 50 terrorists were neutralized” in an airborne counter-attack.
Separately, a police source said a policeman and two civilians were killed on Monday night in an attack on a police border post at Yendere, on the southwestern frontier with Ivory Coast.
A trucker in the area confirmed the attack, adding that many local people had already fled into Ivory Coast because of militant incursions.
Ivory Coast hosts around 18,000 Burkinabe refugees, more than double the tally for 2022, according to the UN’s refugee agency.
One of the poorest and most troubled countries in the world, Burkina is struggling with a militant insurgency that swept in from neighboring Mali in 2015.
Nearly a third of the country lies outside the government’s control, according to official estimates.
More than 10,000 civilians, troops and police have died, according to an NGO count, while at least two million people have been displaced.
Anger within the military at failures to roll back the insurgency sparked two coups last year, culminating in the ascent of a young army captain, Ibrahim Traore.
The junta has ruled out any negotiations with the militants.
It is staking much of its anti-militant strategy on the VDP — the Volunteers for the Defense of the Fatherland militia.
The force comprises civilian volunteers who are given two weeks’ military training and then work alongside the army, typically carrying out surveillance, information-gathering or escort duties.
Since its inception in December 2019, the VDP has suffered hundreds of casualties, especially in ambushes or roadside bombings.
Despite the losses, the authorities launched a successful recruitment drive last year, encouraging 90,000 people to sign up, far exceeding the target of 50,000.
Philippine court denies bail request for staunch Duterte critic in drugs case
- Petition was for a drug case that saw Leila de Lima accused of conspiring to commit illegal narcotics trade in a Philippine prison
MANILA: A Philippine court has denied a bail request from Leila de Lima, a former senator and staunch critic of ex-President Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs, the defendant’s lawyer said on Wednesday, thereby prolonging her detention.
“Sad to inform you that the court denied Senator Leila’s bail application,” Filibon Tacardon, her legal counsel, told reporters.
The petition was for a drug case that saw de Lima accused of conspiring to commit illegal narcotics trade in a Philippine prison.
De Lima was arrested in 2017, just a few months after she launched a senate investigation into Duterte’s anti-narcotics campaign during which thousands of users and dealers were killed, many by police or in mysterious circumstances. She has been in police detention ever since.
A Philippine court in 2021 dismissed a drug case against de Lima, 63, while another court in May acquitted her from a charge that she received drug money from prison inmates.
