This month:

• Blackwater pardons
• Mladic case
• Preliminary examinations at the International Criminal Court
• Shabiha living in The Netherlands

Blackwater

On 22 December 2020, the US president pardoned four Blackwater contractors that were convicted of killing Iraqi civilians. On 16 September 2007 they had opened fire in busy traffic in a Baghdad square and killed 14 unarmed Iraqi civilians, while wounding at least 17 civilians.

The decision was highly critized as it signals that the US fails to comply with international standards and its obligations under international law. Concerns were raised by the U.N. working group on the use of mercenaries and by an involved investigator.

Mladic Case

The Residual Mechanism for the Yugoslav Tribunal has notified the international community that the final verdict in the case against Ratko Mladic is due in May. In November 2017, he was sentenced to life imprisonment for genocide of Bosniaks in Srebrenica in 1995, the persecution of Bosniaks and Croats throughout Bosnia and Herzegovina, terrorising the population of Sarajevo during the siege of the city, and taking UN peacekeepers hostage. Both the defence and the prosecutor had lodged an appeal.

Preliminary investigations

The prosecutor of the International Criminal Court has published several findings on preliminary examinations into alleged crimes under the jurisdiction of the court:

1. On 9 December 2020 the prosecutor decided to close the examination into the United Kingdom/Iraq case and not to open a criminal investigation;
2. On 11 December 2020 the prosecutor announced the conclusion of the preliminary examination in the Ukrain situation. The conclusion was that the statutory criteria for opening a criminal investigation are met and that the her office is to request authorisation to do so;
3. Also on 11 December 2020 the prosecutor concluded the preliminary examination into Nigeria. The examination has led her to believe that the statutory criteria for a criminal investigation are met. She will therefore request authorisation for it;
4. On 14 December 2020 the prosecutor published her report on preliminary examination activities in 2020. The report provides a summary of the status of each situation under preliminary examination, including the current assessment with regard to issues of jurisdiction and admissibility, as well as summarising the measures taken during 2020 to enhance the overall efficiency and effectiveness of the preliminary examination process.

Shabiha living in the Netherlands

On 10 December 2020, the Dutch newspaper NRC published an article “The ghosts of the Assad regime continue to haunt Syrian refugees in the Netherlands”. Based on extensive research, the reporters conclude that several former henchmen of the Assad regime have received asylum in the Netherlands and continue to haunt asylum seekers from Syria. The article draws attention to several important issues that relate to identifying, investigating and addressing those responsible for serious international crimes:

• the importance of screening, investigating and addressing perpetrators of core international crimes;
• that diaspora communities, and especially asylum seekers, are to be protected from the long arm of theirrespective regimes and their proxies;
• the importance of social media monitoring, but also the limitations of using social media posts as a means of evidence since it does not always provide enough context;
• the suggestion that focus might have been more on Jihadist fighters and militant opposition groups, rather than on perpetrators within or aligning with the Assad regime (which may of course be a direct result of the fact that the majority of asyslum seekers fled for the regime and their proxies and that the regime is still in place, which means that most perpetrators do not have a reason to flee the country);
• the importance of proactively collecting data on alleged perpetrators and/or entities involved in core international crimes;
• the fact that, other than the Dutch, most countries do not apply the exclusion clauses on appliucation for regular migration ;
• the gap between the diaspora and civil society organisations on the one hand and specialized war crimes units on the other hand (in the United Kingdom these are given the opportunity to meet the prosecutor once or twice a year);
• the importance of keeping track of trends and developments regarding the influx and to use the improved information position to re-assess applications (like the Dutch immigration did on the Syrian cases).