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04/02/2006:

"Britain Backs Request to Move Liberian's Trial to The Hague"

UNITED NATIONS, March 31 — Britain circulated a draft resolution to Security Council members on Friday that would transfer the war crimes trial of Charles G. Taylor, the former Liberian president, to the Netherlands because of what it said was a threat to regional peace posed by his continued presence in West Africa.

Under its terms, Mr. Taylor would be tried in the International Criminal Court complex in The Hague under the auspices of the United Nations-backed court that was established in Sierra Leone to try people suspected of responsibility for atrocities during the country's civil war, from 1991 to 2002.

Mr. Taylor was indicted by that court in March 2003, while still president of Liberia, on 17 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity. He had been living in exile in Nigeria from August 2003 until Wednesday, when he was arrested while trying to flee to Cameroon and flown to Sierra Leone.

Mr. Taylor is accused of backing rebels who, in a civil war that killed 50,000 people, gained grisly notoriety for raping victims and maiming and killing people by chopping off their arms, legs, hands, ears and lips.

The draft resolution said Mr. Taylor's presence in West Africa constituted "an impediment to stability and a threat to the peace of Liberia and of Sierra Leone, and to international peace and security in the region."
nytimes.com


If Not Peace, Then Justice

I. A Day in Court for the Criminals of Darfur?

A thick afternoon fog enveloped the trees and streetlights of The Hague, a placid city built along canals, a city of art galleries, clothing boutiques, Vermeers and Eschers. It is not for these old European boulevards, however, that The Hague figures in the minds of men and women in places as far apart as Uganda, Sarajevo and now Sudan. Rather, it symbolizes the possibility of some justice in the world, when the state has collapsed or turned into an instrument of terror. The Hague has long been home to the International Court of Justice (or World Court), a legal arm of the United Nations, which adjudicates disputes between states. During the Balkan wars, a tribunal was set up here for Yugoslavia; it has since brought cases against 161 individuals. It was trying Slobodan Milosevic — the first genocide case brought against a former head of state — until his unexpected death last month. And now the International Criminal Court has begun its investigations into the mass murders and crimes against humanity that have been committed, and are still taking place, in the Darfur region of Sudan.

How ugly, the perpetrators of horrific crimes in Africa with total impunity now taking up the mantle of Great White bringers of 'peace and justice.'