| October 1, 2007 | -
Sylvester Stallone, filming the sequel to “Rambo” near the Burmese border, described the country as “a hellhole beyond your wildest dreams.”
| Source:
AP via MyWay
|
| September 22, 2007 | -
Israel, a few days before Yom Kippur, declared that the Gaza Strip is now a “hostile entity,” and the office of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert (who is under investigation for corruption) announced a collective-punishment plan that includes “limiting the transfer of goods to the Gaza Strip, cutting back fuel and electricity, and restricting the movement of people to and from the Strip.” Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum condemned Israel's “criminal, terrorist Zionist actions.”
| Source 1:
BBC News
Source 2:
BBC News
Source 3:
ABC News
|
| December 14, 2006 | - An international war crimes court sentenced a Rwandan Roman Catholic priest to 15 years in prison for ordering his church crushed by bulldozers while 2,000 ethnic Tutsi remained inside.
| Source:
NYT
|
| November 26, 2006 | - Two hundred fifteen people were killed in a massive bombing and mortar attack on a Shiite neighborhood in Baghdad, marking Iraq's largest single-day death toll since the U.S. invasion. The killings prompted Shiite militiamen to seize and burn alive as many as twenty-four Sunnis; other Shiite residents of the capital stoned Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. “It's all your fault!” one man shouted.
| Source 1:
AP via MSNBC
Source 2:
Reuters
|
| October 17, 2006 | - President George W. Bush signed the Military Commissions Act, which suspends the right of habeas corpus for terrorism suspects and grants immunity to CIA interrogators and government officials, such as President Bush, for violations of the War Crimes Act.
| Source 1:
New York Times
Source 2:
Chicago Sun-Times
|
| July 30, 2006 | - It was reported that Private Steven D. Green, who is charged with raping a 14-year-old Iraqi girl, then killing her and members of her family, had said that, in Iraq, “killing people is like squashing an ant, I mean, you kill somebody and it's like, 'All right, let's go get some pizza.'”
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| July 6, 2006 | -
Israel continued its push into Gaza in search of an abducted soldier. “We want to use an iron fist,” said Isaac Herzog, a Labor Party minister, “but cautiously, with a lot of consideration.” Palestinians, who did not cease to fire missiles into Israel, were busy counting their dead.
| Source:
International Herald Tribune
|
| June 30, 2006 | - Four U.S. soldiers in Iraq were being investigated for raping a woman, then killing her and three other members of her family; it was suggested that the accused may have spent up to a week planning the attack.
| Source:
Times Online (U.K)
|
| April 3, 2006 | - Former Liberian president Charles Taylor was caught attempting to flee Nigeria and was sent to Sierra Leone, where he pleaded not guilty to 11 counts of war crimes.
| Source:
The New York Times
|
| March 28, 2006 | -
Iraq's ruling parties accused the United States of killing 37 unarmed civilians at a mosque. "There's been huge misinformation," said U.S. Lieutenant General Peter Chiarelli.
| Source:
News.com.au
|
| March 19, 2006 | - A videotape emerged purporting to show that in November of 2005 Marines in Haditha, seeking revenge for the deaths of their comrades, killed 15 unarmed Iraqis, including seven women and three children. "I watched them shoot my grandfather," said an eyewitness, "first in the chest and then in the head. Then they killed my granny." The Marines promised to investigate.
| Source:
Time
|
| December 7, 2005 | -
Saddam Hussein refused to appear in court to defend himself against war crimes, complaining of a lack of clean underwear. “Go to hell, all you agents of America,” he said.
| Source:
CNN.com
|
| October 30, 2005 | - The United States military published its first public estimate of the number of Iraqi civilians and soldiers killed by Iraqi militants. The estimate appears as a single bar graph on page 23 of a report to Congress and does not provide actual numbers, but by extrapolating from the graph it appears that insurgents are wounding and killing 63 Iraqis a day, and have wounded or killed 25,902 Iraqis since the war began. Some analysts said the numbers seemed low. The number of Iraqi civilians wounded or killed by U.S. forces was not mentioned in the report.
| Source:
The New York Times
|
| June 3, 2005 | - Two Israeli soldiers said that they were ordered to take part in revenge killings of Palestinians. “It doesn't matter,” one of the soldiers said he was told. “They took six of ours, and we are going to take six of theirs.” His unit went on to kill three Palestinians in an ambush. “And we acted flawlessly,” said the soldier. “We performed superbly.”
| Source:
BBC News
|
| February 28, 2005 | - In the U.K., Bournemouth University announced that it has developed two artificial mass graves, each containing about thirty fake skeletons, to be used to train Iraqi
war-crimes investigators.
| Source:
Guardian
|
| January 10, 2005 | - The Pentagon was considering whether to fund special, El Salvador-style Iraqi death squads.
| Source:
MSNBC
|
| October 14, 2004 | - Twenty-eight American soldiers were under investigation for the apparent murder of two detainees at a base in Afghanistan.
| Source: CNN
|
| August 31, 2004 | - It was discovered that full-body CT scans expose patients to the same level of radiation that people a few miles from Hiroshima received in World War II, and that the scans increase one's risk of developing cancer.
| Source: New Scientist
|
| August 8, 2004 | -
Iraq's new government reinstated capital punishment and issued an arrest warrant for Ahmad Chalabi on counterfeiting charges; Salem Chalabi, Ahmad's nephew and the head of the special tribunal that will try Saddam Hussein for war crimes, was accused of murder.
| Source: Associated Press
|
| June 18, 2004 | - A civilian contractor from North Carolina who worked for the CIA was indicted for beating a detainee to death in Afghanistan.
| Source: New York Times
|
| June 18, 2004 | - U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan criticized the United States for seeking to extend immunity for American peacekeeping troops from the International Criminal Court.
| Source: Newsday
|
| June 17, 2004 | -
Donald Rumsfeld admitted that he personally ordered that an Iraqi prisoner be concealed from the Red Cross, a practice that Gen. Anthony Taguba has described as "deceptive, contrary to Army doctrine, and in violation of international law." Seven months later, the "ghost" prisoner had still not been interrogated, aside from a cursory session when he first arrived at Camp Cropper.
| Source: Reuters, New York Times
|
| June 12, 2004 | - Officials from the Bosnian Serb republic admitted that its military took part in the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, in which more than 7,000 Muslim men and boys were slaughtered and dumped into mass graves.
| Source: CNN
|
| June 5, 2004 | - The acting U.N. high commissioner for human rights said that the American abuses of Iraqi prisoners might qualify as war crimes.
| Source: New York Times
|
| June 4, 2004 | - The Special Court for Sierra Leone, a United Nations-sponsored war-crimes tribunal, opened, though the prime suspect, former Liberian dictator Charles Taylor, was enjoying political asylum in Nigeria.
| Source: New York Times
|
| May 20, 2004 | -
Israel continued to demolish Palestinian homes in the Gaza Strip as part of "Operation Rainbow"; a tank and a helicopter gunship opened fire on protesters in Rafah and killed at least 10 people, including several children; military officials expressed "deep sorrow over the loss of civilian lives" and said that only warning shots had been fired.
| Source: New York Times
|
| May 17, 2004 | - Palestinian families in Gaza fled their homes, often with their belongings piled on donkey carts, as Israeli forces surrounded a refugee camp and prepared to demolish hundreds of homes.
| Source: Reuters
|
| May 12, 2004 | - An American businessman named Nick Berg was decapitated on video by Iraqi militants.
| Source: Telegraph
|
| May 11, 2004 | -
President Bush told Donald Rumsfeld that he has been doing a "superb job."
| Source: New York Times
|
| May 9, 2004 | - Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld apologized for the torture of Iraqi prisoners and said that there are "many more photographs and indeed some videos" of American soldiers engaging in "blatantly sadistic, cruel, and inhuman" behavior; Rumsfeld took "full responsibility" for the abuse but still refused to resign. "It's going to get a good deal more terrible, I'm afraid." Specialist Sabrina Harman, who faces court martial because of her role in the torture, said in an email that she never even saw a copy of the Geneva Conventions until recently. "I read the entire thing," she said, "highlighting everything the prison is in violation of. There's a lot." Harman said her job was to "soften up" prisoners for interrogation.
| Source: Telegraph
|
| May 5, 2004 | -
Sudan, where government-sponsored Arab militias called Janjaweed have been slaughtering black farmers, was elected to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights over the objections of the United States. One Sudanese diplomat scoffed at the U.S. objection and pointed to the American atrocities in Iraq.
| Source: New York Times
|
| May 3, 2004 | - Other photos showed prisoners masturbating; several showed U.S. soldiers smiling and posing next to their victims.
| Source: New York Times
|
| May 1, 2004 | - Photographs were published of British troops beating an Iraqi man and urinating on him; the pictures also showed a soldier striking the man in the genitals with a rifle; the victim's jaw was reportedly broken and his teeth were smashed before he was thrown off the back of a moving truck.
| Source: Daily Mirror
|
| April 30, 2004 | - Six American soldiers, including a general, were facing court martial over the torture and sexual humiliation of Iraqi prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison, which was famous for its torture chambers under Saddam Hussein. Photographs of the abuse were broadcast on U.S. television; one image depicted a hooded prisoner standing on a box with wires attached to his genitals.
| Source: BBC
|
| April 14, 2004 | -
Slobodan Milosevic submitted a list of 1,631 witnesses that he plans to call in his defense at The Hague.
| Source: Reuters
|
| March 31, 2004 | -
Serbia's parliament agreed to pay salaries and benefits to Slobodan Milosevic and other war criminals.
| Source: Associated Press
|
| February 24, 2004 | - Rebels in the Democratic Republic of Congo were said to be killing people, draining their blood, and stealing their genitals.
| Source: BBC
|
| February 22, 2004 | - The Lord's Resistance Army massacred almost 200 people in Uganda.
| Source: BBC
|
| January 13, 2004 | -
Germany said that it accepted "moral responsibility" for the 1904 massacre of 65,000 Hereros in Namibia, its former colony.
| Source: Reuters
|
| December 29, 2003 | - an Israeli soldier shot a peaceful, unarmed protester. A national controversy erupted when it turned out that the protester was Jewish.
| Source: New York Times
|
| December 10, 2003 | - U.S. forces killed six children in Afghanistan, along with two adults, just four days after nine children were killed during another air strike. A military spokesman admitted that "such mistakes" might hurt America's reputation in the area.
| Source: Washington Post
|
| December 8, 2003 | - Another Bosnian Serb, a general, was given 20 years for the siege of Sarajevo.
| Source: Washington Times
|
| December 7, 2003 | - A United States airstrike near Kabul failed to kill its Taliban target ("a known terrorist") but did kill nine young children who were playing ball inside the wall of their family compound. Their hats and shoes were scattered all over a bloody field.
| Source: Los Angeles Times
|
| December 3, 2003 | - The United Nations war-crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia sentenced a Bosnian Serb commander to 27 years in prison for his role in the Srebrenica massacre.
| Source: New York Times
|
| November 24, 2003 | - American security consultants were using Iraqi guerrillas to test nonstandard "limited-penetration" ammunition that punctures steel but shatters when it hits "soft targets" and creates untreatable wounds.
| Source: Army Times
|
| November 22, 2003 | - The United Nations war-crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia heard testimony from Miroslav Deronjic, a former Bosnian Serb politician, that Radovan Karadzic gave the order in 1995 to slaughter the Muslim men and boys of Srebrenica: "At one moment, he said the following sentence to me: 'Mirsolav, all of them need to be killed — whatever you can lay your hands on.'"
| Source: New York Times
|
| November 13, 2003 | - The president of the rump Yugoslavia apologized for "any evil or disaster that anyone from Serbia and Montenegro caused to anyone in Bosnia-Herzegovina."
| Source: Agence France-Presse
|
| October 29, 2003 | - Trent Lott suggested that more U.S. troops be moved to the area around Tikrit. "Honestly, it's a little tougher than I thought it was going to be," he said. "If we have to, we just mow the whole place down, see what happens. You're dealing with insane suicide bombers who are killing our people, and we need to be very aggressive in taking them out."
| Source: The Hill
|
| August 26, 2003 | - The body of Foday Sankoh, the late rebel leader of Sierra Leone, whose men specialized in mutilating civilians with machetes, was taken from his grave.
| Source: Reuters
|
| June 14, 2003 | - An Iraqi shepherd filed a $200 million lawsuit against Donald Rumsfeld for the deaths of 17 family members and 200 sheep.
| Source: Agence France-Presse
|
| June 13, 2003 | -
Donald Rumsfeld threatened to move NATO's headquarters out of Brussels because of Belgium's law that permits lawsuits for war crimes committed anywhere in the world.
| Source: Daily Telegraph
|
| June 12, 2003 | - The U.N.
Security Council voted to extend by one year the exemption for American peacekeepers who commit war crimes.
| Source: Associated Press
|
| December 4, 2001 | - Northern Alliance soldiers, aided by American and British troops, killed hundreds of Taliban prisoners who tried to escape from a makeshift prison in an old fortress. Amnesty International and other human-rights groups called for an investigation, saying it appeared that war crimes had been committed.
| |
| November 27, 2001 | - The war crimes tribunal at The Hague handed down a new indictment of Slobodan Milosevic for genocide.
| |
| November 20, 2001 | - Reports of other such war crimes were unconfirmed.
| |
| November 13, 2001 | - House and Senate negotiators agreed to ban any United States cooperation with the International Criminal Court because of fears that Americans could be charged with war crimes.
| |
| November 13, 2001 | - Pundits both liberal and conservative were warming to the idea of torturing prisoners in the antiterrorism investigation, which has so far disappointed them.
| |
| November 6, 2001 | - The United States Consumer Product Safety Commission decided to sue Daisy Manufacturing Company to force the recall of 7.5 million BB guns; safety officials said that two models of the BB guns are responsible for 15 deaths and 171 injuries since 1972.
| |
| August 21, 2001 | - Khieu Samphan, a former Khmer Rouge leader, apologized for the deaths of a million people but said he hadn't known about it at the time: “My mistake was that I was too naive and was out of touch with the real situation.” Twenty Koreans chopped off the tips of their little fingers and chanted “Apologize! Apologize!” to protest a visit by Japan's prime minister to a shrine honoring Japan's dead soldiers.
| |
| August 14, 2001 | - Three teens in Baltimore were charged with murder in connection with a four-month bum-stomping spree that resulted in three deaths.
| |
| July 10, 2001 | -
Slobodan Milosevic declined the services of counsel and refused to enter a plea during his arraignment at the war crimes tribunal at The Hague, which he said was illegal.
| |
| July 10, 2001 | - The Bosnian Serb republic announced that it now was willing to arrest indicted war crimes suspects; about 20 such fugitives, including Dr. Radovan Karadzic and General Ratko Mladic, are believed to be living there.
| |
| July 10, 2001 | - A peace plan was accepted in Sudan, where an 18-year civil war has caused almost two million deaths.
| |
| July 3, 2001 | -
Serbia's prime minister gave Slobodan Milosevic to The Hague to be tried for war crimes even though doing so was technically illegal; the prime minister of Yugoslavia resigned in protest.
| |
| June 12, 2001 | - Three Guatemalan military officers were sentenced to 30 years in prison for crushing the head of a Roman Catholic bishop in 1998, a few days after he issued a report blaming the military for the deaths of some 200,000 people.
| |
| June 5, 2001 | - Crown Prince Dipendra of Nepal reportedly shot and killed most of the royal family, including his mother, Queen Aiswarya, and his father, King Birendra Bir Birkram Shah Dev (who as king was thought to be an incarnation of Vishnu, the Hindu god). Prince Dipendra then shot himself through the temple; he was crowned king as he lay unconscious in a hospital, and promptly died. Prince Gyanendra, his uncle, ascended to the throne and claimed that the royal deaths were the result of the “accidental firing of an automatic weapon.” Riots ensued.
| |
| April 17, 2001 | - The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that gun deaths dropped by 26 percent during the 1990s.
| |
| January 16, 2001 | -
Turkey announced that it had killed 23,000 separatist Kurds in the last 15 years and threatened to get even with France if its parliament passed a bill recognizing the Turkish genocide of Armenians. The U.S. Congress almost passed a similar bill last year.
| |
| December 19, 2000 | - Cargill Turkey Products recalled 16.7 million pounds of turkey products after it was linked to 28 cases of listeriosis, including four deaths and three miscarriages.
| |
| November 14, 2000 | - Radislav Krstic, a Bosnian-Serb general, was standing trial at the Hague for war crimes connected to the massacre at Srebrenica; prosecutors played a tape of a radio intercept in which Krstic said, “Kill each and every one of them.
| |
| September 12, 2000 | - Bureau of Indian Affairs director Kevin Gover apologized to American Indians for “the decimation of the mighty bison herds, the use of the poison alcohol to destroy mind and body, and the cowardly killing of women and children.”
| |
| August 29, 2000 | -
Britain will join an international criminal court that will have jurisdiction over war crimes, genocide, and crimes against humanity; the United States still refuses to join the court, which fifteen countries have joined to date.
| |