Innocent Civilians Research Articles

Arab and Islamic Shari'a Perspectives on the Current System of International Criminal Justice

AbstractThe Arab World is currently witnessing various conflicts, which have resulted in the death and displacement of many innocent civilians. It is notable that the current system of international criminal justice has failed to address many of the atrocities committed during those conflicts. In order to rectify this, it is imperative that "voices of reason" accurately convey to the West the attitudes of the Arab people towards this system. This article attempts to illustrate, on the one hand, that Islamic Shari'a principles, which have had a remarkable impact on the Arab legal systems, are compatible with the provisions of the current system of international criminal justice, and to explain, on the other hand, Arab skepticism with regard to that system.

East Timor's Tortured March to Statehood: A Tale of Legal Exclusion & the Vagaries of Realpolitik

In 1976, without effective local opposition, Indonesia absorbed and annexed East Timor as its twenty-seventh province, but the integration remained controversial at the international level. In the course of the next three decades and in the face of heavy-handed tactics by Indonesian forces keen to wipe out a guerrilla resistance and effectively pacify East Timorese battle raged killing thousands. Indonesian police forces regularly detained and tortured innocent civilians and brutally suppressed peaceful protests. Massive violence committed by Indonesian backed militia forces on East Timor increasingly hardened the international community's support for East Timor's independence. The turning point was the Dili Massacre in 1991 in which over 250 unarmed youth were mowed down by Indonesian military personnel at the Santa Cruz Cemetery. This Article has as its modest aim an exploration of the nexus of the principle of self-determination and the geopolitics that contributed to East Timor's tortured march to independence. In particular the Chapter will seek to examine the tenets of self-determination and its practical dynamics which yielded little protection to the aspirations of the East Timorese.

Poetry of witness: Uzbek identity and the response to Andijon

ABSTRACT This article focuses on poetry written about the 13 May 2005 events in Andijon, Uzbekistan to examine how Uzbek identity is expressed in relation to the narrow nationalism of post-Soviet Uzbek state culture. While the Uzbek government insists the 13 May events were a justified retaliation against armed insurgents, the authors of the Andijon poems portray the episode as a brutal attack on innocent civilians by government forces. In so doing, they not only contradict the official state narrative, but challenge the legitimacy of the government's construction of Uzbek identity and nationhood. This article examines the content, language and distribution of the poems as well as the persecution and arrests of their authors. The cases of these dissident poets touch on a number of theoretical issues—among them nationalism, identity, authoritarianism and literary politics—which have risen to the fore as a result of the Andijon events.

The 'War on Terror' Slippery Slope Policy: Guantanamo Bay and the Abuse of Executive Power

On September 11, 2001, the United States, the most powerful democracy in the world, was struck by a horrible event: aircraft hijackers' attacks to the heart of the City of New York put an end to the lives of 2,973 innocent civilians. An international terrorist organization, Al Qaeda, took responsibility for the act. In response to the attacks, the U.S. Government Executive branch put in place a series of highly controversial procedures. Amongst these procedures, the Executive branch claimed authority to detain indefinitely individuals who were arbitrarily labeled as enemy-combatants. In light of the foregoing events, the central goal of this Article is to assess the legitimacy of current presidential policies toward the detainees held in Guantanamo. Specifically, I will analyze the dangers of a system that allows equivalent detentions for the following vastly different groups: 1) those detained and yet to be adjudged enemy combatants; 2) those adjudged to be enemy combatants, who may or may not be subject to military commissions; and 3) those adjudicated and found not be enemy combatants at all. The Article, however, will do more than analyze the nature of these detentions. On the one hand, it will question the disparate treatment visited upon non-citizen enemy combatants, as opposed to the constitutional safeguards provided to U.S. citizen enemy-combatants. Additionally, with regard to the authorization of this treatment, this Article will challenge the U.S. Supreme Court to meaningfully accept the burden of ensuring that constitutionally required separation of powers are observed between the branches. Part I of this Article presents an analysis of the Executive actions which led to the creation of Guantanamo Bay and the use of Military Commissions, and questions whether the Executive branch holds the power to undertake such actions in light of the principles of separation of powers and checks and balances among the three branches of Government. In developing the analysis of relevant congressional actions, Part II will argue that separation of powers principles are at heart of the organization and function of the U.S. Constitution. This Part will further challenge these congressional actions as part of a discussion about whether certain congressional delegations of legislative power to the President were appropriate. Part III will develop a discussion on the critical role the Judiciary plays in directing a more active congressional response or 'check' on presidential actions. This Article suggests that such a role has not been satisfied to the level the Founders intended. A critical reading of the Federalist Papers evinces that the Founders spelled out the necessity that checks and balances be preserved. By virtue of the U.S. Supreme Court review of the substance of legislation Congress enacted, the Framers' aimed at fostering a system in which individuals' liberties should remain protected as enunciated in the Constitution. This part will then question whether the Executive has confined itself to the constitutional boundaries. In addition, this Part will briefly discuss the concept of enemy-combatants and what the consequences are of being labeled as such, including what implications can arise from being a U.S. citizen as opposed to a non-U.S. citizen. Part IV of this Article will develop attempts to provide for alternative solutions to the detainees' unbounded detention. It will then analyze the impact of current U.S. presidential and congressional choices with respect to Guatanamo Bay on foreign policy, including international treaties to which the U.S. is a signatory. In so doing, this Article suggests that U.S. policies are likely violative of Article Fourth of the Geneva Conventions which provides foreign individuals' protections from submission to military tribunals prior to having been declared prisoners of war (POW) and having charges properly filed against them. Guatanamo Bay Military commissions have proscribed procedural and evidentiary rules, which are distinct from those of military courts-martial, or other U.S. federal courts. This Article will suggest that these rules fall short of what is required for these proceedings to be endorsed as acceptable under our domestic law and treaty obligations. This Article concludes by suggesting that even though the Uighurs release may mark an initial showing of U.S. Government progress in detainee treatment, it appears that a more active and stricter judicial intervention may be necessary to secure rights for other detainees. Such a posture is necessary to avoid abusive encroachments of power among the branches of Government, and to ensure the effectiveness of checks and balances erected by the Founding Fathers. Furthermore, judicial intervention is critical to persuade the international community that the U.S. still respects due process of law and its obligations to ensure the protection of fundamental human rights under international treaties, even in a 'theater of war.'

On Some Merits of the Israeli Judgment on Targeted Killings

The recent judgment by the Israeli Supreme Court on targeted killings is a landmark decision in many respects. Its main merit lies in trying to give precision to, and therefore make concretely applicable by the belligerents, some loose standards of international humanitarian law on the conduct of hostilities. In particular, the judgment is significant because (i) it concluded that the issue of targeted killings did not amount to a non-justiciable question, (ii) it suggested a novel and imaginative way of narrowing down the vague scope of imprecise international rules on methods of combat, and in addition (iii) it set out a range of measures that belligerents must take both before and after armed attacks against civilians participating in hostilities, so as to avoid damage to innocent civilians as far as possible. The measures authoritatively suggested in the judgment may serve both to turn some unclear international rules into workable standards of conduct, and also to open the way to the possible prosecution of individuals (superiors and subordinates) who do not comply with such standards.

Public Committee Against Torture in Israel v. Government of Israel. Case No. HCJ 769/02

Public Committee Against Torture in Israel v. Government of Israel. Case No. HCJ 769/02. At <http://elyonl.court.gov.il/files_eng/02/690/007/a34/02007690.a34.pdf>.Supreme Court of Israel, sitting as the High Court of Justice, December 13, 2006.In Public Committee Against Torture in Israel v. Government of Israel1 Targeted Killings) the Supreme Court of Israel, sitting as the High Court of Justice, examined the legality of Israel's “preventative targeted killings” of members of militant Palestinian organizations. The Court's unanimous conclusion reads:The result of the examination is not that such strikes are always permissible or that they are always forbidden. The approach of customary international law applying to armed conflicts of an international nature is that civilians are protected from attacks by the army. However, that protection does not exist regarding those civilians “for such time as they take a direct part in hostilities” (§51(3) of [Additional Protocol I]). Harming such civilians, even if the result is death, is permitted, on the condition that there is no less harmful means, and on the condition that innocent civilians are not harmed. Harm to the latter must be proportional. (Para. 60)

Can development and democratization address the root causes of terrorism in Southeast Asia?1

Terrorism has become a challenge to which Southeast Asian studies need to respond. This article scrutinizes political and economic developments in regard to democracy and poverty in Southeast Asia, in particular the degree of change, and studies their influence on terrorism. The main question being asked here is whether external support for political and economic development could contribute to the Southeast Asian battle against terrorism. At the same time, this article seeks ways in which the international community, especially Europe, could support and participate in Southeast Asian efforts to address the root causes of terrorism. Finally, a global quantitative analysis of relevant factors is undertaken, and global conclusions are related to the developments and processes observed in Southeast Asia, especially in Indonesia. On the basis of the analysis, it can be established that some of the root causes of terrorism are indeed related to poverty and the lack of democracy. While it is clear that terrorist strategies to address these grievances by targeting innocent civilians are unacceptable, grievances related to poverty and the lack of democracy are perfectly legitimate. It seems that in order to inhibit individual terrorist motivations, democratization of political systems would do some good. However, the main economic and political grievances that are associated with the growth of terrorism are related to transnational communities. Thus, while Southeast Asian countries should continue to develop and democratize, they should also work together with the international community to democratize the international structures of governance.

Torture on Trial: Prosecuting Sadists and the Obfuscation of Systemic Crime

"Torture on Trial: Prosecuting Sadists and the Obfuscation of Systemic Crime": With war come war crimes. There is no documented war in which atrocities, torture, and excessive cruelty upon innocent civilians did not accompany it. To be sure, some cases are worse than others. In the case of Nazi Germany, war also included a systematic genocide, whose machinery of destruction took almost 6 millions lives outside of the framework of the blitzkrieg and the front. Rightfully, the crime of the Holocaust became the focus of criminal prosecution after the war, not only by the Allies but also by the West Germans. Some 6500 former Nazis were brought to trial in West Germany for their participation in the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question," as camp guards, members of killing squads, and desk killers. State attorney's offices had high hopes for these trials; at the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial, Attorney General of Hess Fritz Bauer intended to put the whole "Auschwitz Complex" on trial; the Berlin prosecutors of the planned RSHA (Main Reich Security Office) trial hoped to have a massive proceeding against the bureaucrats in charge of the Holocaust, whose pen strokes and signatures sanctioned the murder of millions. And yet, the trials changed course and soon only the most sadistic crimes of torture were the focus of the law, the press coverage, and the public's interest. The real crime, the methodical murder of innocent men, women, and children in the gas chambers and by the killing commandos, receded into the background, while the full force of the law came down only on the devils and monsters on the stand who created their own instruments of torture, lived out their evil fantasies, and committed crimes so heinous that even the Nazis investigated and punished them for their excessive cruelty. Forgotten by the law and the courts was the system which had allowed these men and women to flourish; in the end, only those who had gone above and beyond the call of duty under the Nazi system were convicted of serious crimes in postwar West Germany. The public learned to gasp in horror at the sick crimes of a few sadists, while distancing themselves from the whole system in which so many were enmeshed. What relevance does this have for current discussions of torture and war crimes? When we take as the prison guards at Abu Ghraib, we are not dealing with soldiers within a genocidal dictatorship, volunteers working at death camps designed especially for extermination. But the soldiers who engaged in the tortuous crimes at that prison have been demonized and held up as monstrous animals whom we condemn for their brutality and inhumanity. The US military publicly prosecutes them as examples of exactly what it does not want among its ranks. They will be punished, justice will be served, and the good war can go on. And yet these soldiers did not appear out of nowhere; they are fighters in an ideological battle against "evil." There is a lesson to be learned here about the tendency, in democratic societies, to condemn only the most extreme perpetrators of violence and torture and to turn a blind eye to the system that created them. The decision to support war will always, ultimately, be a decision to support war crimes. It makes no sense to imagine that torture is only the provenance of a few "bad apples"—it is a fundamental element of war in which "we" attempt to understand, undermine, and eradicate "them." To relegate torture to the margins, to the exceptional, and to the crime of a few sadists is to willfully ignore the nature of war.

Collateral Damage and the "Incident" at Haditha

In his paper, Collateral Damage and the 'Incident' at Tom Engelhardt provides a comparative analysis of the massacres of innocent civilians in the Viet Nam and Iraqi wars. Focusing on the events of My Lai, Haditha, Abu Ghraib, and Fallujah, Engelhardt traces the uncanny resemblance between the ways that the military attempted to contain the flow of information about these atrocities. Engelhardt analyzes the rhetorical tropes of media coverage via the favored terms of collateral damage and incident and the preferred statistics that always claim that 99.9% of the military conducts itself professionally. The fact that the media not only accepts but also promotes such specious terms and statistics has dire consequences for the public's ability to make sense of the atrocities of war. Engelhardt's analysis reveals how the practice of war and the language it depends on create a mass of unknowable enemies that are easy to kill and even easier to forget. Tom Engelhardt, Collateral Damage and the 'Incident' at Haditha page 2 of 10 CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture 9.1 (2007): Thematic Issue, Representing Humanity in an Age of Terror. Ed. Sophia A. McClennen and Henry James Morello

?The Battle Over Our Homes?: Reconstructing/Deconstructing Sovereign Practices Around Israel's Separation Barrier on the West Bank

During Second Intifada, Israel started to construct a separation barrier, officially aimed at preventing Palestinian terrorists from penetrating into its territory. Previous Palestinian attacks caused death and injury of many innocent civilians, and raised a sense of indignation toward incompetence of Israeli government and forces. The construction of barrier, however, raised some objections, based on argument that barrier was not built on Green Line (the 1949 Armistice agreement established between Israel and Jordan) and that it both expropriated extensive Palestinian agricultural lands and de facto annexed many of Israel's settlements that had been built in occupied territories. Tracing various practices, representations, discourses, and arenas in which clashes between state and Anti-Wall movement have occurred, article's main argument is that relative failure of Anti-Wall activists in their struggle, and relative success of state in constructing Separation Barrier, resulted from fact that conflict has become, for both sides, not only a conflict about a barrier and its route, but a struggle over sovereignty and national identity. Under these circumstances, activists failed in mobilizing public against the Wall, whereas state succeeded in using various discursive and non-discursive sovereign practices, based on arguments such as security needs, and the battle over our homes, as a means to accomplish its mission despite resistance that appeared.

The Eelam endgame?

The ceasefire agreement signed in 2002 between the LTTE/Tamil Tigers and the government of Sri Lanka (GoSL) now lies in complete disarray. The civil war has restarted; at least 3,500 lives have been lost in 2006 as a result and ‘disappearances’ are also increasing. This is a particularly difficult time for the civilian population trapped between the two sides. It is not clear whether or not either side has taken clear-cut strategic decisions or know what they hope to achieve during this unfortunate chapter in the civil war. Does the LTTE regard this phase as a prelude to something bigger, seeking to demoralize and weaken the GoSL security forces prior to a major offensive? Or is this a frustrated reaction to a failed peace process and a major split in the LTTE ranks? What aims are the GoSL seeking to achieve by paying so little attention to the impact of their assaults on innocent civilians in the north and east? Moreover, where does the international community turn next? If there is to be a significant victory by either side, the major obstacle and challenge in the future will be legitimacy on the one hand and governance on the other.

Hybrid deliberative/reactive control of a scanning system for landmine detection

Antipersonnel mines infest fields all over the world. According to recent estimates, landmines are killing and maiming more than 2000 innocent civilians per month. The problem of landmine detection and removal requires the cooperation of a number of engineering fields, which in turn poses a need for new technologies, such as improved sensors, efficient manipulators and mobile robots. This paper describes the configuration and control architecture of a scanning manipulator for detecting antipersonnel landmines. The scanning system is part of a demining system based on a walking robot that acts as the carrier for the scanning manipulator. Broadly speaking, the scanning system consists of a sensor head that can detect certain kinds of landmines and, to move the sensor head over large areas, a manipulator that has been appropriately sensorized to scan irregular terrains in the presence of obstacles. The proposed control architecture is of the hybrid deliberative/reactive type: A deliberative controller defines a sweep trajectory that furnishes complete coverage of the infested area, while two reactive controllers are involved in on-line adaptation to the environment. Experiments show good performance of the whole system.

Killing Soldiers

A riddle in the ethics of war concerns whether lethal defensive force may be justifiably used against aggressing soldiers who are morally innocent. In this essay I argue that although there might be reasons for excusing soldiers as individuals, one may be justified in using defensive force against them provided that they have initiated threatening behavior and that our interpretation of that behavior as threatening is reasonable. I go on to investigate various implications of being in conflict with aggressing soldiers who are morally innocent, arguing that different restrictions apply to the use of defensive force when the aggressors cannot be held morally responsible for being aggressors.My argument has important practical implications both for deciding whether to go to war and for deciding how to fight a just defensive war. Concerning the ongoing Iraq war, for example, it suggests that if it were only a matter of killing culpable members of the Republican Guard, invasion could perhaps have been justified. Since any attack would involve killing innocent conscripted soldiers as well as innocent civilians, however, there were good reasons to wait to see whether options other than intervening militarily would become available. If we are engaged in a just defensive war, my argument implies that we must accept a higher level of risk and more harm if we can assume that the aggressors are innocent rather than morally responsible for their harmful or threatening behavior.

The Truth Is on the Reservation: American Indians and Conspiracy Culture

Homeland security Fighting Terrorism Since 1492. - slogan on t-shirts, posters, and bumper stickers printed with image of Native American warriors As we enter the '90s, the FBI's slaughter of AIM militants has long since been completed and hidden from view. ... concerning the form and function of the FBI, things have never been OK. -Ward Churchill and Jim Vander Wall, COINTELPRO Papers The history [of US treatment of Native Americans] is bad enough -there's no need to embellish it. - Russell Thornton to Scott Jaschik in New Ward Churchill Controversy, Inside Higher Ed American Indian conspiracy theories evoke particular sense of uneasiness in society built upon Native lands, phenomenon evident in the controversy surrounding Ward Churchill, writer, activist, academic, and self-identified Native American who has himself been denounced for spreading lies. For several decades, Churchill has been piecing together narrative of American history in which conspiratorial US government perpetuates crimes and covers them up with propaganda and lies. With Jim Vander Wall, he published two polemical exposes characterizing the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) as government agency whose main function is not to fight crime-and thus keep Americans safe-but to actively repress political diversity through counterintelligence programs targeting Indians and other citizens: Agents of Repression: FBI's secret Wars Against the Black Panther Party and the American Indian Movement and COINTELPRO Papers: Documents from the FBI's secret Wars Against Domestic Dissent. In addition to challenging the public image of the heroic G-man, Churchill has repeatedly flaunted the ugly g-word that undermines many cultural myths of America's founding: genocide. colonization of the Americas is explicitly linked to acts of genocide in the titles of full four of Churchill's books, most recently in A Little Matter of Genocide: Holocaust and Denial in the Americas, 1492 to the Present? Churchill's version of American history takes issue with the common understanding that the decimation of Native American populations by European diseases such as small pox was accidental and not part of larger conspiracy to commit genocide. Despite the controversial nature of this earlier writing, Churchill did not receive national attention until 2005 when the media noticed an essay he wrote on September 11, 2001, Some People Push Back: On the Justice of Roosting Chickens. Whereas Churchill's books protesting govern ment-sponsored domestic terrorism and genocide failed to raise public outcry against him or the government, this article's invocation of Malcolm X's response to John F. Kennedy's assassination-it was merely case of 'chickens coming home to roost' -gained him instant notoriety. After protestors at Hamilton College cited the 9/11 essay to oppose the Kirkland Project Panel with Ward Churchill-scheduled for February 3, 2005 but officially cancelled due to threats of violence2 - media frenzy and national debate ensued. Churchill's writing and speeches had compared the United States to Nazi Germany in previous discussions of genocide without receiving much notice, but his description in this article of the little Eichmanns inhabiting the sterile sanctuary of the twin towers evoked widespread indignation. reference stems from his argument that many of the workers at the World Trade Center were specifically targeted by terrorists as a technocratic corps at the very heart of America's global financial empire, not as innocent civilians. attack, he contends, was retaliatory, strike back for years of oppressive US policies aided by the stockbrokers, lawyers, and government employees in the World Trade Center. Beyond blaming foreign policy for eliciting this strike, Churchill argues that many of the citizens who died were guilty of complicity: he connects government and civilian employees as coconspirators driven to protect their capitalist interests. …

The Sudanese Darfur Crisis and Internally Displaced Persons in International Law: The Least Protection for the Most Vulnerable

The article examines the international legal position of internally displaced persons (IDPs) in the wake of the ongoing humanitarian crisis in the Darfur region of western Sudan. The innocent civilians of Darfur have become the primary target of an armed conflict in Sudan since 1983. The terrorised survivors fled their homes in search of safety, causing massive forced internal population displacement. The number of IDPs in the world has steadily been increasing, and has now outstripped the number of refugees. Yet there is no specific international legal and institutional apparatus for IDPs. This article highlights and addresses the problems of their legal identity, rights, humanitarian assistance, and protection in international law. It traces the development of international legal and institutional frameworks for IDPs and their current state of coverage and protection. It offers suggestions to overcome the inadequate legal coverage and uncertain protection. The marginalised plight of IDPs needs to be addressed in a holistic manner as an integral part of the international protection of human rights and the enforcement of humanitarian law.

Casting the First Stone: Who Can, and Who Can’t, Condemn the Terrorists?

‘No matter what the grievance, and I'm sure that the Palestinians have some legitimate grievances, nothing can justify the deliberate targeting of innocent civilians. If they were attacking our soldiers it would be a different matter.’ (Dr. Zvi Shtauber, Israeli Ambassador to the United Kingdom, BBC Radio 4, May 1, 2003).

The Effectiveness of Economic Sanctions: The Case of North Korea

IntroductionThe phrase means restrictions on normal commercial relations with a target country, including trade, investment, and other cross-border activities. Economic sanctions are either unilateral or multilateral. A unilateral sanction is imposed by one country, such as the U.S., against another country, such as North Korea. Multilateral sanctions require the cooperation of at least two nations. The clearest examples of multilateral sanctions are those imposed by the Security Council of the United Nations.The UN has imposed economic sanctions no more than 13 so-called or states throughout its existence. These sanctioned nations include Afghanistan, Haiti, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Myanmar (formerly Burma), Rhodesia, South Africa, and Yugoslavia. When a UN sanction is imposed, all UN member nations are required to comply with the order and to enforce the sanction against the outlaw country (Addis, 2003, p. 575). The U.S. has frequently used unilateral sanctions against many countries as a regular tenet of its foreign policy since the end of Cold War. According to Addis (2003), about 75 percent of the world's nearly 200 countries were subject to U.S. sanctions as of 2000. Garfield (2002) found that the U.S. had placed 68 percent of the world population under economic sections.The U.S. has turned to sanctions or the threat of sanctions to achieve political objectives, such as the overthrow of hostile regimes, the termination of interstate aggression, the protection of human rights, the elimination of weapons of mass destruction programs, a halt to nuclear testing programs, and the encouragement of domestic and foreign policy changes (Ripsman and Blanchard, p. 15i). The U.S. has used sanctions in the hope that they would lead the sanctioned nations' citizenry to rebel against their leaders or at least compel them to comply fully with U.S. demands. However, none of the sanctions has achieved its intended purpose. In fact, sanctions have backfired and tarnished the credibility of the U.S. as a leader of the free world. Meanwhile, the U.S. has created miserable economic conditions for tens of millions of people around the world whom it intended to help through its economic sanctions. Thus, the time has come for the U.S. to recognize that economic sanctions represent a failed policy. The U.S. must build economic and diplomatic ties with its adversaries to ensure world peace and stability. A case study of U.S. economic sanctions against North Korea may help clarify why a policy of engagement and reconciliation with North Korea could be the best approach to accomplish significant improvements in North Korea's social, political and economic condition.A full context for analyzing a change in U.S. policy toward North Korea requires an understanding of (i) the types of sanctions against rogue countries; (2) reasons why most experts oppose the use of economic sanctions as a political tool; and (3) reasons why economic sanctions have been ineffective. Therefore, the following three sections review the existing literature on economic sanctions, with particular attention to the matter of why they often fail. This literature also provides a basis for the specific evaluation of U.S. sanctions against North Korea, and a foundation for evaluating alternatives for dealing with a nuclear North Korea.Types of SanctionsTo achieve political goals, the U.S. has historically used a wide variety of coercive actions against outlaw regimes, including military actions, economic sanctions, and diplomatic protests with or without military threat or covert action. Among those actions, economic sanctions have generated the most heated debate among academicians because they have been notoriously ineffective and have caused irreparable harm to innocent civilians. For example, a 13-year UN embargo against Iraq from 1990 to 2003 spearheaded by the U.S. caused at least i.5 million Iraqis, including 500,000 children, to lose their lives (Alnasrawi, 200i, p. …

Casting the First Stone: Who Can, and Who Can't, Condemn the Terrorists?

‘No matter what the grievance, and I'm sure that the Palestinians have some legitimate grievances, nothing can justify the deliberate targeting of innocent civilians. If they were attacking our soldiers it would be a different matter.’ (Dr. Zvi Shtauber, Israeli Ambassador to the United Kingdom, BBC Radio 4, May 1, 2003).

Scope of Presidential Power: Military Commissions—America’s Domestic War Crimes Court

On September 11, 2001, hijacking of four commercial airliners resulted in death of over 3,000 innocent civilians. Congress reacted swiftly and, on September 18, issued Joint Resolution to Authorize Use of United States Armed Force Against Those Responsible for Recent Attacks Launched Against United States--the AUMF. The AUMF states, in part, that the President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001. On November 13, 2001, President Bush issued a Military Order authorizing Department of Defense to establish military commissions to bring to justice those non-citizen members or supporters of Al Qaeda that threaten security of America and world. Although President's Military Order does not spell out specific, individual procedures guaranteed to accused, Order guarantees accused right to a and lair trial and provides for further orders and instructions to implement Order. Since that time, several military commission orders and instructions have been promulgated, affording accused presumption of innocence, requirement of proof beyond a reasonable doubt, and a full defense. Most recently, Department of Defense promulgated Military Commission Instruction Number 10, an order that explicitly excludes from evidence statements obtained by torture. Although requirement of a full and fair trial arguably includes and mandates this exclusion, this Order was promulgated to address any ambiguity regarding admissibility of such statements. Military commissions have been challenged as being convened without authority, creating offenses that are not cognizable under laws of war, and implementing rules of procedure that deprive an accused of fundamental rights. I'll address each of these challenges in turn. The President's authority to implement 9/11 military commissions is based on his inherent authority under Constitution as commander in chief of this nation's armed and Congress' recognition of that authority in AUMF, Articles 21 and 36 of Uniform Code of Military Justice, and Detainee Treatment Act of 2005. The Constitution provides several bases for establishing military commissions. The Constitution authorizes Congress to convene military commissions. Under Article 1, Congress has power to declare war, to define and punish Piracies and Felonies committed on high seas, and Offences against Law of Nations, to make rules for Government and Regulations of land and naval forces, and to make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution foregoing The Constitution also authorizes President to convene military commissions. Under Article 2, President, as commander in chief, is authorized to convene military courts and tribunals pursuant to his wartime powers. This authorization is consistent with historical practice. Since formation of our republic, President and other military commanders have convened military commissions; they were convened during War of 1812, Mexican-American War, Civil War, Philippine Insurrection, Spanish-American War, and War World II. More importantly, many of these commissions were convened without congressional authorization specifically directing or ordering military commissions. In 1942 Supreme Court case addressed President's authority to convene military commissions in Ex parte Quirin. Eight German saboteurs covertly entered United States to blow up factories and bridges, and were captured. The President convened military commissions to try saboteurs on charges of violations of law of war, conspiracy, and violation of Articles of War by aiding enemy, and spying. …

Terrorist bombing

Bombings and explosion incidents directed against innocent civilians are the primary instrument of global terror. In the present review we highlight the major observations and lessons learned from these events. Five mechanisms of blast injury are outlined and the different type of injury that they cause is described. Indeed, the consequences of terror bombings differ from those of non-terrorism trauma in severity and complexity of injury, and constitute a new class of casualties that differ from those of conventional trauma. The clinical implications of terror bombing, in treatment dilemmas in the multidimensional injury, ancillary evaluation and handling of terror bombing mass casualty event are highlighted. All this leads to the conclusion that thorough medical preparedness to cope with this new epidemic is required, and that understanding of detonation and blast dynamics and how they correlate with the injury patterns is pivotal for revision of current mass casualty protocols.