Thijs Bouwknegt

Este archivo solo abarca los artículos del autor incorporados a este sitio a partir del 1 de diciembre de 2006. Para fechas anteriores realice una búsqueda entrecomillando su nombre.

The wall of victims at the Red Terror Martyrs' Memorial Museum in Addis-Ababa. © Thijs Bouwknegt

“I had a lot of pain last night”, Eshetu Alemu coughed, “but I will try to be present during the entire day”. The 68-year-old Ethiopian-Dutchman has terminal lung cancer and he attended his trial via video link from prison. A convicted war criminal, he wants his entire 2017 life sentence– for 75 murders, 6 cases of torture and 320 arbitrary detentions in cruel and degrading circumstances between February and December 1978 in the cities of Debre Markos and Metekel – quashed. He “regrets” that all these things happened. But he maintains he was never at any crime scene.

On 19 April, Alemu heard his Dutch lawyer plead his case.…  Seguir leyendo »

It was in this region of Deir ez-Zor in July 2012 that the jihadist Al-Khedr and his comrades filmed themselves executing the government soldier Al Ali. © Delil Souleiman / AFP

Al Mohassan, 10 July 2012. A clique of men sits in an extended pick-up truck. The guys are edgy and excited. Except Qussai Mahmoud Al Ali. Sitting mid-row, he glares down. His face is dotted with black spots and contusions. He is ridiculed because he is Alawite, the ethnic group of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad. Ahmad Al Khedr, who is behind the wheel, pulls over at a rubbly school building. Joined by another group, they march Al Ali over a cracked concrete courtyard, heading to a river bank.

Al Ali balances on his feet in the Euphrates. “Can I pay you money?”…  Seguir leyendo »

Montage based on the blurred broadcast of a witness in Al Hassan's trial before the ICC © ICC-CPI / Thijs Bouwknegt / JusticeInfo.net

“There is risk of identifying the expert – private session please,” sighed presiding judge Antoine Kesia-Mbe Mindua on 15 October. It was the end of the first block of expert testimony in the trial of Al Hassan Ag Abdoul Aziz Ag Mohamed Ag Mahmoud before the International Criminal Court (ICC). Al Hassan is on trial for 7-year-old atrocity crimes in Timbuktu, Mali, nearly six thousand kilometres away from the seat of the ICC in The Hague, The Netherlands.

Zapping between the channels of the ICC courtroom, video-links, private and public sessions, judges have now heard the first fifteen prosecution witnesses. It is laudable that evidentiary examinations take place at all against the uncertain odds of the COVID-19 pandemic.…  Seguir leyendo »

From 10 to 12 March, about two dozen prosecutors, victim’s lawyers and defence counsels gathered in The Hague to present their closing arguments to three judges on how they ought to perceive Dominic Ongwen, a former Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) child soldier who became one of its commanders, and whether or not to convict and punish him for a litany of atrocities he perpetrated after his eighteenth birthday. On one hand, Ongwen was portrayed as a monstrous, brutal and cruel serial-paedophile, a mass murderer and a fearless terrorist, who was powerful, proud and happily “gratifying his own desires” in the bush.…  Seguir leyendo »

Dark, cold and heavy clouds loom over foggy, grey Brussels. A large crowd stands in line to enter the old Justice Palace, which has been under reconstruction for a couple of years. An elderly Rwandan man, wearing a chic white trench coat, manoeuvres through the scaffolding and smoothly jumps the line. At 71, his pace is slow. He drags one of his feet. Supporting himself with a crutch in his right hand, he passes security and makes his way up the imposing stairway. His destination is a timeworn, dingy and dark courtroom. It is located at the outer wing of the historic Palace, which was inaugurated in 1883 by King Leopold II, infamous for his lethal colonial exploitation of the Congo Free State, today’s Democratic Republic of Congo.…  Seguir leyendo »